Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. [upbeat music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:16 For more than twenty years, my first guest has served in key technical and leadership roles, delivering breakthrough technologies to the markets he served. 0:25 Most recently, he served as the executive director of software engineering for Dell's EqualLogic Software Engineering Group, where he led the development of numerous storage innovations. 0:36 A speaker and occasional blogger, he focuses on areas of virtualization and data storage, and he holds severed storage technology pla-- patents. 0:46 P-please welcome Laz Vikaras-Dez, chief technology officer and co-founder of ClearSky Data. Laz, welcome to the show. Uh, thanks, Peggy. Uh, thanks for having me. Well, it's-- we're delighted to have you here. 1:02 So let's talk a little bit about your background, it's pretty impressive, and now what you're doing with ClearSky. Sure. Uh, so, uh, I-I've been a storage and, uh, networking guy for quite a long time. 1:16 Uh, and, uh, it's, it sort of came of age in the nineties, uh, you know, working in the networking industry, uh, with lots of networking companies that, uh, uh, have, uh... 1:27 You know, sadly, all the networking companies in the nineties, uh, went belly up in, uh, in the two thousands. 1:32 And so, um, uh, in the, uh, early two thousands, I think it was actually two thousand and one, I got a call from, uh, a woman named Paula Long, who was, uh, starting a company called EqualLogic. 1:42 It was a, uh, storage company that, uh, that, that was using, uh, you know, Ethernet for storage in co- interconnect, which was, um, you know, quite novel at the time. And, uh, you know, it was interesting. 1:53 I had, uh, I had previously told my wife I would never join another startup again, and I would never be a people manager again. 2:00 And then, uh, you know, I joined EqualLogic, which was a startup, and then, uh, next thing you know, I was, uh, running a group there within, like, a year. So, uh, I was a liar twice. And- [laughs]... 2:09 uh, that went on for quite some time. Uh, it, it was essentially an, an eleven-year, uh, uh, gig, which was, uh, you know, building a startup, uh, building it into a real, uh, functioning business. 2:21 We were almost went public. In fact, uh, we got bought, uh, the day of the IPO roadshow. So we were gonna go public, and then, uh, Dell bought us. 2:30 Now, from there, I ran, uh, software development at Dell, uh, for, uh, about five years, uh, until, uh, I, uh, I decided to move on, uh, and, uh, and go back into my, uh, my startup roots, uh, this time as a founder. 2:45 Uh, so, uh, uh, Ellen and I, uh, Ellen Rubin and I are co-founders of this company, ClearSky Data. Uh, we've been at it for a few years. 2:52 Uh, and it was, um, you know, it-- What's, what's interesting about this company is it's sort of a fusion of, uh, networking and, uh, storage technology. 3:01 Uh, and it, it sort of became a swirl of all the things I had done in the previous twenty years, uh, because, uh, you know, the, the, the world was-- we saw it at the time in two thousand thirteen, two thousand fourteen, when we were starting the company, it, it was becoming, uh, much more network-focused because so much of the infrastructure is going to clouds and, uh, you access them over a network. 3:23 And we felt that, uh, the, the portion of the story that was very underserved, uh, was this networking piece, and, uh, and so hence we, we built ClearSky Data. 3:36 Uh, and if you, uh, if you fast-forward, uh, to today, and you, you look at some of the trends that, uh, clearly you're following, uh, it, it, it's, um, it was actually prescient. 3:47 We, um, uh, w-we were sort of predicting the rise of, uh, the IoT world and the edge computing world, uh, uh, because we were, you know, from our observations [notification sound] that, you know, the clouds either weren't, uh, w-weren't well connected enough, uh, or the world wasn't well connected enough in order to really get everything in the cloud, and that latency was gonna be a problem. 4:11 So, so let's talk about that, because that's really important when you think about that and you think about latency and you think about what we need right now and, and the space and how it's changed. 4:21 We have people talking about whether they wanna go to the cloud, they wanna go to the edge. We really think about the need to be to the edge. Why is... 4:29 And, and maybe the first question I should have a-asked, what is edge computing? Why do we need to be at the edge because of that latency and the, the need right now when we think about... 4:38 And I always say to people, speeds and feeds and all of these important things that are happening right now and the immediacy with we have so many connected devices and what we need. Talk to us a little bit about that. 4:50 Well, so, uh, you know, the, there's, um, there's a, a sort of a congenital problem with the universe, and that is that the speed of light is finite, and, uh, and, uh, you know, as a sort of a corollary that our patience as human beings is limited. 5:05 Uh, and [laughs] so, uh- That is so true. So true. [laughs] And so, uh, what, um, 5:13 uh, what, what the, um, when, when you're thinking about, uh, what the edge does for you, it, it, uh, it essentially positions resources that you can interact with, either as a human or as a computer, that are nearby. 5:27 And what that means is that, uh, if you're frequently going back and forth, uh, you, um, you, you, you don't experience this, this latency. And, and a lot of people... 5:38 When we first started the company, a lot of people thought latency was really the same thing as bandwidth. You know, like, "Oh, my God, I got-- I had ten gigabits of, of internet last year, but now I'm up to thirty. 5:48 How can you possibly tell me that this problem isn't solved?" And, and, you know, the problem isn't solved because the speed of light is very finite. 5:56 Um, you know, one of the things that, uh, I always tell our, uh, our customers and, and prospectsThat, uh, we, we have the sixty-mile rule. 6:04 Uh, you know, sixty miles of fiber, uh, a fiber optic cable is, uh, one millisecond of round trip latency. 6:11 And so if you think about this in computational terms, uh, you know, a hundred miles, uh, is, is, is, uh, you know, a millisecond and a half. 6:22 You know, you're going a few hundred miles, it's, it's actually, you know, quite a few milliseconds. Uh, cross-country, the best you'll ever do is about sixty, seventy milliseconds. 6:32 Uh, and then you're going back and forth constantly. Uh, and, and, you know, these milliseconds add up. 6:39 And so applications needing to go back and forth to distant resources a few thousand times, um, will suddenly add up these, these weights that are in the, you know, tens of seconds or minutes in some cases. 6:51 And, and, uh, you know, this can become a real, uh, you know, perceptual problem, uh, if you're a user on, uh, you know, waiting for something to happen. 7:00 Uh, but, you know, even, even worse, if you're an application and you need to crunch a lot of data, it's a very slow process. 7:07 Uh, so when you think about what needs to be at the edge, uh, you really need to think about, uh, you know, what, what sort of data, how frequently you're going to be accessing it, uh, and how quickly you want to be able to get through it. 7:20 Uh, it turns out that there's quite a lot of relevance for that. 7:24 Um, and you can think about it, anything from a security camera or security logs that need to be scanned in real time, uh, to, um, you know, all sorts of types, other types of applications that are out there, from, uh, point of sale applications to, uh, other types of, of analytics. 7:42 Uh, you know, a lot of times this stuff has to be done in real time and has to be done very quickly. 7:47 Uh, and, uh, you know, if, if you're going to wait ten seconds, uh, your window of opportunity to do something may be long lost. And so, so there's, there's a lot there, uh, that, that fits that description. 8:00 Um, you know, something as simple as, uh, I, I always talk about, uh, desktops. Like 8:07 desktop computers, you're, you're used to interacting with your desktop, excuse me, computer, uh, in a way where it's instantly responsive. 8:14 If, um, if I were to put your desktop computer on the other side of an internet line and, and position it, you know, seven hundred miles away because it's convenient to me, uh, you wouldn't have such a good time. 8:26 Uh, and, [laughs] and that, that is, uh, that's not a bandwidth problem, that's a latency problem. And, uh, you know, it's, it's almost universally applicable, uh, across a wide swath of applications. 8:38 Um, you know, and, and I think, uh, you know, folks are just starting to realize that now. Is it because we're so used to working in these silos? You know, when we talk about manufacturing, it's been for years silos. 8:51 And I think when we talk about things, is it because we've been so used to traditional data storage that we don't understand that? Is, is that part of that? 9:01 Or is it just, you know, we're-- we've become conditioned to it, and now we don't realize, look, we can eliminate this latency and that we can do things so much faster, and that it, it, it makes things happen differently than what we're accustomed to, and, and that there's a lot of challenges based on what we've been doing, and we could do things so much differently if we understand the edge versus the cloud. 9:25 Right. I, I think actually, um, you know, one of the... You, you speak to a good point there. The, the fact is that we're used to having our stuff next to us, right? 9:33 I'm, I'm staring at, uh, you know, my laptop right now, and it's right next to me, and it's quite snappy and fast. And, and, you know, I think as, as humans, we're, we're used to even manufacturing. 9:43 We have all of our computing facilities in the same building. There's no meaningful latency there. Uh, and, uh, you know, and that's, that's, you know, how we've gotten used to it. 9:52 Then, you know, the cloud comes along, and one of the dirty little secrets about the cloud is that it's somewhere else. It's not in your building. 10:00 And in fact, uh, it, it's probably hundreds of miles away, if not thousands of miles away if you pick, uh, you know, the, the region inappropriately. And what, and what ends up happening now is you have this problem. 10:11 So everyone wanted to go to the cloud, the cloud, and then they suddenly realized that, you know, there's this new problem, and they don't understand what it is, and maybe, you know, maybe my Internet's not fast enough. 10:22 I, I think, um, you know, the, the drive to outsource a lot of IT infrastructure, uh, you know, has, has pushed us to do something, uh, that is more cloud-oriented. 10:36 But I believe that the, um, the, the need for immediacy and low latency is now swinging the pendulum in the other direction, where, uh, if there is a cloud-like model, it's more local than, uh, than the, the sort of hyperscaler model that we've, uh, we've, uh, seen over the last ten years. 10:57 So then help me understand the difference between an edge data center from a traditional data center. Is there one, or are we talking one and the same? 11:06 Uh, oh, there's, there's, uh, you know, there, there are lots of different flavors. Uh, you know, so, uh, a lot of folks will tell you that anything in a metros-- in a metro area could be an edge data center. 11:18 Um, but, but, uh, you know, true, there, there are different flavors of data centers. 11:22 And, uh, you know, you have, you have a conventional data center that might be sitting somewhere in a city like New York, for example, or like in New Jersey. Um, and, and there are lots of... We, we partner ourselves. 11:33 At ClearSky, we have points of presence, um, uh, where we, we partner with, uh, the, the likes of Equinix, for example. They're a great partner of ours. Um, they have these facilities. 11:45 You could technically call that an edge data center, um, although it's, it's still very large and it's still, you know, it's, it's in the metro, but it does-- it covers, uh, you know, it'll cover large metros. 11:56 Um, if you want to talk about, uh, sort of the, the, the next edge-You necessarily have to get closer. 12:04 So a lot of folks are, are, are, um, really thinking hard about, uh, what the 5G edge is going to look like and also thinking hard, uh, about smaller data center footprints that are, um, you know, that, that are closer to, uh, you know, strategic locations for latency purposes. 12:27 And, and so you have, uh, you know, a s-a whole, 12:32 uh, sort of ecosystem of companies that are now building, uh, what I think is a real edge data center, which looks more like a-- it looks like a, you know, a trailer or, or, you know, a small, um, a small cabinet somewhere in, in some nondescript place. 12:49 And, um, you know, that is a completely different animal than the type of data center that you, you put your Dell servers and, uh, your storage systems in, uh, if you are, uh, i-i-if you are a manufacturer. 13:02 That, that is a true edge data center where, um, you're constrained for real estate, you're constrained for, uh, connectivity, and you're paying a huge premium to put stuff there. 13:13 And so, um-- And I think that is, uh, when, when I think about the edge, I think about, uh, those types of, uh, you know, edge locations where, um, 13:25 where, for example, we just announced a, um, uh, a partnership with, uh, Packet and, um, a-and SBA Communications. 13:33 They're, they're, uh, they were participating in a pilot, uh, near Foxborough Stadium here in Massachusetts, and they have a cell tower, and they have, uh, a, uh, 13:43 a small structure that is, uh, you know, relatively small. 13:47 It's a, it's a, it's a, you know, a containerized data center where a small number of, uh, servers and, and, uh, you know, other types of facilities and networking can be, uh, can be co-located next to the tower. 14:00 That is an interesting-- That's a completely different type of data center, and that is, uh, sort of the emerging model, I believe. 14:08 How is that going to differ then in effect, like the storage, you know, delivered to the edge? Is it going to or is it just a unique way of, you know, because of 5G? 14:17 I mean, is that what we're talking about or is it really going to do something unique in the way we get in this, the speed of information? Oh, well, it does. 14:26 Well, so first of all, if you're interacting with something that's very, very local or very close to you, um, you know, so you're, you're going to get that same, uh, snappy experience that, uh, you ex- you, you've been getting from just local compute resources. 14:39 No pregnant pauses, no back and forth. And then there's a, uh, there's a, a whole slew of use cases and applications, uh, around really IoT, but many other types of things. 14:52 I mean, a-a-any types of, of connected devices that need to interact with other distributed compute resources, they perform much better, uh, and they react much more quickly if the resources are local. 15:06 And there's a, a bunch of applications that can be written that don't exist now, uh, if that infrastructure were to be built. Uh, it's still-- As it turns out, it's still being, uh, constructed. 15:18 Uh, but, um, you know, all of it is very latency sensitive. 15:22 Um, from a data standpoint, that environment is a much more hostile environment than, uh, than standing up something in Equinix or Core Site or some-- or another data center facility, um, because, you know, it's, it's out potentially in the middle of nowhere. 15:37 I mean, I don't want to say Foxborough is in the middle of nowhere. I might offend someone, but it's, it's actually pretty far out from the city. 15:43 Uh, and, uh, you know, the, the, the likelihood that you're going to have some sort of, uh, power outage or a connectivity outage or just a general outage in a small cabinet of that size, it's, it's not like a data center, uh, in an urban area where you have multiple generators and redundant power supplies and, uh, all sorts of other, uh, measures that have been taken structurally to keep this thing running, uh, in, in the event that there's a weather emergency or a flood or something like that. 16:13 It'll just go out. And what this means is that you need to have infrastructure that is built a different way. Uh, 16:20 what, what we've done at ClearSky is we've built a storage system that is edge oriented or edge based, and, uh, our, our systems are basically edge caches that present data to applications, but can present them synchronously through our network to other locations as well. 16:38 So if you lose one location, you can fail over to another location. Um, and so that, um, that allows you to operate in these types of constrained environments, um, more easily. 16:47 And see, there's all sorts of problems like that that emerge once you start going into these, uh, more challenging environments. But the question though then, uh, now you, you raised some challenges to my mind. 17:01 One, about, you know, if there's some kind of weather environment, which we'll talk in a second, but even more so, you've now got me thinking now security issues. 17:11 And I know you're going to tell me you've got some fail-safe, but it just seems- Yeah. 17:14 -to be with these redundancies that, you know, now you've opened up some doors for the hackers to be able to say, when one goes down, other-- That's where, you know, the bad guys like to get in and say, "Look," you know. 17:26 At that moment, that's where they can say, that's where they see the vulnerabilities. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's where I always think. No, you're, you're [laughs] absolutely right, Peggy. 17:35 You, you are totally correct there. Uh, you know, any data that's sitting... So let's just say hypothetically, that one of these, uh, these facilities just loses power. 17:44 It's pitch black, and someone knows where it i-it is, and they know that there's some sensitive information in there. Uh, could they pickax their way in? I'm sure. 17:52 Um, you know, would it behoove you a-as an application owner running infrastructure there, uh, or running in that infrastructure to have all your data properly secured, so it can't beYou know, decrypted or, or listed by someone who wants to, uh, hold you hostage? 18:08 Of course. Um, and, and, you know, think about that writ large. The proper way to write some of these applications is to have that data sitting around in five or six different places around the city. 18:20 So you're, you're more than just doubly exposed. You're exposed all over the place. And so you really need to have a, a, a very, very robust security posture, especially when it comes to data. 18:33 Uh, you know, that, that-- a lot of that data could be... It, it's personally identifiable, you know. In a lot of cases, it's location data. You know, Internet of Things, we often think about cell phones and GPS data. 18:45 Um, you know, it, it, it's, it's very easy to determine who you are by, by, uh, you know, following you around and figuring out where you go. And, um, so you really want that stuff, uh, locked down very, very carefully. 18:59 Loz, do you really think the companies are doing that, though? 19:02 Every time I hear, hear another, you know, hacker situation, you know, ransomware even, you know, looking at that cities, I, I kind of think that, you know, companies have not taken... 19:14 They hear about this, and they go, "Oh, there's another one." And then we just take this lackadaisical kind of attitude about it. 19:19 And I don't want to say companies are doing that, but we just have come to expect the bad guys are going to do their bad things. 19:25 I mean, if you're saying they've got to do all these things to protect the data, I'm just not convinced, having someone who's been covering IoT now for years and years and years, probably more years than I want to admit here, that companies are really going to do what it requires to make sure all of our data is protected. 19:43 Equifax is a, a perfect example. I'm one of those people that's on the list. They got my stuff. So I mean, I, I just don't get it. I just-- I'm just not convinced these companies are doing what they're supposed to do. 19:55 I, I, I agree with you. I think, uh, even, even the most secure companies are, are not always doing what they're supposed to do. I think, uh, you know, you, 20:05 you, you have a sort of another congenital problem where you have a, a whole bunch of systems that were built in with a particular worldview, and the world has changed. 20:15 And so it's very hard to fit security in after the fact. [laughs] And, and so, so I think part of what we see is that, uh, it, it becomes more of an afterthought or a retrofit or, or, you know... 20:30 It, it's a very difficult path, you know, to, to, to do it after the fact. 20:35 And, and, um, you know, you have an exorbitant privilege, I guess, when you're a, when you're a younger company and you're building something from scratch to think about these things, and if you don't, you're foolish. 20:45 Um, you know, I, I, I think that, um, you know, the, the companies that do not have a good security posture, like, you know, let's, let's, you know, hypothesize for a second. 20:55 A company, you know, let, let's, let's assume that there's a, a hot new application area that can be built on top of IoT infrastructure like edge data centers, uh, and, and 5G. 21:05 Um, you know, a-and let's, let's assume it's a very, very big business opportunity. Uh, you know, if, if you are afraid to deploy because of security reasons, you've missed out, uh, on a chunk of business. 21:20 Maybe, maybe it's, it's your bailiwick, maybe it's retail-oriented and you're a retailer, but you're, you're, you're too scared of being hacked. 21:28 Um, so you, you've missed a growth opportunity, and then suddenly you're toast. 21:32 And this is part of digital transformation or what's, what's causing people to think so hard about digital transformation, is, you know, these are the issues that you have to get over in order to evolve your, your, uh, your business, uh, i-into a, a business that's more relevant in the digital age. 21:48 And, um, if you're... You know, and there are two approaches, obviously. You, you can just say, "Well, screw it. 21:55 I'm just going to do whatever I can, and I'm going to rush to it, and, uh, they can sue me afterwards if they lose their data," or you can be more secure. 22:03 Um, I think, uh, in general, it's, you know, the, the survivors will be the ones that, uh, that are more secure, uh, and also more nimble. And I think, uh, we have to start thinking about these things. 22:14 Um, you know, when we, when we built our, uh, our system at ClearSky, uh, we, you know, begrudgingly started with security, uh, day, day one. 22:24 And, and, you know, it, it made everything, you know, a lot more difficult, uh, to, to get to the, uh, to the end goal of a functioning system. 22:31 But, you know, we, we do have some, uh, some inherent advantages, uh, as a result of that. 22:37 Um, and I think, uh, I think the, the, the rest of, uh, the IT world, uh, has to be thinking that way, either to leverage a technology that's, that's ground up secure or, uh, you know, or, or, or think about really, really, uh, overhauling, um, you know, any type of infrastructure that's, uh, that's needed for, for things like this, uh, so that it is totally secure. 23:01 I mean, you know, Equifax is a horrible thing, but, you know, there, there are lots of other, um, you know, ridiculous stories that we hear all the time. 23:10 Um, you know, we, we get, we get bombarded by it, but, you know, it's, it's, it's pretty serious stuff. 23:16 Uh, you know, Capital One, for example, you know, a hundred, a hundred million names of, uh, of, of customers and Social Security numbers got, got leaked. I mean, there's- Yep. 23:26 There's some, you know, some craziness out there. Um, so- So let's talk about a positive. I guys like to end on a positive because that's like depressing me already, so [laughs] I want to end on a positive here. 23:36 [laughs] Give us an example of how you guys are helping, you know, let's say, you know, IoT or telcos or somebody doing some really good things that you guys are saying, "Look, we're here. 23:46 We're here to help you get past this, help you leverage the edge, do some really great things." Give us something that we could, you know, hang our hats on as a positive. Oh, yeah. So, so, you know what? 23:56 Well, let, let me, um, you know... 23:57 When we talk about sensitive data, like what, what we've done is because we've, we've built security in from the, from the, the ground up, uh, and we, uh, we have a lot of these characteristics, we can build the resiliency that, uh, you know, that, thatYou know, businesses need for their data sets, uh, including, you know, things like, you know, infinite backup and obviously the re-- the geographic resiliency and, and, and disaster recovery type orchestration, all of that stuff. 24:26 Um, so you're-- you were able to, to do some really interesting things with sensitive data. Um, you know, our, our first customers were, uh, were the, the healthcare, uh, community here in, uh, in, in the Boston area. 24:38 So Partners Healthcare has a, um, you know, a lot of data that ne- uh, as you can imagine, needs to be very, very secure. It's, it's, uh, you know, very sensitive stuff. Uh, and, uh, you know, that, that, um, the... 24:52 We're, we're at this point the only thing, the only, um, system that, uh, they feel comfortable putting any type of sensitive information on that, that uses the cloud. 25:02 Uh, and, um, you know, and, and this is actually true for a number of, uh, other financial institutions that are using us, uh, as, uh, as, as a data fabric. Uh, so we've, we've secured the data. 25:15 We, um, we, we, we make sure that they, uh, they manage their keys properly. 25:20 We make sure that, uh, because our processes are very tight, we sometimes, uh, force them into processes that they didn't realize they had to do as well. And so, um, so we-we've done, uh, a fair amount of that. 25:32 And, uh, you know, I think, um, you know, we, we are, you know, to, uh, [laughs] 25:38 in an odd way, uh, we, we are actually, um, selling peace of mind and at least security, uh, as, as peace of mind in some way to a lot of our, our core customer base, um, because- And, and I think that's important. 25:51 I think that's important. Yeah. Laz Vikaritas, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of ClearSky Data. What's your URL? I want everyone to go up there. Sure. It's, uh, www.clearskydata.com, all one word. All right. 26:06 Hey, thank you so much for spending time with us today. I really appreciate all the great insights. [upbeat music] Yeah, thanks. Great talking with you. 26:14 All right, listeners, we're out of time, but tweet us at ConnectedWmag and check out our website at connectedworld.com. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. 26:25 And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back after this commercial break. [upbeat music] Everyone is constantly on the go, and relying on technology can help keep us in the know. 26:42 Use your voice-activated service to connect to the most influential Internet of Things podcast. It's as simple as, "Alexa, play The Peggy Smedley Show podcast." 26:53 Listen to current and archive shows, or let Alexa assist you in subscribing. Never miss an episode. Alexa, play The Peggy Smedley Show podcast. [upbeat music] Do you want to be a professional coach? 27:09 Are you in business trying to make a real difference with people you manage or work with? Have you started a coaching practice that isn't quite getting off the ground? 27:17 Get the skills you need to be a successful coach today with the Coaches Training Program from Accomplishment Coaching. The Coaches Training Program will show you how to help others focus and be more fulfilled. 27:30 Whether you want to improve your company's bottom line or create a thriving coaching practice, Accomplishment Coaching can give you the distinctions and practices you need to coach others effectively today. 27:41 Accomplishment Coaching has spent six years developing a cutting-edge coaches training program that will have you ready to coach people professionally in just twelve months, and you don't have to take time off work to do it. 27:53 To find out more about the Coaches Training Program, just call one eight eight eight five four eight six eight one three. That's one eight eight eight five four eight six eight one three. 28:06 [upbeat music] Peggy is taking it on the road in twenty nineteen with live audio, video, and on-site appearances. 28:13 The Peggy Smedley Show will be live at Internet of Manufacturing Midwest, IFT nineteen, Liveworx, and Construct Tech's Technology Days, covering the IoT, AI, machine learning, and other emerging trends in the markets that touch your businesses. 28:28 To learn more about upcoming tour dates, visit peggysmedleyshow.com or connectedworld.com. [upbeat music] Looking to be a successful entrepreneur? 28:39 The virtual assistant industry continues to be a top choice for those looking to start their own business. The problem can be how to become a virtual assistant. 28:47 Many turn to the bible of the VA industry, the book Virtual Assistant: The Series, and it's the perfect guide for office managers, executive assistants, and other administrative professionals looking to make the transition from employee to successful business owner. 29:02 Go to vatheseries.com to get your copy today. I've heard this is, like, one of the best pizza spots in town. Yes, it is. I'll do a slice of pepperoni, slice of vegetarian. You got it. 29:12 And I will pay for all of that in three days. In three days? [laughs] What's that mean? Well, wait, you accept credit cards. That money's not gonna hit your account for three days anyway. I need my money quicker. 29:22 At Chase, we hear you. With Express Funding, card payments are in your Chase account the next business day. Go to chase.com/expressfunding. Chase for Business, so you can. Compensated participation. 29:31 All businesses are subject to credit approval. Not all clients are eligible for next business day funding, and additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. [upbeat music] Thank you for listening to WS Radio. 29:40 Improve your business and your life with useful information from experts and thought leaders. WS Radio is radio with ROI. [upbeat music]
