Article 19 – Coffee Chat with Jeff Tamburino, Tamman’s CEO
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Full Transcript
Narrator:
Expression is one of the most powerful tools we have a voice, a pen, a keyboard.
The real change which must give to people throughout the world their human rights must come about in the hearts of people. We must want our fellow human beings to have rights and freedoms, which give them dignity.
Article 19 is the voice in the room.
Kristen:
Hello, everyone, welcome to Article 19. This is a podcast rooted in the firm belief that access to information is a human right. Here we offer conversations and interviews to create awareness, empathy, and expertise around the intersection of technology and inclusivity. We’re here to discover, grow, and share some laughs together. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Article 19. This is Kristen Witucki, Tamman content creator, author, and co-host of today’s discussion. Tamman is all about accessibility champions and we’re so proud of every single person who is part of our team. We’re a company made up of individuals and we’re all about individuality within that common cause of accessibility. To introduce the people on the podcast, we’re doing a meet the crew series, but today’s episode is really special. I have a very motley crew here with me. First up is my co-host, Marty Molloy. Hey, Marty, thanks for coming.
Marty:
So excited about today’s conversation.
Kristen:
And Markus and Harper are behind the mic helping all of this to run smoothly and our primary guest today is one of Tamman’s co-founders. You’ve heard from the other one recently, Mike Mangos and now we’re going to hear from the one who is carrying the weight of the company, literally, Jeff Tamburino. We’re so happy to have you today, welcome to the pod, thanks for taking time to be with us.
Jeff:
Thank you very much, I’m excited to be on.
Kristen:
Just for those who don’t know, we actually call him JT and the reason for that is there’s another Jeff. But his initials just lend themselves to a nickname, so if you hear us talking about JT, that’s who we’re talking about. Anyway, I’d like to start this. This is a first thing in the morning recording, which is not normal for us, so we’re adapting and overcoming. I’m using a screen reader instead of braille, like all this is weird. We’re calling this a Kaffeeklatsch with JT. What are the beverages that people have right now?
Marty:
Well, I am always and forever, 100 percent coffee and that will be coffee in the morning, that’ll be coffee around noon or so, and that will be coffee in the evening, so this is an appropriately named episode.
Kristen:
Alright, good. I won’t ask about your sleep; we’ll save that for another one. How about you, JT? What are you drinking?
Jeff:
I’m also drinking coffee. This is my one cup a day. It’s basically an espresso with water added to it, which is I believe called an Americano with a little bit of cinnamon in it and some half and half, and I’m good to go.
Kristen:
That’s perfect. I meant to make a latte, especially for this episode, but I have a cold and I’m good on water for now. Now onto the real questions. How would you describe kind of in a very brief snapshot, JT, your background, your history, how you got here and where we are?
Jeff:
I started out, I had in interest in – I actually went to school for art, believe it or not. Advertising and design. I saw that as a path forward as a starving artist and started working part time in computers as a computer operator and started getting interested in technology at the same time and I came to a fork where I had to decide, is it going to be art or is it going to be technology, and at the time, technology was going to pay the bills, so I made the choice to go with technology and that led to other opportunities in tech doing computer support, basically. Which kind of taught me how to support all different kinds of people across different businesses, small businesses. I did end up starting out at a very large enterprise which gave me a background in supporting everyone in admin secretaries up to executives which gave me a big broad experience in relationships and people and supporting different types of people and that lead to a little bit of consulting that I did for a few years which was similar. You get a lot of different experiences and a lot of different environments which kind of opens up your thought process to all the different types of challenges that are out there with different personalities and different business goals and that kind of really gave me a nice background to lead into what I’m doing now. Which is basically supporting people both internally and external clients as well, so that’s kind of a synopsis of a background to get to where I am now.
Kristen:
What inspired you to start your own company with Mike?
Jeff:
There was just so much work in front of me and so many opportunities and honestly, I’m like there’s only so many hours in the day that I can accomplish this. I need help. I had worked with Mike before just as friends trading business back and forth. He was one of the smartest people I knew and I’m like if I’m going to do something, that’s the guy I want to have at my side and one thing lead to another and I basically convinced him to start Tamman because of the work that was in front of us and he helped lay down that groundwork for us to be as stable and have the ability to scale from the very scale. We started the company with employee number three right away and then quickly ramped up from there to handle the work and it was just a great experience to have a partner have your back and you’re both on the same trajectory to where we were headed.
Marty:
JT, I’m curious. Something I don’t think I’ve ever asked either of you and I’ve known both of you for a long time, Tamman’s values, they became explicit later on but the two of you were friendly competitors. You come together. Were the values of the company, the core values, the things that just you operated with, the way that you both decided Tamman would act and treat people with and everything, was that explicitly talked about or was that just something that sort of evolved?
Jeff:
It evolved but I think in the very beginning we both felt that if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well and that was where the whole, that initial quality conversation came from. Plus, Mike was in Japan for a year, so he came back with a very Zen mentality and a very thoughtful, he had a lot of values as far as in his personal life that he brought forward and we discussed together. It’s like if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. We’re going to do it with the right reasons and we’re going to create a company where people are actually going to want to work here and that’s what’s going to draw them and it wasn’t about profit margin and how fast we can grow, it was like if we can do this right and get people to really want to work here, that’s success for us. And that kind of carried us into all the other values going forward.
Marty:
Can I dig in on that one second Kristen, and you, JT? So, you mentioned not being motivated by profit, which I can tell you, as again, someone who was there at the beginning, was sadly true at many, many times, but that mentality has stayed but I’m curious, when the reality of the world comes and hits, and you’ve got bills to pay and everything else, I mean you and Mike really were investing in the company from the very, very beginning. Did you ever have moments where you’re like you know what, maybe we need to focus this in a different way? How do you handle those moments where when you maybe want to be rewarded for building something but you know you still – the values of the company were investing in?
Jeff:
I think we proved to ourselves early on if you’re doing it right and you’re leading clients, in the beginning, we’re small business consultants. We had hundreds of clients on the IT side and we all treated them equally. We made our decisions and we consulted as if they were all our businesses. And if you do that and you do the right way, the money washes out at the end. You will retain the clients that you need to retain. You will get the business that you need to get. And at the end of the day, the numbers work for us and the profit’s there because we did it the right way. There’s no cheat code to getting there. Even when it’s hard and things are tight, you still have to do it the right way.
Kristen:
Yeah, the right way can mean so many different things for the clients you serve and for the employees who are working with you and for you like your family, you individually. That’s a lot of different points of view to mesh together.
Jeff:
There’s tough conversations for sure. You know, the hardest conversations are when you’re trying to convince a client of something that they don’t understand and they don’t think they want and you have to sit down with them and explain here’s the reasoning behind our point of view here. And sometimes they bought it and sometimes they didn’t and when they didn’t, we just moved on. But we weren’t going to do it any other way.
Kristen:
That’s really honorable and certainly one of the reasons that I’m now here with us today as the second newest employee and before we leave the past and kind of look ahead into the future, what was your accessibility background before accessibility became the mission?
Jeff:
That’s a good question. I think when we talk about accessibility and inclusion, you hear those two words together all the time because they’re very similar to what the goal is. The goal is to treat everybody the same, basically. People with disabilities need to not be discriminated against. My background serving so many different personalities and so many different levels of people within the enterprise and within small business kind of got my mind set already in that thinking of treating everybody equally. So that jump to accessibility where like hey, this is a thing, we should do this, it’s good, was pretty easy for me. It was kind of a smooth transition to go from business sense, thinking we should treat everybody equally, to we should just treat everybody equally across the board, that’s going to be our mission going forward. It wasn’t much of a jump to get to that mentality for me personally, because I was already acting that way. I was already thinking that way.
Kristen:
We read in many places that mindset is really the biggest hurdle for people, so if you already have a lot of the mindset initially then it’s just learning the skills to catch up with it.
Jeff:
Yeah, exactly.
Kristen:
Do you have any specialties in digital accessibility at this point?
Jeff:
I think at this point it falls back to my level of empathy for people. That’s my superpower. Every situation, every relationship, every new client that we talk to, I immediately go into thinking I’m on their side of the fence and what are their challenges and what are their pain points? That’s my biggest first question, is like what are your pain points? And I can get into that mentality of feeling what they are feeling which allows me to come forward with solutions and approaches that really hit the mark a lot of times. I would say that’s, as far as digital accessibility, having that level of empathy is a really big part of being successful in what we do.
Kristen:
Can you say a little more about the pain points that many people have? Because I think some people who are listening to this podcast may be at the very beginning of their accessibility journey. How do you address those?
Jeff:
That’s a good question. I think people without disabilities have a hard time understanding the breadth of this challenge. I don’t think they understand the volume and the amount of people, percentage-wise, that are struggling with some kind of disability, whether it’s physical, mental, whatever. Being able to communicate with them, the people that are non-disabled and that have to make business decisions and educate them on why this is such a big deal and why it’s important, getting their mindset in the right place to achieve a goal that we all want to work towards, is the biggest challenge. Some people just don’t think about it. They don’t know anything about it. They see people with disabilities and they put them in a box and they treat them differently and that’s a mindset that we need to just change across the board and we are and we’re making those inroads and people are realizing oh, you know what, people with disabilities are just like everybody else, they just need some help. They need some tools to be able to get through life and get through their day the same way as everybody else. It’s a pretty simple thing to explain but it’s really hard to get people’s hearts to change and open up and allow different points of view and acceptance to come in and that’s kind of the biggest challenge we have.
Kristen:
Are there any trends in accessibility, especially in the last couple of years, that you’ve noticed, either positive or negative?
Jeff:
Yeah, I mean technology is amazing, right? It’s so mindboggling where we have come with applying technology and tools to solve this problem. There’s all kinds of things that are good and bad that people are trying to solve this problem with, but I think obviously artificial intelligence is a huge hot topic right now and I can’t imagine that not transforming the tools that we are using to solve some of these problems. I’m kind of super excited about that. I’m kind of geek at heart so I’m always looking for the latest thing that’s going to make everybody more efficient. I know everybody’s kind of scared people are going to lose their jobs and I don’t see that. I see it as an evolution of people leveraging that technology to make their lives better and more effective and more efficient. That’s one of the positives I see. The negatives, we’re still running into the challenge of convincing people with the money, making the decisions, to fund and support this effort. That’s been like that for the last six years that we’ve been in this business and continues to be, but little by little we’re making progress in getting them to buy in and basically support this effort in making everything accessible.
Marty:
I agree with you, Jeff, on the awareness building side of things. I think that continues to be a bugaboo for the entire industry. We have another episode that folks can go back and listen to, Kristen, we’ve were talking and I don’t know about you, but I’ve been sitting with the words that Kara Gaulrapp of the University of Pennsylvania gave us. When I asked her that question, kind of in a similar but different way, around awareness, and she said that we’ve been talking about inclusion too much and inclusion can mean too many things to too many people and for her, she said I think we need to start from a place of exclusion. I was very intrigued by this and I said tell me more and everything else and she said when you talk about inclusion, everybody can feel good about that and they can say yeah, you know, I want to be included, but when you talk about exclusion, everyone, no matter who they are, whatever their use constraint might be, temporary, situational, episodic, whatever, everybody has that visceral moment of feeling excluded. And so, Jeff, when you talk about empathy and we talk about that feeling, whether it’s middle school and not getting picked for the team or whether it was your friends who just – whatever that is, I can feel that pain right now. And when you put that there, I’ve been blown away, I’ve been sitting with that from Kara for a while, and I think it’s something that we’re going to have to think through, not only as Tamman but as an industry of this feels like uranium that we have to be careful with. But at the same time, I think it’s a really powerful emotional tie in to digital accessibility and everything else that we’re trying to do. The other thing that you said that I think is really, really important, and I want you to dig on this a little bit, which is on the negatives, when we’re talking about awareness, I see one other thing and you talked about how you and Mike started this company focused with the right things and people over profits and things like that and everything else, and unfortunately we see overlays coming out as sort of this easy path, and I think it only happens because there’s a lack of awareness. And Chris and I have done a lot of work that people can go check out on tammaninc.com, videos and things of like they don’t work and people are being hoodwinked. What are your thoughts around overlays and how people are taking the easy road instead of honestly doing the hard work of making the web and all digital assets a lot more accessible?
Jeff:
I think you know overlays are a response to trying to solve a pain point quickly and sometimes business decisions are made based on numbers only and we have this much money that we can put towards this problem, how can we use that the most efficiently? And that’s driven by, unfortunately, and this is another negative, is a lot of these efforts are driven because they’re trying to mark off a checklist, they’re trying to address risk like we’re going to get sued, so we have to do a thing that says that we did a thing so don’t get in this position and that’s the quick, dirty answer are overlays. The harder, more thoughtful, more long-term thinking, and more strategic is approaching it completely different. Overlays are a band-aid and they can work in certain instances for a little bit, but eventually, you’ve got to cure that wound. You have to fix what’s underneath that. They’re the quick solution when people are just trying to make it go away and again, that goes back to changing the way people are thinking about approaching this problem. Once they’re more educated and more informed about longer term solutions that are going to be more robust and last longer, yeah, that investment upfront costs more but it pays off in the long-term and I think that’s another part that Mike and I always came at every decision with a long-term view. It was never about the short-term money, it was never about the short-term budget for this year, it’s like what are these decisions gonna mean for us going forward year three, year five, and as people start thinking that way, we can make people understand that this is not a quick fix. This is an ongoing, long-term thing that you need to solve. We will shift away from those tools and those overlays.
Kristen:
I love that and I love that you’re coming at it from the long-term view, can enable the client to do that and enable them to trust your thinking as not just here for the quick fix but really here for you in the whole trajectory of your company. So, that’s really cool. Looking ahead to all the great things Tamman is doing, what are you most excited about that you’d like to talk about?
Marty:
It was that last caveat Kristen that just got in there, because I know there’s a lot that he wants to talk about that –
Jeff:
There’s a lot going on. I will tell you that I am most excited about seeing so many people paddling the same way at the same time. Everybody is thinking the same way about what we’re trying to accomplish. When you have a company of people that are all on the same path and all on the same page and I know that’s overused as a term, but man, can you make progress and it’s exciting to feel that. We talk about – you opened up saying all of this is on my shoulders. It really isn’t. We’ve intentionally created a distributed leadership model where executive decisions are made by teams and by everybody contributing their ideas and it’s kind of taken some of that pressure off of me. Yeah, at the end of the day, I have to sign the thing that spends the money to do a thing, right, that’s my job, right? I have to take everybody’s information and make a decision when push comes to shove. But in operations daily, day to day, week to week, month to month, we have this huge team of people that are helping push this company forward and that effort is shared across the board. I’m super excited about seeing, putting that into play, and watching the results of that happen on the daily. We just are making progress and it’s just because we have so many great people all thinking alike and that’s really got me excited. When everybody’s paddling the same way, I mean, you can really make progress. We can move some mountains, I think.
Marty:
That’s a real difference, though, Jeff. That distributed leadership model that you’ve put in place, that is a difference from when you had the partnership and frankly, we’re a much, much smaller company to where we are now. You sound very excited about it, but was shift to let go and allow people to take on leadership and decision-making responsibilities and roles, as sort of the owner of the company, that’s a risky move to make, how’s that been from an emotional standpoint?
Jeff:
It’s my personality coming out, right. It’s who I am. I don’t have a huge ego. I’m not concerned about being the smartest guy in the room. I know we have found and built this team up with amazing talent. Why would I want to thwart any of that or color any of that talent? I want to let those people go and do what they’re capable of. I don’t feel any type of I wish I was the one making all those smart decisions. I feel good about supporting people making those decisions and making progress and I just don’t put my personal successes, that’s my success, seeing people be successful and I think it’s just the way I think about and have always thought about building the company. It sounds risky to distribute your leadership like that but to me, the outcome and the results speak for themselves and what we’ve been able to accomplish speaks for itself. It’s easier than it looks, I think, just because it’s part of who I am, it’s part of my personality. It feels comfortable for me to operate like that.
Kristen:
Are there any projects or initiatives coming out that Tamman is working on that you would like to share with the audience?
Jeff:
There are some things happening that we are close to closing. Obviously, we have some new clients that have just unbelievable opportunities to help them out and we’re in the middle of discussions with a couple of different situations which I can’t really talk about until they’re official. As soon as those things come together, we will make them public and talk about them.
Kristen:
Don’t let them off the hook, Kristen. You’ve got them on the ropes, keep going.
Jeff:
You know, things tend to go sideways sometimes and I would hate to have to backtrack.
Kristen:
We should come back 11:30 and have the update. We can also just remove that question from the –
Marty:
No, my goodness, no, but I think the key is, Jeff, when we have some of these exciting things happen at Tamman, you’ll come back on the pod just to talk about those, I hope, right?
Jeff:
We have to. We’re almost 60 people at this point and we are at an inflection point. The company is at an inflection point where we have the opportunity to really accelerate our footprint in our industry and in the community and that’s happening as we speak. It’s super exciting to be where we’re at. It was kind of a grind to get to this point but I think the next step for the company is going to go very quickly and be very exciting. That’s where we’re headed.
Kristen:
Well, we have gotten mostly through some of the professional questions. Did you have any final questions, Marty, before we go into fun stuff? Not that work’s not fun, though. Work might be the most fun.
Marty:
What I think is important is for anyone listening, and I hope that it’s a broad swathe of people, not only people that are connected to Tamman through the pod but also our employees, because one of the things that Jeff, and I have very much adopted this with him, is we’ve talked a lot about clients on this call and one of the management tools that – I don’t know if it’s a tool, that’s not the right way to say it, one of the management ideas that I think compliments the distributed leadership that Jeff has really laid the groundwork for at Tamman and sort of transformed Tamman with, is this idea and hearing him say it before of his client, the thing that he wakes up thinking about, are the people at Tamman. And if he empowers the people at Tamman, then they are the ones who will then go out and serve and consult and do the things that they need to do with clients, and I don’t think that’s normal for leaders in companies.
Kristen:
I don’t think so either.
Marty:
Especially companies that have grown. So, Jeff, I’m kind of stealing your thunder with that, but do you want to talk a little bit about that? Again, it goes back to people, but I’ve heard you say that they are my client. They meaning our employees, the whole Tamman team, are who you focus on knowing that then they will deliver. But I think that’s really unique, do you want to say anything about that?
Jeff:
Yeah, I mean, look, that’s an old concept of server leadership. Your leader serves your people and I think it’s a concept that lends itself to success. Because people feel empowered and they feel supported. You know we talk about that supported people, support people well, and it’s true. If you know your company has your back, you’re going to put all of your effort into your day and the outcome speaks for itself. The better I support people and the better I make people feel good about their work, the outcome just happens. That’s just a natural outcome of that approach that has been really successful. I know I felt that way, when I worked for other people and I felt appreciated and supported, I would want to work harder and I would want to do well and I would want to do better for the clients that I worked for. So, to me, it’s kind of a no brainer. It may be somewhat unique but I think that mentally is shifting in the industry overall. I think the pandemic really made people think differently about work-life balance and I remember seeing all of the articles. I read a lot of business articles and approaches to businesses. I remember all the articles talking about how we really need to start supporting people and thinking about them on their level and I was like, we do this already. That’s how we’ve been doing this before, pre-pandemic and it was like all of a sudden, the pandemic woke up this thought process of like, yeah, we should support our people better and it’s like duh, of course you should. That’s why it was such a smooth transition for us through that pandemic and through going remote, because we really didn’t have to change anything. We were already doing all the right things for the right people and supporting them and it just proofed out when we didn’t miss a beat switching to a remote company why that concept of supporting people and serving them as leaders to do their jobs was so successful. It was like yeah; this is working and it was kind of an easy transition for us. It may be unique but I think it’s getting more common to find that work-life balance, to support the people that work within the company as best you can and really walk the walk. So, I guess I don’t see it being that crazy of a process or that unique.
Kristen:
Well, one way you described to me when we had our intro conversation was that your job is to remove barriers for employees so they can do their best work. I love that. Just that idea of knocking down the walls, you know?
Jeff:
Yeah, let me get those pain points out of your way so you can be comfortable doing what you do and that came from my whole support background of supporting people and I was the guy that fixed stuff and when things weren’t working right, I would go in and make them work for you and your day would get better. That’s all I needed to do to make myself happy. That was good for me.
Marty:
That’s a great tagline for Tamman someday. I want to simplify everything and we’ve got all these things Tamman, we fix stuff or we don’t do peanut butter.
Jeff:
And we don’t do peanut butter which is a whole nother story. But.
Marty:
Awesome. Alright, Kristin, what do we have for our guest today in terms of other questions, personal?
Kristen:
So, the first question is, if you have a life outside of Tamman, what is the most adventurous thing you’ve ever done and was it a success or an epic fail?
Jeff:
So, back in the day this was early on when I had free time, I was a gamer. I used to play CoD, Call of Duty, with a bunch of guys. And you form relationships, you’re online, you got your headset, you’re talking to these people and we played for a few years and it was the same guys all the time. We had a clan. This sounds terribly geeky. But these guys were all across the country and I think somebody was in Mexico and somebody was in Canada. And one year I said look, I’m going to invite everybody to my house and we planned this for six months. Everybody thought I was crazy; you’re going to invite these strangers to your house? I’m like yeah, you don’t understand. We’ve been creating these relationships for three years now, I know these guys. And sure enough, the time came and I had I believe 12 guys in my house with their families and their kids all came and we had a giant picnic, giant barbeque, we went and played paintball. These guys stayed at my house all weekend and it was kind of an amazing experience because you talk to people for years and then you get to meet them in person. It was just wonderful to connect like that with people. And it’s a big risk, you’re inviting strangers from all over the country, and it went amazing. It was a beautiful experience. That was pretty wild. People thought I was crazy for doing it, but it was a fantastic experience and people from all walks of life. All colors, all experiences. People with good jobs, people with bad jobs, divorced people. It was an interesting mix of personalities and nobody could believe we were doing it, but we all did it. We all did it. We all hung out all weekend and I still have pictures that I go back and look at. It was one of those things that was kind of a risky thing to try to pull off but it was amazing. It was an amazing time. I see Mark is saying wow.
Kristen:
I’ve never done that on that kind of scale but I’ve definitely met people that I’ve just met online and yeah, it’s kind of fun. No problem. And honestly, the retreat that we’ve having in November is not going to be that far off, except for that it’s not at your house. We’re all flying in, riding in from everywhere to go to this gathering.
Jeff:
That’s a great segue. I mean, the retreat is an example of you talk to people on Zoom, you talk to people on the phone for long periods of time, but you really don’t, until you shake their hand and you look in their eye, you don’t get that connection with people. Just being in person and seeing people’s body language and experiencing who they are on multiple levels, not just voice, you make that connection, is really powerful. And that’s why we get behind these retreats for the company and flying people in, even at the expense that it is and it’s gotten really expensive. But the long-term value of having connections and relationships is priceless.
Kristen:
If you could instantly gain a new skill that’s outside of the skills you already have, what would you pick?
Jeff:
Oh, gosh. I would say music. I have a slight music background. I took piano lessons. I never took guitar lessons but I have multiple guitars sitting around. I would love to be able to just wake up tomorrow and be able to just jam on the guitar. It’s such a time investment to get to that level and maybe someday when I’m sitting back and retired, I’ll be able to pick up the guitar and spend an hour a day on it, but I would love to be able to have that skill, to play music.
Kristen:
What are your pleasures in terms of food? What’s your favorite comfort food and what rituals do you have?
Jeff:
I love to cook so I’m a bit of a foodie, but I have recently been having to give up some of the things I love which is meat and cholesterol but a nice, well-cooked filet sitting on top of some mashed potatoes with some asparagus is my go-to. I just love a good steak. I don’t think I’ve had one in about six months because I’m trying to be good. I will pull that out of my arsenal of cooking eventually. Probably around the holidays. But yeah, I love a good piece of steak.
Marty:
When you don’t cook it, do you have a favorite steak restaurant?
Jeff:
That’s a good question. I’ve gotten my style of cooking so down for a steak that no matter where I go, I’m like yeah, I can do that. Nobody’s really done it differently enough where I’m like I can’t reproduce that level of quality when I cook a steak. So there really isn’t one that stands out. They all do it pretty much fantastically, but there’s nobody that blows my mind.
Marty:
Additional steak follow-up question. Do you do filet, do you do T-bone, do you do flank? What’s your go-to cut of meat?
Jeff:
Well, I mean, filet is the softest. A good New York strip has the most flavor but sometimes it’s a little chewy depending on what the cut is. But a filet is always – I can always make a filet perfectly. I’ve done reverse sears, there’s all kinds of ways. My brother’s a chef so he taught me a lot, but I’ve been cooking since I was a kid. My mom was like, if you’re hungry, get in the kitchen, I’ll show you how to do this. Now you’re on your own, figure it out. I’ve taken that with me. I love cooking. Cooking’s an art.
Marty:
And I’d like to introduce Article 19 spinoff, Jeff and Cooking.
Jeff:
We should definitely do it. I love to cook. I love to cook.
Kristen:
I think we have a needed change for this. Have your cooking. Everyone has something surprising or unique about them or a hidden talent, what’s something that not everyone might know about you?
Jeff:
Well, I think my perception is obviously running Tamman and we’re always busy, we’re in meetings, on calls all the time, there’s a lot of business that happens in my life. But outside of that, I love to work with my hands. I do a ton of stuff. I’m basically my own mechanic. I’ve done my own brakes. I’ve changed my oil. I’ve fixed stuff that goes wrong with my cars. I do everything around the house. Electrical, plumbing, paint. I do a lot of stuff with my hands that I don’t think that people would realize that I do. I’m pretty handy and I just grew up – my dad, he would fix anything and he would build anything. He never paid anybody to come and do anything. One, they didn’t have the money to do so but he was just always very, very handy and I was always that kid that was holding his tools, watching him do plumbing and electrical and stuff like that. I just grew up naturally, oh, that’s broken? I’ll fix it. And with the internet, it made it really easy to learn how to do something you’ve never done before. There’s never anything that I’ve approached where I’m like I’ve never done that but I know there’s a YouTube video out there and I just would watch videos and follow through and sometimes things would go well and sometimes they wouldn’t but the next time I would get it right. I have no fear to get my hands dirty and do stuff with my hands.
Kristen:
That’s very cool. That’s very amazing. I wish I had that talent. And the final question, if Tamman had a billboard in Times Square and you could have a saying on it for 24 hours, what would you choose for your saying?
Jeff:
Wow, tough one. I keep coming back to just be kind. Be kind today. Do something with kindness. It’s funny how little teeny microtransactions of kindness can create a butterfly effect and I think that’s something that people need to slow down and think about how they’re treating other people around them and what those interactions are. I think be kind is always a good billboard.
Kristen:
That should be permanent, not 24 hours.
Jeff:
Yeah, I think so too. I think so too.
Kristen:
Well, thank you very much JT for taking time to talk with us and to share your excitement and your vision for supporting all of us. We really appreciate it.
Jeff:
It’s been a pleasure. I love talking with you guys so I’m looking forward to the next installment of the podcast.
Kristen:
Yeah, you definitely need to come back. With that teaser, now you have to come back for it too. Well, our guest today was Jeff Tamburino. Co-hosts Kristin Witucki and Marty Molloy. Producers are Markus Goldman and Harper Yatvin. If you like what you heard today and want to explore more about digital accessibility, technology, our company culture or anything else, schedule a time to meet with us. You can find the whole Tamman team at tammaninc.com. That’s t-a-m-m-a-n-i-n-c-.com. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an event or an insight from us. Be sure to rate our podcast five stars on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to us. It really helps our podcast grow and reach new audiences. And make sure to follow us, hit the bell icon so you never miss an episode. If social media is more your style, you can also follow us at Tamman, Inc., on LinkedIn, Twitter, X, whatever that is now, Instagram, or Facebook, and share our podcast on your favorite platform. Until next time, thanks for listening and being part of Article 19. Take care.
