The Story of MetrixData 360

And so who am I? You know, I'm Mike Austin. I'm the CEO and founder of Metrics Data 360. You know, I worked at Microsoft in licensing for just shy of 10 years. I've negotiated a few billion dollars of contracts. I'm really passionate about helping others beat, you know, their goliaths, the software vendors. That really comes from my childhood, you know, when I was. When I was a kid. I have a really strong memory of, you know, sitting at the kitchen table one night and my mom coming home. And it was weird because she just went straight to her room, and normally she would stop and say, hey, how was your day? What are you doing? But she went to her room and I heard tears. And that's when my gut dropped and I knew what had happened. My mom was actually an IT manager in a small factory in our hometown. And that was the day that she lost her job. They closed the plant and moved it to Mexico, actually. And for months leading up to that, my mom was very stressed, having restless nights, not being able to sleep at night. And the reason for that was she was trying to negotiate with her vendors to try and get concessions in order to save money, to hopefully help save, you know, save the plant, not have it closed down. And that was, like I said, that was the day. And it was in 2008 when the recession hit that I found myself because I got. I went on said that was never going to happen. It was a huge impact to my family, you know, that we lived in a small town. There weren't a lot of great jobs. It just had a huge impact. And, you know, I kind of said that never happened to me. And, you know, I my job at Microsoft, and I was rising through the ranks of the licensing group. But into 2008, I found myself not being able to sleep at night. And the reason was, it was the reverse. The recession had hit in 2008. Microsoft was asking me to sell 20 more. I'd learned all the games to play with licensing. I knew how to do it, but, you know, my clients were laying off thousands of people. I was selling into automotive at the time. The automotive companies were flying to Washington trying to get money to keep their businesses alive, yet I was being told to sell 20% more. And I knew how to do it. But at that point in time, I knew that my kind of core values were not in line with where I was working. And so that's when I decided to go on my own and help clients, you know, negotiate smarter contracts and help them save money.