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Where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(motivational music play) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George.

We've got a good one today.

Topics that are going to affect your business.

Joining me tonight is Pat Venditte.

Pat is with Pearl technology, but also a Major League baseball player.

He's got a unique skill set that we're going to get to in a second.

- Welcome.

- Thanks for having me today.

- Well, I'm, I'm pumped.

I kind of a interesting story, how we met.

My little boy, we're during COVID about a year ago, we were working out, at a, practicing at Richwoods just me and him and we're getting some running in and I look over and, I see a guy throwing and I said, you know, this, this guy is not your typical high school pitcher.

This guy has a different skill set and we came up to you and that's how we met.

We introduced ourselves to you.

And then I'm kinda, you're talking to my boy and I'm sitting there googling I go, "son of a gun, this is cool."

So, you remember that day, don't you?

- I do, I think I was up there with my old man that day, we were getting a workout in, you know, during, when you're at home, you got to find a way to train and gotta find facilities.

So we just made the little short drive up to Richwood and met you guys that day.

- Yeah.

And it's funny because here in Central Illinois, you, you just find a field and you just go.

- That's it.

And then, you know, COVID brought up a lot of challenges to where we were, you know, trying to look for fields to go live at, because as much as you go inside, you need that real feel.

If you can have being outside on a mound going against these guys.

So we would go all over East Side, ICC, any place we could find a field to go that would let us go on there.

You know, we'd go work out for a few hours and that helped us get through last year.

- Mentally too.

- Oh, big time.

You know, we're we're inside all day, getting to be able to go outside and feel normal again, it was, it made for a help.

- And jumping fences when the doors are locked and everything else, right?

(laughs) - Yeah, then sadly having to jump over to get the home runs they hit - [Matt] Right!

too off me.

That's another story, right?

- Right So let's start off talking about you a little.

Are, are you from Illinois or, where are you from?

- I'm from Omaha, Nebraska.

- [Matt] Okay.

- I went to Creighton, graduated there in 2008.

And then since then I've lived all over the world, every corner of the country and the Minor Leagues.

And you know, at times in the Major Leagues played in Winter ball, Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic.

And I'm actually a, a citizen of Italy too.

So I play on the Italian national baseball team.

So I've hit Europe, lived over there for a little bit.

- [Matt] I did not know that.

- Long story short.

I met my wife in 2006 at Creighton, and we ended up getting married in 13 and then moved here, I guess in 18, but really just the last year, because we're gone most of the year up until this past year.

- [Matt] Okay.

And, and your wife's from here?

- She is, a Notre Dame girl, like I said.

We went to Creighton and then, once we started having kids, she was able to wrangle me up and bring me back to Illinois here.

- Yeah.

So that's pretty cool.

So, are you right now, because you're at Pearl technology, but are you also considered still a free agent?

I mean you're still looking to get back up to the bigs cause you've gone the circuit for a while.

Minor leagues and pros.

- It's funny you bring this up.

My agent called me a week ago asking me if I was going to start training in this off season.

And he's like, "I think we can get you a job next spring.

Let's let's get ready to go."

And you know, who knows if that's true or not, but I'm not technically retired.

I didn't feel the need to, to make it official yet.

You know, it was such a long time coming.

You wonder as a player, when's that end going to come.

And, I don't think you really allow yourself to go there mentally until it actually happens.

You can plan for the future as much as you want, but while you're training, while you're doing the things you wanna do to stay ready, I found that my mind just wouldn't let me go there.

It was kind of a boom you're done.

And now we, now we move on to what's next.

- It's funny because you know, people ask me about my cousin, Jeff George, all the time, played in the NFL for 14 years.

And he sits there and he, he's 53 now.

He still hadn't retired.

You know, because in his mind he still gets up.

He still works out.

He still goes through this routine.

And not that he thinks he can go out on the field and play, which he, well, he probably does, but you know, you sit there and you always have that in your mind.

That's what you do.

- Yeah.

It's, it's such a big part of your life for so long for me, it's been, you know, I'm 36 now.

So really for the last, you know, 20 years, baseball has been my life since, since I was in high school and that's not just a switch, you can turn off.

I found out.

I thought it might be a little bit easier once I was done to kind of disconnect from that world.

I watched just as much now, as I did, you know last year.

I have so many buddies that, that are still playing that I watch anytime I have the opportunity.

- You're rooting and for 'em and- - Big time.

And you meet so many great guys along the way that you may not become super close with, but you respect them.

You like the way they go about their business.

And when that happens, you're a fan for them, for the rest of your life.

And I'll check in on those guys every night too.

And I don't, honestly, I don't ever see this, this part leaving my body.

You know, baseball is still in there.

I just, I have another job as well now, too.

- Yeah.

And a young family.

So you said you played for the Italian team, It, was that Olympics?

- We tried to qualify for the Olympics in 2019.

- [Matt] Okay - And it was- - [Matt] The word "tried", this is not gonna be a positive ending (laughs) - No, and it, it eats at me.

I watched the Tokyo games and Israel is the team that beat us.

And if you go back, 10, 20 years, the Italian baseball national team has been one of the premier teams in Europe, the Netherlands, which is predominantly players from Curacao that play for the Netherlands.

It's been us and them - [Matt] Ian Jones, back in the day.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

Scope, from the Orioles is there.

But, when Israel beat us, it was, it was tough to swallow because it was, you know, it wasn't the, the toughest field that we had.

You know, a lot of the times you'll have to qualify against the United States.

- [Matt] Venezuela - You know, exactly.

Mexico, the Dominican Republic.

We had a path where we could have got there and that made it harder to swallow because we didn't get it done.

But aside from that, I play in the world, baseball classic with them too, 13, 17.

We were supposed to have it this year.

It got pushed to 23.

So we'll see if I can stay in shape.

When that, when that, when that comes in a couple of years.

- That's pretty cool.

Who were some of the, I'm now just winging this now, because this is interesting.

Who were some of the, now you were up in the big leagues and I still haven't talked about your unique skill, but you're up in the big leagues.

I mean, he played for the Yankees and the Oakland, some other teams, but, who are some of the guys that you pitched against that you sat there and went, man, this guy's unbelievable.

- You know, there, there's your superstars that are household names, Pujols, Trout, you know, where you get, or they're get in the box And you just, you know that, you know, you probably don't have anything that's necessarily going to get them out.

You almost have to get lucky in that battle.

There's very few guys that possess the stuff to dominate those guys.

So it's one of those things where you got to attack with what you have and you just hope for the best.

And, you know, seeing, seeing those guys step in the box, it's kind of one of those, "oh, wow."

Moments where you, you, you know, you kind of come to come to grips with it, but you know what, surprisingly Rougned Odor will be the guy that haunts my dreams for the rest of my life.

- [Matt] Really?

He was the guy that I really struggled with the most.

- [Matt] Odor?

- Odor, I just, I had nothing for that guy.

And then, you know, on the flip side, Prince Fielder, he didn't really see my side to side left-handed stuff well.

That was one of the ones where I was kind of hoping to face him in the moment.

But there, there was just a few of those guys.

- That's funny.

So your dad, was an influence in your life, right?

Baseball wise.

- Big time.

He started me when I was three years old.

He was a college catcher.

Not, not a real big guy, but he's played baseball his whole life.

I'm sure he would have continued playing had he had the opportunity professionally.

But you know, he's 76 years old and he can still catch my bullpens.

He goes down to Florida, plays in these, you know, full on baseball tournament.

And he's been a major, a major influence in my baseball and my, my life as a whole.

- That's pretty cool.

So let's talk this unique skill because honestly, this is probably one of the coolest, most unique things in sports.

You can pitch right-handed and left-handed.

Right?

- Yeah.

It's a weird thing to say.

I know it's not very common.

- I mean, I was doing my homework on this.

There may be another guy or something.

I, I, there was nothing about that.

What, what's interesting is, you know, you hear the term switch hitter all the time, but you're a switch pitcher.

That's crazy!

- It's different.

And this goes back to my dad as well.

He was a, like I said, a baseball guy.

And he had the idea that if there can be switch hitters, why not a switch pitcher?

So when I was three, I'm a natural right-hander.

He had me start throwing left-handed when I was younger, I would throw the football, kick the football shoot baskets left-handed to try to develop that muscle memory.

And we're genetically created in such a way to where most of us are right or left-handed, and I'm no different.

Everything I do in life is right-handed the left side took a long while to work on and it actually didn't click until I was in college.

My pitching coach, my sophomore year, I walked on at Creighton.

He dropped me down side arm left-handed and it was that moment that I finally found a consistent release spot.

And I was able to spin a slider.

And, you know, I was almost 21 years old at the time.

So it took that long, but yeah, that was part of that journey.

- So, um, I mean, you're recognized as the only act of professional baseball player that can do this.

That's pretty cool.

- Yeah.

It's, it's a, it's quite the, quite the honor.

And the, there have been other guys in the past, but the way I understand it, at least in the 19 hundreds, I was the only one that got to the big leagues by being a switch pitcher that whole time, Greg Harris pitched for the Expos and a whole bunch of other teams for 10 years as a righty.

And then in his last one of his final career games, he got to pitch left-hand I was, and I remember I was nine years old and he sailed the ball to the backstop and it, it didn't look, you know, as - [Matt] Fluid - Yeah, it looked a little different, but I mean, he, he had a 10 year career in the, in the big leagues, so whatever he was doing was working, but for me, that was my path needing that matchup advantage what was big for me.

- All right, I'm gonna read this.

Because they, Major League Baseball made a rule because of you, right?

- Yep.

- All right.

Your "rare ambidextrous abilities prompted the professional baseball umpire corporation to issue a new rule for dealing with the ambidextrous pitchers.

Limiting the number of times that a switched pitcher and switch hitter can chain sides during when at bat."

And then it just reads on, but basically you have to declare I'm pitching to this guy right-handed but if you want it to the next guy that came up, you could pitch left, correct?

- Yeah.

And for the, for the viewers that don't necessarily understand the complexities of that as a pitcher, if you're right-handed you want the batter to be right-handed as well.

Because statistically they don't fare as well, right on right.

And left to left.

So for me to have that advantage was big, but a switch hitter would, you know, cause a problem for me because they get, they get to decide based off of the hand, I'm going.

So what I would do is before a series starts decide who the switch hitters are, see which way they struggle from worse and then force them to go that way.

And there were other little things that would come in the mix, like if we're playing at Fenway park, typically don't want a guy hitting right-handed with a three 10 fence down the line.

You know what I mean?

- [Matt] Right.

So the ballpark would play a role as well as the wind, - [Matt] Interesting but that's how we attacked all that.

- Interesting.

And so did a manager, as an example, put you in at different stadiums because the stadium was huge, maybe Detroit or something, and maybe I'll put you in here because it's tougher to see right and left or would they do managers not think that way?

- They do think that way, but it was never a, you know - [Matt] Standard.

you know, yeah, for me, it, the stadium plays such a small role in that it was more or less, you know, which way was I more effective.

And statistically speaking, the Big League managers would bring me into face lefties first because I was more efficient that way.

And if I was able to get those two or three guys out, then I would typically be able to stay in the game and then switch back and forth for the righties.

- All right, So, you're drafted by the Yankees in '08, and you've got wins under your belt and Major League Baseball.

You know, I think it's, it's an interesting story.

It's pretty cool.

And I'm gonna kind of tease you here for a second.

We were just talking before we started, you can pitch against Mike Trout, but you can't pitch against your 4, 3, 4 year old son's Little League team.

(laughs) - So he started coach pitch this year and I was tasked with being the pitcher.

And you know, some of these kids are great and can just hit anything, but for some of them, you gotta, you gotta get it in there perfectly.

And I can't tell you how many times these kids were telling me "you're not a good pitcher" as I'm, you know, five feet away trying to hit their bat.

But you know, it's a lot of fun to go out there with the little ones and especially, you know, share my knowledge of the game with the younger generation.

- And you know, you, I've seen you not only talk to me about Little League, but your whole thing is you just want kids to get better.

You're talking about manners and you're talking about teamwork and you're talking about all of those different things that are very important.

You want to come and talk to my son's team and you're offering it up.

I'm not even asking.

And I think that's, what's cool about everybody here in Central Illinois.

There's some, there's some cool people here, Jim Tomey, you know, Joe Girardi, Zobrist os from here.

You get all those people and then, McAllister and we were talking about those.

But I had a conversation, on one of the shows with both Sean Livingston and Curly who's on the Globetrotters.

If you go back and think of all of the basketball players, just basketball, that have come through Central Illinois, the list is a hundred deep.

But every one of those guys, and women, they come back and they volunteer their time, they give back to the community, they'll go play with the kids in the park and they'll have free camps, they do all that.

That's a big piece of what you do, isn't it?

- Yeah, it is and the Midwest is a special place, Peoria, especially is fantastic.

And the people here are second to none.

And I think that's what makes guys want to come back and give back because this area, you know, even though I'm not from Peoria, I'm from Omaha, same with the Midwest.

You want to give back to the people you care about and the people that helped you get there.

And I'm sure each one of those guys had somebody here helping them along the way.

And that's what this is all about.

You don't remember necessarily all the games when it's all said and done.

You remember the moments that led up to that, - Right.

Well, I could talk baseball day, everybody that watches this show knows I love sports, but let's talk about what you're currently doing.

Knowing at the same time, you're still working out and have that dream.

- Don't tell my boss that.

- Right.

Pearl Technology, what's your focus at Pearl or what's, Pearl's focus at the, on the technology piece.

- Pearl technology is a, it's a, it's a managed service provider.

Cybersecurity.

We have two data centers in audio visual.

And I, I know that's a, that's a big mouthful right there, but from an audio visual standpoint, classrooms, conference rooms, stadiums, anything where you would see a speaker or a screen or both, that's kind of where our design and install takes place.

And then managed services is pretty self-explanatory we'll we'll come in and be someone's IT department, the data centers to, you know, keep, keep the, the servers and whatnot safe.

And then yeah, it's, it's a pretty big space.

- Yeah.

And I hear Pearl Technology all over.

So there's a branding and marketing component.

That's pretty cool there too.

But let's talk about cybersecurity because I just saw something again, just last week on, someone hijacking someone's system ransom attack, and you know, they're doing it to crazy places like Sheriff's departments, schools, and they're holding this data hostage, so to speak and then they want paid.

Right?

I don't, I just, I don't understand in this day and age how we can't figure that out and that piece out, I mean, what are some examples that you can talk about that, that we can do as business owners or in our own business to get better at locking that down?

- You know, it does seem like something we should be able to wrap our heads around and be able to stop.

But the reality of is, is it's, it's ever changing.

You know?

When a defense mechanism is brought to the table, these criminals are going, they're going after and they're finding a way to get around it.

It's a layered approach.

You know, it's not just humans, it's not just the end points.

It's not just the network, the management of it, it's all of that together.

And you know, if you have that piece together in such a way, each one will protect itself.

So if there's a small failure in one of them?

Let's say somebody clicks on something, that's the human element.

The employee education is massive with that, you know, it's not just a, one-time a year training.

This has to be something that's deployed all the time to your employees to make sure they understand what these emails look like.

And with that, they're so creative in the way they can word things and use logos.

It's very difficult unless you stay on top of that.

And what I've noticed is when somebody deals with a breach of some sort, the next two or three days are very locked in and focused on what you're clicking on.

But as humans, we deviate from that, it's just how it is.

- And so, you know, I heard one business where an email came out from a, rouge email account and it, it, but it said it was signed by the CEO.

And it said, I need you to go do this.

And the people go out and purchase gift cards or purchase, or make withdrawals or transfer funds over for payroll or whatever it may be.

And there's stories out there, $3 million, $400,000 over here.

And you're, I like that you used the word criminals, cause that's what this is, it's criminal.

- And if you'll notice those numbers, they're designed in such a way to where they examine the business, they know what it's worth.

They know what they're going after.

And they'll ask for an amount that they know you can pay.

They're not going to ask for something that you can't come up with.

And they're, they're ruthless when it comes to that.

- It's ruthless.

And here you have all these honest people trying to just grind through what we've gone through this past couple years, COVID wise and everything else.

New businesses coming in, old businesses shutting down.

And there's a shift right now across the board.

And then you have to deal with this garbage.

- It's unfortunate, and the reality of it is, it's going to be around for a long time.

I know the government is doing what they can with the CMMC model that they're pushing forward.

That, you know, companies can protect against this and have a standard of requirements that, that companies need to have they're working on it.

But it's, it's a tough space.

- So if I have an issue at my business, I can call ya.

- [Pat] Yes.

And you'll come in and almost do an audit so to speak.

I don't know if that's the right word, but uh - There's no one right approach to every business.

- [Matt] Okay.

Everybody's going to have their own, tailored solution based on what they need.

So to that point, you know, when you talk about an audit, they have things like penetration testing, - [Matt] Okay.

- Penetration testing, the good way to think about that is so let's just use a house for an example, you lock up your windows, your doors.

What penetration testing does is it goes in one of those unlocked doors and sees just what it can extract, what kind of data can be extracted from that.

And then there's network assessments and vulnerable, vulnerability scans, where those are just a little bit more broad, but that penetration testing is what would goes in depth to see.

- So, if you are advising, let's say a business has 40 employees, a business owner or manager can sit there and be proactive in this process and actually educate their employees because that education, like you said earlier, there's stuff new every day, that's coming along, right.

- Without a doubt.

It's not just the, you know, it's not just the employees, it's the owner, everyone needs, and we all do just because I work at a techno- I'm not - [Matt] Right.

You know, immune from that.

I have to stay on top of this all the time.

And like I said before, they're becoming more and more creative, and there's other things in place such as two factor authentication.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen that already save businesses, because if you get access to a password, there's two factor authentication just because you have that password doesn't mean you can get in.

And there's things you can do to really solidify your business.

- Yeah.

That's interesting.

So, should every company have like a disaster recovery plan or some sort of, because there's, there's that, and then there's also because there's an insurance piece to this too.

You have to have cyber insurance too nowadays, right?

- Yeah.

You know, it's a necessity to have that, disaster plan in place because with that cybersecurity or with the cyber insurance rather, you don't automatically just get your allotment of money just because you've been breached.

There's steps that you have to take to make sure that you are safe.

And if you're not covering those bases, you're not going to get your allotment from your insurance provider when it comes time for that.

- Oh, that's very true.

So in a way you better be doing, crossing the T's dotting the I's on everything, or you're not going to get your money.

- The compliance has to be there.

And you'll notice that these insurance companies are becoming less and less likely to take on these policies because of just how rampant it is.

- And so I'm guessing the more, the bigger you are, the harder it is, or the more expensive it is I guess it is to be able to capture that insurance.

- Yeah There's, there's different spaces for all that.

But you know, when you talk about the size of business too, I think that's a common misconception too.

Businesses will think, oh, well, we're just, we're just a little guy.

They're not going to come after us.

And you know, you like into it to somebody that breaks into car lot and has a bunch of keys in their hand.

The car they're going to steal is the one that opens first, not necessarily the one that's most expensive.

If there's vulnerabilities, they're going to find them and go after you.

- You know, I, this isn't the space of business that I'm knowledgeable in.

But, this past few years, I've read more about it and studied more about it than, than you can.

And I think that's one thing that we need to stay on top of as business people, not just owners or whoever, because every day you should even be asking your, IT departments, these questions, Hey, I heard about this, I heard about this because this is ongoing.

So I had a CEO tell me that every five minutes, there's something that changes with these types of attacks and they're coming all over the world.

Is that correct?

All over?

- You're right on.

And that's the best thing you can do is the more you can read, educate yourself.

And like we talked about earlier, because you're going to read something this week, that in two weeks, they've already come up with something new.

And the more you can be educated on that and pass that information to your employees, because at the end of the day, it's, it's interesting to read those articles.

It's not boring reading those.

And I think they would get a lot of value from that.

- Yeah.

And so quickly here, the, if they call Pearl Technology, you can, they can lay out their problems and then you help put together a plan.

- Right.

- [Matt] Because every business is different.

- Absolutely.

And you know, I'm, I'm on the sales side.

So there's fortunately, there's people far smarter than me making all these things happen.

Yeah, I take the phone call and get them to the smart people.

- [Matt] (laughs) But yeah, it's, it's a, it's much better that way, but yeah, there's tailored solutions that we can find and help companies work with with all types of different budgets.

And aside from security, just, you know, the managed service piece and the audio visual, there's, there's quite a far reach of, you know, technical capabilities that we have.

- Yeah.

Well, I, you know, I sit here, I probably wouldn't have said this two, three years ago, but I strongly urge all business owners to stay on top of this more than they ever have, because it's only going to get worse and they need to call people like you, Pat at a Pearl or, you know, internally, you've got some things that you can do to on your own to educate yourself.

So very interesting, very fun.

A great baseball story, great baseball career.

I mean, it is really a cool thing.

You ought to write a book so, well, you've got two career paths going right now.

Good luck on both of them and we appreciate you coming on.

And if you're welcome back, anytime.

- I'd like to do that.

Thank you.

- Well, I'm Matt George, and this is another episode of Business Forward.

(motivational music plays) - Thank you for tuning into Business Forward, brought to you by PNC.