Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti From Law to Tech Innovator

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Brazil. He works as a functional architect. He was first awarded his MVP in 2023. He's passionate about technology and innovation. You can find links to his bio and social media, et cetera, in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Jimmy.

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 1:23
Hello, thanks. Thanks very much. How are you doing, Mark?

Mark Smith: 1:27
Going well, going well. It's good to have you on the show, and you're probably the only second Brazilian MVP that I have come across and well, I could be wrong there, I might get in trouble for that but the last Brazilian MVP, I actually was involved in getting him to immigrate from Brazil to Australia and he him and his wife worked sorry, his wife didn't he worked for me when I was running a business in Australia about six, seven years ago no, actually, it would be closer to 10 years ago now. So that's yeah, so that's my connection with Brazil, and I've got a good mate that lives in Brazil. Now another MVP, actually, steve Mordu. I don't know if you've come across Steve, but he lives in Brazil as well. So tell me food, family and fun what do they mean for you? What's the best food that I could eat if I came to Brazil?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 2:34
Tell me a bit about your family and what do you do when you're not focused on work? Okay, so let's start by food. I love eating, so it's easy. I do like lasagna and stroganoff. We have a different stroganoff in Brazil that's not the one that you usually eat around the world, and something that is from Brazil that I really like is feijoada. I don't know if you have heard about that. It's really nice. When you are in Brazil, you have to taste this. It's really nice.

Mark Smith: 3:15
Tell me about your stroganoff. Why is it different?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 3:19
I'm not sure what exactly you use in the stroganoff around the world, but here we use some kind of milk and ketchup meat and we usually serve this with rice. I saw that in around the world. It's usually takes. We eat this with pasta, but here we eat this with rice, so that's kind of difference, but it's really nice. We put some fries together. It's really nice.

Mark Smith: 3:58
Delicious, delicious. So what about family and fun? What do you do when you're not working? Okay, so about?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 4:05
family. I have two brothers I am the middle one and I'm married and I have two children, a boy and a girl. They are, you know, the older one has seven years old, so they are little and you know we do a lot of things with them. So a lot of my time that I have that I'm not working, I am with them, playing with them, you know, playing some soccer with my older one. It's really nice to have some good time, you know, with your kids, some quality time. So, yeah, that's what I do.

Mark Smith: 4:48
Nice. So I take it, you're into soccer, then yeah, every week yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 4:56
Yeah, this is. This is very common in Brazil. You know some soccer uh school, so yeah, Awesome, awesome.

Mark Smith: 5:05
Tell me about how you got into technology.

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 5:09
That's, that's really interesting because, uh, when I first started college, I was a lawyer at the beginning. So when I was in the college I was like, is that what I need, is that what I want to do? And after I finished the law college, I did not take the bar exam and I started the IT college. And then after that, when I was finishing the IT college, I was between you know, start working with Dynamics or work with COBOL. I don't know if you have heard it about COBOL language, yeah. So I was between these two. And then I picked the Dynamics side and, thanks God, I did that.

Mark Smith: 6:07
When you were at college was was? Is that when you were introduced to Dynamics, or was it some other time?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 6:15
I actually I was at the end of the college, so you know I was almost done there and then I I heard about dynamics. I I did an a small kind of small um course about dynamics and then, um, it was like a draft. You know, we present like a project and then the companies just go there and pick the ones that they like to start working with this. I don't know if this is common in other countries, but that's how I was introduced to Dynamics.

Mark Smith: 6:53
Okay, and so which dynamics Were you on the finance side, or more the customer engagement side? What was your focus?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 7:01
Yeah, I'm more customer engagement side, so I started recording videos to YouTube because of dynamics marketing. So this was the beginning of everything. And then I realized we don't have content in Portuguese for Dynamics at all, so I started creating content about Dynamics customer engagement for all the modules that we have there.

Mark Smith: 7:30
This is interesting. I have a lot of conversations with folks from around the world that English is their second language and they try to all create content in English and I'm like, I'm a big believer that you should create content as much as you can in your native language, because then you're helping so many other people in your area that you know it's harder to learn from English for them if it's their second language and you with Portuguese. I assume there's not a lot of Portuguese content out there for Portuguese people to look at. Would that be right?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 8:09
Yeah, exactly, and that's something that I start thinking about that Maybe I should record some videos in English, but I realized that we don't have much content in Portuguese, so that's why I don't record videos in English. I just recording in Portuguese, you know, to help Portuguese. You know people who speak Portuguese to learn dynamics, because we do have a lot of content in English, but we don't have this much content in Portuguese.

Mark Smith: 8:43
Yeah, so good. I love it. I love it. Tell me about you now are in this role of functional architect. What was your journey to going from learning about dynamics? What type of projects and things did you do to get to this point that you're now architecting projects?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 9:03
Yeah, so when I started, I started as a QA, you know, as a tester, and it was really nice because I was able to, you know, understand how Dynamics works as the functional part, the configuration part, because to test you need to understand how things need to work. So that was really good. And then after that we started some kind of development and some develop work, then configuration work, and that's how I started, you know, qa, dev, config and now architect. So I pass it to all the stages and that's something really nice because that's why that's how I learned how I know about dynamics.

Mark Smith: 9:56
And.

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 9:57
Keryon yeah, no, I would like to say about projects. I have been in a lot of different projects. You know different companies, different style of projects, so that also helped me, you know, learn about dynamics.

Mark Smith: 10:16
Yeah, if you look at all the projects that you've been involved in which one stands out in your memory has been a real highlight for you, that one that you know was maybe your favorite project. It might have been, you know what the problem is, that you were solving by what you were building, but what really stands out as a highlight for you?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 10:38
yeah, the project I am right now. It's a really big one, so this is the. I can say that this is the first one that I'm working as an architect, so for now, this is the most important for me. And then, and, and yeah, that's it, that's you know, I, I, I think that the most important project is always the one you are working right now. You know Even that we know that we had, you know, big projects before and was completely successful, but I think the one you are working is the one that is the most important.

Mark Smith: 11:16
So this project that you're currently working on, what industry is it in?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 11:20
It is an IT consulting.

Mark Smith: 11:24
Okay, okay, and is it? Is it? Is it traditional, like CRM, or are you building something different?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 11:30
Yeah, it's a CRM for the IT consulting company. Awesome, awesome.

Mark Smith: 11:38
Any other industries you've worked in outside of IT?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 11:41
Yeah, yeah, lower companies a lot of them. I work with a lot of lower companies in Brazil. What else, Retail?

Mark Smith: 11:56
Yeah, I don't remember the others, but I definitely work with a lot of them a lot of them, and so so in the in in each of these situations, is it dynamic?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 12:13
365 sales is that the main tool you're implementing, or is it customer service or something else? No, um, I can say that seven percent of the case dynamic sales. But yeah, because every time we start with dynamic sales and then we plug the other models. You know, marketing, customer service, but you know, I think the most yeah, that's it, 70% of the implementations started by the sales In my case. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but yeah.

Mark Smith: 12:50
That's interesting. How do you stay up to speed with all the changes that Microsoft are bringing out, whether it be on Copilot or just the new functionality? How do you make sure that you know what's available to you and you know what's available from a tooling perspective that allows you to do your work well?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 13:12
Yeah, that's a really nice question. Sometimes I keep asking to myself how can I do that? You know there are a lot of new things coming up, microsoft always bringing updates to us, new things, new functionalities, and it's really hard to you know, know all this. But you know I use a lot of LinkedIn. That's something that I think everyone should do. You know, just follow some MVPs or content creators, because it's really nice. You can see what is new. They post everything, they explain how things work. So not only me, but I think the whole community does that. So that's how I try to. You know, understand what is new and what I can use to the clients I work. You know, understand what is new and what I can use to the clients I work. You know, because there are a lot of the new things. It's really interesting to use in the clients because they solve a lot of problems that we have, and that's why we always need to be up to date with the Microsoft news.

Mark Smith: 14:25
Yeah, yeah. Are there any tools that you use outside Dynamics, like XRM, toolbox or anything like that, to help you get your job done?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 14:36
Yeah for sure, I don't know how my life is going to be without XRM Toolbox. That's really an amazing tool. And then, yeah for sure, I use this like every day.

Mark Smith: 14:52
What's the main modules that you use from it?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 14:55
You mean for the XRM toolbox. Yeah, yeah, Okay. There are some tools like Book Data Outdater Data Transporter, Fetch XML Builder REST Builder. Uh, book data data data transporter. Uh. Fetch xml builder rest builder. So all these tools are, you know the best?

Mark Smith: 15:15
nice, nice. So good to hear, so good to hear that these and what you know all developed by predominantly mvps. Right, a lot of that, those, those type of tools and functionality. How did you become an mvp? What was that journey for you?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 15:28
sorry, when was that?

Mark Smith: 15:30
no, how. How did you become an mvp? What was the process?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 15:34
yeah, so it was a long process, but uh, I don't know if you know, dan, to show his students how dynamics is, is Dynamics, you know, because now we can see some similarities, right, because Dynamics we have the model-driven apps and the Canvas app and they were like what is model-driven apps? You know, this is really different from Canvas and what exactly is this? This is really different from Kavas, and what exactly is this? So he invited me to do some class there with him to show his students and then, after like some classes with them, like about one year, after that maybe you feel all the requirements to be an MVP and he referred me to the program, but after that it takes like seven months to the final decision. So it was a long process.

Mark Smith: 17:02
My last question for you is around what's it like being an MVP, and even what advice would you give to others about being an MVP?

Jimmy Zinizopoulos Passeti: 17:15
You know it's something really new to me, but that's something good so far. Something good so far. You know, before the MVP, I was like I was just how can I say that I was thinking in becoming, in being an MVP when I was not an MVP? And the only thing that we need to have is to don't? How can I say that? You need to have dedication, you know? So when I started recording videos, I was like I'm going to post like two videos per week, and then I really did that. You know, about two years posting two times two videos per week. And then I really did that. You know, about two years posting two times two videos per week. And that's what you need to do. You need to dedicate. You know, just look for a goal and go for it and yeah, that's it. You just keep going. You know, do not just keep going. You will reach there one day, one time, maybe sooner, maybe later, but you will reach what you need.

Mark Smith: 18:42
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.