Cultural Roots and Technological Pursuits: Kristoffer Ruyeras' Dynamics Journey and Heritage Fusion

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 Seattle in Washington in the US of A. He's the vice president of Tegunya. His first award is MVP in 2024, so he's fresh into the program. His love for technology isn't just confined to his professional life and he started Matalino, which we'll drill into shortly, as a platform to connect like-minded individuals, sharing his experience and exploring the latest trends in Dynamics 365 ecosystem. His blog Matalino means smart or intelligent in Filipino Might give you a hint to his origins. It is a country I've visited multiple times. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Kristoffer.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 1:53
Thank you. Thanks, Mark, for having me this is exciting.

Mark Smith: 1:57
It is. It is so a couple of things to uncover. Actually, before we get started, let's cover my three Fs food, family and fun and then we'll get into this blog of yours.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 2:10
Okay. So food, my favorite food Balut. I've tried balut before. Yes, it's this duck egg, but no, you know I get asked about this. You know I love cooking.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 2:26
I grew up with my mom being a chef in the family, so I've been around food. Everyone cooked, including you know our generation. You know even the younger guys had to cook. But one food that I'll always go to is called longanisa. It is a portuguese sausage and, uh, if cooked correctly, it's one of the best foods. Every person I've ever given this to, and none of them has ever said, didn't like it. Now the burp after, probably not the most favorite thing to have after, but it is very, very good. It's longanisa, for anyone's curious, l-o-n-g-a-n-i-s-a, so it's been good. So food, family, well, family. I have three children, and I have one in junior high and a freshman, and then my youngest is a nine-year-old, a fourth grade, so full house, and my wife's a teacher. So it's all about learning for us. This household's all about learning, and so this is my family.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 3:53
I reside in Washington State, right off, about 30 minutes from Redmond, washington, which is the home of Microsoft. So that's my background in food, family and fun, fun. So there's a lot of things I enjoy, but there's things in my life that I, you know. Of course, family is always going to be. Anytime with my family, I'm all out for it. No matter what we do, I'm having a good time For me. Individually, what I love to do is ride my motorcycle. You know, considering living in Washington state, it rains all the time, so I I will take advantage of that. Number two is cooking. I enjoy cooking in general and even at some point even at some point in conversation that when I do retire, I may open up a small little restaurant just so I could cook. So we'll see, we'll see.

Mark Smith: 4:49
I love that. That is so cool. That is so cool. I just got to stop a video playing because I've looked up that sausage and I've got a recipe for it. So I am like, yeah, I'm going to try that out Because, yeah, I love Portugal as well. But tell me, are you Filipino?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 5:08
I am Filipino. Yes, I was born there, came here about 10 years old in Washington State. I've kind of stayed here. You know, what's interesting is my last name is certainly Spanish and my mom's maiden name is Spanish. What's interesting to me is that when I did the whole DNA thing, I'm only about 60, 70% Filipino. The rest is Polynesian, but they didn't specify which Polynesian islands I belong to. So, surprise, I have no Spanish blood whatsoever. But my dad's, my family's Espinosa and Sanchez, because the Philippines is full of Spanish last names, but I have no Spanish blood.

Mark Smith: 6:03
When I was in Manila, I went to a I don't know if it was a memorial site or an outdoor museum which showed the whole the Spaniards, you know, coming in and colonizing the Philippines and their involvement and stuff like that. So yeah, I found it very interesting because it was a part of history I wasn't aware of.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 6:24
Yeah, yeah, very interesting.

Mark Smith: 6:26
Um, do you get home much back to your homeland?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 6:29
That's a good question. So the last time I went I've been there. I think I was about 13 years old. Uh, I think, yeah, that's the last time I've been there. I think I was about 13 years old. I think, yeah, that's the last time I've been there. I'm 40 now.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 6:43
I do plan to go back. My kids are getting older and my wife wants to see the Philippines she's never been and my kids want to see it and they're old enough to understand in hopes that I could show them what I remember growing up. You know the first 10 years of my life and I still have family there from my mom's side, you know predominantly my mom's side, so I'm looking forward to see family member. I haven't been, so my goal is next year and I did have an opportunity this year to go to the Philippines, but because of scheduling I did not get a chance to go. So we had put together a Philippines Tech by Anehan Summit their first one and I was part of that committee member and I just the schedule didn't work out for me so unfortunately I missed it, but I enjoyed the post that they had posted on LinkedIn and such.

Mark Smith: 7:44
It's an amazing country. Yeah, I'd love to go back and spend more time there. I went, of course, in IT to set up an offshore development center, so Metro Manila, and hired my first folks in there and, yeah, that's where I got introduced, of course, to a bit of the culture of the Philippines and, yeah, thoroughly enjoyed it and I've worked with people from the Philippines for maybe over 10 years now. I'd say you know Liesel had scheduled this show right. Did you know she's Filipino?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 8:23
I had no idea.

Mark Smith: 8:25
I just thought you might have picked up from her last name, but she doesn't live in the Philippines, she lives in Canada. Ah, so the person that does all my scheduling yeah, based in Canada, has done it for the last I don't know four years maybe, wow, yeah practically neighbors Scheduling.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 8:36
Yeah, based in Canada. It's done for the last, I don't know, four years maybe. Yeah, wow, yeah.

Mark Smith: 8:38
Practically neighbors, yeah, exactly right. Well, and she's in Vancouver, so really neighbors, right. So crazy close, that is crazy close. Hong Kong nine times in one year, and this when I was working in Australia and um for a big project, and this is where, um, a lot of the people in my team worked, from the Philippines on that project and but in the Philip, in the Hong Kong, right, there's a lot of Filipino people that go and work in Hong Kong and what happens?

Mark Smith: 9:16
I think Sunday is the only day of the week that they get off. Right, they do work six days, seven days, so the seventh day they have free and the streets are just for basically daylight hours. Filipino people are just in their groups and they're just everywhere around central Hong Kong, on the island, and you'd go into malls and I'm a short guy but I kind of felt tall because my head was still above so many people and I had a big beard at the time and a lady told me that Filipino men feel intimidated by beds, big beds, because they can't apparently grow big bushy beds, and so it was like lots of people were pointing at me and stuff like that.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 10:10
It was funny. That is funny. Yeah, you know, I have a little beard going on, but it's usually patchy, but I keep it clean. My wife says, yeah, I keep it clean and stuff. But she said, don't shave it off. Don't shave it off because you look like a baby. Don't shave it off, just leave it there, trim it here and there. But yeah, you're right, they're not typically able to grow beards, unless you're. You know, you're descended of other cultures and you can grow beards.

Mark Smith: 10:42
Yes, yes. Now tell me about a couple of things. Tell me about the name of your blog and the thinking around it, and yeah, yeah, so a little bit of background, bit of background.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 11:04
So Matalino means intelligent or clever in Filipino language, and so when I first put that together, I had just started my independent consulting. So I was like you know what I have a knack for this. I actually enjoy helping others, and so I started as an LLC here in the US and so I worked with a lot of organizations. I came to a point in time in life that you know I want to work for a partner permanently and it has to be a good partner. A partner has same beliefs and the drive and hunger of learning, and so I really just took that Mattelino blog from my LLC. I just kept it. It just fit. You know it was a good transition not only from a consulting name for you know turning into a blog, and I just put all my thoughts in there, including interviews that I've ever done in the past, and, yeah, it stuck with me for pretty much forever. So that's how I got the name, you know.

Mark Smith: 12:04
Yeah, Very cool, very cool. Tell us about your podcast and, by the way, give us where can people can find it. What's the name of it? What do you focus on?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 12:12
The way we put the podcast together. It's called Dynamics Corner. You can Google it. We just put a LinkedIn page. It was really more of a design where my colleague, Brad Prendergast and I just to share our thoughts and expertise and just banter from time to time, and so let's say you know what, how about we record it? You know he's been in this space for a long time. I've been in space for a long time and just share the transition from people that were coming from Navision or Nav to Business Central ERP, and so we just started with that a little bit tips and tricks here, and eventually we had started bringing people over to have a conversation and just as that.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 13:02
Just have a conversation. You know, no, uh, no, nothing like what we're doing right now. Just no scripts, nothing. Have a conversation and it worked pretty well. Um, and it's not associated to any anyone, um, associated to a partner or ISV or any of that. So just a conversation that we enjoy. So you can find us. You know Dynamics Corner podcast and we've enjoyed it. You know that's something that Brad and I say like look, as long as we're enjoying it and we're having a good time, that's all I care, you know. So yeah, that's awesome.

Mark Smith: 13:37
That's awesome. How frequently do you post?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 13:39
We do every week. So we've, you know, we've been very lucky and we do appreciate the community. I think the dynamics community is a wonderful community, whether you are a business central community or ERP to par platform and all that. Everyone's been so welcoming and so we've never had any issues of anyone just talking to us and have a conversation. So we do release it once a week. That's typically Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sometimes we release two, depending on getting something out there before. Maybe an event to help, event you know, to help our, you know, maybe if you're a speaker, we want to make sure that you know you have an option for you to tell others to join your session and so forth. So yeah, yeah.

Mark Smith: 14:31
Where do you host your podcast?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 14:35
We host it on Spotify, apple, apple Podcasts and pretty much any of the major ones out there. We also have a YouTube channel. Sometimes they want to see our faces, I guess. So in some occasion we have people share stuff on their screen, like especially, if it's a session about education and teaching someone, then it's definitely on YouTube as well.

Mark Smith: 15:05
Have you seen that now Spotify allows you to put the YouTube video sorry, you can upload the video into Spotify as well, so then the listener can choose either the video or the audio.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 15:12
I have seen some of that. I still may be in the transition. I have to figure that one out, but that's a good call-out. Mark, I appreciate you giving me that tip. That way, if you're listening, you can switch back and forth. So that's a good tip, thank you.

Mark Smith: 15:25
Yeah, I've got. So I publish generally three shows a week, and the middle show, which is the ecosystems show, that's a video show, so that's a video show, so that's full video. So I I, for in post production do a a mix that is video and um, and then the audio is also standard podcast audio, and so what I've noticed. It was only maybe three months ago that I noticed that then, in Spotify, it allowed you to add the video as well after you've published the audio, and it'll then give the user the ability to watch the video. So I just I always upload all my videos, of course, to YouTube, and I really did that as a archiving tool, you know, as in all my history, but what's happened is that now, a lot of people will go and watch it actually over on YouTube than you know on the traditional Apple or Spotify or something like that. So, just behind that, though, do you have anything like Buzzsprout or anything like that as your aggregator that then sends it out to those various platforms, or do you manually upload?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 16:36
No, you spot on 100%. So we are using Buzzsprout right now and yeah, and then just it just basically spreads it out to all those different channels. Yeah, Buzzsprout.

Mark Smith: 16:47
Honestly, I changed. I've only made the change once and I wish I'd done it earlier, but Buzzsprout is. I love that. They keep innovating, right, they keep you know. They've added the whole AI functionality in it about a year ago now and it's awesome. And then, yeah, another tool I use is Podpage, and I use that. It's like a website for your podcast and it allows for you know much more detail around what's in the show content if you have sponsors to put that in. And the crazy thing is, my wife decided to run a report on what it costs me to produce the podcast and I've been doing it six years, right, so I've got some consistency. How much money? So forget my time, because that's not factored in, but this is invoices that I have received in that I have to pay in relationship to my podcast. What do you reckon that is per annum in US dollars?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 18:32
Oh, because you know the Buzzsprout has different tiers.

Mark Smith: 18:41
So I don't know what tier I'm on, it's whatever it needs to do.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 18:43
three shows a week, so three shows a week, and you're gonna do that for a month. So, yeah, you have quite a bit of you know, quite a bit of show there. Um oh, uh, I'm gonna put myself on your shoes what I pay right now. I would probably say about a thousand dollars a month, or more than that, maybe 12,000 a month, okay, so 12,000 a year, 1200 a year. 1200 a year is that way low.

Mark Smith: 19:16
So this is the thing right and this is the thing for me, my bad not monitoring. You know what it costs. So for me, right, I have somebody that does all my scheduling. Um, to put that in perspective, that's 50 hours a fortnight of work around scheduling and working with my producers, um, so each of my different shows have a different post-production editor that I pay to actually edit the shows, right, because I just don't have time for that. Right, I've got time to do the recording. That's the bit I love, and back when I started, right, I would do all that kind of. I would do my own edits, I learned how to splice and all that kind of stuff. But that's not the bit that brings me joy, right, the bit that brings me joy is talking to someone like yourself and finding out your story. I am spending $30,000 a year.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 20:09
Wow, okay, yeah, if you take that into consideration.

Mark Smith: 20:13
Isn't that?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 20:14
nuts, that is nuts, you're right, like if I took the things, so we're early, right. I mean, you've been on this for a long time and I've listened to your shows as well and I have a lot of respect of putting this together, because right now it is fun and I'm learning how to edit, like you said, like what you used to do. I'm you years ago and I'm in the process right now where we're doing our own scheduling, I'm editing, I'm late night, so, yeah, it comes to a point where, like, okay, when is it a lot? And then we have to consider, but yeah, it takes a lot of work for sure.

Mark Smith: 21:01
Lots of respect it's crazy, as in. I couldn't believe it was only like I don't know a week or two weeks ago that she said do you know actually how much it costs to run as in, how much we pay out to run that podcast?

Mark Smith: 21:12
and I was like no way, I had no idea she reminded you that that was going out and I've got an LLC that I use, and so it's not out of my personal finances but it's out of my. When I say I have an LLC, the whole idea. We don't do any implementation work or anything like that, it's just purely designed as a tax mechanism in the country that I'm in. It's why I run it.

Mark Smith: 21:39
I read a book years ago and the author was saying in this book that if you're an author, you should have your own company that you do your authorship from, and the biggest reason is for the tax breaks. Right, I get to on all those things I get to value added tax. I get to claim all that back. I get to on all those things I get to, you know, value-added tax. I get to claim all that back. I get to recover those. You know they're all costs of doing business for me. So, but yeah, I couldn't believe it, that was the number I was absolutely shocked at. That's how much I was spending. Yeah, it's crazy.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 22:13
But I believe it. I believe it, I mean, if you really truly break it down, and that's not even considering the time, your time, it's not my time at all.

Mark Smith: 22:25
That's not factored in whatsoever, but you know yeah. So yeah, I am surprised how much has evolved. How did you become an MVP?

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 22:35
You know I've been in space for quite some time and I didn't really know much about the MVP program. I've heard about it throughout my career. You know my background is in IT. I started my career right when I was still in high school. I think I was senior in high school I had already started with an internship. I was senior in high school, I had already started with an internship. So half of my school was interning somewhere or, I guess, externing, whatever you want to call it.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 23:05
And then and I've always been a big educate you know belief in education, and so when I got involved in the dynamic space, there was a big struggle for me internally to find good content somewhere where I can learn. So luckily, in the Pacific Northwest I was introduced to several others. I had a good partner that helped me introduce to the other businesses in the area while we were implementing Nav. And so what happened was I got introduced to a gentleman named Dave Weiser and Bob Starr they're still in the space and so, hey, we need a user group. And so I was one of the original people that started the user group here in the Pacific Northwest. And so ever since then, every time there's a user group meeting. I always submitted some sessions to speak and whatever I wanted to learn. And then I found that there's convergence and summit happening, conferences Like I got to go. I got to go, whether the business paid for it or not. I even spent money out of my pocket because it was an investment for me to learn. So I sat in there and then I got it's like, how do these people teach others? And I got. I learned from that, not only with the content. Eventually I got to a point where I was like now I'm comfortable enough to submit sessions, so I started submitting sessions and so forth, submitting sessions and so forth.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 24:42
It didn't really come into play until Brad and I started doing our podcast. And once we started doing our podcast, we talked about our history of the product. Someone had recognized us and said hey, you guys are doing a good job. You know you're giving back to the community, we're speaking sessions, we did academies and so forth. And then someone nominated and I was very much honored to be nominated by Shannon Mullins, and so it's been really great. It's an amazing journey and it allowed me to be more confident, on top of that, which allowed me to connect with other MVPs across the globe and across the US, and then do the Tech by Aneon, which is a conference that's outside of the country.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 25:26
So you know, now I want to continue and I want to continue to give back because, look, I was that person at the seat listening to somebody speak and so I learned from that. I learned from the community. So what can I do? What can I do in return? By giving my time back to the community in hopes that there was someone just like me who's sitting back there and saying I want to start my career. They have an avenue to go and ask these questions. Because, yeah, I struggled. There was no documentation, it was hard to come by. You have to speak to somebody that's already been in the uh, in the vision space or nav space christopher, this has been awesome hearing a story.

Mark Smith: 26:08
We're already five minutes over time with our chat chat master. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll need to do this again we'll do I appreciate, mark.

Kristoffer Ruyeras: 26:15
thank you for having me to do this again. Will do I appreciate it, Mark.

Mark Smith: 26:19
Thank you for having me. 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.