[Fully Managed] David Hartmann from The Silver Logic Ep. 215

Shannon: Alrighty. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the Fully Managed Podcast. Thank you, David, for joining me. I really appreciate it.

David: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Shannon: Of course. So today we’re gonna start with a game. Sorry to put you on the spot, but it’s gonna be fun, it’s fun and easy, and you get to talk about something that you really like. Okay, so this is called guilty pleasure confessions. So you have to talk about something that is your current guilty pleasure for less than a minute and convince me for it to be my guilty pleasure.

David: Oh, all right. When it comes to late at night, it’s a little meditation. I build Lego models. So I have built a Titanic. I’ve built Eiffel Tower. That one was not a fun one. So repetitive, but really fun. Right now I’m building the Hogwarts Express, which is really beautiful. It’s lit up inside. And now I’m building Barad-Dur, the tower in Lord of the Rings with the eye on top. And it is just very relaxing, following instructions, putting something together and getting to create something that you can then stare at. The one cool one was also the piano, the Lego piano that you can then play. It’s tiny keys, but you can play it.

Shannon: That’s so cute. Oh, I actually never really was… I didn’t grow up playing with Legos or like building with them. So I didn’t think that I would like it because I’m not a building person. Like I don’t like to build things. I didn’t like that kind of stuff as a kid either. But recently my boyfriend really wanted some Star Wars Lego set. Like he really wanted… he was like, can we build this? I was like, okay fine, I’m doing this for you. And I actually really enjoyed it. I didn’t think that I would. I guess because there’s like self-gratification from just doing… like finishing a task that is easy to complete, just long, I guess. And visible. Like and then see the result.

David: Yes, it’s very nice, actually. I like it a lot because it’s rewarding because you can see the end result and be excited about it. And it’s something that you can display and kind of mock people with. Like, I made that.

Shannon: Which one did you build?

David: I wish I could tell you. I’m not familiar with Star Wars at all. Millennium Falcon, the round thing?

Shannon: It’s not the Millennium Falcon. I know that one. The little dog-like thing?

David: It is the dog-like one. The dog-like one. We made that. It was very cool. It was very fun. I did really enjoy it. And it does have, like, this gun on top, like that’s a laser. And it actually shoots pellets of Legos. Like it has a button, which I thought was awesome. I was like, that’s really cool. I do enjoy the innovation around this. That one is in surgery for me right now because my tiny one-year-old came across it. And because that’s one model I have on the floor in my office. And he was like, oh, this is cute. Poke, poke, poke. And I was like, oh, let me lean on it. Naturally.

Shannon: Yeah. Yes, I think part of the legos are fun to destroy, but also it is sad. It’s just a big version… like this is… I don’t know, very large version.

David: Oh no. Yeah, that’s like destroying nature surgery, but yeah.

Shannon: That’s horrible. Well, you don’t even have to convince me to have this guilty pleasure because I was recently convinced. I was converted to the Lego world recently. So I’m happy we share that together.

Introduction and Background

Shannon: Well, to transition, hello, everyone. If you haven’t been here before, this is the Fully Managed Podcast. This is a podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I am your host, Shannon, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest. David Hartman from Silver Logic. Thank you so much for joining me again. I know I said that before, but thank you again.

David: Looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.

Shannon: So could you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe introduce yourself differently than I would, and let us know about anything that is relevant up to this point on your business journey that you think would be important for the audience to know and what you’d like to share and what you’re doing now?

David: Yeah, so I’m David Hartman, founder and CEO of The Silver Logic. Started the company now, twelve and a half years ago. I came to the US from Germany, did a little foreign exchange and then won a green card and decided to start a company and stick around and stay in the US. And it’s been a really rewarding twelve years. It’s lots of rollercoaster ride and we’ve found a good niche and we do business automation. So we build custom software, but focus really on automation of where can we obliterate the twenty-seven spreadsheets that run most companies or get rid of a lot of manual data entry and just make life easier for people. And that’s been really rewarding because we go across so many different industries. So we always learn something new about those various industries of how they function. I mean, one of our early projects was in assisted living, in the assisted living space, and others are in construction, manufacturing, in food delivery, in energy. So it’s just really interesting to always learn something about those different spaces as we build tools for them.

The Challenge of Learning New Industries

Shannon: Yeah, that’s incredible. I think the problem solving aspect of trying to make a business run better is really fun because it’s just… it scratches that part of your brain that like wants to know how things work. What do you think is the biggest difficulty of trying to learn about a new business or like how to make that better?

David: It’s getting into it enough. So having the right people that are willing to sort of dedicate that time because they take things for granted. For them, it’s like normal, like, oh, of course it’s this way. Well, yes, in your brain, but you assume, but well, I’m not in your space. I don’t know your space. So it’s asking the right questions and getting them… Most of them are excited and passionate about their space, but just inducing them into, okay, talk to me about your space so that I can hear all about it and then learn all sorts of things about it and get to where I am so that you explain to me all the things that you might take for granted and the terminology. Oh, my goodness. So many abbreviations that I get thrown at or nice slang, like business terms. What do you mean? That’s now where AI comes in and I can have like a mini education on whatever the space is so that, cool, I know all about this now, at least enough to sound intelligent. And then the other person can talk to me and tell me more.

Shannon: Yeah. No, I think that definitely must be an adjustment. Even in the agency world, I constantly hear and have to remind people that their clients are not usually people familiar with their work. I mean, like they want to come to you for a service, but they might not be familiar with what you’re talking about, especially if you use terminology that is not in their wheelhouse. And I think that it works both ways. A client, if you’re doing a service for them, you have to understand their business to a level in order to interact. But they also have to understand what you’re doing for them in order to even want to use your service. And it’s very funny how it works like that. You kind of both have to educate each other on each other’s business in order to help each other.

David: Exactly. Some people are like, oh my god I didn’t… I didn’t have to now learn all about figuring this out. No, I hired you so I don’t need to learn at all. But you still need to lightly learn so you understand what’s going on. Some people are very hands-off and don’t need to, don’t want to know anything that you have to tell them, but I think that’s in cases where they’re being helped and not getting the help, I guess, or not being the help, I suppose. So… It’s very funny how that works.

Inc. 5000 Recognition

Shannon: So something that I thought was really cool is you guys are like a two-time Inc. 5000 award winning company, which is…

David: Five times. Yeah, we’ve done five years in a row.

Shannon: Five times. OK, well, my information is wrong.

David: We did two times the regional because I just… I know the date for the big one, like the main one, the national one really well. And then I missed most years, the reminder email for the regional one. Now I’m on top of it. I’ve submitted it already for last year, but we’ve got a couple of times. I didn’t even know it existed in the early years. But yes, we’ve done five years in a row. We hopefully will make year number six this year.

Shannon: It’s funny to know that. I mean, I love the confidence of knowing that just because you missed it, that’s why you weren’t in it.

David: If we make the national ones, the odds that we make the regional one is pretty good. Yeah, we ranked very nicely. Like we were like ninety-something on the regional one. So that’s pretty good. And on the national one, we were usually in the like thousand-something, thousand five hundred, and one year two thousand two hundred. And so, yes, if we… yeah, relatively confident we made it to the big one, we would have made it. But it’s two separate applications that… oopsie.

Shannon: So anyone out there, there are two separate applications.

David: Yeah, that’s very silly. I feel like they would just like… you know, put you in both. Two applications with the same information.

Shannon: So yeah, it’s like doing your taxes. It’s like you could do this for me, but no, no, no. You have all the information and we just get you if you file it wrong.

David: Yes, exactly. It’s very fun process.

Growth Strategies

Shannon: So on that note, what strategies do you think contributed the most to like your rapid growth? Because this is I think the most difficult thing that agencies kind of have is growing their agency. So what do you think is like the biggest players in that?

David: So funny enough, for most of those years, actually until last year, until our twelve anniversary, we didn’t have a sales team. And this is something we instituted at the year-twelve mark because in order to keep growing at this rapid rate, it was just getting too much. The number, the absolute number you need to grow to grow by the same percentage gets bigger every year. So in the past, it was enough to just work off word-of-mouth referrals and current clients being here. And we really focused… So one thing that allowed us to do it was because we’re focused on automating and helping our clients to grow, to scale, it helped since then they became bigger and their needs became bigger so that we would continue the relationship. So we had a lot of long-term clients, not just like a three month engagement, but multi-year engagements. Not meaning that it took us years to deliver anything, but rather we’ll deliver something in six to eight weeks. And then they enjoy that. They get value out of it. And I’m like, OK, cool, let’s do the next thing and the next thing. And so by going over years, we always had a certain base and the sales that I personally did could just focus on the add-on or the growth and didn’t have to do as much replacement sales. And that has really helped us to build that foundation that we could build on top to maintain a certain level of rapid growth from that side. And then just doing great work that led to referrals.

The Milestone System for Employee Retention

David: And on the people side, because obviously when growing, you need both sides. You need the demand that people want your service, but then you need to also be able to fulfill more of that service. There, I’ve always enjoyed organizational things and structures very much. But one of the core things that has helped there is having really good retention. So that also same thing that we keep clients around, but we also keep people around for a long time, which is fantastic. Most companies have some level of struggle with that, but especially in the tech industry, tenure is a tricky piece that most people stick around for two years or maybe one year and then they hop to the next one, where we celebrate many multi-year anniversaries. And one of the key things that I would say attributed to that, of course, is for one, just foundationally our culture, that people just really enjoy being part of the company. And we do cool stuff. But one of the big pieces I would argue that has helped make it all so sustainable is the milestone system that we came up with about probably about a decade ago now.

David: Where as an early founder I got really tired of a certain conversation that would play out after one of the employees says, “Hey” — and this is all pre-COVID — so they would say, “Hey David, can I talk to you in your office for a minute? Do you have a moment?” Usually not a fun conversation comes after that.

Shannon: Yeah, neither party.

David: And it’s usually one of two topics that come up from there. And most people know them. Like most people, when I just say this and pause, they’re guessing it’s either “Can I have a raise?” Or “I got another job. I’m leaving.”

Shannon: Yes.

David: And really uniformly people just know. And that’s why I usually pause before I say them so people can answer them for themselves and most people likely guess them. And that was just not fun. And it’s not fun for either party. So I just realized, look, one day anyone is going to ask me for a raise. So why don’t I get ahead of that? And instead of making this awkward conversation — and even worse is when they just send an email like, “Oh yeah, sorry. I got this other thing so bye.” It’s when not even a conversation happens. But let me get ahead of that and just define what are things that you, employee, can do better that also adds value to the company. So it’s an easy decision for me. And so I can pre-decide that, look, you do this thing, you get this raise. And we came up with these milestones where it’s not just this one big promotion, but rather within your role, you don’t need to switch roles. You don’t need to become a lead XYZ or XYZ manager, XYZ director, but rather you just within your role improve. I know it adds value to the company and thereby it makes financial sense to give you that raise and we can celebrate together. So instead of this confrontational conversation, we work on it together, figure out what adds value, and then celebrate together when I can give that raise because at that point now instead of this resistance and confrontational, it’s a together celebration. And we even shared with the team that, “Hey Johnny over here achieved this milestone” and folks celebrate. And that has helped really and worked wonders for our retention, which is somewhere in the up in the nineties. For I mean, especially for a tech company, that’s really cool. And it’s just really transformed the thought process that it’s not so much this demanding for… “I deserve a raise,” but rather how do we figure this out together and puts us back on the same page? And it makes it that some folks are content with like one or two in a year and some people do like three, four. And it’s just… it’s more micro raises that each milestone we made three, four, five thousand dollars worth. So someone can get… maybe they’re good with a five thousand dollar raise and someone else pushes really hard. And it’s just… it made it really merit based instead of just time that, oh, you’ve got to be in that role for two years and then you can get that promotion. Instead, look, you make some increments, you learn, you level up some skills, get better, you get a five thousand dollar raise. Or you learn a lot and level up a lot. You might get a twenty thousand dollar raise. It’s really now in your hands as employee. And that has really transformed how we look at learning and growing. And it’s really helped our retention because those that are really skilled that would usually look somewhere else for that big jump, they just work hard and they can get a big jump even within the organization.

Shannon’s Response to the Milestone System

Shannon: That is such an incredible thing to hear about. And I really do love that model. I think that is… I do think that… I agree with you that it’s an uncomfortable conversation for anyone, boss, employee included. But it’s nice to know that you’re working towards something because a lot of people work towards something that isn’t guaranteed for them. Unfortunately, they don’t know that that’s something that’s coming on the radar. And it’s also… Some people work really hard in a short period of time and don’t see any gratification from it solely because it’s not the norm to receive a pay grade just because you’re working hard. I mean, but it’s like you could be working three times the output as an employee that has been there for X amount of years and not see any benefits to it solely because you’re, you know, newer or you’ve only been there for so long and whatever it may be. And I don’t think that’s like… that’s really fair. I think that, and it’s nice that you also have this variety of that someone can work a certain amount of… like work hard a certain amount in order to receive multiple levels of this. Of like, I like how you kind of put it of… some people might need or really strive to have that bigger goal solely because it’s something that motivates them or it’s something that, again, they might need for their lifestyle or whatever it may be. Whereas another person who maybe doesn’t have the bandwidth to do that is satisfied and happy with whatever amount of raises are before that. And that’s like the choice.

David: It happens sort of in that curve that initially someone that’s relatively junior, they might really step it up because they want to get to a comfortable level. And then as they do, they slow down a little bit in how much they need to level up because they’re at a comfortable level already. And then maybe some… “oh, just had a second child. Okay, I need to step it up again.” And events like that happen. But it’s really now the beautiful part is that it just… it’s very much like we put together… It’s a uniform checklist. So it’s also… we’ll customize the journey for each employee. But then there’s very uniform blocks that these are skills that we say these are valuable skills for that role. And then everybody in that role has access to them. So everybody can level up and people can take different journeys. Very, well, obviously, video game inspired where I saw, okay, this is like a skill tree now in a video game where, okay, you’re a level one wizard and maybe you’re a level two swordsman and such. And you can level up your skills just that here there’s nice little monetary rewards based on what you’re leveling up.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s incredible. It gives people the option of choice and like based off of what’s going on in their life at that point or what kind of person they are. And it also provides value to the company knowing exactly what level that person is on, like knowing what they’re doing and also how they’re doing it. And so like you can keep track of everyone in like a way, but you can also, you know, you have that ability to see what they’re capable of. And that’s really cool. I think that’s an incredible option that I’ve never heard of. So I really commend you for creating something like that.

Turning the System into a Product: Waystones

David: A lot of my peers, when I mentioned this and when they asked me how I handle promotions or compensation, and I mentioned it, they were like, “Wow, that’s cool. Can you send that to me?” And I was like, “No, it’s a stupid Google Doc. That’s not shareable.” So I heard that enough times that about, I think, two years ago or so, I had another one of those conversations, and then I finally pulled the trigger. We do build software for a living. So I was like, let me build a tool for this. And so we rebranded it. We named it Waystones because milestones, there’s so many that Google term we’re not going to conquer, but Waystones. And we made it that you have your Waystones that you’re achieving, there’s guideposts, that’s the checklist, and you’re on a journey or on different journeys that you can complete your Waystones on. And put that together as a tool that not only… it’s mainly it’s for us, but and we were like, enough people are asking me so let me make it multi-tenant so others can sign up for it as well. Why not?

Shannon: That’s lovely and it’s also lovely to share. I think that you’re really taking care of your employees well to offer something like that. I think that that’s the… that must be such a… I mean you’ve attested that, but it must be such a… it provides retention naturally because people feel valued and that they’re always able to grow. Whereas I think…

David: There is a very visible goal in front of them. Like you were mentioning earlier, it’s not that, “oh yeah, I work hard and maybe I get a reward.” No, no, there’s a very specific reward and you don’t have to have this conversation. That milestone gets submitted and next pay cycle, it’s active. So it’s a very smooth conversation and transition.

Shannon: It’s also that ability to grow, like some people just like growth for the sake of growth, like learning and like being better rather than just looking for like a pay upgrade or whatever it may be. It’s also lovely because I think that the only other reason that people will leave a company if they’re not getting paid enough is usually the reason that people leave the most, or because they don’t like the company culture. But if they like those two things, the other reason is usually because they feel like they’re stagnant in the way in which they’re learning or they’re… and so it’s incredible because this accounts for all those levels of… you know, like other than maybe if someone really wants to work for the most major corporation ever and that’s like their dream job, maybe that would be the only reason why they would leave. But I mean, comfort really is everything. I think a lot of people get comfortable in positions that they don’t even love, but it’s just something that they like. So having all those facets and feeling cared about is like peak comfort, I feel like, almost to work in an organization that provides that comfort.

David: Yep. Yeah, it’s been… it’s been great and all the iterations and feedback. And that’s another funny one. I wrote all the first milestones but then I turned it over to people in their specific roles. So the product owners write the product owner milestones and the software engineers write software engineering milestones. And it was really cool to how they take that ownership and also the pride of, “no, no, no.” You know, the first fear was like, “are they just going to make it easy so they get easy raises?” But they took the pride and ownership that they really wanted to make it specific and what are the things that are valuable in the role so that now they can say, “cool, this person has this milestone. We know they can do X, Y, Z task and skill and execute on a certain level.” And yeah, that was fun to see.

Shannon: Oh, that’s incredible. It’s also really… it’s nice that you admire your team in that way of like, you know, that, you know, they’re not… they’re not dumbing it down so that they’re able to get to a certain point. But it’s also… it’s incredible to see that they’re motivated in a way that is like fair for creating that model for themselves even.

David: Yep.

Service Offerings and Staying Current

Shannon: So switching gears a little bit. So you offer a range of services from like business automation to augmented reality. So what do you do… Give me… how do you choose the services that you provide? And how do you ensure that you’re like staying ahead of the curve when choosing to provide certain services and like creating your team and orienting it around new things that you’re providing?

David: Yeah. So the overall theme is that automation, improving business. That’s really the core theme and we stick around that. And then many of the services that we offer are just, for me, sort of the tools on the tool belt, things that might help make that process better. AI is an obvious one. Just doing integrations, doing apps, doing web apps, that’s the obvious ones. AR, maybe a little less obvious and it’s more on the edge, but it still helps for certain automation tools that are a little more cutting edge, that you might want to see some information very contextually to what you’re doing, where you’re working. And that’s how that became part. And also just because we had the right talented engineers that were capable of doing so and building something in that realm. But the core business I was mentioning, the skills that everybody has, that’s how we drive technology. It’s sort of a bilateral relationship that by the main services we offer, that’s what we look for, for mainly our people knowing and then added bonuses of additional skills folks know. And that’s where on the automation side, being able to integrate APIs, to build nice portals, where we really… when we look at… and then we look at what is your process, what is that end-to-end process? And one of skills that we just really enhance more is a little bit of that consulting that comes in in the beginning to really dive deep and figure out what is it that you need to make this process business and so on better and really understanding it. And that’s where it’s actually very interesting. We have… we have a good amount of… I would say probably half of our folks are not from a traditional tech background but from some other industry. But it now gives us insight into so many different industries that makes it interesting because now we have these subject matter experts that know things about totally different…

Shannon: That’s helpful to the client because they might work in the same field.

David: Like recently, we just had one in the energy sector and we have someone that worked in solar before and in energy and runs a Bitcoin mine on the side. So when we had someone that’s in the crypto space, they connected instantly because, well, he knows a lot about it. So that makes it just interesting on those. But I would say it’s similar to that we don’t need to narrow down on just one industry. Just like I would say, okay, what industry uses Excel? All of them. It’s very universal. Most automation, we replace Excel spreadsheets with nicer systems and we do that just as universally because all of them, there’s some nasty data entry or ugly spreadsheets or beautiful spreadsheets, but it’s just too many of them and you’re just emailing them.

Shannon: Yeah, it’s annoying. People very much resonate when I say the, you know, the twenty-seven spreadsheets that rule their company because, yes, there are some and usually it’s more than twenty-seven.

David: But I don’t have those. Yeah, hundred forty-five or so.

Favorite Part of the Process

Shannon: Yeah, I think that it’s nice to know that there’s a need for those kinds of things everywhere. I think that all businesses can always improve because no one’s really perfect, but to be able to find out what kind of makes a business tick in a way of trying to figure out what you can specifically provide value for that is really cool because it’s different for everyone. What is your favorite part of that process? Like you personally.

David: Of the process of just figuring out the business, the solution, the process. I would say that initial… so getting to and architecting some solution. So when I see and revealing to people that sometimes there is… some folks come with good ideas for solutions already to us and some just come to us with “here’s a problem I’m having.” And there it’s really fun to reveal what they don’t know that they don’t know. So just opening up new opportunity of, “oh, we could do that this way, or we could do it this way.” So that’s usually very rewarding because they’re just… and then seeing after, so that’s in the very early stages, just architecting things. And then after like three months in or a month in and seeing to life and seeing the results of it, because then someone might… their team members might say, “oh wow, this is so much better of a process.” And it’s just… there’s a lot of appreciation. And I really enjoy then going to like client locations to see stuff in action and then just get the feedback from not just the executives that we usually work with but also from the frontline workers that are using the tool because it’s usually might be a little bit cranky in the beginning because people don’t like change. But usually after that initial phase, then there’s a lot of appreciation for like, “oh, my God, this saves me so much time.” And there’s so many of the cool stories where it’s like, “oh, I actually get to see my son at night and put him to bed because I’m not staying late at the office.” Or “I no longer want to blow my brains out by having to do this over and over.” But it’s the little stories that then really make it so rewarding since someone, either we help them be able to scale or just make the people happy because they get to see their son at night since they have to do less overtime and work less because it’s just cumbersome and there’s no ability to… can’t just hire X many more people always because, well, there might not be sustainable. So it’s those parts that make it really enjoyable. And they have so little to do with the direct like ones and zeros and code that we write.

Dealing with Resistant Clients and Process Discovery

Shannon: No, I think that’s wonderful. I think there is a lot of businesses that are hesitant to change. And I think that the difficulty around that is, you know, you can look for help, but you might not want it, even though that’s something that you know you need. Do you ever have an issue where you’re bringing up maybe new problems that they weren’t aware of when they’re coming to you?

David: Yeah, yeah, that has happened. I mean, sometimes it’s even happened. Sometimes I’ve revealed that they thought they have a problem and it’s really different. And I think my favorite example for that was that some property managers, they want to build something for their valet so that you could… people could just text and get their car back. And they were like, “yeah, integration is broken and it just… it always worked. But now right now it’s not working anymore.” We were already a vendor to them, so they just reach out to us quickly. And, well, we found out that their integration was just Sally, that whenever there’s a text that came in through the number, she would text one of the valet guys the license plate of the car that they should go pick up. So Sally for two, three weeks or something along those lines had some surgery. And, well, the integration was broken.

Shannon: I didn’t know that it was broken, just a middle person?

David: That’s hysterical.

Shannon: The company didn’t know. They just thought, “yeah, you text this number and the car gets automatically picked up.”

David: Yeah, no, no, there was a little magic fairy in the background. And I was like, “this is great. I fixed that for you real easy.” But just when we were looking into it and we’re like, “okay, let me dig into this” because a lot of our clients are non-technical. So for them, API is like a term they’ve maybe used, but then there’s nobody responsible for it. And so it’s just… it gets tricky when something is broken. But yeah, many times there is that we really, by digging in, there is… as a byproduct, a lot of processes that get defined a lot more, meaning we formalize a process. And sometimes that leads to, “oh, realizing that if someone has multiple locations, then they might be doing it very differently at the different locations. Let’s take a step back. Let’s first unify this process and then we can automate it because I don’t want to build seven different versions of the process. Let’s unify it first.” It’s a little bit of work, but usually a very good byproduct of what needs to happen.

Shannon: Of course, you have to be realistic with the client as well of like what the process is going to look like because it’s not always just “let me just immediately go at fixing this problem” before you know if there’s a lot of… you know, loose cogs. I mean, you can’t really just go about fixing something. You have to kind of look at every part of it that’s broken. So, I mean, that makes it easier for you. But it also, I think it puts into perspective to the client, like the whole picture that they may not understand when coming to you. So I’m sure that’s very helpful for them as well.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And a fun, good product. I mean, sometimes people just engage consultants to write SOPs. And for us, it’s like, “yeah, we’ll need to do that. And we’ll just do it on the side, like as a byproduct, because we need them automated. And then here, look, you get this fun byproduct that has value in itself and then you also have it automated.”

Shannon: Yeah, that’s incredible. I mean, it’s nice to be transparent with what you’re doing as well, because I think that a lot of people won’t really understand exactly what you’re doing because the zeros and ones are scary and intimidating to them, or just something that they have no comprehension of. I mean, personally, that would be my scenario if I was asking you for help. But it’s nice to be able to outline something that’s digestible for someone to understand as well so that they know that you’re actually doing what you’re saying you’re doing.

David: Yep. It’s been… well, we are… sorry, sorry, what are you doing?

Shannon: No, no, no, go ahead.

David: Well, I was just gonna say we’re pressed for time but I want you to finish your thought if we…

Shannon: No, all good, all good.

David: No, just going into the journey that it’s… it’s always a journey whatever we’re building out and that’s what makes it fun to like see the different evolutions and stages of building and the impact it can have in the short long term. And sometimes it transforms and changes up a business and they realize, “oh, yeah, we should do this very differently.” But it’s lots of introspection and that just makes it interesting. 

Shannon: Yeah, you’re just something being a certain way for so long, you think that’s all it can be. Sometimes, even if it’s something that’s really annoying and tedious, you’re like, ah, this is how it’s always been. 

David: Exactly. And sometimes for no good reason than just that’s the way because, well, Tommy before me told me this is how we do it. And I didn’t ask Tommy why we did it this way. But then this, you know, a company like us comes in and is like, you don’t have to and then they’re like oh well we don’t know but it’s just just how we do it and then sometimes you hear like really fun silly stories of why are we doing it this way in that way and sometimes it is no longer relevant because it might be because oh we came up with these names because there’s only so many characters that were allowed in this And it might not be a limitation anymore. So you don’t need to make up these fictitious names for, for your products or projects, or, uh, I don’t know, we can only store a, this object in like this, this piece of equipment in these slots. And that might’ve been because the door was only over there, but in the meantime, Facility. It’s just, it’s funny. Sometimes people really take things for granted when they’re in a certain process and maybe even more if that process is written down. So challenging those things is fun. And then sometimes you get to really good, cool results. I think that is a perfect note to end on and good advice for anyone running a business or incorporating. Be more introspective. Figure out there might be things that could be easier. And whether you go to someone like you for it or whether you fix it internally, things can be easier sometimes. And we can always try to make that better and easier for the entire company as a whole. 

Shannon: Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me today. I learned a lot and I normally don’t talk to the tech side of agencies. So this was really cool and fun and something that I learned a lot from. So thank you so much. Awesome. 

David: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It was a fun conversation. Can’t believe how quickly it flew by. I know. That’s the best part. The podcast is fun. 

Shannon: Thank you so much, everyone, for watching or listening. We’d be nothing without you. So continue to watch any other episode. Get to learn like I get to do every time. Thank you so much and have a lovely day.

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