Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / Scale Your Business While Staying Lean | The Founder Who Cuts Process Waste (ft. William Dagiantis)

Transcript

Scale Your Business While Staying Lean | The Founder Who Cuts Process Waste (ft. William Dagiantis) · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  So will founder of Cloudasta. Welcome to the show, man.
• 0:02
  We'll do a quick cheers with my guest.
• 0:05
  Glad to have you on. I appreciate you making the trip
• 0:07
  down. I'm going to give a quick
• 0:08
  description of what Cloudasta does just to create context for
• 0:11
  the audience. And then we're going to get in
• 0:12
  some some interesting things from the founder talk community,
• 0:15
  some questions and thoughts I had from them.
• 0:17
  So, and you correct me if this is is this is often anyway,
• 0:20
  Cloudasta helps companies, helps growing companies set up and
• 0:24
  optimize Google Workspace so teams move faster, they make
• 0:27
  fewer mistakes, and they spend less time stuck on admin work,
• 0:30
  saving real hours and dollars every week.
• 0:35
  Pretty close. The other thing that we lead
• 0:38
  with is we're migration experts more than anything.
• 0:42
  Our main expertise is in addition to being like
• 0:45
  productivity and collaboration experts is migration.
• 0:48
  So if migration is the biggest pain point you have and like
• 0:52
  companies growing via M&A who every few months have a
• 0:55
  migration, whether they're acquiring a company coming into
• 0:59
  their environment from Google or you know, a company that's on
• 1:02
  Microsoft and they're bringing them into their environment on
• 1:05
  Google, that's our area of expertise.
• 1:08
  Very cool. We will dive into some of that.
• 1:10
  I'm a big Google person. I hate Microsoft technology, so,
• 1:14
  so I'm happy to dive into that. And then before we get going
• 1:16
  though on that stuff, I asked my so we have a community of other
• 1:20
  founders. They're actually all in
• 1:21
  Chicagoland. And so we have an online
• 1:22
  community and then we're building out some in person
• 1:24
  things this year, which would be really cool.
• 1:26
  But you know, we have chats, I let them know guests that are
• 1:28
  coming on. I'm like, hey, I got these
• 1:29
  founders coming on. Here's a little bit about their
• 1:31
  background. What questions you want me to
• 1:33
  ask them? And I ran a survey and I said,
• 1:35
  here's a few categories that I'm thinking about talking to, you
• 1:38
  know, these founders about and which one interest you the most.
• 1:42
  So the questions or the topics were how to scale a service
• 1:44
  based business without huge payrolls.
• 1:47
  That was 1, the secret to client retention, not just project
• 1:51
  work, but, you know, keeping clients on for a period of time
• 1:54
  because that's obviously huge. It's more expensive to go find
• 1:57
  new clients than it's just to keep your current ones.
• 1:59
  Team retreats and culture building, which I know you guys
• 2:02
  did one last year in El Salvador, if I read that
• 2:05
  correctly, that was the big interest for for the team too.
• 2:08
  And then strategies around change management because
• 2:11
  anytime you're implementing a new technology, there's also the
• 2:13
  people component to that side. Which one of those do you do you
• 2:16
  think actually won? How to scale service based
• 2:20
  businesses. The secret to client retention,
• 2:22
  team retreats and culture building strategies around
• 2:24
  change management. Probably the team retreat just
• 2:27
  because it's there's less content out there about team
• 2:31
  retreats maybe overall. That was a surprising one.
• 2:33
  Yeah, I instantly got a lot of engagement on that one almost
• 2:36
  right out of the gates. It was leader and then actually
• 2:38
  how to scale a service based business.
• 2:40
  Edge did a little bit, but this it's not going.
• 2:42
  There's more people that are going to vote.
• 2:43
  So but the team retreats and culture building was was a big
• 2:47
  one. So I was, I actually wanted to
• 2:48
  talk a little bit about that with you because.
• 2:50
  Yeah. We can hit on a couple of those
• 2:51
  if we have. Yeah, for sure, man.
• 2:52
  I'd love to. So one of the most impactful
• 2:54
  business initiatives that you said that you guys did as a Team
• 2:58
  1 was hosting a company retreat in El Salvador.
• 3:00
  And then the other one was creating and sharing your user
• 3:03
  manuals, which I'm curious about that.
• 3:06
  So if we could talk about the hosting a company retreat?
• 3:09
  Yeah. What?
• 3:10
  What did that do for your company?
• 3:12
  Yeah. So, you know, we're 100% remote
• 3:16
  teams kind of spread out everywhere from US, Spain, El
• 3:20
  Salvador, India. We've all been working together
• 3:25
  for a number of years. And a lot of the folks I had
• 3:28
  never met in person. So, you know, like let's say
• 3:30
  Renee, he's been working with us for a number of years, see Renee
• 3:34
  on meats, but never met him in person.
• 3:37
  So finally Ryan joined our team and he's helping me with a bit
• 3:44
  of everything. But one of the big things is,
• 3:46
  you know, how do we build remote culture?
• 3:48
  And one of the first things we said is like, hey, a in person
• 3:52
  retreat has been on the backlog for way too long, let's make it
• 3:57
  happen. And so we kicked off a project,
• 4:01
  I put together a small budget and said, hey, we're going to do
• 4:04
  it On this date or around this time frame, you know, based on
• 4:08
  doing it in El Salvador where a big portion of our team is when
• 4:12
  the weather is nice, when there is not as much going on and
• 4:15
  everyone's travel schedules. And then we just started having
• 4:19
  like bi weekly meetings, Ryan and I, and we pull in people
• 4:23
  from time to time who can help us plan this.
• 4:25
  But it was here's the budget, here's what we want to do, let's
• 4:28
  start, you know, just having it on the calendar so that we check
• 4:31
  in and work on this together and execute on it.
• 4:36
  So that was a starting point. You know, what did it do?
• 4:41
  We did a mix of business and fun on the retreat.
• 4:44
  So I think that's, you know, a best practice.
• 4:47
  You know, it's wasn't all business, it wasn't all fun.
• 4:50
  It was a nice mix of both. We learned a lot.
• 4:54
  We went to a, you know, three different locations, which
• 4:58
  probably too much, but again, it was our first retreat.
• 5:01
  We did go, you know, we did like we, we went to a coffee
• 5:04
  plantation and walked around and did like some hiking and
• 5:07
  learning about coffee. We went to, there's in El
• 5:11
  Salvador, there's one of the top, I want to say it's like the
• 5:13
  top 20 coffee shops in the world.
• 5:16
  And they do some really interesting things around coffee
• 5:20
  and brewing methods. And we went and did a site visit
• 5:24
  there and got to taste all kinds of coffees.
• 5:27
  We stayed like up on a volcano, obviously not an active volcano,
• 5:33
  but, you know, in the area. And we went and hiked on a
• 5:36
  volcano. So yeah.
• 5:41
  So how do you balance that? You know, you're having a
• 5:42
  company retreat. You want it to be fun, but you
• 5:45
  also want it to be, you know, you want to get some things done
• 5:47
  from a business standpoint, from a culture standpoint.
• 5:49
  How did you think about balancing that?
• 5:51
  Because I think I could see that founder struggling with that.
• 5:53
  Yeah, the way I thought about it was, you know, I kind of mapped
• 5:58
  out like half the time will be for fun, half the time will be
• 6:01
  for company stuff. And, you know, it didn't turn
• 6:06
  out exactly as planned. But, you know, as the founder
• 6:10
  being flexible as a team, you know, being flexible that, hey,
• 6:16
  you know, especially the first time you're doing it or the
• 6:19
  first time we did it, We had our playbook, let's say, but we knew
• 6:25
  we were going to veer from it, you know, weather logistics, you
• 6:29
  know, we got in traffic one time going to the volcano.
• 6:32
  So, you know, things kind of shifted.
• 6:35
  So I set it up pretty much for like 50% work, 50% fun and just
• 6:42
  getting to know each other. And it probably turned out, I
• 6:46
  don't know, 60% fun, 40% work, but that was OK because the 40%
• 6:51
  was that impactful that it made-up for it.
• 6:56
  Yeah. And I feel like, you know, a big
• 6:57
  piece of it is just getting to know each other better or having
• 7:00
  some fun together, having conversations, letting your
• 7:03
  guard down, being in the presence of the team and
• 7:06
  interacting and things like that.
• 7:08
  And there's a lot of value if you just did that, a lot of
• 7:12
  value in just that. Yeah, even if it was like, I
• 7:14
  think we did 4 full days. I mean, even if it was like one
• 7:18
  day and you just got to see everyone in person and, you
• 7:20
  know, learn a little bit about each other, that's impactful
• 7:24
  enough. But spending four days, I mean,
• 7:26
  one day we did like we cooked at the Airbnb we were staying.
• 7:29
  So everybody pitched in, you know, and you got to learn about
• 7:33
  everybody while you're cooking, you're just talking, you know,
• 7:35
  like one person's buttering bread and making like garlic
• 7:38
  bread, someone else's cutting vegetables.
• 7:40
  And it was just like we were collaborating, but in a
• 7:44
  different non work environment and having conversations around
• 7:49
  things we wouldn't normally talk about.
• 7:52
  You know, learn some people really love karaoke and are good
• 7:55
  at it. Or, you know, we've got to play
• 7:57
  some games and learn how some people are a little bit more
• 8:01
  competitive at certain games than others.
• 8:04
  And it might have been different than how competitive they are at
• 8:06
  work. So yeah, it was great to like
• 8:09
  just get to learn about each other kind of in a, in a
• 8:14
  different environment other than always being on, you know,
• 8:16
  Google Meet and staring at each other.
• 8:18
  Right. It is totally different being in
• 8:20
  person. It's one of the reasons I do
• 8:21
  this podcast. Same as like.
• 8:23
  Such a different experience when you're in person with somebody.
• 8:26
  So I, I did a retreat, I guess you'd call it a retreat.
• 8:28
  I was in the sort of a team in the Philippines, you know.
• 8:30
  So we're obviously working remote, you know, and a couple
• 8:34
  years ago I was like, I'm going to come out there and meet the
• 8:36
  team. And I'm then some of the folks
• 8:38
  that I met out there in person spend a few days with, they're
• 8:40
  still on the team today and we have a relationship and we've
• 8:43
  been working together for years. It was a, it was a difference
• 8:46
  maker to see people in person interact with them and even see
• 8:49
  some of their family and stuff like that.
• 8:51
  But I think one of the mistakes I made is I didn't plan enough
• 8:55
  ahead of time, which I think you could probably over plan and
• 8:57
  engineer it, but I don't think I planned enough like I didn't.
• 9:00
  I also happened to get sick while I was there too, which I
• 9:03
  think I think it was COVID, to be honest.
• 9:06
  I was in rough shape, but we I managed through it.
• 9:10
  I muscled my way through it and I think the team had a pretty
• 9:13
  good time and it was good for them to interact with each other
• 9:15
  and build relationships with each other too.
• 9:17
  But from a business standpoint, how do you kind of determine or
• 9:20
  how did you determine what are you going to talk about on this
• 9:23
  team retreat as it relates? Because I think the fun stuff is
• 9:25
  like, hey, excursion or do this or cook some dinner together or
• 9:29
  you got just you know, games or whatever your we did karaoke as
• 9:31
  well. That was fun.
• 9:32
  Like he just kind of a little bit more loose with that type of
• 9:35
  stuff. Just get the team in the good
• 9:36
  environment, get the spirits up and let people have fun and get
• 9:39
  to know each other. The business stuff.
• 9:41
  How did you think about that side of it?
• 9:43
  Yeah, I mean, I thought, hey, we're all in person, what a good
• 9:48
  time to do a town hall. You know, we do a town hall
• 9:51
  trying to do them quarterly, but this kind of fell in the right
• 9:54
  time frame towards we were there in November.
• 9:57
  So towards the end of the year, good time to do like a all hands
• 10:01
  town hall, kind of wrap up the year, look at the year ahead.
• 10:05
  And then in addition to that, I had some on the, the backlog of
• 10:09
  things I wanted to do with the team, like one of them being the
• 10:12
  user manuals. And I was like, oh, what a fun
• 10:15
  way to like do this exercise in a team setting.
• 10:20
  It's very, very important to the business that we do these user
• 10:23
  manuals because one on the retreat we're getting to learn
• 10:26
  about each other as people outside of work.
• 10:30
  And then with the user manual exercise, we got to learn more
• 10:33
  about people's work styles. Again, like some of these folks
• 10:37
  I've been working with for years.
• 10:38
  And just now doing the user manual, I learned that like, oh,
• 10:43
  for, you know, Kevin, he likes getting chats versus, you know,
• 10:46
  emails or vice versa. Now, what's the user manual
• 10:49
  'cause that was one of the things you mentioned that made a
• 10:51
  big difference, just so the audience knows.
• 10:52
  Yeah, user manual is like the guide to working with you.
• 10:57
  So you know, like you get, I don't know, you buy Legos or you
• 11:01
  buy like an alarm clock. There's a manual in it, right?
• 11:04
  So this is the manual to you as a person and how you work best.
• 11:09
  And so there's like 2 sets of questions, you know, those
• 11:13
  focused on you and then those focused on how you collaborate
• 11:16
  with others. Something I learned from a
• 11:20
  friend who's former CEO of Better Cloud, David Politis.
• 11:24
  We started the, let's call it workshop on the retreat.
• 11:28
  Watching David's video where he presented years ago.
• 11:32
  I think the video is like from 2016.
• 11:34
  Even where he presented to, I think it was like work forward
• 11:39
  or something. But he was presenting on how
• 11:40
  much of an impact the user manual process had at his
• 11:44
  company, which was, you know, over 100 employees or even more
• 11:47
  at the time. I saw that video years ago.
• 11:51
  My Co founder has always had for years his own user manual.
• 11:55
  And so something on the backlog that I was like, OK, I want to
• 11:59
  do this with the team. We're in person.
• 12:02
  Like what a great opportunity to like get to know each other on a
• 12:06
  personal level and also kind of flesh out our work styles and
• 12:10
  share a little bit more about how we work.
• 12:13
  And so we kicked off the kicked off the session by watching the
• 12:17
  video kind of everybody learning, oh, here's how they
• 12:20
  did it. Here's what the questions are.
• 12:22
  And then we just journaled and we gave everyone some time to
• 12:26
  start working on it. And then put an ample time like
• 12:30
  post retreat to say, OK, user manuals will be due On this
• 12:34
  date. They're going to go in a share
• 12:36
  drive. And when they're there, you
• 12:38
  know, just start looking at them so you can learn how your peers
• 12:41
  like to work. Never even heard of that to be
• 12:44
  honest. User manual for how you work
• 12:47
  with your employees team. That's interesting.
• 12:49
  Yeah, it's been around like I was really into it a few years
• 12:53
  ago and I don't know, there's like a bunch of different
• 12:58
  versions. There's like this started as
• 13:00
  like the CE OS manual and then David and some others were like,
• 13:06
  oh, this isn't just for CE OS. Like this could work for the
• 13:08
  whole team. Now.
• 13:10
  I think there's even some tools, you know, that, you know, our
• 13:13
  process, which we kind of copied the better cloud process was
• 13:16
  like, here's a doc everybody gets, you know, the same
• 13:19
  questions, pretty much couple extra questions.
• 13:22
  They go in a shared drive and you can see everyone's that
• 13:25
  works for us, but there are some apps now where you, you know,
• 13:28
  get the questions and questions will even come to you every
• 13:31
  couple weeks etcetera. Now, what has been the benefit
• 13:35
  of creating user manuals for every employee?
• 13:38
  What have you seen do? Yeah, it helps you understand
• 13:43
  each person a little bit more individually.
• 13:45
  So like, you know, for example, I've been working with Kevin for
• 13:51
  a number of years. He's one of my direct reports.
• 13:56
  I've pulled out things and he's learned things about my style
• 13:59
  that we've never really talked about, even though he's worked
• 14:03
  for me for years and he's been my direct report for years.
• 14:06
  And we see each other, you know, a couple times per day almost on
• 14:10
  meats. We've never had this
• 14:11
  conversation about like if you send me a chat and it's a task,
• 14:14
  I'm not going to get to it. Like I need an e-mail if it's a
• 14:17
  task, like chat is cool for, you know, quick things, heads up,
• 14:22
  Hey, we got to jump on a meet because there's this issue.
• 14:25
  Perfect. If you send me a chat that's
• 14:28
  like, hey, can you do this? It's not going to get done.
• 14:31
  It just becomes noise. And so having it out there like
• 14:36
  he's learned, oh, if I need will to do something, I need to send
• 14:39
  him an e-mail because that's how he manages his to do's and vice
• 14:43
  versa. Kevin's also like e-mail tasks
• 14:46
  via e-mail kind of person and so.
• 14:49
  That reminds me, so it's like literally 2 days ago, my podcast
• 14:54
  manager was messaging me on WhatsApp, which we have for
• 14:57
  quick communication and just like heads up on things.
• 14:59
  And then we have e-mail obviously for, for the bigger
• 15:02
  stuff. And he'd emailed me a couple
• 15:04
  links. He's like, check out this link,
• 15:05
  check out this link, review this, you know, video, whatever
• 15:07
  it is. And I was like, hey man, if it's
• 15:09
  a link, can you send, do me a favor and just send it to me via
• 15:12
  e-mail. That way I can check it, You can
• 15:14
  check on my desktop, I can click the link.
• 15:15
  I don't have to transfer it over from what's, you know, it's just
• 15:18
  much easier for me and it's like my workflow.
• 15:20
  And that brings me back to like, if we had a damn user manual,
• 15:23
  then we wouldn't have to go through this.
• 15:24
  It would just be clear in terms of how you work.
• 15:26
  Yeah, and I think one of the the big reasons for the user manual
• 15:32
  like this year or you know, last year when we did it was not only
• 15:38
  in work, but in like some volunteer stuff I do as well,
• 15:41
  family stuff. I'm not a texter.
• 15:44
  And so like I started getting too many texts and I'm like
• 15:49
  during the work day, I don't really check my texts.
• 15:52
  So if it's like a work thing, like I need an e-mail.
• 15:56
  And so just seeing more and more like texts for things that to me
• 16:01
  should have been like an e-mail or, you know, especially long
• 16:04
  texts. I'm like, I'm not going to copy.
• 16:05
  I'm like reply in that instance. Now, is that because you assume
• 16:10
  that maybe a text message is not as important or urgent as an
• 16:13
  e-mail? Or I'm curious your mindset
• 16:15
  there? Yeah, I think it's maybe just
• 16:16
  because my, you know, like 1. I don't use like, I mean, I have
• 16:23
  like a desktop app for my text messages.
• 16:26
  But to me, text is like quick replies, you know, And, you
• 16:30
  know, I don't know, jokes with friends, Like, it's not really
• 16:35
  actionable. And so when I started getting
• 16:38
  more actionable texts or like more explanations of things in
• 16:42
  text, I just start, like, thinking to myself, like, why
• 16:46
  are so many people texting me? Like, if I had that user manual
• 16:50
  that David was talking about, you know, back in 2016, this
• 16:54
  would probably be clear, you know, and then I don't have to
• 16:56
  respond to everybody. Like, come on.
• 16:58
  I don't like text. You know, like, please send me
• 17:00
  an e-mail. So yeah, that was the goal, to
• 17:02
  start putting some of that stuff out there.
• 17:04
  Or you know, one of the things most of my team knows,
• 17:08
  especially my direct reports. But like, I go to the gym.
• 17:12
  I try to go to the gym Tuesdays, Thursdays at noon.
• 17:16
  And so my schedule is blocked like 11:30 to like 130 is me
• 17:20
  time, you know, getting to the gym, working out, showering,
• 17:24
  lunch. And so like my schedule's
• 17:29
  blocked. But in my user manual it says
• 17:32
  like, hey, that's important time.
• 17:34
  But you know, for these instances, I can, you know, jump
• 17:38
  out of the class, the gym class like a little bit early to take
• 17:41
  a very, very important call. So yeah, like those kind of
• 17:45
  wouldn't call him like rules, but there's those kind of
• 17:47
  guidelines are very, very clear when you have them laid out like
• 17:51
  that. So the retreat was obviously now
• 17:54
  you know, a few months, several months ago, but as we sit here
• 17:57
  today, what was the most impactful thing that the company
• 18:00
  retreat did for you guys as a business?
• 18:03
  Like everyone more bought in to what Cloudasta does and who we
• 18:06
  are as a company. And it's not just like, I don't
• 18:11
  know, some like esoteric company or anything.
• 18:15
  It's like, oh wow, you know, like we were all together.
• 18:17
  Like, I think it made people more bought into like our
• 18:23
  mission, what we're doing, wanting to stay as part of a
• 18:27
  team even longer. You know, I like, we have very
• 18:29
  good employee retention, but I think that even made that much
• 18:33
  more of a difference. I know people have said like or
• 18:38
  did they said to me or to their manager like, yeah, I feel like
• 18:41
  more we're part of a team now that we've actually got to work
• 18:45
  together in person and the companies making that investment
• 18:50
  into us getting together and having a good time and doing
• 18:54
  some cool work stuff. Yeah, that's great, man.
• 18:56
  And how big is the team now? Full time there is 10 of us OK
• 19:00
  and with part time like 15. Wow, OK.
• 19:03
  And do you feel like now going back to the question of, you
• 19:05
  know, how to scale service based company without huge payrolls,
• 19:08
  do you feel like it's possible for companies now to be able to
• 19:10
  scale without having a bunch of, you know, in house W2 heavy
• 19:14
  overhead? Do you think that world has
• 19:16
  changed? It has changed two factors, one
• 19:24
  like the near shore offshore definitely is a is a factor and
• 19:31
  a good way to build that team, you know, depending on the
• 19:34
  service etcetera. Like we're 100% remote delivery,
• 19:38
  you know, we're 100% Google workspace migration and
• 19:42
  workspace implementation can be done remote, you know, very,
• 19:46
  very easily and very well. It's not like, you know, I my,
• 19:51
  my, my background is supply chain.
• 19:53
  I used to be in manufacturing, like taking out waste out of
• 19:57
  manufacturing plants. Like you can't do that remote.
• 19:59
  Like that requires people going into the plant, you know, and
• 20:03
  documenting the process, etcetera.
• 20:05
  But what we do, yeah, remote work so we can find the best
• 20:09
  talent everywhere. And sometimes you know that that
• 20:14
  does mean having like near shore for some of the services.
• 20:18
  Wouldn't that or near shore? Yeah.
• 20:20
  And you're sure like South America, Central America, same
• 20:24
  time zone. Same time zone.
• 20:26
  Yeah, I've been thinking for the for the most part, like similar
• 20:28
  time zone, Yeah. I've been thinking about that
• 20:30
  because we're kind of heavily leveraged in the Philippines,
• 20:33
  which we've had a lot of good success with the people there.
• 20:35
  But I sometimes think like, man, there's this whole Latin America
• 20:38
  talent pool that we should probably look at as well.
• 20:40
  And being on the same time zone is amazing.
• 20:42
  Yeah, versus complete opposite. Yeah.
• 20:45
  And and for us, like cloud estate, it wasn't by design, to
• 20:48
  be honest, like Claudassa spun out of my previous employer.
• 20:53
  That's a story I can get into. But when it was just me pretty
• 20:58
  much, you know, starting the company with my Co founder who's
• 21:01
  my ex boss. Yeah.
• 21:03
  So but when it was just me, I needed, you know, some technical
• 21:06
  help on the migration side. And I found someone on Upwork
• 21:10
  and he was from El Salvador and he was great.
• 21:13
  And, you know, he was like, hey, you know, Google used to have a
• 21:16
  BPO here, and it's moved, you know, some to the Philippines,
• 21:20
  some to India. And my friend, you know, used to
• 21:24
  work with me at the Google BPO. And he's looking for a job.
• 21:28
  He's a workspace expert. And then that person brought,
• 21:31
  you know, the next person. So it wasn't by design.
• 21:34
  For us in the Philippines, one person here, the next person
• 21:37
  they knew, somebody they knew, somebody appreciating.
• 21:39
  You got a whole damn. You got a team, Yeah.
• 21:41
  And so I don't know where I was going with that, but yeah, so
• 21:47
  there, that's one strategy, you know we're.
• 21:50
  Talking about Latin America talent versus, you know, other
• 21:52
  places, time zone is just like a critical piece to it.
• 21:56
  Where do you come any stuff there?
• 21:57
  Companies are listening to this right now and they're like, man,
• 21:59
  we don't really have any offshore near shore talent.
• 22:02
  It's kind of all either W2 employees or 1099 contractors
• 22:05
  here in the States, which is fine.
• 22:06
  Where do they start going to find these people and in other
• 22:09
  countries? Yeah.
• 22:11
  So the only experience I really have is via up work.
• 22:17
  Actually that's a lie. So some tip mostly up work, but
• 22:21
  then also we do post on LinkedIn and get some candidates from
• 22:25
  other countries. The other thing I haven't used
• 22:29
  but has been like on on my mind or I have friends that have used
• 22:34
  it is I think now it's called somewhere.
• 22:37
  I forgot what it used to be called.
• 22:39
  They're mainly Philippines, but I think they do some other
• 22:41
  countries now. So that's like another platform
• 22:46
  where you can find near shore offshore talentsomewhere.com.
• 22:51
  We've used I think it's onlinejobs dot pH.
• 22:54
  If you Google it, yeah, yeah, yeah, that I remember.
• 22:57
  I didn't look there. That's Philippines, but it's
• 22:59
  basically a, you know, huge job board, but only for people in
• 23:02
  the Philippines. You know, and obviously the
• 23:04
  value here is the cost of living in some of these countries is
• 23:06
  just dramatically lower than what it is here.
• 23:08
  And so the pay is is lower to match that, right?
• 23:11
  Where if you come to America, it's like, yes, you're going to
• 23:13
  make more of a cost of living is through the roof.
• 23:15
  So the advantage here is that you can sometimes find employees
• 23:17
  for what would be cheaper cost for American standards, but you
• 23:20
  can still pay them a very nice wage and they can support their
• 23:23
  families and things like that. So it's a little bit of, you
• 23:26
  know, it's it. And I think in our experience,
• 23:29
  it's like anything. You can go to Upwork and go to
• 23:31
  Fiverr, you can go to these job boards and you can find, just
• 23:33
  like you could hear, you can find people that are not very
• 23:36
  good and you can find people that are amazing.
• 23:38
  And so it's like your ability to kind of weed those, you know,
• 23:40
  the good ones from the not so good ones is a little bit of a
• 23:43
  skill set that you learn too. Yeah.
• 23:45
  So the way I think about it is like, we pay extremely well.
• 23:51
  And, you know, my parents were immigrants from Greece.
• 23:54
  My parents had to leave their country to come here to make a
• 23:58
  better living for themselves and eventually myself.
• 24:01
  The way I see it is with the world how it is nowadays, folks
• 24:05
  can stay in their country, make a good living and not have to
• 24:08
  come to the US if they want to. Or if they don't, you know,
• 24:10
  there's that whole. So it's just a different.
• 24:13
  Yeah, it's like a different world.
• 24:16
  And so, yeah, that's the way I look at it.
• 24:20
  Like Upwork, you can find great people.
• 24:23
  Like I've used Fiverr and Upwork in the past and have had not the
• 24:27
  greatest success. But for the most part, if you
• 24:32
  know what you're recruiting for and a decent recruiter, you can
• 24:35
  find good talent. So let's get a little bit more
• 24:39
  about your area of expertise. But before we do, I want to ask
• 24:42
  you, why should any founder, entrepreneur, business owner
• 24:45
  listening to this right now? Why should they care about
• 24:47
  workspaces or Google Workspace versus Microsoft?
• 24:50
  Maybe there's like, I don't know, what we use is just a
• 24:52
  system. Why does it really matter?
• 24:54
  Well, it's funny because like Google Workspace, Microsoft
• 24:58
  Office, one of the challenges in being a partner and focus on
• 25:02
  that tool, let's call it a tool set or suite of services is it's
• 25:07
  super inexpensive for what you get.
• 25:09
  Like you can basically, you know, when we started, when I
• 25:12
  started Cloud Astor spun it off from my previous company, only
• 25:16
  thing I use was Google. You know, I didn't use HubSpot
• 25:18
  yet or any other like tools 'cause you can do everything
• 25:21
  within Google. It is or, or office, but it's
• 25:25
  very inexpensive and you can run a whole business on it.
• 25:30
  What about the challenge there is you can use, I mean, when
• 25:32
  you're starting out, you can use Google Sheets.
• 25:34
  That's true. You know, like you don't need.
• 25:36
  I did. That starting, yeah.
• 25:37
  Yeah, so did we, you know, like you don't need the, you know,
• 25:40
  $1000 a month HubSpot until you have some customers.
• 25:45
  Why should anyone care? Because it's so inexpensive that
• 25:48
  people sometimes think like, oh, OK, it's just my e-mail system,
• 25:51
  right? It is super powerful how much it
• 25:54
  can transform your business if you spend time looking at, hey,
• 25:58
  we have this suite of tools, Holy moly.
• 26:01
  Like this is very powerful. For example, like and now with
• 26:06
  AI it's gotten even more, but things like vacation procedures,
• 26:11
  like some of those take companies, I don't know, a
• 26:15
  couple days, multiple people, you can set it up with a Google
• 26:19
  sheet and like a form or even a doc with approval and signature
• 26:23
  and everything and take out tons of waste and not pay for another
• 26:28
  tool, you know, So that's one reason people should care too.
• 26:33
  I mean, it is e-mail is the universal language, you know,
• 26:38
  like. I don't think it's going
• 26:41
  anywhere either. Yeah, I mean, people have been
• 26:42
  saying their emails dying for years, you know, Slack, blah,
• 26:45
  blah, blah. I don't think so.
• 26:47
  Yeah, it's still there. There.
• 26:48
  Would be different channels that serve different purposes.
• 26:50
  But yeah, I don't see a different form of.
• 26:53
  I mean, you're gonna need to like write something and send it
• 26:55
  to somebody either inside your company or outside of your
• 26:57
  company, you know? Yeah, and especially starting
• 27:00
  off, like initial relationship, I meet you somewhere at a
• 27:03
  conference. Yeah, we'll trade LinkedIn.
• 27:06
  Yeah, maybe we'll send LinkedIn messages.
• 27:08
  But almost always it's like, Oh my gosh, my LinkedIn, like,
• 27:12
  messaging is, Yeah, a bombshell. Yeah.
• 27:14
  Like, I can't even look at it. Yeah, send me an e-mail.
• 27:17
  Right. So it's always like the default
• 27:19
  is let's start via e-mail, then I might get to know you.
• 27:22
  OK I read your user manual. You only want to chat or text.
• 27:26
  OK, but we always kind of default and start to an e-mail
• 27:29
  because? You need the calendar too,
• 27:30
  right? So it's like e-mail invites,
• 27:32
  calendar invites, some form of scheduling, and that's the
• 27:35
  you're not scheduling through LinkedIn, you know, so.
• 27:39
  So that's why people should care.
• 27:42
  And again, it can drastically streamline workflows.
• 27:45
  I think that's because it's a very inexpensive tool for what
• 27:50
  you get. We have to like push customers
• 27:53
  to like transform their business around that productivity and
• 27:56
  collaboration suite. So you'll say, you know, like
• 27:59
  you mentioned CRM, like, Oh my gosh, my CRM cost this and I
• 28:03
  need to do, you know, you'll get a lot of, hey, we need to really
• 28:07
  restructure our CRM and make this more efficient because
• 28:11
  it's, you know, sales and it's X per month in software costs.
• 28:17
  But then there's other workflows that are just as inefficient on
• 28:23
  the productivity and collaboration side around Google
• 28:26
  Workspace that you can take out that same amount of waste I.
• 28:30
  Was wondering why Google didn't have like a calendly type thing.
• 28:33
  Or maybe they do. It does.
• 28:34
  Yeah, they do now. I do.
• 28:35
  Yeah, forgot what it's called. Seems like such a no brainer
• 28:39
  like. Yeah, it's, I don't know if it
• 28:41
  was released last year or two years, but they have yeah.
• 28:44
  You can send out like you can block certain times and send out
• 28:47
  a link and, you know, you can only book for that time slot.
• 28:50
  Yeah. So how do you So that's the
• 28:52
  thing like, because again, one thing we can do as a partner is
• 28:56
  say, hey, look, you're using Calendly.
• 28:58
  Yeah. And you're, you know, how much
• 29:01
  are you spending on Calendly? Google can do that same as like,
• 29:05
  you know, during the pandemic, tons of companies jumped on
• 29:08
  Zoom. We can say, hey, look, meat has
• 29:11
  almost all the features now that Zoom has.
• 29:14
  Why are you spending an extra 500 bucks a month for Zoom?
• 29:17
  So that's one of the benefits as a partner we provide is like,
• 29:21
  yeah, sometimes you need best of breed, but sometimes in that
• 29:25
  suite there is like good enough. Yeah, because I think Zoom has a
• 29:30
  little bit of an edge, but but Google Meet, we use Google Meet.
• 29:33
  It's just like, at some point I was like, why are we paying for
• 29:36
  Zoom? Well, we have Google Workspace
• 29:39
  anyways. And it's like basically the same
• 29:41
  thing. I mean, it's not worth paying in
• 29:42
  a whole other subscription. And then what happens, man?
• 29:45
  And you know, this is like all these little subscriptions just
• 29:47
  add up. It's like $20.00 a month here,
• 29:49
  $49.00 a month here, $150.00 here.
• 29:52
  And then pretty soon you got 10 GS worth of subscriptions and
• 29:55
  you're like, all right, So I can see part of what you guys do too
• 29:58
  in a little bit is just like, hey, is there an opportunity to
• 30:00
  save some money, to lean out, to become more efficient, you know,
• 30:03
  and that's all part of the process.
• 30:05
  So how would you compare Google versus Microsoft in terms of
• 30:10
  workspace and e-mail? Because companies either are
• 30:12
  like die hard Microsoft, Google's for amateurs, or people
• 30:16
  are like Google is the way and Microsoft is corporate and lame
• 30:20
  and. Slow.
• 30:21
  Yeah. I mean, it's funny, like I have,
• 30:26
  you know, I have some friends in like in the PE world, whatever.
• 30:28
  And I remember when first starting the company, I talked
• 30:30
  to one of them about like, hey, how can we work together?
• 30:34
  And the one thing he said is he was like, and I've known him
• 30:37
  since college, but he's like, oh, if we acquire a company or
• 30:42
  invest in a company, etcetera, he's like, the first thing we do
• 30:45
  is RIP out that Google shit and put in our Microsoft stack.
• 30:48
  And I was like, come on, but. Why do they say that?
• 30:52
  Yeah, I think I'm probably unfortunately not the best to
• 30:58
  answer this only because I went from Lotus Notes at General
• 31:02
  Motors straight to Google. So I don't think I've ever
• 31:07
  really used Microsoft. Here's what I know.
• 31:12
  Google from an admin perspective, if you're like a
• 31:15
  small business and you don't have like a full time
• 31:18
  administrator, or even if you do and that person's wearing tons
• 31:21
  of hats, it is easy to administer a Google Workspace
• 31:25
  instance. You know, complexity Google
• 31:30
  might have now, I don't know, let's say 20 skews for
• 31:32
  Workspace, maybe less, maybe more.
• 31:35
  Somewhere around there Microsoft has like hundreds, you know,
• 31:39
  like just trying to figure out the different licenses within a
• 31:42
  Microsoft environment is a little confusing if you're not
• 31:45
  like ingrained in it. And then just, you know, the
• 31:50
  whole like you talked about earlier, you mentioned change
• 31:53
  management. You know, if I'm super efficient
• 31:55
  at my job using Microsoft Office and all of a sudden you tell me,
• 32:00
  hey, you're going to use this Google thing.
• 32:03
  I need to change a lot of how I'm working.
• 32:06
  And maybe, you know, I need to add 10 hours a week for a couple
• 32:10
  months just to get used to this new workflow.
• 32:13
  I've always been Google after like, the bad experience with
• 32:17
  Lotus Notes, which I hated. I still remember, like, just
• 32:20
  being at GM and being like, why are we using this?
• 32:22
  Like, for e-mail? Like, this is horrible.
• 32:26
  But yeah, so I've always been Google.
• 32:29
  It's all I really know. But I do see more around
• 32:38
  administrating Google. Being the administrator is much
• 32:41
  easier. Collaboration.
• 32:44
  You know, almost everybody I know uses Google Doc in some
• 32:48
  fashion, whether they use it at work or in personal.
• 32:52
  You know, everyone has a Gmail account, everyone's using Google
• 32:56
  Docs at home. And so there's something there
• 33:00
  that for me, you know, the collaboration with Docs is just
• 33:05
  very efficient. So when you're working with a
• 33:08
  company, are you taking, are you working with a company that
• 33:10
  already has Google Workspace in most cases or is it a company
• 33:13
  that is looking to migrate to there?
• 33:14
  I know it's probably both, but. Yeah, yeah, it's a mix of both.
• 33:16
  But for the most part, especially like the last two
• 33:20
  years, it's more of a focus on like the net, new to Google.
• 33:24
  So companies using like Microsoft or GoDaddy e-mail or
• 33:28
  any other type of e-mail, e-mail platform that want to move to
• 33:32
  Google. And why are they wanting to make
• 33:34
  the move? What pain or problems are they
• 33:36
  experiencing that they say we got to go to Google Now or we
• 33:38
  got to go to a different workspace?
• 33:39
  Yeah, yeah. The main one is typically around
• 33:43
  collaboration. You know, yeah, like Gmail is,
• 33:48
  is a very, very good e-mail platform, but in isolation, you
• 33:53
  know, it's just an e-mail platform.
• 33:55
  But the collaboration around Docs and Sheets and Drive and
• 34:02
  share drives, I think that's a little more cumbersome on the
• 34:06
  Microsoft side and so. I'm sorry, but Microsoft just
• 34:11
  makes things complicated that it's just like even logging into
• 34:15
  a Teams call if when I have to do it with clients, it's just
• 34:17
  like it's a hot mess. It's like, yes, I think they're
• 34:21
  like they offer a lot more potentially, but it's like so
• 34:25
  the user experience, sometimes I just want to pull my teeth out.
• 34:29
  It's just it's almost like using the meta ads platform because
• 34:35
  they're they've got Facebook link or Instagram, you know,
• 34:38
  well, they do have LinkedIn. Microsoft does, but it's like
• 34:40
  they're trying to do a lot. But you get in there and it's.
• 34:42
  So like, oh, you don't have this hooked up to this, and this is
• 34:45
  on this page, your company page, but it's not your workspace
• 34:47
  page. And it's like, dude, what are we
• 34:49
  doing? Yeah, you know, it's like.
• 34:50
  Yeah, so I don't. Know maybe I'm just not used to
• 34:52
  it either so. No, I think that's like it's a
• 34:55
  little more cumbersome overall. You know, there are some people
• 34:58
  who have used it for a long time and are experts and, you know,
• 35:01
  like, they look at Google Workspace and they're like, oh,
• 35:04
  this doesn't have XYZ or why does it look like this?
• 35:06
  Or then you get the flip side where someone who's been using
• 35:10
  Google forever jumps into Microsoft and they're like,
• 35:12
  whoa. So typically it's around, you
• 35:16
  know, the benefit of collaboration.
• 35:19
  Now we're seeing more and more like Google's a big leader in
• 35:23
  AI. That's right.
• 35:24
  So, you know, jumping on that boat and getting, you know, into
• 35:31
  Google Workspace to take advantage of some of the AI
• 35:33
  capabilities and things Google is working on.
• 35:37
  We've seen some uptick with that.
• 35:39
  But yeah, Gemini's their main, like Gemini's their chachipity
• 35:42
  basically. Right?
• 35:43
  Yeah. What is Microsoft's then?
• 35:45
  Copilot. Copilot, Yeah, OK.
• 35:47
  Do you like working with you? So are you since you're a Google
• 35:49
  guide, do you do more Gemini or Chachipity?
• 35:51
  Yeah, yeah. We're pretty much exclusively,
• 35:54
  especially me, pretty much exclusive Gemini.
• 35:56
  I mean, I do play around with, you know, other tools.
• 36:00
  How do you compare Chachipity versus Gemini in terms of just
• 36:03
  using AI for whatever work functions?
• 36:06
  ChatGPT has or I mean, Gemini has come like a long way
• 36:12
  recently. So before where I was probably
• 36:15
  doing like, I don't know, 5050, now it's like 9010 Gemini.
• 36:21
  I might check ChatGPT to see what Gemini has given me and
• 36:24
  vice versa. But I'm trying to go like all in
• 36:27
  on Gemini, one kind of like what you mentioned before, like all
• 36:31
  of a sudden you get these subscriptions, you know, adding
• 36:34
  up and the other reason is like more Gemini.
• 36:38
  Sorry, Gemini is free if you have a Google Workspace account.
• 36:41
  Yeah, there's different tiers, but with most workspace plans
• 36:44
  you get some level of Gemini. See, I probably, I'm using
• 36:48
  Chacha Petite just because that was the one that came out was
• 36:50
  big on the scene. But we have Google Workspace.
• 36:53
  I probably have Gemini and I guess not have a $60.00 a month
• 36:55
  exactly or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:58
  And again, so it's the cost these tools add up, but then
• 37:02
  there's also the spending so much time on the different AI
• 37:06
  tools. And for what, a 5% increment and
• 37:10
  improvement? OK, Maybe, I don't know, this
• 37:14
  image looks 10% better with Gemini's Nano Banana or Google's
• 37:19
  Nano Banana versus Chat GPT's image thing or vice versa.
• 37:24
  But like you talked to a lot of people recently and there's so
• 37:28
  much time spent on trying these other tools and it's like
• 37:32
  master, just pick one and get to work.
• 37:34
  That's what I'm saying. Man, that was like the big
• 37:36
  thing, you know, last couple years is people would,
• 37:38
  especially on LinkedIn, people post, I found a new chat chat, I
• 37:40
  found a new AI tool and I'm like, you don't need another AI
• 37:43
  tool. Just get good at the one you
• 37:44
  have, right? It's like, I think some of it's
• 37:47
  just people want the shiny object, it extracts them and
• 37:49
  they're like, oh, I got to find the new thing or whatever it
• 37:51
  might be. Yeah, that's interesting, man.
• 37:54
  I mean, there's something to say about, you know, there's always
• 37:56
  this trade off between best of breed and, you know, like, yeah,
• 38:00
  you know, a suite of tools. Yeah.
• 38:02
  Where do you think Google's heading?
• 38:04
  The next 5 to 10 years? How do you feel about them as a
• 38:06
  company? That's a good question.
• 38:09
  Heard that 100 year bond that they're selling.
• 38:11
  I was like, that's interesting. Yeah.
• 38:13
  I guess that's a bullish yeah indicator, like he's going to
• 38:16
  cash that out 100 years later to look that up and make sure
• 38:19
  that's an actual fact. Yeah, I mean, Google, from the
• 38:22
  stuff we've been reading and what we hear at like partner
• 38:25
  conferences, etcetera, like Google is making a huge
• 38:29
  investment in AI. They're starting to lead in AI.
• 38:34
  You know, in the past, it was always like, you know, like
• 38:37
  Workspace was number 2 after Microsoft or, you know, GCP,
• 38:41
  Google Cloud Platform was #3 after AWS and Azure.
• 38:46
  Now you're seeing Google like in the AI space, Google's like #1
• 38:51
  and so it's a great like positioning for Google.
• 38:55
  They're finally number one and they're leading with that, you
• 38:58
  know, and I think that's a huge step in the right direction.
• 39:03
  Like the investments they're making are right.
• 39:05
  You know, they're number one in something.
• 39:07
  And that's like we're seeing that and how they're investing,
• 39:13
  what they're doing, how they're incentivizing partners.
• 39:16
  Do you think they're nervous with you think Google's nervous
• 39:19
  about AI search now? I mean, obviously they're
• 39:21
  getting into it, but you know, this Chacha boutique came out of
• 39:24
  freaking. It seemed like left field, even
• 39:26
  though they were building every years, but it was just like,
• 39:28
  boom, one day. Google search is just not as
• 39:31
  relevant as it used to be. And I think it's still very
• 39:34
  relevant for a lot of use cases. I don't think anything just that
• 39:36
  big goes away overnight, but people are and we see this even
• 39:40
  in the B2B space. People are searching now on
• 39:42
  Chachi BT and it's a different type of search.
• 39:45
  It's not like what's a restaurant near me?
• 39:47
  That's a good Google search, right?
• 39:48
  It's more like, hey, I'm a company.
• 39:50
  I'm AB2B company, service provider.
• 39:52
  We're doing, you know, 8 million a year.
• 39:54
  We're looking for a marketing partner that can do this, this
• 39:56
  and this or help us set up a podcast.
• 39:58
  And what are some good price? What's a price range we should
• 40:01
  expect? What are top companies in the
• 40:02
  area? Somebody local we'd like to
• 40:04
  have? They're like having
• 40:05
  conversations with AI and then based on, you know, what the AI
• 40:09
  sees in the world of the Internet, right?
• 40:12
  That might be pulling from LinkedIn Reddit.
• 40:14
  Podcasts, blogs, a lot of different information, top five
• 40:18
  or top ten lists. They love those types of things,
• 40:20
  which is why we encourage people to create those on their website
• 40:23
  and, and then they're giving information back.
• 40:26
  And you know, that's why we always encourage people to have
• 40:28
  pricing on their site too, because they may come back and
• 40:30
  give you 3 suggestions of the top ones, this one here, we
• 40:33
  picked this one, this one, this one, they're all local.
• 40:36
  They all have this what you wanted and here's a price range
• 40:38
  for each of them. And if you don't have pricing or
• 40:40
  those articles or list, you may not even cut.
• 40:42
  So it's just like totally different from a Google like
• 40:45
  here's the top three are are blue sponsored ones.
• 40:47
  And then below that is this, it's like it's just changed the
• 40:50
  game. I'm curious your take on that.
• 40:51
  I mean, Google will react fast and change how they're doing
• 40:55
  business to to meet that need, so.
• 40:59
  It also is like, but it's a little bit of a competitive,
• 41:02
  It's a little bit of a conflict of interest in a certain regards
• 41:05
  because, like, so much of their business is Google Ads.
• 41:08
  Yeah, Yeah. And so it's like, damn, like,
• 41:10
  this is like our massive money maker.
• 41:12
  And now it's like we got to adapt with time, but the same
• 41:16
  time, we don't want to kill the thing that got us here.
• 41:19
  It's an interesting dynamic, yeah.
• 41:20
  Yeah, Yeah. What's going to happen to the
• 41:22
  ads business? That's a good question.
• 41:25
  Like, I don't know, you know, and the other day we were
• 41:29
  talking about like AI bots and things like that, like how much
• 41:32
  you're paying. We're paying for ads, How much
• 41:35
  are real? How much are bots?
• 41:36
  It's OK, man. So that ad space, who knows, but
• 41:42
  Google hires a lot of smart people and they will find a way
• 41:49
  to continue being a leader is is what I think, you know, like.
• 41:54
  Yeah, they're definitely not sitting around like, oh, there's
• 41:56
  AI thing like this. Yeah, exactly.
• 41:57
  They're definitely working hard to try to solve that problem for
• 42:00
  sure, I would think. But so you're part of
• 42:03
  entrepreneurs organization, is that what it's?
• 42:04
  Called Yep. EO.
• 42:05
  Yeah. EO Chicago.
• 42:07
  Yeah, I saw someone did a post, I think you reposted it on
• 42:10
  LinkedIn. It was Jesse Itzler came to talk
• 42:12
  to you guys. Were you there for that?
• 42:13
  Yeah. One of the things that stood out
• 42:15
  and one of the things that was mentioned in the in the LinkedIn
• 42:17
  post was being rich with soul and living life before the bus
• 42:22
  stops. Something that Jesse said.
• 42:24
  I don't know if you remember that, but as even beyond that,
• 42:26
  just curious what what Jesse Itzler, anything that he taught
• 42:29
  you from that talk that you applied to business or life?
• 42:32
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The big thing that I learned
• 42:34
  from him is like, there's always a way, like if you hustle.
• 42:40
  So for example, one of the examples he gave was he wanted
• 42:45
  to go to a conference. I think.
• 42:46
  Yeah, he needed to go to a conference because that's where
• 42:49
  like all his buyers were. And I think it was when he was
• 42:53
  doing the jet company, one of his first companies, the the
• 42:57
  part time jet or you know, Airbnb of jets.
• 43:00
  He couldn't get into the conference because the ticket
• 43:02
  was like 5 grand. But he noticed like he went and
• 43:06
  worked at the local coffee shop and he noticed like everyone
• 43:09
  that was coming in was from the conference and they were buying
• 43:12
  like a coffee and like a bagel or a muffin, I think.
• 43:15
  So the next morning he went and bought all the muffins.
• 43:19
  And so when someone came in from the conference and they like
• 43:21
  went up to the barista and we're like, I'll have a coffee and a
• 43:24
  muffin. They were like, oh, we're out of
• 43:26
  muffins. That dude sitting over there
• 43:28
  bought them all. And so you would be like, what?
• 43:31
  Who is like, I want to go get a muffin.
• 43:33
  You go talk to him. And that's how he like landed
• 43:36
  his first few customers for the jet, the jet business.
• 43:41
  And so he had a couple like examples like that where it was
• 43:44
  like, most people would think it can't be done.
• 43:48
  You know, the conference, how am I going to get in?
• 43:50
  It's 5K. Like this dude figured out like
• 43:53
  a hack to like break down any door in front of him.
• 43:58
  And so that was like a constant theme of his, of his talk to us.
• 44:04
  And so it kind of one of the things I got out of it was like,
• 44:09
  yeah, always look. And I've been, you know, getting
• 44:12
  better at this as an entrepreneur and through the
• 44:14
  years. But, like, there's always a way
• 44:16
  through the door. You just got to find that way.
• 44:19
  And he gave some very pointed examples of, like, ways that he
• 44:25
  did it. And, like, he's a very inspiring
• 44:27
  speaker. So like, you walked away, or at
• 44:30
  least I did like, yeah. You know, the next hard
• 44:34
  challenge that comes up, let me think about it a different way.
• 44:38
  Like, how would Jesse do this, you know?
• 44:41
  I think outside the box, you know, yeah, what you have to do
• 44:43
  in business, I feel like. Exactly.
• 44:45
  Yeah, Yeah. So that was 1.
• 44:48
  There's a quote that always stuck with me, which is losers
• 44:51
  find excuses, winners find a way.
• 44:54
  Yeah. And that's kind of what you're
• 44:55
  just talking about. That story is like, hey, you
• 44:57
  know, look, you can find a million excuses on this planet
• 45:01
  to not be able to do something, or you can just find one reason
• 45:04
  to be able to be able, and let's go find that reason.
• 45:09
  Put your head down, get to work. Throw the excuses out the
• 45:12
  window. Throw the oh, it's impossible.
• 45:13
  It seems too hard. I don't know enough about this.
• 45:15
  I've never done this before. I don't have the experience.
• 45:18
  And just go. Exactly.
• 45:20
  Go, man. Yeah.
• 45:21
  Anyways, you're gonna say something else.
• 45:23
  No, I think that, you know, the the soul, he did talk a lot
• 45:26
  about soul and that resonated at the time, but I I kind of forgot
• 45:31
  that piece. Yeah.
• 45:33
  I mean, I know, like another part of it was he's himself
• 45:37
  like, and, you know, that was one of the the reasons why I
• 45:41
  started or wanted to start my own company is like, I got sick
• 45:44
  of showing up not as my authentic self, you know.
• 45:48
  And I was like, especially in, like, my first career in
• 45:52
  corporate America, you know, like, I'd show up wearing khakis
• 45:55
  and a button, you know, blue collared shirt, you know, And
• 45:57
  it's like, that's not me, you know?
• 46:01
  And so one of the main things I did was like, I want just people
• 46:05
  to be themselves, you know, whatever that is.
• 46:09
  And I think that's part of like, Jesse's like, here's who I am.
• 46:12
  Like, you want to work with me or not, you know, like, I'm not
• 46:16
  going to change. And I think that served him
• 46:20
  really well. And so that was another thing I
• 46:22
  took from it is like, one of the reasons he is happy is because
• 46:27
  he is as authentic self and he works with people that fit that
• 46:30
  authentic self. And he's not changing himself
• 46:33
  to, like, win a deal, you know, or, you know, close the next
• 46:36
  deal or retain a customer that's a jerk because, you know, that's
• 46:42
  not him. And so that was a big take away
• 46:45
  from it. But yeah, overall just a very
• 46:50
  inspiring guy. Well, there's a lot of people
• 46:52
  listening. I know some people personally
• 46:55
  that feel like they have to show up a certain way to either
• 46:58
  impress or to I run this, you know, type of business or this
• 47:01
  company size of business. And I've got to wear a suit or
• 47:05
  show up this way or say certain things and and there's something
• 47:08
  wrong with it. If that's you, then do your
• 47:09
  thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:10
  But I think there is something special and freeing when you
• 47:14
  unlock that. I'm just going to show up as me.
• 47:17
  And if people like it, amazing. And if they don't, that's cool.
• 47:20
  Yeah, I know it sounds simple, but it's hard for people to
• 47:23
  really like, grasp at sometimes. Yeah, I think like the most
• 47:28
  stressed I've ever been or like some of the stress in the past
• 47:31
  has been like when I'm not my authentic self or, you know,
• 47:34
  when I get on a call with a potential customer and I'm just
• 47:39
  like, it's not a good fit, but like, oh, but we need to close
• 47:43
  the deal. You know, like, I think in my
• 47:46
  opinion, the most, like the best day ever for an entrepreneur is
• 47:51
  when you can say no to someone. You know, like, you know, we get
• 47:56
  from time to time like people. Oh, you're basically a vendor.
• 47:59
  Like you need to do this because I'm going to pay you.
• 48:01
  And it's like, no, we don't. You know, we're fortunate to
• 48:05
  have high demand for our service.
• 48:07
  Like, we don't need to work with you if you're going to be a
• 48:09
  jerk. It's like that simple.
• 48:11
  And so, yeah, I don't want to do that to my team like and I don't
• 48:15
  want to do that to myself. So yeah, having a good filter on
• 48:21
  you know who you're working with and why you're working with them
• 48:27
  is very important. So yeah, I don't know, like.
• 48:32
  No, and it's a, it's a, it's something that you can't
• 48:34
  necessarily afford to do early on.
• 48:36
  Yeah. Or maybe you can.
• 48:37
  Maybe you can. Maybe I'm just, that's the
• 48:40
  impossible box I'm putting people in.
• 48:41
  But, you know, I think in the beginning you're just like, I
• 48:43
  need clients, I need revenue. You got to get this thing going.
• 48:45
  So you do have a little bit less flexibility, I think.
• 48:48
  Oh, for sure. And then once you build a
• 48:49
  business and you've more established and you have, you
• 48:52
  know, some revenue and things like that, you absolutely start
• 48:54
  thinking about that more. You start thinking about is who
• 48:57
  do I really want to work with? And yeah.
• 48:58
  And you know, the difference, man, between getting a customer
• 49:00
  that you're like or a client that you're really excited for
• 49:03
  and like the calls are amazing. The work together, it's so
• 49:06
  freaking aligned. I have a couple of this right
• 49:08
  now. I'm like, God, get off the call
• 49:09
  feeling energized. I'm like, it's we're so in line,
• 49:12
  you know, with what we're trying to accomplish together and the
• 49:14
  vision. And then you get on calls that
• 49:16
  are just miserable and you're like this, Why are we even doing
• 49:19
  this? Yeah, It's like it's not worth
• 49:21
  it, man. Yeah, well, and I think early on
• 49:24
  you take everything because you don't know, I mean, personally
• 49:27
  that might be a jerk. You might learn something from,
• 49:29
  you know, you might shape where, you know, I don't know, a
• 49:32
  feature or a service you're offering because.
• 49:35
  Oh, wow. Like, I never thought of this.
• 49:36
  But this customer, yeah, they might be a pain to work with,
• 49:39
  but they're actually like helping me kind of shape the
• 49:42
  business. Yeah, that's a good point.
• 49:44
  So yeah, it's like at first, yeah, take everything, you know,
• 49:47
  that's like in my experience, it was take everything, then start
• 49:52
  filtering out to see, yeah, what is like the right profile for
• 49:55
  us, you know, size, type, etcetera.
• 49:58
  And then start kind of honing that from there.
• 50:02
  But learning from every lead or customer I think is like the
• 50:08
  most important thing. Like I do some like EO has EOA,
• 50:13
  the accelerator in Chicago, I'm a coach there, do some other
• 50:16
  mentoring. And one of the main things I see
• 50:20
  a lot with founders is like they want, especially with AI, you
• 50:23
  want to automate like the lead Gen.
• 50:25
  I'm like that's the last thing you automate.
• 50:27
  If you're getting like 20 leads a week, talk to all of them.
• 50:30
  You know, like until that's like 90% of your time, just talk to
• 50:35
  people, you know, like as the founder or as the, you know,
• 50:37
  first salesperson. So that was one thing that I
• 50:43
  learned from my Co founder who's my former boss.
• 50:46
  You know, I was in that same boat early.
• 50:47
  Like back in the day when I was employed at the company, I was
• 50:52
  like, Oh yeah, we should automate this.
• 50:54
  And he's like, no, like we don't get that many leads.
• 50:57
  Like talk to him. And I was like, yeah, you know,
• 51:00
  why not like let's try that. And that was the most impactful
• 51:04
  like exercise that we still continue to do, like automating,
• 51:08
  like lead flow is like probably the last thing I ever think
• 51:11
  about. It is amazed me when people are
• 51:12
  like, we're going to autopilot our LinkedIn and I'm like, dude,
• 51:15
  that's like going to a network of events and like our Zumba,
• 51:17
  you know? Yeah, it's like.
• 51:18
  What, what are you doing? Like you got to talk to people,
• 51:21
  you got to post original thoughts and insights and
• 51:23
  there's plenty of things that we can automate and do AI with, you
• 51:27
  know, but leave the human stuff to the humans.
• 51:31
  If you do have a great client and they are wow, extremely good
• 51:35
  fit, well aligned visions the same or similar, what's the
• 51:40
  secret to retaining clients? The secret to retaining clients
• 51:45
  and AI helps now because you know, it's that second brain or
• 51:48
  you know the main brain, but you know, really getting to know the
• 51:51
  client kind of driving things like the whole, my whole
• 51:56
  philosophy is like, make it easier on the people you work
• 52:01
  with. Don't expect them to remember,
• 52:04
  especially like again, we're reselling Google Workspace
• 52:09
  typically to a business owner or an IT manager.
• 52:14
  My team manager or business owner has.
• 52:16
  Tons of tools. Like that, you know, they have
• 52:19
  to remember about and you know, they have to implement things
• 52:22
  and do certain things for security.
• 52:25
  So my philosophy is always like just make it super easy.
• 52:28
  You know, like do all the work for them, send the invites,
• 52:31
  create the tasks like guide them through a mutual success plan.
• 52:36
  Like understand from them what success looks like, get that
• 52:40
  jotted down and then work towards it with them.
• 52:44
  And you know, sometimes you'll have to veer and change what
• 52:47
  success looks like as the business changes on their end or
• 52:51
  on our end. But I think that's that's the
• 52:53
  main one. Make it easy to work with you is
• 52:56
  kind of the overarching philosophy.
• 52:59
  You know, I hate when I'll see like sometimes someone asked
• 53:03
  like, Oh yeah, when are you available?
• 53:05
  Send me an invite. It's like, no, we're the we're
• 53:07
  the, we're the partner. Like we should be doing that.
• 53:10
  Or I think you know, just be human, be your real self.
• 53:15
  Make it easy. Yeah.
• 53:17
  Be transparent. I think that's what I think what
• 53:19
  you said there transparent on and having the path of success
• 53:22
  and knowing what that looks like, it's mapped out.
• 53:24
  I think that's such a big one too is just sometimes you're
• 53:26
  like, hey, are realigned, like let's sometimes just an honest
• 53:30
  conversation. What do we want to accomplish?
• 53:31
  Let's realign on some things. Where are we going?
• 53:33
  What does, what would just blow like knock your socks off the
• 53:36
  next six months if we were to be able to do?
• 53:38
  And then you got to put now you can just work towards that and
• 53:40
  you're probably going to retain them if you're doing a good job
• 53:42
  working towards that. Sometimes it is that simple.
• 53:43
  You just got to talk to your customers sometimes.
• 53:45
  Yeah, it's almost like like we talked about user manual
• 53:48
  earlier. It's kind of like the same thing
• 53:49
  like, you know #1 how do I make it easy on the customer?
• 53:53
  Like how, how do they like to be communicated?
• 53:55
  You know, I mean, every vendor is trying to get a quarterly
• 53:57
  meeting with a customer to do a QBR.
• 53:59
  It's like, is that, is that relevant in this conversation?
• 54:03
  You know, and we'll get, no, it's Google Workspace, it's
• 54:05
  inexpensive, it's easy to administer.
• 54:08
  Let's check in every six months. Here's like our backlog of
• 54:11
  things we need to work on. It's on the success plan.
• 54:14
  Everyone can see it. We can alter it if we need.
• 54:16
  You know, if something else comes up in their business, it's
• 54:19
  a Co created plan so they can change it.
• 54:23
  So yeah, it's making it easy for them, being respectful of how
• 54:26
  they like to work, you know, knowing what success looks like,
• 54:29
  like you said. And then the big thing we do,
• 54:31
  because we're so focused on migration, like our one of our
• 54:34
  other overarching philosophies is no surprises.
• 54:38
  Things are going to change in a migration.
• 54:41
  We don't promise like, oh, it's going to be perfect.
• 54:45
  You know, like it's not here's what's going to change, here's
• 54:49
  how we prep you to prep your users.
• 54:52
  So at the end of the day, no one's surprised.
• 54:54
  Like everybody knows OK, document links might change,
• 54:57
  here's the work around for that or here's what you know needs to
• 55:01
  be done post migration so that that has less of an impact.
• 55:06
  But we prepare our customer to not be surprised.
• 55:10
  And that's the same with like the relationship later, you
• 55:14
  know, hey, we heard at the conference Google is going to be
• 55:17
  raising prices on Workspace. We got to reach out to all our
• 55:21
  customers and give them a heads up, hey, this is coming.
• 55:25
  You know, we don't want you to be surprised that the price is
• 55:28
  going to go up X. And so we try to be proactive
• 55:32
  enough to again deliver no surprises.
• 55:36
  So out of everything that we we covered, what's something that
• 55:39
  we haven't covered that you would say?
• 55:41
  And you, if you could give a piece of advice to a founder and
• 55:43
  you could say this is how you scale a service based company
• 55:48
  without huge payrolls, what would be your one piece of
• 55:50
  advice to a founder entrepreneur listening right right now?
• 55:53
  I mean, because my back like my background supply chain, I spent
• 55:57
  a lot of time taking waste out of processes, you know, So I did
• 56:01
  like the typical, you know, supply chain is purchasing
• 56:03
  logistics, you know, distribution manufacturing.
• 56:07
  But then I spent a couple times as like an internal consultant
• 56:11
  at GM, basically implementing the Toyota production system
• 56:14
  into GM. Interesting.
• 56:16
  And so I always have that like continuous improvement mindset.
• 56:21
  And so spending the time to like look at where is there waste and
• 56:27
  actually take waste out of the system without reinventing the
• 56:31
  wheel or blowing things up, You know, it's like a small
• 56:34
  incremental improvement. Not like, you know, don't try to
• 56:37
  change everything because then you're behind, you know, it's
• 56:41
  going to put you behind on the next 5 things.
• 56:44
  So OK, our, I don't know, sales process might not be the best.
• 56:48
  Can we make it, you know, 5% better?
• 56:51
  Like, you know, one small change today that will improve our
• 56:55
  sales process and then let's roll with that and make it 5%
• 56:59
  better, you know, in three months.
• 57:03
  So I think, you know, that like continuous improvement mindset,
• 57:07
  but on like little things that will make a big difference
• 57:10
  versus either, you know, analysis paralysis from like,
• 57:14
  oh, how are we going to change this process to like the best in
• 57:17
  the world, how we've done it in our business, you know, taking
• 57:21
  out wastes, you know, constantly improving as the founder, like
• 57:26
  checking in on the processes to see like, hey, you know, a lot
• 57:30
  of times as the founder or Co founder or whatever CEO, I'm
• 57:34
  outside of a process for a while.
• 57:36
  So I might jump into like a sales process or ACS process and
• 57:41
  oh, wow, this looks odd to me. Like, you know, hey, I'm not
• 57:44
  used to this. Why, why are we doing this?
• 57:46
  And then that starts a conversation with like the
• 57:48
  leader of that team. Oh, yeah, maybe that is kind of
• 57:51
  inefficient, you know. And so you're almost coming in
• 57:54
  as like the outside view without like the blinders on.
• 58:00
  And so, you know, taking the time to jump into the different
• 58:04
  areas of of the business as like an outsider to see like, does
• 58:11
  this make sense? Is this as efficient as it could
• 58:13
  be? And then making those small
• 58:15
  improvements, you know, with your leadership team.
• 58:18
  Well, Will, I appreciate you coming on the show.
• 58:20
  We've got your wife in the conference room, Lindsay, She's
• 58:22
  going to hop on next cuz she's the founder as well.
• 58:23
  So I'm excited for that conversation.
• 58:25
  Where can people find you, connect with you, learn more
• 58:27
  about what you guys do? Yeah, cloudasta.com is probably
• 58:30
  the best place. Or LinkedIn.
• 58:33
  I have 5 cousins with the same name.
• 58:35
  But you know, if you type in the jauntis on LinkedIn DAGIANTIS,
• 58:40
  I'll probably be the first that pops up.
• 58:42
  We'll link it in the show description too.
• 58:44
  Awesome. Thanks again for coming on the
• 58:45
  show. Yeah, appreciate it.
• 58:45
  Thanks.