Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From Answering Phones to Tech CEO: Stephanie Johnson's Leadership Journey | Staffing Series

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From Answering Phones to Tech CEO: Stephanie Johnson's Leadership Journey | Staffing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
0:21
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:25
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:27
My name is Anthony Kotaspodi, and today's guest is Stephanie
0:30
Johnson, CEO of Aklin Ave. who is your strategic partner in
0:35
digital transformation, delivering agile custom software
0:39
solutions that revolutionize how you operate, engage customers,
0:43
and drive new opportunities. They emphasize a unique approach
0:48
to Agile software development, ensuring future ready solutions
0:52
that are tailored to meet your technology needs and business
0:55
goals. Stephanie was recently promoted
0:58
to CEO in August 2024, taking over from the previous CEO and
1:03
founder. She has been instrumental in the
1:05
company's growth and management alongside other leaders like
1:09
Jennifer Fields and Evan Hensley.
1:12
With her leadership, Aclin Ave. has strengthened its company
1:15
culture and values, fostering innovation and transparency that
1:19
has truly aligned the team internally and externally.
1:24
Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
1:26
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1:53
Now back to our guest today, the CEO of Acklin Ave.
1:57
Stephanie Johnson. I appreciate you making the time
1:59
to Share your story today. I appreciate you having me here.
2:02
Thank you. So, Stephanie, what first
2:05
attracted you to the IT industry?
2:08
Oh, I, I remember I did my internship at Howard University
2:12
Hospital. My, my degree was in healthcare
2:15
administration and planning. And I, when I did my internship
2:19
there, I just wanted to be in their IT division to see, it's
2:23
like a big hospital. How are they all doing what they
2:25
were doing at the time? It's like, I think my job was
2:28
like setting up emails and figuring like exchange at the
2:32
time. But I loved the technology with
2:36
healthcare. My first love was healthcare.
2:38
And then I wanted to see how technology was going to impact
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healthcare. And so that's kind of what I
2:44
surrounded myself with. I would go to like all of the
2:46
HCA tech innovators conferences back in the day and, and where
2:51
they were like, you know, changing how the patients were
2:56
interacting with tech while they were patients in their hospital.
2:59
And, you know, now we have where you can come in and you can go
3:02
to your room and later on they'll get your information.
3:05
Those were all like innovations at the time that I thought were
3:08
so interesting. So I wanted to see where it was
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going to go. So how did your path eventually
3:13
bring you to the opportunity at Acklin Ave.
3:17
Man, I feel like without trying to, I have been working at
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organizations where they are startup.
3:27
So they're a startup or a startup mentality.
3:30
And over time, when I first became a CEO, which is my
3:34
background as a CEO is where I would just kind of slide into
3:37
those companies, take away their operational debt and eventually
3:43
they would sell. So for every big company that
3:46
I've been at, they eventually sold.
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And and so that's kind of where how I think I ended up at Aclin
3:53
was I have this real need to, to be effective.
3:57
I want to not just work somewhere.
3:58
I want to be effective, I want to help.
4:01
So if I see like the bigger the problem you have in your
4:03
organization, then I'm the person that is going to probably
4:06
knocking on your door. But they found me, they had a
4:10
lot of operational debt and they seemed like they were just at
4:13
the cusp of getting that, you know, getting that fixed and
4:17
then being able to continue to grow the company.
4:20
Like it was kind of not growing. It was kind of year over year
4:23
doing its thing, but a lot of it was because of the operational
4:27
debt. And that just attracted me so
4:28
much along with my my founder. Now the CEO at the time really
4:34
liked, I really interviewed CEOs for my next job and I really
4:37
liked him. I liked how he thought about his
4:39
employees and I knew that like talking to him, he was ready for
4:44
a change. That's important is like to know
4:47
that ACEO is ready for a change. What does operational debt mean
4:52
and how did you help with that? It means that there's that the
4:56
departments may not be operating as effectively and efficiently
5:00
like we are. My, my, I think my secret sauce
5:04
in town is to walk into a place and understand where the gaps
5:07
are. And so when I say operational
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debt, I mean that we're not they're not operating as
5:14
efficiently as they could to be able to, you know, keep money
5:19
from walking out the door to be to be provide optimal service,
5:23
to have optimal contracts to deliver optimally.
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Like those are, those are very important things, but they
5:29
stretch across the organization and they require all the
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departments to be aligned. And so it was a lack of
5:36
alignment in addition to the things that I just meant
5:40
mentioned. So would it be accurate to say
5:42
that part of what drew you to Acklin was the ability to not
5:47
only help Acklin itself, but the ability to help its collection
5:52
of clients be able to bring sort of your operational expertise to
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an even wider swath of companies?
5:59
Yes, I, I, that is the thing that excites me about being an
6:02
operations person. But in my experience too, your
6:06
CEO has to be ready for that kind of change, that kind of
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integration because I'm, I am a change agent.
6:11
When I come into organizations, there will be changed most
6:14
definitely. But yeah, that's it was
6:17
important that he was ready for that and he knew it and he was
6:20
very self aware about the thing that he needed, which was
6:25
somebody like me. And you also said that you
6:28
really like the way that he treated employees.
6:31
Can you talk more about that? The culture at Acland is
6:34
probably one of the biggest, the biggest pulls for people, for
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me, for my senior leadership team and everybody else who
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works, what works with us and for us.
6:45
He just whenever I talk to people there, they loved working
6:49
there. They loved working there through
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struggle, through whatever. He just had this way about
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attracting talent to the company and they stayed.
7:00
And so like he had a lot of longevity on with the people
7:03
that I talked to, the people that were on his team at the at
7:07
the time that I joined. Like I just felt it when I
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talked to different, different folks, I felt it.
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And you know, we're near shore. So the majority of our employees
7:16
are in Latin America and, and other places, but that LATAM
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they, they loved, they loved Acklin and they, and they loved
7:25
his leadership around it. He, he thinks about people.
7:29
The reason that he started that job too, that his job, his
7:32
company at the time was he just wanted to provide someone or
7:36
some, some people a place where they like to go and like to work
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because he didn't have that. And I just kind of like that.
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It's a simple it's a simple reason to start something that
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turned out to be a great great in the culture.
7:49
OK, so let's delve into what Acklin Ave. does.
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So Acklin Ave. it provides our clients with high performing
8:00
agile teams and we also provide staff logging.
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We do that with near shore resources.
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And so if you have development needs or you have a backlog,
8:11
you, you know that it takes you a lot of money and time to build
8:15
those teams, You know, get your BA, get your scrum masters, get
8:18
your dev, your DevOps, your UX, UI design, you can come to us.
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We will scope out your project, tell you how long it would take,
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give you a really, really close estimate.
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And it's already a built team. They're used to working
8:31
together. And we just kind of set that
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down onto your project. We work with your product owner
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and we do whatever project work that you need, whatever
8:40
development work that is needed, including like backlog.
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It could be old tech, it could be putting in new tech.
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So we can do that across all industries.
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But we, we, we really concentrate on fintech,
8:53
healthcare, manufacturing if we were to narrow it down.
8:59
And are most of your clients then here in the States?
9:02
Yes, yes, the majority are here in the States.
9:05
And what else could you say about them that kind of what
9:09
makes somebody an ideal fit for you outside of kind of the three
9:12
industries that you mentioned? Is there revenue size or
9:15
employee count or? No, here's the thing, I think
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it's this is the most interesting thing about what we
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do is we talk to people when they're like when they're trying
9:26
to get money for their idea. So we can help you by clarifying
9:31
the idea that you have and giving you a really good sound
9:35
estimate of time and money to where then you take that and
9:38
then you go ask for that money and you get that money and then
9:41
you come back and then we develop the idea even further
9:43
and give you an MVP or like get you into a MVP into a stage 1 or
9:48
stage two of your, your product. So we have clients that are like
9:50
that and then we have clients that are running, you know, like
9:55
a running old tech, but they had their backlog is so big and
9:58
they're not going to be changing that anytime soon.
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So we we put that team in to help them with all of the
10:05
technology needs that they have with that particular thing.
10:07
And then we have someone who is like, Hey, I've got the money,
10:11
I'm ready to, I'm ready to go and anything in between.
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So we can help anybody who are in like a pre stage where
10:19
they're like trying to get that money for their product to
10:21
people who are already they have their stuff established, but
10:23
they need help updating it. Anything in the backlog?
10:27
Yes. And as I'm hearing you talk, I
10:30
don't hear anything that says, oh, we only focus on these
10:33
platforms or this programming language.
10:35
It sounds like there's a lot of flexibility to go and find the
10:38
talent that's needed, regardless of what the the platforms or
10:42
the, you know, the existing tech stack looks like.
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That is Acklin's like key is they can put those teams
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together. We have a really big like
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resource pool. And so we're not trying to
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preach to you about what tech you need.
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We will advise you if there's something that we think is going
11:01
to change out and you're going to have to come back later.
11:04
But we it's not that, but we do use agile methodology on top of
11:08
everything that we're doing. Describe Agile methodology for
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those folks who aren't familiar with it.
11:14
I would describe agile, and I'm not an agile like what an
11:20
agilist. Jennifer Fields is our chief
11:23
delivery officer and she's the one who's like taught me and is
11:26
the most knowledgeable. But it's basically the way I
11:29
would describe it is it's a way for us to be iterative and
11:35
efficient and scalable so that we're not just stuck to like,
11:41
like we're not taking a a set time to say we're going to
11:44
finish it in this amount of time.
11:45
We're not doing it that way. We are flexible in the way that
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we do things. Something comes up, we pivot, so
11:52
it makes it iterative for us. So that's the best way I can
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describe it, although she probably has a way better
11:57
explanation than I do. So we mentioned in the intro
12:01
that you were promoted to CEO earlier this year.
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So first of all, congratulations for that.
12:08
So now as you step into this new role, obviously you've been
12:11
there for a while and you've affected great change.
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But as you step into this new role as CEO, what are some of
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your first priorities? My very first priority when I
12:21
stepped into this role is to make sure that the culture
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didn't suffer, and it was. Very.
12:26
Not that you wanted to change it.
12:28
You wanted to change it. I wanted to keep it.
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And so it was months probably before we were going to make
12:34
this announcement. And I talked to Colin Callahan,
12:36
who's our founder, and I know that was really important to
12:40
him. And not that, you know, it's not
12:43
that it, these things were not happening, but one thing that I
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did do is I learned, started to learn more Spanish.
12:51
And so now when I have my company wide meetings, when we
12:53
had the announcement, I did them in Spanish 1st 89% of our, our,
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you know, our team are in a Latin country.
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And so it was a way for me to, to say that I see you, you're
13:07
very important to me. And, and, and do my, you know,
13:11
do my intros or whatever I was talking about.
13:14
I, I do those in Spanish 1st and then I do them in English 2nd.
13:19
And I think the feedback that we've gotten from that is that
13:22
it's very, they talk about it, although I have to hear it from
13:26
other people because they won't, they don't tell me, but they
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really love the fact that I'm making those efforts.
13:32
And it was really important for me, although in the beginning
13:35
very nerve wracking because I knew I was probably saying some
13:38
things that were not that were not Spanish.
13:40
Your your Spanish was not not fluent quite yet.
13:44
No. And I keep working on it.
13:46
The team is just, you know, I have so many people that I can
13:49
practice with too, but that I think that it came from my
13:53
heart. It's something I wanted to do
13:55
and it's gone. I think it's gone a long way
13:56
just so that they know that, you know, I'm invested in the
14:00
company and they're important to the company and to me.
14:04
So I'm trying to think, I'm trying to wrap my head around
14:08
what makes Acklin unique, special, different.
14:12
And I'm, I think I'm putting together one, there's a really
14:14
great culture. People just love coming to work
14:17
there. Two, you guys, you're, you're
14:21
sort of platform agnostic. You know, you can advise the
14:25
client on, you know, where you think that they should be, but
14:28
you can, you can support anything.
14:31
And then three, you use near shore talent, so it it probably
14:37
opens up a whole another pool of talent that a lot of other
14:42
agencies aren't able to bring to the table and you know, able to
14:45
do it in a a more cost effective way.
14:47
Absolutely. Yeah, those are those are really
14:51
great reasons why what makes us unique, It's just it's our
14:57
people, it's our ability to pull talent together.
14:59
And it's also our ability to like be a place where people
15:02
want to be and want to work. You were talking about
15:06
differentiators that makes us, us unique.
15:10
And I mean, I think that what for me, the thing that stood out
15:15
and I've worked with, I've worked with Indian teams before.
15:19
I've worked with other Latin American countries in Colombia
15:23
and Bogota and Mexico City. But the thing thing here is
15:29
Acklin puts a lot of time and energy into the community in
15:35
which it sources its talent. And so the majority of our
15:40
talent comes from a particular area, but we're very vested
15:44
there. Like it's it's what they used to
15:45
call the heart of Acklin. And so the story that intrigued
15:50
me about Acklin when I didn't know that I was going to be
15:52
coming here, was that story about how one of the founders
15:55
went there on a mission trip, met his wife, and he kept coming
16:00
back, right? Kept coming back.
16:02
And that's kind of how Ackland started to recruit from that
16:06
area. And so like, even though we
16:09
can't be there with with our team, we spend so much time in
16:14
wanting them to be together. And so we invest in a lot of get
16:17
togethers for them, but we invest a lot of our time and our
16:21
energy and making sure that they feel like they're part of the
16:24
organization where, you know, I feel like I didn't do that with
16:30
other other assignments that I had.
16:34
But, you know, I know that we can't compete with the rupee in
16:37
terms of cost, but in terms of talent and the ability to be
16:42
able to connect with U.S. companies and not we're not yes
16:47
people. Our communication is
16:50
outstanding. We will tell you, you know, our
16:52
teams will tell you if they don't think a thing will work,
16:54
but they're highly polite, but they'll still tell you.
16:57
You know, I think that's what what sets us apart.
17:01
It's just that community involvement and how we really do
17:05
double down on the folks in in those areas where we're where
17:09
we're recruiting from. So you're, you're kind of
17:11
touching on what my follow up question is, which is how do you
17:17
establish and then maintain a, such a strong company culture
17:22
when you are geographically spread out?
17:25
I I get that a lot of your folks in Latin America are in the same
17:31
geographical region, but it sounds like maybe they're not
17:33
all reporting to the same office every day, so.
17:37
No, you know ACLIN has been remote since it started 15 years
17:41
ago, which I think in itself is kind of like forward thinking
17:44
and and amazing and and and having the formula in which it
17:49
works right, it works out really well.
17:53
I think we have a tremendous human resources group headed up
17:58
by Chelsea Gonzalez and we have get togethers.
18:02
We just recently ended up the year we have these quarterly
18:06
meetings. We have monthly just gathers
18:09
where we're just playing games like crazy, like online games.
18:15
And somehow they just make it work where it works not only for
18:19
everybody in Latin America and other places where we have
18:21
people. It works for us here in the US
18:24
to be able to connect and see folks more often.
18:28
And we have such great turn out and we're just goofy together
18:31
online. Like it's, it's, it's it's a
18:35
very family type, even though some people hate the term if I
18:40
say family, but it's a very close knit group.
18:43
And we welcome like how we welcome people into our
18:46
organization too, is like to make them a part of this.
18:50
You know, we with it, we announce a lot of things.
18:53
We announce our wins when we win, we announce losses when we
18:56
lose. Like it's trying to just keep
18:58
them informed so that they feel a connection.
19:01
But we've done that just remotely by meeting weekly and
19:05
quarterly and and for holidays and things like that and also
19:08
acknowledging their holidays along with our own.
19:13
What is a message to Garcia and why is this important to you,
19:17
Stephanie? A friend of mine that I that's
19:23
like my one of my mentors but also helps us in business.
19:27
His name is his name is Ryan Villanueva.
19:30
He's with Cruz and Co. He's just become a friend to me.
19:34
And so like, he's he's like, he's there partly because, you
19:38
know, it can be a little lonely where you don't have someone to
19:41
talk to. So I talked to him about a lot
19:43
of things. And I think this one day I was
19:44
sharing with him how I was feeling a level of frustration
19:49
and a level of of deep gratitude for the types of people that we
19:55
have been able to get on our senior leadership team.
19:58
And so it's like this, I'm trying to explain to him, like,
20:00
if I were to hire this person, I've got to have them, you know,
20:04
not have me tell them what to do AB and C.
20:07
And what I try to do in my leadership style is to encourage
20:11
people to make mistakes because in the mistake.
20:15
In the failure is our lessons that you need to learn and you
20:18
need to dig deeper. And so if you're not bringing up
20:21
problems, I always am like, no, no, no, we always have problems.
20:24
You have to bring some problems in here.
20:26
But I'm also an advocate of like look at root causes.
20:28
But I'm trying to explain this to him and he says I've got the
20:30
perfect thing. You've got to read this letter,
20:34
this letter to Garcia. And it's about a man.
20:37
He's gets his, his higher up says, Hey, I need you to go find
20:41
somebody and get this message to Garcia.
20:43
It was Garcia he was looking for.
20:45
He sends the guy out. The guy asks no questions.
20:48
He just takes the letter, disappears for a couple of
20:52
months, finds Garcia, hands him a letter, comes back, He says
20:55
he's successful. And I'm like, that kind of rolls
20:58
it up for me. It's like he's probably made a
21:02
mistake along the way of his journey, but just go for it.
21:06
I trust you to go make the decisions.
21:08
They may not be 100 completely, 100% completely right, but I
21:12
trust you to go if I feel like I got to like, say, if you come to
21:16
me and say, well, how do I get started?
21:18
It's like immediately I'm just like, no, you just got to go out
21:22
there and like make the mistake. Make it do what you think is
21:26
best. And nine times out of 10, it's
21:29
going to be fine. And then if you have a concern
21:32
or you learn something, come back.
21:34
Come back with that. But be bold.
21:37
So when you're looking to, to build out and support your
21:40
senior leadership team, these are the, the kinds of folks that
21:43
you want along your side, people that you know aren't saying,
21:47
hey, Stephanie, I need a, you know, a step by step 10 point
21:50
list of how to execute this next project.
21:53
No, you want to be able to sort of discuss the the big picture
21:56
vision with them and then you know they're they're going to go
21:59
run with it, yes. That's that's the senior
22:01
leadership team that I have. OK.
22:04
And. So while we're, you know, how
22:06
this came up was like, you know, I haven't replaced myself as the
22:09
chief operations officer. And I felt like, man, that's
22:12
going to be so hard because I have this whole thing this whole
22:15
way, but I also know that somebody is better than me and
22:19
they're going to like, so when someone's asked me what what
22:22
type of person I was just kind of running through, it's hard to
22:24
somebody to ask me that and come up with these, oh, I need them
22:27
to be all of these things. But I do realize too, having sat
22:30
in the seat, I have these biases that I don't need to have.
22:34
But like the core of that they were asking what's the core is
22:37
that I know that the team will communicate with me when they
22:41
need to communicate with me. But they once we decide on
22:43
something and we're off to the races, they are going to execute
22:47
on that without asking. Like how do I get started?
22:50
What do I need to do? All of these things right comes
22:52
up in the discussions that we have anyway.
22:55
Are there a small handful of folks from this team that you
22:57
would like to mention here? Oh, absolutely.
23:01
You know, I love that you asked me that question because coming
23:04
up as ACEO myself, I feel like our COO and now I'm ACEO.
23:09
One of the things that I was like, man, it'd be nice if my
23:11
CEO mentioned the senior leadership team.
23:14
So I'm going to do that. So I would like to shout out
23:16
Jennifer Fields, who is our Chief Delivery Officer, Dan
23:20
McCarthy, who is our Chief Finance Officer, Chelsea
23:24
Gonzalez, who is our CPO or Chief People Officer.
23:27
Lionel Johnson, no relation is our Chief.
23:31
Our CRO, Fernanda Mesquita is our business operation
23:35
strategist. So you're going to make it to
23:37
where I'm going to forget someone.
23:40
And I'm like deathly afraid. I'm forgetting some of my senior
23:42
leadership team and I'm feeling like I am.
23:47
There's there's, there's so many.
23:49
Can we look at your? Website and would they be?
23:51
Yeah, I feel. Like and Colin Callahan right
23:54
And so like, I don't it's it's an interesting thing, but the
23:59
the the reason that anyone could ever look at me to say I'm
24:02
successful, they have to look back at that team.
24:07
They're the reason why I was like, tell me I didn't forget
24:10
anybody. I'm I'm.
24:11
Looking on your site, see if I can find no I did.
24:13
Forget someone Brooke James, who's my personal executive
24:16
assistant, so she makes life very easy for me.
24:22
We got Fernanda right. Check.
24:25
Brooke. Check.
24:26
Lionel. Check.
24:28
Chelsea. Yep.
24:30
We've. Already talked about Colin the
24:31
the founder yes and Dan so yeah, I think we we got them all yeah.
24:36
Nice work. Thank you.
24:37
Thank you for. The opportunity because I really
24:40
like, they're fantastic. Good.
24:42
Absolutely. Yeah, we, yeah.
24:44
I mean, I, I started a number of businesses myself and, you know,
24:48
none of them would have been nearly as successful as they
24:50
were without the team behind me. So yeah, you, you got to give
24:53
credit where credit's due. Nobody is running this race by
24:56
themselves. You know, it seems like there's,
25:03
you know, there's a big emphasis on innovation at Acklin.
25:09
What are maybe some unique approaches or innovations that
25:13
your teams introduced that have had a substantial impact for
25:16
your clients? One big one that stands out to
25:20
me is being able to provide flex teams so that like, you know, I
25:26
know that in our past, if you wanted A-Team, we were saying,
25:31
hey, you have to have all these people on your team.
25:33
And then we started to explore how like we were listening to
25:37
our clients and stuff that they needed and we were like, we can
25:40
build flex teams because every single client's needs are not
25:43
the same. So we can't like just put it,
25:46
put it down, put that team that we have pre built into a client
25:49
where really they need certain things.
25:51
And so we were able to come up with this flex team model that
25:55
if you perhaps had your UX UI design team, but you needed to
25:58
have the devs and the devs OP DevOps and like some other, you
26:02
know, BAQA, we could add those things to you or you needed just
26:07
like a team of QA or you needed a team of designers.
26:11
So we ended up doing that with, which proved out to be really
26:15
good. It brought in like, I feel like
26:17
our mix of like someone who has our clients who have a full
26:20
stack team versus like flex team is like maybe 1/4 of our total
26:25
clients have they have, they have needed or need a flex team
26:30
and that they're utilizing currently.
26:33
How do you find? Most of your clients or how do
26:35
they find you? Man, that is, that is like the
26:39
golden like answer. If I had all those answers, we,
26:43
you know, we've started putting a lot more into our marketing
26:47
top of funnel research. But I could tell you like prior
26:50
to me coming here, the company had one salesperson and she did
26:55
a fantastic job, but all of that was like her secret sauce to
26:59
things. And so there wasn't process
27:00
behind it. And so this year we have really
27:04
torn down everything and rebuilt up with the new CRO and and
27:08
account executives and how we how we get out into the market.
27:15
So I don't know if I have the best answer for that other than
27:18
one of the things that we have been focusing on is audience,
27:24
audience based research. Like how are we going to get in
27:27
front of those folks that like maybe people don't open emails,
27:32
How do we get in front of them? What do they like?
27:34
Do they like a webinar? So we're trying to figure out
27:37
how to get in front of them and then use AI to craft our message
27:42
to those personas that we have. So I feel like I don't have the
27:46
best answer for that. But if you find somebody who
27:48
does, I would love to talk to them, but it's, it's ever
27:52
changing. Things change and you have to
27:54
figure out how you change with your client and their needs.
27:58
Would it be safe? To say that, I mean a fair bit
28:00
of the clients have just come by word of mouth I think.
28:03
In the past they absolutely have.
28:05
And we built a really strong partnership agreement with some
28:10
key people where, you know, if they're talking to somebody,
28:13
they refer them to us. Like I feel like it's almost
28:16
like when if you get the conversation going and we get in
28:20
front of that client, they will see value in it immediately
28:22
because that's what we want them to see is get them to their
28:26
value to their revenues as fast as possible.
28:29
But just starting that from our first interaction.
28:32
As a company that's, you know, on the front edge of all things
28:36
tech, I'm curious what you're most excited about when it comes
28:41
to AI. You know, or.
28:43
Or I should or open the door to say most concerned about Yeah.
28:47
Maybe it's a little bit of like both.
28:50
And I think, you know, I attended a conference that they
28:54
were just focusing on AI. And when I walked into that
28:57
conference, it was back in September and I walked in that
29:00
conference, I felt like as a company, we were behind that.
29:04
I was like, man, we're behind. I'm not really sure what
29:06
direction we're supposed to take.
29:08
I'm just here to kind of hear people out and see where they
29:11
were walking away from that conference.
29:14
I realized that we're not behind that.
29:17
Many people are trying to figure out how this is going to help
29:22
their company or, you know, help their company bring in revenue.
29:26
And even the early adopters are still figuring that out.
29:29
So I felt like I was in a good place.
29:30
I, I left that though understanding that AI is not
29:34
meant to replace people. It is meant to improve the
29:38
services that we're already doing.
29:40
And so I kind of took that approach with my senior
29:42
leadership team. We built up a, a, a committee
29:47
that we will launch. We kind of pre launched it at
29:50
the end of this year, but really going in full force in in
29:53
January. But our sales uses it already to
29:57
find prospects. Our, our financial, our CFO is
30:02
looking at how to like what kind of tool we can use in AI that
30:07
will help us with structured data and unstructured data and
30:10
what's best to use in our, on our development, in our
30:14
delivery. Trying to figure out how AI can
30:17
help us do those things that are timely, like, you know,
30:21
penetration testing or something like that.
30:24
So we're just, we're literally trying to go department to
30:27
department to see how it will help us be better at what we
30:31
already do. Like we're on the very
30:34
beginnings of of figuring that out, but I don't feel late.
30:39
What kinds of requests, if any, are you getting from the client
30:42
side as it pertains to AII think?
30:45
General questions in terms of like, how are we using it?
30:49
Like, what are we using in terms of our development.
30:52
I'm not getting a ton of questions from them from our
30:55
clients in terms of like how we're, are we using it to
31:00
develop like the things that concern me around that like it
31:04
is what are the legalities of those things?
31:07
Like is the percentage of if we use AI as a percentage of, you
31:10
know, developing code, is it, is it belong to us or, you know,
31:16
those types of things are other things that worried me as well
31:19
as incentivize me that we weren't behind.
31:22
But like, how are we managing it?
31:23
How do we manage it in legality with, with our clients?
31:26
How much do we have to divulge if we decide to use it in more
31:29
of our development work? So I'm just, I'm just figuring
31:33
it out. But we haven't had, I feel like
31:35
we have not had a ton of people that are like, how are you using
31:38
AI? Like they're not.
31:40
I don't we haven't had a ton of questions around it.
31:44
That's. Interesting.
31:45
It surprises me a little bit. I was talking with a friend of
31:47
mine recently who's an experienced developer, and he
31:52
was saying one of the things that he really liked about using
31:54
AI in the the coding work is that previously he might spend a
31:58
lot of time searching on like GitHub or other platforms
32:01
looking for, you know, a chunk of code that could execute some
32:05
small portion of, you know, what he did.
32:08
And sometimes he's got to pay a licensing fee for that.
32:11
Lots of times he's got to give credit or share the
32:13
modifications that he makes to the code.
32:15
But when he goes and he uses an AI tool and asks for help sort
32:19
of creating the same thing, it just sort of frees up all of
32:23
that extra administrative work. But you, you, you hit on an
32:29
interesting question here. And I'm, I'm wondering if, if
32:31
you've ever gotten to the bottom of it is who owns that code?
32:34
Like are you free to use that yourself?
32:36
Is there, do you have to give attribution to ChatGPT?
32:39
Is is is there any clarity with this?
32:41
Not yet, not yet, like like literally September.
32:44
And then we put our committee together.
32:46
But that's the thing that worries me the most before I
32:48
unleash it. You know, everybody's using it.
32:51
Your, your folks, your, your, your teams.
32:53
They're they're using it in many different ways, right?
32:55
I used it the other day to like try to create a JDI wanted to,
32:59
to see right. And it worked out beautifully.
33:02
But before we say we have to provide guidance to the company
33:06
and all of its users on how we're saying that we're going to
33:09
use it before I unleash it to an entire company without
33:12
understanding the legalities of that.
33:14
But I've just connected with with other folks who have more
33:17
information about it, more direction and thoughts about how
33:21
we handle it that I just haven't connected with and we won't till
33:24
the beginning of the year. Yeah.
33:26
Yeah. What's the future look like for
33:28
Acklin Ave. Their growth plans?
33:31
You want to get into new industries?
33:34
Paint a picture here. Definitely growth.
33:39
I think you touched a little bit on innovation before and I think
33:44
when I think about innovation, it's a very used term.
33:46
But when I think about it, for us, it is literally testing out
33:50
in theories that we have to be able to support our customers
33:54
even more than we have. And when I say that, I mean like
33:58
is, are there things that we're already doing?
34:02
But we, but they have a need, for instance, if they're using
34:05
multiple, multiple dev teams or multiple agile teams.
34:12
Does somebody else have that? And they're just also using
34:15
Indian teams And they need like a person that's a liaison
34:18
between, you know, the US and their company and the Indian
34:23
team. Or it's like, you know, with the
34:26
flex, with the flex thing that came up as a need where the
34:29
customer's like, I don't need all these people.
34:31
But I, I think we're, we've developed this thing where any
34:35
opportunity that we see that's coming from a client, we want to
34:38
test it and see if it makes sense for us.
34:41
Like is there are there other things that we need to be
34:43
thinking about? Should we be one of our clients
34:46
needed us to like they were using someone who was like just
34:49
wanting just in time support. They would pay like a number of
34:53
hours. We didn't do that.
34:54
We built a small model. They loved it, right?
34:57
And then now we have another service that we can now go
35:01
explore out with other clients. So that's kind of, you know,
35:06
we're definitely on a growth trajectory.
35:12
Have you ever or have you ever done or ever thought about
35:17
building your own SAS products? Like do you see needs when
35:21
working with your clients? It's like, oh, like that's a
35:23
tool that you know everybody would would be able to use.
35:27
Yeah, I. I feel like our team is like
35:29
really gung ho on us exploring that because they talk about it
35:35
all the time. But the reality of it for us
35:38
right now is like, you know, coming into Acklin, doubling up
35:44
the revenue, all of that, so many changes that have happened
35:48
that I feel like that could probably be a conversation that
35:51
we need to have going into 2025 because I feel like we're more
35:55
set to have it. I mean, you're talking about a
35:58
whole different business model. I mean, you've got the skills
36:01
and you have the the front row seat, you know, into a lot of
36:07
client needs, into a lot of industry needs to where you can
36:10
probably say, wow, you know, this is a tool that not only
36:13
would fintech use, but manufacturing could, could tie
36:16
into as well. But it is a different business
36:19
model. Once you build it, you know,
36:21
then you've got to ramp it and you got to sell it.
36:23
And I know. Colin, like, you know, there's a
36:25
big concern whatever we do to try to keep it what we call the
36:29
Acklin way, but exploring different ways, exploring
36:34
different ways to be the Acklin way, I think is is what we're
36:38
trying to do while maintaining who we we've always been.
36:42
How would you? Sum up what the acklin way is.
36:46
Help. 1st, it's help 1st and it's whether we help first, a
36:52
client, a potential client, a person at at work.
36:56
It is help first. That's the mentality.
37:01
I don't know a better way to say it than that, you know?
37:05
My very first business is back in mid to late 90s.
37:08
We were doing a web development, so we were in the tech space.
37:11
And my business partner, one of the smartest guys I've ever
37:14
known, very smart on the tech side.
37:17
He's like, I hate sales. I don't want to do sales like
37:21
and then he would get into a sales meeting and be phenomenal
37:24
because he did exactly what you talked about, Stephanie, It was
37:28
all about helping. He came from an educational
37:31
background. And so, you know, he would ask a
37:34
lot of questions to sort of, you know, get to what the client
37:36
needs were. And then, hey, here's some
37:38
different solutions that could work for you.
37:41
And you know what, it's not the $50,000 price tag that you were
37:44
thinking. There's an off the shul tell,
37:46
you know, an off the the shelf tool that you can put into place
37:50
that and it's going to cost a few 100 bucks.
37:53
And that like developed that cemented relationships so
37:58
strongly that, you know, people would just come back again and
38:02
again as they had future needs. And and I'm going to assume that
38:05
what I'm describing here is exactly what is going on in
38:08
Acklin at a much bigger scale all the time.
38:11
Like, you know, we when we hit a sales, when we, when we had low
38:16
sales, we hit that sales crunch. And I feel like a lot of
38:18
companies, did you know, we all considered ourselves, one of the
38:23
things we talked about was like, consider all of us are
38:24
salespeople, right? We're all going to sell.
38:27
However, for me, it's like more about conversations and
38:30
relationship building and it's not, it doesn't stop with me.
38:34
I think everybody if you called Jennifer, she's gonna, she wants
38:38
you want to know more about agile and how you can apply it.
38:40
She would be willing to talk to you.
38:42
There's no price tag to that. If somebody calls me and it's
38:45
another CEO or a CEO that needs help understanding like an
38:48
operations thing, it is help 1st.
38:50
And now those are the ones that actually come through and they
38:53
don't need to come through at the time that you're trying to
38:56
like it is literally like, hey, what's going on with you?
38:59
And if you can help them, and it may not be that they use your
39:01
service, but if you can help them, they will remember that
39:04
and they will come back and that's what you want.
39:06
It's like, it's not about me selling you something.
39:10
I don't want to sell anybody anything that they don't need.
39:12
It's really about like, where are you in your business?
39:15
How can I assist you whether it's with us or not.
39:18
And because I'm giving you the best advice, it doesn't mean
39:21
that it's the best advice that's going to lead you here.
39:24
It's just advice like this is what we think, you know, we've
39:28
seen, but we don't offer that. But we can put you in touch with
39:32
someone who does or like I know of somebody who better be suited
39:35
to help you with your just UX UI design.
39:38
That's worked for us, yeah. When you help first, you're
39:42
putting the relationship first, you're putting the the person
39:44
and the their company and their needs 1st.
39:46
And I can't think of a better way to to lay a foundation for
39:50
your own reputation and, you know, continue to have avenues
39:56
to converse with that person in an open way sometimes.
39:59
We're just doing things that are voluntary.
40:02
We've taken on voluntary for nonprofits that just don't have
40:06
the kind of. Bank to like fund an entire like
40:10
app development project, we'll do it for free because the team
40:13
likes to do those things for free because they like the
40:15
exposure and the difference. And it's like telling a
40:18
different story for a little while and then, you know, going
40:21
back to something else, right. So I think it doesn't just work
40:23
for that person that we're giving those services to.
40:26
It works for the people that we employ that are part of our team
40:29
to to feel like they're making a difference somewhere that's just
40:34
not related to your revenue. Yeah.
40:37
Stephanie, what's a serious challenge, maybe personal, maybe
40:40
professional, that you've gone through?
40:43
How did you work through that and what are some lessons that
40:45
you learned coming out the other side?
40:48
Well, Anthony, I was pregnant at 15 and so by the time I was 18,
40:57
I had three children and I remember, like, it was really
41:03
tough. I remember working three jobs
41:07
trying to take a class. I think I even took, you know,
41:11
one or two of my kids to class with me so that I could be there
41:15
trying to earn, you know, work towards my degree.
41:19
And I know that like I feel like either I'm too early or too late
41:22
for things. So too early to be a mom, right?
41:27
But by the time I graduated, like I graduated in when I was
41:32
3030 years old, 30 years old is when I walked across to get my
41:37
bachelor's. Two years later, I got my
41:39
master's. But what I recall is being a
41:42
young mother, trying to take care of your family and work
41:45
without assistance is just like people wouldn't give you, you
41:53
know, they kind of would judge you on your circumstance.
41:56
And so I wouldn't get a lot of opportunities.
41:58
But what I learned from that is like I've started at the very,
42:02
very bottom of the rung and worked myself up.
42:06
And I just think that like somebody might say, well, would
42:08
you change anything? I'm not sure that I would
42:11
because I think the person that I've become has led me to the
42:15
leadership style that I have because I understand what it's
42:18
like. I understand what it's like to
42:19
be hungry. I understand what it's like to
42:21
be broke. I understand what it's like to
42:22
have your lights off, not have the perfect place to live,
42:27
having doors shut in your face just because you know of a
42:31
judgment or you don't have that degree.
42:34
And I mean, honestly, the reason I went and got my degree so no
42:36
one could tell me I, you know, no, because I didn't have it.
42:40
And I wanted to get my masters for the same reason is like, I
42:44
also think that like when I'm looking at people, I don't
42:46
judge. There's so many smart people
42:51
that may not look good on paper. I was one of those people and
42:54
you got to give them a chance. And so if that's my own little
42:57
way in life is to be that person, I can tell people like,
43:02
even if you have a kid early or you want to change your, what
43:08
you want to do that you can totally do it.
43:11
And hopefully, like you just pass that kindness on to others.
43:14
There have been people who have been kind to me in the most
43:17
unexpected ways that I can't, like I can't even explain from
43:21
the woman who gave me, you know, just a little bit of respect
43:25
even though I couldn't pay my $6 a week child care bill.
43:29
But the way she treated me with respect and understanding has
43:33
stick with me my entire life, so I have to.
43:38
Imagine that was a very difficult time.
43:41
You're a mother at 15, three kids at 18, working three jobs,
43:46
trying to support yourself, your kids, you know, find stable
43:49
housing. Lots of people judging you, lots
43:52
of people shutting doors in your face, some people that showed
43:56
kindness along the way. And it still sticks with you to
43:59
this day. And in what seemed to be very
44:01
subtle ways at the time. I'm, I'm curious, Stephanie, at
44:05
what point did you feel kind of the dark clouds start to lift
44:10
and think, OK, all of this struggle, all of this hard work
44:15
is finally paying off and we're going to be all right?
44:20
I feel like they come in different phases of your life
44:24
where things aren't like if you were to say, Hey, this is
44:26
textbook perfect. It's not test textbook perfect.
44:30
But like, let me, let me give you an example.
44:32
So I go to, I come to Nashville in 9394.
44:37
I come to work for AI started answering phones here when 10
44:41
Care was just launching. Like that was all the buzz 10
44:44
Care was about to launch. So this company that I worked
44:47
for had 24/7 phone coverage and somebody had to be there all the
44:50
time and I worked for them for a time.
44:55
But when there's something that I do also know is like, I know
44:58
when it's time to move on for another opportunity and I do
45:01
that without fear. But like getting that next thing
45:06
you've learned this thing. So you can you start at the
45:09
bottom, you're answering phones, you learn customer service, you
45:11
know, you learn how to deal with with difficult personalities,
45:15
you hone your communication skills with people when you're
45:18
dealing with the kind of a healthcare adjacent insurance
45:21
type situation you get to take, I got to take all of that.
45:25
That helped me land my next job and I continue to do that as I
45:31
as I go. So to me, when you talking about
45:32
when, when do you know there's a light at the end of the tunnel?
45:35
Well, when I got that next job, there was light.
45:38
When I got an increase, there was light, you know, when I
45:40
worked for somebody that I really respected and loved to
45:43
work for. Like when I learned something
45:46
new that no, because you learned something, things people can't
45:49
take knowledge away from you. I learned that pretty early on.
45:53
I also learned to be a little bit fearless.
45:57
Like I, I will take a risk. I will walk out and do the thing
46:01
because I believe in myself because that's who I had to
46:03
believe on and rely on growing up and also taking care of my
46:08
kids. And so like there's not one
46:11
light, there's many lights, there's not one.
46:15
Destination. It's lots of little waypoints.
46:17
No, you. Gotta appreciate those like have
46:20
you ever broken up with somebody and then you think back and go
46:24
like it was heartbreaking maybe where they broke up with you and
46:26
then you go, man, I sure am so glad that I dodged that bullet.
46:33
I'm not gonna like I and any. Details you want to share there,
46:36
Stephanie or we'll, we'll just kind of leave it at that.
46:39
Just leave it at. That like, it's that kind of
46:40
thing is like everybody's been. There.
46:42
Yeah, everybody. 'S been there, but it's like
46:44
it's not, it's a, it's lights. It's like high points and low
46:48
points. How do you think your
46:51
experience, what I'm going to call a challenging experience
46:53
when you know you're a teenage mother?
46:55
How do you think that has come into play with your role as CEO
47:02
and COO there at Ackland and being able to relate to a lot of
47:08
different types of employees? I mean, that's.
47:10
That's pretty. That's pretty like I can relate
47:13
to a lot of people. I have AI, can connect with a
47:17
lot of people. But I think for me and my
47:20
leadership style, what's what's important and what has really
47:27
affected that has been like I know that I'm always going to be
47:31
kind. I'm always going to try to be
47:33
direct. I'm always going to try to be
47:36
ethical. And if I have to make very tough
47:37
decisions, it will be with kindness, with directness.
47:42
And so I think that I don't go to sleep at night worried about
47:48
any kind of cross contentment. What did I say over here and
47:51
what did I say over there? I feel like being authentic all
47:54
the time works and it works for me.
47:57
And so like, I can have this conversation with people and
48:00
just be like, hey, you know, I might not be happy with
48:03
something, but we have a direct conversation.
48:05
And I feel like they know that. I still support them, but I'm
48:09
just pointing something out and I need you to listen.
48:11
I'm going to listen to you. I want to learn and grow as
48:13
well. But yeah, I think that having
48:16
going through all of those things has like been the
48:18
influence of not judging and being open and being aware if
48:23
someone is going through something and allowing space for
48:26
that. What's the significance of the
48:29
picture in the background there? Which one?
48:33
The Buddha? Oh man, I when I was coming up
48:42
as a kid we were 7th day Adventist and I am no longer 7th
48:48
day Adventist. But when I became a young adult,
48:51
I wanted to explore other religions because I was like,
48:55
this can't be the only religion. There's so many religions.
48:58
And so when I was able to do my internship in DC, I lived on
49:01
16th St. and 16th St. in DC is where all the churches are.
49:07
Like they're all the different churches.
49:09
So you have mosque, you have temple, you have the Buddhist
49:12
temple. And I spent my summer visiting
49:16
every single one that would allow me in.
49:18
You know, there's sometimes you have to have your hair covered
49:21
and I had to learn some things, but I went to everyone that
49:23
would allow me to visit. And I just something about the
49:27
Buddha and the Buddhist principles, they resonate with
49:30
me. Just be kind to ants.
49:34
Like the smallest things have significance in the world.
49:36
And I used to feel very small, but I I feel like I have
49:40
significance in the world. And so like, these are kind of
49:43
around my house a little. Yeah.
49:47
Are there? Any other mentors, books,
49:50
experiences that we haven't called out already that have
49:52
been helpful to you along your way?
49:55
So many, I don't know if they're going to be all around business.
50:04
That's OK. Just I have found like you're
50:09
talking about mentorship, right? Mentorship or books?
50:13
Did you say mentorship? Yeah.
50:14
Mentorship books, you know, and I also think about, you know,
50:17
kind of your, you know, the challenges of being a teenage
50:20
mom. If there was, you know, anybody
50:21
that was, you know, kind of just offering a, a helping hand that
50:25
was rather significant to you, this would be a, a chance to
50:29
give them a, a shout out. So kind of kind of wherever you
50:31
want to go with that question. Stephanie.
50:33
Yeah. I feel like they have been like
50:37
again throughout my life where the lady who was kind to me at,
50:44
at the daycare that I had my kids years later when I first
50:48
became a CEO. Oh, she's getting honored at the
50:50
Athena awards. I get there really late and I,
50:56
I'm at the back of the room, but then they allow for people to
50:58
speak and I'm the last person to speak.
51:01
And like, I'm in like now I'm kind of in the center of the
51:03
room. And I told her that about that
51:06
story about when I couldn't pay the $6 a kid where she was so
51:10
polite to me. She called me, my maiden name is
51:12
Woodard. So she'd say Miss Woodard come
51:14
into my office and she'd say, hey, you have to pay this or
51:16
whatever. I know it's difficult.
51:18
She didn't treat me like I was like not important or
51:22
disrespecting me because I was, I got to get up and tell that
51:25
story to her in front of 500 people and tell her how much I
51:31
appreciated her and where I was in my life and how she still
51:34
stuck out for me. And that was like 20 years ago.
51:38
That, that 20 something years ago that that happened.
51:41
And I wish I could remember her name right now, but I, I, I,
51:46
it's evading me, but it's not that.
51:48
It's just things like that where I find these people who take a
51:54
moment to pour into me or give me an opportunity, like Darryl
51:57
Freeman and Zykron give me an opportunity to step into his
52:01
door without any experience at all allowing me to fail, right?
52:06
These are the things that I want to make sure that I'm allowing
52:08
other people to do. It just happens throughout my
52:11
life, like finding a mentor that is way younger than me when I
52:17
was going through a really tough time.
52:19
Like finding those people, like they don't know it.
52:24
They probably don't know that they had such a significant
52:26
impact to me. But like Ryan Villanueva that I
52:29
talked to with Cruz, lets me just say whatever the heck I
52:32
want to say without judgment, right?
52:34
And just always being able to relate it back to something,
52:37
right? It's just I have them throughout
52:39
my whole entire career in my life.
52:42
That's fantastic and it is fun and it's really rewarding to
52:46
ourselves and our own hearts when we can remember back to
52:49
those and give call outs to those people that have been so
52:52
helpful to us and in ways that, you know, maybe they didn't
52:55
realize at the time. Yeah.
52:57
Yeah. Is there something fun or
53:00
interesting about you, Stephanie, that we haven't
53:03
touched on today that might be fun to kind of share with the
53:06
audience, I feel like. People who are really close to
53:08
me probably know this, know this already.
53:10
So I'm going to just I, during the time that I was like also in
53:15
my career, traveling around or whatever, I was modeling.
53:20
So I was modeling out of New York.
53:21
I was modeling out of California.
53:23
I went to Paris. So I've been in magazines.
53:26
I was on the cover of the New York Post.
53:30
And so like, it was always like a hobby to me.
53:32
And I know that probably pisses off people who are like, my
53:34
whole career is modeling. What do you mean?
53:36
But I got these incredible opportunities to, you know, I
53:41
went to to Paris and I was in A2 spread magazine that this woman
53:45
just kind of reached out to me to ask me if I would be willing
53:49
to come and she'd see me do some other things like some other ads
53:53
for folks. But yeah, I, I've been able to
53:56
do so, so many incredible things from humble beginnings that
54:00
like, I love the fact that I was able to experience that Zykron
54:06
was like my first experience in having a private plane take me
54:09
to my meetings. Like I've had so many like cool
54:11
things that have happened. I coach my, my youngest, my
54:14
youngest daughter is 16. And so I coach her softball team
54:20
in the summer. So any of my time off is
54:22
coaching the travel ball team, which I love because that was
54:26
big time commitment. Yeah, it.
54:27
Was it is. But I love it so much because I
54:29
get to talk to these young women.
54:31
I remember how I was. I think part of the reason why,
54:34
you know, at 15, I was kind of going through some weird
54:37
childhood stuff that was really tough.
54:39
And I feel like it's so important to tell these 15 and
54:41
16 and 17 and 18 year olds that are, you know, that they're
54:44
fantastic just how they are. Like it's a way for me to mentor
54:47
to them in a sport that gives them confidence, That gave me
54:52
confidence playing ball. I was really good.
54:54
And so like I love that that I get to be with her, one, to
54:58
share that experience with my daughter, but also be able to
55:00
talk to other girls and make them understand how how
55:05
important they are just as they are, how to have a voice, right
55:10
and be confident because some of those girls are now like they
55:13
got their college scholarships. So any way that I can help them
55:16
get there? Like that's my one way of me
55:19
giving back in that way. So that's like, I love coaching.
55:23
My dad was a wonderful coach to me.
55:25
I played baseball, so I'm giving you like tidbits of a lot of
55:29
different things. But I played baseball for three
55:31
years. My dad was my coach before.
55:33
He said the girls or the boys were getting too big and he
55:36
wanted me to switch over to softball.
55:38
But I was way better than my brothers.
55:39
So if they see this, just know that Dad said I was better than
55:43
you. All right, we're going to stir
55:47
up a little sibling rivalry here.
55:49
Yeah, that's fun. Just got one more question for
55:52
you, Stephanie. But before I ask it, I want to
55:54
do 2 things for those listening today.
55:56
I know that you love today's content.
55:57
Please hit the like, share or Subscribe button on your
56:00
favorite podcast app. Stephanie, I also want to let
56:02
people know the best way to get in touch with you.
56:04
What would that be? Awesome.
56:06
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, but I'm, I, I'm on LinkedIn.
56:10
I am at, You can also e-mail me. I'm, I'm very open to that as
56:14
well, stephanie@aclandavenue.com.
56:18
Like if people want to talk about anything that I've talked
56:21
about, I'm I'm there for it. That's really cool.
56:24
So last question for you, I'm kind of curious what you see the
56:27
biggest changes coming to your industry in the next couple of
56:30
years. How do you how do you see things
56:31
unfolding? I feel like there's a more, I, I
56:36
feel like I've seen it right, but we, there's more dependence
56:40
on near shore capabilities for companies and offshore
56:45
capabilities for companies. So I feel like I hear more and
56:48
more that that's the way to go because it, you know, it's
56:51
cheaper than US resources. I also know that like I feel
56:55
like they're understanding, like even though you can't compete
56:58
with rupee in our industry, but they do see some value to having
57:02
a near shore team. Like I feel like that's
57:05
uncovering more and more. We're trying to also like expand
57:10
from Latin America to other places that are the same time
57:14
zone that could potentially be another resource pool for us.
57:18
But I know like, I think my answer is I'm, I'm starting to
57:22
see more reliance on the near shore model.
57:26
I know that in our business, they require more flexibility.
57:30
I think AI is going to play a part in how we deliver to our
57:35
clients. I don't know exactly what that
57:37
will be, but I know it's coming. Like I think everybody kind of
57:40
knows it's going to shift. I don't, I'm not 100% sure in
57:44
how hopefully just making us better at what we do, but like
57:49
there's so many models that are very similar to to to what we
57:53
do. But you know, you got to find
57:55
that company companies care about working with companies
57:59
that care about what they care about.
58:01
Like what's the relationship like?
58:04
A lot of times I'm just, you know, checking in on on people
58:08
on clients or potential clients and just saying hi, what's going
58:11
on or sending them stuff that I know that we talked about.
58:15
So that relationship model doing business is alive and well.
58:18
And I think that we'll have to depend on it more and more as
58:21
the years go on. A follow up question.
58:23
For you, Stephanie, because you've mentioned this a few
58:25
times in the interview that with the Near Shore model, you know
58:28
using Latin America resources, but you can't compete cost wise
58:33
with Indian developers, the rupee as you put it.
58:37
But what what are the the big advantages to the near shore
58:41
model that you guys are able to offer?
58:43
Is it being in the same time zone?
58:46
Is it maybe a different caliber of assistance?
58:48
Yeah. Both.
58:49
So it's in the, it's very much like we're in central time zone.
58:54
Their time zone never changes. So there'll be a time where
58:56
they're in the same time and there'll be a time when they're
58:59
an hour ahead or behind. So maybe an hour ahead, but like
59:04
it's the nearest shores that time that you can connect with
59:07
someone in the same time zone and get your answers right away.
59:10
Check on, you know where your projects are.
59:13
Like it's they're working at the same pace that you are.
59:16
And then it's the communication too, like I said before, is the
59:19
caliber of people that we get are equitable to anyone.
59:25
Like if there was someone's going to equate the US resource,
59:29
our resources are outstanding. They also have a voice.
59:33
They also are, you know, experts in their industry.
59:37
So they're going to be able to tell you whether something's not
59:39
going to work or it is going to work.
59:40
They're not order takers. We are not order takers.
59:43
So it's just part of that relationship that you build with
59:46
customers that you can be able to tell them you build that
59:49
trust by not telling them everything that they want to
59:52
hear, but what they need to hear in our opinions about where they
59:55
should go, right discussions as opposed to we can do this and we
59:59
can do it in this amount of time.
1:00:01
We're not, we're not even, we're not even promising whatever.
1:00:04
If you come to us for the time, we're going to say, well, that's
1:00:06
not really how we we do that. You're not going to have the
1:00:09
best outcome. So the way we do what we're
1:00:12
doing is, is, is aimed at the best outcomes possible, not to
1:00:18
reach a timeline, but to also best time possible to get you to
1:00:21
your revenues faster for your application development or
1:00:24
something you have to like you have a release date for or
1:00:28
something you have to get done in a certain amount of time
1:00:30
because it's dependent on the next step or the net, you know,
1:00:34
some release. But yeah, I feel like that's the
1:00:37
difference. Stephanie, I want to be the
1:00:41
first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your
1:00:43
story with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:00:45
No, thank you. For having me.
1:00:47
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
1:00:50
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:00:52
today.