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Navigating the Journey of Leadership with Aj: The Daylight Experience · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And on this podcast, we hear from amazing influential leaders, their game-changing insights, and what has helped them to become the great leaders that they are, and to help you become an unstoppable leader today.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to welcome to the show AJ.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: He is the CEO, right, and of Market Circle.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they have an amazing product called Daylight, which is a CRM.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: You do sales and you do project management on that software as well.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot wait for you guys to hear his insights.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: He has uh an interesting journey of how we became got to Canada.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you check out his LinkedIn profile to read some of that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have something about bugs, because he's got a little story about cockroaches.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But um AJ, welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me on.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm so glad.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So so first and foremost, you you know, you're you're in Canada.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: What compelled you to start Market Circle in Daylight?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the root of that is that the previous job that I had, I got walked out politely.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, just various pol political things or whatever, like internal company politics.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I got walked out and you know, I had a nice package, so it wasn't like they walked me out uh for nothing.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decided to start a consulting gig, and I did consulting for a little while.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And while I was doing the consulting, I saw this this thing on on eBay about eBay, this, you know, one of these shows about eBay.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, well, you know, who does auctions?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, real businesses negotiate.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided that, you know, how hard could that be?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Make a website that where you can put something up for sale and you can ask a price, and somebody could counteroff for a different price, and you can negotiate after a certain number of negotiations if it's great.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: The you know, the deal is made and you move on.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's you know, I was naive, I was very naive, and I decided that, you know, I'll how hard could this be?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So let me do it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I started that, you know, the next day.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I started after looking at that show, and I decided, like, I gotta do something.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is this is god can't be that hard.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how market circle started.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Which not what we do today, we had to pivot a number of times, but that's how it started.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you started with so that's so it was a marketplace.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it market circle.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's why that you know, we could get we couldn't get market square or marketplace because the domains were taken, but market circle was available, so I I grabbed it.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you your company is going along.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about the trajectory of going from you know the market circle to daylight.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened was as we were building up uh market circle, I raised some friends and family money for that particular thing.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we built a system, we had transactions, and then I was going out there to find VC money to take it to the next level.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I managed to get to the very, very top VCs in the valley uh through hook and you know, yeah, hook and crook.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I got there, I was supposed to do a presentation, but the day I got there was when the dot com bubble burst.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I never got to make my presentation.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was again walked out.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were we were now stuck with the situation.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've built this thing, we have this.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do we close the company?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, friends and family money would be lost, or do we do something else?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So uh myself and and Mike, who was with me at the time, he's still with me, uh, as our COO.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, you know, why don't we just do consulting again, like we did before, and you know, pay back um, or like you did before, and and pay back the the investors.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know what, that's probably the right thing to do.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we did consulting again.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we went back to consulting.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And during that process, I was a sales guy, you know.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I but I was also coding.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to wear multiple hats.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what would happen is I would forget to follow up when I was supposed to follow up, and when I did follow up, I'd forget where I left off, which is you know, it doesn't look professional at all, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not, I'm not gonna close any deals like this.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: So so what happened was we had to do something, and we were on this esoteric developer, you know, Apple developer platform, and there was no applications for it for managing that kind of thing.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we decided, you know, again, how hard could it be?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: We made our own, and that was the birth of daylight.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: So daylight was to help me uh not lose track of when I had to follow up, and then when I did follow up, not lose track of where the hell I left, I left off with these people.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how daylight was born.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: So and now how long has Daylight been running?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: So Daylight, the application we started in in 2000, in like late 2000, okay, uh, for ourselves, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2001, um some people at Apple got wind of it and convinced me to sell it as a product.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I started selling it as a product uh in 2002, and there was not enough money coming from it to replace the consulting money.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it took till 2007 for us to be able to replace the consulting revenue.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So in 2007, we became a product company, and at that time it was uh a license-based on-premise.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you had to buy your own server, you have to put the software on the server, and you have to manage your own network, and and and so forth.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so that was the pivot.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next pivot was in in like uh 2013, 2014 is when we started our cloud backend-based system.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we moved to the cloud and then we became a software as a in 2018.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: We became a proper software as a service uh business.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So Apple pushed you.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not, you're not.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I saw I see online that you are a Apple, it it obviously works on Apple and Mac products.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Will it also work on, is it something that you're also putting together for um non-Apple products?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there there is we do integrate uh with other systems via you know the server-side stuff and the back end, but not specifically, maybe in the future, but not at the moment.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right now it it's all Apple ecosystem.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so how many people work at daylight?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: How many employees?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we uh you know it ebbs and flows.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've had, you know, if we were to look at the total number of uh employees plus contractors that are basically working full-time, but they're in different countries and whatnot, we're looking approximately 50 people.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's you know, it's a it's a good size, not too crazy.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So here's here's a here's something that's kind of been ruminating in the back of my mind.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the idea of uh of the sales, you know, sales and and leading people, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how were the times that you got walked out?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, how have those times influenced you as a leader in running now the company that you have with 50 employees?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you know it it what what it uh taught me is um you know, you may have disagreements, but you're human and you have to, you know, you want to be treated with respect and you should therefore treat people with respect.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so it goes both ways.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's you know, and and thankfully each time it was a case of, you know, it was polite.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was not, you know, bad or anything like that.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I do remember very distinctly saying, thinking to myself, well, thank God it wasn't bad, and and remembering that, you know, I would not want to do something uh like that to other people because we've had the situation where we've had to ask people to leave, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's happened a few times, and so you want to do it respectfully and uh and and really uh sometimes it's the best decision for for them and for you, right?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're not whoever it is, you know, we've had people that have been with us and they're not doing well.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not doing like that part of, you know, and it's impacting us because they're not doing well, but they're they're in the wrong, they're in the wrong situation.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I had it took me a while to remember to to put have the perspective, if they're not doing well, then you know, they're not in the right and sorry, they're not in the right environment, so they're not doing well.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's not right for them, it's not right for us, it's not just about us, it's about them too.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you know, you you kind of uh um build up this idea of empathy and understanding the other person's perspective so that when you have to make these difficult kinds of things, whether you being walked out or you're walking somebody else out, that you do it respectfully.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really cool.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I so listeners, I really want you to kind of take note to this because I think this isn't really, really important.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what we're talking about here actually is a part of it is the emotional intelligence and values, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So making sure that the values of the people that are in your fold or that um if if you're the leader or if you're part of a team or part of a company, that your values are aligned.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're if you can use you know empathy or the emotional intelligence to share with somebody that either maybe they're not in the right position or it's not it's not the right fit.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they've done something wrong, it's just because it's not the right fit.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not they're not able to excel and and it, you know, it affects them negatively because they know they're not able to, they're not excelling.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: But they're they're you know, they're stuck.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so the best thing is sometimes and it's harsh at the time, it appears harsh at the time.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but then later when you know you you you know, we we stay in contact with people, whatnot, they they end up finding a good job and they're happy.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're they've found a better um a better environment for them.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually, and it's not burning the bridge.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's basic basically almost like saying thank you to the person who almost like you know, you saying to the person who walked you out, you know, almost like thank you very much for opening the future for me.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and opening up the future.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, a door closing means another one gets to open.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And as a and as a leader, we have to remind the people in our charge that just because they're not a right fit for our company or our team, there may be another place.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably there's a better place out there for them.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a great key thing for leadership.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and you know, there's there's there this is when when it's really different you know, you're in a predicament, you know you, you know, these are it's a good person, it's not a good fit, and you have to kind of work up to the in your mind that you know I have to do this, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's very easy when somebody is a total jerk and totally doing the wrong thing because that's easy, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, that's the it's it's the ones that they're trying, it's just not working, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you and you in fact to like them as people, right?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: But but nonetheless, even the jerks, you walk them out nicely, politely, you never know when you'll you'll run into them again.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or you know, they can refer somebody that's great as well, right?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's happened too.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: We we've had situations where somebody didn't work out for us at all.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: We walked them out.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was at the very beginning, like you know, we realized early on that this wasn't gonna be a fit, and they referred somebody that ended up working out great for us.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's actually really that's really, really great.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, what part, you know, as a as the leader you are, I mean, you got you you've you've been able to see when you've needed to pivot, right?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: In your business.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what were some of those signs?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, obviously, I've you know, obviously walking at the dot com, you're like, okay, now I gotta do.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was that was pretty, you know, that was pretty uh right.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was like a cut and dry.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: That was right, right.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But have there been other points in your, you know, in your leadership and in the journey where you've even been like, you know what, there's something going on where you've almost like you you realize there may be in a blind, there may have been a blind spot or something that you didn't see.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that happens all the time, unfortunately.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, this is the this is the reality, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't know what you don't know.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, or or there's a saying, you know, you are where you are because you don't know what you don't know.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and so then how do you, you know, so what happens in that situation is that you sometimes something, you know, talking to customers or or just the plain realizations when you're not hitting the metrics that you set for yourself, like you know, you're expecting X number of signups, it's just not happening.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why, why?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you dig into it and then you look at other companies, what have they done?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: What are they doing different, etc.?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Something will illuminate, like something will come up.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: It says, okay, well, this.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh then you have to kind of make take some decisive actions.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when you when when you know that gets highlighted and you validate that that's true, and then you gotta act decisively to then make the change so that you can either adjust or pivot.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like in some cases it's an adjustment, but an adjustment could be a pretty, you know, can have a pretty big impact.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: But other cases you're pivoting altogether, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because the market situation has changed, uh, so that you know your old offering is just not gonna cut it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I so something that you know, I'm a Mac user.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love my Mac.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know I guess a couple of kind of questions that are kind of coming to my my brain are, you know, you've got you have daylight, you know, what made you pick Mac?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of number, sort of question number one.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And number two is how are you marketing it now?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it you know, and how are you promoting?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So so there so there is so those two two good questions and two separate.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's uh let's answer the first one first, which is the you know, why Apple, right?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So when when when I I kind of imagined daylight way back in the day, um the idea was then and still is to help small businesses grow, right?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of, you know, you're starting perhaps by yourself and you have you're ambitious and you want to grow a business to five, 10, 15 people in size or or what have you.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're when you're in there, you're doing everything.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're you know, especially at the beginning, you're wearing 10 hats.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, you know, running Windows computers and all this kind of stuff was a headache.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like a, you know, you needed an IT person to keep systems running.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, it was an easy decision to say, okay, well, the the Mac is easier to you know manage and easier, easier with the user.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why we gravitated that way.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we built an application that is native, like it's not you know, browser-based or anything like that.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a native application.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why we chose to first on the Mac, and then we stayed there because it kind of re you know, it kept getting reinforced that it was easier to run stuff.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Macs are easier than Windows.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: We know that everybody kind of knows this, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the that's the reason for that.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then the second one is how do we how do we market?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So in the past, um, so there's word of mouth has always been there.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth is is still there and was there from the beginning.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: What we do in the past was first we would you know be advertising or or talked about on various Mac sites.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: So a bunch of Mac people would learn about us.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that worked until a while.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then that kind of went away, and then it was all about AdWords.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So AdWords is uh was was a big thing.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now AdWords are you know on the dwindle for us.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so what's changing now?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's more social media, podcasts, etc., which is why I'm you know doing podcasting.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so so so it it's changing, and we have to adapt to change, but word of mouth is still um a strong element in terms of how we get new customers.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so did you see a shift in your business, or have you seen a shift in your business, you know, with you know, was it COVID?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Did COVID have a huge impact because people are doing more work from home?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, what has been something that has been like, well, that really I'll give you I'll give you one example that uh where we made the wrong decision.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So okay, yeah, that's wrong decisions are always good decisions.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's learned from.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: So in in in 2023, so we have part of our our system is we integrate with Apple Mail, and then in Apple Mail, you you know, you can see all this daylight stuff in Apple Mail, and then you can link things and we we copy the email in, it's part of the history, etc.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's pretty involved in integration.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And in 2023, uh Apple said, you know what, we're closing that door because of security reasons, and here's an alternative that that we're giving you so that you can continue to integrate.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was you know, we're not the only ones that integrate with Apple Mail, there are other applications that do so as well.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we had this idea in the past that you know this day could come.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we, you know, the idea was that we would add mail capabilities in daylight.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: That was like our kind of plan in terms of you know, if this falls apart, then we have this plan.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so on the on the on iOS, on the phone and on the iPad, we have mail working.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so the idea was was that when this hammer would drop, we would then bring that to the Mac.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: But wrong decision.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: When we looked at the extension thing that they gave us and we looked at the data, um, you know, we had a few people on on staff that were very data driven.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, they're making their decisions with data as opposed to perhaps talking with the customer and data, right?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh or you know, if you're only talking to the customer, you also don't have the whole picture.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking only at data, you don't have the the whole picture.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: You really need to marry the two together, right?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, that's the lesson.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: But but at that time it was, you know, data, data, data.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we looked at the data, but we happen to look at the wrong data to see that, okay, you know, these many customers will be impacted.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, let's go with the extension idea as opposed to the built-in mail uh capability.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: We went with that.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: It took us a uh quite a bit of time, but we got something out.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was it's working, it it's currently working, etc.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: But customers don't love it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: They and they they in fact hate it.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the wrong decision there was you know to go through this roundabout way to get the functionality as opposed to just buckling down and and putting the mail client, uh, the mail functionality right into daylight.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that, you know, we we lost a number of customers because of that.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and and that that had a significant impact on our business.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're you know, we're we're writing the wrong, right?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And mail is coming in daylight, like it's an early access, we have customers using it, etc.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the right decision.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the the the moral of the story here is don't just look at data, data, data.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Don't just look at customer, customer, customer.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Just try to marry the two.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because at the time when we were making this decision, uh, you know, whenever I'd be talking to customers, they'd be like, you know, that's one of your unique differentiating factors.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then the data was like not lining up.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, you know, in that case, you should go with the customer.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's differentiating you is really huge.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So now we'll get that back, but you know, now we've had this lull in between.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And some pissed off customers.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hopefully you'll get them get them back.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because it's we will get them back.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of positive, very positive comments.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's really that's really, really great.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I and I love this because it, you know, it's it's um I love how humbled you are about that too.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, because you know, it was it's a blip, it was a lesson learned.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, mistake, maybe, I don't know, but but learned lesson to then say, okay, now this is how we need to go forward.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a key leadership um process and and tactic too, to to share with your your team and to others that you know what, we're we're not always right, but we can acknowledge that when we made a decision that wasn't the right decision.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we can fix it.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And fix it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that the the first part is acknowledging the fact that the decision was wrong, right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: The um and and that what what I hope to accomplish with that in terms of the team is that when when at different level layers, when the a decision is wrong, that they're not afraid to come to me and say, hey, we made the wrong decision here.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm not gonna freak out, right?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because I made I made the wrong decision too.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: So so so if I can make wrong decisions, so can you.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: We can figure it out, right?
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just don't be sloppy in the first place, but you know, if it happens that, you know, we made the wrong decision, that's fine.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's fix it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think that's a again, I I just I really want leaders to understand that this is actually just a really key leadership lesson, is that when we acknowledge the fact that we've made a mistake, it's not you know, there's always a way to fix something.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you acknowledge it, if you right, if you acknowledge it, right?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like in or you know, I'll I'll share something that happened the other day.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have a a VA that um sent out that was putting together a an email for me and she's new and she thought hitting schedule was going to alert me to prove something.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: It ended up going out.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: It went out to a thousand people.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was completely wrong.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, okay, well, we we learned.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, obviously, you know, nothing we can do about it, but it was for me.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, you know what?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, guess what?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we need to do.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a freak out, don't get angry and upset about it, because there's not because it's a we can learn from it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: We learn and can go move beyond.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna didn't change anything crazy, yeah.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we can always learn from things, we can acknowledge it, acknowledge the people, and if the person and and if the person or if there's some group or a person who's made a mistake too, acknowledge it when you hide things, it doesn't go well either.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: It gets worse, right?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: It gets worse.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: The the on the flip side, you know, if they make the same mistake twice, that's a red flag.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, right, right.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So so uh um, so so yeah, so so acknowledging the mistakes is is important, and the fact that mistakes can be made, okay, we can fix it, right?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: This this, you know, it and it's gonna become more and more common if you in my estimation, because there's so much information now, um, and and it's very easy to get caught in in a rabbit hole of information in the in an echo chamber that you make this decision and then you turn out it turns out to be wrong because when you know when it meets the market, um it's gonna be different.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: So so it's important to recognize that and a get early feedback so that you can change it as as soon as possible.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, early feedback is really cool and really important to have so that you can you know get the customers' feedback because they're the ultimate end user right, right?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Whether they like it or not like it, and finding those key people to interview and to have on your, you know, you know, as your sound.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And like an advisory, uh you have some trusted, some trusted customers.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: So what we do, what we do about this is we know there are there are a set of customers that are like trusted customers that we, you know, I can call up anytime and and just uh ask them and whatnot.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then what we also do is we always try to get some new ones, new customers, because the the older customers, they're they've already figured it out, right?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Versus the newer ones, uh and the situation changes, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: When you're talking about new customers starting new businesses.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So speaking of new business, so as you're thinking about I've as you as you started this, if there is somebody who's starting uh, you know, in the throes of starting a new business, what is like one of the biggest tips that you or insights that you could share?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your business has now been going and you've had a couple of different businesses, right?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So something that you could share.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the the one thing I like to say is that starting a business is like a rocket um uh off the launch pad.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at, you know, to start a business and get it going, it takes a lot of energy, right?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Once you get it going, it's it's much easier to maintain, right?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: But at the beginning, um, you know, you have to put all the full thrusters and and go full, you know, expend like 90% of your fuel just to get to you know low uh low parts of the atmosphere, right?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, or high parts of the atmosphere.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the same thing in a business, right?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning, it takes a lot of effort.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of a lot of things you don't know.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to spend that extra time figuring the stuff out.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to humble yourself and and and call people and talk to people and and whatnot, uh, so so that you can kind of, you know, that that takes a lot of energy.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's like, you know, 12-hour days, 14-hour days sometimes.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Until you get to a certain point, then at that certain point, you can, you know, you have enough money coming in, you figured out your business, you can scale it now.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can scale it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's true.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're talking about scaling, is there is there a point in time when you're like, okay, now, you know, we've been here, now we're ready to scale.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is there like a so you know we have the luxury or are we have the luxury of of seeing many businesses, right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have lots of customers, thousands of customers around the world.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I see three kinds of key phases.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: The first phase is what I call the leap phase.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're leaping into business, you're leaping off a cliff, maybe in your mind, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're figuring stuff out.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh the next stage I call the growth stage.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there, and the growth stage is you're still, you know, you're figuring out your repeatable income, kind of like like how your repeatable sales process, your repeatable execution process.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third one is scaling, where you're basically throwing more resources because you're just duplicating that that that system that you have.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the kind of three phases that I see.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, in the scaling one, there's you know, that there's a lot of sub phases there because you know, when you're adding, when you've have 10 people, uh, it's different than managing a company of 20 people, right?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or 25 people.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: So for us, we have these plateaus five, then 10 to 12 was another plateau, and then 25 was another plateau, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're at this, you know, another yet another plateau.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So so there are these, you know, within the scaling part, these these uh plateaus that you hit and you have you have to kind of break through.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me a little bit about obviously the software and how much, because obviously it it's something that you obviously worked with, how much did it change?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because you were use you started it for yourself.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: So how much did the did daylight change your that that consulting business?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it um at the at the beginning it was, you know, we were selling, uh, we would do custom custom development work, custom software development work.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so each kind of deal was between 50 and 100, 120,000, that kind of size, right?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: So the the sales cycle was longer, it's not a quick sales cycle, right?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: The sales cycle was longer.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what it kind of taught us was, or taught me, or or you know, was that we were able to kind of um more uh you know, we were able to kind of have a repeatable kind of pattern, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's what it taught me is that ultimately, like if if we were to scale, you know, if we stayed in the consulting business, it would have we would have just basically scaled out these little pods, like, okay, you know, you need to you you have a few people working for a customer, they're doing some custom development work, this is the kind of patterns that we follow, and and then this is how you deliver, and then this is how you verify, and this, etc.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is that that pipeline of of things.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So then you're just repeating that.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: What we did was we we did that, but then we pivoted to being a product company.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it changed, it changed how we um it changed our business fundamentally because we were able to get enough revenue so that we could build a product, and then the product we built it up enough so that we didn't need this this first revenue.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now Daylight, we you know, as a company, you do sales, you know, so CRM.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: So so let me explain.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we what we did is a little bit different than what your typical quote unquote CRM thing, right?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So when when uh the very first thing that I remember looking when I was looking at this is why do CRMs fail?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of CRMs used to fail back then, and they failed because they approached things from the top down, meaning management down, right?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: So management wanted these kinds of reports or whatever, and then people downstream had to kind of put the data in so that the report could be true.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, I don't want to do that, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, and also not only I don't want to do that, but that's one of the reasons it was failing because people weren't putting the data in, and therefore the report would not be true.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so instead we flipped it around and we built productivity stuff, like you know, proper calendar, task management, and so forth.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we called that our base layer, right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: These are these things, you know, that that is part of this general productivity, like task management, calendar management, contact management.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then we put another layer on top of this, so not contact management, but notes and stuff like that.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the next layer is contacts, people, companies, and users.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And on top of that is the first part of it is you have to get new business, right?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: As a as a company, you can't exist without customers.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So getting new business, we we called it that because people had an aversion to the term sales.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: When we said sales, they would be like they would they would associate that word with um dirty car salesman.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't do sales.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'd be talking to customers and they'd be like, I don't do sales.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you talking about?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how are you making money if you don't do sales?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Of course you do sales, you just you're you're just offering a service and what you're doing.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: So then we came to the term getting new business.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you get new business.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is sales, right?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to do that, and then finally, when you do that, you've made some promises, right?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: When they've signed on that dotted line on the agreement, you've made some promises.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the next part is you got to deliver on those promises, which is where the project stuff comes in.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, these all sit on top of tasks, notes, and meetings and appointments, etc.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: That that is our base layer.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what makes us different than all the other things out there, is that we have all of this in in kind of like one place, and you don't have to, you know, integrate with five different systems, etc.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's all in one.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's all in one, which is actually really fantastic.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely love it.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what is next for what's what's next in your business?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So what's next for us is you know, there the again, you know, the mail thing that we spoke about, that's the current, you know, main focus.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that, it will be more integrations with with things like Google Calendar and and and so forth, and figuring out how we can leverage AI to help um uh small businesses kind of like, you know, again, the same thing.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do they grow?
• 35:29
  unknown: Right.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And how can we leverage AI in a reasonable with a reasonable cost, um, as opposed to crazy costs?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because then you know.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I absolutely love this.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, as a as a Mac user, I love it.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so are you do you just because I'm as a curiosity, um, do you I saw online that you integrate with HubSpot?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that you also integrate with something like a GHL or GHL go high level?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: So so we have we have like an API and some people, including the HubSpot one, for example, other people did the integration.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't do the integrations, but we have we have an API so so programmers can can you know talk to our back end and so forth.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how that happens.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a few of those.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, we have one uh very strong partner that does a whole bunch of integrations, including in the app itself.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like they, you know, we have a plugin mechanism and they're able to kind of get in there and add some functionality that perhaps we haven't gotten to or is is very specialized.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's fantastic.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what's next for you, AJ?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, um, you know, the the I'm I'm enjoying what I'm doing now.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I have I have two kids.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: I have a 17-year-old daughter and a 21-year-old son.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: So right now my focus is kind of making sure that you know that that that phase of life for them is critical.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and to me, family is very important.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's my main focus right now, right?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Run running the business, making sure that it remains competitive, that customers are happy with what we have, that the word of mouth continues.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then secondly, making sure that the family's all right.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my main focus.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then at some point, you know, maybe I'll and in the meantime, you know, I do take vacations and stuff like that.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: So all right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: So any particular trip that you got planned coming up?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we have um uh a trip to Turkey coming up, and uh and and then also a trip to Dubai.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: So a family trip.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we do these family trips where where we go, all four of us, uh, rent a car, drive around, you know.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a lot of fun.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, AJ, I could talk to you forever.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um how can people connect with you?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Two easy ways.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is our website, daylight.app, d-a-y-l-i-te.app.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you'll see our application and you can try it out.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's a 14-day free trial.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you can also connect with our advisors.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're happy to talk to you.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're not salespeople, but they're you know, they'll advise you.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and then on LinkedIn.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: So on LinkedIn, it's my full name.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's Ali Khan, A-L-Y-K-H-A-N, Jetta, J E T H A.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: You just find me on LinkedIn, connect with me, and I'm there.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not on other social media as much, uh, I'm but I am on LinkedIn and you can find us through through my through our website.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, fantastic.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I will have all those in the show notes too.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So people, but please reach out.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have any business questions, I mean, HA, you've been so successful, and I I have to tell you, I think at some point I may have actually tried Daylight.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually thinking like, oh, now I gotta come back and really look at it again.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so um, I'm gonna be doing that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: We'd be happy to help you with that.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but um seriously, yes, listeners, please connect with AJ.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Check out Daylight because it is really, really robust.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was on there uh looking at it today and I'm like, oh my God, this is really fantastic.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: So connect with him.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if you have found uh listeners, if you have found this podcast, which I hope you have, uh educational or you've gotten some tidbits and snippets that you have written down, please share the podcast with your friends and colleagues.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make great leaders out there.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Great leaders make great happy employees, and that makes a happier world.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm Jacqueline Strominger, and I thank you all for listening.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you, AJ, for being a great guest.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me on.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was really good and that love I could talk to you forever as well.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.