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Advancing Your Tech-Stack from No-Code to Custom Code with John McGann · Budget Your Business

• 0:00
  John McGann: You know, start documenting your unique processes, anything that differentiates your business.
• 0:05
  John McGann: Generic software can handle common workflows pretty well, but your competitive advantage often lies in those uncommon ones.
• 0:13
  John McGann: So you know figuring out what those are is important and then identify you know so essentially your workflow fingerprint.
• 0:19
  John McGann: You know a specific sequence of steps, decision points, data transformations unique to your business.
• 0:25
  John McGann: These are prime candidates for custom development.
• 0:28
  Scott Geller: Hello and welcome to Budget your Business, the podcast for small business owners who want to learn how to financially plan for every aspect of their business.
• 0:37
  Scott Geller: I'm your host, scott Keller, and today I'm joined by John McGann of CloudSource.
• 0:42
  Scott Geller: Hello, john, hey.
• 0:43
  John McGann: John.
• 0:44
  Scott Geller: Good, good.
• 0:45
  Scott Geller: So today we have John on here to talk about upgrading a business's internal software from that MVP or kind of initial version, and how they can take it to the next level.
• 0:57
  Scott Geller: Thanks for joining today, john.
• 0:58
  John McGann: Absolutely Glad to be here.
• 1:00
  Scott Geller: So, John, for the folks who are meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are kind of what you do?
• 1:07
  John McGann: Yeah, so I'm John McGann, founder of CloudSource.
• 1:11
  John McGann: What we do is we help startups and small businesses that have kind of outkicked their coverage with their software solutions and need to get to the next level.
• 1:21
  John McGann: We help them get to that next level and we come in and build out a custom solution for them that makes them truly unique.
• 1:29
  Scott Geller: Okay, very interesting.
• 1:30
  Scott Geller: Yeah, I think that's going to be really helpful today digging into that.
• 1:33
  Scott Geller: So to get us kicked off here, john, I'm not a software guy.
• 1:37
  Scott Geller: I've worked with software companies but maybe you could help me understand, or help our listeners understand.
• 1:42
  Scott Geller: You touched on that next level.
• 1:44
  Scott Geller: What are the levels of software for a company?
• 1:47
  John McGann: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 1:49
  John McGann: So what I typically see is a few different stages.
• 1:54
  John McGann: Initially what we like to call the hamster wheel stage, and that's when you're doing everything.
• 2:00
  John McGann: You are a small team, you're handling everything, you're kind of in the background making things work A lot of spreadsheets, but it works because you are small and lean and you don't have a high customer base.
• 2:14
  John McGann: But as you scale you move in to a more stable, maybe off-the-shelf air table, maybe industry-specific off-the the shelf software.
• 2:25
  John McGann: And then, once you get into this stage, you're good for you know, you're good for some time.
• 2:31
  John McGann: You can get in with the workflow automation, you know, using Zapier or paying for your customizations.
• 2:37
  John McGann: But you know, at a certain point there you start hitting those limitations as well, a pulse kind of snowball, and which drives you into the custom development stage.
• 2:48
  John McGann: And that's when you've gotten big enough to where you know what you need and it makes sense to own your own solution and your software becomes a competitive advantage versus an operational necessity.
• 3:02
  Scott Geller: Okay, I've heard of no code.
• 3:05
  Scott Geller: Where does that fall into that range you just mentioned?
• 3:08
  John McGann: Yeah.
• 3:08
  John McGann: So that range is, you know that's essentially.
• 3:12
  John McGann: You know the early stages.
• 3:14
  John McGann: So using like the no code or even low code to kind of prove out your model, you know you may have, depending on where you are with your business.
• 3:24
  John McGann: If you're just starting out, you know you don't want to put too much money into proving out a concept.
• 3:30
  John McGann: Or you know a business idea or your market, you know, to see if it's going to be viable.
• 3:36
  John McGann: You can use these no-code solutions, which are super valuable, in order to figure all of that stuff out before getting into the custom phase, when it's going to cost you a bit more but you're able to pay for it at that point with money that you've earned through the business.
• 3:54
  John McGann: So you're just taking it to the next level.
• 3:57
  Scott Geller: And what are some of the warning signs?
• 3:58
  Scott Geller: Let's say I'm in that no code or low code stage of my business.
• 4:03
  Scott Geller: I'm sure there's going to be some warning signs of this is where this level is just not working.
• 4:09
  Scott Geller: What are some of those warning signs that you see?
• 4:14
  John McGann: Yeah, it comes in different buckets so you'll see it across the people.
• 4:19
  John McGann: So, for instance, your team spending more time fighting with your tools than actually doing any work, or you know they're having to manually move or retype data, you know.
• 4:30
  John McGann: Or they're even leaving out of frustration due to some of the tools they're having to use.
• 4:35
  John McGann: You know those are some signs.
• 4:36
  John McGann: Processes, so a simple task of taking multiple tools to handle, taking longer to handle.
• 4:43
  John McGann: You also have your data.
• 4:45
  John McGann: So, because you're using various tools, your data becomes siloed and as you grow, different departments may not be able to access certain things.
• 4:53
  John McGann: You may have high paid resources that are spending a lot of time manually entering data, being overpaid to do simple tasks, manually entering data, being overpaid to do simple tasks, and your decisions become outdated because the decisions you're making is on old data, because reports are taking you longer to cobble together Growth that's another area.
• 5:16
  John McGann: So onboarding customers or employees that process taking longer and longer that's a sign there.
• 5:24
  John McGann: Or you're having to turn down business.
• 5:26
  John McGann: Your systems can't handle the complexity, or you're just turning it down out of fear that they can't Budget.
• 5:34
  John McGann: That's another area.
• 5:35
  John McGann: So you're paying for multiple tools or customizations and as you start to scale that starts to balloon up, and this is all ongoing, since you don't actually own your solution, right, so it's.
• 5:49
  John McGann: So we're actually working with a company now that's paying ten thousand dollars just to look into what a customization would cost them to do, and so you know, that's the calculus that they're running in their head, you know, and they're getting bigger and bigger, and you know, seeing that it's time to jump ship Tech.
• 6:11
  John McGann: Obviously, tech is going to be another area.
• 6:13
  John McGann: You know performance issues, temporary solutions are now your permanent workflow, you know, and you start to your kind of user experience starts becoming clunky for your users, which then you start having your customers.
• 6:27
  John McGann: You may start hearing complaints about your system.
• 6:30
  John McGann: Most of the time, though, customers are just going to bail.
• 6:33
  John McGann: They're not going to say a word.
• 6:35
  John McGann: So you're actually lucky to have those vocal early adopters that actually stick it out and give you that feedback.
• 6:41
  Scott Geller: Okay, yeah, you hit some really important ones there.
• 6:45
  Scott Geller: I mean, as far as I'm concerned, not willing to take on new clients, losing existing clients.
• 6:50
  Scott Geller: Those are some Some pretty big warning signs.
• 6:53
  John McGann: Yeah, some are more egregious than others.
• 6:57
  Scott Geller: And I see these signs, I know I need to do something.
• 7:00
  Scott Geller: How do I get started, like, where do I go from there?
• 7:02
  John McGann: Well, so the first really the best and first step, I would say is starting with workflow automation.
• 7:10
  John McGann: So that means mapping out your current processes, looking for those repetitive tasks that require human intervention and highlighting those processes that make you special as well, because those are going to be important to bake into your product.
• 7:31
  John McGann: A critical mistake I see companies make is going custom too early and too quickly.
• 7:37
  John McGann: There's no-code, low-code tools out there that can really help you understand what you actually need before investing and maybe going down the wrong path too far.
• 7:49
  Scott Geller: Yeah, interesting Now in your experience.
• 7:53
  Scott Geller: Then how do I know if it's too early or not?
• 7:55
  Scott Geller: And I like what you're saying is sometimes those somewhat generic is a good way to get started.
• 8:00
  Scott Geller: If I'm starting right off, do I always go no code, or obviously I don't always go custom, but what should I be thinking about as far as how I get going?
• 8:10
  John McGann: Well, like I said, you know, start documenting your unique processes, anything that differentiates your business.
• 8:16
  John McGann: Generic software can handle common workflows pretty well, but your competitive advantage often lies in those uncommon ones.
• 8:24
  John McGann: So you know figuring out what those are is important.
• 8:26
  John McGann: And then identify you know so essentially, your workflow fingerprint.
• 8:30
  John McGann: You know specific sequence of steps, decision points, data transformations unique to your business.
• 8:36
  John McGann: These are prime candidates for custom development.
• 8:39
  John McGann: You know development that you're going to want to look at.
• 8:40
  John McGann: So start with the existing tools before building from scratch, and that way you've got a blueprint for what unique processes you'll need and it will actually cost you less because you'll have a better idea going in.
• 8:54
  John McGann: And then most modern software has APIs and customization options that can bridge that gap for you.
• 9:00
  John McGann: So if you have a somewhat solid solution coming in with a good idea of what you need, you're in a lot better shape and you can still stick with those out-of-the-shelf solutions for things like payment processing, basic CRM features.
• 9:16
  Scott Geller: It doesn't need to be everything just your core processing, gotcha, yeah, I like that.
• 9:21
  Scott Geller: And you don't have to rewrite the entire wheel.
• 9:23
  Scott Geller: Right, you should be thinking about your core, but there's so many CRM processors, there's so many payment processing options out there that you can leverage what's already been built.
• 9:34
  Scott Geller: Right, gotcha, okay.
• 9:36
  Scott Geller: So how far in advance should I be thinking about this?
• 9:40
  John McGann: Yeah, great question.
• 9:41
  John McGann: It's good to be thinking about this stuff early, you know, have it in the back of your mind, you know from an early point.
• 9:50
  John McGann: But you really should start getting serious about it.
• 9:54
  John McGann: Between you know, typically between about $2 million and $5 million annual recurring revenue somewhere in there, right after you know, right after that two mark you should start based on you know what you're doing.
• 10:07
  John McGann: There You'll likely start seeing some cracks At the $5 million.
• 10:11
  John McGann: You know you're pushing it.
• 10:13
  John McGann: That's really kind of your ceiling.
• 10:15
  John McGann: You know you're pushing it.
• 10:19
  John McGann: That's really kind of your ceiling.
• 10:20
  John McGann: And the key is being aware of your technical debt before it becomes painful, you know, and a real problem.
• 10:24
  John McGann: So tracking software costs and complexity early, that stuff helps, you know.
• 10:29
  John McGann: Documenting your processes while they're still simple helps a lot and it also makes the future automation much, much easier.
• 10:38
  Scott Geller: Gotcha All right.
• 10:38
  Scott Geller: Well, let's go down that future automation conversation, John, and maybe you could walk me through.
• 10:44
  Scott Geller: What does a process look like to go from this no-coder generic to something more custom?
• 10:50
  Scott Geller: You talked about how to kind of get ready for it, but I really want to understand the process to actually go through it.
• 11:03
  John McGann: Yeah.
• 11:03
  John McGann: So once you've got so, once you're there, you want to find a partner, you know, somebody that can kind of come in and and help work with you to build out what you need and make sure that this you know.
• 11:11
  John McGann: Talk to a couple different options there.
• 11:13
  John McGann: When you get into these relationships, you know it's.
• 11:16
  John McGann: You know, if you get into a typical company, it's finding a girlfriend.
• 11:19
  John McGann: It's like, you know, finding a wife.
• 11:21
  John McGann: They're hard to get out of and you want to make sure that it's somebody you want to work with.
• 11:27
  John McGann: And then you know, make sure you have buy-in with your stakeholders as well.
• 11:32
  John McGann: Get them involved.
• 11:33
  John McGann: That's important, you know getting their buy-in early, getting their feedback early.
• 11:38
  John McGann: That will also help with their adoption as well.
• 11:41
  John McGann: And then you want to going through this process.
• 11:45
  John McGann: You don't want to take everything and say I want to build this all out as a whole, break it up.
• 11:51
  John McGann: You want to break, you know, chunk it out into small modules and stuff, because things change so fast.
• 11:59
  John McGann: You know technology changes, business needs change, customer needs change and so you don't want to get locked in too much too early.
• 12:07
  John McGann: Give yourself some flexibility.
• 12:09
  Scott Geller: Okay, and breaking it up?
• 12:12
  Scott Geller: Should I be thinking about breaking it up as far, like how should I be thinking about breaking it up as far, like how should I be thinking about breaking it up, like how do I break it?
• 12:19
  John McGann: Yeah.
• 12:19
  John McGann: So you know you want to look at those key areas that are going to A first and foremost, you want to automate out all of the things that you can looking for, those things that are taking time away, and you know those are things that you can easily put into to automate out because you want your employees focused on high value tasks versus grunt work.
• 12:41
  John McGann: There's some things you can also look at too, like on the response times, error rates, customer satisfaction, customer facing metrics like that to look at as well.
• 12:51
  Scott Geller: Okay, and how long should I be expecting to spend?
• 12:56
  Scott Geller: How much time should I?
• 12:57
  Scott Geller: Months, weeks, years, hopefully not, but how long should I be thinking of giving myself enough time to go through this process?
• 13:05
  Scott Geller: Do you mean the process when you actually getting into that custom part?
• 13:13
  Scott Geller: And and you know, I've agreed to have somebody come in and help me with this and I know it's probably.
• 13:20
  Scott Geller: It depends, but maybe you could give us some, some ranges to think about.
• 13:23
  John McGann: Yeah, so.
• 13:24
  John McGann: So yeah, obviously depends on the size of the company how long they waited before making the switch over, but you know it's not going to be a you know a quick and you know a quick thing.
• 13:37
  John McGann: So you're most likely looking at, I would say, at least six months to a year of work, based on the size of your company, and then expect some.
• 13:46
  John McGann: Typically you'll want to have some kind of support following that, after you know you've got, which are different than the monthly fees that you would be paying off the shelf.
• 13:55
  John McGann: You know where you don't own the code or your solution and you're having to continue to pay for updates, changes.
• 14:01
  John McGann: You know this is more from improvement side of your software and you know making it scale and say you know serving your customers and staying on track with technology.
• 14:13
  Scott Geller: You made a comment that I'd like to go back to.
• 14:15
  Scott Geller: John, you mentioned it depends on how long you waited to start this process.
• 14:19
  Scott Geller: Why does that matter?
• 14:21
  John McGann: Yeah, no, that's a good question.
• 14:22
  John McGann: It matters because when you, it becomes much more expensive and disruptive the longer you put it off.
• 14:29
  John McGann: So the later you start, the more you're building around existing constraints versus optimizing based on what you know, what you've learned with those early tools that we were talking about before.
• 14:42
  John McGann: But you know, I've seen companies successfully modernize their internal software in various stages.
• 14:48
  John McGann: You know across the board, so you know it's always doable.
• 14:52
  John McGann: It's just a matter of you know how much money and pain you know you're looking at and that can come in.
• 14:59
  John McGann: You know a direct out of cost expense it could come, you know, and missed opportunities at the time when you're making that switch over.
• 15:09
  John McGann: You know just knowing that upfront helps the process as well.
• 15:13
  Scott Geller: Is it ever too late?
• 15:14
  John McGann: I don't think so I think it's it's rarely ever too late.
• 15:16
  John McGann: And you know, like I said, I've seen companies come, you know come in all different stages and come in pretty, pretty late, pretty big, and you know it's it works out for them.
• 15:29
  John McGann: You know it's just more painful Ultimately, you know if you kick the can on it long enough, you know what you're in for.
• 15:35
  Scott Geller: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
• 15:36
  Scott Geller: Could you give us any guidelines?
• 15:38
  Scott Geller: We try to help businesses plan for these massive changes in their business.
• 15:43
  Scott Geller: You gave us a little bit of around the duration.
• 15:45
  Scott Geller: Yeah, what about the cost?
• 15:46
  Scott Geller: Like how much should they be thinking about the cost of going through specifically on the on for the to get a custom software?
• 15:53
  John McGann: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 15:54
  John McGann: So it ranges but it can be, as you know, as low as if you're doing it modularly and you're doing you're kind of breaking things out.
• 16:03
  John McGann: You could be looking coming in 20, 30 K or you know, for an initial, you know rollout of what you're looking at.
• 16:11
  John McGann: It could be, you know, it could be 50 or 60, based on, you know, based on the size of your company.
• 16:17
  John McGann: But then you know you, like I said, you want to kind of take those small chunks, build those out and get a you know, get a better feel for what you need.
• 16:28
  John McGann: As you go and just do it, be smart, build slow.
• 16:33
  Scott Geller: And do you have any do's and don'ts when trying to find a partner to come in and build this custom software out for them?
• 16:41
  John McGann: Do's and don'ts.
• 16:42
  John McGann: I would say do's, make sure you're invested or have somebody that you know, somebody dedicated to it.
• 16:51
  John McGann: You know, for us we handle everything you know, from the project management you know down to the delivery and testing, but it's we still, you know, always ask for a, some resource that we can have as a dedicated point of contact.
• 17:07
  John McGann: You know, and this helps because they can help, you know, wrangle the stakeholders and bring people in and and kind of be the, you know, the decision maker on that side, which is super important, because you don't want your dev team making your business decisions for you.
• 17:23
  John McGann: So, yeah, that's definitely one.
• 17:25
  Scott Geller: And before you go to the next one, does that have to be like a chief technology officer or chief information officer?
• 17:32
  Scott Geller: Does it have to be somebody that's an expert in technology?
• 17:35
  John McGann: It's a really good question.
• 17:36
  John McGann: No, not at all.
• 17:37
  John McGann: Okay, somebody that just knows you want somebody because you know.
• 17:42
  John McGann: It actually kind of hinders things a bit when that happens, because when somebody is coming in like that, they have an idea of how they want it implemented, versus giving what the needs are or the problem and so, which allows for the development team to kind of come up with the best technical solution to implement.
• 18:01
  John McGann: So, no, definitely that is not needed.
• 18:03
  John McGann: In fact, most companies that we work with we work with a lot of non-technical founders without CTOs, so they look at us as essentially being that for them, and so just having somebody on their inside there that is close to you know, close to what the needs are and the stakeholders, and has a good pulse on what the application needs to do.
• 18:27
  Scott Geller: Thanks, sorry for interrupting.
• 18:28
  Scott Geller: You.
• 18:28
  Scott Geller: Feel free to go back to the do's and don'ts now.
• 18:30
  John McGann: Yeah, no, no, no, absolutely.
• 18:32
  John McGann: Stakeholders, you know, like we were talking about before, is a good one.
• 18:35
  John McGann: They're making sure to get their buy-in on that.
• 18:39
  John McGann: Let's see, on the don't side, like we were just saying, you know you don't want to come in overly rigid on what it is you want.
• 18:47
  John McGann: You want to have a clear idea and you've got things proved out on the process side, but in terms of how it's implemented, don't be as rigid there.
• 18:55
  John McGann: Let the technical folks do what they do best and come up with the ideal solution for that.
• 19:02
  John McGann: Okay.
• 19:02
  Scott Geller: And is there anything?
• 19:03
  Scott Geller: I haven't asked to be prepared for this process?
• 19:06
  John McGann: To be prepared, I would just say, with the dedicated resource and making sure that you're somewhat committed to the success of the product and have some buy-in.
• 19:19
  Scott Geller: I think that's important as well from our guests.
• 19:27
  Scott Geller: The first one are three budgeting or planning takeaways.
• 19:32
  Scott Geller: The idea is our listeners can take these and as soon as they get off the podcast, they can put them into place.
• 19:38
  Scott Geller: I know this is not your first company that you've worked with or even started, so it could be around that, or it could be something you've already mentioned or in something with getting that custom software place, but love to get your three takeaways uh, you said three takeaways from.
• 19:56
  John McGann: I'm sorry, I think it's a takeaways yeah, so just three takeaways three budgeting or planning takeaways.
• 20:02
  Scott Geller: It could be about running crowdsource or it could be about building out custom software got it.
• 20:07
  John McGann: So I would say one say one.
• 20:09
  John McGann: You know, don't spend.
• 20:11
  John McGann: You know, don't spend a lot too early.
• 20:13
  John McGann: You know you have an idea or if you've got a business that you're starting, try to.
• 20:17
  John McGann: You know, try to figure out the.
• 20:19
  John McGann: You know, try to do things manually and kind of as much as you can to get a feel for what you would actually need to be automated, instead of going down the rabbit hole of trying to do all of that out the gates.
• 20:32
  John McGann: Yeah, that's definitely one.
• 20:35
  John McGann: You know, waiting and then waiting until you have that to actually invest into that custom solution.
• 20:42
  John McGann: See, another one I would say is in terms of, you know, starting this company.
• 20:50
  John McGann: You know we, we invested in a marketing team.
• 20:53
  John McGann: I think kind of early, too early, I would say.
• 20:56
  John McGann: A good recommendation there is to make sure really you as a founder need to kind of figure out your messaging and what works and talking with customers and really learning the market and the people and what the needs are before engaging in anything like that, and have somebody else try to figure that out for you.
• 21:13
  John McGann: So I would say that as well.
• 21:15
  John McGann: And then let's see a third budgeting and two are fine too.
• 21:19
  Scott Geller: If you don't know, if you can't come across the third one, the both of those are pretty good.
• 21:23
  Scott Geller: I like both of those.
• 21:23
  Scott Geller: Do you roll out all three?
• 21:25
  Scott Geller: What's that?
• 21:26
  Scott Geller: Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, if you have three, great.
• 21:29
  Scott Geller: If only have two, then that's perfect too.
• 21:30
  Scott Geller: Let me think here.
• 21:34
  John McGann: Budgeting Hmm.
• 21:37
  Scott Geller: And I think we're you know with those two.
• 21:39
  Scott Geller: I like those, don't spend too much money early.
• 21:42
  Scott Geller: I really like that and I think that should really resonate, considering it's coming from somebody that you know that that that sells those services.
• 21:51
  John McGann: Right.
• 21:52
  Scott Geller: And and yeah, you know, know, know your marketing spend and and kind of think about when it makes sense and how much to spend.
• 21:57
  Scott Geller: I yeah, I like both of those, john.
• 22:00
  John McGann: Okay, all right, we're well with that yeah.
• 22:01
  Scott Geller: So other question is do you have any?
• 22:04
  Scott Geller: We always ask our guests if they have a favorite podcast or book recommendation.
• 22:08
  John McGann: Well, you know Budget, my Business is definitely top on the podcast list.
• 22:12
  John McGann: But on the books, you know the book side is just.
• 22:15
  John McGann: You know there's too many to really pick from.
• 22:17
  John McGann: I will say you know I read recently it should be called D&E's Influence, you know for any.
• 22:26
  John McGann: You know any of the small businesses out there trying to grow.
• 22:29
  John McGann: It's a great book to really understand.
• 22:29
  John McGann: You know any of the small businesses out there trying to trying to grow.
• 22:31
  John McGann: It's a great book to really understand.
• 22:32
  John McGann: You know human psychology and what makes humans tick.
• 22:36
  John McGann: Good Help with your conversions.
• 22:39
  Scott Geller: All right, thank you Like that one.
• 22:41
  Scott Geller: This has been great, john.
• 22:42
  Scott Geller: Where can people find out more about you online?
• 22:45
  John McGann: Yeah, they can check us out at cloudsourcecom or find me on LinkedIn and reach out.
• 22:50
  Scott Geller: Okay, well, thank you.
• 22:51
  Scott Geller: Thanks for joining us today, john.
• 22:53
  John McGann: Absolutely.
• 22:53
  John McGann: Thank you, scott, appreciate it.
• 22:55
  Scott Geller: All right, folks, that's it for today.
• 22:57
  Scott Geller: If you liked the show or found something useful, I just ask that you please share it with someone else.
• 23:02
  Scott Geller: Send it to someone else, Say, hey, take a listen to this episode and I'd just like to grow the audience and help more small business owners.
• 23:09
  Scott Geller: I'm Scott Keller and I hope you join me.