Latest / Better Together / How to Scale Without Chaos with Grant Wasch and PJ Sawchuk

Transcript

How to Scale Without Chaos with Grant Wasch and PJ Sawchuk · Better Together

• Shawn Sundsvold: Hey everyone and welcome back to Better Together, the podcast that shares the stories, the lessons and practical advice from founders and leaders that can help you improve your business. I'm your host, Sean Sunsvold, along with my partner in business and in life, Kelly Sunsvold. And today we're joined by Grant Wash and PJ Sawchuck. They are the co-founders of Epic Solution Partners, where they partner with organizations to turn complex technology into clear strategic systems that actually drive results. Grant Wasch: and bring it. Thank Shawn Sundsvold: Grant focuses on helping businesses modernize their tech and make smarter decisions around the tools they use, while PJ works closely with leadership teams to turn those strategies into real execution by aligning people, process, and technology. Together, they bring a complementary approach to growth and in this episode, we'll dive into what it really looks like to scale systems that bring clarity to the chaos. Grant Wasch: Thank you. Thank you. Shawn Sundsvold: Well, Grant and PJ, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. kept looking for more things to read and it just wasn't there. And I'm like, why isn't that reading anyways? So welcome you guys. It's great to have you here. And it's nice that you are just literally 15 minutes down the road from us in Towson, Maryland. So nice to have some local faces on here. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, thank you so much. Grant Wasch: Awesome, thanks so much, we're excited. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome, awesome. Well, let's start at the beginning here. Tell us a little bit about what you guys do with Epic Solution Partners and the role that each of you sit in for the business. Grant Wasch: Yeah, sure. So we started the business almost five years ago ⁓ morphed over time. And as we've helped clients and realized really where we help the most. ⁓ So have two main service offerings. I'll walk through one and then Pedro will walk through the other, but they're IT advisory as well ⁓ project executive, project execution. ⁓ So on project execution side, we take IT projects. A lot of times we'll start with hey, we need a CRM, we need this product, we don't know where to go, right? So we'll work with them, develop the requirements and then help them pick the software. And then usually we'll stick around and help them implement that. We'll make sure that everything meets their needs. And then at the end of the day, it's something that's usable for them. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, and these offerings are very complimentary, right? So on the IT advisory side, what we wind up doing is usually like broader assessments and a lot of the Shawn Sundsvold: awesome. PJ Sawchuk: those selection activities, which inherently lead to the project leadership. And sometimes things can take on different flavors. We wind up doing a lot of vendor performance assessments, could be vendor selections. Sometimes organizations need to just retool their team or existing technologies. ⁓ So help in those ways as well. ⁓ And are a partner in platform agnostic very intentionally because we want to find the stuff that just is the best fit ⁓ for needs of the organization. that we're working with, rather than being biased by being like a partner of like just a Salesforce or just a Microsoft. ⁓ love them all. We just love them differently for different groups. Kelly Sundsvold: It's nice that you guys can find something. It's not a one size fits all. know, Salesforce for a business like ours would be probably not the best choice. So it's nice that you guys take the time to, you know, get know your clients, get to know what's best for them. ⁓ So a company comes to you, what's usually broken and not working that really like leads them to pick up the phone. Grant Wasch: It really depends and every client pretty much is different, is why it's so, know, PJ and I like the originality of each client and you know, a lot of them come through our partners, right? And so it could be their current IT managed service provider who says, hey, they know they need a CRM, but they don't know which way to turn. Can you help them? That's a common one or one where someone connects us up because, ⁓ you they've got a new CEO and the IT just isn't working. And so, you know, hey, talk to PJ. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, I mean, we do love the diversity because we've seen almost every problem under the sun at this point. ⁓ And sometimes it's those things that the leadership just can't put their finger on. They know that a lot of things have evolved and some things have stayed the same and now there's a gap. And so maybe as the organization has grown, maybe as their needs have evolved, they have all the same IT people with the same role and they have all the same technology solutions that are designed for the things they were doing like eight or 10 years ago. ⁓ And so we'll come in and help them look at that sort of stuff and help get them back up to not just present day, but like their vision for the future. Shawn Sundsvold: awesome. Grant Wasch: Yeah, one thing to add on that, a lot of the commonality is that organic growth, right? So the organization has grown and they've been focused on what they're doing and how they're helping others. And all of sudden they realize they get to this point about, shoot, all of these separate systems aren't talking or this isn't working right. And that's that kind of light bulb moment for them. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to lead out the grant. Feel free to jump in. So it really starts with the leadership talking about what are your goals, what are your aspirations, and bringing that conversation to be more and more at the ground level. So hey, if those are organizational strategies, ⁓ what you measuring to achieve those? And then, OK, that's cool. Now that we know that's what you're measuring, what are the activities that you're doing to have those measurable results? ⁓ And does the technology fit into driving that? Grant Wasch: Yeah, go ahead, BJ. PJ Sawchuk: And so that's a great place to start. It's a really organic conversation. It helps them connect the dots between where the rubber hits the road versus what they're aspiring to do. But there's a few other considerations too, right? Because they could be operating in an environment with changing compliance considerations. Maybe there's new constraints that didn't exist in their organization or in their environment a few years ago. And so we try to tease all that stuff apart. We also want to look at it could be as fundamental as or hardware, right? Like nobody should really be in the data center business anymore. And if they have a bunch of servers on-prem, like does that make the most sense for what they're doing? So ⁓ are pretty holistic. Cause if you're looking at people, processes and the tech, that's, there's a lot of questions and a lot of things to look at to come up with solutions that consider all that. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Grant Wasch: lot of times they come with a specific problem. ⁓ And our knee-jerk reaction is, ⁓ let's solve But we've got to always step back, because a lot of times it's not what they think it is. Just like when you go to the doctor, your knee hurts. Something else usually, right? And so it's the same in a business, right? Sometimes the technology is actually there, but the process is broken. not putting the data into the system. So the reporting is wrong, right? It might not be that the report was incorrectly created. It's the former. Shawn Sundsvold: Thank Grant Wasch: we always make sure to talk to all levels as well, who's actually putting the data in at the day to day versus the executive that wants the summary report at the end of the month, right? So all of those pieces are critical to figuring out what the right path forward is. So we always started with that assessment. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, in our business, we call it a discovery call and ⁓ we go through a whole huge discovery because yeah, know, ⁓ don't, you're the expert in your business and your field. And companies are not, they're hiring you to be the expert. So when they come in and they go like what you said, my knee hurts, you're able to go, well, actually, you know, this is why this is happening after you're able to do a full assessment. That's such an important piece that I think is that businesses sometimes don't completely grab onto that. you really have to really dig in a little bit sometimes because you are the expert. And that's the difference between, I think, experienced business consultant anybody who does kind of that service like we do, you know, ⁓ going in making sure that ⁓ you have full picture before you just make the assessment based on ⁓ whatever the... you know, the client says, because it helps us be able to be successful in the role and let them have a big win. So I'm glad you brought that up. Take us back just a little bit. Before you were both doing Epic Solutions Partners, ⁓ what you learn in your earlier roles that helped you be able to really be successful at what you're doing now? PJ Sawchuk: Great, I'm gonna go first, shall we? Grant Wasch: Yeah, sure. background is more on the project management side. And so what learned was you've got to have a collaborative relationship with whoever the end client is, whether that's internal. I was in ⁓ kind of project management, marketing, leadership role, ⁓ it was shared service with other groups in the company. And I had to have the conversation with each of them. They all wanted something different. They needed something different. Right. And so the one size fits all doesn't work. And so that was very telling to me to say, Hey, I've got to ask the right questions when they come to me with, I need X, Y, or Z. And it's the same with our clients now. Right. You know, we kind of have a similar issue with two different clients, but they're different. The people are different. So we've got to understand and ask those questions to get to how do we tailor this to fit their needs? PJ Sawchuk: So my career started actually more on like the technology side. So I spent 12 years with the law firm as the director of IT. The firm's about 185 people by the time I left and they grew a lot during my tenure with them What skills did that teach me ⁓ how to operate under duress? ⁓ good service delivery looks like how to balance very diverse stakeholder interests, right? So like those were all like really super valuable skills are like kind of portable to everything ⁓ technology part was the easiest part of my role And then I left that I went to oversee basically like the support team and implementations team of a CRM software company. So now rather than being like within the client, I had a portfolio of clients that were about 150 different law firms. ⁓ Again, we're being put under duress and stakeholder management were all like really important things. now managing the team that like had to deliver. for all of those law firm clients. And then in 2020 is when I ⁓ laid off and that was like the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Because knew I wanted to get into consulting and it was like, all right, there's the kick in the butt. Let's get into consulting. And so at that point, the playing field had been leveled because nobody really knew how to win projects in like a COVID environment. And met Grant like in my first month at like some ⁓ networking basically online Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. PJ Sawchuk: Networking thing and at that time I was like fully doing business development because I knew like you know got to win the work to be able to do the work and I remember Offering the grant at the time. I was like hey, I don't have any actual work yet So if you need help, I don't want my brain to atrophy I will help you just for free just so I can like stay sharp ⁓ And he was very flattered by that offer but offered to pay me That's how we met Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Grant Wasch: Yeah, I know, right? Shawn Sundsvold: So nice of him, you know? So like, I'm curious, well, talk about that first year of kind of figuring out your business, right? Like, found Grant, you're offering yourself freely, right, to just help him get some work and stay ⁓ at your feet in the brain. ⁓ what did that first year look like for you guys in trying to get that business built? How did you assign roles to each other? ⁓ did that work that first year? Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. PJ Sawchuk: first year was almost more of a try before you buy for at least the way it played out for us. ⁓ have the same subcontractor agreement for each other. ⁓ it was like, it was really convoluted. We basically signed the same thing. It was like bidirectional. And like he would win some work and where he needed help, he'd bring me in. And then I would win some work and where I needed help, I would bring him in. Grant Wasch: Yeah. Right. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Grant Wasch: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay. Grant Wasch: Yeah. Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay. PJ Sawchuk: And so we were able to get like a really good sense of like each other's working styles and just like saw those synergies just very organically come to life. And it was great to be able to do like capacity balancing and expertise balancing and even like pool resources to the extent that we knew other people that had certain skill sets that we could fold into. So yeah, it was very organic. Kelly Sundsvold: Mmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay. Nice. Edit. Grant Wasch: Yeah. Yeah. So it wound up being at least a year before we formed Epic Solution Partners to really come together. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay. Yeah, I was curious at what point was there like that point that you realize like, hey, this could be something bigger if we kind of put our minds to it. PJ Sawchuk: Well, and that's what drove that was like we knew we wanted to get bigger. And so now it's a lot easier to do as an entity versus like this disparate bi-directional subcontractor thing. Grant Wasch: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: right. Grant Wasch: Yeah. we were also honing what the service offering was. And so as we were having those conversations, we realized ⁓ were better together, ⁓ Peter said, were synergies between us. offered with different backgrounds and so we could work together on projects or separately depending on what the project needed. And so it just kind of came together pretty nicely. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Shawn Sundsvold: Nice. Nice. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, it's really nice when you're an entrepreneur and you have that that kind of tag team that you can do. And like you said, being that that better together, you help build because you have different ideas, different thoughts. It sounds like different client things that you need help on. Like that just sounds so perfect. Yeah. So you're stepping. So often you're stepping into organizations where. Let's say they're a little bit less organized, right? What's the most common patterns that you see? besides chaos. Grant Wasch: That's a good question. Yeah. Well, it's more the heads down approach, right? So stovepipe silos are the most common in larger organizations, even smaller organizations, you know, like the finance team, they ask for things, but they have their files over here, they have their process, and then they have, you know, HRs over here ⁓ ⁓ know, marketing or whoever's over here, right? They're very separated. ⁓ that's how they look at their files, their processes and everything, and even technology. And so a lot of that is helping them work together find commonalities. And can be set up. ⁓ A of times when we do SharePoint work, yes, you have your own place, but we need a common platform to do this and a process to make sure that ⁓ things are ⁓ Some companies retention policies. Do you tag them the right way so that way you ⁓ meet all your requirements there? ⁓ It's just lot of that. You know, some are organized within the organization, but it's getting that standard operating procedure across the board that really helps. PJ Sawchuk: we frequently say that we help organizations in two ways. We're either going to augment your capacity or we're going to augment your expertise. ⁓ so pretty much everything falls into one of those two buckets, right? ⁓ to Grant's point, so often there's just these blind spots that exist within organizations or disconnects. ⁓ And so there's a lot of opportunity for us to help there. Sometimes you find organizations where there may be somebody internally that knows exactly what needs to be done and they're right, but they don't have sufficient buy-in and there needs to be some sort of like due diligence process where like an external party comes in who can like actually re-evaluate everything and if we arrive at the same conclusion as them, great, that's awesome. But the rest of the organization kind of needs to hear that in order for them to have the confidence to move forward and serve. directions. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, you know, just years is a good, almost six years now, really, ⁓ know, it's a good time. It's a good way to see exactly what's out there and see a lot of different challenges ⁓ along the way. You know, I'm curious. Especially when you guys are a fairly small organization, right? You're kind of doing the process of like, we got to get clients, we got to do the work, we got to get clients, we got to do the work. And that can be a boomer bus cycle, right? Like you go, you rush really hard, you work hard, you get five, six, seven clients or whatever the number is for you guys. And then you go do the work. And then it feels like that momentum that you did to get all those clients kind of stops. Right? So how did you guys deal with that? You know, as you were growing your business and how is it, what does it look like now versus where you were at? when you started. Grant Wasch: A lot of lessons learned. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, and the best, and the best Lauren's lessons come through the most pain and hang. Shawn Sundsvold: You Grant Wasch: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, perfect example. mean, we, you know, PJ landed right when we kind of came together, this massive client, it took all of his time and a bunch of my time. And therefore we were so heads down. And then we came out of that and the pipeline was empty. Right. And so that was really the, my, can't let this happen again. And so we've been fine tuning it over time, what the percentage is, but making sure that we carve out, you know, Shawn Sundsvold: Yes sir, yes sir! Kelly Sundsvold: Yes. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Right. Grant Wasch: 30, 40 % or more of our time dedicated to business development and sales, right? Otherwise, when it dries up, then the revenue stops, right? So we can't let that happen. that's ⁓ his thing. He loves being out there, meeting, selling, kind of building relationships. And so ⁓ carves out more of his time to do that piece ⁓ that reason. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. PJ Sawchuk: And that is the beauty of the partnership, right? Is that you can start to drill deeper into your passions and the areas that you love and knowing that, again, if it's complementary, then it works really well for the whole. ⁓ so that is where I've been spending more of my time as of recent. But it did ⁓ us a little while to figure out ⁓ do we balance it not only ⁓ but also as the entity to make sure we had the right ratio of the billable time versus those non-billable activities that are so important. to either support or fuel the billable activity. Kelly Sundsvold: you Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Boy, your journey just, it feels so similar and the whole concept of, know, PJ being a little bit more like, Hey, I like going out and seeing the people and Grant, would assume that you're a little bit more, client facing or maybe a little bit more in the weeds. Yep. Yep. I hear you. That's, that's my role. Yeah. Sean's Sean's the, the let's, let's go find this new group to be a part of. Go it. ⁓ Grant Wasch: Yep, exactly. I mean, while we're still young and growing, we both have to do it. So I've been more focused on keeping that time allotted to do that. But I find joy in the ⁓ project execution, them achieve that goal. And that's where said, it really works well. That little bit of split, he takes more of that, I take more of the client side, which works out well for both of us. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. I mean, because you really need that both in a business. It like you guys complement really well. ⁓ So while guys were figuring out the roles and all that, what was that you kind of early on in business that you've like completely changed mind on? Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome. Grant Wasch: Yeah, no, that's a good one. I would say for me, going way back early in my career, I thought you ⁓ this perfect system and it's just gonna be magic. I remember I've actually worked for a financial firm, but I helped them put together this, it was an early stage CRM. And I like, ⁓ this is gonna be the answer to all the problems. You still get the data in there. And so ⁓ flash forward, the same thing now we're dealing with. ⁓ And you get the fanciest, best, Shawn Sundsvold: Mm. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Grant Wasch: software, if no one's using it correctly or at all, it's a waste of time and money. So, know, that's been an interesting shift where the people I didn't understand the people side of things. When I first got into the working world, that is ⁓ big if not the biggest component in ⁓ work. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, and you know, I think I've always been pretty good at managing my own expectations, but we talk to a lot of people that are like new to the contractor or going out in their own like role. And one of the common things that, and so like, first of all, like my story is different. I shared my story with you all night. I was fortunate to get the kick in the butt to be like, Hey, go and run and do this. And I have just enough ADHD to be able to jump around and do different things and like kind of thrive in the chaos of like having to wear 30 different hats, maybe within an hour. ⁓ but like for people that are new to it, it's Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. PJ Sawchuk: for them because they know they've got a great skill set and they haven't really done as much thinking on how to productize that skill set and make money off of it and get it in the hands of the people that need it. And that stuff is more important than that skill set as it turns out. So like your skill set is about 49 % of which you need to be successful. But the other 51 % is how do you market it? How do you sell it? How do you scope it? How do you collect on it? And then how do you grow it from there? And that's the part that trips up a lot of people. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, I think there's so much truth to that. I mean, there's so many people, it's like they have a great idea, they don't know how to follow through with it, or they have a great skill, but don't know how to market themselves. You know, right? So I think y'all have done a fantastic job in like trying to figure out those roles between the two of you and build something out of it, which is just amazing. You know, kind of from both of your perspectives and just looking at, you know, where ⁓ guys are now, what separates companies that ⁓ that successfully scale versus the ones that stay stuck? you know, as you're helping companies do that, what are you seeing? PJ Sawchuk: Companies that are honest with themselves, first of all, that have a willingness to have uncomfortable conversations and create a safe space for those conversations. Leadership is really the most fundamental in helping to scale. Leadership has to be like, again, they are going to facilitate those conversations. They need to create the safe space for them. They need to remind people that, like, hey, you're always going to be heard, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to do exactly what you're saying, right? But it'll be part of the conversation. consider it either way. And so at the end of the day, like strong leadership is what's so ⁓ to having an organization that can scale ⁓ ⁓ a strong leader is a whole separate podcast episode. like are certain attributes ⁓ to that are especially ⁓ I'm reading good to great right now. And like the first chapter is all about like, yeah, it's all about like ⁓ the types leaders that are so good. Shawn Sundsvold: Great book. PJ Sawchuk: helping those organizations grow, right? I mean, we see that every day. There's a lot of truth to that. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Grant Wasch: Yeah, I would add to that is the process side of it, right? So the companies, some, they had a great product, they had a great idea and they grew, but if they want to continue, they've to put the process in place and have people follow them. Cause eventually they're going to plateau and things are going to go sideways once they hit a certain size. And so making sure that hopefully they do that as they grow, those are the ones that we've seen that have been most successful long-term. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay, yeah, it was interesting. I just figured out in just that there, which of you is the visionary and which of you is the person is the executioner of who executes all that stuff. It was pretty interesting. PJ Sawchuk: you Grant Wasch: Yeah, yeah, very good insight there. Yeah, in our responses you can see it. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah. So kind of shifting to technology, how should leaders be thinking about technology today, especially with like all the noise around AI, the new tools, it can be a little overwhelming. So kind of how, should leaders be thinking about that? Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Grant Wasch: Let's say, have you heard of AI? ⁓ Yeah, right, exactly. I know, right? Every headline, I went to a Microsoft conference in the fall and Copilot was, you we wanted to turn into a game because like you heard it so many times in every presentation. It's just, ⁓ the future, right? And so it's the same with now everything else. And that is a huge part of it, but people that... PJ Sawchuk: You Kelly Sundsvold: It changes every single day. Shawn Sundsvold: No, tell me more. Yeah. Grant Wasch: we talk to what they don't understand is if you're still using paper in your business, AI is probably not right now for you. So it's an awareness of where you are and what you need to do to get there, right? So in this day and age, technology should be used to help your team be more efficient, you know, in terms of the growth, that's really should be what's part of that engine to grow is helping you, you know, keep track of things, be more efficient, be faster and better. And then ⁓ the right data sets and everything else, then you can have those AI conversations about, how do we automate a ton of things, right? Then that comes in. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, there's like such a strong allure to have conversations start with the tech first and then let's back them into what we're doing. And that is the opposite direction that you should be going in as an organization. So like start the conversation with, hey, here's what we should be doing. And then how can we do it better or more efficiently or use technology to help us get to that place in ⁓ better way? ⁓ And the reason why that's better is like your outcomes are more easily measurable and you're not like just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks And so we try to like flip the script on how the conversation is happening like just yesterday and granted now we're talking about it earlier we had there's a new IT leader in an organization that we did a huge assessment for last year. And we've maintained a great relationship with that IT leader and continue to help them wherever they need help. A lot of our engagements will be IT leadership mentorship sometimes and helping them integrate into organizations and just be more effective. ⁓ so they were like, hey, we're thinking about using AI. ⁓ ⁓ do you think? Can you help us? And so we're like, ⁓ well, that's cool. So what are you trying to do? Shawn Sundsvold: Okay. PJ Sawchuk: bring the conversation to what you want to do. ⁓ it turns out that after we started talking through some of their things, all they really need are some automations in those workflows. And so to Grant's point, actually the needs are a lot more fundamental with where they're at right now. ⁓ what we realized is that some of those integrations, they've set integrations and ⁓ they need to be fixed. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. PJ Sawchuk: So like AI would be like adding like, you know, a lot of horsepower to something that quite frankly just needs a really fundamental fix to begin with. And then it's actually gonna do everything you need, at least for that scenario, right? And so like we sent them off with a homework assignment to have more internal conversations that actually got us to the point of like, hey, here are the things we need to do because we're not just gonna start throwing like AI solutions at them without being clear on the fundamentals first. Kelly Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, and it's interesting, you know, both of you work very closely with leadership teams. You know, what is something that maybe leaders think is a technology problem that really comes down to a people or process problem? Grant Wasch: That's a good one. PJ can expand upon it more, but a lot of times we go into these assessments, most of ⁓ clients we work with, they have maybe one or two ⁓ IT folks, but then they also have an external company that's helping manage at the top level or ticket escalation, things like that for IT issues. And sometimes there's breakdowns in the process and they think it's the vendor's problem, it's their fault or it's ⁓ we're submitting tickets. And what we found once we dig in and talk to all the right people, A lot of times it's the people and how they're putting things in. They're not following the steps or outline and that creates gaps and delays, right? So it's, it's a lot of times at the top, you don't have time or nor should you look at every single piece of the process. You just look at the outcome, right? And if the outcome is not what you want, you're like, Hey, there's a problem. But a lot of times it doesn't align with the truth. PJ Sawchuk: Yeah, and if you look at a workflow, so we're apart from technology, so throw the technology out for a minute. Like a workflow, especially in organizations, the bigger they get, more complex they become because you have these handoffs between the different teams as something goes through. where there's so often those breakdowns, the grant's point is if this maybe marketing has conjured up opportunities, now the sales team has to take over, and then the sales team closes it, and there's a team that delivers on it. And then that has to go to finance or billing because now they need to capture the money on it. And as these things get handed down, through if there's not the handoff of the right data for the next group to be able to do their role and be able to like report on their effectiveness. then that's a big problem. so we want to make sure, like all of our assessments really start with like some of those workflow mapping exercises because it may not be a tech issue. It may be that this group just doesn't know they have to enter in this information, back five hops in the workflow. And so by the time it gets to this group, they don't have the important stuff that they need, even though all the systems are there to be able to facilitate it, you know? So yeah, it can be that fundamental sometimes. Shawn Sundsvold: you Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, for sure. Have you ever walked into a situation we've this in the six years we've been in business for sure, but have you ever walked into a situation ⁓ you thought this is going to be a bigger scope and a bigger challenge than you realize? PJ Sawchuk: Well, that's why we changed our building model. ⁓ Grant Wasch: Yeah, I was gonna go there. Kelly Sundsvold: Sure, very fair. Shawn Sundsvold: truth. PJ Sawchuk: So very transparently, like almost everything, because like you can only do so much in a sales discovery. after five years, we've gotten really good at trying to tease out as much as we can. But in every SOW that we put in front of the groups that we work with now, everything is based on like, hey, here's your budget range. It's based on these assumptions. And if we get in there and some of those assumptions don't hold true in the spirit of like a good partnership, we're going to work with you to manage the new things that have evolved or come up, right? But like that could mean that it changes what we're gonna have to do and therefore the amount of money that's associated with doing it. And so ⁓ preface every... ⁓ every engagement with that very clear language because so often like people you know what's used the complaining about the knee pain example again on is is the result of maybes like of of an issue with their back or something else and like until we get in there we start poking around it's hard to tell what you straight slurred ⁓ us ⁓ Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah. Grant Wasch: Yeah, one of our early projects was ⁓ a fixed bid and we're like, ⁓ this looks good. And was one of those onions, right? You peel it back and it just keeps going. And it was a prebuilt software they had gotten. Someone else had done it years before and they wanted to do all these new things. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. And ⁓ was painful. It was just ⁓ of those painful lessons learned where we... again, need to go to the hourly model and just keep our clients updated the best we can. And so we try to, you know, whether it's a change order or just a conversation, you know, if, hey, here's what we thought right or wrong, you know, this is the reality now. And so we just want to keep that in the forefront with you. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, I appreciate that perspective. It's a little bit of the vulnerable side that kind of, we learn and grow as our businesses. expand, grow, we take on new clients, we learn new things. And I think that's really the point of what we try to do with this podcast is just have those conversations with business owners who can be and sharing some of those hard things that come up because honestly, we're not alone. ⁓ And if we can all help each other and go, you know what this thing I'm feeling, or I made this mistake with this client, you know what? All of us have done probably there's out there who has done the same thing. So I appreciate Grant Wasch: Yeah, true. Kelly Sundsvold: you guys open and vulnerable with our audience ⁓ talking about just real world examples from your time. how can we, ⁓ how can people a hold of you ⁓ and get ⁓ with you? Grant Wasch: Yeah, the best way is through our website. We've got a phone number, email, or a form there. always happy to have a 30-minute sit down, that discovery call, conversation with whoever's interested. So ⁓ And we'd love to be open to chat with whoever. PJ Sawchuk: And find us on LinkedIn too, because we try to post content that's relevant, at least weekly. We just recently did a blog that's a little bit more oriented for nonprofits about just how they can find funding to take on technology projects, right? And that's really important for them. And we're always happy to act as resources to any group. So even if we can't help you, we've sort of made a bunch of connections and are always happy to point you to people that we trust. That may be a better fit to help different groups with different challenges they face, or even Kelly Sundsvold: how we are. PJ Sawchuk: opportunity they're trying to capitalize on, know? Either way, we want to be a resource. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We appreciate your time. Shawn Sundsvold: for sure. Grant Wasch: Thank you both. Alright, bye guys. Shawn Sundsvold: Take care. PJ Sawchuk: Thank you.