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Tales from the PROS is hosted by Michael Georgiou, Co-Founder, and Eric Lawrence, Director of Growth at Imaginovation, an award-winning app and software development company. Each episode dives into honest, unscripted conversations, hard-earned lessons, and the behind-the-scenes chaos of life inside a tech agency.
If you’re a founder, exec, or innovator trying to navigate the tech world without getting burned, this podcast is your no-BS roadmap. Through real talk, personal stories, and insights from the front lines, you’ll pick up smarter ways to build software, steer clear of common mistakes, and choose the right partners in a crowded, often confusing space.
Whether you’re scaling a startup, driving digital change at a larger company, or just love keeping up with tech innovation, Tales from the PROS brings you straight-shooting advice and inspiration without the fluff.
Michael Georgiou (00:43)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Tales from the Pros podcast. I'm Michael Georgiou, co-founder here at Imaginovation, joined by my co-host and our director of growth, Eric Lawrence. Today's episode hits on something we see all the time. Business is hanging on to outdated software way past its expiration date. And we get it, rebuilding can be a scary thing. You've already invested time, money, energy into...
your current systems, right? But when your platform is slowing you down or blocking growth, holding on becomes way more expensive than letting go. Especially in today's very competitive market with user and buyer expectations and this crazy digital age of AI and technology. In this episode, we're going to talk about the fear of rebuilding, how to know when it's time to evolve and why a rebuild might be the best move your company can make this year.
We're excited for all of you to hear this. Eric, how you doing, man?
Eric Lawrence (01:38)
Doing great, doing great. Excited to talk about this. I feel there are a lot of people out there that are hanging on by a thread.
Michael Georgiou (01:46)
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, we have definitely a lot of experience in this area. I think it's gonna be fun to talk about kind of just like the different topics in this episode that I think are gonna really help a lot of people and help a lot of businesses. So I'm excited to get into it. So, Eric, guess, let me ask you with this question first. know, like from your experience in...
this industry working with a lot of different clients, right? And prospects leads that are having issues with their current software applications, websites, just their technologies, right? What are you kind of seeing in the market? Are you seeing fear very high in terms of potentially, you know, asking them to rebuild it for certain reasons? of what are you seeing?
Eric Lawrence (02:34)
Yeah, I think it varies by industry. There are definitely industries out there that seem to be a little bit more like tech leaning. I would say ones like healthcare, they're thinking about it. Obviously like e-commerce, especially some of the more like tech focused, fintech, that sort of thing. But there are industries that typically lag behind and those are the ones that are really struggling with it. Think.
Like in the public sector, a lot of government organizations tend to struggle with this. And I think they're placing a bigger focus on it, but even things like construction, manufacturing, those are the ones that tend to lag behind. And you see, okay, Hey, yeah, it's, it's kind of like they, all move like a herd, so to speak, where it's like, once somebody really starts to step their game up, everybody kind of looks around and picks their head up and was like, I think it's time for us to figure this out too, because
Michael Georgiou (03:10)
Yep. Nonprofits. We've seen nonprofits too. Yeah.
Eric Lawrence (03:26)
You know, by and large, there's a lot of, I guess, fear and uncertainty and a lot of the younger people within the organization understand it, but it's a matter of getting everybody on the same page to say, Hey, it is time for us to invest in the future, at least with our technology.
Michael Georgiou (03:43)
Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely agree. Yeah, it seems like when there are applications within a company organization that were developed so long ago, right, on both design and kind of code perspective, you know, we've seen that when clients are looking to
I want to say clients, just kind of let's generalize it more like when businesses or even startups entrepreneurs are looking to, you know, talk to different vendors, right? To seek just information and some insight in terms of what needs to be done with their technology. And when we do like an audit on their code, for example, right? Just to jump a little bit, when we do like an audit to see if their code is good or if they're
If their design is good or bad, it's like they're so afraid to even hear the word rebuild sometimes when they're not expecting it because they really want to just fix what's currently there. And I think that's something that we've really seen a lot in the industry for several years. Cause sometimes, man, let's face it, like rebuilding your technology can be a really good thing, especially if
Eric Lawrence (04:51)
Absolutely.
Michael Georgiou (04:57)
If your system was built 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you need to keep innovating. Software shouldn't die. needs to keep nurturing, evolving, improving in order for your business to grow and thrive. It's critical.
Eric Lawrence (05:10)
I'll,
I'll actually tell you the two most common examples that I see that are out there. I think the first one is that what they're doing is just really out of date. So let's say they might be running their business off of Excel spreadsheets, or some sort of really old software where they say, Hey, yeah, this was built 15 years ago and it's running on some ancient technology and we've just been able to make it work for however long, but we know we can't be on this forever.
Or we're just like trying to keep it alive at this point. think that that's one. And the other one that I see that's pretty common is that, as time goes on, ⁓ a company just tries to piecemeal it where they're like, ⁓ from an operational standpoint, I'm starting to use quick books. And maybe from this other thing, I found some plugin or something out there that I'm doing it. And what ends up happening is they kind of have this Frankenstein monster of all these different systems that just.
do not talk to each other and nothing's really centralized. They're trying to figure it out that way when really in the end they need a platform that everything can live on and everything can communicate with itself.
Michael Georgiou (06:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, it's, think it's also very important to make sure that they feel comfortable and confident in the, I would say like the, do I put this into words? Kind of like making sure that the insight of the audit, let's just say, right? When you're auditing the system.
even if it's a high level audit, not talking about like a very, very detailed code or design audit, like on a high level when our team goes and looks at it, right? I think it's important for them to feel comfortable with the information that they're receiving in terms of how it impacts their business, right? Potential long-term costs is very important, right? Risk that could be associated if they stay with the same app that really could...
hurt their growth, their revenue, their employee retention, the list goes on. You know what I mean? So, you know, it's really just important to align from the beginning in terms of kind of the, call it technical debt. know, tech guys on our team say that a lot, but when there's just all this, you know, old code that just hasn't been touched or it's been touched by so many different developers, you know, and it's just not.
It's not providing that kind of value that that business needs in order for them to thrive.
Eric Lawrence (07:34)
Yeah. You
touch on something important there, which is the very first step that anybody should take is to audit what they have to figure out what's the good, the bad, the ugly. And I know a lot of times businesses need to think about, okay, so you have this platform, you have this system that you use for your business. What direction do you want to go? Because there's usually three paths that you can take. The first one is stick with what you have and try to continue to improve it.
Usually that's not going to be the best path, but I know a lot of times that's the one that seems to be most popular because, you're not having to rebuild anything. The second path is to potentially use somebody who has a white labeled solution that could fit your operations, your platform into what they offer. And then the third path is to rebuild something from the ground up that is personalized to you. It's, your own software. It fits the
unique needs of you as a business and can evolve over time. So that's really the purpose of what the audit should be for is to evaluate your current system and figure out what should you do next? Which path should you take?
Michael Georgiou (08:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we're seeing this a lot nowadays that especially with the age of AI ⁓ now and just how crazy things are in technology and just the world, the competition that's out there, you have to continuously innovate and staying comfortable and stagnant with your tech.
should follow the same sort of, I would say, ⁓ mindset as like us and us as people in life, right? When you stay comfortable, you know this, right? When you stay comfortable and you think, hey, what I've been doing is working, it's great, it's this and that. It doesn't mean that you're growing. And I think if you're not growing, you're kind of dying, you know? And yes, there are times where you should stay there, stay stagnant a little bit, you know, just to kind of reflect and understand what's going on. But
⁓ At the same time, I think it's very, important to accept that, you know, if the facts are there that, for example, the code is old, it's outdated, the design, the user experience is not good, and you have, you know, people out there in the world that are telling you, hey, you really need to think about redoing this and revamping or rebuilding this system, this platform. Sometimes you just need to
accept that and try to make that investment because it's going to help you to really grow and scale if that's something that you want. And most businesses want to grow and scale.
Eric Lawrence (10:07)
Yeah.
And Michael, what would you say are some like common signs that it may be time for you to consider rebuilding?
Michael Georgiou (10:16)
That's a good question. mean, my experience from the code and design audits that we've done, and I'm talking from a non-technical person. I'm not going to try to pretend I'm a developer because I'm not, but this is from what we've seen in kind of the after documentation of what's provided to the client in terms of the status of the system. What I've seen is if the design
is very outdated, where you can kind of see just like the, I'm not talking about the branding of it. I'm talking more of just about the simplicity of the user interface and the user experience. has to be easy and intuitive, and it needs to make sure that the audience that is using it is really finding value from it in a simple way. It's not complex or cluttered. And we've seen
Hundreds of systems at least on the design level of it that it's just very clunky and sometimes that can be a red flag that There might be some underlying issues not all the time not all the time sometimes there could be a really good design and maybe the code is good and you know, and maybe sometimes the the the team will say hey, we don't really need to revamp
any of the backend code or the database or so on and so forth. We just maybe need to do a user interface or user experience, rehaul and revamp, right? But from what I've experienced is that typically when we see that there are issues on the code level too, you know? And then that's when the team goes in, you know, and they go into a deeper dive to make sure that the...
the code, the database, the programming languages that are being used are up to date and they're following modern standard coding practices that are gonna allow that business or that entrepreneur or whoever owns it, allows them to grow and to evolve and to thrive off that technology. I would say that's something that I've really noticed. Another thing I would say,
is if the technology is very, very old, like, I'll give you an example, and I can't name clients here, but we had a legal client back in, I think, 2018, 2019, and this was a very large client. And they basically came to us, they had an old, old system that was running almost their entire business, and it was run on, I think, IBM, like,
I think Lotus Notes or something. So it was a very, very old, very old technology. It was difficult to scale. It was really difficult to grow the platform and to work off of it. So ⁓ our team did a deep dive audit on it for I think a month or two, because it's just such a massive platform. they ended up, you know, or we ended up being able to convince the client and align with the client that this is the right.
⁓ strategy moving forward is to basically rebuild it. But in order to rebuild it and to make it better, we had to do like a huge migration and fix like some other kind of backend issues before we could even migrate the or we could even rebuild the platform. So it was a massive project, but that's an example is that is like sometimes the technologies can be really old, right? And
technologies now like programming languages, I'll name a few like React, React Native, C Sharp, and there's a lot out there, right? Python, there's a lot of these programming languages now that are continuously innovating, but there's a lot of old ones that are just kind of, I don't wanna say dying, I'm not knowledgeable enough to say that, but they need to be looked into to make sure that...
they can be improved and fixed and potentially rebuilt.
Eric Lawrence (13:58)
Yeah. Yeah. I think for any sort of rebuild, it all comes down to the framing. I think it's so easy to get caught up in a, ⁓ think about the effort. Think about the cost. What could go wrong in the process that it really is, is just a mindset shift of when you're discussing this as a team, you have to think about what, what's going to happen once this is done. Because obviously with a rebuild, the systems are going to be much cleaner, much faster.
Michael Georgiou (14:10)
Yeah, true.
Eric Lawrence (14:27)
But rebuilds often improve things that you may not even think about like things like internal team morale, customer experience, even long-term scalability. These are all benefits that companies can have once they go through that rebuild. So it's so easy to feel like you're just at the foot of a giant mountain looking straight up, but it's, really a matter of just getting the team excited about it and just recognizing, look, you know, just because what we have doesn't work.
all that well right now doesn't mean that we failed in any ways. just means that our organization has grown and done so well. It's time for the rest of it to catch up.
Michael Georgiou (15:05)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you mentioned a really good point. And we've both kind of said different things in kind of the same way. In a sense, like it's about the mindset, I think, first, like you said, right? Because you can throw the word rebuild and it can be very scary and it could show, but we did all this stuff before, we spent all this money, you know, and sometimes that it's...
just part of growing, right? You're gonna have to invest and take on some of those risks sometimes in order to grow and in order to see success in your business, right? But obviously it needs to be backed by validation and facts and accurate insight that kind of gives the green light, the approval internally, right? To get them excited and to...
allow them to all align and say like, hey, we should do this. We should do this. This is gonna really help our company.
Eric Lawrence (15:59)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think anytime you go down the path of a rebuild, it's smart to have somebody on your end, be the architect because whoever you're going to be working with, it's going to be important that you bring them up to speed on what your processes are and walk them through and, know, great detail because an audit's great from a code level basis and that whoever you're working with should give you some clear direction on what could be improved. But I think at the same time, whatever company you work with,
Michael Georgiou (16:17)
yeah.
Eric Lawrence (16:26)
They're not going to be as much of a subject matter expert in your industry and your process as you are. So it's going to be important that you have somebody from your side that understands your processes inside and out to be able to walk that company through. Hey, this is what our tool does. This is what our platform does. Here's what's great about it from our opinion. And here are where a lot of the inefficiencies stem from. you know, don't, don't let your imagination hold you back there. There's actually a lot of things that you might be doing manually that could be solved.
through technology that you're just not aware of. it's a process for sure.
Michael Georgiou (16:58)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, and I think it could be a very great investment ⁓ internally and externally for your business. yeah, sometimes you just gotta take a look, take a look ⁓ internally and see if it's something that needs to be done and how it can be fixed and what the solution is. So.
Eric Lawrence (17:16)
Yep.
So I'm, think now's a good time to give our sponsor a shout out for the episode. ⁓ it's, brought to you by MagicTask, the task management app. actually like using most task tools feel like a chore MagicTask is the opposite. It's fast, clean, and somehow makes staying on top of work feel enjoyable. Whether you're managing your own to do's or keeping a team on track, it helps you stay focused without slowing you down.
Michael Georgiou (17:21)
Let's do it.
Eric Lawrence (17:43)
We use it every day at Imagineovation to run projects and stay aligned. It's genuinely part of our workflow now. Take a look at magictask.io. You might actually enjoy using it too. So let's think about kind of the big takeaways for today when it comes to rebuilds. I know getting alignment, getting an audit done, choosing which path makes the most sense, having a stakeholder in place that can help run the project with your team.
Is there anything else that you think is worth touching on with this subject?
Michael Georgiou (18:12)
Yeah, I would say if a rebuild is necessary, there are a lot of long-term benefits like the scalability, which we've touched on a little bit. You've touched on internal team morale, making sure that everyone's aligned internally to make sure that the project goes smooth, of course.
You know, would say improve customer experience. If a, if a platform that helps to run your business for whatever reason, it will improve, not just the customer experience, if that's the purpose of it, but also employee experience and retention, right? That's, that's critical as well. Cause we need tech to run our businesses. can't just do it. Like you said, by using, you know, ⁓ pieces of, of, paper and sheets and making all this stuff, right? You need to kind of use tools and systems that are going to help to allow you to grow.
Eric Lawrence (18:53)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (18:57)
Um, let me see what else, uh, I would say kind of just aligning on a, a, on a mindset level as well that, you know, the, the, systems and the platforms that you're using, whether it's a mobile or a web app or, or AI or whatever it is, um, that kind of everyone's on the same page, uh, in terms of the innovation aspect of your business. Cause you, need to innovate.
If you don't innovate today, we've seen it. I've seen it Eric so many times, man, like that there were past businesses and people I've spoken to where they didn't want to innovate. They were kind of scared. Like we talked about before, or they saw too much risk and they ended up failing. And that's the unfortunate reality of it. But yeah, I would say those are kind of the main ones. And, but yeah. So I guess to close everyone, you know, I would just say
that the scariest part of rebuilding isn't just the technology, it's letting go of the past. If your system's slowing you down, costing you more to maintain and to fix it, or simply can't grow with you, it's time to really look inward and see what can be done to help grow your technology and help grow your company, your business.
And rebuilding isn't about failure. It's about building forward with clarity, confidence, and a smarter foundation. So if you're wrestling with the decision and not sure what's salvageable, feel free to reach out and we'll help you figure out if a rebuild really makes sense or not and how to do it right. But yeah, I would say that's pretty much it everyone. Hopefully someone found some value from this and can help you out. So yeah, we appreciate everyone so much. And thank you, Eric. I know you're...
super busy man and it's fun doing these content sessions. So, very cool. Yeah, thank you everyone for listening to Tales from the Pros. This is your host, Michael Georgiou and your cohost, Eric Lawrence. Thank you everyone. Take care.
Eric Lawrence (20:44)
Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for listening in everyone.