Duke: Hey everyone.
Welcome to another episode of CJ and the Duke.
As always, I am a co-host Robert the Duke Fedor.
And I am Corey, CJ Wesley.
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CJ: What the goes on here?
Duke: We're keeping that one in yeah, so for those of you just joining us,
Corey and I have been here for an hour, scratching our heads, trying to figure
out what episode we're gonna do today.
Not, not to say we're not prepared.
We have a huge library, a potential episodes, but we just
didn't feel like we didn't have enough gas in the tank on all on.
CJ: Yeah, man.
You know, sometimes it's a thing that calls you, right?
Like you go through these things and something's, calls out to you.
You feel something in your soul about it, right?
And, and, and we, and we jump in on it and we, and we, you know, knock out like some
bullet points and then we proceed to start recording and ignoring all the bullet.
Points and . and you know, this time, like we went through our extensive backlog
of, you know, I love backlog, right?
Like, we're gonna talk about this, like we're doing stories in agile development.
Yeah.
We went through our backlog and none of this stuff really just,
called out to either of us.
And so here we are now, just kind of, uh, we're shooting really
Duke: There we go.
Yeah.
So, um, what do you struggle with this week, bud?
CJ: testing actually, testing and documentation.
were on the agenda for this week and.
You know, neither one of those are typically a struggle to this week
though, they were a struggle, and maybe it was, maybe they were a
struggle because I just kind of hit my flow state on the theme that I was
building last week and which led to me completing it, which was great, right?
, but it was, but I felt like I had a little bit of flow state left over and I had,
I didn't have anything to use it on.
and so now when it comes to like testing and, writing a documentation like that
doesn't really, for me anyway, doesn't really require or utilize Flow state.
, for like documentation.
I do other kinds of writing that I do need the, flow state for, but
those sorts of things are a little bit more, , they're a little less, I
don't know where you want to call it.
Right.
But in the zone.
Yeah.
They're a little less in the zone when I do it.
Right.
So it's just been a little bit of a struggle to get
through that stuff this week.
What about you?
Duke: I can totally riff on that actually.
I relearned another important lesson.
You know, those lessons that you just like relearn every, two years for 10 years,
CJ: Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
One of those things that you say I, I'm never going to make this mistake
again, and then you proceed to.
Duke: Or it's not just a mistake.
It's just a truth.
Right.
And I'm developing an, gosh, I'm developing several custom apps right
now, but one app in particular is it's kind of a mutation of something that
they do very primitive, but it's like, what would level three of this look like?
And so we're basically going all, all in.
Functionality ServiceNow doesn't normally do.
, they don't have the funds to get stuff that actually does this,
so we're doing it in ServiceNow.
It's a lot of fun.
But what I'm relearning is that when you do something like that,
it's so, so difficult to get the full picture of what the thing
is gonna be without having tests.
CJ: Okay.
Duke: You know what I mean?
And I guess, I guess it's just iterative development, agile development,
whatever you want to call it.
But look at this thing in the beginning, you're like, this is like a four week job.
And it's just like a long time later, you're still like adding new stuff and
stuff that is quote unquote simple, just pops out as being missing.
Like, how could we forget that?
Well it's, it's like a brand new thing.
how should we have remembered that
CJ: Right.
Duke: that's what I'm kind of relearning is that the newer and more novel, the
thing that you're putting on ServiceNow, the more absolutely critical it is to just
have jam sessions with your stakeholders and just like, how do you feel about this?
CJ: I mean, that's a really good point, right?
when you're doing that iterative development, the sooner you
can get stuff in front of your stakeholders and have them tell
you yay or nay, essentially, right?
Like the better.
Off the project is like, developing inside of a vacuum is never a good idea.
You gotta, you gotta let that thing get in the hands of the client, let somebody
deal with it and somebody bust through the vacuum Of, of your own preconceptions.
Duke: And like literally nobody's used this before,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: right?
So it's like, how do you even know at the start, did we even ask all the right
questions to get the fullness of this app?
And it's not like we're developing like Angry Birds or something on the
mobile phone where it's like it does one thing exquisitely, no, everything in
ServiceNow does like, five to 10 things.
how do you even know you've.
The fullness defined.
CJ: So, uh, James Altucher has this, , concept he calls idea sex, right?
And it's basically when you got two different or multiple different ideas
that exists separately, and you combine them on some sort of intersectionality
and that, and the intersection of those ideas form something great, right?
So I look at this, what you're, what we're talking about here.
From the perspective of you got this process and you have this technology, and
now we combine them and they're, and in, in certain circumstances, like Nirvana
happens with that combination, right?
And you and the folks who are now looking at the product and understanding
the product more and understanding their process and understanding
now the technology more start.
All of these huge ideas about what can be done and what should be done.
And so maybe you had all of this ironed out and buttoned up before you guys
started, but now they know right.
Click everything and it changed the world and so I, that, that's how
I look at something like this too.
Well, in terms of like making sure that you get your code, your product, your app
in front of your, customer, as soon as.
Duke: Man, that idea sex thing I did at Knowledge 15, I did a present
presentation on innovation is Not Alchemy, and one of the things I
talked about is having a repository to, to put all of your ideas in, right?
Or concepts you wanna research, and then after that, like regularly
recombine all of those things.
CJ: Right.
Duke: And I remember at the time it was, Michael SL Robotnik, you remember?
CJ: I do
Duke: Actually not past tense.
The guy's still around, but I remember at
CJ: one out for Michael.
Duke: Hey, Michael's back.
We can pour another one to celebrate Uh, good.
All right.
Cheers to Michael.
he came from a customer and they had, basically, it was just at the point
where I'm thinking like, what could Xbox achievements combined with ServiceNow?
Does anything useful come outta that and then sure enough, a day later, Michael
Snicks, like doing this case study where they gamified their IT support and they
had points and badges and levels and stuff for your contributions it, or
like revolutionized their help desk,
CJ: kick
Duke: was really cool because with these stuffy corporate attitudes and aesthetics
and frameworks, like who would've.
To even say, Hey, what can, video gaming teach us about our performance?
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: would've been laughed out of the room until somebody actually has
the guts to do that recombination.
CJ: Which, you know, in hindsight seems pretty obvious because when
you think about it, like how many casinos are there in the world, right?
Like there are a ton of them.
And people love gambling, right?
And people love playing, and that's gaming.
it's called the gaming industry.
Like how many, gaming consoles has, you know, Microsoft, Sony, uh, Nintendo sold
over the past like 30, 40 years, right?
Atari, all of them, right?
So many games, right?
like these things sell.
by the boatload for a reason.
And you know, ignoring them, I think society, has made a huge
mistake in ignoring gaming as like a kids sing for far too long.
Duke: it's what keeps us glued to our iPhones, right?
CJ: Yeah, exactly.
It's the same mechanism.
Social media too.
Duke: somebody's using that to ex, you know, to exploit your attention.
So,
CJ: Oh man, absolutely.
I just read a great book on this.
I will figure it out.
We can put it in the show, in the show notes.
, but it was about habit and oh, the Power of Habit by, uh,
char Charles, uh, duh, hick.
So I wrote for the, , New York Times.
, it talks about like why we do what we do and how to change those things
that we do with, that we're doing without, no, without thinking.
Right.
Like it's, oh, it's a phenomenal book.
And once you read it and understand like what's driving you, you know,
you can kind of use that to, to build better habits and get more productive.
Awesome.
But we should put it in show notes.
Duke: For sure you got a link to it.
CJ: Yep.
Absolutely.
So what about you, duke?
Duke: Um, this week, I guess it's less about ServiceNow specifically and
more about, personal performance and,
CJ: Okay.
Duke: and how context switching is just the ruin of performance
CJ: Yeah, go on
Duke: And I kind of got into one of those things, right?
Where it's, it's the big thing about being an independent consultant, right?
It's like things don't slot in 40 hour intervals really nicely.
And so I'm in the process of like wrapping some up and ramping some on,
and on paper it's just like I have to do x number of things in a day, right?
But if the X things are from completely.
Ends of the spectrum, it's way heavier than just four things.
Does that make sense?
CJ: It.
Yes, absolutely.
Duke: Like if I work for customer X and I have 1, 2, 3, 4 things to do, or
I have four customers and one things to do for each, the one to do for each
of the cust that like, that's second scenario I'd say is more than double the
amount of like mental fuel to manage.
That make sense?
CJ: It absolutely does.
Right?
Because you're now in this context, right?
Of this dealing with this one customer.
And you might have five things, but you can peel 'em off
because there is a next right?
The, it's the power of next.
Right?
And maybe I should coin this, but somebody probably smarter
than me probably already has.
But what I've noticed too, and I, I, you know, I, I've mentioned before
on I show I have d h, D, right?
And so one of the things.
For me, it's like the power of next is something that I try to weaponize is by
having a stack of readily available tasks that I can draw upon in the context that
I'm in and which will keep me going.
But if that stack is empty, right, if there's nothing to draw on and that
next queue, that's when I find myself spacing and finding it hard to go
to the next task, whatever, and even decide what the next task is, right?
Or know what that is.
and you know, and it sounds a lot like what you're talking about now.
Sorry, I didn't mean I jumped in there.
I kind of , you know, but, you know, it resonates really, really hard with me.
Really, uh, really strongly with me because, that whole context shifting
thing for me is, is really, one things that sa SAPs a lot of my, productivity.
Duke: Yeah, I just, I'm gonna be just like commit to being way
more careful about it this year.
. And this is just a lesson too, because this week, like three or four people
have asked me to like, Hey, connect me with recruiters cuz I'm really
interested in, hyper flexible part-time work that I could do after hours.
CJ: Okay guys.
Duke: And it's just like, but it isn't Or at least like, I don't know if I, if I'm
the one of the blind spot here, but I'm just like, do those even really exist?
Those, feel like unicorns.
CJ: So I, you know, I feel like they should exist.
I think that they don't exist because people are still kind
of glued even in 2023, right?
People are still glued a little bit to the boots in the seat
kind of methodology, right?
and not, and even if boots in this.
Seat is, seat is now in your home office.
People are still glued to nine to five business hours, right?
Where you should be available during the conventional time when business
is done, except that what we do in a lot of cases can be flexed outside of
conventional business hours, right?
So if you have somebody who's working a day job and instead of them starting
a side project, would just like to take up some additional ServiceNow work, to
me, that makes a whole lot of sense.
But I.
Find that, and I have found this too, from just talking to potential clients and
existing clients over the years is really difficult to make that work in practice.
Duke: Yeah.
And the more I struggle with things like my own context switching fatigue,
the more I, the more it underscores my idea that these unicorn, I'm not
saying they don't exist, I'm just saying they are, they're unicorns.
They're, they're super rare.
CJ: Right.
Duke: it's just because, If they could see you at the time of day you choose to
work, would they want to pay the money?
Right.
So I just finished an eight hour day at my day job and then, I got dinner ready.
I helped the kids with their homework, took a breath, family time, got my
kids tucked in, and it's 8:39 PM.
And am I like rough and ready to go and do some like real significant
troubleshooting or are we like being real here, maybe being a bit
antagonistic or am I just trying to monetize my least valuable hours?
my very, very least monitor, you know what I mean?
CJ: I do.
I do, but I think it.
Duke: and if the, and if the work could be, at that time with that, after the,
you know, in that time by somebody whose mind has already gone through a full day's
worth of cognitive work, why wouldn't they just ship that offshore immediately?
CJ: What I say is because everybody's different, I'm an early bird,
I'm up at four o'clock in the morning in the wintertime, right?
And, the work that I do from four to seven, it's just as valuable as
if I had done it from 10 to one, and yet it ain't, you know, and it
got done and the client is happy.
, So I, I'd say that, if you can manage to deliver quality work by doing it in
unconventional times of the day, then I think, there should be a market for that.
But the hack that I'm thinking that probably exists is maybe folks should
be looking to consider themselves offshore to other countries, right?
We're working hours are dovetailing with those, , late night
hours or early morning hours.
, right?
Like maybe you need a European client.
where you can then, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, maybe you're now,
and forgive me on the time zones, I don't feel like doing the middle maths.
I'm figuring out what times people are open, but you know what I mean, right?
so in AsiaPac, right, like three o'clock in the afternoon, it's
typically about the time that they're starting to get up and get online.
So like 7, 8, 9 in the evening, if you're doing work there, you're still
in the middle of their business day.
Right.
And so if you're doing work for an Asia Pac company, maybe that's how you
align that, those few hours of, off cycle time that you want to monetize,
Duke: I'm glad we did this jam session thing because I think we can riff on this
one seriously, and I'll play the bad guy
CJ: go for it.
Duke: Uh, Because this, like, this actually scratches a lot of the
questions that I get asked, right?
So number one is, can you connect me with jobs where I can basically sign
in whenever I want, do as much hours as I want, whenever you know what I mean?
The, the unicorn customers.
And I don't, I don't believe that those exist at scale.
And I think it's a bad idea, even in your case where it's like, okay, you
get up at six, but now you're given, or whatever, you start work at six.
Five to seven, you get
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: two solid hours of, but those are your best times.
So you're taking it from somewhere.
That means another one of your accounts gets your ass hours.
CJ: Okay.
That's a, that's an interesting
Duke: what I mean?
It's like, okay, you, you put 'em in the morning, but I just go on this principle.
Like you, you have some amount of cognitive load in a day.
that's your maximum cognitive load.
Never.
And , at a specific point, say it's six hours, eight hours, whatever, four hours,
maybe even, all other work diminishes after that if you're doing cognitive work.
And why shouldn't we believe that?
lumberjacks only have a certain amount of time, they can strain their body
doing lumberjack works, oil rig workers.
Our brains are no different than that.
you can't flex that muscle all day long.
CJ: Right.
Duke: And so let's say there's leftover hours somewhere, who are
you given the leftover hours to?
CJ: Yeah.
I'm
Duke: And there's another point you just made too.
It was like, Oh, the internationalness, right?
Like, oh, I'll just get a customer somewhere else.
Because a lot of people wanna just say, I wanna live over here and
I wanna do contract work and bill US rates to us customers, but I
wanna live in like wherever, right?
Cheapest cost of living in the entire world.
you can't just do.
CJ: Why not?
Duke: Well, because it's the same as working for like, I, think the
companies that want to, the companies that want to offshore, right?
There's no question companies want to offshore.
Um, but when they do it, they don't say, oh, find five a hundred, find a
hundred independent people for us to, connect with and build contracts with.
No, they pick one like vendor of offshore resources.
Then it's basically like one interaction they have to.
Your people aren't doing good enough, great.
We'll add five more or we'll crack the whip harder or whatever.
And so, but they don't go and say, find me one person to do this.
I just don't think they think like that.
CJ: yes, I could probably agree with you that I don't think they think like that,
but I wouldn't, wouldn't you think they'd have a much better experience if they did?
, when you think about like, and, and I, and I'm speaking from, from the
entirety of the IT experience, right?
Because not just, you know, all shoring from the ServiceNow perspective,
but I, you know, general IT as well, and I've been, I've been in
situations where, you know, a all shoring company has been brought in
and the quality is often different.
even when we, um, when I've seen like some of the better offshoring companies
get brought in, , you know, there's, there's still like a difference between,
you know, your permanent folks and the ssha folks, or a communications
barrier sometimes, or, you know, other, other things that contribute to a, a
less than baseline experience of the people that you might be replacing.
and so in those situations, right?
why do you need to actually why continue to throw the throw?
Why continue to follow the same existing paradigm that's not working and why can't
I see, and I I think this way because I'm independent consultant, right?
And, my, what I'm selling is value, right?
I, I'm not selling hours.
You know, like that's how I get paid.
Duke: Yeah, I'm, I think you're a different cat though, right?
Like you, you've reached a certain point in your career where you can't
pitch it that way, but even so, okay.
CJ: Okay.
Duke: like the companies that can afford ServiceNow on
average are larger companies.
We can agree on this, right?
Okay.
And like when you decide, like let's say the ServiceNow owner is really open and
says, I need to do X, and there's one person that's all the way across the,
the world in this other country, and I want to pick them to get this stuff done.
Okay, so now you're at like a Fortune 500, fortune 100 company
and, and they're like, okay, do they just, they don't mail cash to that.
You know, so how do you get this person paid?
Well, we have to know exactly how their country allows them to get paid, right?
So this person's like, this person's out in the Ivory Coast.
What do I know about the Ivory Coast and what, what tax?
How much do I have to send to their government?
Do I have to send anything to the state that they.
Do I have, do I have to provide some kind of benefit because
I'm paying them a certain way?
they basically have to adopt another country's legal way of paying you
CJ: Why, why would they know?
Right?
Like
Duke: well, they probably won't.
That's the thing.
So it's basically like you, you know, you're in the Ivory coast and somebody
says, and the US says, okay, Corey like, 'em and stack 'em, do all this work.
And then you're like, great, how do I get paid for my a hundred hours?
And I'm like, uh, I don't know, maybe their co their vendor management
part of the company doesn't know.
And furthermore, they're basically filling out contracts for like massive right?
A hundred thousand dollars at a time.
And then your contract might be a rounding error for that.
And so basically just for somebody to buy you, you personally
might not be worth the effort.
Cause procurement's gonna put at the bottom of the list just to get
you in a position where they can.
CJ: Yeah.
And that's the problem, right?
and, and that's why there's a typically a difference in quality too, right?
Like, you know, when you.
for me, right?
Like any company hiring me, I make it really easy for
them to hire me, number one.
But, you know, there's also the, um, let me think on this one.
So it's a, so if a company wants to hire me, so let me
put it to you this way, right?
, I'm more valuable than a team of most offshore resources, right?
I didn't notice, I didn't say one person, right?
I said a team.
and that's both from a, development standpoint and an
architectural standpoint, right?
, but if you're looking for that and I happen to just be
working outta Jamaica, right?
Like, and you, and you rob yourself of that experience like, To me that , that's
a negative on the company, right?
Like you're losing, , you're losing value there, or you losing generated
value for the company, right?
Because you're inflexible with the way that you do business.
Now, that's the theory.
The reality of this is you would absolutely not know I'm in Jamaica, right?
Or you might know that I'm in Jamaica, but you wouldn't know
that I work outta Jamaica.
You might just happen to know I'm on vacation and I'm,
and it's a working vacation.
The my bank account would be a US bank account in the US Bank.
All of my, , tax information would be all US information, . And I might not even
be in Jamaica long for, for a long time.
I might be happy to be there for a month and I might be going
to like Antigua a month later.
And it, and that just might be my lifestyle, right?
Like a more digital nomad.
Travel the world, stay in these places where the cost of living
is a lot lower than the us.
All I need is an internet connection, right?
And you pay me what, uh, whatever we negotiate you, you send it to me as
if I still, because I maintain the US address, you send it to me as if I still
live in the US and everybody's happy.
Duke: Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't happen or can't happen,
I'm just saying like, like I'm dealing with this right now.
Somebody wants me to come in and do kind of a, uh, prepare them for a
greenfield re architecture, right?
They got the seven year rich, let's just trash this thing and start over.
CJ: Kick ass.
Duke: And, but they're basically right out front.
They're like, yeah, we want you.
Who can you work through?
Because their procurement is not gonna st is not gonna take one second to
like, sign a contract with, Robert Fedor of Chicago, Illinois, 66 30
CJ: Right.
Duke: You know what I mean?
CJ: I do.
I do absolutely know what you mean.
Yeah.
Duke: Even if they did take the time, I would never pass their
vendor standards to be this.
So basically they're telling me like, align yourself with some big
company whose paper you can reside on, or this thing is a wash even
though you know we really want you.
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: So it's just,
CJ: I agree.
Like those, those companies, you know, and a lot of companies really, it's
not just those companies, you're right.
There's a lot of companies who are not gonna take the time out.
once they understand that, the nature of what's going on to, to deal with it.
So that's a good, that's a good, that's a good point.
, I don't know, but I, I do feel like it's a missed opportunity.
Right.
Yeah, I can keep it working for, for individuals.
Maybe this isn't a scalable idea.
Maybe this doesn't work for like thousands or tens of thousands of people, right?
But it can certainly work for 10 or a hundred people,
Duke: Yeah.
To me it's like, I wish it could be different, but then it's like, maybe
it's not different for a reason.
CJ: right?
, Duke: yeah.
Anyways, it's an interesting thought process anyway.
CJ: Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and.
I think it works for, individuals who are out there listening to the show
right now, maybe it doesn't work for a thousand or an ecosystem, right?
So maybe you can't build an ecosystem off the back of this idea.
But if you one person is listen or are listening to this, And you're
thinking, I would like to pick up a few extra hours in my off cycles.
Right?
And those off off cycles happen to align with prime European
business working hours.
And I say European as if it's one time zone as many of them.
But pick a country and then pick a time zone and you happen to align
with one of those and they happen to need ServiceNow work, right?
Then boom, Bob's your uncle and do it.
And I think you could make it work.
what I probably wouldn't try to build a career on it though, and, but maybe you.
Duke: Yeah.
Um, yeah, I just, I hate being the bear of bad news, right?
Like, cuz people ask me this all the time and I'm like, I wish you well.
It's just like, this is not how things work, right?
Or not how things are optimized to work.
CJ: Yeah.
Well, you know, let me, and let me ran on this a little bit too, right?
Because this has exposed this to me, like the lack of understanding
of, business value that's inherent in the IT space, right?
Like so when companies are hiring consultants, and say a in, in a
lot of different spaces when a company brings in a Accenture right?
They're not expecting Accenture to sit in a cubicle 40 hours a week, and
have that green line button going from eight to four, eight to five, right?
that's not happening.
I mean, and when it is happening, that's like negotiated upfront.
Most of the time, Accenture's telling them this is gonna be the output.
Of this project that we're signing up for, and the company's just
waiting on that output because they appreciate and understand the value
that Accenture brings to the table.
Right.
, you know, and I think what we see a lot is that con that companies don't hire
service down resources and understand the value that's being generated
by the, for the business, right?
They still think of this as almost, you know, staff ag butts in seats, right?
I need to see your green.
teams icon lit up to make sure that I know that you're actually doing something.
It's like, no, you know that I'm doing something, you know, the valuable I'm
doing because you actually see the code and somebody can use it and it works.
And the process that you have trouble with after you hire me, you
no longer have any trouble with it.
Duke: Yeah, that's, I like, I gotta underscore that that is not the
most common type of ServiceNow work.
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: That that whole, like I'm providing a business outcome to you is kind of a,
it's a solution consultant mentality.
And it's best leverage when you can say like, I don't know how to do this
so well, like an almost fixed rate it,
CJ: Well, that's kind of what it is.
Like it is, it is almost that it's, it is a, , fixed rate, , project that
you happen to break up , and bill as like time and materials or hourly.
Right.
and because again, the mentality of the industry in general is one that
doesn't necessarily tolerate the value billing sort of, um, uh, method.
right?
Like , there it isn't aligned to outcomes.
It's aligned to bust seats, right?
Like, you know, you spent six hours in this business rule, right?
Who cares about the business rule?
Duke, like you didn't hire me.
Like I think you think like companies, I think they think they
hired me to build a business rule.
But that's not really what they hired me for.
They hired me to take ServiceNow and make money with it for them.
Right?
that's why they hire me.
So it's like whatever that process is, you know, asset
management, for example, right?
Like they didn't hire me to come in here and build business
rules around asset management.
They hired me to build a really consistent, efficient, and
scalable process for them in asset management that's gonna.
Take their as management staff and to a certain degree, their op degree, their
operational staff internally, right.
And make them more efficient so that they lose less ac, ac, assets, right?
So that they are, they stay on, time with, um, returning their leases, right?
And, and get new, hardware and software in as they.
They cut down on the amount of, uh, software asset license
spending they're doing.
. Because maybe, you know, you, your, um, licensed for 15,000 windows installed
and you really only got 5,000 people since 2008, but you didn't know.
Duke: they gotta, they have to have, like, they have to have a way to gauge
the cost and the work though, right?
So you can either come in and say, I do this for a hundred thousand flat rate,
CJ: Yeah.
Duke: And they're down for that.
, or like the only other alternative like that is to count hours.
CJ: Yeah, well, I, I think it's in intrinsic upon the, , the
consultant also to know the value that you bring to the, uh, project.
Duke: and here's another thing that I learned through s SPM
is that the different types of labor matter to finance.
So Robert Fedor, building the business rule is a different
financial transaction than Robert Fedor training a room full of people
CJ: Fair enough.
Duke: because that business rule is a thing that exists now.
It's an asset,
CJ: Right.
Duke: abstract sense, it's an asset and therefore like they can depreciate
the labor on that part of the project.
So I have some sympathy to like, well, what?
What are you spending your hours on?
Even if it is the components,
CJ: Yeah.
I think we, I think we will, we will have to disagree on that dude, cuz I, I, , I,
because I really don't think it matters.
Right.
For me, it's all coms.
It's like, what did I deliver for you?
Did it meet the thing?
Did it enable you to do the thing you were trying to do?
Right.
And if it did and it did, it, did it successfully, then we, everyone
should consider that a win.
, I mean, way back in the battle days, right.
Of, of, , accelerators, right?
That's what this was.
, right?
Excel.
This is the accelerator methodology.
You go in and you hire, you know, partner A and they come in with their way of doing
things and they, they kinda, you know, they sung a dance shoe about like why
they have an accelerator, but honestly they have an accelerator so they can
write once and, and build many, right?
It's scale, it's just scaling hours that they invested in it, right?
For me and, and, and abstracting those hours away from their hourly cost.
That's exactly why you had, well, you had accelerators.
To me, it's the same thing, right?
Like, I wanna scale the hours that I put into, um, that I put into the,
in, into, the, the relationship with my client as well, and that as long
as that value is there for them.
Right.
And, in the startup world, and if you listen to folks who are like, you know,
selling SaaS services, um, they'll come in with a service and they'll
sell it to an individual or small team.
And that service might be $15 a user, per month.
Right.
Reasonable.
Right.
But then IBM comes in and they wanna buy it, right.
And they want to be a subscriber and they, they've got a team of
like, I dunno, 50,000 people, right.
Is that company charging it ibm, $15 a month, per user?
Or is that company now charging b m $50 a month per user?
Because they gotta deal with all the enterprise bullshit, right?
That comes with b m, right?
Like you gotta go through like compliant certifications and you
gotta deal with, you know, ibm.
Purchasing team and proc processing and blah, blah, blah.
All the stuff that comes with dealing with big organizations, right?
Like the, you've gotta build more resilience in your product because
they can't afford to be down, right?
Like, there's a lot more that comes into it when you start
dealing with big organizations.
And the value that IBM's gonna get outta your product is different than the
value that small mom and pop business is gonna get outta your product, right?
And.
Sell them to sell that to them in two different value, points.
Now, the question is, is like, is that wrong, right, for acknowledging
the customer gets more value out of your, um, service than the other one?
And if so, then should you just sell it always at the
same, , the same price point?
And I'll tell you the answer is go to any software, , any SaaS app
and look for enterprise sales, and you'll, you'll see two words there.
You know, contact us,
and, and that's kind of where we are with this, right?
Like, you know, it's the, it's, it is the, it's the thought behind it that.
And, and this is aimed at, the consultants who are at this, this
have, this ability to sell, right?
And the, and the ability to deliver, right?
Like, you have to think about the value that you create for client, right?
And so, don't charge mom and prop pop, rates to, Microsoft, they can afford it,
, and they're gonna get way more value outta whatever you're gonna deliver for them.
So that's how I look at it.
Duke: Yeah, it's, uh, there's definitely a lot of merit in there too.
, wow.
We are at 36 minutes of record and I didn't
CJ: We had nothing to talk about, dude.
Duke: Nothing.
We're coming up blanks and we've talked about shoot, iterative
development, testing, recombination and innovation, attention and context.
Switching the unicorn project offshoring and internationalizing
consulting and shoot what?
Pricing our work.
CJ: And pri Yeah, and pricing our work.
Absolutely.
Duke: There you go folks.
You got six in one episode.
tell us we never do anything for you,
CJ: and, and, and on this one, I would love to hear your feedback folks.
So if you do have any takeaways on this one, , do leave us a
comment when we post about it.
Duke: Yeah, man.
Argue with us.
It's gonna be awesome,
CJ: Yeah, no doubt.
Love arguments, right?
Like how else do you know if you're right or wrong, unless people tell you
that they agree or disagree with you.
Duke: That's right.
So thanks everybody for listening, and we will see you on the next one.
CJ: Bye-bye.
Duke: CJ and the Duke is hosted by Robert the Duke, Fedor, and Corey CJ Wesley.
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