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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So Tom, welcome to the show today.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Could you give us a top level overview about what it is that you're currently working on
and your journey so far?
Yeah, so Alined Consulting, at the end of the day, we're an IT consulting firm, right?
And so what we've done and our kind of our approach to the market overall is to really
blend professional enterprise-grade consulting services, but built on a different type of
delivery engine, right?
So our clients, Fortune 1000, Fortune 500, right, come to us to ultimately solve their
technology problems and their needs.
uh Our approach to it is a little different than historically has been done.
We have a large bench of people and I you have to source on that bench and manage that.
uh We have a, and we're very lucky to have a really great practice lead, SMEs, lead
solution architects and engineers in-house.
And we keep that core band right inside the house, but we're built on top of that staffing
delivery engine.
So, which makes us very agile and nimble.
So.
When we walk into a project for our clients, we're able to like scale up and down and meet
their needs.
There's a lot of work on the back end for that to be successful.
But when it works, there's kind of a beauty to that, right?
There's a cost save for our clients and they appreciate kind of that.
You know, I go back and for that niche, best foe, custom approach, whatever people like to
hear.
And now it's, know, AI is the craze.
So what are we doing there?
And how have we not been working with AI for the last two decades as people want that
experience?
And that's the challenge now.
as companies try to implement those solutions in scale.
Amazing, amazing.
mean, I love to dive into all those different things, but I like to start by going back to
start of your journey, right?
So when you started this company, what was the motivation behind it?
What were you doing before and what was the early days like?
Yeah, I think I get asked this question a lot.
I think I always had an entrepreneur's like itch back to college.
I remember my dad gave me, I don't know if you ever read the book, like Rich Dad Poor Dad,
like Robert Kiyosaki.
That was kind of a eye opening moment.
I had never read anything like that before.
We didn't, we had a couple of friends that their families had businesses, but that wasn't
like, wasn't taught in school that like, you could, you could make money and do it a
different way than go down this path.
And so, um, you know, but when I came out of school,
I started within the staffing industry and then they were kind of working into consulting
services and spent 15 years within two companies there.
Great experience, very, very fortunate, especially to be a part of a couple of companies
that I got to go from 40 million to 1.2 billion in just nine years.
was unbelievable and almost uh made me jaded and think it wasn't what happens to every
company.
when you were in it, you don't realize how special that is and rare.
um But I think COVID was kind of the catalyst.
the company I was at, they were shutting down the Chicago operations.
I was looking to see, well, maybe I could just buy out my office from the company and was
talking with investors.
then I was kind of sitting on the couch one night and they asked me, like, well, why don't
we spin up the own organization versus trying to buy something?
And one of the first things my wife said was like, well, you're going to definitely need a
business partner because you have lots of gaps, so Stu was actually the one to kind of
recommend.
Brendan, Cody, my co-founder, we have a lot of alignment on core values and stuff.
But I think from a timing perspective, when you think back to 2020, the consulting
industry, it has trends, right?
You can see the dot com, it burst, but it came back very, very quickly.
The housing market crashed in a way, it came back very quickly.
The industry's not recession-proof.
We're going through a little bit of change right now, but it is a little
recession-retarded.
We see it bounce back faster than the record in the market.
So Q4 of 2020, we were kind of following what other companies were doing and they were
starting to have like what would be record-breaking quarters in Q4 for them after the
volatility of the first half of year, still while we're in COVID, and then the massive
stir of that hiring.
I think everything came together probably six, seven months faster than we initially
thought.
We thought we'll kind of sit down and we'll take our time and really put pen to paper.
we launched in, after starting to talk about it late October, November, we launched in
February ah and wanted to try to capture that market and some of that.
So think part of it was the timing.
The other side was we thought that we could do it.
And if we built this farm,
you know, and set that infrastructure right to be able to support our clients, we could
come at it from a different way that we thought would add more value to them, you know,
while allowing a lot of people to be successful with inside the company.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I guess you had all that experience, you know, working in that corporate setting
previously, and you could take those lessons into obviously starting this business.
So within the first few weeks, you how did you find finding your first few clients and
what did that look like?
Cause I know a lot of companies when they start, they struggle.
So was to get their foot in the door, get those first few clients on board.
So what was your story there?
terrifying.
You you put your website up there and you probably know a little bit.
It's not like the phone just starts ringing and people are like, I have a thousand
opportunities for you.
um You get a lot of congratulations and good luck.
I know I'm excited and all that stuff.
That's really nice.
um It's funny.
We were talking about this last night.
Do you remember what we were doing in our first week?
And I was like, I honestly can't remember exactly.
uh
what we did with our day, the first couple of weeks, but I do remember when we were
sitting down and say, hey, we're gonna do this, do we have the professional network that
we've built that credibility and have that relationship equity with folks, that they'll at
least take my call.
I don't know if they're gonna have a project for us to work on.
I don't know how we're necessarily gonna support it right out of the gates, but they'll
take my call.
And I felt confident enough between Brendan and I that I can reach out to these people and
they'll have a conversation with me.
And what we found that is extremely humbling is that, especially in the early days, it was
amazing how many people wanted to help.
And they're like, hey, uh I'm excited.
I'll be your guinea pig, right?
How can I help you?
Like, let me get, and there was like this interesting, uh almost pride that they had,
because, you know, someone's got to give you your first shot.
And it's not like I'm sitting there with a book of case studies.
I had all my personal experience, right?
But they're like, what has aligned them?
Nothing.
nothing.
It's day two.
Um, and so we, we, we got lucky, uh, you know, with some people started just like, I'll
give you a shot.
You know, I've worked with you guys in the past and that, you know, we're kind of banking
that they just knew that we had high integrity, that we were going to do whatever we could
to come.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It seems to be a common trend with a lot of people that have been on the show where when
they started, the first protocol was their network, right?
Their professional network and just tapping into that.
And it goes to show as well, you know, when you are looking to launch, you've to use what
you've got, right?
And so if you have a network, then just use that, right?
To get things going, get the ball rolling.
And then from there, obviously, you get your first few clients in, you have a lot of
lessons that come off the back of that.
And then you can roll that into obviously, those newer clients that come in.
So I guess, you know, in those early days, you know, you were going after people in your
network and people that were there.
Then how did that transition go from, you know, working with maybe those people to then
maybe expanding to colder leads, let's say in colder companies that don't actually know
who you are yet.
Yeah, it was, if you think back to like 21 and 22, the market, people were hiring like
crazy salaries for through the roof.
So it wasn't as difficult to just get business through our network starting up.
And there was a blessing and a curse to that.
So we weren't doing what I would call hardcore pure business development, you know, maybe
in that nine, first nine, 12 months, hired a couple of people.
But we were able to walk into our network and the demand was so high that we are really
getting opportunities.
And that was kind of that wave that we were hoping to capture.
And then around 2023, we had to, into 2024, like start to change and we've continually
changed our attack to business development.
And it's just what has proven to be the best is old school, cold reach out, cold calling,
know, connect, follow up with another email, cold call them again later in the day, get
them on the phone.
Uh, and you know, as much as that people will talk about, that's dead or, you can't do it.
we tried automation engines though.
It didn't work very well.
You know, you get a couple of emails and you're like, Oh, that's catchy.
I'll at least give it a shot.
But, um, and I'm sure you have to do a little bit in your job as well.
You're constantly trying to grow and elevate your network.
Um, and we just went, we just did it that way.
Right.
I mean, referrals are still the best.
So if you do a good job for someone, they'll refer you.
And it's not like a CIO is typically going to pick up a cold call and be like, yeah, come
on in.
You so you sometimes have to work your way up, you know, to that level or get someone that
worked with them in the past.
But yeah, we just went back to just hardcore, pound the phones, hundreds of things a day,
get on the phone, set a meeting, do whatever you can, meet them where they are, have
coffee, um, and build a relationship.
And that is, is proving to be what works the best.
Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of people that say, Hey, cold out bounds there, this,
that, and the other, it's like, just because you wouldn't reply to it doesn't mean other
people won't.
And I think there's a channel for everyone.
You know, it's like I've, I've never bought from like Facebook ads, right.
Or anything like that.
But you know, I have bought from obviously organic like search, et cetera.
Right.
And so there's channels for everyone else, right?
Everyone's got their own one that they'll resonate on.
just cause it wouldn't, just cause you wouldn't reply to it personally, it doesn't mean
someone else, you know, wouldn't take that chance.
Yeah, clearly someone's replying, right?
sometimes I get an email like, I can't believe that works, but it must, right?
Otherwise they'd stop doing it.
um You know, it's funny too, when like some of our salespeople will cold call someone and
I always think it's funny when they're like, how did you get this number?
Or, you know, I can't talk right now.
Why did you pick up the phone?
Like, how do we know what you're doing?
And you can kind of make a joke of it, you know, and go from there.
But like, yeah, I think that, you know, and I think that
coming out of 23, 24, as most people were going back into the office, um it's been
interesting to see the decline of the virtual meeting.
Clearly, if you're not in the same city, right, it's a great avenue, but if you're in the
same city, you do see a lot more people now that are like, yeah, you can come by the
office, or we'll get a cup of coffee, and that kind of professional in-person relationship
to Garner that trust has been increasing dramatically.
Yeah, it's interesting because we've seen the same thing over on this side of the pond as
well, where, you know, I recently did a podcast in person with the CRO of a huge company
here and he's like, it just comes to the office and we can just have a podcast in one of
the meeting rooms.
Right.
And it was, was really cool experience to obviously go in in person, build that
relationship and build it face to face.
Cause it's interesting.
You can build such strong relationships in person rather than just online.
Online, course you can, but when you're in person, it's just a different, a different
type, right?
It's a different type of relationship you can build with them.
It's different, mean, it's the technology behind, you know, what they did with Zoom and
now Teams is there and, this platform, right, and how people have done it has created a
lot of ease and flexibility.
But yes, I think there's still like, you break bread, you shake someone's hand.
There's just that kind of implicit trust that you have a better opportunity to build.
And it's just relaxing, you know.
It's like, I gonna write you a check for a million dollars?
I've never met you.
That's harder to do.
did it because we had to and that's what everyone had to do for a while.
But now it seems to kind of feels more like 2018-2019 in a weird way.
no, for sure.
One thing I'd love to get your take on is, you know, the first few hires within the
company, because obviously those hires, they're really critical for the business success
overall, because obviously the wrong hires can dramatically reduce the speed you're to
grow.
And obviously you guys have grown really well over the last few years.
So what were those few or the first few key highs that you made internally and how did
that go there?
Yeah.
Well, I think we got lucky with a few people, right?
woman that runs all of our marketing now has been with us, you know, basically since the,
you know, I she started, we were eight months old and she's been in a bunch of different
jobs.
runs our Elevate program.
um Having some of that, have a person that came into sales, you know, recently, but was
running, you know, all of our delivery function, um you know, along the way.
And those have been kind of our bedrocks, right?
um I think we have changed who and how we hire to.
uh
ah partially based on the market where we were focused a lot on delivery in the beginning.
And you know, can look back, it's always easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but
we're also responding to what the client's demands were at the time.
And the thought was, okay, if we keep this up, we're going to really have to expand our
delivery operations much more than we ever anticipated.
Well, as the market changes shift and then you're like, all right, well, we need more
salespeople, right?
We've had to change and the profile of how we changed and, even in this year, um, you
know, to go and now we, instead of targeting more senior individuals or experience, we're
kind of going back to like, Hey, let's build a much
more robust training program internally.
Bring people in right out of school.
I'm a big fan of that.
I love that.
I think that's fun just to promote from within.
It's not saying that we don't need people in key roles in other places.
But if you're a Jim Collins fan at all, and a good to great and built to last, that seems
to be a theme for any great company that like they do a great job of hiring out of school.
They have a great training program.
They promote from within.
Like none of this is new.
I just don't think that
we knew how that was gonna fit in our system.
ah And we had this kind of 15 year vision of like spend the first five years to set the
infrastructure up and we're coming up on our five year anniversary.
And then the next five is all about just like growth, growth, growth.
So ton of hiring, we're in big hiring mode right now, which is exciting and fun.
um But that profile had to change a little bit.
But you're right, like without a couple of these key people, then how do you get through
those tough times?
um
know, loyalty ah is hard to come by, right?
And so you always feel grateful for that as well.
Yeah, for sure.
And what I love about that model is hiring from within because to your point about loyalty
is if people can see, where they can move into and everything, then they're going to stay
with the company, right?
Which is what you want at the end of the day.
And so you can carve out roles for people to obviously keep them excited, keep them
happier in the workplace and obviously see the success and see the growth of their own
careers.
Cause I think my experience working in previous startups and previous companies was the
organization was very flat.
And so no one was really moving up or anywhere really.
And so you kind of felt stuck.
He's like, well, what do I go and do after, you know, well, where am I going next year,
you know, within the companies and there's nowhere to go.
And so trying to create that, think once you are still growing and then still in the early
days or early few years of the companies, it is tricky to do because, how do you create
those roles and how do you keep the team motivated for it?
And we're actually going through this right now where we have three of our key high is
already done.
And so now we're trying to figure out a cool.
The organization is very flat right now.
There's not many, there's not many senior roles apart from, you know, maybe moving to my
position, but, um, you know, how do we, how do we then structure this organization as we
keep growing, keep evolving to keep people excited, you know, with it and keep them happy
in the workplace.
That's definitely something we're going through now.
So it is cool to see that you see that.
Yeah.
No one you hire you ever, you especially you're excited and you don't hire anyone to be
like, oh, this is just going to be temporary.
And we'll probably, you you want them to stay forever and you want them to grow and you
want them to be successful.
Like we're a service based organization.
So our success is a hundred percent tied to bring people in and ensuring that they're
successful and doing everything we can.
It doesn't mean everyone is right.
Especially when you hire young change happens, values change, people move, they think they
want to do one thing and that's totally fine.
Um, yeah, I'd love to hire everyone in there.
all successful and come in and grow personally, professionally, and financially as fast as
possible, right?
That's probably my struggle, so I'm always trying to, I went so badly for you to do as
well as possible, to a fault where I can be really direct and you're like, all right, Tom,
Brennan, you gotta chill out, buddy.
Or you want things, but you're being a little hard, so.
Yeah, absolutely.
So moving on to, guess, the business model.
So you do both consulting and staffing together.
So how come you have, you know, you're not leaning just into consulting or just into
staffing.
Why do you have a mix of, both those areas?
So I think that, you know, at the end of the day, when you're solving problems with
people, right?
You know, there's a couple of ways to do it.
The historic playbook where, you know, consulting firms come in, you take the big four,
right?
You know, for example, they obviously have huge benches right now, but they're still
allocating, you know, resources to that.
Now I remember being down at a client and one of those companies had a big contract with
oil gas, big oil gas company that you might know on your side of the pond too.
And the whole flow.
or was filled with all these contractors.
And I was asking the stakeholder, was like, well, you know, look, who has that project?
And he told me, and I was like, well, how are they bringing people in?
like, well, just tell them we need another person and hire.
And in my head, I was like, well, that's what a staffing company does.
And they were getting charged a ton for these low level people.
Good for them, right?
But I kind of started thinking like, you had seen some staffing companies start to try to
pivot into more professional services, managed service.
That's a hard thing.
It's been done, but it's very painful to go through the perception of what a company can
or can't do.
So within our industry, staffing, gets commoditized all the time, right?
You're almost like a four letter word.
You're staffing, you're just a body shop.
You just find me a temp person versus professional services.
There's this, oh geez, you know, you're, you're, you're still solving problems with great
people, right?
At the end of the day.
So, and I think for us starting off going in, it's like, you're going to have a problem.
It's going to need to get solved with people.
So you have a choice.
If you don't have the time to.
to manage it, we'll take that burden on and we'll manage that whole point.
But you do have to know how to manage to those deliverables.
Hence why we have that key band of people that have to know that, hey, we got $100,000 to
do this project.
It's on us to do it.
If it takes it longer, going back to the client and saying, need 200,000.
That is not a fun conversation.
If there's a legitimate reason for it, sure, but no one wants to do that.
And so being built on a delivery engine where we control more of the staffing up and down
to bring people on, ah
for small pieces of that project allows it to do that.
It also allows us to have a more targeted approach.
It's not just John or Sue sitting on the bench that's next up that they have to allocate.
We can be very poignant on this is the exact type of person that's gonna be successful on
this project.
uh know, because so much of it comes down to culture.
There's a lot of great engineers out there, but if they're doing a project and the client
just doesn't like them, you know, or they don't get along, which happens, right?
ah Great, I don't have to worry about that as much, right?
It's still always a challenge.
so we found a lot of efficiencies and sometimes I think what clients, when you kind of
walk them through the journey of their problem, they think they need one thing, they
really need the other.
So we have the ability to go, I don't care what you need on this spectrum.
If you just need us to find you a couple of people, that's awesome.
Great.
We'll do that.
We're set up to do that right now.
There's a different cost structure, you know, for that.
Let's call staffing what it is.
Or if you want something more robust, let me bring my practice leads and let's talk about
what that's going to look like.
So value-based versus kind of cost plus.
And so that was hard, I think for a lot of people in the beginning.
they will tell me which one you are.
Um, but we have enough case studies now success where we can walk in and do that to the
point where when the project ends, we have people that stay behind that were on our w two
that we bring there and the clients love that flexibility.
And so as long as we can, I think do that, they're going to pick up the phone and call us
for repeat business.
As long as they're happy at the end, like everyone high fives at the beginning of a
project.
You think it's going to go great and everyone does, but more often than not, by the end,
you're just like, yeah, that's fine.
We did it.
I don't really want to call them again.
And that's my goal,
No, it's, it's interesting.
Cause I'm that in-person podcast that I mentioned I did before is actually with the CRO of
Mawson group, which is big staffing and consulting firm as well.
And I was asking him about, about the model because he was like, because we have this
model, allows us, as you said, to diagnose, okay, this client wants to do this project.
They don't really know what they need, right?
They think they know, but they don't actually know.
So they go in and they consult with them first.
And then they can obviously build out the process of the people element and everything
like that.
And then they go in, they do this complete project and the client gets everything done in
one sweep essentially.
And so it's interesting as well, because you're saying the amount of insights you get from
managing these types of projects, then when another project comes up with a different type
of company, you can lean on that information that you learned in those previous projects,
right?
And say, oh, well, we learned X, Y, Z from this when we did a project similar, this is
what you need.
And that's a type of insight, which they can't get from a traditional staffing company or
anything like that.
Those types of insights on actually building the project out.
is invaluable.
You're 100 % right and to have...
those internal SMEs in here.
And also to keep me, I'm a sales guy at heart, right?
So I'm always gonna wanna say, yes, we can do it.
But to have those people be like, Tom, you're not really understanding the full complexity
and that what they're asking can be done, but it's gonna take a bigger lift.
And so being able to come back to that, I know enough to be dangerous, right?
But I'm not a hands-on keyboard guy, I code, Python and stuff, I'll dabble in some of the
AI vibe coding, but um I really rely on those people to understand and say like, we just
did that project,
just implemented that and we can show you.
ain't going to work, right?
And that's important for clients to gain that trust.
Yeah.
love to get your take on kind of how you guys are using AI right now and how do you
foresee, you know, the companies coming to you for these IT projects and help with IT.
How are they looking at AI as well and what type of insights you might have around that
side.
So it's been fascinating over the last, where are we?
We're coming up on three years, right?
uh What was it?
Is Chaputee Three that came out?
That was the big one, right?
So I think once a couple of things have happened, we had the initial craze where all of
our jobs were gonna be gone in two years.
Clearly that didn't happen, right?
um
But it is changing the way we work.
Every single one of us is using it somehow, right?
If you're not, I have shame on you, right?
There's no reason uh Brendan will make fun of me.
he's like, did you just write another email and chat to you?
I was like, yes, of course.
Why would I not?
I'm not wasting my time.
I have to edit it and change it, right?
And I think we're all doing that.
We're all using it.
I think there's two things happening in AI that companies are struggling to deal with.
And you think of kind of a pyramid
of AI maturity, right?
Where everyone wants to get to the top of the pyramid, where you have, you know, agentic
agents and running and making decision for you.
That's great.
You can do that on small scales now, but there have been so many failures of, you know,
company.ai that has a product.
They try to go implement it.
And when you get into larger organizations, it's just, you're trying to untangle a
hairball of messing it and connect it.
And it might solve one specific thing.
And so we got caught up in a little bit of that in the beginning.
Like we think there's this bigger thing and then kind of realized
especially from an enterprise level, you still need great engineers.
The engineers are pivoting to more stuff.
They have to use AI tools.
They're really clawed at Gemini, Code and Code Faster, because we have to do that for our
clients and we have to be able to come with a roadmap for AI solutions.
But we've bucketed into really two different things now, because we'll go into a port go
of a PE firm and we'll do quick AI evaluation accelerators, like four to six weeks, create
your roadmap.
We have an awesome chief AI officer that comes in that's got great enterprise.
She can actually build the ROI.
That's a big for people.
So how you get to an ROI, I think is the first side of it.
If you can't agree on what that is and don't overcomplicate it, then don't start the
project.
That's not new.
You can't just say, well, AI is going to fix it, right?
But the two things that are happening is there's a productivity level, which is all the
soft costs, which is your co-pilot to your chat.
That's great.
And that makes people a lot more productive.
And then you have to say, well, what are we going to do with the other four hours of the
week?
Right.
Are they generating revenue?
we pay them less?
Right.
Can we reduce headcount?
But then there's these enterprise game changer stuff.
And there are very few companies have done that or figured it out yet because it takes so
much time to get your data ready for those large, large initiatives that sometimes the
cost might not be worth it.
You're like, yeah, we'll get there and we can do all those cool things.
But is it worth $1.5 million to pay
build up with them.
So I think that's the challenge now and getting them to see that.
then, you know, battling it that they're like, I saw a demo and I think we're just going
to go with this company and then.
Three months later, they pick up the phone and call and they're like, yeah, like that was
a bust.
We kind of realized we were there getting paid, you know?
And I think people are catching onto that a little bit more, right?
So we've kind of had to stay the course and be like, if you want to try that, that's okay.
But I don't think your data is going to be ready to do what you see on these nice, cool
presentations.
uh So that's the approach that we've taken now is like, Hey, we can come in and do your
co-pilot training.
We can do your assessment.
Like, let's agree on an ROI before we do that.
And meanwhile, there's still great tools.
Machine learning is still a great.
Yeah.
are still great to solve that problem.
um You can get in a car and go to the grocery store but you don't need a Ferrari to do it
all the time.
Would it be fun?
Yeah sure it'd be more fun.
um But so that's kind of where we are.
But it's changing still right?
It is.
Yeah, it is.
And it's interesting as well is, you know, there's so many new AI platforms coming out.
And I think the biggest thing, you know, I see is, as we were saying is a lot of people
get excited at like new AI tools come out.
Cool.
can demo it, have a look, whatever.
But then actually the practicality of actually using the tool isn't actually like worth
it.
Right.
Like no one wants to log into another, another dashboard, another self, you know, SAS
tools, whatever it's going to be.
Um, like I think that's where the fatigue starting to happen a little bit with all these
tools.
think the best AI tools that I've seen are ones that live within your current ecosystem.
So like fixer.ai for email management and everything.
That's really cool because it's all done by time you log into your email, which you do
anyway.
And so I think those types of SaaS tools are the ones that are, know, pulling ahead than
the other ones.
Um, but it is interesting to, to hear, you know, kind of how other companies are looking
at AI itself.
And from some of the enterprise clients that we we're working with.
They're at the stage where they know they need to implement it.
They want to, but they just don't have the capability to do it just yet.
Right.
From like security, from like compliance, all those things, they haven't figured that side
of it out.
So at the enterprise level, from my experience, a lot of them are signed to struggle with
it.
Like how do they actually use these tools?
How do you use AI in that type of environment where obviously smaller companies are a bit
more agile with it.
But I'm not sure if you've all seen the same with like these bigger companies.
slowly trying to add an AI but not really too sure on how to go about it.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think that those questions are still coming up.
And it's so new that you'll get into somewhere, a big company, they'll want very domain,
industry-specific experience.
Like, well, can you tell me when you did our exact thing somewhere else?
I'm like, no.
ah You haven't done it.
And you're the market leader.
No one else is doing it.
um I can tell you that.
If we, if we bring in the right people, we have done things similar.
have the workflows, we have the framework to do it.
And we know how to get there because we have done that before, but yours is going to look
a little bit different.
It has to be, it has to be customized to what, what you need.
Right.
And, you know, so it's from a software perspective, it's interesting to take a, you know,
Oracle or Salesforce, they're building a ton of those tools.
They're embedded.
So is Microsoft in, so the balance of like, Hey, what are we going to build versus buy, or
just, you know, have things that are already live in our ecosystem that we're just getting
a little.
bit better at, you every day.
think the, um, the one thing I'm excited about over the next couple of years is what's
going to happen with CRMs.
It seems that, you know, uh, you know, any type of natural language processing that come
into that, that the traditional, let me log in and fill this form out.
Like you won't have to do that.
Um, that's very tangible as things are built, right?
But to your point, like, you're just going to go throw your CRM out the window and then
buy the new one.
There's still a, a cost and, you know, it's a,
it's a big decision.
But yeah, I would love my salespeople not have to, know, recruiters log in and do all that
stuff and they could just like type it in and it would just automatically go in and handle
that.
We're getting closer, right?
And that's, that's cool.
I've seen some demos there.
So it's coming.
It's, it's happening.
I just, it's gotta be the right thing for you, you know?
a hundred percent changing gears a little bit.
love to learn about from a, from a mindset point of view about the entrepreneurship
journey.
So what's probably one of the biggest mindset shifts you've had from of course, working in
a corporate setting before to then running the business.
What was one of those shifts that you've, you've had.
Well, I was fortunate because the first place I worked was that kind of rocket ship that
grew up and then, you know, had an opportunity to go to another place that was much more
entrepreneurial minded.
Um, and I feel fortunate for that second experience that I think I was allowed to stress
test some ideas I had of like, think I could do this better.
Um, and most of the time I was wrong.
I couldn't, you know, and I just thought I had, and, uh, you know, some of those, you
know, kind of Jim Collins, like tried and true methodologies.
I think one thing that's changed over the last few years.
we've kind of just gone back to more of like, there are repeatable things that people have
done prior to us that work really well.
And there's no beauty in like, well, I must find a totally different way.
There's sometimes what has always worked will always work.
And so I think that's, especially in the last like year has been a big shift for us.
I think on a funnier side, I'm always shocked uh how little...
People really know I always thought I'd find some like Harvey Specter lawyer out there.
Look, it's guys gonna know everything and no one does And so networking with other
founders big what are you doing for this?
Right has has become great and it's not that it's like lonely at the top of you're just
like well No one knows and they're looking for me to know.
I don't know.
I've never done it I can research and get a thing but like how do I stress test that
stuff?
But I think that that has changed and then just the ability because people want like not
everyone's going to have that like, I'll just entrepreneurial leap of faith.
Like I'll just go figure it out and it's fine.
And you know, we'll figure it out and you know, we'll stress test ideas.
And if it doesn't work, we'll just pivot.
Some people can't do that.
It's a struggle for them.
um it makes fun of me because I came up with like our first logo and if I look at it now,
it's not very good.
And then how did you ever think this was a good idea?
I'm like, well, you have to start somewhere, you know, like, then you make it better.
This is how this whole thing goes.
Or they're like, Oh, can you believe what we
were doing in our first year, I'm like, I can.
And they're like, isn't it better now?
like, well, that's the point.
If it wasn't, we're failing.
know, like it always has to get better.
You always have to look at what you did before and be like, yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't
very good, you know?
ah And I think so just going back to like, you know, it doesn't have to be different.
uh You know, take something that, you know, someone has done before and if it worked and
you can apply it, like that, that's great.
But sometimes you do have to go through the pain of figuring it out.
least I did.
I like, no, I'm not any better or
I'm great at stealing ideas and repurposing them.
I'm not that smart.
No, it's, it's one of those right where it's that shiny object syndrome, especially I
think in the, the early days, I definitely had it where again, especially in the way of AI
going back to go back to that is where there's a new tool for this and the other side.
that's going to solve all my problems.
Well, that's going to solve all my problems.
I think, I think the big thing that we've seen just on the AI side was that the AI SDR.
So a lot of companies invested millions into getting these AI SDRs in, and then they've
scrapped it all because they're like, actually it's relationships that closes deals,
right?
Not necessarily that whole, that whole function.
So.
Going back to what you said, right?
It's just that the thing that's always worked is just do that essentially.
Like you don't need new things.
It's just improving on maybe slightly things that have already worked and have worked for
many, many years.
Yeah, I think the other thing, think there's two other things that like come to mind.
I think that...
You know, I remember sitting in those big company conferences and the founders would get
up and they'd be like, you know, I really feel like I work for you guys and you whatever
you need.
And I heard it and I drank the Kool-Aid but I was like, do you really feel that way?
You're kind of the boss.
And then I remember feeling that very early on this, this, this responsibility back to our
people where you, it just cuts a little bit deeper if it doesn't work out, right.
Or you mess up and you're, they're looking to you to ensure that like this thing's going
to be successful and they've trusted you and they.
sign that employment contract that I'm going to uphold my part of the bargain.
think that's very differently, you as a boss.
And then the other thing is
I am not, uh, not immune to probably having an ego and thinking I'm right almost all the
time.
and so having people in my life, my co-founder Brendan, right.
To be one of those that could be like, you're an idiot.
Uh, probably most importantly, you know, when you have a partner and my wife very easily
could be like, that was a bad call.
You shouldn't have done like, Ooh, my first reaction is no, you don't understand.
then, you know, probably after she beats me over the head with it, you know, for a few
minutes, I'm like, I get it now.
That was pretty stupid.
I've heard that from other people, like if you don't have someone to lean on, right?
To hold yourself in check and tell you when you mess up, and even if you don't have the
ears for it in the moment.
So I feel very lucky for that too.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Amazing.
So one of the, uh, one of the final questions we always ask guests in the show is if you
can go back to your 18 year old self and only take three lessons with you, whether it's
some philosophical knowledge, some business knowledge, some general advice, what would
those three lessons be and might it be those things?
18 year old self with lessons.
Am I telling my 18 year old self these lessons or am I just, okay.
um
That's a good question.
um I think it would be a couple of things.
I think that if I told my 18 year old self who probably thought he was better than
everybody else, that would be like, hey man, you're not special.
There's billions of people in this world.
You're not as special as you think you are.
um
That doesn't mean you can't do go great things and you're not a good person, but you know,
hey realize that there's a lot of great people out there, a lot of good people, right?
And so the faster you can just realize that and then feel more fortunate for things,
you're probably going to be happier.
And it took me a long time to kind of probably get there and I had to have some humbling
experiences through school, right?
To learn those lessons.
So at the same time, you know, you are who you are.
I don't regret anything, you know, because of those.
I think the other thing would just be, it's going to be a lot harder than you think.
and the road, that journey of failure loop growth, failure loop growth and having a growth
mindset.
I always worked hard.
I was always involved in a ton of sports and activities and got good grades and like hard
work was not something I couldn't do.
But I think that, uh, I thought if you work hard, you deserve it and you should get it.
And if you work harder than somebody else, then you deserve it.
And that might be true, but that's not the way the world works, right?
There's people out there with a work.
m
than me that aren't successful or vice versa.
And so just realize that like, at the end of the day, you just putting yourself in a
situation where, you know, you got a little bit of good fortune or luck, but like, yeah,
you have to outwork, right?
You know, everyone else, but don't think just because you do that, that's gonna be enough.
You have to go out and get it and take it.
You know, I think those would be the lessons.
And then the last thing would probably just be like, yeah, when you get called out, you
need to have open ears, buddy.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
mean, I think there's a three, three great lessons.
And I think about this whole podcast, there's lots of golden nuggets for everyone
listening as well.
I mean, thank you so much for taking the time today.
I've really enjoyed the conversation and hopefully we can record another one, you know, in
a few months or next year or something.
Yeah, this has been great.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for taking the time.
today.