Detailed Notes
In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche walk you through a practical mid-year business tune-up—from website audits and marketing reviews to expense tracking and scaling operations.
🔧 Topics covered include: • Why you need a business tune-up • How to refresh your messaging and website • Reviewing tools, services, and subscriptions • Ensuring compliance and security • Adjusting strategy for growth
🎯 Episode Challenge: Take 30 minutes this week to perform your own business tune-up.
🔗 Read the full blog: https://develpreneur.com/business-tune-up/ 📬 Contact us: [email protected] 🐦 Follow us on: * https://develpreneur.com/ * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://x.com/develpreneur * https://www.linkedin.com/company/develpreneur/ 📺 More episodes: https://youtube.com/@developreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] We have hit record. Caught you right in the middle of grabbing a drink. All right. So, we are we did imposter syndrome. We did off the rails. Off the rails. Reading the rooms and how to demo. We had a couple topics out there. We had uh getting valuable feedback, which I think we kind of did through demo, but I don't know if we wanted to do a different one on that. And then uh self-doubt was the other one. Let's do uh this is mostly because I am a little in the midst of it. [Music] Um one thing I'm thinking about is like I don't think we've done a um shoot, how do I want to call this? um uh I'll call it like a tuneup uh business tuneup kind of thing periodic taking a look at your what you're doing and yeah since we're nearing the end like a reset a review uh I don't think we did I don't think we covered that have we talked about another one that I think would be nice to do would be um like project retrospectives for a business. It's a little bit out of I mean it comes out of the scrum world or actually I guess it existed beforehand. It's a scrum thing but it's also I think a very good thing and getting the most out of your you know learning from your projects. Yeah, I think that works. uh cuz we've done finance, we did overcoming barriers, pitching, scaling, hiring, uh business automation and templates, leveraging AI, business growth strategies, work life balance, disaster recovery, uh business continuity, keeping the business running when life happens, uh networking strategies, digital marketing, uh product placement strategies, Product enhancement strategies, how to build a sustainable B business, uh pitching your business, uh customer communications, strategies on how to improve client interactions, uh building customer trust, uh why setting deadlines is key, taking breaks, uh an MVP, stop chasing your tails. Yeah, so those two would uh definitely work. I especially like since we're nearing the end of the season, uh the like the reset or kind of uh not rebrand, but like like you said, just kind of like a review where you're at kind of thing. And um what was the second one again? Uh basically like a retrospective for projects. So one be more like a business tuneup, a review, and then the other is actually more of a project level retrospective. And they're sort of sort of go together, I think. No. Uh yeah, I'm just taking notes. Okay, that works. And then next time, uh so next week will be our last two episodes of the season and then we'll have the wrap-up episode. Okay. Yeah, we'll see where we want to go with those. I think that's what we did last time is we did a wrap-up and then went right into the next season. So, we'll see how that goes. Um Oh, yeah. Randomly have not heard back. I asked the one guy that we got the um uh interview email from looked like it could be an interesting one, but then I sent it to and it's he's got somebody that's like his, you know, his person that's going out there finding that stuff and I sent it back, but I haven't heard anything back from his person. So, apparently his person sucks, but we'll see how that goes. Um because that would be a fun one. And that may be we'll see because I think I'm going to also kick up I think I'm going to get back into the whole um I'm going to get back into the whole interviewing interviewe kind of thing and um one second cuz I still have that uh Raina from um Sprinkle Me Sugar. uh she was interested in doing a podcast with us. Uh I thought it would kind of fit with this season, but we could kind of tack it on as like a postseason interview. Yeah, we might do something like that. That's that gets it a little bit into the next season. Uh maybe we'll sneak a few more in. So, going into business tuneups, what uh kind of things you're thinking about for this one? Um, basically just sort of walking through stuff like what are some of the t this is sort of what we do annually, but this is going through things like website review and uh promotional material review and stuff like that. We did a little bit of it. We talked about branding and things like that, but I think it's a like, hey, take a look back at it, like working on your business, like review your business and what you're working on, where you're going, things like that as well. Uh, really? Yeah. It's like just making sure that you're still on track. It's it's a um business tuneup, something along those lines, you know? It's like, hey, periodically you need to just sort of step back and take a look at where you're at. Cool. All right, let me do this one more time. Shuffle this off so I don't get annoyed or just pinged. Stupid notifications. I can't turn them off fast enough. All right, three, two. Oh, I should do this more. I look a little one more gianty wh two. One. There we go. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of building better businesses, but we are actually the building better developers podcast, also known as developer. I am just known as Rob, I guess, also known as one of the founders of developer and a founder of RB Consulting, where we go out there and help people use technology better. We sit down with you. We help you un really work to understand your business. Help you craft a recipe for success that is customized to your business, your goals, where you are at now, where you're going to be in six months, where you want to be in years from now, and it's basically called a technology roadmap. We start with an assessment, basically figure out where you're at, build a road map, and then we can help you either do it yourself to, you know, go off and implement your road map, or if you want us to guide or help along the way, so we do that as well. All of this we do, we help you wrangle your technology and reduce your technology sprawl through simplification, automation, integration, and even innovation. Just use all the tools that are out there to help you have a better technology footprint and ROI on that which happens to be one of your biggest if not your biggest investment in your business. Good things, bad things. Uh I'm going to go with good thing was Mother's Day. just pre recently around the time we did this is had Mother's Day. It was a uh we had a everybody got together. We managed to even though we weren't sure, we managed to get everybody into one place for food. Uh it was a lot of it. It was a long brunchy type of thing, but it was a very good one. Uh so great times all around. It's those kinds of things that sometimes you get to like appreciate life and all of that and not be just stuck with work. bad thing is that happened to be Mother's Day happened to be on a Sunday which you guys may already know that which was the end of a weekend and it was a very long weekend. So by the time we got done with the Mother's Day's festivities and things like that, I went to take a nap and the nap ended up being essentially a full night and a half of sleep or something like that because just I guess everything just caught up. So got a little worn out because of all of that. Hopefully you're not too worn out after my introduction so that you are wide awake for Michaels. Go for it. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malashsh. I'm one of the co-founders of Developer, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of a company called Envision QA where we help businesses really look at their software uh make sure that their tools are working for them and they're not working for their software. We help you with custom solutions. We help you implement uh you know the right solution for your needs. Be it something, you know, cookie cutter off the the shelf we can buy and implement for you, something custom or if you are a software shop and need help, you know, kind of spinning up additional developers or getting your product across the line, we also help you with that. Good thing and bad thing. Uh good thing, we are definitely over the allergy season. So, I'm finally finally feeling better. Uh it has been a long slog. Uh usually it's like February or March, April is really the worst, but this is really dragged into May something fierce. Uh so that's the good thing. Uh kind of also uh good slash bad. So for the last two weeks, my wife has been away. So uh I've kind of had the house, responsibilities to take care of, you know, kind of detracted from work a little bit and kept things going. But she is back. So, uh, that is also kind of a good bad. It it it's kind of on the tail end of that. Well, uh, in the world of good and bad things, I guess we're going to talk about business. Uh, we'll call it like a business tuneup this time around. And it's really this kind of thing that we usually talk about at the end of the year, maybe even in the be around the middle of the year, which we are actually at this point getting close to a midyear kind of thing. You may even do it quarterly. Uh but I would say at least twice a year. You want to go back and essentially review where you at? What do you have? Where are you going? And now with this particular focus we want to do is really on your your products, your messaging, your offerings, things like that. It's a little bit your brand, but it's probably take it at a level deeper. And it's really like what are your pitches? What are your what are you selling? How are you selling it? How is that going? Now, you may be very attuned to these kinds of things. You may have metrics that you look at every day. How are my sales going? How am I adjusting all this stuff, but this is really bigger on a a bigger picture. So, it's not really that tactical. It's more the strategic kind of look. And it's the things like how am I doing towards my vision, my mission statement, how you know maybe the numbers are going very well, but am I happy? Is the business growing at the right speed? and my position so that if these numbers continue, I will continue to be able to provide my customers with the experience, you know, the support, all that kinds of stuff that they've come to expect. And so this is a is almost a it really is truly a holistic kind of approach. So it's things like looking at some, you know, sort of give yourself a laundry list, looking at your your website, that is one of your main pieces, that's one of your, you know, sort of the face of your company these days. So, is your website up tod date? Is it running? That's you should know if it's not. But some places, especially a smaller business, especially a side hustle, it could be down for a while if you don't check it on a regular basis. But beyond that, looking at your content, looking at the message, looking at like go through your site like you're a regular just random visitor. Is it is the journey what you want it to be or is it something that you maybe need to adjust a little bit? Is it dated? Are there uh for example, let's say you've got a blog, you've got blogs on your site. Are those blogs starting to get a little dated? Are they a little old? Do you need to do a little, you know, a little painting and and freshening up of those things? Do you need to take maybe even your evergreen content? Do you need to just go back and just brush some dust off of it? or is it something a little bigger where the evergreen content was leading people in a different direction than you really want to go right now? And this could be it could be seasonal. It could be one of these things where maybe you're just in a you know you're having a bad year or a different year and you need to adjust a little bit. Maybe you're not speaking to the same sort of customers. For example, uh back in the day when there was a housing crisis, you had all these companies that initially before the crisis came in were talking to everybody about, hey, let's, you know, get a second loan and do all this kind of stuff and rates are good and blah blah blah. And then suddenly the market changes and so those u positive messages are not what you want to be selling on because people are going to say that's not how it's going right now. There's things like that. But you want to just, you know, hit your website. Also look at whatever your primary marketing uh pamphlets and material are. Whether that is, you know, maybe it's as maybe it's as core as what are your email signatures. Are those things good? Are your brands up to date as far as maybe some of your logos and some of your images that you're using? If you have uh some sort of like you if you've got business header letters that are going out or reports that you're sending out particularly if you're doing if you're if you're somebody like us where you do maybe you know daily or you know maybe weekly or monthly reports are those up todate? Do those maybe need a little bit of a a freshening up? If you're doing uh maybe you're doing sprints, so maybe at the end of each sprint, are there certain reports that you're delivering that you need to yeah take a look at them and and maybe tweak those a little? Now, sometimes it's not a matter of the content being bad. It's just a matter of changing it up a little bit. It's just like if you watch a, you know, if you watch a TV show from series, you know, season to season to season, it's nice to have a different uh intro and maybe intro and outro to each season. Uh, a classic one I remember back in the day was um, Home Improvement. It was an old, you know, old old show that went on many, many years, but then they would, each year they would have a different intro and then even when they got to some of the later ones, they actually showed the progression of some of the kids that as they aged through the years and, you know, as part of their intro. So, things like that is just a little bit of changing it up sometimes is enough to get maybe some more traffic, maybe get people to look at your company a little differently. And so that's where a tuneup is is going to be great. You now you're sort of like think of your car where now you don't maybe it's not all dusty dashboard anymore. Maybe you don't have a lot of bird poop out on your on the trunk of your car. You're actually you know get all that kind of stuff cleaned up. It's the same kind of thing we want to do with our business is just take a look at it and with a little bit of a you don't need a lot of time. Maybe it's just 15 minutes, half an hour, something like that. Just going through your stuff. Is there something you can do to touch it up a little bit to just freshen it up? Those are some of the thoughts I have on, you know, doing a tuneup. And it doesn't have to be that great or that big or that, you know, but it could be very small. So, I think I'll toss you. What are some of the things that maybe you've done with your your tuneups and your adjustments? So, I do all those, but I do some additional ones. So, for me, I do these kind of quarterly, but more or not it we're too busy and it's like twice a year. But I typically look at my uh and I'm bad because you know you and I are we're fairly small shop so we wear many hats. So one of the biggest problems I have is keeping up with the books. Like I do weekly like balance a checkbook things like that get everything good. But I try to do a at least a quarterly review of all of my expenditures for my company. What are the services I'm paying for? Are they still valid? Are have I added some services for projects that are no longer needed? Do I need to cut those? Um, so I kind of look at a expense review as my tuneup kind of on a regular basis kind of like on a quarterly semiannual basis. And typically if you don't do this, you could find out like those Rocket Money or whatever uh Rocket app or whatever it is that you have subscribed to things that you're still paying for that you're not using for your business anymore. Time to cut those out. You know, you have to keep on top of those or you're going to be wasting money on things that would be better off maybe hiring another employee. So, as you're going through this process, look at some of the services you have, some of the expenses and income. You know, do you have more income coming in than expenses? That's a good thing. But if you have more expenses going out than income coming in, all right, where can you pivot? Do you is there something you need to do to change course or do you just need to spin up or try to find some more customers because maybe you just wrapped up a project and you're in between projects. So it's like okay you're in a little low. So that's one of those things you got to look at. And that's also a good point too is when you're in those lows, how is your marketing material? You know Rob mentioned website but how is your marketing strategy? Do you have marketing campaigns on Google? Are you doing email blasts? You know, are you keeping up with those and actually following up with customers that respond or are you neglecting those and potentially losing customers? So, you need to make sure you follow up on that. The other thing that comes to mind uh as we're talking about this business uh tuneup is bandwidth. So throughout the course of a year, could be a month, could be quarter, could be half a year, you could find yourself, hey, I've taken in a lot more business than I've had 6 months ago. Maybe you're on a growth trend. Is it time for you to look at maybe a virtual assistant or hiring someone else to help you extract yourself from some of your projects? uh and continue to look for new opportunities to continue to grow your business. Uh so these are some of the things that you might not think of because you're too busy. It's like I I'm so working in the business, not on the business. And those are kind of really critical. The other thing too, which is interesting, and we don't really think about it with a business tuneup, but when was the last time you went out and networkked? When was the last time you maybe went to a trade show or maybe read some training documentation on what it is that your industry is? You know, if you're in healthcare, have you kept up with the latest medical laws that are out there? Are you still compliant? Are you, you know, are you doing what your business needs to be doing to stay in business? Or are you potentially falling into those gray areas where you're not in compliance with the law? you're not in compliance with new government regulations, which could potentially get you fined or shut down. So, those are things that you do need to stay on top of, but as small business owners or business owners, sometimes we forget about those because we're too busy just doing our job. And that's what this whole business tuneup is about. It's, hey, take a pause, take a step back, work on your business, and kind of look at it from all points, you know, like Rob said. So, you have like your website review, you have your marketing materials review, you have your social media review. Hey, was there a new social media uh tool that rolled out? You know, are you on TikTok? Is Tik Tok really for your brand? you know, h are your marketing uh funnels really working for your business because those could have changed. So you you may need to pivot, add some new social media accounts, remove some social media accounts. So a review of that is highly recommended. You know, review those marketing materials. And another thing is if your business is growing, are you also keeping up with your infrastructure? So Rob talks about agile a lot and sometimes our agile practices start out small. We do the bare minimum we need to do to keep the projects going because we're more interested in getting things done than completely following the agile model because we're small. We we got to quickly deploy, you know, get things out, turn things around, make some money so we can grow. But if you're on that growth pattern, are you putting the steps in place to ensure that you are doing things in the right manner and at the right time or are you skipping that and missing out on critical things to make sure that your projects are streamlined, that they're moving forward the way they need to move forward. And the last thing I'll touch on is if you do have websites, if you do have software or technology, are you keeping up with all your system and software updates or are you neglecting those? Are you potentially letting zero day or bug or potential security uh problems cause your site to be hacked, cause you to get ransomware? You know, are you keeping up on those things? Those are very critical. We don't think about them. Most systems we put in place typically are pretty good about reminding us, hey, you need to do this. But you, if you are a software developer, are you keeping up with that? You know, you got OASP you can which will go out and check for vulnerabilities. It's gotten a lot better since uh COVID and there's some other tools in that that you can put out there to monitor your site and keep things uh to let you know when things need to be updated and keeping track. What are your thoughts on that? So, there's a couple things there that I think to add to would one would be just check out for take a look for like maybe licenses that have expired. uh sort of as long lines as he said is things where you're like maybe you're not using this you can clean some of that up uh some just to make sure that there are going to be those things where it's like oh yeah this is coming up I need to make sure I do that it's similar to touching base with people maybe you're you know want to reach out to your your group or certain customers every so often maybe it's time to make sure you've done that is there somebody that you were going to reach out to and now time has moved very quickly and you haven't uh so that you're you know like hey now it's time to to catch up with Um, I'll actually go with uh something that this is an opportunity to do the things that I talk about every episode. So, automation, is there something that you're burning a lot of time on? Is there maybe something that now it's like it's time to automate it? It's a little bit like uh Michael mentioned in infrastructure. Same thing. Is there something that's like we now can simplify? Maybe it's something where we've grown to a certain point and we've grown or we've grown very fast and we have that sprawl that I talk about and that we maybe, you know, need to simplify some of these things down. Uh sometimes because you've grown a certain point where now all those little things you did, you've grown to a point where like no, now we can find we can afford a tool that combines those things together. Um not going to worry about innovation. That's something you may, you know, that's more of a green sky kind of thing that you may want to do to but you between the uh automation and simplification even integration maybe now you've got a couple tools that you realize it's like I'm spending too much time with this or I've grown to a point and I've got a couple different departments they're sort of going their different ways and now I need to pull those things back together. Another thing that you may want to take a look at is just making sure if you're one of those it's, you know, it's certifications, licenses, uh, you know, continuing education hours depending on what your job is and what your focus is. There's certain things that you may have to do every an, you know, annually, every other year, something like that to keep current and make sure that you're doing that. So, you know, it's some of these are things that are maybe a general checklist, but doesn't hurt to take a look at those, particularly from a business point of view, because you may be a business where you need to, you know, do certain things to be able to operate in certain states or certain municipalities or things like that. Depending on your business, this is one of those that we do tend to get a little bit caught up in whatever is going on, our customers and things like that, and the next thing you know, you've flown through it. Part of what this is is it's just to like, you know, put on the brakes. Let's take a you take a look around and make sure that we are set up for whatever our next push is going to be. And that's the that is the challenge we're going to throw out to you this time is hopefully you know maybe you've done this recently and so you don't have to but if you have not in the last you know month or two done a you know business tuneup take 15 30 minutes something like that run through the you know the key facets the key properties the key attributes of your business the you know between marketing and sales and HR and you know accounting and all that kind of stuff is Just take a look. Are you current? Are you up todate? Are there some things that maybe you could like, you know, do a little spend a little bit of time on and freshen them up and use it as a way to maybe get some customers back, have a couple extra visitors to your site, things of that nature. For example, you could ask people to send you an email like we are right now. Shoot us an email at infodelvelopreneur.com if you have any questions, comments. Actually, even if you don't, if you could just make something up, we would love to hear it because we love hearing from you. We love feedback. We are getting near the end of another season. And so, this is the time that feedback becomes even more valuable because you could actually impact something that's going to occur within a few episodes from now when we start our next season. I don't even remember what it is. I think this is now 25 is coming up. Something like that. Anyways, it's a lot of seasons, a lot of episodes, but we would love to hear from you because we're more than happy to move in a direction that helps you guys out more often. Uh, more so you can also reach us on X. You can we are at developure. We have the developer channel out on YouTube. If you're watching this, then you already know what it is, but if you're listening to this, we do have a it's not a simalcast, but we have a video version of the audio the podcast. So, we also have it and we always have bonus material uh as well. So, it's worth an extra, you know, it's a little extra time. You can always block us out if you don't want to see us, but at least you can get the audio version and that will help out quite a bit. That being said, I am going to wrap this one up, give you some of your time back. As always, we do appreciate you being out there. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Bonus material. So, one of the things I touched on but really didn't get into too much detail on is when you're doing these business tuneups, also make sure that you are backing up all of your digital content. This is a very good time to ensure that you have backups of everything that you need to keep your business going in case of a disaster. Uh, a lot of people don't keep up with that and then emergency strikes and whoops, I'm out of business. So, these are great times to make sure that your backups are working the way they're supposed to be working. Uh, your sites are tuned up like Rob mentioned. Uh, make sure the sites are backed up. Recently, I had a customer that their site got hacked and we are luckily I found an archive version of the site out there. Uh, so we're not totally dead in the water, but uh, we're having to rebuild everything from scratch because it's literally gone. bonus I think I've been throughout this time is because it's been I've been playing around with this lately take some of your key content your you know your pitches uh maybe some of your slide decks and stuff like that take some of that content have a chat with one of the AI engines that are out there and see if it gives you some sort of a a direction that maybe you're like oh you know what I want to word this a little differently or hey that's a different line of business or a different pursuit that maybe I can like expand out that way. It's a great way to just get your information with a different set of eyes. I mean, you can always sit down with a friend or something like that and just say, "Hey, take a look at my site. Take a look at this flyer. Take a look at this email. What do you think? What are your thoughts?" And get their feedback. But you can also get that through, you know, AI engines to say, "Hey, what do you think about like take a look at this site and tell me what it says to you or something like that." Um, and there are a lot of tools like that that are out there these days. And it doesn't hurt to have, like I said, another set of eyes and see what comes out of it because it might actually be something that is a, you know, suddenly an epiphany of your own where it's like, oh, I can go this different direction or I can state this a different way and it's going to have a a different impact. It's going to hit them in the fields, as they say, a little bit differently. I don't want to hit you in the fields anymore. I don't want to exhaust you and make you take a long nap that turns into a long night of sleep. So, we will wrap this one up. We will be back. We got a few episodes left before we hit this season. And we don't even know what this next season is yet. So, we are more than happy to hear from you. But probably like last time, we are going to end up like going into episode one and that is when we will actually figure out what the next season is because that's actually a really fun way to go. It keeps it entertaining to us and we're always worried about what is that? We've got that cliffhanger of what is the next season going to bring. Go out there and have yourself a good one and we will talk to you next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
We have hit record. Caught you right in
the middle of grabbing a drink. All
right. So, we
are we did imposter syndrome. We did off
the rails. Off the rails. Reading the
rooms and how to demo. We had a couple
topics out there. We had uh getting
valuable feedback, which I think we kind
of did through demo, but I don't know if
we wanted to do a different one on that.
And then uh self-doubt was the other
one. Let's do uh this is mostly because
I am a little in the midst of it.
[Music]
Um one thing I'm thinking about is like
I don't think we've done a
um shoot, how do I want to call this? um
uh I'll call it like a tuneup
uh business tuneup kind of thing
periodic taking a look at your what
you're doing and yeah since we're
nearing the end like a reset a review
uh I don't think we did I don't think we
covered that have we talked about
another one that I think would be nice
to do would be um like project
retrospectives for a business. It's a
little bit out of I mean it comes out of
the scrum world or actually I guess it
existed beforehand. It's a scrum thing
but it's also I think a very good
thing and getting the most out of your
you know learning from your projects.
Yeah, I think that works. uh cuz we've
done finance, we did overcoming
barriers, pitching, scaling, hiring,
uh business automation and templates,
leveraging AI, business growth
strategies, work life balance, disaster
recovery,
uh business continuity, keeping the
business running when life happens, uh
networking strategies, digital
marketing,
uh product placement
strategies, Product enhancement
strategies, how to build a sustainable B
business, uh pitching your business, uh
customer communications, strategies on
how to improve client interactions,
uh building customer trust, uh why
setting deadlines is key, taking breaks,
uh an MVP, stop chasing your tails.
Yeah, so those two would uh definitely
work. I especially like since we're
nearing the end of the season, uh the
like the reset or kind of
uh not rebrand, but like like you said,
just kind of like a review where you're
at kind of thing. And um what was the
second one again? Uh basically like a
retrospective for projects. So one be
more like a business tuneup, a review,
and then the other is actually more of a
project level retrospective. And they're
sort of sort of go together, I think.
No. Uh yeah, I'm just taking
notes. Okay, that
works. And then next time, uh so next
week will be our last two episodes of
the season and then we'll have the
wrap-up episode.
Okay. Yeah, we'll see where we want to
go with those. I think that's what we
did last time is we did a wrap-up and
then went right into the next season.
So, we'll see how that
goes. Um Oh, yeah. Randomly have not
heard back. I asked the one guy that we
got the um
uh interview email from looked like it
could be an interesting one, but then I
sent it to and it's he's got somebody
that's like his, you know, his person
that's going out there finding that
stuff and I sent it back, but I haven't
heard anything back from his person. So,
apparently his person sucks, but we'll
see how that goes. Um because that would
be a fun one. And that may be we'll see
because I think I'm going to also kick
up I think I'm going to get back into
the whole
um I'm going to get back into the whole
interviewing
interviewe kind of thing and
um one
second cuz I still have that uh Raina
from um Sprinkle Me Sugar. uh she was
interested in doing a podcast with us.
Uh I thought it would kind of fit with
this season, but we could kind of tack
it on as like a postseason interview.
Yeah, we might do something like that.
That's that gets it a little bit into
the next season. Uh maybe we'll sneak a
few more in.
So, going into business tuneups, what uh
kind of things you're thinking about for
this one?
Um, basically just sort of walking
through stuff like what are some of the
t this is sort of what we do annually,
but this is going through things like
website review and uh promotional
material review and stuff like that. We
did a little bit of it. We talked about
branding and things like that, but I
think it's a like, hey, take a look back
at it,
like working on your business, like
review your business and what you're
working on, where you're going, things
like that as well. Uh, really? Yeah.
It's like just making sure that you're
still on track. It's it's a
um business tuneup, something along
those lines, you know? It's like, hey,
periodically you need to just sort of
step back and take a look at where
you're at. Cool.
All right, let me do this one more
time. Shuffle this off so I don't get
annoyed or just pinged. Stupid
notifications. I can't turn them off
fast enough. All right, three, two. Oh,
I should do this more. I look a little
one more gianty wh two. One. There we
go. Well, hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season of building better
businesses, but we are actually the
building better developers podcast, also
known as developer. I am just known as
Rob, I guess, also known as one of the
founders of developer and a founder of
RB Consulting, where we go out there and
help people use technology better. We
sit down with you. We help you un really
work to understand your business. Help
you craft a recipe for success that is
customized to your business, your goals,
where you are at now, where you're going
to be in six months, where you want to
be in years from now, and it's basically
called a technology roadmap. We start
with an assessment, basically figure out
where you're at, build a road map, and
then we can help you either do it
yourself to, you know, go off and
implement your road map, or if you want
us to guide or help along the way, so we
do that as well. All of this we do, we
help you wrangle your technology and
reduce your technology sprawl through
simplification, automation, integration,
and even innovation. Just use all the
tools that are out there to help you
have a better technology footprint and
ROI on that which happens to be one of
your biggest if not your biggest
investment in your business. Good
things, bad things. Uh I'm going to go
with good thing was Mother's Day. just
pre recently around the time we did this
is had Mother's Day. It was a uh we had
a everybody got together. We managed to
even though we weren't sure, we managed
to get everybody into one place for
food. Uh it was a lot of it. It was a
long brunchy type of thing, but it was a
very good one. Uh so great times all
around. It's those kinds of things that
sometimes you get to like appreciate
life and all of that and not be just
stuck with work.
bad thing is that happened to be
Mother's Day happened to be on a Sunday
which you guys may already know that
which was the end of a weekend and it
was a very long weekend. So by the time
we got done with the Mother's Day's
festivities and things like that, I went
to take a nap and the nap ended up being
essentially a full night and a half of
sleep or something like that because
just I guess everything just caught up.
So got a little worn out because of all
of that. Hopefully you're not too worn
out after my introduction so that you
are wide awake for Michaels. Go for it.
Hey everyone, my name is Michael
Malashsh. I'm one of the co-founders of
Developer, Building Better Developers.
I'm also the founder of a company called
Envision QA where we help
businesses really look at their software
uh make sure that their tools are
working for them and they're not working
for their software. We help you with
custom solutions. We help you implement
uh you know the right solution for your
needs. Be it something, you know, cookie
cutter off the the shelf we can buy and
implement for you, something custom or
if you are a software shop and need
help, you know, kind of spinning up
additional developers or getting your
product across the line, we also help
you with that. Good thing and bad thing.
Uh good thing, we are definitely over
the allergy season. So, I'm finally
finally feeling better. Uh it has been a
long slog. Uh usually it's like February
or March, April is really the worst, but
this is really dragged into May
something fierce. Uh so that's the good
thing. Uh kind of also uh good slash
bad. So for the last two weeks, my wife
has been away. So uh I've kind of had
the house, responsibilities to take care
of, you know, kind of detracted from
work a little bit and kept things going.
But she is back. So, uh, that is also
kind of a good bad. It it it's kind of
on the tail end of
that. Well, uh, in the world of good and
bad things, I guess we're going to talk
about business. Uh, we'll call it like a
business tuneup this time around. And
it's really this kind of thing that we
usually talk about at the end of the
year, maybe even in the be around the
middle of the year, which we are
actually at this point getting close to
a midyear kind of thing. You may even do
it quarterly. Uh but I would say at
least twice a year. You want to go back
and essentially review where you at?
What do you have? Where are you going?
And now with this particular focus we
want to do is really on your your
products, your messaging, your
offerings, things like that. It's a
little bit your brand, but it's probably
take it at a level deeper. And it's
really like what are your pitches? What
are your what are you selling? How are
you selling it? How is that going? Now,
you may be very attuned to these kinds
of things. You may have metrics that you
look at every day. How are my sales
going? How am I adjusting all this
stuff, but this is really bigger on a a
bigger picture. So, it's not really that
tactical. It's more the strategic kind
of look. And it's the things like how am
I doing towards my vision, my mission
statement, how you know maybe the
numbers are going very well, but am I
happy? Is the business growing at the
right speed? and my position so that if
these numbers continue, I will continue
to be able to provide my customers with
the experience, you know, the support,
all that kinds of stuff that they've
come to expect. And so this is a is
almost a it really is truly a holistic
kind of approach. So it's things like
looking at some, you know, sort of give
yourself a laundry list, looking at your
your website, that is one of your main
pieces, that's one of your, you know,
sort of the face of your company these
days. So, is your website up tod date?
Is it running? That's you should know if
it's not. But some places, especially a
smaller business, especially a side
hustle, it could be down for a while if
you don't check it on a regular
basis. But beyond that, looking at your
content, looking at the message, looking
at like go through your site like you're
a regular just random visitor. Is it is
the journey what you want it to be or is
it something that you maybe need to
adjust a little bit? Is it dated? Are
there uh for example, let's say you've
got a blog, you've got blogs on your
site. Are those blogs starting to get a
little dated? Are they a little old? Do
you need to do a little, you know, a
little painting and and freshening up of
those things? Do you need to take maybe
even your evergreen content? Do you need
to just go back and just brush some dust
off of it? or is it something a little
bigger where the evergreen content was
leading people in a different direction
than you really want to go right now?
And this could be it could be seasonal.
It could be one of these things where
maybe you're just in a you know you're
having a bad year or a different year
and you need to adjust a little bit.
Maybe you're not speaking to the same
sort of customers. For example, uh back
in the day when there was a housing
crisis, you had all these companies that
initially before the crisis came in were
talking to everybody about, hey, let's,
you know, get a second loan and do all
this kind of stuff and rates are good
and blah blah blah. And then suddenly
the market changes and so those u
positive messages are not what you want
to be selling on because people are
going to say that's not how it's going
right now. There's things like that. But
you want to just, you know, hit your
website. Also look at whatever your
primary marketing
uh pamphlets and material are. Whether
that is, you know, maybe it's as maybe
it's as core as what are your email
signatures. Are those things good? Are
your brands up to date as far as maybe
some of your logos and some of your
images that you're using? If you have uh
some sort of like you if you've got
business header letters that are going
out or reports that you're sending out
particularly if you're doing if you're
if you're somebody like us where you do
maybe you know daily or you know maybe
weekly or monthly reports are those up
todate? Do those maybe need a little bit
of a a freshening up? If you're doing uh
maybe you're doing sprints, so maybe at
the end of each sprint, are there
certain reports that you're delivering
that you need to yeah take a look at
them and and maybe tweak those a little?
Now, sometimes it's not a matter
of the content being bad. It's just a
matter of changing it up a little bit.
It's just like if you watch a, you know,
if you watch a TV show from series, you
know, season to season to season, it's
nice to have a different uh intro and
maybe intro and outro to each season.
Uh, a classic one I remember back in the
day was um, Home Improvement. It was an
old, you know, old old show that went on
many, many years, but then they would,
each year they would have a different
intro and then even when they got to
some of the later ones, they actually
showed the progression of some of the
kids that as they aged through the years
and, you know, as part of their intro.
So, things like that is just a little
bit of changing it up sometimes is
enough to get maybe some more traffic,
maybe get people to look at your company
a little differently. And so that's
where a tuneup is is going to be great.
You now you're sort of like think of
your car where now you don't maybe it's
not all dusty dashboard anymore. Maybe
you don't have a lot of bird poop out on
your on the trunk of your car. You're
actually you know get all that kind of
stuff cleaned up. It's the same kind of
thing we want to do with our business is
just take a look at it and with a little
bit of a you don't need a lot of time.
Maybe it's just 15 minutes, half an
hour, something like that. Just going
through your stuff. Is there something
you can do to touch it up a little bit
to just freshen it up? Those are some of
the thoughts I have on, you know, doing
a tuneup. And it doesn't have to be that
great or that big or that, you know, but
it could be very small. So, I think I'll
toss you. What are some of the things
that maybe you've done with your your
tuneups and your adjustments? So, I do
all those, but I do some additional
ones. So, for
me, I do
these kind of quarterly, but more or not
it we're too busy and it's like twice a
year. But I typically look at my uh and
I'm bad because you know you and I are
we're fairly small shop so we wear many
hats. So one of the biggest problems I
have is keeping up with the books. Like
I do weekly like balance a checkbook
things like that get everything good.
But I try to do a at least a quarterly
review of all of my expenditures for my
company. What are the services I'm
paying for? Are they still valid? Are
have I added some services for projects
that are no longer needed? Do I need to
cut those? Um, so I kind of look at a
expense review as my tuneup kind of on a
regular basis kind of like on a
quarterly semiannual
basis. And typically if you don't do
this, you could find out like those
Rocket Money or whatever uh Rocket app
or whatever it is that you have
subscribed to things that you're still
paying for that you're not using for
your business anymore. Time to cut those
out. You know, you have to keep on top
of those or you're going to be wasting
money on things that would be better off
maybe hiring another employee. So, as
you're going through this
process, look at some of the services
you have, some of the expenses and
income. You know, do you have more
income coming in than expenses? That's a
good thing. But if you have more
expenses going out than income coming
in, all right, where can you pivot? Do
you is there something you need to do to
change course or do you just need to
spin up or try to find some more
customers because maybe you just wrapped
up a project and you're in between
projects. So it's like okay you're in a
little low. So that's one of those
things you got to look at. And that's
also a good point too
is when you're in those lows, how is
your marketing material? You know Rob
mentioned website but how is your
marketing strategy? Do you have
marketing campaigns on Google? Are you
doing email blasts? You know, are you
keeping up with those and actually
following up with customers that respond
or are you neglecting those and
potentially losing customers? So, you
need to make sure you follow up on
that. The other thing that comes to mind
uh as we're talking about this business
uh tuneup is bandwidth. So throughout
the course of a year, could be a month,
could be quarter, could be half a year,
you could find yourself, hey, I've taken
in a lot more business than I've had 6
months ago. Maybe you're on a growth
trend. Is it time for you to look at
maybe a virtual assistant or hiring
someone else to help you extract
yourself from some of your projects? uh
and continue to look for new
opportunities to continue to grow your
business. Uh so these are some of the
things that you might not think of
because you're too busy. It's like I I'm
so working in the business, not on the
business. And those are kind of really
critical. The other thing too, which is
interesting, and we don't really think
about it with a business tuneup, but
when was the last time you went out and
networkked? When was the last time you
maybe went to a trade show or maybe read
some training documentation on what it
is that your industry is? You know, if
you're in healthcare, have you kept up
with the latest medical laws that are
out there? Are you still compliant? Are
you, you know, are you doing what your
business needs to be doing to stay in
business? Or are you potentially falling
into those gray areas where you're not
in compliance with the law? you're not
in compliance with new government
regulations, which could potentially get
you fined or shut down. So, those are
things that you do need to stay on top
of, but as small business owners or
business owners, sometimes we forget
about those because we're too busy just
doing our job. And that's what this
whole business tuneup is about. It's,
hey, take a pause, take a step back,
work on your
business, and kind of look at it from
all points, you know, like Rob said. So,
you have like your website review, you
have your marketing materials review,
you have your social media review. Hey,
was there a new social media uh tool
that rolled out? You know, are you on
TikTok? Is Tik Tok really for your
brand? you know, h are your marketing uh
funnels really working for your business
because those could have changed. So you
you may need to pivot, add some new
social media accounts, remove some
social media accounts. So a review of
that is highly recommended. You know,
review those marketing
materials. And another thing is if your
business is
growing, are you also keeping up with
your
infrastructure? So Rob talks about agile
a lot
and sometimes our agile
practices start out small. We do the
bare minimum we need to do to keep the
projects going because we're more
interested in getting things done than
completely following the agile model
because we're small. We we got to
quickly deploy, you know, get things
out, turn things around, make some money
so we can grow. But if you're on that
growth pattern, are you putting the
steps in place to ensure that you are
doing things in the right manner and at
the right time or are you skipping that
and missing out on critical things to
make sure that your projects are
streamlined, that they're moving forward
the way they need to move forward. And
the last thing I'll touch on
is if you do have websites, if you do
have software or technology, are you
keeping up with all your system and
software
updates or are you neglecting those? Are
you potentially letting zero day or bug
or potential security uh problems cause
your site to be hacked, cause you to get
ransomware? You know, are you keeping up
on those things? Those are very
critical. We don't think about them.
Most systems we put in place typically
are pretty good about reminding us, hey,
you need to do this. But you, if you are
a software developer, are you keeping up
with that? You know, you got OASP you
can which will go out and check for
vulnerabilities. It's gotten a lot
better since uh COVID and there's some
other tools in that that you can put out
there to monitor your site and keep
things uh to let you know when things
need to be updated and keeping track.
What are your thoughts on that? So,
there's a couple things there that I
think to add to would one would be just
check out for take a look for like maybe
licenses that have expired. uh sort of
as long lines as he said is things where
you're like maybe you're not using this
you can clean some of that up uh some
just to make sure that there are going
to be those things where it's like oh
yeah this is coming up I need to make
sure I do that it's similar to touching
base with people maybe you're you know
want to reach out to your your group or
certain customers every so often maybe
it's time to make sure you've done that
is there somebody that you were going to
reach out to and now time has moved very
quickly and you haven't uh so that
you're you know like hey now it's time
to to catch up with
Um, I'll actually go with uh something
that this is an opportunity to do the
things that I talk about every episode.
So, automation, is there something that
you're burning a lot of time on? Is
there maybe something that now it's like
it's time to automate it? It's a little
bit like uh Michael mentioned in
infrastructure. Same thing. Is there
something that's like we now can
simplify? Maybe it's something where
we've grown to a certain point and we've
grown or we've grown very fast and we
have that sprawl that I talk about and
that we maybe, you know, need to
simplify some of these things down. Uh
sometimes because you've grown a certain
point where now all those little things
you did, you've grown to a point where
like no, now we can find we can afford a
tool that combines those things
together. Um not going to worry about
innovation. That's something you may,
you know, that's more of a green sky
kind of thing that you may want to do to
but you between the uh automation and
simplification even integration maybe
now you've got a couple tools that you
realize it's like I'm spending too much
time with this or I've grown to a point
and I've got a couple different
departments they're sort of going their
different ways and now I need to pull
those things back together. Another
thing that you may want to take a look
at is just making sure if you're one of
those it's, you know, it's
certifications, licenses, uh, you know,
continuing education hours depending on
what your job is and what your focus is.
There's certain things that you may have
to do every an, you know, annually,
every other year, something like that to
keep current and make sure that you're
doing that. So, you know, it's some of
these are things that are maybe a
general checklist, but doesn't hurt to
take a look at those, particularly from
a business point of view, because you
may be a business where you need to, you
know, do certain things to be able to
operate in certain states or certain
municipalities or things like that.
Depending on your business, this is one
of those that we do tend to get a little
bit caught up
in whatever is going on, our customers
and things like that, and the next thing
you know, you've flown through it. Part
of what this is is it's just to like,
you know, put on the brakes. Let's take
a you take a look around and make sure
that we are set up for whatever our next
push is going to be. And that's the that
is the challenge we're going to throw
out to you this time is hopefully you
know maybe you've done this recently and
so you don't have to but if you have not
in the last you know month or two done a
you know business tuneup take 15 30
minutes something like
that run through the you know the key
facets the key properties the key
attributes of your business the you know
between marketing and sales and HR and
you know accounting and all that kind of
stuff is Just take a look. Are you
current? Are you up todate? Are there
some things that maybe you could like,
you know, do a little spend a little bit
of time on and freshen them up and use
it as a way to maybe get some customers
back, have a couple extra visitors to
your site, things of that nature. For
example, you could ask people to send
you an email like we are right now.
Shoot us an email at
infodelvelopreneur.com if you have any
questions, comments. Actually, even if
you don't, if you could just make
something up, we would love to hear it
because we love hearing from you. We
love feedback. We are getting near the
end of another season. And so, this is
the time that feedback becomes even more
valuable because you could actually
impact something that's going to occur
within a few episodes from now when we
start our next season. I don't even
remember what it is. I think this is now
25 is coming up. Something like that.
Anyways, it's a lot of seasons, a lot of
episodes, but we would love to hear from
you because we're more than happy to
move in a direction that helps you guys
out more often. Uh, more so you can also
reach us on X. You can we are at
developure. We have the developer
channel out on YouTube. If you're
watching this, then you already know
what it is, but if you're listening to
this, we do have a it's not a simalcast,
but we have a video version of the audio
the podcast. So, we also have it and we
always have bonus material uh as well.
So, it's worth an extra, you know, it's
a little extra time. You can always
block us out if you don't want to see
us, but at least you can get the audio
version and that will help out quite a
bit. That being said, I am going to wrap
this one up, give you some of your time
back. As always, we do appreciate you
being out there. Go out there and have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next
time. Bonus material. So, one of the
things I touched on but really didn't
get into too much detail on is when
you're doing these business tuneups,
also make sure that you are backing up
all of your digital
content. This is a very good time to
ensure that you have backups of
everything that you need to keep your
business going in case of a disaster.
Uh, a lot of people don't keep up with
that and then emergency strikes and
whoops, I'm out of business. So, these
are great times to make sure that your
backups are working the way they're
supposed to be working. Uh, your sites
are tuned up like Rob mentioned. Uh,
make sure the sites are backed up.
Recently, I had a customer that their
site got hacked and we are luckily I
found an archive version of the site out
there. Uh, so we're not totally dead in
the water, but uh, we're having to
rebuild everything from scratch because
it's literally gone.
bonus I think I've been throughout this
time is because it's been I've been
playing around with this
lately take some of your key content
your you know your pitches uh maybe some
of your slide decks and stuff like that
take some of that content have a chat
with one of the AI engines that are out
there and see if it gives you some sort
of a a direction that maybe you're like
oh you know what I want to word this a
little differently or hey that's a
different line of business or a
different pursuit that maybe I can like
expand out that way. It's a great way to
just get your information with a
different set of eyes. I mean, you can
always sit down with a friend or
something like that and just say, "Hey,
take a look at my site. Take a look at
this flyer. Take a look at this email.
What do you think? What are your
thoughts?" And get their feedback. But
you can also get that through, you know,
AI engines to say, "Hey, what do you
think about like take a look at this
site and tell me what it says to you or
something like that." Um, and there are
a lot of tools like that that are out
there these days. And it doesn't hurt to
have, like I said, another set of eyes
and see what comes out of it because it
might actually be something that is a,
you know, suddenly an epiphany of your
own where it's like, oh, I can go this
different direction or I can state this
a different way and it's going to have a
a different impact. It's going to hit
them in the fields, as they say, a
little bit
differently. I don't want to hit you in
the fields anymore. I don't want to
exhaust you and make you take a long nap
that turns into a long night of sleep.
So, we will wrap this one up. We will be
back. We got a few episodes left before
we hit this season. And we don't even
know what this next season is yet. So,
we are more than happy to hear from you.
But probably like last time, we are
going to end up like going into episode
one and that is when we will actually
figure out what the next season is
because that's actually a really fun way
to go. It keeps it entertaining to us
and we're always worried about what is
that? We've got that cliffhanger of what
is the next season going to bring. Go
out there and have yourself a good one
and we will talk to you next time.
[Music]