Detailed Notes
In this episode of Building Better Developers, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche discuss upgrading your business — what it means, why it matters, and how to do it smartly. From better tools and smarter hiring to training and compliance, this episode is packed with tips that can save you time, money, and frustration.
🔧 Whether you’re a solopreneur or growing team, learn how to: • Spot hidden time-wasters • Choose the right tools and software • Decide when to train vs. hire • Stay compliant and secure • Boost productivity through smart upgrades
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0:00 – Behind the scenes 8:23 – Introduction 15:00 - What does “upgrading your business” really mean? 34:30 – Challenge 39:35 – Bonus Material
Transcript Text
[Music] accord to the cloud and boom, we're live as far as you know. Well, we're alive. Uh well, actually, we might not be by the time we get this. Who knows? But we are right now. me through traversing my various little notebook here to see where I can put some notes for what we're going to talk about. Um, randomness uh networking thing came across a guy that he focuses on um they're like a life coach and their focus is uh burnout and stress and like high per high achievers and high performers and trying to keep them from burning out stuff like that. So, uh, swap business cards and said, you know, this they've got like a whole, it's like a Tony Robbins kind of thing. They've got like a whole process they go through for this, but like I said, hey, how would you like to be on a podcast? And he's like, "Sure." He's like, "So, I think we may have a guest for a future episode for an interview kind of thing." Cool. It's crazy. I know Reena was still um interested and in fact she's about to move out of the local into her uh an actual brick and mortar. So she's location. Yeah. So she's growing. Uh I think she's got a new vending machine coming to Nashville. And so for bronze it's like she she's taking off. It's pretty cool. Let's see. Did we have leftovers? I don't think we have any leftovers. I think we're caught on at least that backlog. So, let's see. What are some good thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking? I will preface this. This is a uh cocktail hour. Oh, maybe I should do that, too, because I'm just running with decaf tea right now. Um, you know what? All right. because I was uh at the Wei Work space uh at the local great place if you're in Jackson, Tennessee. All right. Uh I'm going to step off camera for a second and pour myself a cocktail while we think about that because you know what? It has been a day slashw week. So, while you're doing that, any ideas since I can still pick you up on the earbuds? Um I'm trying to think of what is some good I'm trying to think like what have we not really touched on that would be building better uh especially towards the end since we are near the end. Yeah. One thing is I'm looking around my plates here my doicile. Um, you know, one thing we could go into, it's a little bit more of a feels like a Christmy kind of thing to do, but we could go into like, um, choosing proper equipment for your, you know, purchasing proper equipment for your employees and stuff like that. So things like, you know, in, you know, making a decision. Is it really worth it to go, you know, buy a large screen for their computer or buy a, you know, do you buy a, you know, spend extra money on a laptop or do you just say, you know, screw it and go with like, you know, something that's just the, you know, the cheapest thing that's off the shelf that like does the job and and things like that? because there's definitely some some level of you know the investment in the tools but that's going to pay off because that's also and that actually even goes into things like what if I get a um it's like training and um you know some of those tool like do I get an IDE or I just say no just use like notepad or something like that. Yeah, because we talked about uh was it employees or scaling? I think um build a sustainable business, pitching your business, product enhancement. Yeah, I like that. That that definitely. So maybe uh let's see. So yeah, making decisions to upgrade equipment, cost versus ROI versus time. Um, oh, so we did sort of do that. No, no, I was reading what you I summarized what you just said. Ah, okay. I said I want to give Yeah. Off the rails, business tuneup checklist, try to refresh, refocus. Uh, yeah, we didn't really touch on a I mean, we touched on other things like when to hire people, when um yeah, how to build real relationships that grow your business, networking strategies, continuity, recovery. Oh, yeah, there's more up here. Uh, business growth strategies, uh, when and how to scale successfully, leveraging AI. Yeah, this would work. Um, which is kind of interesting because, you know, when I rebooted the business or rebranded the business, I actually had to buy some hardware upgrades because some of my machines were just Well, they were functional, they were just slow. Yeah. Well, I I mean, it's a it's a regular challenge depending on where you're at, you know, like like it used to be. That's part of why I moved over to the Apple and Mac world many years ago is because I was going through about every about every 12 to 18 months essentially. Well, desktops I could go maybe two years. Laptops it was literally like basically every 18 months I needed a new laptop because it was just it was things were moving too fast at that time too. But you know it just wasn't going to it wasn't helping me out very much. So um yeah that's and I had to decide on a regular basis. Okay, do I go ahead and, you know, do I give my do I get a bonus this quarter or do I go get another laptop that can so I can do my work better or, you know, get another machine so I have a network that I can test on? Things like that. All right. So, here just based on that. So, making decisions to upgrade your business. um something as let's go with upgrade your business cuz I think so here's hang on. All right, so that's kind of the high level but then with under that I've got bullets for cost versus ROI versus time. Uh maybe update your training materials, update your uh environments or even your employees. Huh? Even your employees. Yeah. Update employees. Uh, onboarding materials, virtual or physical environments, equipment. Yeah. Let's see where this one's going to go. Um, okay. Let's see. Well, where do we want to talk about? What's the second one going to be? They're going to do upgrade your business. Well, we could go with this and then kind of go like with some of the other ones where we probably get something out of this one that will lead into the next one. That's true. And this may be a good two-parter anyways because we could talk more about equipment in one and then maybe upgrading your employees in the other or something like that. There's some um so we have tal have we talked about like legacy systems and stuff like that and upgrading updating your stuff to like modern technology? I don't think so. Okay. So, that's another one. I mean, grant this is like self- serving, but I mean, because that's definitely what we do all the time. That's what we talk to people about all the time. But, um, yeah, we'll give that a shot. Hello and welcome back. We are developer. We are the building better developers podcast. We are continuing this season getting close to the end of building better businesses. This episode, I'm not going to wait make you wait. We're actually going to talk about upgrading your business. Now, how we talk about upgrading it, that you're going to have to wait for. You're not going to have to wait for me to introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. I am one of the founders of Developer, Building Better Developers. Also, a founder of RB Consulting, where we are what they call a boutique consulting kind of place. And actually, it's funny. Somebody asked me the other day, actually, the other day being today, uh what is what is boutique consulting? And my thought on it is that you have your general consulting companies, especially in the IT world, that they basically just throw bodies at a problem. So it's like, hey, you have a problem, we have people, they have skills, we're going to send them to you, we're going to bill you for them. Boutique is a little bit more of like we have a specific set of skills. We have specific problems that we're going to work with you on. And it's really more of a partnership kind of thing where we're going to help you do better. We're not there to like just throw ours at you. were actually there focused on solving problems, not just throwing random resources at you. I know that seems a little insulting to some consulting companies. So, if so, call yourself boutique then and make sure that you actually do that. Uh the way we work is we sit down with our customers, we talk about their business and understand what is it, what is the secret rep, the special recipe that you have that you're going to sell to your customers. Why are you special? What do you do? And then within that and understanding your business and how you approach things, we're going to help you figure out what is the best set of tools that you have out there using technology uh maybe even your people and things like that is how do we build a better business sort of that infrastructure for you to do business better. We do that through simplification, integration, automation, innovation. There's a lot of shuns out there and we use all of them, whichever it is that we need to to help you move from sort of lost and trying to figure out what you want to do to having a plan, a road map and then executing on that road map so that you are in a better place for today, tomorrow, for months and years down the road. All right, good thing, bad thing, bad thing it is. I'm in the I'm in Nashville, Tennessee in the time of year where there's like storms, tornadoes, hail, everything. It's just it's always fun here. So, yesterday totally had to live through it. I had to I had to drive what should have been 10 minutes away. It took like 30 and at one point, which was sort of funny as I'm sitting there about to leave pouring down rain and I'm like, I'm going to wait a few minutes because I don't want to walk through this pouring down rain to get to my car. in the time that it waited for like between when I sat down and when the rain abated enough for me to leave was only like two minutes, but my estimated time to reach my destination went from 30 minutes to almost an hour. And then I got on the road and was able to make a couple of things that, you know, I was initially I got it down to 45 and I got it down to about 30 minutes and got there. But it's just a bad thing because it sucks when you like get out on the interstate and you can't see 10 ft in front of you and everybody else has got their red blinkers going on all that kind of stuff and it's just it's just slow and exhausting to do. So good thing is that uh my youngest is getting close to his uh capstone project and we got to spend some time with him. He's uh he's in film and was directing his film for his, you know, capstone project and we got to hang out with him and the film crew and do all kinds of stuff there as far as like, you know, helping out and even did a little bit of acting and stuff like that. I didn't, but we helped with some of those and got some people in there and just it was a good old time, you know, hanging out and just being behind the scenes watching that kind of stuff go on. So, uh, as always, sometimes it sucks to watch the sausage get made, but sometimes it's actually really cool to do. So, that was my good thing for this week. Uh, a mediocre sort of meh kind of thing this week is that Michael is over there, but he's going to make it better with an incredible introduction. 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 Envision QA. We are like Rob mentioned, we are very tailored to more of a bi boutique style uh company where we work with businesses really walking through how your business work, but we do it through the tester's eyes. We do it from the user's perspective. So, we spend a lot of time understanding how your business works, what the problem is that you're having, how to solve it, and really understand how it all works. So at the end of the process, we can build you a custom solution that works for your business to streamline the process and make things work better. Or we can help you find a custom uh system or cookie cutter system on the shelf, which may be cheaper and may get the job done without having to spend a lot of time developing. We look at both the pros and the cons. At the end of the day, we try to save you money and give you the best solution possible. Good thing, bad thing. Uh Rob, you already mentioned the weather, so I'm not going to touch on that. Uh good thing. I have been working on a very difficult project for months now, and I've had a particular task that was assigned to me that I started working on sometime early April. This is a legacy monolithic mess of an application. And after weeks of working through this, 90% of the problem being not having access to the systems I needed access to, which people didn't know what you needed access to. So, it's one of those where you kind of peel back the onion. Whoops, roadblock. Whoops, roadblock. Well, needless to say, today I finally was able to push the button to commit the code. Wrote the test. Everything worked. It went in. Finally, job done. Moving on. So, that's one of those great moments. you just kind of like, yes, I checked something out, but it's a big sigh of relief. It's like, yay, party time. Bad thing. It's that time of the year. Um, it's you'll be watching this probably after Memorial Day, but um my mom passed away back in 2019 on Memorial Day pre-COVID and uh well, it was kind of bittersweet. Uh my relatives went to visit the grave today, took some pictures. I got that. So, it was it was a reminder of that time of year. You know, you lose loved ones. So, that was kind of bittersweet getting that. So, that was kind of my bad this week. Well, let's try to bring it up a little bit here and talk about upgrading your business. Now, the thing that got me thinking about this topic, for those of you that weren't there in the the pregame here beforehand, the pre-show, is looking around at some of the just, for lack of a better word, the toys that I have, some of the technology that I actually have acquired and um intentionally done so as part of my business over the years. I can go very very far back because I can go back to the point where I had an actual fax machine because there was a day where like you really needed one for a business sort of. I don't think I use it that much, but theoretically you needed to have one. I also had a uh a speaker phone. This is before you had cell phones and stuff like that. So, I had a nice little like one of these that you could put out there and you could talk to people. Uh you know, I've had wireless stuff over the years and things like that. And then eventually it's things like desktops, laptops, tablets, all the good things like that, including like now some I was looking around some of the things like extra screens so that you can have your laptop but then you can have like two or three extra screens there. Uh if you could have a desktop that you can have these really like, you know, wide areas of use and things like that there. Yes, these things are toys to some extent or they're like bonuses and bells and whistles, but there's also value to them. And I want to talk about not only that, but there's also more direct things like software and things like that. There's a difference between having a really like crappy um you know male client from the '9s versus having something that is a you know something modern. There's a there's a difference there is and it people can get into religious discussions almost about this about things like having uh you know an alternative software to something for example for a long time uh and there are there are big camps on this but there's like Photoshop that was expensive and still is not the cheapest thing and then there are other things out there uh like a da Vinci and some of those that are going to be you know price priced differently uh but in some cases there's there's going to be a a productivity cost. Sometimes there's not. And that's what I talk about is is stepping into some of these things is looking and this is one of those it's like a it really is a business checkup kind of thing is looking at the the things you do on a regular basis that and not only that really the things that your employees do on a regular basis and considering is it time for me to get something better? Is it time for me to invest in my business? Now, this could include things like training. You know, maybe it's your your employees are just they're struggling to use like let's say you go in and you're like, "Okay, we're going to go use HubSpot and we're going to use the free version and that's going to help us with our customer relationship management. Uh maybe it's going to set up our website, some things like that because it says it could do it." So, it's like, great, we're going to do this. But then you get it and your employees are losing days trying to figure out how to just use it that they don't have those skills. And a lot of times some training will help get them over the hump or sometimes even more than that. It will go from totally useless to, you know, super awesome employee because now they know how to do it. Now they've been trained on it. But of course, you know, some of these things you're going to find it's like, ah, I'm going to train them, but to train them, I've got to pay plane tickets and I've got to pay for a hotel for a week and then I've got to pay thousands of dollars for a training class and all of that. You're going to look at it and say, "Geez, do I really want to spend $20,000 training two of my employees to enter data into a system that I just spent $50,000 to do?" And I'm making up numbers, but it feels like that or maybe worse. And then the bottom line is in a lot of cases, yes, it actually is valuable. That's that's the whole reason that people can honestly part of the reason they can charge that amount of money for their training and some of the things they do. Not everybody is like us where we are just out here throwing stuff at you all the time. There are a lot of people out there that that's their that is their business. That is what they do. That is how they make money. And the reason they make money is because they bring value. They're not just, you know, randomly saying, "Okay, we're going to sit in front of a video camera for several days with a class full of people and just charge random amounts." There is a value to it. they can see that, hey, yes, you're going to spend $5,000 for this class, but if you're, you know, typical employee, you're spending, let's say, you know, it's a $50,000 a year salary. You don't have a lot of time that you have to save before now you're starting to wreck, you know, 10% of their time over however much time. Let's say that saves them 10% of their time on a week for the rest of their career. Well, depending on how long they're with you, you're probably going to earn that money back fairly quickly. So yeah, there's a lot of things like that that you want to take into account and the things the thing I'm going to do is I'm going to throw it out to you real quick because I can see I I So I have a question for you. So your idea there prompted a question I want to throw at you that I think goes well with this. So when it comes to training your employees, what is your thought of training versus hiring a more senior developer for the cost to train your employees? this is a and it's not just a senior employee. There are some cases where it's it's training your employee versus hiring a specific set of skills. So, I will, you know, let's let's broaden that a little bit. And that includes things like um honestly it even includes things like people with college degrees, but also with certifications, with experience. You know, you're going to get cheaper if they don't have experience. If they just come out of college, they just need a job. They're not going to require a lot. But if they've been doing this for 40 years, they're going to want a pretty serious salary. There's a lot of stuff that goes into that. Now, this is where um I am more of a do as I say, not as I do kind of person because myself, I am very quick to invest in the higher end. I am not going to sit there and especially with my business and with that kind of stuff, I do not find it valuable to go for, you know, to lowball a situation. I would rather get somebody, you know, like a developer that is more skilled and spend some more money than I would then I would sneeze. And I'm going to put that there. So hopefully you can pick that up later because we can edit that one out. Um I want to be able to I find that if I don't spend the money upfront, I'm going to end up spending more time bringing that resource up to speed. And time is the thing that I just I've I am not a fan of wasting time. So I will spend more money. I will hire I will and I have been in these arguments. I one of my favorite that I was right uh with a with a company many many years ago. There was a guy that was like he was he was decent. He was really green though like you know maybe one two years experience. And then we had a guy on the other end that was and now I think he's like a seale steuite person somewhere or something like that very accomplished very skilled person that was literally going to cost over twice as much to hire him and I argued quite a bit to I was like we need the the double salaried person. Now granted that wasn't coming out of my back pocket but it was something that was like in our budget stuff like that. So there was a I had skin in the game. We hired the cheap person. They ended up being not useful, not effective, and we came back later and after I don't know, it's a few months I think that person went away and we were able to go back and get the better person, the more expensive person and honestly better as well for the position and better as a human being. John, if you're out there, you probably aren't listening to us. um was a very good guy and um that was one of these that I had I said all I was like I was right I was like we should have spent the money early on we would have saved a lot and you got to think about with employees that's actually a very big thing is that you don't want there's a cost to churn so if you're going to get somebody you're going to have to either spend the time and train them or you're going to have to make sure that you bring somebody in and you got to watch out for like oh I spent all this I'm trading them and then they go on to something else. So, you know, now they're worth more anyway, so now I've got to pay them more. I think about that with um with tools as well. You can get the the freebie version and stuff like that. And now it's nice that you have uh a lot of this software as a service and cloud things that they will scale up with you, but in the past there's been a lot of situations where you're going to sit there and go, you know what, I don't want the the community version or the free version. There's too much that I get out of the, you know, enterprise version that is value to me. So, what are your thoughts on that? Yes, I was hoping you would throw that one over to me because I am the biggest cheapkate when it comes to things along that line. I I look for the free option in everything I can possibly do because I'm a strong believer in open source and also you know been around for a long time you know WordPress uh or I forget uh Corell uh Corell and Microsoft hand in hand over Office and Word Perfect or Works or whatever the hell they were back in the day. Now you have Libre which really is a good alternative to Microsoft Office. you have which is a more complex tool than Adobe Photoshop. Um, there's always a tool out there that you can do on the cheap. The question you run into is, is the time to learn the tool costly versus buying something off the shelf? So, like Libre, no, you can download Libre. Boom. It is fairly simple, almost identical to Microsoft Office. versus Photoshop. There is a learning curve to versus Photoshop. There's a lot of things that are similar, but can be a little less forgiving if you don't know what you're doing. So, you have to spend a little time training up on that. So, it it there are trade-offs to all these. The question is, what is your return on investment? Are you spending more time learning the tool versus using the tool? Uh, that is usually my kind of go-to to determine what to use. The other thing you got to be careful of, especially for small businesses, is are you reaching the point that community additions are violating the licensing of the community edition? Um, I have not quite reached that point, but there I've been with companies where we were small, quick startup, hey, great, we can use all these tools, but then you reach a point that you can't. And if a internal or an external software audit is done on your company, you're going to find that oh crap, I'm out of compliance, I'm now going to be build x number. So you have to be careful to watch out for those things. So if you are using free tools, community editions, open source, make sure you understand the licensing before you get too far into these tools. If you're just a small one-off person just doing things, you're probably fine. But as you grow, this is something you definitely need to add to your tuneup or your business uh upgrade ideas. Uh the other thing along that line that we were talking about is you mentioned um tools a while back. Well, in the world of cloud-based development today, you know, we have things like uh Docker, you have AWS, we have all these tools that we can use to throw up virtual environments. And to go from tools to like your workforce development, a lot of times, make sure that the software you're using, not just the tools, but your environments, make sure they're all up to date. Make sure you're not running into something that is running into security risks, especially if you're dealing with things like HIPPA, uh, healthcare, banking, things along that lines. Make sure that what you're using is still compliant. Also, make sure that you're not running into zero day crap. Make sure that like your Windows is updated, your Mac's updated, your devices are updated. Make sure you stay compliant and up to date because a lot of people can fall behind on that and you run into the situation where crap uh this bug came out and whoops now my software is down. Let me throw that back to you Rob. Uh I I know I kind of tallied a little. Yeah, this is there's definitely that side. Um and I think this is where it's I don't want to go back too much on that. We have talked about that a little bit security and some things like that. So I do want to swing back around a little bit to the uh the equipment and the training side of it is really the things and this is yes it's a little bit about your customers and things like that. So it may be like um purchasing you know having a really good license for some maybe help desk software or outs outsourcing your help desk to somebody that is going to do a better job than your you know your employees. But sometimes it is more cost effective obviously to do that kind of stuff. It may be that it, you know, everybody hates the offshore help desk, but that is cost effective at times. And then there's also now AI is starting to be a part of this and things like that where it's like there are cost savings, but then there's also these where it's you're you're not really sure. It's and it is like time. Like I said, I'm very uh cognizant and and intentional about time, but also it is something that is it's very easy to uh to lose it when you're think lose it in the the calculations when you're saying, "Hey, bottom line, I spent $1,000 on this person or on this hardware, software, or whatever it is. Where is my bottom line increase?" you don't see directly that I did this and it saved an hour a day which you know you can do your math then and say okay now that means that I earned that $,000 back that month next month six years however long it was you know we keep talking about employees but the other thing we have not mentioned that does fall into this category is our time because you and I have done this a lot where oh I can do this quickly and I think in my mind that oh I'm saving money by doing it myself quicker when actually you might be costing yourself more money over time. And that's exactly it is that you may be doing something that you're like, okay, it takes me five minutes to do it. It's not that big a deal. But the cost savings of buying that other thing of upgrading or whatever it is suddenly can make a big difference. I I go back to an a a very like a more in-your-face kind of example of back in the day when people were this is a developer kind of thing but and even actually I think across the board it would take sometimes minutes to boot your machine in the morning. So people would come in and they would they always had to turn their machine on and boot it up and it would take literally minutes. So, it was literally something where you could like come in, you turn your machine on, you go get yourself a cup of coffee, you come back, you're talking to people for a little bit, and then finally you can actually like log in and do work just to go to a machine or, you know, wireless or some of the things now that we have where it's just like it's it's basically instant on. You've saved several minutes, but now you've saved, you know, five minutes a day. Over a week, you're talking almost a half an hour. You're talking a couple hours a month. that stuff adds up. Same thing, although it's going to be harder to measure, are things like getting a modern machine versus something that is just that isn't uh vis like some people are like, "Oh, nobody needs a big screen. Nobody needs, you know, a wide screen for their work." But depending on what you do and there is a lot of people that are not developers, accountants are a good example where it is very valuable for them to have a nice big screen where they can have, you know, two spreadsheets up at the same time or they can, you know, be reading a spreadsheet or report while they're entering it into the accounting system. There's things like that. There's a lot of places where having better equipment actually helps quite a bit. And this goes back, I will throw this back to one of the very first places I worked at. This guy was the development manager was coming in and they were starting a new software development wing in this consult consulting company and his one of the stipulations of him coming in to work at the company as a development manager was that he was going to be able to have the budget to buy the highest end machines for his developers which at that point literally made a big a difference of hours a day probably that we spent working instead of waiting for things to compile and things to re, you know, recompile and regenerate and all that kind of stuff that the machine was would take large amounts of time. And of course, the stronger machine, the faster machine allows you to get through it faster. And that's where you may not have to worry about it too much, but it things like having a better, you know, internet connection or higher speed wireless or having wireless that is consistent, things like that in your business. Yes, it costs money. Yes, it is. It's infrastructure and investment there, but there is a huge value in doing so because there is a return on your employees time. I'll tack on to that slightly before we get to the challenge. But just a good case in point, this is just this is not just for developers. This also runs it to all levels of business. And I will throw this out because I had a customer over a decade ago that um I had for almost 11 years before he passed away. But he had this he was a property management um business where he would go buy in uh industrial properties and things like that and uh contract that not a not a software developer, a business user. So, he was using all his computers for business. Word, Excel, uh, you know, uh, QuickBooks, literally just to keep his systems running. I would have to come in on a Friday night and spend six hours updating three machines to the latest software updates, backing everything up. It took me six years to convince him to upgrade to the current level of systems. I mean, we're talking business level. He didn't want to go developer level. My time to upgrade his systems went from 6 to 12 hours to 2 hours. Right? There is a huge savings. So again, don't think of this just as a developers. What what I need for my developers, what do I need for my business in general? So if you have secretaries, accountants, make sure you look at how long it is taking to do these system maintenances and is it worth upgrading versus just maintaining. So that brings us to the challenge is take a look at your business uh if you if you have employees and spend a lot of time just watching what they do during the day. Uh this is actually I highly recommend this on a regular basis because and it's not so that you can figure out if they're like you know playing solitire or something like that. is because you will learn where they're spending their time and be able to, you know, help address those issues because that's part of what you want to do is help your employees work better, be more effective, be more productive. If it's you, as you're going through the week, where are the times where you're sitting there like tapping your thumb, tapping your fingers, waiting for something to happen, where are the times that you are tempted to go off and catch up on Facebook or something like that because you're like, "Okay, this is going to take a while." Or that you get lost reading email or things like that. Honestly, just the times you get lost reading email. Maybe there's something that would be worth it to invest in software that like puts a big red warning light when you've spent more than five minutes in email or things like that. There some of these are yes, they are restrictive and they feel like oh my gosh, that's the Gestapo tactics, but they're not. These are things that we do to ourselves as well because we know that we can get squirreish. We can sit there and go, "Oh, there's a squirrel." And the next thing you know, we are off on something else. instead of doing the stuff that we really want to do. And this is even oursel like I know myself. I shut down notifications on a regular basis and now like live with my phone pretty much not notifying me of anything except for my like my kids get through and now I actually resent my kids sometimes because they'll just be like they'll send something some dual text and I'm thinking, "Okay, are you dead? Are you on fire? What?" And no, it's just they want to show me a cat video or something like that. However, see, I digress. That's why we put these things in place. And that's what I want you to do is take a look at where are you spending your time. Where are and it's not the things that we get distracted by as much as it's like what are the things that are actually like these little thieves of time that are in our daily and our, you know, weekly routines that maybe we can like find a way to improve it. I mean it, you know, it would be extreme to say, "Yeah, you know, it would be nice if I had a car that could go 100 miles an hour so I could get to work faster." Okay, maybe that's not quite it, but there are things like that. There are things like, and it is my co my employees, that's why there is a phone stipen, there is an internet stipen, and they all have internet. I'm like, spend this to upgrade your internet. It's things like that. is make sure that they've got a modern phone and not some little thing that we can't get a hold of on. It's these things are all valuable. Some of them are just like it's easy. You know, it's like it's a lowhanging fruit. Business needs to have it. But then there are other things that if you want to be a better business, you need to have it. One thing that everybody has, including ourselves, is an email address. So shoot us an email at [email protected]. Let us know your thoughts, your your thoughts, your frustrations, your budget, stuff like that. Anything that you have heard that you like, that you don't like. We love feedback and we are wrapping up a season pretty soon here going into another one and we are very much, you know, looking for what is the next topic. We are very open to that even more so than normal. Uh you can also reach out to us on developer.com. We have a contact us form. You can get us out on you can follow us on uh YouTube there's a developer channel wherever you get podcasts you can follow us there you can like us you can send comments we will you know give us feedback we'd love to hear from you uh also on x at developreneur we have stuff out there on a regular basis uh if you haven't tried the podcast uh but you're doing YouTube okay you're getting pretty much everything you need although it is a little bit different you don't see quite it is a little more cleaned up we'll say when we get to the podcast level but if you're on podcast, you do get there is bonus material. We have other stuff that we talk about. We have at least I don't know usually at least 5 to 10 minutes of extra content around every single episode. And then also on our YouTube channel, we've got stuff way way way back. I I have had people that are like marketing and brand people that when I talk to them about my little company and what I do and then I point them to developer, they're like, "Oh my gosh, you were talking about some little thing of content. you have mountains and oceans of content. And yes, that is what we have there. And if you would like even stuff that we haven't thought of in years, if you'd like feedback, if you'd like help, if you'd like us to, you know, throw some of our suggestions, we would be happy to do so. Right now, I'm happy to give you some time back into your life. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Bonus material. The biggest thing I will mention um is when you if if you want to figure out what your employees are doing, make sure you keep it as a safe space so you're not hovering, you're not, you know, don't make them uncomfortable because like that. Um, a lot of times when you're trying to figure out what the employees are doing, sometimes it's fun to bring them all into the conference room and say, "Hey, walk me through a normal routine. What are some of the problems you're having?" You know, put it into a problem-solving situation where the team can work together to help mitigate the hang-ups that everyone's having. It could be software, it could be time. Um, this is just something not just for this, but just in general, it's worth doing every so often so that everyone is on the same page and you can kind of keep things moving. So, it is good to do this at least once a year, but it's kind of good to do this more than once in a while. And make it a game, make it fun, make it something engaging so that they don't feel threatened when you sit down with your employees. I think, yeah, I'll go with that. Gamification has been a thing for a few years now, and especially in the world of uh productivity enhancement, things like that. It really is it's it's giving you that endorphin rush of doing things better. And some people get it naturally, but for those that don't, you know, something like that where you make it, you know, make it a challenge, make it a a team effort, whatever it is that will draw people in and help you get the feedback you need. So, they're going to say, they're going to complain when they need to complain and say, "You know what? I could do my job better if this was better. If this was out of my way, if this didn't take so long." Those are some of the kinds of things. And it gosh, it can be so simplistic. Um, sometimes it's like there are companies that have figured out that it was cheaper for them to bring lunch in for their employees than it was to allow their employees to go out for lunch because they would go out and then it would take extra time and it was time of, you know, they had to go get to their car and drive to the place and wait for the food and then come back and all this kind of stuff. And then it also separated them. They didn't go out. But if you have like a, you know, if you have like a a family environment essentially where you come in and you have lunch and everybody's working together, everybody has lunch together and stuff like that, then you have a little bit of a you have that community feel. And it doesn't mean that everybody has to have a lunch at the same time. You don't have to be like, okay, the bell rings and you go. But having that opportunity will help you build company uh build employees that are more uh loyal to your company basically that they're like now they're not just getting a paycheck now they are tied to other people. there's all these like there's a lot of uh indirect benefits to a lot of the things that we're talking about and it really is and the the last the extra I guess bonus thing I'll say is don't knock it until you've tried it. There are things out there that your employees will say this really matters to me. Uh, a good example, like I said, big screens. There's a lot of people talk about. Another one is like just comfortable chairs. If you have employees that complain about, you know, I just like a a higherend chair. Don't give me this, you know, garden folding chair that I have to sit in all day cuz they're like sitting on it for eight, you know, eight hours or maybe more. And if you don't, if you're like, it's no big deal. Sit in that chair for that amount of time and see what happens. And that's why again this is me talking to somebody that I have been in those situations where I've been like this chair causes me pain. I get up on a regular basis just to go like get out of this thing or I'll go take my work somewhere else just because I don't want to sit in that chair too long and that's when I'm like I need to get a new chair. Health care that could be you could save money on your health care costs by buying a ergonomic chair for your developers. And there are there are a lot of companies that will tell you that they will show you the they will show you the money. They will show you the numbers that say that you know this is where ergonomics got really big now I guess it's like 30 years ago is people realize that there's like one there is a cost for every little action you have and if it takes you even you know a tenth of a second more that can add up over time and it allows you to be more effective and things like that but also there's there's exhaustion that's involved. there is like things like, you know, neck and back injuries and things like that that come over time because of repetitive stress stuff. So, there's a lot of places to look. There's a lot of value out there. That's why the challenge is here. That's why I wanted to throw this one out there is to say, you know what, it seems sunshine and roses and unicorns and all that kind of stuff. But no, it really is a bottom line black and white. If you you are investing in your company, your infrastructure, your employees, so do it wisely and see what happens. I dare you. I also dare you to come back next time around because we are wrapping this one up. I don't know where I was going to go with that. So, I just had to like just had to bail out of that one quickly. Uh go out there and have yourself a great day. We will talk to you guys next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
accord to the cloud and boom, we're live
as far as you know. Well, we're alive.
Uh well, actually, we might not be by
the time we get this. Who knows? But we
are right now. me through traversing my
various little notebook here to see
where I can put some notes for what
we're going to talk about.
Um, randomness uh networking thing came
across a guy that he focuses on
um they're like a life coach and their
focus is uh burnout and stress and like
high per high achievers and high
performers and trying to keep them from
burning out stuff like that. So, uh,
swap business cards and said, you know,
this they've got like a whole, it's like
a Tony Robbins kind of thing. They've
got like a whole process they go through
for this, but like I said, hey, how
would you like to be on a podcast? And
he's like, "Sure." He's like, "So, I
think we may have a guest for a future
episode for an interview kind of thing."
Cool. It's crazy. I know Reena was still
um interested and in fact she's about to
move out of the local into her uh an
actual brick and mortar. So she's
location. Yeah. So she's growing. Uh I
think she's got a new vending machine
coming to Nashville. And so for bronze
it's like she she's taking off. It's
pretty cool.
Let's see. Did we have leftovers? I
don't think we have any leftovers. I
think we're
caught on at least that backlog. So,
let's see. What are some
good thinking, thinking, thinking,
thinking? I will preface this. This is a
uh cocktail hour.
Oh, maybe I should do that, too, because
I'm just running with decaf tea right
now. Um, you know what?
All right.
because I was uh at the Wei Work space
uh at the
local great place if you're in Jackson,
Tennessee. All right. Uh I'm going to
step off camera for a second and pour
myself a
cocktail while we think about that
because you know what? It has
been a day slashw week. So, while you're
doing that, any ideas since I can still
pick you up on the earbuds?
Um I'm trying to think of what is some
good I'm trying to think like what have
we not really touched on that would be
building better
uh especially towards the end since we
are near the end.
Yeah. One thing is I'm looking around my
plates here my doicile. Um, you know,
one thing we could go into, it's a
little bit more of a feels like a
Christmy kind of thing to do, but we
could go into like,
um, choosing proper equipment for your,
you know, purchasing proper equipment
for your employees and stuff like that.
So things like, you know, in, you know,
making a decision. Is it really worth it
to go, you know, buy a large screen for
their computer or buy a, you know, do
you buy a, you know, spend extra money
on a laptop or do you just say, you
know, screw it and go with like, you
know, something that's just the, you
know, the cheapest thing that's off the
shelf that like does the job and and
things like that? because there's
definitely some some level
of you know the investment in the tools
but that's going to pay off because
that's also and that actually even goes
into things like what if I get a um it's
like training and um you know some of
those tool like do I get an IDE or I
just say no just use like notepad or
something like
that. Yeah, because we talked about uh
was it employees or scaling? I think
um build a sustainable business,
pitching your business, product
enhancement. Yeah, I like that. That
that definitely. So maybe
uh let's see. So yeah, making decisions
to upgrade equipment, cost versus ROI
versus time. Um,
oh, so we did sort of do that. No, no, I
was reading what you I summarized what
you just said. Ah,
okay. I said I want to give Yeah. Off
the rails, business tuneup checklist,
try to refresh,
refocus. Uh, yeah, we didn't really
touch on a I mean, we touched on other
things like when to hire people, when um
yeah, how to build real relationships
that grow your business, networking
strategies, continuity,
recovery. Oh, yeah, there's more up
here. Uh, business growth strategies,
uh, when and how to scale successfully,
leveraging
AI. Yeah, this would work.
Um, which is kind of interesting
because, you know, when I rebooted the
business or rebranded the business, I
actually had to buy some hardware
upgrades because some of my machines
were just Well, they were functional,
they were just slow.
Yeah. Well, I I mean, it's
a it's a
regular challenge depending on where
you're at, you know, like like it used
to be. That's part of why I moved over
to the Apple and Mac world many years
ago is because I was going
through about every about every 12 to 18
months essentially. Well, desktops I
could go maybe two years. Laptops it was
literally like basically every 18 months
I needed a new laptop because it was
just it was things were moving too fast
at that time too. But you know it just
wasn't going to it wasn't helping me out
very much. So um yeah that's and I had
to decide on a regular basis. Okay, do I
go ahead and, you know, do I give my do
I get a bonus this quarter or do I go
get another laptop that can so I can do
my work better or, you know, get another
machine so I have a network that I can
test on? Things like that. All right.
So, here just based on that. So, making
decisions to upgrade your business.
um something as let's go with upgrade
your business cuz I think so here's hang
on. All right, so that's kind of the
high level but then with under that I've
got bullets for cost versus ROI versus
time. Uh maybe update your training
materials, update your uh environments
or even your employees. Huh? Even your
employees. Yeah.
Update
employees. Uh, onboarding materials,
virtual or physical environments,
equipment. Yeah.
Let's see where this one's going to go.
Um, okay. Let's see. Well, where do we
want to talk about? What's the second
one going to be? They're going to do
upgrade your business.
Well, we could go with this and then
kind of go like with some of the other
ones where we probably get something out
of this one that will lead into the next
one. That's true. And this may be a good
two-parter anyways because we could talk
more about equipment in one and then
maybe upgrading your employees in the
other or something like that. There's
some um so we have
tal have we talked about like legacy
systems and stuff like that
and upgrading updating your stuff to
like modern technology? I don't think
so. Okay. So, that's another one. I
mean, grant this is like self- serving,
but I mean, because that's definitely
what we do all the time. That's what we
talk to people about all the time. But,
um, yeah, we'll give that a shot. Hello
and welcome back. We are developer. We
are the building better developers
podcast. We are continuing this season
getting close to the end of building
better businesses. This episode, I'm not
going to wait make you wait. We're
actually going to talk about upgrading
your business. Now, how we talk about
upgrading it, that you're going to have
to wait for. You're not going to have to
wait for me to introduce myself. My name
is Rob Broadhead. I am one of the
founders of Developer, Building Better
Developers. Also, a founder of RB
Consulting, where we are what they call
a boutique consulting kind of place. And
actually, it's funny. Somebody asked me
the other day, actually, the other day
being today, uh what is what is boutique
consulting? And my thought on it is that
you have your general consulting
companies, especially in the IT world,
that they basically just throw bodies at
a problem. So it's like, hey, you have a
problem, we have people, they have
skills, we're going to send them to you,
we're going to bill you for them.
Boutique is a little bit more of like we
have a specific set of skills. We have
specific problems that we're going to
work with you on. And it's really more
of a partnership kind of thing where
we're going to help you do better. We're
not there to like just throw ours at
you. were actually there focused on
solving problems, not just throwing
random resources at you. I know that
seems a little insulting to some
consulting companies. So, if so, call
yourself boutique then and make sure
that you actually do that. Uh the way we
work is we sit down with our customers,
we talk about their business and
understand what is it, what is the
secret rep, the special recipe that you
have that you're going to sell to your
customers. Why are you special? What do
you do? And then within that and
understanding your business and how you
approach things, we're going to help you
figure out what is the best set of tools
that you have out there using technology
uh maybe even your people and things
like that is how do we build a better
business sort of that infrastructure for
you to do business better. We do that
through simplification, integration,
automation, innovation. There's a lot of
shuns out there and we use all of them,
whichever it is that we need to to help
you move from sort of lost and trying to
figure out what you want to do to having
a plan, a road map and then executing on
that road map so that you are in a
better place for today, tomorrow, for
months and years down the road. All
right, good thing, bad thing, bad thing
it is. I'm in the I'm in Nashville,
Tennessee in the time of year where
there's like storms, tornadoes,
hail, everything. It's just it's always
fun here. So, yesterday totally had to
live through it. I had to I had to drive
what should have been 10 minutes away.
It took like 30 and at one point, which
was sort of funny as I'm sitting there
about to leave pouring down rain and I'm
like, I'm going to wait a few minutes
because I don't want to walk through
this pouring down rain to get to my car.
in the time that it waited for like
between when I sat down and when the
rain abated enough for me to leave was
only like two minutes, but my estimated
time to reach my destination went from
30 minutes to almost an hour. And then I
got on the road and was able to make a
couple of things that, you know, I was
initially I got it down to 45 and I got
it down to about 30 minutes and got
there. But it's just a bad thing because
it sucks when you like get out on the
interstate and you can't see 10 ft in
front of you and everybody else has got
their red blinkers going on all that
kind of stuff and it's just it's just
slow and exhausting to do. So good thing
is that uh my youngest is getting close
to his uh capstone project and we got to
spend some time with him. He's uh he's
in film and was directing his film for
his, you know, capstone project and we
got to hang out with him and the film
crew and do all kinds of stuff there as
far as like, you know, helping out and
even did a little bit of acting and
stuff like that. I didn't, but we helped
with some of those and got some people
in there and just it was a good old
time, you know, hanging out and just
being behind the scenes watching that
kind of stuff go on. So, uh, as always,
sometimes it sucks to watch the sausage
get made, but sometimes it's actually
really cool to do. So, that was my good
thing for this week. Uh, a mediocre sort
of meh kind of thing this week is that
Michael is over there, but he's going to
make it better with an incredible
introduction. 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 Envision QA. We are like Rob
mentioned, we are very tailored to more
of a bi boutique style uh company where
we work with businesses really walking
through how your business work, but we
do it through the tester's eyes. We do
it from the user's perspective. So, we
spend a lot of time understanding how
your business works, what the problem is
that you're having, how to solve it, and
really understand how it all works. So
at the end of the process, we can build
you a custom solution that works for
your business to streamline the process
and make things work better. Or we can
help you find a custom uh system or
cookie cutter system on the shelf, which
may be cheaper and may get the job done
without having to spend a lot of time
developing. We look at both the pros and
the cons. At the end of the day, we try
to save you money and give you the best
solution possible. Good thing, bad
thing. Uh Rob, you already mentioned the
weather, so I'm not going to touch on
that. Uh good thing. I have been working
on a very difficult project for months
now, and I've had a particular task that
was assigned to me that I started
working on sometime early
April. This is a legacy
monolithic mess of an application. And
after weeks of working through this, 90%
of the problem being not having access
to the systems I needed access to, which
people didn't know what you needed
access to. So, it's one of those where
you kind of peel back the onion. Whoops,
roadblock. Whoops, roadblock. Well,
needless to say, today I finally was
able to push the button to commit the
code. Wrote the test. Everything worked.
It went in. Finally, job done. Moving
on. So, that's one of those great
moments. you just kind of like, yes, I
checked something out, but it's a big
sigh of relief. It's like, yay, party
time. Bad thing. It's that time of the
year. Um, it's you'll be watching this
probably after Memorial Day, but um my
mom passed away back in 2019 on Memorial
Day pre-COVID and uh well, it was kind
of bittersweet. Uh my relatives went to
visit the grave today, took some
pictures. I got that. So, it was it was
a reminder of that time of year. You
know, you lose loved ones. So, that was
kind of bittersweet getting that. So,
that was kind of my bad this week.
Well, let's try to bring it up a little
bit here and talk about upgrading your
business. Now, the thing that got me
thinking about this topic, for those of
you that weren't there in the the
pregame here beforehand, the pre-show,
is looking around at some of the just,
for lack of a better word, the toys that
I have, some of the technology that I
actually have acquired and um
intentionally done so as part of my
business over the years. I can go very
very far back because I can go back to
the point where I had an actual fax
machine because there was a day where
like you really needed one for a
business sort of. I don't think I use it
that much, but theoretically you needed
to have one. I also had a uh a speaker
phone. This is before you had cell
phones and stuff like that. So, I had a
nice little like one of these that you
could put out there and you could talk
to people. Uh you know, I've had
wireless stuff over the years and things
like that. And then eventually it's
things like desktops, laptops, tablets,
all the good things like that, including
like now some I was looking around some
of the things like extra screens so that
you can have your laptop but then you
can have like two or three extra screens
there. Uh if you could have a desktop
that you can have these really like, you
know, wide areas of use and things like
that there. Yes, these things are toys
to some extent or they're like bonuses
and bells and whistles, but there's also
value to them. And I want to talk about
not only that, but there's also more
direct things like software and things
like that. There's a difference between
having a really like crappy
um you know male client from the '9s
versus having something that is a you
know something modern. There's a there's
a difference there is and it people can
get into religious discussions almost
about this about things like having uh
you know an alternative software to
something for example for a long time uh
and there are there are big camps on
this but there's like Photoshop that was
expensive and still is not the cheapest
thing and then there are other things
out there uh like a da Vinci and some of
those that are going to be you know
price priced differently uh but in some
cases there's there's going to be a a
productivity cost. Sometimes there's
not. And that's what I talk about is is
stepping into some of these things is
looking and this is one of those it's
like a it really is a business checkup
kind of thing is looking at the the
things you do on a regular basis that
and not only that really the things that
your employees do on a regular basis and
considering is it time for me to get
something better? Is it time for me to
invest in my business? Now, this could
include things like training. You know,
maybe it's your your employees are just
they're struggling to use like let's say
you go in and you're like, "Okay, we're
going to go use HubSpot and we're going
to use the free version and that's going
to help us with our customer
relationship management. Uh maybe it's
going to set up our website, some things
like that because it says it could do
it." So, it's like, great, we're going
to do this. But then you get it and your
employees are losing days trying to
figure out how to just use it that they
don't have those skills. And a lot of
times some training will help get them
over the hump or sometimes even more
than that. It will go from totally
useless to, you know, super awesome
employee because now they know how to do
it. Now they've been trained on it. But
of course, you know, some of these
things you're going to find it's like,
ah, I'm going to train them, but to
train them, I've got to pay plane
tickets and I've got to pay for a hotel
for a week and then I've got to pay
thousands of dollars for a training
class and all of that. You're going to
look at it and say, "Geez, do I really
want to spend $20,000 training two of my
employees to enter data into a system
that I just spent $50,000 to do?" And
I'm making up numbers, but it feels like
that or maybe
worse. And then the bottom line is in a
lot of cases, yes, it actually is
valuable. That's that's the whole reason
that people can honestly part of the
reason they can charge that amount of
money for their training and some of the
things they do. Not everybody is like us
where we are just out here throwing
stuff at you all the time. There are a
lot of people out there that that's
their that is their business. That is
what they do. That is how they make
money. And the reason they make money is
because they bring value. They're not
just, you know, randomly saying, "Okay,
we're going to sit in front of a video
camera for several days with a class
full of people and just charge random
amounts." There is a value to it. they
can see that, hey, yes, you're going to
spend $5,000 for this class, but if
you're, you know, typical employee,
you're spending, let's say, you know,
it's a $50,000 a year
salary. You don't have a lot of time
that you have to save before now you're
starting to wreck, you know, 10% of
their time over however much time. Let's
say that saves them 10% of their time on
a week for the rest of their career.
Well, depending on how long they're with
you, you're probably going to earn that
money back fairly quickly. So yeah,
there's a lot of things like that that
you want to take into account and the
things
the thing I'm going to do is I'm going
to throw it out to you real quick
because I can see I I So I have a
question for you. So your idea there
prompted a question I want to throw at
you that I think goes well with this. So
when it comes to training your
employees, what is your thought of
training versus hiring a more senior
developer for the cost to train your
employees?
this is a and it's not just a senior
employee. There are some cases where
it's it's training your employee versus
hiring a specific set of skills. So, I
will, you know, let's let's broaden that
a little bit. And that includes things
like um honestly it even includes things
like people with college degrees, but
also with certifications, with
experience. You know, you're going to
get cheaper if they don't have
experience. If they just come out of
college, they just need a job. They're
not going to require a lot. But if
they've been doing this for 40 years,
they're going to want a pretty serious
salary. There's a lot of stuff that goes
into that. Now, this is where um I am
more of a do as I say, not as I do kind
of person because myself, I am very
quick to invest in the higher end. I am
not going to sit there and especially
with my business and with that kind of
stuff, I do not find it valuable to go
for, you know, to lowball a situation. I
would rather get somebody, you know,
like a developer that is more skilled
and spend some more money than I
would then I would sneeze. And I'm going
to put that there. So hopefully you can
pick that up later because we can edit
that one out. Um I want to be able to I
find that if I don't spend the money
upfront, I'm going to end up spending
more time bringing that resource up to
speed. And time is the thing that I just
I've I am not a fan of wasting time. So
I will spend more money. I will hire I
will and I have been in these arguments.
I one of my favorite that I was right uh
with a with a company many many years
ago. There was a guy that was like he
was he was decent. He was really green
though like you know maybe one two years
experience. And then we had a guy on the
other end that was and now I think he's
like a seale steuite person somewhere or
something like that very accomplished
very skilled person that was literally
going to cost over twice as much to hire
him and I argued quite a bit to I was
like we need the the double salaried
person. Now granted that wasn't coming
out of my back pocket but it was
something that was like in our budget
stuff like that. So there was a I had
skin in the game. We hired the cheap
person. They ended up being not useful,
not effective, and we came back later
and after I don't know, it's a few
months I think that person went away and
we were able to go back and get the
better person, the more expensive person
and honestly better as well for the
position and better as a human being.
John, if you're out there, you probably
aren't listening to us.
um was a very good guy and
um that was one of these that I had I
said all I was like I was right I was
like we should have spent the money
early on we would have saved a lot and
you got to think about with employees
that's actually a very big thing is that
you don't want there's a cost to churn
so if you're going to get somebody
you're going to have to either spend the
time and train them or you're going to
have to make sure that you bring
somebody in and you got to watch out for
like oh I spent all this I'm trading
them and then they go on to something
else. So, you know, now they're worth
more anyway, so now I've got to pay them
more. I think about that with um with
tools as well. You can get the the
freebie version and stuff like that. And
now it's nice that you have uh a lot of
this software as a service and cloud
things that they will scale up with you,
but in the past there's been a lot of
situations where you're going to sit
there and go, you know what, I don't
want the the community version or the
free version. There's too much that I
get out of the, you know, enterprise
version that is value to me. So, what
are your thoughts on that? Yes, I was
hoping you would throw that one over to
me because I am the biggest cheapkate
when it comes to things along that line.
I I look for the free option in
everything I can possibly do because I'm
a strong believer in open source and
also you know been around for a long
time you know WordPress uh or I forget
uh Corell uh Corell and Microsoft
hand in hand over Office and Word
Perfect or Works or whatever the hell
they were back in the day. Now you have
Libre which really is a good alternative
to Microsoft Office. you have
which is a more complex tool than Adobe
Photoshop. Um, there's always a tool out
there that you can do on the cheap. The
question you run into is, is the time to
learn the
tool costly versus buying something off
the shelf? So, like Libre, no, you can
download Libre. Boom. It is fairly
simple, almost identical to Microsoft
Office. versus Photoshop. There is
a learning curve to versus
Photoshop. There's a lot of things that
are similar, but can be a little
less forgiving if you don't know what
you're doing. So, you have to spend a
little time training up on that. So, it
it there are trade-offs to all these.
The question is, what is your return on
investment? Are you spending more time
learning the tool versus using the tool?
Uh, that is usually my kind of go-to to
determine what to use.
The other thing you got to be careful
of, especially for small
businesses,
is are you reaching the point that
community additions are violating the
licensing of the community edition? Um,
I have not quite reached that point, but
there I've been with companies where we
were small, quick startup, hey, great,
we can use all these tools, but then you
reach a point that you can't. And if a
internal or an external software audit
is done on your company, you're going to
find that oh crap, I'm out of
compliance, I'm now going to be build x
number. So you have to be careful to
watch out for those things. So if you
are using free tools, community
editions, open source, make sure you
understand the licensing before you get
too far into these tools. If you're just
a small one-off person just doing
things, you're probably fine. But as you
grow, this is something you definitely
need to add to your tuneup or your
business uh upgrade ideas. Uh the other
thing along that line that we were
talking about is you mentioned um tools
a while back.
Well, in the world of cloud-based
development today, you know, we have
things like uh Docker, you have AWS, we
have all these tools that we can use to
throw up virtual environments. And to go
from tools to like your workforce
development, a lot of times, make sure
that the software you're using, not just
the tools, but your environments, make
sure they're all up to date. Make sure
you're not running into something that
is running into security risks,
especially if you're dealing with things
like HIPPA, uh, healthcare, banking,
things along that lines. Make sure that
what you're using is still compliant.
Also, make sure that you're not running
into zero day crap. Make sure that like
your Windows is updated, your Mac's
updated, your devices are updated. Make
sure you stay compliant and up to date
because a lot of people can fall behind
on that and you run into the situation
where crap
uh this bug came out and whoops now my
software is down. Let me throw that back
to you Rob. Uh I I know I kind of
tallied a little. Yeah, this is there's
definitely that side. Um and I think
this is where it's I don't want to go
back too much on that. We have talked
about that a little bit security and
some things like that. So I do want to
swing back around a little bit to the uh
the equipment and the training side of
it is really the things and this is yes
it's a little bit about your customers
and things like that. So it may be like
um purchasing you know having a really
good license for some maybe help desk
software or outs outsourcing your help
desk to somebody that is going to do a
better job than your you know your
employees. But sometimes it is more cost
effective obviously to do that kind of
stuff. It may be that it, you know,
everybody hates the offshore help desk,
but that is cost effective at times. And
then there's also now AI is starting to
be a part of this and things like that
where it's like there are cost savings,
but then there's also these where it's
you're you're not really sure. It's and
it is like time. Like I said, I'm very
uh cognizant and and intentional about
time, but also it is something that is
it's very easy to uh to lose it when
you're think lose it in the the
calculations when you're saying, "Hey,
bottom line, I spent $1,000 on this
person or on this hardware, software, or
whatever it is. Where is my bottom line
increase?" you don't see directly that I
did this and it saved an hour a day
which you know you can do your math then
and say okay now that means that I
earned that $,000 back that month next
month six years however long it was you
know we keep talking about employees but
the other thing we have not mentioned
that does fall into this category is our
time because you and I have done this a
lot where oh I can do this quickly and I
think in my mind that oh I'm saving
money by doing it myself quicker when
actually you might be costing yourself
more money over time.
And that's exactly it is that you may be
doing something that you're like, okay,
it takes me five minutes to do it. It's
not that big a deal. But the cost
savings of buying that other thing of
upgrading or whatever it is suddenly can
make a big difference. I I go back to an
a a very like a more in-your-face kind
of example of back in the day when
people were this is a developer kind of
thing but and even actually I think
across the board it would take sometimes
minutes to boot your machine in the
morning. So people would come in and
they would they always had to turn their
machine on and boot it up and it would
take literally minutes. So, it was
literally something where you could like
come in, you turn your machine on, you
go get yourself a cup of coffee, you
come back, you're talking to people for
a little bit, and then finally you can
actually like log in and do work just to
go to a machine or, you know, wireless
or some of the things now that we have
where it's just like it's it's basically
instant on. You've saved several
minutes, but now you've saved, you know,
five minutes a day. Over a week, you're
talking almost a half an hour. You're
talking a couple hours a month. that
stuff adds up. Same thing, although it's
going to be harder to measure, are
things
like getting a modern machine versus
something that is just that isn't uh vis
like some people are like, "Oh, nobody
needs a big screen. Nobody needs, you
know, a wide screen for their work." But
depending on what you do and there is a
lot of people that are not developers,
accountants are a good example where it
is very valuable for them to have a nice
big screen where they can have, you
know, two spreadsheets up at the same
time or they can, you know, be reading a
spreadsheet or report while they're
entering it into the accounting system.
There's things like that. There's a lot
of places where having better equipment
actually helps quite a bit. And this
goes back, I will throw this back to one
of the very first places I worked at.
This guy was the development manager was
coming in and they were starting a new
software development wing in this
consult consulting company and his one
of the stipulations of him coming in to
work at the company as a development
manager was that he was going to be able
to have the budget to buy the highest
end machines for his developers which at
that point literally made a big a
difference of hours a day probably that
we spent working instead of waiting for
things to compile and things to re, you
know, recompile and regenerate and all
that kind of stuff that the machine was
would take large amounts of time. And of
course, the stronger machine, the faster
machine allows you to get through it
faster. And that's where you may not
have to worry about it too much, but it
things like having a better, you know,
internet connection or higher speed
wireless or having wireless that is
consistent, things like that in your
business. Yes, it costs money. Yes, it
is. It's infrastructure and investment
there, but there is a huge value in
doing so because there is a return on
your employees
time. I'll tack on to that slightly
before we get to the challenge.
But just a good case in point, this is
just this is not just for developers.
This also runs it to all levels of
business. And I will throw this out
because I had a customer over a decade
ago that um I had for almost 11 years
before he passed away. But he had this
he was a property management um business
where he would go buy in uh industrial
properties and things like that and uh
contract that not a not a software
developer, a business user. So, he was
using all his computers for business.
Word, Excel, uh, you know, uh,
QuickBooks, literally just to keep his
systems running. I would have to come in
on a Friday night and spend six hours
updating three machines to the latest
software updates, backing everything
up. It took me six years to convince him
to upgrade to the current level of
systems. I mean, we're talking business
level. He didn't want to go developer
level. My time to upgrade his systems
went from 6 to 12 hours to 2 hours.
Right? There is a huge savings. So
again, don't think of this just as a
developers. What what I need for my
developers, what do I need for my
business in general? So if you have
secretaries, accountants, make sure you
look at how long it is taking to do
these system maintenances and is it
worth upgrading versus just maintaining.
So that brings us to the challenge is
take a look at your business uh if you
if you have employees and spend a lot of
time just watching what they do during
the day. Uh this is actually I highly
recommend this on a regular basis
because and it's not so that you can
figure out if they're like you know
playing solitire or something like that.
is because you will learn where they're
spending their time and be able to, you
know, help address those issues because
that's part of what you want to do is
help your employees work better, be more
effective, be more productive. If it's
you, as you're going through the week,
where are the times where you're sitting
there like tapping your thumb, tapping
your fingers, waiting for something to
happen, where are the times that you are
tempted to go off and catch up on
Facebook or something like that because
you're like, "Okay, this is going to
take a while." Or that you get lost
reading email or things like that.
Honestly, just the times you get lost
reading email. Maybe there's something
that would be worth it to invest in
software that like puts a big red
warning light when you've spent more
than five minutes in email or things
like that. There some of these are yes,
they are restrictive and they feel like
oh my gosh, that's the Gestapo tactics,
but they're not. These are things that
we do to ourselves as well because we
know that we can get squirreish. We can
sit there and go, "Oh, there's a
squirrel." And the next thing you know,
we are off on something else. instead of
doing the stuff that we really want to
do. And this is even oursel like I know
myself. I shut down notifications on a
regular basis and now like live with my
phone pretty much not notifying me of
anything except for my like my kids get
through and now I actually resent my
kids sometimes because they'll just be
like they'll send something some dual
text and I'm thinking, "Okay, are you
dead? Are you on fire? What?" And no,
it's just they want to show me a cat
video or something like that. However,
see, I digress. That's why we put these
things in place. And that's what I want
you to do is take a look at where are
you spending your time. Where are and
it's not the things that we get
distracted by as much as it's like what
are the things that are actually like
these little thieves of time that are in
our daily and our, you know, weekly
routines that maybe we can like find a
way to improve it. I mean it, you know,
it would be extreme to say, "Yeah, you
know, it would be nice if I had a car
that could go 100 miles an hour so I
could get to work faster." Okay, maybe
that's not quite it, but there are
things like that. There are things like,
and it is my co my employees, that's why
there is a phone stipen, there is an
internet stipen, and they all have
internet. I'm like, spend this to
upgrade your internet. It's things like
that. is make sure that they've got a
modern phone and not some little thing
that we can't get a hold of on. It's
these things are all valuable. Some of
them are just like it's easy. You know,
it's like it's a lowhanging fruit.
Business needs to have it. But then
there are other things that if you want
to be a better business, you need to
have
it. One thing that everybody has,
including ourselves, is an email
address. So shoot us an email at
[email protected]. Let us know your
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pretty soon here going into another one
and we are very much, you know, looking
for what is the next topic. We are very
open to that even more so than normal.
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okay you're getting pretty much
everything you need although it is a
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it is a little more cleaned up we'll say
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would be happy to do so. Right now, I'm
happy to give you some time back into
your life. Go out there and have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next
time. Bonus material.
The biggest thing I will mention um is
when you if if you want to figure out
what your employees are doing, make sure
you keep it as a safe space so you're
not hovering, you're not, you know,
don't make them uncomfortable because
like that.
Um, a lot of times when you're trying to
figure out what the employees are doing,
sometimes it's fun to bring them all
into the conference room and say, "Hey,
walk me through a normal routine. What
are some of the problems you're having?"
You know, put it into a problem-solving
situation where the team can work
together to
help mitigate the hang-ups that
everyone's having. It could be software,
it could be time. Um, this is just
something not just for this, but just in
general, it's worth doing every so often
so that everyone is on the same page and
you can kind of keep things moving. So,
it is good to do this at least once a
year, but it's kind of good to do this
more than once in a while. And make it a
game, make it fun, make it something
engaging so that they don't feel
threatened when you sit down with your
employees.
I think, yeah, I'll go with that.
Gamification has been a thing for a few
years now, and especially in the world
of uh productivity enhancement, things
like that. It really is it's it's giving
you that endorphin rush of doing things
better. And some people get it
naturally, but for those that don't, you
know, something like that where you make
it, you know, make it a challenge, make
it a a team effort, whatever it is that
will draw people in and help you get the
feedback you need. So, they're going to
say, they're going to complain when they
need to complain and say, "You know
what? I could do my job better if this
was better. If this was out of my way,
if this didn't take so long." Those are
some of the kinds of things. And it
gosh, it can be so simplistic. Um,
sometimes it's like there are companies
that have figured out that it was
cheaper for them to bring lunch in for
their employees than it was to allow
their employees to go out for lunch
because they would go out and then it
would take extra time and it was time
of, you know, they had to go get to
their car and drive to the place and
wait for the food and then come back and
all this kind of stuff. And then it also
separated them. They didn't go out. But
if you have like a, you know, if you
have like a a family environment
essentially where you come in and you
have lunch and everybody's working
together, everybody has lunch together
and stuff like that, then you have a
little bit of a you have that community
feel. And it doesn't mean that everybody
has to have a lunch at the same time.
You don't have to be like, okay, the
bell rings and you go. But having that
opportunity will help you build company
uh build employees that are more uh
loyal to your company basically that
they're like now they're not just
getting a paycheck now they are tied to
other people. there's all these like
there's a lot of
uh indirect benefits to a lot of the
things that we're talking about and it
really is and the the last the extra I
guess bonus thing I'll say is don't
knock it until you've tried it. There
are things out there that your employees
will say this really matters to me. Uh,
a good example, like I said, big
screens. There's a lot of people talk
about. Another one is like just
comfortable chairs. If you have
employees that complain about, you know,
I just like a a higherend chair. Don't
give me this, you know, garden folding
chair that I have to sit in all day cuz
they're like sitting on it for eight,
you know, eight hours or maybe more. And
if you don't, if you're like, it's no
big deal. Sit in that chair for that
amount of time and see what happens. And
that's why again this is me talking to
somebody that I have been in those
situations where I've been like this
chair causes me pain. I get up on a
regular basis just to go like get out of
this thing or I'll go take my work
somewhere else just because I don't want
to sit in that chair too long and that's
when I'm like I need to get a new chair.
Health care that could be you could save
money on your health care costs by
buying a ergonomic chair for your
developers. And there are there are a
lot of companies that will tell you that
they will show you the they will show
you the money. They will show you the
numbers that say that you know this is
where ergonomics got really big now I
guess it's like 30 years ago is people
realize that there's like one there is a
cost for every little action you have
and if it takes you even you know a
tenth of a second more that can add up
over time and it allows you to be more
effective and things like that but also
there's there's exhaustion that's
involved. there is like things like, you
know, neck and back injuries and things
like that that come over time because of
repetitive stress stuff. So, there's a
lot of places to look. There's a lot of
value out there. That's why the
challenge is here. That's why I wanted
to throw this one out there is to say,
you know what, it
seems sunshine and roses and unicorns
and all that kind of stuff. But no, it
really is a bottom line black and white.
If you you are investing in your
company, your infrastructure, your
employees, so do it wisely and see what
happens. I dare you. I also dare you to
come back next time around because we
are wrapping this one up. I don't know
where I was going to go with that. So, I
just had to like just had to bail out of
that one quickly. Uh go out there and
have yourself a great day. We will talk
to you guys next time.
[Music]