Detailed Notes
Welcome to Building Better Developers, your go-to destination for continual professional and personal improvement. In our debut YouTube episode (Season 21 podcast), hosts Rob and Michael reveal the inner workings of their weekly discussions. Including invaluable experiences and the lessons they learn while tackling challenges in their respective businesses. Today, they're offering an exclusive peek into their entrepreneurial journey experiences and unveiling strategies for a successful business launch.
First, we open the discussion with Michael, formerly at the helm of Meloche Consulting, who has recently made a move to launch a new company, Envision QA. This company has a niche focus on quality assurance audits and assessments. Rob and Michael discuss what it takes to start a business. Including defining a niche, establishing a brand, and setting up a business entity. Priceless insights for budding entrepreneurs.
Strategies for a Successful Business Launch * Start with an idea. * Do some market research. * Design Logo and branding. * Register your company. * Register a Domain. * Setup a Website. * Get a company email.
Pay Attention to Your Brand. Next, they explore the critical realm of branding and logo design, drawing from their experiences with platforms like https://99designs.com. They underscore the significance of crafting a brand identity that resonates across various mediums, ensuring maximum visibility and consistency. Rob also gave an example of what can happen when your branding color look good on paper, but when they are put to use on PDF or a websote they appeared much differenterently. Therefore, it is always a good idea to pay attention to how your brand comes together, test it on different media, and get some friends to help give you feedback.
Throughout the discussion, they emphasize the importance of perpetual learning and adaptability in the fast-paced landscape of technology and entrepreneurship. By encouraging you to explore their array of resources. These include our comprehensive video series, "Launch an Internet Business," and our courses available on develpreneur.com
Online Resources: * Small Businesses Self-Employed - https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed * School Develpreneur - https://school.develpreneur.com/ * Launch an Internet Business - https://develpreneur.com/launch/
In summary, we provide practical insights, relatable anecdotes, and a treasure trove of strategies for a successful business launch. With our unwavering commitment to growth and improvement, we are dedicated to empowering you on your journey to success in the tech industry.
Transcript Text
[Music] welcome everybody this is a little bit different we're starting to do is we have found we've got a lot of content if you haven't figured that out check out develop ur.com um we crank stuff out on a regular basis but that takes time and we want to make sure that we are servicing our our YouTube channel our podcast and the blog site itself with some of the content and one of the things that we've done over the years is we've got uh we've got these Mentor uh Mastermind types of groups that we've had in various States and a lot of what came out of that turned into some really good content for our site and so we're essentially turning the cameras back on ourselves and doing that as we're going through some of our uh basically revamping the develop andur a little bit and some of the focus that we've got so we figured it would be useful to a lot of you to hear an example of how that kind of discussion would go your branding and your avatars and and things like that but also some of the tips and tricks of the trade that we're going to talk through that are the kinds of things you will see um depends on who you talk to or where you go but if you look at particularly uh content producer uh helps sites and things like that one of the things they'll often talk about would be the idea of a Content a Content stack and it's essentially it's the idea of having your short firm form videos your audio uh blogs all of the different places you can put content but sort of getting it from a single source and so what we're going to do with this is we sit down periodically and as we're going through some of the challenges that we and this is Michael and I and I'll introduce him in a second uh if you haven't already met him but uh Michael and I do this on a regular basis weekly basis sometimes more often uh where we talk through what are we going through what are our challenges U it's sort of it is a bit of a really a m kind of thing but a little bit tighter because it's not a full group it's just a two of us and occasionally a few others will join us and what we do is you know in doing all of this we're going to record these things and this is going to give us what you're seeing you're seeing this right now is our YouTube episodes and we'll still have some others mixed in here and there but you're going to see essentially the same kinds of content that we've had in the past we're going to tweak it a little bit and we'll be discussing that in this and in further episodes but then within that we're going to take that same material and that's going to be a podcast is so we're going to take you know for say a 20 minute 30 minute session we're going to talk about something and you'll be able to see it if you from the YouTube channel you be able to see the video side of it and you'll probably get a little bit more actually no probably you will get a little bit more on the the YouTube side because we'll have a little bit of you know Preamble and postamble I guess if that's a word around the the podcast that audio will then be moved out to podcast episode so if you want to hear it from audio you'll get it and then when you get into uh the blogs and things like that we typically if you haven't noticed we usually have a Blog article related to post whether it be out on YouTube or our podcast podcast has always had a you know a little bit of a a little blog with it some show notes and things like that so you will continue to have that so you currently consume that's going to continue and now we're hopefully going to give you a couple other channels and easier ways to consume now I have rambled on a little bit trying to give you a little bit of the here's where we're going and here's what we're doing what we're changing as we go into uh continuing our you know our twice a week at least uh post out to YouTube also this is going to start season 21 of the podcast which seems a little crazy when it doesn't seem like that long ago that we were on the 21st episode uh but now we're 750 episodes into this thing and over 20 episodes or 20 Seasons so I've mentioned him and now I'm going to flip it over to Mich I'm going to go ahead let you like give yourself a little bit of an introduction uh I think you you guys have heard him along the way we've we've interviewed at one point we've done a lot of different things but now sort of like update on where you're doing and uh how you doing today Mike hey thanks Rob so you know like Rob said you know we've been doing this for a long time working together uh recently I have switched focuses in my career uh I was running uh another company called M Consulting doing pretty much the internet of things on the web and that kind of got a little exhausting after a while so I've decid to change focus a little bit and I've started a new Endeavor called Envision QA where we're focusing on QA audits assessments and trying to flip the discussion on uh QA and trying to involve it from the beginning of the business we're talking with the customers all the way through the software development not just waiting till the end and I'm excited with Rob to start this uh new video u YouTube thread that we're doing and podcast so uh it's a little bit about me and I'll pass it back over to Rob I guess I should come back U and give a little bit of an update of who I am because I don't think I introduced I've introduced myself since about 700 episodes ago but there's also a set the T tone I think a little bit and the a little bit of the context around a lot of our conversations as Michael mentioned he is switching changing his Focus altering his focus and really tightening his focus on his uh for his business I'm also in a little bit of a uh a little bit of a change for the last uh probably six months to a year maybe a little longer than that where I've been adjusting my primary company RB Consulting and looking at some of the things that we essentially that we want to do and focusing more on like let's get into things where we what what is our strength where can we help our customers the most and also what do we enjoy doing uh funny enough not a lot of people enjoy some of the work the specific stuff we do so it makes it helpful to us uh but it's also just something that gives us at the end of the day a feeling that we've we've brought value to our customers and so that's a lot of what our conversations are going to be we're going to talk about things like in general Consulting if you want to to and we're going to talk about starting up because even though we've done this for a long time there is a a startup kind of phase particularly for Michael we've we've just gone through um really from scratch and I think that's something we'll you know we'll bring up here in just a minute but this is one of those where we've been living this for a little bit and we realize it probably helped to talk through for some other people whether you've done it before and it may give you you know a little additional Insight or if it's something you're considering then it's going to give you an idea of you know such like a checklist of oh yeah I need to do this and I need to do that and I think going with that the checklist idea I think was a good way to start this first sort of introductory uh episode as mentioned Mike you just went through all of this and I think you know if you can just sort of like walk us through a little bit like what you did from to launch and vision QA a couple of those couple of those steps and maybe some of the the challenges and you know if you got some tips and tricks for somebody that's going through it what would you recommend uh again this is for somebody just to be clear's Michael's done this a couple of times it changes every time because technology and the services are different but uh let's hear how your latest uh experience went sure so one of the biggest things over the last probably decade with all the companies I've worked for and the different projects I've been on QA has kind of been the lackluster no one wants to do it it's kind of been ignored so I again change focus and decid to close Mage Consulting and just start a QA type company uh it took a little while to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up because QA can Encompass many different things there's a lot of QA services and focuses like that so one of the big things I had to sit down and kind of come up with was was what part of QA do I want to do and how is it going to be different than everyone else so basically I had to kind of come up with the niche I had to come up with something one that I knew what to do and two was something that could be serviceable that customers would want to buy and need uh that kind of led me to different areas of QA you know do I want to do uh you know testing plans do I want to do testing services and then I came up with the idea of this QA assessment QA audit and from there it's like okay I kind of have an idea so what type of company do I want so I kind of basically got to the point where I kind of had a mission statement or some type of vision and then I went back through and I was like okay now what do I want to call this so I started thinking about names um it it's a little challenging because since I'm kind of putting a new Niche on the market there's not a lot of competition out there there's a couple companies but they're very service-based so when you search the web to try and find uh competitors to try and get ideas for names and see what kind of domains are available um it it was a little challenging so I decided to jump on the AI bandwagon like everyone else and uh I started playing around with chat GP T Bard uh Gemini uh and co-pilot and ultimately came up with a list of some names that kind of got me closer to what I wanted and then I was like okay what's going to make it stand out what's going to make me be different and I kept thinking about it and it's like well since I want to focus on QA assessments and QA audits I was like well why not Envision QA I want to change the mindset of a company around QA so that's where I came up with the Envision QA from there I moved into branding I went on uh 99 designs because we've used them before in the past uh and went through an interesting process of about three weeks of trying to figure out different designs and brandings and then from there uh once I had The Branding I spun up uh a web page I bought the domain name got my email and then immediately turned around and uh signed up for an L LC uh my escorp the Ein and since I'm in the state of Tennessee we now have to do something called a Boi uh so I signed up for that as well and at where I'm at today uh I started all this in January so literally we are now two months into the year I've got almost everything up uh and I decided to join a co-starter class uh through my local uh chamber and Co-op and met and meeting and networking with local businesses to try and refine my business idea and also get my teex speech back down to the uh lower it down so I can talk to anyone within the company not just technical people there is uh it's funny if somebody's taking notes they're probably like feverishly going through that if they're like what do I need to do there are there are tons of of little things that came in there but the interesting thing I think is and it's been a challenge that we've talked about over the years is that while we are technologists we we are you know Hands-On keyboard kind of people I mean we can design stuff and we do that but it's also it's like you know push comes to shelf we're the ones that are designing Solutions and then implementing Solutions we are not in marketing we're not in sales we're not in that kind of stuff and yet here you've got a very much a IT service product company and there's almost nothing that you've done that is related to that in the first you know the first two months is you've you've got the the regulatory stuff which I think is something anybody that's starting needs to look into is like what what does your organization need to look like is it an LLC does it need to be a corporation whether it's an S corp or a C Corp and look at what the costs are the structures it's it's one of those things that I think is very much an individual uh kind of an approach I high recommend doing one of those you can be a sole proprietorship and just sort of like just make it a side hustle kind of thing but I think uh as we've both seen in the past it's just so much and cleaner to have that separate bank account that separate business that separate everything so the business is its own entity even if it's an LLC you can keep that separate you can track everything so at the end of the year you can give the you know you can give your personal shoe box of of receipts to an accountant and then your business shoe box of receipts to accountant and get your taxes done at at the end of the year now one of the things sort of as a sort a wrap up just in this one um was I spent a little bit more time on the the 999 designs which is 99designs.com if anybody wants to go check that out uh and also Envision QA does exist Envision q.com so you can go check out the the results the fruits of his labors um but tell let's talk a little bit more about that process when you what was the 99 designs process like and and figuring out your your logo and and all of those kinds of things so that was kind of an interesting uh Endeavor uh you had gone through it before with develop Nur and had such a good uh result with it that you did RB Consulting and I really liked what came out of that so instead of kind of going around and trying new things out there I just jumped in right to 99 design which interestingly enough I found out that I guess they're they were either bought or they're now tied to Vista Print so it um just long story short it made getting the business cards the t-shirts and all the swag at the end so simple it it was a very cool process now uh but the process of going through figuring out your brand figuring out your design if you really have no idea what you want it can be daunting um one once I came up with the name and kind of the mission statement I was able to put that out there and then I took the chance because 99 designs gives you the option to I guess go through the your first round and get your money back if you don't like any of the designs you can click the option and you can get your money back I went ahead and said no to that which uh kind of moves you up a tier and gets you some higher level uh designers and within probably the first four or five hours I got a couple quick designs and I'm like H didn't really like them but it started making me think okay uh what do people think of uh when they hear my company name so some took the Envision part and started doing eyeballs uh or some type of Eye Design with the QA and I was like okay well that's an interesting take I would not perceive people to take en vision and think eye company or eyeball uh so that was kind of an interesting process to kind of get like designers or people that aren't in Tech looking at at least a company name and saying what type of company is this which for Branding and logo design I find is very intrinsic they're really tied together which is something I didn't think about when choosing the name uh and as I started going through the process uh some designers um gave me some just off-the-wall design but then once after like 3 or 4 days it got down to okay I started seeing a pattern of things that I liked so then I started choosing those uh filtering them out um they give you an like a star system so you can go uh one uh 0 to2 is like low quality you can do uh 3 to four uh or 3 to five as like good quality so you can kind of filter out the good and the bad and then you can then communicate back and forth with the designers to tweak the design a little bit to kind of get it to where you like and it ended up taking me the whole time to figure that out because really at the start I really had no idea what I wanted uh which is why I went with 99 designs because I had heard a lot of good things about them where the designers can come up with something from nothing and it kind of helps you envision where your end product wants to be and then once I got to the end product um there was a couple tweaks at the end I got a very nice uh branding document out of it I got a wonderful logo and uh I've been able to throw up some T-shirts uh some polo shirts some logos uh business cards and all that the whole process probably costed me with all the swag uh probably about $600 $700 so if you think about going through 99 designs the initial branding process probably will cost you about 500 bucks uh and then you're going to need business cards things like that so figure about another 150 tched on to that so figure about $650 if you want to go through them now if I wanted to go through a marketing company my local marketing company was going to cost me a couple thousand dollars to go through them so just kind of an Apples to Apples comparison on something like that yeah I think you made a you brought up a good point and I found this uh which was actually very interesting when I did the develop we went through the development or process but also when I revamped uh RB Consulting and its logo I guess I should say RB is it's rb- sns.com you can go check that out and you can see um and of course develop and.com d v l p r n r you can also see it in the backgrounds there um both of these situations is I I think I I I didn't go in completely blank and it was basically because that initial interview process that they do in 99 designs where they sort of say what do you like what don't you like and so that little thing and they just you it seems like it was hundreds of uh logos and icons it's sort of like what do you like what do you to get you uh sort of whether it's in modern or uh pastels or or I don't know enough about those but different families of designs and walking through those and so I had some ideas but it was funny like building better developers I actually ended up purchasing two different I had two people win and purchase two different sets uh the one was because it was sort of what I originally wanted to go with with or what I originally had in my mind that had to do with like you know uh speed and and learning quickly and things like that but then ended up with the ones that we've got because it were just more uh they're just like it was more direct it was simple it was more iconic in a sense and particularly when we're thinking about things like a a podcast page you know having that podcast logo and some of those things it just worked better and RB Consulting was the same kind of thing like he said is that as I got into some of them there would be these little bits and pieces of an icon or a logo that somebody would add the designer would add and I was like oh that's a really cool idea uh for example like I've got now uh if you look at the RB logo it's got a it's basically with in a like a gear uh within it that was something that was never a thought but then somebody had something like that on a on a logo and then we eventually you know talked my way through with the designers getting to that piece so it's definitely it's a learning I think it's a great learning process just to go through that and um yes you if you go with a a marketing company of some sort you're probably going to get more than just you know going through that process however um it's a good deal more expensive it's particularly if you're just doing a sort of startup kind of thing this is still I think it's one of those this comes down it's one of those processes I think I recommend anybody that is has an entrepreneurial itch at all go through it just to see what it's like it's it's think of it as more like for Education as opposed to an icon but it's worth it to have an icon and and a logo even if you are just you you know I think we've we've gone through that we've talked about this before um and that was one of the things I think that you learned is that you went through and built something for mage Consulting that you had you know you had it was definitely a look that was distinct to it but I think you got a lot more out of this process and and getting some feedback so that now I think you've got something that you're I would say that you're much happier but I don't want to you know speak for you so what do you think about it like having gone through it twice once without and once with what are your what are your thoughts on that so luckily the first time I went through it with milash Consulting I was able to Outsource that to my wife and daughter uh so I am craftsy and artsy to a point but when it comes actually designing things I'm a lost cause so it it was very stressful very daunting um but my wife had some free time and my daughter was very good at arts and crafts and so we kind of bounced some ideas around and actually what was interesting about the Mage Consulting logo that we ultimately came up with was uh there was a binary stream of numbers behind the logo well that binary stream was actually milage Consulting in binary and then we put the logo on top of that so it was kind of an inside joke but it was also very much me so I really liked that logo uh but this time around I wanted something a little more uh brandish that people would recognize and it would stand out um also my old logo at the time not thinking about like swag or hats or anything you could not put that on a t-shirt with a heat print or print or uh with thread it really would not work in fact even with the new design there was some things I ran into with that where certain letters in the current font get cut off if they try to stitch it so I actually have to make a slight edit to the logo uh to separate the letters slightly and then I'm going to try again uh with stitching but right now it works for heat print it looks really good uh business cards look great uh so I'm pretty happy with it that's like you that's a really good point uh as we wrap up this episode one um you know for a technology podcast yeah we've stepped stepped into a little bit more on The Branding side but I think that's something that's sort of a those are some good Lessons Learned is that you may have something that looks really good on on the screen or on a PDF or you know however you look at it but make sure you a couple different places a a real brief story in the past I remember we were working with uh a I won't name it but a it was a it's a multinational uh oil organization oil and gas and stuff like that power and their logo we had on a site we were doing for them or it was their logo and their corporate colors and this was many years ago we had these like lower quality you know monitors they were were a little bit everything was a little bit like fuzzier and and colors were all muted and you like oh that looks you know it looks okay well then we had one time we were demoing it and we went to I it's when you first had like HD monitors come out and we put it on the HD and it like burned our eyeballs because the the colors were so muted normally but then they were suddenly so bright on the Monitor and we said all right we kind of Crank that down a little bit or like people are going to be like you know they're going to have sunburns while you looking at the site so that's you know that's just sort of like that that kind of thing is like I don't think we always think about it but it is much like testing in general where it's like you know you want to test if you're building like say a mobile app in particular you got to test it on Apple you got to test it on different versions of like iPhones and tablets and if it's Android it's all the different Android things and the different versions and we need to do that with our our logos as well and that's the same thing like I think you sort of touched on is it's like uh the the technical crowd that may see it but also our customers in particular how are they going to view it and then people that maybe are don't have the same mindset as we do and you know need to make sure that they see it uh the right way or they get the things that we want out of the logo they get that same uh we'll call it that warm and fuzzy these guys look like somebody I want to work with kind of you know feeling for it any last thoughts from you uh the only thing I would like to uh end on is so if you've gone through what we've discussed today and have actually gone through and uh signed up your business you have your business name you have your domain you're ready to to basically go out and put your website up uh take your branding and you know put yourself out there uh check out our launch and internet business uh video series on YouTube and on the site because we've actually walked through that process and me and Rob have actually both gone through it again recently since I had to spin up a new website and we found that uh everything we have out there is still relevant and still works so please check it out uh as well uh Rob I don't know if you have it off hand but um it is on YouTube YouTube so please check out our YouTube channel there yeah uh it's definitely it's if you go out there I can't remember all the channels we've got now but there is a launcher internet business Channel there is also if you go out to develop order.com you can actually sign up we still that page out there that it's I think it's one of the primary menu items uh options you can go in there and actually it will uh it was originally set up as an email sort of a drip campaign so if you want to do it uh set it up I believe it's a 21-day process it's 14 or 21 I think it's 21 day process and it's basically 15 minutes a day a little more early on because you have to wait for Amazon registration and some things like that but it walks you from zero to a website to having having your website uh I believe we I think we cover https so you've got all the things you need there it's a WordPress site it's walking through some of the U you know selecting your themes and some of those kinds of things so if if you're not Technical and you're thinking about hey I want to try this out or if you're a if you're if your technical skills are not in you know server side stuff like going in and firing up a Linux machine and a or a virtual machine and running Linux and running stuff that's not on Windows or Mac this is very helpful there's a lot of little pieces it's definitely a uh an introductory kind of thing but it does hit all the key bases and then it's something where you will find uh in a lot of this you can go back through our site and through others you can sort of Advance those skills uh because that was sort of launching points for several things we've done over the years so this welcome uh thank you for joining us for episode one as we've gotten into this as we launch into our new season uh for those you are listening you can always check us out on our YouTube channel for those of you on our YouTube channel you can check us out wherever you get podcasts we're going to have uh this as well and we're just going to keep chugging along and uh as always feel free to shoot us any any recommendations questions uh you can leave comments but also you can shoot something to info@ develop or.com and let us know if you have recommendations or questions about you know topics you want us to discuss because we are more than happy to do so uh because otherwise we're just going to sort of like go over whatever it is that we hit that week and sort of like a you know problem of the week and we'll see where it goes but that wraps this one up thank you so much for your time and and as always go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
welcome everybody this is a little bit
different we're starting to do is we
have found we've got a lot of content if
you haven't figured that out check out
develop
ur.com um we crank stuff out on a
regular basis but that takes time and we
want to make sure that we are servicing
our our YouTube channel our podcast and
the blog site itself with some of the
content and one of the things that we've
done over the years is we've got uh
we've got these
Mentor uh Mastermind types of groups
that we've had in various States and a
lot of what came out of that turned into
some really good content for our site
and so we're essentially turning the
cameras back on ourselves and doing that
as we're going through some of our uh
basically revamping the develop andur a
little bit and some of the focus that
we've got so we figured it would be
useful to a lot of you to hear an
example of how that kind of discussion
would go your branding and your avatars
and and things like that but also some
of the tips and tricks of the trade that
we're going to talk through that are the
kinds of things you will see um depends
on who you talk to or where you go but
if you look at particularly uh content
producer uh helps sites and things like
that one of the things they'll often
talk about would be the idea of a
Content a Content stack and it's
essentially it's the idea of having your
short firm form videos your audio uh
blogs all of the different places you
can put content but sort of getting it
from a single source and so what we're
going to do with this is we sit down
periodically and as we're going through
some of the challenges that we and this
is Michael and I and I'll introduce him
in a second uh if you haven't already
met him but uh Michael and I do this on
a regular basis weekly basis sometimes
more often uh where we talk through what
are we going through what are our
challenges U it's sort of it is a bit of
a really a m kind of thing but a little
bit tighter because it's not a full
group it's just a two of us and
occasionally a few others will join us
and what we do is you know in doing all
of this we're going to record these
things and this is going to give us what
you're seeing you're seeing this right
now is our YouTube episodes and we'll
still have some others mixed in here and
there but you're going to see
essentially the same kinds of content
that we've had in the past we're going
to tweak it a little bit and we'll be
discussing that in this and in further
episodes but then within that we're
going to take that same material and
that's going to be a podcast is so we're
going to take you know for say a 20
minute 30 minute session we're going to
talk about something and you'll be able
to see it if you from the YouTube
channel you be able to see the video
side of it and you'll probably get a
little bit more actually no probably you
will get a little bit more on the the
YouTube side because we'll have a little
bit of you know Preamble and postamble I
guess if that's a word around the the
podcast that audio will then be moved
out to podcast episode so if you want to
hear it from audio you'll get it and
then when you get into uh the blogs and
things like that we typically if you
haven't noticed we usually have a Blog
article related to post whether it be
out on YouTube or our podcast podcast
has always had a you know a little bit
of a a little blog with it some show
notes and things like that so you will
continue to have that so you currently
consume that's going to
continue and now we're hopefully going
to give you a couple other channels and
easier ways to consume now I have
rambled on a little bit trying to give
you a little bit of the here's where
we're going and here's what we're doing
what we're changing as we go into uh
continuing our you know our twice a week
at least uh post out to YouTube also
this is going to start season 21 of the
podcast which seems a little crazy when
it doesn't seem like that long ago that
we were on the 21st episode uh but now
we're 750 episodes into this thing and
over 20 episodes or 20 Seasons so I've
mentioned him and now I'm going to flip
it over to Mich I'm going to go ahead
let you like give yourself a little bit
of an introduction uh I think you you
guys have heard him along the way we've
we've interviewed at one point we've
done a lot of different things but now
sort of like update on where you're
doing and uh how you doing today
Mike hey thanks Rob so you know like Rob
said you know we've been doing this for
a long time working together
uh recently I have switched focuses in
my career uh I was running uh another
company called M Consulting doing pretty
much the internet of things on the web
and that kind of got a little exhausting
after a while so I've decid to change
focus a little bit and I've started a
new Endeavor called Envision QA where
we're focusing on QA audits assessments
and trying to flip the discussion on uh
QA and trying to involve it from the
beginning
of the business we're talking with the
customers all the way through the
software development not just waiting
till the end and I'm excited with Rob to
start this uh new video u YouTube thread
that we're doing and podcast so uh it's
a little bit about me and I'll pass it
back over to Rob I guess I should come
back U and give a little bit of an
update of who I am because I don't think
I introduced I've introduced myself
since about 700 episodes ago but there's
also a set the T tone I think a little
bit and the a little bit of the context
around a lot of our conversations as
Michael mentioned he is switching
changing his Focus altering his focus
and really tightening his focus on his
uh for his business I'm also in a little
bit of a uh a little bit of a change for
the last uh probably six months to a
year maybe a little longer than that
where I've been adjusting my primary
company RB
Consulting and looking at some of the
things that we essentially that we want
to do and focusing more on like let's
get into things where we what what is
our strength where can we help our
customers the most and also what do we
enjoy doing uh funny enough not a lot of
people enjoy some of the work the
specific stuff we do so it makes it
helpful to us uh but it's also just
something that gives us at the end of
the day a feeling that we've we've
brought value to our customers and so
that's a lot of what our conversations
are going to be we're going to talk
about things like in general Consulting
if you want to to and we're going to
talk about starting up because even
though we've done this for a long time
there is a a startup kind of phase
particularly for Michael we've we've
just gone through um really from scratch
and I think that's something we'll you
know we'll bring up here in just a
minute but this is one of those where
we've been living this for a little bit
and we realize it probably helped to
talk through for some other people
whether you've done it before and it may
give you you know a little additional
Insight or if it's something you're
considering then it's going to give you
an idea of you know such like a
checklist of oh yeah I need to do this
and I need to do that and I think going
with that the checklist idea I think was
a good way to start this first sort of
introductory uh episode as mentioned
Mike you just went through all of this
and I think you know if you can just
sort of like walk us through a little
bit like what you did from to launch and
vision QA a couple of those couple of
those steps and maybe some of the the
challenges and you know if you got some
tips and tricks for somebody that's
going through it what would you
recommend uh again this is for somebody
just to be clear's Michael's done this a
couple of times it changes every time
because technology and the services are
different but uh let's hear how your
latest uh experience
went sure so one of the biggest things
over the last probably decade with all
the companies I've worked for and the
different projects I've been on QA has
kind of been the lackluster no one wants
to do it it's kind of been ignored so I
again change focus and decid to close
Mage Consulting and just start a QA type
company uh it took a little while to
figure out what I wanted to be when I
grew up because QA can Encompass many
different things there's a lot of QA
services and focuses like that so one of
the big things I had to sit down and
kind of come up with was was what part
of QA do I want to do
and how is it going to be different than
everyone else so basically I had to kind
of come up with the niche I had to come
up with something one that I knew what
to do and two was something that could
be serviceable that customers would want
to buy and need uh that kind of led me
to different areas of QA you know do I
want to do uh you know testing plans do
I want to do testing services and then I
came up with the idea of this QA
assessment QA audit and from there it's
like okay I kind of have an idea so what
type of company do I want so I kind of
basically got to the point where I kind
of had a mission statement or some type
of vision and then I went back through
and I was like okay now what do I want
to call this so I started thinking about
names
um it it's a little challenging because
since I'm kind of putting a new Niche on
the market there's not a lot of
competition out there there's a couple
companies but they're very service-based
so when you search the web to try and
find uh competitors to try and get ideas
for names and see what kind of domains
are available um it it was a little
challenging so I decided to jump on the
AI bandwagon like everyone else and uh I
started playing around with chat GP T
Bard uh Gemini uh and co-pilot and
ultimately came up with a list of some
names that kind of got me closer to what
I wanted and then I was like okay what's
going to make it stand out what's going
to make me be different and I kept
thinking about it and it's like well
since I want to focus on QA assessments
and QA audits I was like well why not
Envision QA I want to change the mindset
of a company around QA so that's where I
came up with the Envision QA from there
I moved into branding I went on uh 99
designs because we've used them before
in the past uh and went through an
interesting process of about three weeks
of trying to figure out different
designs and brandings and then from
there uh once I had The Branding I spun
up uh a web page I bought the domain
name got my email and then immediately
turned around and uh signed up for an L
LC uh my escorp the Ein and since I'm in
the state of Tennessee we now have to do
something called a Boi uh so I signed up
for that as well and at where I'm at
today uh I started all this in January
so literally we are now two months into
the year I've got almost everything up
uh and I decided to join a co-starter
class uh through my local uh chamber and
Co-op and met and meeting and networking
with local businesses to try and refine
my business idea and also get my teex
speech back down to the uh lower it down
so I can talk to anyone within the
company not just technical
people there is uh it's funny if
somebody's taking notes they're probably
like feverishly going through that if
they're like what do I need to do there
are there are tons of of little things
that came in there but the interesting
thing I think is and it's been a
challenge that we've talked about over
the years is that while we are
technologists we we are you know
Hands-On keyboard kind of people I mean
we can design stuff and we do that but
it's also it's like you know push comes
to shelf we're the ones that
are designing Solutions and then
implementing Solutions we are not in
marketing we're not in sales we're not
in that kind of stuff and yet here
you've got a very much a IT service
product
company and there's almost nothing that
you've done that is related to that in
the first you know the first two months
is you've you've got the the regulatory
stuff which I think is something anybody
that's starting needs to look into is
like what what does your organization
need to look like is it an LLC does it
need to be a corporation whether it's an
S corp or a C Corp and look at what the
costs are the structures it's it's one
of those things that I think is very
much an individual uh kind of an
approach I high recommend doing one of
those you can be a sole proprietorship
and just sort of like just make it a
side hustle kind of thing but I think uh
as we've both seen in the past it's just
so much and cleaner to have that
separate bank account that separate
business that separate everything so the
business is its own entity even if it's
an LLC you can keep that separate you
can track everything so at the end of
the year you can give the you know you
can give your personal shoe box of of
receipts to an accountant and then your
business shoe box of receipts to
accountant and get your taxes done at at
the end of the year now one of the
things sort of as
a sort a wrap up just in this one um was
I spent a little bit more time on the
the 999 designs which is 99designs.com
if anybody wants to go check that out uh
and also Envision QA does exist Envision
q.com so you can go check out the the
results the fruits of his labors um but
tell let's talk a little bit more about
that process when you what was the 99
designs process like and and figuring
out your your logo and and all of those
kinds of
things so that was kind of an
interesting uh Endeavor uh you had gone
through it before with develop Nur and
had such a good uh result with it that
you did RB Consulting and I really liked
what came out of that so instead of kind
of going around and trying new things
out there I just jumped in right to 99
design
which interestingly enough I found out
that I guess they're they were either
bought or they're now tied to Vista
Print so it um just long story short it
made getting the business cards the
t-shirts and all the swag at the end so
simple it it was a very cool process now
uh but the process of going through
figuring out your brand figuring out
your design if you really have no idea
what you want it can be daunting um one
once I came up with the name and kind of
the mission statement I was able to put
that out there and then I took the
chance because 99 designs gives you the
option to I guess go through the your
first round and get your money back if
you don't like any of the designs you
can click the option and you can get
your money back I went ahead and said no
to that which uh kind of moves you up a
tier and gets you some higher level uh
designers and within probably the first
four or five hours I got a couple quick
designs and I'm like H didn't really
like them but it started making me think
okay uh what do people think of uh when
they hear my company name so some took
the Envision part and started doing
eyeballs uh or some type of Eye Design
with the QA and I was like okay well
that's an interesting take I would not
perceive people to take en vision and
think eye company or eyeball uh so that
was kind of an interesting process to
kind of get like designers or people
that aren't in Tech looking at at least
a company name and saying what type of
company is this which for Branding and
logo
design I find is very intrinsic they're
really tied together which is something
I didn't think about when choosing the
name uh and as I started going through
the process uh some designers
um gave me some just off-the-wall design
but then once after like 3 or 4 days it
got down to okay I started seeing a
pattern of things that I liked so then I
started choosing those uh filtering them
out um they give you an like a star
system so you can go uh one uh 0 to2 is
like low quality you can do uh 3 to four
uh or 3 to five as like good quality so
you can kind of filter out the good and
the bad and then you can then
communicate back and forth with the
designers to tweak the design a little
bit to kind of get it to where you like
and it ended up taking me the whole time
to figure that out because really at the
start I really had no idea what I wanted
uh which is why I went with 99 designs
because I had heard a lot of good things
about them where the designers can come
up with something from nothing and it
kind of helps you envision where your
end product wants to be and then once I
got to the end product um there was a
couple tweaks at the end I got a very
nice uh branding document out of it I
got a wonderful logo and uh I've been
able to throw up some T-shirts uh some
polo shirts some logos uh business cards
and all that the whole process probably
costed me with all the swag uh probably
about $600 $700 so if you think about
going through 99 designs the initial
branding process probably will cost you
about 500 bucks uh and then you're going
to need business cards things like that
so figure about another 150 tched on to
that so figure about $650 if you want to
go through them now if I wanted to go
through a marketing company my local
marketing company was going to cost me a
couple thousand dollars to go through
them so just kind of an Apples to Apples
comparison on something like
that yeah I think you made a you brought
up a good point and I found this uh
which was actually very interesting when
I did the develop we went through the
development or process but also when I
revamped uh RB Consulting and its logo I
guess I should say RB is it's rb-
sns.com you can go check that out and
you can see um and of course develop
and.com d v l p r n r you can also see
it in the backgrounds there um both of
these situations is I I think I I I
didn't go in completely blank and it was
basically because that initial interview
process that they do in 99 designs where
they sort of say what do you like what
don't you like and so that little thing
and they just you it seems like it was
hundreds of uh logos and icons it's sort
of like what do you like what do you to
get you uh sort of whether it's in
modern or uh pastels or or I don't know
enough about those but different
families of designs and walking through
those and so I had some ideas but it was
funny like building better developers I
actually ended up purchasing two
different I had two people win and
purchase two different sets uh the one
was because it was sort of what I
originally wanted to go with with or
what I originally had in my mind that
had to do with like you know uh speed
and and learning quickly and things like
that but then ended up with the ones
that we've got because it were just more
uh they're just like it was more direct
it was simple it was more iconic in a
sense and particularly when we're
thinking about things like a a podcast
page you know having that podcast logo
and some of those things it just worked
better and RB Consulting was the same
kind of thing like he said is that as I
got into some of them there would be
these little bits and pieces of an icon
or a logo that somebody would add the
designer would add and I was like oh
that's a really cool idea uh for example
like I've got now uh if you look at the
RB logo it's got a it's basically with
in a like a gear uh within it that was
something that was never a thought but
then somebody had something like that on
a on a logo and then we eventually you
know talked my way through with the
designers getting to that piece so it's
definitely it's a learning I think it's
a great learning process just to go
through that and um yes you if you go
with a a marketing company of some sort
you're probably going to get more than
just you know going through that process
however um it's a good deal more
expensive it's particularly if you're
just doing a sort of startup kind of
thing this is still I think it's one of
those this comes down it's one of those
processes I think I recommend anybody
that is has an entrepreneurial itch at
all go through it just to see what it's
like it's it's think of it as more like
for Education as opposed to an icon but
it's worth it to have an icon and and a
logo even if you are just you you know I
think we've we've gone through that
we've talked about this before um and
that was one of the things I think that
you
learned is that you went through and
built something for mage Consulting that
you had you know you had it was
definitely a look that was distinct to
it but I think you got a lot more out of
this process and and getting some
feedback so that now I think you've got
something that you're I would say that
you're much happier but I don't want to
you know speak for you so what do you
think about it like having gone through
it twice once without and once with what
are your what are your thoughts on
that so luckily the first time I went
through it with milash Consulting I was
able to Outsource that to my wife and
daughter uh so I am craftsy and artsy to
a point but when it comes actually
designing things I'm a lost cause so it
it was very stressful very
daunting um but my wife had some free
time and my daughter was very good at
arts and crafts and so we kind of
bounced some ideas around and actually
what was interesting about the Mage
Consulting logo that we ultimately came
up with was uh there was a binary stream
of numbers behind the logo well that
binary stream was actually milage
Consulting in
binary and then we put the logo on top
of that so it was kind of an inside joke
but it was also very much me so I really
liked that logo uh but this time around
I wanted something a little more uh
brandish that people would recognize and
it would stand out um also my old logo
at the time not thinking about like swag
or hats or anything you could not put
that on a t-shirt with a heat print or
print or uh with thread it really
would not work in fact even with the new
design there was some things I ran into
with that where certain letters in the
current font get cut off if they try to
stitch it so I actually have to make a
slight edit to the logo uh to separate
the letters slightly and then I'm going
to try again uh with stitching but right
now it works for heat print it looks
really good uh business cards look great
uh so I'm pretty happy with it that's
like you that's a really good point uh
as we wrap up this episode one um you
know for a technology podcast yeah we've
stepped stepped into a little bit more
on The Branding side but I think that's
something that's sort of a those are
some good Lessons Learned is that you
may have something that looks really
good on on the screen or on a PDF or you
know however you look at it but make
sure you a couple different places a a
real brief story in the past I remember
we were working with
uh a I won't name it but a it was a it's
a multinational uh oil organization oil
and gas and stuff like that power and
their
logo we had on a site we were doing for
them or it was their logo and their
corporate colors and this was many years
ago we had these like lower quality you
know monitors they were were a little
bit everything was a little bit like
fuzzier and and colors were all muted
and you like oh that looks you know it
looks okay well then we had one time we
were demoing it and we went to I it's
when you first had like HD monitors come
out and we put it on the HD and it like
burned our eyeballs because the the
colors were so muted normally but then
they were suddenly so bright on the
Monitor and we said all right we kind of
Crank that down a little bit or like
people are going to be like you know
they're going to have sunburns while you
looking at the site so that's you know
that's just sort of like that that kind
of thing is like I don't think we always
think about it but it is much like
testing in general where it's like you
know you want to test if you're building
like say a mobile app in particular you
got to test it on Apple you got to test
it on different versions of like iPhones
and tablets and if it's Android it's all
the different Android things and the
different versions and we need to do
that with our our logos as well and
that's the same thing like I think you
sort of touched on is it's like uh the
the technical crowd that may see it but
also our customers in particular how are
they going to view it and then people
that maybe are don't have the same
mindset as we do and you know need to
make sure that they see it uh the right
way or they get the things that we want
out of the logo they get that same uh
we'll call it that warm and fuzzy these
guys look like somebody I want to work
with kind of you know feeling for it any
last thoughts from
you uh the only thing I would like to uh
end on is so if you've gone through what
we've discussed today and have actually
gone through and uh signed up your
business you have your business name you
have your domain you're ready to to
basically go out and put your website up
uh take your branding and you know put
yourself out there uh check out our
launch and internet business uh video
series on YouTube and on the site
because we've actually walked through
that process and me and Rob have
actually both gone through it again
recently since I had to spin up a new
website and we found that uh everything
we have out there is still relevant and
still works so please check it out uh as
well uh Rob I don't know if you have it
off hand but um it is on YouTube YouTube
so please check out our YouTube channel
there yeah uh it's definitely it's if
you go out there I can't remember all
the channels we've got now but there is
a launcher internet business Channel
there is also if you go out to develop
order.com you can actually sign up we
still that page out there that it's I
think it's one of the primary menu items
uh options you can go in there and
actually it will uh it was originally
set up as an email sort of a drip
campaign so if you want to do it uh set
it up I believe it's a 21-day process
it's 14 or 21 I think it's 21 day
process and it's basically 15 minutes a
day a little more early on because you
have to wait for Amazon registration and
some things like that but it walks you
from zero to a website to having having
your website uh I believe we I think we
cover https so you've got all the things
you need there it's a WordPress site
it's walking through some of the U you
know selecting your themes and some of
those kinds of things so if if you're
not Technical and you're thinking about
hey I want to try this out or if you're
a if you're if your technical skills are
not in you know server side stuff like
going in and firing up a Linux machine
and a or a virtual machine and running
Linux and running stuff that's not on
Windows or Mac this is very helpful
there's a lot of little pieces it's
definitely a uh an introductory kind of
thing but it does hit all the key bases
and then it's something where you will
find uh in a lot of this you can go back
through our site and through others you
can sort of Advance those skills uh
because that was sort of launching
points for several things we've done
over the years so this welcome uh thank
you for joining us for episode one as
we've gotten into this as we launch into
our new season uh for those you are
listening you can always check us out on
our YouTube channel for those of you on
our YouTube channel you can check us out
wherever you get podcasts we're going to
have uh this as well and we're just
going to keep chugging along and uh as
always feel free to shoot us any any
recommendations questions uh you can
leave comments but also you can shoot
something to info@ develop or.com and
let us know if you have recommendations
or questions about you know topics you
want us to discuss because we are more
than happy to do so uh because otherwise
we're just going to sort of like go over
whatever it is that we hit that week and
sort of like a you know problem of the
week and we'll see where it goes but
that wraps this one up thank you so much
for your time and and as always go out
there and have yourself a great day a
great week and we will talk to you next
time
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