Season 1, Episode 26 – 5 to 1 Podio Partner Round Table

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to powered by Podio. Automation is everything. Supercharge your business with Podio, get ready for another episode of supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming, your weekly dive into the awesome impact workflow and automation can have on your business when it’s powered by Podio. June is each week as we learn from the top Podio partners in the world as we investigate system integrations and add ons and hear from real business owners who have implemented Podio into their business. Now join your host, Jordan, Samuel Fleming’s CEO of game changers for this week’s episode.

Jordan: 0:45

Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of Supercharged! I’m your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, here to talk all about the power of workflow and automation when your business is Powered by Podio. Well, today’s a pretty special episode and it’s one I hope we can repeat because I have not one guest, but a number of guests. And in fact a number of Podio partners. A little bit of a Podio partner round table today I’ve got a Seth Helgeson, Pete Cuff, Mike Demunter, and Alex Shull and of course myself also a , uh , Podio partner. All Podio partners from around the world. We are represented in North America and Europe. And , uh , just a chance for us as a group of Podio partners to get together, have a little chin wag , um, and uh , you know, sort of pass ideas on and I thought it would be an excellent idea to, to get this out to the public. So start the conversation off. Um, Seth brought some, something really great , uh , uh, in a chat earlier about how you defined the problem in order to build solutions. So I’m going to turn it over to Seth to start us off.

Seth: 1:48

Hello. Hello everybody. Um, thanks for thanks for the invite and, and including me in this. Um, yeah, as I mentioned a little bit earlier in , in one of our conversations and actually yesterday with a client is , um, you know, you can’t, when it comes to building out automations and workflows and working with clients and , and even your own internal systems, whether , uh, maybe you’re not working with a client, but you’re the project lead inside of a company, it becomes a big bottleneck when you know what you want to get completed within your organization, but yet you can’t define or identify what it is that needs to be done or what it is that needs changed. And I think one of the biggest things , um , that we come across is really, you can’t automate that which you can’t identify. And , um, I think that’s a big trouble point and a big sticking point. So to dive into the specifics of what I’m talking about here, just inside of Podio, because you really have the ability to set up a project any way you want. I was working with a client yesterday and, and I’m sure you guys have as well, where, what’s the difference between a project , um, versus an opportunity? Um, versus a task versus a job versus, right. So actually defining the nomenclature of what to call things is really the very first stepping point. And to give an example with this client yesterday, you know, they , they bring in, they have a master client, but then they have client locations and each location can place an order for let’s say a printed product or a , a a a just an order of some kind. And the project is now defining what the customer wants to be a part of these like line items and invoices to be delivered to them. And it gets into, well they were saying, well it’s a project, but after the estimate is won, how can you have a project before an estimate is actually purchased? Right. So it’s also an order of operations of being able to define a project is something that’s defined to be completed. But there’s projects, there’s sub projects, there’s deliverables, there’s sub deliverables. You know, it’s, it’s one of those things that we run into and I’m sure you guys have come across that as well, but

Speaker 4: 4:20

sort of the like, I look at it as, I’m just, I like it as when you’ve got a blank page you’ve got, it’s both liberating in that you can do anything which Podio allows you to do, but it’s also terrifying in a, when you are trying to write a book for instance, and you’ve got that blank page in front of you because you’ve got every opportunity over you. And so it’s difficult to know which way to go. I mean, as a consultant we’ve got a sort of methodology we go through, you know , what about a, I mean, Pete , you do a lot of this. Um, what are your thoughts?

Pete: 4:56

Yeah, so h\aving a very similar, having a conversation with a client today , um, where they were looking at that . So they had a patio platform we built on that four years ago now and been working together for four years and gradually developing it and moving it forward. Um, but as a result and kind of a bit building on what you’re talking about there Seth, it’s kind of become a bit of a beast and the , it started off as one thing and now it’s got a bit more than it does and a bit more and a bit more and it’s kind of Frankensteinish. Um, and if I could do it all again, I would, I’d rip it all up and say, you know, you don’t want , um , a bicycle with two seats and a motor on it. You want a two person motor bike and let’s, let’s start with building your two personal motorbike now. Now that you know that that’s what you want, but one of the things that is most challenging, I feel is that people don’t know what it is that they want. They need to sometimes see something to then realize what it is that they don’t want. And no matter how many times you kind of try and, and work and finesse what you’re trying to give to somebody, sometimes firstly you need to tell them they’re wrong . Secondly, you need to listen and learn and perhaps let them make their own mistakes sometimes so that you can go, alright , now that we know what we know, what should we do? And, and part of the skill set that comes up of, you know , in software development, but in Podio development especially I think is that you need to go around the block a few times before you come out and actually know where you are. And it’s only through like Podio partners like ourselves building system off the system, up the system, learning from seeing so many different ways that people achieve the same thing to find out. Actually, I think that is probably the better approach. And then working with them to finesse that further. So I mean a quick example is say invoices, everybody raises invoices, but it’s some people go , Oh , I only need one thing on my invoice. Other people need really advance things. So you have nested programs that do it . Some need to link to a central repository, some don’t, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There’s no right or wrong way, but there is lots of potential pitfalls you can fall into. And equally then functions that you can spend loads of time on building the other people actually don’t need. So you can kind of over-engineer a solution sometimes. And this , this client I was talking to you today said that uh , she wanted to throw AI the problem she would , she wants to say, all right , we get the same kind of emails in all the time . So I just need an AI solution to strip them out cause I want to maintain being a person and talking to them. So I want to write a fluid email, but I want to, I don’t want to send them to a form. I want AI to come and process this. Probably you’ve got there is you’re trying to structures, sorry you , you , you , you know that there needs to be a structure. You just don’t want to make people use structure because you want to have a fluid dynamic thing and make it look like this just magically happens. Yeah . How dare you scale and structure and process. You can’t really do that. Thank God

Jordan: 8:05

Mike. Yeah.

Mike: 8:08

Kind of thinking along the same lines here. You know, one of the very first things I do with a new customer is having a glossary app. So basically it’s always they have like the different terminology. Even within the company t hey, they talk, they use different terminology to mean the same things. So it’s basically just one of the simplest possible a pps imaginable. U h, but it’s really helpful. I t’s a lways like a little gift of myself to them saying we need to establish the ground rules here a nd u m, So we need to speak the same language. In my case, probably not your cases, but i n m ind there’s also like different languages. Could be a French, w e

Pete: 8:52

If I can just dive in on that. I think that’s an excellent because it would really help with onboarding new staff members as well when they joined the team. You just go, here’s the lexicon that you need. Go and look at the separate , learn everything right now. Come back to me and let’s talk about it. Yeah.

Seth: 9:07

One thing. One thing I’ve found is , uh , what I find interesting is if you really break down the mechanics of what it is that we’re doing and , and what those that are tasked with building out Podio systems, you may not be a partner you’re really diving into when it comes to business processes, it’s the psychology of business processes, right? And it can be very daunting and scary. And because you have to define first why you’re doing what you’re doing inside your organization, you have to, you have to go through all those loops of why are we actually doing this? And then once you’ve actually defined what it is that you’re doing and why you’re doing that, now let’s identify the names that what’s to be done. And that collaboration is a very crucial first step that gives us a huge, you know, a huge springboard. Right? And that’s one thing that’s not in this data age, right? We’re talked about how to, how to build a company in business school, how to, how to do financial accounting and, and , um, you know, how to be a good dad and those kinds of things. Um , I think that , uh, one thing that I think is, is critical is all of this stuff is being ingrained with us. But the one thing that’s missing is how to efficiently can not conduct business but actually manage the, the data that feels that there’s so real and is now beginning to control the processes. You know, it used to be so reactive based and taking a reactive business processes and turn it into a, a proactive solution. That’s a very big pivot. And so I see that and I’m sure that others deal with you all of a sudden become the psychologist of trying to retrain staff, understand why there needs to be a pivot, a intellectual pivot that’s going to help you comprehend and understand some of the biggest breakthroughs. You know, those epiphany’s that I’ve had with customers where they just go, Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how big of a mess this actually was. And now that I can see an order of operations, we need to conduct these things. And that’s usually where the greatest progress is made is when that, that realization of where you’re actually at it. And that’s that, that psychological moment of when you know you’re really screwed up in the head, it’s time to do something about it. And it’s the same thing as business processes when things are really just not able to grow or scale your , your mentally constipated, but your business is constipated by the, you know, there’s no defined processes and it can get really scary and quickly.

Jordan: 11:51

I was going to say Alex and that’s feels like a good point for you actually to come on in.

Alex: 11:57

Oh yeah, I was gonna say there , you know, there’s a lot of the aspect of looking at your business process through Podio that I think involves um, being honest about what , what is good about what you do and what isn’t good. And Podio provides an opportunity to model out your actual work and to address some of the points, pain points with automation maybe , but to actually do it in a way that’s custom to your process. And you know, that may be the way that you innovate your service delivery model or whatever it is. Podio lets you realize the way you actually want to run your business. And that’s, that’s the real beauty of it to me is that it is a system that with a light touch is able to evolve along with how you may adapt to, you know, your, your business climate or your industry, whatever it is and your core systems. If you put them in a really big expensive, you know , system, then it’s really expensive to change it. And if you invest in some kind of office shelf, you know, SaaS system that is very industry specific, then how will it adapt to changes and do you agree with it? And so the, the, the guy, what I’m trying to say is that the , the flexibility that Podio gives you, lets you really realize and capture those ways that you want to do business that make you unique. And you can look at the way other people do things. You can follow the best practices. And um, you know, there a lot of like template systems that we deliver for customers. If they’re doing just a CRM system. We have a kind of off the bot , you know, shelf system. But then that’s never what anyone really wants. And so that the beauty of Podio is you get to , you know, then do some , um , of the , uh, the work that, that lets people realize , uh , a more complete vision or to , um, um, you know, I , I, that’s what, that’s the way our customers get to get the value out of it. Some of the largest customers that we have , um, are , um, you know, today comparing it to systems like , um, Zoho for instance. And have any of you use Zoho before?

Jordan: 14:17

Yeah , yeah. Yeah.

Alex: 14:20

And so those are very powerful system and you can, you can definitely run a business on Zoho, but the reality of it is that , um, the, you know, the ease of understanding how your actual business works and that kind of model is not as easy as Podio. And so , um , that’s where , uh, my IC , the , um, the real , um, the key benefits , um, when you are showing a client of, you know, how to see their business in Podio.

Jordan: 14:51

well , let me, let me ask guys, let me, let me pick up on something a couple of people have said or talked about in the notion, you know , Pete, kind of picking up on one of the things you said, the notion of iterative design, right? Because, because you , and the fact is a lot of our , a lot of times you don’t know what you want, but you know what you don’t want. So it’s not that I necessarily know the end game, but I know I don’t want to be over fucking there . Right. And I, and I, you know, I’m, and Pete, I may not know that I want the two person motorcycle, but I know I don’t want to fucking horse . So, so, so you, we’ve got these sort of ability sometimes to start with the, I know what I don’t want, we don’t know where we’re going. So I certainly take the view is that Podio enforces a nd a n iterative take on systems because you start and then suddenly they go, God, now that I know I’m here, I actually want to be a bit more over there. I didn’t even know over there existed. I didn’t even know that it was possible. But now that y ou’ve s hown me this b ed, let’s go a bit over here. How do you, I mean, is that, does that chime for you guys? U m, and how do you approach it a nd what do you, what do you guys think?

Pete: 16:08

Yeah, so I’m sorry . We would always kind of start doing with a new client. We’ll do as long a discovery phase as we possibly can, but the reality is, and so , you know, discovery phase, meaning let’s sit down and talk to someone and work out really what they’re asking because they’ll come and say, I believe you sell magic answers. Can I have a magic answer please? I go, sure, let’s just work out what the magical problem is first. Um, so we , we flesh out as much as we can. And you typically find that people mentioned this on previous podcast , Jordan, I think it was how I want to CRM and unfortunately CRM one is not the same as CRM two and no two clients are the same and they have overlapping features but they’re not the same thing and every business is different. The iterative design bit comes to coming. Let’s throw another simile in there. As you say, I am sure that I want to go from London to Edinburgh. I’m absolutely convinced Edinburgh is the destination and you go , okay, do you have an idea of how you want to get there? Yes, I want to take the motorways. Right. That’s a good start. What are we going to do when the motorway is broken? What are we going to do when the motorway is full, what are we going to do when there isn’t a motorway ? And then that’s when they realize maybe actually I want to fly. Ah right. Okay so we need a completely different way of getting you to Edinburgh . Let’s work out where the nearest airport is. Fine. Right. That’s enough of my similes cause that’s silly. But the point is that iterativness comes from the fact that a re set o ut on a certain direction but only it’s only worthwhile setting off when you know really where you’re trying to get to as opposed to getting going because you can, and that’s, that’s one of the, one of the points, brilliant and negative about Podio simultaneously is the existence of app-packs in the store i s because they fundamentally b uilt being built by someone else for their purpose and happy to share with you for free. That’s fine, but it’s not your solution. It’s their solution that they can, they’re letting you use. So people tend to come in and install an app pack and think that they’ve solved their problem. And actually that’s the beginning of their problem because they’ve just started to use a square peg in a round hole. Put in another simile. I’m sorry.

Jordan: 18:20

Jesus. I was going to say Pete enough . [inaudible] okay .

Seth: 18:30

the back to that psychology piece of how quickly we want to fix, right? We want to, we want a solution as quickly as possible to our current issue. And, and there’s so many buzz terms out there for, you know , CRM and you start saying these and eventually you start to go, Oh my gosh, I hear the word CRM. Can you actually define for me what a CRM means to you and the in this spec of how you would actually use it. You know, I’ve , I’ve come across so many customers that say, Oh, we’re going to move in with Salesforce. Well we’ll, we’ll, we’ll wait. Wait a second. Why? You know, let’s, let’s define what pieces of your business you’re going to use Salesforce. Well, all these things. Well, what about your production? What about your logistics? What about all these other components and pieces and like, Oh, we can do all that. Say sure it can, but I mean you , you’re going to be dealing with, the biggest disasters I’ve ever dealt with are those customers that come in, you know, blasting their shotgun of blanket statements and wide spreading ideas and they have a very good landscape of everything they want to get done. But you really have to start out with that targeted approach where it’s, you know, if we start chewing off and biting up too much, you’re going to, you know, we know where you want to be, like your Edinburgh, right? We know you want a ride there, but we have to break down this starting point of do you even have your car packed? I mean, do you even know who you’re going to take with you? You know, I mean, there’s so much that it really breaks down into. So I always, from my customers and I tell all customers, let’s define the low hanging fruit that the immediate problems that have to get done and if I can get them done in just a 30 day turnaround, you know , let’s get those first problem statements resolved. Or at least almost like chiropractic care. Get the alignments back in so that you can actually say, okay, okay, now that we’ve got some ribs back yet, now you can breathe. Now let’s actually start to address these. And so a lot of our projects that we’ve had with customers for, you know, four or five, eight, they’re on you know, version , uh Oh probably like scope number 37 or you know, scope 50, where we’ve gone through so many projects and each request is a new, let’s define at request and actually get those pleadings . So we have a very almost that sprint schedule. The starting point.

Pete: 20:58

Yeah. I’ll take a slightly , um, sometimes take a slightly different approach Seth , which is, cause I think it’s, but then again it might be the same thing. Sorry, the sense all we are in different points . But if you say like hello or hello brand new organization, tell me your pain points. Right. I’m going to fix those for you over 30 days. And then we’re going to go on to the other stuff in the end of that 30 , Oh , sorry. During that 30 days, are you kind of warming them up to what Podio is and how to use it and what a task is and what an item on an app and all those kinds of things are , or do you kind of wait, keep all that hidden behind the curtain and then go and show them the solution to their biggest pain point

Alex: 21:41

perspective? We definitely introduced Podio early on just to give them an idea of how we build solutions because that’s our preferred tools. We want them to see it early, understand how easy it is, win them over for that. With that first deal . Say this is how we run our business. We eat this dog food so to speak. That’s the expression. We use it every year and once the , once we we can move forward with, you know, the idea that that’s the tool set. Then they understand that we build using those as constraints or healthy constraints to have on how you model out the applications and we’d go jump and run quickly, iteratively. Give them a little small bite as quickly as we can. And then then we do , we do the discovery, but sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes they don’t even know what they’re actually doing and it just takes a lot longer. And if you give them a little bite of something just to, to move it forward, it depends on how big the organization is and what their real need is. But , um, there’s a lot of our clients come in with very, very concise needs and we can deliver something within a four week period that really satisfies their expectations. That that’s, those are, those are unusual cases though.

Mike: 22:50

And my experience, I, I, I experienced both sides of this story. So once you go in and you just solve like a really hard problem they have and they go, yeah, thanks for fixing my problems and I have some other problems. And I go like, yeah, what do you can do that as well? And they say, yeah , is it true? Because at that point they’re not really getting that Podio can do all, all these kinds of things. Um , but sometimes it’s also the, the, the other way around that, that you basically come in and you say, give me the , the whole shelter at your , I , you want the full suite of solutions to make offers on invoices and accountancy and the whole shebang. And I say, yeah , well you can do that. And obviously they don’t believe you. When we give them that a , then you can actually quite easily and fast show them that what you actually can do it because you have this iterative process really have, like at the end of the week you can show stuff and say, yeah, yeah, it is kind of what I’m thinking. And that’s going that direction at you. Take the customer along with you, it’s very, very important to take them along with you. So in the beginning of projects, I always go to the customer’s premises and don’t work at offsite , but always on prem because there’s so much to talk about to get to know them, understand that terminology and so on. That’s all . Uh, so that, that’s, I , I couldn’t see it working in other ways .

Jordan: 24:19

Let me ask you guys a question. I’d be curious now, what do you guys think about this one? And this is sort of a followup question to the conversation we’ve just been having, but I have always , um, I’ve always felt like when we first introduced clients to Podio, we should force some manual labor on the client’s behalf because you can, I always say like, I , there’s lots I can automate. There’s lots we can make happen, but you, if you don’t know how the sausage is made, so to speak, if you, if you don’t know the foundational building blocks of your system, then you know, then, then we’re potentially in for some problems down the road. So I’ve always said taking the feel like sometimes we, we, we, we so sell the workflow elements of Podio that we paint ourselves in a corner. Um, and what we should really be doing is bringing them into this, into their environment, forcing them to do some manual labor, forcing them to get to understand it so that then we can go, Oh, you don’t have to do that anymore, by the way. Like, you know, but yeah, so not , not just because then it makes us seem fantastical . Oh my God, thank you. I don’t do this anymore. But also cause then they’ll, they’ll understand that they’ll get their , how their data is structured or how their system is connected other than just like, Oh, I know I put this in and loads a shit happens. Yeah . Um , what do you think?

Seth: 25:47

Well, I think that’s a very good point because that’s, that’s my diff, it took me a while to define this because we’re all so hungry for customers, for building businesses , uh , our own and others. But there’s that tipping point of when is a client, a bad client, and I’ve had to put it in my standard of you’re not a good fit for my business processes is if I’m going to be doing everything on my own , um, who’s going to be implementing things with me? Um, and am I going to have team and resources internally that are going to be fighting for the same thing I’m going to be fighting for? Because you’re going to be instantly at a lose lose position if you’re the only one making the changes because your going to be viewed as the disruptor rather than the implementer of innovation and improved processes. Um, and I’ve, I’ve witnessed this where you have employees they don’t want to change. They’re very happy in their job security with their manual processes. And I’ve , and , and that becomes a very big problem point because I’m not getting anywhere. And the customer says, look, we’re not getting anything implemented. And I say, well, it’s your employees. You’re not, they’re not cooperating. But I’m not the, I’m not a manager. I’m not the director there . I have no control over. I’m only at the whim of people that want to get this implemented. So it’s almost like you can help an addict, you know, and it’s really, it’s , you’re addicted to bad business processes, but do they want your help? And not every employee’s going to want that help. But being able to have that , uh , that teamwork from the beginning is absolutely critical. And I shared in a chat, one of our chat messages are our personal process of that iterative design process where we break up the first round. The first stage is broken into three stages where it’s a discovery and an architecture. Then stage two is build out testing alterations and alterations . And then stage three is a system handoff, but you have to have someone internally that’s going to work with you through all of that. A , the biggest red flag for me is when an owner of a company comes and says, I want all these things implemented and then they don’t participate anymore. And to me I just say, you know, that’s, if you can’t produce the documentation and we can’t start on this collaborative process, then good luck in your future endeavors.

Pete: 28:08

I think there’s a real interesting piece in that, which is a combination of the , those two main points. So the , the manual labor element I get Jordan about, you know, we have all gone through the journey of not understanding what Podio is through to learning inside out, but we forget what that day one a finding it was like, and day one of using it as like is it is actually a deeply confusing , um, set up and until it’s familiar, it’s alien. And so I do see the merit in getting people to, you know, learn what a reference field is and linking from one app to another and therefore what an app is and why you would have two of them rather than one app for everything. Um, but you do find that if you’re, if you’re now coming in and trying to fix the problem , um, the, the people who are tending to commission you and say, let’s get a new solution in place. Typically I’ll talk with a tree and they’re saying, we just need to be better. We need to be more efficient. We need to get more done. We need to have fewer staff so that we can have a higher efficiency rate, et cetera. But if they are not on board with where this is going, then you’re fighting a losing battle from day one that the change has to come from the top and it also has to come from the bottom. And those are in inverted commas obviously because the people who are going to be using this day to day, and I’m putting the, you know the detailed data in, in order to produce the shiny glossy number that comes out at the end of it showing you how well you’re doing those people you have to solve their pain points. So when we go into an organization, we will say, we will listen with one ear to the top of the tree and we will listen with an equal there to the bottom of the tree. So you know, viewpoint on this system is going to be different. Everybody has got a bit of their job that takes up far too much of their time and if you can just come in and fix it, they will think this system’s great. And now back to the manual labor thing is one of the reasons, well they’ll love this system if it just works is if they don’t have to do anything and it just does it automatically. But if you come in and solve their problem automatically right from the start, then all they know is, I don’t need to do anything anymore, but when it goes wrong, it’s not my fault. It’s the system. So then you’ve got this kind of internal fight about you fixed their problem and then potentially not educated them enough that they feel that they have an ownership over the system to the point where they can go and fix it or investigate what the problem is unresolved. So many times people go , go on Alex .

Alex: 30:48

Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I was gonna I was just going to interject that it’s also when they’re educated on how the system is designed and built, then as they use it, they can be more educated in it , informed on how they make requests to improve the system and how to enhance the system. And, well, what if I have an app that does this and links to this and they have ideas once they get in. And so that’s the evolution of it. Podio user is someone who goes from a passive user of a system that they don’t know how to control to someone who has ideas about how to improve not only the way they use it and all the power that’s in Podio, but also the way that they can, if they’re not capable of making the changes themselves and at least they are capable of making better decision making, having better ways of describing what they want and how the , you know, the system could be changed or improved their work .

Seth: 31:41

How often do you guys come across customers that come to the table with a defined business process? Meaning like a lucidchart or visio up here is the step by step of every action and here’s the break offs. And how often do you guys come across that? Almost never will . I mean like once every w when I , when I do I buy him a steak

All: 32:07

trash by the way,

Pete: 32:10

no one never . I’ve got one client at the moment who , um, who came to me with a flowcharts of processes. Um, and we then started building, designing based on those processes. And we kind of get to the first box and I ask a question and you realize at that point there isn’t a branch for that question. And he’s like, Oh, okay, hold on, I’ll just redo the job. We are all, we are still designing the child. But then again, that comes back to that iterative design is , you know , this is, this is what they think they know. And then you start poking them in, in, you know, in proactive positive ways saying, you know, have you thought about what happens when this happens or this happens or if this doesn’t happen. Oh, I’d never thought of it like that. Or yeah, well we just, you know, at that point we’d just scribble it down on a piece of paper and put it in a drawer. Right.

Jordan: 33:02

And their process is likely to be based off of a shit way they’ve had to do things because either their systems were bad or, or they never knew they could do it in other ways. So a lot of times where we do have people who will then, you know, we’ll go into these, this discovery phase, like I think we all do some method of discovery, right? Whatever we call it, whatever, you know, some level you’re like, Brian , tell me how you, how, what the hell do you do? How do you do it? Um, and we, you know, we’ll almost always, that will always get redesigned because they will have been doing a lot of things that are stupid in a system that is good or in a way where they have suddenly an opportunity to automate something they never knew could exist. And so you’ll always take it. Um, it’s, I, my view of that is if, if I can have a client who’s at least thought their processes through, I’m happy because then I’m not having to just like extract . I’m instead, we’ve got some level of common ground to start. Um, you know, and if I can have that, I’m grateful I get that maybe 30% of the time

All: 34:20

I think can we kind of have some of your clients please? Another thing is.

Pete: 34:32

how do you, a question we kind of put forward when we’re trying to learn about them is how do you know what you don’t know that you don’t know. Okay. Donald Rumsfeld If you’ve only ever used a word document and you’ve never heard of excel, then maybe you’d been drawing tables in word your whole life. Maybe you’ve been getting a calculator out to add up the cells and then typing in a total. When you then use Excel for the first time, your mind is blown about possibilities. All right, so fleet , they’re nine and just using another simile because I can . Um , so there is, there’s this kind of fine balance to be played when you know that the system is powerful and flexible as Podio is, you kind of need to open their eyes to the possibilities about what they don’t know that their system could do that just been , they’ve obviously seen something shiny and gone, I want this please. And you go , okay, just before you grab it, can we just check actually what you want because we’re going to give that to you, but have you thought about this, this, this, this, what else does this link to? This isn’t just one system. This could be all systems, . So do we release all of this at once or do we trickle that out in, in stages so that you’re kind of adoption curve is , is a little less of alignment .

Seth: 36:03

You want the candy, but can you actually afford this? What? The candy that you want to get implemented?

Jordan: 36:15

Sorry, Mike.

Mike: 36:16

Yeah, I, I mostly go in like the first two days with the new customer, we going to do a domain model and they plan like nine out of 10 go . Like what’s the domain model, process, model , SWOT, what are these kinds of animals? Um, but they really want to pinpoint them to the way they’re working now, which is mostly document based . Like probably eight out of 10 work, you know, office365 is the ship . Uh , and you try to make them think not in documents but in actually extracting the information from documents and assessments. And then later on bringing them together again. And that’s actually a lot more powerful than working document based . And most of the customers have to wrap their heads around that. And I spent quite some time on that to uh , to make them understand that there’s actually, I experienced this this week. I say I built them something to make offers and Podio and they said, Hey, this is actually takes me more time than doing it in word or Excel. And I say , yeah, but you’ll get the advantage back. And quite soon when the setup is finished, you’ll see that, Oh , this and this and this reason. This is actually a set up that makes a lot more sense than doing it document based and going copy pasting if you want to make your invoice, if you want to send information to your account , et cetera, et cetera.

Pete: 37:35

And that’s when it comes back to good architecture and design is because if all of these things that we’re creating, if they, if they can get to the point of understanding about data structure and you know the equivalent of It’s that that word document is symptomatic of all of the data that’s gone into it to be able to produce that one thing that you know, it can shine up, hold up in print. I can give to a customer. Sorry, I wanted to jump on that real quick. One of the things that I , I don’t know if you’re going to be able to add or shared documents, a couple

Seth: 38:36

of the documents that I’ve been sharing in the chat, but one of the things I want to talk about is that on that point specifically, you know, in the end what I’ve got a client life cycle scope for a website design that I just posted. And inside that you’ll see that there’s, you know, a huge gamut of step-by-step bubbles, bigger, smaller as you know it’s , but you’re able to follow along with that. But being able to generate that document took a, you know, a good three months of discovery and architecture and then when we’re building it out, revising and reiterating and going back over those, those points again to be able to get it in order of operations. And I think it really breaks down to we’re all emotional thinkers and so many areas, but when it comes to the business processes and actually automating before you can even automate anything, you have to be able to define. If this, then that statements of every action has a reaction because you cannot automate, you will never be able to automate illogical business processes because they have to be put into mathematical logical statements that does this business process make sense? Logically? No, it doesn’t. Well then I can’t automate illogical business processes because there’s no, I can’t invent a new form of math or PHP or, or scripting to be able to control that kind of chaos and the customer at the end, they didn’t know that that was their business process. And so really our first step is as consultants aren’t just workflow architects, but we’re that psychology aspect that we kind of started out with it . We’re psychologists, we help the customer really diff define , you know, we’re psychologists out the , the degrees in psychology, but we’re helping them to find out really what are your current issues? Where do you currently sitting? How are we going to get you out of this mess? Okay. Now that we’re friends, hold my hand, I’ll get you out of here and we’ll, we’ll go on this journey together. But it really has to be a partnership between all people.

Jordan: 40:44

Absolutely. Uh , and I , I mean, I think there’s a fascinating , um, you know, the, the, there’s a fascinating , uh , curve not only to a clients like I love, the thing I love about Podio and , and working with clients is when it takes and there are projects where it doesn’t. Like I, we’ve all had projects I’m sure, where it doesn’t take as well as you as you’d like and some in in disasters ways. Um , but , uh, when it takes , um, then you can watch their whole mindset and business set mindset change and uh , and a business can take a, an enormous step change in a way that I’ve never seen possible.

Seth: 41:33

I define that as 56 grams of fun.

Jordan: 41:41

We need, we have buttons, we need buttons for that. The next podium partner meet ups start. You start, man .

Seth: 41:47

You start , uh , ma. You know, you start measuring how much when you actually achieved that level of excitement and happiness, then it’s like, well this is way better than cocaine. I mean this is way it more addictive.

All: 41:59

I l ive l egal reasons. I need to explain [ inaudible] I’ve heard, I’ve heard m oved to Canada. U m, yeah,

Pete: 42:12

you’re absolutely right. Seeing that transformation in an organization is, is certainly why I do what I do. I , you know, I, I saw it with my business first and then went though that was so, so much fun. I wanted to help other people learn this too and , and realize that thing. And you know , again, it’s, it’s not evolution of business processes, business systems and ultimately business information. And you know, it tends to be driven from a point of initial frustration. People are going like, my business should be better. I need to make it better. How do I, how do I make it better? What’s the magic solution? And I’m very fortunate the , I think Podio is a vast number of times when it takes, as you say, when it takes properly, is that magic solution. It really can be that driver to push the push. Any organizational or there’s always cocaine.

All: 43:08

It’s up to you. Podio, cocaine tagline. I’m sure that’s one of the things , there was a statement that I saw on social media recently that I’m going to claim that I wrote, but I didn’t , uh, is the two worst things that two great, the greatest and the worst thing that can ever happen is , uh, getting what you want

Seth: 43:28

and , and well, getting, getting what you want. It can be one of the worst things in the world, right? Because if you get, if you go into it with a different definition of, okay , well I want this specifically this. Yeah, I need deliberate . The customer’s like, this doesn’t work well. I just delivered what you wanted. Well, I just gave you what you wanted. Um , and so that aspect is, can be a double edged sword of, of really breaking it down to, do you really want this? Is this really what you need versus just , uh , you saw it working somewhere else or how are other people doing things so well? Absolutely.

Jordan: 44:08

Well listen guys, it’s getting towards the end of the podcast now from Mike and I think it’s almost 10:00 PM. Mike’s going to be in my time zone. So Pete, none of this, it’s too late. Shit, you’re in London. Relax. Ale your what times when you Alex,

Alex: 44:28

yeah, I’m a Eastern standard.I ‘m approaching 4:00 PM here.

Jordan: 44:34

Your, your Eastern and Seth your further West. Right you’re mountain. Okay, well listen guys, it’s been a phenomenal pleasure. I mean I, I’ve uh , Alex, I’ve never had a chance to actually be in the room with you. I missed that too in California when I, when I couldn’t make it cause a flight ah , is absolutely getting , uh , gutted for that. But um, I think it’s really fun to get together with you guys to get together with partners and have a chat. I hope we can do this again. Um, I, you know, talk about different things. Maybe come up with certain kind of ideas or things to, to, to, to talk about , uh , beforehand next time I did this a bit on the fly just to see how it go. Um, I appreciate you guys coming here. Uh , I hope everybody finds this interesting. I’ll make sure I post everybody’s websites and details on the podcast, on the podcast page so that if you’re listening, please do check. These are all Podio partners here. Everybody’s got their unique sort of approach. Uh , they’re in different geography , geographical ranges. They have different kind of , um , products. Most of us have a products. Mike’s got a quivvy tools. Alex has got sassafras. Um , Seth has got a print , um, it print sync and a couple other it that are coming up as well. And obviously I’ve got smrtphone and uh , and uh , boostPM and Pete Well I had some whiskey next week, eh , whiskey next week in London with me. Um, but uh, for anybody listed, please go ahead and um , check the Partners out. Um, and uh, I would love it if you guys could rate or leave a rating on the podcast, leave a review. It really helps it. Alex has got a, a podcast called , um , a Podio. Alex helped Podio Solutions Podcast. I’ll link to that as well cause it’s well worth listening to that . I think they just finished season one , um, a bit ago. Um, well worth listening to and uh , guys have a fantastic day. Thank you so much for joining me this late for you in Europe and this , uh , during the middle of day for you in North America. Have a fantastic week. Thank you so much. Thanks.