CEO's You Should Know x Mindgrub

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
iHeartMedia presents CEOs you should know by. I'm John Dinkle,
founder and CEO of Dinkle Business Development and former president
publisher of the Baltimore Business Journal. This is iHeartRadio CEOs
you should know and I'm here today with Todd Marks,
founder and CEO of mine Grow. Welcome Todd, and thanks
for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, thanks for having me John. It's great to talk
to you today. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to catching up to you. It's
been been a little while, so thanks thanks for being
on the program. So, for those who may not be
failuar familiar, could you tell us about mine.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Grub Yeah, you bet. Micrub's a digital product development firm.
We make the market software for clients. We focus on
delivering high quality digital experiences to a combination of strategy,
design and technology, and we're headquartered right here in Baltimore.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Great and tell us your mission.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Micro's mission is to empower organizations to innovate and transform
through technology. We aim to help our clients day head
of the curve by providing cutting edge solutions that enhance
their operations and their user experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Excellent, and what makes you different from other you know,
let's say digital product development firms or firms you know
in your space. So what makes you a little bit
different from them?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, we're different in a couple of ways. So instead
of just being an agency where really we call ourselves
an innovation agency. But we have four different business units.
So we have a consulting group that makes software. We
have an agency that does user acquisition, marketing and websites.
We have a support group that does ongoing ticket based support,

(01:39):
and then we have an emerging technology group that adds
cutting edge technologies to products like artificial intelligence, augmented and
virtual reality and gamification experiences as well.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Gotcha, And that's probably a difficult question to answer, But
what's a good client for you? I know you have
four different business units, but in general, like what's who's
who's a good client for mine?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Growth? Yeah, the best clients are those that are open
to collaboration and innovation. So we stopped kind of being
a fulfillment company a long time ago. A lot of
that really went overseas if the client's showing up with
you know, user experience and design and they just want
somebody to bang out a lot of code for us,
it's it's clients that really want to invest in their technology.

(02:25):
They really want to look at market research, competitor analysis,
create user personas, and really designed the best experience for
their customers.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
And do you mostly do commercial work or do you
some government work.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Or what's what's that look like.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
We primarily focused on commercial clients, but we've also engaged
in a number of projects with government agencies. We've done
some pretty cool things, like we designed the TAC program.
So the d o D when they have warfighters out
in the field, they were you know, they have to
use mapping, and they were large using their personal devices,

(03:02):
their iPhones and their androids because the mapping experience is
so good. But the problem was that the enemy was
spoofing their location and so the government, yeah, it was.
It was a major problem. So the government knew that
they needed to enhance the user experience of mapping. So
we created the mapping framework that's used by the Army
of the Air Force, the Navy. Wee work non duty too.

(03:23):
We did a great project with Noah for fishermen and
divers and vacationers to navigate the Florida Keys so that
they know exactly where the protective coral reefs are and
they don't drop their anchors and break the coral. That's cool, yeah,
I mean it's just really fun projects for government. And
on that note, we actually just incorporated a new brand

(03:44):
you're familiar with Mind. We have a number of different entities.
We have actually a restaurant called the Mind Pub. We
have a incubator called the Mind Hub. We have a
cannabis company called mind Buzz. But the newest company that
in that family is mind God and it's being headed
up by my wife, who is running our restaurant now.

(04:06):
But you know, she wants to get into a business
that frankly we can do on the road because we have,
you know, our last two kids stabbing our high school
seniors and as soon as they're out of the house,
we basically plan on living in a van and traveling
the world. So lovely hard to operate a restaurant from there,
but she can certainly be government contracted.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
I love that. That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, And speaking of kind of the innovation and some
of the really kind of cool things you guys are
doing over there, I understand that you do a lot
of work around artificial intelligence, and you know, I want
you to elaborate on that a bit because it's it's
obviously been around for a while, but it's just gotten
a lot of preps I guess you could say in

(04:48):
the past two or three years, especially coming out of
the pandemic. And you know so, but but I think it's.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
What I want.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
I'm interested in what you guys are doing around artificial
intelligence and what you're seeing from the business screen and
how they're maybe adopting and what some of the things
you're working with clients want to adopting AI.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Machine learning, Yeah, absolutely. AI actually came out of Dartmouth
originally in the fifties, so it's been around for a while. Yeah,
and you know, even at microt we've always worked on
natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision, a lot of
the underlying technologies, but it was all early adopters sort

(05:29):
of stuff. And really in twenty three when CHEPT three
point zero came out, that's when it went from early
adopter to the early majority. AI is explosive now, so
it's much like our growth we went ten years in
five thousand around mobile web applications. We're now starting to
see similar growth around implementing AI for clients.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
And so why what's the barrier?

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Why don't you see more companies adopting AI machine learning
in our business?

Speaker 2 (05:59):
It is the education barrier.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
They are not understanding where it fits in their business.
What are you kind of seeing out there and what
kind of like to be some examples of some solutions
you guys are working on with some clients in that regard.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean many companies hesitate to adopt AI
because it is a lack of understanding. And it's not
just understanding around the lower level technologies, it's really they
don't understand the benefit. They have concerns around implementation costs,
challenges related to data privacy and security, They have a
skills gap. Their teams just don't necessarily understand AI. So

(06:35):
we start by educating them and creating that understanding as
a first step to any AI implementation. But of these days,
we're i mean, we're just doing you know so much.
So we help them with you know, various practical applications,
including automating customer service, creating personalized marketing strategies, doing data
analytics that drive you know, actionable insights. But then more specifically,

(06:59):
we're creating tons and tons of bots. So you know, examples,
were about to release a bot for for Compon State
University and essentially it's a guidance counselor for schools implementing
a number of customer service bots. If you think about
any call center, you know, eighty percent of their calls
are things that humans are answering with scripts do what

(07:22):
they're expensive, right, So if they can do self service
and then ultimately if they have to get into a bot,
AI can answer a lot of those calls to free
up the humans so that they can answer the really
difficult things, essentially lower their overall costs, but then you know,
essentially create higher you know, customer service value for their customers.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, it actually bring up a really good point. I
think there's either a little bit of the misnow or
fear that you know, AI is gonna you know, take
away people's jobs and things like that, where on the
other hand, it actually, you know, it's not gonna take
away jobs, but also what better engage employees to more
meaningful work, you know, and more of the analysis and
like you said, like deeper customer service stuff as opposed

(08:06):
to just you know, entering data or off of the
script or something like that. So yeah, I mean that
that seems where there's like some really good applications for
you know, for AI, and it sounds like you guys
are doing a lot of that stuff, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, you got I mean one one quick analogy. You know,
you look at like fast food, they have over one
hundred percent turnovers. People don't generally want to work in
fast food. It's an entry level job. It's a grind.
But at the end of the day, that's not You
go to like a white tablecloth restaurant because you want
to know it's farmed a table it's you know, have

(08:39):
some Michelin star rated chef. Rightly, you go there for
the experience of the humans making your food. You go
to fast food because you just want a quick meal.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Your business is like that. They're going to get automated, Right,
It's going to be the same end result, but you're
not going to use all the human capital, and then
those same humans can go do much better and bigger
thing with their time. Maybe if they want to work
in hospitality, then they can go work at a Michelin
star restaurant. I get a lot better experience than you know,
flipping burgers at you know fast food chain.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Right, Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that actually is reading
an article this morning. I forget what publication it was,
but it was about these new set of like flip
fryers that it's basically automated robots that are just working
the uh you know, the prime machines and things like that,
and it's evidently really taking off, so which is pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
But yeah, we're actually behind the curve. In Asia, they
have a lot of restaurants that are fully automated. We
do have some in California that are popping up, yeah,
that are fully automated. And you know, it's going to
take us a little bit, you know, to adopted you know,
across the States, but you know it's coming. AI is
anything that humans do as a repetitive task over and
over again with only a little bit of thought work.

(09:52):
AI is going to replace those jobs. It's you know,
after quicker and more cost effective.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah. Yeah, that's yeah, that's pretty wild.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Well, yeah, and you and min Grub has always been
kind of known for innovation. Gosh, I remember I was
it ten years ago when you had the robot and
that was that, I mean, it was remember making a
lot of news and so you've been at.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
This for a little while.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
But what are some technologies that you know, other than
a that year kind of exploring or maybe looking at
for down the road that you're excited about.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, we're still very excited about robotics. You know that
was stacked the robot which is right, this is essentially AI.
But you know, these days we're you know, we're doing
a lot with you know, blockchain for secure transactions. We
really love augmented in virtual reality. We've been releasing a
lot of new products for the Vision pro which is

(10:45):
both AR and v R, which is really excited, exciting,
and then we do a number of things in the
Internet of Things too to enhance you know, connectivity and
data collection for our clients.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Got it cool?

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Any new services or product within your four divisions that
you're going to be launching other than or is it
really big focus right now is on the AI products.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, a lot of I mean, we have several you know,
growth service lines now, so cloud our support services, we
have a group that's much like it support services, but
specifically for custom and configurable software. And then we are
doing AR and VR. But AI is predominantly the big
growth area, and we have solutions coming out for healthcare, education, manufacturing, retail, hospitality.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Legal, you name it.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's just it's exploding in nearly every industry right now.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah, that's great, that's great. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
All right, I'm gonna switch it up a little bit,
so tell us a little bit about.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Your personal background.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
How you got to this point being CEO of a
big tech company and branding agency and everything else that
you do.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, I mean going all the way back, you know,
after undergrad I started as a high school teacher here
in Maryland. And this was the nineties. And even though
I majored in math and I had a concentration in
computer science, I didn't love programming. I didn't love, you know,
staring in front of the computer. At the time, I
was a cimber and a kayaker, and I wanted to
be a teacher to get my summers off. But I

(12:18):
started having kids and needed to make more money. But
this was ninety nine two thousand when the dot com
started to blow up, and my students got me really
excited about the prospects of technology. So I started my
first company in two thousand. It was a small digital agency.
After September eleventh, we parted with our separate ways. I
then founded mind grub in two thousand and one two

(12:40):
thousand and two, but it was myself as an independent contractor.
When Windows Mobile came out in two thousand and five,
I thought that was my big break, and so I
founded another company specifically focused on Windows Mobile, but that
platform didn't work or didn't really take off. I then
worked for DoD, I worked for Deloyd for a little while,
and finally in two thousand I was in a iPhone

(13:01):
released the SDK, and I remember it. Finally I was in.
I was in Chicago. It was January. It was like
a brutal winner and I've kind of exaggerated, but like
a taxicab went by splashed me with water and I
was so fed off. I'm like, I want to do
a new thing. And and I saw the announcements that
Apple released the SDK, so basically, you know, gave him

(13:24):
notice at my job in Chicago, and I was also
teaching at UMBC at the time, and I hired a
bunch of students and we held up in my basement
and started making some of the first mobile apps. And
our our initial clients were Believe or Not, Geiche and
Dell and they flew to BWI, took a cab. Right,
there wasn't Uber lift at the time. They took a
cab and they came to my basement because they couldn't

(13:45):
find companies making mobile apps. And that really, you know,
just was a rocket ship for us and really grew
you know, both mobile web applications at the time. That's cool.
That's a cool story, man.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
I appreciate you sharing that with us.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
I'd like to talk about leadership on the show, so
I wanted to ask, you know, how would you how
would you describe your leadership style.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, my style is really kind of collaborative and adaptive.
I really believe in empowering my team members and you know,
fostering an environment where creativity and innovation can thrive. I
prioritize open communication and feedback to ensure everyone feels valued
and included.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yeah, and being such a.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
You know, kind of a company that thrives on innovation,
how do you how do you promote that?

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (14:36):
You know obviously a lot of.

Speaker 4 (14:37):
Communication, but how do you how do you instill that,
I guess in your employees to have a cool idea
or something that's out of just you know, you know,
not thinking it right now, like how do you get
them to to share and how do you how do
you create that kind of innovative culture.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, we have an entire team called strategy. So you know,
for a lot of client projects, you know they might
be mundane websites, and you know there is some innovation
to be had there. Most of the work we take
on is because a client is really trying to go
through a digital transformation. They're trying to you know, grab
market share, they're trying to beat their competitors, and so

(15:15):
we might start with what we call spread zero, which
is a discovery and you know, as I mentioned earlier,
it's we do competitor analysis, market analysis, you know, create
buyer personas, we map the journey, and then we create
ethics around what type of functionality and innovation their users
might need. And then from there we'll then design their software,

(15:36):
develop it, deploy and test it. But it really starts
with a team that is a strategy team, and you
know they're digital strategists, their product owners, product managers, and
they get in there and they specifically look to how
to innovate on behalf of our clients.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
That's cool, that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, I know it's been
couple of years. But if you can remember back to
the pandemic and obviously the lockdown and all those things,
what do you feel, you know, looking back, you know,
what do you feel you've learned about how to manage people,
how to lead from that whole situation.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, the pandemic really taught me the importance of resilience
and flexibility and leadership. I mean, it really emphasized the
need for clear communication and supporting our team members both
personally and professionally. It reinforced the value of remote collaboration
tools and the importance of maintaining a positive culture even

(16:37):
in challenging times. We are our biggest growth During the pandemic.
We went fully virtual, and we're still virtual to this day.
I mean, our get actors still like to get together
every so often, our genetic managers, leaderships, we go to
the office a couple of days a week. Yeah, but
we shed our other brick and mortar locations and we
really embraced the online culture and expanded too tremendou this thing.

(17:00):
We were entirely you know, DMV. We are eighty percent Baltimore,
with maybe twenty percent down in DC pre COVID. Now
it's it's a complete one eighty. We've got team members
in Columbia, Brazil, Croatia. Our domestic team is all over
the US. I think we don't have anybody in a
laugh or wwhi yet, but I'm waiting.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, that's really cool, that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
What what are What gets you really excited about the
future of their mind growth?

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, I mean I'm excited for the potential of growth,
you know, fort growth and innovation, particularly around AI. As
I mentioned, we went ten straight years I think five
thousand with mobile web application growth, and then twenty one
to twenty three. We made a lot of changes going virtual.
We changed in our operating model from you know Rockefeller
to EOS. We created these four different business coups. We

(17:52):
did a whole digital transformation ourselves because a lot of
our tools were outdated. So we did a lot of change.
But I was, you know, getting board of technology AI
know when chance EPT came out, and even though we
did underlying things, it didn't have the hype that it
has now. And so I'm super excited because that's hype,
you know, even though there's a little bit of a
hype curve, and you know a lot of people went

(18:14):
into products and and they're you know struggling to really
get market adoption for a lot of these products. The
services industry around AI is just starting to take off,
and so you know, most of.

Speaker 5 (18:25):
Our growth, you know, has been doing AI innovation across
you know, one hundred and fifty plus clients that we
already have, not to mention new clients and startups that
are looking to be AI at their core. So it's
a very very exciting time. And you know, we're planning
on growing for another five or ten years and then
you know, frankly, we'd love to go public, you know,

(18:45):
do some roll up you know, and you know, get
well over one hundred million in revenue and then look
to go public and take you know, some of our
company and you know, get on the public market so
that we can kind of control our own state as
far as capital markets also.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
That's really exciting, man.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
All We got some happy for you, John, and look
forward to see some of the you know, cool things
that you guys guys come up with in the in
the coming years. What on the other side think what
keeps you up at night?

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah, I mean we've gone through it now, but definitely
maintaining the same efficiency. Being fully remote, yeah, had been
a challenge. I mean when we were packed in the office,
there was so much like water cooler talk that created efficiency.
And even though our individuals and you see all the data,
individuals are more efficient working from home. I mean, frankly,

(19:35):
they're saving hours commuting, right, it's the communication between individuals
that you missed, that ad hoc communication. So you know,
we really did have to, you know, do a digital
transformation update. All our tools really embrace you know, telework,
and so we've gotten that efficiency back. And then now

(19:55):
that we're a global company, you know, we can find
talent anywhere in the world, so that actually helped us.
So even though we struggled a little bit in the
beginning with the efficiency, now we've gained efficiencies in hiring
because we can find talent anywhere, you know, and and
that has really helped us get not just more reach

(20:16):
as far as our talent, but more reach as far
as clients. We have clients all over the world now too,
which it was difficult pre COVID to get clients anywhere
outside of Maryland. Has an Maryland company back then.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And you still feel like even with being full of remote,
being global, you still feel like you have that good
collaboration in those and between the systems and technology that
you've set up, you're getting that water cooler talk and
the collaboration between teams we do.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
I mean, we had to do some change management. So
you know, everyone's using Slack and you know Zoom these days,
but in Slack you can do an ad prompt impromptu
call with somebody, and so we really embraced that feature.
So if you have a quick question and you don't
want to chat it out and you know, just do
a quick call right within Slack. You know, we really optimized.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Our Zoom use.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
You know. That said, I still feel we have entirely
too many meetings. You know, we have a lot more
meetings now than we had pre COVID because you could
just walk to somebody's office. Despite all that that, we
did get our efficiency back. We're you know, back to
similar margins that we had, you know, pre COVID. Another challenge, though,
has been you know, there has been you know, quite

(21:26):
a bit of rising costs due to inflation, kicking around
domestic talent and you have to pay your talent more.
I mean, everything you know, from groceries to gas has
gone up considerably. Yeah, but that also kind of, you know,
compressed our margins a little bit. But now instead of
you know, some of the junior talent that we would
have to have domestically, we can get senior talent at
similar price points around the world. So, you know, covid

(21:49):
did a lot to change our business and and most
of it good.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, that's cool man, I appreciate you sharing all that.
That's that's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
So to wrap things up, is there anything else seed
like our listeners to know about you and mine grub?

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah? I mean for our clients there perspective clients out there,
I just want to emphasize our commitment to innovation and collaboration.
We're super passionate about helping our clients achieve their goals
through technology, and I look forward to building lasting partnerships
with existing and new clients.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
And how can our listeners get more information about mincroub.

Speaker 5 (22:24):
Oh, that's easy. All you have to do is search
minrob We have a lock up on like the first
cold pages on Google. But areuurrelmincro dot com and you
can find us pretty much on every social media channel.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Okay, awesome, Well Cott Man, it's been great catching up
with you. I really appreciate you taking the time to
talk to us today and congratulations on success and looking
forward to seeing all the things that happened through AI
through MicroB that should be really exciting.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
So yeah, thank you again, John.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
This has been iHeartMedia CEOs. You should know