Season 5, Episode 4 - in PODIO we TRUST!

In today's awesome episode we welcome two guests for a fascinating insight into how Podio can really revolutionise a business. Our returning champion Joel Ordesky (Private Guru) brings one of his clients William Lindhal from the CPT Institute, a national charity that helps to preserve government benefit eligibility for the injured and at-risk by providing education and training to the legal community.

This is a fantastic episode for a number of reasons. First of all it really showcases why working with the right Podio Partner can bring enormous long-term benefits to your company. Second we get to hear a phenomenal success story about a charity who really has revolutionised how they operate by building out their entire business in Podio.

This is a superb episode for anyone who is looking at Podio and wondering if it will help their business, as well as anyone looking to understand just how powerful Podio can become when you really integrate it across your business.

Show Links:
You can check out the CPT Institute at https://www.cptinstitute.org/
Reach out to Joel Ordesky at https://www.privateguru.net/

Have you checked out our Podio Masterclass? (https://www.wearegamechangers.com/category/podio-masterclass/)

Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to get notified of new videos.

Please don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe to the Podcast and if you’d like to be a guest on an upcoming show please register your interest at https://bit.ly/supercharged-guest

Episode Transcript

Narrator (00:00):
Welcome to the supercharged with Jordan Samuel
Fleming, your weekly podcastdedicated to what your business
can achieve when it's powered byPodio. Join us each week as we
learn from the top Podiopartners in the world as we
investigate system integrationsand add ons and hear from real
business owners who haveimplemented Podio into their

(00:21):
business. Now join Jordan SamuelFleming, CEO of smartphone for
this week's episode.

Jordan Fleming (00:28):
Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's
episode of supercharged I'm yourhost, Jordan, Samuel Fleming,
here to talk all about theawesome power of workflow and
automation when your business ispowered by Podio. What an
episode we have this week,really, really a fun one.
The guests today are JoelOrdesky, returning champion
Podio partner, you'll probablyhave heard him on the podcast

(00:50):
many times and he brought alonga client of things. William
Lindhal, from CPT, the CPTInstitute, they are a charity in
the US. And William gives agreat summary of just how many
people they help and, and howthey do that, across the
country. And I love thisepisode, I love this episode for
a couple of reasons. Number one,it shows what a great

(01:14):
relationship you can have with aPodio partner, and how much
value that relationship canbring you. Right? How much value
into you know, how you actuallybuild your Podio, how you
implement it, how you get itfully functioning within your
business, it's very clear that,you know, William talks with

(01:35):
glowing terms about Joel, butabout that relationship and how
the well they've workedtogether, and how, you know how
much Joel has helped theirorganisation, grow their
business processes using Podio.
And I think that's a reallygreat thing to see. Because it
really, you know, I've put yourpartner for over 10 years, and I
know that that relationship iscritical. And it can be so so

(01:59):
valuable. So that's one thing.
The other thing is, I think it'sa really great case study for a
business, you know, kind ofgrowing its software, finding
Podio and, and kind of findingnirvana. I mean, you were gonna
hear in this episode, how theywent from sort of Salesforce

(02:22):
environment that got tooexpensive, and they built their
own sort of thing in anextranet, intranet sort of
function. And that wasn't quiteright. And then they found
Podio, and Joel, and really,that's 4000, some odd years ago,
and it's, you know, they've beenkind of going ever since, and
you really, you know, they'vereally sort of skyrocketed. And

(02:45):
it's a great case study of how abusiness, you know, and a
complex business business with alot of regulations, a lot of
moving parts can really buildtheir whole kind of business
process inside of Podio. HowPodio can be that, that central
hub of how the business works,containing the data containing

(03:05):
the the the employees, beingable to collaborate and being
able to seamlessly integratevarious elements. I mean, we
talked about ShareFile, withoutquestion. We also talked about
smartphones or a smartphoneuser. It's just a great example.
So if you're a business outthere, you know, wondering if
Podio is the right step forward,wondering how much Podio can do

(03:28):
for your business. This is sucha great podcast to listen to. As
always, please, before we getinto podcasts, go to iTunes,
Google podcast spot, whereveryou listen, give us a like, give
us a review. It really helpsboost up the visibility of the
podcast to make sure that we arespreading the gospel of Podio as

(03:50):
wide as possible. And of course,I'm always looking to speak to
new people. I'm fascinated tohear everybody's stories about
how they work with Polycom.
Podio so please do pop over towe are game changers.com And go
ahead and you know, submityourself in for a guest while
you're there take a look at themaster class really helps you

(04:10):
supercharge your Podioparticularly if you're
relatively new to it shows youall sorts of cool things you can
do with Podio and new videos getlaunched every week. Alright,
enough of me. Let's hear fromJoel and we'll

(04:31):
and it's pretty informal aswell. So like let's like the is
the I will try not to curse. Joewill know that that is not an
easy thing for me to do. But Iwill do my best my level best.
So anyway, we'll we'll enjoywelcome to the podcast. Joel is
obviously a returning championwill as a brand new champion to

(04:53):
the podcast. Why don't you guyswill maybe you can kick off by
giving us a little background onthe company so that we know
where we're playing with.

William Lindhal (05:03):
Yes, yeah, I'm the executive director of a
nationwide nonprofit trusteethat protects people that are
catastrophic ly injured, who areno longer able to make, earn a
living. So basically administertrust, trust accounts in 48 out
of 50 states, and the backboneof our organisation is Citrix.
Podio. Excellent. And now, as Isaid, so you were working, you

(05:28):
had your business in anotherplatform before Podio, and then
made a transition. So I guessthat's something that I see, not
only when I was a Podio partnerthat I do that a lot. But I see
it all the time of people movingfrom other systems into Podio.
What was, you know, what was theimpetus and what was the
transition, the initialtransition like?

(05:52):
A nightmare, just to be blunt.
For the, we're about 26 yearsold, so the first 10 years, we
were primarily Salesforce, andthe more complex and the more
diverse the company got, themore the bill went higher and
higher and higher and higher, tothe point where we got to about
10,000 a month, no big deal,then, we transitioned to a
private extranet host provider,which is, I'm not sure they're

(06:16):
even still in business. So webasically run a SQL Server and a
private extranet system. And theproblem we have is that we do a
lot of stuff with API's thatconnect to say, banks or other
institutions. And we neededsomething that had to have a lot
more customization andflexibility on the fly, that

(06:37):
would result in adding on aplethora of subscription
services that would then priceout to our word, charity, we're
a nationwide charity. So costsare a big issue for us, we try
to be the lowest cost providerin the country. So basically,
most other commercial platforms,I think you tend to as you scale

(06:57):
them, they tend to become costprohibitive, at least in that
line of work on it.

Jordan Fleming (07:05):
And cost revenue. And also the
flexibility of being able to,you know, to rapidly change
around make modifications issomething that most other
platforms, or if you're buildingsomething in an environment or
like an extranet environment,you're not going to have a rapid

(07:26):
ability to do that. nearly aseasy is that correct? as well.

William Lindhal (07:31):
You know, not only is that correct, the most
powerful feature of using podidofor us was that you could
emulate and replicate thefunctionality and most other
third party options in themarket in a much more efficient
non cost without a rising costs.
So we were, we were able toemulate a prior trust
administration system that spenta half a million dollars

(07:52):
building, and literally job andI re emulated it and
reconstructed it and re designedit in Podio, probably within a
few weeks our initial launch, Ithink of being able to use it
within a few weeks. And you'retalking about something we
spent, you know, yearsdeveloping, emulating the whole
exact structure. And then thatkind of got out of control in
the sense that now we have like90 Something apps that we've

(08:15):
built. So we were able tocustomise the Podio platform to
the diversification hastremendous relationship to HR
data resources, knowledge,databases, authorization
systems, auditing, I mean, itreally exponentially changed the
power of what we could do in oursystem.

Jordan Fleming (08:35):
And let me actually follow up on something
you just said, because I thinkit's it bears repeating. And if
people listen to this and arekind of wondering are getting
into Podio, you know, you'retalking about these different,
you know, whether it's HR orwhatever, but you, you know,
where you're trying where you'vegot other systems in particular,
where you're looking at othercapabilities, a lot of people

(08:56):
end up having to link togethermultiple platforms, multiple
services, you know, multipleonline software applications,
whatever. Not only can thatbecome cost prohibitive, whereas
building in Podio contains it,but it also means that the data
is centralised and able to beaccessed from every point of the

(09:18):
business. And I think that's areally important part of this.
Did you find that improved a lotby

William Lindhal (09:26):
I looked at what you just referenced a call
is my experience last, you know,I've owned multiple companies
and I've been doing you know, Iused to do software stuff
myself, Ed many, many years agonow I'm inept. But to be honest,
the real issue in today's moderntechnology environment is the
cobbling together right. Youknow, the if then then that
doesn't quite work what youthink it would a lot of

(09:48):
integration technologies are notrefined enough. So we were able
to take existing functionalityand all kinds of third party
options and emulate the similarexact type of structure without
our subscription fee and withcobbling together another API
interface into replicating thatsame functionality within Podio.
So it allowed us to surrenderand drop a lot of other

(10:10):
subscription services that wouldhave had a certain functionality
that we could eventuallyemulate. And CTQ. The problem is
you can't do it without apowerful partner, like many
people have met Joel thing heworks for me, but he does it.
Joel has been supporting us forages. And I can't thank him
enough. But I think having astrong Podio partner is
paramount because the averageconsumer or business person

(10:33):
doesn't really understand how tomake the technology do what
they're asking, they know whatthey want, but they have no idea
what goes into making thatactually happen. And I thought
that someday we would slowlywean ourselves of our private
guru, your joy, and if anything,it won't be found out is that

(10:55):
there's constant stability toenhance, replicate and expand to
the capacity where he has suchan intimate knowledge of
operations. I can't imagine mylife without him. He's not
allowed to ever not work for us.
It's just prohibitive. It's, youknow, I personally haven't
hunted down and superglue him tocheer.

Jordan Fleming (11:13):
Well, that that mirrors I mean, I will say that
I am 100% agree. You know, andit mirrors my experience when I
was a consultant, you devalue agood consultant, you know, is an
invaluable resource because theyknow your business, but also,
you know, what you want, youdon't really want to have to
know how to execute in Podio.
Like, why should you Why shouldyour team have to do that? How

(11:36):
did you end up finding Joel? Or,well,

William Lindhal (11:44):
well, just not to just as applicable to this
podcast, but I'm legally blind.
So the first time I saw Joewithout his headset on and said,
I didn't recognise him, hewalked right up to me and
introduced himself. And I'vebeen working with him for years.
I didn't even recognise thatguy. Now. That said, I actually
don't remember how I met. It wasit was a standard.

Joel Ordesky (12:04):
It was a standard partner request that came
through Citrix, the Citrix Podiopartner platform, and it was
about four years ago, I lookedit up. Well, it was March of
2018. And it's been, we've,we've done 1000 hours of work

(12:24):
together as of the last lasttime I the last billing period.
And I looked it up and I havenot yet not yet exceeded the
cost of one year of yourextranet.

William Lindhal (12:39):
No, that's that's the Dennis the truth. I
think the the, this is a hiddengem, I hope the industry can
understand I think Citrix poliosbiggest challenge is for people
to understand the capacityintegration and the augmentation
of time together things likesmartphone, and your video

(12:59):
conferencing software, andsharing even an individual
record or project is somethingthat just is not that common in
the CRM platform world. So thediversification of this platform
is still astounding to me. And Iused to be an MCSE guy, I used
to develop a software like thisfor a long time ago. So I've
been very, I'm still impressedat how we can keep augmenting

(13:23):
and triggering and manipulatingand adjusting it without having
to keep adding more fees andmore external services.

Jordan Fleming (13:30):
That's a that is a that's a very succinct way of
putting the benefit of Podio.
And also, I think, one questionit comes to mind because you
know, when you first obviously,you had these other use
Salesforce, then you had yourown external, you know, element,
when you first got sort of intothe polio environment and
started to, you know, start toshake the, you know, the kind of

(13:54):
kinks out of it. What what didyou find, if you can remember
back to, to that to those kindof first weeks and months of
Podio? Was there anything thatstood out in a positive or a
negative way that you've nowkind of four years old,
obviously won't matter to you?

(14:14):
But is there anything that stoodout to you as a new user?

William Lindhal (14:21):
It was little hard to surrender to the will of
Joel. So I had always been adevelopment person myself. And
one thing I did to make Joe'slife miserable is he could work
really hard on something andthen I would take around and I
break it for him. You know,there's creating work for him.
So my frustration I would sayabout that people have to be

(14:43):
careful about Podio is that it'svery easy. It seems easy,
because the fundamental way tomanipulate stuff is fairly
straightforward. But once youstart setting up flows, and
start automating features, thenyou kind of have to turn off
anybody's capacity you startmaking changes because they can
undermine or break things down.
But what is beautiful is, I havea Director of Operations, named

(15:04):
Kate. And she works with Joelnow exclusively. And now we have
this ongoing tech ticket appthat of course, we developed in
Podio. Right. And it's a foreverlist. And when I say it's a
forever list, we can continue tomake enhancements every week. I
mean, I bet there hasn't beentwo weeks gone by and CPT, where
Joel hasn't made a change thatdidn't enhance or better our

(15:26):
business. And I don't think youcan say that about any other
software system. And Joel didnot pay me to say that, I'm just
saying literally, and I'll giveyou a very good example. We deal
with people who are catastrophicly injured in a difficult
precarious situation, they can'tmake a living. So you can
imagine we're responsible forhundreds of millions of dollars
for other people. And havingjust triggers that send text

(15:49):
messages to the cell phone, letthem know if a request was
approved to die, or letting themlog into a system and see where
things are at the scale of ourcapacity of what we've been able
to accomplish has only gottenstronger and stronger and
stronger over time. And I, I canabsolutely not say that about
any of the past experiences.
Every time you had growing painsin your ground your business to

(16:12):
almost a halt as you had to makeadaptations or worse shelf, drop
something and then restartsomething. And Gerald Jones had
the unfortunate experience of ushaving to migrate hundreds of
accounts from one institution toanother. So the it's been, it's
always difficult, but the factthat you have that constant

(16:33):
scale and adaptability is justnot, does not exist anywhere
else. I don't know of any otherplatform that has this much
flexibility.

Jordan Fleming (16:42):
Agreed. Now you you I mean obviously you
mentioned sending a text messagebut also you mentioned you know,
having people will be able tolog in and see things is that
are you externalising Podio datafor that is that are you know,
we've come into Podio.

William Lindhal (16:57):
We've experimented with that. But
people just people are alwaysaverse, anything new and
different and easily confused.
So I just like that, I can dothat. So let's say I'm helping a
law firm in Louisiana right now.
I share an open project withthem and going Pope post
everything uploaded there andhave them go to one lake and
constantly share a sharedinterface without me paying for
a separate feed for that party.
So that external licencedintegration to an external party

(17:19):
doesn't cost extra money onPodio, too. And that's very
unusual. You're only paying forthe seat, you're using internal
within your organisation, youcan integrate to outside third
parties, we've even expandedexperimented with working with
mass tort organisations whereyou can handle hundreds of
concepts externally. So again,you're not going to be driving
up all this cost when you needto pull in third parties on a

(17:40):
project. And you can't say thatin most, most of the programmes,
you've got to pay every time youhad a person.

Jordan Fleming (17:46):
That was actually one of the reasons I
moved over to Podio back in2011, or something was, I was
using another software, anothersystem. And if I wanted to bring
in an external developer, justto share an idea on a project
not to, not to hire them, butjust to be like, share a bit of
stuff, I had to pay 150 pounds,because I was working in the UK

(18:11):
at one point, per licence. And Iremember thinking, well, this is
gonna, this is not going to bethis is not going to be good for
a small business, if I if everytime I've got a new designer
who's doing a teeny bit of work,I gotta check on him 50 quid a
year, I had a licence for him,I'm not gonna be able to sustain
it. And I went searching andfound Podio back in the day when

(18:31):
it looked a little different,quite well, quite a bit of
different now, but also backwhen globey flow or Citrix PWA
as it is now globey flow wasthen Podio flow, it was first
name was Podio flow. And Iremember when it launched and
thinking, good lord, what isthis tool? And, you know, it's

(18:52):
but the trigger the catalyst wasactually the external user
problem. And the fact that Podiogave me a scalable way of
working with other people.

William Lindhal (19:02):
So no doubt, no doubt.

Joel Ordesky (19:05):
We've also benefited with this
implementation. Not only are weusing mini apps for for like
the, the the beneficiary's to beable to access their data. And
we all have used internal Podioshare and workspace share as
well. But one of the things thathas been really huge is the
ability to access data fromother institutions. So we have

(19:27):
at least two financial and soonto be three financial
institutions that are sending usfinancial data on a regular
basis through an API. So or inone case, in our primary
financial institution where weare sending payments, there's a
constant flow of balanceinformation coming from the

(19:47):
banking balance information andsending requests. So you know, a
lot of process that was beingmanually done. In fact, when I
joined them did the financialinstitution. When I started this
there was a process As we'refaxes were being sent and people
were reentering information fromsystem to system to system
outside of CPTs walls that eventhe financial institution was

(20:10):
having to fax data around tomake these payments. Today, it's
all done via API, the data iskept up up to date, if if we
make a payment today requesttoday, then an API tells us
tonight that that's beenaccepted. And then a day later,
when the check clears, or theACH clears, it updates in the
system. So we have a lot ofaccess that way to do it. If

(20:37):
this is allowed, the growthpotentials and controlling of of
costs of manpower costs, youknow, as well, by able to make a
lot of these things happen. Inan automated sense. I asked one
of the staff people today, howmuch stuff comes in without them
having to retype it all. Andthen she said to me, 70% of her

(21:00):
stuff comes in today, you know,in an automated way that she
doesn't have to retype it.

Jordan Fleming (21:06):
And that's, I mean, when you scale that, like,
that's just that is make orbreak for, for an organisation.
I mean, that kind of automation,that kind of that kind of
efficiency, where team memberscan be more efficient in their
job, because they're not havingto do these very mundane

(21:28):
processes that that are takingup, oodles of time and are soul
destroying to do as well, right?
I mean, nobody likes data entry,that nobody where I made them
sure somebody does. But well,you know, another thing

William Lindhal (21:41):
that Podio does, it saves our bacon is that
I'm in an IRA very litigiousshop, right? So routinely, when
you're your trustee, it's thesame as having a bull's eye
target on your back. So we haveto report to courts, to
government agencies, to stateagencies, and having the ability
to have a transactional historyof every every single change of

(22:03):
a field and or data, andhistorically had that go back so
far with so much depth. I thinkthat's something that most I've
never seen in any otherprogramme where we have that
level of transparency of allinteractions and or changes
within an actual app or a datarecord. So imagine now, if I get
sued, or subpoenaed, which ispretty common, we've never been

(22:24):
successfully sued in 26 yearsknock on wood. But my point is,
our records have always beenunbelievably thorough, in the
sense that, you know, mosttimes, it's just dismissed, and
most people don't realise thatmost CRMs a lot of data records
is things change, there's not aclear delineated history going
back in the comment section oractivity section, like they do

(22:45):
in Podio of every single pieceof meat. So even if someone
makes a mistake and fixes it,you get to see who made that
mistake, and who fixes it. And Ican't understate this enough,
because I think the wholeproblem is, a lot of times
people can corrupt or damagerecords and or an app or a
product or do something you kindof can't operate within Podio
without there being a trail. Andthat cannot be understated.

(23:08):
There's many programmes outthere. Even in the banking
industry, we don't use one ofour financial institutions we
work with, we don't use theirinterface because it doesn't
have a strong enough audittrail. Think about that.

Jordan Fleming (23:19):
100% That makes perfect sense. And, you know, I
always used to say to people,when I implement Podio, you
know, there's nowhere to hide inPodio. You can't you can't
Right. And, and that is a from amanagement point of view, that's
a blessing. But also, you know,you know, unless you're a
complete dick, from anemployee's point of view, it's,
it's a blessing as well, becauseyou, you know, you ultimately,

(23:42):
you've got that safety net of Ican always know what happened.
What you know, what did I screwup? And oh, yeah, I can fix it
now. Whereas, you know, I mean,I used to, you know, even this
ability to you know, sometimeswhen you've got you know, you
put a value into a number fieldsand you get the wrong one or you
or you accidentally change itand you think shit what was the

(24:03):
real one instead of me having togo you know, through different
files to find it I just look atthe Revision History go I you
know, there it is. And that is ais a small thing, but it's a can
be a real big thing as well.

William Lindhal (24:17):
Yeah, I I think the only thing that I need in
poor Joby busy doing this for along time, is I think the
biggest problem in everybusiness is human nature. So you
can have all the best fields inthe world, you can have the best
systems, the best triggers, youknow, the best flows. But, you
know, fundamentally in mybusiness, whenever somebody

(24:38):
makes a mistake, I asked myselfcould I have made that same
mistake, and even if the dataand stuff is present, the
biggest value I see long termfor us in Podio is having
triggers and mechanisms toovercome human nature mistakes.
So for example, even though Joelhave an embedded history last 90
days where the transactionalhistory is on a trust account, I

(25:00):
can't trust that the employeesactually looking at that
thoroughly enough to look fortrends or patterns are
inappropriate. So learning howto build triggers into like,
okay, when was the last timesomebody submitted something?
Are they still alive? You know,you know, you know, we do
wellness checks, you know, I'mtaking care of people that have
catastrophic ly injured, I needto verify that they're still
alive. I mean, it soundsterrible, but it's just, it's a

(25:22):
fact. So I think a lot of thingsthat the only thing I that I
hope will get better for us inPodio is having the right
triggers and mechanisms toovercome the nature of a human
being just to be rushed over ina hurry or not pay attention to
something that actually is quitecritical. But it's easy if
you're rushing to miss it. Andthat's probably the only thing I

(25:44):
see us constantly wanting toadapt to human error. So as we
see errors that occur in in theutilisation of the apps, Jo user
comes back and says, we'llactually just turn a trigger on
to let them know, hey, look,it's been three months, since
you've talked this person, youmight want to reach out, you
know, you know, and Joe's prettywitty, I mean, we have some
buttons that runs certainscripts that pull in data from

(26:05):
other apps and bring themtogether. And it's really cute,
because we'll look over into ourcomments section, I'll say this,
squirrels are hunting for allyour nuts. And we're like, what?
And really, that's just Joe puta comment in that when it's
going to grab the data for thefield says, Hey, give me a
chance I sent the squirrels out,they're gonna get all the nuts,
and they'll put them in yourbox. And it's great, because,
you know, it sounds silly, butit's, we have a daily thing, are

(26:28):
we 2.0, but we pull in all themeetings, and we're very
regimented, scheduled. So he'sable to pull everything into you
organise your whole week. Andit's pulling all that data,
you're not running aroundjumping from app to app to app.
The other thing with Podio iswe've fallen in love with it so
much that I, Joe, do you thinkour total number of apps are
now?

Joel Ordesky (26:48):
God? Yeah, I mean, there's about almost a dozen
workspaces that ate. And therethere are, yeah, we probably you
probably have about 90 apps. Imean, you have a lot of stuff. I
mean, and we're constantlyoptimising and rearranging, and
the names get changedoccasionally. And it gets

(27:10):
refined. I mean, I think that's,I think one of the beauties of
the system is that that there isno, oh, we're going to have to
plan for this revision, it'sgoing to show up in a version,
that so you have an idea, now,it's gonna take us three months
before we can launch thatversion, after it's gone through
all this testing, I canliterally make a change, like,

(27:33):
in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, andthat changes is immediately
affecting everybody, you know,down the line. So I mean,
sometimes things arecomplicated, like the wellness
check that we've been workingon, you know, you get into it,
it's a little complicated,because it's not just, I'm
looking so that we don't callpeople up and go, are you okay?
When they've actually made arequest, made a phone call

(27:56):
texted us, or done any of anumber of activities, we don't
want to call them just becausewhen they've done one of those
things, so there's about a halfdozen factors that that are
being measured, and thencalculated, and then it makes a
day since last event count. Andthen when we get that over 90,

(28:19):
then it's flagged to an app theycall matters to actually have a
human. And in fact, we're noteven going to we went one
further, we're not going to havea human immediately, we're going
to that's going to send anemail, that's going to request
them to either fill out asurvey, or to make an
appointment to talk to us viaCalendly, which again, the API

(28:40):
pulls it straight back in. Andif that if they do those things,
then the wellness check dateswill reset themselves. And if
they don't, then someone'sultimately, you know, after two
attempts, the third attempt willbe someone getting on the phone.

Jordan Fleming (28:54):
They flagged them up. Yeah. Okay, hands up
who's using Podio for realestate, and they don't want more
Leads. Nobody. You want moreLeads closed, well check out
smartphone for Podio, the onlyphone system fully built for
Citrix Podio with an fullyintegrated power dialer, and
amazing mobile apps. It meanswherever you are, you can make

(29:15):
more calls, love to Podio sendmore texts, love to Podio and
close more deals all log to yourPodio CRM, click the link, check
it out.

William Lindhal (29:26):
So again, you you're avoiding that human error
issue. Like I can't the lastthing any employee wants to hear
from another employee is Oh, I'msorry, I forgot. You take away
that ability for people toactually forget you can't it's
kind of the system the clock andthe system's going to run it's
got to do it regardless, andyou're gonna get alerted. So
there's not it's reallyimportant in my type of business

(29:47):
as you can imagine, everybody'scatastrophic.

Jordan Fleming (29:51):
Now, just just I want to follow up on something
there, you know, because we, youknow, talking about employee
error and things like that whichwhich always happens. And
there's a potential for thateverywhere. But if I zero into
your employees, how did ingeneral, how was the Podio?
Except, you know, the journey togetting everybody accepting

(30:14):
Podio? I mean, new people arenever really an issue. Because
if you've never worked in thecompany, and you'd never use the
other systems, then you're sortof like, well, I guess, is this
the system? I gotta learn? Andthat's all there is to it. But
was, you know, from atransitioning point of view for
your employees as well? Was itdifficult? Was it was it
relatively easy? I mean, ingeneral, what was the feeling

(30:37):
and acceptance of it?

William Lindhal (30:40):
Well, it seems like a whole lifetime ago,
right? I don't remember lifebefore Joel. And when I when I
say that is that life beforeJoel was more of a, you, it was
really more of a one dimensionalsystem opposed and multifaceted.
So Podio had so much depth anddirections that our trust

(31:01):
administration system before wasjust to an admin, okay. So if I
look at Podio, now, I haveworkspaces that are client
administration, trustadministration, my board,
analytics, monitoring,oversight, coms pay, you know,
operations, third partyworkspace. So there, I don't, we

(31:21):
didn't have anywhere near noteven remotely, that scope and
depth, we had a complex extranetthat was just for trust
administration to interface withbanks. But that was just it was
just one dimension, right? Youjust did requests and checks,
and you stored it there. So whenpeople switch to Podio, I think
the only thing that surprisedthem was Oh, guess what, we have

(31:43):
another new app? Oh, we have anew another new add? Oh, by the
way, we're automatingscheduling. Oh, by the way,
we're, we're gonna pre read youremails and populate them
directly to the appropriateclient. Oh, by the way, all your
calls are automatically going tolink to your client. So we
didn't have I don't thinkanybody in our companies ever
complained about Podio. Whatthey've really more complained
about this, Hey, they get theyget excited. They realise, Hey,

(32:04):
you think Joel could do this?
You can talk to that? And thereality is, most times the
answer is yes. There's someversion of yes, the bad part is
that show how many open techtickets you think we've carrying
at a time? 34?

Joel Ordesky (32:16):
Yeah, they were up to about 30. At the moment,
there's just a bunch of I mean,the thing is that, I mean, the
nice thing, again, is that Podiois dynamic enough that like our
priorities shift, and we workeda lot on the wellness check in
the last week. But if ifsomething changes dynamically
within the business, we shiftour focus immediately to, you

(32:38):
know, so I'm shifting between,you know, fixing a bug or a
problem or a system, or realityinduced issue, right. So to, you
know, something else todeveloping new features, and it
kind of seamlessly goes back andforth, where we're working on

(32:59):
those different types of things.
You know, I think, as, as peoplerealise, you get that what I
like to call the podium, ahamoment. So you know, thinking
back to the beginning, thebeginning, I know that one of
the things that everyone wasjust floored by is I convinced
the banking institution at thetime that we started this to
participate in Podio. And thiswas before API and anything

(33:23):
else. And instead of sendingthem faxes, we put something up
on Podio, we mentioned them, andbut the thing that was huge was
that they would then change thestatus from acknowledged to
funded. And all of a sudden, itchanged the whole world where
data that they'd never in thepast, if someone called up and

(33:44):
said, did that cheque getreleased, did that get paid? Did
the check clear, they'd have tosend an email, they'd have to
wait for a response. Now, theydidn't need to do that. Now.
They just looked at the request,looked at the funding the
payment, and if the payment saidfunded, it was funded. And if it
said cleared, it meant that itcleared the bank. And they're

(34:04):
like, Oh, this is a gamechanger, because now they have
that information, likefirsthand.

William Lindhal (34:13):
You know, Joe, it's funny, you mentioned that,
because that app mentioned thingis something that needs to be
clarified. I think, you know, inthis age of people using slack
and iMessage and WhatsApp, it'sso wonderful that that's another
thing that you have an internalmessaging system within Podio
that can be less intrusive andinterrupting. So I always am

(34:34):
always surprised by that. So weuse a plethora of tools to
communicate, so you reducedistractions for your employee.
So for example, we our staffknow that you only do a Podio
message meeting the instantmessenger built into Podio. You
only do that you need an urgentresponse when you're going to
interrupt somebody's workflow.
But you can be anywhere withinany app anywhere on the system

(34:56):
at any date, time and age. Andyou can The Add symbol on your
keyboard and type in the name ofyour fellow employee. And you
can send them an instant messagethat goes up into notices, but
doesn't interrupt them. And theycan review them twice a day and
say, Oh, here's what's going on.
The other thing that's shockingto me about Podio, because my

(35:17):
job is so dangerous illegally,that I can literally look at the
global inbox. And I see theactions and activity of
everybody within theorganisation and snapshots. And
I can jump to and fro fromthere, so that you have a
central repository that givesyou a window shot of an

(35:38):
organisation. Imagine we're anorganisation with 90 apps, 12
workspaces. And in an instant, Ican be on one place and jump
around to any of that and noteven have to know which app or
where it is, is directlyeverything's URL based. That's
the only thing that blows mymind about Podio is I can share
anything just by copying theURL. I mean, you know, a lot of

(36:00):
problems tend to close outpeople from getting in unless
you're paying licence fee. Podiois just the opposite. I feel
like it makes the door open, butit's still secure. And that's
very unusual in the CRM space.

Jordan Fleming (36:10):
When and picking up on your ad mentioned point.
One of the things I've alwaysfelt is really powerful. And you
mentioned slack. I personallyhate slack. We use it in
smartphone internally, and it'sfine for it's fine for chatting
to people. It's no problem. Butit suffers from that. You know

(36:30):
that? Forever scroll back tofind something problem. Right?
Because it's not. It's notthreaded, and it's not always
threaded, but it's not a

Joel Ordesky (36:40):
contact contextual. Yeah, no contact.

Jordan Fleming (36:43):
And one of the things I've always sort of
encouraged people to reallyunderstand about Podio is, by
with the ad mentions on things,you can contain conversations on
the things they relate to, asopposed to just chatting about
things back and forth. Or, youknow, I'm talking about this
customer or this claim, or this,whatever it is, and we've got

(37:07):
the messages and the back andforth contained on it. And that
is huge for being able to, youknow, for being able to see the
history and zero in and what youcare about not have to forever,
you know, I can scroll backback, you know, 18 months to
find that one message thatrelates to the things you you

(37:28):
are talking about. And that'swhere Podio I think in the app
mentioning on the items is just,it's the only way to fly in my
opinion.

William Lindhal (37:38):
Well, in the West be the only thing I think
is hard and especially using apodcast or video, I think
contextually it's very hard forpeople to grasp the scale of
what we're saying, even in thispodcast, you, you if when I tell
people that even if I show aperson, it takes a little while
and then the light comes on. Andthey look at our system. And I'm

(37:59):
like, Oh my God, how would youdo that? Right. So it this is, I
think it's there's a lot ofsoftware out there in the
industry that I'll call it eyecandy. And they'll make the
parts that are pretty that thepeople think they want the most,
but there's not that much depthto the product. So they don't
realise. They don't realise thebox that they're boxed in it a

(38:21):
good example would be likeSalesforce sheet, you start at
this level. And every time youadd it's cutting, cutting,
cutting, cutting and expanding,and you're like, Oh man, I can't
even afford to run my business.
I got too much money tied up inmy CRM systems and my related
collateral programmes. So inCitrix, Podio the more you use
it, the more you realise there'smore you can do with it. It
doesn't get old and the depthseems to keep getting deeper and
deeper. And then you know, it,there's a lot of creativity and

(38:45):
uniqueness that I have neverseen anywhere else.

Jordan Fleming (38:51):
100% I, I 100% agree I hope Citrix listens to
this. Because the you know, Imean they they've struggled for
a decade to understand how toposition Podio. They've,
they've, they've tried toposition it as a CRM, but then
people log in and they're like,where's my CRM, you got to build
it. They've tried to position asa project management tool, and

(39:15):
people go great ways, my Asanaboards, you gotta build it, you
know, gotta shift, but you're,you know, to your point, all the
various parts of your business,every one of our businesses can,
you know, touches so many thingsfrom HR to finance to sales and
customer and support and, youknow, whatever it is we touch a

(39:37):
lot of different things. Andthere is never been a one stop
solution that works. And Podiois that solution because you can
build it exactly how you work.
And it sounds like what you guyshave managed to achieve is and
is continuing to evolve and getbetter and better and better and
better. Is a good case point foryou know, the power of taking

(39:57):
Have a business and, andbuilding, you know all those
little bits so that the staffcan seamlessly run their day to
day. And they've got automation,they've got workflow, they've
got all the data at theirfingertips, and they're not
wasting time jumping around,trying to find things. And
that's, you know, sounds likeyou've got done that very

(40:18):
successfully.

Joel Ordesky (40:20):
I think one of the things also that's interesting
is that, you know, the inmanagement, we talked about that
a good business runs on reallyclear organisational clarity,
you know, who's responsible forwhat you know, who to turn to,
in any circumstance. Podiopromotes that sort of
organisational clarity, becauseyou can go to a record and say,

(40:40):
Okay, I know who the, you know,I look at this record, this
record is connected to thisclient, this client has a trust
Officer of this person, it has aJunior Assistant of this person,
okay, I now No. So like, whenour outside financial
institution, which is in oneworkspace, looks at a payment
request and has an issue withit, they just look at the bomb,

(41:02):
they can see the trust officersname, they can add mention the
trust officer and say, Hey,there's something wrong with
this payment, or this paymentreturned to us with something
odd on it. You know, thatorganisational clarity that is
both in the context and can bereferenced by a member field
makes all the difference. SoPodio is not just a it's not a

(41:23):
CRM, it's not a projectmanagement tool, it is a
business tool, it is a is aenterprise level business tool
that really makes it possiblefor a company to clarify. And
then by putting the good processand procedures around it through
the tool, you can reallysuccessfully run your business,

(41:45):
optimise your business.

William Lindhal (41:48):
And I have no job. No either. I love that.
Imagine this, just think aboutthe statement for a second,
you're talking about a softwarethat I pay almost the same money
as when I started four yearsago. Now in 2022, I'm spending
the same money, give it a takemaybe a couple of 1000 bucks
total for the year. And I'veincreased the capacity and

(42:11):
functionality of Podio, probably100 fold. Now think about that
you can't there's no otherplatform where you're not going
to be running up an enormousamount of extra cost. So we took
something that started off withsay, 2030 apps at 90 and use it
to run our HR projectmanagement, finances, banking,
accounting, anything you canimagine your business. And yet

(42:33):
none of those things increase mycosts, except Joe.

Jordan Fleming (42:37):
At 1000. He's,

William Lindhal (42:39):
and you know what St Joe's never increases
costs less either the wholetime,

Jordan Fleming (42:43):
that may change after this podcast, it's no, I
listen, I mean, I'm so great. Ithink this is such a great
example of both a, you know, ofa comp of a relatively complex
business, being able to builditself into Podio. And then
expand. I think it's such agreat use case. Just to close

(43:04):
out as a closing thought, youknow, you mentioned obviously
finance events, in terms of, youknow, add ons you you've got
proc foo, I'm guessing Joel, youknow, what are the core add ons,
if there's right signature eSignature Tools are anything
that that you use, as well inyour Podio that you've been able
to integrate into your workflowvery well.

Joel Ordesky (43:25):
So they're the proxy definitely for the because
we use it for not only scriptsand for some functionality
there, but we use it a lot. Nowfor many, many apps to allow
clients to access stuff we areusing. We use Calendly for for
scheduling and through the API.
It comes in and then that allowsus to line stuff up. Right

(43:45):
signature is there's a lot ofcontract work that is at the
front side at the lead in thecreation. We've we're in an
early phase with rightsignature, but we were able to
create something pretty basic,pretty simple. That allows them
to set up their document andthen get it off for electronic
signature. So that that thatinitiative is growing, but it's

(44:08):
definitely there. And also theentry point for that was the
cost entry point for that wasreally relatively good. They're
using ShareFile as well. Becausethere's they had a lot of
documents, they have a highlysensitive and stuff. So they
were a great candidate forshared files because we're

(44:30):
creating stuff. It's the systemis actually backed up to fold at
this point. It we're usingmomentum tools, we use momentum
tools, both for the toolsportion for the power tools
portion, but we also it is thesystem is backed up by that but
we are also backed up by techiegoes singing which we use for

(44:51):
stuff we're using. We have adigital ocean SQL server which
is helping the So, the miniappso I mean, there's a host of
little things that have systemsthat are out there that we're
we're interacting with, it'sgrown over time as the bang for
your buck has has worked, but itis definitely, you know, an

(45:13):
evolving thing that is done in,like I said, the, the API game,
you know, this is something thatyou sort of need a partner to
help with. But, you know, like,just that Calendly API is
priceless. You know, yes, anyonecan take an email in, and then
have a staff employee, you know,schedule the thing. But having

(45:35):
Calendly, bring it in and let itput it on the calendar. And then
it reaches out and it updatesthe lead and it updates the this
or this is is very valuable. Tohave those things work. We have
a little we're using aIntegromat. For just one little
thing, because we're making aconnection to Google Gmail for

(45:59):
Will, Will has a need to becausehe uses certain accessibility
tools on his iPhone. So we do alittle extra work for him with
syncing some Google Calendarevents for him. And using that,
but I mean, like I said, eachpiece to a purpose. API calls to

(46:20):
our different financialinstitutions then calling stuff
to us, inquiring us it makes itreally, really very powerful.
And like I said, it's aconstantly evolving and being
tweaked and optimised and, andnew features being added all the

(46:41):
time.

Jordan Fleming (46:45):
Yeah, sounds sounds fantastic. Sounds
fantastic. And I'm going topoint out because I'm
contractually obligated, do youalso use smartphone?

Joel Ordesky (46:54):
Oh, yeah, I forgot. I'm sorry. I meant I
didn't even think about

Jordan Fleming (46:57):
my mind. I'm thinking to fucking logos here,
man. Oh, man.

Joel Ordesky (47:03):
Well, I'll say I'll say this, we are they on
the smartphone side. I like tosay when I'm doing chunk clients
to smartphone, they're one ofthe biggest because they're a
customer relation system. Sothey're constantly on the phone,
their phone calls are a big partof it. Everything is recorded

(47:23):
because they have a requirementto maintain all of the audio. In
fact, we, after so much time, wepull the audio often stored in
Podio, which is a, I think not alot of people do that particular
trick, they store it off to someother system, I actually store
it in Podio. To allow that togo. But it's really interesting

(47:43):
how they have, they've actuallyrevamped the communication app
because they actually app theyactually look at whether
something is a call is done ornot. So even if there's a missed
call, somebody's going in therelooking at that missed call and
has to market is done. They havedisposition statuses for
smartphones. So if you answer acall, you can say answered you

(48:05):
can say answered and done, oryou can say answered and I need
something more done with this.
So that they those disposition,statuses trigger other flows. So
they're actually creating atremendous amount of volume
through the smartphone system.
At one time you had how manypeople will in the office that
we're all operating out of thesame room, on smartphone. Free

(48:28):
COVID. We had

William Lindhal (48:29):
12 at one time, but and the other thing was
smartphone that I thought Joe,is that imagine if you told
attorneys and people in yourmarketing this that they can
keep their own cell phone andnever have to give it out? See I
love dialling everything from asmartphone app and nobody has to
get my cell number. And I youcan't understate that. The other
thing too is imagine yourcompany you get I have 12,000

(48:50):
contacts. So when I use mysmartphone, I just type in the
person's name and Bada bing,bada boom, they pop up and you
go, Oh, that's easy. And then itsays, Okay, which one do you
want? Do you want to send atext, you want to call it home,
you want to call their office,those functionalities even
exceed this generalfunctionality in the iPhone. If
you think about it, you'reyou're opening a smartphone app
that literally is looking atyour contact database of

(49:12):
everybody in your business thatyou've been running for 25
years. I mean, that'sunbelievable. And then I can
keep logs and track and even addnotes right then live while I'm
talking about source in mysmartphone app. And it's
supposed to get to the record.
So I can't you know, I thinksmartphone was one of those real
nice, huge enhancements to ourPodio system went once it was
refined a little so I'm verymuch in love with smartphone.

Jordan Fleming (49:38):
That's great. I also to your point. One of the
things I always tell people whenwhen they're taught when I you
know if a business is like Oh,I'm not sure if I move my phone
system on, you know, onlinebecause some some are, you know,
some businesses are just a bitwary if they've never used the
cloud phone system. They're abit wary and I understand that
but I always say look, you know,you got 20 employees. How nice

(49:59):
was it? IE, to never have toworry about, you know, buying
them a phone anymore about aboutyou know them, you know, taking
your seat that having all yourcontacts on their iPhone, which
they can just download and orspeak to regardless, how nice
would it be if you have to workfrom home because a pandemic

(50:20):
hits that nobody drops an inchof a second, because, you know,
I remember people were sendingIP phones to people, you know,
when they were usingRingCentral, or these systems.
And you know, with smartphone,you just like, man, just open
your browser or pick up yourmobile phone, the apps there. So
there's a lot of value aroundthat, you know, about around not

(50:42):
having an infrastructure therethat you have to develop? I
think, well,

Joel Ordesky (50:47):
also for will the context is killer, because you
know, we've got he, you know,not only is it a litigious
business for him, he's dealingwith a tonne of attorneys,
right. Every client has one, ifnot two attorneys involved in
the circumstance, right. So wesometimes get situations where
people are like, I've beencalling for three days I have or

(51:08):
whatever, well, we have everyphone call logged in me even if
you hang up, we have the calllog. And if you talk to anyone,
we have the call recorded. Soyou know, it's very easy to
track where failures arehappening, or if they are indeed
really happening. We had Iremember there was an incident,
we had somebody who called andwas like, I've been at it and

(51:30):
I'm like and will would workwith me in the sessions as much
during that time. And I waslike, wait, wait, wait, look
here. I'm like, Look at this.
And I'm like, does he have anyother phone number, there was no
other phone number. It's like,we look the calls, we're just
not there. And we'll get on thephone. And he said, I'm happy to
get this result for you. I seeyou called Three days ago once
and didn't leave a message. And,and, you know, we're happy to do

(51:53):
this and deal with this. But I'mjust I'm really concerned on
I've got my developer we onlysee the one call. And you said
you've been calling for threedays. And then the guy kind of
admitted he was exaggeratingmassively. But it is useful to
have that track and information.

(52:13):
It also is useful for us tooptimise. Kate and I will spend
time occasionally optimisingwhat staff is doing by looking
at call flow, looking who'sanswering the calls looking how
stuff is is moving. You know,it's not just about, okay, now
you control your phone system.
It's it's that you gain thisinformation and you in into the
context of what records who'sdoing it not only what contact,

(52:36):
but what record is that relatedto? Because we add that piece in
so that we know a lot more aboutcommunication. It goes back to
that wellness check. As Imentioned, it's like one of the
factors I'm checking, okay, wasthere there has to be a phone
call. It has to be outbound orinbound and answered. And or it
has to be an inbound text fromthe right phone numbers, that

(52:58):
qualifies it out of a wellnesscheck. Because that sets the
date that I've heard from them.
You couldn't do that with a lotof in fact, I'm not sure you
could do that with any othertelephone system. Because
without the disposition statusof answered, because I've had
clients who tried to use somesystem other than smartphone,
right? And I'm like, Yeah, buthow do I know that you answered

(53:21):
this call? How do I know that itwasn't just a voicemail or
something else? That doesn'tcount? I need to know that that
there was communication. So Imean, there's a lot to be said.
In fact, I remember at onepoint, the disposition buttons
disappeared from one point ofview. And I'm like, hold it.
Wait, this is the biggest singlefeature of smartphones are these

(53:42):
disposition buttons. It's likenothing, no one else has that.
Oh, so it's huge.

William Lindhal (53:48):
With joy, I always feel like it saves our
bacon all the time, because itallows me to know for sure, I
can't tell you how many times aclient or person says, well,
your people didn't call me back.
Well, I just put the login ago,they tried to call you four
times, here's the times, oh, myvoicemail is not set up. Okay,
well then stop telling yourattorney that we're not
following up and keeping up withyou because you're not answering
your phone. So if anything getssaved, it's probably saved us

(54:11):
more from customer serviceproblems and allows us to have
quality customer service,because smartphone gave us a
feature to say Oh, I see youcall I just did this yesterday
said ma'am. You call us ninetimes. You gotta give us 24
hours to call back and callingnine times doesn't help and
leaving nine messages doesn'thelp you. So we use it very
much. Our communication logswith smartphones in our video is

(54:34):
like our lifesaver. I can'timagine anybody doing high
volume call work where theywouldn't benefit from that type
of system.

Jordan Fleming (54:44):
Well, mental note do not change the way
dispositions work in Podio orJolin. Will will fly over and
beat me to death. So that's thatgood point. All right. I've made
that note now. That's That'sgood. Well listen, guys, I gotta
say, I so much appreciate. Ithink the story is fantastic.

(55:06):
Both, you know, obviously thejourney into Podio, but also how
much Fotios broadened into you,your organisation and how much
you are now seeing the great youknow, even more opportunities, I
think that's fantastic. I thinkit also shows a real value in
working with a good partner,where the that partnership of
you guys wanting business endsand, and Joel being able to help

(55:29):
you guys meet it. I think thisthis illustrates very, very,
very well. Just gonna give youguys a last kind of the last
word, if you have any lastthoughts and or let people know,
you know, obviously your veryspecific case, I is you're not,
you're not going to be coldcalling selling to be blogged

(55:50):
through the podcast, but I willdrop your website link into the
podcast, of course so people cansee it. But just final thoughts
and just let people know how youcan find both you and Joel.

Joel Ordesky (56:03):
But let's do this, I'm going to promote will and
I'll let will promote me as alittle bit of a change. Alright.
So let's say it's CPT. So if youhave a situation, if you're
you're you do law, if you're alawyer who does deals with
cases, and has need of aFiduciary Trust Company, as a
charity, CPT, you know, atreally low fees with excellent

(56:28):
customer service with people whoreally care that is not a profit
targeted company, they theyreally work very, very hard.
I've learned more about willsbusiness from working with him,
and how hard they work to be theright sort of company, for their
beneficiaries. And, and alsotruly as as, because that's only

(56:53):
a part of what they do. Theother part is to educate
attorneys, and I've been oncalls and listen to will work
with attorneys. This is a verycomplicated point of law and
will is the subject matterexpert, he knows more about
these things and can helplawyers really do an excellent
job for their clients. So if ifyou know anybody who's in this

(57:14):
service circumstance, where atrust is needed, CBT is always
worth checking with, it willalways be, I think the best
choice for you.

William Lindhal (57:26):
All right.
Thank you, Joe. You know, and Iwant to say that most
importantly, I can't. And I knowthis sounds strange and corny, I
can't imagine my life withoutJoe's influence, he's profoundly
changed the way we operate heand having a Podio partner that
joins the journey and has such agranular, intimate relationship
with a business partner. At thislevel, you don't see that with

(57:48):
other products and services. Itjust doesn't exist. I mean,
everybody that needs Joe thinkshe actually is one of our
employees, you know, it's likeno, no, he's been a vendor
supporting us for years. Theonly thing I only want to
caution anybody about Podio isyou have to have patience,
because you get to make thisexactly what you want it to be.
But you're not buying a thingout of the box, you're basically

(58:10):
buying one hell of a foundationthat you can turn into whatever
the hell you want. And with agood Podio developer like Joel,
the sky's the limit, you justhave to know to ask and you'd be
surprised what someone cancreate new for you.

Jordan Fleming (58:25):
I couldn't ask for a better sum up of both joy
and Podio as I've known Joe foryears. So both of you gentlemen,
thank you so much for being onthe podcast today and on telling
a bit about your journey. Ireally appreciate it. And I hope
you guys continue to thrivetogether. So thank you so much.

Narrator (58:47):
You've been listening to another awesome episode of
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