#45: Jeff Francis, Founder | ENO8 - In The Thick of It

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
I think looking back.
One of the biggest lessonsI learned early on, and that was probably,
gosh, sky's probably 24, 25when I started that business.
And at that time, I still don't think thatI'd even be an up close in a startup.
I didn't probably truly understandwhat it is
to be an entrepreneur or a small businessowner and what that took,

(00:24):
and I think I probably tookfor granted a little bit,
that just because you start somethingor you think you're really smart
like that doesn't really matter.
I mean, it helps, but there's much moreto making that successful.
And I think that being overconfident,maybe even semi arrogant
about what I thought my capabilitieswere compared to everybody else

(00:47):
was somethingthat got me in trouble. There.
Hey, welcome to In The Thick of It.
I'm your host, Scott Hollrah
In this episode of
In The Thick of It,we welcome Jeff Francos, founder of ENO8.

(01:08):
Jeff shares his journeyfrom growing up in Farmersville,
Texas, to becoming a strategicand innovative entrepreneur.
He reflects on the pivotal momentsthat shaped his career
in the technology industry, and challengeshe's faced along the way.
Jeff speaks about the importanceof aligning personal and business visions
and how he navigated partnership dynamics.

(01:28):
Tune in to hear Jeff's story of startinginnovate and insights on software
development, client engagements,and ways to overcome business plateaus.
Well, joining me in the studio is JeffFrancis, founder of ENO8.
He has spent his whole careerin the technology space and can't
wait to hear how things came to bewith your current company.

(01:51):
Let's start with this.Where'd you grow up?
So I grew up in the Dallas area,small town.
Most people don't hear Farmersville.
It's probably 30 or 40 minutesfrom downtown Dallas.
So graduating class of, like, 62 people.
So, yeah.
Small town, but nearby.
Yeah. So kind of generally in this area.
Okay. Yeah.

(02:11):
And growing up,I assume it was kind of country. Yes.
Very like.
Did you guys live on acreage?You live on farm?
Like,I guess acreage by today's standards.
Not really.
I mean, we lived in town, but, you know,it was large yard and that kind of thing.
And you didn't wake up in the morningto milk cows.
I didn't, I didn't we did have chickensin the backyard for a long time.
When I was a kid, though,which was kind of funny.

(02:32):
But no, I mean, a lot of my friendslived out in the country,
country outside of Farmersville,so sort of a good mix,
I think of small towneverybody knows everybody. And,
everybody around town knows your parentsand so keeps you in line.
It was, it was.
And, you know, it's sort of interestinglooking back at it.

(02:54):
I think growing up in a small townhas a lot of pluses and minuses,
you know, and especially I have kids.
And so thinking about, you know,what's the type of environment
we want them to grow up inand that kind of thing nowadays.
But one of the cool thingsabout growing up in a town like I did
is you get the opportunity
to try a lot of things, be involvedin a lot of things simultaneously.

(03:14):
Whereas I thinkwhat I'm seeing today is, you know, kids
have to sort of focus on a particularsomething a lot more.
And in order to kind of be competent at itand get that confidence
and that kind of thing.
So I think that was one of the cool thingsabout growing up in a smaller town is
you just had a lot of opportunityto participate
in a lot of different thingsand really kind of grow
in a lot of different areassimultaneously.

(03:34):
What were the kinds of thingsthat you were involved in?
What do you gravitate toward?
I was sort of an odd duck,I think in some ways, because
I stayed involved in a variety of thingskind of all the way through high school.
So I was the big sports growing up,and our town was baseball.
Mainly when you're a youngerand then it becomes football
as you get a little bit older.
I was a Boy Scout, so I was in boy Scouts.

(03:56):
We may talk a littlebit of that about that.
I also played in the band and,
you know, that was something I continuedall the way through high school.
And so I kind of participatedin a lot of different things that had
overlapping or different friend groups.
And so I think looking back,some of that stuff probably enabled me
to have some of the strengthsthat I have today.

(04:17):
I think that's been able to relateto a variety of different people and build
relationships, keep relationships acrosspretty diverse set of people.
You know, I look back and I think a lot of
that may have started,you know, when I was really young
from sort of having such a variety. Yeah.
What instrument did you play?
I was a trumpet player.
I learned how to play trumpet.
You know, it's funny because I was moreinterested in athletics.

(04:40):
I enjoyed that more.
I desired to be really good at that more.
But I had a little bit of a natural talentfor playing the trumpet.
It was easier for me to be good at thatthan it was to be good at athletics.
And, what sort of interesting is,
you know, I would look at that kidswho are more naturally gifted than me
at sports, and they didn't have to workas hard to be good at it.

(05:02):
Right.And that would almost make me mad, right?
Like they're so goodand they're not trying hard.
But it's funny because I was like thatwith something that I was good at,
like I was good at it,and I didn't try as hard at that.
But I had to try really hardin order to be competitive with athletics.
But yeah, I didboth of those sort of funny
story like, so this will tell youabout how I was different in a small town.

(05:23):
So only having so many kids and, you know,the high school, a lot of us played
like both sides of the balland football played offense and defense.
Yeah. You had to have a certain number of.
Right.
Yeah. Exactly right.
Probably probably half of us playedboth sides of the ball. Right.
And but then I also marchedin the band at halftime.
So get to halftimeand my gosh take off the pads.

(05:43):
And so we had to have the go marchat halftime and then go
put your stuff back on.
And like you saw that Friday night.
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
I was gassed by the end of Friday nightplaying offense defense.
And yeah.
And you got to march in the halftime.
Oh my God that's right that's right.
But you know it's funny I just hadthis conversation with my daughter.

(06:05):
We're driving the car that day.And we're talking about activities
and let this be too muchand that kind of thing.
And she was kind of concernedabout taking something on.
And, you know,
there was a quotethat I thought about that
I shared with herthat and I don't know where it came from,
but if you want something done,give it to a busy person.
Man, I was thinking the exact same things.
My dad used to say that every time it is,I think it's true, right?

(06:27):
I mean, I look at that
even as I, you know, got into college,I think I made the best grades I ever made
was the couple of semesterstowards the end,
when I was busier than I ever was,I really overloaded.
But there's something about
being in action consistentlythat just sort of feeds itself.
And I was able to tie it to herrecent science lesson.

(06:49):
Luckily,they're studying Newton's law. Right.
And we were talking aboutand I just tell her, it's like, you know,
all you guys are saying, right?
Like things in motiontend to stay in motion.
Things at rest tend to stay at rest.
It's like give something to a busy person.
It gets done.
People that stay in motion stay in motion.
And when I feel least productive iswhen I don't have as much on my plate.

(07:09):
And maybe not in that groove like that.
So I think there's no way to apply inertiato its very real life.
That's right. That good, good job,good job.
All right.
You mentioned Boy Scouts, man.Tell me about that.
Did you go all the way through Eagle?
So interesting story.
So I was in Boy Scouts from very early on.
My dad was a scout leader, very,very involved.

(07:29):
And you know, looking back,you know, it's funny
how you don't appreciate some thingswhen you're a child.
And then you look backand especially now being a parent, I might
I look back at that commitment of time
and stuff and I appreciate ita whole different level than I used to.
And so I guess the short answer toyour question is I was a service project
short of getting my Eagle Scout,so I'm not actually an Eagle Scout.

(07:53):
I was at the one yard line and didn'tput it in the end zone, I guess. Wow.
Yeah.
And you know, we could go down a rabbithole on why
I think that was and stuff,but that was a big activity for us.
And, you know, I justI got interested in different activities
and I don't know if it's like that today,but you know, there was sort of some
like social pressureassociated with being or stigma.

(08:14):
So sort of being a Boy Scout
when you're a kid,I think maybe especially in a smaller town
where there's not as big of a groupthat's kind of doing their thing,
but that was something that, you know,
you'd maybe get made fun of and stuffbeing a Boy Scout.
And it's interesting.
I think looking back,there was so much value
and things that I learned from that, that

(08:36):
I don't think kids get enough of today.
You know, some of the fundamentals abouthonesty and integrity and helping others
and learning things and working hard,and there's just needs to be more of that.
Well, I quit after my weebelow year in elementary school.
I didn't I didn't go into Boy Scouts,but people that I know that have been
involved all the way through,
and I've talked about this on the podcastseveral times for we've got 2 or 3

(09:01):
Eagle Scoutsthat are on the team here today.
And, we've had a coupleof others over the years,
and it teaches you so much.
And one of the things that I thinkit teaches
you is a little bit of independence.
And having to just figure things outfor yourself, it does.
And I think that is so, so important.
I think that kids todayreally need more of that.

(09:23):
My own kids for that matter.Yeah, need more of that.
The merit based system,I think is really cool too.
If you think about it,so much of the whole program is set around
that you can earn these recognitionand you earn these merit badges.
You have to do the work.
It's not even it's not given.You have to earn it.
And there's a lot of opportunityto earn those things right.

(09:45):
And there's getting that little badgehelps feed
that that desire to achieve,I think. Right.
And then, you know, the opportunityto, you know, for instance, be a leader.
That's a big,big part of the program, right?
Is that like, how can people emergeto be leaders of their peers, set example,
have tough conversations, do hard work,

(10:06):
those kinds of things that you know, it'sjust a great practice ground, I think.
And, you know, you're talking aboutyou had a couple of Eagle Scouts.
I mean, I think if I saw EagleScout on a resume that put
somebody at the top of the pile,or at least a short list to be considered.
I've said this before,but if I see an Eagle Scout on a resume,
I will at least give them the interview.
Yeah, and they may not get the job, butI will at least give them the interview

(10:28):
because it just it speaks volumes aboutcharacter and work ethic and whatnot.
I agree, I agree.
I mean,you said some of the second ago that
I was actually thinkingabout just in the last week or two,
you talked about like as a kid,you kind of took for granted
the commitment that your parents had madeand the effort that went into that.
Man, when I was really young, our family,

(10:51):
we went through some really hardfinancial times,
and at one point my dad was workingtwo jobs.
He would go to work in the day.He'd come home for a little bit.
He'd go work at nightand then rinse and repeat.
At that point in life,
I was so young that I don't thinkI really even fully understood it.
But man, in high school
I can remember we lived in Minnesotafor a few years and there was a period
where my parents had got me into thisice hockey skating program.

(11:16):
It was at like 530 in the morningand six in the morning, like that.
And it was a good 20,30 minutes away from the house.
Oh, well.
And so not only was therea financial cost,
but I mean, my dad was getting upextra early.
My mom was getting up extra early,driving us all the way there, driving us
all the way backand then going to work and back.

(11:37):
Then I just kind of thought,
well, that's just mom, dad, that'sjust what you do, right?
Things are.
I mean, I'm spending hours and hoursdriving my kids
all over the place and I'm like, oh,that was a really big sacrifice.
Yeah.
And if I didn't realize it at the time,if you're like me, right,
just like you said,you just you kind of take it for granted.
But now being on the other side of it,the little things like driving around

(11:58):
to practices and stuff or just beingavailable to drive to practice, right?
Or, you know, my mom,I remember she would work and cook dinner
every single night, you know, and,and I think about now, you know, whining
about cooking dinner a couple of differentnights a week or cleaning up.
And it's just it was, man, it's so easy tonot appreciate that stuff in the moment.

(12:20):
Without a doubt.
All right.
So I grew up in, Farmersville. Yep.
And went off to school at UNT in Denton.
Correct. You're an entrepreneurship major?
I was, so after I graduated,I wasn't quite after graduating
from high school, I wasn't too sureexactly what I wanted to do.
Yeah.
And so I started with a semester,I think maybe once a year I call on county

(12:44):
community college for a yearand then ended up transferred into UNT,
and, I was undecided major to start with.
And I guess at the pointwhere I kind of had to decide on a major,
I was trying to think through that andfigure out, you know, what I wanted to do.
The entrepreneurship as a majorwas kind of a newer concept at the time.

(13:05):
There's a lot of, collegesI think that have that now,
but that was a little bitof a newer concept back then, I think.
And I think growing up in Farmersville,there was a, you know, a couple
of families there, one in particularthat was pretty entrepreneurial.
They owned a grocery store,they owned apartments, had several
different businesses.
You know, we mentioned Boy Scouts.

(13:26):
I remember every year
he would pay for several kidsthat didn't have the funds go summer camp.
He would pay for people.
And it's always sponsoring something
just very generousand involved in the community.
And that that kind of stood out to me.
My dad was also a business owner,but I wouldn't really
consider it an entrepreneur.
He was reallyhe owned a business, kind of owned a job.

(13:47):
And so I looked at,
you know, this other guythat lives in our town
and I don't knowwhat made me think about it.
And maybe I'd gone homefor the weekend or something,
and it was kind of fresh in my memory.
But I remember pulling up to class
in the parking lot and thinking,I got to declare a major here.
And that was on my mind.
And as I was kind of looked at optionslike, you know what I want,
I'm gonna go down that path,and that's what I'm going to major in.

(14:07):
So it's kind of like
where I made that decisionto sort of moving in that direction.
And I think I did not knowwhat I was getting into at the time.
Right.
What was the curriculumlike for entrepreneurship?
Like, I imagine you probably had to take
like the general management,the finance and accounting.
But like outside of that, like what werethe major specific classes that you took?

(14:28):
Yeah, I mean, not to knock it.
I mean, I think the program generallywas pretty good.
And yet it's a good school.
I think it gets overlooked,especially, you know, here in Texas,
pretty big college.
You know, it was a very sort of broadcurriculum, you know.
So you had business policy.
You had, you know,some legal classes in there.
You had stuffthat I still don't understand

(14:49):
why it's such a big partof the curriculum,
like business statisticsand some calculus.
And, you know,so it was a pretty broad swath of classes.
But, you know,if I think about being an entrepreneur now
and looking back, going,if I were to design the curriculum,
what would I do differently?
And one of the thingsthat stands out to me a lot is the lack of

(15:10):
like a pure, like, sales focused class.
Right?
And I think there was some things
to do around communication and managementthat were probably in there.
But if I think about a lot of the skillsets that I really rely on a lot now,
it's not business calculus.
It's not statistics necessarily right.
To be good at that,
you have to do it regularand you have to like, use it often, right.

(15:30):
For it to be really familiar and useful.
But I use communication constantly.
I use sales constantly, not just in,you know, working with new customers,
but anybody. Right?
Employees, contractors, partners.
You have to lean on that.
And yeah, I didn't really learnthe fundamentals of like sales
and the sales processuntil I got out of college and got,

(15:53):
you know, an internship and a mentorand learned it that way.
So I think, you know, it was,I guess, the one class that I do remember
that was really useful that I look back on
and I really enjoyed a lot, wasthey had an entrepreneurship class.
I think that's what it was called.
And I lucked out.
I had a the teacher that I hadthat semester was a retired

(16:15):
executive from,I think it was Lucent Technologies.
That was likea pretty big company at the time.
And he retired and hehe wanted to teach entrepreneurship,
and he and he made a commitment.
He was going to teach itonly two semesters.
And so he was one of those kind of peoplethat you just learned
so much about life from, like hearing himtalk about

(16:36):
he had just a really unusual approachto teaching, but the class was pretty cool
in that they put you into groupsbased on your different degree plans.
So you have a marketing personand finance person.
You have HR, you know, so youthey would sort of group you together
with groups that there was differentfocuses on the team.
And then your big class project

(16:56):
for the semester wasthat you had to pick a business concept,
and then you had to do all the researchand, you know, create a business plan.
And the biggest part of your grade,
a huge part of your grade
was at the end of the semester,you presented to a panel of investors
that were friends of his that he pulledtogether to judge your plan.
Right.
And, funny sidebarI remember as part of them giving

(17:19):
that assignmentwas very getting a semester
that you're going to have to doa lot of research for this.
And, you know, it's a pretty good new toolthat you may want to check out.
Everybody write this down.
Google scholar.
And I rememberwriting Google on my notepad.
Me like Google.That's such a weird name, right?
And so I mean, gosh, the tools we have atour fingertips now is way different.
But that was sort of a fresh new thing.

(17:40):
But that was an awesome experience
because it really didsimulate having a think through
what is a good business to try to focus onwhat's plan, working with other people.
Even the conflict among the team,you know, throughout the semester,
trying to put that stuff together
and then that big presentationat the end and sort of being judged.
And your grade being based onwas a worthy opportunity to invest in.

(18:03):
Yeah, that's really cool.
Outside of class,what was college like for you?
Were you in a fraternity?
Were you involved? Did you work both.
So I workedand I was in a fraternity as well.
And yeah, that was a good experiencefor me too, and lots of different ways
since I transferredin Pledge of Fraternity,
you know, being a little bit older
than some of the other guysthat did at the same time.

(18:25):
And so
but yeah, I was in the attorneyI was involved with,
you know, there'sa Interfraternity Council
that's like kind of a collectionfraternities.
There was a another fraternity at UNT thatthey had that was that was called wings.
But it was really more of a fun thing.
It was a few guys from each ofthe fraternities that were involved there.
I worked,
I waited tables, I worked at Chili'sand bartended on the weekends and stuff.

(18:46):
That was the main job that I hadduring college until my last year or so,
you know, and I think the fraternitiesinteresting thing too, you know,
it gets set a lot, but it's really true,is that it's truly one of those
kind of things where you can get out of itwhat you put into it.
And if all you're looking to do is
have a social
life and party and have fun,you can certainly do that.

(19:09):
In some ways, it's
similar to what we were talking aboutearlier with Boy Scouts, in that
if you really want to learn somethingor develop leadership skills
and take something on,I think, you know, it's a great playground
to do that kind of stuff, too.
I was the president of charitywhen I was there, and,
you know, I got a lot of experiencefrom that, right?
Trying to get people to alignand do something

(19:31):
where they don't have any kindof financial incentive to do that.
Right.
Dealing with a lot of differentpersonalities, managing finances,
planning.
You know, rush was basically salesprocess, prospecting,
identifying leads and closingdeals. Right?
So, I mean, there's a lot of parallelsthere that I think that I look back
and I was able to pick up a lot of thingsthere.

(19:53):
The relationships, you know,which I think is a huge basis
of the business world,especially entrepreneurs being able to,
you know, identify relationships, investin relationships, build relationships,
learn how to give as well as take.
And my first job out of college came from
getting to know a couple of the guysthat were alumni from the fraternity.

(20:15):
So we had a little bit of a storyso that we were in the process
of building a new house on campus,because we didn't have one at the time,
and there was a couple of guysthat were alumni from the fraternity.
There were,I don't know, 8 or 10 years older than me.
And while I was the president of Charity,one on called me up.
His name is Dave.
And he, he said,you know, Jeff, me and John are starting

(20:38):
this software company and we're lookingfor someone to intern and help with sales.
Do you know anybody? Be interested?
And I said, yes, I'm interested.
And so they had our officeover in Addison.
So I drove over and sat down with themand met with them.
And and I think I'm glad I made this movebecause my thought process
there was I'm interestedin owning a business.

(20:58):
I'm interestedin that sort of entrepreneurship path.
And I need to know sales.
And so that was a storyI told him, is that
this is what I eventually want to dois start my own business.
But I know that I probably need to be goodat sales to do that.
That's why this is interesting.
So real quick,the fact that you had that self-awareness,
that this was a gapthat you needed to fill, that's huge,

(21:21):
because I think a lot of people,especially at that age,
don't have that kind of self-awareness.
I know I did not have that levelof self-awareness, and it's awesome
that you did.
What kind of software were you selling?
So it was for the health carestaffing space.
So they they're kind of a niche.
And health care staffing called per diemnurse staffing.
It's basically agencies that staff nurseson a shift by shift basis at hospitals.

(21:44):
And what was interesting about what wasgoing on in software at that time is that
there was a shift from sort of like whatyou call it then client software,
where installing stuff and running itlocally and to web based or SaaS software.
And Salesforce was just hitting the scenethere, you know, and so what
they were trying to do is they wantedto build a software application
for nurse staffing agencies,but it was going to be a SAS model

(22:07):
instead of this client servertype of approach.
And, you know, it was a really good move.
It was a small enough niche thatthe big guys weren't going after it yet.
It was big enoughto build a decent sized business.
And there were some incumbents therethat were very comfortable,
that were ripe for being disrupted.
And so when I started working for them,I say sales, I was

(22:30):
I started off basically a cold caller
about 100 calls a day, just tryingto set appointments and set up demos
and it was good for me because, you know,I had to learn a lot of the basics
about sales, right?
So we, you know, my mentor there, Dave,taught me a lot about sales funnel and
using the CRM and working a sales processand being disciplined

(22:50):
about making sure you're qualifyingand all those kind of basics.
Right.
But it was just himand his business partner at the time.
He was focusing on sales.
His partnersfocus on building the product.
And so I kind of set at the crosssection there
I was on the phone with these prospects.
They're telling me, hey, I'd be interestedin this, but, you know, does it do this?
If it doesn't, thenI probably wouldn't be interested now.

(23:12):
But if I did, I'd be interested. Right.
So I go run down the hallway to John, go,hey, they said if our software to this,
they would probably buy it. Right?
And so that's something that looking back,turned out to be really valuable
for me and my, my current businessthat I have now, because
learning the customer need up front,understanding what has value
and then talking to the developmentor the product team
and figuring outhow do we bring our product

(23:33):
into alignment to meet that needthat started at that job way back then.
And so, yeah, I think that I don't knowif you want to go kind of in
depth on that stage of things,but like that was my first job in college.
I would drive,
I think, Monday, Wednesdayand Fridays over to Addison and
make 100 cold calls a dayand then drive back to Denton,
and then all my classes run on likeTuesday and Thursday and Wednesday nights.

(23:57):
And I was presidentfraternity at the time.
So that was that period of time.
That was referred to earlieras lazy person
to ask a busy person, yeah,but super get learning experience
and getting that opportunity came from,you know, being in the fraternity and
stepping up right.
If I wouldn't had taken the initiativeto try to lead and be the president,
I probably wouldn't have gotten that phonecall.
But, you know, so, yeah,
I think one of the lessonsthat I look back on

(24:18):
is that you got to give yourselfas many shots on goal
as possible, and a lot of timesthat's by saying yes
and taking responsibilityand owning stuff.
Yeah for sure man.
You use that term
a second ago that I haven'theard in forever about that thin client.
Oh yeah. Right.
Like that is a that is a good story right.
Gone by me. Yeah. Yeah.

(24:40):
What was good about that.
And so part of the reasonwhy we were so competitive
is those guys were still distributingtheir software on CDs.
And here we come.
First of all, we're having to explainto our clients
that their databaseisn't posted on the internet. Right.
That's not what it meansto have web based software, right.
But as we started making improvements,we were just pushing stuff
like you could make updates very rapidly

(25:03):
and there was no way it was possible
that they would be able to keep up with usonce we got that speed right.
And that was a big part of the sauce backthen, was being able to move really fast.
On improving the product. Man,
you're taking me way back.
Earlier in my careerthis was mid to late 2000.
This company I worked for, we sold,accounting software for construction

(25:26):
industry, and I remember it was right,right at the end of the year.
In fact, it was somewherebetween Christmas and New Year's.
And the publisher of the softwarehad shipped out an update
to update payroll tablesand something for tax
calculationsor for producing nines or whatever.
The in the year to nine and ten,nine nines, I'm forgetting.

(25:49):
Anyway.
And there was a problem with it.
It was calculating things incorrectly.
And so, you know, we had hundredsif not thousands of customers
that have thisand you got to ship a new CD
to get this thing,you know, updated again.
And what seems medieval now, right, right.
You think that. Yeah,we've come a long way.
All right.
So in a time period wisethis is like early 2000.

(26:13):
Yeah.
This is yeah early 2000right around 2002 or so.
Okay.
I mean making 100 cold calls a daythat'll toughen you up really quick.
Well.
Well you get told.
No a lot hung up on insulted a lot.
Thankfully I've had to do very little coldcalling in my career.
And I hated every second of it.

(26:33):
Yeah, it's not fun. Now,I'll tell you this.
One of the things this is definitely goingto bring you back to the past, dude.
So one of our killer techniques backthen was the fax blast.
So you could queue up like a one pagerlittle brochure
and hit your fax list all at one.
I rememberthat was a big day around the office.
Like, hey, we're going to do a fax blasttoday. Oh, wow.

(26:55):
So do the fax blast.
And the phone started ringing
because thousands of themgo out all at once or something like that.
Right. And that was a great
it was a it's a great sourcefor us for a really long time.
You'd be surprised.
That's way before MailChimpand oh yeah, yeah, before MailChimp.
And yeah, there wasI mean, email was definitely
being used widely and stuff at that point,but I don't know if it's because I think

(27:17):
probably, you know, we're talking aboutI think part of it was the uniqueness
of our target customerand how they operated.
They were very heavilyreliant on fax machine
to operate their businessbecause they got needs from their clients,
like the hospital sending in,like what they need covered by fax.
They weren't really using email yetfor that part. Wow.

(27:38):
So now that I'm talking through this,I wonder if a big part of why
that happened to be pretty effectivefor us was because fax in particular
to them, like when that fax machine litup, that meant opportunity for them.
So you talk about an open ratewas probably really, really high on that.
Right? Well, at some pointeverybody's going to see it. Right.
Even if they throw it away. Yeah.
They don't just get to like Mark unreadand move on to the next one.

(27:59):
But there's a physical piece of paperthere, right?
You still got some mean responses.
I remember one wheresomebody sent a page back that was like a
fully like blacked out pagejust to eat up all of our toner.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you did that for a few years. If.
What was your next role? Yeah.

(28:20):
So when I first started there, it'smore of an intern role
as employeenumber one and continued in sales.
So after I graduated college,I took a full time job there.
And it worked out really good for mebecause what was nice about it
is if you think about, like ramping upand building like a pipeline,
I was interning,building a sales funnel on a pipeline,

(28:40):
and then when I graduated from collegeand went officially full time,
I had a terrific salespipeline already, like built up.
And so I was able toand they put together a really good
comp plan, like a commissionplan and stuff for me there.
And so I was there for five yearsafter college

(29:01):
in a sales role mainly,and and it worked out really good.
So I was able to make pretty good money,
like right out of the gatecoming out of school.
And those guys,they were terrific to work with.
I look back,they're really close friends of mine.
Even today.
I learned a lot from both of them,and I appreciate both of them very much.
And, you know, like I said,we remain really good friends.

(29:21):
But, you know, I justI learned a whole lot from them.
And so five years into it,we start having the conversation about,
hey, you've talked about wantingto start your own business.
Is that still something you'rewanting to do? That kind of thing.
So we start having these conversationsand ultimately those guys partnered
with me and put up most of the moneyfor me to go start my first business.
Wow. Yeah.

(29:42):
So which wasn't a technology company.
So I did a little bit of a detourafter that.
You say we were building softwarefor the healthcare staffing space,
and there was kind of a new nicheor a niche kind of emerging there
that seemed to be gettinga lot of attention, where it's more like
they call it travel nurse staffing,where it's longer term contracts.
So we start talking about, well,

(30:03):
what if you started a businessthat actually did that, right?
So we'll go start a staffing company.
You were doing placementsyourself, correct?
Yeah.
So I was going to kind of jump the fenceand do what like a lot of our clients did.
Right.
And so using the same software that yeah,
they were going
to let me use the software, you know, likeand we were starting to think about
building some stuff that was a little bitmore targeted to helping that space too.

(30:27):
And so, so you know,they put up a lot of the funding.
And then I was the reallythe operator. Right.
They weren't really like involved day
to day with the businessor anything like that.
But in terms of kind of partner with meand setting me up to go do that,
I think there's a lot of lessons
from that experiencethat we can probably get into.
It was a good experience overall.
I did that for five years.

(30:47):
We kind of talked about like kind of whatthat journey look like.
But I think looking back,one of the biggest lessons
I learned early on,and that was probably, gosh, sky's
probably only 24, 25when I started that business.
And at that time, I still don't thinkthat I even be up close in a startup.
I didn't probably truly understandwhat it is to be

(31:09):
an entrepreneur or a small business ownerand what that took,
and I think I probably tookfor granted a little bit,
that just because you start somethingor you think you're really smart
like that doesn't really matter.
I mean, it helps, but there's much moreto making that successful.
And I think that being overconfident,maybe even semi-retired, arrogant

(31:32):
about what I thought my capabilitieswere compared to everybody else
was somethingthat got me in trouble there.
What kind of trouble?
Trouble in that?
Like a I kind of assumedit was all going to be a lot easier
then it turned out to be workingwith those clients all the time.
I think in all transparency,I looked at it,
I thought, hey, if these guys can do thisand look how successful they are at,
I should be able to do thisreally well, right?

(31:53):
And that's really naive.
And it's the arrogance of youth, I think,to think that there's no easy business.
I've learned the hard way.
All businesses are hard in their own way.
Some kind of have better payofffor your effort, time and risk, I think.
But so many times the grass looks greener.
Oh, that guy's gotthe he's got the right idea
for that business kind of thing. Right.

(32:14):
So I think I underestimated that.
And there was a lot of skillsthat I look back on now
that I think I've built over the yearsthat I didn't really have done.
I think I've gotten betterat focusing on the important things
and being able to filter out stuffthat isn't aligned with the goals, right?
The importance of team building.

(32:34):
I think I look back at that business,
and I was probably too concernedwith being a people pleaser
instead of making the hard decisionsand having really hard conversations.
So things like keeping team members aroundthat just probably weren't
a good fit for what we needed,
instead of just making the decisionand making a change.
I think being a lot more comfortablewith just change in general.

(32:55):
I stayed to set and patterns.
Instead of recognizing this isn't working,I need to take action right now.
Have gotten better at that.
I'm definitely not a master of that. It'ssomething I have to work a lot at.
But looking back,there was a couple big things I would do.
Different isI would need to take on those tough
decisions, put more scrutiny onis this really working?
Is this really getting us where we want?

(33:15):
And then just being brutally honest myselfof it's not now I got to make a change.
What do I need to dothen? Go execute on that.
And I too am a people pleaser and I toohave delayed making hard decisions.
And man, it is hard to be a people pleaserand an entrepreneur.
It is.
You're always going to make somebody upsetand that's a people pleaser.

(33:37):
I don't want anybody to be upset.
Right? Yeah, yeah,that's always been a challenge for me.
I think the biggest step for mewas becoming aware of it.
If I look back at the 25 yearold version of me,
I was that, but I wasn't aware of it.
And so just getting I think
the biggest part of the battleso many times is becoming aware of that.
And, you know, there was a lot to go on.

(33:59):
Too much of a tangent, but like one ofthe things that was a kind of a cool tool
that helped me find some awarenesssimilar to that in a different area was,
and if you ever heard of the Colby Index,so I think when I first
I had some friends that were in thisprogram, strategic coach, and they,
they were talking about their Colbyand they sent it to me and I took it
and I was I had created this identityfor myself that I'm an entrepreneur.

(34:21):
Right.
And I sort of give you these ratingsin different categories.
And one of them is like quick start.
You know, it'slike one of the labels on it.
And I was like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur.
I knowI'm going to be a quick start. Right?
And it comes back.
And I was like kind of middle of the roadlike in Quick Start.
And I was really high, like a nine out often in what they call a fact finder.
Right.

(34:42):
And I remember like lookingat those results and thinking like,
almost like I was disappointed, like,oh, maybe I'm not really an entrepreneur.
And some of that'sjust not understanding the tool very well.
And as I understood it, like whatI did start to become really aware of
is some natural tendencies aroundhow fact finder and how quick start.
And these things show upin the way that I respond to doing things.

(35:05):
And for me, when I got those results
and learn more about it more in depth,it made a lot of sense to me.
A lot of things.
I could look back and I could seea lot of pieces fit a lot better,
because I do tendto have an analytical approach to things,
and my way of initiating workis to gather information and understand.
And and so I think it doesn'tit's not a good thing or a bad thing,

(35:28):
but understandingit made me more self-aware is like,
hey, I'm prone to analysis paralysisor getting stuck or trying to pursue
too much information instead ofmaybe getting into motion quicker.
But by having that awareness,I can figure out what's the right balance.
How can I get enough informationbut know about myself?
I can't get stuck there.
I got to move.
So I think awareness is a big partof the battle, without a doubt.

(35:50):
Real quick.
Were you married at this point
when you started that business,or did that come later in your career?
Now, I was earlyand being married as well.
Let me think so I think so.
I was dating my now wife,so we were together,
but we had not gotten married.
And then we got married
while that business was going,let's get get it off the ground.
Yeah.
What was that conversation like with herof, hey, I'm going to make this jump.

(36:14):
Was she all on board?
Was she uneasy?
She was amazingly encouragingand confident about it.
I think some of that came from mebecause I was very confident about it
going into it.
And I think one of the thingsthat's been terrific about my wife is
I think she has ashe has a high confidence in me,

(36:35):
which can kind of be a double edged sword.
There's a high standard, an expectation,I think that comes with that.
But I think that ever sincewe've been together,
she's had a high degree of confidencein my capabilities.
And, you know, sometimes I think that that
has caused some frictionbecause she can see sometimes if I'm not
realizing the full potentialof my capabilities,

(36:56):
then that conversation right where
I may be having to face somethingthat's true about that observation,
maybe I'm resistant to that, but yeah,she was really supportive about that.
I remember her throwinga celebration dinner and going out.
Friends of Jeffstarting his first business
and being really encouraging about it.
I think she was maybe a little bit
with me, more confident about how fasteverything would happen at that point.

(37:19):
Right?
So you're doing this rightas you're getting married,
did your in-laws, like, tapyou on the shoulder and be like, hey,
you sure you're about to take our daughter
and you're jumping off the cliff with we,you know, with all this risk?
Yeah.
Was there any of that or was it just like,no, this is great.
Go do it.
There was not maybe initially.
I mean,I think people look at the glamorous side

(37:42):
of entrepreneurship and most of the time
they focus on all the success,like stories or the like,
looking at people after they've achieveda certain level of success.
And, you know, for me,
it was a really slow path,like the entrepreneurship journey.
I probably should have tried
something different at a coupleof different times over the years.

(38:04):
I probably stuck with stuff longer,like take for instance,
the business we were just talking about.
That business was modestly successful
right before kind of the oh eightfinancial meltdown stuff happened.
And then I had to really kind of decide,do I really want to stick with this
and push through itor maybe do something else?
And, you know,after several years of banging

(38:24):
on that thing and it not really turninginto something where
I was really getting to the income levelthat I had the potential love
and that kind of stuff, then, yeah,it was a tap on shoulder moment.
Even semi intervention,you know, to sit down and talk about this.
And that was hard.
I mean I was really conflicted about that.

(38:45):
And I have a terrific in-laws.
They're awesome.
My father in law is super smartlike a lot to learn from him
a little bit different philosophyperhaps on what the path should look like.
Right.
It's a little bit more corporate,a little more security focused around,
like go get a sales job or somethinglike that in a big organization.
And there's nothing wrong with that.

(39:06):
I just, I didn't feel like thatwas the right path for me at the time.
And I think that was kind of toughto navigate.
Right?
Because, I mean, I could look at itas a father, too and be like, hey,
you did your entrepreneurship thing,now you need to go
get safe, secure joband go down that path.
And, you know,you could argue that both is right.
But I think that in hindsight,I'm glad that I stayed with it and,

(39:31):
you know, took the tough lessons and triedto learn from it and keep applying it.
Yeah.
You know, obviously that's notthe business that you're in today.
Yeah.
What ended up becoming of that business,did you sell it.
Did you just wind it down.
Yeah.
So let's say soI mentioned that the financial crisis
kind of happened around the timethat I got out of that business.

(39:51):
And so we were growing.
We're actually doing okayat that point. Right.
It was turning into a pretty decentsmall business.
But then when that happened, I startedlooking at numbers and everything.
And I remember the day.
So we our company,we had about 1500 to 1800 open
contract opportunitiesat any given time on average.

(40:13):
And around that time when all that stuffstarted to happen, I remember seeing that
that number drop to like 30.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
And I rememberlooking at that day to that day
and seeing how drasticallythat demand had fallen off a cliff
and looking at the contractsthat we already had in place,
where we could have some forecast revenueand everything.

(40:35):
And, you know, I had two partnersthat had put up a majority of the funds
and we hadn't really done distributionsor anything at that point.
We just kind of kept it on the business.
And I remember looking at the math,
I mean, okay,I don't really love this business.
The space, it's not something that I feellike I'm real passionate about.
I really wanted to get back intoto software.
Do I really want to committo weathering this period

(40:58):
and then trying to rebuild this?
Or is this time where I need to makea decision to do something different
and when I looked at that sheetwhere the jobs had fallen off,
I did the quick math on.
I was like, okay, I know right nowthat if I start winding things down,
I can make sure all my investorsget every penny back.
I get all my money back,
we get a little bit of return on thatand we move on to fight another day.

(41:22):
Right.
And so it was hard, but I justI decided to do that.
Right.
I decide I'm going to start oneand sing down about that same time
I had a relationship.
This guy that I knew reached out to meand he was in the in the industry.
I think he may have even beena client of mine.
Then I'd signed the software company,and he was working with a firm
to do a roll upwhere they were acquiring companies,

(41:44):
and we had this certificationthat we invest a lot in getting.
At the time, that was pretty valuable.
It was a little bit,a little bit difficult to get.
And he was going to piece together2 or 3 different companies, and
he had a backer that was going to fund itand they were going to combine them.
So we actually got the businessunder contract to sell.
So I was thinking about winding it downand then came in an opportunity

(42:06):
to actually sell the business.
That's a very generous use of the word.
So we're going to sell it.
And we went through all the due
diligence and everything got downto like within a day or two of the deal's
supposed closing and another businessthat was one of them
that they were going to becombining together got flagged
for some kind of Medicarelike billing stuff or something.

(42:27):
And so that pulled the plug on that.
And it kind of torpedoed the whole dealat the very last second.
So we ended upnot really even selling that business,
just writing ituntil we kind of winded it down.
And that actually, funny enough, kind ofled into the next like phase for me.
I was subletting the officeand I forget where I post it,

(42:49):
but maybe Craigslist or somethinglike that to sublet the office space.
And the guy reached out to meand, wanted to come look at the space.
And we met. And they were.
This was around the timethat the Apple App Store was kind of new.
And, you know, mobileapps was kind of like a big new thing.
And these guys came to look at the officeand they had a business
that built custom mobile apps and,you know, talked to them.

(43:12):
They were growing like crazy.
And so we got to just talking about like,well, why are you subletting the office?
What do you guys do?
And just kind of had a longconversation and turned into,
maybe we should look at you
joining us and,you know, becoming a partner or something.
Right.And so we had a bunch of conversation.
So I ended up like deciding to join them.

(43:32):
And got a stake in the businessand came on to kind of focus
more on like, operationsand that kind of thing.
And that's where I really gotthe crash course and custom development.
I mean, that was a wild time.
Looking back at, I think when
that the time I joined, though,I think we probably had 100 different
fixed fee software projectsgoing simultaneously

(43:55):
with barely any systemsor leadership in place.
It was wild.
It was a really interesting time.
Yeah.
And real quick, I mean, you've beenin the technology space
for the overwhelmingmajority of your career.
You're not a developer yourself, are you?
I'm not.
You know,I'm really more from the sell side, right?

(44:15):
I think I probably relatemore to the product side of it
within like product development.
Like I'm not an engineer.
I don't write code.
I have become pretty technicalover the years though.
So I think I've had several people,you know, that first was like, you know,
you say you're not technical, Jeff,but you're really technical.
I'm technical in the sense of understandthe technology and understand

(44:36):
and kind of the fundamentals
of different pieces of it,how it works and how to build products.
But if you sat me down at a computerand I had to write code, I'd be useless.
Yeah. So
how did you piece together all the like?
You said that systems were not there.
Was that a big part of your jobwas getting systems in place?
It was. I mean, that period there.

(44:58):
That's a great example of what it lookslike when you completely redline
the engine on growth,like just out of control, right?
I mean, it was miserable to be honest,for a while because like 8000 hour weeks.
Totally. Yeah.
I mean, at the officeall day long, deep into the night,
lots of fires just every day.

(45:18):
Fires everywhere. Right.
And what happened,you know, looking back, like
there's just tons of fundamental flaw.
There was no systems and processes.And you grow so fast.
So you do lots of things wrong.
And then they all compoundon top of each other.
So for example, no great processes
for scoping and understanding the effortfor something.
Right.

(45:38):
And so you're you'reestimations are flawed.
And then you do a fixed feecontract on it.
And then you go sign as many of thoseas what happened then.
And they all stack up.
And then you don't have delivery structureand leadership and processes in place.
So you have delivery problems.
And so it just
it was like almost every area ofthe business was on fire at the same time.

(46:01):
And so it was just sort of a slow,painful process of navigating it
and working on one bed at a timethroughout the day.
Man, what kind of systems like whatwere the things that you actually plugged
in to? Kind of right. The ship?
I mean, it wasn't just me, right?
So it was definitely a team effortto try to work through it.
But I think looking back, like a lot of itstarted with the numbers,

(46:25):
like getting clear on numbers likeour tracking, like where's effort going?
What are we actually spendinglike our time on by project,
getting our finances right,because we were growing so fast
that we were trying to raise some fundingto help, like kind of fuel that.
But when you don't have good books,you can't talk
to anybody about putting moneyin, you know, and you can't,

(46:45):
you know,at that time we were looking at all
kinds of different optionsfor how to satisfy that.
But when you don't have financesthat are books are.
When I first got there,the finances were in Excel sheets.
Oh, wow.
It wasn'teven in like QuickBooks or anything.
So getting QuickBooks
implemented and getting a timetracking system implemented and actually
putting logging effort towards thingsso you can see where it's at.

(47:08):
I spent a lot of time front line with justcustomers that were upset, right?
Trying to figure outlike where things at and
what was committedand how do we make it right.
And, you know,I think even a lot of those customers
that I dealt with, rightwhen I kind of got involved,
you know, thatmaybe it wasn't a bad situation I built.
What I'm proud of isI feel like for the most part,

(47:29):
most of them felt likeeven if it's a bad situation
and maybe they didn'tlike what was happening,
then they felt like I dealt with themin a respectable way.
Right.
And I think that that'sanother big lesson for me is that
especially in custom software,because it's it's kind of rife with
potential budget overruns and timelinesand just unexpected issues
and that kind of thing.
And some of my best customerrelationships are with clients

(47:53):
that the projects
or the initial engagements didn'tgo very smooth, like there was a problem,
but how I responded to itand made it right, even at my detriment
a lot of times,like forged these relationships
that there's trust where theythey know what to expect from me.
Yeah, look, nobody's perfect.
And I think it's not a matter of if,but when you screw something up

(48:18):
for a customer. Right.
And man, it's all about how you handle it.
It is.
And you can completely turn things aroundby the way that you handle it
and come out the other sidewith a better relationship.
Yeah.
After you screw up,if you handle it right.
Exactly, exactly.
And you know, that doesn't mean

(48:38):
just talkingnice to people or listening to them.
I mean, sometimesyou have to put skin in the game.
You know, I can rememberthis was probably the third ish
year of the business,one of my early team members.
I could hear them in the other roomon the phone, and I couldn't tell
what was going on, but it sounded likethe conversation was kind of heated.

(48:59):
Yeah, and when he got done with that call,I wouldn't talk to him like,
hey man, what's going on?
He's like, well, they're upset about thisand this and this and this.
I called the CEO of that company
and I said, hey, forget the money,forget everything.
What do we needto do to turn things around?
How can we make this right? Right.

(49:19):
His demeanor completely changed.
He was floored that it was the,you know, starting with forget the money.
And it was straight intohow do we get things back on track.
He's actually become a friend.
We get together here and there for drinksand he's gone on
to to do something else now.
And you know, we've kept up through that.
And so it's amazingwhat happens when you do the right thing

(49:42):
and you handle those situationswell. Yeah.
You got to play the long gamelike relationships can't be short game.
And you know, sometimes that meansyou take it on the chin in the short term.
But you play the long game.
And I think one of the principlesthat I really try to keep in mind is just
how would I want to be treatedif the roles were reversed,

(50:03):
like treat other peoplethe way that you want to be treated,
and you'd be amazed how simple and basicof a concept that sounds.
But you know, when you do that, like that,I think that's a big difference
maker, especially in a relationshiptype of business, without a doubt.
And we operate exactly like that.
We talk about that all all the time.
We talk about the Golden Rule. Yeah.

(50:23):
Well what was the jumping offpoint for you to leave there
and go intowhat would become anyway? Yeah.
So I was with that companyfor about five years and
you know, I can't exactly rememberwhat was the catalyst.
I think I just want to move on.
I think I've just been there five years,and it was just
just getting the feelingthat it's time to do something different.

(50:45):
I was a minority partner, so I didn'treally have control over the business,
and there wasn't a big enough stakewhere I kind of felt
like it was going to continueto be a good use of my time.
There was another one of thosethat I look back,
and I think the learning that I took fromit was extremely valuable.
So I wouldn't say that, you know,I wouldn't do that again necessarily, but

(51:06):
but definitely the financial payoffthat I was expecting during
that period of timewasn't what I had hoped it would be.
Right.
So if I have to take itin the form of learning, I'll take it.
And that's what I did.
At that point, I just knew,I want to do something different.
This isn't really what I thinkI'm I'm being led to do.
So I set a time frame and,you know, for being out of that business

(51:28):
and negotiated, you know, sellingthe stake that I had in it back to them.
And I wasn't quite surewhat I was going to do.
I think there was a big part of methat was thinking, maybe I will go back to
more of a sales role, go to a softwarecompany and focus on sales.
I knew that I could do that really well,and that could be
a pretty good,like path for a lot of different reasons.

(51:51):
But I had a lot of previous clientsand partners and people kind of paying me
like, hey, like you're going to gostart your own shop, right?
And so I started kind of thinkingabout that path
and like, okay, what would this look likeif I started on my own?
And, and aroundthat time I had reconnected
with a contact of minethat I'd met years before.

(52:13):
We happened to sit next to each otherat a event
that a mutual friend had hosted,and we got to talking about,
like what I was up toand kind of search for the next thing.
And he was kind ofin the space with a business that was more
focused on it outsourcing,dedicated teams, that kind of stuff. And

(52:34):
so we start having conversationsabout like, you know,
what would it look like if we partnered upand did something together?
And I think coming out of that sortof like
pure time, that kind of calllike the mobile app Gold rush days.
Right?
One of the big lessons that or the thingsthat was big on my mind at the time was,
you know, mobile is big, butin the big scheme of things, it's not big.

(52:55):
And sort of the software
world, it's sort of a line itemas part of a bigger solution.
Right.
So we were very focused on the front endmobile apps.
Right.
And and this is all B2B, it's not B2C.
That was a mix there.
That was all big mix.
Some of it was B2C, some was B2B.
I mean, it was all industries.
It was all over the place. Right?

(53:15):
But the the common thread was thatit was pretty much all native
mobile applications,iPhone and iPad apps and Android apps and
so I think as I was trying to think aboutwhat to do next, I knew that
I didn't want to focus just on mobile,even though that's where I had
a lot of expertise at that pointand opportunities, quite frankly.
But what we started to talk about was,okay, if we did something together,

(53:38):
how can we be sort of a provider for,
you know, whateveris the emerging technology, right.
And so then we started thinking about likeis should it be specific?
Everybody's talking about AI.
Should we do something focused on AIor should it be IoT
or like all these things, you know, aroundthat time that were kind of starting
to get a lot of buzzand what we sort of landed on is that

(54:02):
what we wanted todo was be more of an innovation partner.
That whatever the type of technologywithin sort of the digital product
space was,we were sort of positioned to help clients
with whatever is kind of leading edgeand real quick, just for another kind of
frame of reference.
Timewise,this is like 2016 ish somewhere in there.

(54:22):
And this was so let's see,it was about eight years ago.
Yeah. So yeah the 2016 okay. Yeah.
And so we decided to partner upand start innovate together.
That was eight years ago.
And the goal being that we were goingto be focused on helping clients
with digital product development,but focused on sort of being an innovation

(54:42):
studio. Right.
What's the story behind the name anyway?
Good question.
So the name was hard around that time
when we decided to start that business,we were brainstorming names and we were
actually kind of struggling with it a lot,and we knew that we wanted to help.
Clients were driving innovation

(55:03):
and actually get mymy business partner at the time credit.
Like he called me up and he's like,hey, well, let me back up.
We've been playingwith all these different names
like fusion five,I think was something that was in the mix.
There's all these kind of stuff
on the brainstorming boardand we didn't like any of them.
So he called me up and he's like,you know, I was thinking
this could be like a loose playon innovate if we call it no.

(55:25):
Eight.
But, you know, the wordno is like actually
like an urban slangfor like wicked awesome or cool.
And the number eighthas a lot of significance in like,
Asian culture and, you know, like,you know, a lot of the team
work from India and that kind ofsounds like, what about no.
Eightand it's like, we'll see if that domains.
Oh, that's a four letter domain.We should go get that right.

(55:45):
So yeah that'swhat we ended up going with.
So the official story is it'ssort of a loose play on the word innovate.
Secondarilyyou know is means awesome or wicked cool.
Love it.
And so we made a deal and we startedthe business together and moved forward.
And we really struggled to executeon what we had in mind for several years,

(56:08):
like for the first several yearsof the business.
Because, you know, when you start out,
you're trying to keep the lights onand you're trying to feed enough
to hire the people you needand just basically get to the next step.
And so a lot of what we were doing was,was taking opportunity that we could get.
And really all we were for the firstseveral years was kind of a dev shop,

(56:28):
you know,we were building more mobile apps,
like most of the opportunities werefrom relationships that I had or people
that that knew me and kind of knew mefor doing that kind of thing at the time.
And so we started a lot of our earlyprojects were mobile application projects,
and I remember it was my birthdayseveral years and starting this business,
and me and my business partnerhad lunch together,

(56:49):
and we just kind of had this conversationabout like, man,
we're just not doing whatwe said that we wanted to do.
So are we going to like, continuedown this path, or are we going to
try to like, figure out,like how to get back on track again?
And so that was
that was another one of those like,you know, like a self-awareness moment.
I got like Dan Sullivan, he's pretty bigin like the entrepreneurial scene.

(57:10):
But he talks a lot about that.
Like all progress beginswith telling the truth.
And I think that's likejust being honest for ourselves as, like,
neither one of us is happywith the direction we're going right now.
We're not on track.
We're not doing things on alignmentwith like, what our vision was.
And on that note, yeah,what's your partner?
Was your vision aligned

(57:30):
or did he want something differentthan what you wanted?
I think that our vision for the businesswas aligned.
I think what later turned outto be a little bit of a challenge for us
is that our vision individuallyfor what we wanted to do within business,
not that business,but just business in general,
wasn't like totally aligned,not good or bad.

(57:52):
It just we were at longer termgoing towards different things.
And we kind of learned that overtime. Right.
But as far as what the business was,I think that we did have that vision.
But what wasn't,
there'sa difference between having a vision
and like really being clearabout that vision.
So I think what we lacked at that timewas that vividness of
what does it actually look likeif we were on track for our vision.

(58:16):
So we had this stated thing ofwe want to drive innovation
and we want to help clientswith digital innovation.
These words that don't really like, like,what does that mean?
It wasn't till we got clear onwhat does that mean
until like things really startedto like take off for us.
As you saythat the word digital transformation
was really big,like five, six, 7 or 8 years ago,

(58:39):
and you still hear itevery once in a while.
And every time I hear it, I just,I kind of thought
a little bit on the inside like, okay,what does that actually mean?
Right?
And anyway, I'll get off my soapbox there,but I'm totally with you.
Yeah.
You've really got to codifywhat this thing is.
Yeah.
And you got to start with something,right?
I think it's just it's.
Or like if you think about, like, thepeeling and onion kind of like analogy.

(59:02):
Right?
You can start with like a general idea.
But I think that another big lesson for meis that you can start with
this general idea,
but it's really important to scratch itthat until you really get down to like,
okay, what does that actually looklike in practice
and what is it we're actually doing,and what's the value that generates?
And what are the real clientsthat need that.

(59:25):
And just really like grinding on thatuntil you get that
level of clarity is super importantI think.
Yeah, I'mjust kind of I'm projecting here.
And so tell me if I'm way off.
But thinkingback to the staffing business,
I'm going to say it seems likethat was kind of an opportunistic thing.
It wasit was some of the that you were like
you said yourself,you weren't passionate about it.
Right?

(59:45):
It seems like the technologyside of things
is somethingthat you are much more passionate about.
And is it fair to say thatthat's what's kind of kept you, like you
said, peeling the onion. Scratching.What is this? What is this?
Let's let's make it into it istechnology is interesting to me.
Like it's the stuff that I would readabout and be excited about anyway,

(01:00:05):
I think the intersectionwhere I kind of fit in at
figuring out how we take that technologyand use it and solve real problems.
And, you know,one of the one of the phrases we use with
our business is building softwarethat matters, because a lot of software
and a lot of technology that doesit really make an impact can be question.
And I think figuring outwhat those things are that are actually
worthy of sort of pursuingand then helping our clients

(01:00:28):
go after that,I think that's really fun, you know?
And it's always changing,never more rapidly than today.
Are you a gadget guy?
And you're like, hey, I wear a rig.
I like everything,but we're sitting here, right?
We'll geek out later.
So you have this moment of like,yeah, this isn't what we set out to do.
What came after that.

(01:00:49):
You know,it was a little bit slower after that.
I think that after
we kind of acknowledged that to each otherthat just we're not on track.
This isn't funeven it was something we talked about.
This just isn't fun.
And was it not funbecause things weren't going
well or because your vision wasn'tbeing achieved?
That it was more that,I mean, we were doing okay.
We weren't like killing itor anything at that point, right?

(01:01:11):
Yeah, we were doing okay.
But I think it's more of what was goodis that both of us were uncomfortable
with that.
Right?
It'd be pretty easy to go, well,can we make some money doing this?
Can we muddle along,you know, down this path?
Maybe.
But I think that what was good
is that both of us were like, well,this isn't what we envisioned.
This isn't anything special in our mind.

(01:01:33):
And that's not very excitingto spend this much effort on.
And so it didn't, you know,
I don't think that it like, clickedand everything just shifted suddenly.
It took a while to continue to tryto figure out what does that look like.
And I think for us,a lot of that started to come together,
you know, over the yearswe started making steps towards it,

(01:01:54):
but where it really where I thinkit really like broke through for us
was probably early in Covid when we,
you know,everybody's remote and everything.
And we did a couple of engagementswith clients where
we didn't jump right into trying to build a product.
We proposed somethingthat was a little bit more exploratory,

(01:02:14):
right where we broughtin a couple of different team
members to help do thingsthat we really hadn't done before.
I think we tried to be more specificabout this.
So, for instance, one of the conceptsthat we talked about a lot around that
time was everybody's talking about designthinking like, what is design thinking?
We need to do designthinking for our client.
I had no idea what that even met.
You know,either one of those terms and with.

(01:02:34):
Yeah, I didn't even know what that meant.
And, you know,I even had some clients that we'd
done some work with before and like, hey,do you guys do this stuff?
And at that point it's funny.
Now, looking back, how cluelessI was about like what that actually meant,
considering it's such an important partof what we do today for our customers,
and how much of a like, like evangelistI am for that kind of stuff now,

(01:02:56):
because so we were talking aboutlike we needed to design, thinking that
that could be a partof this innovation process,
but not knowing what the right typeof resources look like for that.
What does that process look like?How do you sell that to a client?
You know, that kind of stuff?We hadn't quite figured that out.
And so we did an engagement with a clientand we
we had a couple of resourcesthat we started working with on our team.

(01:03:17):
So just build out like a proposalfor them.
On doing this work upfront.
That really is is intended to get clarity.
So sort of the same conceptwe're talking about saying
about getting really clear onwhat is your vision.
You know,I mean, it sort of in the real world,
that's sort of whatwe've packaged up into this product.
And we ended up,you know, naming it the Innovation Lab.

(01:03:39):
And that's a big partof what it aims to do
is take this general visionand like, really make it look tangible
because now we know who's it for,what problem does it solve?
Why do people care about this?
Why is it going to stand out?
How much is it goingto cost to actually build it?
What kind of team do I need?
Like all of those questionsthat you don't really know
when you're kind of talking about,like the concept.

(01:04:01):
Right.
And so around that time we started doinga couple of these engagements
and then we started to figure out like,okay, like now we can,
we can better define like whattypes of deliverables do we provide
and what's the right type of clientfor this and what do we call it.
And all these thingsstarted to kind of come together
after we did a couple of those.
And then we started working with thisconsultant that was mainly for marketing

(01:04:25):
and lead gen.
That kind of thing is an externalthis external. Yeah.
And I'll give you a shout out.That's okay. Yeah.
A company called Nine Day Pipelineand we got a lot of value out of it
for what we thought we would get.
But a lot of these exercisesat the very beginning of the process
where we had to sort of dig through,
what kind of customershave we worked with before?

(01:04:48):
What are our capabilitiesin this different areas?
And you sort of go through this
like scoring systemthat's they had this really cool matrix.
And what was really neat aboutit was after doing that, it
got a lot more clear to us onwho really is our target ideal client.
What is itthat we really like provide as a value,
and what is sort of aa differentiator for us?

(01:05:09):
And our space is pretty crowded.
There's a lot of lookalikesand it's hard to kind of stand out.
And I thinkwhen we went through that process,
when we really did the hard workto get super clear on who do we really do
the best job at helping,where's our value prop most compelling?
And we started to focus on that and forgetabout the other stuff that also had,

(01:05:30):
man, the conversations and thingsthat we start having clients changed.
And then once we put a productname around the service offering
and we knew how to present that to clientsso that they were really problem aware,
like they knew what the problem wasthat was out there
that maybe they didn't really understandbefore.
It's like the lights went on, you know,the conversations with prospective clients

(01:05:51):
changed, and I felt like we really startedto find our way at that point.
So I'm going to kind of paraphrasewhen you started doing this kind of work,
there wasn't like a templatethat you could just follow.
You had to kind of take a guessand then just iterate on it.
What were the biggest iterationsthat you guys went through?
Quite a few.
So we do this upfront work,and then usually what will happen

(01:06:14):
is our clients will want us to build itfor them in most cases.
And I think one of the biggestchanges that we had is
earlyon, the lab was pretty self-contained,
and then we handed itover to the delivery team to go build it.
And we found problems with that
because we underestimated
how hard it would be to like kind ofthrow it over the fence to the other team.

(01:06:37):
And so I think we had to makesome adjustments to our process of like,
how do we sort of pullsome of these people
that would be involved in the buildingforward into that front end process
and extend some of these people
that are involved in the front end processforward into the execution phase.
So there's more continuity there.
That was a big change.
I think we had to play around a lotwith pricing and figure out like,

(01:06:59):
what's the right way to price this,to really kind of meet the need
mean pricing is somethingthat it's come up a lot on the podcast.
I think pricingis one of the hardest things.
So hard.
Have you all like,do you feel like you've got it dialed in,
totally figured out? No,
I thinkwe're in a good place with it right now.
We've had a few differentiterations of it,

(01:07:21):
and I think for us, understandingwhere does it fit in with
our overall strategyfor working with customers
and really understanding where they areand kind of their like buyer's
journeymade a big difference for us, right?
I think you have to keep that in mind oflike putting yourself in the customer's
shoes and understandinghow are they looking at my offer?

(01:07:43):
Like, for instance, what are they thinkingwhen they see this proposal?
What other alternative iswhere they potentially consider
other than looking at us?
If they didn't work with us,what else would they do?
Like,I think that sort of empathetic approach
to looking at pricing can help you.
A lot of times
because you goget into your customer's shoes
and then look at itfrom their side of the table.
And that's been a really good exercise.

(01:08:04):
I think just listening to people, I mean,gosh, this sounds so simple, right?
But just listen to people, you know,and ask questions and get that feedback.
And I think it's just really importantto make sure that, like at whatever
price level you're doingand whatever your offer is
at that price level,
that your customers walk away feeling thatthey're getting good value for that,

(01:08:25):
whether it's a big price tag,small price tag,
big deliverable, small dollar of what it
but like, do they feel like they'rethey're really getting value out of that.
That's really important.
And listening for that kind of indicator
from clients can be a good guideon setting pricing, I think.
Yeah.
Well getting a little bit closer to today,
you went through kind of another iterationor major change in the business.

(01:08:48):
Talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah, I think so.
You know, the most recent kind of big stepwas, as I mentioned
when we first started in oh eight,
you know, I did that togetherwith a business partner, and we did a lot
of really good things together.
And I think both of usbenefited from that, that sort of journey
that we took together.
And but,you know, as the years went by again,

(01:09:09):
we start looking at where are we headedand what are we doing right now.
And, and I think that both of usjust again,
kind of being honest, like,is this path that we're on aligned
for both of us and probably,you know, middle part of last year.
So we started havingsome of those discussions and just trying
to authentically work through like,hey, is this working for both of us?

(01:09:31):
Or we both go to the same placeand I think it became clear
that we just had different visions,you know, for where we were going
and where this business fitsinto each of our individual goals.
And path that we're trying to follow.
And, you know, the truthkind of emerged there.
It's like, hey, like,
I don't think that we're both alignedon where we're trying to go necessarily.

(01:09:52):
And then then the next question is like,okay, well, what do we do?
What do we do? Right.And that wasn't easy.
I'm really proudof where we ended up with that.
That could have beena really messy situation.
You know, a lot of times
for people when they're having to sort offigure out how to get out of partnership
or go different ways, that kind of thing.
And, you know,I think we navigated that really well and

(01:10:14):
we ended up in a spot, both of us,that I think we probably both
feel pretty good about.
And so the result was,you know, what we ended up having to do
is, was figure out a way to sort ofdivide up the business and do that
in a way that we could both live with itand feel good on the other side of it.
And so we did that.
And so after kind of reworkinga few things and, you know,

(01:10:34):
now, like the brand kind of stayed with meand we continue on that path and,
you know, largely our visionand our mission for like how we what we do
and who we target,that kind of stuff is still largely kind
of the same as it waswith some just sort of adjustments.
And I think that will continueto evolve over time.
But it's kind of been a cool new journeyfor me.

(01:10:55):
It's really been the first time everand sort of the entrepreneurship world
where I've been sort ofthe only like owner of the business.
And so, you know, I've done a quitea few things that I think, you know,
it's been good for me, like just in termsof being able to make decisions quickly.
I think it's important to have goodadvisors.
That's been really, really valuable to meis make sure I'm surrounding myself

(01:11:17):
with people who will give me hard truthssometimes
and the right type of encouragement,the right type of questioning sometimes.
And I think, that share a lot of sort
of the similar worldviews and valuesthat's been something.
And, and then just sort ofwhat's been kind of interesting for me
is that I can sort of steer the businessto be a little bit more of a closer

(01:11:42):
reflection of sort of my personal valuesand who I want to be as a person.
And I think in the pastwhen I've had partners in businesses,
I really sort of firewalledthat off, right?
Like the business is separatethen sort of maybe my like personal values
and I kind of feel anotherdegree of freedom now where there doesn't
really need to be much of a distinction,like the way that I do.

(01:12:02):
The business doesn'thave to be like any distinction, different
than how I choose to do my personal valuesand beliefs right?
But yeah, you said it,but I want to kind of double down on this.
One of the thingsthat was going through my mind was,
okay, you no longer have a partner.
You've had partners in other ventures.

(01:12:23):
Has it been burdensome to carry the loadon your own, or has it been more freeing?
And it sounds like it'smore of the latter?
Yes, it's more of the latter.
For me,I think one, I'm very fortunate to have
some really good members of the teamthat are terrific at what they do.
Right.
And I think that I'm continuing to buildmy skill set as an entrepreneur.

(01:12:45):
Right.
I think and a big part of that for me is
maybe slow down some and, you know, like,
you know, the saying like like slow assteady, steady as fast, I've really become
I've really grown to appreciate thatsaying a lot, because I do think
there's a lot of truth in that.
Is that, like sometimes taking ontoo much stuff creates a lot of chaos,

(01:13:05):
and then you just sort of spend more timefixing things or that kind of stuff.
And so there'sa lot of different philosophies on that.
Some people are like,
go really, really fast, break things fast,make change that kind of stuff.
I don't know, that worksgreat for me personally.
I do a little bit better.
I've been a little bitmore deliberate, intentional and smooth,
and that'swhat has sort of worked for me better.

(01:13:26):
But, you know,I think I have quite a few friends
that are entrepreneurs, and that'sa good group to like, lean on a lot.
And then, you know, having like I said,I mentioned,
you know, several advisors and then,you know, we've talked a little bit
about like strategic coach programthat's been really useful to me as well.
So I think you got to havethe right support system around it.
But having a good teammakes all the difference.

(01:13:47):
It's interesting, as we've interviewedpeople over the last couple of years,
individual entrepreneurs have oftensaid they wish they had a partner.
They wish they had a co-founder.
Other people that have had that have said,no, I think I would have rather done it
on my own.
I don't think that one is rightand the other is wrong.
But maybe for people who are listeningand they're thinking

(01:14:08):
about taking on a partner, what advicewould you give them about that?
I think getting really clear on thingsbefore
you get into the partnership,it sounds really obvious, right?
But like getting things downin a very clear agreement on
what is each partnerbringing to the relationship
and how does that tie to sharing

(01:14:31):
and thethe benefit of what is getting built?
I think being very clear about thatupfront is super important.
I think that makes surethat those things complement
and you're not like duplicating like skillsets like the.
I think the goal of the partnership
is that someone should bring somethingthat the other person doesn't have.
There needs to be this sort of puzzlefitting process there, I think.

(01:14:53):
Right.
And I think generally making surethere's a lot of alignment on big things.
I mean, much like even a marriage, right?
Like if I want to marry somebodythat has a similar worldview
and similar sort of values systemand sees things in a similar light,
not that any of them are good or bador better or worse or anything like that.
It's just that

(01:15:14):
those are really fundamentalto like working together really closely.
And if you don't have alignmenton some of those things,
it's going to be really hardto make that work.
And so I think someone that you approach
things with a similar like view is big.
Trust is a huge one. Right.
And I think somebody that you likebeing around, it's really important to

(01:15:36):
like do you feel comfortablewhen you're around them.
Do you feel like do you like it?
Do you feel energizedif your energy level goes up?
The more that you engage with that person?
I think that can be a good indicator.
You need to listen to your gutmore than anything.
Like, yeah, that's one I actually thatthat's one I would stress a lot.
Like there's so many timesI look back over the years when my gut

(01:15:59):
was sort of indicating something to me,and I like override that with my mind.
And I look back and like my gut was right.
You talked earlierabout being data driven.
Yeah. You want to find the facts.
And so man does does that like createsome internal of you better believe it.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think the other onethat that complicates it is
I mean I really do think I'm an optimist.

(01:16:20):
Like I try to give the benefit ofthe doubt and believe in the best about,
you know, people on the teamand who are working on whatever.
Right.
And, and I think that the gutis an amazing indicator for things.
And at the very minimum,I think it's important
that if you feel somethingthat just doesn't feel right, then
spending some time to reflect on thatand people do that in different ways.

(01:16:43):
Prayers.One way to do it. Other people meditate.
Like I think figuring out a way to likejust listen to that
closer could servepeople really well. Yeah,
right.
You and your business partner, you had asounds like a very amicable split.
Yeah.
And what I'm gathering from that is
there were things that the company didthat they took and are now doing,

(01:17:07):
and there are things that you are
probably now doing that you weren't doingbefore that you wanted to.
What does the company look like today?
So I think part of what we had to doafter we,
we made the transition was sothe partner in the business
had another business,that there was some overlap operationally.
And so after the split,a lot of those things

(01:17:29):
that were being coveredbecause that overlap were no longer there.
Right.
And so that was part of what I've workedon this year is figuring out like,
where are those gaps and what's our planfor shoring all that stuff up.
And so
I'm a big fan
of remote work, so pretty mucheverybody works remote.
I'm a huge fan of utilizing

(01:17:49):
talent in even fractional roles.
So that's somethingthat's a little bit different
over the last couple of years, isthat people think about hiring full time
employees all the time,and that's terrific.
But there's also a lot that you can doby leveraging part time or contract
or freelance resources,
that I think it's a lot easier to do todaythan it used to be.

(01:18:11):
And so for a lot of the stuffthat we do, we
and when I say remote,we're talking about globally remote.
We have to build some other capabilities
in-house, like recruitmentand really kind of talent.
Identificationhas been a big focus for us.
So that was a capability we didn't havethat we had to really build out.
And I think we've done a great job on thatthis year, because

(01:18:32):
we've really built a processthat's designed around
funding people that as humans,we think aligned with,
like our values as a business,but then also have a good skill set
and it can be trusted to, you know, reallylike help us like do excellent work.
And so we really had to kind of pluga lot of those holes.
And we,we kind of hire all over the place.

(01:18:53):
I just hired a bookkeeperin the Philippines.
It's the first one.
I've hired someone from thatregion before, and that's working out
fantastic for us right now.
And so that's kind of a
a new area where we've never had anybodyworking there before.
And, so just kind of being openglobally to
where can we getthe best person that fits the need?
And that flexibility has allowed us to,

(01:19:16):
you know, really grow pretty efficientlygoing back to the work itself.
So you help companiesbring ideas for software to life.
What do you thinkthe biggest misconception is, or their
common misconceptions that your customerscome into the endeavor with that,
if people thought through, thingsmight go better for them?

(01:19:36):
Yeah, I think there's kindof two that come to mind.
One is a really common mistake.
People think that they know enoughto go ahead and start building something,
when very often they shouldn't be buildingsomething yet, right?
Like they have a pretty good visionof what they want to build.
They think they've got it nailed down.
So they go get developersand they start writing code,

(01:19:57):
and then they look up in six monthsor 12 months and they haven't, like,
launched anything.
They've burned all their budgetand they're trying to salvage it,
and they're fighting this sort of sunkcost fallacy now of like,
I've already spent this much money on,I've got a now it's going to be double.
I got, youknow, I'm not going to scrap this.
And so, you know,you see that all the time in the space
where people are so deep into itthat they just keep dumping money.

(01:20:21):
But the problem is that oftentimesthey're not even getting any closer
to getting to that goal.
So I would say the first oneis that they probably need a greater level
of clarity before they actually startbuilding something.
And the other one isthat we're very fortunate today
that it's cheaper and building
software is more accessible to peoplethan it was in the past.

(01:20:44):
Right.That doesn't mean building software cheap.
It just means that there's a lot more costeffective ways
to do it nowfor lots of different reasons.
And so more in the past,like raising big money
and trying to build a big, complicatedplatform, was more of the game.
I think the game now isyou got to focus a whole
lot more on the front endabout what problem

(01:21:06):
we actually solvingand should this be solved,
you know, is it a big enough problemwhere there's really an opportunity
and do we really understand thatwell enough
to de-risk the big investmentof actually building something?
Looking back onyour entrepreneurial journey,
what's the biggest
surprise that you've hadin all these years?

(01:21:28):
Well, the biggest surprise for mepersonally, I think the biggest surprise,
like, if I could gotalk to my like 24 year old self and
is having a less glamorized view
of whatactually being an entrepreneur is versus
what being an entrepreneur is,I think it's a lot harder is I mean,

(01:21:49):
I've heard it on tons of podcasts,like it's way harder than you think.
It's going to take a lot longerthan you think.
Like all that stuff is definitely,definitely true for me.
I think thatso much of the entrepreneurial journey
is about growingas an entrepreneur, right?
Like really, because you have to developall these skill sets.
So you have all this variety.
You have to be decentat such a broad spectrum of things,

(01:22:13):
and there's just no way that everybody'slike really good at that.
I think a lot of really fortunate peoplethat maybe have really early
and fast successis that they have some super skills
that serve really well for doing that.
I haven't happenedto be like that type of person,
so I feel like I've had to focus a lotmore on developing myself as a person
in a lot of different areasand continuing to do that even today.

(01:22:36):
And it really is a journey.
It's not a destination. Well said.
What's next? What's next?
Oh, I've been contemplating thata lot recently.
I think continuing to grow in oh eight isdefinitely my short term focus.
I think that we really fita good need in the market,

(01:22:57):
and we did a little bitdifferently than a lot of folks.
And so I think that there's a waythat we can help a lot of people.
So that's definitely like my big focusprofessionally in the near term,
you know, and I think just continuingto grow the business while also
continuing to expand a lot of freedomin other areas of my life.
I want to be a good entrepreneur,but I want to be a good dad.

(01:23:18):
I want to be a good husband.I want to be a good friend.
Yeah,I want to be a good community member.
I think for me, a lot of what's next is me
continuing to try to grow in those other
complementary areas that that sort ofbring together the entire picture for me.
So a lot of it is professionallyfocused to know a longer term.
I don't think this will be the lastor only business that,

(01:23:40):
that own, you know, in the future.
I think there's other things
that I would be interestedin down the road, but I think that
there's a good opportunity herethat I have right now.
It's great.
All right, last question.
Could you pick up the trumpet today?
You would not enjoy it.
Maybe you would.I could definitely do that.
In fact, funny story bywe went to my mom's house,

(01:24:01):
I think, on holidays last year,
and we were going througha bunch of old stuff, and my daughter
found the trumpet in the closet,
and somehow it made its way in the carand back to our house now.
And so every once in a while,I will hear the trumpet play.
But it's not me. It's one of the kids.
And, there's some practiceto be done there, but,
no, I don't think I could probably playthe trumpet today.

(01:24:24):
Well, Jeff, thanks for coming onand sharing your story.
Now. It's my pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
It's been fun.
that was Jeff Francis, founder of ENO8.
To learn more, visit eno8.com.
That's e n o number 8 .com.

(01:24:49):
If you or a founder you know would liketo be a guest on In The Thick of It.
Email us at intro@founderstory.us.

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#45: Jeff Francis, Founder | ENO8

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#45: Jeff Francis, Founder | ENO8