December 1, 2023 • 29 mins
Welcome to the Use Case Podcast! William Tincup interviews the esteemed Gloria Folaron, CEO and co-founder of Leantime. They discuss Gloria's crazy transition from nursing to becoming a tech entrepreneur, and all the wild experiences in-between. They also dig into challenges and solutions related to project management; particularly the approach Leantime takes to integrate both hard and soft skills. They also touch upon futuristic AI-driven features that LeanTime will be implementing: aiming to enhance work efficiency through task recommendations based on best practices and employee's preference.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Tincup (00:25):
This is William Tincup, and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
We have Gloria on from LeanTime,and we'll be learning about the
business case, so the use casefor why customers and prospects
pick LeanTime.
So let's go ahead and get rightinto it.
Gloria, would you do us a favorand introduce yourself and
LeanTime?
Gloria Folaron (00:45):
Yeah, I'll start with me.
Um, I'm Gloria Fulleron, and I'mthe CEO and one of the founders
of Lean Time, uh, and I have abackground that is a little
unconventional for what I'mdoing.
Uh, my background andundergraduate degree is in
nursing, and I started my careerlife as an emergency room nurse,
(01:07):
having done pediatrics research,uh, tons of different things.
And at some point I realizedthat I was seeing problems that
I couldn't fix on a 12 hourfloor shift as a nurse.
Right.
But I did realize that businessand tech could solve the things
(01:28):
that I was, I was seeing.
Yes.
Uh, and at that time, I didn'tknow, I didn't never connected
that when I was in nursing, Iwas solving problems and I've
always been a problem solver.
So I ended up at a tech startupweekend.
And from that experience startedmy first health tech company.
William Tincup (01:47):
Oh my goodness.
And what did it, what did it do?
What was the problem that it wassolving?
So,
Gloria Folaron (01:53):
I was in the pediatric ER at the time, and at
that time, I was seeing, um,little newborn babies in the
middle of flu season coming intothe ER at 2 a.
m., 3 days, 5 days old, andusually for things that were
completely normal.
So, uh, one of the ones thatstands out to me, you can
(02:13):
probably hear that in thebackground.
No, you're good.
Uh, one of the things that Isaw, uh, was that, They were
coming in for those completelynormal things, and babies up
until they're two months oldhave zero immune system.
So there was a disconnecthappening between what is normal
and those parents getting thateducation that they needed and
(02:39):
With their providers, and Ididn't know where it was
happening, but what I realizedwas that having a video
conference or access to a healthcare provider from your phone or
your computer could then helpyou get answers that you need
without putting your baby atrisk.
So I had video my doc forpediatrics before telemedicine
(03:01):
was even, um, thought of or evenpaid for.
Uh, at the time that we werebuilding this, the, uh, laws
were that insurance only had topay for telemedicine if you
lived 50 miles away from anyfacility, very rural.
William Tincup (03:21):
And so, and then, and then, uh, cause so
that played out, however itplayed out, how did you, how did
you get to lean town?
Gloria Folaron (03:29):
So my experience in that is some of what's gone
into lean time.
So two years ago, I wasdiagnosed with ADHD and at the
time I didn't know.
That there were lots of thingsin my entire life that would go
along with that diagnosis, um,that I was I was self treating.
(03:51):
So, uh, as part of our healthtech startup, we were using the
lean canvas lean methodologiesto validate our business idea.
Well, the Lean StartupPrinciples are print out a big
poster board and put stickynotes all over it.
I hope you're laughing becauseADHD plus sticky
William Tincup (04:12):
notes.
I am.
I am.
I am for all the reasons thatyou said.
Yes.
Yes.
Gloria Folaron (04:18):
Yep.
So I never had the ability toeasily connect what I was doing
with where I wanted to be.
And so we, um, Marcel, mytechnical co founder had already
had this code, the original codebase in his back pocket.
And so we said, well, let's justput the Lean Canvas in it.
(04:42):
And the very, very firstprimitive version of LeanTime
was born to help us navigate myown challenges.
As we've grown into it, one ofthe other struggles that I
experienced was going fromnursing into the business world.
It hurt my head.
(05:02):
And I say that because thebusiness world was explaining
concepts that Didn't necessarilyneed their own word.
And so I was just all the timepeople were using business
language and I felt foreign andout of place, not understanding
(05:23):
that word.
And then somebody would explainthe concept to me.
And I'm like, there's anotherword for that.
William Tincup (05:29):
And the Latin root of that word is, yeah, I
could, I could see that.
And, and, you know, some ofthat, even in, once you get into
industries and not even justbusiness, but you start getting
into these old nuanceindustries, there's, there's
this lingo within theindustries.
That's also not made up words,just not understanding that
(05:52):
there's other concepts or otherwords that.
That already that already cancover that.
It's like, it's like, there'ssome type of need to come up a
new way to say the same thingthat we've been saying for the
last 200 years.
So I get that.
Gloria Folaron (06:07):
So, 1 of the things for me in that is that I
really see that.
All of these concepts often haveelements of the same truth, but
sometimes with a spin on it,that really changes everything.
And so, there's a, um, a bookcalled Range, um, Why
Generalists.
(06:28):
Succeed in a specialist world, Ithink is the title, and one of
the things that that talks aboutis it's the variety of
experiences that have, that youhave that give you the ability
to see and apply concepts thatyou may not have thought were
related to make something
William Tincup (06:46):
better.
100%.
I can, I can speak to thatwithout reading the book.
I know, if I write it down, I'lldefinitely look it up.
My background, I have a B.
A.
in Art History, M.
A.
in American Indian Studies, andM.
B.
A.
And most people think that I usemy M.
B.
A.
And I don't.
I use my Art History degree.
(07:09):
More than I use far.
I mean, not even, it's not evena close race.
I use it far more, uh, becauseit's the history of the world
that that particular degree isa, it's the history of the world
told through the, the lens of,of art.
And so like I can talk tosomebody and, and talk to'em
about history and talk to'emabout art, talk to'em about all
(07:31):
kinds of different things.
It's just, it's fascinating.
It's like I'm not regurgitating.
Porter's strategy model, like,you know, I need to know, I
personally, I don't mind knowingthose things.
However, that's notconversationally.
That's not what, you know, whenI'm talking to practitioners,
uh, in HR or recruiting, that'snot what they're, that's not,
(07:54):
uh, that's not how they talk.
When I talk to vendors, that'snot how they talk.
So it's like.
You know, I, I totally get it.
I absolutely makes sense to me.
So the technology right now,lean time, uh, as it's, as it is
current form.
And I'll preface this by saying,boy, I hate software categories.
(08:14):
I absolutely despise them, andthe reason for that is many
software plays defycategorization.
But I also know that HR and alot of budgets are built in
Excel or Google Sheets, sothere's a, there's a row and a
column.
And so where do peoplegenerally, generally put y'all
(08:36):
in terms of a category?
Gloria Folaron (08:39):
You just touched on a very personal struggle.
William Tincup (08:46):
Thanks, William.
I have a scab and you justripped it right off.
No, I didn't mean to.
Gloria Folaron (08:52):
Dig in, digging the, digging the nail in before
we even get
William Tincup (08:56):
started.
Well, I, I, I hate categories.
So.
You know, you're, if you don't,you know, first of all, if you
don't like them as well, youcan't hate them more than I do,
you just can't.
I despise them because it's justlike, and people come up with
new things, especially now, but,but even before AI, before all
(09:17):
this stuff, it would, it'd be acombination of things that
people are, is that an ATS?
No.
Oh, is it screening?
No.
Is it, well, is it staffing?
Well, it's like these.
Old categories of, of softwareand services that make up these
budgets.
It's like, no, it's none ofthose things.
Here's what it does.
It does this, this, this, this,this, which is kind of a
smattering of five differentthings on your budget.
(09:39):
Like, okay, so, but we are, butwhat do you, what is it?
It's, it's, it's, it's, itsolves this problem.
So how do you solve this problemcurrently?
And when I talk to vendors aboutthis, I'm all, it's kind of a
bit on competition because allthese, it's a trick question.
I'll say, who's your competitor?
And they'll usually point toanother software or software
(10:01):
players.
And I'm like, yeah, that's notyour, your, your competitors is
status quo.
It's them doing it the same waythat they did it yesterday.
That's actually your competitor.
These software, you don't, youdon't have to worry about the
totality of all the softwarevendors that might even think to
do something that you're doingor a piece of what you're doing.
(10:22):
They don't, they don't match thestatus quo.
So anyhow, I'll get back to theoriginal question.
And it can be as rudimentary asit needs to be, but how are they
thinking of you?
How about we go that direction?
Gloria Folaron (10:39):
So we're in a very, we're in an interesting
space, um, and one that if we'reon the topic of categories, I
have watched the industry leadsgo into and create new
categories and new concepts as aform of advertising or even
(11:00):
trying to normalize what exactlytheir product is doing.
Right, right, right.
The thing that they, from, frommy experience and lots and lots
of conversations, um, that I'verealized in all of that time is
that we're in a space ofsomething that people do
naturally.
(11:21):
We naturally have a bias towardsaction.
It's ingrained in terms ofhistory into the roots of our
ancestry.
If there was a lion across fromme, I am going to move.
The thing I don't do naturallyis coordinate a herd of people
(11:43):
to move away from the lion.
And that's, that's where we'reat.
The project management space isour largest definition and where
we get most of our users, uh,but I think I, I tend to call us
more akin to a work managementtool because it's the way we
(12:04):
work and organize the.
Caveat to the project managementtool piece is that project
management, going from waterfallto agile and where we're at now,
which is really often a hybridof the two, what I end up seeing
(12:25):
is that the tools are reallyonly covering half of project
management.
And so to have a successfulproject, you need to have both
soft and hard skills.
The tools that exist right nowreally only focus on the
elements of a hard skill, butit's that soft skill and that
(12:48):
human skill that actuallydecides whether or not a project
is successful.
William Tincup (12:53):
So is the buyer more of HR or has it become more
of a line manager or adepartment, you know, a manager
Like who's, who's the buyer foryou right now?
Or buyers plural
Gloria Folaron (13:08):
being in the project management space on a
team side, we tend to either seeproject managers who are looking
to find a tool that will helptheir non project managers get
in the tool.
William Tincup (13:22):
Oh, interesting.
Gloria Folaron (13:23):
Okay.
So, um, many, a lot of the othertools I've heard over and over
again are overwhelming.
Yeah, they are.
A lot of that, though, isrelated to cognitive load,
right?
So you go into those tools andyou have to really think about
where does my work go?
How does this flow?
How do I need to organize this?
And that's something we'retrying to solve in terms of how
(13:47):
do you get into a tool and justknow where to go,
William Tincup (13:51):
right?
It becomes intuitive.
Um, but also I think that someof the historical project
management tools, there's alsofeature bloat, you know, just,
just, you know, years and yearsand years and years of just
adding more and more and morefeatures.
It's overwhelming.
To a new user, even if they'reskilled now, that's not even,
(14:13):
that's not even dealing withpeople that maybe don't come
from that world, but even peoplethat, that are come from that
world, it's still a bitintimidating because there's
just, again, there's so muchthat you can do with it.
I think that it's not just a UIthing or, or, you know, like,
uh, how do, how do we get peopleto adopt technology?
It's just.
(14:33):
Maybe there's just features thatyou just don't need.
Like they're there, they'rethere because historically maybe
you needed them, but you don'tneed them now.
Like it's, there's a better,better way to do that.
So, um, I like that.
Okay.
Okay.
I get it.
I love that, especially the wayyou framed it up and saying
project managers like this forpeople that are not project
(14:55):
managers or didn't come up thatway, didn't, you know, didn't,
weren't trained that way, etcetera.
And so they've got to be able toget into it and get to their
work as fast as possible andunderstand how to do that.
Gloria Folaron (15:09):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's something we see onall the time is that there's
this moment of overwhelm.
And so when that happens, youfreeze and you just don't go
back into the tool until youabsolutely have to.
And then what ends up happeningis your project manager is
Spending all of their timechasing folks for updates and
(15:30):
having to update all of thethings themselves.
William Tincup (15:32):
Right.
And it becomes kind of a, again,an admin tool where they're
getting all of that data.
It's very inefficient.
And so, and I'm sure there'smistakes that get made or data
that gets pulled in incorrectly,et cetera.
So it's much better to have thepeople that are doing it use an
intuitive system that they canjust put it in themselves.
Gloria Folaron (15:56):
Particularly in a remote slash hybrid world,
that's probably not going to goaway.
Oh, I would
William Tincup (16:03):
hope not.
I hope not.
I hope we, we've, uh, again, Ithink flexibility, I've, I've.
I'm one of those people that Iwant people to just have the
flexibility.
If you want to work in anoffice, go, you know, if that's,
if you want that, that's fine.
But if you don't, if you don'tthrive in an office, there's a
bunch of people just don'tthrive in an office environment
(16:24):
or you work in a differentcountry or whatever.
Like, you know, as long as thejob gets done, why do we care?
I want that to be up to theindividual, not the company.
That's my personal bias, by theway.
Gloria Folaron (16:39):
No, I think you're completely right, but
that, that touches back to, um,and I think you said we could be
honest, that touches back to thepoint of project management or
work management not containingthe soft skills that we need for
projects to be successful.
Right.
So when you don't have yourpeople in the office, You have
(17:01):
to rely on soft skills as amanager, as a leader, to be able
to motivate and get those thingsmoving.
If you don't have them to beginwith, then it's a, it's a bigger
failure point if you, if you areremote.
William Tincup (17:18):
So All right, let's do some by side stuff real
quick.
One is your favorite part.
When you get to show people LeanTime for the first time, what's
your favorite part to show them?
Like when you know you can kindof get a prospect or just
someone that you want to showLean Time to, you know, once you
get to this one place, they'regoing to fall in love with what
(17:39):
you built.
Gloria Folaron (17:43):
I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of how to
phrase this.
William Tincup (17:49):
You know, multiple, usually what people
say is, well, there's fivethings.
It doesn't have to be one thing.
Just, there's an aha moment inevery software demo.
So, and sometimes that's, uh,they can be different, like the,
the person that's giving it canfind, like, this is my favorite
report, or this is my favoriteanalytics, this is my favorite
(18:09):
this, that, and the other, andthe practitioner, this is what
they'll like.
So sometimes they're, they canbe different, but for yourself,
what's your favorite part toshow people?
Gloria Folaron (18:20):
So our long term goal is really that lean time is
more of an experience than anindividual feature.
Uh, so when we're looking atfeature development, we're also
reading up on all of the mostrecent studies around dopamine
and ADHD and how dopaminerelates to motivation.
(18:41):
And how can we extrapolate thatinformation and turn it into a
feature that guides the user tothat dopamine and intrinsic
motivation.
And so we're buildingcollections of features that
when they're used in tandemstart to promote that.
(19:03):
So an example is that dopamineis not secreted when you get to
a goal, it's secreted on thepath to the goal.
Oh, interesting.
So the more, the more weshowcase, hey, look, here's your
progress, and this is whatyou're contributing to, and this
is the purpose and the value youbring, the more the dopamine
goes in your brain and startsspinning circles, and you're
(19:25):
like, no, this feels good.
I like what I'm doing, and Iwant to do more of it.
William Tincup (19:30):
Oh, I love that.
It also kind of explains theletdown once you reach the goal.
Gloria Folaron (19:35):
Exactly.
So there's a huge drop and forsomeone with ADHD, that often
means that's the moment when youstart seeking another spot,
another, um, kick.
Right.
William Tincup (19:47):
That makes a lot of sense.
I love that.
Okay.
Well, see that, that was easy.
So if People are buyingLeanTime, you know, for the
first time and, and again,because it's unique, they've,
they don't have the arsenal ofquestions.
They don't have the literacy of,of questions to then be able to
ask you, should they be askingyou in terms of like buy
(20:10):
questions?
Um, you know, how do they buyLeanTime and how do they ask the
right questions or, or justbetter questions so that they
make better decisions?
Gloria Folaron (20:26):
I think the question is probably more their
own reflection of what are theirgoals in looking for a new tool.
And so, I, I would be happy towalk somebody through that and
that reflection point becauseit's, it's hard to figure out
what that pain point is.
Right.
But the majority of projectfailures, no matter what title
(20:49):
you put on it, can be tied toThe fact that we're humans and
those soft skills of somebodythat wasn't communicating
clearly, we didn't establish ourgoals and that wasn't, um, that
wasn't done and implementedwell, the leadership or the
teams not being motivated,they're all tied to a human
(21:09):
skill or a human element.
And so for lean time.
That's the direction that we'regoing, so if that's what you're
prioritizing, if the people thatyou have in your company are who
you value and you want to buildthem up, then LeanTime is a
(21:30):
great fit for you.
William Tincup (21:32):
Yeah, it's, and again, it's that reflection.
I love the way you, you framethat up.
They have, they have to knowthat they have a problem.
And if not, or at least theymight not be able to articulate
it perfectly, but even justhaving an understanding of, Hey,
something doesn't feel right.
I need, I need it.
I need something that will helpmy team, will actually help my
(21:54):
team reach their goals.
And WorkTech, what are we doingin terms of actually solving
these things?
You see a lot of indexing onskills development.
Right now, a lot of skills basedhiring, a lot of things internal
mobility that are skills basedand soft skills and hard skills
development stuff, which isgreat, but you don't really have
(22:18):
someone that's doing what y'allare doing in terms of, okay,
that, but there's, again, youcan do all that, which you
should, but you still got to getwork done and people, especially
with ADHD, they've got to,they've got to be able to
interact with.
Work and be able to get thingsdone and, and, and again, then
(22:39):
do it in an efficient way sothat they, they feel, again,
they feel like they've actuallyadded value to the company, to
the project, et cetera, but alsoso that the project gets done,
you know, on time, on budget,you know, all the things that
are important in projectmanagement.
So I love it.
I love it.
That's, I mean, first of all, itmakes sense to me.
(23:02):
Um, now what's, uh, what's therest of the year look like for
y'all?
Are you doing more kind of, uh,features and functionality and
development and doing thatstuff?
Are you doing more kind ofgetting out there and doing
awareness and branding and goingto conferences?
Like what, what's just the restof the year look like for you?
Gloria Folaron (23:25):
I have a feeling you've been in the business
space long enough to know thatyou have to do all of those
things at the same time.
Yeah.
There is no escaping that.
I'm really excited about whatwe're working on right now.
Because it's not something thatI've ever seen in the space.
And I'm really excited to seehow it flashes out.
(23:46):
So one of our AI features thatwe're building right now is
Starting the foundation phaseone is AI driven task
recommendations based on bestpractices.
So we take three differentmodels and the AI will take your
top 10 tasks due that week andput them in an order that's
(24:07):
based on those best practices.
William Tincup (24:10):
I like that.
And that can be personalized forthe person.
I mean, best practices,obviously, but then also for
that person and it learns basedon that person.
What works well and what doesn'twork well for that person.
Gloria Folaron (24:23):
Absolutely, but so, I, I think it's not enough.
Yeah, yeah.
So, the next level of that isthat we give users the ability
to rate tasks privately.
So, the employer doesn't seethis, but they can, from a scale
of red angry face emoji tounicorn.
(24:44):
We are allowing people to ratethose tasks and then compiling
that information based on thedescription of that task and the
title and the nature of the taskso we can get a good idea of
what that user loves to do andwhat they don't like to do and
so our next phase from therewould be is to Get to know the
(25:04):
user.
Be able to recommend to theusers who are assigning tasks.
Right.
This is the best person torecommend this to.
William Tincup (25:13):
Yeah, because they love those
Gloria Folaron (25:14):
tasks.
Yeah.
And they're going to get moredone and they're going to get it
more done.
They're going to get it donemore quickly.
Well, it's
William Tincup (25:19):
not arbitrary.
Like the way that we assigntasks right now, it's like we
have a blindfold on and we justthrow tasks out to people and
some of them are successful andsome of them are not successful.
And so if data can give us anidea of who likes those tasks
and maybe who's moreaccomplished or, or, or again.
(25:40):
There's just a better outcomewith the, with people using
those tests.
I also think that there's acomponent, if not now, later
around timing.
of tasks because like the sametask, I might like it if I'm
doing it at eight o'clock in themorning versus hate it if I'm
doing it at four o'clock in theafternoon.
Same task, timing's different.
(26:03):
So again, if something could,would inform me, cause you know,
that's, that's.
I don't know that about myself,so how can the organization know
that about me?
So I think if technology cangive me some guidance as to not
just what do I like, not like,but also the timing, uh, of
those things, I think, uh, Imean, first of all, that's,
(26:25):
that's what we want technologyto do is to inform us and
connect dots that we can't see.
So I love that.
I love where you're all takingit.
That's, that's beautiful.
Absolutely.
I appreciate
Gloria Folaron (26:36):
that.
Um, and you touched on somethingthat we've really talked about.
There's a, um, a mobile appcalled Rise and that, that app,
what it does is it paysattention to when you wake up
and then it uses traditionalcircadian rhythm patterns to
tell you when you should betaking meetings versus when you
need to go take a walk.
(26:58):
And so those are things that, toyour point, like, um, we're
looking for the, in the futureto be able to integrate with.
So that we can do the same thingand know when someone is waking
up versus starting their workand be able to recommend based
on that.
Well, it's all,
William Tincup (27:14):
I mean, you're, you're driving towards the, the
ultimate goal is where peoplethrive.
How they thrive, where theythrive, et cetera.
And it's just been this arcanemodel of like, we're going to
throw Susie and Dan on thisproject and they're going to do
these things.
And cause they were successfulin the last project that has
(27:35):
nothing to do with this newproject.
And it's all happenstance.
It's like, we wonder how someprojects.
We're super successful and someprojects just fail, abject
failures.
It's like, well, because we'renot doing it based on data,
we're doing it based onrandomness, uh, or even worse.
(27:56):
So, uh, I love that y'all arebringing a sophistication to,
you know, if I see, I see just areal lovely sophistication to
being able to making sure thatpeople, they get a better sense
of where they thrive.
And the company gets a bettersense of where they thrive.
So they don't put them inpositions where they're just not
going to thrive.
(28:16):
So satisfaction goes up, moralegoes up, engagement goes up,
retention, retention goes up.
Like people are happier becauseagain, they're not being put in
situations where they're justwere never going to thrive.
Gloria Folaron (28:31):
And then the leaders aren't even more pinched
trying to implement those thingsthemselves.
William Tincup (28:36):
Right, right, right.
I can see that.
Well, Gloria, I could talk toyou all day, but I know you got
like work to do and stuff.
So thank you so much for comingon the podcast.
I love it.
I absolutely love what y'all arebuilding.
Gloria Folaron (28:48):
I appreciate it.
I've enjoyed the conversationand even the nails.
William Tincup (28:55):
Well, and thanks for everyone, uh, for listening
to the show until next time.
Thank you.
This is William Tincup, and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
We have Gloria on from LeanTime,and we'll be learning about the
business case, so the use casefor why customers and prospects
pick LeanTime.
So let's go ahead and get rightinto it.
Gloria, would you do us a favorand introduce yourself and
LeanTime?
Gloria Folaron (00:45):
Yeah, I'll start with me.
Um, I'm Gloria Fulleron, and I'mthe CEO and one of the founders
of Lean Time, uh, and I have abackground that is a little
unconventional for what I'mdoing.
Uh, my background andundergraduate degree is in
nursing, and I started my careerlife as an emergency room nurse,
(01:07):
having done pediatrics research,uh, tons of different things.
And at some point I realizedthat I was seeing problems that
I couldn't fix on a 12 hourfloor shift as a nurse.
Right.
But I did realize that businessand tech could solve the things
(01:28):
that I was, I was seeing.
Yes.
Uh, and at that time, I didn'tknow, I didn't never connected
that when I was in nursing, Iwas solving problems and I've
always been a problem solver.
So I ended up at a tech startupweekend.
And from that experience startedmy first health tech company.
William Tincup (01:47):
Oh my goodness.
And what did it, what did it do?
What was the problem that it wassolving?
So,
Gloria Folaron (01:53):
I was in the pediatric ER at the time, and at
that time, I was seeing, um,little newborn babies in the
middle of flu season coming intothe ER at 2 a.
m., 3 days, 5 days old, andusually for things that were
completely normal.
So, uh, one of the ones thatstands out to me, you can
(02:13):
probably hear that in thebackground.
No, you're good.
Uh, one of the things that Isaw, uh, was that, They were
coming in for those completelynormal things, and babies up
until they're two months oldhave zero immune system.
So there was a disconnecthappening between what is normal
and those parents getting thateducation that they needed and
(02:39):
With their providers, and Ididn't know where it was
happening, but what I realizedwas that having a video
conference or access to a healthcare provider from your phone or
your computer could then helpyou get answers that you need
without putting your baby atrisk.
So I had video my doc forpediatrics before telemedicine
(03:01):
was even, um, thought of or evenpaid for.
Uh, at the time that we werebuilding this, the, uh, laws
were that insurance only had topay for telemedicine if you
lived 50 miles away from anyfacility, very rural.
William Tincup (03:21):
And so, and then, and then, uh, cause so
that played out, however itplayed out, how did you, how did
you get to lean town?
Gloria Folaron (03:29):
So my experience in that is some of what's gone
into lean time.
So two years ago, I wasdiagnosed with ADHD and at the
time I didn't know.
That there were lots of thingsin my entire life that would go
along with that diagnosis, um,that I was I was self treating.
(03:51):
So, uh, as part of our healthtech startup, we were using the
lean canvas lean methodologiesto validate our business idea.
Well, the Lean StartupPrinciples are print out a big
poster board and put stickynotes all over it.
I hope you're laughing becauseADHD plus sticky
William Tincup (04:12):
notes.
I am.
I am.
I am for all the reasons thatyou said.
Yes.
Yes.
Gloria Folaron (04:18):
Yep.
So I never had the ability toeasily connect what I was doing
with where I wanted to be.
And so we, um, Marcel, mytechnical co founder had already
had this code, the original codebase in his back pocket.
And so we said, well, let's justput the Lean Canvas in it.
(04:42):
And the very, very firstprimitive version of LeanTime
was born to help us navigate myown challenges.
As we've grown into it, one ofthe other struggles that I
experienced was going fromnursing into the business world.
It hurt my head.
(05:02):
And I say that because thebusiness world was explaining
concepts that Didn't necessarilyneed their own word.
And so I was just all the timepeople were using business
language and I felt foreign andout of place, not understanding
(05:23):
that word.
And then somebody would explainthe concept to me.
And I'm like, there's anotherword for that.
William Tincup (05:29):
And the Latin root of that word is, yeah, I
could, I could see that.
And, and, you know, some ofthat, even in, once you get into
industries and not even justbusiness, but you start getting
into these old nuanceindustries, there's, there's
this lingo within theindustries.
That's also not made up words,just not understanding that
(05:52):
there's other concepts or otherwords that.
That already that already cancover that.
It's like, it's like, there'ssome type of need to come up a
new way to say the same thingthat we've been saying for the
last 200 years.
So I get that.
Gloria Folaron (06:07):
So, 1 of the things for me in that is that I
really see that.
All of these concepts often haveelements of the same truth, but
sometimes with a spin on it,that really changes everything.
And so, there's a, um, a bookcalled Range, um, Why
Generalists.
(06:28):
Succeed in a specialist world, Ithink is the title, and one of
the things that that talks aboutis it's the variety of
experiences that have, that youhave that give you the ability
to see and apply concepts thatyou may not have thought were
related to make something
William Tincup (06:46):
better.
100%.
I can, I can speak to thatwithout reading the book.
I know, if I write it down, I'lldefinitely look it up.
My background, I have a B.
A.
in Art History, M.
A.
in American Indian Studies, andM.
B.
A.
And most people think that I usemy M.
B.
A.
And I don't.
I use my Art History degree.
(07:09):
More than I use far.
I mean, not even, it's not evena close race.
I use it far more, uh, becauseit's the history of the world
that that particular degree isa, it's the history of the world
told through the, the lens of,of art.
And so like I can talk tosomebody and, and talk to'em
about history and talk to'emabout art, talk to'em about all
(07:31):
kinds of different things.
It's just, it's fascinating.
It's like I'm not regurgitating.
Porter's strategy model, like,you know, I need to know, I
personally, I don't mind knowingthose things.
However, that's notconversationally.
That's not what, you know, whenI'm talking to practitioners,
uh, in HR or recruiting, that'snot what they're, that's not,
(07:54):
uh, that's not how they talk.
When I talk to vendors, that'snot how they talk.
So it's like.
You know, I, I totally get it.
I absolutely makes sense to me.
So the technology right now,lean time, uh, as it's, as it is
current form.
And I'll preface this by saying,boy, I hate software categories.
(08:14):
I absolutely despise them, andthe reason for that is many
software plays defycategorization.
But I also know that HR and alot of budgets are built in
Excel or Google Sheets, sothere's a, there's a row and a
column.
And so where do peoplegenerally, generally put y'all
(08:36):
in terms of a category?
Gloria Folaron (08:39):
You just touched on a very personal struggle.
William Tincup (08:46):
Thanks, William.
I have a scab and you justripped it right off.
No, I didn't mean to.
Gloria Folaron (08:52):
Dig in, digging the, digging the nail in before
we even get
William Tincup (08:56):
started.
Well, I, I, I hate categories.
So.
You know, you're, if you don't,you know, first of all, if you
don't like them as well, youcan't hate them more than I do,
you just can't.
I despise them because it's justlike, and people come up with
new things, especially now, but,but even before AI, before all
(09:17):
this stuff, it would, it'd be acombination of things that
people are, is that an ATS?
No.
Oh, is it screening?
No.
Is it, well, is it staffing?
Well, it's like these.
Old categories of, of softwareand services that make up these
budgets.
It's like, no, it's none ofthose things.
Here's what it does.
It does this, this, this, this,this, which is kind of a
smattering of five differentthings on your budget.
(09:39):
Like, okay, so, but we are, butwhat do you, what is it?
It's, it's, it's, it's, itsolves this problem.
So how do you solve this problemcurrently?
And when I talk to vendors aboutthis, I'm all, it's kind of a
bit on competition because allthese, it's a trick question.
I'll say, who's your competitor?
And they'll usually point toanother software or software
(10:01):
players.
And I'm like, yeah, that's notyour, your, your competitors is
status quo.
It's them doing it the same waythat they did it yesterday.
That's actually your competitor.
These software, you don't, youdon't have to worry about the
totality of all the softwarevendors that might even think to
do something that you're doingor a piece of what you're doing.
(10:22):
They don't, they don't match thestatus quo.
So anyhow, I'll get back to theoriginal question.
And it can be as rudimentary asit needs to be, but how are they
thinking of you?
How about we go that direction?
Gloria Folaron (10:39):
So we're in a very, we're in an interesting
space, um, and one that if we'reon the topic of categories, I
have watched the industry leadsgo into and create new
categories and new concepts as aform of advertising or even
(11:00):
trying to normalize what exactlytheir product is doing.
Right, right, right.
The thing that they, from, frommy experience and lots and lots
of conversations, um, that I'verealized in all of that time is
that we're in a space ofsomething that people do
naturally.
(11:21):
We naturally have a bias towardsaction.
It's ingrained in terms ofhistory into the roots of our
ancestry.
If there was a lion across fromme, I am going to move.
The thing I don't do naturallyis coordinate a herd of people
(11:43):
to move away from the lion.
And that's, that's where we'reat.
The project management space isour largest definition and where
we get most of our users, uh,but I think I, I tend to call us
more akin to a work managementtool because it's the way we
(12:04):
work and organize the.
Caveat to the project managementtool piece is that project
management, going from waterfallto agile and where we're at now,
which is really often a hybridof the two, what I end up seeing
(12:25):
is that the tools are reallyonly covering half of project
management.
And so to have a successfulproject, you need to have both
soft and hard skills.
The tools that exist right nowreally only focus on the
elements of a hard skill, butit's that soft skill and that
(12:48):
human skill that actuallydecides whether or not a project
is successful.
William Tincup (12:53):
So is the buyer more of HR or has it become more
of a line manager or adepartment, you know, a manager
Like who's, who's the buyer foryou right now?
Or buyers plural
Gloria Folaron (13:08):
being in the project management space on a
team side, we tend to either seeproject managers who are looking
to find a tool that will helptheir non project managers get
in the tool.
William Tincup (13:22):
Oh, interesting.
Gloria Folaron (13:23):
Okay.
So, um, many, a lot of the othertools I've heard over and over
again are overwhelming.
Yeah, they are.
A lot of that, though, isrelated to cognitive load,
right?
So you go into those tools andyou have to really think about
where does my work go?
How does this flow?
How do I need to organize this?
And that's something we'retrying to solve in terms of how
(13:47):
do you get into a tool and justknow where to go,
William Tincup (13:51):
right?
It becomes intuitive.
Um, but also I think that someof the historical project
management tools, there's alsofeature bloat, you know, just,
just, you know, years and yearsand years and years of just
adding more and more and morefeatures.
It's overwhelming.
To a new user, even if they'reskilled now, that's not even,
(14:13):
that's not even dealing withpeople that maybe don't come
from that world, but even peoplethat, that are come from that
world, it's still a bitintimidating because there's
just, again, there's so muchthat you can do with it.
I think that it's not just a UIthing or, or, you know, like,
uh, how do, how do we get peopleto adopt technology?
It's just.
(14:33):
Maybe there's just features thatyou just don't need.
Like they're there, they'rethere because historically maybe
you needed them, but you don'tneed them now.
Like it's, there's a better,better way to do that.
So, um, I like that.
Okay.
Okay.
I get it.
I love that, especially the wayyou framed it up and saying
project managers like this forpeople that are not project
(14:55):
managers or didn't come up thatway, didn't, you know, didn't,
weren't trained that way, etcetera.
And so they've got to be able toget into it and get to their
work as fast as possible andunderstand how to do that.
Gloria Folaron (15:09):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's something we see onall the time is that there's
this moment of overwhelm.
And so when that happens, youfreeze and you just don't go
back into the tool until youabsolutely have to.
And then what ends up happeningis your project manager is
Spending all of their timechasing folks for updates and
(15:30):
having to update all of thethings themselves.
William Tincup (15:32):
Right.
And it becomes kind of a, again,an admin tool where they're
getting all of that data.
It's very inefficient.
And so, and I'm sure there'smistakes that get made or data
that gets pulled in incorrectly,et cetera.
So it's much better to have thepeople that are doing it use an
intuitive system that they canjust put it in themselves.
Gloria Folaron (15:56):
Particularly in a remote slash hybrid world,
that's probably not going to goaway.
Oh, I would
William Tincup (16:03):
hope not.
I hope not.
I hope we, we've, uh, again, Ithink flexibility, I've, I've.
I'm one of those people that Iwant people to just have the
flexibility.
If you want to work in anoffice, go, you know, if that's,
if you want that, that's fine.
But if you don't, if you don'tthrive in an office, there's a
bunch of people just don'tthrive in an office environment
(16:24):
or you work in a differentcountry or whatever.
Like, you know, as long as thejob gets done, why do we care?
I want that to be up to theindividual, not the company.
That's my personal bias, by theway.
Gloria Folaron (16:39):
No, I think you're completely right, but
that, that touches back to, um,and I think you said we could be
honest, that touches back to thepoint of project management or
work management not containingthe soft skills that we need for
projects to be successful.
Right.
So when you don't have yourpeople in the office, You have
(17:01):
to rely on soft skills as amanager, as a leader, to be able
to motivate and get those thingsmoving.
If you don't have them to beginwith, then it's a, it's a bigger
failure point if you, if you areremote.
William Tincup (17:18):
So All right, let's do some by side stuff real
quick.
One is your favorite part.
When you get to show people LeanTime for the first time, what's
your favorite part to show them?
Like when you know you can kindof get a prospect or just
someone that you want to showLean Time to, you know, once you
get to this one place, they'regoing to fall in love with what
(17:39):
you built.
Gloria Folaron (17:43):
I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of how to
phrase this.
William Tincup (17:49):
You know, multiple, usually what people
say is, well, there's fivethings.
It doesn't have to be one thing.
Just, there's an aha moment inevery software demo.
So, and sometimes that's, uh,they can be different, like the,
the person that's giving it canfind, like, this is my favorite
report, or this is my favoriteanalytics, this is my favorite
(18:09):
this, that, and the other, andthe practitioner, this is what
they'll like.
So sometimes they're, they canbe different, but for yourself,
what's your favorite part toshow people?
Gloria Folaron (18:20):
So our long term goal is really that lean time is
more of an experience than anindividual feature.
Uh, so when we're looking atfeature development, we're also
reading up on all of the mostrecent studies around dopamine
and ADHD and how dopaminerelates to motivation.
(18:41):
And how can we extrapolate thatinformation and turn it into a
feature that guides the user tothat dopamine and intrinsic
motivation.
And so we're buildingcollections of features that
when they're used in tandemstart to promote that.
(19:03):
So an example is that dopamineis not secreted when you get to
a goal, it's secreted on thepath to the goal.
Oh, interesting.
So the more, the more weshowcase, hey, look, here's your
progress, and this is whatyou're contributing to, and this
is the purpose and the value youbring, the more the dopamine
goes in your brain and startsspinning circles, and you're
(19:25):
like, no, this feels good.
I like what I'm doing, and Iwant to do more of it.
William Tincup (19:30):
Oh, I love that.
It also kind of explains theletdown once you reach the goal.
Gloria Folaron (19:35):
Exactly.
So there's a huge drop and forsomeone with ADHD, that often
means that's the moment when youstart seeking another spot,
another, um, kick.
Right.
William Tincup (19:47):
That makes a lot of sense.
I love that.
Okay.
Well, see that, that was easy.
So if People are buyingLeanTime, you know, for the
first time and, and again,because it's unique, they've,
they don't have the arsenal ofquestions.
They don't have the literacy of,of questions to then be able to
ask you, should they be askingyou in terms of like buy
(20:10):
questions?
Um, you know, how do they buyLeanTime and how do they ask the
right questions or, or justbetter questions so that they
make better decisions?
Gloria Folaron (20:26):
I think the question is probably more their
own reflection of what are theirgoals in looking for a new tool.
And so, I, I would be happy towalk somebody through that and
that reflection point becauseit's, it's hard to figure out
what that pain point is.
Right.
But the majority of projectfailures, no matter what title
(20:49):
you put on it, can be tied toThe fact that we're humans and
those soft skills of somebodythat wasn't communicating
clearly, we didn't establish ourgoals and that wasn't, um, that
wasn't done and implementedwell, the leadership or the
teams not being motivated,they're all tied to a human
(21:09):
skill or a human element.
And so for lean time.
That's the direction that we'regoing, so if that's what you're
prioritizing, if the people thatyou have in your company are who
you value and you want to buildthem up, then LeanTime is a
(21:30):
great fit for you.
William Tincup (21:32):
Yeah, it's, and again, it's that reflection.
I love the way you, you framethat up.
They have, they have to knowthat they have a problem.
And if not, or at least theymight not be able to articulate
it perfectly, but even justhaving an understanding of, Hey,
something doesn't feel right.
I need, I need it.
I need something that will helpmy team, will actually help my
(21:54):
team reach their goals.
And WorkTech, what are we doingin terms of actually solving
these things?
You see a lot of indexing onskills development.
Right now, a lot of skills basedhiring, a lot of things internal
mobility that are skills basedand soft skills and hard skills
development stuff, which isgreat, but you don't really have
(22:18):
someone that's doing what y'allare doing in terms of, okay,
that, but there's, again, youcan do all that, which you
should, but you still got to getwork done and people, especially
with ADHD, they've got to,they've got to be able to
interact with.
Work and be able to get thingsdone and, and, and again, then
(22:39):
do it in an efficient way sothat they, they feel, again,
they feel like they've actuallyadded value to the company, to
the project, et cetera, but alsoso that the project gets done,
you know, on time, on budget,you know, all the things that
are important in projectmanagement.
So I love it.
I love it.
That's, I mean, first of all, itmakes sense to me.
(23:02):
Um, now what's, uh, what's therest of the year look like for
y'all?
Are you doing more kind of, uh,features and functionality and
development and doing thatstuff?
Are you doing more kind ofgetting out there and doing
awareness and branding and goingto conferences?
Like what, what's just the restof the year look like for you?
Gloria Folaron (23:25):
I have a feeling you've been in the business
space long enough to know thatyou have to do all of those
things at the same time.
Yeah.
There is no escaping that.
I'm really excited about whatwe're working on right now.
Because it's not something thatI've ever seen in the space.
And I'm really excited to seehow it flashes out.
(23:46):
So one of our AI features thatwe're building right now is
Starting the foundation phaseone is AI driven task
recommendations based on bestpractices.
So we take three differentmodels and the AI will take your
top 10 tasks due that week andput them in an order that's
(24:07):
based on those best practices.
William Tincup (24:10):
I like that.
And that can be personalized forthe person.
I mean, best practices,obviously, but then also for
that person and it learns basedon that person.
What works well and what doesn'twork well for that person.
Gloria Folaron (24:23):
Absolutely, but so, I, I think it's not enough.
Yeah, yeah.
So, the next level of that isthat we give users the ability
to rate tasks privately.
So, the employer doesn't seethis, but they can, from a scale
of red angry face emoji tounicorn.
(24:44):
We are allowing people to ratethose tasks and then compiling
that information based on thedescription of that task and the
title and the nature of the taskso we can get a good idea of
what that user loves to do andwhat they don't like to do and
so our next phase from therewould be is to Get to know the
(25:04):
user.
Be able to recommend to theusers who are assigning tasks.
Right.
This is the best person torecommend this to.
William Tincup (25:13):
Yeah, because they love those
Gloria Folaron (25:14):
tasks.
Yeah.
And they're going to get moredone and they're going to get it
more done.
They're going to get it donemore quickly.
Well, it's
William Tincup (25:19):
not arbitrary.
Like the way that we assigntasks right now, it's like we
have a blindfold on and we justthrow tasks out to people and
some of them are successful andsome of them are not successful.
And so if data can give us anidea of who likes those tasks
and maybe who's moreaccomplished or, or, or again.
(25:40):
There's just a better outcomewith the, with people using
those tests.
I also think that there's acomponent, if not now, later
around timing.
of tasks because like the sametask, I might like it if I'm
doing it at eight o'clock in themorning versus hate it if I'm
doing it at four o'clock in theafternoon.
Same task, timing's different.
(26:03):
So again, if something could,would inform me, cause you know,
that's, that's.
I don't know that about myself,so how can the organization know
that about me?
So I think if technology cangive me some guidance as to not
just what do I like, not like,but also the timing, uh, of
those things, I think, uh, Imean, first of all, that's,
(26:25):
that's what we want technologyto do is to inform us and
connect dots that we can't see.
So I love that.
I love where you're all takingit.
That's, that's beautiful.
Absolutely.
I appreciate
Gloria Folaron (26:36):
that.
Um, and you touched on somethingthat we've really talked about.
There's a, um, a mobile appcalled Rise and that, that app,
what it does is it paysattention to when you wake up
and then it uses traditionalcircadian rhythm patterns to
tell you when you should betaking meetings versus when you
need to go take a walk.
(26:58):
And so those are things that, toyour point, like, um, we're
looking for the, in the futureto be able to integrate with.
So that we can do the same thingand know when someone is waking
up versus starting their workand be able to recommend based
on that.
Well, it's all,
William Tincup (27:14):
I mean, you're, you're driving towards the, the
ultimate goal is where peoplethrive.
How they thrive, where theythrive, et cetera.
And it's just been this arcanemodel of like, we're going to
throw Susie and Dan on thisproject and they're going to do
these things.
And cause they were successfulin the last project that has
(27:35):
nothing to do with this newproject.
And it's all happenstance.
It's like, we wonder how someprojects.
We're super successful and someprojects just fail, abject
failures.
It's like, well, because we'renot doing it based on data,
we're doing it based onrandomness, uh, or even worse.
(27:56):
So, uh, I love that y'all arebringing a sophistication to,
you know, if I see, I see just areal lovely sophistication to
being able to making sure thatpeople, they get a better sense
of where they thrive.
And the company gets a bettersense of where they thrive.
So they don't put them inpositions where they're just not
going to thrive.
(28:16):
So satisfaction goes up, moralegoes up, engagement goes up,
retention, retention goes up.
Like people are happier becauseagain, they're not being put in
situations where they're justwere never going to thrive.
Gloria Folaron (28:31):
And then the leaders aren't even more pinched
trying to implement those thingsthemselves.
William Tincup (28:36):
Right, right, right.
I can see that.
Well, Gloria, I could talk toyou all day, but I know you got
like work to do and stuff.
So thank you so much for comingon the podcast.
I love it.
I absolutely love what y'all arebuilding.
Gloria Folaron (28:48):
I appreciate it.
I've enjoyed the conversationand even the nails.
William Tincup (28:55):
Well, and thanks for everyone, uh, for listening
to the show until next time.
Thank you.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!