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Family Business Radio, Episode 4: Valencia and Ozzie Giles, Lawrenceville-Suwanee School of Music, Melissa Gunderson, Morsels by Melissa, and Bonnie Mauldin, The Mauldin Group

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Family Business Radio
Family Business Radio
Family Business Radio, Episode 4: Valencia and Ozzie Giles, Lawrenceville-Suwanee School of Music, Melissa Gunderson, Morsels by Melissa, and Bonnie Mauldin, The Mauldin Group
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Anthony Chen, Bonnie Mauldin, Melissa Gunderson, Valencia Giles, and Ozzie Giles

Family Business Radio, Episode 4:  Valencia and Ozzie Giles, Lawrenceville-Suwanee School of Music, Melissa Gunderson, Morsels by Melissa, and Bonnie Mauldin, The Mauldin Group

On this episode of “Family Business Radio,” host Anthony Chen welcomes Valencia and Ozzie Giles, owners of Lawrenceville-Suwanee School of Music, Melissa Gunderson, chef and owner of Morsels by Melissa, and Bonnie Mauldin, founder of The Mauldin Group. “Family Business Radio” is broadcast from the North Fulton Studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Valencia and Ozzie Giles, Lawrenceville-Suwanee School of Music

Valencia and Ozzie Giles

Valencia and Ozzie Giles own Lawrenceville-Suwanee School of Music, a top award-winning music school in Gwinnett County where instructors teach instrument lessons to over 650 students, ages 3 to adult, from the U.S. and abroad. Lessons include voice, piano, guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, violin, viola, drums, clarinet, flute, greek instruments and more.  More than 40 instructors teach classes in Early Childhood Music Development, Special Needs, Music Theory, and Art, all under one roof.

Valencia’s love of music took root when her father gave her a piano at age 7. The music school director graduated from Alabama A&M University with a double major in flute and piano. She is a member of the Music Teachers National Association.

Ozzie, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in Special Needs Education, and a Master’s in Counseling and Ministry, works with students with special needs.

The couple highlights how Lawerenceville-Suwanee School of Music provides loving structure and support to help students not only succeed in music, but in life down the road.

For more information visit the Lawerenceville-Suwanee School of Music website. Valencia Giles can be reached by email, or call 678-376-9800.

Melissa Gunderson, Morsels by Melissa

Melissa Gunderson

Melissa Gunderson is chef and owner of Morsels by Melissa where she provides full range menu items to clients including specialty cakes and sweets. Melissa’s expertise includes the planning and implementation of corporate and private parties and events, as well as wedding receptions and intimate dinners.

At a young age Melissa loved to cook and sing. She turned down culinary school to pursue a career in opera. As a “Full Lyric Soprano” she sang professionally for 10 years. While singing full time, she honed her cooking skills in New York City with some of the top caterers there. In the end, Melissa decided cooking was her true joy in life and decided to jump into the culinary world full time.

Melissa started her culinary career in New York City. In 1996, she worked as a private chef for Four Star Chef Works and The Pavilion Agency while catering for private clients of her own. In 2000, Melissa decided to move back to Atlanta, her hometown.

Melissa started as an event chef for Bold American upon her arrival in Atlanta. She also worked with Proof of the Pudding as catering manager/party chef and The Epicurean as sous chef. While working with these premiere catering companies, she began to build her own clientele, eventually starting her own catering company, Morsels by Melissa.

For more information visit the Morsels by Melissa website. Melissa Gunderson can be reached by email,  or call 678-357-2349.

Bonnie Mauldin, The Mauldin Group

Bonnie Mauldin

Bonnie Mauldin is founder of The Mauldin Group. Her agency specializes in serving small businesses with professional web design, internet marketing and business development training. Services also include social media management, Search Engine Optimization, Linkedin profile makeover, Pay-Per-Click Management and more. Her mission is to help companies become more profitable and expand their brand to new heights.

The Mauldin Group is ranked as a Top 10 SEO and PPC Agency in Atlanta by Expertise.com.

Bonnie serves on the Marketing Council at Gwinnett Technical College and as a Diplomat with the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce. Bonnie was named Business Person of Excellence this year, and has won Business of the Year by the Forsyth Chamber of Commerce.

She is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs become more profitable and expand their brand to new heights.

For more information visit The Mauldin Group website. Bonnie Mauldin can be reached by email, or call 678-846-2306.

Anthony Chen, Host of “Family Business Radio”

Anthony Chen

This show is sponsored and brought to you by Anthony Chen with Lighthouse Financial Network. Securities and advisory services offered through Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. (RAA), member FINRA/SIPC. RAA is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of RAA. The main office address is 575 Broadhollow Rd. Melville, NY 11747. You can reach Anthony at 631-465-9090 ext 5075 or by email at anthonychen@lfnllc.com.

Anthony Chen started his career in financial services with MetLife in Buffalo, NY in 2008. Born and raised in Elmhurst, Queens, he considers himself a full-blooded New Yorker while now enjoying his Atlanta, GA home. Specializing in family businesses and their owners, Anthony works to protect what is most important to them. From preserving to creating wealth, Anthony partners with CPAs and attorneys to help address all of the concerns and help clients achieve their goals. By using a combination of financial products ranging from life, disability, and long term care insurance to many investment options through Royal Alliance. Anthony looks to be the eyes and ears for his client’s financial foundation. In his spare time, Anthony is an avid long-distance runner.

Decision Vision Episode 39: Should I Write a Book? – An Interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 39: Should I Write a Book? – An Interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company
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Mike Blake and Bea Wray

Decision Vision Episode 39:  Should I Write a Book? – An Interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company

Are books still relevant? How do I get a book out of my head and down on paper? Should I self-publish? The answers to these questions and much more come from this interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company, “Decision Vision” is hosted by Mike Blake and presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company

Bea Wray

An innovation expert, Bea Wray helps thought leaders share their stories, passions and knowledge as they invent, launch, and promote new products. As the former Chair of the Entrepreneurship Practice Group at Advantage Media Group, ForbesBooks, Bea further leveraged the wisdom and experience of these innovators through branding, visibility, and marketing efforts substantiated by the ForbesBooks brand name.

Bea is an innovator herself.  She successfully built and eventually sold SourceHarbor Inc.  Along the way, she expanded the company to serve thousands of clients internationally, and has consulted with hundreds of startups. Bea served as the Executive Director of The Creative Coast, a regional non-profit building the innovation economy in Savannah, Georgia where she hosted TEDxCreative Coast and the innovation conference known as GeekEnd. Her years of energy and effort are an immediate benefit to entrepreneurs across 26 countries and throughout the United States.

Bea’s upcoming book, titled What Harvard Taught Me, But My Kids Made Me Learn, is expected to arrive late in 2019. She is looking forward to sharing how her experiences as a mother of three taught her how to negotiate, communicate, and adapt in the business world.

Bea holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, is a summa cum laude graduate of Emory University, and is one of South Carolina’s prestigious Liberty Fellows of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is a frequent keynote speaker on innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth, and an inspiring contributor to various publications, including Entrepreneur.com, The Grindstone, and The Savannah Morning News.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting advisory that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:38] My name is Mike Blake and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we’re recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe in your favorite podcast aggregator. And please, also, consider leaving a review the of podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:02] Our topic today is, should I write a book? And this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because books have become, in some respect, easier to write and circulate than ever before. And I do sort of have this secret desire to get about five or six books out, which surprises a lot of people because they’re a surprise and I learned I could read. But in point of fact, I think that there’s a voice in there that wants to put things down on either dead tree paper or virtual paper.

Michael Blake: [00:01:38] And I think a lot of people are thinking about that as well. And it may be people who are like me that are in the services area that wish to establish and reaffirm our reputations as subject matter experts to the market. It may be people that have an artistic bent and this is, you know, a book is in effect their canvas for self-expression. Or it could be somebody that simply feels like they have a story to tell or a lesson to teach. And a book is their way of of getting that lesson out to the world. That’s sort of their contribution to society. And we all know this proliferation of books out there under various names. They could be books, they could be e-books, they could be something else.

Michael Blake: [00:02:27] And, you know, I think that, you know, as we record today in 2019, this is a topic that really wouldn’t have even mattered 20 years ago. You know, the notion that somebody would just somehow write a book was a much larger undertaking because of the way the industry was structured, because of the way technology worked or didn’t work. And it’s just another one of those signs of the times that technology is enabling us all to put a voice out there in a way that, for good or bad, we simply were not able to.

Michael Blake: [00:03:06] And joining us today is my pal Bea Wray, who is with Michael Levin Writing Company with the awesome tag line, their books make their clients happy, famous, trusted and rich. You have a story to tell, a business case to make, a family history, to capture, your book as the ultimate leave behind on sales calls. And I agree with that. The best way to record the culture of the enterprise you’ve built and your legacy for your family.

Michael Blake: [00:03:31] Bea herself is an innovation expert. And she and I know each other from back in the days when Startup Lounge was active in Savannah, Georgia, and she was the director of—executive director of our partner organization Creative Coast there. And now she’s helping thought leaders share their stories, passions and knowledge as they invent, launch and promote new products. As the former chair of the Entrepreneurship Practice Group and Advantage Media Group, Forbes Books, Bea further leverage the wisdom and experience of those innovators through branding, visibility, marketing efforts substantiated by the Forbes Books brand name.

Michael Blake: [00:04:08] Bea is an innovator herself. She successfully built and eventually sold Source Harbor Incorporated. Along the way, she expanded that company to serve thousands of clients internationally and has consulted with hundreds of startups. She serves as the executive director of the Creative Coast, a regional nonprofit building the innovation community in Savannah, Georgia. By the way, one of those awesome cities anywhere. If you don’t—if you’ve never been there, go. If I can ever afford to retire there, that is where I’m going. She hosted TEDxCreative Coast and the Innovation Conference known as GeekEnd.

Michael Blake: [00:04:40] Her years of energy and effort are an immediate benefit to entrepreneurs across 26 countries and throughout the United States. She holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a summa cum laude graduate of Emory University and a bunch of other good things. And last but not least, I mean, we’ll get to this one. She has written her own book or is in the fit—in the process of putting her own finishing touches on that book. What Harvard taught me but my kids made me learn, which is expected to arrive in 2019. And I know she’s looking forward to sharing how her experiences as a mother of three taught her how to negotiate, communicate and adapt in the business world. And I think there’s a lot that I’m going to learn from that, too, as a father of two who I think already can negotiate better than I can. Bea Wray, thank you so much for being on the program.

Bea Wray: [00:05:30] I’m so happy to be here, Mike. This is wonderful.

Michael Blake: [00:05:33] So, let’s sort of get down to it. You know, normally I start these podcasts with a definition because we’re talking about a fairly technical topic. But I’m just going to go on a limb here and say everybody knows what a book is. So, why would I want to write a book? You know, I don’t have time to even read all the books that I would like to read. Why am I going to take that time and write one instead?

Bea Wray: [00:05:57] Well, the main reason is to—that people want to be known, loved, and trusted and businesses want to hire people that they know love and trust. And more and more businesses are deeper in whomever they’re working with. Whether it’s your accounting firm, your lawyer, even your orthodontist. You know, I helped an orthodontist write a book because he explains that the impact of straightening teeth on a child’s sleep and what was happening in sleep and the ability for that child to do better in school. So, I thought, orthodontia was all about just keeping your smile pretty. Well, it turns out that the fact that this doctor spends more time understanding the numerous impacts, he wrote a book about it.

Bea Wray: [00:06:53] And so, I guess what I’m trying to say is, you introduced the podcast, which was excellent by, you know, this was not something you could have done 20 years ago because technology was different and the distribution was different. That’s very true. I would argue that in addition, the knowledge base was different. And so, one of the reasons fewer and fewer people publish with a traditional publisher is because we are not all reading the same book. You just said yourself, there’s 10 or 12 books you would love to read. Those are probably not the 10 or 12 that are on my list.

Bea Wray: [00:07:35] It’s that we want more specific stories, more connected to our lives. I want to know not what is the most popular book in the country, but I want to relate to someone who’s more like me, who has insights about things that I need. And so, one of the reasons you might write a book is because you have a unique and special experience and perspective that can help some people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. Maybe not a few billion people. And yet helping thousands of people is actually a really great thing to do, and sharing your own thoughts in that way is a great endeavor.

Michael Blake: [00:08:23] So, you touched on something that I think I want to jump to, because if you’re—if you really haven’t looked at this and if you’re a people of a certain age such as myself, you think, oh, I need a book, I then need to, I guess, find a way for John Wiley and Sons or McGraw-Hill or, you know, somebody else that’s going to pick this thing up, is that necessarily the case anymore? Is that gateway or that barrier to entry still important?

Bea Wray: [00:08:55] It is not. And I’m a big fan of both of those companies. And working with a traditional publisher can be great and it might not work for you at all. And I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of authors. And what I find is that that industry continues to consolidate and to minimize in such a way that the services one would have gotten in the past, like marketing services are smaller and fewer. And so, it may not be a great experience if you, one, go down that route even if you’re successful. Then the distribution of the book may not be what you’re hoping for.

Bea Wray: [00:09:39] What also can happen is, you know, they’re in the business of selling books. Not in the business of selling you or your company or your idea, which can be great as long as your incentives are aligned with what you want with your book. And so, if they’re not aligned, what can happen is a very specific methodology that maybe it’s something you go over in your consulting practice. It’s a way you use as a business card. It’s what you start talking about and bringing people to your company. Make it watered down in the book that’s trying to be sold to a million people. And so, right off the get go, just the book you envision in your head, depending on what level of control you want, it may be better to self-publish or a hybrid publish than going the traditional route because you lose a lot of control. There’s a lot of talk about how you lose money. You get 40 cents on the book versus $10 on each book sold. But a big problem is, are you actually putting out there the book that is in your heart and mind and soul?

Michael Blake: [00:10:50] And you know, you touched on something there that I want to kind of break from the script a little bit and drill into because I think that’s an important point. You know, the business model of bookselling and the life model of the author may not very—may not be in alignment, right, to sell a book. If you’re going to really do it the way McGraw-Hill put on a bestseller list, that kind of becomes your job, doesn’t it? And maybe you don’t want that to become your job.

Bea Wray: [00:11:18] Absolutely. That’s exactly right. And you know, you mentioned me and my own book. And I’ll just use this as a very specific example. Is—I write not exclusively to women, but sometimes to women, because I’m a mom and I am a woman and I’m a business person. And what I have found is that, we as women, choose to belittle our own experiences in the home and outside of the corporate world, even though they’re very, very relevant to learning about how to deal with people and learning how to negotiate and all those things you said earlier. I never speak from a platform of corporations to conferences or in my book as a victim, or about those bad men who don’t treat me well enough, because that’s not something I think about.

Bea Wray: [00:12:14] However, there is a huge market for that. There is a lot—after the #MeTooMovement, there’s a lot of energy and there’s—I have actually been approached by traditional publishers, write the book in this way because there is a market for, if only men would pay a dollar and a dollar to men and women and the gender pay gap and all this whole language that—those are important factors and there are important things to fight for. But I’m going to fight it from the perspective I know which is I’m going to get better at raising my hand. I’m going to get better at taking risks. I’m going to be better at stepping forward. Not about saying I’m a victim.

Bea Wray: [00:12:55] And the point I’m trying to make here is I have personally been approached, hey, if you change your book to say something that wasn’t in your heart, mind and soul, we can sell it. That’s not been my personal choice. And I know 30 other people who’ve made a similar choice to me because what was more—if you’re going to go through the effort of writing a book, it is a long journey and it sticks with you a long time, my encouragement is make it a book you want it to be.

Michael Blake: [00:13:22] And you know, I would think the thing about a book even by today, it—still, if you compare it to other forms of communication, media, it—a book still has a permanency to it that even a blog doesn’t, a YouTube video, or a Facebook post, whatever, an Instagram, whatever it’s called, a gram, I don’t know. I’m not on histogram, you know, tweet, whatever. A book is still different in that regard, isn’t it, that once it’s out there, either on on dead tree paper or a virtual paper, at some point, I think most people would would have a need to be proud of that out there, because if you’re not, it ain’t going away.

Bea Wray: [00:14:08] Correct. And it is all about—I mean, I love that the word author is part of authority. It is all about establishing your authority. So, be clear on what authority you want to be establishing. Be clear on who you are on that paper because this is where you have your chance to shape it.

Michael Blake: [00:14:30] So, let’s do a close eye role play here. But what I’m really doing is I’m getting free consulting and other guys are giving you a podcast interview opportunity. But I’ve got a book and I’ve got several books in my head that I think I want to write. Do I just start writing? Do I do the Snoopy cartoon thing where I’m on my doghouse, the typewriter and say it was a dark and stormy night? Or how do you—what are the first steps toward that goal?

Bea Wray: [00:15:00] Well, that’s a great question. And you certainly can. Most people start to at least have an outline and a set. The kind of questions you’re thinking is, what is the book I want to write and for whom? And then why? I do recommend being I won’t say selfish but a little bit. Like know your purpose for writing the book because that will help you define your audience and your use. And it will certainly keep you motivated.

Bea Wray: [00:15:34] So, I’ve worked with people who are writing a book because they just hope that one of their grand kids will read it someday, that they don’t want to die without their story somewhere written down. And that’s what they’re going to do. Maybe it will get published in a place and all those people around the world will read it but it was really just about a legacy. That’s a great reason. I’ve helped people write books because their need is to drive business to their company. Now, those kinds of people may be selling $40 gene. Usually, they’re selling a complicated relational relationship kind of product. So, $150,000 on average. Way that leads to consulting, whether it’s for manufacturing or setting up of insurance captive or whatever, where their wisdom and knowledge and the sense to be trusted is so critical. You can’t have that across in a phone call. They want their ideas out and they want to be trusted. And that’s their way that they attract people to their company.

Bea Wray: [00:16:45] Some people want to launch a speaking career. Some people—so, understanding your why. I think it is really, really important before you go too far in writing your book. And then there’s the how. What I will say is I learned over time that the average entrepreneur take around three years to write his or her own book. And unfortunately, fewer than 40 percent of the entrepreneurs to start out on that personal endeavor finish. And that’s why people like the Michael Levin Writing Company exist, is people who are running their own company have—there’s so much at stake every two hours that they spend just writing, not working in the company. And so, it’s constantly the battle that’s most urgent thing and the book never gets done. And so, it becomes a very costly endeavor just an opportunity cost.

Michael Blake: [00:17:54] So, you know, you said another thing. You’re going to make us rip off the script, which is great, because I can do that with you because you’re smarter than I am, empirically. And that is that you say something that kind of runs against what a lot of us, I think almost everybody, is taught and as a hardwired way, which is cater to your audience, cater to your audience, cater to your audience. And while I think you’re acknowledging kind of the existence of the audience, at the end of the day, if you’re going to produce a book that you’re going to feel is worthwhile at the end, it’s really about what you want. It sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing is that it’s really about what you want to put out there to the world. And then if people buy it, buy into and engage cause they’re great. But that’s just kind of the way that it’s got to go.

Bea Wray: [00:18:48] Yes. I mean, one of the first questions we ask people is who is this book for? And what are you going to do for them? And so, in why are they going to do what you want them to do? It may be that they—you want to motivate them to take better care of their health. Great. It may be that you want them to call you to take better care of their health. We don’t know. But one of the very first questions is who are you writing for? So, I do care about the audience.

Bea Wray: [00:19:21] But before that, you have an idea for the book. It really needs to be your idea that’s deep in your heart and your passion connected to the life that you are ready to lead as an author. And so, whether that’s a business person who has a book, whether that is a speaker who has a book, or whether that I’m a grandparent, I’m leaving a legacy that has a book. This book is becoming a part of who you are and you have to have a reason for wanting to write it. And that will help define your audience. And then you can start tailoring to that audience and you have to or otherwise it won’t be a good book. But I—what I don’t recommend is go out, survey the world, and see what book is missing.

Michael Blake: [00:20:12] Interesting, because I’ve actually heard exactly that advice given many times. So tell me more about that. Why? Why is that a bad idea?

Bea Wray: [00:20:23] Because we don’t live in—because, well, we’re going to think I’m an old fuddy duddy, but because we don’t want beaver cleaver on T.V. anymore is basically the reason. And let me explain that. So 40 years ago, you watch, you consume video television, the same—you and every other neighbor were watching the same thing as there were three channel. And we all watched the same thing. We consume information in a certain way. And my guess is you didn’t watch that last night. Am I right?

Michael Blake: [00:20:59] Yeah.

Bea Wray: [00:20:59] And you didn’t watch even the same thing as everyone on your street. And if you’re like most of America, you don’t even watch everything that was the same even if people in your home. So not only is it not consistent. Three options down the street. Most of us watching the same thing and talking about it. And as the water cooler the next day, we are self-selecting and sometimes is independently created content like YouTube videos, TedX Talk, and so on and so forth. So the way we consume information is so totally different than the way it was years ago. At that time, publishing of individual books had certain channels. We need so many mysteries, we need so many adventure stories, we need so many biographies. And we don’t have a recent biography of Abe Lincoln for 10-year-old. We needed to fill that.

Bea Wray: [00:21:56] That is not the way information is consumed today. It’s quite the opposite. We create whether video content or written content as a way of connecting with people. Who do we want to connect with? Is it based on our faith? Is it based on our geography? Is it based on our clients? And so, I want to write a book that helps me be who I want to be and connect with the people I want to connect with. I have a—I have an e-mail today from a friend who went to Harvard Business School who wrote a book about parenting and leveraging Harvard Business School, very, very similar in some ways as my book and not at all similar. And it will be used in the same way. But we became friends because our books were similar. But never did she think, oh, gosh, you’re writing on that topic, I can’t. Or did I think you’re writing on that topic, I can’t.

Michael Blake: [00:23:01] Yeah. And to some extent, right, it probably kind of reaffirms a factor you may be on to something.

Bea Wray: [00:23:07] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:23:08] If one person, other person thinks it’s worth writing that book, that would tell me there’s 10,000 people that think it’s reading that book.

Bea Wray: [00:23:18] Exactly. But it wouldn’t be the case if there were only one spot on the network or only one spot in the McGraw-Hill sells for this type of book. But that’s not the way books are distributed, written especially today.

Michael Blake: [00:23:36] So—and this actually—this does circle back then to a question I actually had prepared to ask for today, which is, you know, given all of the media that bombards us and is available, you know, I mean, are books on their way out or are books still a real thing?

Bea Wray: [00:23:58] That’s so interesting because many times you also in this podcast talked about, you know, a paper book or an online book. And I believe that not only are books very much relevant today. Funny, I’m looking at a bookshelf right now suddenly filled with books. But I think paper books are still very relevant, even though I’m an audible fan. I listen to books often. And the reason is because they are a way of connecting with people.

Bea Wray: [00:24:30] So more and more people are writing books, more and more people are writing books to connect with their audience. It may not be a billion people. It may not even be 300,000 people. But writing a book—well, take the guy, for example, whose client is $150,000 every time he gets a client. This gentleman wrote a book, put it in the hands of fewer than a thousand people, and his business increased by $5 million in the first year because it didn’t take many people to learn, to know, love, and trust him. Does that make sense?

Michael Blake: [00:25:15] It does. And by the way, as an aside, I have stolen that phrase because I’m familiar with the phrase no like and trust. No love and trust is so much better. So kudos to you.

Bea Wray: [00:25:26] Well, thank you.

Michael Blake: [00:25:26] And if you hear lots of other people that are using that, it’s because I stole it from you and told everybody they can have it.

Bea Wray: [00:25:33] I appreciate that. I was told one time that, you know, the first time you borrow, you give credit. The second time, you know, oh, I was talking and so-and-so said. The next time you say, so and so taught me to say. The third time you forget about so-and-so altogether and you just know it.

Michael Blake: [00:25:52] That’s right. And by the fourth time, it just came to me one day. I don’t know where. But you’re welcome to borrow it if you want.

Bea Wray: [00:26:01] There you go.

Michael Blake: [00:26:01] Yeah. So I do think, you know, there is still some—there is still a mystique around a book. In spite of all the other media that, you know, compete for attention, I give books a lot because I recommend that people read a book and then to guilt them into reading and I’ll often buy it for them and send it to them. So they’ll at least lie to me the next time they see me and say they read it. But, you know, it is a very powerful calling card.

Michael Blake: [00:26:32] And I’ll share my own story. So years ago, I co-authored a book called Entrepreneurship Back to Basics, and it’s one long out of print. But I remember, I was applying for a job and they asked me for a writing sample. I say, okay, if I send you a copy of my book, right, just sort of hear a pin drop at the interview at that point. An extreme case, but still an anecdote of the impact that a book could make.

Bea Wray: [00:27:00] Totally fabulous. And you know, a lot of time it’s okay if someone doesn’t read the whole book. But one of the most powerful sales talk is to say, you know, hey, Michael, it was great to speak with you today. I really appreciated the questions you had on my marketing strategy. Please turn to page 26 in the book that I’ve enclosed.

Michael Blake: [00:27:23] Yeah. And of course, then there’s if you want the benefit of reading the book and I haven’t actually read it, you can just hire me.

Bea Wray: [00:27:31] Precisely.

Michael Blake: [00:27:34] So let’s say we’re well along the way to a book being written or maybe it’s even written. Is it as hard to get a book picked up by Amazon and distributed to Kindle or iBooks or something like that? Is it hard at all or can anybody just sort of do it? How, you know, what’s your assessment of that electronic distribution medium in terms of making it harder or easier to actually get a book out there?

Bea Wray: [00:28:01] Well, I think anybody can do it. Most people need help with how. So certainly making sure the book is a great quality. You know, you do want an excellent manuscript, well-written, but that’s not enough. You definitely have to have someone who’s helping you do the layout, make it look excellent. Pull out images and illustrations and even font type and book jackets. All of that matters.

Bea Wray: [00:28:30] And so, I’ve never met someone who can do all of that him or herself. You know, that usually takes a team who can get that done. And that’s where, you know, hybrid publisher and that’s where, you know, our company helps people find that right team at the Michael Levin Writing Company so that—because what people don’t want to do is finally get this book out of themselves. Finally have this manuscript and then say, now what, and still run into all of the hurdles that they were experiencing before, you know, they took the steps to get the book actually done. That said, you know, Amazon will put a book up, and so you don’t have to go to McGraw-Hill to have—to be a published author. And you still get—and you get to retain much more of the profits of the book, which is excellent.

Bea Wray: [00:29:27] But there’s still a science around how do you get it in the very category? How do you get the ISBN number? How do you make sure that it becomes an Amazon best-seller because Amazon does a great job of creating certain categories. And there’s a system around making sure enough people are voting for you at the time so that you can be a best-seller. And so, there—it’s not that hard. You just, you know—my husband will kill me for saying this. I don’t even change my oil in my car because I don’t know how to do that, right.

Michael Blake: [00:30:03] Right.

Bea Wray: [00:30:03] He does and he knows how to take the radiator out, too. And if he doesn’t, he’ll learn on YouTube. That’s not me. So my philosophy is get the people who are excellent at doing these things for you so that you can feel comfortable and go do the things that you’re excellent at.

Michael Blake: [00:30:25] So you mentioned in passing that assuming the book is finished at all, that it would take an entrepreneur roughly three years to complete a book. Is that reflective of best practices or is that reflective more of that? There have been a bunch of fits and starts and mistakes and restarts. And that’s not really an efficient path. And if you do it kind of the Bea Wray way that it doesn’t necessarily take a full presidential cycle to do that.

Bea Wray: [00:30:55] Now, I think the best practice is 90 to 120 days.

Michael Blake: [00:31:00] So good. Yeah. Because I’m not nearly that patient if I’m going to write my book. So, let’s walk through that. If you’re talking to somebody and they’re serious about writing a book, what—how does that time typically get allocated? Do somebody take 90 days off to write the book and they go to a, you know, a Nepalese monastery where they’re not going to be disturbed? Or do they take one or two days a week or they just sort of locked themselves in an office and do that? Or is it, you know, the method where somebody gets up at 4:00 in the morning and the first two and a half hours a day, they write? How does that typically work?

Bea Wray: [00:31:38] So, what I have experienced in the last few years, both with the Michael Levin Writing Company and the ghostwriting company and when I ran the Forbes book is that they realize they want to buy their—what they’re really doing as CEO of a company is buying his or her own time. They’re saying, I don’t want to delay fits and starts because there’s something about our brains that actually gets ourselves in the way of writing our own book because we want to be perfect. And writing is an imperfect endeavor. We have to get it out and then it needs to be edited and changed and moved around.

Bea Wray: [00:32:18] And so, most people who have not been trained as writers and have 10 years of history as a writer with things that are not emotionally connected to themselves, are not going to be the best at writing their own book. They’re going to be the best at speaking their own books. And so, what they typically do is say, I want to hire a partner to help me with this book. And then, the first thing that happens is there’s a 90-minute phone call where there’s a conversation about who’s the audience, why are you doing the book, and let’s work through what is the book, meaning the outline of the book in the book plan.

Bea Wray: [00:33:00] And then usually the writers will go back and take probably six to eight hours with that 90 minute, listening to it, just writing it, re-listening to it, reshaping it, understanding, doing some research and then deliver back. Sometimes a 10 to 12 fixed, detailed outline, sometimes with holes. This is the way I see the book. Here’s where I sit these stories. What do you think? And so, now we’re working off of a book plan. And from that book plan, sometimes weekly phone calls are scheduled, sometimes every other week, depending on the schedule of the book and whether there is sort of a launch of that. But we need this book to be done by X date. What are we aiming for in order to hopefully get the 90 to 120 days.

Bea Wray: [00:33:51] And oftentimes, the entire book is interviewed. And then the writer goes away and delivers factious the first three chapters, never the whole book. That’s too much to digest for the author. So, the ghostwriter will deliver back the first two or three chapters, are we—did I get the voice right? Are we on the right path? That’s the time to iterate and decide how to shape the next two-thirds of the book. And within 90 days, an excellent ghostwriter, ghostwriting team should be able to deliver to a CEO his or her book written in his or her voice about his or her story.

Michael Blake: [00:34:40] And so, you know, kind of working through that process. And it certainly makes sense to me if you’re retaining a ghostwriter. You know, you’re surely buying back that time. And by the way, I’ve got to assume being a ghostwriter is extremely hard because writing to capture someone else’s voice has—I know is excruciatingly difficult because I’ve tried to work with ghostwriters in just small articles. And it’s never worked very well. And I think it’s something that’s very hard to do. Meaning that if you find somebody like you guys that can do it, you know, that is a precious commodity.

Bea Wray: [00:35:23] I think so. I can’t not do it. So, let me be clear. But the Michael Levin Writing Company has written over 700 books in 25 years. And I’ve been tracking for the last five years, and what I find is there are people who can do it. And interestingly, I spent enough time with them that these actual ghostwriters will say it’s easier for me to write your books than my own because all of those emotional things like that are those blocks that get ourselves in the way, get in our, we put in our own way don’t happen.

Bea Wray: [00:36:07] But it is one reason why the calls are cheap recorded, is there’s a lot of time spent getting that voice correct. Getting even that like (inaudible) of stories correct.

Michael Blake: [00:36:22] So, you touched on something I think is an important definitional point and that is editing and proofreading. I don’t think those are necessarily the same thing. And if you agree with that, can you explain to our audience what the differences between those two steps?

Bea Wray: [00:36:39] Yeah. So, anything—you know, they’re closely related, but editing is this—is a little more thorough and has a little more power. So, there’s ghostwriting. There’s really an overseeing. So, Michael Levin actually does all the book planned and he does the overseeing as a whole company. But there’s dozens of ghostwriters who are very carefully, closely match specifically to the author, but they’re never going to do their editing themselves. And so, then, there’s an overall editor who’s paying attention to tying the written work back to the author,b Back to the transcripts, back to the plan.

Bea Wray: [00:37:24] And then the proofreading is more the very final, you know, fork it out the door.

Michael Blake: [00:37:35] Right. Make sure there are no glaring errors and so forth, as opposed to high level kind of structure elements, I’m guessing.

Bea Wray: [00:37:41] Exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:37:42] Okay.

Bea Wray: [00:37:42] Editing can be—proofreading is making sure what they’re perfect. Editing is making sure we have everything we need there and identifying what’s not there.

Michael Blake: [00:37:57] Yeah. Okay. So, we’ve touched on this next question a little bit, but I don’t want to skim over because I do think it’s important. What’s your opinion of e-books?

Bea Wray: [00:38:11] Well, I think a lot of people that have them need to have them. Personally as a parent driving me crazy that my kids almost only read e-books because they read them on their phone and then there goes the text message, it’s like an invitation for a distraction. So, I don’t think they’re going away but there is a lot lost. I also don’t think—I’m positive they’re not replacing paper books where you can highlight and send and give as a gift and wrap up in a way. That cannot be done as effectively in an e-book.

Michael Blake: [00:38:55] And in terms of impact on a reader, do you think there’s a difference? Do you think that maybe readers look at e-books—and I want to make a distinction. I don’t necessarily mean a formal analog book that also happens to have a Kindle variant, but I’m more referring to kind of the promotional e-books that you see out there and they’re often called an e-book and maybe they’re not even worthy of the name. They should be called something else. But, you know, maybe they’re 15, maybe they’re 50 or 80, 90 pages to be considered almost too short a book to publish in paper format. But you see kind of that genre of book that appears in a digital format. You know what I’m talking about?

Bea Wray: [00:39:36] Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And, you know, there are certain things that are seen to be shared and they are sort of too short that would never make it as a book that also has an electronic version. I hear what you’re saying. So, I tell people that some of those out, it’s definitely not my specialty and I don’t personally have a big desire, so I don’t know that I have enough experience to say, you know, to have an opinion about them. It makes sense to me that sometimes people have a shorter message to give and a 50 page e-book will get it done.

Michael Blake: [00:40:20] Okay. So, now, I’m curious on your view, and I think our listeners are curious, and it’s an off—it’s an awkward, almost insipid question, but I think it has to be asked and that is, you know, how easy or hard is it to actually produce a book that people are willing to pay for? And, you know, for most people, is that even a realistic or desirable goal?

Bea Wray: [00:40:55] Well, I think that the hardest part is digging deep in your heart. So, I’ve been involved with the publishing of hundreds of books and every one of them has met that bar. They are—some people are paying for them. What I’m not sure is that enough people are paying—the author is getting a million dollars. So, I am not a fan of published—I never say to someone go write a book, you’ll be a millionaire because it’s selling—making money, selling books is hard work. So, it depends. You know, you’re not going to get very far if your book is of bad quality and you can’t find some market who will pay for it.

Bea Wray: [00:41:48] Oftentimes, the way to get to that is you might give it away to other people, but it has to be excellent quality, has to have an excellent work, has to have a brief title, has to know the audience but that’s a big leap from, you know, I sold books at the back of a conference to I became a millionaire selling books. And I say a million dollars because it’s really not worth your time and effort. Probably you’re gonna get a $200,000 but there are easier ways to make a living.

Bea Wray: [00:42:22] And so, that is really hard. And I don’t think it’s about the quality of the book at that point. I think it’s about the quality and the dedication of your marketing and how many—did you run here to get on the radio station? And how many public speaking engagements are you doing and how did you work your way onto The Today Show?

Michael Blake: [00:42:45] So, it’s about the business of the book?

Bea Wray: [00:42:46] Most people don’t want to do all of that work because they don’t need to, that their book is making them a million dollars because it’s tied to a business that they’re doing or it’s tied to some other reason. So, they don’t go through the effort to get on The Today Show.

Michael Blake: [00:43:01] Right. And plus, I mean, it sounds like—I mean, that process, if you want your book itself to be that kind of income generator, the book itself becomes a business and it requires a substantial investment. You know, I don’t think you just sort of write at info@todayshownbc.com, whatever their domain is. Hey, can I come on. I’d really like you to interview me. You know that in itself is a huge financial investment.

Bea Wray: [00:43:27] I used to help software companies sell their software. And what we always said was no matter how great it is, you can’t just cut a hole in the side of the building and hope that people start driving up like Burger King.

Michael Blake: [00:43:40] Darn it.

Bea Wray: [00:43:42] It’s true with books.

Michael Blake: [00:43:44] So, we’re running out of time. Before we do, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to shift gears to your own upcoming book. It’s going to be released later this year. Are you self-publishing that or is that going for a formal publishing house?

Bea Wray: [00:43:57] I am actually self-publishing that and I’m really excited about it. We’re finally getting into the homestretch here.

Michael Blake: [00:44:05] And if it’s not a major state secret, what is the voice of that book and what is the idea that you just had to get out of yourself and into that book?

Bea Wray: [00:44:18] Thank you. So, I had the privilege. I called the company and I had the privilege of taking about six years off of corporate work to raise my children. And I actually did so on a (inaudible) island in South Carolina. Daufuskie Island. So basically it’s exactly next to heaven and it was a perfect experience. But when I went back to work, which was at the Creative Coast, which you’ve already mentioned, I’m terrified. Did I have any skills? What can I do? How could I help them? Could I even find a job? And it was even way worse when I did because then I thought of all the ways I would fail because I had been at home with my children for six years.

Bea Wray: [00:45:00] And what amazed me is I had floods of thank you note. Thank you for that introduction to the venture capitalist. Thank you for this great event that you put on. Thank you for the strategic consulting. And I kept wondering, what were we doing that was helping these people? And then I kept wondering specifically, where did I personally get this skill to help these 300 plus companies? And over and over and over, the answer to that last question was not that I got this skill because I had attended the Harvard Business School. It wasn’t that I got this skill because I had decades of experience as an entrepreneur. Over and over again, the ability that I had to connect people, make people feel comfortable at an event, set out a vision for where we were going I received because I was raising children. So I want to talk about it.

Michael Blake: [00:46:00] And what what is the—is there one lesson that stands out as to the most important or the most obvious that your children taught you?

Bea Wray: [00:46:16] There isn’t one. Well, there’s dozens of them. But I think the main—the overarching lesson is that business is done with people. So people skills matter. So a great way to get people feel—hone your people skills is to try to raise them in your home.

Michael Blake: [00:46:37] Very good.

Bea Wray: [00:46:38] The one to do I have that I hope people walk away with is we, both men and women, belittle on our LinkedIn profile anything to do with parenting. We treat it as like a black mark, especially people who have taken time off. We try to cover it up from our professional experience. And my invitation is to consider not feeling that. And if you consider saying, you know, here’s who I am as a whole person. It’s basically Sheryl Sandberg said, hey, your corporate—your career path is not a corporate ladder. It’s not linear. It’s a jungle gym. And what I’m trying to do with this book is to validate that parenting is a reasonable spot on that corporate jungle gym.

Michael Blake: [00:47:33] Well, I am going to hit you up for a signed copy of that book. I can certainly see where that would fit because you’re right, there’s not just people skills. I think, you know, modern parenting involves tremendous time management requirements. I think obviously there’s economics that are involved. There’s conflict resolution. There’s so many things that actually can take from that. I’ve never thought about that. But the more you talk about it, the more inherent sense it makes to me. So, like I said, I’m going to hit you up for an autographed copy of the book.

Bea Wray: [00:48:10] I can’t wait.

Michael Blake: [00:48:11] So we need to wrap up. I think this is the longest podcast we’ve actually done and this is number 37 or 38, something like that. So I’m not sure if congratulations are in order or not, but it is what it is. If people want to contact you about writing a book or or maybe just figuring out where, you know, what lessons their children should be teaching them, how can they best contact you?

Bea Wray: [00:48:36] So, my personal e-mail is bea, is my name. B like boy, @beawray.com.

Michael Blake: [00:48:47] Okay. And that’s gonna do it for today’s program. I’d like to thank Bea Wray so much for joining us and sharing her expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re facing your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision podcast.

Pam Balentine, Viking CPA Group, and Anna Clapper, Deep Blue Aquatics

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North Fulton Business Radio
North Fulton Business Radio
Pam Balentine, Viking CPA Group, and Anna Clapper, Deep Blue Aquatics
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John Ray, Pam Balentine, and Anna Clapper

North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 175: Pam Balentine, Viking CPA Group, and Anna Clapper, Deep Blue Aquatics

A small business “CPA with a personality” and a professional mermaid for your next corporate event were featured on this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio” as Pam Balentine, Viking CPA Group, and Anna Clapper, Deep Blue Aquatics, joined the show. “North Fulton Business Radio” is hosted by John Ray and is broadcast from inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Pam Balentine, Viking CPA Group

Pam Balentine

Pam Balentine is founder of Viking CPA Group, which services small to mid-size business owners, assisting them with tax, accounting, and consulting needs. She prides herself on being a value add to her clients and forming relationships. Pam helps clients understand their business numbers and how to use them to make key growth decisions. She assists clients with strategies to incorporate operations and processes with financials to ensure a low risk, effective, and efficient business.

Pam earned bachelor and master’s degrees in accounting from Michigan State University, and started her career at the prestigious EY in the Detroit office. She continued her career in auditing at various Fortune 500 companies. While working in internal audit, Pam started Viking CPA Group in March of 2013. She is a former adjunct accounting professor at Kennesaw State University. Pam describes herself as the CPA with personality.

To learn more, go to the Viking CPA Group website, email Pam directly, or call 404-850-0326.

Anna Clapper, Deep Blue Aquatics

Anna Clapper

Anna Clapper is a professional aquatic performer and owner of Deep Blue Aquatics in Columbia, SC. She has made appearances at events all across the Southeast. She not only provides exceptional mermaid and aquatic performance entertainment, but also offers personalized dive instruction, aquatic safety workshops, and life-saving certification courses upon request. She has nearly 15 years of diving experience and is a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor. As a PADI Master Freediver and Freediving Instructor, Anna has a recorded breath hold of over three and a half minutes. She can safely perform in open water and confined water environments using both breath hold diving and surface supply scuba systems. Anna has more than 20 years of training in a variety of dance styles, making her a skilled underwater model and performer.

In addition to diving, Anna is a published scientist. She works closely with local organizations as an advocate for conservation and STEM education. In her spare time, Anna is also a volunteer diver at the South Carolina Aquarium (in her human form). And, as you might have guessed, her favorite sea creatures are jellyfish.

To learn more, go to the Deep Blue Aquatics website, email Anna directly, or call 843-289-0033.

North Fulton Business Radio” is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®, located inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with approximately $12.9 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Gary Grace, Atlanta North Art Gallery, and Derek Griffin, Speartek

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North Fulton Business Radio
North Fulton Business Radio
Gary Grace, Atlanta North Art Gallery, and Derek Griffin, Speartek
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John Ray, Derek Griffin, and Gary Grace

North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 174: Gary Grace, Atlanta North Art Gallery, and Derek Griffin, Speartek

An artist’s story, an technology-enabled art gallery, and technology expertise in ecommerce for wholesalers were the topics featured on this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio” as Gary Grace, Atlanta North Art Gallery, and Derek Griffin, Speartek joined the show. “North Fulton Business Radio” is hosted by John Ray and is broadcast from inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Gary Grace, Atlanta North Art Gallery

Gary Grace

Gary Grace opened Atlanta North Art Gallery in the Warehouse District of Peachtree Corners in 2019.  The  location allows the artist, owner enough space to design and display his large scale industrial abstract masterpieces. He is also a photographer. A large section of the gallery is dedicated to Gary’s photography, offering originals and prints.

Gary is a native of  Pittsburgh, PA. He grew up during a time when Steel town blast furnaces were still ablaze, and the scent of coke and soot dominated the city. As a child, Gary rode his bicycle through busy streets from one corner of the city to the other, exploring fearlessly. Today, it is his quest to blend form with nature and his innate ability to visualize abstract concepts that are the foundation of his highly revered art style “Industrial Abstract.” Abstract artwork using oils is the medium Gary is most known for in the art world. His travels have brought him an affinity for landscape photography, and he has written and Illustrated a published children’s book, “Sasha, I Can’t Find My Bicycle.” Gary is currently working on two adventure novels’, “45” and “Throwbacks.”

Gary’s dyslexia has been the pathway to his creativity and exploration. He attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, where he majored in fashion illustration and clothing design. He is the founder of the clothing line “Posse,” which went national in the 1980s.

To learn more, go to the Atlanta North Art Gallery website, email Gary directly, or call 678-283-5390.

Derek Griffin, Speartek

Derek Griffin

Derek Griffin is co-founder of Speartek, a unique combo of technology firm and web development shop. Over the past 20 years, Speartek has built and continued to evolve the only ecommerce platform created primarily for the needs of B2B ecommerce. B2B is Business to Business and is often used by companies that sell their products wholesale or through distribution.

Speartek works primarily with product companies that are either manufacturers or importers, and while the industry doesn’t matter, they have numerous clients in Gift and Home Decor, Promotional Merchandise, and Industrial Products. Speartek designs and builds websites that are essentially a business solution that helps companies capture revenue more seamlessly and have those orders feed directly into accounting and ERP systems.

To learn more, go to the Speartek website, email Derek directly, or call 770-674-3900.

North Fulton Business Radio” is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®, located inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with approximately $12.9 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Decision Vision Episode 38: Should I Outsource My IT? – An Interview with Tony Rushin, Network 1 Consulting

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 38: Should I Outsource My IT? – An Interview with Tony Rushin, Network 1 Consulting
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Mike Blake and Tony Rushin

Decision Vision Episode 38:  Should I Outsource My IT? – An Interview with Tony Rushin, Network 1 Consulting

Will outsourcing my IT increase my cybersecurity? What’s a human firewall and how does a managed services provider help me with this aspect of my IT? In this episode of “Decision Vision,” host Mike Blake explores these questions and much more with Tony Rushin, Network 1 Consulting. “Decision Vision” is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Tony Rushin, Network 1 Consulting

Tony Rushin

Tony Rushin is a Vice President, Sales & Marketing, with Network 1 Consulting.

Network 1 Consulting is a 21-year-old, IT Support company in Atlanta, GA. They become – or augment – the IT department for law firms, medical practices and real estate & construction companies. Their IT experts can fix computers, but what their clients value most are the industry-specific best practices we bring to their firms. This is especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, changing so rapidly. They take a proactive approach to helping our clients use technology to gain and keep their competitive advantage.

For more information, go to the Network 1 Consulting website, or contact Tony directly by email.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

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Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:37] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator. And also, please, consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:01] Our topic today is, should I outsource my IT or information technology functions? And you know, I think this is a question that companies wrestle with quite a lot. In fact, I know companies that kind of do the IT two-step where they’ll insource it, and then outsource it for a while then. And then, thrilled to kind of bring it back, and then send it out again. And, you know, it’s really sort of the Texas two-step information technology style. And, you know, having been a business owner myself, I had to face that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:01:32] Now, as an anecdote, when I had my firm for a while, Arpeggio Advisors, our family at that time had started out as a Windows platform family. And then, something like three weeks into my trying to launch my company where my blood pressure was at a fairly high level, all of a sudden, my wife’s computer crashes and my oldest son’s computer crashed. Basically a race time when they can’t do anything and we’ve got to figure it out. And I’ve spent an entire day getting them back up and running, which I eventually did. But I said I’m just never doing that again.

Michael Blake: [00:02:16] So, on Saturday, I don’t know if Apple salespeople work on commission or not. But whoever—if they did, they made a lot of money on me that day because that day all the PCs are out. Macs were in. Never had trouble since. And this is not meant to be an Apple infomercial. I mean I do actually still have Windows machines for some things, but it’s indicative of how IT can be disruptive to a business, even if you’re a sole practitioner or even if you’re a home based business. That when you—when you’re infrastructure doesn’t work well, it is a real pain in the neck. It’s one of those things. It’s kind of like an umpire in baseball. You don’t notice and necessarily they do great. But boy, when they fail, you notice the heck out of them.

Michael Blake: [00:03:02] And IT is like that one. When your technology fails you, I can tell you from my perspective, I feel betrayed when my technology does not work. So, I feel like, you know what? I’m doing my my job. Right. Why is Apple, why is Microsoft, why is whoever not sort of holding up their end of the bargain? And so, the IT function in a company in the 21st century is every bit as important, if not more important than sales, than an accounting product delivery. You know, it’s right up there. But I don’t think that there’s as much controversy or consternation on whether or not to to keep that function or to outsource it or maybe if there’s, you know, identify kind of where that inflection point is, where you should consider that—you should consider that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:03:59] And so, as is often the case, you know, I’m not qualified to advise you on how to make that decision. So, I’ve brought in somebody who is qualified to help you make that decision. And joining us today is my friend Tony Rushin, who is vice president of Network 1 Consulting. Spending 30 years in high technology sales and marketing from IBM to startups, Tony brings his broad experience and business development marketing in IT business strategy to Network 1’s leadership team clients and partners. His passion is to help people achieve greatness and however they define it. And by the way, if your Atlanta Braves fan, you will appreciate this. He does run it out when the ball is hit into the gap in the outfield. Unlike some of our players here.

Michael Blake: [00:04:38] Network 1 delivers I-T managed services exclusively to businesses in Metro Atlanta. Since 1998, Network 1 becomes or augments the IT department for companies. Network 1’s IT experts fix computers for what their clients really values, the industry best practices they bring to the firm. It’s especially important with technology, along with regulations and cyber threats, which are changing rapidly.

Michael Blake: [00:05:02] With over 30 employees, Network 1 has built a culture that attracts and retains network and desktop professionals who know their stuff and have an outstanding desk side. Man, that is not easy to do. They find a fixed root causes instead of putting a Band-Aid on issues. Network 1 delivers proactive planning, so their clients avoid problems and gain competitive advantage. They’re not just a cost function. Network 1 is a fractional chief information officer, a support desk network engineer and everything in between. Tony, welcome to the program.

Tony Rushin: [00:05:32] Well, glad to be here, Mike. Thank you.

Michael Blake: [00:05:34] So many of us encounter outsource support when we need to fix our computer in sort of a robot vacuum. Is outsourced IT support simply hiring day from India. What does that look like?

Tony Rushin: [00:05:49] Well, no offense today from India, but if that’s all outsourced, IT support would be, there wouldn’t be much outsourced IT. So, it’s much more than that. But, you know, it can be confined to that, too. It really runs the gamut as far as what companies need, and then what they go out and get.

Michael Blake: [00:06:08] So, you know, what if a company happens to have a lot of people who are relatively computer uncomfortable, does that change the equation? Not every company necessarily has or needs people who are power users at every desk, right? Does that at all impact the decision on whether or not you should keep that function in-house versus outsourcing it?

Tony Rushin: [00:06:29] Great question. We’ve got 120 clients around Metro Atlanta. And I would say most of the users we support are relatively uncomfortable with technology and yet they still have a job to do. And their threshold for when they need help is much lower than that, power user often. And some of those that are uncomfortable with technology are also in some form the rainmakers. It could be a salesperson. It could be a managing partner in a law firm. And so, we haven’t found any correlation to whether or not you outsource to the how comfortable or uncomfortable people are with technology.

Michael Blake: [00:07:15] So, let’s back up. I probably should have made this the first question but too late. But there’s a term people hear a lot and I’m not sure they understand what it means. What—when we say managed services, what does that mean?

Tony Rushin: [00:07:27] Yeah. Managed services. It can mean something different to different IT support companies. What it means for Network 1, and in general I think we’re aligned with the industry, it’s the ongoing and always up to date services that are delivered by your outsourced IT company. So, what does that mean? And not all outsourced IT is—includes managed services.

Tony Rushin: [00:07:53] But, for instance, basic security. Well, that’s antivirus. Well, making sure it’s the latest version and it’s on everyone’s desktop or laptop. Well, that kind of infers that desktops and laptops need to be monitored to make sure that the latest is on there. It could be advanced security suite that’s got more tools and solutions in there to protect and prevent bad guys from getting in, but also detecting them when they get in. It can be managing a firewall. So, it always has the latest firmware and software involved in the company that is being managed on behalf. Never has to worry about it, never has to buy the hardware, it just gets supplied. So, think of it as baked in.

Michael Blake: [00:08:40] And so, in effect, is it fair to kind of characterize managed services for the most part as just a turnkey solution to some IT operation that needs to happen?

Tony Rushin: [00:08:50] Yeah, great, great summary of it. Turnkey and but typically it’s also based on a menu. Hey, I need this, that and the other and I don’t need those other things.

Michael Blake: [00:08:59] Okay. So, I think—in fact, I know a question on a lot of business owners and executives minds. As you know, we both understand the importance of IT to an organization. Right. And when IT doesn’t work, an organization can stop dead. And we’ve seen, we’ve heard of those those things. How do you overcome as an executive this notion or the idea or the fear that if I don’t own my IT department, really own them, right, they’re employees and I can, I don’t know, yell at them or fire or throw rocks at them, whatever, right, that that just leaves me more vulnerable to a disaster?

Tony Rushin: [00:09:42] Yeah. You know, it’s great you do this podcast because you’re getting advisors in here that have some experience and yet some in your audience that own businesses will say, yeah, I hear that but I think I have a better way. And so, we don’t do too much to educate people. We let the marketplace educate them for them. What I mean by that is the common sense of one business owner might be, I need IT in-house and it could be going great because let’s say there are financial advisory company and they’ve got 15 people and they’ve got an IT guy. That’s good. He’s customer-oriented. He’s focused. He runs around. He helps fix issues. And then, he gets sick or he quits or he’s not so good and he’s spotty.

Tony Rushin: [00:10:36] That’s the education of the owner like, oh, wait a minute, he is who he is. And by the way, the dynamic of the marketplaces, if he is really good, and I say he because most of them are guys, then he won’t be satisfied forever at a 15 person financial advisory company. He’ll want colleagues. He’ll want more challenges, whatever it is. And so, if someone chooses to bring it in-house, it could work great. My guess is for a small size business, say under 50 employees, it will bite them in some way, in some form or fashion.

Michael Blake: [00:11:17] You bring up something I want to make sure that I talked about because I do think it’s important. You know what was not intended to create innuendo here, but I think size really does matter. Right? I mean, I think there’s a—is it fair to speculate on my part that there’s maybe a sweet spot where, you know, can an organization get so big that having outsourced IT just isn’t—at least entirely, is no longer practical and maybe even on the small end, right, outsourced IT may kind of even be overkill, right? If you only wanted two people and you know your way around a computer, maybe it should just kind of do that. Is that fair?

Tony Rushin: [00:11:57] It is fair. And I’ll talk in generalities because it’s different depending on the kind of business it is. Some are highly regulated. I use financial advisory as an example and some are less regulated for instance. In the marketplace over time—and Network 1’s 21 years old. I’ve been there almost 10 years. I’ve seen almost a physics of size and when they need certain IT support. And if you’re less than 10 employees or or less than 8, you can often get away with some kind of as needed IT support. So, the opposite of managed services. You simply pick up the phone and call somebody if you need their help, only when you have an issue. And sometimes that can be done internally if you got a smart guy. And hey, I’ll fix it for you, right.

Tony Rushin: [00:12:52] Sometime between 5 and 10 employees, if they’re doing it with a smart person in-house and they’re growing, they might say, hey, wait a minute, it’s better to have Sally get out there and get new clients than fix our computers, and she’s really good at getting new clients, for instance. And so, that’ll happen. And they’ll say, well, let’s get someone that can fix things when they break. Often at about that 10 employees standpoint up to say 50, they’ll say, hey, look, I need—it would be better if there was someone more proactive and all inclusive delivering these services, not just when my hair’s on fire. Because when my hair’s on fire, I need him here now. And you can always get him here now. Whereas if they’re fixing little things along the way, it can avoid the big thing.

Tony Rushin: [00:13:42] So, really, for companies less than 50 employees, but 10 to 50, we don’t find a lot of in-house IT people. They’re outsourcing everything. Somewhere between 50 and 100, typically, we see them get their first IT person and that can actually be worked really well with an outsourced firm. We love working with an internal IT person because no matter how good our support desk is and they’re really good, I mean, they get to every issue within on average, seven minutes.

Michael Blake: [00:14:16] Wow.

Tony Rushin: [00:14:16] But the person on site can beat that every time. Now, not if he’s helping Joe and Susie down the hall needs him at the same time.

Michael Blake: [00:14:26] Right. That just assumes a personal sort of waiting for the phone to ring and that phone lights up and all of a sudden-

Tony Rushin: [00:14:32] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:14:32] … you’re rushing up to that person, right?

Tony Rushin: [00:14:34] Yeah. But between that 50 and 100 people, they typically have a person onsite. And then, if they get to that issue where, hey, we have multiple people and you know, our IT guy can’t get to them all, they’ll often bring in someone like us and say, hey, look, is there a way we can streamline, so that they take what they can? But if it’s over their technology knowledge or if they’re flat out, you know, covered up with a couple different issues or you know what, the dang employee wants vacation once in a while, go figure, right. They’ll have a relationship with someone like us, a managed service company, and says, look, we want to escalate or we want to hand off whenever we need to. So, that’s about 50 to 100.

Tony Rushin: [00:15:19] And then, when you get multiple people in I.T., then they have colleagues, then they can internally go on vacation or go to a class and still have someone to back fill. And we find that typically when there’s more than 100 employees.

Michael Blake: [00:15:35] So, I think there’s an important point there that I want to make sure we highlight is that this choice may or may not necessarily be an either or. Right. It very well could be an and, right. You may have, you know, one IT resource that is captive. Right. But then some firm like yours might then be available to augment that. It could be as needed, it could be strategic, whatever. Right. So, maybe in some cases it’s a fault—you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Tony Rushin: [00:16:09] Yeah. Really, it ends up being managing the business risk and managing the ongoing productivity of the employees on a fundamental level. The business risk is I have one IT guy and he gets sick. He leaves, he goes on vacation, whatever. And, of course, Murphy says that’s when the bad things gonna happen. And you need help.

Michael Blake: [00:16:28] Absolutely.

Tony Rushin: [00:16:29] And if you wait till then to have this outsourced relationship, well, the company you bring in doesn’t know your system. And so, they’re doing the best they can. But at best, it’s triage learning the systems. Oh, was it documented? Oh, you don’t even know passwords. Well, then they’re hacking into your system.

Michael Blake: [00:16:48] Right. It’s like an emergency room visit.

Tony Rushin: [00:16:50] Exactly. Whereas if you do it when everything’s quiet, you’ve got your IT person, they’re part of the solution of bringing in the company. They’re actually even getting, hey, what’s my style? What’s the style of the person to work with? Do they work with me well? Then they’re part of the solution. And it works fine for when those emergencies come up.

Michael Blake: [00:17:12] So, you mentioned something else I want to make sure to underline, because I think one of the arguments somebody might have to maintain a captive IT resource is that notion that while I own most of the service, the response time is going to be instantaneous. Right. But, you know, that’s not necessarily the case. And if you work with the right partner, you may very well find that you get, you know, assuming it doesn’t necessarily need to be an onsite because most of these—most computer issues can be addressed remotely now that you aren’t necessarily making that sacrifice of responsiveness that you thought you might.

Tony Rushin: [00:17:47] Yeah, it all depends. It depends a lot on how customer service oriented is the person you hire. And, you know, people can be really good in interviews, and then you get what you get. But let’s say they’re great, you know, and they know their technology and they’re really customer service oriented. You still run into, oh, my gosh, the rainmaker’s on the road and his laptop failed and yet they’re addressing a server down issue in the other part of your company, they can’t do two things at once. But that’s part of the business dynamic. I think companies get there on their own, get their meaning. Oh, we need to augment the current person we have in site simply from enduring enough IT issues that, you know, the person can’t clone themselves.

Michael Blake: [00:18:36] So, I would have to imagine that you’re having many more conversations about cyber security now than you were, say, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, right. So, how does—how do concerns about cyber security impact that decision of outsourcing IT functions? On the one hand, I could see an argument that’s well, again, if I have this captive asset, I own it, it’s ostensibly a closed cycle that should be nominally more secure. On the other hand, maybe it’s by outsourcing your brain and expertise, you could not possibly afford to hire cause cyber security experts are—they’re as well paid as a senior software engineer, if not more, at this point. Where do you kind of fall in that? Where—how do you kind of look at that, that many decision within the decision process?

Tony Rushin: [00:19:27] Yeah, great question. I don’t think overall it really affects the fundamental of do I outsource or do I bring it, have it in-house. What it has done—and really we’ve seen the acceleration rapidly in the last three years, you know, where cyber security, it’s gone from reading about it in the newspaper like, oh, it happened to someone else, to people—oh, it happened in my company or my next door neighbor’s company and I know him personally and I think that’s what’s accelerated it.

Tony Rushin: [00:20:00] You kind of set it up really well with if it’s that single in-house person and you’re keeping them really busy, how much time do they have to do that proactive. Hey, what new solutions are in the marketplace that might protect us better? Do they have colleagues already in-house that they can pick up the phone and just have a brainstorm sounding board conversation about, hey, we got this bad malware, how did you guys prevent it? It’s hard to find that really tactically good computer broke, fix it fast, person. And have that same person be that strategic, always looking forward, hey, what’s on the horizon? What do the bad guys do and what do the good guys do and what solutions should I be looking at? Oh, I should bring it in and vet it and do a pilot on it. Oh, wait a minute, this guy’s computer broke. That’s where I have to spend my time. And that’s the reality of what that single shingle person is involved with. And so, it ends up driving more people, I think driving more outsourced I.T.’s conversations, whether you keep that internal person and if he’s good, you should or whether you simply want to outsource all of it.

Michael Blake: [00:21:15] So many companies now are also using cloud services or putting all their data up in the cloud, whether that’s One Drive, Dropbox, something like that. Does that impact a need to—does that impact at all kind of the decision as to whether or not you outsource versus keep in-house, given that by definition, when you’re putting your data in a cloud, you’re already taking a step to outsource anyway, right?

Tony Rushin: [00:21:41] Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of things that are bundled into that, you know, cloud solution are what a company like us would do if you had it running on a server internally, meaning the servers in that cloud solution if you picked a good one, right. Not one that’s really in someone’s basement, but, you know, Microsoft or, you know, Office 365 or something like-

Michael Blake: [00:22:10] Josvpn.com.

Tony Rushin: [00:22:12] Right. They’re going to have redundancy built in. They’re going to have backups built in. And they’re going to make sure that everything is designed in a way where the application is not going to go down. Or if it goes down, it’s gonna be minutes and, you know, like that, not two days. So, all of that is a real big step up where we find that people—I mean you still need—you still have users and you still have them. I mean, I’ll flip it around, ask you question. Do people still go to the wrong websites?

Michael Blake: [00:22:47] All the time.

Tony Rushin: [00:22:47] Do they still get tricked by that e-mail, that phishing e-mail, and they might click on something?

Michael Blake: [00:22:53] You better believe that.

Tony Rushin: [00:22:55] Do they still forget to run the updates when their computer says run these updates?

Michael Blake: [00:23:00] Especially with Windows, I think many people actively avoid it.

Tony Rushin: [00:23:04] Yeah, because then, you know, you got a reboot or hey, the update might cause a problem.

Michael Blake: [00:23:09] And takes a minute.

Tony Rushin: [00:23:10] Takes a minute. So, it’s the user issues that are still the same. In fact, maybe they’re more complicated because you’re not going to pick up the phone if Office 365’s not working right and call Microsoft and actually get a response.

Michael Blake: [00:23:23] Right. Not unless you’re a really big user.

Tony Rushin: [00:23:25] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:23:26] Or you’ve really paid for their Cadillac plan, which they will sell you. Right. But then are you really saving anything, right?

Tony Rushin: [00:23:31] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:23:32] You know, I want to go back to those questions you just asked because they’re so important. You know, speaking of spear phishing attack, a friend of mine who was a CFO fell prey to a spear phishing attack and lost her job.

Tony Rushin: [00:23:52] Wow.

Michael Blake: [00:23:52] Within two days, gone. Right. Now, I do not believe it was her fault. The organization had never trained her or anybody to recognize spearfishing. There are no policies, rules, procedures, right? Yes, there’s human error. But to me, that was human error that was set up by an organizational failure to be prepared. So, my question for you is, beyond kind of the nuts and bolts of of keeping a machine running and keeping software update and so forth, can an outsourced IT function, if it’s not you, maybe somebody else, also help kind of establish those rules, procedures, create awareness? Because the end of the day, you do still need your end users to be smart about this thing.

Tony Rushin: [00:24:37] Yeah, and it’s interesting. The biggest weakness in any network is still the human firewall.

Michael Blake: [00:24:44] Yeah.

Tony Rushin: [00:24:44] It’s that person. And you hit the nail on the head. Well, how do you make that human firewall more secure? It’s through education. It’s through training. It’s through—and not one time events. Right. It’s like, hey, security is important. And that’s the day that you hired him, and then you never talk about it again. Well, that doesn’t work.

Michael Blake: [00:25:06] Right. This isn’t sensitivity training. OK, just kidding, just kidding, hold your e-mails.

Tony Rushin: [00:25:11] Right. So, the—first of all, we, as the outsourced IT or any outsourced IT can influence the leadership of the company to take security seriously and make it part of their employee handbook, make it part of their regularly ongoing employee training. But at the end of the day, if they don’t—if the leadership doesn’t step up to lead it and say this is important and this is what we’re doing, we can only influence, right.

Tony Rushin: [00:25:51] But let’s say it is a company that they care. It’s like, look, I want this to care. Then, yeah, we can advise. Well, then here are the steps, the processes, the training that you should incorporate into your culture. And here’s the frequency at which you should do it. So, I think most companies that are like us and helping those smaller companies can at least advise, influence, give some examples of processes and procedures to put in place to raise up their security. And solutions are put in place. If they need—if they’re in a regulated industry and they need something more robust than you’ve got those paid as much as a software developer kind of people that are consultants to put whole company assessments in place around security, physical and online security and put, you know, really extensive processes and procedures in place.

Michael Blake: [00:26:53] I mean, that—yeah, and that security space has has evolved into sort of the neurosurgery, I think of the IT world. Partially because I’m glad about the regulations, because, you know, financial statement, audit rules are now directly addressing this. Right. Your data security. In my world now, you know, I am—although badly I am now asking customers, not customer, I’m asking clients, why appraise their business? What are they doing about data security? How many records do they have that are potentially exposed, right, to do business in Europe where GDPR becomes effective or in California where their roles become effective? Because I don’t think that if you’re—if you ignore that, you’re really missing a big potential risk, right?

Tony Rushin: [00:27:38] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:27:39] So—but it’s become so specialized that, you know, if you’re a generalist, you just can’t cover it, right. And if you’re really sensitive, if you’ve got high sensitivity, that maybe another IT function that needs to ultimately be outsourced and just part of the cost of doing business. Right?

Tony Rushin: [00:27:56] Yeah. And the good news is. When you look at the tools of the technology that’s available to also help protect and prevent and detect security breaches, in this day and age, they are very affordable for small businesses. And especially if they outsource because what they also get the benefit of, let’s say with us, is a 50 person company pays a 50 person price for whatever licenses they might get of Cisco umbrella that protects them way out on the Internet side, or Huntress Labs, which is a cool piece of software that doesn’t protect you. But it always scans to check and detect if something made it through because something’s going to get through no matter how good your protection is.

Tony Rushin: [00:28:51] Well, those things for a 50 person company might cost them, say, $40 per computer per month. Well, a company like us will buy 2000 nodes for all our clients, and then we’ll offer it to our clients for $10 a computer a month. Plus, by the way, you know, we’ll get an alert when something happens and we’ll dig into it. You don’t even have to know about it. So I wanted to bring in costs because it’s important. These solutions typically start with big companies. And then, over the years, more competition comes in or that same company will develop a price point that is very palatable for small businesses.

Michael Blake: [00:29:37] And interestingly enough, I see the same thing, but from a different angle. I see that also occurring because small companies, most of them at some point would like to be bought by a larger company. And I have seen deals get stopped dead or at least get dragged through the mud and prices go down because the larger acquirer that does have kind of “best practices”, I think they do. Right. And they’re reaching down into this small company that is farther behind. Right. And it’s like trying to buy a house and you realize you’ve got to put a million dollars to get up the code and the deal can fall apart.

Michael Blake: [00:30:18] So, you know, I think a best practice for many companies is to make your IT as best practice as you can afford if you want to be acquired, because an information officer will say, look, this is too risky.

Tony Rushin: [00:30:33] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:30:33] Either they’ve got to go through and get a real grown up IT audit and a clean bill of health from your national firm or it just doesn’t make sense. An Exhibit A was the Verizon Yahoo! deal. Right. I remember when Verizon bought Yahoo! a while ago. And in the middle of that deal, they discovered a breach and it shaved billions of dollars off the acquisition price. I mean that’s an extreme example, but it happens all the time.

Tony Rushin: [00:30:57] Yeah. And I want to play off that a couple different ways. And in your example, it doesn’t mean the small company has to spend big company money. I mean, at the end of the day, you have to be more secure than your neighbor, just like physical security with your house.

Michael Blake: [00:31:13] Run faster than the other guy when you’re running from there.

Tony Rushin: [00:31:16] Exactly. And so, no one’s asking them to, you know, spend what Yahoo! or Verizon spent. In fact, no matter how much they’re spending, they can’t keep themselves safe. So, if the bad guys want to get you, they’re going to get you. What you want to do is button down things, so when they knock on your door from a cyber standpoint, oh, no one’s home. Go to the next. I checked the windows, can’t get in and they quickly go to the next. And so, you don’t have to spend that kind of price. You just have to pay attention to it appropriately.

Tony Rushin: [00:31:51] And going back to outsourcing, if you’re a single small business, you may not know what’s available out there in your price point or what are best practices without overspending for a company that’s 40 people. Whereas a company like us has one hundred and twenty clients that are that size and we work in there all day. And by default then because we earn a living doing this, we understand what best practice is or what’s appropriate and what’s available for that sized company.

Michael Blake: [00:32:23] Now, correct me if I’m wrong. If I’m not mistaken, a lot of your clients are law firms and accounting firms.

Tony Rushin: [00:32:30] They’re law firms and financial advisors.

Michael Blake: [00:32:31] Financial advisors, okay.

Tony Rushin: [00:32:32] Yeah, not quite accounting firms.

Michael Blake: [00:32:34] So, is that because those kinds of firms tend to lend themselves better to outsourced IT than do others? And are there other kinds of firms that say, you know what, this kind of firm probably really needs to just have staff in-house?

Tony Rushin: [00:32:51] So, way back in our history, 21 years, our founder married an attorney and the daughter of an attorney. So, it’s not rocket science why we got law firms at the beginning. We got referred in by people that knew our-

Michael Blake: [00:33:05] Right. Fair enough.

Tony Rushin: [00:33:06] And then, we built enough reputation there for being good. We call it that side manner to be able to explain things to an attorney or their staff that wasn’t tech talk and to be empathetic and to be responsive. And so, we got more law firms and attorneys. So, truth be told. Now, are some better outsourced than others? No, pretty much we find across the board any business can benefit from it. The ones we found actually—I say any. The ones that don’t seem to be quite as good a fit is that technology company that part of their offering is delivered through technology that’s facing for their client.

Tony Rushin: [00:33:52] Think of Amazon when they were really little. Well, when they were really little, they’re structured the same way as they are now and their technology was really client facing. Click here and go on and order a book. Well, if you outsource the IT support for that, you may not—that’s a critical function to their business. Those critical functions or the family jewels, if you will, you typically want to have in-house. So, that’s not quite a fit. But any others, we haven’t seen the correlation.

Michael Blake: [00:34:29] So, what does—what are the economics of outsourcing IT typically look like? And what I mean by that in a more specific way is, is pricing typically done on a monthly retainer? Is it on a per incident basis, done on an hourly basis, some other basis? How does that typically work?

Tony Rushin: [00:34:53] Yeah. Well, the good news for that small business owner is it’s a highly competitive marketplace. In Metro Atlanta alone, there’s over 800 IT support companies.

Michael Blake: [00:35:07] Wow.

Tony Rushin: [00:35:07] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:35:08] I thought I had competition.

Tony Rushin: [00:35:09] That’s a real number. And now, granted, 780 of those 800 are one, two or three-man shops. But the good news is that business owner, you brought up examples, you know, is it on a monthly retained basis, is it per incident, is it this or that? The answer’s yes.

Michael Blake: [00:35:26] Got it.

Tony Rushin: [00:35:26] You can find a provider that works with any of those models.

Michael Blake: [00:35:31] And what about you guys? Is it—do you find that you kind of tailor your pricing to the particular needs and wants of that customer as while? Do you sort of have—or do you have kind of a more of a fixed model?

Tony Rushin: [00:35:44] It’s both. We have three different basic plans, and then we have these managed services that, oh, you don’t need the advance security suite in your environment. Okay, don’t get that. Or you don’t need the the backup and recovery with disaster recovery built into it or at least it’s not at your price point. Great, let’s not do that. So, it’s some of both smorgasbord and fixed plans.

Tony Rushin: [00:36:10] We, in particular, won’t take a client that merely wants to call us when their hair’s on fire. That’s the as needed only. However, we’ve been around Atlanta for 21 years. So, if we find someone or if someone’s referred to us and say this is the kind of plan I want, we’ll simply say, well, that doesn’t fit us but we know two people that are really good at that. And would you like their names. Yes, we would. All right. Go call them. We found—we—I’ve been there 10 years. And for the first three years of me being there, we tried to serve both kind of client and we found we simply couldn’t because our monthly retained clients are where we put all our resources. And then, that person with their hair on fire calls and it’s like, do we take this engineer off this client that pays us every month? No, of course, we don’t. And then, we’d never be responsive enough for the hair on fire guy.

Michael Blake: [00:37:00] Right. That makes sense. And it would be like working at, you know, at a car company. And they have this assembly line, that’s their model, and then all of a sudden the CEO wants a custom car built, right? It would break everybody. Right. You wouldn’t get a very good custom car and it would disrupt the entire assembly line, too. Tony, this has been great. We’re running out of time, so we’re gonna need to wrap up. But if somebody wants to contact you with questions about this decision, how can they do that?

Tony Rushin: [00:37:31] Yeah, a lot of ways to contact. It’s trushin, R-U-S-H-I-N, @network1consulting.com. And that’s the numeral 1. So, that’s long the first time you type it. You know, just put me in as a contact. You can find me on LinkedIn, Tony Rushin. We’ve got a website. You know, we do tweet and we do Facebook. Personally, I’m not on those too much cause our—I’m on LinkedIn mostly cause that’s where business people are.

Michael Blake: [00:37:56] Right.

Tony Rushin: [00:37:57] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:37:58] Well, good. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Tony Rushin so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our decision—our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company and this has been the Decision Vision podcast.

David Shavzin, The Value Track

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North Fulton Business Radio
North Fulton Business Radio
David Shavzin, The Value Track
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John Ray and David Shavzin

North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 173: David Shavzin, The Value Track

David Shavzin, Founder and President of The Value Track, explains how he gets business owners on “the value track,” methodically building the value of their business in preparation for a successful sale or transition in the future. “North Fulton Business Radio” is hosted by John Ray and is broadcast from inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

David Shavzin, The Value Track

David Shavzin

David Shavzin created The Value Track to help business owners build value and create a path toward a successful exit. Too often, they have not built the value they need and are unprepared when the time comes to put their transition into action.

Since 2000, David has helped business owners get on The Value Track. He helps them think through their long-term goals and plans, educates them on business value and brings the right – collaborative – advisory team around the table. He then assists in the implementation of value-growth initiatives, guiding them to a successful transition (sale, family transfer, etc.) His 7-step process improves their quality of life and allows them to exit on their own terms.

A frequent speaker on these topics, David is a Certified Management Consultant, former IMC Georgia chapter president and President and Co-Founder of Exit Planning Exchange Atlanta, formed to bring advisors together in a collaborative effort to serve their clients.

His early career was in banking and finance, then 12 years with life sciences company Sanofi/Aventis. He spent 4 years in corporate finance and Mergers & Acquisitions. Then, 8 leading teams responsible for Quality, Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Service and IT functions within a $175M subsidiary.

To learn more, go to The Value Track website. email David directly, or call 770-329-5224.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“North Fulton Business Radio” is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®, located inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with approximately $12.9 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Alan Rosenbaum, Dream Vacations

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North Fulton Business Radio
North Fulton Business Radio
Alan Rosenbaum, Dream Vacations
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Alan Rosenbaum, Dream Vacations

North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 172:  Alan Rosenbaum, Dream Vacations

The differences in ocean cruise line brands and why river cruises are so popular were just two of the travel topics discussed with Alan Rosenbaum, Dream Vacations, on this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio.” The show is hosted by John Ray and is broadcast from inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Alan Rosenbaum, Dream Vacations

Alan Rosenbaum

Alan Rosenbaum has been planning vacations since 2003. In 2003, Dream Vacations was known as CruiseOne because virtually all bookings were cruises. However, over the years they added almost everything related to vacations, so in April of 2016, they re-branded to Dream Vacations. In the past, Alan served on the CruiseOne Advisory Board. He has been quoted numerous times in trade publications and he frequently mentors new franchise owners.

Dream Vacations is a travel agency specializing in vacation destinations. This can range from a simple 3-day cruise to a custom tour of the world. Agents book destination weddings, honeymoons, and anniversaries. They also plan for groups of all kinds including celebrations, reunions, and fundraising cruises. Dream Vacations offers company incentive travel for organizations that seek to reward their best performers. Knowing clients can buy a vacation from hundreds of places, the most important aspect of the travel agency is its excellent service.

For more information visit VacationsByAlan.com, email Alan directly. or call him at 770-664-9010.

“North Fulton Business Radio” is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®, located inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with approximately $12.9 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Alpharetta Tech Talk: Joseph Garfield, Phase3 IT

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Alpharetta Tech Talk
Alpharetta Tech Talk
Alpharetta Tech Talk: Joseph Garfield, Phase3 IT
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John Ray and Joseph Garfield

“Alpharetta Tech Talk,” Episode 2: Joseph Garfield, Phase3 IT

Why should you outsource your IT project management? What are the characteristics of a successful IT project manager? Joseph Garfield, Founder and CEO of Phase3 IT, answers these questions and much more on this edition of “Alpharetta Tech Talk,” broadcast from the North Fulton Business RadioX® studio inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Joseph Garfield, Phase3 IT, Inc.

Joseph Garfield

Joseph Garfield is Founder and CEO of Phase3 IT, which has one mission: To help people succeed with complex IT projects. The company focuses on enabling business leaders to develop a clear vision of project success and then make their vision a reality through exceptional people and processes that cut through the fluff and deliver results. Phase3 IT’s background includes such recent projects as the merge of Northside/Gwinnett Hospitals, rollout of Cerner EMR to Northside, large network infrastructure upgrades, and various upgrades and deployments. Phase3 IT has a reputation for taking ownership of project delivery.

Joseph has a broad technical and business background that enables him to quickly adapt to diverse environments and get complex projects back on track.

For more information go to the Phase3 IT website. You can also email Joseph directly or call 678-906-9308.

About “Alpharetta Tech Talk”

“Alpharetta Tech Talk” is the radio show/podcast home of the burgeoning technology sector in Alpharetta and the surrounding GA 400, North Fulton, Roswell, Johns Creek, and South Forsyth area. We feature startup entrepreneurs, executives of larger enterprise companies, and other key technology players from a region with over 900 technology companies.  “Alpharetta Tech Talk” is hosted by John Ray and originates from the North Fulton Business RadioX® studio inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

“Alpharetta Tech Talk” is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®, located inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with approximately $12.9 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you.

Decision Vision Episode 37: Should I Use an Offshore Software Developer? – An Interview with Dave Bernard, The Intellection Group

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 37: Should I Use an Offshore Software Developer? – An Interview with Dave Bernard, The Intellection Group
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Mike Blake and Dave Bernard

Decision Vision Episode 37:  Should I Use an Offshore Software Developer? – An Interview with Dave Bernard, The Intellection Group

What countries should I consider for offshore software development? How should I manage an offshore software development project? The answer to these questions and much more come in this in-depth, frank interview with Dave Bernard of The Intellection Group. “Decision Vision” is hosted by Mike Blake and is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Dave Bernard, The Intellection Group

Dave Bernard

Dave Bernard is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Intellection Group. He is a serial entrepreneur, technologist, investor, inventor.

The Intellection Group specializes in rapidly building sophisticated, high-quality and innovative technology solutions that deliver breakthrough business results.

No matter where you are in the world, if your company or government agency is a market leader in your niche that requires highly-custom systems to maintain your leadership position and invent further marketplace advantages, they can help. The company’s specialty is complex (and often, award-winning) SaaS projects, and they’ve become well-known as the “vendor of last resort” for many of their clients.

The Intellection Group applies their versatile and deep technology and project management skills to solve problems in areas like developing database architectures that ensure effective data mining, integrated disparate information systems through service oriented architectures and loosely-coupled techniques, applying advanced techniques in data presentation, often an important selling point and differentiator, and rescuing complex technology projects that threaten to derail business plans.

The Intellection Group also has special expertise in emerging technologies, including voice recognition, text-to-speech, location services (GPS, RFID), natural language processing and search (supported by their patent portfolio.)

They like nothing better than for you to count on us to bring new and exciting ideas to the table that enable you to succeed in a tough and complex marketplace.

The Intellection Group delivers technology solutions which get results, like

  • A comprehensive portfolio management program for a world-leading private equity firm
  • A flexible data interchange application for one of the world’s largest vehicle transporters
  • A complex human resources system for a European defense ministry
  • A sales force productivity management system used by Microsoft, Symantec and Computer Associates
  • The most advanced online education delivery platform available.

The Intellection Group’s work has won awards such as the TAG (Technology Association of Georgia) Excalibur Award, the TAG Top 40 Most Innovative Company Award, and the Virginia Governor’s Technology Award.

To contact Dave, you can find him on LinkedIn or you can email him directly.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision“

Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make vision a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:20] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:38] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware & Company, a full service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator. And please, also, consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:02] Our topic today is, should I have software developed offshore? And for those of you who either know me in real life or have follow the podcast, and if you have followed the podcast, thank you very much for doing that. It’s a small but growing club I’m sure. You know that I have a background working with emerging technology companies, even matured technology companies. And in working with such companies, there are a few universal truths that I hear about how somebody is going to grow and scale their company. One, they say, well, we’re gonna have viral marketing and that’s a whole—that’s a different animal that we’ll tackle at some point. But if you know how to reliably produce viral marketing, you don’t need to raise money. Somebody will pay you $10 million a year to do it. But I digress.

Michael Blake: [00:01:59] Second is, all I need is three million dollars and this idea comes to fruition. And the third is we are going to develop software offshore. And we tend to think about this as if it’s something that is just very easily done and very easily executed because we are used to technology now being imported from overseas, whether it’s phones from Korea, whether it’s Macintosh’s or iPhones being made in Taiwan and China, whether it is Facebook memes coming from Volgograd. The fact of the matter is we have a lot of technology that comes from abroad. And of course, everybody is familiar with the meme of Steve from Wichita, who’s actually based over in Mumbai. And so, we’re used to having our technology come from someplace else.

Michael Blake: [00:02:50] And so, at a high level, it’s easy to kind of think about, well, we’ll just have our software developed abroad. These—you know, many of these countries have very strong educational systems and in particular,  very strong in producing engineers, scientists, mathematically oriented people. People are clearly very comfortable with computers. And by the way, you know the story goes that they basically work for peanuts or whatever the Indian equivalent of a peanut is.

Michael Blake: [00:03:20] And that’s fine as far as it goes. But when you sort of dig into it, you know, I’ve discovered that for every success story about well, we’re just going to offshore and outsource our software development, there are few stories that are not as successful. In fact, some of them are just outright tire fires. And so, it’s indicative, I think, of an important notion that software development abroad, really anywhere, but especially offshore doesn’t just happen just because you know that other companies have been able to do it.

Michael Blake: [00:03:55] And so, it’s a decision that needs to be worked through very carefully, because for most companies, getting your software done correctly, getting it done on time and now in a way that makes sure that you’ll have security back doors is not just a financial imperative, it is existential to the firm. And if you get that wrong, you just have no product. Not every firm can just sort of hit the reset button. So, OK, this didn’t work, let’s try it again a second or third time. And so, I think it’s important to kind of understand what exactly is involved in that.

Michael Blake: [00:04:27] And other than what I just told you, this is not a topic I know anything about, but fortunately I have a guy here in front of me who does know a lot about that and he’s going to tell us about it and share that knowledge with us. So, joining us today is Dave Bernard. Dave is a serial entrepreneur, technologist, inventor, and investor living in Atlanta, Georgia, an expert in new and emerging technologies.

Michael Blake: [00:04:48] Dave has co-founded several companies, including the Intellection Group, an innovative technology consulting group that has been recognized as one of Georgia’s most innovative companies. The Intellection Group specializes in building complex award winning-software as a service systems for both commercial and government entities in North America, Europe, and Africa. The Intellection Group specializes in rapidly building sophisticated, high-quality and innovative technology solutions that deliver breakthrough business results. They like nothing better than for you to count on them, to bring new and exciting ideas to the table that enable you to succeed in a tough and complex marketplace.

Michael Blake: [00:05:26] Dave has led and helped create award-winning complex software programs for organizations across many different industries, including healthcare, supply chain, insurance, retail, hospitality. You get the idea, all shapes and sizes from startup to multi-billion dollar enterprises. Dave has also founded a company called BeneVets providing technology solutions to veterans services organizations. Boy, did we ever need that. He’s also led the Intellection Group’s development of a patented technology architecture that unifies web development capabilities with voice recognition, text to speech, natural languages, radio frequency identification, and global positioning system technologies, deliverable to wireless, handheld, and desktop services. And his credentials go on and on but you get the idea. He’s pretty smart. He’s pretty accomplished. Dave, welcome to the program.

Dave Bernard: [00:06:19] Thanks, Mike. That’s quite, quite an intro. I’m really glad to be here, though. Going to have fun with this.

Michael Blake: [00:06:24] We’re going to have fun with this. And I know that we’re going to learn a lot because, you know, do you agree with me that I think you know, I think a lot of people are just sort of take for granted that offshore software development happens, right? And that’s not the case.

Dave Bernard: [00:06:38] They do. And, you know, there’s definitely what I would consider an almost mythology about it. And, you know, I tend to have a bit of a contrarian attitude about a lot of things. I’ve been in this business 40 years. I’ve seen a lot of best thing since sliced bread come and go. And so, I have an increasing skepticism about what that next best thing is.

Dave Bernard: [00:07:03] When we first started our company, our technology company, about 16 years ago, you know, you’re a new company, you want to control costs and make some money coming out of the gate. And I already had a large network of offshore people I have met at conferences over the years. And I just kind of flipped through my Rolodex and started calling some of these people overseas and we actually started establishing a nice little business doing that. And it has been—it has not been a better process. All along we’ve learned a lot through the school of hard knocks. And I’ll tell you, one of the biggest revelations for me in building this up has been that I thought software development is software development, no matter where it’s done, and that meaning that I didn’t think that there were cultural differences that would make a difference. I’ve found that to be diametrically opposite in practice, that cultural differences may matter a lot to how work is done and you have to account for that.

Michael Blake: [00:08:06] Good. So, let’s put a pin in that. So, we are going to get back to that. But speaking about kind of those cultural differences, in your mind and your experiences, you see it sitting here today. What are the countries right now that seem to attract the most interest in terms of being hosts of offshore development exercises?

Dave Bernard: [00:08:24] Yeah, it—I mean, everybody talks about South Asia, India, Pakistan, even Bangladesh. You have the Far East emerging as a very low cost area, Vietnam, Philippines in particular. The Philippines is very attractive because a lot of English speakers there. But there are also an entire half day ahead of you. So, that needs to be—I actually use a virtual assistant of the Philippines. So, I am acutely aware of that.

Dave Bernard: [00:08:52] Other areas that are up and coming, I think of Central America, South America, their values, because there tend to be in about the same time zone we’re in. And you also have to pull in Canada as a nearshore opportunity. But mostly Canada’s been positioning itself as QA technical support type of capability. So, that’s what you hear about. What we have found after going through the school of hard knocks on this is that Eastern Europe for us is the biggest bang for the buck. Best cultural fit. And just—there’s just a lot of stud developers over there.

Michael Blake: [00:09:28] Now, an important sort of nuance. When you say Eastern Europe, do you mean sort of all of the countries east of Germany or do you parse kind of central Europe that has Poland, Czech Republic versus Belarus, Ukraine, Russia? Does that make a difference?

Dave Bernard: [00:09:42] I would say Central and Eastern Europe.

Michael Blake: [00:09:44] OK.

Dave Bernard: [00:09:45] We’ve been—we have a ton of experience with Bulgaria, for example. And I’d like to highlight them because there’s a historical reason why there’s that way, but also a substantial experience in Poland and Belarus. And I know people who work with Serbs, Croats, Romanians, and Hungarians, and Czechs, and they’re all very, very good. It’s a very similar type of approach.

Michael Blake: [00:10:13] You know something about Bulgaria, they produce a ton of academic finance people and economists, for some reason more than any other country. When—you know, in my field, when somebody writes a really new and interesting paper that is super quantitative, like, you know, it takes me an hour and a half to get through the first page basically, Bulgaria seems to produce a lot of people like that. And I think that goes to the culture, right. For whatever reason, their culture, maybe their education system seems to skew towards that way.

Dave Bernard: [00:10:47] Yeah, there’s a very interesting wrinkle in Bulgaria that I did not discover till after I was working there for a few years. And that is that if you recall, the command economy that the Soviet Union ran in the Warsaw Pact, you had countries like Poland that were building aircraft. So, the Soviets would outsource a lot of their aircraft manufacturer to Poland in order for the economy to succeed. So, the Czechs and Hungarians built cars. The Bulgarians built computers. That’s what they did. They built software-

Michael Blake: [00:11:18] That’s right.

Dave Bernard: [00:11:19] … firmware and computers. They’re very well known for that. So, when you do that, your whole education ecosystem is built around that. So, that is still there. That disproportionate focus on the hardware and software side of things is tremendous there. And I think that part of that is informed—you know, a disproportionate amount of their population is in that business. And we just found tremendously talented people there.

Michael Blake: [00:11:48] That’s really interesting. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware of that, but never made that connection until you made it for me. That explains. And I’ll pull the kimono back for just a second. One of my hobbies is retro computers. One of my prized possessions is an Apple IIGS. It actually works, souped up, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the—one thing that I do not have in my collection and I will not because that will be a major fight with my wife that I’m not going to have is a Pravetz computer, which was their knockoff of the Apple II, that their spies basically went into Cupertino, stole the diagram, stole everything, basically, and remade it. And if you look, you can find on eBay once in a while and it looks almost exactly like an Apple IIe, except Apple has been replaced with the Pravetz.

Dave Bernard: [00:12:40] Well, next time, I’ll go see if I dig one up for you.

Michael Blake: [00:12:42] Oh, boy, you do that. You’re my friend forever.

Dave Bernard: [00:12:44] But, you know, there’s one other really interesting thing about this and something that Bulgarians are immensely proud of. And that is the the person who invented the digital computer is widely regarded as a fellow named John Atanasoff out of, I believe, is Iowa State University. Well, at—his name is spelled Atanasoff with two Fs at the end. But I didn’t ever made the connection because I know a lot of Atanasoff in Bulgaria. And sure enough, he’s Bulgarian.

Michael Blake: [00:13:18] Is that right?

Dave Bernard: [00:13:19] And, in fact, when I made that connection, I asked—when I was in Soviet one time, I asked my team, do you know about this? “Oh, yeah. He’s one of our greatest heroes.” And they took me to a large statue in the middle of Soviet that has his figure on it. And I also had a little—another little antidote is that I was actually at a soccer game with my daughter, probably about 12 years ago and standing next to an old friend of mine who also had a daughter in the team. And I had mentioned—so, I must have been talking about going to Bulgaria. And she said, “Oh, my family’s Bulgarian.” Oh, really? No kidding. And she said, “Oh, by the way, my grandfather invented the digital computer.” And I was like, John Atanasoff? “Yeah, that was him.” And actually, a few years later, on his 100th birthday anniversary, they came over, found her, and brought her whole family over for 10 days random around the country and just celebrating his 100th anniversary. It was a big deal there. Big deal.

Michael Blake: [00:14:17] Well, good. So—and by the way, if you’re listening from the Bulgarian Embassy, the commercial attache, feel free to call up and sponsor our program. That’s fascinating. I did not know that. But, you know, getting back to the, you know, the current part of the question is that not all offshore hosts are the same, right? And it’s not just about cost structure but cultural. So, I’m curious. You said that Central and Eastern Europe for, at least for you, seem to have worked the best, maybe for your clients. Why is that?

Dave Bernard: [00:14:49] Yeah, there’s a very definite pattern there. When you’re in a small business like me, you know, I can’t afford to micromanage people. I need to have smart people, knowledge workers you can call them, that could run on their own, take initiative and go solve problems and think for themselves. Otherwise, it doesn’t scale, just doesn’t scale. So, with a lot of countries, there is actually a great cultural barrier to saying no to the boss, you know, or disagreeing with the boss at all. So, you—they’ll just say yes to you all day long, and then you’re just paying them all day long.

Dave Bernard: [00:15:29] With the Bulgarians and with many others in that part of the world, I found a pretty common theme is that they definitely will push back. I mean, it’s great to have those kind of—you know, they’re not tense conversations but they, you know, sharpening the steel. And we’ve had many times, many times when I’ve said for them to do something and they said, “Dave, that’s a really bad idea. And this is why.” And I said, oh, you’re right. Thank you for telling me. And I love that aspect of it with them.

Michael Blake: [00:16:01] And, you know, I’ve found something similar. As you know, I spent a lot of time in Belarus and Ukraine myself. And they are not shy. I mean, they’ve-

Dave Bernard: [00:16:10] They aren’t.

Michael Blake: [00:16:10] And for whatever reason, maybe it’s because for 70 years, they couldn’t say no. Now, they can’t say no fast enough, right. And you’re right, that is a good thing. You’d much rather have that than the passive aggressive, hey, we’ll take your money, right?

Dave Bernard: [00:16:23] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:16:24] But then you don’t wind up with what you want. I’d much rather be told that I’m not doing the right thing upfront.

Dave Bernard: [00:16:30] And they do appreciate that directness, too. It’s part of their culture. So, if I’m direct with them, they’re direct with me, we all get along great and we get a lot done. So, that’s what—that’s really the big difference for me.

Michael Blake: [00:16:42] Interesting. Okay. So, the obvious driver to move development offshore is cost, at least perceived cost anyway. Are there other things you might want to consider? Is there a reason besides cost to consider offshore development?

Dave Bernard: [00:16:58] Yeah. I mean—and I hope I don’t upset too much of the audience but, you know, I’ve been just underwhelmed by the bang for the buck I get from onshore developers. There’s several problems with onshore developers and I just have chosen not to deal with them. One, I think is they’re grossly overpaid for what they do. And I’ve seen that firsthand with working with developers all over the world. The other thing is I think that even more important—and all these things are kind of tied together. Cost is an issue. Culture is an issue. Work ethic and attitude is an issue. But also there’s this kind of pattern in the U.S. where you job hop. You don’t like your job. You can make 10 bucks an hour or more over there or another 20 grand a year over there. You job hop. That just doesn’t happen. In my world, in Central and Eastern Europe.

Dave Bernard: [00:17:49] We have multiple examples where we’ve had the same small group of developers working on a project for 10, 12, 13 years. And when you have that kind of continuity on a project, all kinds of things happen that you don’t have to worry about. They tend to be a lot better at their work because they can work in the system. They make a lot fewer mistakes. That makes QA and testing a whole different ballgame. Responsiveness goes way through the roof. And I don’t have to have all these processes and plans for when they leave. So, we actually don’t even think about that. Because there’s so much continuity now, we don’t worry about it, you know. And that is so ingrained in the U.S. approach. If you really looked at all the processes and procedures that they put into U.S. based software development, the vast majority of is geared toward that guy walking out the door and screwing us.

Michael Blake: [00:18:46] You know, it’s—you know, actually, you bring up two things that I want to kind of highlight. One is that, yeah, the cost here is higher but it doesn’t sound like that in and of itself is problematic. What’s the value that you get for the cost?

Dave Bernard: [00:18:59] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:19:00] Right? You can live with the high cost if the value were there. But-

Dave Bernard: [00:19:03] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:19:03] … the value was not there.

Dave Bernard: [00:19:05] And I would say too that, you know, we don’t pay the lowest rates that are out there.

Michael Blake: [00:19:09] Right.

Dave Bernard: [00:19:10] And there is a lot of academic work done on programmer productivity. If you look at DeMarco and Lyster and Ed Yordan and some of—and Steve McConnell, you’ll see a lot of academic work. And at the end of it is, is that there’s a wide range of talent in developer community. The difference between a mediocre developer and a top notch stud, it can be 7, 8, 9 10x. So, what we want to do is we want to find the 7 or 8x guy that we can pay 2x, 4. That’s a tremendous bargain. So, a lot of times the $10 and $15 an hour people take four times as long to do something. I could pay somebody $20 or $25 an hour and they do the work of five people. So, there’s a whole different mindset there. It’s economics. It’s math.

Michael Blake: [00:20:01] Yeah.

Dave Bernard: [00:20:01] You know, that’s what it boils down to.

Michael Blake: [00:20:02] And we’ll take a little bit of the finance side tour. As you know, one of the things I do a fair amount of is, is appraising software. Right. Internally developed software. And two of the factors that we consider that plugged directly into the quantitative models we use are how effective are the programmers and what is the turnover. And it’s fascinating because you would think not knowing, and I didn’t know this, not knowing the intricacies of that software development process. The knee jerk reaction would be, oh, turnover is gonna be lower here, especially if they’re kind of in-house people, right. I can pay him. I can keep him.

Michael Blake: [00:20:45] But that’s so not true it sounds like that, in fact, these offshore teams, for whatever reason and maybe that’s cultural, right, tend to stick around for prolonged periods of time. They’re actually more stable than even if you hire people in-house.

Dave Bernard: [00:20:59] They are. And there’s—I think there are some insight that I can add to that. I think software developers in general, having been one for 40 years myself, I think in general they’re a lot like doctors. They’re trained to practice a craft. And that’s what they want to do. They don’t want to run a business. They don’t want to have to deal with insurance companies. They don’t want to have to market themselves. Software developers not that much different. If you could create an environment for them where all they got to do is code and build stuff and be creative, they’re very happy.

Dave Bernard: [00:21:30] So, really our job in the Intellection Group is to find customers and give them work. And when we do that, we make them very happy and they’re not going to go anywhere because they’d be shooting themselves in the foot. I think the other thing we do, because of distance, it’s also very hard to—it’s harder to build relationships with people, even if you get Skype and e-mail and all that. We communicate with our guys constantly. But we also visit them on a regular basis, at least once a year. And we know their kids. We know we—visit their houses. We know their spouses. So, it’s a relationship that’s built on that personal side as well as the commercial side.

Michael Blake: [00:22:14] So you talked about the fact that you’ve found some folks that work really well and you’ve got long-term relationships. Let’s put ourselves in the seat of somebody now as thing on a map, you know, I should think about offshoring. How do you go about making an assessment as to whether or nothing would be a good fit? I mean, it can’t be as simple as finding resumes on Indeed.com or something, you know. And you’ve got the cultural, geographic, distance, how do you do that?

Dave Bernard: [00:22:43] You know, I mean getting introduced to them is probably the hardest part because there’s a lot of them out there to sift through. What I try to do is—and I rarely add new teams, although I did add some new teams the last couple of years in Krakow, in Minsk. And I actually went to visit them before I engaged with them, to see their offices, to see how they run their shops, you know, and look them in the eye. I mean, I—that’s worth the investment because I’m about to bet my company on these guys.

Dave Bernard: [00:23:14] The other thing we’ll do is to test them on some small projects that we don’t pay for. Okay. I learned that a long time ago. Find a 20 or 40 hour project that they’ll do. And almost all them will say, yeah, sure, we’ll be happy to do that. And what you really want to test there is not necessarily their coding ability, but I want to see how well and how they communicate and how responsive they are, because in our business has everything. Our clients want us to be responsive and communicate frequently. They don’t want unknowns. And that’s the same way I want to run my business. So that’s really what I’m looking for. If I see a lag in that, that’s a big red flag for me.

Michael Blake: [00:23:56] And that’s gonna be another differentiator between an offshore market here. I mean you try to get somebody local to take on a project of that scope to test out their capabilities, right.

Dave Bernard: [00:24:08] They’re not going to do it.

Michael Blake: [00:24:09] They’re not going to do it.

Dave Bernard: [00:24:09] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:24:10] Right. At best, they will not refuse with extreme prejudice.

Dave Bernard: [00:24:15] Yeah. And that’s part of that whole attitude thing.

Michael Blake: [00:24:18] Yeah.

Dave Bernard: [00:24:18] You know, I actually think there’s a tremendous desire to work with Americans in overseas markets.

Michael Blake: [00:24:25] I think so too.

Dave Bernard: [00:24:26] There’s a cache to that. That’s leverage for you. And if you treat them as equals—you know, the thing I used to hear all the time from some teams—I mean every time I visited, they tell me this. You know, we do work with some other U.S. companies but they don’t let us do cool stuff. You guys let us do stuff that people actually use. They also feel distrusted and disrespected in a lot of ways because oh, well, the Americans know best, but that’s not the case.

Dave Bernard: [00:24:52] And what we try to do, actually, because it’s good for business is to push everything down to the lowest level. We want them to do architecture. We want them to do database design. We want them to do documentation, so that they own the whole thing, and then they learn the business. So, again, that scales. If I get to tell them every little thing to do, that doesn’t scale. So, Mike, I got guys who know—I got guys in Soviet who know more about global private equity than most people in New York. You know, I’ve got people in Minsk who know more about sales, online sales and marketing than most people in California do. That’s because they’ve had to bury themselves in it, in the details and build it and they own it. So, I don’t have to tell them technical specs. I just say the customer wants a report that shows this, this, and this. Four or five sentences, they go build it. They know what to do.

Michael Blake: [00:25:44] So, that brings up another question or two later but the segue works here. It sounds like—and correct me if I’m wrong but it sounds like you’re an advocate of sending entire projects, not necessarily having the offshore developer work on a piece or a part of it and maybe keep it here. Sounds like you think just either you’re going to give them the project or not. Is that fair?

Dave Bernard: [00:26:06] That is fair. I mean the structure we have is we have onshore managers here, but really the delineation is in customer ownership. Who owns relationship? We own the relationship, the Intellection Group, with our customers. The developers rarely talk directly to our customers. We want to be that intermediary who want to own the relationship. And actually, quite frankly, the developers are very happy with that. They don’t wanna talk to customers.

Michael Blake: [00:26:32] I’m sure.

Dave Bernard: [00:26:34] They want to do their thing. So, that works out very, very well. So, we—that model is really important, I think. And that’s actually—I would say it’s our biggest problem is finding good onshore management. That is a—still an Achilles heel for us, because, again, you know, we’re dealing with people who are trying to run by an agile playbook or something like that. And I think if I just put all these processes in place, everything’s going to work. No, you’ve got to get engaged. You’ve got to talk these people everyday. You can’t just e-mail them, you got to get on Skype, look them in the eye. You got to be able to be flexible and move priorities around. These guys are good at that. Make use of it. You know, and I still have a difficulty finding people who will do that.

Michael Blake: [00:27:25] And I think that’s an important point because it’s different to manage an offshore team.

Dave Bernard: [00:27:32] It is.

Michael Blake: [00:27:32] Right. Even if you’ve had 15 years of experience that—pick a company, Cox Communications, right, managing their internal software development processes, it’s just a different skill set, a different animal managing an offshore team, isn’t it?

Dave Bernard: [00:27:48] It is. And we have—I have my own personal philosophy with the hundreds of projects I’ve been involved in in my career. Like agile is not fast enough. Two weeks grumps to me are awful. We drop code every day with our clients. You know, when you do that, you don’t have to give them a status report because the system is the status. It’s always built. It’s always running. It’s always up to date. You want to see where we are? Go look at the system. That’s where we are.

Dave Bernard: [00:28:18] And if you do that every day, mind share is preserved. okay, so that’s where we would hate for a developer to make a change. Wait for two weeks to deploy it. So, the customer tests it. He’s already forgotten after the third day what he did. Customers come back and said, “Oh, there’s something wrong with it.” I don’t know what I did back then. That’s how things really work. We would rather have that very tight velocity and much, much—it’s much better use of mind share for us. And that has worked for me in lots of projects.

Dave Bernard: [00:28:50] So, we call it, for want of a better term, call it super agile. And we’ve gotten that confirmed with some independent third parties who looked over our process and our code. And they—I was actually told by a European firm that just did a large code review, a multi-million line system we’ve been building for 10 or 12 years and they told us they’d never seen a more productive team. And I said, it’s really simple. We just—we deploy a lot and we still do 500 hours of work on that system every month, every single month. It’s never going to end. And so—and they couldn’t—they’ve never seen by with our velocity. But that to me is the only way to build this, to preserve mind share. It’s a knowledge worker business.

Michael Blake: [00:29:36] It’s—even in my field, it’s very hard to start, put down, pick up, down, pick up.

Dave Bernard: [00:29:44] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:29:45] It’s—the creativity gets lost, the time getting up to speed and so forth.

Dave Bernard: [00:29:53] And you know it intuitively, you know.

Michael Blake: [00:29:55] You do. I mean I—you know, I had—not in software, but I was set to be an expert witness in a case that I last touched about four years ago. And I assume the thing had settled. And then, all of a sudden, you know, the attorney e-mails and says, “Hey, this thing looks like it’s going to trial.” Let me see if I can find it. I wish I find can it. But, you know, you’re trying to kind of get back and step back for—you know, thankful it’s settled. So, nobody wanted to be in that case. But the notion of having something that’s sort of still like that, and then try to pick it up and try to do the same quality work that you were doing when you started, boy, that’s the exception rather than the rule, isn’t it?

Dave Bernard: [00:30:39] It is. And, you know, I would—and this discussion is about offshore development, but a lot of things I’m talking about apply to software development in general. And the point I want to make is that the reason we do offshore development is it actually makes some of the other stuff clearer and easier and more predictable to do in a lot of ways. So, that’s—its big advantage.

Michael Blake: [00:31:02] So, talking about kind of where you can get this done and you of all people appreciate this, because I know that there’s something that you’re very involved in studying, is the nature of security, right. There are countries out there that wish the United States ill. And candidly, they realize they cannot defeat us on a conventional battlefield. And so, their battlefield is cyberspace.

Michael Blake: [00:31:28] And there’s concern. And we’ve seen even with the current administration that, you know, we’re not necessarily letting other companies sort of have the run of the place from technology anymore. And I’m curious on, even if it’s not a particularly “sensitive project”, is that something you think about? If you think about, you know, a Russia, if you think about a China being a software developer for us. Maybe they’re not enemies but I’m not sure I’d say they’re friends either. Right. Is that something if you’re in the private sector, should give you pause?

Dave Bernard: [00:31:59] You know, I would say that we let economics drive us and talent. Talent and economics drive us where we’re gonna go. So, I have nothing against working with Russians or Chinese. There may be some other things that give me pause. So, I do pay attention to things like economic sanctions. And that’s a business risk. It’s a business risk if—you know, I was actually working in Bulgaria before the VAT was implemented there, and I had some concern about whether they were going to apply it to services. It turns out they didn’t because that would have changed our business model. That’s a 20 percent tax. So, it’s things like that more that are going to drive me.

Dave Bernard: [00:32:37] I—if you’re talking about intellectual property, I get that asked of me a lot. People will say, well, what if they go and steal our code? And my response to that is a question. What are they going to do with it? I mean, they don’t—by definition, they don’t like marketing or selling. So, they’ve got to have—they would have to package it up and figure out where the market is and go sell and build a business around it. They don’t have time for that. They don’t want to do it. And plus AB, as soon as I found out about it and I would, I’d kill—you know, I’d cut them off.

Michael Blake: [00:33:08] Right.

Dave Bernard: [00:33:08] So, that’s a disincentive. So, I think right now, can you completely bottle that up and make sure it doesn’t happen? No, you can’t. And even if you have NDAs and contracts, they’re worth your ability to defend them, which you want to do.

Michael Blake: [00:33:25] Right.

Dave Bernard: [00:33:26] It’s like a pattern-

Michael Blake: [00:33:26] Which is tough.

Dave Bernard: [00:33:27] So, if you’d not willing to defend it, why go do it? But in our case, we are—we focus on making a relationship very strong and making it a really symbiotic relationship that tends to keep those things at bay. And I’ve never had a problem with that. As far as national security types of aspects of this. Well, that has its own rules. And we have done cleared projects overseas under U.S. Army contract or NATO. And I do some pro bono work on the national security space anyway. So, I have a maybe an extra sensitivity to working with some of those places. And for me, there’s just so much work and so many good people that I can work with. Why risk working with people who are on the fringe? And I might consider right now in the current political climate and economic climate that Russia and China are kind of on the fringe.

Michael Blake: [00:34:20] Got it. So, switching gears a little bit. I’m curious in your experience, are there certain kinds of software applications that are better or worse suited to being developed offshore?

Dave Bernard: [00:34:36] You know, I was giving that some thought because I had your question ahead of time and I just couldn’t think of any pattern one way or the other.

Michael Blake: [00:34:44] Okay.

Dave Bernard: [00:34:44] The thing that I could think of the most was if you had a—an application that was such high availability that you needed to have 24/7 engineering support on it and that time zones might cause your problem with that. But other than that, we’ve already built systems used in tens of countries at a time 24/7 around the world and they were all built by the offshore guys. And you know, a lot of our customers in the beginning, they’ll say, well, you know, they’re not available after like 1:00 p.m. Eastern or something like that. And they actually fall into our pattern of following the sun. They love sending me stuff at 11 p.m. And when they get up in the morning, it’s done. So, actually, they’ve all adapted to our pace and our time zone and they actually understand it. You’re going to have a gap somewhere or by sleeps, right. So, all they do is they understand, hey, I can get stuff today late and it’s going to be done while I’m sleeping.

Michael Blake: [00:35:48] It’s interesting you said that. And sometimes I wonder if they sleep, because for a while, I’ve actually used an Indian contractor for my valuation practice. And, you know, it just astounded me. I would send something at 9:00 at night. That’s when I have a bunk bunch of my sort of technical work done and I’m getting a response in 30 minutes. I’m like, dude, you should—what? You should be asleep.

Dave Bernard: [00:36:11] I’ve had that same experience. I tell them the same thing, go to bed.

Michael Blake: [00:36:16] You know, you’re no use to me if you do it, you know, if you’re—but you’re right. They seem to adapt. They seem to be willing and enthusiastic to adapt their body clocks to match our time zone if necessary.

Dave Bernard: [00:36:27] And your customers adapt too.

Michael Blake: [00:36:30] Yeah.

Dave Bernard: [00:36:30] I mean, it’s all kind of the same thing you’ve got to do with them anyway, set expectations. This is the way it works and it’s very effective for them.

Michael Blake: [00:36:41] So, I’m going to show off a word here that our mutual friend, Scott Burkett, who is on podcast number two or three, I think-

Dave Bernard: [00:36:48] Oh, I know Scott.

Michael Blake: [00:36:48] … shared with me and that was technical debt. So, I did not know what that was until about six months ago. Anyway, it is—and for those who don’t know, as I did not six months ago, technical debt is basically the amount of rework you may have to do with a software package to get it done, so that it actually can be expanded upon as opposed to just getting it done in a rigid way to meet a deadline.

Dave Bernard: [00:37:15] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:37:16] More or less. Right. Also sort of covering-

Dave Bernard: [00:37:18] That’s a good definition.

Michael Blake: [00:37:18] Also, covering obsolescence to a certain extent. Is there a greater risk or a lesser risk of accumulating technical debt when an offshore project is-

Dave Bernard: [00:37:28] The short answer is no, I don’t think so.

Michael Blake: [00:37:29] Okay.

Dave Bernard: [00:37:30] I mean developers—you know, a good developer knows the best way to implement any given task. Now, given that, I’ll just get on my soapbox a little bit about technical debt and I have a really good example, a counter example-

Michael Blake: [00:37:45] Got it.

Dave Bernard: [00:37:45] … for this. It’s actually a little bit of a surprise when I heard it. Like I said earlier, we had had a large system reviewed by European—it took months for them to do the review. Very thorough job. They looked at every bit of our code. And they came out and said, you know, you have a bunch of technical debt in your reports. And this is a system that had been around for a while. We’ve probably built 200 or 300 reports. We’d even retired like 20 of them. And they said you have a tremendous amount of code duplication among these reports. And I said, really? Because I don’t tell the developers how to write stuff. That’s their job.

Dave Bernard: [00:38:21] And I talked to developers and they had a very interesting story to tell me. They had followed my directive exactly. And what I directive to them was this customer is extremely sensitive to accuracy and risk in the code. They just don’t want bugs. So, they took that to heart. And basically the approach they took is whenever a new report request came, they went and found another report that was battle tested, coded and worked, copied the code and worked from that, the one that was closest to what they had to build. So, immediately, they were reducing the risk tremendously, increasing the likelihood of accuracy and reduce the amount of work they had to do. So, responsiveness went through the roof. Accuracy was still really good and risk was low. Exactly what the customer wanted and they’d been doing that for years. Okay.

Dave Bernard: [00:39:10] And so—but these guys who were reviewing said, oh, this has got to be fixed. I said, really? Okay. So, what’s my pitch to the customer here? I’ve got to go burn a whole bunch of time that you’re gonna pay for and I’m gonna refactor this code. So, now, I’ve just instituted a whole lot of risk and I get cussed. I get developers changing code. That’s risk. And then, at the end of the day, it’s all gonna be tested again, which is the bulk of work in software development. And so, at the end—and after all that’s done, then the customer’s got to verify it, which they’ve already done with the existing reports.

Dave Bernard: [00:39:46] And after all that’s done, they had the same thing they started with. So, how do I pitch that to them? And they said, “Oh, I see your point.” Because they were gonna make it a prominent part of their presentation to clients. I said you can do whatever you want but I know what they’re going to say. And so actually, it’s turned into—it was eye opening for me because I love—it was the genius creativity in my mind because the customer doesn’t care how it’s written. They just want it to work and make their business grow. And this is a customer who’s realize billions of dollars of return on this system.

Dave Bernard: [00:40:21] So that’s why there’s a lot of these little things, object-oriented programming, agile development, technical debt, QA processes, you know, test driven development. All this stuff is really to me, they’re red herrings. They’re distractions from serving the customer in the way that best does that. So, I have a similar contrarian attitude about testing as well based on experience. So, you know, I did tell the customer a little bit about this, said you may hear about it, I’m just telling you, just say no, you know, it doesn’t matter. So, that’s my my little soapbox on that.

Michael Blake: [00:41:02] All right. So, let-

Dave Bernard: [00:41:07] And oh, by the way, I would challenge anyone in the audience to counterpoint that. I would love to hear it.

Michael Blake: [00:41:11] Okay. Well, please do also, because the more you challenge something and write about the podcast, the better SVO it gets. So, light it up, everybody. It’s open season for trolls on offshore software development.

Dave Bernard: [00:41:25] There you go.

Michael Blake: [00:41:26] So, I want to ask this. I mean you’ve mentioned several countries in which you work. I’m curious if you’ve ever had different teams in different countries working on the same project or do you kind of allocate kind of one project per team?

Dave Bernard: [00:41:41] Yeah, as a general rule, it’s one team per project. I think it’s—you know, there was a book 50 more years ago by Fred Brooks, the guy who invented the 360 operating system for IBM called The Mythical Man-Month and is still in print. It’s a fabulous book. Every software developer should read it. Basically, one of his famous quotes in there, adding people to a late project makes it later. But his big thing was that  lines of communication expand exponentially as you add people. So. the Google approach is to keep teams very small because the lines of communication are very—are fewer. If you have three people, then you have—you know, I guess it’s a factorial, three factorial lines of communication. And if you add a fourth one, it goes up a lot.

Dave Bernard: [00:42:35] So, if I have to have multiple teams working in different parts of the system at the same time, I have to not only contend with communication, but I also have to contend with different styles and approaches. I have to contend with different velocities because there’s different talent in different places. It’s a nightmare, quite frankly. It’s really, I think, is uncontrollable. I think there are certain—there could be situations where the system can be built in very parallel pieces where you could probably get away with that. But I prefer actually for the mind share to be in one place and not in multiple places. It’s just—that’s just something I’ve not—I’ve found to work much better. And there’s an ownership issue, too, you know. These developers want to own their work. They want to have—it’s their baby. You know, it’s a creative process. It’s not engineering. It’s a craft. So, if you’ve split the craft up between two groups, who owns it? You know, they’ll bid—you get into finger pointing exercises. It becomes a blame game if something goes wrong.

Michael Blake: [00:43:39] Yeah. Okay. So, you’re obviously a big fan of offshore development. So, let me ask you a contrarian question. Are there cases where you have advised clients that offshore development may be not—may not be a great idea?

Dave Bernard: [00:43:57] I think if there—for—there are clients out there or people I’ve talked to who just can’t wrap their head around it. They don’t—it’s a trust issue when you boil it down. They just don’t trust what they can’t see. They want the person in their office. You know, you just can’t get around that. And I would tell them, then we’re not a good fit for you because we don’t work that way. You know, we can’t give you the economies and the performance and velocity of development in that environment because we’re committing to something when we quote our system. And we’re committing to it based on how we do it. You know, if you want to change that, then you got to get a different group of people. So, I think that’s probably the only real time I tell them it’s not going to work for you.

Michael Blake: [00:44:42] Okay.

Dave Bernard: [00:44:42] Other than that, because we tend to deliver very quickly on stuff, it’s almost like they’re there. You know, it just starts. And then, they forget that the person is not there because they’re seeing results. A lot of it is that trust, because I don’t see what’s happening, I don’t see a guy typing at a keyboard and come in at 8:00, leaving at 5:00. But if you see and results, then it doesn’t matter. They quickly get over that. That’s what I would say to them.

Michael Blake: [00:45:09] Okay. Well, Dave, we could easily go another hour on this but we’re running out of time. So, I think what I’d like to do is invite people if they want to learn more about this, if they’re thinking about this for their own companies, how can they contact you to maybe ask a question or two and follow up?

Dave Bernard: [00:45:24] You know, my e-mail address is, I’m always available, dbernard@intellectiongroup.com. You can easily find me on LinkedIn. I get a lot of people communicating with me on LinkedIn. Happy to do that. So, I’m not gonna give out my phone number over the podcast but I can be called too. Once you e-mail me, then you—I’ll allow you to call me.

Michael Blake: [00:45:48] Yeah, you’re not hard—and I mean phones are so 20th century anyway.

Dave Bernard: [00:45:52] My phone number is probably on several websites out there anyway.

Michael Blake: [00:45:54] Probably is.

Dave Bernard: [00:45:55] If you do a search, you’ll find me.

Michael Blake: [00:45:56] Probably is. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Dave Bernard so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re faced with making your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision podcast.

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