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Garrett Massey, Polyglot Labs

June 25, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio
North Fulton Business Radio
Garrett Massey, Polyglot Labs
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NFBR producer Diane Lasorda with Garrett Massey, Founder and President of Polyglot Labs

“North Fulton Business Radio,” Episode 144:  Garrett Massey, Polyglot Labs

Garrett Massey describes the custom websites and web applications his company, Polyglot Labs, designs for clients as he speaks with host John Ray on this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio.”

Garrett Massey, Founder and President, Polyglot Labs

Garrett Massey, Founder & President, Polyglot Labs

Polyglot Labs is a technology solutions company that works with speed and creativity to solve business challenges with technology smarts and likable personality. They do that through two specialized companies they call labs – Eyesore and Cortex Digital.

Eyesore builds awesome websites and digital marketing that make companies look good and drive business. Find Eyesore at eyesoreinc.com.

Cortex Digital innovates elegant, web-based solutions for back-end processes, databases, and systems that improve technology investments and business results. Find Cortex Digital at cortexdigitalinc.com.

Learn more about how their custom digital solutions can help you simplify processes, solve problems, and make your work and life better at www.polyglotlabs.com.

 

 

 

“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.

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:07] Live from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank, the bank that specializes in understanding you, it’s time for North Fulton Business Radio.

John Ray: [00:00:20] And hello again everyone. Welcome to another edition of North Fulton Business Radio. I’m John Ray, and we are coming to you from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank. We love Renasant Bank and the great hosts they are for our studio location here in beautiful Alpharetta.

John Ray: [00:00:40] I want to welcome — we’ve got a great guest, and he’s a fun guest. He really is a fun guest, but I’m going to let him convince you of that, folks. Garrett Massey with Polyglot Labs. Garrett, it’s great to have you here.

Garrett Massey: [00:00:55] Thank you, sir.

John Ray: [00:00:56] So, you win the award. The Business RadioX Award that have just come up with for the most creative names for a company, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:01:05] Thank you.

John Ray: [00:01:05] You’ve got three different creative names for the different enterprises you’re involved with. Tell us about Polyglot Labs and what you do.

Garrett Massey: [00:01:14] Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, Polyglot Labs is a technology solutions company that’s comprised of currently a couple of different labs, one called Eyesore and one called Cortex. Eyesore is a website design and development company that works with small and large businesses, as well as digital marketing agencies as a white-label partner to design and develop really good-looking websites. Cortex is an application development company that creates both web and mobile apps focused on solving some type of workflow, business process, issue, streamlining things, and making the end clients, as well as the business more money.

John Ray: [00:02:04] Cool. So, for those that already know you, this is a little bit of a change.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:09] It’s true.

John Ray: [00:02:09] So, you were originally Eyesore, and you’ve just changed the name of, let’s call it the mother company, to Polyglot Labs. And then, you’ve got two different business lines, and you’ve clearly defined those with these two names – Eyesore and Cortex Digital.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:26] Sure, sure.

John Ray: [00:02:27] I got all that right.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:28] You did.

John Ray: [00:02:29] Good.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:29] You did, you did. Yes.

John Ray: [00:02:30] Okay, cool.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:30] Our brand release was actually last Friday from Polyglot Labs. So, a few of our partners had heard the name prior to that point, but most of our clients and partners were not familiar with it. So, it gave us an opportunity to kind of branch out. We’re still doing the same types of work that we’ve done, but it gives us the ability to kind of focus our marketing efforts and really how we engage with our clients in kind of a more individual way.

John Ray: [00:03:00] Sure. So, I find it interesting that you call these two entities labs. Explain why.

Garrett Massey: [00:03:09] Yeah, definitely. So, we chose to use the terminology “labs” internally because we really liked the feel of an experimental approach. We do not come to the table with a solution that’s in our back pocket. We do not come to the table with a product off the shelf. We do come to the table with — it’s a process that we can use to hone in on what the best solution is for any particular client. What that’s done for us and for our clients is, really, it helps us hone in on what exactly they need, our client’s needs, and gives us the ability to do work that’s a little bit different every time. Kind of keeps our creative folks really engaged in the process because we’re not doing the same thing day in and day out. There’s always a little bit of a challenge there.

John Ray: [00:04:01] And you’re not, I guess, pushing product as it were, right, the term, but you’re not focused in on what your sacred elephants are-

Garrett Massey: [00:04:11] Sure.

John Ray: [00:04:12] … or sacred cows, or whatever animal that is. You’re really about looking at clients from what their needs are and what the problems they need solutions for as opposed to whatever you’ve got on the shelf now.

Garrett Massey: [00:04:29] Yeah, exactly, exactly. One of my favorite examples of that, I get probably two or three phone calls a week, this is anywhere from small business to large business, wanting an app. Everybody wants an app. And the first thing I do is try to talk them out of it because that is a profitable line of business for us, it’s shiny object for a lot of people, but it’s not a good fit for most scenarios. So, kind of taking that off the table, take a step back, and evaluating what folks really need gives us the ability to kind of help them nail down what will ultimately serve them the best.

John Ray: [00:05:09] And sometimes clients don’t know what they need, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:05:14] True.

John Ray: [00:05:14] So, you have to — that requires a little bit of a — it’s not that they are dumb or anything like that. It’s just that having that conversation and having that open inquiry as to, “Hey, we might not have everything on the shelf. So, let’s talk a little bit about what it is you’re trying to get to,” may help them clarify some things they really didn’t have a good handle on to begin with just because they hadn’t been asked the questions.

Garrett Massey: [00:05:40] Oh, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. We believe in doing discovery up front is really, really key. We work with clients that have an amazing technical competency, and we were with folks that don’t. And they know a lot about their business, a lot about their problems, a lot about what they may think that they need from a technology solution, but we get to help them step through that process and why isn’t that being the best solution.

John Ray: [00:06:09] So, let’s talk a little bit, Garrett, about the Eyesore side of the business. So, Eyesore builds websites. That’s not like my teenager in the garage building with a website builder, right? It’s a little more complicated than that-

Garrett Massey: [00:06:29] It is.

John Ray: [00:06:29] … in terms of the kind of projects that you do.

Garrett Massey: [00:06:31] It is, it is. So, I started Eyesore two and a half years ago as a website design and development company, right. That’s kind of where we focused on. My background, at that point, had been in computer science. I’d just gotten out of college. So, I always had an interest in more complex projects. And we still do brochureware websites, buy page, about us, home page, contact us kind of deal because those do really serve an important purpose.

Garrett Massey: [00:07:00] We, also, develop more in-depth websites a lot of times for a lot of our marketing agency partners, other partners we serve as their technical team to help implement what their client ultimately needs. So, roughly, 60% to 70% of the work that we do on the Eyesore side of the world is in that white-label space where we’re partnering with a digital agency, a traditional marketing agency, video, event planning agencies to ultimately design and develop their clients’ projects. And that can look like a five-page website or that can look like a 12,000-page website that has a lot of custom functionality built in.

John Ray: [00:07:44] And for those that don’t know, that’s pretty common in the world of marketing agencies, digital agencies, that kind of thing to partner together. And so, you really come along as the highly technical side of a marketing agency that really don’t have any of those kind of folks typically, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:08:05] Sure, sure.

John Ray: [00:08:05] I mean, they’re more, I guess, right-brained kind of creative types, and they don’t have that technical expertise. You bring that to them.

Garrett Massey: [00:08:14] Definitely, definitely. The marketing agency, a lot of them, especially the Atlanta area, began to realize several years ago that it’s not in their client’s best interests, and it’s not in their best interest to keep everything in-house. So, the number of partnerships that we’ve seen, not only in just market agency hiring a developer to write a website or whatever, but video production, event production, AI, all the cool stuff that goes into a successful marketing campaign, they’re realizing, “Hey, we can partner somebody else, and we can kind of hone in and focus,” because there’s enough work for everybody to go around. And if they can partner with the best in the business to do each particular aspect of what they do, the end client ultimately gets a better product, a better experience, and it shows.

John Ray: [00:09:08] Folks, we’re speaking with Garrett Massey. And Garrett is the President and Founder of Polyglot Labs. Now, talk a little bit, if you would, about — I mean, it’s one thing for me to say you build a lot more sophisticated websites. It’s another thing to put that into something that our folks out there understand. Talk a little bit about maybe an example of some of the work you’ve done there.

Garrett Massey: [00:09:35] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. On the Eyesore side, we’ve worked on many, many complex projects over the years on the website side of the world. One of my most memorable projects, one of the agencies that was employed by the US Military was hit up by the US Military to build a new website for the US 3rd Army, which is the army that is the combination of the Army, the Navy, the ,Marines the Air Force, all that stationed over in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, all the places that you really don’t want to be.

John Ray: [00:10:10] Oh wow.

Garrett Massey: [00:10:10] And they had a timeline of two weeks to build what turned out to be a 12,000-page website. So, we were able to successively not only design, and develop, and launch a website in that timeframe, we also had to learn an entirely new programming language and content management system to actually execute that project. So, it actually took two and a half weeks only because they held us up. It’s kind one of the more memorable projects on the website side of the world.

Garrett Massey: [00:10:46] On the application side of the world, gosh, we developed the application that the 2016 Democratic National Convention used to assign all of the hotel rooms to their delegates. So, it’s not just a matter of having 50 different delegation groups. It’s actually about a thousand. So, each stay, each lobbying group, the Kennedy family has a delegation. It’s kind of crazy. But prior to this solution that we developed being in place, they were actually planning all this using post-it notes. So, they’d have a big wall, and they would write down on the wall or on a post-it note the name of the delegation, how many attendees they had, and they would mark off the 5000 different hotels they had for that particular location for that year. And they would assign rooms based on post-it notes.

Garrett Massey: [00:11:43] So, we were actually able to come in and develop a web application that automated that entire process. It was so successful that they literally had to change the Democratic National Convention Committee’s passwords to get them out of it, so they could finalize the numbers. They had so much fun in their playing in different scenarios, figuring out, “Hey, put this group over here. That changes this and that.” So-

John Ray: [00:12:07] Wow.

Garrett Massey: [00:12:10] … kind of bringing it down to the small business side of the world, some of the applications we’ve developed really helped streamline processes in a little bit of a different way. One of my favorite examples, we have a relatively local client in the State of Georgia that is an in-home health care provider, and they have hundreds and hundreds of in-home health care providers that go out to people’s homes and assist assist their folks. They had a time clock system that would involve folks going to these people’s homes, picking up a landline, and calling in, and it would actually clock them in, and they’d call in again, and clock them out. Well, several years ago, this little a trend, not many people have landlines anymore.

Garrett Massey: [00:12:58] So, we developed a mobile app that the in-home health care providers were able to download on their phones, and go out, and actually clock in from the app, clock out from the app. We did a cool thing there. We planted a QR code in the folks’ homes, so you could scan it with the app, and it will clock you in. Well, QR codes can be copied, right. So, it wasn’t in the background, but it occurred, we actually grabbed their GPS coordinates at the same time that they scanned the QR code.

John Ray: [00:13:32] Oh boy.

Garrett Massey: [00:13:33] So, the first month it was running, we actually busted somebody checking in at McDonald’s, a few miles away from the patient’s home. So, that added a level of kind of validation-

John Ray: [00:13:48] Wow.

Garrett Massey: [00:13:48] … and type of feel to that. We also integrated in that particular application a series of text messages, a text messaging system setting. So, anytime there was an availability for a position, the folks in that particular area would receive text messages and all sorts of cool stuff.

John Ray: [00:14:05] So, for that client, you were solving a problem they didn’t know they had.

Garrett Massey: [00:14:10] Correct, correct. It was easier. It’s one point in time when the whole landline thing was relevant. They become less so, and they basically did not have the ability to clock in and clock out. And through developing this process, we kind of weeded out some folks that they didn’t necessarily knew that they had.

John Ray: [00:14:32] Yeah. Back to what we were saying earlier about bringing solutions to clients as opposed to the product off the shelf. The product off the shelf wouldn’t necessarily have solved that problem, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:14:43] No, it would not, it would not. And I mentioned earlier that we enjoy doing a discovery session on the front end of our projects. We get a good clean idea of what’s going on. We also like doing — and the word “agile” in my world, anyways, has been overused to death. It’s the idea of iteratively working on solving a problem in chunks of time called sprints, right. So, you’re kind of stepping through that process. We we enjoy taking elements from that process because we don’t want a client to be waiting 18 months for us to build something. We want to be able to put something out that has some value, that has some use, and then work with them to continue improving that because in 18 months, a lot can change in a business.

John Ray: [00:15:35] For sure.

Garrett Massey: [00:15:36] In three months, a lot can change in a business. So, the issues that may have been addressed at the very beginning of a project, a few months later may have changed or new ones may come to light.

John Ray: [00:15:50] We’re speaking with Garrett Massey. And Garret is the Founder and President of Polyglot Labs. So, I guess, the solutions, the applications that you develop come through the Cortex Digital side. I’m curious how that started because it’s interesting that if you’ve developed a pretty sophisticated business out of one that maybe for some companies is not so sophisticated, but you’ve developed a pretty high-end business in terms of the technology solutions you bring to the table.

Garrett Massey: [00:16:32] Sure, sure. There are a ton of folks out there that build websites. There are ton of folks out there that build websites really well.

John Ray: [00:16:39] And nothing against them by the way, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:16:41] Absolutely not, absolutely not. With my background, like I mentioned earlier, my undergrad is in Computer Science. So, when starting, I understood a lot of the theory that goes into what makes computer work, what makes good software work. And so, always had an interest in solving more complex problems. Very passionate about building excellent web presences that serve a need that we kind of meet a goal. But we had the opportunity early on to tackle some more in depth into the problems that our clients may have.

Garrett Massey: [00:17:16] And what it’s done for us on the Eyesore side is give us the ability to be a true technical partner to not only our agency partners but also our clients. We don’t have to give up because we ran into an issue that we can’t solve. We have a whole team of programmers. And that’s one of our kind of value-adds to our partners is we have an entire team of in-house developers. It’s not just one person. Solopreneurs in our space are great, but they run into the issue of being siloed away from everybody else. And, obviously, the internet kind of helps mitigate that. But at the end of the day, when you run into an issue, and you can lean over to someone sitting next to you and say, “Hey, what’s going on with this? Have you seen this before?” and work collaboratively to solve the issue, that gives an end client, really, a better product and a better experience because it’s all taken care of.

John Ray: [00:18:17] For sure, for sure. Now, I’m interested, and I’m sure our listeners are too because there’s always a search for talent, how do you get the programming talent you’re always looking for? Because there’s always a shortage of talent. So, how do you get the folks that you’re looking for? And here’s the real secret, how do you get them, if you’re headquartered in Griffin Georgia, because that’s where your headquarters is?

Garrett Massey: [00:18:46] Oh, yeah.

John Ray: [00:18:46] Right?

Garrett Massey: [00:18:47] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:18:47] So, I mean, you’ve got quite a few issues there. You have to address in building your business.

Garrett Massey: [00:18:53] Yeah. I remember the first time you and I met, you were shocked to learn that I had a problem-finding talent and programmers in Griffin, Georgia.

John Ray: [00:18:59] Right.

Garrett Massey: [00:18:59] Your mind was blown

John Ray: [00:19:01] My mind was blown. It still is.

Garrett Massey: [00:19:05] Griffin’s a really cool place but is not exactly Silicon Valley.

John Ray: [00:19:09] Right.

Garrett Massey: [00:19:10] And that actually has some unique benefits for us. So, to answer your first question on how we acquire talent, most of our folks, and we employed 15 or 16, folks something like that, most of our folks start out with us as interns, and they’re from the area or have an interest in living in the area. One of those recent fellows we hired lived up in North Georgia in a small town, wanted to live a little farther south in a small town. So, it worked out. But we try to keep a steady influx of paid interns in-house to give us the ability to, hey, they can do work for us that we don’t have to do, so that’s fantastic, but it gives us the ability to kind of get a true insight into folks as to how they work, what their strengths are, and whether or not they’d be a good fit to kind of keep on a little longer than just an intern.

John Ray: [00:20:08] Sure.

Garrett Massey: [00:20:10] So, most of our folks, as I mentioned, are kind of from our area or have a really strong interest in working in our area. We have some folks that live and work in Atlanta, but most of our folks are actually down in Griffin.

John Ray: [00:20:29] Pretty cool. So, I’m curious about what this split with Eyesore, with Cortex Digital, the split off that you have with these two that they’re still part of the same company, of course, Polyglot Labs, but why you thought that was necessary? Is it for marketing reasons solely or is there something else going on that makes sense?

Garrett Massey: [00:21:00] Yeah, definitely. So, we, really from day one, had two sides to our house. And there was overlap, and there still is overlap. We’ve always had what we call, at the time, a frontend and a backend side. Now, we call it kind of a digital presence side and a product development side. And even down our physical space. Half of our team is in one part of our offices, and the other half’s in the other, but there has always kind of been a logical distinction there.

Garrett Massey: [00:21:32] What we found back in the fall, we did a big survey of our clients, current and former clients, and asked them a handful of questions about what they like about us, what they don’t like, which was not too much, I’m proud of that, but then also kind of what the branding and messaging that we had in place for Eyesore kind of meant to them. And what we found was the types of products, and solutions, and services that we offer on what’s now the Eyesore side and what’s down the Cortex side really spoke to two different target audiences.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:16] And our goal with kind of the split from a marketing perspective was just that, it was for marketing purposes. Eyesore has a really, really fun personality. It’s really engaging and kind of creative. Cortex is fun and engaging as well, but it’s a little more buttoned up. It’s the branding that everybody will be seeing kind of roll out of the next several weeks. We’re coming up with stuff like whitepapers and you know.

John Ray: [00:22:48] Oh dear.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:49] Yeah, right?

John Ray: [00:22:51] That sounds pretty serious.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:52] It is, it is, it is.

John Ray: [00:22:54] Yeah.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:54] I work with a bunch of really, really smart people, thank goodness, but yes. So, the short answer to your question is yes, it was primarily for marketing purposes. Same team doing the same types of work, just spend a little bit differently.

John Ray: [00:23:09] Okay. So, I have to ask, do you spend most of your time on the buttoned-up side, or you over on the kind of wild and crazy side, Garrett? Which side are you on, buddy?

Garrett Massey: [00:23:21] I-

John Ray: [00:23:21] I’ve stopped [indiscernible].

Garrett Massey: [00:23:24] Yeah. No, in our offices, I bring chaos wherever I go.

John Ray: [00:23:29] Right.

Garrett Massey: [00:23:29] So, my personality is definitely more on the Eyesore side of the world, but I did tuck my shirt in for you today.

John Ray: [00:23:37] Well, thank you.

Garrett Massey: [00:23:37] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:23:40] We appreciate that. Though, seriously, I think you bring a lot of fun to your business. And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that because that’s obviously part of keeping good employees, regardless of how attractive they are. I mean, because good people, whatever they do, will leave if they’re not having fun at what they do.

Garrett Massey: [00:24:08] Right, very right, yeah. Yeah, it’s — I think your question there is as how do we retain people and how is fun part of that.

John Ray: [00:24:18] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Garrett Massey: [00:24:20] And it really is a huge, huge part. So, I think, the biggest thing is not forcing any of it. There’s not some master strategy that I put in place to make sure people have X amount of fun, so they’ll around twice as long or anything like that. Not anything that maniacal or well thought out. But I do believe that if people enjoy what they do, they feel valued, they feel like they’re part of a team, and they will stick around. The folks that that work made have made a conscious decision to work with us, and they are part of kind of building and defining that culture that we have.

Garrett Massey: [00:25:09] When we originally planned on kind of breaking out a piece of Eyesore and calling it something else, the idea of Polyglot Labs, of kind of a mother company was not really on our radar. It was not really part of that plan. But in kind of talking through and hashing out, started to realize that, hey, people are kind of seeing us kind of split into two different entities, and there was nothing juju or anything like that going on, but it’s still one that there was a division there. And our team is really, really close knit. We go to lunch together every day. We do all sorts of crazy stuff. We can talk to them on the radio every day.

John Ray: [00:25:50] Well, we’re not regulated by the FCC so-

Garrett Massey: [00:25:52] Sweet, yeah, yeah. That’s right, that’s right. I forgot about that.

John Ray: [00:25:56] Right. We’re a podcast network, buddy.

Garrett Massey: [00:25:56] Yeah, there you go.

John Ray: [00:25:56] So, okay.

Garrett Massey: [00:25:58] There you go. Well, in case my mom is listening.

John Ray: [00:26:00] Oh, okay, okay. Okay. Well, let’s button it up. Yeah, okay.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:05] Exactly, exactly. But the idea of Polyglot Labs came out of that kind of concern kind of consciousness of that being a thing. We wanted folks to feel like they’re still part of the same team because they are. Want to feel pride in kind of both sides of the business individually, but everybody is part of the same team. And so, I think that feeling is really pervasive in Polyglot, and that’s been a big success for us.

John Ray: [00:26:34] So, unlike the big tech companies we read about that they’ve installed a massage table, or a pinball machine, or free lunch, or whatever they’ve got, right, whatever happy stuff they’ve got, it’s really more about how you treat people. Imagine that.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:52] Right? Right?

John Ray: [00:26:52] Imagine that.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:53] Yeah. It’s-

John Ray: [00:26:54] What a revolutionary concept.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:56] I patented it, trademarked it, and own it.

John Ray: [00:26:58] Yeah.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:58] But, yeah. No, it really is. And we have a very strict no divas rule in our office. So, particularly in the programming world, there are a lot of kind of lone wolf types that are very proud of the way that they do things. We don’t allow that. So, that’s another kind of facet of kind of what loops everybody in together. Nobody’s afraid to go ask for help. Nobody’s siloed away. So, it’s a ton of these little small things really kind of add up to having an organization that everybody enjoys being a part of 99% of the time. There’s that 1% where we’ve gone to each other’s nerves, but that’s pretty minimal.

John Ray: [00:27:46] And you’ve got some pretty intense work you’re doing. I mean, you described this project you did for the Armed Forces that was a very compressed two-week project where if you don’t have that emotional bank account fully deposited with your employees, you’re going to have problems when it comes to projects like that.

Garrett Massey: [00:28:11] Yeah. It’s huge. The buy-in that we have is astronomical. And my job is to really make sure we don’t take that for granted.

John Ray: [00:28:23] And happy employees make for happy customers.

Garrett Massey: [00:28:25] They do.

John Ray: [00:28:27] Yeah.

Garrett Massey: [00:28:27] They do. It’s just like this big beautiful circle where everybody tries to make everybody else happy. Then, things just kind of work out.

John Ray: [00:28:34] That’s great, that’s great. Great story from Garrett Massey. He’s the Founder and President of Polyglot Labs in Griffin, beautiful Griffin, Georgia. And Griffin is beautiful. That’s not a throwaway line. It’s a pretty town. So, Griffin, for those that have heard what you had to say, would like to hear more from you, like to check you out, tell them how to do. How to be in touch?

Garrett Massey: [00:28:57] Definitely, definitely. You can check us out at polyglotlabs.com. So, a polyglot is someone that speaks in multiple languages, right, or a polyglot program, or somebody that works in multiple languages. So, polyglot, P-O-L-Y-G-L-O-T, polyglotlabs.com and all of our information is there.

John Ray: [00:29:17] Outstanding, Garrett, thanks for being with us.

Garrett Massey: [00:29:18] Thank you. Appreciate it.

John Ray: [00:29:19] Absolutely.

John Ray: [00:29:21] Folks, today, you’re more connected than ever, and whether it’s your friends, or your family, or your life, Renasant understands how you bank, offering the mobile banking services that you need. Renasant also knows that, sometimes, you need to speak to real people with real answers. And that’s why Renasant has more than 170 convenient locations throughout the South ready to serve you. For more information, go to renasantbank.com. That’s Renasant Bank understanding you. Member FDIC.

John Ray: [00:29:55] A reminder that you can listen to this show every Tuesday morning live at 11:30 a.m. Or if you miss any of our live shows, no problem. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, whatever your favorite podcast app is – Overcast happens to be mine – or go online at northfultonbusinessradio.com. Check out the archive of our old shows there. Got some great guests just like Garrett that we’ve had here today. Please also follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, North Fulton BRX. That’s North Fulton BRX.

John Ray: [00:30:39] So, for our guest, Garrett Massey of Polyglot Labs, easy for me to say, I’m John Ray. Join us next time here on North Fulton Business Radio.

Outro: [00:30:56] Today, you’re connected more than ever – your friends, your family, your life. And banking is what you do on your time anywhere you like. Renasant understands how you back, offering mobile banking services you need. At Renasant, we also understand that, sometimes, you need to speak to real people with real answers. That’s why Renasant has more than 170 convenient locations throughout the South ready to serve you. Renasant Bank, understanding you. Member FDIC.

Tagged With: Cortex, Cortex Digital, custom app, custom app development, custom application development, customer data, customer data analytics, Eyesore, Garrett Massey, Griffin, Griffin GA, integrated application development, intergrated applications, marketing agencies, marketing agency, Polyglot Labs, Technology Solutions, web developer, web development, Website Creation, website design, website development, websites

Decision Vision Episode 3: Should Our Firm Have an App? – An Interview with Scott Burkett, Incursus

February 21, 2019 by John Ray

Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 3: Should Our Firm Have an App? - An Interview with Scott Burkett, Incursus
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Scott Burkett and Michael Blake

Should Our Firm Have an App?

Michael Blake, Director of Brady Ware & Company and Host of the Decision Vision podcast, interviews Scott Burkett on the decision process for building an app, understanding the business problems an app will solve, working with an app developer, and more.

Scott Burkett, Incursus

Scott Burkett is the Founder & CEO of Incursus.

Demonstrating a passion and commitment to quality and process improvement, Scott holds a certification in Six Sigma, and is a former director on the Board of the Carnegie-Mellon sponsored Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN). He played an instrumental role in a key client (AT&T Universal Card Services) winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, as well as a 2,000+ person consulting firm achieving Ford Motor Company’s Q1 Quality Certification. An original contributor to the Linux kernel, Scott co-authored The Linux Programmer’s Guide, The New Linux Book, and Linux Programming Whitepapers. He was also a key contributor to the now legendary comp.lang.c USENET group.

Scott has been featured, quoted, or published in Money Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, TechJournal South, Datamation, WebSmith Magazine, The Linux Journal, and TechLINKS. He has been featured as a lecturer/speaker at events sponsored by such organizations as Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), The University of Georgia, ATDC, Draper-Fisher Jurveston, NASAGA, APRA, ACPI, The Kettering Executive Network, ExecuNet, 400 Technology Connection, and i-Compass.

Incursus, Inc. is a boutique creative-design and open-source software solutions studio headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. In short, “We Create Thingz®,” as they like to say! The Incursus team focuses on four key areas: creative design, custom application development, managed cloud services, and technical due diligence. Additionally, they have a program for startup companies aimed to help them affordably satisfy their technology needs.

They do not aspire to be the biggest provider of these services in the world. They simply aim to be the best. Period.

The Latin word Incursus — which can be translated into “raid”, “attack”, or “invasion” — represents their attitude towards their work — with swift forward movement into projects to get them done efficiently with skill and finesse.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

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. Mike is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

He 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 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 visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:22] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we’re discussing the process of making decisions on a different topic, rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different. We will talk it to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:40] 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 iTunes, and please consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:02] So, today we’re going to talk about building an app, and not just the process of building an app. We, probably, won’t talk a lot about the process at all, but rather a decision of getting an app. So, lots of companies, now, are thinking that they’re kind of left out. They’re not in the cool kids club anymore if they don’t have an app. And so, everybody kind of wants one. But is that really the right — Is that the right decision? Is that the right place to put management time? Is that the right place to make investment? And is it really all it’s cracked up to be?

Michael Blake: [00:01:34] So, how do we go about making that decision? And to help us with that decision, I’ve invited my good friend, Scott Burkett. Scott is a 30-year veteran of the technology industry. He’s the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Incursus Inc., a boutique creative design and open source software solutions studio headquartered in Atlanta. Incursus focuses on four key areas: creative design, custom application development, managed cloud services, and technical due diligence. Team Incursus, also, recently launched ticketburner.com, a web-based platform that focuses on customer service delivery by helping companies automate their business processes.

Michael Blake: [00:02:14] Prior to founding Incursus and TicketBurner, Scott served as a Chief Technology Officer for several companies, including MFG.com and Apto Solutions. Scott was also the founder of wwetcanvas.com, a large online community for visual artists, which is now owned by F+W Publishing, one of the largest privately-owned media groups in the country. Additionally, Scott has been very involved in the Atlanta area startup community for the past 15 years and was a Co-Founder of startuplounge.com, one of the early advocates for fast-growth entrepreneurship in the southeast. So, it’s my great pleasure to welcome to the program and recently released from prison-

Scott Burkett: [00:02:52] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:02:52] … Scott Burkett.

Scott Burkett: [00:02:53] Thank you. Thanks for — Thanks for being here, Mike.

Michael Blake: [00:02:56] Well, I’m [crosstalk].

Scott Burkett: [00:02:56] But the StartupLounge is here when we had our podcast.

Michael Blake: [00:02:59] This is sort of a role reversal. We did that podcast, you sort of drove this, and I was the foil. So-

Scott Burkett: [00:03:04] Well, that’s okay.

Michael Blake: [00:03:06] How does it feel to be Dean Martin now?

Scott Burkett: [00:03:08] Weird. I’m like Dean Martin without the drink.

Michael Blake: [00:03:11] Well, if you say so.

Scott Burkett: [00:03:13] Yeah, exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:03:15] So, let’s talk about, even the word “app” is kind of a new term in the English language, right?

Scott Burkett: [00:03:20] Right, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:03:20] So, let’s make sure we have the right vocabulary when we start. What is an app? And when you think of an app or one of your clients thinks of an app, what are we talking about here?

Scott Burkett: [00:03:28] Well, generally speaking, when you hear someone use the word “app,” they tend to be referring to mobile devices, right. Your smartphone, download this app, download that app, or whatever, or maybe even your tablet or something like that. But I’m a software engineer by trade, so it kind of irks me when I hear app only being used that way. A lot of folks will refer to an app that way, but an app can be anything. It can be a web-based software product. It can be a desktop app, an application for your desktop. So, it’s a pretty broad term, but, yeah, it tends to get more love on the mobile side these days.

Michael Blake: [00:04:03] And so, is that where that’s now headed? Is every app a mobile app, or-

Scott Burkett: [00:04:07] No, not at all.

Michael Blake: [00:04:08] … do you see that there’s not an end for apps on a more conventional sense?

Scott Burkett: [00:04:11] I think, it’s hard to argue that the growth of mobile hasn’t played a role in this, right. I mean, there’s more mobile devices, phones, laptops, whatever, tablets than there are desktops. Just people aren’t buying desktop. They’d rather buy a smartphone and a tablet than buy a desktop. Unlike I’m a hardcore gamer, as you are as well.

Michael Blake: [00:04:31] You’re more of a game historian, I think, at this point. It’s true.

Scott Burkett: [00:04:34] But I still play them.

Michael Blake: [00:04:35] Long live Atari, baby.

Scott Burkett: [00:04:36] Exactly, but I’ll still have a high-end gaming rig at home and use desktop stuff, but most of the work that we do is on laptops or mobile devices these days. So, that’s a big shift.

Michael Blake: [00:04:48] So, when somebody comes to you and says, “We think we want to have an app for our company,” did you kind of walk them through the process? Is that the right path for them to go? Or how do you find the clients who are thinking about that? What does that decision tree look like?

Scott Burkett: [00:05:04] Well, it’s complicated because every situation is different, right. The first thing that we try to do at Incursus is dig into what the business problem is they’re trying to solve with it, right. We were talking at lunch here earlier about the cool factor behind apps. And that’s certainly out there, but the reality is 99.9% of our clients are going to come to us and say, “We need to build something to solve this particular set of problems.” And it could be to extend a web application to the mobile device, or it could be just greenfield app itself on a mobile device.

Scott Burkett: [00:05:37] So, you want to understand those business problems, right. And once those things line up, then you can kind of dive into what’s the next step. How do we prioritize these? How do we dig into them? And to make sure that their understanding of what a return on that investment is going to be is the same as your understanding of it because, at the end of the day, it has to drive some sort of value and trying to put that-

Michael Blake: [00:05:57] You’d like to [crosstalk]-

Scott Burkett: [00:05:58] Yeah, back to the-

Michael Blake: [00:05:59] Although it is cool just to have my logo on my phone.

Scott Burkett: [00:06:02] You have the light saber app, don’t you?

Michael Blake: [00:06:03] I do.

Scott Burkett: [00:06:04] I do, yeah. Hey, it’s at sword fight mode. We could actually-

Michael Blake: [00:06:06] We could, but it doesn’t work as well as audio.

Scott Burkett: [00:06:08] Yeah. I was going to make a bad crossing swords joke, but I’m not-

Michael Blake: [00:06:11] That’s all right.

Scott Burkett: [00:06:11] Did I just make a bad crossing swords joke?

Michael Blake: [00:06:12] It’s not that kind of podcast.

Scott Burkett: [00:06:14] That’s right. Family-friendly.

Michael Blake: [00:06:17] So, every sort of situation is different, which is kind of what we expect. So, is it fair to say that there are kind of two categories of apps? One is kind of outward-facing. You’re trying to have an app that is client-focused, client-facing, maybe let clients interface with your company a different way. And then, kind of, an internal app, something that makes the way your company works or operates more effective and more efficient. Is that a fair distinction?

Scott Burkett: [00:06:44] That is fair. The thing with the App Store is it’s a public utility effectively at this point, right. You go into it, and you find what you want. You pay for it or you get it for free. You download it. Most companies are probably not going to want you to download their internal applications from the app store, but we do see both. We do see both.

Scott Burkett: [00:07:01] I think, the biggest trend over probably the past, I’d say, the best decade, really, as the shift to mobile happened was you had successful web applications like Facebook, for instance, or LinkedIn, those kinds of sites, social media type sites in general that didn’t, initially, have a mobile app. And the mobile adoption is a lot greater now than it was when those companies were founded.

Scott Burkett: [00:07:22] So, the mobile strategy kind of came in later for them, but that became a way to interface with a larger platform on the desktop effectively. It’s the same product, right, but you’re limited to a certain set of features and certain experience on a mobile device that’s a little smaller in footprint than what you’d get on a desktop, for instance, right. But, yeah, that shift is definitely there.

Michael Blake: [00:07:44] Are we at a point now where you can realistically have an app that doesn’t have a mobile companion?

Scott Burkett: [00:07:50] Well, in that context do, we talked about web applications, right. On the B2B side, if you’re successful, you need to have a mobile app. It’s just your users are going to demand it. In fact, if you don’t eventually have a mobile app in your B2B type web application, your customers are going to go find another solution somewhere else because mobile’s that important in the enterprise now, right.

Scott Burkett: [00:08:13] My UPS guy who comes to the house and drops off packages, first thing he does is he pulls out his mobile device, and he’s got access to all this back in functionality at UPS that he’s like flipping around and doing all this stuff. I try to sign my name, it looks like my kindergartener signs it when I do my finger, but all that functionality is all on a mobile device. That’s a great example of an enterprise application on a mobile device right there. Not something you can download from the app store, but they have it. So, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:08:39] So, apps, I mean, back in the old days, we used to call them software applications or programs. So, the words changed, but what we’re creating is largely the same. Does an app have to be something grandiose, like PowerPoint or Microsoft Word? Is this something that can be fairly slim? Walk us through that. Does an app have to be big, and hairy, and complex to be valuable? Are there ways to do something relatively quick and painless?

Scott Burkett: [00:09:10] I can tell you that 99% of the stuff that’s on my smartphone, my iPhone here, was put there by my kids. And the vast majority of things that are on there are simple silly things that add zero value to my life. So, the short answer is it doesn’t really matter, right. There’s an app for anything these days, you want to track your weight loss or whatever. And you’re still doing all the work, by the way. It’s not like you stand on the iPhone-

Michael Blake: [00:09:34] I don’t need an app for that by the way, but the math there is not that complicated or fast.

Scott Burkett: [00:09:37] You don’t stand on your iPhone. I want to write a trick app that it’s a scale for your iPhone, and you just stand on your iPhone, and I wonder how many people would do that. But there are apps for everything, small, large whatever. I don’t think people have to have a vision of something being grandiose or lightweight. I think they have to have a vision that their app — And I’m speaking more in a business context here — solves some kind of problem or fulfill some sort of need in a marketplace, right.

Scott Burkett: [00:10:06] So, it could be a game. It could be just pure entertainment or just a boredom breaker kind of a thing. And those things tend to be kind of lightweight. But when we start talking about business-to-business enterprise type integration, those things tend to lean towards the hairy side just by their very nature, right.

Michael Blake: [00:10:22] Got it.

Scott Burkett: [00:10:22] So, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:10:23] All right. So, somebody comes to you and says, “Scott, we think we want an app. We’d like to have you build it.” Open the hood a little bit, what does that process kind of look like?

Scott Burkett: [00:10:33] Well, the first thing I do is I get out my incense burner. No, I’m kidding.

Michael Blake: [00:10:38] No, that’s what we do in valuation.

Scott Burkett: [00:10:39] no. The interesting thing about technology is that while technology has changed a lot over the past 20 years – let’s just say 20 years. It’s really longer than that. About 30 years, I guess, at this point. God, we’re getting old – the process by which you build it has nominally changed, right? Certainly, we have faster tools we have better tools, and libraries, and integrated environments that we can build all these great things in.

Scott Burkett: [00:11:04] And that’s condensed the timeframe for delivery of building something like that, but the process is still largely the same. You got to understand the requirements. Are there requirements? What are you trying to build? If you just have an idea you’ve got a lot more work to do. You could come to me with an idea, that’s great. I’m happy to help you walk through kind of flashing that out.

Scott Burkett: [00:11:21] But, at some point, you’ve got to put pen to paper, or well, we used to do that, but put your fingers on the keyboard, as it were, and type up your requirements. Well, what are the problems it’s going to solve? How is it going to solve? What are the benefits to the user? What are they going to reap by using this particular application? And it doesn’t matter if it’s on the web, or if it’s on a desktop, or if it’s a mobile app, the same principles still apply.

Michael Blake: [00:11:41] Now, having known you as long as I have, I know you’re a very creative guy. You’ve done-

Scott Burkett: [00:11:45] A few things, I guess.

Michael Blake: [00:11:47] You’ve done literally done art websites.

Scott Burkett: [00:11:50] That’s true, that’s true.

Michael Blake: [00:11:51] So, when you have that conversation or when somebody — I want to depersonalized a little bit. Is it reasonable to expect that if I’m looking for someone to help me develop my app, is the app developer going to, then, maybe interact with me and help flesh out what the business case might actually be, suggest additional functionalities, or is it more like an order-taking process where, “I need an app that does A, B, C, and D,” “Here it is, go”?

Scott Burkett: [00:12:17] Well, to the latter, there’s a million people that can do that, right? You can go to upwork.com, find a freelancer offshore somewhere, send them a bulleted list of stuff that you want to build, and they’ll build exactly that.

Michael Blake: [00:12:31] Okay.

Scott Burkett: [00:12:31] Okay. And it will be cheaper. By and large, it will be cheaper to do that. The problem is if your development team isn’t completely aligned with your business drivers, and in those sessions, and on the white board, and trying to understand how your business is evolving, and not just in a bulleted list, these are the things that are important to us, but understanding your customers and what they want. You’re going to paint yourself into a corner as a founder. You’re making an investment. Ostensibly, it’s a chunk of your savings, or you’ve raised some money maybe in a seed round or something like that, and you’re trying to build something. The last thing you want to do is know that you just wasted $100,000, or $50,000, or whatever it is by giving somebody a bulleted list because you think you’ve got all the answers, and you think that’s all they need. There’s always more to it than that.

Scott Burkett: [00:13:18] If I took a pile of building supplies and dropped them off on a lot that you owned, and said, “We’re going to build a house.” And you came to me and you said, “Okay. Here’s what I want. I want three bedrooms, and I want two baths, and I want a sunken den. That’s all it. That’s my main thing. I just got to have these things.” We’ll build it. We’ll build the house. It will have three bedrooms, two baths, and a sunken den. And then, you’re going to realize that you wanted brick, and you wanted one bedroom upstairs, and not all three. You didn’t want a ranch house, right? So, the house is still built. I did my job, right?

Michael Blake: [00:13:46] Yeah, yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:13:48] And so, you run into situations like that. And more importantly, you run into situations where you realize you can’t add an extra room to your house because of the way the house was initially built, right? It wasn’t built to be extensible. We took up all of the real estate on that lot by building this house, right?

Michael Blake: [00:14:02] If we add here, that’s a support thing.

Scott Burkett: [00:14:04] That’s right, that’s right. That’s a load-bearing wall. We can’t take that down. So, you think about that from a development standpoint, developers, there’s something called technical debt, which may come up later in the show here. But technical debt is one of those things where it’s the — You’re familiar with monetary debt, right?

Michael Blake: [00:14:20] Of course.

Scott Burkett: [00:14:21] So, it’s financial debt, right? It’s very akin to that. When you’re building an application, and a developer takes the easy route, if you give me a bulleted list, I’m taking the easy route and implementing all this because I don’t know what you’re going to want to do a year from now or two years from now because I’m not in line with your business. So, I’m going to build those things, and I’m going to take the easiest fastest way for me to accomplish those tasks, and I’m going to do it. Okay.

Michael Blake: [00:14:43] Just satisfy the statement of work.

Scott Burkett: [00:14:44] That’s right, just satisfy the statement of work. So, fast forward a year from now, your business is pivoting, or you’re changing, you’re getting into a new market, you got a new partner that you want to integrate with or something like that. And all of a sudden, you realize you can’t do that because you have technical debt. You have to now re-factor, and take all the easy stuff out, and do it the right way where you can open those doors into integration with other companies and things like that in your code.

Scott Burkett: [00:15:07] So, when you think about giving someone a bulleted list, if anybody’s listening to this that is in that mode, don’t do that. Don’t give someone a bulleted list and a check and say, “Let me know when you’re done.” That’s absolutely the worst possible thing you could do.

Michael Blake: [00:15:23] So, one of the decision points, then, is do I, as a person who wants the app, do I have enough time myself to engage in this process, so that I get what I want? When you put an addition in your house, a great way to make sure you’re unhappy is just send the contractor off.

Scott Burkett: [00:15:39] That’s right. That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:15:40] Not oversee the work, not get progress updates.

Scott Burkett: [00:15:41] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:15:41] It’s sounds like it’s the same thing there. You can’t just throw it over a wall.

Scott Burkett: [00:15:42] There’s basically there — I guess, three ways of looking at building an app, or three reasons, or drivers behind it. One is you’re writing something for yourself, which happens a lot with techies. Us, geeks, like to write tools that we use, and we think are cool. And that’s fine. You’re the only user of it, and you’re happy. That’s a success, right? Or you’re trying to monetize it, and actually grow business out of it, and turn it into something that’s a little bit more longer lasting than just you using a tool. And then the third one is the hobby market. You’re making something for other developers to use or other tool builders to use as a part of their applications.

Scott Burkett: [00:16:21] When you look at the second one, that example that you just gave about, “Am I going to have time to engage in this?” Well, if you’re writing it for yourself, and you don’t have time to engage in it, then I don’t even know what’s going on there. The third one is a hobby. It kind of falls back to the first one, which if you’re not willing-

Michael Blake: [00:16:35] You either do it or you don’t.

Scott Burkett: [00:16:36] Either do it or you don’t. If you’re trying to monetize it and build a business around it, you either find the time or you don’t. And if you don’t find the time, you’re just wasting your money.

Michael Blake: [00:16:43] Okay.

Scott Burkett: [00:16:44] Right? You have to engage. I think you absolutely have to engage with your developer. IT people and techies are not the same as they were even 20 years ago. They have business degrees now. They understand sales and marketing. They understand how companies work, at least, on the surface, right? They can understand those business drivers and apply them to how are we going to integrate with those partners in our app down the road. Things like that are going to open up for them. So, I think you absolutely have to find the time to engage with your development team no matter what you’re building.

Michael Blake: [00:17:12] Okay. So, I mean, apps sound great. It’s the way of the future. It’s all cool. Why doesn’t everybody have one?

Scott Burkett: [00:17:20] A lot of people don’t have a mobile strategy upfront. And we’re seeing this is a little bit different now because, I think, mobile strategy is one of the first things an investor is going to ask you, especially if you’re in the business-to-business side or building a web application that’s going to have a lot of users. What’s your integration strategy? What’s your mobile strategy? That’s one of the things they’re going to want to know. And if you don’t have one it’s going to be a strike against you. You’re not thinking big enough. You’re not thinking outright.

Michael Blake: [00:17:44] Right, because that’s where most of the devices are.

Scott Burkett: [00:17:47] Exactly. And that’s how we consume content, by and large, these days. I mean, I get my news from my smartphone. I don’t watch the news at night. Who does that anymore?

Michael Blake: [00:17:53] I can’t remember the last time I watched the news.

Scott Burkett: [00:17:55] Exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:17:55] Do you even do that anymore?

Scott Burkett: [00:17:56] Is Walter Cronkite still alive. No. Yeah, right. That’s the last news that I saw, right?

Michael Blake: [00:18:01] Right.

Scott Burkett: [00:18:02] Paul Harvey and Walter Cronkite, right? So, yeah. Someone’s listening to this going, “They’re Googling Walter Cronkite right now.”

Michael Blake: [00:18:08] Exactly.

Scott Burkett: [00:18:09] “Who is Walter Cronkite?”

Michael Blake: [00:18:09] Exactly. Going to the biography channel.

Scott Burkett: [00:18:09] How do you spell his name? Yeah. So, no, and people consume content on their mobile devices. So, mobile strategy is important. I think maybe a decade ago, 15 years ago, mobile was — I don’t want to say it was optional, but it was sort of like gravy. In fact, a lot of investors back then probably we’ll look at you and say you’re thinking too big. What’s this mobile thing? I mean, the world has changed. Obviously, it’s evolved. So, if they don’t have an app, then there’s either one of couple of obvious reasons for it. One is they don’t want to fund it. That can happen, right?

Michael Blake: [00:18:40] Yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:18:41] They don’t see the value, in which case you want to short their stock, I think, at this point, right?

Michael Blake: [00:18:45] Got it.

Scott Burkett: [00:18:45] Certainly, if it’s an enterprise type company. And on the social side, I think any sort of social media app these days, application on the web is going to have a mobile component. If not designed kind of in counterpart with the web platform, it’s going to be built like shortly thereafter once they get all their integration points and everything is sort of in place where the mobile devic can communicate to the web app.

Scott Burkett: [00:19:06] So, I mean, when LinkedIn and Facebook first launched, they didn’t have mobile apps. This came along later. So, I don’t know how Facebook is now, but it’s probably 15 years old or something like that maybe.

Michael Blake: [00:19:18] It’s something like that, yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:19:19] Something like that.

Michael Blake: [00:19:20] I mean they went public in — Went public in — Actually fairly recently. It went public in like ’13 or something. So, looking around 2006.

Scott Burkett: [00:19:28] Right. So, yeah. Yeah. So, there you go.

Michael Blake: [00:19:32] So, is there kind of a tale to this? It’s one thing to sort of build an app, but I have a feeling an app is not something you just buy once and put away, right?

Scott Burkett: [00:19:42] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:19:43] You put it online, and you’ve got to maintain it. Apps tend to get updated if they’re going to be around for long. So, is that the case that when budgeting and figuring out if an app is right for you? Do you have to think about six months from now, a year from now, kind of, what long-term commitment you’re going to make to it?

Scott Burkett: [00:20:00] Any business has to think about that. It doesn’t matter what your business is, you have to think about, “Okay, I know I’m going to raise this much money, maybe nothing. And I know that whatever I have is going to get me to a certain point at which, hopefully, I’ll have a product.” And there’s a revenue ramp. And at some point, your revenue is going to go up and then you can afford to pay the bills.

Scott Burkett: [00:20:21] What a lot of young entrepreneurs tend to do – and I see this unfortunately more often than I want to admit – they just assumed that once they get that revenue ramp going that it’s just cruise control from there. And they just basically are printing money. And that never works. It never works. When’s the last time-

Michael Blake: [00:20:40] It’s not that easy to become a billionaire?

Scott Burkett: [00:20:42] No, it’s not.

Michael Blake: [00:20:42] Oh, shocks.

Scott Burkett: [00:20:43] It’s absolutely not, but think about your — My iPhone, I turn it on. Every day, there’s updates to my apps, right. The ones that don’t get updated are going to become deprecated over time. Users are going to abandon them, and this could be mobile, but it could also be on the web as well. It could be on the desktop as well. I mean Word Perfect went under. Remember Word Perfect?

Michael Blake: [00:21:02] Sure.

Scott Burkett: [00:21:02] Yeah, it was great. It was great. Well, Microsoft Office came along with its auto updates, and then everybody said, “Hey, this is great. They’re adding new features to this incrementally. It’s getting better. It’s improving.” Word Perfect went the way of the dinosaur and had a horrible interface. They never did anything to fix it. It’s an antiquated analogy, but, still, it’s one of the examples.

Michael Blake: [00:21:20] No, it’s true. Once the old lawyers died out, that-

Scott Burkett: [00:21:21] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:21:22] Because the lawyers were the last stronghold-

Scott Burkett: [00:21:24] And they loved it, that’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:21:25] … for Word Perfect. And once they died out and retired, the new generation grew up with Microsoft Office or, now, Google Docs.

Scott Burkett: [00:21:31] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:21:32] That’s what they’re using, right?

Scott Burkett: [00:21:32] Users are going to demand a couple of things. They’re going to demand that the bugs get fixed. And there’s always bugs in software. It’s written by humans. Right? So, we’re going to have those problems. Bugs get addressed in a timely fashion. The product evolves. As new opportunities and new technologies arrive in the marketplace, your product, if it’s applicable, has to be in a position to take advantage of those things and incorporate those into your application as well.

Scott Burkett: [00:22:00] I’m just thinking out loud here, but I just bought a device called the AirServer, which is a little embedded device that allows me to stream Chromecast, and AirPlay, and Miracast from a PC, a Mac, a Smartphone. Any sort of device, I can screen cast directly to my TV. Well, before I learned about this product, you had to have the right laptop. You had to have the right TV.

Michael Blake: [00:22:24] Apple with AirPlay.

Scott Burkett: [00:22:25] That’s right, that’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:22:25] Apple TV.

Scott Burkett: [00:22:26] Exactly, right. So, something better came along. And it’s one of those things that something better is always coming along in this day and age. I mean, my Twitter feed is full of it. Every day, it’s just 20 new things that are launching that didn’t exist yesterday. And some of those things are going to fall out by the wayside. It’s just law of averages, right? But the ones that make it, the ones that have long-lasting ability in the marketplace are the ones you have to take advantage of. And how do I integrate with it?

Scott Burkett: [00:22:51] It may not be applicable to everyone, but when certain things come along — Like single sign-on is another great example of that, right. Interfacing with single sign-on, does your app want to take advantage of that? You see apps now that lets you login with Google or Facebook, right? Easy. You just click the button and you’re done, right?

Michael Blake: [00:23:06] Thank God.

Scott Burkett: [00:23:07] It’s great.

Michael Blake: [00:23:07] Just typing all those things with my fingers on the phone, it’s a nightmare.

Scott Burkett: [00:23:11] And it takes you eight times to get your password right. Then, you locked yourself out.

Michael Blake: [00:23:14] Exactly.

Scott Burkett: [00:23:14] But it’s one of those things that — Just think about this, if your product was in the marketplace, and you didn’t have that capability, it’s a seemingly inane feature. Okay. It shouldn’t be a make or break decision, but I can guarantee you, people will say, “Why do I have to keep logging into this when I can just — Why can’t I just click on the Facebook button and authenticate me that way?”

Michael Blake: [00:23:32] Especially if it’s just a subscription to Reuters. I don’t care if somebody pirates that account.

Scott Burkett: [00:23:37] That’s right. That’s right. You don’t really care.

Michael Blake: [00:23:38] I’m not paying anything. I can’t post anything. It’s not a high-leverage discussion.

Scott Burkett: [00:23:43] Absolutely right. So, I think you have to — Getting back to the question, I think, as a founder, you’ve got a budget for the incremental advancement and evolution of your app, okay. Be it on the desktop, the web, mobile device, it doesn’t matter, you have to constantly be thinking, how is this going to get better? Because that’s what makes your business better at the end of the day anyway. How are you going to evolve as a business? Well, that involves dragging your product along, hopefully, right?

Michael Blake: [00:24:05] Yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:24:06] So, there you go.

Michael Blake: [00:24:07] All right. So now, It’s the time in the program to go negative.

Scott Burkett: [00:24:11] Uh-oh.

Michael Blake: [00:24:11] And what I mean by going negative is I like to talk about times when people and customers or, not even customers, companies have built apps that have just failed.

Scott Burkett: [00:24:21] Okay, sure.

Michael Blake: [00:24:22] Why do apps fail? And what can we learn from that where maybe it’s just not a good decision on the part of that company to commission the app in the first place?

Scott Burkett: [00:24:33] Well, we’re speaking here, obviously, in the business context. If you’re writing it for yourself, and it fails that you don’t even use your own tool, then that’s your problem. That’s not a world problem. But there’s a couple of things that it comes down to. If a company’s generating or building an app, we’ll just use a mobile app in this particular case, and maybe it mirrors their web application, right? They’re not seeing the adoption rate, for instance, going up.

Scott Burkett: [00:24:58] Now, if you’re web app is successful, and your mobile app is not, that’s a different problem, okay. That tells you that the core product that you have is valuable, and people are using it on the web, but they’re not using your mobile app. Maybe the interface stinks, maybe the usability stinks, it’s not worth it, there could be bugs, things like that that need to be addressed.

Scott Burkett: [00:25:18] But it all comes down, at the end of the day, to outreach and marketing, getting your app on the mobile side, the same exposure that your web application is getting in that particular instance. And when we say a business context, that’s generally what we’re talking about. It’s Facebook with a website or a web application, and they’ve got a mobile component to it as well, that type of pattern. So, they’ve got to look hard in the mirror and ask themselves why it’s not working, why it’s not getting the adoption.

Michael Blake: [00:25:44] And that’s true on the internal side too, right?

Scott Burkett: [00:25:46] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:25:46] If you want your app for internal use, you got to make sure people know about it.

Scott Burkett: [00:25:49] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:25:50] There’s got to be an incentive for them to use it.

Scott Burkett: [00:25:51] A policy. Crate a a policy, right?

Michael Blake: [00:25:53] It could be a policy, It could be you remove whatever process there was before, so they’re forced to use it,

Scott Burkett: [00:25:59] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:25:59] But-

Scott Burkett: [00:26:00] The worst thing you could hear as a developer, as s a software engineer, is that people aren’t using your app. They’d rather use email. That’s like the worst thing.

Michael Blake: [00:26:08] Really?

Scott Burkett: [00:26:09] Yeah. It’s too clunky, it does this, it’s too slow, whatever. It’s just easier to send the guy an email. Okay. So, that’s what they do, right?

Michael Blake: [00:26:16] Right.

Scott Burkett: [00:26:16] And email is like — Everybody wants to kill — Everybody has been trying to kill email for 20 years.

Michael Blake: [00:26:22] They have. It’s died more often than Rasputin.

Scott Burkett: [00:26:24] Exactly. I know, right? He’s on his 12th life at this point, right? But the reality is when that’s your fallback, your fallback is, “It’s just easier to send an email,” yeah, you got some issues with your app that you need to sort out.

Michael Blake: [00:26:37] And that brings up — I’m not going to attribute the name. I don’t necessarily have permission, but I was at a conference-

Scott Burkett: [00:26:41] Oh, come on.

Michael Blake: [00:26:43] I was at a conference a couple months ago, and there’s a venture capitalist there. One thing that he said that I’ll never forget, it was a great advice, is that, “Already good will always beat might be better, or good enough will always beat might be better.”

Scott Burkett: [00:27:02] Is there a question in there, or do you want to-

Michael Blake: [00:27:03] No, I’m asking for a reaction. If it’s something you’ve got, like email is already good enough, something that has, now, a learning curve that has some risk to it, if it’s not clearly better, it’s just going to get dumped off on the side of the road. They’ll go back, like you said, the email.

Scott Burkett: [00:27:20] Well, I think any founder would agree that their business plan paints a perfect picture of how things could be better or should be better. No business owner is going to say, “Well, my business plan does a poor job of telling you how great this product is going to be.” They’d probably go too far in that regard, if anything.

Scott Burkett: [00:27:36] I think that’s applicable sometimes. I mean, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it Kind of mantra, but there’s certainly been plenty of applications that have come along that have made getting tasks done, or achieving certain goals, accomplishing something, adding value in ways that were it was easier than before. Case in point, look at LinkedIn, right. Before LinkedIn, I either knew you or I didn’t. I either could call you on the phone or send you an e-mail because I had that information. And email contacts were closely guarded, like that was your rolodex, right?

Michael Blake: [00:28:12] Yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:28:12] Like the little black book that we used to have in the ’80s with all the phone numbers written down on. It was the same thing, you guarded your contacts. The business development people made a killing because they would go from one company to the next, and they bring basically their book of business with them because they had all their contacts, right?

Michael Blake: [00:28:26] Yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:28:27] Well, that’s gone now. By and large, it’s gone. Still relationship-driven and a lot of industries are, but if you think about LinkedIn, if I wanted to connect with someone to ask them a question, or invite them to come on to a panel, or speak at an event, or whatever my reason is for reaching out, I can probably get to them within a day. I can probably get my message in front of them pretty, pretty quickly, right?

Michael Blake: [00:28:49] Sure.

Scott Burkett: [00:28:50] So, before LinkedIn came along, that didn’t exist. That capability didn’t exist. Now, imagine yourself as an investor, and it’s hard now because LinkedIn is just part of the fabric now. Everyone uses it but think about maybe 15-20 years ago as an investor, and some guy, Reid Hoffman, comes to you in California and says, “I’ve got this great idea. We’re going to connect the world on the internet.” “What? Okay. It’s a big idea. I get it, but-”

Michael Blake: [00:29:16] No, you burn them for witchcraft.

Scott Burkett: [00:29:18] Exactly. It’s heresy. “What do you mean? These are my contacts. I’m not going to share them with other people,” and that kind of thing. Well, the world’s changed. So, I think there’s some applicability to what that investor told you, either way though.

Michael Blake: [00:29:29] Yeah. So, a lot of apps are now made offshore. I don’t know if your company uses offshore.

Scott Burkett: [00:29:35] No.

Michael Blake: [00:29:36] Not so relevant to the discussion. But if I go to a shop, and they say that they tend to use a lot of offshore labor, wherever it is, it could be India, it could be Ukraine, it could be Philippines, should I be concerned? Should that in my mind be a disqualifying feature in terms of selecting who my developer should be?

Scott Burkett: [00:30:00] I think, it’s going to come down to one key factor here and that’s money.

Michael Blake: [00:30:04] Okay.

Scott Burkett: [00:30:05] Okay. You can certainly find a country that will build your app, probably off of a bulleted list, like we cautioned about earlier, and you save some good money if you find the right company in the right country. But I will tell you a story not so awful long ago, there was a Japanese software company that had offshored, outsourced some of its development on its key product to China. Okay. Well, China, hopefully, the Chinese politico is not listening to this right now, and they’re going to hunt me down or something, but China doesn’t really have a great track record in not stealing things. I mean, China has-

Michael Blake: [00:30:42] Always since Marco Paul.

Scott Burkett: [00:30:43] That’s right, yes. China has a wee bit of a reputation for reverse engineering things and just outright lifting things.

Michael Blake: [00:30:51] Adopting them as their own.

Scott Burkett: [00:30:52] Adopting them as their own. Look at our new stealth fighter, right. Yeah, right, whatever. So, this Japanese company was so paranoid about China, these developers in China working on their product, they actually had five different Chinese offshore companies, and they gave each one of them a piece of it. They wouldn’t give the entire thing to one company. So, what does that tell you?

Michael Blake: [00:31:12] I think Apple does that, if I’m not mistaken.

Scott Burkett: [00:31:14] They could, they could.

Michael Blake: [00:31:14] They don’t let everybody have the whole formula.

Scott Burkett: [00:31:15] The keys to the kingdom, right?

Michael Blake: [00:31:17] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:31:17] And I’m not here to say that all offshore is bad. It’s not. I’ve had some successes with offshore development in the past, and I’ve had some that were not as successful. Ultimately, it came down to the ones that were successful were the ones that were fully engaged with the team, the larger team, the business team throughout the development process. They took the time to understand the drivers behind it, and where we’re we going, and best practices. And there was a liaison on the business team that ensured that the development team were using best practices and things of that nature, so not to paint you into a corner.

Scott Burkett: [00:31:52] So, I think, it goes without saying that you should probably go into it with eyes wide open, if you do it. But to be fair, I would approach it here in the United States as well the same way. I’d do it the same way. I wouldn’t necessarily give it to five different companies to work on like the Japanese company I mentioned did. But I would certainly — Over here, we’re protected by NDAs and other things, IP agreements, and things like that, and, of course, the US Code of Law, which helps a lot.

Michael Blake: [00:32:19] There is that, yeah.

Scott Burkett: [00:32:20] The minute you put it offshore — And I’m not an attorney by any stretch of the imagination. Though, I have given a free legal advice before.

Michael Blake: [00:32:27] Don’t let that stop you.

Scott Burkett: [00:32:28] That’s right. But I think you should probably consult maybe some fellow entrepreneurs that have had successes building things offshore, and maybe kind of learn from them, specifically, who they’re dealing with, and are they reputable. That referrals always going to go a long way.

Michael Blake: [00:32:44] So, a recurring theme we’re hearing here is that the business side of the business has to be very closely involved with the technology side. This is not just something you hand over a bunch of nerds-

Scott Burkett: [00:32:55] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:32:55] … and say, “Have us build something.” I mean, you’ll get something.

Scott Burkett: [00:32:57] You’ll get something.

Michael Blake: [00:32:58] It just won’t be what you want most likely.

Scott Burkett: [00:33:00] Or the technical would be off the chart.

Michael Blake: [00:33:02] All right. Well, we’re running out of time, unfortunately. We could talk about this and other things-

Scott Burkett: [00:33:06] That true.

Michael Blake: [00:33:06] … for a long time. So, any concluding comments, anything that I should have asked but didn’t, or something else that our listeners need to know about the app decision process whether to build that app?

Scott Burkett: [00:33:19] I haven’t even got to my belly dancing bit.

Michael Blake: [00:33:22] Probably for the video version of the podcast.

Scott Burkett: [00:33:24] Okay. I think when you decide you want to build something, I think you have to make a commitment to the project. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo founder, a single founder, or you’re a small team, or you’re a company that’s looking to build an application. Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s a desktop, web, or mobile.

Scott Burkett: [00:33:41] I think you’ve got to apply those fundamental business practices to it, take those practices, and basically force feed the development team with those business drivers because if you don’t, like you said, you’re going to get something back, but it may or may not — it may do everything on the list functionally, but it may or may not solve the problem at hand. And, I think, aligning those things is a very key factor that people should go into it with knowing that, so.

Michael Blake: [00:34:07] Okay. Well, this has been great. I’m sure somebody listening to this this podcast will want to learn more. How do people find you?

Scott Burkett: [00:34:15] Unfortunately, I’m fairly easy to find on the web. So, you can just Google my name, Scott Burkett, I suppose, or just go to scottburkett.com, and all my links are there somewhere. I think so.

Michael Blake: [00:34:27] Yeah. you are not hard to find.

Scott Burkett: [00:34:28] I’m, unfortunately, not hard to find.

Michael Blake: [00:34:30] All right. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Scott again so much for coming and sharing his expertise.

Scott Burkett: [00:34:36] Thanks for having me.

Michael Blake: [00:34:36] This has been great. I’ve learned a lot. And we’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in so that when you are faced with your next business decision, you have a clear vision when you’re making it. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

Tagged With: custom app, custom app development, custom application development, Dayton accounting, Dayton CPA, Dayton CPA firm, Decision Vision, Decision Vision podcast, Decision Vision podcast series, LinkedIn, Michael Blake, Mike Blake, mobile app, offshore app development, offshore development, open source software, Startup, startup company

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