Gurmeet Judge
Encompass solutions founder and CEO Gurmeet Judge interview successful business leaders as he dives deeps into the world of business to help people like you become successful business leaders!
Gurmeet Judge
The Real Reason AI & Automation Fail in Business
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Business leaders must understand technology's transformative impact on operations, efficiency, and competition. Embracing AI, cloud, and automation as strategic tools enables rapid scaling, cost reduction, market expansion, and innovation. This knowledge turns challenges into growth opportunities, building resilience and competitive advantage in dynamic markets
In this episode, I had a discussion with Rob Broadhead — a veteran software architect, entrepreneur, and mentor with over 30 years in technology and business. He’s the founder of RB Consulting and the voice behind the Develpreneur Podcast, where he helps developers and business leaders turn ideas into real-world success. Rob’s passion is helping people build better — smarter systems, stronger teams, and more meaningful careers.
https://rb-sns.com/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Rob Broadhead
03:12 Introduction to Technology in Business
06:24 Common Challenges in Technology Adoption
09:12 The Mindset Shift: From Cost Center to Revenue Generator
12:03 Bridging the Gap: Business and Technology Communication
14:59 Understanding Technology's Impact as a Non-Tech Business Owner
18:14 Navigating Automation and AI: Starting Small
21:01 The Importance of Defining Problems Before Implementing Technology
24:13 Exploring Possibilities: How Technology Can Transform Business
27:12 Continuous Improvement: Technology Audits and Future Planning
36:29 Understanding Technology Risks in Business
44:42 Navigating the Consulting Landscape
54:24 Rob's Journey in Technology and Consulting
01:01:14 Empowering Business Owners Through Technology
Introduction to Rob Broadhead
SPEAKER_00I've worked across uh startups, uh small companies, big companies, Fortune 500 companies. Regardless, it seems like where the things start to break, where the technology starts to have issues, is usually actually before you start applying the technology. Uh the problem is actually when you get down to a technology is just a tool. Technology, whether it's uh you know old school stuff from you know card reader machines or it's the more modern, you know, automation and AI, all it does is it just it highlights your system that you already have. So as a business, if you're looking technology to solve something, you probably want to make sure first that you've actually defined that problem and what it is you want to solve way before you get to the technology point of view. It's not even the elephant in the room, it's like everybody talks about it clearly, you know, all the time. They say business and technology struggle to communicate. Now, it definitely has gotten better in the you know the decades that we have now made. Technology has been a very active portion of business for a while now. Very often, as we start small and we start to use technology to fix problems in our company, it also opens our eyes, especially to the non-technologists, because suddenly they're seeing they see a problem that's solved, and then they're starting to think, wait a minute, I've never thought about applying technology to this other problem, but this is another problem I have. And now maybe I can use technology to apply to this one. I highly recommend uh like pilot programs and and tests and betas and things of that nature. Take something small and then use that where you're automating it, AI, you know, wherever you're applying technology. The reason I say start small is not because I mean, although that is a part of it, it's not because you don't want it to blow up your entire company, but it's because you hi there.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Rob Broadhead. Rob is a veteran software architect, entrepreneur, and a mentor with over 30 years in technology and business. He's the founder of RB Consulting and the voice behind Developner Podcast, where he helps developers and business leaders turn ideas into real-world success. Rob's passion is helping people build better, smarter systems, stronger teams, and more meaningful careers. You know, this was a very interesting discussion. If you are a business leader or business owner or in any leadership position, you know technology is becoming a bigger part of your business on a daily basis. And uh, you know, we don't need as business owners, we don't need to be expert every area or every technology out there. However, we need to understand um the impact of technology in a business and how we can use technology as a tool to grow and scale our business. So that this discussion I have with Rob was around this topic. Um, hope you find a value out of this discussion as much as I did. Uh, don't forget to uh subscribe, share with your friends, and send us your feedback. Your feedback is very important uh to us, allow us to focus on our right discussions to help you go and scale your business. So thank you again for your time. Until next time, please welcome Rob
Introduction to Technology in Business
SPEAKER_01Broadhead. Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Rob uh Broadhead. Rod Rob uh, you came from the same industry, so you know there's so much uh to you know uh in comments. So I'm looking forward to a discussion, looking forward to your side of things, you know, in the software developments. I'm looking forward to learning from you. Thank you so much for time and welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much. I'm happy to be here and really looking forward to the conversation.
SPEAKER_01Good stuff. So you've been working with a lot of business leaders over the years, Rob. You know, you've been helping them, coaching them, mentoring them, and aligning technology with the business. Where do you see some of the common challenges that you see across the business leaders? Where do they get stuck when it comes to technology or IT departments or or or any tech? Where do you see some of the challenges that you see?
SPEAKER_00Well, the first thing is actually, and I've I've worked across uh startups, small companies, big companies, Fortune 500 companies, regardless, it seems like where the things start to break, where the technology starts to have issues, is usually actually before you start applying the technology. The problem is actually when you get down to a technology, is just a tool. Technology, whether it's you know old school stuff from you know card reader machines or it's the more modern, you know, automation and AI, all it does is it just it highlights your system that you already have. So as a business, if you're looking technology to solve something, you probably want to make sure first that you've actually defined that problem and what it is you want to solve way before you get to the technology point of view.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is a very common problem. We see something shining out there and we jump to technology, not understanding what problem we're trying to solve. Technology, end of the day, is like a your hammer against my hammer. You know, they all hammers at the end of the day is what you do with it. So, where do you where you see some of the challenges? Why don't people understand that, you know, is is us, you know, because they don't, you know, business owners who are listening or watching us, they don't need a technical background to understand that impact technology makes in a business is create business, right? But so what what is the hesitation or how come they, you know, you know, there's enough people explaining that, like, you know, you and I, you know, two business owners. So what's not getting across that business owners still hesitant about it or they don't want to deep dive, understand some of these uh some of this impact.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's uh boy, there's a lot in a couple of those. Is one, there's a if you're coming at it from a point of cost and you're just trying to fit if you if you see it as technology is just a cost of doing business, we and this is so often one of the mistakes that is is made is the we have to have this because this is part of it. Like today, it's AI. And you can go back before that, it was we have to have a mobile app, we have to have a website. You know, there's always, as you said, I love the shiny thing idea of there's this new shiny thing, it's a buzz, we have to make it a part of our business. And that is completely the backwards way to look of it. It's it's not to look at it as say, we have to have this thing for our business. It is what does our business need that this thing will solve, that this technology will solve. And so instead of going at the solution, which is whatever that technology is, it they they go after, they get instead of going after that, we should go after defining
Common Challenges in Technology Adoption
SPEAKER_00the problem. And I do put part of this on the technologist side of this equation as well, because if we're a software developer or consultant or something that they we want to use the newest thing, but that doesn't always get aligned properly with what the business needs. And so I think that's one of the first problems is instead of saying we need this thing, we need this tool, we need AI, we need, you know, whatever, we need to go to the cloud. It really needs to be more of a step back for a second. Let's take a look at what is it that we have that needs that. And I'll just give a brief example. Well, no, actually, I think we'll wait on that. I want to we'll move forward. I'll come back because I want to I want to talk a little bit more about automation later, but and I'll use an example then.
SPEAKER_01Okay. But but we know from uh our industry standpoint, uh Rob, is innovation that Microsoft come up with, that Google come up with, IBM comes up with that, those innovations that in a technology, that's a probably a few years ahead of that where business owners can make sense to their business where you know word technology deliver value to the business, right? So there's all these gaps in between. So I think it's a balancing act that you know to you want to catch up with the vendors, you want to get their because they're they're trying to market their new innovations as well, right? Because they want to have their return on investment too, right? So it's it's a balancing act between following their you know, marketing that the following their innovations to stay on top of everything, and then matching that with the business value week trying to get out of technology, right? So I think the few years gap there is probably confuse a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it very much does. And but it's honestly, if you think about it, if you step back and look at it, not from a just from a an average's point of view, is you have the you know, the idea of like bleeding edge, the people that as soon as that thing comes out, they're they're diving into it. And then you have leading edge that's that's a little bit behind that. They're they're very forward thinking. And then you have sort of the common adopters that you know that that understand it. Now it's settled in, it's baked in. There's there are plenty of examples ahead of them. And then there's the trailing, you know, people that the business are just like, hey, we're we're gonna wait till everything is totally baked in, totally proven. The thing is, is your business needs to be, no matter if it's big or small, there is a a need for your business to have some level of agility. I don't care if you're a brick and mortar, I don't care if you're software development, I don't care what industry you're in. These days, most industries, there are technology changes and there are even business environment changes that make you have to choose, you know, move quickly. I, for example, we could have had like let's say a pandemic that suddenly changed the whole landscape. Well, whatever business you're in, now you have to be, you have to be, you don't have to be super nimble, but you have to
The Mindset Shift: From Cost Center to Revenue Generator
SPEAKER_00be agile enough. And a key to being agile is being stable. This is, you know, you want an example from the uh martial arts, is like one of the first things they have for a Bruce Lee or anybody that's great at that is they want to make sure that they are stable, that they have their position, so that they have their stance, so that they can, you know, they can kick or they can punch or they can do whatever they can, but it doesn't throw them off balance. And that's the same thing that we can see in a technology world is the the technology, the the speed that it it allows our business to move at takes us off balance. We suddenly have something that worked when it was slow, it worked when it was when it allowed like a human touch, but now when you hand it over technology, then now it's like it's it's starting to shake too much and it starts to fall apart and it starts to break.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. Great point. I want to I want to address the mindset a little bit, uh Rob. I know historically, if you look at it 20 years ago, 30 years ago, traditionally IT was put under CFO's umbrella portfolio. CFO will manage IT. The reason for that was IT cost was blown out of proportion, so we wanted to control the cost. That was a mindset behind it that listen, anything that we need to sharpen pencil or control the budget on, we're gonna put it under CFO, a portfolio. That happened for so long. That these are just my views. That happened for so long. It worked very well for industry. We control the budget, but we're a technology today. If you look at that, that IT budget is a much bigger budget in a company than compared to what it used to be. Now it touches revenue, it touches many different areas. It used to be only providing us services, but now it's it's almost touches every corner of the company. A lot of companies still keeping that under CFO control, but it but it's not under it's not only providing service to the company these days, but these days also it helps you generate more revenue. Uh, the way revenue comes under CEO's umbrella or president's umbrella, that's what they focus on. How do how do we generate more revenue so we can grow the business? Where CFO is simply trying to control the car. Where you see that mindset, how do you you know, people you're talking to, are we still in a in a trying to control the budget? Are we people looking at as a tool to wait? How do I generate more revenue? I'll control it is good, but I also want to generate revenue. So CU CEOs and presidents getting involved in this and simply saying, I'm gonna use technology as a tool so I can grow my business.
SPEAKER_00That's a that's an excellent question. I think it is I see it in I see two different uh views of it. And and honestly, a lot of it I see this this does impact the the direction of the company is that you can see it. Well, let me back up one thing. Yes, it is, I think in a lot of cases, short of staff, short of salaries and paying your people, technology is going to be right up there, probably your most expensive part of your budget as an organization. So it very much is something that you need to have control of, you need to
Bridging the Gap: Business and Technology Communication
SPEAKER_00have visibility into that, you need to have an understanding of how do we leverage this huge portion of our of our, you know, of our expenses, of where our money is going, of where our investments are going. Now you can look at it at it as the we need to keep it as low as possible, it's just an expense, it's just part of doing business. And to me, that is you not actually using it for the way it is. It's not, it's you're buying this tool, but you're not actually saying, you're saying, like, how do we get the cheapest tool? As opposed to how do we make this tool work best for us? And so if you look at it as a, honestly, as a resource and modern technology, between when you get to automation and AI and some of the things that are out there, it has literally got the the ability to replace headcount in some cases. And while, you know, there's arguments about the good and the bad about that, really the thing that you should be looking at if you're if you're running a business is not reducing headcount, it is improving the human interaction, the human parts of your business. So where can I take where can I take the the humdrum administrative menial tasks that people throughout the the organization have to do? You know, and it's everything from sometimes it's is just handling basic day-to-day emails and doing status reports and and summarizing things and and some of that stuff that's just the the administration, the red tape that a company has, and the bigger you get, the more that is part of it, because you have to have all this communication. It's investing in the technology to say, let's take those things that don't need a human touch or that can be automated and reduce time that humans have to do something and actually free the humans up to do the things that we really need to. And so it's sometimes it's a matter of finding the things that are not your business's prime areas, the things that the business stuff you need to do that's not actually directly, you know, filling your pipeline, generating revenue and and adding to your bottom line. Sometimes it's actually, I guess, reducing it, it can be used to reduce costs as well. So it can say that, hey, I don't have to go spend you know 100 hours a week doing all of this reporting and all this integration stuff that I need to do. I'm gonna have something, a system do it, and now I'm freeing people up to do it elsewhere. So there are those two. It's I really think it is a mindset that is critical to success these days, is either it is a cost center, it is a it is a you know expense that you just have to do. And yes, some people are in between, but almost it's very rare. It seems like it's either it's a cost center or this is an investment. And the investment people are looking at things like I want ROI. The cost center people are looking at it as I just want to reduce costs. And I think that's that very much shows throughout the it is a culture thing, even in a lot of cases.
Understanding Technology's Impact as a Non-Tech Business Owner
SPEAKER_00You will see it throughout the organization, you will see that trickle down. And it is something that honestly, if you're a if you're a founder, if you're a president, CEO, the you know, if you're at the top of the chain, that is something you should be aware of and make sure that the people underneath you are giving it the right focus. So you are using this tool. It's you know, you don't want to buy a hammer and put it on the shelf. That doesn't help. You want to actually say, let's make sure we're using this.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. Both sides of those equations, uh, Rob, what can business owners do to understand that how can they capitalize on technology to increase revenue or grow their company? Or also can can technology people do a better job in that area? Where do you think some of the gaps are? And and how could we, you know, which both sides we, you know, definitely we as a technology, you know, uh, you know, pioneers, we gotta do a better job explaining that. And and also business owners need to spend a little bit of time understanding that. What do you think some of that some of the area we can work together and of the business owner, CEO, the president of the company, or we do a little bit better job explaining better what where some of the gaps are. What do you think the where's what's the room for improvement in this both areas?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's such a and uh this is gonna sound like the sky is falling, so it's falling because historically there is a very big gap. Everybody mentions it, it's it's not even the elephant in the room, it's like everybody talks about it clearly, you know, all the time. They say business and technology struggle to communicate. Now, it definitely has gotten better in the you know the decades that we have now made technology, it's been a very active portion of business for a while now. And so what you have is you're you have had a drift from the business side and technology side closer. There's there are there are companies that do it very well where everybody is integrated, people are talking the same language, people are, you know, as they say, rowing the boat in the same direction. But I think regardless of where you're at, the way both sides have a value in this. I think from the business side is you need to be very clear on what your problems are that you need to solve. When you're when you're throwing it at technologies, you need to be very, and I guess a little bit it's trust technology to understand, because sometimes it's been simplified or dumbed down or however you is, because like there'll be this the feel that like technology is not going to understand the business or doesn't need to know the business. They just need to know what the outcome is that we want. But if you do that, you're missing opportunities because you probably, if you're especially if you're a CEO of a big company, you don't have time to know what technology can do. What you need to be focused on is like what do we need to solve? You're, you know, what are the problems that our business solves and that need to be solved to help our business get better? You put those over your technology people and let them chew on those and say, hey, here's a problem we need to solve. They can go out, they're gonna use their skills and their all of what they've done, their experience to say, you know what, this problem is very solvable with this technology or this approach. Now, this pushes on the technology side. They need to, if you're a technologist, if you're in that group, if you're in that department, whether you're leading or an implementer, you need to be pushing, you know, wherever
Navigating Automation and AI: Starting Small
SPEAKER_00you can, pushing back to be like, we call it, and it's yeah, it's a Simon-Cynic thing. Why? Why are we doing this? Why are we building this? What is the purpose of what we're doing? And then that needs to be a part of the implementation process so that you're not building something just to you know embrace the latest technology that you're keeping focused on we're actually solving a problem. And there should be within that a solution defined, a vision of a solution that says, here's the problem. This is a solution that we need that will work for us. And by that, it's the things like it's gonna, you know, our users are gonna be able to use it without ripping their hair out. It's gonna be able to integrate with our vendors if there's vendors out there. It's gonna have to integrate with the other systems that are out there. It's gonna have to allow these days, it's gotta, you know, you've got to have vision from you've got to be able to view into that from the HR department and marketing and sales and product development and all these, you know, all these different departments, all these organizations should have some, you know, there should be visibility into it, most likely. And that means that there should be input and acknowledgement that they're out there so that you're not just building a solution that is like, oh, this is great for marketing and it's awesome in their silo. But as soon as you start talking to sales, then it breaks down because it's not just solving the problem for that team or that specific department, it is solving the problem so that this fits into the organizational scale. And this is this is honestly, this is a lot of where scaling becomes an issue. When you're very small company, when you're starting out, everybody's together. Every there isn't the departmental silos, but you build things and you build them as one-offs. You're like, we just got to solve this problem. We don't really care. Well, now you've gotten into that point where you've been very busy. Now you want to grow this, you want to go from five to fifty million dollar company or something like that. Now, all of that that dirt that technology we have in technology, the technical debt, but in business, there's just the idea of like there's there's things that aren't processes that are they're not as smooth, they're not as well defined. And when you start pushing on those, when you start adding pressure, when you remove slack, suddenly things that you thought were great, they become much more apparent. You get to see where there were issues, and that's what you know, technology needs to be there, sort of saying, hey, this is we need to be clear that we're solving the correct problem the right way, and the business needs to make sure that they're giving enough information for technology to do that.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. If I'm a business owner, Rob, uh, before we get to automation and AI stuff, you know, I want you know, uh let's focus a little bit more on the business. If I'm a business owner, I don't have a tech background. How do I, if I want to understand the impact of technology, I'm
The Importance of Defining Problems Before Implementing Technology
SPEAKER_01taking on a development project or any other project, you know, in a in a technology project. What can I do? You know, definitely technology is not my expertise. That's an area foreign to me. It but I need to make a business decision, I need to make a financial decision. So, what can I do? How do I approach it? And what kind of questions can I ask to understand a little bit more in the detail so I can make a right decision, even though I don't have a technical background, I don't have an understanding of it. Can I stay on a surface that ask enough questions to understand what I need to understand?
SPEAKER_00You very much can. And it it is the same thing I just talked about from the technology side, is it's it is the focus on the on the why and the problem that you're solving. This is actually where I have found that RFPs are very valuable for that. Is that when you actually go through an RFP process and you you sit down when you're creating it initially, and you sit down and you say, What is the problem we're solving? What are the constraints around this? What are the The nice to have's, the need to have, the, you know, and in between. When you have that focus as a business owner and you say, this is a problem I need solved, and now you're taking that to technology, then you do have the you have the ability now because instead of being wild or intimidated or however you you see the technology, instead of having that be you know where you how you frame the discussion, instead keep it framed on the problem you're solving, keep it framed on the why, keep it framed on it's it's constantly asking questions. Okay, you know, you as if I'm talking to you and you're a technologist and you say, Well, we can do A, B, and C, then I'm gonna be pushing back and say, well, what does A look like? What does B look like? What does C look like? And and picket those and say, Well, okay, you say you can do A, but what does that actually look like? What would that be? What might the experience be that if my problem is solved that way, how would that look like to me? And there's gonna be vagaries and things like that because you know you're you're talking theoretical to some extent, but the more you can make that real, the more you can and even bring you know real examples. For example, say, here's a problem we have. We are not getting, we're not getting fulfillment done fast enough. And you give an exact, you should be able to give an example of we have a case where we had a customer that this is what happened, this is why fulfillment failed, this is what the outcome was. We need to fix this. Can technology do it? They're gonna say, you know, yes. Tell me what that looks like. What does it look like? What is the what is the technology part that's stepping in? And and not on a detailed level, but like, how does technology step in? Where are humans still in the loop? And then what do you know, how do I see it? How do I get visibility into what that is? And how do my people know the reports when it's successful? And also what do we what happens when it breaks? That's those are the kinds of questions that you don't have to have any technology knowledge to ask these kinds of questions. And while you may get a uh a tech speak answer for lack of a better term, if you you may get an answer that's very technical, but I think as you
Exploring Possibilities: How Technology Can Transform Business
SPEAKER_00do this, you will find that uh if it's the right, if if it really is the right solution, you're not gonna get the technical answer. You're gonna get something that is gonna actually be translated to address the business concerns. Because at the end of the day, the technology should be an invisible tool, essentially. You should nobody should care what the technology is. What should matter is that the business problem gets solved, the the customers are happy, the employees are happy, and everybody involved is you know, is it should be smooth. If it's if the technology is your, you know, and unless you're a technology company. I guess if you're a software company, it's a little different. But most business, it's it's it would be like you shouldn't care what your technology is. It shouldn't be a bragging point, it shouldn't be somebody that's saying that this is gonna, you know, that shouldn't be the thing that makes you better than another company. It's not the technology, it's the problems you solve and how you do it. It really is not, at the end of the day, a technology thing. It is a it is a business, it's a sp and it's a problem solving time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and especially let's talk about the um automation and AI, you know, there's a lot of what you know information around these two, but but you're trying to solve a problem. There's so many options these days available, right? I think that's what's blurried a little bit people's uh you know, you know, ideas because there's just too many options. There's so many AI projects going on, uh, a lot of automation, and then you lose a focus. What are you trying to solve uh because you get get involved in that you know all the new tools and all this stuff? How can business owner you know keep a control of that? Definitely that documenting business department is a good start. But uh, you know, even though so many options there, what can they do to just stay focused on what are you trying to do when you have so many options available?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it's it again, it actually starts before you get into that. It's because you need to have a I highly recommend like pilot programs and and tests and betas and things of that nature. Take something small and then use that whether you're automating it, AI, you know, wherever you're applying technology. The reason I say start small is not because I mean, although that is a part of it, it's not because you don't want it to blow up your entire company, but it's because you need to have something that you can tightly define. Because what we need to do is we need to take the process. If you're evaluating technology, you need to take the process out of the equation. You need to be able to actually evaluate the automation and the technology. And honestly, most of the time, it's not the automation of technology necessarily that's a problem. It is the the process behind it. And what I I was going to mention earlier, but now is where I want to go is the idea of uh let's say you've got just a you know a kid's bike, like a little tricycle. Well, if it's all tightly put together and everything's good, you know, it's like tightly fit together and it's built well, then kid can get there and they can ride it really fast and it's no big problem. But if it's not put together well, if you've got a screw loose or you've got a couple things that don't fit right, when you start moving it faster, the friction is going to cause issues. It's gonna cause screws to pop out, it's gonna
Continuous Improvement: Technology Audits and Future Planning
SPEAKER_00cause, you know, metal to shave on metal and things like that. So, same way with the process is what what you're doing when you're adding automation and when you're adding AI or whatever you're doing technology-wise, is you're actually saying this process, you know, ideally it should be I'm confident that this process can move faster, that it can be done in a faster fashion. And that comes down to a lot of different things because one is we need to know what the process is, but we also need to clearly know it. And this can sometimes be a problem as a manager, because you will think that the process works, you know, A, B, C, D are the steps. But what you find out when you dig deeper is you find out that, well, they don't always work that way. That sometimes, and sometimes it's more obvious, but we don't think about it. It's like sometimes B doesn't work. And so, you know, we have to call Bob and he steps in and he he jumps in and he cleans it up. Or, you know, like if it's just like think of a regular order flow, sometimes, you know, most of the time orders come in and everything's great, but sometimes we have exceptions. We have they didn't put the right information on it, or we don't have the right parts available, or something that should be there, you know, has missed a uh timing, and now we've everything has to change. If we have, and it's not that we can't use technology on imperfect processes, but we have to be very aware of that. Once we start applying a technology where we were using a human to make the adjustments to make things work, then now we have to make the technology make the adjustments to make things work, which goes back to requirements and the whole idea of let's let's start small. Let's make sure we can walk before we run, let's make sure we can crawl even before we can walk. So take something that you're very comfortable with, take something that you're you have a very good understanding of, and that it has very well-defined inputs, outputs, and a way to measure it. And then you can you can have your people, you know, whether it's consultants, your company, your advisors, your staff, whoever it is, start doing these, you know, applying technology and make sure that it's done with guardrails and it's done with you know as as much visibility into as possible and reporting so that you can say it along the way, you can say have you know gates basically of yes, this is working, this is doing what we expected it to do. We're great, you know, we can move forward. A caveat to that, or I guess a flip side of that sometimes is sometimes the rest of the business is not ready for that. So you want to process, you want to, if you're gonna invest in a process and and we'll say modernizing or or automating it, you need to make sure that that is one that you can handle. A good example that we'll see is a great example that is not even from a technology point of view, is the old idea of a uh the company that runs a Super Bowl ad and then they get so many orders and so many customers they can't they can't process them. They don't know what to do. So now it's like it's money on the table. It's the same thing with technology. If you're automating something that all it's doing is it's allowing the boxes to pile up further down the the process, then you're not really helping things. And actually, you may be doing things worse because now you've got things that are piling up that maybe you can't, they they aren't valid to pile up. They're you know, they're gonna spoil or they're they're gonna cause problems because they're there's that pile of stuff that we don't need. And so, yeah, bottom line, start small, start with something that's well defined, make sure you have visibility into it, make sure you have reporting, and then rinse and repeat essentially, and then expand it as you become more comfortable or as your team becomes more comfortable, or as you become more comfortable with your vendors that are implementing it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know the you starting small. One of the benefits is you can measure, as you mentioned, that in you know, if you can start measuring it, you know, on a smaller unit, definitely that the measurements can explode. You know, you can you know every step in the way where you're going with it, right? So I think those are there's a lot of benefits starting small, but you know, then expanding it. Simply you're building all those, you know, touch points where you can measure every little nuts and bolts before you uh roll out the company wide.
SPEAKER_00I will I'll add one more thing about that that I found throughout business. So that's you know, people are running it or those that are more in the trenches working on projects. Very often, as we start small and we start to use technology to fix problems in our company, it also opens our eyes, especially to the non-technologists, because suddenly they're seeing they see a problem that's solved, and then they're starting to think, wait a minute, I've never thought about applying technology to this other problem, but this is another problem I have. And now maybe I can use technology to apply to this one. And so the next thing you know is that you know, we call it scope creep and things like that. But essentially what it is is it's it's people are learning that, wow, okay, if this works in this area of our business, it can work in this other area of our business as well. So let's start, let's take advantage of it. So the it also will, by its very nature, if you're starting small and taking those baby steps, it will also, for lack of a better term, educate you, even as a non-technical person, the kinds of things that technology can do. So that now you can bring more of your business knowledge and your business problems and throw them out to your technically people and say, hey, I've got this idea. I think there's something that maybe technology can do. Is this something you can you can you know can help us with? And it's this goes back to your earlier question of if it's a if it's always an expense, you're not gonna think about that because you're gonna say, Well, I don't want to spend more money, I don't want to talk to the technology. That's that's gonna cost us money. But if you think of it as this is an opportunity to earn more money, to increase revenue, to you know, reduce costs or things like that, now you're gonna be more likely to have that free flow of of problems to solve and the ability for you to use that tool to the best of its ability.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, to your point, that's a great point you mentioned, uh Robert. But to your point, sometimes business owners, because they they're working on so many items, you know, because they got to grow a company, they they gotta deal with the finance, they gotta deal with the people. They, you know, when they're dealing with so many items, they just know they you know, they normally don't have an idea what's possible technically these days out there, right? So when you don't know what's possible, how can you set up expectations? What are what are your expectations and what are you trying to do with the technology? So when technology people show them that this is possibility, we can do this, that opens up their perspective. Okay, if this is possible, this is also possible, then this is also possible, right? And and I think a lot of business owners, presidents, CEO, they need that from technology people to show them the possibilities out there. Because every possibility will open up so many options to build, run a business or grow a business or to scale a business, right? So I think that the biggest service we provide to business owners is just show them what's what's possible out there, what to expect from technology. If you can do that, then how to get there, that's the easy part, as long as you can you can show what's possible out there and with the real uh world examples.
SPEAKER_00Oh, 100%. I think that I I mean you sort of nailed it right there. I think technology is the easy part. The actual getting to that point and defining the problem, understanding the problem, looking at a solution, those are the parts that are the difficult part. Once you've got those, the technology is not as hard. It's it's usually pretty straightforward at that point. I mean, yes, there are some problems that it's like if you're getting out of the research level, you know, it's a little bored, but most business problems are not at that level. They're the kinds of things that if we can define what our problem is, and then we put it in front of our technology people and say what's out there. And as a technology person, if you're in the technology, you need to be regularly reassessing things too, because this is where you know, some tech type sometimes the technology side sort of gets in a rut or gets very comfortable where they're at. And I think they should never be comfortable. And it's not that they you don't want to always change stuff, that's too much and that's too disruptive, but you do want to on a regular basis, and regular depends on a lot of factors, but for some level, you know, whether it's you know, twice a year, once a year, every other year, something like that, you should be doing just like you do financial audits, you should have some sort of a technology audit where you're looking in a review and look at what we are doing, how are we doing this, what are the new things out on the in the market? And this is how you become really good at being leading edge. I don't know necessarily bleeding, but definitely leading edge, is that you're always taking an eye and looking at instead of at what we're doing today, look at where do we want to be as a business in a year and five years, where is technology going? And is there some way that we can take advantage of how technology is moving to help us get to where we want to go faster or to get there safer or better? And so that is, you know, it is it is more on I think the technology side to do that because I think from a business side, as long as you are communicating to your technology people to your leadership, these are the problems we're trying to solve. Then they're gonna have those in their head while they're looking at all the technologies.
SPEAKER_01I wanna I want to talk about one of the challenges I see, Rob. I want to take it, you've been doing this in a for longer than I have, so I want to get your take on it. One of the common challenges I see for the business
Understanding Technology Risks in Business
SPEAKER_01owners is they they they have a one or two technology, you know, uh software developers or or uh you know programmers in a business. And they they identify the need for business and they build the software very well, it's working very well, and but business owners get confused that this is a competitive advantage too in a market because nobody has a software that built maybe integration, maybe it's a software that built something that nobody else has, and they think that's their competitive advantage. Not understanding the risk involvement, that if you only get a one developer, you build something, the person leaves. What do you do in that, right? So if you're putting all the everything on a one piece of software, using that is your business, that's your competitive advantage, and then then you don't have the staff anymore, then then somebody can understand the code. Now you lose the competitive advantage. So working on that as something without understanding the risk involved in that, you know, definitely, you know, if if required to build, sure, but manage the risk properly, what risk you know associated with it? I see this mistake so many times over and over, people making sometimes one developer, two developer, they're not trying to be developing house, but they they try to solve a problem, but they consider that as a competitive range, without understanding a risk. What do you take on that? You think that is that is something you see that people doing it and and uh they're managing a risk, or are they simply staying away from it until they can buy off the shelf and and to run a business? Where you see uh the risk assessment in this area?
SPEAKER_00That is that is um that is an excellent question. And there are a couple of little assets or additions to that that you had that made it even better. So I'll start with the first off that it is a putting all your eggs in one basket kind of a thing. It's the same way as like whether you are whether you've got a small team, you've got one or two people that built your custom software, whether you've got a single vendor, whether you you're in vi whether you're on an environment that you have lock-in with somebody, even if they're big, it could be a Microsoft or an Oracle or somebody that you're like, they will never disappear, but they can make mistakes and then you'd be amazed at how fast and look at history, and you won't be as amazed at how fast that those things can change. That this the winds can change, and suddenly you know these great companies or these great things that are going on, or you you know, a good example, and I wish I wish I could think of it. There was a social site, I think it's called Parlor, about five or six years ago that they had they loved Amazon, they had all their stuff on Amazon, and Amazon was fine. But what happened is they got sideways of the the restrictions of Amazon, and Amazon cut them off. And now suddenly they had one vendor and they're dead, basically. They had to, they suddenly have to scramble, which sort of goes to your idea of we'll do this for now, but we'll buy off the shelf later, is way too often I found that. And by the time, you know, either you wait too long to buy off the shelf, and now what you had is is almost impossible to move, or you wait so long that you're gonna have to upgrade what you have. But now the developers you have either want too money, much money, or they've retired, or they've gone on to other jobs, or whatever. And so you're stuck with something that you can't really, you don't know what you have. And so managing the risk is gotten better from a technology point of view. At least it's always been there, but technologists are more aware of it, and they're more often, they're more likely to do the right things or the and these are things that are it's tech speak in a sense, but it's things like versioning their software and properly documenting it, making sure that they have backups and making sure that they have run scripts and things like that. There's there's a lot of technical check boxes basically that you need to put, you know, check off as you're building software. But that's something that even as even if you're not technical, I think that is something that you do need as an owner, as a driving an organization, when you're pulling in a technology group or you're building custom software, that you make sure, say, like, what are you doing as a as a vendor, as an employee? What is it that you're doing to limit our risk? What happens? Like we always use the bus thing. It's like, what if you get hit by a bus? We need to make sure that this can continue on, whether there's backups, whether there's cross-training, whether there's documentation, whether there's some sort of automation, whatever the however it's addressed, it needs to be addressed and it needs to be documented. If there isn't the idea of backups, if there isn't an idea of disaster recovery, then if this is a pro if this is a program, uh project or an application that matters heavily to your company, then you need to go back and make sure that exists. It's like everything else. It's you know, if this is something that when if it gets shut off, it suddenly causes pain in the company, however that is, whether it's loss of sales or whatever it is, then you need to make sure that you understand what that pain looks like. And then how do we mitigate the risk? It's like it's really not that different from any other risk mitigation. It's just, you know, make sure you do your due diligence, make sure that you double check that, that you're, you know, you're you're dealing with trusted sources. If you're not, then make sure that the the untrusted sources, you're taking something from them and you are going out to trusted sources to vet it, to, you know, and that's where uh fractional CTOs or CIOs sometimes will come in. It's just like, I just need somebody to come in, take a look at what we're doing, and let's make sure that that we have a roadmap to disaster recovery and backup and all of the things that will mitigate our risk. And if not, at the very least, get somebody to come in with like that and do some sort of an audit or an assessment and say, okay, where tell me what we're where we risked risking things. What is our, you know, where are we at on this? Are we doing this well? Are we doing it not? Is there a level of exposure that we we are comfortable with, or is there expose are we exposing areas that we don't know about? And then when you start dialing in security and things like that, it it opens a whole nother can of worms to make sure that not only does this is this good for your company and running, but also is this protected so it doesn't cause so you don't get hacked and your you know your intellectual property gets lost, company secrets go out, customer data goes out. It is a it is a big field. It is there's a lot of stuff going on there. I know it's it's easy to get intimidated. It's like it's really it's these days, it's like law and medicine. It's those things. It's like if you do it, great. If you don't, then it's like it's just it's voodoo to you. So find somebody you trust. It's like you need a trusted doctor or physician, you need a trusted uh, you know, lawyer or advocator, or you need a trusted, you know, technologist of some sort.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And you know how much developers love to document everything. Um, that's like, yeah, that our super thing. Our most favorite thing about development is the documenting everything, right? So whether there's a version control that we love to document. So, yeah, you know, if you're depending on developers' documentation, you're not gonna get much further, you know, unless so, yeah. These are the challenges. The reason I brought up that the business owners are aware of that, there's so many risk involved in that. So, so do it, you know, just word of cautious, do it properly, plan it like any of the projects. So to your point, understand what are you up against, what are you trying to do, and the cost is gonna cost you over the time. And you know, sometimes the software is not your competitive advantage. The business logic you put in a software that's competitive advantage. So understand that, just follow the business logic and make sure you build the software, it could be the place with a different business logic if you need to, right? So I think it's just understanding in that area will help. Lot. Let's talk about RB consulting. What do you guys do in RB uh RBC consulting? How do you guys help out business businesses that uh uh rock?
SPEAKER_00Well, and this is it's a lot of what we've been talking about. So been doing this for a couple decades. My my desire is for companies to use technology to solve their problems and get on the far side of that at the other end of that and have a solution that works, not to be in a situation where they they you know threw money at something that they weren't ready for, that they did it in a way that ended up being you know behind schedule and behind money. And so, you know, behind uh over budget. And so what we do is we we have a couple different things we do, but ideally we're gonna step in initially
Navigating the Consulting Landscape
SPEAKER_00with the consultation and talk about what is your problem. Let's just like start with before we get into the technology point. This what is it? Like, what is your problem? What are you trying to solve? How are you, how are you looking at this? Where are the risks that you see? Where are the things that you think that are gonna work that may not work? There's a we've got a long list of things that we go through to talk to really make sure that there is a uh we call it a reality check, but it's really like let's make sure we are all clear on what it is we're solving and what a good solution looks like. And then from there we're gonna help, and we can help at varying levels, but essentially we're gonna say, all right, now that we know what the problem is and we know what the solution is, let's talk about what that process looks like. And we can help create a roadmap, we can help them and however that works. So it could be as simple as we create a roadmap for them, we give it to them, they go out and their teams go and execute it, and everybody's happy. And maybe they need to build out, they need to find vendors or they need to hire people. We can help them with that and say, let's let's walk you through the processes you're gonna need to do to make sure that you're finding the right people, that you're asking the right questions, that you put together your RFP. We can help them with implementation, we can help them with testing. You know, we can do the implementation side as well, but really our focus is let's make sure we get this thing right. So even if you've got you know another company that's gonna come in and you're like, hey, we've got this great technology company, they're awesome, they're always successful. They you don't want to be the first one that they're not successful with. And they don't want you to be, but that's where we sometimes will come in and say, okay, let's get a second set of eyes. Let's look at what you're doing and how you're doing it. Let's make sure that all of this, you know, all of the right questions have been asked and answered properly so that you have a lot more comfort going into that project, that you know where that money is going, you understand, you have expectations, everybody's clear on what those are. And that you're, you know, when that happens, you're just it starts removing a lot of the reasons why projects go off the rails, the reason why projects fail. Because now we're just gonna walk through the things, we're gonna set you up for success as much as possible from the start, so that now if you can continue and you can execute, and you know, suddenly the especially the the avoidable errors don't get made. Those are the ones that we really want to help you with. It's the things that's like we don't want you sitting there six months later, you know, into a project going, man, if I just asked this question or if I just known this, those are the things we want to get to up front.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But are you providing much needed clarity to solve the business problem early on in your process? Because you know, by you asking questions, you going back and forth, you're bringing that clarity, the options that that that that expectation early on in a process. So business, you know, whoever you uh sitting with, they can clearly see the possibilities of many different ways of solving problem. And one of the possibilities could be you need to build something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's honestly, that's a lot of times too. I've seen where where projects go off the rails, where they become very expensive and they become, you know, you get overruns in time, is that it wasn't the the business wasn't ready for it. They didn't have all the questions answered. And so now it's sort of like running around in a cab and not knowing where you're going. And so, you know, you've got this team, they're working, they're implementing, and your business requirements are changing because there are things that you didn't you didn't think about. There are things that you didn't know about maybe when you first set this in place. So we want to make sure that we get ahead of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What are some of the signs you saw over the years, Rob, working with the different business leaders that that tell you, okay, this project's gonna be successful? You know, if you see a couple of signs from a business in interaction with the business owners or or with the technology side of people or developers, what are some of the signs you notice that if you see that you know that pretty much we, you know, it's gonna be everything on time and we're gonna deliver a lot of value.
SPEAKER_00I think the thing is it's it's it's almost an easy answer, but part of it is that there are there is a when you're asked a question, that there is a clear understanding of what you're asking and what they're replying back to. There's not the the things I use a lot of times, if there's answers along the lines of like, why do you do that? Well, that's the way we've always done it, or that's just how it gets done, where it's like you know it's vagaries that just dodge the specifics of it and instead say, Well, just you know, just make it work that way because this is well, if you can't say what that way is, that's not gonna help us. And from a, you know, on the the flip side of that, from a talk technology point of view, if if somebody says this is how we need to do it, this is how we need to solve your problem, you should be able to pick at that and say, Well, why is that how you know why do we have to use this vendor? Or why did you select that technology stack? And you don't have to know, you don't have to vet whether as much whether that technology stack works for that problem. But what you do want to hear is behind that solid logic. That you know, we did it for these reasons, and this is and it applies to your situation, that they can they can take that and say, we're doing this, and this is your solution, and this is why we need to do it this way, and this is how it helps you, or this is the other thing is the reality is part of that. So we all know that you know, business changes, technology changes, things break, there are things that are not identified, or you know, ownership is fuzzy, things like that. When the answers come with that acknowledged, uh that's gonna help you a lot because it's the whole idea of if I make something to not break, then as soon as something shifts, you know, if it's very rigid, it's gonna break. But if I'm sitting there with a mindset of, okay, this has got to take a little bit of wiggle, this has got to take you know some changes, this has got to take, it's got to be able to adapt to whatever comes up six months down the road in the world of business, when those things are part of the discussions and part of the answers. And it's things like it's not this won't ever break or this won't ever go wrong, but there are things included like, this is what we're going to do to notify you when it goes wrong. This is what we're gonna do to let you know that this isn't just a one-off, but now this is a systematic product that we've got to go back and fix. Those kinds of answers are the things that should give you comfort and confidence that this project is gonna go forward. And if I if I'm talking to somebody and that's what I hear, then that's gonna, that to me is a good sign. It's uh, I guess a green flag instead of a red flag that this is something that is more likely to move forward because people are aware, their eyes are open, they have a good understanding of what they're trying to do and the the risk involved in it. And that just makes it now. Everybody's open to conversation, everybody's open to making sure that we have clear agreement on where we want to go and we can move forward to get there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, great point. Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of great points you mentioned. One, uh, you know, we mentioned that uh what I hear is a lot of people asking a lot of why questions, not of how are we gonna get there, but why question? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Why we need to do this, right? So so that's one part of it. Second, you mentioned that that expectation are embedded in a reality, not as some some uh you know convoluted expectation, right? They have expectations that are real. That you know, it's a process with two teams gonna work together with the with a trust relationship that's simply things understanding things gonna break, things gonna, you know, not work the way you want it to, but this is a process we're gonna follow to make it work. This is a process we're gonna follow to work together. So when you have that kind of partnership and people have a real expectation, I think that that's uh what I'm hearing, that there's a more chance of working together and building something instead of just having those unreal expectations. Listen, you told me this, we're gonna do this, we can, you know, just trying to tie with the timelines instead of trying to figure out the process, understanding things will break, things will come to the point it didn't work. We tested it. It's still scenarios of a couple of scenarios we didn't test. It's gonna go wrong when when when we don't need it to, but are we gonna be tentative to take care of that stuff?
SPEAKER_00And that is that is 100%. That's it. Is that you want to make sure that you're that you're going at it with your eyes open and saying, yes, this this might break, or this might be something that is is unclear or something that we're gonna have to change. And we need to make sure. So, you know, what happens when that happens? When that when that breaks, when that fire erupts, what do we do? It's that's what you want to do, is you want to be able to have those contingency plans and things like that in place. And in so doing, it helps the conversation. Then it's not you know, somebody saying, Well, this is what you need. It's a let's talk about what we need and why we need this and why does this actually solve our problem? It does. It goes back to the why way too often, but it really is like the you know, the foundational question to get all of these other pieces figured out.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. So, how talk about your journey, Rob? How did you get involved in a development site and helping business and technology site? I know you've been doing it for many years. How did you get involved? Was that the passion, or was were what did you get involved as a job? Like if you talk about your journey, how how do you get so good at this?
SPEAKER_00I was as a kid, I was introduced to programming as a child when I was about eight or nine years old. I've I've always liked from I guess from the wound. I don't know how far back it goes, but as my memory, I've always liked problem solving, I've always liked puzzles. And that's what that's what to me application development was. And so I I went through high school and college and got out of college and went to a big six company that got in some trouble and had to change their name and then sort of went into a lot of boutique consulting companies and things like that, ended up in the dot-com boom. So I was very blessed, even though I had I love technology, I was regularly exposed to conversations with
Rob's Journey in Technology and Consulting
SPEAKER_00people at all levels in a company. So this is where I was able to say, well, wow, we use this technology over here to solve this problem. But now this department has a similar enough problem. I wonder if we can use it here. And that became something that now, you know, then it sort of naturally rolled into sort of a consulting role. But also because I had been in companies that had hired consultants, I had seen projects, I'd seen a few go, you know, that were successful, but I'd seen several fail. And so I was more looking at the failure trends and what you needed to do. And I said, okay, well, here's some things that I can see that are common, you know, mistakes that that don't need to be made. They're, you know, we'll call them rookie mistakes. And so if I can go help companies not make those mistakes, then we can have better software projects. And so that was we've been uh started into consulting and doing software projects and helping companies get those done. And uh as we've grown over the years, it's been more and more that it's it's while we still can implement and do all that kind of stuff, it really has been more of a focus because there's a lot of need out there. Uh, there's a lot of little companies, there's a lot of companies that are making changes that they're about to take a step into something that is, you know, they're gonna try to scale or try to grow or add another product line or something along those lines. And those are all places where it's great for us to be able to come in and say, okay, let's make sure that we're asking all the right questions. Let's guide us into the, you know, guide you into that process so that you can have some success. And that has been, it's it is very rewarding to see people have success and not, you know, have regret going into a project, especially with because you know, as a technologist, I hate seeing the you know, the smear of the the technology industry of like, you know, it's too too expensive and it always fails, or anything like that. It it hurts seeing the the numbers these days of I think it varies a little bit, which shows how little they know exactly about what it is. But uh, they're saying that like 70 to 80 percent of the AI projects this year are gonna fail. They're talking billions of dollars are gonna be wasted on it, and it hurts because it's like I think a lot of those are the things that go back to what we talked about. If you don't go blow billions of dollars and instead you blow something that's not blow, but you spend something that's a lot smaller on a smaller project. Well, one, I guess if it fails, then you're not wasting as much money. But two, it's much more likely to succeed, especially if you go into it, not just saying, I want to use AI because everybody's using it, but instead you say, Hey, I've got a problem that this is now a novel solution or a novel problem that AI suddenly opens the door to being able to solve that. And that changes it all. And that's why we're here. That's that's what RB Consulting does, is we help businesses find clarity. And you know, we sort of emphasize the whole technology doesn't break things. Usually technology highlights what was already broken. So if we can get that core thing fixed, then technology is the easy part.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. No, great. Um, so where are you spending a lot more time? Where you invest most of your time, uh, Rob, uh you you know, you in a consulting side or technology side, where you invest most of the majority of your time these days?
SPEAKER_00These days, I guess more of it really is on the the consulting side. Most of the time, I guess there is a technology side of it because it'll be designing systems and things like that, but a large portion of it, because I have to scale too. So I've got you know people that work for me to do some of these pieces that now it doesn't make sense for me to do because it's much more helpful for me to make sure that we're we're you know getting the sit the ship started in the right direction, that we're talking and and especially because I've done this enough times, it is very second nature to have this conversation with a a founder or department head or CEO or whoever it happens to be or board members to say, all right, let's let's walk through the essentially the interview process to get the answers from them, but also get them thinking in the way that is going to be very helpful for them to interact with technologists to get the the right information out of them to you know to set the stage properly for that project and then go complete that project. And it's obviously it's also a lot of fun. I love getting into these conversations with when the lights are coming on with a founder, especially the visionary founders and leaders, where you start turning on the lights and they see that, oh my gosh, here's some things that I hadn't even thought of applying technology to, or I didn't think it would work for us, it would be too expensive. And now these, you know, the barriers start to drop. And now you're in this like, you know, feeding frenzy basically of them saying, Oh, wow, we can do this and we can do this and we can do this. And you do have to calm them down a little bit and say, let's take it a step at a time. Yeah. But it is very, it is very fun and rewarding to see that like this is not the technology is not just like turning, you know, solving one problem. It's actually opening a door so you can solve a whole plethora of problems.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. If you can solve one, you can solve all of those, you know, if the same problem. But you know, that you know, in my mind, I could be a little biased because I'm from a technology background, as as well, Rob. But you know, my mind, the you know, what you're doing with a business order, this is such a noble service that to humans to humans you can provide. The reason for that is that you know, you can sit down business owner and you can change his expectation. Hey, this is what to expect. So many different ways you can run a business, and then show him how to get to those expectations and deliver the work and then move the business forward. So all three steps where you can change expectation, you can change different ways of running a business, you can create a solutions, you can deliver the solution and show the result over time. I think that a lot of a lot of industries don't do that. Our industry does it. I'm a little bit biased as well. So I think it's such a noble service that you can take somebody's dream, what they're trying to build in a business, and and uh translate those dreams into technology and help them achieve those dreams and whatever the visions and whatever the goals they have. I think it's one of the best services human to whom you can provide, and you're doing a great work in that area. So kudos to you that helping our business owners to to achieve those goals, whatever the dreams they have to achieve.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. That's like I love like I need you to just walk around behind me. It's like this is great, this is what they do. Because it it is that's like this that's the reward of it too, is seeing like you know, seeing that you've you've essentially it sounds like we're overselling it, but that you've made the made the dreams real. It's it and and it has like it's that's why it was fun. You know, it's fun when you're dealing with like even with a startup or somebody that's just coming with an idea and and they're like, well, maybe this will work. And if if you can walk them through that and then get them the other end and say, wow, look, this idea that was on a napkin, you know, a few years ago, now it's actually out there and it's helping, it's not just helping them, it's helping you know other people. It really is, it is it is a very rewarding place to be. So I I agree a hundred percent. And it and it, if you do it right, if you do it as serving other people, then I think
Empowering Business Owners Through Technology
SPEAKER_00that's like that is part of the key too, is making sure that you're doing it to to focus on that customer, to focus on that client, to focus on that project. And how do we make that successful? Then it's like everything else. If you focus on making them successful, then you're gonna you're gonna end up being successful somewhere down the road. And so you don't have to worry about it. You take care of that, take care of what's in front of you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it is, you know, you know, it's uh you're helping them achieve the life goals, whatever the goals are set up, right? You're making it easy for them to achieve there. So I think it's uh kudos to you guys doing a lot of work, but I think uh a lot of people doing that, it definitely, you know, business owners, they gotta change the perspective, they just gotta build a trust with the technology people. I know in the past there's so many clutters been that was project was successful. This wasn't successful, but you gotta find the right people like yourself and and see those visions and deliver that. Great stuff. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you, Rob?
SPEAKER_00A couple places. Uh, the website is rb-sns.com, is the rb consulting website. You can shoot me an email, rob at rb-sns.com. Also, I'm out on LinkedIn pretty regularly, Rob Broadhead, and it's B-R-O-A-D-H-E-A-D. And uh, you should be able to find me. There are a few other Rob Broadheads in there, but I think they're all Rob. They go by Robert, and funny enough, that are actually in technology. There's like three or four of them. So I thought it was only one. I'm not, but if you go out to LinkedIn, you should be able to find me. I post all the time, so you should see you know regular content and things like that.
SPEAKER_01I'm going to include a link below this video. I'm gonna put your LinkedIn, uh, your website, all that stuff so people can click a button and that's gonna reach out to you.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. See technology, it solves all my problems. I should so yeah, I love to hear from people that way. Um I would love to just have conversations like this as well. So feel free to reach out if you have any questions about this. I'm more than happy to help out.
SPEAKER_01You know, business owners or business leaders are watching us, listening to us on a podcast. You know, I will strongly recommend that. Click a button below, reach out to Rob for discussion. You know, I we we we talked for 40, 40, uh, 50 uh 50 minutes. You know, I learned so much from even though we're in the same industry, there's so many different ways of looking at the same perspective, same items, and learn from each other. So, you know, business owner watching us, click a button below, reach out to Rob, have a conversation. Who knows where the conversation is gonna go? But uh, I think one thing you will see that you know Rob's gonna understand your problem and help you solve some of those problems of what you're up against. So reach out to him, have a conversation. Who knows where the discussion is gonna lead us? Well, Rob, it was a great discussion. Thank you so much for time. Any word, wisdom you want to leave for business owners who are looking to start any project or looking to solve some of those problems that that we talk about, you know, if they're hesitant about it, they haven't started the journey yet. What can they do to start their journey to start solving some of those problems?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I really want to steal what you said as just one little thing, is just like, hey, this is your opportunity to make your dreams come true. But the other thing is in in doing so, is reach out to you know to somebody if you're if you're uncomfortable with technology, reach out to somebody that that knows it, find somebody, you know, you may have to do some networking or something like that, find somebody you trust that you can you can get that second set of eyes. But also these days, you know, between AI and Google and things like that, go search. You can do searches, you can ask AI about like what it is that you're the problem you're trying to solve and and look for industry standards or recommendations of you know, specialists in that area. There are there's a wealth of information out there, and yes, it is it can be overwhelming, but it's one of those things I think if you can if you can even dip a toe in so that you can get a little bit of an idea of of what that looks like from a technology side, then it's gonna help you moving forward. And it's just like anything else, whatever your business is, you need to have a little bit of knowledge, at least about you know, like accounting and finance and sales and marketing. And you know, technology is one of them. You should have a little bit of an idea of what technology can possibly do to you. If nothing else, look at your competition or your potential competitors. What do they do? How do they use it? And that that will hopefully at least give you some ideas moving forward to say, oh, this makes sense because this is this is what the industry uses. So at least it's a start. It's not gonna differentiate you, but at least give you a start into that. And then you're gonna have to unfortunately probably gonna have to a little bit learn as you go because that's actually what all of us do. If you're the technologists that are out there that are any good, they are lifelong learners, and they will they can bring you some really interesting ideas because they're gonna be bumping up against people, usually in other industries and other areas and other positions and other stages of their you know business development that you know they can be great sounding boards. So take advantage of them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great advice, great words. Thank you so much for time, Rob. It was a great discussion. I enjoyed it. Pleasure talking to you. Hopefully, talk soon.
SPEAKER_00Oh, definitely. This was great. Have a great one.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. All right, thank you. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'm I recommend to check one of these discussions on the top. Um, also don't forget to go back to that channel homepage. There's a playlist created just for you, whether you're looking for business discussion, technology discussion, or process discussion for business growth, all those categories are there, and I'm sure you will find something that you enjoy from those categories as well. So don't forget to send us your feedback, subscribe to this channel for any upcoming videos. Your feedback is very important to us, allow us to focus on the right discussion to deliver value for you on a weekly basis. So enjoy until next time. Thank you for your time.