🎉 MOS 50th Episode - Livestream Celebration

Mitch: Everybody, welcome. This is a big moment for us. We hit this this is 50 episodes of our Make Other Successful podcast. We decided to do something a little bit different this month. We said, what if we did a livestream version of it and we are already experiencing the effects of livestream.

Normally, we can cut this stuff out, but we said, let's just lay it all out there and be live and talk to people and do a a live version of the podcast. So we have some fun activities planned. It's gonna follow a slightly different format than before. We have a special guest joining us. We have some giveaways.

We're trying to make this a little bit of a celebration and and a little different episodes today. So if you're listening to this later, you're missing out cause we're we're going to be doing giveaways throughout. If you are joining us, we're streaming this to YouTube and our membership community. If you're joining us, why don't you just send an emoji, your favorite emoji or say hello or share where you're joining from. We love to just pause and and say hi and see where everyone's at.

And with I'm with Matt and Mike today. You guys wanna say hello?

Mike: Yeah. Hello. Happy 50.

Mitch: Hey, everybody. This almost lined up with their fiftieth birthdays, but we couldn't quite swing it.

Matt D.: Not even close.

Mike: You're supposed to pretend it's closer.

Mitch: It's wishful.

Matt D.: Oh, I'm supposed to spend it pretend it's closer. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Matt D.: Next I

Mike: mean, we might as well be 50.

Matt D.: Well, we were just talking about your beard being white

Mike: and Yeah.

Matt D.: Getting older.

Mitch: But what happens? What is relevant though is we are right on the cusp of hitting 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. I think we're like

Matt D.: 500 or something or

Mitch: less. Yeah. Five or 600 away, something like that. So if you're watching and you don't subscribe Subscribe. What if we hit 50,000

Matt D.: Let let us sit there.

Mitch: Stream, you guys. Let's have a

Mike: Pizza party.

Mitch: Stream or a subscriber, like, marathon right now. Yeah.

Matt D.: We're not gonna get off until

Mitch: we get to everybody, you know, to get us to 50,000.

Matt D.: We got some people talking to us already.

Mitch: We got some

Matt D.: people from Italy.

Mitch: Italy, South Dakota, Iowa.

Matt D.: Yes. Some some known some people we know already from South Dakota, from in a car driving to Iowa. So welcome everybody.

Mitch: Love it. Cool. Yeah. What do you guys think about getting to 50 episodes?

Mike: I think it's a little bit of a labor of love. I think I'm very appreciative that we've stuck to it. We've like, good things come out of consistency and doing it again and again and again. We get better at it and we learn a lot through it. And I think that's one of the biggest things for me.

Matt D.: The number of months has a bigger impact for me. Right? Like, that means fifty months.

Mitch: Right. Four years.

Matt D.: Four years. That's a that's a lot it's longer than I thought we were doing it.

Mike: Right.

Matt D.: It doesn't feel like we've been doing it that long. Yeah. Which kinda goes to what you're saying, like, when it when it's a habit, when it's a thing that you start, hey, we're gonna be doing that every month. You put a system around it. It just becomes a thing you're gonna do, which is good Yep.

In a lot of ways.

Mitch: Yeah. The forty eight like, forty eight months, but four years. So we started this in 2020 because we started our YouTube channel that summer.

Matt D.: Yep.

Mitch: And then a few months later, we were like, let's make a podcast.

Matt D.: Let's do podcast. Yeah.

Mitch: Yeah. I feel like we're getting to the spot of I used to be able to have like a Rolodex in my brain of here's all of our different topics and here's

Matt D.: Oh, yeah. You can't do it anymore.

Mitch: Which podcast to listen to for this thing. And I can't do that

Matt D.: quite well.

Mitch: I can

Matt D.: remember whether or we've talked about it on a podcast, but I don't remember what podcast or what the exact details of what we were talking about were. I'm like, oh, I know we did one on this Right. But I don't know what it is.

Mike: Well, that's a bit of a shocker.

Matt D.: Oh, come on now.

Mitch: It's not in mat gpt?

Matt D.: It's in there to go look.

Mitch: Yes. You can retrieve facts. Yeah. It's a source. Yeah.

So, are there any on that topic, are there any topics you remember talking about that you think of highly that you're like, you think people should go listen to? If this is their first episode, this is not a good representation of our podcast.

Matt D.: But Nope.

Mitch: If if you wanna listen back, is there anywhere you would point people?

Matt D.: I mean, the big thing that I would go back to is some of the ones I've heard people really find valuable. Some of the conversations about Intranets, some of the costing. Like, we're pretty open about, you know, pricing and and how you should think about consultants and how you should think about, you know, just raw business things. And I think a lot of those have really helped a number of people.

Mike: I think like the build versus buy conversation was a good one, right? That's great. You're thinking about Software that you need to to run your business and, you know, how to justify cost for whatever that thing is. I think that was a good one. That one, I think, impacted a bunch of folks.

Yeah. Well, I think some of the other ones that I have appreciated the most have been the Bulb Gals podcast where they've talked about communication and kind of breaking down some of the barriers in organizations so that communication flows a bit more freely and some of the methods like topic based communication and why it's effective and stuff like that. Really I've gotten a lot out of their perspective on on this world.

Mitch: So I was just gonna look. We do have some stats of which ones have been the most Oh, really? So of all time, episode breakdown of all time. So the top, listen to the first place by quite a long shot is redefining workplace communication, the shift from person based to topic based.

Matt D.: Topic based communication.

Mike: That's a good one.

Mitch: So it's been a big one that we have heard is it resonates with folks, helps them think in a different way. So if you're wondering where to start on a new episode, maybe that's a good one to go. Second It's

Matt D.: one of our favorite topics.

Mitch: Yeah. Second is my m three sixty five is changing. Here's what it means for you.

Matt D.: Oh, yeah.

Mitch: So we got, like, the more tool based episode and then it kind of becomes a wash after that, but it was foundations of productivity, projects, processes, and people was

Matt D.: The third.

Mike: Next one. I like that one. That was a good one. I enjoy I remember enjoying that discussion.

Mitch: Yeah. That's another kind of interesting line of thinking that we have seen people get frustrated by when they're using these tools. We have a few questions that people submitted ahead of time. We if you're not on our newsletter, we have a newsletter that we send out every Thursday with some actionable insights that you can keep up to date on what what's going on in our world and and hear from us regularly. In that, we announced the fact we were gonna do this stream and then we we said, hey, what if we didn't ask me anything?

So I wanna encourage questions. If you've been wondering anything about us, like, we're basically going to do an ask me anything. So anything's on the table, ask us whatever questions you have and I'll go through some of the the pre submitted ones and and we'll get to the other ones as they come in.

Matt D.: Yeah. So post your questions in chat.

Mitch: Yeah. The first one is, I've learned This is from Corey. He says, I've learned that you should not manage tasks out of an email inbox. What does the team at Balb use to manage tasks? App, software, pen, paper?

Thanks. You're probably the worst person to ask this question of because I know your answer. Why don't we start with you? With me.

Matt D.: And then

Mitch: and then we'll go to Matt.

Mike: I would say it depends on on what I'm doing. A lot of the project work that I do, it's DevOps. Like I'm that's actually a preferred tool. I love DevOps for task management when it comes to building software or building apps. But aside from that, if we don't have something that's that needs that level of complexity, Planner's a good tool.

I'll often use that. I will use To Do on occasion if like for more personal stuff, but generally I'm using a task board out of either DevOps or Planner.

Mitch: Okay. So when you show up to work, where's the first place you look to see what you need to do that day?

Mike: DevOps, usually. DevOps. Because that's most of my work, right?

Mitch: Yeah. The the the primary slug. Yeah. What about you?

Matt D.: So, me personally, my tasks are all project related for the most part. Project or process related. And if it's project related, it's gonna live in the project board or the project space where we're managing tasks for the project. And that's for us a variety of ways. You know, it could be Planner Premium, it could be Planner, it could be an individual task, it could be, in some cases, that lives in our customer's environment, in some cases that lives in our environment.

It really is of we're not a good example, is I think the big thing that I would is leave people we, because of who we are, we're well adept at using lots of them in concert. Yeah. And that's not doesn't work for people.

Mike: The nature nature of a consultancy.

Matt D.: It's nature nature of the work that we do. Yep. I think a better example is probably are some of our internal things. You know, we just were going through a sales meeting where we were talking about our leads and lead generation. That's all managed in a in a dedicated platform for managing our sales sales stuff.

Right? And so all of our tasks are built into that for that process. Right? Because that's more process related.

Mitch: Which, because we have the technical skills, I created a don't remember Zapier or Power Automate. We like we blur the lines sometimes that when one gets assigned to me, it shows up in my to do in Microsoft. Yep. So like, it's supposed to flow into this single source of truth,

Matt D.: but Yep. But it's it's it's for us there is no real single source

Mike: of truth.

Matt D.: I think that's part of the problem.

Mike: The other one that is going unsaid here, and I know it's true for me, I assume it's true for the two of you as well, so much of my day and my week is driven out of my Outlook calendar or my Teams calendar. Mhmm. And, like, that's how I spend half of my time at least

Mitch: Yeah.

Mike: Is in a meeting or doing something that's been scheduled in a calendar.

Matt D.: Or we block out time to work on a

Mike: particular project. Shouldn't be overlooked as a means of managing your time, at least.

Matt D.: A 100%. Especially if you're in a scenario like us where we have project based work. Because when when you say you look into DevOps, which DevOps board? Right? There's 17, What you do is you really go, oh, the priority for today or this moment in time is this project right now.

I'm gonna go look at the DevOps board for that project because I know I have a meeting for it or I know I have something else. It's very project focused for us. It's highly focused on projects. But we also do stuff little planner boards for, you know, we have our IP development. So, where we're developing stuff like our course and some of the other work and we go through, you know, we have a loop workspace that has some associated plans and task boards and stuff that we deal with there.

So, it is really a variety of places for us in particular, but that's largely because we're us three in particular are in everything, right? Yeah. A lot of other, you know, if we get someone else from the team in here, might be interesting to hear their answer to it because I think their answers will be a little different.

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like, there's for sure a desire to make that simple for the rest of our team. Yeah.

We sort

Matt D.: of And bear with take on the burden. Yeah. Yeah. And we try to keep people off, you know, 17 projects so we don't so they don't have as much of a burden.

Mitch: Yeah. So, one day maybe we'll figure out how to make it all one.

Matt D.: I I question whether or I question whether or not that's the juice is worth the squeeze in some way in some cases. I

Mike: think eventually that's a place that Copilot's gonna help out. Like the

Matt D.: AI The

Mike: solution for that problem Yeah. Isn't gonna be one tool. The solution is gonna be

Matt D.: Copilot, And what do need to do having it actually have access to everything. Right. Because the problem today is, for us, for example, Copilot doesn't have access to to certain things.

Mike: Yeah.

Mitch: Alright. Yeah. So thanks for that question, Corey. We'll go on to our next one from Maurizio. He is joining us on the YouTube I just saw.

So he asked, I will be responsible for training our staff on Microsoft three sixty five, but many colleagues are resistant to change mainly due to age and long standing habits. Even when I show clear examples of benefits, they often don't perceive them as real advantages. What practical strategies would you recommend to reduce fear, communicate the benefits effectively, and turn resistance into active engagement? Additionally, what steps would you follow in the training process? In what order would you introduce the different Microsoft three sixty five applications?

One minute to Matt Dressel. Go. Otherwise, he'll go for 60.

Matt D.: It's a it's a challenge. It all has to do with your where you're working from. If you're a business owner or a leader of a group of people, you know, I would set us a precedent. We're going to work in this way for a fixed period of time. Then we're gonna assess how it went.

Right? And we're gonna execute on this stuff that would in this in this format, in this way. We're gonna do our best. And then when we get done, we're gonna talk about the benefits and the issues and the whatever, and then we're gonna try it again. The real thing that you want to break, the mentality shift that you want to make, is that we need to be improving.

Not so much that you have to work a certain way right now forever, it's that we can do better, we're going to try to do better, we're all going to work better together, and this is the path that we're going move forward. So, if you're in a leadership position, that's what my recommendation would be. If you're just a person that is, you know, part of a team trying to bring this to everyone else, it's a lot harder, but it really comes down to, is there something that you control that you can get a sign off that says you have permissions to make that work a certain way? And if you do, make that work the way that you want, provide documentation, help people understand, and get feedback, right? Your hope is that people who are struggling, you can identify what their problem is and help them, you know, close that gap.

Or some people who start loving it, publish it. And once people learn from other people that they like it, you know, people's, you know, they start to go, Oh, I guess maybe it is okay.

Mitch: Yeah. So maybe there's a little momentum that builds. Yeah,

Matt D.: it builds.

Mitch: But, yeah, the initial is definitely a big hurdle. The thing that I most often see is folks like yourself come in and say, we want to use these tools better and I want my team to want to use these tools better. And I'm like, why?

Matt D.: Yeah. What what What are what's what's the problem I'm Why are trying to do

Mitch: upset a bunch of people's working habits to do this? And it gets skipped. The whole premise, the why behind it gets skipped. If you can't articulate that, you're probably going to struggle because people are just going to look at you as a nuisance.

Matt D.: For example, some customers have been like, we had this event happen and it went horribly. And we think a primary cause of it was this. Yeah. Take that moment, stop. Like a lot of some people won't, either won't recognize it, so the first thing is try to recognize moments like that.

Once you recognize it, bring the people together and say, hey, here's a perfect example of what went bad. What could we have done different? Could we have tried this other thing? Right? And sometimes, it's not that it went bad, maybe it's that it went how it always goes.

Mhmm. Right? Mhmm. So, yeah.

Mitch: That's good. I think we're gonna have enough questions like

Matt D.: Live questions.

Mitch: Wanna save some too and we we can come back to that one if you Let's go to Mitch's question in YouTube here.

Matt D.: Is this a different Mitch?

Mitch: It's not me.

Matt D.: Okay. Yeah. Well, okay.

Mitch: He asked, what experience in the industry did each of you have before bulb? What education slash training do you have? I'll go first. I come from a computer science background, went to school, got a bachelor's degree in computer science, went into a common, like, dev shop environment. I think I only worked there for, nine months before these guys were like, hey.

We have too much work and are you interested in in helping us out? And we kind of met through mutual friends and actually family stuff too. So I kind of leapt out off or I leapt out of the the nest a little bit of safety. I needed to make sure I bought my house

Matt D.: Before you switched. Yeah.

Mitch: Because they you need like two years of because I I went I came on with this contract with these guys ten years ago. So, yeah, I I come from like typical background of wanting to take things apart and put them together and figure things out, and I applied that at the computer science space and then have started there, did a lot of tech projects here and kind of fell in love with the problem of business, figuring business out. And so I've been leaning into that the past couple years.

Mike: I'll go. Our story's about the same though.

Matt D.: Very similar.

Mike: Matt and met you

Mitch: during the hit Yeah. Since the beginning.

Mike: Right. Not much space between us. We met in college actually. We're in the same computer science program. Grand Valley State University, props to the to that university.

Was a good place to go We we had a friendly competition for grades and everything that we did in college which was kind of fun. But then I got an internship at a like first real job type of a thing and then he followed me there shortly after and that was more or less a consulting style gig I would say. And we've got some fun stories about that place if you ever wanna hear those. But that was kind of a consulting gig and then we ended up at another consultancy that was a Microsoft partner for another five years or so and then moved into like a product development space. So we're actually focused on a Software as a Service product that was in the healthcare space and then started this thing.

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt D.: The only things I would add to what Mike said is like we're all three of us come from a Computer Science background, you know, diving into code, developing code, building products is something that we love doing. But when we started this business and all through our experience, Mike and I's experience for sure, that is very commoditized. How many lines of code can you build? We prefer to deliver stuff that changes people's worlds. And a lot of times you end up in those worlds.

It's difficult to position yourself, especially at the size that we were going to be, to be a strategic partner for someone and make a difference in that world. And so that's kind of one of the reasons why, you know, you might ask yourself, why are these three guys that do, that, you know, have an experience in software development, why are they doing what they're doing now? And we still do that, just to be really clear. That is something we definitely do. It is not something we market a ton, mostly because, like I said, we don't wanna play the the commodity game.

But our experience, my experience in particular with SharePoint and, you know, all of that, when we were the Microsoft partner and even before, we were all about delivering experiences and changing people the way they work and how they get work done in their business. Back then, we just had, we way more often pulled out the Custom Development tool. And then when we to go it on our own, it was right around the same time Microsoft three sixty five really started to start doing things. And it has been a transformative force. And so it allows us to really get into that different type of world and differentiate ourselves because I think a lot of organizations and a lot of people still don't think that there's value in structuring that appropriately, but we feel pretty strongly that there's huge value people can take.

They don't you don't need to go do something custom, you just need to start using the tools a little bit better.

Mike: Yeah. That's what we try to help connect the value to the to the people.

Mitch: I am gonna have a question for Mike here. Question is, how are the bees?

Mike: Well, I don't really know. So the bees are put away for the winter, technically. I moved them into a out of the weather location for the winter months and I've got four hives or I had four hives. I don't know how many I have. I know two still at least still have bees because they throughout the course of the winter they fly out and the dead ones end up on the ground outside the hive and I've got that type of activity still going on.

That's a good thing.

Mitch: Says, best honey I have ever had. Thank you.

Matt D.: You're welcome. Do they do you still have them in the same spot or do you move them?

Mike: No. I moved them now I got the south end of my house, that patio report.

Matt D.: Oh, yeah. And so I moved

Mike: them down there because it gets the south facing sun and it's actually under cover.

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: So there won't be any snow buildup or anything like that. Michigan is not an easy place to keep bees.

Matt D.: To keep bees, yeah.

Mitch: So Cool. We're gonna shift gears over into a slightly different chapter here. We're gonna do a little special guest who's just joining us. It's been a couple years, so

Matt D.: It's been a while.

Mitch: If you guys want to just say welcome to Ashley quick. Come on. Come on.

Matt D.: Just sit down right here.

Mitch: Hey. We're just talking.

Matt D.: Hey. Hello.

Mitch: I just said, hey. Come join us for our fiftieth

Matt D.: Podcast.

Mitch: Podcast episode. It's been a little while. Yeah. We didn't even talk to her before this outside of coming to the room and come sit.

Ashley: Yeah. But that's kinda that can be better sometimes.

Matt D.: Yeah.

Ashley: That's what we can have.

Mitch: Yeah.

Ashley: Candid. Candid. Yes. A cold conversation, nothing prepared.

Mitch: Right. Exactly. Ashley was I wanted to give you an update. You still hold three out of five of the top viewed videos on our channel.

Matt D.: Yep.

Mitch: You got knocked out of number one, but you're like two, three and five.

Matt D.: And

Mitch: so you're you're still holding your your spots.

Ashley: That is amazing because it's, you know, been a little bit.

Matt D.: Yeah. It's been a while.

Mitch: Yeah. It's been good. But, yeah. So, does everyone remember Ashley? Like, it's been a little while.

You can you can say hello. How are things going? Good. You remember when the last time people saw you was? What it was?

Ashley: What the topic was or when it was?

Mitch: What the topic was. What were we talking about?

Ashley: That's a really good question. I wonder what my last video was.

Mike: Was it the project management?

Matt D.: I think it was too.

Mitch: It was probably one of

Mike: the The teams for better project management?

Matt D.: I think it was one of the first project management ones. Because because Emma redid your video about a year later because there were a bunch of new new technology stuff.

Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. And is that the one that's the new number one?

Matt D.: I think so. Yeah.

Ashley: So, I mean, I do kind of

Matt D.: Yeah. You started it. Yeah.

Mike: Should definitely For get some

Mitch: sure. I I did have a little Easter egg that Cam can pull up for us, but I wanted to share a memory that we had with Ashley. This is a picture of her last in my the office. I wanted to document this moment because she was headed in a different direction. Yeah.

And I said, I want to remember this. So I took a picture in the conference room and said, this is Lashley's last meeting with us ever.

Matt D.: Should have told me I would have put my leg down, that's a little rough.

Ashley: Oh, that is That's a

Matt D.: little rough for me.

Mitch: So, I thought you'd enjoy that.

Ashley: I do. That's a great picture. I love that. I've never seen that. And I do remember it was either one of my last meetings or my last meeting that you weren't actually in as a participant of the meeting, but you came to it.

I believe you two were there, And we're like, Mitch, what are you doing here? And you're like, I'm just going to stay for your Yeah. For your last meeting. I'm going to be here.

Matt D.: I'm just going to hang out.

Mitch: That doesn't sound like me at all.

Matt D.: It's Yeah.

Ashley: Maybe it's when that

Matt D.: photo Yeah. Was much.

Mitch: Okay. So, what's new? How are things going? Like, what's your world look like right now? You catch us up on the last Three three years?

Ashley: Yeah. So, I guess it's been two or three years.

Mitch: Yeah.

Matt D.: Yeah. Three. Three.

Mitch: We've been going

Mike: on three at least.

Ashley: Three. So, yeah, life's been good, busy. It doesn't really feel like that long.

Matt D.: Yeah. You've been doing quite a bit. You're now like, I saw like, I think you got one or two job changes in between, like same company.

Ashley: Yeah, same company. Now I work for a large distribution company and doing product owner is my position. So, started out with a lot of similar I've always enjoyed project management type work in the technology space. And, yeah, now I'm doing more data warehouse and reporting and that kind of development, which has been a change. So, a little bit different of a skill set that I've had to learn.

But, yeah, it's been good. Work has been really busy. I would say the switch, like the initial switch was a little more jarring than anticipated, but I think things have settled and is exciting and fun and going well.

Mitch: You're not in the Microsoft world anymore though.

Ashley: I'm not in the Microsoft Are

Mitch: you keeping up?

Ashley: You know, a little bit. I have a little bit, and I do give my current work a hard time because I always we all come from Microsoft in a way because that's what everyone uses. Yep. And so I I tend to make fun of people that aren't in the Microsoft world, and I'll do like compares and contrasts. So that has been fun.

But I would like to I think some of the tools in the Microsoft space right now are really exciting, so

Mitch: You're in good company.

Ashley: I know.

Matt D.: I think so too.

Ashley: Yeah. I know there's been a lot of changes because when I was thinking about some of the topics of what my videos used to be compared to like what they would be now, and like how weird is it to say AI wasn't a thing?

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah. Isn't

Ashley: it? Like it wasn't a

Matt D.: thing, At you least the AI that we have today, right? Yes. Was not at all the same.

Ashley: Yes. And now you're like making videos on Copilot and, you know, again, wasn't a thing.

Matt D.: Changing very fast. Changing very fast. Changing very fast.

Mitch: Do you use AI daily now?

Ashley: All the time.

Mitch: Yeah. The thing that I am battling with is I use ChatGPT sometimes and Matt hates it because it's against his Oh. Whole, like, ethos of it's not safe and they're taking they're taking data from us and it's going into the big brain and we're all just becoming computers. And

Matt D.: That's not what I'm worried about.

Ashley: Not Is that worried the issue?

Matt D.: It's a it's a security thing. Yeah.

Mike: For sure.

Matt D.: Most of it. Yeah. Because which we could pay for we could pay for pro. Yeah.

Ashley: And then you get, like, your own.

Matt D.: But then but then we already pay for Copilot. So it's like, unless it's really that much better, which in the last, six months, year, something like that, I would say that it's they're so much more similar. Yeah. It's like, I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense to

Ashley: me.

Matt D.: But he also values way more the style and aesthetics and the other things of programs and he likes he likes targeted apps. He's already still got a third party thing for emailing. He's got a third party thing he just

Ashley: likes Mitch says. His Yeah. See.

Matt D.: He likes his his things his way.

Mitch: Yes. Nothing has changed here. Matt is still the same. He cares about compliance. Mike cares about hard compliance.

Ashley: Yeah. I'm just

Mitch: breaking down whatever walls are put up around me. That's my my MO here.

Ashley: Somebody put Ashley and Emma are doppelgangers.

Mitch: Uh-huh. Yeah.

Ashley: I have heard that, like, oh, they hire you, like, you they hired We someone that looks like you and made similar

Matt D.: did not. That's not what we did.

Ashley: I know, I know, but it's funny. I consider that a compliment.

Matt D.: Just a company update a little bit, just so you know, I've been thinking a lot about your last Christmas party with us we're going I back to the same spot again this

Ashley: just heard that from Matt, other Matt.

Matt D.: Yeah. So that's been a little bit of a revisiting and thinking about that.

Ashley: Yeah. That

Matt D.: was thing for the company Christmas party this year.

Mitch: A little more context. Matt was worried about us doing our bar tab

Matt D.: Yeah, that was a bad and

Mitch: we had no problem with that.

Ashley: Has it been beaten since? I mean,

Matt D.: during the April.

Ashley: Three Christmas parties

Matt D.: since Prices prices go up, and so it's

Ashley: So, yes.

Matt D.: And we have a little bit more people, like we have one more one or two more people, so yeah.

Ashley: So that wasn't the worst.

Matt D.: It's not, worst isn't the right thing. It's just,

Ashley: Highest.

Matt D.: I truly did not, it's not that I didn't think that we could, I wanted to make sure that we did. But what actually happened was I condoned a lot of alcohol consumption. That's what really happened.

Mitch: So Yeah. Good times.

Mike: Would you say you blessed it?

Matt D.: No. No. Condoned only. No blessing was going on there.

Mitch: Well, one other fun thing I was reminiscing about was whenever people start this job and we're like, yeah, we do YouTube, there's no expectation that they participate in YouTube. But I think there's like this weird peer pressure thing of maybe I should. Like, will they will I be helpful if I do? And so I think that made its way to Ashley originally, and we were like, hey, we could come up with a topic and you didn't want to be on camera alone. Wanted to have someone with you.

And so we were like I

Ashley: sound like a child, but that is exactly

Mitch: what together and I I like wasn't even in the shot for the first couple minutes and then I'm there and so it was our team's breakout rooms.

Ashley: Yes.

Matt D.: That whole thing about YouTube and creating content is an interesting dynamic at a business when you're hiring someone or when you get somebody involved, especially at a smaller organization because when you have time free or when you're like, hey, I've got something that I could be doing. And for us, we're like, well, content's really important. We should be doing content and awareness. And then it becomes like, oh, okay. Well, I'll do that.

But then when the reality sets in that I'm gonna be sitting in front of a camera that's gonna be like immortalized, you're pretty much not gonna get rid of It's it just changes the way people think about it. Fun

Mitch: note on that recording though

Ashley: Our joint video?

Mitch: Yeah. My microphone didn't record and only yours did. This was like early in the day, so we didn't have a process. And so I had to like recover my audio from your microphone. It sounds terrible.

And so the act of me having to participate in your video, is twice as bad because my mic It's sounds

Ashley: a lot of work. Yeah.

Mitch: And so I'm just like we paid the price. Then you did your next one alone and

Ashley: Did I do the next one alone? That's what was trying to think of, how many did I make you do with me?

Matt D.: I think it was only the first one. Because I think after the first one, wasn't that it wasn't we had a we had a small number of people. It wasn't like, it was just, it was okay.

Ashley: Yeah. We would get like, I mean, was when it was brand brand new.

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah. Very, very small.

Ashley: Yes. But I you were still a heavy participant in my videos because I required a large, a lot high level of coaching.

Matt D.: We all do. Nobody ever lives up to Mitch's expectations. Some

Mike: of us don't care as much anymore.

Ashley: So maybe it felt more joint to me, even though it

Mitch: Well, They were a labor of love. Like, you used that term earlier. They were Nobody likes sitting in front of a camera and having to perform and say it the right way and Well, there's required some coaching sometimes.

Matt D.: Also A lot. It's also was a It's been a learning experience just in how to do all of that because you got to learn how to take the criticism or the direction, but then also giving direction that is appropriate. And then everybody has a different little bit different goals about what they really want to talk about. And then we're writing them from blogs. Yeah.

And so then the blog might work one way, but something that works for a blog doesn't work for a video. Mhmm. It's a thing.

Ashley: So we'd have to like reformat the blog post into something that we thought would work for a video.

Matt D.: Yeah. Or or or just, especially back then we would do that a lot. Now we're like, it's okay that they're different. Like, it's okay. Because it was too much work.

It was so much work rewriting the blogs or trying to make them really map really, really well. Then

Ashley: reviewing it with our producer.

Matt D.: Yeah, exactly.

Mike: More often now we take the most important thing out of a blog and make a video out of just that.

Matt D.: Just that one piece. Yeah.

Mike: Because the video doesn't need to be thirty minutes long.

Matt D.: Well, other thing is it's really hard

Mitch: to And Mike writes books, so

Matt D.: Well, I mean, that's in

Mike: my case. Also, was just reflecting on whether or not we take direction as direction or direction as criticism.

Matt D.: I mean, it's a little bit of all And maybe, of

Mike: but I don't know. If we can avoid taking it as criticism, do a lot better.

Ashley: I definitely took it as direction. I was like, I just need to be told exactly what to do because I wasn't

Mitch: Yeah.

Ashley: Comfortable on my own.

Mitch: And everybody's different in that, like, if I tell Matt exactly what to say, there's no chance that's what he's going to say.

Matt D.: No. That's not because I it's not because I don't want

Mike: to. I know.

Mitch: I just

Matt D.: can't, it's not my voice, it's not my Right. Exactly.

Mitch: And then, Mike, I feel like you you can get frustrated if I make you do things too many times or things like that. Because it you you have the thing you wanna say and you get it out and I'm like

Mike: I also I have my standard as I don't know what if your standard is lower. My standard is probably a bit lower than yours. Like there is a definitely a good enough for me. Hashtag good enough.

Matt D.: Well, I've also had to stop like worrying so much about all the views because it just doesn't matter, really. Like trying to go, oh, my how how is it progressing in the next? I used to watch that stuff all the time and now I'm like, maybe once a month, that kind of thing I'll look, I kind of compare a little bit between them all, but

Mitch: Yeah. Or especially in the process of coming up with the idea.

Matt D.: Planning for the

Mitch: Like, how do we make this go?

Matt D.: Viral. Viral or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Maybe somebody somebody posted, my husband is a one take podcaster. It's rare.

Matt D.: That is rare.

Ashley: So rare.

Mitch: Yeah. This is this is our attempt at

Matt D.: that It's right interesting. We are podcasts. So, to give some a little bit of behind the scenes a little bit, we generally do our podcasts in one take. Very rarely, like, we try our best not to have to redo stuff. Our biggest problem will be, like, we have a rough structure of what we want to do on podcasts, but then when somebody goes off the rails, like either talks way too much doesn't say something that somebody else wants, and then we're like, okay, we gotta stop When and then

Ashley: we gotta someone does

Matt D.: that. Start over it's not always me. Is often me, I will say, but it's not always me.

Ashley: I always feel bad mid because I'm like, oh gosh, like, I keep screwing up. Mitch would have

Matt D.: to schedule He over

Ashley: was the editor at the time, and then I'm like, he's gonna have to edit

Matt D.: this Yeah. So

Mitch: then it comes out on the other side and you're like, that was me. I'm like,

Ashley: that's some sort of miracle, some of these videos. Yeah.

Matt D.: Yeah. Yep. That's yeah, that's about it.

Mitch: Let's let's because she's here, let's offer a question to her to like, someone just asked, how do you minimize micromanaging? I feel like we can that's in your arena.

Matt D.: How do we Yeah, because you're managing people now, right?

Mitch: How do you How manage people managing?

Ashley: I always think managers should manage to an outcome, not to a

Matt D.: Task or a

Ashley: method or like a how.

Matt D.: Yeah, yeah.

Ashley: So, I find I do better with like, especially for me, with not as technical of a background, and, you know, I shouldn't be telling the experts how to do something, like how to engineer something, but I feel that a lot even with, you know, managers I have or have had, I think we all do better if they give, like, their outcome deadline and then let people

Matt D.: Do what they got to do.

Ashley: Do what they need to do.

Mike: This is what I need, this is when I need it, and this is why. Yep. Yeah. Well, if somebody can't

Ashley: Why is important.

Mike: If somebody can't do that, then you should probably fire them. Then that would get rid of some micromanagement too.

Matt D.: That's right. Get frustrated about that. I've heard it from before is like, well, now you're just, they can just do whatever and what happens when they get stuck and they spin and whatever?

Mitch: This was her question. We were just talking about you talking too much

Ashley: I think I answered.

Mike: I think

Ashley: we're ready to discuss.

Matt D.: Yeah. I agree that you answered. That's why I was just

Mike: trying Once to ask again, said something you didn't want him to say.

Matt D.: Yeah. And I get shot.

Mitch: Shoot. We're it's happening, you guys.

Matt D.: Yeah. Right. Live. Right now.

Mitch: You guys yeah. Normally this Maybe gets we should do all of them live.

Ashley: How many do you do live?

Matt D.: Is this the first one we've ever

Mitch: done live?

Ashley: You've done live? I was yeah. So I was surprised. Yeah.

Matt D.: That was the The

Mitch: first first one's extra fun. Matt was thrilled by this concept, when we when we brought it up. He was like

Mike: was all about it.

Mitch: Let's do it.

Mike: He was

Matt D.: the most I'll take it. I was the force behind it.

Ashley: Jump out of bed this morning.

Matt D.: If anybody doesn't catch the sarcasm, it's there.

Mitch: Let's throw one more Ashley's way. Do you have any top productivity tips? Someone asked, Callum asked that earlier.

Ashley: You know, I probably would have answered differently, but I feel like in the past couple weeks talking to friends, I have learned a very basic thing that people are not doing, which would dramatically improve productivity, but people are still mainly like emailing. I was at dinner randomly with my friends, I ran into a friend at school pickup, and our daughters were going to dinner at the same place. So I was talking to her at dinner, and she was, you know, had a work event that day, and so she was behind in emails, and we're talking simple stuff, and I just started asking her like about the types of emails she was getting. I'm like, do people chat you? Like, do you guys have Teams or Slack or anything?

And I've had the same conversation twice in the past couple weeks. They have it, but they don't really use it for that. And I'm like, if someone has a quick question, like how much are we delaying that work by, you know, creating an email, which people put more time into that, they're more formal, then you send the email, you don't know if I'll ignore my email for hours if I'm working on something and I'm responding to chats, but I, you know, I just am like, how much is getting delayed if people stuff work that's sitting in people's inboxes? Yep. So I think that's what I would say right now.

Can't believe how many people still not utilizing chat.

Mitch: That's right.

Matt D.: Am I allowed to agree?

Mitch: Nope. You have thirty seconds.

Matt D.: Thirty seconds. Love it. That's that's exactly what we talk about all the time.

Mitch: You know what? This is what we call a game of constraints. It requires creativity for Matt to get all of it down into like this distilled and that's where

Matt D.: I just like to talk with our courses come

Mike: from because we're like, oh, this You just

Matt D.: try to control me. That's okay.

Ashley: Try to control This idea

Mitch: comes from

Mike: He broke it all

Matt D.: the way

Mike: down I into love it. That was so creative of

Matt D.: him. Yeah. I love it.

Mitch: So I'm I'm gonna claim

Mike: You should be proud

Mitch: of him. It is a good thing.

Matt D.: Claim it all you want.

Mitch: Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm No. No. I'll back up.

I'm sorry, Matt. Let's

Matt D.: I'm good. That's all. That's I said it. I love it. I absolutely love it.

Mitch: Okay. Well, we are gonna shift into a different topic. Ashley, you're welcome to hang out, but like, we have the spotlight on you for a little bit.

Ashley: You're not required to I'll hang out next door. Okay. That sound good.

Matt D.: Yeah. Thank Thanks, guys.

Mitch: Yeah. Let's do one more question, and then I'm gonna shift into a prediction. So Mitch asked, how much time do you spend on average for content creation, like blogs, videos, podcasts, and how you budget them in respect to billable hours? This is a great,

Matt D.: great, great question.

Mitch: I should have passed on this question because No. I saw it.

Matt D.: I was like, is good if he's gonna go for this one. It's really, really, really, really, really hard to explain because our content creation is unlike a lot of other channels. We believe we're creating unique content, you know, content that is having a different voice. And so because of that, there's a lot of effort put in idea creation, business strategy that technically is required to create the content. Right?

So if you split it out just to just, hey, how much are we spending just to create content? On any particular video of our time, not editing time or other things, it's could be anywhere from three hours to eight hours, depending on

Mitch: what Mike's is probably like.

Matt D.: Mike Mike produces it really fast. He can create content like crazy.

Mitch: Oh, so it I forgot. It's you.

Matt D.: I I take a really long Yeah. I take

Mike: a really long really long time.

Matt D.: So it, like, just creating a particular thing, it can be that long. But a lot of the things, like having a formalized thought around topic based communication, it's been something we've I've talked about and thought about for a long, long time, but you never really get it distilled because nobody else is talking about it, and nobody else has an opinion about it, nobody else is doing that kind of stuff. And so, it was years of thinking and little things here and there and and conversations and and, you know, to try to distill it into something you could actually put into a blog. Right? You know, the concept was there, but like, how do you make it something that you can kind of explain?

And so it's a wide variety of things. The question about billable hours, it's a struggle. There's no doubt about it. The three of us are huge input both in billable hours for our organization, but also in the content creation, and it's a challenge. I think, for example, the topic of communication one, I did it on the weekends.

I did it on a Sunday, Saturday, Sundays. Mhmm. So it didn't impact, you know, billable hours because we had a lot of work going on at the time and that's what I did. Have a couple

Mike: of thoughts

Mitch: that for, like, everyone's we rely on individuals. There's like a our process, we collaborate on the idea, and then we split into individuals, and then we come back together, like, a couple times. Yep. And every one of those iterations can make things spiral or make them really good. And so each scenario is a little bit different.

And that process, you probably you might realize we used to do more with more of our team. And while that was a ton of fun, it just Very expensive. Yeah. It makes it a lot more expensive. So it's not something we definitely don't want to do in the future.

It's I think it's something we want to like slowly fold back in, but we found ourselves in a spot where we're like, oh my gosh, we're spending a lot of time on this.

Matt D.: Let's It also makes a lot of editing Yeah. And a lot of, like, others, like, not just content creation, but

Mitch: Which on that note, in the chat, Capture Video Marketing says, congrats on the fiftieth episode. That's huge. Keep it up. They are our current Oh, yeah. Video editor.

Yeah. So if you need some if if you like our stuff and are wondering where it comes from, the recent stuff, is from them. It's

Matt D.: from them. Yeah.

Mitch: There's a little plug for them

Matt D.: Yeah.

Mitch: Doing a good job. But, yeah, that fed into like We're doing a video a week

Matt D.: or something. We were trying to do a video a week at one point in time. Yeah. And that's a lot of editing and a lot like, it's a lot. Yeah.

And the content we created was great and I love being able to do it. And it's actually, it hurts me right now because people ask for like, oh, want more content. Like people want a lot of the Copilot stuff that I, the last one that I did. But it's it's it's it's just hard. It's hard to keep that up with running a business that's that's currently the primary monetary general, you know, the how we make money, right?

Yeah. Hopefully that answered the question. I think I think we were pretty open about that, but it's that's a really, really good question and we are challenged by that very question on a regular basis.

Mitch: Yeah. And it's it's really hard to attribute. Yeah. This video resulted in this thing for the business, and so that's why we you know, originally, our mission was literally just like, let's help people. And over time, it's become a little bit more, like Matt said, when we're coming up with concepts, it's it's a little more associated with, well, what kind of work do we foresee in our future or do we foresee people needing help within the future?

And so we incorporate a little bit more business strategy into maybe the types of things that we do if we have to choose a very small subset of of things. As we include more people and up to frequency, like, becomes less important because we can yeah. Anyway. Let's see. So let's move on to our next segment.

So we are going to be doing a segment about explain this picture.

Matt D.: Oh, no.

Mitch: So what we're gonna do is we're gonna put up a picture on the stream for Matt and Mike that they haven't seen that

Matt D.: Is it one that we haven't seen in the past? Yeah. Gosh.

Mitch: Maybe. Maybe. I kept it kind. Okay. That's what I'll say.

Matt D.: Well, I'll be the judge of that. Yeah. Don't worry.

Mitch: I'm just gonna lean on Cam. I'm gonna leave it up to you to pick a picture and you can I don't know if you Do you know what this is? Yeah. What is this? What is this representation of?

Matt D.: This We went on lunch to go buy the the TVs for in the office.

Mitch: Yeah. In our first office. Yeah. This was But it's more significant than that. This is the first thing that Bulb Digital ever owned as a business.

You guys bought things like

Matt D.: Oh.

Mitch: With your own little side hustles in those accounts or whatever, but this was

Matt D.: Bulb. Is he right? Is he are

Ashley: you sure?

Matt D.: Asset. I don't think that's the first ball last time.

Mitch: I had to push you guys to buy something. Which office? We didn't own anything.

Matt D.: I mean, it's the first thing you got us to buy. In the old That In the old I'm sure true.

Mitch: Old office.

Mike: Okay. The 2nd Floor there? Yeah. I'm trying to think. So the furniture that was in

Mitch: there We used their table Yeah.

Matt D.: It all their stuff.

Mitch: All of our, like, equipment was our

Matt D.: Yeah. Own So, okay. Let me let me give some backstory. So the off the original office, original original office for Bulk Digital was we have a customer that we've worked with for a very long time. Actually, Mike and myself worked with them back when we were talking about our history, like, in the second job we were ever in.

And then we came back and worked for them again and they had a big project for us and they they had enough space and we're like, hey, just plop down. And so it was the three of us and and one other guy plopped in a

Mike: Were you BYOD?

Matt D.: Yeah.

Mitch: Yeah.

Matt D.: He was Yeah. He was. Yeah.

Mitch: We have a picture of that. Why don't you show the So

Matt D.: we were in this we were in this little cubicle, all four of us, like, for a year or more. They had a spot that they would rented us. And so, but it was very much the same kind of thing. It was just a room with a bunch of tables in the middle and everybody kind of, oh yeah. So this is, yeah.

So this is the this is that. The cube

Mike: Look how much less gray there is in that beard.

Matt D.: And you also get a you also get a a old view of the logo of our bulb logo. If you look in the bottom there, that is old school bulb logo from long ago. Yeah. So this is that.

Mitch: This Yeah. Why Bear Bulb down on the bottom? We used to call Bear Bulb Companies.

Matt D.: Yep.

Mitch: That was me working on our website.

Matt D.: Which there was many recommendations that Bear Bulb, companies

Mitch: There's a reason why we have a different name now. Yeah. That was that's good good times. So that was the TV was I'm I'm pretty positive.

Matt D.: It's for sure the thing that you the first thing that you got us to buy. Yeah. I'm not sure whether or it's the first thing we ever bought, but it's probably pretty close. Yeah.

Mitch: You guys, it was that was pulling teeth.

Matt D.: I didn't think that was in the that other office, though. I thought that was No,

Mitch: we it on that wall.

Matt D.: Yeah. I remember getting it getting it into your car was a problem. It was tough. Because I'm pretty sure it was your car. Either that or it was my car.

Mitch: I think it was your car.

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah. But it was like I

Mitch: had to like

Matt D.: see Yeah. You had to sit up sit up forward. Yeah. It was tough.

Mitch: Good times.

Mike: Let's do another picture. Oh, my Oh, yeah. That was

Mitch: Yeah. What's this one, Matt?

Matt D.: So this is the current office. And when we moved into the office, this was it was all black on the floor, but the black was chipping up. And so we started scraping all of the black paint away, and that's what it is today. It's now

Mitch: almost It was like a side product. Like, if we would get bored Yeah. We would just would go pick up the scraper

Matt D.: and Yeah. Or if or if I needed a break at Right. In the evening or something, I would just go scrape it for a little while. But then, this is our first birthday breakfast.

Mitch: Yeah. So we we

Mike: Whose birthday was it?

Mitch: I

Matt D.: It was mine.

Mike: There it is.

Mitch: Happy birthday to Matt Dressel. Mhmm. So we we marked it in the floor as a testament to how much we love him. Yeah. Let's do another one.

Oh, Kenan. You see what that what that says up there?

Mike: Conference room build.

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah. But it was it used to be called

Mike: It still is.

Matt D.: It is it is cached as that. Yes. It is not currently called that, but as cached as that.

Mike: So, yeah. Prestige worldwide. For all of you Stepbrothers fans.

Mitch: Yeah. We we we literally named our conference room Prestige Worldwide Conference Room for a hot minute.

Matt D.: It was it was long enough for me to go to when people started getting emails from PrestigeWorldwidebulb. Digital, I was like, hey, this probably ain't going to be good.

Mike: What's wrong with that? I still think that's okay.

Matt D.: I got feedback from a customer that was like, hey, I find it funny, but I don't know that other people will.

Mitch: Catalina wine mixer. That's what they're talking about in the chat right now. Matt Dressle wouldn't get it, but, yep.

Matt D.: I mean, they made me watch it. I had never seen it before. Yeah. It was right around the time because it was this office that you guys made me watch it. I tried to ignore it, but the opening scene was enough for me

Mitch: like, Just lives in our memories now. Let's do another one. We I feel like we're rolling with these. Yes.

Matt D.: This is that this is that the first office.

Mike: Where the TV was hanging.

Matt D.: The first real office.

Mike: Yep. Yep. And this was move out day.

Matt D.: Is that was move out?

Mitch: Yep. Yep. We were moving out into this office, but notice how big it is. Like, we it is

Matt D.: And we had seven people, six people?

Mitch: There is no room

Matt D.: There was no room to do anything.

Mitch: On the other side of me.

Matt D.: That's when we chose this.

Mitch: Yeah. That's what we walked that's what it looked like when we got there. That is our first office.

Matt D.: Yep. One room. Yep. One tiny

Mitch: So it was you know, we painted the walls, that was a big thing for us. We requested them to get

Matt D.: But they did it for us. Yeah. Unlike our current, we were we would have to pay for it or we would paint it ourselves.

Mitch: Yep.

Matt D.: They were great landlords.

Mitch: Let's let's do a couple more and then we can move into our our next segment.

Matt D.: Oh, yeah. This is our first team outing. Yep. We Twenty eighteen. We went out to Escape Room.

Yeah. That's the first one that we ever it wasn't really like, was planned but it wasn't like, we're going to do this all the time and then we decided It wasn't to just do

Mitch: system. Right. It was just Yeah.

Matt D.: We just decided we would go down on a Friday Yeah. Afternoon. So folks

Mitch: here probably recognize Matt Kahn. He's there on the left. Mike has like this mighty lion mane beard going on.

Matt D.: And then we got some people probably nobody's seen.

Mike: Some of us got it.

Mitch: Us with another one, Cam. I have like 20.

Matt D.: Oh my goodness.

Mike: The Oh. Great

Mitch: No one has seen this before.

Mike: The Great Logo Logo Project of

Matt D.: I mean

Mitch: 17 when it when We've never publicized this. Yeah. This was in the process of coming up with the new name because Barebulb was not it. We said, let's be named Bulb Digital.

Matt D.: We needed a different name. We decided on Bulb Digital, but then we were like, we need a better logo.

Mitch: Naturally, we decided to do it ourselves.

Matt D.: Naturally, we decided to make it a big production. To save things. And it was highly hotly contested, very distracting, very

Mike: yeah. As I recall, we needed the compliance officer to make the final decision or something

Matt D.: You needed compliance officer to accept the result.

Mike: Something like, yeah, something like that. Yeah. And it took a long time.

Matt D.: I mean, that's not the part that took a long time. It took a long time to get to this point and then the next point where we actually had a final thing.

Mitch: Yeah. So for someone maybe just listening, what we have on the screen now is picture of a wall, bunch of paper, different logos on it, and you will see the final one there. It's the second row that we ended up choosing. But there's a couple other good good winners in there that maybe if we ever wanna revisit, we could do that. I know Matt is just hankering for that.

Mike: Definitely low on my list.

Matt D.: Yeah. My choice was not wasn't wasn't even in this. Didn't even make this stuff this Yeah.

Mitch: Let's do one more. What? Okay, two more.

Matt D.: Uh-oh. He's got one he Oh, wants us to get

Mike: this is my favorite one. This is my my Slack profile picture still.

Matt D.: Yeah. Which is against policy, but whatever.

Mike: Well, hey, that's the compliance guy. Yeah. Leave it to him to say it's against policy.

Matt D.: I just don't know why we take headshots of everybody and then that's what we use.

Mike: I like this picture of me because I have more hair on I the

Matt D.: mean, we can we got some people who know how to Photoshop.

Mitch: We can

Matt D.: do that to everyone

Mitch: here Your at old school war photo of Right. Of Mike

Mike: looking A tin type? They call that a tin type.

Mitch: Tin type? Okay.

Matt D.: Didn't you use AI to do this or something?

Mitch: No. This was before AI.

Mike: No. Somebody with Photoshop skills did it for me. Yeah. And I loved it so much. Made it with a Yeah.

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah.

Mitch: Shout out to Dominic.

Matt D.: Dominic.

Mike: Okay. Let's do another one. Remember what Yeah. This

Matt D.: So, this was the

Mitch: GLS, right? GLS. Where we met Emma. Global Leadership Summit.

Matt D.: Yeah. I think this is the year that we met Emma. Right?

Mitch: Yeah. That would be one.

Matt D.: Because it was the first one, I think.

Mitch: Theoretically, Emma could be sitting right behind us. Yeah. One or two rows behind us. At one point, she was sitting right

Matt D.: behind Yeah. Right behind us. Got him. Yep.

Mitch: I don't know if this was that moment, but kind of fun.

Mike: Oh, how much better of a picture would it have been if she

Matt D.: was like Was it right there?

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah. How related? You remember this?

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Goodbye birthday cake or goodbye cake for Emma.

Mitch: Emma was a big

Mike: Office. Office.

Mitch: Office fan. Big time. And so Is. Wait. Yeah.

Matt D.: She's not dead.

Mitch: Yeah. No. She just wasn't able to make it to this. Okay. The when Dwight does the party, he's in charge of planning a party like for Angela or something and he puts up a banner.

Kelly. Kelly. Oh, it's for Kelly. Yes. Yeah.

It is your birthday. Right. Period. And brown like half blown up balloons. Right.

It's very obnoxious. And so we said, let's let's send Emma off with a cake and we made her a cake that just says, it is your last day. Period. Period. Yep.

Matt D.: So that day?

Mitch: Thanks to Dwight Schuh for the cake decorating. Absolutely.

Mike: We should have had a cake made for this livestream.

Mitch: I know. I know.

Mike: I could go for some cake right now.

Mitch: Yeah. Let's talk about our last segment here. So the last thing that I want to go through is we've been doing this for four years. Right? Like, that's

Matt D.: This type of thing.

Mitch: Yeah. If we're thinking back to what that reality was like of what if we start a podcast, what was technology like at that point in time, and then fast forward four years later and it's like quite a different world that we seem to be in now. What's four years beyond this? What what what's gonna happen in the space in regards to AI, Microsoft, Us? Let's That's

Mike: pretty broad.

Mitch: What do you think?

Mike: What's gonna I think we should ask. Make a prediction.

Mitch: Matt. This is our this is what we're gonna go back to in five years and say,

Mike: much Let

Matt D.: me check it.

Mike: So he's he's the one I would want to hear the technology predictions from.

Matt D.: Oh my goodness. I think making specific technology predictions in this context is a little bit iffy, but I would say that I think the journey that we have are on, and encouraging people to be on, will be so much further along. Like, it's Complete is probably not the right word, but like, there is, you know, Ashley was just mentioning it, you know, why are we doing emails so much, right? I have to believe that in four years, we're gonna be sitting in a world where more than 50% of the people, more than 50% of the organizations are either transitioning or already on their way to moving out of that. Maybe through AI, maybe through better adoption of the tools they have, maybe through lots of different ways, but I think for us and and germane to us, think that's a huge thing.

If you really, really want to push on on technology, I think and if I limit it just to Microsoft and I limit it to just what we're what, you know, what we focus on, I think there are some really great things that are gonna be happening within Copilot, Teams, SharePoint, like, all of these tools finally actually coming together. They have oftentimes felt very disconnected, but I believe that that is going to be something that is transformative going forward, either through Copilot, meaning Copilot will make it easier to do the right thing the first time, but I also think Microsoft is starting to align better with what how we think about things in regards to don't start with personal, don't start with individual. That is stupid. You're selling to businesses, you're not selling to individuals. And that transformation will be huge, in my opinion, for how these things work going forward.

Mitch: That's interesting. The thing that I thought of while you were talking through that is I felt similar to it with Blockchain Right? Years When all of sudden, blockchain is the thing. It's going to revolutionize.

Mike: It's going

Mitch: all be part of everything we do everywhere. Why? And obviously that didn't

Matt D.: happen. Didn't happen. No.

Mitch: There's still future potential for it. But is this just another one of those moments?

Matt D.: No. The specifically to AI, specific to AI, because I think that's what This you're really talking is different because people, it's already invaded. Like, Blockchain was never ever ever ever ever something that I would ever even talk to my someone who's not tech savvy to go, Hey, I think you should use this. Now, some people were. Some people were like, it's the, you know, everybody should learn it, everybody should be understand how it works and whatever.

Mitch: Mhmm.

Matt D.: But I never was like that. Now, it's like, number one, everyone is already using it because every time they do a Google search, they get an AI result.

Mike: Yeah.

Matt D.: And then, on top of it, every company, everywhere, seemingly, is buying into the concept that I can just implement AI and reduce my costs. Right? And they're doing so by literally just, like, letting people go, especially especially in the tech industry, but even other ones, it is it's there. Like, moves so quickly. Blockchain never was that way.

Blockchain was always some tech guy was gonna build a thing that somebody else could use that would leverage Blockchain, that somebody else could get better. Mhmm. The technology is just being used by everyone.

Mitch: So it's AI is first hand. Yeah. Blockchain was always second hand.

Matt D.: Yeah. Yeah. And so it was always up to the tech people to do the convincing and the implementing and everything else.

Mitch: The only first thing hand thing of Blockchain that I experienced was payments. That

Matt D.: I mean, yes. Right?

Mitch: But then

Matt D.: If you didn't seek out a What is Blockchain payment the

Mitch: price of Bitcoin based on and that's changing and it doesn't seem like sustainable to base everything on that, like, yeah.

Matt D.: Yeah. I mean, like the the real thing, so if you think about AI in particular four years from now, agentic stuff, like actually having it do tasks for people, that's the big question. And I think it's going to be there. I think that there's so much money being poured into it that people are going to do it. I don't know if it will be sustainable or ubiquitous.

I think we'll get there. I think you will be able to have I think you already do, in some cases, have agents that can operate relatively autonomously. However, I don't know if it's sustainable and I don't know if it's gonna be ubiquitous. Like, just don't I don't know about that.

Mitch: Okay. What about you, Mike? Everything's gonna be a model driven app?

Mike: No, I like, I was just thinking about the AI thing and I do think that there will be ubiquity in terms of the use of something like Copilot within So all of the if you're authoring a Microsoft form or you're building an app or whatever you're doing now. It's already there but people aren't using it to the extent that it could be used and it's still early, so it's not the greatest in all scenarios, but it is very powerful. And to that end when it comes to creating things like forms or presentations or things that get delivered or consumed visually, I think the real commoditization is gonna happen for the creatives. Because I think Copilot, it's already got some capability with in just applying styles and themes to things like Microsoft Forms and to SharePoint sites and things like that and generating images now. Like I don't like, I can make something I can make a beautiful presentation and I don't need a designer anymore.

Matt D.: I'm gonna tell I'm gonna take the point of I think that people will do that and try to get rid of designers, but I think it's a fail. Think Agreed. I think what should happen is that people who didn't weren't able, because no one's going to pay a designer to help them anyways build a great great presentation, will now be able to create great presentations.

Mike: Yeah. I think I'm saying it more because the overall quality of everything is going to go up because everybody's going to be able to afford that Meaning

Matt D.: meaning, you may still have a designer but you won't have five. Right. Oh, okay.

Mike: Like, fair. It becomes more of a commodity the machine can just do 80%, 70% of it for you and it's it's 50% better than what I was doing.

Mitch: Yeah. It's interesting. I was just watching a short from Charlie Puth on YouTube about, will AI take like the music industry?

Matt D.: Music industry, yeah.

Mike: And Apparently, there's a country song that's top of the church right now by

Mitch: the way. His response was interesting in that AI seeks perfection. And the beauty of particularly music comes from imperfections in the music. Like, when everything is exact and on beat and perfectly calculated, it sounds that way. Like, you can tell that there's not a human hand in it, and you don't detect that, like, emotional response as as easy.

Matt D.: Another way to say it would be uniformity. Like, it it is trying to fit it in a box.

Mitch: Yeah.

Matt D.: And, you know, would we ever have had rock music? Would we ever have had Right. Like all the different genres and things that we have if we weren't involved? Probably not. Because AI wouldn't have known that anybody would like it.

And so then it wouldn't have made it.

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt D.: So it's all we're getting deep, but it's a very interesting thing.

Mitch: Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Well, I would say my response to this is a little bit different in that I hope four years from now or whatever that our equation that was being asked earlier has changed of how do you how much time do you spend on this stuff is versus a billable, etcetera. And that right now, we are still seeking a critical mass that makes us feel like even doing this was like no brainer.

We should absolutely do like, it's always if not this, or if you choose something to do, something you're not you're choosing to not do something else. And that hurts the creativity

Matt D.: Yeah.

Mitch: And experimentation side. And I I long for a day where I hope four years from now we're looking back and it's like, we're going to record in the studio because so many people have told us they want this thing and we can see a sustainable business model in that context. And we don't have that figured out quite yet, but

Matt D.: Yeah.

Mitch: We're still working on it.

Matt D.: Yeah. I agree.

Mitch: Yeah. So hopefully I can watch this back in a couple years. There was another question. Are businesses dictating that at the moment though through nervous

Matt D.: AI. Like, hey, you've got to use AI.

Mitch: Yeah. Are they more comfortable with Power Automate rather than an agent driven app?

Matt D.: I think businesses are dictating it because they are afraid they will miss out more than anything Out

Mitch: of fear.

Matt D.: Maybe you could make you talk nervousness, maybe more and more out of fear that their competitors will figure it out. Their comfort with other tools, I mean, the promise of what Power Automate can do and the investment, if you weren't already investing in it, you're already behind the times, Right? If you're not already doing automation, helping your your team members and your processes improve, you're already behind the times. And so it's not it's not a and or people are doing both.

Mitch: I, yeah, I think my thought I was talking to someone from Microsoft about this the other day, is that until AI becomes this, like, it knows deeply all of the tools that you're working with and how to do everything, it's not gonna it's gonna be this weird in the middle world because people find frustration of, yeah, I can do this, but I can't do that. And they're building connectors, so you need to build an agent that has inputs and specific outputs. And, like, there's a and part of that that is very good and helpful, but it doesn't entirely, like, get in to know your business deeply and understand your intent and think ahead for you because it can't. It doesn't have that level of integration yet. And so I think that's that goes to play into the should we invest in AI?

Should we not? Yeah. I don't know. It's it's gonna be an interesting next couple of years.

Matt D.: It's gonna be an interesting ride.

Mitch: Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks guys for joining. This has been awesome to dig into and we will be back. We're actually going to record another episode here next week.

So Yep. We appreciate you joining.

Matt D.: Back to the more standard

Mitch: Yeah. Podcast. Regular programming.

Matt D.: So Format.

Mitch: Thanks all for joining. It's been ton of fun. Let us know how you like this livestream format and, we'll see you again soon. Hey. Thanks for tuning in to make others successful.

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