The Truth About Building a Mobile App as a Startup

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:05]

Hey, how's it going?

Mark Abbott

[0:00:07]

Good. How you doing?

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:08]

I'm great. I'm. I'm super happy to be here.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:10]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:10]

No, this is fun. So, Kyle Phillips, you run one of our product teams. You've been with us now for a.

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:23]

Year and like five days shortly.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:24]

Oh, really?

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:25]

Yeah, in like a week, it'll be like a year.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:26]

Wow.

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:27]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:27]

So is it five days over a year, or is it five days under a year?

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:31]

Under a year? I think it was like June 5th was my official start date.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:35]

I was going to say, I don't remember wishing you happy anniversary yet.

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:37]

Okay. Yeah, no, I don't think it's hit yet. It's June 5th.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:40]

Yeah. So cool. So if you wouldn't mind, can you give the folks who are watching this a little bit of, you know, the story of you and your background and how you got here? That'd be awesome.

Kyle Phillips

[0:00:52]

Yeah, I mean, I think to start maybe now and going back, you know, I. I know our Greg Vesper, right. Our. Our cto, cpo. And I called him for a reference for another job.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:06]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:01:07]

And he was like, you know, hey, I. I might have some spots here at this company called 90. And you know, at first I did not have any idea what, what we did here, but, you know, kind of after talking about it and things, it was pretty, pretty exciting, I thought to come. And the reason it was was because if I look at really my background, you know, I had started my own companies. I was always very much just a entrepreneur. Kind of got it from my family because they were that. And, you know, in college I started my first company, which, you know, was really a lot of fun. And I ran that all the way up till about 2012 when then I exited. And, you know, from that company, you know, I had learned a lot of things of just never knowing how to do marketing, you know, and figuring it out how to make hard decisions. And then I got into software because the company had started was a camera company. And, you know, I had solved a problem out there in the market that people didn't. That people had. But what I found from it was how much I actually liked software more.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:11]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:02:11]

Than physical products. It was very hard to run a physical product business. Yeah, you got inventory and technology changes. But I found through software how fast you could iterate and it's a lot more flexible. So I moved into, you know, joined a software company and got into product management, which I didn't even know product management was a thing. Yeah, you know, it was very new at the time. But what it allowed me to do was to build and solve problems, which is what I love the most, you know, and, you know, so then, you know, ultimately I. When like I said, coming back to now, Greg approached me on this. It really resonated with me because we help people build great companies.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:47]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:02:48]

Through all the different stages of them growing. And I'm like, I've been there in all those places, and I know how hard it is and the questions. And so, you know, I was like, the opportunity to work on some software that could help people do that. I was like, I wish I had this back when I first started in like 0506 and my first real company.

Mark Abbott

[0:03:05]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:03:06]

And, you know, and now I'm here, and I can't believe it's already been almost a year. It's gone by pretty quick, and we've already done a whole lot of great stuff.

Mark Abbott

[0:03:14]

One of the things that I think's, I've learned throughout, you know, the many decades of. Of, of company building and leadership and investing in other companies and just getting to know humans is, you know, it's always interesting when there's a really sort of obvious Venn diagram between their personal interests and what they do for a living. And one of the things about you is like, you're not just designing software and building software all the time. You actually have a family, but then you have some other hobbies that I think are pretty design and build. Centric as well. Share a little bit about that because.

Kyle Phillips

[0:04:01]

I like to build. I like to still work with my hands. You know, I spent a lot of time doing metal fabrication and building cars. Love cars. You know, I've always have just how they work and everything. And so I've, you know, I spent a lot of my spare time, which, you know, when I have it, to be working on my car projects, driving some of my cars, spend time out there in the shop to kind of still work with my hands.

Mark Abbott

[0:04:24]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:04:24]

You know, and be. And be physical, you know, with it and. Yeah, it's. It's. It's one of those things that I wish I could do almost as my job.

Mark Abbott

[0:04:33]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:04:33]

You know, but those are. That's a very hard kind of industry to be in, you know, and. And software, I think, gives me more of that. I get to build a lot of fun things and try different things. Right. And it's a little easier to do.

Mark Abbott

[0:04:45]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:04:46]

And I think one of the things that's been cool about having you, and we were literally talking about this before we got in here. Right. But is also Having you on this team and you being someone who I think is passionate about design, Right. And so, so when you came on board, we were figuring out, okay, so what's. I don't. To call it. Let's call IT product development 4.0 probably, right, because in the beginning it was me. And, you know, for those of you who've been watching a lot of the podcasts, you'll know that, you know, we began with two engineers who I didn't even know were in college. That's a whole other discussion. And I was, like, really involved in the design, you know, the, the look and the feel of the. Of. Of the. Of the product. I was very involved in that in the beginning. And then we brought on Eng, some of whom, like McGregor, who's been with us, you know, yeah, he's great for a long, long time, had his own thoughts on, on design. And so then, you know, McGregor got involved and then we brought on ahead of product, who I think was more of a just traditional head of product management kind of human. He was interested in design, but not, like, passionate about it. And one of the stories, I don't know if I've ever told this on the podcast, and hopefully he won't, you know, get mad at me for sharing it, but I said, I don't know if you've ever heard the story. I said to him, I'll pay for $25,000 of a Tesla for you, because I want every day when you get up and you go to work and you think about stuff, for you to see decent software design. Because I thought they did a pretty good job really early on. And I don't own a Tesla anymore, so I can't comment on it today, but very early on, I loved not just the look and feel of the monitor that, that I had, because I had one first year. So, I mean, not the sports car, right, but the. But the sedan. I had a Model S literally within the first year because I'm an early adopter. I'm one of those guys. So I had a Model S. And what I loved about it was the simplicity, the. The beauty of the design. But I also loved, like, every now and then, almost every month, you'd walk out and your car would be updated, right? So it was the combination of how cool it is to get updates, right, obviously to do it well, and how cool it is to have great design. And so I, I literally said, dude, I'll give you and our head of design back then each 25,000. And he didn't want it, you know, and I was like, wow. Right. But, but design for me has always been. Been super important prob, you know, some people's perspectives in the company, I'm too involved. But I, I deeply care about it. I love people who deeply care about it. And that's one of the things that's been super cool about having you on the team. When you joined. Did we. I don't even remember this now. I know it's, you know, just a year now, but in terms of what you were going to take accountability for, you know, why don't you talk a little bit about when you joined, what you took accountability for and what you have accountability for today.

Kyle Phillips

[0:08:14]

You know, man, when I initially joined, I was brought on to, you know, be head of product for our productivity team. Right. Which was our core tools. Right. Pretty much what the, this company was initially built on. Right. Meetings to DOS issues as well as what we now call everboarding, which on the time when I joined was onboarding.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:31]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:08:32]

Which, you know, is all about how do we get somebody onto our product and turn them into a, you know, a paid customer, an advocate, a promoter of it.

Mark Abbott

[0:08:41]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:08:41]

You know, and so that, that's what I started with. And you know, within a short period of time, you know, I ended up getting involved in our mobile initiative. Right. Which we'll, we'll talk about. So now, you know, I'm currently acting as the PM right now for our, for our mobile app. Because it, it was needed. Right. It was one of those things. As well as head of design right now, you know, leading our, leading our team of designers. So definitely wearing some additional hats that I didn't expect. But you know, I am a person who, coming back to being a builder, being a problem solver, you know, I will do whatever I can to move a product forward. That's what I do. I don't, I like to, you know, see it become successful, you know, and so I will, you know, I think being a good product person as well as you'll fill gaps where you need to, to get something across the line.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:33]

You not only got in there, as I said, we'll talk about mobile, but okay, I gotta help here. Right? Within, like I want to say within three months of joining, plus or minus, it's like, okay, I'm going to take this thing on.

Kyle Phillips

[0:09:46]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:09:47]

But you also even took on another idea which was what we'll call the planning board, which is, which is like, so, so you had your day job and then you had these two new jobs and then you had the designer, you know, sort of making sure everybody was, you know, on the same page into, in terms of design. So you've taken on a lot and, and one of the things that you' done really super well and thank you for is bringing mobile to market. You know, as I, as I think I've shared before, you know, mobile's been something that people have been, I'll go so far as to say, harassing me about almost since day one. Right. And I just didn't feel like we had the resources to do everything we needed to do and mobile to sort of, you know, have the desktop, have the mobile going and all that complexity. I deeply believe less is more until it's not. Even though I'm sure most people in the company are like, yeah, right, you've got us doing all this stuff. But I deeply believe less is more until it's not. I try to, I try really hard to respect that concept. So. So definitely one of the most requested, most important features, because it's not really a tool on the one hand. On the other hand, boy, oh boy, it certainly feels like a tool. So if you could tell a little bit about sort of, you know, the, the story of mobile coming to being.

Kyle Phillips

[0:11:10]

Yeah, I mean, I think even when I joined, I was like, where's the mobile app? Right. I expected there to be a mobile app for something like this, you know, and, you know, shortly joining, I found a lot of people been asking for it and it's been a long requested thing, but I think I didn't think about it as, you know, what have you guys been doing? Why don't you have a mobile app? I. I think it's easy to look from the outside in and say, like, how come somebody doesn't have a mobile app? But the truth is, like, you know, it's right place, right time, and there's lots of PR priorities going on. There's always more that you could be doing. And so, you know, waiting till you really had it in the position to say, like, we need to have a mobile app now, you know, is. Is the right thing. So I'm super honored to be kind of right here in the right place at the right time, because I love mobile apps.

Mark Abbott

[0:11:53]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:11:54]

I love the design of them. I love everything that, you know, you could kind of do now with mobile. So to be able to be a part of kind of the, this whole green field of building the mobile app for the first time and taking it to market is something I was super excited about it.

Mark Abbott

[0:12:07]

Yeah. And, you know, another expression I use all the time. Once again, probably to people's like, come on, Abbott is. We're exactly where we're supposed to be learning the lessons, you know, we need to learn. And if I look back, if we had gone mobile earlier. Right. And I'm pretty sure when you got here, if we. If those things had happened, you'd be like, what the is this? Right. So I'm, you know, I'm at peace with how long it took for us to get there and super excited about it, but I'm super, you know, I feel fortunate that we didn't get going until you came on board because. Well, we both know this because when you came on board and you started working on it, not to diss anyone. Right. But the first look and feel that design came up with didn't, like. Right. Talk a little bit about the journey of. In the beginning, if you wouldn't mind.

Kyle Phillips

[0:13:08]

Yeah. I mean, I think we were, you know, trying to get something out to market, and the initial kind of design that was. That came up with it. You know, I think I saw it quickly as, okay, well, I see we're trying to do something, but I start asking the questions. I go, well, what's the. What's our real future design like, where. Where we want to go with this? Because this. It doesn't look like a mobile app completely, in my opinion.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:32]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:13:33]

And, you know, so I started asking questions about that and, you know, saw that we. We were going to take too much of a. Let's not change too much. Kind of give what people are used to.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:42]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:13:43]

You know, and, you know, I said, okay, well, like, that's okay, I guess, kind of. I get what you're trying to do. You're trying to, like, not upset customers.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:50]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:13:51]

Fair. But I go, this is an opportunity because our desktop experience was. Is lacking certain things that customers want as well.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:58]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:13:58]

I'm like, we now have a greenfield opportunity to build something, like, amazing.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:02]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:14:02]

And nobody's using it, so we can kind of come up with whatever we want.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:07]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:14:07]

And then, like, that's a lot of fun.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:08]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:14:09]

So, like, why are we not, like, focusing on that? Why are we not taking this opportunity where people have been waiting, like you said.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:14]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:14:14]

So a lot of risk now because it's like, you get your first version out there and it fails. You know, you people are going to lose a lot of trust quickly because they're like, you didn't deliver something that we've been asking for forever.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:26]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:14:26]

You know, so, you know, I got involved and I think started, you know, asking more questions. And I had built mobile apps in the past. I'd done a lot of design. I'd follow what mobile patterns are, you know, to say, well, like let's, let's follow just existing mobile patterns. Like, we don't have to, we're not reinventing anything. This stuff exists.

Mark Abbott

[0:14:44]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:14:44]

And, you know, let's give something that people are already familiar with with it, but let's just figure out what, what is the core initial app look like, but as well as what's the long term vision for the app. Right. Like, it's too easy to get hung up of just like what you got to get out there initially and you don't design for the future. And I think we wanted to think about both of those things.

Mark Abbott

[0:15:03]

Was that easy or hard to get people to sort of play the short and long game and try, you know, and sort of, you know, go back and forth and.

Kyle Phillips

[0:15:13]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think you have to have somebody kind of in the room who has that mentality, a bit of like, okay, this is great for now, but then are we still going to be able to get where we want to go long term?

Mark Abbott

[0:15:24]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:15:25]

And kind of like remind everybody? Because I think that there's the people who are executing on stuff and they're, they're trying to do the work and then they're kind of forgetting a little bit about where we're going and that's okay because they're focused on right now.

Mark Abbott

[0:15:37]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:15:37]

But then I think making sure you have somebody in the room asking the question of like, does this work long term of where we're going, like, is this putting us into a position where it's gonna be really hard to change down the road? Is this the right thing? We also want to be building.

Mark Abbott

[0:15:50]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:15:50]

So, you know, you got to kind of keep being, you know, zooming in and zooming out as you're, as you're working on this stuff.

Mark Abbott

[0:15:57]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:15:57]

I think also we had to get to a design to help people see our vision in the company as well.

Mark Abbott

[0:16:05]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:16:05]

I think I already had this idea and vision in my head. And once, you know, working with our designers and we iterated on and we iterated every day.

Mark Abbott

[0:16:13]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:16:14]

I mean, every day we had a meeting and we iterated on this thing and once we had that, we were able to share it with everybody. And then everybody in the company started really rallying around. It was like, oh, this is amazing. They started seeing what we were trying to do. They understood it, you know, and we got much more positivity, like feedback from people being like, this is going to be really, really cool. Got people like really excited about it.

Mark Abbott

[0:16:35]

Right. And if you look at it, because I know I probably over index on long term than short term sometimes and I know that, you know, early on when you, you shared it with me, I said, oh, this is awesome. Right. But then, you know, introduced. Maybe it was in your head. Let's, let's be honest about it. Right. Or maybe it was, you know, it was okay. Yeah. Yep. Plus. Right. But you know, the whole notion of as we've got it today, the big idea here, it's a task management tool, it's a communications tool, it's an education tool. Right. And I'm like, we gotta make damn sure that as this thing. So how far, I guess would you know your honest, honest answer. Right. Because I had a vision for mobile for, you know, for years and years and years. And then you came in and you worked on it. How far close were we in terms of what I was envisioning and what you were envisioning and how was, what was that exercise like working with a founder who kind of has some strong opinions on occasion?

Kyle Phillips

[0:17:42]

I wanted to make sure I understood, I think, your, your vision for it. Right. And in respect, like, okay, does this play to our vision? Does this play to our brand? Is, is this staying true to who we are? Yeah, it's very easy to go off and build a whole bunch of stuff or new things that, you know, are cool, but, you know, is it staying like true to us? So I think working with you was, was great because I think I was able to bring my ideas Right. And some fresh eyes to stuff and my experience just building this kind of stuff.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:10]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:10]

And saying like, hey, here's, you know, here's the problems I think we're going to be solving with this and here's where we're going to start. And this gives us the opportunity to grow into, you know, more and more, even though it's like we're not going to have all the functionality day one. Right. It's something you iterate on.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:26]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:26]

I'm a true believer in, in getting something out the door.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:29]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:29]

Get something out the door and get feedback on it. Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:31]

Quickly.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:32]

Don't, don't wait too long to have like everything in this big bang. So, you know, I think, I feel like when we, we iterated on it and we were sharing with you and hearing feedback that, you know, we weren't probably too far off.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:43]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:43]

I think that What I clearly saw that we were going to need to do.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:48]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:49]

Already aligned with, I think, with a lot of things that was in your head.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:51]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:51]

I think some of your initial feedback was, hey, this is awesome.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:54]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:18:54]

And you're like, here's some things that I would like to see. And, you know, here's some things that didn't make sense to me. Right. And that kind of stuff.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:59]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:19:00]

But it wasn't a. This is completely.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:02]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:19:03]

The wrong direction of what you were thinking.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:05]

Knowing my obsessions, I think that it was awesome that I never saw version one, you know, design wise. Right. Because, I mean, I never even saw it. Right. And you were like, nope. I mean, basically. Right. Version one just went straight into the old. I. You know, it's funny, I have the vision of. Of, you know, Robert Downer Jr. Jr. In Iron man, especially one. I would love one Right. Where he takes the idea, just throws.

Kyle Phillips

[0:19:34]

It in the truck. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:35]

Yeah. Throws it right into the train. No, we're gonna get doing this again. Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:19:39]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:19:40]

And so I didn't see that one, which was awesome, I think, because obviously the next version that you were really involved in designing just was, like, so elegant and simple and intuitive, and we can get into some stuff that we've learned since then that was unexpected. But, yeah, the. The. By the time I started to see it, it's like, this makes a heck of a lot of sense. Are there any. Were there any other. Besides obviously in the beginning, getting everybody on the same page in terms of design as you brought up, you know, helping people remember the long game because it's easy for us to get caught up in the short game and making sure that we're not going, you know, too far off where it's hard to come back. Were there any other developmental challenges sort of like, early on that are.

Kyle Phillips

[0:20:27]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:20:27]

Worthy.

Kyle Phillips

[0:20:28]

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest challenge was our timeline. Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:20:34]

And. And. And who came up with the timeline?

Kyle Phillips

[0:20:36]

I did.

Mark Abbott

[0:20:37]

Thank you. Just want to make it clear.

Kyle Phillips

[0:20:41]

Absolutely not.

Mark Abbott

[0:20:42]

CEO.

Kyle Phillips

[0:20:43]

You know, I think coming back to, like you said, our. Our. Our. Our goals and our vision, you know, we've got some pretty ambitious goals as a company.

Mark Abbott

[0:20:51]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:20:51]

And fitting your product into that. So I think for me, when I said, okay, well, we want to build something cool, we got to deliver on something that customers have been waiting for. It's got to be great. So we kind of said, like, this has got to be out early in the year. And I know. And, you know, just from experience, like, you know, coming out in the new year, with stuff. And new value for your customers is extremely important. Customers start looking at other products when they come into the new year. They're thinking about what they're going to be doing for the year. They're making plans on what they're going to spend on, do they have the right tools. And we wanted to be first out there making a big splash in the market of here's all the cool stuff that 90s doing. So customers immediately feel like we're delivering new things and, you know, we're going to, you know, push those other competitors down when they start coming out with the stuff because they're like, well, 90s already gotten everybody's attention.

Mark Abbott

[0:21:42]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:21:43]

So I think I put that timeline on us because I said this is going to be important for us to meet our goals for the, for the year. We got to get this thing out. But you know, I also, when I looked around the room at the people I had, you know, I was like, I'm like, we can do this. I'm like, we can absolutely do this, you know, but we had to iterate quickly, meet constantly. Right. It was a constant feedback loop, testing stuff out, making sure it was going to work for us. And so the, and then to add onto the timeline, we didn't get a dedicated resourcing for this details. Right? Yeah. We had to say, hey, you know, you got to build that with your existing teams, which are all heavily focused on still working on the Core90 product. So it was like, well, how are we going to do that? Not to mention cross functional development across teams as well.

Mark Abbott

[0:22:29]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:22:30]

So, you know, bringing all those teams together and getting them aligned, you know, was definitely a challenge, but people were super excited. I think everyone's excited to work on like a new thing, especially mobile. So, you know, we getting together and meeting and giving people feedbacks, showing progress and iterating through and we had, you know, we had said what our MVP is going to be. We said, here's the stuff that we want to go to market with, you know, and as you know, we, we got to our beta timeline and we didn't have everything that we wanted to have for beta.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:03]

Pretty close.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:04]

Pretty close. Yeah, very close.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:05]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:06]

But, you know, I think people were asking the question to me saying, Kyle, is this going to be. We're not going to make it. Do you want to move your beta?

Mark Abbott

[0:23:13]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:13]

You know, and that's where you take a hard look at your product. Right. Depending on whether you're a product person or the founder or whoever, and saying, do I want to still go to market with this, you know, And I. I said, yeah, why not?

Mark Abbott

[0:23:23]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:23]

I go, some of those features are important. People are gonna be asking where those things are probably during the beta. But I'm like, let's just get what we have out now, and let's. Let's see what people have to say. The beta is supposed to be kind of where you test it. No one's expecting a polished product.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:36]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:37]

They're just excited to be a part of it and check it out.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:39]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:40]

So, you know, we just did it.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:41]

And if I recall, I'm sure you know the answer. Right. With regard to the original date and the date set for beta, you were within weeks.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:53]

I think we pushed the beta just a few days from our original date. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:56]

Yeah. I mean, it was like.

Kyle Phillips

[0:23:58]

Yeah, I think it was. We were trying to get the mobile builds up into the store.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:04]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:24:04]

But, you know, and the team was so awesome. They, like, did workarounds to just, like, make it happen. Opposed to, like, our nice automated flows that we have now of getting. Deploying new builds now. Yeah. They're like, well, we'll get it up so you can. We can just hit this date. Right. And that's the kind of people and team. Right. You have to make this stuff happen is. It's that kind of thing. But, yeah, I mean, we were within days of.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:23]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:24:24]

Of meeting it.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:25]

You know, and not just within days of meeting it to beta, but you were also, I think, within days of meeting it to ga, too.

Kyle Phillips

[0:24:32]

No, I think we moved it like, six days. I pushed it out like a week.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:36]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:24:36]

Yeah. And. And that wasn't even something I was in control of. That was.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:40]

That was. That was Apple.

Kyle Phillips

[0:24:42]

Right. That was the App Store. Yeah. And that was. You know, we talked about that was. Those are the. The worst feeling because I have no control. I'm at the mercy of Apple's App Store review of, you know, approving the app. So, yeah, we had. We had to just sit there and essentially just hope that it would happen, but we still got it done.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:00]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:25:00]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:01]

Any other notable challenges getting to either beta or to ga? General availability.

Kyle Phillips

[0:25:08]

You know, I mean, I think the beta. The beta. No, I think the. The. With the GA side was like, you know, the. The challenges was marketing. You know, we, you know, your product's only so good. You got to have a really strong marketing campaign. And we came up with, I think, a good. A good marketing campaign. But the challenge was all the details of how do we want to market what through what channels, what's the messaging. How do we get this in front of all of our users? Right. We've got quarter million users.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:37]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:25:37]

Like I want every single person to somehow know about it.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:40]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:25:41]

And I also want to convey the messaging to, to our customers of, you know, we're unlocking new value for you as well as other employees who are not currently on our product because we know that the companies get the full value of 90 when everybody is using it.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:55]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:25:55]

And that was part of the purpose of the mobile app was to unlock new value. It wasn't just giving customers a mobile app and kind of checking the box and saying, here, you, you know, you now have a mobile app. It was, hey, we actually feel there's a value unlock here for you.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:07]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:26:07]

And it's going to not just help you, but we think it'll also help all your other employees who we know are not behind desk.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:12]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:26:13]

You know, a number of our customers, they're not sitting in an office. These are people who are on the go.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:18]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:26:19]

And we know that mobile, mobile is becoming like the primary for people. Younger generations aren't even buying computers. There's workforces are just mobile only.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:28]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:26:29]

And I'm like, okay, so it's like that whole thing, there's this huge opportunity there. And so I was like, I want to make sure we get that messaging right to people so that they, they see that this is not just trying to hand a mobile app to existing people. It's like, oh, you guys are trying to give us something new to think about.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:43]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:26:43]

And to use with our, with our entire company.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:45]

Yeah. Because a lot of times, you know, we lean towards thinking about making sure that this really makes sense for like the founder or it makes sense for, you know, the, the chief operating officer some people call, you know, the integrator or it makes sense for, you know, the whole leadership team for planning purposes and vision sharing and all that. Right. We, we do tend to have a very right or wrong. Right. We, we really make sure that we're delivering things that, that create significant value for the leadership or part of the organization. When you were designing mobile and thinking about mobile though, who, you know, walk us through, who were you really thinking about and how did you, like, how did you balance the weight of that breadth?

Kyle Phillips

[0:27:36]

Yeah, I mean, I think one was to really talk to all those types of people. Right. We, we had talked to a lot of different users in different roles, leaders to individual contributors, you know, and it, you know, a theme emerge really was just, you know, help me gain clarity of, like, what's most important and whether you're a leader or you're just an individual contributor. Right. That's true.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:02]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:28:02]

You know, it's like, I just want to know what I should focus on for my day. What needs the most attention.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:06]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:28:07]

So, you know, when we. We kind of followed that theme, we said, okay, you know what, what do leaders really need to be doing in the app? And what does that individual contributor need to be doing in the app?

Mark Abbott

[0:28:18]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:28:19]

So that we were able to build an experience where, you know, it didn't matter which role you really had. You know, we made that clear.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:26]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:28:26]

So whether you are a leader and you're trying to see what's going on across your teams. You got that clarity.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:30]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:28:30]

Or if you're just into a contributor and you're saying, what is it I'm supposed to be focusing on and what's most important for me to deliver on this week? Right. I have visibility into that. Right. And so it would fit no matter what, because the leader still needs to do a lot of those things individual contributor does. Right. But the leaders, like, I also have visibility into teams. Right. And one of the things we came up with was more of, like, a recent activity log of issues. You could see all the issues that have been created recently across all your teams really quickly.

Mark Abbott

[0:28:56]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:28:56]

Helping somebody be informed before they go to a meeting of like, hey, what's been going on just recently? Are those my L10s going to be more productive? Because I'm walking into it with a sense of, like, what we're going to be talking about. Maybe I've been able to have conversations with people beforehand. So now I come in, help being able to solve that issue way more effectively. Opposed to, we talked about it. I have to wait till I go talk to somebody else, and then when we come back, we'll deal with this thing because it requires other people. And that's what people kind of want is they want to, like, kind of get ahead of these things. They want to feel productive. They want to feel like they're moving things forward. And I think the mobile app is what, like, gave us that opportunity to create that level of visibility for people so that they felt like they were focusing on the right things and they were doing good work, because that's what everybody, like, wants at the end of days. They want to feel like they accomplished something.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:41]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:29:42]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:42]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:29:43]

You know how many times you ever been busy the whole day? And at the end of the day, you're like, what did I do today?

Mark Abbott

[0:29:46]

Yeah, right?

Mark Abbott

[0:29:47]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:29:48]

I have that feeling so many times. And I'm like, no, I want to be able to look back my day and I want to know that I did the following things. I feel good.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:53]

I've said literally since the 80s that I judge every single day. You know, I used to say, I judge it when I got into the elevator back in the old days when we used to work in an office, right? Worked in a bank, right? And every single day when I go through the. Got into the elevator to go home, right? Do I feel good about today? Right? And my, my, my perspective has always been if 90 of the time, and, and this is literally before I fell in love with the word 90, right? But 90% of the time, right, If I can go home and say, that was a good day, right? I should, I should, I should be pretty happy with, you know, with, with, with me and, and what I'm doing. And, and so, yeah, you know, being able to, you know, end up every day saying, you know, another one, you know, another, another one. That was 90%. One of the, one of the things that I want to hear your thoughts on is, you know, I talk about in, in, in work 9.0 that we've now moved into this new age of understanding, Right. And I'm curious about, you know, your thoughts on the principles or frameworks that influence the design to ensure clarity and ease of use. Is, you know, so what, what, what, what, what, what were things that sort of, you know, helped you move with confidence?

Kyle Phillips

[0:31:20]

Yeah. I mean, coming back to design, right, that we love design, right? I'm like a minimalist when it comes to things, you know, so mobile, it's great because mobile, right. You don't have very much real estate. It needs to be very action oriented, can't be cluttered, right. You just don't have that, that type. So I followed that idea of just saying we have to stay simple. You know, don't, don't make it too complicated. As well as follow existing mobile patterns for design. This stuff has been designed. There's great designers out there who come up with it. Google, Apple, they've got really great UIs. So I said, you know, let's not try to introduce our own UI patterns for mobile, things that people are already familiar with, right? Everybody knows how an iOS or an Android app should operate, so they're expecting similar behavior. So I go, if we follow just some of those ideas, someone's going to just intuitively know how to use the app because it looks like there are other apps that they're stealing. So making sure the navigation is in a position where your thumb can reach it. You don't have to use two hands. Being able to create an item, global create, make it very simple. Swiping type actions. It was just use existing stuff, but keep it minimal. And every time we would add anything to a screen, we constantly challenge whether or not that thing should actually be there. It's like, is that should be there? Is that even useful? Or does that just look good? Are people actually going to find that valuable? So that influenced everything, you know, down to the information, the color, the text, all those types of things. We followed that so that, you know, we didn't. We only put really what people needed and made it intuitive. And I think that's why the app was pretty successful. Out the gate was, you know, people were like, I just. I just see how to use this. I seem to know where things are at. And it's like that validated that we thought about it correctly, you know, And.

Mark Abbott

[0:33:14]

I'm not trying to put you in a weird position where you got to pat yourself on the back here, and I say this right, but were you. Are you surprised with a level of like, dude, you nailed this?

Kyle Phillips

[0:33:31]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:33:32]

Early on, I mean, it was like, like, did you expect it to be this high or were you like, I'm coming here? And then you actually got like, more. I hate to use the term affirmation. Right. But where the feedback was like, dude, you nailed this.

Kyle Phillips

[0:33:49]

Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right. I mean, I've built a lot of bad products. I've done a lot of bad design. Right. You know, and so I felt confident that we had designed something great.

Mark Abbott

[0:33:59]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:34:00]

You know, I was like, okay, you know, this. This feels good. I think the functionality that we designed for it was the right thing. I'm like, hey, seeing. Talking to people and showing some of our early designs right before we actually had anything working.

Mark Abbott

[0:34:12]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:34:12]

I'm like, I feel confident. Right. But, you know, that's a small subset of customers. Right. And, you know, people. And so when it got out there and nobody was coming, really, with negative feedback, I'm like, is the app actually working? You know, we're looking at our stats of who's using it. I'm like, are these correct?

Mark Abbott

[0:34:30]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:34:30]

Maybe this isn't actually reporting on stuff correctly. Because I'm like, you know, we weren't getting any bad feedback of, like, this design is crazy.

Mark Abbott

[0:34:38]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:34:39]

The feedback we got was, this is awesome. People have been saying, we've been waiting for this forever. This is Great. And then people are saying what they wanted to see next.

Mark Abbott

[0:34:47]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:34:48]

You know, and I'm like, this is great feedback. Right. And, you know, we got some negative feedback here and there, but it was pretty small. Right. And, you know, I make it a point that any feedback left in the store or anything like that, I respond to.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:00]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:35:00]

It doesn't matter whether it's good or bad.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:02]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:35:02]

You know, because I think that also shows to other people looking at us, you care about what users are saying. You know, it doesn't matter. But, yeah, I mean, I was. I was, like, really, really surprised and really, really happy.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:15]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:35:15]

You know, but then when I think about it, I go, you know, I shouldn't be so surprised. We focused on this thing so hard.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:24]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:35:24]

We met. Like I said, we met every day, and we iterated through the design, and we would show up one day, come up with something. Next day we would come and be like, that doesn't make any sense. After we designed it the day before. And it's like, okay, change this thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:36]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:35:36]

Constantly. You know, so I'm like, you know what? We did the work, we did the grind, and we validated it. And then I think people using it and saying, this is great. It's like, this is. This is awesome. I think it provides a level of validation where it's like, follow that same thing with other stuff, too.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:52]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:35:53]

And that will be good as well, because what you followed worked from a leadership perspective.

Mark Abbott

[0:35:59]

Curious how you manage this. So, as someone who is extraordinarily comfortable with change to the point of where if I have an idea on Tuesday and additional data comes after that idea and such that by the time I wake up on Wednesday, my brain's already been processing Tuesday. And part of the journey I had during sleep was there's issues that don't make, you know, things that I just don't think make sense anymore. That's how my brain works, which is unfortunate. Sometimes the next morning, it's like, hey, right. I know we said this, but. Right. My experience has been as a leader that some of us are comfortable with change and trashing things that we've worked on. And as the founder and significant shareholder of this company, I'm all. I'm like, hey, if I'm okay with the fact that we wasted a. You know. You know, it's not really waste because we learned a lot. Right. But I'm okay with dumping. I mean, I'm very comfortable with dumping, But I've.

Kyle Phillips

[0:37:09]

I've.

Mark Abbott

[0:37:09]

I found that most people aren't so how did you manage that part of this process? And how do you, generally speaking, as a leader, manage dumping stuff that people have put, you know, their, their heart and soul in? And sometimes it's like, you know, I, you know, we're all creators. We, you know, every single one of us is a creator. I talk about this a lot, right? How we, how we participate in the creative process is different. Some people are big picture idea people. Some people are like, oh, man, take it into reality. Some people are like, hey, have you thought about how this is going to. How this is going to feel, how this is going to resonate, right? So they really understand the emotional side. And then some people are like, hey, guys, that's all really cool, but you realize if you do that, you've just destroyed all this other stuff that we've been working on forever. So you got the thinkers, the feelers, the doers and the critics, right? The guardians that, that, that you want to involve in the creative process to make sure that you've seen all the angles. So as a leader, when you go through a process like you've just gone through, how. How do you get the team to get comfortable with change and comfortable with, yeah, I know, it's okay. Yeah, we throw something away.

Kyle Phillips

[0:38:25]

I think part of being, like they said being a good leader is probably getting them to understand the why behind why maybe something's not going to work. I like to constantly come back to what are the objectives and the goals we're having. So when we do something like that, it falls. And it's like, I have that moment where I'm like, actually, this doesn't make any sense. And it's like, well, it doesn't make sense because it doesn't actually align to where we're going. It was a good idea, but we forgot about the big picture. And it's like, okay. And so I think, I try to, if I have that, I try not to just tell. I think somebody's saying, hey, guys, like, this is not going to work. We're trashing this thing, right? And then everyone's like, why? And it's like, well, I just want to. Right, right. I think I try to explain the why behind it. It's saying, you know, this doesn't actually align to our goals, guys. Our goal is this, right? It's like, okay, well, does this align to the goal? I don't think it does. Anybody else thinks so. And everyone's like, well, yeah, it doesn't. It's like, okay. And then it's like, we Spend all that time. Well, it's like, that's okay. We. We realize this one thing. But I go, but what if we had sent this thing out? It wouldn't have worked, Right. So did you guys. We don't want that either.

Mark Abbott

[0:39:26]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:39:26]

So I'm like, we now kind of learned from that experience. And so I think kind of explaining some of that to people, telling them that what we built, maybe the work we did, it wasn't bad work.

Mark Abbott

[0:39:37]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:39:37]

You know, I'm like, guys, we built something, but it's not the right thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:39:40]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:39:40]

I'm like, you know, you gotta iterate on something, right. Like, continuously to build something great. I mean, that's how everything has gotten built. Nothing great has gotten built just in its first form. Like, somebody has practiced something. Like, you gotta. You gotta be really bad at something before you can be great at something. And so you have to keep trying.

Mark Abbott

[0:39:57]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:39:57]

And then you gotta be willing to fail. Like I said, I've built a lot of stuff that has failed. And that's how I figured out, like, what works is by keep failing at it. And you mentioned, like, my hobby for cars. I'm like, I kept screwing up constantly. Something doesn't work. I haven't put a car back together the right way, doesn't run, whatever it might be. My measurements are off, you know, and that's. That's how. And it's like, well, you know what? Why did that happen? But it's like, not feeling like I've thrown something away, and it's like, feel bad. It's like, no, I realize what I did wrong there, and that's okay. And I think telling everybody that it's, you know, that's. That it was okay. And I think not putting somebody down or saying, like, you know, this is your fault, you know, and whatnot. And I think trying to take that, Take it as, you know, this is a learning experience. And it's like, let's just. Let's understand it, move on. Let's work on the next thing that we know is, like, actually what the.

Mark Abbott

[0:40:50]

Right thing is, just because, you know, it's called Founders Framework, and we talk about, you know, things. Lessons for founders all the time here. Was it easy to get the team to, like, shift into being comfortable with throwing stuff away, or did it. Did it take some time?

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:09]

No, I think that they were pretty comfortable with it.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:12]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:13]

I think part of the reason that they're comfortable is, is if they have a good leader.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:17]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:18]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:18]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:19]

They're looking to their leaders for confidence. That what we're doing is the right thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:24]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:24]

Right. And so I think if you go to the table with it and you show that, hey, this isn't the right thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:32]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:33]

It's okay. We're going to throw it away. And I think doing all the things like I just talked about, you know, I think people get comfortable pretty quick with it. They're like, okay, I feel good about this. Maybe some of them already didn't think it was the right thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:46]

Yeah. But just uncomfortable sharing it.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:48]

Uncomfortable sharing it because they're maybe afraid to say to the person who's confident in the room about where we're going that I don't think this is good idea.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:55]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:41:55]

Sometimes it's hard to challenge sometimes.

Mark Abbott

[0:41:57]

Or you're calling someone else's work less than perfect.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:00]

Yeah. You're saying something isn't. Isn't a good design. You know, and some people can take that stuff, like, very personal when somebody says, this thing is like, this thing's terrible.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:08]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:09]

You know, and. And that's okay. But I think that's where I try to create an environment with the people I work with that I'm like, you can tell me if you don't think something right now. Do it respectfully.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:19]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:20]

Professionally.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:21]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:21]

You don't have to be, like, rude.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:22]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:23]

But, you know, I try to create that where people feel like they could say it and they're not gonna. I'm not gonna be like, you know, don't say anything. This is not your role.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:31]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:31]

Just do what I tell you to do. It's like, no, no, look, I want to. I want everyone here to be a part of the collaboration ideas. I want you to say if you think that this is not the right idea. And we had some moments like that with Mobile where we wanted to have headlines, and we had an initial design for it of how we wanted headlines to look.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:47]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:48]

But, you know, we. We face some challenges with actually making it work.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:51]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:52]

And the team came up with the idea of, like, how it should be working and in the app as it is right now.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:57]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:58]

And I'm like, that's brilliant. It.

Mark Abbott

[0:42:59]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:42:59]

Right. And they came to the table with the solution. They didn't. They didn't come to the table and say, like, oh, we're looking for you to come up with a different solution here.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:05]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:06]

And that's what I want.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:06]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:07]

You know, I want. I'm. I'm trying to say, hey, look, here's what we got to have. But, like, come to the table with ideas. And, you know. And they did.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:14]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:14]

And that's the kind of environment I want because I don't know, have all the right answers.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:17]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:17]

I'm just trying to lead us in the direction overall of like, what we're trying to get to, but I need everybody else to be a part of this. I can't do it yourself. You can't do it myself?

Mark Abbott

[0:43:24]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:25]

How many folks were in the team?

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:27]

Oh, wow. We had probably. We had. I mean, if you're talking all the product engineering designers. I mean, if we're talking marketing as well, if you're talking about like the whole thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:38]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:39]

I mean, it was practically. There was probably somebody from almost every department in this company. Right. To getting it built, getting it marketed correctly, ensuring that, you know, support knew how to use it.

Mark Abbott

[0:43:51]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:43:51]

You know, I had support people pitch in to help with the beta because it, you know, it was a little bit of a. There were some manual steps to actually give somebody access to the beta app and we didn't have automation built. We have time to build some of that.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:02]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:44:02]

So I had some support people, I trained them up and they were like more than willing to say, yeah, we'll handle every single request come through to get a beta access to somebody. And they did like over 500 users manually doing it. So everybody had, everybody contributed to the success of the app. But I mean, I think almost everybody touched this thing in some way.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:19]

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:44:20]

Crazy, crazy. Where are we now in terms of. So we got version one done. We. You have a vision. We obviously we're here, we want to go here. It's not a straight line, right. There's zigging and zagging as we, as we go to here. We've got like, I'll call it the Northern constellation. Right. We've got these things that guide us, right. Where, where's your head in terms of listening versus doing? And you know, a lot of people in software hate the concept of waterfall and roadmaps. And, and, and I think we actually have a very healthy. I, I believe that we have a very healthy culture around agile versus waterfall versus Roadmap. Right. We have vision, we have what we have, we have data. So walk us through your thoughts right now on listening and how we play the game.

Kyle Phillips

[0:45:38]

The idea, right, was to get the first version out here that we felt good about and then to really listen to the market. We have ideas of what we know. I have a few things that I'm really excited about. We're going to be bringing this whole communication side, collaboration side. To the app. Right. Which is the app. Why we've got, we've got the strategic planning, we've got the productivity, we got that kind of stuff going. The other side of this is that. But I think right now it's to really listen to what people have to say and what they're doing in the app to help guide us to ensure that that kind of stuff is going to be the valuable thing. So I think making sure we have those feedback loops from customers and even internal people, anybody in the market to ensure that we are doing the right things, but then look for opportunities for small wins. I think we've already pushed out a couple little tiny enhancements on the mobile app just very quickly. Just little things that were like, just get them out there and keep improving it bits by bit. It doesn't have to be like these waterfall type things as you know. Well, you know, you have your big stuff too, but having that. So you know, I think really listening to it as well as staying focused on of like, well, the long term vision for this product is this.

Mark Abbott

[0:46:52]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:46:53]

We still have our desktop app. Right. We got a mobile app. I don't want those to completely go off in different directions. So it's like making sure that what we're going to do in mobile still aligns with what our desktop strategy is so that somebody who's. Doesn't matter if somebody's using our product, it feels like a seamless experience. They, they feel like it's the same. You know, they can do what they need to do, doesn't matter which platform they're actually using. So I think keeping my ear close to the market is extremely important. You know, and I think, you know, the next stuff coming up is super exciting. This, the communication, collaboration side of the app.

Mark Abbott

[0:47:28]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:47:29]

Is, is going to be, is gonna be big for us.

Mark Abbott

[0:47:31]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:47:31]

Because we want people doing that in the app. Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:47:35]

So one of the things that I want to use past tense, but I think it's, I think, I think it's not fair to reality is that, you know, we're transitioning. We're literally in the middle of transitioning to, from a company that wasn't. The velocity of improvements to the app, generally speaking was relatively slow. And I know that's not an atypical comment from a, from a founder slash CEO for a couple years and then you guys, the new team came on board and started to make things happen and then all of a sudden like a lot of stuff's getting, getting released to the point where we actually got feedback from our clients that you guys are making changes too fast. Right. And so we agreed as a senior leadership team that we're going to move into what I call from an internal perspective a five quarter way of looking at the world. And that meaning that okay, so we have five quarters in front of us. Four. The first one on the left is the one we just had making sure. Right. We all know what we said we were going to commit to and, and that we, and how we did. And historically we've been like 90% plus in terms of hitting our commits, which is like, I mean for years. Really, really good at that. Then we got, okay, this is what we're working on this quarter. Then we got, this is what we, we're going to work on next quarter and then next quarter and next quarter. So you got five quarters in front of you. And then we said we need to do this just so we all are generally aligned with regard to where we're going. Once again, there's always this tension between waterfall and roadmaps and agile. So we agreed to do that. And then what we said was because of our customers really having this. We love you guys making improvements but you can't just keep jamming them, you know, in front of us all the time. We're, you know, especially like coaches and integrators. You're like, hey, I gotta know about this stuff when you know it's coming in so I can help my people deal with the great changes. But it's changes, change. So now we're in this transition to we make, we address issues like bugs and right and, and, and, and, and, and, and whatnot continuously. I mean like we are now continuous deployments. And then what we want to do is we want to move to every month we'll release, we'll tell people about some, some minor stuff. And then once a quarter like we'll like the big stuff, we'll, we'll let people know. And we're not only going to do that but we're actually giving our clients a sense for what's coming down the road. So like, oh right, so they've got a sense for this. So if someone's like, well why, you know, I want you guys to do this, this and this. And we're like hey, yeah, that's actually on a road map. And so we're showing our clients now this is what we said we were going to do every quarter, right? We'll update. This is what we said we were going to do. This is what we did. This is what we got going on this quarter and this is what we got going on in the outer corners. We're not giving them the full five the details because they don't need it, they don't want it.

Kyle Phillips

[0:51:04]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:51:05]

But we're, you know, we're in that transition now because we're still doing a little bit of, you know, non bugs, weekly updates. And the challenge is not just, you know, there's obviously products involved, product marketing's involved. There are a lot of people involved in making sure that people are aware of what's going on. So we're committed to moving to this, what I'll call it, this continuous for bugs and really super minor things monthly or quarterly. What can users look forward to that you're comfortable sharing in terms of, you know, what's up next?

Kyle Phillips

[0:51:48]

Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, we're going to be working on this whole communication, collaboration side of the app.

Mark Abbott

[0:51:53]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:51:53]

I mean, even in the desktop app, people have been saying, you know, how come we can't really communicate more inside. Right. So we're working on this whole thing of, you know, notifications in app, app mentions, push notifications, you know, in an activity feed, which we want to actually do in both mobile and desktop. Right. So, you know, you can easily see what's going on. You don't have to go fishing in the app for everything going on. Right. We have all this information, all these companies are putting all this cool information into our, into our system. Right. But if you don't know how to really get at it, it's not. That's power the system. Yeah, exactly. Right. So having an activity feed that really more informs people of what's going on and then they can also communicate with each other within the app is going to be really the next big thing for us, I think, to make our app really, really valuable to people and also have those conversations more within the app on the issues that they're having, which we know they're just having them outside right now, but they're not linked. And it's hard then when you're trying to talk about things and bring people together, opposed to just having it in the app on the issue. So the communication side we talked about, you know, we're currently looking at bringing in elements of the scorecard. We've gotten some, we had some ideas that people might want something like that, but we've already got some, a lot of requests for it. People saying, I'd love to see some scorecard, not the whole thing. Right. That doesn't really work. But you Know, people want to watch some of their KPIs.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:24]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:24]

So is there a view of components of the scorecard? Yeah, I think so.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:28]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:28]

As well as Knowledge Portal.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:30]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:30]

Right. People need to be able to access documentation and training type material out in the, out in the field, not. Not at their desk.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:38]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:38]

So we think that we can bring in some of that functionality so that, you know, it's like a well rounded app.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:44]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:44]

And then I think there's some really cool stuff that we could probably do with Maz.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:47]

Yeah, we haven't talked about it at all.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:49]

We have. Yeah. We haven't gotten into it, but I think that, you know, I'm talking here right now.

Mark Abbott

[0:53:53]

Yeah, we're talking about, we're talking about it.

Kyle Phillips

[0:53:55]

Yeah. But we didn't really touch on what you do in the mobile. Yeah. Side. But, you know, everybody's using, right. These ChatGPT and Gemini and all this stuff.

Mark Abbott

[0:54:03]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:54:04]

And we were working on a pretty cool AI thing right now ourselves with already some cool things. So I think that on the mobile side there's some stuff we can do with that that will just unlock a whole bunch of value for customers and will make their, you know, their lives at their jobs, like even a more enhanced experience, I want to say, than anything.

Mark Abbott

[0:54:27]

We can go down a lot of. Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:54:29]

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:54:29]

But just the, you know, it's interesting, you know, just the idea of, hey, you know, you're running in, you know, you're running around, you're running into your senior leadership team meeting, right? And you're like, hey, Maz, right? What, what, you know, what are the big issues that, you know, are on the docket for today or hey, Maz, is there anything KPI wise that I should be like, focusing on that's, that's, that's different or revealed itself within the last week, right? And it's just like, boom, right? It's right there. And then, and then, you know, you think three, four, five years from now, right. It's gonna be really, really interesting in terms of, like, we talk about mobile right now, not to be freaky on you, right. But we talk about mobile right now from a hardware perspective, right?

Kyle Phillips

[0:55:23]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:55:24]

Five years from now, right. What is, you know. Right. It. When we get form factor. Right. So, you know, five years from now, we may have a conversation. This conversation may be around mobile in a way we never even. Right, right. Envisioned.

Kyle Phillips

[0:55:40]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:55:41]

Especially with that, with the help of, of, of. Of AI, so getting untethered from the desktop to now to a lighter version of, you know, Hardware, and then ultimately to who knows what is really like, I. This. As designers and builders, I know you and I are aligned on all this stuff, right?

Kyle Phillips

[0:56:03]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:56:04]

This. This is what's super bloody fun.

Kyle Phillips

[0:56:06]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:56:07]

Right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:56:08]

I mean, you're just like, pioneering new. New ways of things, right?

Mark Abbott

[0:56:11]

Ways of.

Kyle Phillips

[0:56:11]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:56:12]

You know, it's like Greg and I, our ctpo, were chatting yesterday, and, you know, I always struggle a little bit with, you know, people like, what's 90? And. And, you know, we help people, you know, build extraordinarily productive, human and resilient organizations. Yeah. But it's more than that, Right. You know, we help people understand what's working, what's not working. Yeah. You know, we help people navigate the unavoidable stages of evaluate. Yeah. But really fundamentally, where this platform that reduces the friction associated with, you know, just having a really comfortable level of growth. For some organizations, Right. That could be 30 or 40 or 50% a year. For other organizations, it's 2, 3, 4, 5%. Right. We either grow or die. But fundamentally, right. We're a growth platform. We're just trying to figure out how to continuously reduce the level of friction associated with you growing. Because we know that, you know, things either grow or die.

Kyle Phillips

[0:57:11]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:57:12]

Right, right.

Kyle Phillips

[0:57:13]

I mean, I think what, you know, coming back to when, you know, I had my first company.

Mark Abbott

[0:57:18]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:57:19]

And as I'm growing, trying to figure out, you know, should I hire some people, should I buy that building, should I invest that money in the next iteration of the product that isn't cheap, right? Yeah, I wish almost I had, like a chat GPT type of AI thing to talk to that somehow knew everything about my business. And then I could say, well, my goal is this. What are the things maybe I should focus on? And it could just tell me, right. It's like if you dumped all the information about our company into, like, an AI and you said, hey, tell me, what are the biggest problems we have? It's gonna be able to tell you quickly. And it's like, that's the kind of feedback people want. And they want to know because it's so hard to take all the information. We got so much information coming at us nowadays. Right. You get so distracted with everything.

Mark Abbott

[0:58:06]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:58:06]

It's like you just want to be able to kind of get that clarity.

Mark Abbott

[0:58:09]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:58:10]

And I see that being, like, a huge opportunity for us where, you know, if. If we can do that for customers, it can tell the customer, hey, here's the things you probably should be thinking about.

Mark Abbott

[0:58:20]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[0:58:20]

If you want to keep growing and.

Mark Abbott

[0:58:22]

By the way, based upon where you are right now, I like to say, you know, MAS will say, I'll bet you two months worth of software. Right?

Kyle Phillips

[0:58:31]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:58:32]

That these are the seven issues you're dealing with. And if five of these are correct. Right. I don't know you, and you're like, shit, how'd you know? And it's because, as you said, we have all this data, we've structured it. A lot of it's unstructured traditionally, but we've structured what is prior to now unstructured data. And so now it's just a question of, you know, of back to the growth platform notion, how do we take leverage, all that we have because you've played the game with us to help you navigate the moment you're in strategy. You know, as I like to say, it's really simple. It's about win the game you're playing.

Kyle Phillips

[0:59:14]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:59:15]

And then make sure that the game you're playing makes sense in terms of where you want to take this thing in, you know, 5, 6, 10, 20 years, whatever, however you want to play it. But it's just like, win the current game, make sure that you're set up to win the next game. Yeah, right. That's it. Right. So. So we're here to help people win the game they're playing. Yeah. You know, and, and make sure that the game that they're playing is one that they can continually be a part of because, you know, it's one thing to go. And I got to give, you know, my buddy, my son Cole credit for this one. Right. It's like, you know, if, if you gotta, if you love playing a game and you're all about just winning it, but then no one invites you back to play the game.

Kyle Phillips

[1:00:00]

Yeah, right.

Mark Abbott

[1:00:01]

That sucks.

Kyle Phillips

[1:00:02]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:00:02]

Right, right. You wanna, you don't wanna just win the game. You wanna win being able to win the game forever and to be invited back and continue to play because you love playing the game, right?

Kyle Phillips

[1:00:14]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that, I think that's, that's, that is really, that's the right way to be think about it, you know, And I, I think coming back to it, how many people, founders, right, they, they just found a problem and they built, tried to build a business off it, right. And they don't know anything else about businesses. Some just fall into it and they don't know. And that's where I feel like we can help, is helping them understand, like their growth, you know, and how many founders you found that they don't really have a vision, like a goal. It's like they, they have an idea.

Mark Abbott

[1:00:46]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:00:47]

But you say, well, where do you really want to go long term? They're like, well, I don't know. I don't really know exactly. I kind of tell you.

Mark Abbott

[1:00:53]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:00:53]

You know, but if you help them get that clarity, then the steps to that become a lot clearer because you know what, you know what your target is, you know what you're aiming at.

Mark Abbott

[1:01:01]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:01:01]

You know, and so I think that that's the, the type of thing to, to really help and where to put your resourcing and your time, given that.

Mark Abbott

[1:01:08]

This is where you're going, given that this is where you are developmentally, given everything that's going on now back. I think we started this conversation around focus. It just enables you to more confidently focus.

Kyle Phillips

[1:01:20]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:01:21]

And work on the things that matter at this moment in time and, and, and be able to be at peace with the fact that there's a lot of stuff just like on our roadmap we're not going to hit for. I mean, last question for you right before we do closing thoughts, is. And I've never. I, and I didn't prepare you for this one. Right. How far out in your brain right now do you have kind of a decent sense for what needs to be done?

Kyle Phillips

[1:01:52]

I think from a product standpoint, a couple years. Probably 2027.

Mark Abbott

[1:01:56]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:01:56]

Even early 2028.

Mark Abbott

[1:01:58]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:01:58]

I have an idea of. Based on where we think we're going, what the product needs to look like, all the little pieces that go to it. Not sure.

Mark Abbott

[1:02:09]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:02:09]

But it's like. Yeah, it's like I have this idea of, of what we would evolve to be, you know, and that the journey would take to get there. I could see how long.

Mark Abbott

[1:02:18]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:02:19]

But, yeah, probably a few years out, at least of what I want it to look like. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:02:23]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:02:24]

Because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty clear all the way to 20, 30 these days. And, and I'm looking forward. I know in our quarterly. Right. It's all saying, okay, so here's here, here's here, here's here, here's here, here's here. And, and then just manifesting that dream and turning it into reality like you is just. That's. Yeah, that's the super fun, cool stuff.

Kyle Phillips

[1:02:46]

I mean, I, I think you got to get like, excited about the journey of what you're trying to get to.

Mark Abbott

[1:02:52]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:02:52]

Even if you're not sure how you're going to get there. Yeah. Right. The road's not clear.

Mark Abbott

[1:02:55]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:02:55]

Because it's supposed, you're not supposed to be. Yeah. People already done it. So I try to get excited about the idea and then it's like, how are we going to get there and how are we going to solve the problems that come along with it and what else we're going to find along the way. Right. Because other things come in, you know, it's not a straight line. So you end up kind of market changes. We see how things, you know, how the whole world can change sometimes like on a dime and you know, that can change then what you do.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:20]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:21]

Because all of a sudden people are in need of something different. So you know, that's, that's what makes it fun.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:26]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:27]

Is you're not completely sure.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:28]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:28]

And you know, so I, I'm excited by it, you know, and I'm excited by the fact we get to help a lot of people build companies.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:36]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:36]

You know, and solve these kinds of problems and see them.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:39]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:39]

Prosper. Right. And get where they want to go.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:41]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:42]

Is like a good feeling. It feels like we're, we're creating like real like value for people.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:49]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:03:49]

Right. Like really providing something that like is, is helping the world, you know, ultimately grow. So, you know, it's pretty, it's pretty cool thing to be able to work on. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:03:59]

Yeah, it's really cool. Right. Because ultimately, you know, maybe I talk about too much, but for the society to be healthy, we need great small and mid sized businesses because they're the ones who are constantly helping us innovate and think about, you know, dealing with the issues. Because these issues are always evolving. And so, you know, small and mid sized businesses are, I believe they're the lifeblood of a healthy society. Improving the percentage of those businesses that are actually flourishing to me and then flourishing means that everybody involved, Right. All the ideal stakeholders are like, like, they actually like playing the game and they're enjoying the game together and they enjoy who they, who they serve and how they help. And so yeah, I, I love what we do and, and, and I really deeply appreciate like having you in this, on this, on this journey with us. And like mobile was, as I said, it's, you know, it's a, it's a, you know, hard, hard, hard to say it's exceeded expectations because you never. Yeah, I'm a karma guy and, but, but man, you, you guys exceeded expectations and it was, it's just been so cool to watch.

Kyle Phillips

[1:05:11]

Thank you. Yeah, no, I appreciate you letting me join this, join this organization and, and, and entrusting me to work on some of this stuff. Right. That's also a big thing for founders and trust. Right. Is letting somebody else work on things that you started.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:24]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:05:24]

And feeling like, you know, it's, they're going to keep going in the direction that you want to go, you know? And I'm, like, super grateful to work with a bunch of great people here who all want to build great stuff as well, you know, and they're not, they're not here just because it's a job. They're here because they're like, this has meaning for me.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:41]

Yeah.

Kyle Phillips

[1:05:42]

And that's the kind of people environment I like to be in.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:44]

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:45]

Well, thank you.

Kyle Phillips

[1:05:46]

Yeah, thank you.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:47]

It's been fun.

Kyle Phillips

[1:05:48]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:48]

Appreciate it.

Kyle Phillips

[1:05:49]

Yeah. This is great.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:49]

All right.

Mark Abbott

[1:05:50]

Cheers.