On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. Whenever I talk about goals, whether it's a business goal or a personal goal or any kind of goal that you're holding in your head, that goal has to align with your personal values. If it does not align with your personal values, you will most likely not accomplish the goal and you will most likely spend a lot of time in internal conflict, you know, that that can even manifest as, like, you know, pain.
You are listening to gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owner who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today.
We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get the Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? Chaz Wolfe.
I wanna tell you about my guest this week, Frank Oshlager, This guy has been in and around tech for I shoot. I remember what he just said. 20 plus years, probably maybe 30 years. This guy has a has a a super unique perspective on business, and now he provides consulting services to the tech space He breaks down so many pieces that literally, release tension points as a business is scaling.
This is exactly what he does for tech companies all over the world that pay him a ton of money, and he brings it to you today on Gathering the Kings. Grab that pen and paper here Alright, guys. Chaz Wolfe. I'm back gathering the Kings. I've got Frank, bro. Frank, you're gonna have to say your last name for me. So so this is the Americanized pronunciation of the name. Ull Schleger. Ull Schleger. Okay. So tell us where, I mean, just where does that come from? That's that's German.
Literally translated, it means oil striker. And and, yeah, and so it really comes the background is, that somewhere back in my distant family, they made linseed oil. And so they struck the oil out of linseed. So oil shryker is literally what it was. Yeah. Wow. Well, you're you're you're not in oil anymore. Well, first off, welcome. Welcome to the States. Welcome to the show. We appreciate you for having me. Really, really happy to be here.
Yeah. So so you're not in oil, but what what are you in now, Frank? Software and and technology. Yeah. So so, obviously, that means a bunch. Right? And so I want you to give me a little bit of idea. What what is I mean, we'll get into your history, and I know what you're doing currently looks a little different than maybe what you've done in the past. And so that's fantastic. Maybe give us a little variance of understanding there.
But, like, at today, where you are now, what is it that you're doing inside that industry? Yeah. So it's actually pretty interesting. Me and a couple other guys that have had similar journeys to me, have created this we call it enterprise technology consulting, and it's essentially a hybrid of management consulting and hands on technology consulting.
So a lot of our clients come to us when they are at an inflection point, with their product or service or you know, sometimes, when they have some kind of, existential challenge, or or even in, you know, there's a mark, you know, a life changing market opportunity that has presented itself, but, you know, they need to do something different in order to take advantage of it. And so we're very project based. We're very outcomes based, with our clients.
And, you know, we work with companies from startups, usually funded startups, all the way through, you know, multi $1,000,000,000, you know, global companies. So you work, you know, sort of across a lot of scale. So, you know, my elevator pitch, I'd say, you know, we're we're full stack and full life cycle.
Yeah. And so for for the guy who's listening or gal, who's, you know, most likely at a 6 figure mark, and they're trying to understand the positioning of of what you offer to some of these big companies. And and is it anything in the in the process from from just getting started to the nitty gritty to how to exit, or is there specifics in between? Give us an idea of kinda what you'd like to hone in Yeah.
So what we usually like to to hone in on is where, there's there's a problem space that is at the intersection of some business goal. It might be business advantage. It might be business survival. You know, it might be, you know, hey. Here's a new opportunity. We need to go pursue this and and and see what happens. And then, you know, we help them take that that business goal understand what role technology plays in that, you know, how to implement that technology.
And then a lot of times, you know, they won't have the resources or the skills to do it, you know, alone internally, or a lot of times it re requires change in process. It requires change sometimes even, you know, at a at a cultural level. Right? So when you're when you're truly doing something transformational for a company, you know, you just can't go slap in a tool. And, you know, and say, okay. We're done. Right? Right. Right. Unfortunately, people still try that.
You know, we've watched that fail for what 40 years now, and people are still trying it. So it it's sad. So, you know, what we do is we help them with all of those moving pieces. Right? You know, I'm an expert in change management. I have taken companies for at $30,000,000 a year that started to go backwards and, you know, help them change and become a $100,000,000 companies in in, like, 2 or 3 years. Right? So that's That's that's a transformation.
And you can't do that if you wanna have the same approach to things. If you wanna right, same way of doing things the same way of thinking because that's not that's not gonna get you there. It's not gonna move the needle. Yeah. It's funny that you said it. And, obviously, it's just It's just more zeros, but we we talk about that on the show all the time, which is maybe just less zeros and going from 6 to 7 figures, it's a different way of thinking.
It's, you know, you, like, currently someone listening most likely is in in the warrior stage, the grind stage where It's marketing to get new clients, sales to sell those clients, fulfillment of fulfilling the project of whatever that project service is, and then finance. So just getting the money organized. And so and you and you just repeat, right, as many times as you can, so you get big enough to where you have resources.
And now you can start thinking about, like, your team and a little bit more influence and maybe the next level and And so it's kind of the same thing. What you just said is that in order to go the next level, 30,000,000 to a 100,000,000 or you know, 400,000 to 1,200,000 or 1,200,000 to 5,000,000. Like, it it's a different way of thinking usually. It is.
And and you and you actually said something, and I don't know if you had intended to, but you put your finger right on the heart and and on the meat of it, which is is you need the ability to repeat. Right? Because if you can't repeat it and get the same results, then you can't scale it.
So if you wanna go if you wanna go from 6 to 7 figures and you haven't figured out to take what you're doing to create that six figures and make it repeatable so that somebody else can do it, then you're never gonna get to 7 figures or 8 figures or or 9 figures because ultimately, it's it's gonna be fractal. And even while you're rising above the grind Yeah.
Somebody still has to be building their business inside of what you're doing and feeling that grind because if nobody's feeling the grind, then, you know, complacency sets in and that's bad. That's bad for everybody. Right? So that grind never goes away. It just moves.
Yeah. And having the repeatable process or maybe even systems around those things so that someone else can step into it, not only gives it away so that that the owner, in this case, can move on to the next level, but it also allows for it to be scaled out to a team or even multiple departments or whatever that might look like. So so much good stuff already. We're only a couple of man's Angie's. This is this is this is great stuff.
Okay. So real quick, at this level in the game where you've had not only a major amount of success yourself, but now you're helping other companies have huge amounts of success. You said 30,000,000 to a 100,000,000. I mean, that's incredible in the tech space. So what why? Like, you're you're you've been doing this for a long time. Like, well, why still now? Why why are you here? Why are you pushing? Why are it like That's that's that's a really, really great question.
Because in, you know, my background is I'm a product guy. You know, I spent 25, 30 years. I don't wanna say how long, repeat, repeatedly building you know, B2B software companies, you know, the I including Chaz companies going all the way back to the nineties before it was called SAS, but it it wasn't application service provider either. We actually had, you know, essentially what you would call multitenant architecture today. Back back then.
So, you know, I've really thought of myself as a a, you know, product guy, a product innovator, you know, moving, you know, the needle forward. You know, we did geospatial analytics, machine learning stuff, in 1998. Right? Nobody nobody cared. At that point. Right? But, you know, we were really kinda doing some different things.
And then in, 2009, when we sold our last company, that our last product company that I did, to SAP, you know, I just was like, you know, 25 years of of back to back startups is you wanna talk about the grind. Seriously. That's why I have, you know, white hair. Thank god. But, so I just I knew I needed to, like, take a break and and step out. And so a buddy of mine, one of the other partners in in 10 Mile Square, which is our our technology company that I described a little bit earlier, Yeah.
You know, he was like, well, you know, why don't you come join us? You know, we're doing these really interesting projects, at the time, they were digitizing Strips Networks, which you might recognize as you know, food network, DIY channel, Chaz, all that sort of stuff. So that was, you know, kind of like cool stuff, and he sold me on the interestingness of the work and and sort of a work life balance. And I thought, okay. I'll go give consulting a try for a couple of years.
That was 10 years ago. Yeah. I'm still here. I'm still there, and I've absolutely I've absolutely fallen in in love with it. You know, if if I'm, you know, depending on my mood, you know, and, stuff like that, you know, I somebody asked me the question. I might say, well, you know, I used to have all of my own problems that I created myself on a daily basis, but now I get to solve other people's and sleep better at night. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
It's kind of a shift in perspective because you can go in and and, you know, not that you don't have co ownership you know, when you're working with your client on outcomes, you absolutely do. Yeah. But, you know, it's, you know, my business Regardless of the state of my client's business, because a lot of times they'll come to me again at these sort of existential challenges. You know?
You know, in in more than one example, you know, uh-uh, CEO has brought me in because You know, there was an explosion of relationship with, you know, whoever was running, you know, technology, and they they just needed somebody to figure out what was actually going on. And so, you know, you have to come in and and really deal with, you know, a lot of lot of different dynamics but you didn't create them, and you don't own how they got there.
You know, you're just there to help figure out how to smooth things out or or move move things in the right direction. So it's a it's just a really a different perspective to be able to come in with you get to really help people a lot. So, you know, why I still am passionate about why I really like doing it is I I get to help a lot of different companies, a lot of different people, be more successful. And and and I like Chaz, you know, because a lot of times, It's I don't know.
You ever watched that that show, the dog whisperer with that guy, Caesar? Yeah. I've heard I've I've heard it. I actually seen clips of it is really one of this. Okay. So so the punch line is that there's never a problem with the dog. It's always how the owners of the dog are treating the dog or or the signals Right? Yep. Exactly. It it's it's the same. Right?
You go into these technology companies or or, you know, or these companies that rely on technology and you just gotta get them to stop doing the things that are hurting themselves. And and, you know, that can really, really help a lot. And then you can get people that had you know, maybe a a bad idea about how to do something, get them on the right path, and then they can start being successful. Then they can start learning and and that feels good. So I like that.
Yeah. You know, we also get to create jobs. Like, you know, one of the reasons that I got into being an entrepreneur way back when was because I wanted to be able to create jobs for people. And and I've all that's been a thread throughout my career, and I still like doing Chaz. And, we actually just hired a couple of people at at our company, that are, you know, they've got some good basic, you know, basic core skills, and and we're gonna grow them and do, like, really good technology experts.
So, you know, that's awesome. Yeah. There there's a rewarding, you know, part to or I may maybe or a fulfillment part to what you're talking about. It's it's the legacy play of I've done this so many times, and I feel the same way, even though We've been doing it for different lengths of time, and we're in completely told different different industries. When I can go into someone else's business, first off, it takes a certain mind. So Congratulations. It doesn't mean that you you're any better.
It just means that you've got you've got the ability to see the forest differently. Partially because you're outside of it. Right? You didn't create the problem, like you said. But then you've got this knack, obviously, with your business or with your mindset to walk into a business, and be able to have a fresh perspective, but yet solution oriented and be able to align all these pieces Chaz to your point, a lot of times are all combobulated.
What I heard in there, that I really wanna point out to the to the listener, because I think it's so important, again, with with the the majority of the listener right now at being sick figures trying to get to the 7 figure mark, they feel all over the place. Right? They feel chaotic. They feel like they're wearing a bunch of hats. They're stressed to the max.
And what you just said at the 5, 10, a $100,000,000 mark is that you've got this CEO who's stressed head spinning like crazy because he just had this issue in the business. And that's when you get brought in is under the under the pressure or the stress of, I can't figure it out. Right? And so even though they're doing a lot more revenue, and maybe they're thinking differently, I'm sure that they are at that level.
But the reality of it is that problems still exist and and and and oftentimes need, outside help. And so I just think that's such a good perspective to know at a at a small business because if you know that the guys, you know, at the bigger players are are dealing with the same stuff, then you can look at, well, what do they do to fix it? You know? Right? Yeah. And and you know how to run from it.
And and when you're a smaller business, you know, you you might think you know, I don't have the ability to get their those kind of resources to to help me. Right? But they're, you know, companies like mine and and dozens of others You know, we know how to scale our services back to to not break your wallet and still yield effective results. Right? And and it just, you know, it means you have to be a lot more focused and and you you might have to go a little slower than you want. You know?
But if you know, you can still help. The other thing I would say to especially 6 figure business owners is use use your local resources. So for example, I I live in Virginia, but I I work with a program in Virginia called the Maryland tech council, and they have this thing called the Venture Mentor Services. So you you have to be invited in sort of nominated to be a a mentor and and you get a little bit of special training.
And and so it's a cadre of of people who have, you know, been through the grind. A few times, you know, have demonstrated that they know what a successful pathway looks like. And and then we help in turn companies in in Maryland that apply that need mentors. And, you know, a lot of these companies are trying to get, you know, to their 1st 1,000,000 in in revenue. Some of them haven't even figured out how to get revenue yet. Right?
You know, they put their product out there and they're like, how do I get somebody to pay for this? Right? And so we go in on a on a volunteer basis, a pro bono basis, and and we use a team mentoring approach and really help these these companies you know, get going. And, you know, that's I like doing that too because that's another way to give back, and and it keeps me really plugged into what's going on, you know, innovatively.
You know, kind of companies are being born, what what ideas are people thinking about. And, you know, not that I would ever use that for anything other than just, you know, learning, you know, what the trends and patterns are. Yeah. Exactly. Trends and patterns. It's everything, especially when you're working in an industry from a high perspective in lots of different places. It it's funny that you say actually said two things I wanna kinda maybe circle in on.
Number 1, I mean, that's fantastic that you have that in your area. You know, if someone doesn't have that in their area, there's gonna be you know, small business administration, division, help center most likely in their city that they can get, like, help up with a business plan. They can help with some of my marketing ideas. There's obviously individual business coaches. There's local chapters that they can meet people and try to take people to lunch. I just think of edible arrangements.
My first business that I bought. And I was like, okay. Who are the top 3 guys? What are the phone numbers? And I called them. Hey. They're across the country. I couldn't take them to lunch, but I'm like, hey. When when the convention comes, I wanna buy you dinner. And I would just wanna and I and I would bring my notepad. Right? And I wrote I wrote down all the things that they had done and and that worked and didn't work. I mean, it's as simple as that. Right?
Yeah. So you're saying getting around other people. Getting around other people. And, you know, I think networking coaches, you know, you mentioned you know, mastermind groups, all these things are resources. You know, and and different ones work different ways. There's there's free ones. There's low cost ones. There's invitation only ones. You gotta you gotta look at your own business, your own situation. You know, what's what's the cohort look like?
In the group, you know, is it a good cohort for you? You know, you gotta evaluate all that stuff. Yeah. I love that perspective of of making it purposeful.
I I wanna get your initial thought on this because I had, a situation here this past week where and this isn't the first time this has ever happened, but I had someone, in a conversation talking about an investment, personal development investment And I was just chatting with him about it, and it was the most that they had ever spent in this regard. Right? And this option for for, this guy's business it was a little bit abstract.
Like, the result was, you know, maybe you meet some people, maybe you don't, maybe maybe you, you know, like, the it's it's a little bit of like, okay. Well, if I go that you just told me about in Maryland or if I go to the SBA, like, what am I gonna get? And you're like, well, you're gonna meet somebody, and you're gonna connect with them, and you're gonna take them to lunch, and I don't know what they're gonna tell you.
Like, I just talked about the edible arrangements guys, but you're gonna at least know someone that you didn't know before and some things that you didn't know before.
But my my point here, my question for you is this, is that in the tech space, especially when we're talking about, like, you know, going from 30 to a 100,000,000, just such bigger numbers, does it apply that when you make a scary decision, and that could be bringing you guys in at maybe a large investment or at a CEO level investment.
Like, do you see it apply to the individual thinking or the business thinking that when a scary investment is made, then it's like, even though that was scary is what is exactly what we needed because it, like, literally pushed us into making it happen. Like, is this making sense? Is this my is my question, my sense?
Yeah. No. And it it's funny because, you know, there's a lot of you know, sort of psychology, you know, that that goes into the kind of work that I do that I, you know, specializing because it is very change is scary. Change is scary for everybody. Even even the people who have to pull the trigger you know, and and often the change and and bless it. And, you know, I don't really make it less scary for them up front because I Wolfe so if you're a CEO and and you're telling me you know, hey.
I I want to do a full agile transformation, you know, across across my whole company, you know, help me figure out how to make that happen and then, you know, use your you know, train resources and and come in and and work with us and make it happen. The first thing that I will tell them is this is not a set and forget exercise. You have to be actively part and actively vocal of that transformation yourself.
Because, you know, change is a thing that requires not only active resistance against entropy. You're actually trying to move the needle in a different direction. So, you know, basic physics, right, if it you have to pour more energy into the system then it's currently consuming. Right? And you have to do that for a while. Yeah. So, you know, a lot more than you think.
So this is not, you know, you're gonna send out an email for a couple of weeks reminding people there's a natural transformation going. Hey, guys. We're transitioning everything. Right. You know? So, you know, I I I actually I want them to not be scared of the change. I I want them to be thoughtful and intentional about what they need to do personally to make that change. Have a any chance of of success.
And I think, you know, even though it's daunting at first because they thought they could just say, thou shalt be agile. And Right. And it will and, you know, they realize it's a much different proposition than that, but that knowledge also arms them. Right? Because now they have a mental map in their head for how the company is gonna move from a to b. Whereas when they were in the declarative mode, you know, there's no map, mental map for that. Right?
They they see now, and they have a state there. Everything in the middle is a fog Chaz makes the change scary because they don't understand how it moves from from a to b, but if so, you can walk them through that, but you have to get them to make that map connection. You can't just draw the map for them. Right? You Right. You know, you know, you have to be part of this. And, you know, you have to breathe energy into that.
And, you know, this is and and they build that math themselves, and and that's the psychology. Yeah. I know. It's huge. I, in fact, earlier, when you said, that you were the change. I can't remember exactly the title that you used, but the change agent in essence, you're right. It's so much, thought process and mindset that goes in top down, all, like, literally from the top down. And and even just applying this again to our listeners who are most likely 6 figures.
It's like, you know, maybe it's just them and 1 or 2 other guys, but the standard, the standard of operation, the process that we do things, whether they're repeatable or not. Like, all these ties together, does it not? Like, we're if I'm gonna hand this off, it's gotta start with me, whether it's changing or whether I'm just literally building it from ground 0, the ownership piece that you're talking about can't just be, well, here, here you go. There you go.
Yeah. So here's here's a real world example, for you, for somebody who's at a 6 figure level. Right? And, you know, you've been building based what's essentially you know, a B2C or maybe even like an expert to consumer, you know, kind of business model. And, you know, that that scales to a certain point. And, you know, maybe you figured out how to make it repeatable. And so now you're gonna put a platform around it.
You start building a form around it, and and you're showing some some people and there's some interest. And suddenly, a fortune 500 company calls you and says, hey. Some of our people started using this. We would just wanna get an enterprise license. And it needs to integrate seamlessly, you know, with our with our HR system. So here I am. I can imagine they get the guy getting the phone call on that end who's 6 figures, and he just he probably just, you know, soiled himself. Right.
So but, you know, here's here's the reality. Right? You know, you're working on this with with probably everything you've got.
You know, you have a part time developer that you hired off of, you know, guru.com or or whatever who's not vested in anything, you know, other other than their, you know, hourly hourly rate for, you know, checking in code that you know, it's doing what you want as as it evolves, you know, under your due diligence because you you didn't really have a master product plan anyway because this is evolving as you go. Right. So, you know, what do you do?
I mean, because to to solve the need of this big company, you know, you're gonna have to throw, you know, $2300,000 at this product right now. Yep. And string them along for a month or 2 months while you actually, you know, rebuild it. Build what, you know, the things they need. And they and they need to know that. Not really string them along, but, you know, say, you know, hey. You know, we didn't build this as an enterprise product.
You know, the HR integration is gonna take, you know, this in blah blah blah and and you work all that now. But, you know, this is a business model change. You know, this is this is a complete, you know, essentially left turn, you know, from where from where you were going.
Yeah. Oh, you know, if if you were building this you know, because you have some purpose, some mission, you know, that that you were, you know, trying to create, you know, say equity for a class of people, you know, by creating this app that, you know, does whatever it does. Selling to a major corporation so that, you know, they can check-in ESG box on on their HR checklists. You know? Right. Right. Is that is that still Wolfe your mission? Right? You know? Right.
What are you gonna do about that? How do you weigh those opportunities? These are the things that that make these kinds of decisions scary, and it can happen. And and then so the reason I'm telling the story It can happen at any level. You don't have to be a 10 or a 100 or or a $1,000,000,000 company to have, life altering choices put in in your path, you know, Chaz can happen anytime. Yeah. You're a 100% right.
And and, I mean, I think if we're all honest, like, a lot of these especially for the entrepreneur who's got a lot of ideas. Sometimes this could be this could be daily. So how do you determine or how have you seen other successful, CEOs that you worked with determine what's just an idea, or in this case, you know, an enterprise level something that came to us. It's a real opportunity. It's not a quote, unquote idea, but it's a distraction.
Like, how do you how do you eliminate distraction versus Wow. This is something that we had thought of. This is a left turn, but but if we go down this route, it does fill our mission. It does make us more money. It does create more jobs like whatever that checklist is, but how how do you how do you in that moment do that decision? So, I mean, you know, from from a pure business sense, You know, the the first question is, does this advance my current goal, my current priority? Right?
And and for a lot of small businesses, the current goal or the or the current priority is, you know, grow revenue. Right? You know, add add top line sales. And and that's, you know, really that's a driver for for a lot of small small businesses You know, some of them get to a point where the priority shifts and becomes, you know, deliver on commitments because Right. They were got so busy selling and got so good at that.
They they forgot to map out, you know, the execution, so that they could do it well for everybody. Right? So the early customers that went, oh, these people are awesome. You know, then translated to the next level of customers that are like, they never show up. Right. You know, so you you gotta kinda you gotta kinda keep that balance. Right? So priorities and business change. And and so you have to evaluate any given opportunity in terms of does it advance that goal?
Does it detract from that goal? Does it put that goal at risk? Does it support that goal? Because everything has to be baked around that. The other thing that I would say, because whenever I talk about goals, whether it's a business goal or a personal goal, or any kind of goal that you're holding in your head, that goal has to align with your personal values.
If it does not align with your personal values, you will most likely not accomplish the goal, and you will most likely spend a lot of time in internal conflict. You know, that that can even manifest as, like, you know, pain, you know, physical pain in your body, because you're fighting against yourself by trying to accomplish it. And it's To the core. Yeah. To the core. And if you do somehow manage to pull it off, and you're just gonna be really miserable.
Yeah. Or it's something that, your core needs to change. Right? So your identity Chaz change in that regard if it's gonna be, you know, to your point, successful. And, obviously, James clear talks about this in atomic habits. Like, you have to you actually have to make habits based on your identity, which is exactly what you're saying. Cause if it you can you can routinely do something, but if it's against your core beliefs of who you are or your identity, Good luck.
It Yeah. 21 days, 75 days, 75 it doesn't matter. Yep. No, that's a that's such good, insight there. I hope that the listener is writing some stuff down because in essence, what what you've just given you is the exact formula to make good decisions. And so you have to align it with not only what is the what is the goal here, but then who are you? Like, what is does it align with who you are as an individual as the business owner? And we talk about this.
When we talk about just transition from warrior to king, because warriors were worried about the biz or worried about the the battle only. The king has to worry about all these other things and and worry, I say lightly, but has the responsibility or has the pleasure of worrying about all these other things. Right? And so you have to be able to make sure that those things align with who you are because there's other people probably writing on that Chaz decision.
So let's flip the coin here, Frank. Let's talk about a bad decision. You didn't give us an exact quote, unquote, good decision that you made, but you gave us the process. And I love I love that. So if you flip the coin, give us an example of a bad decision that you've made in business. That the listener could hear and be like, oh, okay. Let me steer clear of that. Yeah. So that's, I have one. This is a great one for you. So we were we were enterprise software company, basically delivering art.
This is still selling in sort of enterprise soft So we delivered our software to our clients and it and it ran on a computer and and their local data center. And and the reason is because it was sort of a real time data integration product, right? So it need kind of local access and it moved data around all willy nilly. Not like other products used to do it back in the in those days.
Okay. So, we sold our our product to a company that wanted to use it for something completely different than what we designed it to do. So we sold it outside our product market fit. So here's the TLDR. Boris decision ever made, a decision I would warn every business owner not to make. Is don't sell your product or your service out of your established product market fit, right, unless you've got a really good trust relationship with that customer, and they know that that that's the case.
And and it's gonna be adapted. Right? So, you know, so our our sales team told the product to this this company to support a use case that we did not support out out of the box. And so we committed to them to modify our product, to do that. By the 2nd or 3rd week in into the project of working with them it became pretty obvious that there was a lot of pretty toxic internal politics going on around this what this project was was part of that inside.
And on our first iteration delivery to the client, because we We're doing this iteratively. We're trying to adapt the product, you know, with with feedback. Right? You know, very agile process, you know, that people would expect. And on the first iteration that we delivered to them, they basically slammed it 9 ways to to Sunday, and and listed all of the features that hadn't been implemented yet, which weren't even scheduled to be implemented yet. Right. Chaz version 1. Right.
But basically said that we had delivered something un unworkable, and they were gonna terminate the contract. And, they were they were gonna sue us for a full refund of the money they'd already paid us. So that wasn't a a good position to be in. You know, our team My entire product team, the entire engineering team, were completely demoralized, because they they delivered exactly what they had signed up to deliver. Right? Right. And Right.
Thought they had done a good job on it, and they did do a good job on it, but there was not gonna be any successful outcome with that client in any shape or or way. So, you know, my big lesson, my big takeaway is you know, don't sell your product outside of your established product market fit.
Now I think Frank probably, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys the sales team, you're you allowed the sales team to do it because going back to what you just said on a good decision is top line revenue. Right? Like, hey. Top line revenue. We chased. We yeah. So we were still we were still trying to establish a foothold in in the market. You know, we we hadn't really figured out a repeatable sales. Like, well, yeah, we were bleeding cash. We needed money, you know, all the things.
And, yeah, that's just vulnerable. That's that's That's why we did it. And and, you know, we thought we could pull it off. Right. But, you know, we obviously didn't. And and so earlier when you said, you're you're selling, let's say, B2C, and you and you have a client who heard about the B2C, and they say, hey. We wanna buy an enterprise level.
Same product, same usage, you make that pivot or even investment of time and resources to go after that sale, But over here, basically, you're saying, like, it's so far out of the realm of what our target market was or our avatar. And so that's why it was a bad decision. Yeah. So that's a very good thing. I'm glad you you kinda revisit that because I don't want people to get confused.
So in the first one where there's a pivot, a, there's a pivot involved, and it's a pivot in business model, but the use case is largely the same. Right? The it was who's paying for it? Who's buying it? You know, who's at what size? What scale it is. Right? You know? Right. But, you know, what the app fundamentally does for the people using it doesn't change, you know, and how it's governed, how it's delivered, you know, maybe that changes. Right.
And in our in our case where we made that mistake, it was, you know, we solved a a set of very specific data integration challenges. And what this customer wanted to do had nothing to do with any of them. Why why did they want you? So I, you know, I well, so I think at the time so what they wanted to do, there was no product on the market that that could have done that. And I think even today, there's there's probably only 1 or 2 that that could really address what they were trying to do.
They didn't wanna invest the money to build out their own product. They wanted to take the bid of what you had and try to create something, which, to your point, is just left field and and shiny object syndrome. And and, unfortunately, the circumstances were right and you secreted in. Yeah. And we and and we did.
And, you know, if they had in, you know, again, if the relationship with them had been different, you know, over time, I think, you know, we could have adapted what we were doing for them, but that still wouldn't have changed the fact that it was a complete one off. Right? I think in the history of technology, you know, maybe what they needed to do has been done 3 or 4 times. Sure. Yeah. So there's no market there. Right?
So the it was just bad decision all the way or in hindsight, you know, you can just It's super clear. All the flags were there. Right? Yeah. It's tough. It's tough, which I think is super authentic, right, because, like, we all, as entrepreneurs, go through this. Whether we're in a tight spot like you guys were, where we're kind of clouded our judgment, or we're making good decisions. And we get to just get too excited about something that that we probably shouldn't have.
We get a little too boastful around our growth, around our resources coming in. We get we get a little miscalculated. It happens all the time. So I think it's super, authentic for the listener to be able to understand that this happens. You just gotta try to, you know, learn as you go. It doesn't mean that you just make all these decisions and go say, hey. I'm in a bunch of bad decisions. Obviously, we learn from them, but but we wanna be tactical.
We wanna go back to what you said as far as, okay, does this align with our business goals. Okay. Great. Does it align with who I am individually as a CEO as an as the owner? Does it align with what our company mission is? And if those things are hit, then, obviously, there's some more there's more details usually in a decision, but, man, that's a great place to start. Yeah. It is.
Because it's really, really hard to say no. To money, especially when you're when you're in the grind and you're struggling for survival or you're or, you know, maybe you're right on the edge of that breakeven and, you know, you're like, yeah, I just wanna hit Chaz. You know? But, you know, sometimes it's the right call. Sometimes saying no to money is actually the thing that Wolfe let you survive to fight another day. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oddly enough, I enjoy it.
It's so weird to me, but it's like finding a client that isn't the right fit. It's like the I'm the first one to be like, hey. You know what? Let me back out because no. Because I got too many things going on. I got too many companies, too many decisions. Too many, you know, flows or irons in the fire that I can't have this one mistake.
Now it doesn't mean that I don't make bad decisions because we all do, but you know, if you can if you can embrace what you just said, which is be able to basically step away from the deal. I learned that negotiation. You gotta be always willing to walk away. Always. Otherwise, you're gonna be influenced to make sticky decisions out of necessity. Right? Okay. Let's do the speed round. Here, Frank, I'm curious to know some of your is on these.
From your perspective, obviously, technology might be a little different, but generally speaking, in all of the companies that you've owned been a part of or consulted with, If you could just window all of them down into one metric that you would track forever and ever, what would it be? Cash flow. Cash is always king 100 percent of the time. You either make money or you have no business. Well, you gotta you gotta you gotta brokopy up. Right? You're making money or you're a charity. Right?
You know, those are your 2 options. That's right. Cut and dry. Okay. So what book would you recommend a 6 figure earner read trying to get to the 7 figure mark? A book that I would read anybody who's trying to build a business of any kind, is called the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. And K. And, he'd been Horowitz, it of, you know, of Andreessen Horowitz, you know, the a to z you know, Capitol out in in Silicon Valley.
He he started a a network monitoring, you know, kind of company way back in the beginning of the of the dotcom boom. The reason I like his book, more than any other business book is because in every other business book written, they say the same 8 or 11 things. They just have their own way of saying it. And most of them talk about what things look like on the happy path.
Most of them talk about, you know, things, you know, to do when when you wanna scale and, you know, or, you know, Again, you know, the positive successful, you know, rosy look at things. Right. Ben talks about everything he did wrong and, you know, how he got there and, you know, in hindsight, what would have been a better way to handle it.
And I learned more from that one book than I think I've read from than I've from every single other management leadership, self improvement book I've ever read. Yeah. Well, if if there's ever been a book promo, Frank. I know. Right? You just gave it. I know. It's just Yeah. It's a incredible just books that really changed the way I thought about startups. Yeah. I love it. I think that's, super applicable.
Okay. And we kinda talked about this earlier with with, mastermind groups and stuff like that, but do you intentionally network? Are you part of any groups or anything like that? Yeah. Absolutely. Actually, I'm trying to to build, a new in person group now that people are that weather's starting to warm up and people are are willing to go out. You know, we can meet, you know, there's a a a great little coffee shop down the down the road here, and, they have nice outdoor seating and Nice.
It's, you know, partially covered. So, you know, I think people would be willing to do that at this point. Yeah. You know, what I found is that you know, tighter knit social people, you know, groups are willing to get together indoors, but, you know, the the random, you know, person you know, on LinkedIn is is still like, well, can we meet at a coffee shop outside somewhere?
I'm trying I'm trying to kinda coalesce these two things and and and put a new group of people together that come from a variety of perspectives and and, you know, essentially what I will call the the specialized service provider you know, ring, which is how I would classify kind of what we're doing right now. So kind of an ad hoc, you know, invite only kind of mastermind, you know, group where we can help each other.
I mentioned the the mentoring that I do I'm also part of a, sort of a more ninja group that's a business continuity task force within the, you know, Maryland Tech Council. Yeah. So we help we help people there. And that kind of resonates a little bit with my day job anyway, because these people are in the crisis of keeping their revenue streams alive. So a lot of companies got hit very, very hard when quarantine came, you know, COVID, you know, business models had to change.
And we think, you know, mostly about you know, frontline workers, you know, the service industry is being the most impacted, and they were horribly impacted. I don't mean to take away from them at all, but you know, software companies that support retail outlets, on a SaaS basis, you know, also guide in acted pretty hard and and essentially had to reinvent themselves overnight.
So, you know, if you are, for example, the, you know, office management and scheduling some for, you know, a doctor's offices and you're delivered, you know, from the cloud. And, you know, suddenly, you know, they don't have ten people using their software every day anymore. You know, they need Right.
You know, one license, you know, or maybe maybe you got cute and too charged, you know, a per appointment, you know, fee as opposed to a fee and, you know, they went from 80 appointments, you know, a week to 2 appointments. Yeah. Yeah. A huge huge change. Right? So, you know, it kinda it rippled throughout the whole ecosystem, and and so, you know, we help a lot of those companies figure out how to survive you know, when they're the whole entire basis of their revenue stream just went away.
Yeah. 100%. Okay. Last question, Frank. If you lost it all, if you if you if you didn't have, you know, your consulting business now, what would you do? Like, if you lost it all, just all clients are gone. Nobody'd call tomorrow. How would you do? I would take one of the 5 ideas I a week that I have. That I jot down, but aren't prioritized to do anything with. And I'm gonna build a product or a company around it. And I just don't know why not.
If I've lost everything, I've got nothing left to lose. So go for it. You know, take the best idea and and run with it. You know, I've done it before. I can do it again. That's right. That's right. The the the startup world can can come back again. That's right. Frank, you've been you've been such a a value of you know, for the listener today. And and for me, I think that, we've had some great conversation here. And so how can someone connect with you?
They've resonated with just the things that you've shared, or maybe maybe they have, a $100,000,000 company. They're looking to go to 200, or they need some change agents. How can they reach you? Yeah. So, you know, couple e easiest way is to email me, frank at 10 milesquare.com. You can check out my bio on LinkedIn. You can look me up. Frank Holschlager. I think it'll be spelled somewhere I don't have to do it here. You know, you know, you can also go to our website, 10 milesquare.com.
You can find me on Twitter at devontthink. Devont, by the way, is an old walloon where which means to, lead the edge of. Oh, that's that's that's my handle. Yeah. Yeah. Not like it. I like to think that I'm thinking the leading edge of things. Wolfe, and and if somebody's not, then they're not gonna have a clue what that means. So, you know, you're you're bringing in your ideal market. Right? And and because I'm absolutely shameless, I also have to plug.
You may notice I'm sitting in a music studio here. I did notice. You can also, find my music, at frankolshlager.com. Love it. Or you can look me up on Spotify or Apple or Amazon or or anywhere else that you want. And, I've got a a new project right now called null hypothesis for recording an album. So look for that before the end of the year. That's awesome. Yeah. I noticed the guitars in the corner and, and thought there's gotta be there's gotta be a reason. So that's fantastic.
Well, I hope that the listener took good notes today. Frank, you gave them, more than than, within what I told them they were gonna so that's fantastic. I appreciate that love over delivering. So best of luck in in not only just the projects that you got going on, but in your music, I'd love to hear that. And so thank you again for being on the show, brother. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to gathering the Kings.
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