Jeff chats with industry veteran Bill Whitebone of http://www.advancevelocity.com/, to discuss how he transitioned from Services to physical products, and now to pure consulting. Bill walks through how he effectively built partner teams and also the best way to use offshore resources.

Transcript:

Jeff  00:07

Hey there, it's Jeff from getting services done podcast. Got my next episode coming up here and one of the great things about starting this podcast is I've heard from a lot of people that I hadn't chatted with in a while we've all been super busy with our families in our careers and Bill Whitebone. We were a project managers together. In DECA believe I hadn't really talked or seen him since I think 2006 Or seven I feel like I bumped into him in the hallways of Vistaprint one time but anyways, we we got together for lunch one time or coffee and we just started, you know, shooting the shit and going over stuff. And suddenly I was like crap, I really wish Brian the microphone and recorded some of this. So we got back together last week. And we went over really just a lot of stuff. Bill's done some great things. He was, obviously in professional services, went to do some actual physical product stuff at Vistaprint and some other places and was able to give that sort of product and professional services perspective. And now he's often consulting, he also led a large group of people over at Acquia. They used a lot of partners to do to deliver in their work. So he's got some good perspective on partners and using offshore components. And just all in all a great recording with a with a great guy. So it was it was a blast to do. I hope you enjoy. I will try and get my show notes out there. I the reason why this is a little later is that I had sent this over to somebody on Fiverr that I had found and then he couldn't complete it because he had I guess college exams. So I just wanted to get this out there. But I'll get some show notes up on medium soon. So feel free to fire any questions in and thanks a lot. All right, so we are recording. This is Jeff Krish Merrick and I'm here with the Bill White Bone, which is one of the great things I found from when I started this podcast out is that I've gotten to chat with a lot of people that I hadn't talked to in a while. And Bill had reached out to me and I swear to God, we hadn't talked to each other. 2008. Exactly. Which is great. And then we got together for a cup of coffee. And I was like Jesus, why have no microphone. But then I was like, well, we got into some stuff that we probably wouldn't get rid of which is nothing bad. It's just memes. And real. Yeah, what's going on with this guy and stuff that's total inside baseball that that people probably don't want to hear and everything. So Bill, I have lots of stuff to chat about. I'll try and keep it under the hour. But why don't you tell me? So first things I forgot even what you did before we were together at in DECA. We were both project leaders and I feel like there's a point in time we're actually sitting next to each other. Yeah, it's a memory. It's hard because you know, we moved offices and things like that. So

Bill Whitebone  04:12

yeah. Do you remember that myself? Yeah. So before I got to InDeck I was actually a digital house. Yeah, so that digitize for about four years. And I really interesting story actually how I ended up but digitize. I was at the MathWorks so I was doing web development. My brother was at the MathWorks briefly so it was it was it was the hot time right so that everybody was looking for that next opportunity. So I was at the MathWorks for six months and digitise approached me and said, Hey, how about we give you 50% More compensation? Can you come over here and do some project management not just do development?

Jeff  04:49

So that's that's good. Getting paid more money is a good thing here. Thanks.

Bill Whitebone  04:53

It worked out. Well. Yeah, it was definitely definitely something that was of interest to me.

Jeff  04:58

You know what, now that you've said the digital thing. I now remember that because there was a point in time where people were like, We need real project man. Like, I'm like, wow, we're getting some real legit people in here. Like, I'll just step over here for now.

Bill Whitebone  05:15

Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, what they said to me i It's time I was purely developing and I, they said you can be 50%, developer 50% project manager. And from day one, I never did another line of code. It's pure project management, day one. And that's what I did, which I'm happy about I'm glad the way things have progressed. And it was a it was a good start as far as project management for me. So that's where I was before. So working with big clients, like FedEx, worked with Boeing were some really interesting projects. And then ended up moving over to in Dhaka was looking for something smaller, and actually did a little bit of consulting in between, which was interesting.

Jeff  05:57

So it just sort of if people aren't familiar, so DECA were gone, I worked, we basically were on the professional services team for a product company, at the time, the product, no SaaS model, nobody even knew what that was. It was basically you're deploying a server somewhere and then building up the user interface for the side. And it's also the thing that drives their whole customer experience. So my question to you, actually, from people coming from an agency background into that, what was the sort of the big shifts that you noticed from there?

Bill Whitebone  06:35

Yeah. So something that I really realized that did you toss was that when you're working at an agency, you know, everything right? So that's, that's the way you approach everything that's you're looking for whatever work comes your way, and you'll make it happen. And there was a lot of making it happen. So we there were instances where there was products that we had never used that I would go get trained after we just after we sold the deal, right. So interesting, right? Like, oh, go learn Sitecore or something like that. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So is there were multiple instances that that happened. So I would become the expert as I was doing the work. in Dhaka, never knowing that. Right, right. Yeah. Always, always been working with this. I've always been an expert with it. It's well worth what you're paying.

Jeff  07:23

Don't Don't don't hire one of your people to learn it. Pay us so I can go learn it and charge it. Absolutely.

Bill Whitebone  07:30

Yeah, so So being in Dhaka was it was very different, right? That we were the experts, we actually worked only in this product. And we knew it inside and out. Right. So that that was something that was really different. For me, it was to have that that focus on one product be doing the same thing on a day to day basis to it. That was, I felt like I was I was the classic. The classic person who had lots of experience brought experience, but didn't have the depth of experience while I was in the agency world, right. And then moving over, I didn't know the product inside and out the people. I worked with all new details, amazing details about it. So I really liked that. And it was a distinctly different experience.

Jeff  08:12

You mentioned that expertise, I'd forgotten about that. Because we kind of had to be, we had to the hats we were project management, business analysis, I think account management and customer success, because there's none of that, right. It was basically you got an account and you ran it. And you occasionally heard from the salesperson when it was getting close to renewal if everything was okay,

Bill Whitebone  08:35

exactly, exactly that those are the old days of customer success before customer success was called what it is now. Right. It's it was from inception to ongoing support that we were we were representing for the foreign DACA. And you came

Jeff  08:50

on if I remember, and I believe it was a credit card company moves like you were sort of your sort of program managing a whole bunch of things. Am I correct on that one, like you had this really big customer that you kind of had as well or? I'm trying to express I believe it was that yours or

Bill Whitebone  09:06

American Express was mine at when I was at Digital so I was working. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah, yes, I didn't add in Dhaka I'd had a whole breadth of different clients when I was in a DACA which was was really interesting. You know, they ran from the very large to very small I remember one was a huge, huge timeshare company or timeshare rental company that that was that was a really challenging one actually the most interesting one for me was Autozone

Jeff  09:37

so oh my god yeah, that's right. Forgot about that.

Bill Whitebone  09:40

I'm a car guy. So my dream but I I ran into things concerning vehicles that I had never seen as challenges. The hierarchy of vehicles is one of the most challenging things in the world, I think, oh my god. Variations in vehicles was such a challenge for us to implement.

Jeff  09:59

Yeah, out there, we you know, we were a big pipeline back into the product because we're out there trying to implement it. And it's like, look, this is real world, these these are the categories that they have. And we have to make it work. Right. Exactly, exactly. It's funny you said that, but for some bizarre reason, I was always getting put on these adult product product projects. I don't know why he never got those.

Bill Whitebone  10:20

I do remember that one. I told that story to this day. Who wants to work on this? This is the the gist of what it is. And the dark room. Exactly, exactly. Closed Door.

Jeff  10:35

Oh, man. And then the funny the words to top that one off when I was at Bright code, we signed up Playboy as customer and I had no male project managers. But why I had this one awesome. Female, she's like, I'll take it there. There'll be fun to hang out with. I was like, Oh my God, and then everybody's like, you get what I'm like, Listen. That's okay. You got to do. So walk me through after I believe is that when you went to go work for a product company after that? Was that when you went over to Vistaprint?

Bill Whitebone  11:10

Yes. Yep. So yeah, I went over to Vistaprint Vistaprint was, was really different for me, I, I started there as a program manager. And the first program that I managed was actually a physical product. So I had never in my career, created a physical product. So it was everything was digital. So they told me that they wanted to start making customized mugs. So not only was it a hard product for me that I was producing, but it actually was the first FDA controlled product that they were they were putting, or FDA controlled. Yeah, so because they they actually touch your mouth, you need to make sure that product doesn't have any contaminants in it, that would be bad for you.

Jeff  11:55

That's crazy. You know, it's funny, you bring that up, I just just yesterday was you know, I was like starving and I like ran into like Whole Foods and I grabbed like those Justin almond butter packets or whatever. And I just like rip it open and squealing you know, in second time, I'm like, You like this is so disgusting. Like somebody else probably had it in their hands and said, Screw it, and then I pick it up by just comply. So I want to touch on one of my favorite themes, and see if it's valid, or if I just a generic and it's true, there's always somewhere in the middle. But, you know, we had some pretty hard like just real hard driving workers, I believe. And deco we were all had that unifying goal. And then I found when I work with product only teams if there's a little bit of a different work mentality in did you do bump into that when you weren't started working at Vistaprint with a physical product and not having this client deadline that was sort of like a bullet to your head and stuff like that, or,

Bill Whitebone  12:59

yeah, it was different. So if the things that were similar is and key to any place that I've worked in wanting to work has been working with really smart and dedicated people. So that was something that was really appealing to me about the Vistaprint team as I got to know them. So that was the same. But when I when I look at the level of dedication in general, being at a small company like indeco, where we were very early on, you had a different connection to it, right. So disciplines, very dedicated people, dedicated people, lots of great work. I think it's a great company, but a different field because of the scale of it when I joined. So that guy just felt like was it was different in that we all had that common goal of growing this as quickly as we possibly could, whereas I felt like Vistaprint was at a place of excellence right? So wanting to create absolute excellence and then decade was more when we were there was more scrappy, done move things as quickly as we possibly can and put out a very high quality product. So is it different different mentality different stage of company? And it took some it took some getting used to for me so I it felt like you you touched on it felt like a different pace, essentially. Yeah. And a lot of what had to happen was me motivating myself more than the just all around insanity motivating me.

Jeff  14:23

But yeah, like sometimes, it's okay not to have like your world just on fire every day. I've got three other projects and they're all like, let's go let's go let's go it's um, now as you're probably the fourth or fifth person I've talked about this with I'm realizing that I'm perhaps the Pro. Oh my god, okay, I'll meditate on that one. So that was great. So you were there for how long because I, you I want to start getting into the really large scale stuff that we talked about because I'm over my skis where you sort of went in terms of experience for really big teams and things like that. So my strikes.

Bill Whitebone  15:02

So I was I was at Vistaprint until 2011. So I was there for four years. So yeah, and kind of like, no other interesting thing that just to touch on is that I did that physical product. And then I ended up back in my realm while I was there, in that I went to strategic partnerships, right? That's right. Yeah, it was focused on implementing third party, third party options, third party products on the Vistaprint. Site, and then also offering the Vistaprint site in different ways. So white labeled for staples, white label for FedEx Office. So I ended up getting back into essentially consulting, right. So meeting, a team that was very similar. Well, and

Jeff  15:46

it's funny, you touched on it, but I actually really haven't discussed this that much so far, which is one of the things that we wind up doing at product companies in and I don't think as much as with service companies. But But basically, there's a point in time where you're not supposed to grow your services team anymore. And you need to start finding strategic partners to implement a lot of the work. There's just certain things with valuations of companies that they don't want you have in this massive services team, because then it looks like a really difficult and complicated thing to deploy, which was, but we still need it. There's also another thing where if you start bringing on strategic partners, like you're talking about, they can they can sell into their customers as well, like the example like we would never sell into Coca Cola, but Accenture would so let's get Accenture ramped up on the snap. But I really like working with the small regional providers in I don't know if you sort of had any thoughts on that, because I know you worked with them a lot when we were in tech of I don't know if that happened Vistaprint at all.

Bill Whitebone  16:56

So actually, that'd be a good segue into aqui. So yeah, that's that's where it was. That was what it was all about for me. And that was a big change in that aqueous focus was really on building the Drupal, overall Drupal ecosystem. So in order to build that ecosystem, they needed to to have lots of folks deeply involved. And they wanted to get more and more, which meant that from a services perspective, we didn't want to build a big services team, we actually wanted to build a services team that leverages third parties to empower those third parties to be out evangelizing and actually growing Drupal in general. So I only had engagement managers, so very, very senior project managers and technical architects on my team, actually, the employee, the actual employees, and then we use third parties to do the majority of our delivery. Yeah, I'd say all of our delivery, essentially, other than the top leadership.

Jeff  17:53

Let's let's dive into a little bit because I hadn't realized that and how did you manage? Because I've dealt with certainly dealt with the sort of split projects and stuff like that. But how did you keep those partners on track? Obviously, you had some high level engagement managers there. But I'm just wondering, let's talk about like, five minutes, like the lifecycle of one of those projects and making sure that these outside developers were delivering the quality and doing all the things that you needed them to do?

Bill Whitebone  18:25

Sure, yes, a really important part of leveraging third parties effectively is getting them involved early. Yeah, so making sure that they're part of the estimation process. So generally, what we would do is we would, we would engage with the clients, we'd get the relationship going with the client, we'd get the initial requirements, and then we would decide what partner would be the best based on what the need was of that particular client. So at that point, we'd bring the partner and have them estimate, and also connect directly with the client, if needed, we'd be a part of all those conversations that connect directly to get more details. So they would actually come up with an estimate, we compare our estimate to their estimate, and some usually ended up in the middle somewhere whose paper whose paper was it on? It was on our paper. Responsibility. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they would contract with us, then we were always contracted with the client. So from there, the delivery process would be overseen by my engagement manager and by my technical architect, but the day to day delivery was being managed by a project manager on the other side.

Jeff  19:24

So they were setting up sort of a good relationship with between the engagement manager and the project manager. And this little for everyone was saying like this before the days of like, daily stand ups and slack and HipChat and everything else. So it's a little bit of, I don't know, I just used to always lose my mind on these projects. But you know, because you just are they working? It helps the delivery guy or even just, I never had a good feel for them. So

Bill Whitebone  19:50

yeah, exactly. We didn't write we didn't have that direct, immediate connect connection consistently. So it was really setting up regular calls. So then The calls weren't a daily frequency necessarily, but there were at least a couple times a week. Hitting on the right are the most important details of progress. But you and I actually discussed this briefly when we met, we met up, but I'll give you an example of when things don't work.

Jeff  20:18

It's perfect because you learn so much more when you know, everything just blows up on me like, not do that again.

Bill Whitebone  20:24

Absolutely. Absolutely. So one of the most challenging projects clients that I worked with at Aqua was definitely NBC Sports. They in during the Olympics, for NBC Sports, great, great group. But under a lot of stress, right. So we're talking about so much money that is dependent on this site being fully functional and being fully fully functional on a date that it needs to be inconsistently up. So they they really wanted to make sure that we were hitting deadlines and that we were we were on the right track. So we we ended up in a situation where the third party that was implementing started to fall behind, they of course started to fall behind when the biggest convention for Drupal of the year was happening. So I was at Drupal con in Denver. And so as the third party that was supposed to do the delivery, and I had some conversations about we need to speed this up, we need to get going on this right now. And my client was at Drupal con, my CEO was at Drupal con. So really easy to get us all in a room. And we did all get into a room. And it was a highly stressful meeting. So I was under a lot of pressure. And so I started to put that pressure or additional pressure onto the third party. And they told me that they were a lifestyle business. And that one of the things that was really important to them was to be able to spend time at this convention and focus on the convention. So not the answer I necessarily wanted to. So that's the kind of thing that you run into, though, when you're working with third parties. You don't know what the culture of their organization is. That culture was very different from the culture that I was working in, in the culture of my client. So it got done. We were 100% successful, but only because we switched out to another another company to take Oh, you did

Jeff  22:17

switch out? I didn't realize that was it? We didn't cover the only chatter. Yeah, well, that must have been, I think I think you're growing hives right now. I'm just telling you the story right now.

Bill Whitebone  22:27

Absolutely. Absolutely. It was, it was one of the more challenging times in my my career for sure. And, and it worked out, we found another third party delivery company that was very, very capable, and came in quickly and got the work done at high quality.

Jeff  22:45

Yeah, I listen, I'm all about lifestyle. But you know, sometimes it's good to get the job. You know, it's terrible, especially when you're a project manager and you're like team is sitting with you. And I'm like, Oh, you guys go out to lunch, I'll get you a lunch, I'll bring lunch it like you don't want anything to distract you. When you have one of those unfortunately, like, this is the deadline. There's nothing you can do about it. It's it's nice to be able to say, well, you know, we haven't gotten the requirements. And we can't go far with a deadline. But there's a certain point in time where your company makes a decision, like in order to get the steel, we're going to have to run it hot. I say it was quotes on and then you got a partner and they don't run it hot.

Bill Whitebone  23:21

So yeah. And I had no backstop right that I had no, I had my tech architects, right. But they didn't have capacity, because they had so many projects they're managing simultaneously. Yeah, really, I had no backstop. And that was that was one of the biggest challenges is that the only way to protect yourself was to bring another third party in and get them ramped quickly if one wasn't working out. So that happened, didn't happen frequently. But it did happen several times. And that's, that's a really tough position to be in. Because you're having to ramp a new team quickly, you're having to tell another team to take a hike, and also talking you're not gonna pay them for any digital work, and maybe some of the work they've already done because it wasn't a high quality or wasn't delivered on time. So

Jeff  24:02

oh, sorry, did you have a sort of was there like a partner guy or person that was sort of creating these relationships? Or were you out there finding them for yourself?

Bill Whitebone  24:12

So the partner group started to grow as probably year two. When I was there, the partner group started to grow. So when I started, it was really, project managers were as we talked about earlier, they were like in deca, they were responsible for everything, right. And really, I and then it rolled up to me as far as the longer term relationships. But yeah, partners, partnerships became very important at that point, really focusing on going larger scale too. So instead of working just with these open source shops that was focused on starting to grow into bigger consulting, right and bigger consulting, was seen as being able to bring more opportunities. Was that the reality? Not necessarily, but I saw that it was the right trajectory. Definitely. What partnerships what's

Jeff  24:57

and we're gonna talk about the set for a while. There's a bunch of topics are one of them. I'm curious, how big was your team there underneath you at that time?

Bill Whitebone  25:04

So my team at Max was about 100 people.

Jeff  25:08

Yeah, that's a good size. What sort of management structure do you have in place in terms of like tiered? Or, you know, like, how many? What's your philosophy on how many direct reports a manager should have? First of all,

Bill Whitebone  25:21

my view is, I mean, it really depends on what you're doing on a day to day basis. But I usually stick by 10 to 12 is the max, I'd rather see somewhere around eight if you're going to be effective. And it really depends on what you're trying to do, too. So if you're a project manager, or program manager that's managing project managers, you probably want to focus more on the junior folks, right? And if you have a very junior team, you're gonna want less numbers. And that's what I'm kind of looking at, what are we trying to accomplish here? Are we maintaining some senior people and trying to grow them? As we can be really trying to grow some junior people really quickly? It really depends.

Jeff  26:00

Yeah, I think for the 10 to 12, I think at that point in time, you need a bunch of senior people, right, but those, for me, I'm sort of more in the six to eight tops camps. But you know, I've been in these roles where you're hiring some more junior people and bringing them on board. So you get to kind of give them a little bit more like, you know, not just the one on ones, you've got people walking into your office, like, Hey, can I bounce something off you and all that stuff? Absolutely. But I You guys have grown to a big size at that point in time. So you could probably bring in some more senior people. And you can say, here's a chunk of work. And then maybe, I'm guessing have like a couple junior people that you can then work on bringing up so

Bill Whitebone  26:38

yeah, that's really been my strategy on going is to start to build a team with very senior people. And then as you see you have some capacity, then start to bring the more junior folks in. And sometimes you may start to go towards the more junior folks more quickly, because you're looking at margins and margins need to get right. So that's sometimes that but having capacity to want support and to grow junior people is really important. You need to do it at the right time.

Jeff  27:05

I should just made me think of a topic because, you know, you always hear from from the upper management, they're like, oh, we have all these smaller customers. Right? Right. Please tell the audience why that's always a disaster. The most junior person on the cheaper projects?

Bill Whitebone  27:22

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you and I both know, and many people listening to this know that your most challenging clients are your smallest clients.

Jeff  27:32

Wait, they're only paying us 30k Just put the 70k project manage drops? That makes total sense.

Bill Whitebone  27:37

Because they'll nail that budget, they will nail that budget. Yeah, I've seen that many times. But yeah, we we know that I mean, that's, again, customer success. You talk about customers success, and that's your from every customer success person that the clients that are using them, the majority of their time, are those small clients.

Jeff  27:58

Oh, yeah, they just, it's numbing, it's, it's my understanding that the contract value, it's more, it's just as usual indicator that they're just not used to these types of things. So they don't have the structure in place. And they're never meeting their deadlines that you're asking. It just turns into a shitshow. It's just I every time and but you feel for him, you know, it's just a it's just a really bad thing to put junior people on those smaller clients. Or maybe one but not all of them. Because that was the other thing like that you always hear is that, oh, they'll take all the smaller ones any revenue under 40k, or whatever. You know, they'll have all of these ones or whatever. And it's just it just doesn't work. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's cool. So that sort of touches on that any other things on the big scale, like what you started seeing, I mean, at the digitized background, so you're probably a little bit more used to it. But when you started getting up like over 50, over 60, I think that's where some people started seeing some, like, oh, what I used to do doesn't really kind of work as much here and changes that you had to adjust to when you started getting into these groups of 100 or so.

Bill Whitebone  29:12

Yes, it was a significant transition in in really starting to, to find ways to be able to trust people more than to be involved in everything on a day to day basis. So and that's hard, right, especially in the services industry, there's so many moving parts that it's easier to verify yourself than necessarily rely on others. And, you know, keep yourself involved enough that you're looking at those key things. Yeah, but yeah, once you get up to that larger scale, it is very hard to keep yourself involved with on a day to day or even a week to week basis on some things it at least at the level that you would like to

Jeff  29:48

right you can't know every single status of every single project. Right? Right. So that's a blown up so that's okay, I have the same thing. There's no one podcast where my phone's not blowing up. I'm sorry about that. That's okay. Is that a landline?

Bill Whitebone  30:03

It is my wife insists on it.

Jeff  30:05

Oh, no, we have like a like a hill right near our house and it blocks out most cell phone stuff. And so I still keep it on especially to just get all the telemarketers.

Bill Whitebone  30:14

Exactly, exactly. They got sorry about that.

Jeff  30:18

Oh, no, no worries. So And how about the hiring process is one of those things that Mark and I worked on, you know, like took a year off from project work was to like, we had those career paths and the hiring processes. And we had that thing where like, you're the culture person, you know, so you just don't keep asking the same person for, you know, the same three questions every time or whatever like that. Did you wind up having any specialized hiring practices or things that you did to, you know, spur on hiring faster or better? Yeah, that was definitely a key. And I'd say the fastest hiring that I needed to do was when I was FF w, so or blink reaction was what it

Bill Whitebone  30:59

was. Okay, we can swing into that. Yeah. So we grew very quickly there. So when I joined, it was 35 people. And we needed to grow very quickly to dress really the demand that we were seeing. So droop was a time was really hot. And there was demand that we were seeing from large clients that we wanted to dress. We grew actually from 35 people to about 150, close more than 150. But 150 Ichor. Wow. And what timeframe was that? That was in three years. We did that? That's pretty fast. Yeah. Especially for services group. It's

Jeff  31:33

like, yeah,

Bill Whitebone  31:35

right. Yeah. So it was it was really necessary for us to be very, really focused in our hiring and making sure that we weren't having the same people asked, or different people asking the same questions multiple times in the time investment alone. Getting that many people through the pipeline, and hiring that many people is huge. And we didn't want to be diminishing margin based on the fact that we weren't efficiently Hi,

Jeff  31:57

you're you're taking billable resources, basically. Right? I hate to talk about it, like it's a business. But you've got to, you've got basically you've got percentages, and you're trying to drive hiring decisions based on you know, how much allocated work people can do and stuff. So we have that thing where, you know, to two people into it, and it'd be like, you know, make sure you do it nicely, but it's just not really the right thing to do here, right? Like, we were trying to hire, like 100 people that year or something crazy like that. I remember it. It was like, what first or second interview. Don't wait, don't waste terrible word. But don't waste the other two people's time. If if the first two people basically said, This person is not going to

Bill Whitebone  32:41

work here, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's, that's a tough one. Right? So that's tough.

Jeff  32:45

I always say Dylan, I hate being that guy walks in the room, you know, like, hey, so I'm gonna walk you out to the door. Now? It's right. I know it, you know, it was be?

Bill Whitebone  32:57

Absolutely. It is an uncomfortable situation. But it's a better situation for everyone. Right? So we've, we've seen situations where where folks will bring people through a full interview process, knowing 50% of the way through that, that it's not going to work and it becomes apparent no matter what. It's the lack of lack of investment in the additional interviews during the day or whatever it is, it becomes apparent is tough as that conversation is, it's an important conversation to have. And it's it saves critical time. Yeah, but it's you got to do it the right way. And that's

Jeff  33:35

always tough because I believe we I like the manager lunches, part of that. And it was like, actually, we're not going out to lunch. I'm just gonna walk into the elevator, I'm not gonna get on the here's five bucks this lunch, because there was there was the we wanted to have an offer. By the end of the day, we're competing. You I mean, this bill and I bought like we were we were competing against not only just the startups, but where we were literally down the street, Google, Microsoft, they all started moving in into it. And suddenly cool, Cambridge started becoming like corporate Cambridge, and we started getting some really big companies. We're all trying to hire these, like MIT grads, and all these people. So we wanted to have an offer in their hands by the time they left, maybe even get them to say yes, if they were the right person, you know, what was what why do you need to go through those additional two to three weeks of bullshit, right? Like the stress, like they're gonna walk out and get an offer from somebody else. And so let's if we really want this person, let's just give them an offer that day, which is I love when they came up with an idea I love when they came up with that because, you know, we all wish hiring processes were that smooth. So

Bill Whitebone  34:48

yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's, and that's, it's so true. I mean, the demand consistently, even continues to be so high in certain roles. That is, it's better for both just to move on and get the negatives rolling. Let them go.

Jeff  35:03

When when you're a blink reaction was that when you started using more offshore as well, too?

Bill Whitebone  35:08

Yes, yeah. So the interesting, still direct,

Jeff  35:13

like left shift? Let's talk about, because they're the same, right? It's like, oh, no, now I need to be able to tell the reasons why instead of me just, you know, suggesting them. But why sort of went down that road?

Bill Whitebone  35:25

Yeah. And I can tell you, I'll tell you how the transition happened to just to blink reaction. So I while at Acquia, I reached a point where I really wanted to go back to the traditional delivery that I was used to write having my own team, and being able to manage that team really effectively. So having the backstop again, being able to see further ahead on whether projects were going to be successful. Those were really key things for me. So I ended up leaving Acquia and then really started looking to the Drupal community. Because I liked it. I really liked the Drupal community. I really liked the partners we worked with. So I started talking to some partners, actually. And I talked to my favorite partner, blink reaction. And blink reaction, by the way, is the company that saved me on the Olympics to

Jeff  36:17

Oh, no kidding. Oh, that's all I didn't realize that. That's an awesome story. Yeah, yeah.

Bill Whitebone  36:21

Yeah. So I talked to them. I talked to a couple other partners. Get it done, right, like, right, yes, I trusted these guys. Absolutely. So I knew they had key people that really were dedicated what they're doing and really smart and had tons of Drupal experience. So it was the right time, it was the right place. So I ended up joining. And really our goal from when I joined was to build a wildly successful company that we either were very happy to be a part of, and we wanted to continue with indefinitely or to sell, right. So really, the things that we did and how we acted were similar with either path, we really didn't have a decision on what we were going to do. But yeah, that's what I'll say another key different key differentiator for blink reaction in my decision making was the offshore piece of it. So that's differentiated, right? So you look around at the agency world in general, and you see a lot of companies that are doing the same thing. And they're, they have similar rates, and similar approaches, just because that that's the standard path. But the offshore model gave us a lot of flexibility and what we could do investments we could make, and really looking at Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe has amazing technical capabilities. So there was direct connection for blink reaction to a group in Ukraine. And Ukraine. Okay. Yep. They're full employees. But we had a manager that was focused there. And that's a key Actually, I'll say to you about doing offshore, make sure you have a representative

Jeff  37:57

offshore 100%. I actually was just talking to a prospect just the other day. We have a offshore component in Costa Rica. They're amazing. And this company had been kind of trying to start their own office up. And but they were just kind of hiring developers. It's like, No, you, you need that person. You need that that presence. You know, that's just keeping it all together there. Yeah,

Bill Whitebone  38:21

absolutely. That was key for us, really, to make sure the team was happy to make sure that we were hiring the right people. And just really just to keep it moving. So we hired a lot of great people out of out of Ukraine. And it was a really, really effective team. And we were able to scale it quickly. And a lot. A lot of scaling we did was just based off of friends of friends. Right? So there was such a Drupal community there, that we were just finding people based off of somebody saying, Hey, I know some people and then we did reach a point where we really couldn't scale as much within our within our network. In Ukraine. We started to branch out a little bit further. We we brought on some some folks in Serbia, we actually, Aqua hired a team. Yes. We had some folks in Bulgaria. So we started

Jeff  39:12

to be traveling over there. I picture you sitting in these, like European cafes is all espressos and interviewing people. Now.

Bill Whitebone  39:21

I did get over to Ukraine, but it's not that that picture your paint is not the picture actually. It was sitting not understanding a single word of what I was looking at or hearing. Ah, yes, the language is very difficult. And again, good reason to have a representative in that country. He he was able to bring me around and watch out for me.

Jeff  39:40

I just watched too much Jason Bourne. I apologize. Absolutely. What was your ratio by then, like 60% offshore 7080? I'm just curious.

Bill Whitebone  39:49

Yeah, we varied i It was between 60 and 70%. Generally, yeah. If we started to ramp up from there, we'd start to get a little bit concerned just about about margins and and where we're at. So we were able to offer very attractive rates based off of the offshore model. And we want we needed to maintain that differentiator. So we keep a close eye on it

Jeff  40:09

was the project oversight, like the architects of the project management onshore, and then the development was offshore.

Bill Whitebone  40:17

It was and I really see that as a key communication with clients. The same timezone when it comes to project management, technical architects, is important technical architects, I did have some that were based offshore, and were able to communicate, communicate well, based off the time and just English language. That was a part of hiring teams making sure that the English skills were good.

Jeff  40:38

Now, we deal with that now, it's, there's a point in time where the the customer is going to want to the developers to jump on a call every once in a while. So

Bill Whitebone  40:46

absolutely, yeah. And I did find for more junior developers, it was okay, if their English wasn't quite as their spoken English wasn't quite as good. Many people, their written English is much better than their spoken English as they're learning new language.

Jeff  41:00

You know, it's just like one of the lessons important lessons I learned on this was very recently, where we were on a conference call. And the customer was there and asked questions, and the developer was doing a very good job. And he's, he's, you know, was spoken English was very well. But then you realize they're speaking slower. And then we went on pause for a little bit. But I think the customer had to drop, we're gonna switch over to an internal meeting. And suddenly, they all started speaking in Spanish, very fast and fluid and going back and forth and everything. And it's like, that's right. There's, that's that's very hard thing to do. Right? You're talking about technical concepts, you're context switching in different languages, you're doing translation in your head and everything. It's such a skill, and then it's part of that hiring and onboarding process. At what position? Do you put them in? How much do they talk with people? Yeah, it's, you know, just assume, like, oh, he speaks English? Yeah, let's just get them on the phone and do X, Y, and Z. And then suddenly, the customer is like, that was a little rocky. And you're like, Well, you know, it's not their first language. And we're talking about really complex things here. They're just doing, you know, it's like, you know, 10, five second delay for, you know, translating those in their heads. So,

Bill Whitebone  42:19

right, absolutely, it's very uncomfortable situation for the individual, you put in that situation to knowing that they're not able to communicate the level that they want to. It's just, it's very uncomfortable. And I don't like putting people in those positions. One of the things that we did was we offered English English classes. So that's cool. Yeah, that was something that we found really important, and was pretty effective, it becomes challenging that you're moving in a million miles an hour, and you're trying to offer classes and get people to have the time to do the classes. So it's, we need to make sure that there was a balance. But yeah,

Jeff  42:49

that's very smart. Do you mind talking about percentage of billable time, at a, at a straight consulting company versus a product team? Like I'm trying to remember the percentages in my head, but I remember that deck, I think we're trying for 70 to 75%. And so I kept those when I was at break codes. And then we had, you know, any of that extra allocated time to go into like, oh, as a company meeting and maybe want to do some fun stuff and everything like that little different when you don't have that product kind of slush fund of

Bill Whitebone  43:24

Exactly, exactly. That's that is a key differentiator, as you say, between the between those types of companies. My target was 80% plus. And I was able to frequently get individual, the individuals are working above that. And it is interesting, and when you don't have a product that's associated with the, with what you're doing, there's not any of that training or any of that you need to be doing we did have to train on the technology. But a lot of that technology training was happening while folks were actually doing implementation. So we put a board junior developer in partnership with a more senior developer and have them develop co developing basically.

Jeff  43:59

Yeah, that's yeah, no 100% on that. So in your current situation now, are you using some of the same people or teams that you use previously or if you had to go off and sort of create a new team?

Bill Whitebone  44:11

Yeah, so I am still I'm it's funny. I am working in the partnership model right. So I am using one team that I used to use when I was at both FF W and aqua so highly trusted team and their Indian based team. So do great work, I trust them and then I have I also have a Ukrainian team, which I've done some projects with and been very successful but it's a different team than the team I've worked with in the past

Jeff  44:38

are you just living life with on a different timezone right now are you like, Sunday night? It's nine o'clock getting on the phone and

Bill Whitebone  44:44

things are exactly, exactly. That's helped and I do have a tech architect it's based in the US but I still do it upon calls that are that are way off of the time. I prefer to be on calls that

Jeff  44:55

nothing beats my old New Zealand calls. Those are amazing. So I can't I remember what I think those are like seven o'clock on Sundays seven o'clock at night basically.

Bill Whitebone  45:04

Exactly, exactly. It does take some getting used to the as far as Indian time, timezone. I've never actually tried to match that one to very much.

Jeff  45:14

Somebody had to Alia, if somebody had to ask you, if somebody was saying, Hey Bill, I'm trying to I'm getting pitched on on starting up a dev team in India, or Eastern Europe, what would what sort of questions would you ask them back in to help make that decision?

Bill Whitebone  45:37

What is technology? Right, so what technology trying to work in? I think there's there's pockets of different technologies, looking at different areas throughout the world. So I my personal experience with offshore companies in general, I've found that Eastern Europe was a little easier for me, at least as far as communication. And part of that was probably timezone. Right. So there was more time that I had available that overlapped with that team to really stay in sync. So one of the questions I would ask is, what is your your time? Time flexibility? You know, that you're working on flexibility? Yeah. So in we had folks that actually work us time in Eastern Europe, and they did it very, very happily, because they, they got to work later in the day. So early in the day, they got to do whatever they wanted, and then they'd start later. So I took those fancy

Jeff  46:29

Eastern European coffee shops with a little saucers in the cups are absolutely obsessed with this,

Bill Whitebone  46:35

if you envision it.

Jeff  46:37

So have you were you able, because there's a big, I don't wanna say prejudice. But there's a big impression in the field that you cannot give Indian teams Agile projects. Is that false? Were you able to find some of that? I mean, the thing is, if you give something incredibly specked, and well thought out, or more support roles, what I've found is there, those teams are great for that. But I've never, I've not been able to find a great agile working relationship with an Indian team.

Bill Whitebone  47:12

The way that I have made it successful is with a good amount of us support, right. So having the onshore offshore having the onshore project leadership has made a difference. Right. So I think they

Jeff  47:24

just could have given the whole project over to India, you sort of have a blended company.

Bill Whitebone  47:30

Exactly. Project. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that the there's many, many technical resources in India, I feel like project management doesn't have as there's not as much of a focus on project management. That's my impression that

Jeff  47:45

you're that's probably what the issues that I've dealt with are, is that, yeah,

Bill Whitebone  47:49

so I, it's structuring it in that you have US leadership from a technical technical and from a project perspective, and then having the delivery team in India, that with the right communication, those people having to work off hours, you know, the leadership definitely has to work off hours to stay in communication. But I've seen it be very successful that my partner, my Indian based partners, does excellent, excellent work, agile projects. And that's because we have the right structure in place to be able to do that.

Jeff  48:21

Yeah, it sounds like if anything, if you put your your due diligence in and find the right teams, and I just could not like go fly over to India and try and meet with like five different companies and go through all of that it was sort of just didn't have those those in place. And we had been dealing with some customers where it was a binding project, you know, our team and their team and their team was in India, and it just, it just didn't really work out that well. We'd have those crossovers right and o'clock in the morning, we'd have the can you go take this and, you know, pass the baton for?

Bill Whitebone  48:54

Right? Yeah. And so there's so many stories out there like that, right? So you definitely hear it a lot. And even you heard about Eastern Europe, too. It's just it really, really comes down to how you structure your team, how you assess your team, how and what level of commitment they have. And yeah, having a team that is onshore offshore, versus having a full onshore team, there's, there's considerations that are for both that you need to take into account, it's easy enough to think about an offshore team as not being part of your company or being different, right. So they just do the work over there. And, and we just send them work and we provide the oversight that they need, but they this they are part of your company, they're part of your culture, but their culture is very different, you know, when it comes to their, their actual culture that they live in, but in their working environment are looking for many of the same things you need to make sure that that culture is is across the board and you may have to adapt it some but it's have that common goal, just like any company that that we've been added to in DACA. We had to have that common goal and it's important to maintain that even with an offshore team.

Jeff  49:55

Yes, some of the things that we found successful recently is that if you're dead If you're starting off a big project, fly the team over right or at least fly the leads up. Or in that seems to work really well, you know them being with the customer, but then just feeling like they're in the culture of the company, where where we've flown the team over, we've done the kickoff that we spend like another week at our offices or two or maybe even a full sprint or two. That's that's been something that's that's worked really well. And every time we do it, just do more. So

Bill Whitebone  50:28

absolutely. Absolutely. Another important piece I found to just minor but communication mechanisms are important. So video interesting. Turns

Jeff  50:37

out beginning status calls with no video and just a phone call. Yeah,

Bill Whitebone  50:44

absolutely, this video makes a big difference. And it's easy enough to fall into, I'm not going to turn my video on because I work from home and my rooms rooms, a masseur, I didn't I didn't take a shower this morning, whatever it might be. But I think it's important to have that video component. So I actually

Jeff  50:57

shaved for you. If you'd see me an hour ago, you might have thought you're on the wrong call.

Bill Whitebone  51:02

I appreciate that.

Jeff  51:05

Nobody wants to see that. So I think we went pretty, we went pretty deep there for a little bit. I noticed he was gonna get mark on the phone. We'll talk all sorts of ops and percentages and things like that. But that was that was that was great, because I really wanted to get into some of these scalability and the onshore offshore things as well. Any any sort of lasting thoughts or lessons or things that we didn't cover off on?

Bill Whitebone  51:30

I'd like to just touch on what I'm doing now. So Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yes. So I actually was really excited when I saw your podcast, because the way you described it is what the direction that I've gone with my career at this point. So I identified that same gap that you talk about is combined to get professional services information, and really get support when it comes to professional services and how to how to build an organization, how to scale an organization, how to make decisions, how to prepare, plays, all those sorts of things. So I made the decision to start my own companies to call the advanced velocity, which is really focused in that area. So there's there's three areas I focus in one is professional services, consulting, and it also because they go hand in hand customer success, and I have only briefly had the title of customer success. But really in reality my career has been

Jeff  52:21

I wish I could tell you oh my god, yeah. Oh, there's 100% oil, you don't know customers? Oh, yeah, you're right. I don't know anything about customer success, because I don't have that title.

Bill Whitebone  52:31

Exactly, exactly. I have had so many of those conversations. But yeah, so I am actually I have lots of expertise in customer success. And I am consulting on both professional services and customer success. And I am qualified.

Jeff  52:47

Yes, he's actually he's very well coached. It's, it's just funny, I you know, there needs to be some I was just talking with Rene. And there needs to be consolidation going through her LinkedIn. I was like, yeah, like customer experience, Customer Success customer to I don't know, like enrichment. It's just like, what the industry needs to kind of settle in on what's with all of us sort of Exactly, exactly. Where you are. It's just sort of like, what's flying out there these days, and what some chief talent officer wants to call something. So yeah,

Bill Whitebone  53:16

absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, I'm really happy to be working in that space. No, add to that just general technology consulting, working with organizations just to assess their their overall technology platform, and also the processes they're using there. And then using the teams that I spoke about earlier to do development, too. So focusing on what development area

Jeff  53:36

on the success. I don't want to run too long. But I'm fascinated with some of those on the on the success and professional services. Who's your target? Who's calling you up for these are? Because, you know, I've you get contacted by people who are like, I'm a startup founder. I know nothing about this, but I know that I need it. Or what sort of are those people that are sort of calling you up for those types of engagements right now? Yeah, so

Bill Whitebone  54:01

I'll say that why this was particularly interesting to me is because when I looked at what was available out there, as far as this type of consulting, the big, the big consulting companies are doing this, right. So they'll come in, they'll do a million dollar multimillion dollar to get your professional services to the next level. But there really wasn't a focus for companies that weren't they didn't want to spend that or couldn't spend that. So what I'm seeing in is really, some small organizations and startups I'm seeing that are looking to either start a professional services or customer success capability, or don't know where to go because they reached a point where they have one, but it's not the margins that

Jeff  54:38

I'm making. In the evolution that I always see here is product company starts has developers, they're making the product, suddenly customer access for some implementation help in some customization. And the developers are doing the professional services. And then suddenly they hire a project manager who's managing the developers and then and then Bill come Is that right? Is that kind of what?

Bill Whitebone  55:01

Exactly, exactly. So I'm not really sure what utilization is supposed to be I'm not sure what margins are supposed to be with these feel bad. Yeah. So it's really, how do I scale? How do I structure that's that those are the things that I'm seeing. The other place that I'm seeing it is the private equity. So private equity, buys up a bunch of different companies, and they've got

Jeff  55:22

high value, but bad operations, stuff, like they've got a very good product out there. But they just need some help on the operational side. So they get brought in to kind of take to clean it up, make it more valuable by just running things with the fast with a better operating system base.

Bill Whitebone  55:39

Exactly, exactly. So I'm helping out both on the side of before they actually acquire, so due diligence, and then I'm also helping with, Hey, how do we actually make this a better cert? How do we make this better made private equity, they're there for a short run, to make the company look better to make some money and then sell it for whatever x. So my services really help them and understanding. First off, what does this services organization look like? And then second, how do I bring it to the next level, or 10 levels from here,

Jeff  56:06

this is great, you know, when I was kicking this around, and I admit, it took me a few extra months, because I was trying to figure out what to do. And I also have a full time job. But I was I'm glad I'm now I'm gonna say go to Bill, but I was originally going to be like, Okay, let's put some like a resource center together on a website. And it's sort of like, don't send an email with a quote us a proposal document, like, like, are you doing stuff like that as well to like, walk through, like how the sausage is made on a deal. And you're like, You're kidding me? Like, I can't believe your business right now. But everybody goes through it. But

Bill Whitebone  56:37

you're so w is in a PowerPoint deck.

Jeff  56:41

Once in a while, I will say once in a while, when you've got to I have done that recently. But it's a very complicated thing. Oh, no, it's not the NSFW, right? Or but like the proposal and the PowerPoint deck, because it's sort of like, what's the what's the deal with? And that's the other thing. Some people just write statements or works in a legal documents like, no, let's, this is like true inside baseball, softball, like, no, never do that. Because you don't want to start getting the lawyers involved. Every time you're trying to agree on scope, use a proposal document, put the logo of the company you're pitching to on the other end of the project, talk about what you're doing, talk about what how you've done this before, make us successful, and then, you know, use whatever things you need to do to get everything agreed and signed off upon. Then you put it in a statement of work.

Bill Whitebone  57:29

Absolutely. Absolutely. And a master services agreement actually is a value and important.

Jeff  57:34

Yeah. Then and then you know, then the overwatering of some of these things, because the attorney that is trying to do their best job, but they're not used to dealing on services stuff. So they start overwhelming the like mshs, and things like that. So are you walking in with sort of templatized versions of good mshs? and So who are these people off the ground that way?

Bill Whitebone  57:56

Yeah, that's one of the biggest things, earlier stage companies that are bringing lots of assets to the table right off the bat. Yeah, those are, I'm finding a huge value. So the simple things like kick a kickoff deck, you refer to proposal, right, so what what is a good version of this look like? So these things are just really

Jeff  58:16

Oh, hey, go fly to your customer that agreed to pay you some money to do a project? Right off, right?

Bill Whitebone  58:23

Absolutely. Yeah, this little things people just don't even think about it makes such a difference.

Jeff  58:29

Yeah. And I'm being trying to be funny a little bit, but people just don't know until they do it. Right. Like I didn't know these things the first time like, and we did a lot of status kickoff calls at indeco, where it was just a very bad on call for a little bit and then it's like, oh, this deck is 150 slides. We should probably do that in person now.

Bill Whitebone  58:49

Right? Yeah, absolutely. But it's it's funny for me now. And I'm helping companies to pick vendors right and provide services. And I just watched them the behaviors that they they exhibit. I'm like, that's not the right way to do that. That frustrates me even more, right, because I know and I've been on that side of the table. So I think for me,

Jeff  59:09

yeah, the toughest thing for me in that regard. The last part in the sales thing is when I'm getting pressure from the staffing team, and I have to use that as an argument back to the customer slash prospect I hate using the term prospect but hopefully potential customer but it because I can see somebody like you going up here they're trying to do the thread tasks, but I'm like I literally am in a staffing meeting. And they don't know whether to hold these people for the next two weeks or to put them on this other project and it just like laughing your ass off like oh, here's the time when the resources shortage is a threat.

Bill Whitebone  59:45

Yeah, I've been in that mindset and I can tell when people are doing it for sure. It's it's you just sit there how do you how do you motivate How do you motivate them doing it with the same tactics you use? Or may not I'm not sure but I believe

Jeff  1:00:00

Trying to help them out. Okay, so this is great. I was gonna get into like some fun stuff, but like we already went to an hour and I know your phone's probably blowing up and don't want people to fall off here. But what's one thing nonwork thing that is, is keeping you going right now that you love doing like, oh, let's put the laptops down and do X.

Bill Whitebone  1:00:21

Yeah. So the thing that I make time for now, well, first off you my kids, but Oh, my wife on that. I love frat driving. So I take my car to the track and

Jeff  1:00:32

not know that. Did you ever do that with Alex back in the day? No, I

Bill Whitebone  1:00:35

hadn't started doing it that I just started doing a few years ago. And it's an absolute blast. I need situations where I'm not thinking about work. Yeah. And when you're sitting in a car going as fast as you can around the track, you cannot think about anything.

Jeff  1:00:49

That's amazing. I'd say the same thing with a guitar. Like I come home with a metronome on I'm trying to learn something. And because there's no way you can think about work. It's the same concept. It's just you need something. See when when you're watching TV, like, people were like, Hey, do you watch like this? And I'm like, no, just imagine your work like not there's anything particularly wrong with it. I'm like, I just need a break to detach from it. And so

Bill Whitebone  1:01:09

right. I find it funny. I do highly stressful things to find, find find relaxation from work, but I guess that's my personality,

Jeff  1:01:16

like skydiving, right? Like some people do that. And I'm like, Oh my God, but Oh, that's great. So Bill, I stopped the recording. And this was fantastic. I'm sure we'll do a follow up on some stuff you've bumped into along the way with your new gig as well too. And it was great chatting with you.

Bill Whitebone  1:01:32

Great chat with you, Jeff. All right.