A Role Model in Corporate Success w/ Caleb Woods | Ep. 105

In this episode David and Gary talk with the CEO of RoleModel Software, Caleb Woods. They chat about all things leadership, growing the best team and creating a legacy from hard work.

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwoods/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/rolemodel-software/

https://rolemodelsoftware.com/

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined per usual by Gary Voight. And Gary, I was meaning to tell you those plugs are coming in real nice, man. Your hair looking really fly today is a wig.

Gary: 0:20

It's just glued on tight.

David: 0:22

Just glued today.

Gary: 0:23

Yeah, I can give you the name of my wig guy. You know, the wig guy? Not? Not that you need it.

David: 0:28

Not that I made it. What do you think? What are you saying? Exactly? I don't need a wig, these flowing locks, tech. More importantly, we are joined by Caleb Woods, who is the CEO of role model software. And in full disclosure, I have met Caleb before he is in my business group, not in my actual group, but in an adjacent group across town. And we met at the Christmas thingamabob er last week. So Hi, Caleb, how you doing, man? Doing great. Thanks for last week. Yes.

Gary: 0:56

Christmas thing last week?

David: 0:58

You know, we did not I don't know.

Gary: 1:00

It's like, it's like Walmart Christmas. That's

David: 1:03

what is it? Yeah. I mean, you know, we had

Caleb: 1:06

Christmas stuff out it by this point at this time, and we had a

David: 1:09

pumpkin spice latte. And now I want my wreath. So I have been looking forward to we've been trying to schedule this one for a while. I look forward to talking to you. So Caleb does what we do. So I am I love talking to people who do what we do. And so I'm excited to chat with you. So tell me about just let's go right off the bat. Tell me about role model software? What do you guys do? Yeah, so

Caleb: 1:33

a role model, we craft custom software solutions, by collaborating with business owners to solve something unique to their business. So usually, it's a tailored solution, solving something that is in the line of their business where they're, they're needing to scale something off, the shelf doesn't exist. And they're looking to make an investment in custom software. And we often are the long term partner to help them do that.

David: 1:55

Nice. Nice, nice, nice. So I learned about you guys, because you built the C 12. App, which is where we'll Dixon who is the head of our little c 12. Group mentioned you guys. And so of course, I had to look you up and find out that you're not that far from us over in Holly Springs. So how long so tell me your story is what I find it fascinating that you're not the founder? Correct. But you and you are recently become the CEO tell that story, because it's a great story.

Caleb: 2:25

Yeah, so I came to role model 11 years ago, really got into software, not super intentionally, experience with you know, technology and playing around with that stuff in in high school, had an internship where I got an opportunity to be exposed to software projects, and then had a mentor that really helped shape the ability to grow a team and saw the value of mentorship and apprenticeship, and really got a passion for Software Craftsmanship in general. That company was before role model. And so as my time there was coming to a close just the variety of factors kind of coming along the way. Ken, our who's the founder of role model software, had been a mentor to my boss at the time and said, Hey, you should talk to Caleb, as he's thinking about, you know, moving on to the next opportunity and see what that looks like. And so how did that initial conversation with Ken and he brought me in as a member of the development team, that was the main thing that we were, I was looking to grow, be surrounded with other folks that had more experience in the area of software development than I did. And I told him when I when I joined the company, you know, one of the things I'd love to do someday is, you know, co founder, a company or lead a consultancy in some way. Which is kind of weird, because I've never done consulting professionally and never co founded a company. So these are dreams of a kid and there is 20s, you know, saying what a want to do, but not really knowing what that looks like. But over the years kind of got opportunities to grow out role model be mentored by Ken. And really, the path started probably about seven or eight years ago, of really stepping into more leadership within the team, and recognizing, you know, my ability to be more of a multiplier, you know, not we talked about, like the idea of a 10x developer, you know, somebody that's so good at what they do that they have an increased impact on the team, that building and while I love technology, and I love building systems and interacting with customers, my ability to kind of guide an organization and use that as the growth for what can I have a bigger impact on than anyone else in the organization has really gone up. And so being able to grow into that leadership, so it was a it was a cool opportunity that working alongside the original founder of the company, but having that be a progressive step to get there. So kind of slow handing over more of the leadership. So became CEO almost three years ago at the beginning of 2021. And then at the end of last year actually closed out a deal to buy out Canada's original founder and become the sole owner of role model.

David: 5:16

Oh, wow. That's very cool. That's a very cool story. It's good the second time. So I am so interested in? Well, let me let me let me say it this way, I've I've been hearing, I'm just changing gears in my own head. Sorry, none of that came out loud, that'll probably get edited better. Sorry. Let me do it this way. I have heard on TBJ, which is triangle Business Journal, it's our local business website slash paper, about several companies like ours going under in the last year. And that always makes me sad, because people I've known and competed with, honestly, for all, you know, most of our time, our tent were 10 years old. And a lot of them going away. Not a lot. Some of them are going away or shrinking dramatically. A lot of marketing agencies that we've known forever are going away. Have you noticed that in your neck of the woods as well, and is that just a Raleigh thing? Are you seeing that

Caleb: 6:12

as well? As far as how is that impacting our business directly? Or seeing that with

David: 6:17

just seeing your competitors? It's, I guess, it's easy to say, maybe it helps your business, but at the same time, there are a million competitors coming up right behind them. So to me, the amount of work doesn't really change when someone comes or goes. But I'm just wondering, are you hearing stories over in your neck of the woods? Have other dev jobs folded under? And if so, or even not? Why do you think that is what are you thinking about right now is so hard on agencies?

Caleb: 6:43

Yeah, in some ways, I think like who we compete against is always a question that is a tough one, that you're aware of the core business presentation that we do every year in C 12. And one of the questions to try to ask there is, who are your competitors? And I always laugh when I look at that question. Yeah, well, it's like calm competing. It's the status quo, off the shelf SAS solutions that somebody can buy, or just the Freelancer in Poland, that's going to build a solution for you. I mean, it's all over the map.

Gary: 7:15

Anything that comes up in a Google search? Yeah.

David: 7:18

Yeah, yeah. That's what kills me is like, yeah, I can build that. And you're like, you're a WordPress developer. Nothing against that, but you're not doing what I'm doing. But you're gonna tell that client who doesn't know the difference that you can, and they're gonna throw money at you, because you were very charming or whatever. And realize you absolutely have no idea what you're doing. And that happens so often. So yeah, that that question always I just write, we have a gajillion. That's just that's what I read. And my market share is inconsequential. Those my two answers to that question.

Caleb: 7:51

Yeah, and so I mean, I have I seen that change within the market. You know, in the last little bit, I do see less local kind of competition. In some ways. It's like there's either the extremes of people want to build the team internally. Or they're going all in on a company like ours. In some ways, it's been, it's gotten easier, as we've kind of made ourselves more distinctive. We're, we're building sustainable software systems, and we're coming in to establish businesses. So one of the challenging things for us as an agency is figuring out, like, who is the market that we actually go after, because we've served everyone from startups to Fortune, you know, 10 kind of companies over 26 plus years. But who's the folks that we actually want to enter, interact with and actually be able to serve well, long term. And really, we found that that's a it's a mid market customer, where we're working with a business innovator that's an owner or a key leader in that business. And we're able to be their long term, software partner, you know, they ever use software, or every business needs software, but just not always custom software. And when you want to do that, you got to make the decision. Do we want to become a software company? Or do we want to use software to be an investment we're going to make just like we would buy, you know, welding robots or buy a laser cutter, if we're in a manufacturing business? Looking at software in a similar way, to how do we exploit that tool and be able to make a return on that investment?

David: 9:23

We I phrase it up when people ask, you know, who's our customer as like, I break the world down into two types of CEOs. There are those who buy off the shelf, and there are those who are bitten by the custom software bug, those two do not mix at all. Because once you been bitten by the bug, you will never go back to off the shelf software. And if you if you haven't been bid, you think we're all idiots, because I can just go over here and buy it and it's so much cheaper and why would you ever do that? Right? We hear that. But if you're the other side, it's like, I mean, it doesn't matter what your actual businesses. It could be anything from landscaping. To entertaining people to whatever, if you've been bitten by that bug, you have to have your solution do exactly what you wanted to do, and nothing else. And that, and I found that to be very strong is people will not, they don't play in that. In C 12. There's a mix of the two and, and they almost like, fight each other. It's like, you're an idiot, no, you're an idiot, why would you do, and it's so interesting. And it all comes down to whether or not they are okay with something off the shelf that doesn't do exactly what they want, you know, it's a little bit of a square peg round hole situation. But they'll just kind of, you know, shave their head just down. And that can change my business a little bit to fit in, put my peg in there to abuse a analogy there. But other people like absolutely not, I'm going to custom craft, the place where the peg goes, it's going to be perfect, right? And those people just are very different people, personality wise and everything.

Caleb: 10:54

But it's also what kind of business are you trying to build, if you have kind of a standard business that you're delivering on a particular service or product that is just no, you're geographically competing, okay, then maybe they're standard solutions in your market to be able to deliver what you need to do. But if you're trying to compete with a broader market, it's what's your competitive advantage, you can't go by a competitive advantage with an off the shelf software solution. You've got to build that competitive, you got to build

David: 11:24

that. So do you guys, are you guys us only or

Caleb: 11:28

do you offshore it all? us only?

David: 11:31

So are you but you're all in your office, right? You all's are local devs? Are you remote.

Caleb: 11:37

So we're an interesting hybrid. So up until 2016, we were all in the office or in client offices where we were working. Never really staff org, but more of Team augmentation. So we would, when we were working with big fortune 500 kind of companies, you know, coming in and running a project or supplying a team, kind of within their environment. Since then, we've moved to we still have about 60% of our team that is in the greater triangle area here in North Carolina. And then the other 40% is spread throughout kind of the Eastern and Central time zones. And so we we can we try to batch that to have people connected. And in we have one other office up in Wisconsin, where we've got five people now. But otherwise, we've got more senior folks where they're working remotely. And then we bring the whole team together at least once a quarter to be able to work on professional development stuff. And then our annual kind of company retreat. We value a lot of that in person collaboration, even though the day to day is spread out more than

David: 12:41

so. So do you have the same problem hiring remote US workers as we do? I'll tell you a story. This is a true story. I don't think I have said it on the podcast. When we were I know this was a contractor to be clear. But we were interviewing and we have this crazy process to make sure you are us because it's really important to us to make sure all of our people US base. So this guy, I find his profile. And he is Gary smiling because he knows

Gary: 13:15

this story you might have you might have said this before, but I think it's worth repeating.

David: 13:20

So this guy, this is 100% true. I swear I'm not making this up. This guy his profile picture kinda was like me big round melon head beard bald, you know, I it looked like me. And so I'm like, okay, cool. And so I set up, he had a good resume, we set up a thing. And I'm like, Okay, do you have a camera? And he's like, No, I don't have a camera. I was like, well, we have to have a camera. He's like, Okay, give me a minute, disappears for a little bit comes back. Camera comes on. There is okay, so I'm going from bottom up. So first, I see his pale white skin sitting here. And the Pink Guy picture is a white guy that matters in just a second. So and then he's wearing my favorite interview wherever, which is a wife beater or the tank top under shirt. Why free to such a horrible word, but that's what they were always called. I'm sure there's a better word for them. Now my kids are everybody

Gary: 14:11

knows what it is. As soon as you say it, though,

David: 14:13

you know what I'm talking about. So that's what he's wearing to the interview. Okay, so we're already in good, good start. Then we get to his face. His face is that picture that I described a minute ago? Avatar to over his face where it moves and very poorly like this very low, low

Gary: 14:32

tech, deep fake talk filter.

David: 14:35

Yeah, just and I'm it's just it's over. Like it's not it's even like got a crease down the middle. Like it's been so bad. And so I am like, whoa, right? Like what is going on? Clearly, this is not supposed to be targeted. And so I'm taking screenshots and I'm shooting them over to slack. Like this is who I'm interviewing right now. And I have a thing like, I'm always afraid someone's gonna get mad at me or whatever. So I have to go through the motions of interview Hearing this guy, at least for a few minutes before I let him go, even though immediately I know there's no way I'm hiring this dude. But to me that was such, that's an extreme example of the lengths people will go to, to pretend they're a US based developer. I mean, we have hundreds of examples of hundreds, that's exaggeration, dozens of examples of smaller, less insane, pretending. But it happens all the time. And I had one guy who had a webcam that had, if you're on the thing, YouTube, you'll see my finger. This is all I could say, of his face, I had my finger in front of the camera. And that was all I could see. And everything was fuzzy. And I'm like, and you could see people walking around behind him, like he was clearly in some sort of call center. Do you have those problems? Or is that just unique to us?

Caleb: 15:53

I think I've seen kind of the the market shift, in some ways over the last few years, for sure. You know, things were definitely different in 2021, as inflation was skyrocketing, and, you know, trying to find anybody that was willing to move from where they were that had experienced that didn't want a 2030 40% pay raise, you know, it was kind of a hard thing to find. Sure. And then I feel like over the last nine months, we've actually seen things go almost a little bit of the opposite way where people are willing to find a company where their values aligned, where they're doing the kind of work that they want to do the work is mattering. And they'll take a cut, in order to do that, you know, they'll go from this this company that they were not loving what the work that they were doing, and come to an organization where they can have a greater impact or have that collaboration at a better level than they would otherwise. That to say it's not like, Oh, I've got those kind of folks beating down the doors and ready to jump on the team, it's, it's often that they are not perfect fix, from a staff perspective, you know, maybe the technology experiences they have are not 100% there. But what does that transition look like? So that's kind of what our experience has been around that we definitely get all kinds of those folks from outside the US or other places that are are looking to, hey, I'm a developer with this many years of experience, here's what I've done that kind of stuff. And those are pretty easy to filter out. In a lot of cases, we put that

David: 17:31

on our applications like us only, we don't we're not offshoring this at all, it's a thing, whether you agree with it or not, doesn't matter. That's who we are. And while you're still trying when you're in Ukraine, or Argentina, or wherever this is, we're very clear as to what we're looking for. I find that so interesting. I mean, what what bothers me, and outside of even hiring is the trend. And like you said, I think a lot of that has gone away in the last year ish as the dev market in particular has gotten beat up, because all the tech layoffs and whatnot. But in the last few years, there has been this trend, I don't know when and this is more of a competitive thing than a hiring thing. Where a company A will go and pitch, you know, a potential client, and they'll say their US base and you come to find out their PMS, our project managers are in the US, but their team could be anywhere. And they hide that fact. And I'm like, if you're gonna do that, that's cool. There's nothing wrong with that that's a fine model. And it can work if you're good at it. But don't lie about it, dude, I mean, be what you are, be proud of what you are, whatever you are, is I just, I find that a lot. And when we're competing now, and I'll tell potential classes, like, if you're comparing us to an offshore team, we're gonna lose every time price wise, we just we can't compete

Caleb: 18:57

which, which which version of the price, the original, the first quote, at the end, the end at the end results of what you're wanting to build?

David: 19:04

Yeah, that's something if you've never done it before, you don't believe like, I'm like, I'm gonna tell you your future right now here comes, you're going to hire that offshore team, because they're 40% lower than we are. And you're going to think and you're going to get a sweet, sweet deal, because that pm sold you really well, that's wonderful. And then you're going to realize that that price didn't include everything we just talked about, because they gave you that price. After talking to you for an hour, they have no idea what you want to build. But then they gave you that price. You were like that's a sweet, sweet price. And then you realize by the time you're done six months, nine months later, that price is now 90% of what my cost was 12 times the headaches, and you didn't really like what you got in the end. And anyways, that's your future. And of course, they think I'm just sour grapes. But then it happens. Right then then I'm right and then they come back. Sometimes this doesn't happen all the time, clearly. But sometimes I come back and I'm like, You're Alright, I'm sorry, I don't have any more money. But you're right, have a good one, right?

Caleb: 20:03

Because I'm running some of our best customers are those folks that have had those experiences, not necessarily that it was the absolute last experience they had, because usually, it's hard to have laid out that money and then realize, man, we got to do this again. But often, if you've had that experience, then when we, because when we're talking about custom software, and an agency, we're selling the invisible. So what I'm really selling you is, here's our approach, here's how we think about problems. Here's how we're going to steer along the way, here's the expectations that we can set. And here's why that's going to be a value to you to get to where you want with confidence. Because that's really what I'm selling is confidence in our approach to get there. Not this set of features. I mean, it's totally different than, you know, everybody likes to bash on used car salesmen. But you do know when you go to a lot and you buy a car, what you're getting it has these features, or it doesn't. And software is really challenging, because you don't know. And you're just going to be a change agent in your business, and is what's the impact that it's going to ultimately have

David: 21:10

and whether or not they're going to ask the questions that allow you to think of ways to do something you didn't before, right? If you've got a guy who's just going to do everything you say, is pure? Yes, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll build that. Yeah. Oh, cool. Sure. Without questioning why. Or maybe there's a better way. At the end of the day, you're not a new client person, or not a software designer, you wouldn't want, you would not go and design your own house. So why would you design your own software? You don't know how to do either. But for some reason people think because I use a computer, there's a keyboard sitting in front of me, and I stare at monitors all day, I must be a software expert. I must know how software works because I use software. That's like saying the fish knows all about water. No, they don't. They have no idea. They're just in it. Same thing. And we find that all the time. And most people understand that like what the guy we were talking about before he'll go do this offshore thing, that project will die a horrible death. Not always, there are good ones out there. But sometimes, but then he'll go leave that company come to another company, then call me and be like, okay, so I made a mistake. And now I'm doing it for another company, we're gonna do it right this time, right? Those relationships that I'll keep for, gotta call me five years later. And, you know, it's ready to go. And yeah,

Caleb: 22:29

it's amazing how those things come back around, right? You those conversations that you thought went nowhere? Or the impression you didn't think you left one? And kind of out of the blue? Oh, yeah. You know, the length of conversations is interesting. Because it's what makes it hard to predict, like, what is what does 2024 look like? I know, there are businesses that I interact with, where they can tell me exactly what their project load is, and things that the big municipality projects or things like that, they know exactly what 2024 is gonna look like. I don't know what December is gonna look like at this point, right? I know what some things that are going to be on the schedule, but a lot of those things haven't happened yet. And that's the really interesting aspect of it. But I know there's going to be lots of opportunities to interact with existing customers that we interact with, or a new businesses come in that have an opportunity. And it's an opportunity to come in and learn their business. And a lot of the times we want to think about it, you know, you talked about, they don't know how to design the software solution that they need. But they do know what their processes, what their competitive advantages. And so we want to be someone that can come in and learn that in the same way that we're a member of their team can be thinking process first software second, and how we build the solution for them. So that we can be making all those micro trade offs that are happening within any development build. And that comes from knowing what's the end business goals that we're trying to accomplish.

David: 24:02

Along with those same ideas, one thing I've always been fascinated by is everyone knows how to do their job. And most people are really, really good at their job. But if you actually ask them to write it down, they have no idea how to do their job, because they've been doing it in their head for 510 20 years. But when you say okay, how do you do this process? Well, I do this. Oh, wait, I forgot about that. Oh, yeah. And I do this too, when we make them write it all down? For not actually but walk it through it out? Yeah. They have no idea. They it's just instinct at this point. And that is always interesting, because then they realize how much extra junk is in there that they don't really need but they've been doing for 10 years, or things that they wish they had that make their life easier. And that's that's the pulling out process that

Gary: 24:50

I like the scenario that that comes where they've been doing it this way for so long, because they think they've figured out a solution when all they really did was Create a complex workaround for something the software didn't do for him.

David: 25:05

Yeah, that's, that's SAP actually, that's the entire. That's what SAP is. SAP is a big huge for those who don't know, SAP is a huge piece of software that very large companies use, that runs everything. And I have a client, they did it, they switched over to it like, a couple years ago. And they literally had a week after they went live. And this is spending millions and millions of dollars to get this thing in place in the contractors come in, and consultants, they didn't have email at all in their company for a week. Like, it was nuts. And he described because here's how SAP works. Everyone says I'm gonna hire SAP, I'm gonna bring them in, and I'm going to hate everything that they do. And then they're going to train me on how SAP works, and I'm going to hate it. But then this is normal. And then a year later, is the only way that good things can be done. And you're, you've never really enjoyed SAP at all. But at some point, it's just normal. And that's exactly what Gary's saying is, yeah, these processes, and we integrate with SAP pretty regularly. And it's a nightmare. It is just a nightmare for everyone involved. And there's one guy at the company who knows everything. And if he got hit by the bus, no one would have a clue what's happening at any point in time. And it's just sorry, I've gone off on a complete tangent that makes no sense to anybody but me

Gary: 26:25

say baseball for you guys.

David: 26:27

Yes, wait, who has way inside baseball read there? So what is it that made you want to go from a developer regular code monkey? To owner? What was it that lit that spark?

Caleb: 26:43

So I think it really is the opportunity to in let me start that over again. I think it's really the opportunity to interact with business owners, I mean, and be a problem solver. So I mean, problems are often those opportunities to come in and make a bigger change. And, you know, I was one of those guys that grew up, you know, classic introverts would never have thought, you know, what the thing that I love is actually getting into a meeting or on a call and actually working through how do we solve this problem? How do we solve this challenge, but it actually is really energizing for me. And I think, you know, small talk is hard. But jumping into something where there's a needed solution is actually a lot more gratifying. And seeing the impact that can have there. And being just kind of a continuous learner, like a wanting to improve and see things improve. Personally, kind of led to alright, I love technology. I like what I do, as a developer, I think I've got a good mind for it. But it wasn't actually what got me into software, what got me into software was solving problems in a business context and being able to serve. And so it actually was a more natural transition than I would have thought. But still an interesting one Jeep because it's going from a wagon to lose my technical skills by kind of going down this path. Where I really love that I enjoy that. And now it's actually kind of interesting at this point in my career, and, and as a business owner, as a CEO, I get to jump in and still do some technical things still give an overall business direction, because I think that's really needed to lead an organization in the kind that we are, you know, as a consulting agency, but I get to do it on hard problems and doing it with people. So it's collaborating to be able to do that, and thinking about how do I apply the things that I've learned of how to run really good software projects with those feedback loops into how do we build those feedback loops into the business itself, which I feel like is kind of that, alright, as I can apply the things that I'm learning to my own business, I'm better equipped to then serve other business owners and other business innovators and trying to solve their own business challenges because I've got a deeper understanding.

David: 29:10

So how much are you coding now? percentage wise, any 20% 80?

Caleb: 29:16

Whoa, maybe five.

David: 29:19

So you're in there, you come in there as the storm trooper, because some problem needs to be solved. You fly in. When

Caleb: 29:27

it's usually Yeah, it's kind of a translate. We're scaling, you know, scaling from we're 36 People now. We were 20 at the end of 2019. So with that, that growth, it's you know, trying to figure out what is it was it looked like to interact? I still interact a lot on kind of the early kind of solution ideas with customers. Alright, so what's the sales engineering? How could we come up with solutions to this, but then having enough connection to the engineering side of it, to be able to say, alright, and here's how we can actually improve that. So a lot of it is interacting with, here's a challenging problem, I want somebody to be able to talk through that with and think through the solution. And so our software craftsmen are usually the folks that I'm interacting with there. And then occasionally, you know, we've got a few internal tools that we we build and maintain, to help us run our business operation. So I get opportunity to just to jump in there from time to time and actually knock out some features or, or change some things or explore some technologies to

Gary: 30:33

see your custom software businesses running on your own custom software.

Caleb: 30:38

Not very much. I mean, I actually, one of the big things that I have is that you really shouldn't have a whole lot of custom software in your business. And we we don't, we have very little, but it's kind of that hub, it's the piece that, where's that the extra 10%, that the tools that we use, don't actually solve for. And so that's where we have some solutions in place. Do

David: 31:04

you? Or have you found that you have gotten off the technology train? Or are you still, like, I'll use myself an example, I stopped coding the front end, I was a full stack for a long time, I stopped coding the front end in jQuery. I got off the train at Angular and react when those started rising up. Because they drove me nuts. They became magic, and that I didn't want to deal with. So now like when that happened, gosh, four years ago, three, four years ago, it became the first time I couldn't solve the problem. Right? If the front end is broken, I am not your man. Because I know No, I have no clue how react works at a low level way at least. Are there are you have you gotten off the train in that regard? Meaning that your team is now way in front of you? Or do you still keep up to date?

Caleb: 32:01

I feel like I've kept up to date somewhat. I mean, there are definitely areas where I recognize there are members of the team that are definitely have deeper skills than me. And often the the areas that I'm coming in are not. Alright, we've got this really esoteric bug and okay, I've got, I'll raise my hand, I've got the most deep knowledge in that. More of I've got experience, and how can we think about this problem and apply those skills of debugging or whatever else to it, or here's the high level business problem that we're trying to solve for. And Can Can I ask the directional questions of, yeah, but why are we doing it that way? Or can we approach it this other way? Or something like that?

David: 32:45

I get the biggest kick out of guy comes to me on my team stuck, right. Everyone else is busy, or they are they don't know the answer. And he's like, dude, I'm stuck. Can you help? Sure. I have no idea what you're doing. Let's go see. And those old school man are doing this longer than anyone else on my team by a longshot. Those old school debugging and sussing out what the problem is, they still work even if I don't know your language, they still work. And that gives me the biggest kick. I'm gonna like that old man who's excited that you know, still got it there. It is that tell you that? That is it doesn't happen very often. My team is way smarter than I am, which I'm very proud of. But there are times every once awhile this oh man, you know, puts on his glasses and gets to work. And that's fun. For sure. My story of like, I'm jealous of you. Because you got to work with a mentor, who then bequeathed gave when, whatever, however, that process, right, you got this up. My version of that story is not nearly as much fun. I saw a guy when I was 23 years old, first job. See this guy, who's the CEO of the company I was working for I was working for a company that no longer exists called inform. In Houston, Texas, and I love this guy. Just the nicest dude, I didn't know him. He was the CEO. And I didn't know we didn't talk a lot. But someone I admired. Found out. He was 33 years old. And I was like, he's running this multimillion dollars pretty good sized company, multimillion dollar company. And he's only 34 That's what I wanted to, like, hit me. That's what I want to do. And so that was that became a goal. But then I left that company, right. They got sold and blah, blah, blah. And I moved on to several different companies. And but I always had them back in my mind. His name was Doug Wendler, if he's listening. Hi, Doug. He has no idea that I'm telling the story because I haven't spoken him in 20 years, but I finally started big pixel when I was 35. So I didn't quite hit it. But that was my my goal was but I would love to have had your story which was Doug comes into your life shows you the ropes brings you up onto the mountain and enjoy the kingdom. I love that so much. And I'm way under shooting, I know you worked hard. But you know, that's just so cool. I'm so jealous

Caleb: 35:13

at the same time I look at it of I see just kind of how God orchestrated the story for those things to come along. Because Ken was the right person to start role model. I looking back at it. Now, I don't know that that is what I have taken that step in faith to say, alright, here, I'm ready to jump out, quit my job, and start role model assisting from the ground up. But take it to the next level. Continue to grow it and iterate on it. Take the vision of what has been built, that I really believe in and be able to see that continue for the next decades. Yeah, that that is kind of where things are best set up. And in some ways, it's interesting to have kind of come in, and being a second generation CEO. Because it's also impacting the way that I think about leadership. So what does it look like? I'm still fairly early on in my career overall, early 30s. And so what does that look like for me, you know, leaving role model in the hands of someone else? And that's my vision, like, how does this business outlive my involvement in it as well? So what does that look like? 20 years from now, if I'm no longer CEO, for one, the person that is probably going to take over? Doesn't probably work for me now. Which is a an interesting thing to think about. And how am I investing in those people that as they come on board, and identifying who this potential leaders are, to give them opportunities to lead and fail in ways that allows them to grow and establish some of their own leadership opportunities.

David: 37:01

So you're speaking of succession a little bit there, you took over and then eventually, you're gonna pass it on somehow. succession to me, in my view of running a company like this an agency model, and software is just a type of agencies is a billion. They don't sell, right, everyone talks about you know, and C 12, or whatever, that, Oh, I got a 3x multiplier, I'm going to sell it and I'm gonna retire and it's gonna be beautiful, magical moment. Agencies, the multipliers, generally half. So if you have a million dollars in revenue, and just picking a number out of the air, your company could theoretically be sold for about half a million dollars, which is great, but not something you're going to live on for the rest of your life. And so that's always kind of weighed on me. It's like, what is succession mean to an agency owner. And in your case, you bought it from the owner, which is so fascinating, because I've never heard of that before someone hiring, growing up and then passing the torch to an internal person. I haven't seen that an agency model for so that's super cool to me. So I look around my kids have zero interest in my so that that process is ship has sailed as it were, maybe they'll come around, but I doubt it. That's just not their world. And selling it. I mean, again, you you've built your life, and you have a 2 million $3 million annual revenue company, you might get a million and a half for it. Okay, that's a lot of money. Don't get me wrong, but it's not sit on an island and drink my ties kind of money. So that's kind of weird. Recently, I've been noodling about the concept of an ESOP, which is an employee stock option plan, which is basically selling your company to your employees, or at least a chunk of your company. Yeah, there's a million ways to do that. But that's kind of been noodling about because it kind of fits with my ethos, kind of the way I run the company and stuff that that speaks to me. So I'm only 45. So I'm not there. I'm not thinking of this in real terms yet, but it's still are you thinking of potentially passing your company? I know, it's way early, you're in your early 30s. But is the idea of how you got it how you'd like to pass it on? Is that appeal to you? Are you thinking? No, I'm going to sell it or have you ever had any of those thoughts?

Caleb: 39:20

Yeah, it is interesting to like, you know, have been less than nine months from closing the deal to buy the company beef already thinking about what does it look like to sell the company at some stage, but I mean, but yes, there's there is a level of selling to an outside buyer versus someone internal. There's kind of two major distinctives there is what does it look like for the culture to be able to be passed down in leadership? I think that's the thing that made this transition of me taking over role model, such an interesting one because the culture it was actually kind of a relief to the rest of the team. You know, it wasn't Here's the exodus of Alright, Caleb is buying the company. It was alright, we're excited about that, because now there's not the threat that, alright, couldn't be sold to an outside firm, even if they have what seems to be a values alignment, what's going to change about the culture? Instead, it was very known, here's what's going to change, and this person already is serving as the CEO anyways. Now, it's kind of stepping into that that next role. So I see a similar kind of idea. I mean, ESOP was something that we explored as well, you know, whether that would make sense it, it's a tricky one, kind of depending on size, and financial situation, and other things like that. And so it wasn't a good fit for this last transition. But I could see it as a future one. And having leadership involved with the running of the company, is, I think the value there. At the same time, I don't know like, is it something that I need to sell in 20 years? Or is it I'm, I'm here as an owner and involved in other areas of leadership and able to do other things? I don't know, I don't, I don't know what that looks like day to day.

David: 41:12

Yeah, there's part of me. There was a client we had years ago early on in big pixels world. And it was a family owned business. And the sun had taken over years before. But dad still had an office, he was like 85 years old. And he would come in every day. He did nothing at the company at all. But he kind of became the mascot. And I mean, that the most loving way possible, not like a joke, but he would come in and he waved to everybody. And he'd walked by and go into his office, dude, lord knows what because again, he was not responsible for anything. But everyone loved him, his job was just to make people happy. And he would go and visit with everybody in the office and just shoot the breeze with them. And they felt loved. And no one would have replaced that man ever. He had the corner office, everything. I mean, his son who ran the company had a smaller office, but there was like, you built this, this is your world. And we're just really happy. It was very sweet, sweet story, actually, because we'd be in there doing a consulting thing. And he'd walked by, hey. And I was like, this is the coolest. But then you also hear the other side where the guy just can't let go. That's what I don't want to be right. The guy has no idea hasn't developed anything hasn't done anything productive in a while he's just cranky. You know, you've seen that. There's lots of companies like that. And that's what I don't want to be. And I there's a there's a fine line for that. For sure.

Caleb: 42:42

Yeah, they've got the piece of somebody shared the insight with me around the time that I was making the purchase of role model that a healthy timeline for the term of a CEO in a privately held company is 20 years. And so it's kind of a mark that I have, in my mind, I can lead the company for 25 years as owner and CEO. I'm three years into my tenure. But I kind of have that in my mind, like what is 20 years from now look like? You're 17, I guess, look like. And that's like in the ballpark of where I can see a transition making sense, because it's just, it's the new set of energy. And that's the thing that I saw with kind of getting a chance to come up through the business, is there's a new energy to grow in the business. And what are those challenges, which I can just imagine 20 years from now, I'm not going to have that same energy to keep driving and hustling and everything else. after that. I still hear that hopefully, I've got some wisdom to share at that point. But the energy is is something that's hard to replace.

David: 43:45

Here that Gary only got 10 years left, man,

Gary: 43:48

your energy level is kind of through the roof. I doubt that. Within 10 years, we might want you to kind of tone it down. We need new energy because I'll do it in C plus plus.

David: 44:05

C sharp for the wind.

Gary: 44:07

Okay. Well, Caleb, I had a question for you. Since Yeah, you are someone who came up from beginning as a developer and now running the company. What would your top three pieces of advice be for anybody who's either starting a new business as an entrepreneur or coming up through a business like yours to kind of gain that success?

Caleb: 44:29

Yeah, so I think one of the things that was even a reason of why I wanted to get into consulting and software is just an opportunity to always be learning, being a lifelong learner and to be able to apply that learning was what is interesting to me about the consulting world of interacting with clients and learning their business and be able to apply what learning whether that's, I'm a big audiobook guy, so you know, always be listening to and reading books. is kind of a thing for me. Like there's there's something timeless about learning those concepts in a longer form of a book. That's really valuable. But then I think in the work that doing trying to find feedback loops, how to know and try experiments. So I'm very much a, what's the habit that I can get in? Or what's the do on a consistent basis to get improved results? But also, what's the learning I can put in to ensure that I've got a feedback system such that whatever I'm going to try, I can measure did that work or not? What improved or or not from that process? Or the thing that I tried as an experiment? I think that those are the couple of things that I've tried to keep front of mind as I came up through those opportunities for sure.

Gary: 45:49

Now, if anybody wanted to learn more about role model software, what is the best place for them to look you up and reach out to you?

Caleb: 45:57

Yeah, hit us up. Role model. software.com is a great place to go can see some of our past projects. See what it looks like if interested in joining the team or working with us in any way. LinkedIn is also a a great place to interact with, you know, some of the things that we've shared there as far as just stories of what we've done, or reach out to me directly there. That'd be great spot.

Gary: 46:22

We'll include those links in the show notes for anybody who wants to check those out.

David: 46:25

Man, I tell you nerding out with someone who is knows what it's like to run a company like ours, I call it the sausage, sausage software making is always a treat. So I can't thank you enough for joining. took too long to get you here. But it was so so much fun. Thank you so much.

Caleb: 46:43

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys.

Unknown: 46:46

Hi, I'm Christy pronto, Content Marketing Director here at Big pixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the biz dev podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email Hello at Doug big pixel.net the biz dev podcast is produced and presented by big pixel. See you next week. Until then follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook threads, YouTube and LinkedIn