Forecasting for Future Success in Business w/ Josh Fuller | Ep. 109

This week Gary and Christie talk with Founder of Matic Digital, Josh Fuller. Hiring, expanding and creating your digital footprint the right way are all on the table. Sprinkle in a little skateboard talk and you have this week's Biz/Dev podcast episode.

Links:

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/matic-digital/

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Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

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

Gary: 0:05

Hello, and welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm your host today, Gary Voigt. And I am joined by our amazing marketing director Chris de pronto. Hello, everyone. Today we're here to discuss topics ranging from tech news, software development, small business, startups, leadership strategies for growth, and everything in between. It sounds like a lot, but they're all kind of related. So we'll try to keep you mildly entertained as we go. And today, we are joined by our special guest, Josh fuller. And Josh is the founder and CEO of medic digital. How are you doing, Josh?

Josh: 0:41

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me today.

Gary: 0:44

Thank you for joining us. So we're gonna get into your journey and your company. Just wanted to start off with a few things that are a little bit off topic. As I was looking through the website, there is two things that I noticed for medic digital. And one of them struck me immediately, like a detective I keyed in on right away on your about us page. And one of the images in the background. There's a Frankie Hill skateboard. I don't know if you know whose it is, but I'm curious to find out who's going to skateboard. That is because that's vintage Powell Peralta. Frankie Hills skateboard. No one in this audience is going to care about this except me. But I have to know. I'm

Josh: 1:23

so happy. We're starting here. Yeah, that's my man. I'm a massive fan of that era of skateboarding. And even a little older. And my my office at home has a couple of, like, Malayalees. And then yeah, at the studio, we've got a really cool vintage Steve Cavalera. And the Frankie Hill, which is still looking for a home on the wall. And I ride a ray Barbie is my kind of ride around. But a newer a newer addition, Ray Barbie so big on that.

Gary: 1:59

I think we're just gonna skip the whole Tech Talk. And I think me and Josh are just going to talk about skateboarding because I can go on this topic forever.

Christie: 2:06

It really was just saying that he was gonna put skateboards on the wall in his office. Yeah.

Gary: 2:13

And I grew up skateboarding started in the 80s.

Josh: 2:18

That's the one I keep right, right next to me. I clearly don't do very many tricks anymore. But it's a great way to keep up with my daughter when she's on her scooter. So

Gary: 2:31

see, actually, I convinced my daughter to skate with me. And she did for a little while. And then she got into other things in school and skateboarding took a backseat. So that means I didn't get to go to the park as much as I would like. But I still roll around.

Josh: 2:43

I mean, I don't know if I don't know if I'm making it look fun. I

Gary: 2:49

might look, it doesn't matter how it looks. It matters. Not skateboarding, actually. You'll find through I know your company's digital branding company, and you do a lot of creative and I've, throughout my career here as a designer have noticed that a lot of other designers and people that I've worked with in the creative fields do have a little bit of a background in skateboarding, skateboarding and music seem to crossover a lot into the creative fields. I don't know if you've noticed that as well.

Josh: 3:19

Absolutely, it was music to my ears when we built out our studio this summer. And one of our account directors Bryce was, was the first one he actually instigated the skateboards on the wall notion. I didn't try and prescribe that it just, that's what they that's what he wanted. And then the team kind of got around it. So now we have like, six of them hanging around the office. And yeah, half the other people are in musicians, like, we do a weekly PTO and my content director, he lives in New York, actually. And he, his notice was, I need to block these couple of hours on these couple of days for we're doing some recording in the studio with his band. So it's just yeah, we all just say I don't know, but then my studio lead. She took up ballet so I think this industry just, they just don't have a thing. And that's, that's fun. It's a fun,

Gary: 4:17

creative outlet. For sure. Yeah. Speaking about your studio, why don't you give us just like the broad overview of what you guys do at Matic digital.

Josh: 4:28

Yeah, so we are a product and strategy, design, practice, build, you know, a lot of kind of functional frameworks for either newly forming or already up and running organizations, all kinds of sizes from from enterprise to startup. And, you know, with that we really focus more on the tangible the overall brand perception and user experience. We try and, you know, pull those threads through A lot of times there can be a drop off between them. And we do some development as well, though we're considering looking at just focusing 100% on on the design and strategy piece, and content inherently is a part of that. But you know, we've done large financial tech platforms and smaller Webflow marketing sites, so sort of, you know, everything in between there, ultimately, all those, all those interfaces and endpoints require, you know, collecting and aligning on what we're saying and who we're saying it to, to kind of drive those reactions from the user base. So if it has a, if it's gonna have another set of eyes on it, we, we work on it.

Gary: 5:44

Nice, that actually aligns with a lot of what we do at Big pixel, we are a little bit more focused on the actual development part of it. But as far as working with everything, from startups to enterprises, from trying to keep their brand in line with the product that they're building, or creating a brand for them for the product, and then moving through, you know, from just the initial concept all the way through to completion, that's very similar path. Same workflow marketing sites, typically, we do this for companies that we're already doing other projects for, we don't focus on just the websites, but we'll build them for you as a secondary part of the business for one of the larger clients we had. Now, did your team also work with existing, like a development? Like? In other words, if there was an enterprise company that hired you to do something specific? Are you working along with their dev team to?

Josh: 6:39

Absolutely getting a little more in the triage or, you know, even, I get made fun of, because I use this word a lot, but like being surgical, so something exists, we're in here to augment or effect an area without breaking any other areas. Yeah, you know, a lot of scaling from from current, but, you know, a lot of a lot of the business that sort of come in, and we're really, just to turn to so we're still figuring out us and figuring out what we, you know, there's a lot of things you can do in the strategy, design and development arena, as you know, and but then you want to start to focus on Okay, well, what do we like doing? What do we like the most and, and more? So where are we taking the biggest guesses at success? versus where we know every time this this thing was scoped? Right, we're gonna hit the marks. And so we're always sort of reflecting and refining on that. But yeah, as of, you know, in our second year, we've jumped into things where the water was pretty warm already. And, and then a lot of it's like, oh, we have this, we want to change everything. So a lot of full refresh, which has its own, you know, it's it's much more difficult at times, then when you're dealing with, you know, starting out with a white page and just, you know, okay, what are we building, like, paper napkin example is, it's fun to say we think that way we can start from nothing and go, the truth is, I think it's actually a lot more. The barrier to entry to getting to an MVP, and getting to a positive outcome is so much more straight line, straightforward. When you are starting from zero versus when you're starting from, we're doing 10 million a year. We don't want to disrupt this. But we want to do a full replatform. Go. So yeah, we're still in the business of both. But I think, you know, as we continue to mature, as as a practice area of, you know, where do we want to be known for? And what's the thing? What's our elevator?

Gary: 8:55

That's a confident approach. Especially you said, you're only like two years old? Is that what you said? Yeah, companies only. So usually, in this phase of a smaller business, from what we've seen in companies we've worked with, I mean, the first year is going to be just figuring out how to get clients and then the second years figuring out how to get more or just how to continue or just how to just make enough to get by because it's a struggle. After only two years, you're being able to pinpoint exactly what you want to move forward with and the direction you want to go. That's that's a confident move. And I applaud you for that. How hard was it getting up from zero to two years like what made you take the leap to starting a company and then well, from the first year

Josh: 9:42

medic benefits from its young but I'm not. So I did run a small agency back when I first got my career started in the early 2000s. far different landscape than when I started Matic. So I guess, you know, the benefits we had were out of the gate, I knew some people already had a pretty strong network. You know, the last decade, I mean, I spent nine years independent before I even took my first real job, right. And that was as creative director of an established agency here in Denver, grew out of creative practice there for over three and a half ish, four years. And then Deloitte Digital was here and growing. And so, you know, I jumped there, my, my agenda was like, Okay, let's go get a Master's Oh, deletes here, let's go get a PhD. I like working in big team working with big brand working on big problems. And I've done nine years of small stuff. So I was excited to see big and, and, you know, Deloitte was was very good to me, and I got to travel the world and work on some pretty big projects while I was there, and then I but I knew ultimately it was like, okay, Deloitte, you really got to be on a partner track, if you're gonna go for life here. And I, you know, measured what that looked like. And at times still think it sounds awesome. But in that moment, in time, there were there was interesting opportunities coming up in the late 20 teens. And one of them was to join a small forming, we just raised 3 million come build our product with us jobs. So I did this startup. And we launched two products and three brands in a year. And by product, I mean, native apps in the genomic space, we got acquired in our first year, it was just like, it couldn't have been a better startup experience. And I

Gary: 11:37

was gonna say that sounds like the ideal experience, hey, we had Yeah, and hey, we're successful. And hey, we're gonna get ya success. That's, that's not the most common startup story. But that's that's

Josh: 11:49

the founder was was really smart guy. And, you know, he was a really good steward of focusing on the team, including me, I mean, I was always throwing ideas out from all over and some of those were well received, and others were like, Let's stay in our lane on this. And keep up focus, you know, and, and, and, yeah, so that was, that was a cool experience. And then I joined another health tech, and that one was even large, much larger, and did that for two years. So when I left, I left with intention of okay, I really miss shipping, I really miss dealing with kind of interesting product problems from various arenas, not just sort of this health lane, I've been in for four years. And I kind of left because I had a little bit of runway I was I was offered the opportunity to support a bigger agency as kind of a lead creative with JetBlue. And so I had this like five month, month gig, right, right on my own. So I was on my own, but not really. And I didn't totally know I wanted to do an agency. I just knew I wanted to get out there again, I kind of imagined more of a permanence. And then that sort of led into, Oh, I hear you're on your own end, do you want to look at this doing this thing with us or that thing? And like Sanyo, I was scrambling for help. And I was like, Yeah, I want to do that. That sounds cool. I don't really have the time to really do the COC, I better better get a content strategist in here. And oh, that's gonna need some code. Let me ring up some old developer buddies, see if they're around. And it just kind of escalated. So 21, September 2001, was kind of when the light bulb went off. And I launched Maddock, I was like, Yep, I want to build an agency, let's, let's go nuts. And, you know, the big thing was, I wanted to build two models within the agency, so that we could sort of support clients from what I saw as mission critical to them. So one is be a partner that can take the requirements. Clay is very wet, work closely with stakeholders and come up with an outcome all by ourselves, right. So full, independent studio, then the other was for a client that might not be moving at the pace they need to with their hiring or their team. And so maybe, or maybe see that we need a specialty for this amount of time on this effort, totally living and breathing the problem with us, but in six months, we're not going to need them anymore. So So we built Matic teams, and and so, at that stage, you know, the first few months, I'm just sort of like trying to get a few clients which which did come and slowly but surely. And boy, I'll say this, I was very rusty. I was very, very rusty from my days of studio and agency and having

Gary: 14:39

rusty in one aspect dealing with clients like the sales aspect or just rusty in

Josh: 14:45

the sales aspect that that sort of click the no problem. It was more defining the project and making sure we had achievable acceptance criteria that

Gary: 14:57

to this day is still one of the hardest thing So, even for us, like we've been, I say we, I'm the design director, but the team itself was built kind of similar to yours, where David, our CEO, was a freelancer, he was a developer, and he got good enough to where people were noticing and offering him more work. And then he just kind of needed more help. So he would hire contractors to help him out. And then it just kind of snowballed from there that when he needed more help, and got more clients, it just became like a business of his. So similar story, but to this day, still getting the idea from especially a startup that don't really know what they want, one of our things we do is a lot of pushback, not in a negative way, but we'll have an exploratory with the client, and then we'll kind of get their idea. And then we'll kind of say, Okay, but what if we took that and did this instead, and try to figure out a more business practical approach to what their idea might be and see if they're receptive. But at the end of day, once we start specking, out the actual project, then trying to come up with an estimate for time and hours and stuff, that's still one of the hardest things to nail down.

Josh: 16:11

So it really is, it's such a, you know, it's such an opportunity for a I think, to come in and be like, you know, take every edge case and start building out models for okay, because client a and client B with same exact deliverables will be totally different roads to get there. And how do you you know, this whole forecasting model is, is it's inherently agency, it's inherently us, we do it. And it's so difficult to kind of control the destiny for you and your clients. So just like, we're all going to be happy at the end of this. Because the work will be great, but maybe the budget was, you know, super under, and then the agency kind of paid to make sure the work was great. Or the inverse of that is, you know, the the budget, the budget was maybe too healthy for what the problem that needed to be sold really was. It's just it'd be, I don't know what the science of it is. I don't think anybody does. It's what we're still doing this the same. The same model of take a guess call it an estimate, sign a contract, you're locked. Hope you guess, right.

Gary: 17:25

That is the flypaper that we are, yeah. Every single time and you think you learn as you go, and you learn, especially if you get products that are similar, or even, we don't stick to one industry, or one vertical, I guess, is the corporate term for it. So we like to bounce around to different spaces, just because it's more exciting for us that way. It's not, we're not doing the same thing over and over again. But a lot of times the technology and the product map are similar enough to where we, you know, in our heads, we're like, we've done something similar to this already. This app does a, b and c, we built an app that does A, B and C and D. So we should be able to do this in the same amount of time with the same stack. And then it turns out, now it's a b and c is actually a different language. Now. It's Tuesday and F, it's not the same thing. But it's

Josh: 18:16

a very, and then when you start getting into the predictable, repeatable models, the the fun of solutioning, the fun of strategy, this the that that sort of is a trade off, like we just do logos, right? Like that's

Gary: 18:32

when you become a conveyor belt.

Josh: 18:34

If you Hyperkin conveyor, belt it and you build the engine, it doesn't lose the allure of like, We're doing great things, solving interesting problems, and driving dramatic results, right? Like that's, that's the dream. That's why you start it, you don't start an agency to build an assembly line generally. So, you know, and one of the things that I think we're thinking a lot about is just what's our success versus satisfaction, versus obviously revenue performance against things like when engineering was involved, there's always unknowns. There's, there's just inherent unknowns with with software. Especially, you know, the second word custom preclude software, then you're just, again, it goes back to how good of a guesser i So, so we're at, you know, maybe not quite the assembly line, but more of the specializing and and you know, we've done things that were new this year when just to finish so when I when I launched the thing. When I launched Matic add those two notions. And then within a few months, we had a few projects I was mentioned, I was rusty, but we got through those projects and it just started to get better. I started to propose better I started to write out project plans much more coherently and deeply, instead of like trusting kind of intuition to get us to the finish line. So got sharper, they're pretty quick But then the team's business, sort of all of a sudden exiting 21 entering 22, it took over we had a client kind of come in, they said they needed one UI UX designer for like, maybe four month contract. They were they were building a pretty ambitious enterprise product on a fast scale. And they weren't very happy with the recruiters. So it was my first chance to sort of test this model of teams. They ended up bringing on four UI UX designers for extended contracts, and then orders from your team. Or for I met, they asked for one, I sent them five options. They they aren't, they took four out of five for contract. And then they said, Cool, we need a copy developer, we need a marketing developer, we need a flutter engineer, we need a QA director, all of a sudden, I had 14 people. So I'm like, Well, this is this is the business. This is definitely the business in the studio, was also doing a little bit of work, but not nearly the numbers that that the the more teams business was. The problem is that client, in particular, just, I won't get into choose temporary. Exactly, they were they were poorly managing their funds on the top side, and they ended up kind of dissolving at the end of 22. So it was a wild ride fraught with some really fun, like, I can't believe we just did this revenue. So early mixed with, I can't believe we owe this much money because that client hasn't paid their bill. It was a rollercoaster year, and I had some health stuff that year too. So 22, it was still just me, by the way, I hired one kind of person to help with the books for about six months out of the year. But the client and the delivery was still pretty much 100% Me.

Gary: 21:49

So you were doing all the legwork with finding the people to send to them and managing

Josh: 21:55

contracts, how often I had sort of somebody that was a really good counterpart to me that helped with the team's piece. But he wasn't officially working here or a partner just just you know, in it. Yeah, as he should be in it for the money, right. So he was getting the money. But we, in terms of building that that was sort of me. And that year was my focus. And so ended 22 Ultimately, very strongly because kind of refocused. We did end up getting paid from that client and things sort of, you know, the ship kind of turned around. So instead of paying off a credit card, or buying a new car, which both things would be really fun to do. I went ahead and define what's the skeleton team medic needs to go, go go bigger, right and be more successful and not you know, and just you can only you can only bottleneck yourself so much on these projects before it's like, where's the things that I'm being pulled in directions the most, I'll hire for that. So out of the gate and 23, we hired four people, and it's been a really good journey. We're up to eight now. And then a lot of independent contractors are still submitting on retainer, just as full timers, basically, but I'm not quite ready to commit to the full time this of that. So yeah, I mean, I think it's just, you know, when the second you bring in a lot of people now process becomes more important than it was when it was just you now. You know, prediction, the ability to forecast the ability to see what's coming and right. And then what can I teach versus what am I hiring them to already know? Like? That's a very interesting, it's just been a sorry, if my thoughts are vague, it's just been such a learning here to be totally honest. So

Unknown: 23:52

it's perfect.

Gary: 23:53

Your story is very similar in certain aspects to big pixel story. So a lot of what you're saying, I can completely relate to I know if David were here, he would be throwing his arms that's gone. Exactly. I know what you mean, it's happened to us. And you'd have a story for every story you have that probably matches exactly, but just from hearing him talk about it. But yeah, big pixel is 10 years old. But we're still going through things similar like with estimated and estimating and the processes that you're mentioning, the more we try to nail down a process, the more efficient we become. But at the same time since we are a remote team, those processes have to be somewhat fluid. Right when we are bringing in contractors. And you know, sometimes we'll have months where a client will kick up there. We don't call them sprints. We call them stages now, but basically kick up a chunk of time of work that is dedicated to their project. And if they're kicking up a few more because there's new features being built, then we do have to rely on contractors. We don't keep any Onra tainer had a full time rate, we do keep some, you know, like part time rates, but sometimes there's nothing stopping the contractor to say like, you know, I don't have that many hours for you this month. Sorry, right. And then we're scrambling to try to figure out how to how to keep everybody on the projects that they are on, and keep those processes going while still trying to find more outside help or figuring out how to unload this extra work. And, you know, filter it down amongst the team without everybody getting cranky. So, how big are you got it? We're like, Yeah, okay, well, I think what is it? 13. Now, yeah, 13, or 1413, or 14, the big chunk of it is developers. And then me for design. Christie's marketing, we have a group of testers, and project managers too.

Josh: 25:52

I mean, and that's awesome. But it's definitely like, and I'm sure I would have a tremendous amount to learn from you guys. Honestly, I'm, I'm always like, Yeah, let's make friends with agencies that are further down this road, you know, and, and, obviously, you know, learn and share and commiserate. But just going back to that, I think it's that that's that cycle, what I see is like, it's very hard to get to 20 people and be sustainable, and then the next level. And then I've heard, if you're there and you're satisfied, it's pretty good. And then if you're trying to grow the neck, you're going to be struggling the rest of the way to get to 100. And then it becomes sustainable again. And it's a very weird, you know, cycle, I think, to find yourself and i Anything under 20. At least this is what I felt like is I pictured myself climbing a hill in a sand dune. And the sand is very slippery. So I get a little bit of flooding, but it's just moving constantly. And so every assumption that was true in August is being rethought in October and pressured. And this is, you know, it's definitely, it's not so much the client work that any of this applies to it's the business of running the business. That was

Gary: 27:09

just the operations of keeping the business moving the way it should. Yeah, for sure.

Josh: 27:14

The client were I mean, the clients are, you know, overall, we've had wonderful partners. And that part's great. You know, we'd love some bigger work, we'd love you know, I can't believe I'll tell you this. So you know, I did those health texts, those were both big app product experiences, like super integrated, high touch, high focus, high transaction type app experiences for users. And, and then before that, you know, the JetBlue thing or a bunch of stuff with travel and fintech and, and then my my studio lead, she's former Deloitte as well, she was on the Kapolei team for the last four and a half, five years of her time there as the lead UX on the team. We've done zero native apps at Matic and it blows my mind. I'm like, I don't know if if you guys have felt that thing. A lot of web and web is cool. But where am I product people?

Gary: 28:09

Now earlier, you mentioned earlier, you mentioned content developer. And I know Christy was asking more about your content strategy. I think she had some questions for you about that. Oh, no,

Christie: 28:21

I had just seen that I think it was September of this year, you had just brought in a new content strategist or head of head of content. And I find that fascinating, I wasn't sure I find the whole agency style that you guys have set up to be so fascinating, because for us, we're only handling the one portion of this particular thing for the client and giving them this gift and hoping that you know, they're putting this beautiful engine to use with great content that's optimized, and you just never know. So I handle our content, and putting that out in all forums and trying to find all those blind spots, that they're just constantly evolving into what will be, you know, digested by people. And so I saw that you had just recently hired and I thought to myself, yeah, who is this magic person that you decided to hire. And so I started reading some of his pieces. And I aligned very deeply with sort of his ideology, which was old school, which is like SEO is never going to die. If the a plus b plus c, there's some real things that we can we can glean from these things and not have any blind spots and sort of move forward with confidence. And so that lent itself to your overall brand because it's very, you know, confident and and so I liked that. And I was wondering when you were hiring your content director, what was going on in your head like what was this unicorn type person that you were looking for to sort of do all of this for you?

Josh: 29:49

Well, first hill love this. So yeah, he's great. He is he's he is a popular guy here at Mattox. So You know, nothing's a straight line. And I wish I could say I just saw it in new. When I last late last year, when I was putting together our hiring team. I didn't feel like I needed a traditional creative director. I felt like I can augment that and but there's something I can augment. And it's that it's a content site and constants wildly overused, but for this purpose, we'll say, you know, everything you just said, we're all on the same page about content. But you know, it's not the copywriting, that could be a component or, you know, takeaway from it, but it was really getting in and just leading with empathy across every factor. And then, and then Oregon, situational awareness research, and then knowing how to analytically kind of put that all together, shake that up, and you know, come back out with like, Okay, here's the truths. Here's the hypothesis. And here's the goals.

Christie: 30:56

Yeah, we struggle with that balance, too, I think is finding the balance of how much do you want to give away added value that you absolutely always want to do the best that you can for your client? While also do we really want to go all the way down that avenue and offer those services fully? And sort of where's everyone at? And once you do that, can we really sustain that scale? So it's a very interesting, very interesting concept for us currently. So I hear you and when you say that,

Josh: 31:21

it's, I think, if you're in digital, brand and solution, you know, there's always been creative director, copy, write creative director, comma copy, Creative Director, comma, design, Creative Director, common digital, it's a very interesting thing. I don't think as an industry, we've really, you know, I don't know what the term creative directors really gonna mean to us in 10 or 15 years, it'll mean something, I just don't know, if we can keep slicing it apart, like a pie chart. So you know, for all intensive purposes, we threw content on there, but but he is a strategy leader, and I think any anymore the kind of work we're doing, it's just if you're not leading with success, you're just leading with intuition and the ability to move pixels. And I think that was, okay. 15 years ago, I think it wasn't really okay. after that. But I but I don't think necessarily, you know, all UX all day is the I think, I think the tip of the spear, I think is thinking through what are we saying? Who are we saying it to? You know, what do we do? How do we do it, like actually defining these really a B truths for organizations and product teams can can help, you know, set the tone for all the other things. So I just I do think the content strategy is definitely having its moment. In our, in our industry, it's, it's, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see Google put a certification program out for that soon. Yeah, right. Yeah,

Gary: 33:00

it's interesting, some of the clients that we've had in the past. They don't know they need that, until you pointed out to him. So it seems like a service you can offer, if it's the right fit for a client, you know, some clients don't need it at all. Some are just like, we just need our app to do this. So just build that. And then that's it. Right? A lot of times when you think through why do you need your app to do that? What's your goal for having this? Why are you building these features, and then finding exactly the best avenue to kind of make that work for them, and then making them rethink their strategy beyond that, and then coming up with the, you know, the content strategy for that beyond what their initial idea was, I think that's a that's a very powerful to have in your toolbox. And if it's the right fit for some clients, and that that can be a homerun for a while.

Josh: 33:53

One of the greatest things, I learned it at Deloitte, which was you know, there was so many, but it wasn't that I came out, like, I'm such a better designer or anything like that, although I think I did get pushed much further than when I arrived. But it was it was the think it was the way to think that was really so so valuable, where we kind of came and that kind of minds I'm looking for at Matic is, you know, we all might enter a room, because Okay, the reason for this meeting today is we're looking to redesign our website. And and by the time you've left the room, through through meaningful dialogue, and you know, the right types of questions and the right threads being pulled through the thought you might exit the room with a totally different target. So it's kind of like yes, sure, we have a problem statement. Is it the right one, and let's start there. And you know, downstairs,

Christie: 34:51

why are you redesigning your website? Well, my leads aren't converting well, why aren't your leads converting? Well, let's take a peek. Well, it doesn't have anything to do with the interface it has to do with like I think your contents a mess or structures. Let's Let's optimize that. And you don't need a whole new How about that? Yeah, it's never it's never that. And that's and we thrive on that here. And that's where it Gary saying like the exploratory and the pushback is like you think it's this, but let's just like, keep digging, and it's probably actually this.

Josh: 35:18

Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Gary: 35:21

Well, just since you've only been, I guess you could say, in business with magic for two years, but you do have a lot of experience coming up to that point. One of the questions we ask all of our guests, what are your top three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur, new business or startup? And for you, this can go back to just even becoming part of a team all the way up to building your own team.

Josh: 35:48

Yeah, I love it. So I actually have put some thought into this question. And, you know, I think there's kind of three that I can't I like that, you're asking three, because I can limit it to three pretty easily. But for me, it's staying inspired. Like, just, you know, I kind of always have 5% of my brain, looking for inspiration. So if I'm watching a show, or reading or listening to a podcast, like, I'll pick up, if I hear something that I think is an applied story, use case emotion that ties back to, you know, either the company I'm building, or the clients that we're helping build. So I think just kind of being inspired is, you know, in looking, let allowing your so it's very easy to be like, I can't do that, right now. I'm too busy, or, you know, especially in the early days, and, but I've still found ways to like find inspiration, and I think that helps to kind of, you know, remind you to, you know, see the forest, not just the trees right in front of you. So, the other is kind of following following notions like being willing to think in hypotheticals. You know, ideas or parallels are going to come at us all the time. And I think if you're building something like, it's not a betrayal of your mission to think in hypotheticals about like, how to get to your mission, maybe faster, differently, maybe maybe there is a left turn on the horizon that is going to achieve, you know, goals sooner. So that's something I've, you know, as much as I think that's why we're looking at like, right now we're doing a healthy evaluation of where we strongest, where do we, where do we, you know, roll it feel like we're rolling the dice? And can we do anything about that going into, you know, our next chapter, can we can we do anything to roll the dice far less and enjoy what we're doing every day. So, just following that all started with a notion thought a couple of weeks ago, that sort of led us down this path, so and then the last one, you know, being resilient like an under in less than my first year, I lost a month to being sick in the hospital, I was a single shop, I got a single person shot, had a big client, but didn't matter. They were big, they weren't they they defaulted in their payments, and notice about a half a million dollars. I had maximize cards to keep contractors happy and keep, you know, at least my my company clean and that situation. Certainly didn't have a ton of other projects work at the time. And thought I was done. Thought I thought I was done spent a month thinking about being done decided to go the other way. And a few weeks later, that client did pay and you know, we were able to kind of breathe again. And, and think clearly and like resilience did that being you know, it's okay to definitely also know when it's time, right, like maybe this just isn't the time I'm done and like, but be resilient in that don't be regretful of that. So I think just being resilient has been something I guess somewhere along the way from one of my my dad stepdad or adoptive dad, one of those dads taught me or mom, mom's too could have been any of the three moms to I don't know where exactly, but somewhere in my messy landscape of life. I picked it up and and I don't think it's stubborn. I think it's just, you know, remembering because if I had given up, I wouldn't have realized that well on paper and under a year. I've sold like 1,000,003 right now many companies do that out of the gate. Why would I shut down like I'm just having a bit of bad luck. So like, I'm happy that I that I, you know, took the time to investigate that instead of being like, who am I playing startup guy, I'm in my 40s I got a family. I got to take care of them and go get a job, which is something I was very close to doing in mid 22. So I'm happy that I saw it from the other lens and you We are,

Gary: 40:01

um, have you worked out for your minutes? Yeah, incredible story. And I'm not sure many people would have been resilient in that situation. So,

Unknown: 40:09

yeah, fear would have come in there, I

Josh: 40:11

think. Yeah, it was there. It was there. But I don't have it support. I've got support, this conversation

Gary: 40:18

has been great. And I appreciate how real you are. And you're telling us the story without the added fluff of my company. So good because of this. And I'm so great because of that. And all our experience has led me to this level of success, success, you know, so it was just a really fun conversation. Well, Josh, thank you for taking time with us today. We appreciate you telling us your story. And if anybody wants to learn more about you or about magic, where can they find you? So

Josh: 40:46

we're at medic digital.com. I'm on LinkedIn and always welcome. Hello, or a new connection or a conversation. I'm in Denver, but I don't really like surprise visits. So let's play.

Unknown: 41:01

Man, I booked my flight canceled. You guys except

Gary: 41:07

well, we'll post those links in the show notes and everywhere that we put this on social media and on our website, so people be able to just find you easily there. Rod sounds great. That's it for this week. And we will see you guys next week. Talk to you later.

Christie: 41:24

Hi, I'm Christy Bronto, 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