Ever wondered how someone can skyrocket a company's revenue without prior experience in that industry? Shane Mishler might just be the wizard of growth you've been looking for. As COO of SD Tech, Shane joined me to unpack his unconventional rise in the tech world and how he helped transform the company's financial landscape. His story is a testament to the surprising turns life can take—and how seizing opportunities can lead to unprecedented success.
This episode is a journey through Shane's personal struggles, his role as a life coach to a friend, and the fateful encounter that led him to SD Tech. It's a conversation that reveals the intricate dance between personal growth and professional achievement, peppered with Shane's practical insights on business strategies. For anyone interested in the human side of corporate success or looking for motivation to chart their own course in business, Shane's story will not only inspire but also offer tangible takeaways on driving growth and embracing change. Join us for an episode that's as much about personal initiative as it is about the power of mentorship in the business world.
Ever wondered how someone can skyrocket a company's revenue without prior experience in that industry? Shane Mishler might just be the wizard of growth you've been looking for. As COO of SD Tech, Shane joined me to unpack his unconventional rise in the tech world and how he helped transform the company's financial landscape. His story is a testament to the surprising turns life can take—and how seizing opportunities can lead to unprecedented success.
This episode is a journey through Shane's personal struggles, his role as a life coach to a friend, and the fateful encounter that led him to SD Tech. It's a conversation that reveals the intricate dance between personal growth and professional achievement, peppered with Shane's practical insights on business strategies. For anyone interested in the human side of corporate success or looking for motivation to chart their own course in business, Shane's story will not only inspire but also offer tangible takeaways on driving growth and embracing change. Join us for an episode that's as much about personal initiative as it is about the power of mentorship in the business world.
Hello everyone and welcome to Voice Like a Lion podcast. I'm your host, steven Pemberton, and today I've got Shane Mishler. He is the Chief Operating Officer for SD Tech. Shane oversees the daily operations of the company. He partners with the owner to design and implement business strategies, plans and processes. Shane is actively involved in all of the company's investments, clients, strategic franchise partners and expansion activities. During his tenure, the company's revenue has more than tripled, which franchise partners and expansion activities. During his tenure, the company's revenue has more than tripled, which is crazy. And their active client list is over 200 companies.
Speaker 2:Shane, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Steven. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I'm excited to hear from your experiences because, for me, I don't just do the podcast, I have multiple businesses and I also work with a lot of businesses. So to hear from your experience, I guess the best place to start is like how did you get involved with SD Tech? What is SD Tech and how'd you get involved with it?
Speaker 2:Oh, man. So I will do my best to give you a short, condensed version of how I got involved with SD Tech. I had never worked for a managed service provider previously. I had never heard of a managed service provider previously. I had never heard of a managed service provider, was not familiar with that term whatsoever. But it started with me taking in a close friend who I had known since high school and he was struggling. He was still living in the small town where I'm from and he was struggling in his environment. So I wanted to get him away from some of the stuff that was dragging him down and I brought him to live with me in San Antonio, texas, and he had been living with me for about a year and during that year he had gotten a job with SD Tech. I didn't know anything about the company, I didn't know anything about the work he was doing. I knew that he was struggling and he was struggling at his job. So I started coaching him. I was acting as a life coach and so he was telling me hey, I'm struggling with this, that and the other thing. And so I listened to him and I helped him break down his grievances into two lists and I told him hey, man, these are this list. You need to go and speak with your supervisor or the owner of the company and let them know what's going on. And I gave them some tips and advice on how to approach it and I said now this other list, alex, this is you. Man, I'm like you're really struggling, but you're complaining about other people, but this is you. And so I had been helping them and I had been learning a little bit about the company during that, and so that's the part that sounds more professional, it sounds great, but that's not how I got involved with SD Tech.
Speaker 2:Sd Tech, at that point in time, had an administrative assistant that my friend was just head over heels from, and he was telling me he's like, dude, you got to go into the office and come meet this girl. You have to come meet this girl. And I was like Alex, I don't have any interest in going to meet this person, I don't know anything about her. And so finally he convinced me he was heads over heels for her. So he convinced me to go in, and while I was there and meeting his coworker, the owner of the company, came in, wes Homer, and Wes had this look on his face and I could tell he needed to talk to his employee. But he was a remote employee, so it was only in the office maybe one day a week and he went from making eye contact with his employee. But he was a remote employee, so it was only in the office maybe one day a week and he went from making eye contact with his employee to looking at his administrative assistant to looking at me, and I could see the look. I knew the look. The look was who are you and why are you in my business? And I could see Wes go back and forth about whether or not he wanted to coach his employee. But he didn't have a lot of opportunities. So he took the opportunity, he started coaching his employee and I chimed in and I said hey, alex, this is a lot of the stuff we've been talking about. You know, make sure you're you're, you're following my advice. And Alex kind of had a deer in the headlights look. And Wes looked at me and he was like who are you? So? So we started talking and he asked about my background and I asked about his and we had a really good conversation. We found that we had a lot of hobbies in common and similar backgrounds, and he asked me to lunch and I was in the process of launching my own business. I was looking for investors at that point in time and it wasn't going to be anything like this. I actually wanted to open up a restaurant that was heavily focused on technology, but it was still going to be a restaurant, and he had been running this business for about 19 years and he had a small team of employees and we just clicked. There was something about it that there was magic in the air. It sounds super cheesy, but it's the truth. And so after our lunch I called up my wife and I told her about it and she said are you going to consider working with them? And I was like I am, I would like to if you don't mind. And she was like why would I mind? I was like because he can't pay me money. And I was like, not really, he didn't know what I would be able to offer him. I didn't know what I would be able to offer him. I had never worked for such a small company before. So my wife said she would help pick up the slack and if it felt like a great opportunity, she didn't want me to pass it up, and it's been five years now and we've actually quadrupled our revenue. Our client list is over 300 active clients and we franchised out the organization a little over a year and a half ago, so I would say that it was a risk worthwhile.
Speaker 1:Dude, it sounds like it. And I love the aspect where you're talking about with your wife, because for me, my wife is the catalyst of why I'm even on this podcast, why I even do what I do. So to hear someone with a similar story is incredible and I just want to honor her for taking the chance on you, because for the people listening you could just glaze over. It's like, yeah, she did that, that's cool. She just worked a second shift, she did whatever. But you don't understand the amount of trust that she put in, not only you to do what you think you can do with the skills that you have, but also the trust that you know what you're doing, that you care enough about your family to say I'm not just going to throw it to the wind because you were already building something. You had to stop something to start something. You had to let go of something to be able to receive something. So I just want to honor her in this moment of the podcast.
Speaker 1:And also how, when you're talking about like because there's this moment, right, so you join the company you're not getting paid nothing. How did you go from not getting paid to quadrupling clients? What was the big gaps Because, for me, I do a lot of strategy, especially with e-commerce companies, so they're more direct to consumer, and I noticed one big thing it's usually like there's a company I talked to last week they're doing about 5 million revenue and they want to go to 10. Cool, everyone wants to double their income, right. But there is some gaping holes that they don't see and I see them, and so it's like, okay, these gaping holes, these are the ones you can close quickly, and if you close them quickly, it can significantly increase the revenue.
Speaker 2:How did you be able to go into something that's not paying you and find these gaps and say, hey, I can fill these gaps? Well, so, full disclaimer, I was getting paid. I was getting paid the same wage as a frontline help desk technician, because that's we didn't know I'd be coming on us. So I spent I spent about 80% of my day shadowing Wes and for about three months I spent as much time as I could learning how this man had built up his business over 19 years, and over 19 years he was working in a vertical that I was not familiar with. All of the large companies I had worked for, we always had our own internal IT department, so this was new to me. The teams I had managed the smallest teams were teams of about 17 people and so that's three times the size of this company. So I did as much as I could to just learn and shadow and soak everything in. I learned how he interacted with his clients, I learned how he built relationships with the clients, I learned how he manages employees and I connected with 90% of everything that he had going on and the values that he operated based off of, and I love that. And I listened to him talk about how his team was so vital and that without his team he wouldn't be able to do what he did his team, he wouldn't be able to do what he did. But that was actually the gaping hole.
Speaker 2:Wes really respected his employees and he put a lot of value into them, as any good leader will. But what he didn't realize is that he was still performing large amounts of their daily functions on an everyday basis. So he would wake up not super early right, tech is a little bit different but he would usually be at his desk by about 9.30 or 10 o'clock in the morning and work, and he would work until about six o'clock at night and then he would take a small break and he would hang out with his wife and his kids. They would do dinner, they might go to a park and then around nine o'clock he was back at his desk and he would work I'm not exaggerating, stephen. He would work until about two or three o'clock in the morning sending out emails, following up, making sure that help desk tickets were taken care of, making sure that the administrative duties were taken care of.
Speaker 2:So what I saw was that you had this one individual who put everything he had into his company and he was truly carrying the weight of 19 years and although he had a team that helped support him, they didn't support him, they just supported aspects of the business. So the reality is what I did was I came in and I presented the company with the same amount of vigor that he did and I started to help offload some of those duties off his shoulders and directly onto mine. So then we doubled the workforce that was leading the company and then from there that was our launchpad and I helped showcase to him and to our employees how things could be managed differently. And I brought in my operational experience and that started to fill in the gaps, lessen the load.
Speaker 2:And then we worked to build up our employee base with more like-minded people who were not as invested as we were in the business but at least more invested in the clients. I've never looked for people who are invested in the business as much as I look for people who are invested in our clients, because if you're invested in our clients, it's easy to invest in people. Investing in business is difficult, but investing in people is usually pretty easy, and so we focused on building relationships, and the relationships internally and then our relationships externally. The money came, it was. There's no magic, it's just focusing on the people and the processes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, focusing on the right things. So, as I hear you tell that story, you're talking about Wes and him 19 years. How did you convince him, or how did you show him, that you needed to hire more? Because doubling your workforce seems like an obvious choice to me to offload the mundane tasks so you can focus on moving the business forward. But for someone who's been doing it for over almost two decades, how were you able to talk to him and say, hey, this is what you need to do?
Speaker 2:So having spent so much time getting to know Wes as an individual and getting to know how he ran the business really allowed for me to see what he found to be important. And so Wes, although he's great with people and he's very much a people person, his, his backbone not just his background, but his backbone is technology, and technology is very procedural based right. I mean like it's if this, then that and so when? When the time came for me to start giving Wes my input and my advice on when we would want to hire a new employee or when we should start budgeting Budgeting was a very foreign concept to a very strong entrepreneur I presented the data behind it and I showcased, you know, so we have a more efficient team. We have people who are working together and pulling in the same direction. So I showed him, for instance, with our help desk, how many tickets we were handling a day, how many tickets we had coming in in a day, and if we were looking at onboarding a new client, I would showcase this client is similar to this existing client and this existing client has this amount of workload behind it. So then it became planning for the future, which helped him start breaking down some of these ideas and then we just built towards it.
Speaker 2:And I remember the first two new people we hired Wes was reluctant on, but once we got those positions in and I showcased how, adding to the puzzle and there's time right where it takes time for everything to settle, but once the dust settles, how everything continued to work very smoothly. The third new person we hired there was no resistance. Wes knew that he had somebody who was working for his vision, for his business, and that we were all pushing, pulling in the same direction. And so then there was just trust. That has been built over time and I know that he is really good at what he does and he knows that I am really good at what I do and there's a lot of overlap, but it's all built around trust.
Speaker 1:Our relationship is the most vital piece and very similar to how you were, uh, honoring my wife mave is is absolutely amazing, but the same core pillars of our relationship that make our relationship work are the same core pillars in the relationship and my business partnership, um that's all the communication yeah yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I was picking up on was just the trust built, and I think that that's something I've noticed with people I would say my age and younger is like the millennials and Gen Z is there, they're going, they're seeing the things that are on social media and they're going for the quick cash and not realizing that. You followed him around and said, hey, we're doing all this, we're changing all this. There's no way they would be like, yeah, let's do it, there's no way. But you had to build trust, you had to build a relationship. That's relational equity.
Speaker 1:There's something that you said even earlier on which the underlying theme that I'm hearing is not just the building the trust and building relationships like that's a skill, and I heard you say it in the beginning with your buddy, alex, where you said you helped him break up his, his qualms in the two lists. How did you get to having that emotional intelligence? Cause we talk about IQ but there's also EQ. How did you get that kind of EQ? Cause it sounds like that has served you really, really well, because you must be emotionally intelligent when you talk to your wife for her to be willing to trust you. You must be emotionally intelligent to talk to Wes for him to trust you, and obviously you had to be pretty emotionally intelligent to talk to Alex to have these two different verticals for him.
Speaker 2:Well, so I've been a guest on a couple dozen podcasts over the last year, and this is something that only a handful of hosts have asked me about, and I'm always very gracious when it does get brought up. So it's really allowed for me to explore into how did I reach this place, and I can tell you that it started in my teenage years. I'm the oldest of eight kids and my youngest brother and sister are right under 12 years younger than I am. So when I was 15, there's eight kids the youngest twins being three years old and my mom was a single parent, working three part-time jobs. For as long as I can remember, she didn't have an opportunity to really grow out her career until after I was already gone from the nest. So a good portion of the time I was looked at as the leader in our household and I was not great Stephen I really wasn't Fifteen-year-old trying to manage eight very different personalities across a wide variety of stages of life.
Speaker 2:It was hectic a wide variety of stages of life. It was hectic, and a lot of my skill set that I have today that's really assisted me in business came from during that time learning to work with a variety of personalities growing up in a very underprivileged home. If you will, I find it really easy to connect with people from all different walks of life.
Speaker 1:Difficult parts of our story is really where our character is built Because if you hadn't have gone through that, like if you were an only child, I was an only child, so I didn't have to have a lot of emotional intelligence because there was no one I had to deal with right, it was just me. But what I learned over time was learning. The emotional intelligence came from just how I wanted to be treated Like I would notice that I could pick up on other people's emotions really really well, and that's something that I've done my whole life. That served me really well in my job when I had a job, and it served me really well over the last four years in business. But you just explaining that. I want people to hear that because, especially nowadays like you understand, you're in tech we got AI.
Speaker 1:Ai is the new hot thing that everyone's jumping on, and the crazy thing is is, since there's no like real compliance yet, anyone can develop an AI at this moment. You pretty much just take the same kind of foundations. You can make chat GPT. It's going to suck compared to chat GPT, but you can make something that does something similar as far as a search engine is in that way. But the thing that I noticed is the what the big shift is going to be is how humans treat humans. Like, yes, technology is going to come in and you're going to be able to use AI to take away a lot of menial tasks Great. But when we're still having conversations as the business owners, as the integral pieces of the business, you still have to connect with the human on the other side, not connecting with the software.
Speaker 1:So that's why I wanted to bring that up is because tech, like you said, it could be very linear where it's like A equals B equals C and people will mistake tech because I mean, we work with SaaS founders. So when you're working with someone that has a software, it's very much like okay, all we have to do is build this software that does this, this, this, this and this, and then it'll just sell. It's like okay, all we have to do is build this software that does this, this, this, this and this, and then it'll just sell. It's like but people want to understand emotionally how is it going to help me? It's not just like okay, great, it'll help my business. You would think that that's the mindset they would have, but they want to know how is it actually going to help me? How is it going to give me better status by helping me get more sales? How is it going to do? Whatever the thing is, so I'll just really honor you for bringing emotion and bringing the human back to technology.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, stephen, and you're right Tech, technology and techies right. The people behind the technology are oftentimes looked at as being very transactional individuals and it's not me, but I worked very hard to make sure that that's not me. And while I am a strong empath, there's times where being a strong empath will lead to an individual wanting to shut down to protect themselves, and so between that working in technology, it'd be very easy to become exceptionally introverted, but I work at it and making sure that we have that human connection is really important. My background, aside from technology, is heavily centered around customer service and one of my early mentors. I was in my first lead position for an offshoot of AT&T and one of my early mentors told me he was like Shane.
Speaker 2:One of the things that you have to help other people understand is that anytime you're talking to a person who's calling, in, emailing, in submitting a ticket, if they're telling you about a problem, they're actually telling you that they have two problems. And I was like, well, how does one equal two in this situation? And he said if they're telling you that I'm being faced with this thing, with this, this problem that's interfering with my day, they're telling you that a that problem needs to be addressed and, b it has now introduced an emotional problem. Right, it has caused some type of interference, and so it could be as simple as if you are shopping at a mall and you buy a shirt and the shirt feels good in the store. You try it on, and then you go home and the shirt no longer feels comfortable, and so you want to go and return it.
Speaker 2:Like even as simple as that, that small interaction can cause a person to have some type of emotional interference, and so both of those problems need to be addressed, and I think that with technology, it's really easy to forget that when somebody's email isn't working properly, when their internet goes down, when a voice call you know when there's, when they're static on the line, it's really easy to forget that there is that emotional interference as well. For a business owner, that emotional interference is typically going to come back to you're doing something that is interfering with my money and that doesn't make me happy. But both of those problems need to be addressed, and maybe, at one point, ai will be able to address the emotional aspect of it, but we're not going to see that anytime soon, so we are still liable for addressing the emotional impact that people incur from various forms of technology or problems, or whatever it is that causes.
Speaker 1:I think that that's a great piece of advice, where if somebody's telling you that they have a problem, they really have two problems. And because I haven't really put it into words that way, but even with a client that I have we're finishing up his work this week but even with him signing him on, it seemed great. Everything lined up where it made sense, he pays. And then he turned into a nightmare. And what I realized? I was sitting down talking to my wife because she helps in the business as well. I was talking to her and we just came to the realization he's not actually a nightmare, he's just scared. And because he's got this big event that's going on and he has his friends that he's having come in, so he's really connected in the business space. So he has these friends coming in that are very high powered, like they're well known, and he wants to look good in front of his friends. And I like they're well known and he wants to look good in front of his friends, and I get that. But the way that it presents itself is it presents itself like, hey, I don't know what you're doing, I'm gonna, I'm gonna message you every single day and just make sure to check in, and it's like but that's not the scope and you're asking me to do things outside the scope of work. It's, and, but what's happening is because he's having an emotional experience where it and then it's. It's been a roller coaster, but the thing is that you just have to disconnect the two.
Speaker 1:What is his actual problem that you can solve? And what is in? If I solve problem A, does it solve problem B, or is there something deeper to problem B? If I get more people to show up to his event, does it make him feel comfortable and does that solve his problem? Yes, ok, great, so we just work on this one. Now, if A does not equal B, like you were saying with tech, then A. If I solve this problem and he's still this way, then it's like okay, what else is there? What is it that he's actually upset at? What is it that he's actually holding on to? And those are those areas I've noticed, and obviously you guys have too. When it comes to clients is, yes, here their problem, but their problem is not actually the big problem.
Speaker 2:Right. Oftentimes the big problem is the non-technical piece. Oftentimes the big problem is the emotional problem. I think if you look at like weddings as an industry no matter who you are if you're supporting the wedding industry, you know that you're charging extra, not for the technical aspects, right, for a photographer, you're not charging extra for the photography, you are charging extra for the potential emotional impact and that's where you have to be a step above the rest and I won't mess with that industry, but I think about it, right, and I relate that back to what businesses we do support, and the emotional impact can oftentimes be significantly worse than whatever the actual problem is.
Speaker 1:So what kind of businesses do you guys support?
Speaker 2:All of them. So, yes, the vast majority of MSPs have a space that they work in right. So one of our strongest competitors that's local to us. They focus on the health care industry. We have there's another nice little MSP that focuses on just just food, and what we have found that that we're really good at and that separates us out from other people is supporting small business owners that have multiple locations.
Speaker 2:We're really good at aggregating different types of data, and when I hear aggregating data, I think about stuff that doesn't mean anything to me, like pulling in servers or databases, things like that. What I actually mean is we make it easy for a business owner to run multiple locations. So making it easy to view cameras all at the same time accessing your voice recording, so phone calls all from one central space. We're really good at working and making it easier to do business on scale. That's actually one of the things that made us realize that, since we're really good at supporting multiple businesses or multiple locations for a business owner, we were able to replicate that internally in their franchise organization. So I have clients who are in real estate, veterinarians' offices, lawyers, architects, health services. Yeah, so it's just a whole variety of small businesses. I say small, medium, a couple of large, large businesses, but anybody who's got a very human approach to making money we can do business with pretty well.
Speaker 1:So are these businesses? Are they more like brick and mortars, or do you help people that are just strictly online?
Speaker 2:I think all of our clients are brick and mortar.
Speaker 1:That's what it sounded like, so I was curious. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:The reality is. I guess some of it would. No, it's all brick and mortar. Like real estate is weird because you have a lot of real estate agents who only do business primarily out in the field. So I guess that would be a little bit different. But for the most part it's brick and mortar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, the reason why I ask is because I just want the people listening to have clarity as to hey, is this for me, is it not? Because for me, I'm locationless, right, so I'm completely online. So it wouldn't really serve me to be able to know all my different locations, because I don't have any, but for the people who do have locations which I know them, they would need something like this. But I think that that's a great space to be in, because I don't want to have a buddy who he has multiple locations, which may be somebody that I can talk to, but he has multiple locations in the e-commerce space.
Speaker 1:And what's very interesting about him? He worked at Nike for years and years and years and he was almost an executive and what he was in was the supply chain logistics and he was also over analytics. So one thing he said was Nike does not do near as much money online as you think they do. 75% of their revenue actually comes from brick and mortar. And I was blown away at that and I was like I didn't know that and he said yeah, so that's why when I, when he left Nike to start his own business, as he said.
Speaker 1:I just did brick and mortar. He said I didn't go do what everyone else was doing and started e-commerce stories, like because most commerce still happens in person. So I think having a brick and mortar the way that you guys help people, it's, it's actually really needed. Even though it seems like we're in the digital age, the brick and mortar is still very much alive.
Speaker 2:It definitely is still very much alive. And so just a brief little background about what we do. I have clients from California to Florida, texas, all the way up into Canada. I have 11 sites in Canada that we support, and our home base is in San Antonio, texas. So, right, not as far south as you can go, but it's damn close.
Speaker 2:And we support everybody, from just small operations where it's a lawyer who's primarily doing the majority of his work out of his home, and so I don't really think of that as it's not e-commerce, it's not online, it's just everybody has various degrees of technical home and so I don't really think of that as right. It's not e-commerce, it's not online, it's just everybody has various degrees of technical support. But if you have a computer, phones, a basic home network, we support stuff like that. Because even for small clients, when I actually don't know how some people manage to run their business, because if you're using Microsoft products and something doesn't work right and you don't know how some people manage to run their business, because if you're using Microsoft products and something doesn't work right and you don't have somebody who's technically adept in your pocket, I don't know what people do, I really don't.
Speaker 2:I would feel very stranded, have questions about whether or not our company is somebody that can help you, or even if it's not our company, just if you're questioning whether or not you could use a managed service provider.
Speaker 2:Our company and the majority of our competitors it's not just us, but the majority of us offer free consultations. So getting somebody on the phone, getting a professional on the phone and having a conversation about what it is your business does and how it is a managed service provider can provide that level of support. Take advantage of that, stephen. Recommend it to anybody, because to me, as a person who truly finds value in building relationships and building partnerships, I can tell you that the number one thing I see small business owners do wrong is not ask for assistance, and they end up running so many different aspects of their business on their own. And when your Wi-Fi goes down for two or three hours and you're looking up on Reddit or YouTube or TikTok how to troubleshoot it, you're losing out on building relationships with your clients, you're losing out on building relationships with potential vendors, and all of those things can really build up your efficiency for running your own business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can attest when it comes to Microsoft. Man, if you try to do anything with Microsoft as far as support goes, you might as well be in tech. You might as well just go get your PhD in technology just to try to get access to your stuff, because it's insane. I've never seen anything like it. It's like, hey, what was it? Ok, what's the last four year? Social? Ok, great. But there's like when was the last time that you logged in? When you were on a trip in in Florida for two days, but not the second day, the first day, and then at between the hours of 1 am and 3 am, it's like I don't even think's last username and it's like how am I supposed to know any of this stuff? And yeah, so Microsoft, I don't understand it. Like they're a gigantic company. You think they make that a little easier, but that's obviously why you guys are around is to be able to help people navigate their lives.
Speaker 2:Yep, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1:It's not easy, but yeah, it's just so funny messing with Microsoft. So how, as we come to the close of this, what are some things that you would love to leave the audience with when it comes to that tech side, when it comes to being able to actually manage tech and why it's important to have someone like you in their back pocket?
Speaker 2:So what I like to leave everybody with is is there really is an incredible power in building up partnerships and technology. Technology is still about finding people to connect with right Like that's. That's what I love about what we're doing right now, having this podcast is is the way technology can bring two individuals across the U? S together and allow for great conversation with, with very minor hiccups. Right, it's amazing, but, stephen, how much time did you spend investing into figuring out what actually worked for you from a podcast perspective? How many different platforms?
Speaker 1:did you try Quite a while.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Two. Two different platforms yes, two.
Speaker 2:And how long did it take you to figure out your mic and your audio and the video setup?
Speaker 1:So the mic and the audio and the video setup. This is something that I've actually I've had this part figured out for a little while because we ran our own online events, so that part I had good Like I kind of understood that.
Speaker 2:But when it came to the platforms and stuff, especially when you get into the editing- my, but when it came to the platforms and stuff, especially when you get into the editing, my god, the the editing is a big, big pain. It can be. It can also feel like it's really easy. Yes, you're not actually doing a whole lot, but but as you started learning more about editing, uh, did you watch what? Four, six hours, eight hours worth of youtube videos to help you along?
Speaker 1:oh, I didn't. I just ended up like hiring that out.
Speaker 2:Oh, did you see that? It's great that you actually hired somebody else to help you with it. I will tell you that a large number of people in the podcast space take that on themselves. I've I've taken it on myself. I used to do a whole bunch of streaming.
Speaker 2:I did podcasts for a while, but I, as as a business minded individual, whenever it came time to do the editing piece, I knew that that was a skillset that I wanted to have for a variety of reasons. I enjoy making a film, I like putting together videos, I video game, I stream, I'm in the car community. So, like I knew, it was a skillset that I wanted. But I think that a lot of especially small business owners, entrepreneurs, we're headstrong individuals, we like learning, we want to be really good at all the various aspects of what we do.
Speaker 2:On this really small skillset that I was never going to use again, when I could have reached out to somebody who's a professional in that space and gotten a little bit of assistance. And I'm not talking about reaching out to a company that's going to charge you $150, $200 an hour for consultations. I'm talking about reaching out to somebody that's local, possibly somebody who's already in your network right now and leveraging that to further your relationship with that individual. That's what I want to leave anybody listening, anybody who cares about anything that's been said. Leverage your relationships, guys. There's so much power in them and you're not just helping yourself, you're helping out a member of your community, your network, and it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I love that leveraging your relationships. So where can people connect with you?
Speaker 2:So the easiest way to connect with me. You can find me on LinkedIn, shane Mishler. You can find me in other places as well. I'm more likely to respond on LinkedIn. If you're interested in SD tech, can find us at SD-technet.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So I always leave my guests with one question, and it's always the same question, but it's always interesting to see how people respond to it. So the question is what are you overcoming, whether that's in life or in business? What are you overcoming right now?
Speaker 2:Oh, so right now I am. So right now I am overcoming exactly what I talked about. Right now, so I am overcoming taking on more things than I should be Really prioritizing which different areas that I'm not great at do Do I want to continue being amazing at? And then, which areas have I been focusing on that? Maybe I need to look for more outside assistance.
Speaker 2:So, for instance, we have been working on revamping our franchise training and I have been the primary person, with one guy on our team that's really helped me out, but I have put I don't know probably 250, 300 hours of work into building out our training. It's been a lot, and I have been learning more and more and more. And now I'm finally like you know what, when it comes to making the training material look pretty, making it feel like it has the right corporate feel, I found a great designer who we're now offloading that work to, and he's been doing amazing at it and I really love the product that he's producing and he's doing it in literally a fraction of the time that I would have been and for a fraction of the cost. If you break down the amount of hours that I've spent on it, I should have done this, like six months ago. The cost if you break down the amount of hours that.
Speaker 1:I've spent on it. I should have done this like six months ago, and I think that that goes back. Exactly what you were saying is that's why I've just realized that even when I was still in corporate and when we built our first seven figure company is that was the first thing I did, Like just learning how to offload. It was a huge piece for me. And even now there's different opportunities that have come across my table. Like there's a guy who just texted me and he's basically wanting me to come on board and do something for free, basically donate my time.
Speaker 1:But in the beginning I was fine with that. It's like, okay, cool, I can come on and just consult and help out. And then they said we're making you the person over the whole marketing division. I went wait, hold on. It's like I'm now I've got people who report to me and it's like you want me to do all this for free. You're asking me to connect with designers and UX people and all this stuff, and I'm just like that is a lot to do.
Speaker 1:And then I'm just sitting there and I'm, and for me is there's a part of me, right, and maybe there's a part of you that's similar, and even the people listening where you go. Yeah, but it's a great opportunity and I could learn so much and I could do this and I want to help people, so maybe I could do it. But then it's like when you do that, you're taking your eye off of what's actually important. Like if, just even, as you said, if, six months ago, you would have hired the designer, how much further along would you be? Not even just and not even just you, but also the company how much further along would you be If you just focus on what you were great at instead of trying to learn something you're not good at? That's actually a big myth that I want people to kind of step away from is. I used to always hear it's like you got to work on your weaknesses, it's like. But what if you just double down on your strengths?
Speaker 1:Because if you double down on your strengths and let somebody else handle your weaknesses, because that's their strengths then you would just be stronger together. That's why it's important to do exactly what you said earlier, which is leverage your relationships.
Speaker 2:That is great advice. So my background is in leadership, and that's something that's really difficult to get away from because, especially in lower-level management, oftentimes we expect for frontline employees to be very well-rounded and they need to be good at everything, bad at nothing and great at one or two things, and that's just not realistic. It's not how humans work. We need to focus on what we're amazing at, double down on our strongest strengths and then find somebody that can help us out in our weaknesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so good. Shane, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I greatly appreciate it. It was amazing, and I know that there's going to be so many people who get just some amazing nuggets out of it, even if it's just the end, like if you listen all the way to this point, just take the last like five minutes and that could be transformative for your life. So, shane, thank you again for joining me.
Speaker 2:Stephen, thank you so much for having me. You've been an absolutely wonderful host and this was a great conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I appreciate that so much To everyone listening. Thank you again for joining us and I'll see you in the next episode.