Navigating the Future of Enterprise Data Management with Mark Frear of Chrome Consulting

0:00Welcome to IT Mastermind Talks your access to insights and experiences from thought leaders in the IT services industry and those that support the industry our podcast features not only the season professionals charting their start to exit Journey but also the key contributors who help ensure the success we delve into the diverse challenges encountered within the IT services realm encompassing both professional hurdles and personal obstacles join us be part of growing community and engaging the conversation hosted by Ian Markram of growth okay today I've got mark frier from chrome Consulting I've known Mark for quite a few years and it's a great honor and pleasure to have you here Mark and I would love to to start off with is just talk about your background and how you got into a consultancy firm okay well thanks again for inviting me here I think we've known each other for 20 years wow yeah anyway and our P had pretty close back in in the UK but so from a background I did Electronics as a degree wanted to get some business skills became an accountant with Cooper and lbrand and was sort of in that service industry from that perspective and really like the fact that we could go and help customers achieve and solve problems basically ended up at sap in the in the UK office and and was really on the software selling side for a long

1:33Time but really saw myself as an educator so listening listening to customers issues and really trying to solve that and you know getting the value proposition right and you know I could see that that was a burgeoning thing and I came over to Australia spent 15 years in in the AZ office and then in 17 2017 I think my time with sap was over 21 years did they give you a nice watch they gave me a bottle of GRA brilliant on the anniversary of my first day so it was 1996 I think great which was very thoughtful present look I enjoyed my time at sap but it was time to get out and really help customers take it that much further and I'd seen a gap in the market where everybody was looking at either structured processes with sap but forgetting about the documents although we're looking at documents and forgetting about sap so I was trying to straddle Both Worlds of structured and unstructured as they pertain to business process and really help the organizations improve their efficiencies right great so it's a bit of a passion I guess yeah you are very passionate about this topic and it's I think it's becoming a bigger topic we'll get into it a bit more later on in the discussion with with AI and everything else that's popping up but the really interesting thing about the journey that Chrome consulting's actually been on is it actually started before most of the people that I've

3:06Coached are the founders of businesses and they've started the business with two to three other people and they've moved on that Journey you came in at a point with two other Founders and those people are basically you know part of the business obviously the management team and running the the directors of running the company and they're doing a really good job but how did you actually come on and what was a process and and and because I think it's really important a lot of clients that I coach might not have started that way but they tend to end up bringing on you know other people into the leadership team it's the management team the SE management team the LT whatever you like to call it to actually grow take the business to the next level the 10x mold and and obviously that's happened early on with chrome so how did that happen and and how did you was there a bit of a change management process there you know everyone giving up the baby sort of that type of thing yeah look Chrome started 10 years ago actually 2020 sorry 2014 in may we just had a 10y year anniversary party down in Melbourne Dan and athl well AEL founded it Dan joined a few months later and I joined in 2017 from sap so I was bringing a different level of connections I had my chared accounts background and stuff but did I know how to sell services like commercial Contracting stuff no I mean I had some business now

4:39But so I was a bit subservient I slipped into the into the management team and I was doing business development and marketing type stuff and I think what happened was I became The Reluctant CEO which is probably the best form of CEO I'm I'm not about ego I'm about doing things I'm about calming the the noise in the business and that's when we brought you on and you helped us I think the quote that Aur would say is you helped us avoid costs like basically from mistakes so you pointed this into a more holistic perspective we also had emth at the time mhm so we had had a a coaching organization which was completely independent and then we you know because of your background in the IT services industry and in our ecosystem which is the sap ecosystem we found your input very valuable yeah so you know I think it was 2019 I became CEO and it really became a crucial point in the business because we were doing Decisions by committee yeah it's a bit of a it's a bit of a trend that I see with with consultancy firms they don't want to make the hard decisions so what they do is they tend to make it you know decision by committee because they to

6:11Take the pressure off themselves yeah it's growing up decision by committee and then changing your decision you know or forgetting that you'd made that hard decision so tracking you know we tracked every decision that we made thereafter and then we put in Pro more operational processes but it turned out and you hit the nail on the head it's a change management piece it's everybody's perspective that needs to sort of come together and be more aligned on what the business is trying to achieve yeah it's amazing because I was on a call late last night with a client and I was saying to them you know just take action it doesn't matter sometimes if it's the wrong action but in action is what tends to happen I think everyone's so fatigued in small businesses and especially in IT services that they're always you know putting all that energy into their customers to make sure their customers are successful and then when they have time to execute internally they don't actually do that themselves and you know they don't look after themselves as a business and that tends to mean an action and it's sad yeah I was thinking last night the other thing that you brought to us was and I guess this goes back to a lot of the Frameworks and education that I had you know through Coopers and through sap Etc there's a phase of points where you go you're consciously competent you're consciously incompetent you're

7:44Unconsciously competent or you're incompetent and our our call out to you was to try and get you to tell us where we were being unconsciously incompetent and that that's exactly one of the points which is you know sometimes you're scared to make a decision because you don't know what's out there and it's a I guess it's a fine line but you know that that that was definitely a call out that we appreciate it you know from your kind of advice yeah oh thanks for that so let's move on to you know you know you just had a 10-y year anniversary down in Melbourne last week and I saw the the photos and everything else in linked it's awesome to do that lot of the businesses don't make you know F past five years let alone 10 and I think it's a you know well done to to you Dan and atel and I think it's fantastic news but you know what do you think of the next 10 years you know where do you think you want to be in 10 years time and we're all getting older don't want to carry on working as hard as you are you know do you see the business growing doubling or where do you think you you you bu be in 10 years I think in the next three years we like to double okay great we think the the Market's out there for us to do that there's a few key things that need to happen but we think there's definitely potential there and you know in the words of Michelangelo failure is defined as aiming low and achieving it

9:19Yes for sure as opposed to Aiming High and just missing it so there's there's definitely aspiration there and I think you'll know and as you were talking about the 10 year the real good thing that we've done in the last 18 months is to deal with culture in the business and one of the feedback from the employees I mean we the three directors sat in front of the employees and they told us what we should stop doing what we should continue to do yeah and you know what did they think of our our leadership style and stuff which was brilliant feedback basically yeah and it's a quite a brave things people think it's brave but you know if you if you're open for feedback then why wouldn't you take it and you know one of their things was celebrating success and yeah so the feedback actually came from the the employees and you know why not make it special because it was 10 years for sure I mean in that Journey you would have kicked goals gone back a few steps gone forward more steps and you progressed but it's just like any other business it's not perfect so when you get those wins you've got to celebrate them I think it's really important you know and the thing with directors is and I always say this is the owners of the business you know they don't it's very hard for them to Pat themselves in the back they become very hard you know of what really is defined is success and it's quite it's quite difficult and I often say to

10:51Them hey you got a great business you just don't realize that but they just see as humans do what needs to be done and where are the negative components you know are within that business so they're always trying to make sure that business is better and better but not taking the Breather to say we're actually doing quite well yeah I think I'll draw a bit of a funny analogy I think it's like the royal family yeah like we have a duty as owners to the employees and that is something that we you know it turn us on us and it Keeps Us pushing forward and and maybe not having the time to to celebrate but definitely you know owning a business is a is a responsibility and you don't really want to take the foot off the gas for sure definitely it's you know a lot of people dependent on you and when you hire people you put that that you know that focus is really important to make sure you get the right person on Bo but then you got to make sure they actually going to get paid and yeah that's great good that's what I love about you guys you really honest easy company to coach and yeah I mean everyone has difficulties but you of you know such a core team of people there that makes it a pleasure so yeah I've often wondered and I've asked you the question a couple of times you know how many owners should you have should it be two three four five you it's it's difficult difficult because you know I've got other sort of businesses

12:24Outside of Loading Growth and and there a few are that actually work with quite a few shareholders and some are are quite difficult to work with shareholders and the stats are out there that two to three is optimal so it's one is very difficult and I see that with single Founders there's no one really to help them out yeah and there's they need to be uplifted every now and then you know you have your down your Downs at the at the point in time you need to be lifted up emotionally as well and S picked up off the floor when you get knocked down and when you have two that does help but then you the alignment is is quite difficult with two but three sometimes is a lot easier because there's always one person to really help the other two make a decision through through whatever difficulties you have so I think that's yeah stats stats out there yeah we've got three different directors each of us have got a different perspective on on different skill sets as well and diversity is good but it also can bring conflict but dealing with that in a positive way through you know changes in the culture I think has really helped great going to move on to more about the growth and development where you think things are going to be full crime and one of the things that I see is what do you think is a pivotal moment to get to where you want to be in three years time we've mentioned AI briefly privacy Security on data and I think it's the the big the big button

13:58That I think you've you will be pushing over the next three years could you elaborate a bit on that and where do you see companies out there needing your services look I think the pressure on data and by data I mean structured and unstructured has been increasing and I think there's been a Tipping Point around or people's realization around Ai and also privacy given the amount of cyber hacks that are happening I think 300% in the first quarter of this year wow so it's it's almost daily that people are getting hacked customers and businesses are so you know I think there's many roads that lead to this problem of data and it doesn't seem like there's a single strategy or approach out there and customers struggling so we get you know we might go and pick up a problem here to do with SAP systems and shrinking it for for the S4 move that's good but of course if we retire data or Purge it then it's very secure because we it so does that data have pii information in and I think gdpr and and pii is coming and we've seen a couple of organizations like doing work for a bank where your right to be

15:30Forgotten as an individual record across all of their banking systems is something that we're able to achieve in terms of a Precision removal but you know mixed in with that that concept is the data life cycle so how do we create a manage it it's business active for a while and then it's business complete you know do you want to move business complete information into Cloud systems well the software as a service industry don't want to take a lot of history some Industries actually have to keep 75 years of data well that's federal and state government so there's these competing aspects but at the at the center of it is data and it's redundancy and it's getting old and trivial and you suddenly then come along and you want to take on an AI project and AI for me is or generative AI is similar to switching on a engine and we've had customers run Enterprise search up and they found lots of pii information in their search results and they know that that's a threat and they can't have that and that you know that's come about from old SharePoint team sites Etc and AI using that kind of data

17:05Set yep will take the Redundant an old information toal and construct something that it shouldn't it shouldn't have access to all of that information and Security in the in the document space is very poor I liken it to the ww west for sure I think it's going to be a big topic the next year or two definitely so we know there's a big opportunity for your growth in the next three years we we all understand that from the it perspective I me that's fantastic so we know that clients have a problem the challenge with clients as we know is they don't know how to you know really address the problem or they don't really know what the problem is they know they've got some some ends wrong how are we going to get them to basically and you know realize there's a problem are you going to educate them are you how you going to go to market over the next three years what are you what are your things you going to you know you've been doing webinars the last couple of years youve got a community happening are you going to double down on those what's your strategies around that definitely with the community yeah so We've run one user group on one particular product line there's a new product line that or the other product line yeah will be a community that we'll we'll set up I think education has to happen we've got to do a Leverage model I think we're going to do that through certain Partners yeah you know we've reached out to

18:38Microsoft Microsoft have gone you know you're 12 months late yeah we need you why why weren you around 12 months before but we're here now yeah and they still haven't really got the support that they need and they want to be the data platform for customers yeah but they don't know how to articulate and and work through the different capabilities and solutions out there that might be needed yeah definitely because there's not a one siiz fits all at the moment yes the large Enterprise so many complexities here on the landscape and the buyin and the you know the actual people that have the permission to do things and everything else it's quite it's quite a difficult you know hurdle to get over and always people comes down to people not systems it's the people that's right and look when we go to customers and we try and archive old data out of the system to shrink it we're not even deleting it we're just moving it to somewhere which might be a little bit more safe you know on modern technology the business don't want even that to happen but they don't use that data anymore and there are reports and and things that we can use and Analysis tools out there that can find pi information can find duplicates and redundant information but what you do afterwards you need to secure it if it's business worthy yep and that can be tricky for sure

20:13Back on the business side how you know it Services software changing so much how are you going to stay irrelevant how you going to stay in know top of the field and in front of everyone else you're investing in people at the moment I know you do your higher grads what's your thoughts on that sort of innovation internally in your organization how you going to keep on growing to meet the demand so we've just recruited two new graduates one with a cyber security background I think we will have to recruit some of those additional skills yeah because we just can't train we know what we know and we've got a training program to do that for sure and that's that's useful for us y but on the edge I think we're going to have to recruit the the skills that we need yep yep and the two graduates you got how how' you go through that process quickly if you got two seconds to go through it yeah look it's definitely been a refined process because we've we've recruited before and it's not worked out yeah in one instance we were gazumped in another instance they started for 3 days and then left sure and I think that was all around expectations and and maybe the maturity of the The Graduate and look I think attitude in The

21:48Graduate is probably the most important attribute of always sort of said that and once they join supporting them you know to be successful yeah with lots of pillows and gloves and handling them very carefully and and letting them giving them time to kind of settle in and get used to you know working life sometimes these graduates have had little jobs in other places so they kind of have done that that transition from study to to work so that's another attribute that we would look for sure that leads me into you know the team culture it's really important you mentioned that early on getting that feedback from your company to the to the three directors I think it's amazing what you did there between all of the leaders yeah for sure so oh so between all the leaders so how's that team culture how have you made that Center to where you are as a business and how are you focusing on that look I think culture was something that we sort of ignore or let's put it that way we left it to chance so defining what a set of behaviors are that are good that we're going to stick by and you can hold us accountable to was a big start and and even just agreeing those behaviors was a an important step in doing that

23:24But also the relationships that we have between ourselves needed to be deeper so it's not just a warning sure you know it's oh how you going well you know put the evident yeah and and have that range of relationship kind of conversation with different people yeah means that you can hold behaviors more accountable yeah and for me you know probably like analogies for me you know we had handbooks and we had policies and procedures and we thought we we were very mature in that space you know we've got a pmo customers should be really happy that we always look to improve we have customer success Ser surveys afterwards and we're very thoughtful in that piece but the overall culture wasn't being guided and now we have that that guidance it's helping so you don't have to write so many rules and and things great great I think it's important that you've got that as a as one of your leevers in your businesses as you grow the team culture has got to be it's got to be really strong and if you're competing against the large multinationals in their size you got to be different otherwise why would people come and join you I think that's a a very good takeaway thanks for that Mark look you know one of the the leaders in the team have worked for some of the siis recently yeah and he's seen the kinds of behaviors that they

24:59An act and that we do refer to that in the in the recruitment process to say that you know which is why we're different for sure it's it's it's quite amazing that those sis are still the same when I was there you know 20 years ago that they they've got this culture that they keep on trying to change they put a lot of effort and money and you see it all in the newspaper and the Financial reviews or whatever it is that they they're putting a lot of time and effort into it but fundamentally I think the business model is what defines their culture and I think that's the problem you'll never change the culture of those big organizations if the business model is like it is at the moment so I think that's the The Challenge and your business model is around people and I think it's important yeah I mean we we often say we're a very family oriented business yeah and that means caring for you and your family and you know allowing you the flexibility to do whatever you need at the time that's important for you yeah great all right now let's get on to the the clients you know the ones that pay the bills at the end of the day and and it's really important you know let's just quickly talk about the services you sort of offer just so the people have sort of understand you know where you came from where's Chrome what they do where they're positioned can you just give us a bit of an idea of what services your folks really offer so I think our tagline is confidence in your content and that content could be data structured data or unstructured data and what we do is we we look at

26:37Organization's operational processes you know if they're running sap or other systems like Pega Etc and how do we inbuild or embed the content so it's easier for the end user y which makes it more efficient they're getting the right information at the right place and in some cases and in some processes it contributes to the saving of lives so you get a business efficiency of course but also you know in the asset space when we're dealing with quite a lot of content that relates to instructions for disassembling and assembling maintenance items Etc if you get that wrong then that could involve injury or even worst case death so we're very purposeful in that regard in terms of not only getting confidence in your content that you're using the right stuff but also trying trying to align that with the business benefit and business value yeah so it's not just compliance for sure great you're an overx partner yes yeah you really bridge the gap between openex and sip really really well and Microsoft and Microsoft sorry yeah yeah true Microsoft as well so you you've got that covered real the cornerstones of large Enterprise where there's a lot of a lot of data and a lot of document management so that's really really good you know just the the common challenges that I see with a lot of

28:10Midsize consultancy firms where you folks are are positioned you know you know what you're famous for and and I love that because you know it's it's really difficult when when people pick up a you know a EDM or or email from a potential consultancy firm and you're a client and you wear working you know what do these people actually do you know for you guys it's content and and it's managing that content making sure it's secure and they can get quality content to make decisions and I love that that's support Ai and clean up for pii but it's all data content related and that's that's what you're famous for and that's what you guys sck out and it's really really good and I think if you you for those people listening out today Niche is really important if you can go deeper rather than broad it's powerful and you've done it really really well there so one the challenges I see though mid Enterprise is consultancy firms sorry going to large Enterprise delivery is the onboarding process and I'm I always get frustrated because the big consultancy firms never really have a challenge around this because they way they sign up the client and the way they've got the commercials aligned and everything else with small consultancy firms or midsize consultancy firms there is a CH can you sort of give the audience today a bit of an idea of what that challenge is and you know where you battle and where you would would where would the ideal client be and how you try and solve that as you go through that

29:43There's a few aspects to that yeah I'd say maybe well it varies from year to year but maybe 50% of our business would be through Partners through a DXE or Accenture or IBM or KPMG and we kind of run to the their Rhythm and their transparency or lack of that so it's quite hard for us to justify project managers on projects like that even though were experts in our particular so with those you those kinds of projects you have your own special kind of challenge and that's really around the the timing of when you get engaged the other aspect that we have is sometimes where not only following the drum beat but we might be on for a few weeks and then off and then we're waiting for their teams to do other things and then we're back on more and more we're getting a bit more Savvy around certainly for three or four cases where we say look this person's yours m that's it they're booked on your time for sure for other customers were agreeing in the month before what the following month's commitment will be so with the either the customer or the Si's project manager and saying that you know let's say it's 15 days that's what we're

31:16Going to pill yeah now we still have the the resourcing obligation to fill the other five days but that's giving us a bit more certainty and a bit more transparency around that so they're two things that we're expanding I guess in that sense right along with an onboarding checklist you know and and really trying to be we're very customer friendly let's put it that way there you go and the customers sometimes take advantage of you guys take advantage and so you know having a bit more discipline on our side to say no we will not commit any resource and until you know you've issued user IDs you know or servers are commissioned or whatever and because we know there's leate times associated with that but again it's it's about transparency yeah and and being open with the customer as well you know and checking in for sure so we've had a recent very yesterday we've we have PMS we've been brainstorming some of these things and yeah we're hoping to take that upper level and you know my my drive is to be better every time yeah like that makes me happy growth growth is happiness in my in my book so yeah good point eing eing and pushing that boundary to be a little bit more more improved let's say and that

32:51Might also include terms that we might change on the statements of work around cessation of of things and ramp downs and ramp UPS but putting in a statement of work isn't the answer really sure it's kind of like a a back stop heavy but it's not a it's not polite and it's not it's not the way you want to do this it's not customer friendly here that's right I really like that about you and scrome so the the the thing is well you know it's making sure you're efficient more efficient as an organization I love that you know looking at the process you're diing that in a bit more taking it to sort of the next level and with that efficiency also less frustration will happen at this well through so the cost will be better you won't lose you won't lose Revenue unbillable days and and then on top of that frustration you eases and I think it's less friction better for the Consultants as well so you know they've got more certainty of knowing what they're going to be doing during the days for sure they can look forward to it they can talk to other Consultants were very Collegiate in terms of sharing skills and knowledge yeah and then yeah it's again I guess it's taking noise certainty out in the business a lot of pressure on consultants and you know if you can take that off a little bit make it easier they enjoy it do better outcome for clients and they'll stay with you longer you know as a staff member yeah okay so let's just also just thinking about can you share a bit of a success story where your services

34:26Have have made a bit of a impact for a client like you know not a case study or such but something that something that you know you you go you go home one day and you go you know we've done something really well there and it's it's awesome it's a bit hard when you're a Services firm and you you know you're putting some technical solution and to sometimes get that you know that feeling that you're actually changing the world or you're doing something good do you have an example of that at all or a thought on that yeah so probably the one I'm most familiar with would be one that I account managed and often when customers put in this kind of solution there's a hyperare phase and there's lots of problems that are surfaced during that hyperare phase and that it frustrated me that you know the customers emotions were in play at the time and escalations were happening and it it wasn't a you know a good outcome for the customer really and I saw that a couple of times and I really wanted to get to the bottom of what that was and for the most part it was change management or setting and because of this type of solution that goes in it's it's in the AP automation side of things it's requiring more discipline with the business users which they don't always

36:00Appreciate but it's overall you know more efficient for for everyone in the in the organization so managing the expectations with the business users managing the reasons or explaining the reasons why this there could well be hyperare educating even the vocabulary that should be used around problem is because what this solution actually does is it shines a light on business Behavior okay right and everybody thinks the problem's with the tool but the problem is with the business behavior and you can't override sap you know so it's it's not going to be able to fix it unless the business user for instance does a Goods receipt and if they're not doing good with see it's going to highlight the people that are are not following along but of course you need the management structure to support the end users with training and also you know convictions in their own policy change if it it was and so we ended up writing a white paper or a briefing document or best practice guide call it what you will that covered all of these aspects and on this particular project you know I was briefing the management team and it came to hyp care and there were some issues but it was to do with infrastructure and

37:33The desktop setup of the end users but actually errors and faults in the system nonexistent so we could set this this circumstance up portraying that it might be a problematic period but actually it wasn't in the end yeah so we've we've shared we've offered that document now to the user group brilliant and anybody else who's interested in understanding U how to avoid change management issues yeah fantastic it's really good some of the challenges that you've witnessed over the last couple years obviously you know you've been in this industry for a while what are the challenges you think going forward are going to happen in in the IT services industry and and if so you know you got any is is going to be because at the moment it's it is quite tight out there in the market people are sort of working out where is the global economy going you know hyperinflation all these sort of things are happening you know that you know we just talked bit early on about what's happening with elections in the US that could impact the rest of the globe anything there that you sort of like to share for the IT services industry where you think you know is it going to be a sales challenge or was a delivery challenge you know a year or so ago we couldn't find resources do you think it's more about sales at the moment Staffing delivery what do you think of the challenges going forward the next three

39:07Months I don't know I'm not sure if I'm good at reading the market from a from a perspective because we you know the past half year has been very good yeah I do think that you know some of the legislation that's coming through on the books in Australia will put a focus on privacy and that'll release budgets in those particular areas I think there's a maturity that needs to happen within the market around you know all the cyber security issues that are being caused and and the I guess the the belief that AI can help you know doing threat monitoring or or whatever is probably an area which will go through the the Gardner trough the Hypes and the troughs much like AI will and when customers start to really see what is possible and the kinds of outputs they can get I think there be a kind of a bit of a realignment bit and when when I say AI I'm I'm not talking machine learning I think machine learning's got a lot more more utility it's a lot more predictable yeah for sure now we know every sort of IT services businesses goes up and down es and flows that's sort of Conant as we as we go through the Journey of

40:42Organizations what are the challenges that can you sort of highlight one setback that you had and you know could be a regret that you had that setback or or how you fixed it is there anything there you could share all those Journeys in your journey you've had there was one organization that we were struggling to withh and we ended up walking away from that organization and the the project money associated with that I'm not sure if it was a you know at the time it felt like the right thing to do yeah you know I don't know I think the jury's still out on on that for sure right yeah so it's it's difficult when you're in the in when you're in the weeds and motions running high and these clients are are basically you know being destructed to themselves sometimes you got to just take it on the chin or sometimes walk away I suppose you decide to walk away at the time which was a fair call and it wasn't wasn't you know a cut let's go it was a a ramp down so we didn't leave them in the Lurch yeah for sure but yeah I think that was probably the biggest set back to the organization first for sure well thanks for showing that it's it's I think it's a nothing works you know perfectly as we know in in the business world and yeah that's good future let's talk about the future in the vision you know we spoke about the trends really of the IT industry where that's going and there's really great upside for Chrome

42:14And I think that's that's fantastic for you folks it's always good when you're running consultancy firm that certain things do fall in your lap a bit nothing really does everything's planned now you want the order to flow in your direction for a change so you want to swim with it swim s with it not against it not against it and in this case I think it's is definitely going in your in your direction which is always fantastic we spoke a bit about the long-term goals and and I love for that sharing that what would you give someone that's really you know could be you know your past working for a big vendor that is maybe not say thisen but really wants to change how would you think is the best way or what do you think is the best way for you for them to move into an IT services organization or start one up any thoughts on that I think you've got to try yeah you know if you've got the conviction and energy then try and and even if you fail it it's not really a failure you know and then that's the US culture really yeah it's it's not necessarily the Australian culture yet but I think there's lots of niches out there with all the microservices and you know in the sap world it's the btp platform you've got tons of services with AWS Google Etc so actually assembling those provides full you more

43:51Potential but I think from a stepping out and trying just make sure that some of the housekeeping aspects so I would say you know make sure the industry is growing that you you're addressing right check on geopolitical factors that might affect things and once those big building blocks are in place I think or you're it's understood then I think go for it great great yeah just jump just make the leap I know when a started Chrome in 2014 he needed very little funding for sure very little yeah it's not like you're building a sess product that's right you know it's it's really just let's get out let's be a maybe a contract to start off with and let's get some Revenue in the door and let's hire two three people and just start the machine like you say you're building a skateboard yeah definitely not a car not a car everyone wants a car right you get to the car got to get the momentum but also product you know products are difficult yeah definitely I mean we've not gone that way yeah you know not purposefully probably because we've been distracted we could do it we do have a portfolio of custom work that we do so this 17 or 18 custom Mups that could help

45:24Customers but we haven't prioritized that and I've seen other businesses try to productize things and it's difficult be burnt yeah and the problem with that is you a Services firm and you got to make sure people avilable and then that goes up and down all the time that Focus has got to be on there that pulse of the business and if you're trying to build a product in parallel to that you know it's gets orphaned and neglected so yeah it's a bit of a challenge I see and then you know a software company might come along and fill that Gap fill that Gap yeah yeah it's pretty difficult all right just like to say thanks Mark you've been an awesome client and you got a great business and you should be very very proud of where you are and where you going thanks so much thanks you thanks for joining us on it Mastermind talks don't miss out on our next episode hit the follow button and stay updated want to be our next podcast guests contact us and share your expertise with our audience visit www.IT Mastermind Talks.com for more