Jeremy Weisz
Is there a really use case that surprised you? Or that yet was surprised you?
David Nevogt
Yeah, I mean, one for example is like hospitals needing to use the software to basically use it for the opposite. Most people want to know most people want to use it to make sure to to, to make sure that basically somebody is working your required amount of hours. So say you have a company that now has to go remote and you will make sure that your people are actually putting in 40 hours you want to have that very simple use case. That’s the that’s like a big primary use case of our software’s making sure people are doing what supposed to be doing when they’re supposed to be doing it right. Hospitals use it for you know, a lot of times for residents they can only work 80 hours a week because of, you know, fatigue. And so what they use it for is make they want to because the residents want to, or they don’t maybe not necessarily want to work more, but they’re putting situations often don’t have to work more. And so or they’re, you know, kind of pressured to work more. And so hospitalization is to actually limit the hours to 80. So you cannot go over this time. You could not track time, over this hour range per week, which was interesting.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, it’s funny, because I’m one of one of the reasons we wanted to implement is to get more visibility on hiring, as far as when do we need to hire someone else? Right. So is this person starting to get at max capacity? Or what tasks? Are they doing that maybe we need to separate out from their job? And so right now, I could see someone wanting to track the time but we wanted to get more visibility because you can With the software, program different tasks at that person, you know, an individual on a daily basis, people are doing different tasks throughout the day. What are the different tasks they’re spending the most time on? And also customers wise? Who’s taking up most of the time? Yep, right and 8020 rule.
David Nevogt
Those are both perfect examples like with the customer. Most companies can’t, most companies have a very hard time tracking profitability. So that that’s one thing that we really help with it all the nice thing is it all happens automatically. Not I wouldn’t say automatically 100% but kind of automatically. And like, you can tell how much time is being spent on various different customers or clients. And then basically, you know, like a cleaning company, for example, a cleaning, maid service, you know, they’ll have one customer that their house takes two hours and they quoted for two hours, but it’s actually taking You know, three four what for whatever reason maybe they have very detailed steps maybe the customer is just, you know, just required requiring extra time whatever that’s an act that that customer did maybe unprofitable over time. I’m in a business of low margins where another customer they can fly in and out in an hour and so you’ve got an you can adjust pricing based on that or you can you know, go and you know, a lot of what we do is to help companies and business owners kind of like adjust another example like you said is I have a I’ve had an example like that as well where a manager managers and owners they don’t understand what their people are doing very hard to understand what your people are actually doing. I mean, they could be and many times most times it’s not it’s not nothing it’s nothing ill hearted or anything
Jeremy Weisz
Trusler
David Nevogt
Yeah, no, but not by the employee that they’re not doing anything wrong. They’re just trying to do their job, but they’re doing it and it’s a management issue. And, um, like, for example, when I ran my golf company, um, you know, I had this guy, he was awesome. He was he was our lead developer. I said, Why are projects always running so slow? Why cannot Why can’t things ever get done on time, but I can’t project downtime. I can’t figure it out. You know, we, I’m doing everything I can to give you the resources to get these things done on time. I can’t figure out why it’s not getting done. So he mean, you know, he didn’t have a really good answer for this. We started tracking time, and all of a sudden, you start tracking time to different projects. I realized in the course of just basically a week, and I had been trying to solve this problem for a year and a half, two years. After a week of tracking time, I learned that he was actually spending like 40% of his time on customer service. So I can adjust it and say now that’s a he thought that was a job. You know, he thought and I was giving him that job or knowing That there was taking so much time, but he had had to solve all the customer issues. Why can’t you login? Why can’t you reset your password? Right? Like things like that? I could I was paying this developer, right three times the weight, right? And my projects are going slow because of one problem that I could have easily adjusted for hired a customer service agent. Right and made an adjustment business big, become more profitable. Can I project it? So over, you know, you until you’re doing until you’re tracking time and you’re getting data, it’s very hard to understand these these issues.
Jeremy Weisz
Dave talk about implementing it into the team, um, people may be thinking, well, I don’t want my team to think I don’t trust them. And then all of a sudden, I onboard Hubstaff, what are some what some language you recommend people using when someone is, you know, onboarding the team to using Hubstaff?
David Nevogt
Yeah, and I think, Well, I think a lot of it comes down to the to the the transparent Have a manager or an owner, I’m talking to their people about how they run their business and what they need. So some companies might not need this and some companies might not go down this route. You know it. So what I know
Jeremy Weisz
no offense to you for that, but like, I think everyone does need that. I mean, I, I mean, what I expressed was, I am personally going to use it this is not for everyone, but I want to track my productivity and what I may be wasting time on or what you know, I having some visibility into that. So I think even as a an owner standpoint, it’s valuable.
David Nevogt
Yeah, that’s one angle I what I what I usually kind of think of is like more along the lines of like, okay, you know, I need this data as the owner because honestly, we we have to make better decisions as a company. Right, we have to make better decisions as a company. And without hiring without you giving me feedback every day over Slack, or what or over email, then I have to consolidate and I’ve got to roll that into reports. And then I’ve got to write you have to explain your job as the manager or the owner, the things that you have to do. So I, I have to track down timesheets, I have to do payroll, I have to do, right I’ve got to do invoicing of clients this software is going to make all that automatic for for my company it’s going to make my job is to grow the business so I can hire more people or pay you as the employee more money. Right? I can roll that back into you. I need to streamline what I’m doing. So with Hubstaff or you know many contracting software’s or whatever right like all you know, how much you pay employees how if you pay by the hour especially, or how much you pay contractors, how much you invoice, your clients, all of that happens automatically and that’s really where I think And most business owners, especially small business really struggle with that, you know, now if you’re more in let’s say e commerce where you don’t have those issues, you don’t have the issue of, you know, how much invoice a client, you just have to figure out how much you want to pay people. And if they’re on a salary, right, then it does become more about, Okay, I need to know what projects you’re working on, so that I can, you know, understand how much time and how much cost is really going into that project? Is that something that has all the business so things like that, you know, I think, are good angle to go.
Jeremy Weisz
So conversation around transparency, why it’s so important for the business and then second, while it’s benefiting them, maybe it’s saving them time because they were doing timesheets or tracking something and they have to do it anymore. And,
David Nevogt
and I’m a believer that if that if an employee or contractor can’t understand that if they if they say, Well, you know, it’s still I don’t want this thing on my computer tracking what I’m doing. You know, if that’s if that’s what they’re saying, You Back to then it’s like, then there must been something’s off. Because that I’m a believer that employees and contractors that are our, you know, everyone’s needs to be they need to understand from the business standpoint that it’s a trade off, right? So they’re getting income, and the business is hopefully getting ROI on that income. And if that’s not a, if that circle cycle is not happening, then something is off. So if all you’re thinking about is your side of the equation, then you’re not worried about anything else that happens in the next knot. It’s not a match. Like that’s not a person that that I want in my word, if they can’t understand that simple, you know, philosophy. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
yeah. I want to talk about the core values a little bit but but to the customer service question. You know, what made you decide to bake so much customer service and touch into a software that it’s not like you’re charging an exorbitant amount per month or anything like that.
David Nevogt
Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s hard to that. That’s actually pretty a very interesting conversation. I’m glad you I’m glad you experienced that. I’m glad that I’m glad that it was a good you know, sounds like it was a good experience for you. I’m glad it was. Um so
Jeremy Weisz
those maybe it’s because people are on an old desktop computers and you just needed it because people can’t get it run it, you know?
David Nevogt
Yeah. Well, no, I think the thing is like that, you know, customer service is your first line of defense. They are you they they are all true salespeople in their own way. And that is how we gain trust of our clients and customers. So we can’t afford because you sit like you said, we’re our software is not expensive. So we can’t afford to have a sales team. I mean, we could have a sales team. If but I don’t think that said we haven’t found a way to make that profitable because our our businesses are mostly small businesses and the average account pages $50 a month, 60 hours a month now. So it’s very hard to make those numbers work in a commission style or that kind of thing. So but what we do, what we do believe is that almost what we know is that almost every single customer customer that comes in, they ask a question, they have to ask a question in order to get the software up and running or they you know, it’s very, very unlikely that they have no issues onboarding their team, because you have one owner, our software, you have one owner, which is another reason why this was a hard business to start is that you have one owner that’s paying you, right? But then you have on average, like seven to 10 people that are not paying you that are using the software day in day out that need to be those are the the team members are the ones that you that that are using the software that everything needs to work. It takes just pretty much one or two of those people to say hey, This doesn’t work or there’s issues or I’m having this issue no matter what they’re doing. It could be just,
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, it’s really tough because you need every single person on board. And if you’re getting negative feedback, it’s gonna be start, the owner is gonna start questioning decision. So you
David Nevogt
need to Yes, exactly, because really the the team members are the ones that that are though if they on board and it’s all good, then okay now and they get good feedback, then great, everything’s fine. If you’re making it a hassle. We need to make life easy for the owner not harder, and you’re making it harder if if now everyone’s got an issue. Everyone needs help onboarding, right. And that needs to be so our team needs to be really good when it comes down to helping people get through it. And we look at them as our salespeople because we don’t have salespeople. So they’re really yeah, so that’s, that’s, I guess that’s where my mindset
Jeremy Weisz
one of the things we did is I didn’t want to make the decision off the bat. I wanted the team to research Have top two choices, and then come to us because then if it’s coming from them, they’ve researched, it’s easy or not easy, then it’s much, you know, you made the decision on it. And that’s what you chose, essentially, to assign it the best and the easiest. And so we’ll figure it out on our end but we want them to be on board with using actually using smart Yeah,
David Nevogt
that’s good to hear. That’s interesting to hear. Yeah, I think that’s what happens a lot.
Jeremy Weisz
Um, and so from the customer service, talk about mapping that out because you’re very detail oriented. Obviously. There are certain touch points you want to with the customer service and you know, and how methodical you are behind the scenes. Yeah,
David Nevogt
it’s kind of hard because we have, like we have, we have ecommerce, we’ve got agencies, we’ve got software development, we’ve got construction, we’ve got, you know, all these different people coming in. And they all we don’t have a software built specifically for any one industry. So it’s hard to to build those touch points exactly out, we do have that data. So we were starting to kind of build out paths for our, for our most popular kind of like people that would resonate with one of those industries or whatever. But it’s a bit in general, you know, in general is just about a if you want a demo, we’ll give you a demo. If you you know, in general, it’s about the people that are coming in, how they like to learn, and us being able to, to offer whatever it is that they need, and being very upfront and honest or not, not demanding, but just we want to make sure that they know where to get help if they want if they need, they need to get that help in, in in the format that they want. Some of them want a PDF downloadable that they can email their people, some of them want a video some of them want, you know, a live person that we do all we just make sure that they have the sources that they need. I didn’t know if there was some point because I know I don’t remember how long we had been on But someone reached out and said, Hey, if you have questions, or if you want to get a phone, like, let us know, I don’t know if there’s like a specific point where you see people maybe need a little more hand holding, they’re just starting to get their footing on it. Is there a certain time period? And I think we just kind of set it up and Okay, yeah, just Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
well worked, whatever you’re doing. So yeah, thank you. Um, how do you best hire Customer service is obviously integral in your business people. That’s your front line of not just support, but salespeople, sort of, you know, making sure people are supported. How do you hire a good customer support person?
David Nevogt
So we’ve got a process that we go through. And I think, you know, a lot of it happened. A lot of it starts with like, what? A lot of a certain attitude, everything starts with attitude. I think, you know, you mentioned, you know, your grandfather, like, what’s that book? Man’s Search for Meaning? I think Viktor Frankl Yeah, right? So like, everything starts with attitude. And it’s like, you need to get people with you with the right attitude on your team. So in my mind, yes, you, I want somebody technical to be on the support team, but I can teach them I will accept them on the team, if they have just an awesome attitude, and they are going to do whatever it takes to make somebody happy. And they realize in their heart, they can do that job. That’s more important than being extremely technical, but be but thinking that the world revolves around you and what right so i think a lot of it sorts of attitude. I can teach the technical part we can we have training for that stuff, right? So start with attitude. And then basically, we have a whole process we go through but I mean, we’ll put a job out and we’ll get maybe. I don’t know because we’re a remote company. We just get a ton of response when they get 300 applicants in and we do look for people that They’re technical and that and that, understand because you have to go in and diagnose a Linux computer, you’ve got to know what Linux is, you’ve got to know, right? You’ve got to know. You’ve got to understand how to go on to and download a debug app on your iPhone and go through the process of QA that
Jeremy Weisz
I would not be hired by you do.
David Nevogt
Right. So we know there’s certain hurdles, but after but after that, you know, it’s a lot about attitude and then,
you know, so we go through, we might interview we might interview five out of out of that group of 300 and then make a choice. And
Jeremy Weisz
how do you bake in that those questions or in the hire process that you measure? attitude, like if people are have their best want to put their best foot forward?
David Nevogt
Yeah. How do you part of it? I think part of it so you do automate, we do. Like it like audit like forms, right? That have, you know, I think it’s like seven to 10 questions that you have to answer when you come through the application process. So we’ll get those things and we’ll we’ll you’ll have, you know, hey, give us a link to your LinkedIn profile. If you can’t give me the link to your LinkedIn profile, chances are you’re not you’re disqualified. I mean, you know, I’m saying like,
Unknown Speaker
surely disqualification?
David Nevogt
Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s, yeah, it’s a process of if, if I asked you, please explain your why you’d be a good fit for this role. Like, and you wrote me a three word, you know, phrase, you know, hey, 10 years customer service experience. That’s not good. That’s not good enough for us like we want I want a long paragraph, I want you to have the qualities that I want. So we believe that it’s best to provide a one touch response and I want to solve that problem in the first time that you You have an issue I don’t want, if we don’t get a response back from you, that’s actually really good. Um, so in order to do that, we’ve got to provide a really long write like response that is very detailed, we thought through, and I want to see that same response happening in your mind. And that same attitude happening in your mind before. I have to, I think, that’s one thing I can train you a lot of stuff that’s hard to train is you’re going to resent that if that’s not your natural place, or the your natural way of working, then you’re going to start to resent this, this job. And so it’s about fit. And so we look for long, you know, long responses there and like, you know, a detailed response well thought through so you can do a lot just with that, you know.
Jeremy Weisz
So what are some of the ways you measure attitude is one you have a couple questions baked in there, but you see more of how they respond. So is it really long is it really detailed? Is it really friendly, like those times Perfect, yes.
David Nevogt
Right? And then you and then like, for instance, we’ll say, we’ll, if you we do most of our email. So like, you’ll get an email address, what’s your email address? Okay. So if we write you an email and you don’t respond back for three days, you give me all this long, this long, you know, great response. But you but you’re not responding back in three days. Again, that’s not something that we’re looking for I understand you might have a job or whatever, we’re looking for somebody that actually that that’s boom, they’re there. They’re responding back to you within, you know, seven, seven to 10 minutes sometimes, you know, like, fast. And it’s like, that’s the person is going to rise up and say, This is a person that has the attitude experience that we need. They’re good enough for interview.
Jeremy Weisz
Are there any other questions that you find? You know, teases out, like someone has a good attitude, like you mentioned, you know, what would make you a good fit? Are they any other questions that you find that you’re really looking at in that interview process?
David Nevogt
I know not a ton, and I asked a lot of personal Questions like personal meaning like, what are your hobbies? I want to know your hobbies. If you’re if we’re hiring for a developer, I want to know that you enjoy taking apart computers. Like, I want to know that you enjoy that. I want to know, a lot of our developers are very active, they like to hike, they like to bike. They like to do that kind of thing. So that you know, it doesn’t. There’s not there’s no wrong answer. A lot of people like video games, that kind of thing. But at least I want to know that you’re trying to go do something for yourself better yourself. A lot of people we hire have tried to start their own businesses or even have businesses on the side that they’re running, or had they’ve tried to build an app or they’ve tried to go do something or they or they, you know, they contribute to open source technologies or they you know, whatever it is that gets them going for something. Yeah, just yeah, passion for something, you know, not just because I think that you know, that that mindset of being able to go do Something in tackle it is very important. And whatever that is, that doesn’t necessarily matter as much as long as you’re trying to do something. So that would be one thing that I look for, you know, a lot, we also look for cultural fit, you know, what, I’d like to see somebody that can laugh and have fun and smile. And, and, and, you know, ask questions. So, yeah, that would be
Jeremy Weisz
David. It’s apparent, you know, from the website and the company, that transparency is very important to you. And, yeah, and, you know, you promote the core value of transparency and you share your growth metrics publicly on the site. Talk about that decision to do that. That’s, I think, for some people completely counterintuitive. Why
David Nevogt
Yeah, and I don’t Yeah, I don’t I that was, um, that wasn’t a huge decision. I mean, we made that decision back when we were first starting, you know, like not when we were at zero, right. So like,
Jeremy Weisz
really shows for us. to zero, like no big deal. Yeah, at that point, that’s an easy decision. Right? And
David Nevogt
the reason why we made that was kind of selfish actually. Because what we thought at, you know, when we were building this company was like, Hey, we need a story, we need a hook. And that’s, it’s a lot easier for us to get, you know, attention from media and from anybody. So, you know, somebody’s writing, like, like yourself, for example, it’s just a lot easier. That’s something that that, that some that a podcast host, or that a customer will latch ahold of and say, okay, yes, this company has customers, they’ve got 11,000 customers, I can see that it’s kind of cool that they share that. I’m now part of a I’m part of it. Because I mean, you don’t know I mean, if somebody is, somebody can put together a good website and have three customers or software’s crap. You know, I like it that people can see we have 11,000 customers. That is that adds trust. So anything to add trust. Anything that says, hey, I’m not hiding anything, anything, right? So, but if we’re writing in a reporter, and we’re saying, Hey, you know, say, from Minneapolis, I’m looking at it in Annapolis. I’m a, you know, we’re local Indianapolis company, reporters and care, you know, whatever, we’re software, we share our numbers. Now that peaks there. That’s kind of cool. That’s different. You know, so that was kind of the decision point.
Jeremy Weisz
I mean, later on, I mean, there’s levels of transparency, right, like sharing your customer. There’s social proof sharing, you know, some of the amazing companies that you guys have helped is social proof and credibility. But I would say it’s more rare for people to share their number actual numbers. Yeah. Was that a tough decision and did like, what was the thought process of Well, some people say, Well, I don’t really want our competitors knowing exactly how we’re doing. So what, what was that? How did you come to that decision? That’s
David Nevogt
come about more recently now because people can see that we’re growing people can see. So there are thoughts there. And I know
Jeremy Weisz
there’s a lot of there’s a moat, right, you need a lot of developers you need to like customer service. So there’s some moat there of, they can’t just oh, they’re just hop into doing my time tracking thing. But But still, there’s still competitors out there.
David Nevogt
Yeah. And there’s competitor there. A lot of people certainly we have built a lot of competitors based on having that page up there for sure. And that that’s not a great feeling.
Jeremy Weisz
To keep it so there must be like a reason and
David Nevogt
yeah, it’s just a matter I think it’s a matter of for us it’s a matter of we know how hard we know how hard it’s been to execute we know how hard it’s been to build what we build. And we believe we really believe that there’s enough forever You know, we’re not trying to it doesn’t matter in the end it really doesn’t matter in the people that go around it. Yeah, yeah. And if we’re we believe that the soft that this world that that the soft like the industry. We’re in Which we’re in is a is a growing niche, and we’re really trying to help our customers. And if they choose us or some other product, I want what’s best for the customer in the end, I really do. And you know, I just think it’s more about just helping helping the community and helping the customer and if we’re doing the right thing, which we believe the right thing is to, just to build, listen to our customers and build the put our heads down and build the best product for our customers. It does the rest of it doesn’t really matter, we will be fine. You know, we can do that every day. We’ll be fine.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, Dave, one thing I read that struck me on your site is you said you’ve got to feel pain. When you lose an entrepreneurs life is all about surviving the pain and sacrifice it takes to win until you achieve freedom. I don’t do this for the money. I’ve been paid in two years. I do it for the freedom. Talk about that period where you hadn’t been paid in two years.
David Nevogt
Yeah. And that was that was a kind of a rough period. But I mean, you know, luckily, my wife was making income time.
Jeremy Weisz
Because people see, you know, 34,000 customers like this guy’s made it, you know, it was an easy journey, you know, talk about that time where you didn’t pay yourself for
David Nevogt
that that’s just a business. I think that was just a business decision. So, you know, I had had a few other businesses in the past. So I was I had some savings to live off of, you know, first of all, so not everyone’s in the same business position. We actually had a lot of pickup we had a lot of people coming in the door all during that time where Yeah, we weren’t making any money. We weren’t personally making any money at that point in time. We weren’t paying ourselves. We couldn’t we couldn’t pay ourselves. We were putting it back into the company. You’re building.
Unknown Speaker
What’s up,
Unknown Speaker
you’re building the infrastructure.
David Nevogt
Yeah, yeah. And so um, but all during that time, you know, we We had we were still getting good pickup from people coming in the door saying I really like this suffer. I really like what you’re doing. I really like the company, you’ve done a great job with the UI or whatever they’re saying, right? And and that we weren’t advertising to get these customers, they were just coming to us. And so, yeah, I’m not being paid now. But I know that I that I’ve got a good thing going, I know that we’ve got a good thing going. And so it’s worth investing in that. And, you know, we know it’s a matter of time. You know, I think that’s what it was about, you know, it’s not, it wasn’t like, we were just, I think there’s a balance I want to be because a lot of times I do I do enjoy talking, I realized that founding a company is not an easy thing. And I realized that, um, there’s a lot of founders that really fall in love with their ideas, and they, they they spend too much time on each one on their ideas without making profit. Profit is the most important I you know, I went Clear, but that profit is the most important. Because if you’re, you know if every day is a choice that you make. And so, at that point in time, I was making the choice yes to invest in my company, because I felt really good about where we’re going what we’re building. I had a good partner, I had a good team, we had good software, we have people coming in the door. But if I don’t have it, if I’m knocking on the door, and no one’s responding day in day out for it, that would not have been the case, you know, so I think you got to really understand you got to see the demand in order to make that decision. At least I did.
Jeremy Weisz
How do you decide on pricing? Seems like a tough thing to do.
Unknown Speaker
A lot of it’s based on a lot of it’s based on the market on what our competitors charge meaning like Tsheets or Tsheets is a competitor of ours, their timesheet solution, right. So we’re at times exclusive in their country. So you know, they’re charging five bucks a month or whatever they’re charged. I don’t know. I think they raised the price. Not a I don’t even You know what they’re charging right now, but at some point, they were like five bucks a month for per user. Um, and so, I mean, we’re not gonna be able to charge. I mean, you know, realistically, we, it’s hard for us to charge 20 We can now because we have features, they don’t have it for a specific niche. But we, you know, it’s hard for us to come in the door in charge, but we also do a lot of testing. So we’ll test prices, and we’ll test and we want understand Hey, this is too high or this is too low, do we have various different tiers. So, you know, we have basic, which is $7 a month premium, which is 10, an enterprise which is 20 currently, and that, that that’s come through data, most of what we do comes through data, so that has been tested to be the most, the best
David Nevogt
option for us, you know,
Jeremy Weisz
three like market demands with you Want to provide the best I always think of it people look for the least expensive option sometimes or free option and I feel like I never want to go with those because I want the company like you said the profit to be to be sustainable been around for a long time. So to sustain it you really need to charge to provide you know, the the right mentality is there going to roll it back into customer service in the company is you know, what the market, you know, demands and also you got to pay the good people to provide the service to so it’s a really tough balance, I think.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, there’s been a there’s been a
David Nevogt
there’s been a lot of things we’ve looked at. We’ve looked at, for instance, like offering like our timesheet solution, like tight, let’s say timesheets, invoicing, timesheets, meaning if you’re tracking on the web timer, you know, for like, say $3 a user. There’s some things that we’ve looked at, but but this is just what we’ve lined on. We used to be for a long time, we were $5 And then we offered a premium here, which I had some more. But a lot of it too comes down with the expenses, like a lot of that data that we track is just super expensive for servers and that kind of thing. So, because there’s so many, like we have like right now, I mean, I know the number, but it’s something probably probably right now. 1.6 million screenshots a day taken, that’s stored like yeah, in terms of apps, URLs, I mean, in the millions per so to manage all that data coming in, is expensive, because it’s gotta be stored. So it’s like, how are you going to? So that’s why we have to include certain things in that premium tier. You have to you have to pay more to get that to literally start
Jeremy Weisz
new David. You know, one thing that struck me with your story too, is that it wasn’t that your parents were super entrepreneurial. You just you had that bug,
Unknown Speaker
right. And
Jeremy Weisz
I thought that was a really I don’t know what that moment was like. But, but your dad was a mom and your dad offered to pay for a course for you. Right early on. Right? Yeah. And that was out of his nature. It seemed like
Unknown Speaker
it was, um, it was a
David Nevogt
I don’t know what that I don’t I don’t know. You know, I don’t know why that because it I don’t know if it, you know, he just said, you know, hey, he and I was lucky enough to have him pay my way through college, which which made it interesting because, you know, he has been a you said they’re entrepreneurial. They’re not. They’re not, you know, they’re very risk averse. I’m very I’m more like risk taking. So, you know, imagine that he had just paid my way through college, and I get the corporate job that he always has, that basically is the return on his investment, right. So your son now gets the corporate job and I’m saying you What I’m just not fulfilled in this job, I’m just pushing reports doesn’t mean much to me. I’m not happy. I’m telling him this, you know, on the golf course, whatever. Um, and he’s like, well, you know if so this course is like 500 bucks, which wasn’t cheap, because that’s against his nature to you’ll spend it on me but not on himself every right like the only guy that wears a pair of shoes for the path for seven years before you right? 710 years. So, you know, yeah, it’s 500 bucks and he said, you know, ay ay ay, ay, if you promise me that, you’ll implement this. You know, I’ll buy this for you. And so I made that promise. I did implement it, and it paid off. That’s what led me down this whole path.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, but he saw that you you had that? What was it that you had that just kind of fire that use one do your own thing?
David Nevogt
Yeah, I think that was I think that’s just my attitude. I just don’t, I just, it’s hard for me to it’s, it would be very hard for me to work for somebody else. I mean, I think that if it’s a very good match, I probably do that. But like, I just believe that like, my, the bet, the most value I can create and give to the world is when I can start with something from zero, like nothing, just a thought and idea. And that that idea, then it’s implemented, and it’s new. Like, I think that’s a value that I give to the world. And you know, then value comes back. And, like, that’s what I really believe that like, and without being if you’re just pushing a report that somebody’s telling you to create, and you’re just doing what you’re told to be, do you know, it, that’s not creating a ton of value. It’s just being a cog in the wheel, you know, and so, and that’s something we even try to do with our people, like, you know, hey, have an opinion, believe in something, tell us how to do things better create value inside the company, like we teach, we really try to get people to do that, because I think that that’s But when you have that moment of being able to like, Hey, I, that was my idea. Now it’s live in code, right? I can see that out there implemented. That’s what helps us to retain a lot of people and help helps people to actually enjoy their job. It, you know, adds dimension of pride to what they do you know,
Jeremy Weisz
this thing, you know that it comes full circle because that was originally why you just or you know, at least why you said I didn’t really like that job. I was pushing reports, but now you kind of solve that problem for people. Because it does it automatically, like your software actually solves that. So it actually lets them do be more fulfilled probably in their job. Maybe they would have been pushing more reports in their job and
David Nevogt
Right, well, they’re chasing, I’m solving the problem of them. They’re chasing down time. So that’s their job. That’s the entrepreneur job in most cases, chasing down timesheets trying to get things organized, like I want them to live a better life and to not be so stressed. stressed out all the time about you know, the little things, if you’re stressed about the big things, okay, that’s, that’s out of my realm. I can’t fix your sales problems with my software. But I can make your team more efficient and more, you know, your whole business really more efficient, take away those admin tasks and make that more streamlined and efficient. And that’s something that gives me pride because I know that then they can choose how they reinvest that time. And then energy.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I think I want to encourage you to check out hubstaff.com also check out their blog, because they have a really cool timeline of different aspects along different milestones and aspects of their company, you know, and so that are super interesting, you know, including some of their choices to switch email platforms, why they dumped one and why they picked up a new email marketing platform. So there’s just some really interesting posts that I encourage everyone to check out along your your journey. And obviously I gravitate towards a couple and one was it was so I don’t know if I was should be surprised that maybe I was because most people don’t mention it. But one of the decisions you made of starting a podcast. Yeah, right. So what was that? Why did you make that decision? How did that help? Um,
David Nevogt
yeah. And that was that was a cool I think, thing to do. It was basically we, our number one client and customer at that point in time, we’re agencies. So we said, How can you reach multiple agencies and agencies, digital marketing aid people that had issues with everything I just mentioned, how much time is somebody working on specific projects? How do I invoice that I’m charging, right? I’ve got people working for me, but I’m billing them out at different rates per Client right I build up for one client I built out at $30 now for another client 70 same person so you can solve those problems with dubstep it’s very hard to solve that problem and do the math and do the invoicing and things like that without having a solution to actually, you know, figure that out. So, you know, the podcast came down to just a different channel for reaching that customer what channel is that person interested in? And like I’m a big podcast person in general because I you know, listen to podcasts as I’m running or as I’m mowing the lawn or as I’m driving like I do not like wasting time like right so I don’t sit there and you know, mow the lawn and you know, I’m you’re
Jeremy Weisz
on or you’re Yeah, I’m just
David Nevogt
trying to think through things, whether it’s an audio book or podcast, and it helps me think a lot of times it’s non business related. It’s, you know, things about self improvement or Just what are your favorite podcasts?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, what are you? What are your favorites? What are you?
David Nevogt
Um, so like I like, I like a lot of like, I follow a lot of sports so I listen to sports, like I listened to like live sports like, like not live sports, like, in real time, but like, meaning radio shows, right? So they all have podcasts now. I listen to a lot of like, I listen to a lot of like biographies and like and like I listen, I do a lot of like, like war strategy stuff, I relate that to business a lot and how to build teams and how to motivate people and how to I listened to a lot of that stuff, just a lot of history. So like that kind of stuff. Um, but yeah, so I just don’t like wasting time. So I do I do that a lot. And you know, it just became apparent that that was a new way of reaching a customer base that we didn’t have in our in our marketing arsenal. We had the blog. But that was a, that was really good. The problem, the only problem is that we kind of, um, lost steam in terms of kind of like new people to interview the whole, the whole the whole point of that pot, the positioning of the podcast was interviews, like this is right here. But I had lost inner agents, we would interview agency owners to find out how they their stories from how they grew their agency. And so I guess we just kind of felt like over time that that, you know, people had gotten what they need. We had done what the podcast still around where people can listen to the archive, but the new ones were kind of like coming it wasn’t becoming betters. It was kind of staying stagnant.
Jeremy Weisz
So that was your favorite interviews. Who were the some of the favorite people you featured.
David Nevogt
I didn’t do the podcast, so I didn’t have the podcast. Okay, I didn’t do the did the interviewing. So I don’t Yeah, I didn’t. Um,
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, the customer of ours.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah. Um, so what about software tools? What are your favorites? Like, obviously, you know, excluding Hubstaff is one of the favorites. What do you use? You mentioned Slack, what other tools software.
David Nevogt
So, you know, we Hubstaff, we have a product, we have a project management tool as well. So like project management system, so, you know, like, you know, it’s can band so you can drag and drop that kind of thing you can, but I mean, so that is outside the realm of time tracking. So it’s that and we use that internally, but like, that’s where I would go is any project management. So that’s number one. That’s number one. above everything else is like some kind of system where whatever you use Asana, you know, tasks, Trello, whatever, just some way to document and blueprint. You know what, how you You know, do business. I like mind mapping software a lot. I use, you know, flow charting and processes a lot. You know, that kind of thing. We do a lot Google Docs, we do almost everything Google Docs. It’s free. You know, but all of our specs for software development are all on Google Docs, all of our special marketing, we use specs for marketing. That’s really how we kind of develop what we’re going to work on for the quarter is all in a Google Doc. And then basically, we have a plan how we’re going to implement that and then we have you know, the assignment and then we go to help set tasks in our case, which is our project management tool and basically assign those tasks out to people to have worked on then that’s how we communicate and we comment and you can add many people and then you get it back. So you know, our business is made up of Google Docs, upset tasks, Hubstaff. Slack is a lot of slack is for culture and culture development and company. And then we, you know, obviously we have a lot of development specific tools that we use to build our software. We use rush for like search and, and information.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, um, David, last question and really appreciate your time and sharing your philosophies and core values and your journey everyone should check check out hubstaff.com And I really believe you know, I should have had this a long, long long time ago because it makes me personally more productive we what you track and what you focus on expands. And so if you’re tracking actually the tasks you’re doing and and you know, it allows me to figure out where should I best spend my time and what am I spending you can’t you don’t know that unless you know what you’re spending your time on in the first place. And so it’s been really valuable to see what am I spending time on and Also it keeps me on track from that wasting time, because I see that thing ticking. And like if I go off to Facebook, I’m like, Well, I kinda have to stop that timer. Now I’m not being productive. So it really helps me. Zero is I think, I believe if you’re a staff of one, you should be using it personally. You know, lots of people do yeah, let alone obviously having an insight into what the whole team is doing. You know, so I encourage people to check out hubstaff.com And check out their software, become a user, even if you’re a personal one. I don’t care who you are, you know, so check it out. I always ask since it’s inspired Insider. Dave, what’s been a low moment that you had to push through? And what’s been a proud moment especially proud moment? What’s been more of like a challenging time that you had to push through?
David Nevogt
Um, I you know, there’s there’s been Hubstaff came about From a need of just I’ll go back to that time where like, just just the extreme stress of running a business and not knowing if what you’re doing is right, not knowing, Hey, you know what, I suck at management, like, whatever it is I coming to these realizations of saying, You know what? I need hellp And, you know, like, that moment for me was back when I was at my golf business and just like, I just, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t make things I couldn’t make things, you know, couldn’t make things happen. It couldn’t make the things that I wanted to happen. I couldn’t move things along faster. I wasn’t, it wasn’t bringing in tech money used to it was kind of on the decline. And, you know, just having to kind of say, Okay, it’s time to it’s time to move on from this time to move on and do something different. And so, you know, those are always you know, hard moments. You have something you run for, you know, nine years and it’s time to move on, you know, but just like your bidding. Yeah, I mean, I think the the best thing is just that I advise always to just start something. When you start to have those feelings, you know, you got to start to move on before the end is there, you can’t, you know, so you start to kind of see allows you to kind of test the waters and see what might be your next thing before the end has come.
Jeremy Weisz
I mean, that’s what you did with your full time job. I mean, you were moonlighting, waking up at five in the morning try and make some noise that you were it wasn’t like quit cold turkey burn the boats. You’re like, No, I just hop on the next boat. I didn’t burn this boat. So that’s a really
David Nevogt
I’ve done it with with three different things now. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, that’s smart. What about on the flip side? What’s been especially proud moment and
David Nevogt
I think journey. Yeah, I think proud. I think pride right now I think pride currently right now, because I work I’m going through this exercise right now actually today later on today. building out our future vision and where we want to go, which is hard for me, you really got to sit down and kind of turn everything off and, and try to get in the mindset of where you want to go and what you want to do with the company and how you’re going to make an impact on the world. And it seems, you know, it seems like that’s something that you but it’s always adjusting. It’s always, I mean, at least it is like it adjust every you know, let’s say three years or five, four years. And as I’m sure you never know, if you’re going down the right path, you never know if the path you’re going down is right. Like you never know what you’re there’s not that immediate feedback. You’ve got to go with what I feel like is the right thing to do. I have reasons for doing that. And so, you know, I’m just proud that right now that like, we have a company that honestly has helped people stay. There’s been a lot of people that we’ve helped out from people from You know, that we’ve introduced through our software and have had jobs and can feed their families and have the job that they want dream jobs they never could have gotten if they work, let’s say, in they live in Idaho and on a farm and they have somebody from Chicago, hire them, and now they can do what they can have a better life because of what we do. And that makes me you know, just people from somebody from the Philippines might meet somebody from California and now they have a great relationship and they’re, you know, able to have a job they never could have had locally, you know, so that and that whole movement is happening now. It makes me proud that like we have a software that can be in the mix and in the middle, and really a leader in terms of helping to move that forward. And so you know, that and it makes me happy that business owners can be happier. Also using the software because they get it they get a lot of advantages. Well, yeah, so
Jeremy Weisz
yeah, you know, thank you Dave, I totally appreciate you and what you’ve created everyone check out hubstaff.com And I want to be the first one to thank you.
David Nevogt
Yeah. Thank you
