Shaping the Future: Innovation & Success

Speaker 1: [Music] how do I put together really bulletproof processes run a really tight ship make sure that we're always delivering at super high quality just as we say we're going to do and create the agency that I wish that I had and on top of just executing while is executing successfully like not only just getting it done but doing it in a way that's going to win in the Market at this point we're almost 15 years in we've launched well over a 100 applications I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the Sheil it podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a, people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome to welcome back to the Sheila podcast thank you for joining us Lindsay share with us your journey into Tech and what inspired you to launch welcome app Studio I started working in software and Tech right around the birth of the App Store when smartphones were just coming on the scene so I had been after college living in South Africa for a couple of years I was working in nonprofit environmental engineering is actually my background so more mechanical engineering and when I came back to the US I had been completely shielded from pop culture I didn't know who Taylor Swift was I arrived back here and people were using blackberries I don't know if you remember those days but that was how smartphones came on the scene and so people were on their phones accessing the internet and videos and things like that so for me I didn't see this happen gradually this happened right away and I was like this is so cool and I found out that you could create the apps on the phone that essentially you could ship globally immediately just put on software on the store and then anybody could have it immediately and that I could then modify that tool or software and then everybody would get the modification immediately so it was really exciting to me that you could create tools that people could carry around with them and use all day and that you could continually update and ship new tools or versions of that tool continuously and immediately so that to me was like really eye opening and I'm an entrepreneur by birth or personality or something so I was really excited and what did I want to build and so I had this idea for an app that I wanted to make these were very early days there were like 10 apps in the app store right and so I didn't know how to do that so I went online and I googled literally how to build an app or who to hire for this and I ended up hiring an agency out of New York City they were in Union Square so I was like they're obviously legit and I just thought that okay they tell me how much it's going to cost and I hand them the money and they hand me back the product I didn't understand anything about this process and all that goes into designing a product how to design a product that's going to be effective in delivering value sometimes we tend to think that the idea or the concept is the thing that is valuable and certainly ideas are valuable but how you execute on it and whether or not you're able to deliver the value you're trying to deliver immediately to your user or to the person who wants to use the product that is the Delta between the idea and actual successful execution is actually quite large and there's a large body of like strategic and historical knowledge that goes into figuring out how to execute well but I didn't know that at the time I hired this company I was able to raise money and I got a decent Siz Grant from an organization and then I also pre-sold real estate in the product ads ahead of time so I was able to use that to fund the development of the product what happened is that this team that I hired really didn't deliver and they would say oh we're going to get it done we'll see something in a month and then a month would pass oh I would just literally not hear from them or they were not responsive to me and the thing that was really most frustrating about that is that they would say I'm going to deliver at this time and then I would tell my investors or this grant I needed to send updates I was accountable to all of these people as I should be they gave me money I need to deliver and so I was passing on what this development shop was giving me and I was wrong it essentially turned me into an untrustworthy person which was extremely hard for me I do what I say I'm going to do and I care about having character and I care about being trustworthy and this kind of turned me into somebody who was the opposite of the way that I wanted to be because this team was not delivering that was honestly a Dark Night of the soul I remember where I was when I was just coming to terms with the fact that they're actually never going to deliver this and I have $220,000 left and I need to figure it out somehow and I just remember laying on the grass and like looking up at this tree this like anemic tree with no leaves on it and just feeling like such an immense failure in every way really honestly what was I doing with my life so I ended up I was like all right I have $20,000 I need to get this thing across the finish line so I started really studying the process and I had been studying it up until that point but then I started apprenticing with a ux designer out of MIT I was in Boston at the time and then I started working with some local developers I was able to piece together this product in the end when I shipped it I basically limped across the Finish Line like bleeding pretty much I was like I'm I barely got it done but I got it done that was what I said I would do I felt like the product was a shadow of the great idea that I had and then it was just like when it was like in form this is isn't as good as IID hoped it would be so to me I checked a box but I just I wasn't really super proud of it but because those were super early days in the app store that's how I justify I got like a decent amount of traffic and some people really liked it and I got some press around the product as well as a part of friendships and networks and this Grand organization that I was involved in and there was some excitement around it that I like didn't maybe feel I deserved and I was getting a lot of incoming from people who were like oh you built an NA I want to build an NA too I want to become like a great Tech entrepreneur how did you do it and it was like watching people who you like waiting into a pond that you know was full of alligators and I just wanted to put them in a raft and carry them across I know how to navigate this now to some degree right and so I just started doing that just helping people get simple software built so they could ship an app and use that to grow an existing business or execute on a new idea and over time that had a decent roster of work that I was doing and it wasn't for profit it wasn't a business I had decided I wanted to do a whole different thing I wanted to start a wellness consultancy for businesses so I was like trying to start this other company I didn't want to work in Tech anymore I was like there's so many untrustworthy people you have to rely on others to do what they say they're going to do it's really hard to vet developers and know if they're good I didn't understand what a tech stack was how to choose it how to vet a developer do they have the appropriate skills set it was like oh you're a developer okay you can build this thing but that's not really how it works you have to be a developer with a specific kind of expertise basically there's just like an encyclopedia of knowledge that I started to piece together by that point so anyway I told my husband at one point I was like you know what Mark Twain says if you chase two rabbits you'll catch neither I don't want to do the software thing so I'm going to stop I need to stop doing this and like just tell everybody I'm going to go pursue this other project more full-time because I'm getting distracted and he just took a deep breath and just said Lindsay nobody wants to pay you for your wellness consultancy and you have all these people who want your help with software if you're going to chase one rabbit why don't you do the one where there's some real momentum and a real need and you're somewhat known that you have the skill sets I didn't really think of myself as a tech person like had become one on accident still to this day I don't know like I'm in Tech but am I of tech I don't know I took a weekend and then I realized that he was right and so I put up a website and okay I'm doing this now in a real way and then just slowly over time built my team and what I realized in working in apprenticing in ux was that that's actually what I've wanted to do my whole life or I've been doing my my whole life I'm cut out for user experience designer I have a an instinct for understanding the how question that stands between the idea and the product and so I was actually really passionate about that and then figuring out how to create a processes for development teams first of all how to find the right teams I worked all over the world with different developers and project managers and quality Insurance Specialists and how do I put together really bulletproof processes run a really tight ship make sure that we're always delivering at super high quality just as we say we're going to do and create the agency that I wished that I had and on top of just executing while is executing successfully like not only just getting it done but doing it in a way that's going to win in the Market at this point we're almost 15 years in we've launched well over a hundred applications do a lot of mobile apps direct to Consumer mobile apps we also build S software that powers businesses that have been running on like Excel spreadsheets for years and like finally how can we systematize or build our own sort of software back in to power our business and reduce administrative burden and thank you for sharing all of that because as an entrepreneur we've all had those moments of what am I doing right and thank you for sharing how you pushed through it because look where you ended up and we've all made those decisions to work with someone where we're like why did I do this how am I going to get through this and that's such an inspirational story to anyone listening who might be going through that right now and there's a lot of people that probably are I believe that everything is progress and there's a Buddhist or Zen story about bad news nobody knows have you heard that one I love The Art of Letting Go letting go of things that aren't good for you in that type of thought process yeah that story is about how like something can happen and it looks like it's a bad thing in this example it was this farmer he has his son and the son falls off a horse and breaks his leg and so he loses his son his son helped him with his farm and so that was obviously right bad news and then this war breaks out and they come and they're going to take his son to be a soldier but they can't because the son's leg is broken so then there like good news bad news nobody knows and so the story keeps going on like that this thing happened and everybody comes over and says oh wow great news and the farmer says good news bad news nobody knows and then it will flip for me like that time I remember it so well and very much it was bad news and even when I started helping people with it I wasn't trying to make money this was not going to be a business right but I got myself into situations where I was like crap this is going to cost we more than I've charged how am I going to figure that one out that's what we all have to do and it's so inspiring to hear stories like yours can you tell us about welcome app Studio what is it how can someone be involved sure so we are a software design and development agency we're an entirely senior level team I don't mess around like we're all veterans we've been working together for a long time our average 10 years like six seven years or something like that like we've just been together for a long time so we work together really well and we have teams that cover the strategy and design aspect of things where it's here's my concept or my idea okay let's then let's talk through how to execute on that so that we can deliver value to your user as quickly as possible with very little friction so you say here's my value proposition I'm going to deliver X and then somebody downloads your app and they get X immediately so getting really clear on what is the thing that's going to happen and then how do we deliver on that in the best way because I think you can be pretty sure that at least seven other people have the same idea maybe half of them have the wherewithal to try to execute and in some ways it's a winner take all game here right who has the best idea like a lot of people have that idea but who executes and with most Clarity and simplicity so there's that aspect of the work where we strategize we design the product prototype it get some feedback on it and then we create a plan and we put together a development team which is a project manager quality assurance specialist and usually two developer sometimes three sometimes just one depending on the scope of the project we put together full teams and run and get a project done and then we we maintain it we're as if in-house technical teams for our clients and we stay with them for the full lifetime of their products it's fun to continually grow with these businesses and help them solve new problems create road maps for what are we going to accomplish this year and then sometimes we're week by week what's going on where do we want to focus our resources if you're like the CEO of a company that has some software component to it you have our team is your technical team essentially so we work in that way we do CTO as a service as well so for companies where you have a Founder with a great idea who doesn't have maybe a CTO co-founder and doesn't want to give up 50% of their business to a developer that they met at a Meetup in San Francisco who they don't know how to properly bet there's a lot of risk in doing that I think that can be hard and so for for somebody like that they could work with a company like welcome put my face on their deck as their CTO and we help them throughout their fundraising process or whatever just to support them and then be their technical partner when they're ready to execute so that's us that's awesome and you're right on deliverables it's so frustrating when Tech doesn't work and I feel like you have that one chance I love all the different apps and all the new things that we have at our fingertips right now but when they don't work it it gets really frustrating so you're right about that when they don't work and as a client when it's not delivered on time this happens like we inherit a lot of project with another team yeah and it's just they're not getting it done or they're making promises that they can't keep or there are two cases we're working with right now in one it's a very skilled team but they are not accountable they're just continually not delivering there's a lot of turnover and so it's just very frustrating for the founder to expect to ship a feature next week and then next week comes and goes that's really frustrating and then there's another project where the team is very eager and hardworking but they don't have the skills or experience like it's obvious that they just can't do it or when something gets done it's not really working and some decisions that are being made around third party Solutions let's white label this other company's code and you have to be really careful about that so like cases where they've done that and it's not really working white labeling or using like pre-built libraries is can be really risky we have a client actually we built there it essentially it's a SAS platform it's a web- based portal and scheduling tool and it automates and does all these things for them and then they wanted to create a mobile app that was like a direct a consumer mobile app which made a lot of sense for their business and it would be a long project for us like it'd be like a six-month engagement and so they didn't have the money for that at the time and so they found this like white label solution they were able to get that up and running and I was in support of that I actually went to some of the meetings and was just like yeah this sounds like this would be a really good solution for you go for it and they they did and then it turns out that it's not doing the stuff that they said it was to do and the this company like has additional features or like fixes that they need to have made in order to deliver to their clients and this company's that's it's not really on our road map or they're not able to deliver fixes very quickly and so this is a point of a lot of frustration for them because now it's we've paid this money for this solution we all beli them when they said what it was going to do but it isn't I love your passion for delivering for your clients because we all want to work with a business business like that and having the team members as long as you do is a testament to your leadership yeah people like to work with me I don't micromanage my team and I don't like to hire people that need to be micromanaged and so part of that is the reason why it's an entirely veteran team these are all senior level people who've been around who know what they're doing so it's not like I'm never checking in who did you get that done or that done because I just know that it has been done I can see it happening in slack and if somebody isn't delivering we usually know that within the first month or so that they're hired so we can have fairly High turnover in the first month or two that we have a three-month trial period so we know okay we can trust you to deliver or not you can't take that for granted and I think that if you want to have the best people on your team and then you need to create conditions that the best people want to work in and provide them with a certain level of trust to Independence I like to have time freedom and location Freedom so I can work the hours I want to work that I can work from different places if I need to travel to see family or something and then and my team has the same Freedom that that I want to have I think everybody appreciates that and it's the best when you don't have to worry about it and you know the person's got it covered that's like the Dream Team for you and for clients yeah and it's not a trivial thing to build it took a long time to figure that out magic happens when we focus on on the part of our business and ourself that brings us joy what is one thing that you do for you to find and live your joy I am learning a new sport right now it's called padel it's a racket sport from Spain it's actually in Mexico but there's a court next to where I work in the Embarcadero in San Francisco and I wanted to play a sport and also a team sport that I could play with others which I think is more fun than just working out if you will and so when they open those chords I was the first one to sign up and so I do that and I'm going to go play a game with some colleagues in a couple of hours a lunch break game it's great as an activity but I'm bad at it so I have I'm like learning from scratch I've never played a racket sport so I go to clinics I've befriended the coach and she helps me I do practice every day so I'm doing like 30 days or I'm going to practice every day for at least 15 minutes and I like post I have this separate Instagram account for like accountability so my coach has this access this account I upload like my videos of training every day and this is like a whole new side hobby for me that is not only helpful personally in terms of Joy but it's challenging in a way that I feel embarrassed by how bad I am sometimes fairly often to be honest I feel frustrated by just the fact that I'm still not any good I don't know what my expectation is that I'm going to be good after two weeks but doing these sorts of things that are brand new for me it keeps me alive and young and growing and in a growth mindset or and not just resting in my competencies but really trying to build them and the same is true with AI where I'm always trying to like stay on top of what's happening in Ai and trying to push see okay what can I use this for what can we use this for what kind of businesses could we build around this so figuring out that new technology all the time and then also for me I'm a good maker I know how to make stuff that's of high quality I don't know how to Market and that's obviously not something that our agency offers but it is something that's a really important piece of the puzzle for these companies that we support and so I want to understand that so I've been going to some conferences around it making some friends who work in that area and then I've partnered with somebody who's a really good growth marketer and we're going to launch a business on the side just as a hobby to see for me I want to learn from him and then not just in an academic way but like actually start testing and seeing what we can do and so there's for me I think I'm getting a lot of I don't know if it's just pure joy or if it's just Life Energy out of continuing to push myself to grow my skills in terms of what I'm capable of rather than just being good at what I'm good at I love that and we all want that and I'm sure it gives you endorphins and it keeps you competitive too because you're playing against other people and you have to be competitive in the business world it's so fun and we should let us know how we can follow you and your is it like pickle ball or tennis it's like a mixture of both it's similar to tennis except there are walls and you can play off the walls so it's a squash in that way but it's always played in doubles and there's two sides of a court with a net in between so it's similar to tennis in that way but the rackets are more like a foam core pickle ball racket with holes in it just a little bit different racket but about the same size as a pickle ball racket it's so fun if you ever come to San Francisco let me know we can play a game thank you for for sharing your story with us and for being so honest about your journey and bringing us into the world of tech today share with us how and where we can find you and we'd love to follow your sports Journey too welcome is at welcome.

Speaker 1: Studio which has welcome has no vowels my initials are lwc so welcome is WL cm. Studio that's our website and then you follow me on LinkedIn just find me Lindsay wh Mar Collins on LinkedIn because I post on there just about every day and then I also have a newsletter on LinkedIn that I post every month and I really enjoy that and that's a Roundup of personal Reflections in terms of what's going on for me or like how I'm thinking about the work and then it just summarizes the articles that we've written that month and then what's happening in Tech that we think is interesting we're always keeping our thumb on AI so you can hear our thoughts and Reflections on that there and then I also publish on Inc and Forbes and and we have a Roundup of all that stuff in the newsletter so if you follow the newsletter you can get all the good stuff thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our shetit website or at Sheed on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave