Your Technology Needs Leadership

Chris Davis 0:11
We’re back. Welcome to another episode of the All Systems Go podcast. And I want to use this episode to slow pump the brakes a bit. You know, I was so excited, everyone, and when I say I was excited, Starting at episode 202, there was, there was quite an hiatus, a hiatus that, that I was on.

Chris Davis 0:33
And if, if those of you that have been following, I, I rediscovered my why and went on and had to, you know, re. Rediscover or let the business evolve because the marketplace had evolved and I got in it and I was just like, oh my gosh, I’ve learned so much now that I, I need to tell people, I need to tell the people about this and, and software this and AI this and, and automation that. And the most important piece of it is how, how to achieve it outside of the doing. Right?

Chris Davis 1:05
Outside of the doing. And, and part of my evolution in my business was the evolution from the doer to the leader, right? You, you, you, you get to a point where you’ve, you’ve done enough to, where you can truly take what you’ve done and lead others to do better. Not the same, but do better and in full transparency.

Chris Davis 1:35
That was a bit of a transition for me because I actually enjoy building. There’s nothing about the building that I was like, oh, I just hate it. There’s elements of after the build, right, and things like that. But essentially I had to realize that I was best utilized as a leader in a company than a doer, right?

Chris Davis 2:05
You get enough time and success and you’ve seen enough and you realize that there’s generate, there’s generations of people that need the type of guidance and tutelage to truly operate at a higher level for their, for their clients. But also my, my, one of my missions has always been to replicate myself in the marketplace. And you can’t do it if you’re the one occupying all the space that you’re trying to replicate people to occupy. So I had to, I had to level up, I had to elevate so that I can impart my knowledge over the years, my expertise, my, my understanding to others who could take it and watch this, everyone run faster with it than I ever could.

Chris Davis 3:02
And it brings us to the topic today is that you don’t need more tech, you need more tech leadership. All right? This is the biggest mistake that I see people make and it continuously, because of the low barrier of interest entry to technology, a person is more Prone to hire a doer than a leader. And that is hurting you more than you realize in technology.

Chris Davis 3:30
And the reason why this isn’t being called out is because you can have really sloppy tech and still be profitable. I hate to say it. I hate to say it personally, because I want you to have great tech and great profits. But what happens is when someone is profitable, their tolerance, their tolerance increases.

Chris Davis 3:54
Meaning they don’t realize it, but they’re willing to pay for more people to do stuff more. They’re willing to pay for more manual with the hopes of some at some point being profitable. But they see their money’s leaving as the top risk, not the fact that they don’t have the proper tech setup in place as being the top risk. And all types of byproducts of that happen.

Chris Davis 4:23
And they’re always looking at the doers. Hey, what’s. I had to get rid of my. My agency.

Chris Davis 4:28
Oh. I had to fire that freelancer. Oh. We’re no longer working together.

Chris Davis 4:32
We’re. When all in all, what happened that you don’t realize is that when you hired that doer off upwork or wherever you got them, you. You also hired yourself as the technical lead for that doer, which means you’re supposed to know more about the technical processes and needs in your business than the doer. Because if the doer knows it all, there’s no way for you to check that they’re doing it right.

Chris Davis 5:06
And most people’s check is if they have somebody build the landing page, their check is. Can I see it? Does it work right? Oh, here’s my landing page.

Chris Davis 5:16
It has a URL. The images are right, the copy is right. Great. And then they launch it.

Chris Davis 5:21
Someone. Someone opts in and it doesn’t go to the right place, or they have a deeper issue where they opt in. It does go to the right place, but then the thank you page is wrong. Well, why?

Chris Davis 5:35
Because you don’t have the right technical leadership to do the due diligence on the doer. You’re thinking, oh, I need help. I need something done. And what you’re thinking is, I need someone to do instead of saying, I need someone to lead this for me.

Chris Davis 5:56
The most successful SaaS companies, just. Just track it. Go ahead, look. Crunch.

Chris Davis 6:01
What is it? TechCrunch. And there’s one more. There’s one more.

Chris Davis 6:04
TechCrunch. And it’s the website where they show you the pro, the public companies, their evaluation and all that. But anyways, you can find it all online. There’s always going to be a, either a co founder that is technical or a CTO, you will not find a successful SaaS company without it.

Chris Davis 6:26
And if you do that, co founder, that founder was technical first. So they understood the technical landscape and then they, they, they operated as a CEO. And the, and the reason that this is important is because I cannot tell you how many times I have been brought in as a consultant and looked at and the CEO has diagnosed their team as underperforming. And after I assess, I realized, man, you got a really good software developer.

Chris Davis 7:04
Your project manager is great. You’ve got a great project manager, but operations manager, like the team that you have support. Amazing, right? The team that you have is solid.

Chris Davis 7:19
You keep switching seats of people in your company, trying to fill in the gap that only technical leadership can fill in. Only technical leadership. And I’ve got an episode, I’ve got something to say about this too, because the reason a lot of you are doing it is if, if I can shoot straight, you’re cheap. You’re cheap and you don’t want to pay the cost.

Chris Davis 7:47
You’re trying to go offshore, you’re trying to get, you’re trying to pay the least for the maximum output in your technology. And I’m going to tell you what, there is a way to do that, but you’re going to have to pay to play. If you pay for the right technical leadership, they will be able to get more out of a lean team than you ever could by yourself. And that’s my claim to fame, and I’m sticking to it because that’s what I do.

Chris Davis 8:15
That’s what I’ve been doing. And it hit me and I’m just like, oh my goodness, everybody needs this every. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were the CEO and you said, hey, I want a survey. I want to put out a survey.

Chris Davis 8:32
I feel like our audience will really respond well to it. And these are the questions that I want to ask. Not necessarily the question. This is the data that I’m trying to capture.

Chris Davis 8:41
This is the story that I’m trying to tell. And this, these are the questions that I’m trying to answer. And that was it. That’s all you, that’s all you said.

Chris Davis 8:50
And then you had a technical leader that said, okay, I understand the business objectives now let me translate that into technical directives for the team and I’ll let you know when we’re done. And that’s all you had to do as the CEO. Many of you are saying, yeah, that’s what I do now. But it’s not.

Chris Davis 9:13
It’s not because you’ve trained your team based on the level of technological operations that you know or someone told you. It’s not specific to your business, it’s not as efficient or effective as it can be. But guess what? If it works just a little bit, you’re like, hey, keep doing it, keep doing it, don’t break.

Chris Davis 9:36
My team has it. And a lot of times where you want to scale, scaling is not through more advertising, more leads and more sales. It’s through leveling up your tech team, making them more efficient, equipping them with what they need to do their job better, easier, faster. And it’s real, right?

Chris Davis 9:58
The teams that I’m leading right now, they’re deploying AI solutions for things. If you listen to the. I can’t remember what episode it is. It’s maybe one or two back, but one of my clients replaced Typeform.

Chris Davis 10:12
They were about to go sign up for Typeform to solve a problem that we had an AI engineer on the team. He looked at it, he saw it and was like, wait a minute, we could build that out and we don’t have the limitations and the data is free, is more freely sent to our platforms. Why, why go with type form and have to upgrade to their enterprise just to get a few features? We can build that now, right?

Chris Davis 10:39
Again, no shot at Typeform. I’m just using them as an example. But it could be any SaaS tool. So, so what?

Chris Davis 10:47
What was the outcome there? Well, with me as the lead, I’m thinking to myself, hey, can you green light go do it? Who cares? No go.

Chris Davis 11:00
You got two weeks. Get it done, get it done. Present it to the team CEO. Blown away.

Chris Davis 11:05
Oh my. It looks so on brand. Oh, this is exactly what we’ve been trying to achieve over the years. Why haven’t you been able to achieve it?

Chris Davis 11:12
Because you haven’t had the leadership to truly understand and match and be the bridge, automation bridge between your business objectives and how to achieve them effectively and efficiently with technology. That’s the missing layer, that’s the leadership layer. And when you hire a doer, you become the expert in technological process and development and you don’t know, you don’t know how to get the most out of that software developer. There’s a client that I was working with and their developer was great, but the CEO was just giving them so many directives, just, hey, can we do this, can we do that?

Chris Davis 11:56
And yes, the developer just wants. At times they’re a hammer looking for a nail. Yes, I can hit all these nails in, right? And I came on and I started to see, hey, wait a minute, you’re gonna get burned out.

Chris Davis 12:10
And actually, hold on, what should we be thinking about that we’re moving so fast that we’re not thinking about? I want to give you a voice and raise concerns. You started talking about security issues, privacy, service workers that make sure that other team members don’t have access to sensitive information just because they’re prompting through MCP or a built interface. Things that I know that CEO would have never uncovered because they don’t even know the questions to answer because they don’t understand the process.

Chris Davis 12:43
They’re just focused on, did you get it done or not? Well, I understand the process and I understand what it takes for a developer to truly build. Not just skill wise, but also ideate your team. Can I let you know your team is void of ideation.

Chris Davis 13:01
Your team needs someone that they can ideate, that knows more than them, that can help them come up with solutions beyond what you’re asking them to do. Listen, this is just how it is, right? This is why you hire a coach for your players. Can you imagine a general manager drafting players and then being responsible for their performance?

Chris Davis 13:29
Can you imagine that? That would be ridiculous. But we do it all the time with tech because the cost of purchasing technology is next to none. And then getting someone to do your tech for you because you’re just following the leader, you’re just emulating what someone else did.

Chris Davis 13:46
Oh, they use Kajabi and have a landing page and courses. I’m going to use Kajabi, have a landing page and courses. I just need to find somebody to build that. That may be good to get started, right?

Chris Davis 13:58
That may get you started. But as your business matures and you start to see what really works for you, you are going to have technological challenges with any SaaS off the shelf product. I, I’m telling you, it’s just a matter of time, everyone. And when that time comes, how do you navigate that?

Chris Davis 14:15
How do you navigate the decision to use another platform? Some of you are navigating that decision based on price, based on price or based on somebody that you met that said, we can do the migration for you. That’s your decision making. Nobody that understands your business model, nobody that understands your business objective, both quarterly and annually that says, oh, based on that, you don’t want to go that way because that type of, if we use that technology, we won’t be able to do xyz.

Chris Davis 14:48
Right? You have no foresight, no Guidance beyond you and what you know. And then when you hire somebody to do it, that’s not a leader, that’s a technician that’s just hired to do. They don’t have a deep enough understanding of your business, your business model to truly tell you.

Chris Davis 15:06
So what are they gonna do? They’re gonna give you their boilerplate template, hey, yeah, we need to send emails. Okay, yeah, use go high level. Nothing against go high level.

Chris Davis 15:15
I’m just saying that’s what they’re comfortable with. That’s what they’re proposed. Who knows if that’s best for your business? Who knows?

Chris Davis 15:21
You need leadership to help you understand that. Right. And more importantly, or equally as important is you all. Let me just say it.

Chris Davis 15:32
Let me, Let me put it plainly. I have not met a company yet, a company yet that when I initially engage with them, has the proper data, securities and structures in place. This, mark my words, this is going to be more and more critical as people are releasing agents and doing all kind of stuff and giving permissions freely. When I’ve seen people build apps that I could hack, I’m not even a hacker.

Chris Davis 16:00
But you’re. You’re putting passwords and authentication tokens in your code base instead of using environment variables. I mean, you’re just trying to build. You’re just trying to get to the output.

Chris Davis 16:15
And you are, and you’re exposing your entire business. There was an app that I built with airtable once, and as AI was writing it, I realized there was a URL. Then I went to the URL myself in a private browser and it exposed my entire airtable database. And I said, hey, why is this?

Chris Davis 16:35
How is this possible? And AI is going to. Oh, did you want me to lock that with a. I think it was like a secure, signed API endpoint.

Chris Davis 16:46
I didn’t know what that was, but I was like, yes. What are you doing? Why? You just have my stuff exposed out?

Chris Davis 16:52
My back is out. I got a shirt on, but the back of the shirt is cut out. The back of my pants is cut out. I didn’t know that I was exposed.

Chris Davis 17:01
I’ve since then learned what all of this means. And now when I’m building one for myself, that’s not an issue. But two, every single company usually has a data hole that, that can be easily breached by someone. And when your only metric is, is it done and is it working to your understanding, you expose one of the most.

Chris Davis 17:29
The. No, not one. The most critical asset in your business, which is your data, they don’t know you really have to understand how to protect your data while you’re building out your tech stack and operating your business. And it is beyond spread.

Chris Davis 17:47
You all have to get out of spreadsheets or everything. They are not as secure when I don’t. Y’, all, there’s so much. There’s so much.

Chris Davis 18:00
Your, your information should be in a database that can be encrypted, that can be locked and permissions locked by permissions internal to your team and encrypted from the outside world. There’s just levels of protection that you would have to have maybe enterprise level spreadsheet policies to achieve. And none of you are doing it. Let’s be honest, I know people who are still storing Social Security numbers in spreadsheets and using Google forms to collect it.

Chris Davis 18:37
This, my friends, this is why you need technical leadership. Because your business is exposed in a way that you don’t realize it. And by the time you realize it, it’ll be too expensive for you to pay. But guess what?

Chris Davis 18:52
You’re going to have to pay. Okay, so when poor leadership is in place, which, which poor. Let me say poor leadership is not a negative thing. Let me just let you off the hook.

Chris Davis 19:06
As the CEO of your company, you are the poorest leader of your technology. I’m not calling you a poor leader. You’re the poorest leader of your technology. Once you embrace that, you realize, let me go find the best leader of my technology.

Chris Davis 19:24
Just talk to companies who have it figured out. Talk to, they will tell you, oh, no, tech stuff. I defer to this person. It’s not an operations manager.

Chris Davis 19:35
It’s not an obm, online business manager. It’s not a VA that’s been in your business so long that they’ve elevated to the point where they are your right hand. It’s not that they’re just capable of effectively executing technology for your processes. That’s not enough.

Chris Davis 19:54
You need someone that can see ahead, that can see further, and you need someone that can grow them. Because I will tell you, I don’t care what type of open door policy you are. You have. They’re not coming to you with their questions.

Chris Davis 20:11
They’re not coming to you when they’re confused and when they have issues. I’ve experienced this because when I come in and I’m leading the tech team, the first thing they start to. It’s like I’m a therapist. It’s like they’re on the couch and I’m on my notepad.

Chris Davis 20:24
They’re just pouring it all out. And I just wish the CEO would understand if we could just slow down a little bit. And they don’t understand that when they say start another platform, that’s just more for us to do. And da da da da.

Chris Davis 20:36
They need. Now it goes both ways. You don’t just need technical leadership to translate business objectives down to technical directives for your team, but you need your team to have a voice and speak to some of the perhaps unrealistic expectations that are being placed on them to achieve the business, the business milestones. So it goes both ways.

Chris Davis 21:02
The leader stays right in the middle and says, hey, here are some concerns for the team here. Here are the things that we’re seeing and based on this objective, I think we could still meet it, but it’s just going to take another week or two. And we’re going to do it in a way that doesn’t require us buying more software and is bulletproof. Because I know that in the future you want to, you want to launch more courses this way, you want to launch more products this way.

Chris Davis 21:23
So we’re building the infrastructure to be able to do that at scale. You can’t have that conversation with yourself. And what you’ll do is since you can’t, you’ll defer to your people to have the conversation with you. For you, it just doesn’t work like that.

Chris Davis 21:38
Okay, so, so what am I saying? Your next hire for, for businesses that are growing and scaling and you want to do this as early as possible. By the way, your next hire should be a leader. Okay?

Chris Davis 21:51
The right leader will optimize your tech stack and your tech people. There’s something that I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve been, it’s been marinating on low heat and that is as soon as I say this, because I’ve had this conversation with people in person and they’re like, where, where is that person? I need them. Is that you?

Chris Davis 22:13
I’m like, well your business would have to be a little more mature, a little more established and all of that. Right? So what, what I’ve. And you all let me know what I’ve, what I’ve been building.

Chris Davis 22:25
Simmer. This is an app by the way. Just simmering is a way for you all to get access to that type of leadership of me one on one in a limited capacity, we’ll say. So if you’ve got a big decision coming up, you would be able to get on a call with me and maybe 5 to 10 minute call and be able to ask the questions and given the brief context that I have in your business, I would be able to guide you better than if you were to ask anybody on your team or anybody external.

Chris Davis 22:57
Right. And it would be one of these things where it’s like a first come, first serve. Imagine a first come, first serve office hours where there’s registration, you register, the first one gets first slot, second slot, third slot. Kind of like when you go to the DMV and take the ticket out.

Chris Davis 23:11
Then you wait for them to call your name. But you will get a private session, 5 to 10 minute private session to help you diagnose either team performance or tech performance so that you can get a taste of the leadership that I’m talking about. Because until you experience it, you don’t realize what your blind spots are. Right?

Chris Davis 23:30
So it’s something that I’m ideating around. Everybody on my email list, you, you all will be the first to know when this is available. It will be at no cost, by the way. No cost.

Chris Davis 23:40
And then of course, if you’re in the community, you have access to me always. But if you want to jump on that call as well, outside of the office hours that we run, it’ll be made available to you. But the main thing that I want you all to start, if it hasn’t made that much sense now, just keep the possibility open that your next hire needs to be a technical leader or you need to have consistent access to technical leadership that you trust. I’ve done that as well.

Chris Davis 24:13
There’s people who’ve earned the right to call me at certain times and say, hey, look, here’s what we’re looking to do. What would you suggest? And I’m grateful because I know that they trust me to make the best decision technically for their business. You need that, you need that resource and you need to operate like that from now on.

Chris Davis 24:34
You can never say, I didn’t know. That’s off the table now because you listened to this episode, Sorry, didn’t let you know. But now that you know you’re operating in the light now, you can turn the lights on and stop operating in the dark. Right?

Chris Davis 24:47
And I hope, I hope that this made sense to you. It illuminated, turned on the light and helped you see perhaps something, a challenge, a problem, an opportunity in a different perspective and gave you a different path to achieve exactly what you’ve set out to do over the years that maybe has been eluding you. So I hope to see you at Weather in the community on my email list and we launched this thing. Hope to see you on the call and you say, hey, Chris, I listened to your episode.

Chris Davis 25:17
So glad to be here. And I’m gonna tell you, great, get to it. Cause you only got five to 10 minutes. Let’s get your problem solved.

Chris Davis 25:24
But until next time, everyone. I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends.