On the morning meeting with Steve and Russell. They were going over the news and updates section. Lots of talk on where to store the filters and sub features - at the corp level, at the admin level, and even at the employee/user level. The filters and settings will help us display the correct feeds and news and updates back to the users. They also talked a bunch about pushing 3rd parties over to the adilas marketplace. The eventual goal is to get all 3rd party solutions to have an active adilas market account and profile before we add them to the adilas 3rd party solutions page. Kinda force them over there before we do any outside advertising for them.

Fun little one linear from Kelly Whyman - "If you touch, you track."

On elements of time, Steve is wanting to setup internal templates and being able to fully control them and/or lock them down. Basically, a way of making a normal template but not allowing the users to change and/or manipulate things. Basically, we create it and let them use it, but we don't allow direct editing of certain pieces (maybe only certain things or limited options). Steve was mentioning a virtual ice-down on some of the settings and features that are turned on/off. This is not an ice-down date, but it is a form of ice-down but icing down settings, features, and functionality.

Some of the custom settings are almost becoming their own database tables and we have to make sure that things are setup correctly.

At 10 am to 1:15 pm, Eric popped in and we worked more on the loyalty points and gift cart stuff. We went into media/content and looked at all entries under "loyalty" and got some good ideas. That spun us off on some side tangents. We also talked quite a bit today about how things will be tracked, showed, and how things will be held on the balance sheet. One of the good breakthroughs today was an idea of how we could tie in these new special tracking accounts to existing balance sheet items. See attached for a small screen shot.

The uploaded image is a normal BSI (balance sheet item). It shows a main and normal subs. We then talked about how we could add additional options such as: main_account_types (#1), account_type_rules (#1.5), special_accounts (#2), and special_account_transactions (#3). We also talked about some of the stacking order under the main balance sheet items and how that would play out.

We recorded a number of new notes and even did some light scenarios using small drawings and such. Towards the end, we talked with Steve about the accounting side of both gift cards and loyalty points. Gift cards need to be tracked on an invoice, the part number needs to not be recorded on the P&L (revenue) but needs to be deferred to the balance sheet. We also have gift cards as a form of payment. We talked about some of the invoice payments that might need to be tied into make that happen. We also talked about how loyalty points and coupons are basically future discounts of sorts. Those values don't really show up on the balance sheet, but do need numbers below the surface. A discount could be in-line and/or standalone. Both the loyalty points and coupons reduce revenue and need to be treated like special trackable discounts or price adjusters (variable of price). See other attached document for more details and notes.

Online team meeting to cover security, adilas API sockets, black box code, and upcoming white label options. We started out with a number of reports by the different guys.

/////////////////// here are some of the quick reports by the developers:

- Eric - Fixing custom carts and working on the pricing engines. Lots of custom one-off's. Working on loyalty points and special tracking accounts.

- Russell - News and updates - new API socket feeds and such. WordPress site and other look and feel things.

- Wayne - Refactoring code, testing based design, and underlying framework. QuickBooks integration stuff - imports and exports. As a side note, Bryan has had many customers asking about similar type features. Wayne is also working on other database stuff and migration.

- Bryan - White label stuff for outside parties. Tons of custom projects.

- Calvin - Hybrid API to Windows desktop app. Custom PDF labels and printing.

- Alan - Helping Steve with Metrc API stuff. Working on tons of tax and in-line discounts. Helping Brandon with other projects.

- Danny - Generating sales - Props to the developers who are creating the functionality. He pitches the idea that the developers are accessible. Custom labels.

- Shawn - Helping with payroll, federal withholdings, state withholdings, and county level withholdings.

- Brandon - Helping the developers and doing small projects. Merging code and maintenance stuff.

- Steve - Grateful for the help with the Metrc API stuff. Working on phases and sub locations. Steering the ship. New approval levels on other state traceability systems.

//////////////////// meeting notes:

- Talking about the Adilas API and system - dealing with security. Facebook was brought before the senate due to a breach. They allowed an outside company to come in and develop an app for Facebook (basically a 3rd party solution). The problem was... what does that outside service actually do and have access to? The app ended up doing some internal data mining and then sold that data.

- We want our users to be successful - we want to enable them but we also need to protect them.

- Small switch in the sales focus. The older model was one-by-one and dealing with reps and consultants. We are seeing more of a switch to bigger companies that virtually take over the sales force and are wanting to sell our product more as a white label type application. Lots of mixing and blending of products and services. They are allowed to provide all of the supporting services that support our product.

- Ideas from the group about security:

- Russell said, bold it or make it red and let them know what they are exposing (meaning the API sockets). Allow the agreements between the parties... we are part of it, but we let them create the relationships between themselves.

- Steve said, we don't want to make our users work harder... to turn things on, but we do want to make sure that the clients know what they are getting in to. Example of what happened with back in 2015 with Hypur and Emerald Fields (two of our clients). Basically, the 3rd party solution (Hypur) got turned on and then it kept growing (what Hypur was doing and/or requiring) and eventually was trying to get at more sensitive sales and inventory level stuff. Eventually the client was super upset due to the lack of disclosure of what was going on and what was open/available to the outside party.

- We are seeing that most of these 3rd parties and white label people tend to expand what they are asking for. Bryan is seeing that more and more auditing type levels are wanted by these 3rd parties. We have also had a number of questions about different server levels and certifications. Our clients want to make sure that their data is safe and secure.

- Russell brought up the point and the difference between a couple of if statements on a page vs a full on white label type solution. We need to develop and standardize that white label type path. They need to pay for it and also be able to help maintain it (meaning the white label company). Taking things clear out to a white label theme (actual files and folders). White labeling is basically bulk black boxing but you can still use any of the classic pieces. We drew some small diagrams and talked about possible options.

- Shawn chimed in and started talking about building a city. Basically, kinda like urban sprawl or older parts of a bigger city - no plan, no alleys, buildings touch other buildings, and not a well planned layout.

- We need to stay on top of things. Keeping code and the database structure up to date. If we do this... it will help us be more efficient and save us time.

- Eric chimed in and said "process" is the solution vs simple communication only. Basically, as we are growing, we need to get to a more standardized process of development. We have a huge landscape to consider. Lots of moving pieces. Ultimately we need to adopt a process oriented approach. Wayne agrees. Different levels within software development. From critical and saving lives to making sure that we have solid code and pieces. It gets into speed and flexibility against slow and more stable type processes. Maturity in software development is sometimes measured in how well you implement internal processes. Eric thinks this is the next step we need to take as a company.

- Danny has been threatened... :) He was talking about levels that people rely on our solution and how all of that plays in and such.

- Small little analogy of the little red hen... everybody wants it but they may or may not want to participate. In real life, things cost money and take time to get done.

- From Brandon - Let's make this thing what we want it to be!

- Any core elements need to be merged into the master branch. This is required.

- Steve was saying... be on the lookout for companies and what they are wanting. That could help us know how to play with them... Maybe look deeper than the current project. We really need to protect our client's data. He was talking about the adilas market (adilas world) and also the 3rd party solutions page. We need to point outside parties to come through the main monitored pathways. We need to keep those sections updated and let the clients know what is being opened/exposed. Very important.

- The value of oversight and/or having someone to help watch them and help them out. This seems to be new trend. If that is the case, we need to make sure that they know what is going on and what is opened and what is closed (talking about data).

- Brandon will write up some super basic pieces of what our current rules and processes are.

- Alan pitched the idea... Local, live, and then into production - talking about a testing server that will be coming this year.

We ended the meeting and allowed people to jump off the meeting. We basically said we would be doing this again (meaning a team meeting) and would get them some info and instructions.

/////////////////////// after the meeting

- Alan and Steve were talking about breaking up code into logical pieces and making the road map more object oriented. Basically, organizing the use and flow of data - making the map for others to follow. Currently, we are just using Brandon's memory to help guide people to the right spot. We need a better road map that others can follow.

- They got into some technical conversations about threads, processes, RAM memory, read/write times, etc.

- Part of our process needs to be setting up and monitoring the servers (actual eyes and reports or dashboards). We need more information, stats, what pages are being used, what processes are running, and what data is being accessed and how often?

- We talked about caching, traffic, threads, database transactions, data mining, and changing from transactional data to more of an aggregated type model (summing up things and organizing things for reporting features). We need to keep allowing day to day operations but also need to optimize things for reports, exports, and other bulk reporting features.

- Alan and Steve were talking about the challenges of using outside API's and syncing up data between systems. Lots of options, but also lots of moving pieces.

- On the API sockets... We need to provide good samples of how to call things and also good response type data. It is really nice if we can format things as well. It just makes it easier for our guys and also outside developers.

Russell and Steve were talking about the process for 3rd party solutions and how to white label things. What are the thresholds, the paths, and the requirements? We also talked about getting our people into the adilas market (adilas world) and into the 3rd party solutions page. It might depend on who they are, as far as cost to be part of that 3rd party solution. Steve will be controlling that gateway for now.

- All 3rd party solutions must go through Steve to get approval. Other developer will work on the projects, but Steve will be the approver and gatekeeper.

- Talking about the value and perceived value of using adilas as a white label.

- You have to be on the 3rd party solution page and in the adilas market. Between $1,500 and $3,500 (depending on size)

- A white label gets a 30% discount on the system. They then have to take care of the support for those accounts.

- A consultant doesn't get a discount, they get a commission back to them as the consultant.

- We briefly talked about laws against price fixing.

- Expectations and requirements for people who want to play to the white label level. Russell was also asking questions about price increases and how that flows through. Steve was saying that they still get the 30% discount based off of the current price (our prices may go up and down but the discount remains based off the current price).

- We are really excited to get into pricing based off of data storage and bandwidth and usage. We need to show our users how much data we are storing and processing.

- Comment from Russell - If we go into normal black box code and/or bulk black box code (white label), the code is as is. If they want updates, they need to pay for them. Or we could add an update fee or a  yearly maintenance fee.

- Delegation - it is hard to delegate sometimes because you feel like you don't have time. There is also a comfort level and even a separation anxiety that happens as you start to delegate. Ask your self, do I really need to do this or can someone else do it? Think of a snake shedding his skin... it just needs to happen.

- We have to refine what we do just like adilas has to refine what it does. Life requires refinement.

- We are way stronger together.

- We, Steve and I, are in the business of delegation and oversight. Sell the vision.

- We are looking for people that are looking for certain opportunities and/or are hungry for certain pieces.

- Get Bryan to help pave the way for the upcoming and future white label options.

- We are looking at ways of avoiding the burning platform (proactive approaches). We are trying to push monies in key places where we see things happening. Basically, skate to where the puck will be.

- A note about "change". Sometime the word change scares people, including me. Maybe we could use the word "refinement" or "tweaking" with less fear of the actual change.

Alan popped in and both of us started working on the in-line discounts stuff. I was going through files and merging in changes from other branches and master files into our current tax branch. Alan was coding other pages and prepping files. Steve was doing phone calls and other meetings.

Talking about PHP projects with Russell. We talked about using Bridgerland and their developers to help build and maintain certain new and existing projects. Russell really would like to work on some developer training courses, API socket training courses, etc. Basically, ways of making it easier to get interested people into the development side of the system easier. We also spent some time talking about other possible projects... these would be built out using PHP and then connected to and/or talking to adilas.biz through external API sockets. Projects like outside scheduling of time (both adilas and google), outside ecommerce sites, visible elements of time (public viewable), project management, and scheduling time for employees. All great options. They would also be great projects for the Bridgerland developers.

We also talked about pushing more and more on the Adilas University site, the Adilas Market (adilas world), play at the wall (web/API sockets), and creating a fun and pretty front facing site. We will fund those projects. We will keep core adilas and custom code behind the wall and keep it internal as far as who builds on it. The rest is open territory.

Russell mentioned versioning our code so that we don't hurt other developers who have already done development. This is dealing with the API and then also making things backwards compatible. Basically, we really want outside developer to play the game and "Play at the wall". Good discussion.

After that, I reviewed some notes about time clocks (see attached for an email that was sent out in December of 2016). I also wanted to make a note that elements of time # 2042, here in the shop, has a ton of information about some of the payroll, time clocks, and project direction. Just trying to keep all of the pieces sorta linked together.

I scheduled a live adilas training session at Bridgerland for May 29th, 30th, and 31st. I let a few people know and will be trying to grab some ideas and such from key users, reps, developers, and admin persons. Good stuff.

Live Adilas Class. Logan, UT - Bridgerland ATC, Custom Fit, Room 810 (computer lab). We had 4 live paying clients and a number of internal team members in the class. We had Steve, Shari O., Dustin S., Alan, Bryan, Calvin, Russell, Shawn, Jeremiah, and myself from the core adilas team. Not all of them were there everyday, all the time, but they all came and participated quite a bit of the time. We also had a number of folks join us online in the GoToMeeting sessions. We recorded all of the training except for two main sessions.

Here are some links to the videos.

video from day 1 - morning session
small adilas demo, intro, and core concepts

video from day 1 - afternoon session
new features, open q&a, and historical stepping stones

video from day 2 - morning session
POS - point of sale features part 1

video from day 2 - afternoon session
POS - point of sale features part 2 - open q&a, and world building in use

video from day 3 - morning session
CRM - customer relationship management overview

video from day 3 - afternoon session
exploring ecommerce & custom email settings - BI - business intelligence and big data

video from day 4 - morning session
tips, tricks, & best practices - small custom consulting session

video from day 4 - afternoon session
meet the adilas developers, adilas model, and wrap-up

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
other notes that I took during the class.
5/29/18
- Drag and drop custom fields - they really like the custom field settings for customers. They would love that to cascade out and filter through the whole system. Point and click, toggle on/off fields, sort, customize verbage & instructions, and be able to effect the display as well.

- The need for more one-to-many relationships

- Light request for more settings on the main salesperson and other salesperson settings - be able to split the names instead of just one setting.

- A custom preset on permissions "copy and/or duplicate" permissions.

- Setup a master and then apply those settings. This could be templates and/or master files - a virtual job description.

- Floating up and down nav to help minimize the scrolling.

- The power of "templates" - elements of time, sub inventory, payee/users, look & feel, etc.

- Start by setting up the templates and then assign them as needed - that makes a great starting point.

5/3018
- Alan was doing an exercise - he had everybody list what they could for two minutes on all of the fruits that they could think of. Fun little exercise. After that, he was comparing this to development. We try to hit the fruit that is on your list. Things keep evolving and sometimes you forget things and have to add that in later.

-  Corp-wide settings and allowing you to set certain verbage stuff.

- Bryan Dayton was showing the adilas market (adilas world). We really need to get others into the marketplace.

- While Bryan was showing his profile... I was thinking that we need to help him get some better screen shots for his demo graphics. You could tell that they were done with a low end and/or free graphic editor (kinda fuzzy and pixelated).

- It helps us to have a flow and/or a clear picture (talking about custom code and custom development).

- Small demo on a custom dashboard for Global Design

- Steve and Shari O. were talking and doing a demo together. Steve was talking and Shari O. was driving. Later Steve and I did similar things. It really helps to split that load and have a helper. The person talking can focus on what they are saying and the demo person (driver) can draw, highlight things, and show focus areas. It seemed to work out quite well.

- Steve and Shari O. started out in a coffee shop and did some quick split cart stuff. They then went into some of the corp-wide settings to show how they were able to do what they were doing. Good flow from normal usage to how it is done based off of settings.

- Eventually we need a deep merge (find and replace) on customer records.

- Our users would like to be able to compound a discount. For example: double up points, do a 1.5 mark-up, etc. Lots of time based sales and promotions.

5/31/18
- Not many notes from this day... We started out and Steve and I were presenting on sub inventory. See the video links above for more details and info.

6/1/18
- Steve was going over the new cultivation functionality. 4 main levels for the cannabis guys... they need cultivation, production, distribution, and retail.

- Some of the these white label options should really build out and use all of the pieces.

- Page and function level settings

- Interesting topic of hardcoding & concepting vs dynamic code & production - speed, limited scope, and testing.

- Being able to lock-down certain pieces, features, and virtually ice things down (ice-down dates).

- Also, interesting as we get deeper and deeper into the industry specific code... the verbage, lingo, & the flow are really important. That is what makes it feel like native or custom code or custom software.

- Comment from Dustin - We need guide rails, guard rails, settings, templates, and easy configuration options. Help lead the people down the paths that we want them to go.

- On the data tables - it sure would be cool if you could sub filter things. It comes down to space, coding, page real estate, and planning. People want more and more custom options - to setup their flow, work space, and environment (requests for deeper and more robust world building options).

- On numeric entry fields, show the unit of measure to remove the questions (if applicable).

- Making the label options show up and be available from multiple pages and such.

- Settings are preset choices & decisions - super important.

- On Calvin's tools... Just an idea, but what about dynamic or user input boxes and text fields? This is for text that may be added on the fly. He currently has static text, HTML enabled text fields (allows formatting), and dynamic look-up text (text fields mapped to data or dynamic output). What about user input text boxes?

- Making labels and empower the users.

- We had a client/participant that recommended that we put a small icon on each page that could be a default homepage and then have a quick link to set it as the default homepage. Great idea. Basically, let them navigate there (to the actual page) and then set it as their homepage if that is what they want.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Comments from Bryan - who talked with one of the participants

- When starting the class, for someone who is brand new... it might be nice to give a 15-20 intro and general overview. We just started out and jumped right in. Basically, somewhat of a canned explanation of what is adilas and what do you get with this software package. A really simple and organized intro.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Notes from Dustin - See attached for full notes

General To Do's:

Need to Have each page check for the color of the background and adjust the card to be a lighter complimentary color (universal). (4,5)

Need to have api key capability for each employee that performs metrc api interaction.

Need to set up custom permission setting capabilities so that they can set permissions for multiple employees over time without having to do a redundant process. Themes and standardized user type templates.

Make a excel or csv spreadsheet that templates the fields needed for api integration to give to a customer to fill out. Maybe a master list that passes in all of the general fields and passes over unneeded fields based on customer needs.

Need a graphical repesentation of the entire seed to sale process with tie-ins to each adilas feature/tool.

Need predictive on the search vendor field on the add/edit page.

Need to have customer password fields auto-populate wherever needed. (e-commerce)

Need to have a set to default button on the nav menu for setting any page as a default homepage.

Need to have a toolbar button for page relevent tips and tricks with links to news and updates.

Need to update how people reset thier login attempts: lets add a captcha or at least put the copy paste link on the same page. Maybe two step varification would work.

When you are switching corps, instead of needing to click on the little box link, make it so that you can click on anywhere on the corp piece.

Need to have UOM type indicators on any field that holds wieghts. In most cases this could probably be hard coded.

Need to create the ability to check a box that opens all of the subs for inventory search for adding to cart.

Notes for ideas, assignments, direction for Shannon helping with Internal Project Management:

Organizing & Brainstorming on Prioritizing & How to Move Forward:

Assignments:

#1 - Common Tech Support Issues (Categories):

Locked out of login:

• New & updates for this issue?
• Current error response?? - More 

Navigation:

• Where things are located?
• Common areas include: tax settings, departments, user changes, update & special POs - inventory adjustments, shortcuts/tips/tools
• Remembering how to access areas that are not frequently trafficked (settings, taxes, users, etc.)

Reports:

• How to get data out of the system?
• Many people struggle with retrieving their data in the way they want
• Where to go to search for the info they want? Not a good understanding of how/where data is stored & located
• How to utilize advanced searches, or even regular search parameters, special reports already formatted

How to accomplish X task in the system:

• Great if you have a good consultant to help navigate these issues
• Not an understanding of all the tool can do or what tools are available to accomplish what tasks

Hardware:

• The nightmare tech support question!  Hardest category by far... so many variables!
• Might be helpful for us to make a more thorough News & Updates & at least show all the places to look - browser settings
• Svend - sending hardware support his way - Very willing, help with tips & tricks, suggested hardware list, Adilas Market - calling card on tips & tricks, proactive - money for him to reach out to clients?
• Come up with a game plan for hardware support - where do we need to go & how can we educate our clients on our model but still support them in getting hardware support?
• Connect with Svend - What do you need from us to get things going?
• Able to bill Adilas for $??? to get going
• #1 - For free on Adilas Marketplace so we can get things pointed his way (Russ - Bryan - Benjamin Hudson
• #2 - Tips & tricks - get them online, link them to him, help write them up - notes
• #3 - To come... Proactive 

Back-end users - Balance Sheet:

• Lots of the higher-end users/owners do not have a good working knowledge of how to use their Balance Sheet
• How to track various BS accounts properly
• I struggle knowing a lot of these things too - Steve & Shari are the masters!!

Levels of Training Needed:

• Laser focused
• Beginning
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Accessible
• Where to put the training, how to set this up, how to make it accessible, 

#2 - Circle the Wagons - Gather what is already there before moving forward on what to do next

Find the User Guide content already completed

• Review 
• Meet w/Brandon, get to web
• 
  

Categories for Internal Project Management Needs:

Maintenance

Bugs

Custom Projects

Assigned Projects & Project Follow-up

Client Communication & Follow-ups

- Working with Shannon and getting back in to the loop...

- Small review of the training event

- Shannon reporting on her progress and her homework assignment. See element of time 4010 in the shop.

- Known tech support areas... login and getting locked out, navigation, reports, step-by-step how to's, hardware, back-end users (balance sheet)

- Reports on items and invoices - getting their information back out

- Using the existing tools to get what you want

- Hardware is always a "hard" piece - no pun intended - We would love to get him on the adilas market and then let him handle it from there.

- Possible hardware packages and suggestions

- Maybe proactively pay a hardware guy to reach out to his/her clients and be on the proactive side of things.

- Maybe some trouble shooting documents for different known hardware issues - tips and tricks

- More needs for using the adilas marketplace - calling cards, tips and tricks by power users, mini advertising

- Hardware is a totally different realm and is the hardest tech support category - at least for us

- Great ideas - but sometimes it goes nowhere -  just due to the number of things calling for attention

- Shannon has also seen lots of high-end questions from back-end users - especially from the balance sheet and high-level financials

- On training... we need different levels - laser focused, beginner, intermediate, and advanced - how do we accomplish this?

- Multiple different forms of helping to educate our users - help files, steps to success, user guide, videos, live training events, etc.

Meeting with Shannon - 2 tasks to follow up on - hardware with Svend and picking up existing pieces for the adilas user guide.

New notes - She has met with Svend twice and they have another meeting setup for later this week. Their goal is to get Svend's adilas market profile up and have some live content by next week. Once that profile is live, we will let Shari O. and Drea know to help point people who have hardware questions to Svend's market profile. As a second step, we would like to do some more news and updates (tips and tricks) dealing with hardware and then give some credit to Svend and such. Create links back and forth between the adilas market profile and the news and updates.

Shannon will reach out to Russell and see if she can get some more advanced training on both news and updates and advanced options for the adilas market stuff. Russell is still the master there.

On the user guide stuff, we also went in and found some of the old content that was created for the adilas user guide. I did some light checking on my end with no new results. Shannon did find a number of her files. Shannon will be pushing those pieces up in to the adilas university so that we can get to that info. She has about 20 Word docs that have some beginner user content.

We scheduled a meeting for next week, and will stay on task with those two tasks. Just advancing the ball. Also, as a fun note, I gave Shannon some other updates on who is working on what and some other inside adilas news. We are really excited to have Shannon back working with us. It will be awesome.

Our to do list for this meeting: Keep following up on the adilas market and getting content for the user guide. We will both be checking on each other's progress.

Brandon reported on his progress and some new outline pieces.

Shannon reported on her progress and going over some older work sessions (prior notes and content). She was also able to connect with Svend (adilas market and some hardware stuff). As a side note, we may have Shannon help us get some of our developers out and setup in the marketplace.

This was a note for our meeting: Follow-up on each other's progress - adilas marketplace and the adilas user guide.

Brandon reported... good intentions and not much to show for it.

Shannon reported... she has been getting more time to work on adilas and that is a plus. She has been reviewing training from the last Denver training. She has also been working with Svend on the adilas market profile and expectations for hardware support. We also talked about lines (client needs) and what adilas will and will not cover. Hardware integration gets tricky. We want to help cover simple hardware support issues. We need to maintain the independent relationship as much as possible.

Shannon will be writing an email and setting up the conversation about max, min, expectations, terms, and what the general rules will be. We talked about allowing Svend and Smart POS to bill us for up to 1/2 an hour per client. If more time is needed, he would need to bill for that independently. Dealing with Svend and hardware, he would like to offer POS (point of sale) packages and the setup and integration parts and pieces of that (hardware packages and setup). He would also like to be available on a 24 hour option.

One of our goals, as adilas, is - see a need and fill that need.

With certain independents, we may need to hold their hand a little bit and help them out with some specific adilas training. That will either need to be covered as part of business and/or some other way of funding and taking care of that. Ideally, adilas would fund a portion of that and make sure all is well. We, as adilas, will then gain from that relationship if they, the independent and/or 3rd party solution, are able to take care of that part of the puzzle. Once again, see the need (identify where or what is needed) and then fill that need (either internally or put an independent and/or 3rd party solution in place to handle that need).

Our next meeting will be a work session where Shannon will be typing and I will be speaking and spouting off... :)

Wayne and Steve were talking about servers and some of the new updates that are going on. Wayne is helping to fine tune and monitor the servers. He wants to be in charge of that portion of the puzzle. He is very good at it and knows what he is doing. Steve and I are trying to encourage him to keep going in that direction. Some of the discussion items were dealing with servers, up-time, redundancy, database table locks, response time, active vs passive monitoring, and empowering our users and clients to view stats (maybe limited views) on the server. There was quite a bit of talk about new news and updates talking about the server monitoring and even possible mirror and/or redundancy back-up and/or mirror server options (insurance and roll-over technologies).

Wayne was asking some great questions about the current model and where we want to go with things. Steve was responding and answering the questions. We left off with a charge on Wayne to get in there, dig around, and come back with a plan. We may end up rolling some of the new changes out over a series of months. Good stuff.

We touched base with some of the other developers on the meeting and then broke out into our own work sessions. I was working on the sales tax branch and trying to cascade new sales tax changes through the black box pages. As a fun side note, there are around 400 (ish) black box pages that are part of the master code branch. That doesn't even include ones that are created and uploaded without being merged into the master branch. What that tells me is, that our clients like custom options and that section, black box or custom code, is a huge part of our model. It can be a pain in the rear some times, especially if we are trying to update things, but it also fills a need and our clients seem to like the options of being able to customize things. That is awesome.

Once everybody left the meeting, we all just worked on our own little projects. I was doing tech support and follow-up on some sales calls. Towards the end of the session, Steve and I chatted briefly about the client who may want to do some tracking on their assisted living facilities. We talked about maybe setting up a play site for the assisted living and running things with locations, elements of time, etc. Lots of good ideas.

We also talked about the adilas label builder that Calvin is working on. We are getting close on this round of the project. We would like to see where all of that goes and what comes out of it. We are looking to close out phase one and then start using it to see what else may be needed (round two or phase two).

Steve - we are a solution for solution minded persons. We are really seeing that the clients that like customization, they tend to be some of our greatest clients. Very interesting. We are also seeing that some of the reps are a great resource and are throwing some ideas and monies at things (pieces of the puzzle) that they need and/or want. Some of them are getting funding from their clients to help push things forward.

Random idea... what about opening up the door to our customers to get their own developers and let the custom side of things grow a little bit deeper. Maybe use the adilas market and let some of the independent developers run with things a little bit.

Training - we were talking about ideas and timing. Things are a little bit crazy right now, but we don't want it to get out too far before we circle back around and setup some more training. We were also talking about costs and paying for that. On a different note, we have tons of hidden benefits like hooking up Marisa and Drea on training. We also have Calvin who was at the last training and got tons of great info and feedback about his labels and Gmexting (group mass texting). Lots of hidden benefits and getting people trained and more involved.

Meeting with Dave Forbis and going over his assisted living flow chart stuff. He has posted 3 different flow charts to date. We spent a good hour and I took a number of notes on what he is thinking and where things are going. Dave has been working on ideas, concepts, how data will flow in/out and interact between the facilities and adilas. Great stuff. See the element of time # 4147 here in the shop.

Shannon jumped on just before 3 pm. She listened in as Dave and I were talking and chatting. Once we were done, we talked about getting some of the adilas developers up and on the adilas market or in the adilas world (marketplace stuff). That is great place to start. There is already a huge demand for that service.

Around 4 to 4:15 pm - Janna popped in and we covered some WordPress stuff and some small tasks that she is going to do. She is a technical writer and will be helping us with content and making sure things are good to go there. This was the first time that she virtually met both Shannon and I. We told her that eventually, we would have her helping Shannon and I on the adilas user guide.

The last part of the session was actually going through and working on the adilas user guide. We did a small session and were recording some notes to help us document each of the players and what they do and/or may do. Nice little work session. Shannon and I rescheduled for next week to continue chipping away at our internal projects. Good stuff.

On the phone with clients going over ideas and options. Some of them want some closer hand-holding as part of the setup process. We talked about a couple of options and I told them that I would reach out and talk to Steve about those things.

Steve and I got on a call and went over a number of things. There seems to be a very high demand from our clients to get certain pieces and/or features in place. We are almost getting pressured by our clients and some of the adilas reps. We are trying our best but there are only so many hours in a day. We have to figure out a way to manage all of the demands.

Here are a couple of small pieces that helped me out. Most of this came directly from Steve in our conversation...

- Reach out to local adilas users and see if they want to pick up some moonlighting options to help train other users

- If needed, we could get some of our top reps to reach out to clients to get a relationship built there

- If a company is really struggling, try to figure out why? Is it training? Interface? Flow/process? Expectations? Requirements? Bad setup? Forced timelines? etc. Some of these things take time... you can't just say go and have everything in place. It may take hours, days, weeks, months, years, or somewhere in between - depending on the task, how deep, timelines, budgets, talent, etc.

- We need to focus on what we do well. If other products and/or services are needed, that is great. It opens up options for the adilas marketplace and/or adilas world type concept. We have to charge for what we do and/or provide.

- Analogy of Lewis and Clark (explorers finding their way across the western united states by river and canyons) - Some days we may get 10 miles further down the path and other days we may be recovering from sickness and/or portaging raging rapids. We are exploring as we go.

- If a company wants to... we recommend that they do a pros and cons list and then make a decision. What is gained and what is lost. Not every solution is right for every person. We have a ton to offer. Do they want what we are offering or are they looking for something more or something less?

- Steve was saying that we should have three main parts to the puzzle - 1st - hit the sweet spot (are we a match with our clients on what is available, offered, and prices). 2nd - Who is going to help them along the way (initial setup, getting started, training - qualified help and/or skilled help). 3rd - Ongoing and helping to bring the clients along as changes are made, upgrades happen, new options open up, and keeping up to speed with what is going on and/or available.

Anyways, a good set of phone calls. We are learning every day and slowly making progress just like Lewis and Clark in our adventure. Good stuff.

Bryan and I met and did a good session and worked on a number of different projects. We started looking into what it would take to add a new category (main professional group) for the adilas market and adilas world. After that, we rolled into a small research session on a small bug when showing and filtering sub inventory based on a sub barcode. The problem seems to be that the sub barcode is sticking (entered into the database) as the package gets created, but not being passed when the product gets used. We spent quite a bit of time looking into and doing some research on what the problem is and what is needed. We setup a time to work tomorrow to get in and start working on the bug fix. The fix will have a few different sides and/or pieces to make it all flow.

After the meeting, I was doing emails, running inventory updates for a client, recording notes, and other clean-up stuff. Busy day.

Shannon and I jumped on a GoToMeeting session. We went over a number of projects. The original goal was to work on the adilas user guide content. We ended up going over the new graphical sales report, custom email addresses for clients (mini project), and talking about populating the adilas market or adilas world with reps, consultants, and developers. Mostly just a work session today. Shannon was happy to get some new projects to work on in her spare time.

Alan, Steve, Dustin and I were on the morning meeting. The first little bit was each person reporting on what they were working on and what issues are still outstanding. Steve had a couple of questions for Alan and Dustin. They are following up on different tasks. I spoke with Alan a little bit about our plans for some changes in how the sub inventory and sub barcodes were going to be searched and filtered.

Next, I gave Steve a small update on my meeting with Spencer and Wayne from last week. He asked for some drawings on what was going on. I explained that Spencer was at a turning point where he was going to be needing access to actual data. He doesn't know Adobe ColdFusion very well yet, but he is a PHP master. PHP is another open source server side scripting language. Wayne and I decided that we would let Spencer build out his new prototype in PHP and use the adilas API sockets to get and pass data back and forth. That sort of spun us off into a small discussion on where are we going and how are we planning on integrating all of these pieces. That, of course, is a whole other topic. We touched on the need to build out the adilas API sockets (play at the wall - allow outside data connections) and how that would fit.

Calvin jumped on and a couple of the other guys bailed out. Steve and I had a good talk with Calvin. Our current project with Calvin is an outside label builder for custom and bulk labels. Part of our conversation was helping both adilas and Calvin get our communications being built up and on better levels. We chatted, got on the same page, and will hopefully be back on task next week. Calvin still has some other projects that he is working on right now. Good meeting.

Steve and I then spent some time talking about how the trend is kind of going toward 3rd party solutions and 3rd party build outs and then trying to inter connect them with internal adilas flow and processes. This took us back to a subject of PHP and other adilas API socket connections.

Eric popped in and had a couple of questions. He is building an project for sub special account tracking stuff like loyalty points, gift cards, etc. Some of our discussions today were dealing with page flow and naming conventions. We talked about having a new sub homepage for the special account tracking stuff. We then talked about how the user would have to let us know what special account type they were looking for information on, and then what that process would be like as they walked from step to step, adding filtering, and then finally results with drill-downs. Lots of concept level talks about flow and data. Good stuff and I think that Eric is making some good progress. We'll still need to tweak and refine things, but progress is being made.

Lots of emails and other things, just trying to get caught up and going. After that, Steve and I jumped back on the discussion about PHP, adilas API sockets, playing at the wall, internal vs public files, what servers would look like (just Adobe ColdFusion boxes, just PHP boxes, or dual setup of both ColdFusion and PHP per box). We have some questions that we will be asking Wayne about options and direction. We also made some good break trough's by noting which files and servers were private (owned and controlled by adilas) and which files and servers were public (owned by 3rd party and/or outside entities). Just adding what was public and what was private, really helped the conversation and get both Steve and I on the same page.

What we are seeing is that we need to keep pushing for a full separation between the data (database, storage, and access to the data), the logic (functions, methods, API sockets, and flow), and the actual display (what things look like, where they focus, and what they do or don't do - visual interfaces). Those three things data, logic, and display are huge. The more we separate them, the more modular our application becomes.

We didn't spend a ton of time on this... but all of our discussions were somewhat pointing to the greater and greater need for the adilas market (adilas world) to play a part in the puzzle. Currently, we have a saying "Play at the wall" for the adilas API sockets that we expose to the outside public. That wall is basically the access point between the adilas database and logic and the outside world. We are almost seeing a 2nd wall (virtually speaking) starting to form up. That second wall or outer wall is the adilas marketplace and who has what, who offers what, how is it obtained, or who has made pieces that  virtually are able to be plugged in and/or integrate with adilas core functions and functionality? I'm betting that the open market will end up playing a bigger and bigger role as things progress. Our challenge is how to manage that as it grows. Good stuff.

Reminder for me: Follow-up on graphical sales flyer, custom emails, and adilas market.

Shannon and I met over a Zoom session (Steve was using the GoToMeeting session for a sales demo). We got going and I showed Shannon a few of the things and projects that I was working on. Limiting certain query tools to 100,000 records or less, maintaining customer tax category settings in the cart, etc. In a small way, they, the current projects, played into some of our other discussions. By way of a report, Shannon said that she had been working on some content for the new graphical sales flyer. We spent most of our time talking about what we really want there. The sales flyer is not done and is somewhat of an open book. We want to make it fun, visual, and really get what they are getting and/or getting into in front of them. Mixing those pieces will be a challenge.

We talked about all kinds of things that normally may or may not be on a sales flyer. We talked about being a good fit, explaining the open market concepts (adilas market or adilas world), setting realistic expectations, steps for success, how to set an attainable goal, how to eat an elephant (step by step or bite by bite process vs trying to take down the whole thing at once), cause and effect decisions, training, setup, self-serve model, and how custom plays into that mix. Shannon took a number of notes and I passed her over some links and documents that had some good ideas. We setup another meeting for next week. Our plan is to keep chipping away at things and hopefully come up with a great sales tool that inspires and also educates our client base.

Here are a couple of the links that I sent to Shannon.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3957 - notes from a training session in Denver. Search this for the key word "Kelly". We recorded a session where Kelly Whyman, power adilas rep, was talking about setup, training, and steps to success with the adilas platform.

https://data0.adilas.biz/intro_to_adilas.pdf - older PDF sales flyer with some light info about adilas and our model.

Keep following up on graphical sales flyer, custom emails, and adilas market.

Shannon and I got started. She asked how things were going, so I gave her a small run down of some the current projects and direction that we are going in. Lots of moving pieces. After that, we spent about half an hour recording some notes about our model and how it works best (right combo of clients, demands, requirements, and expectations). Lots of good notes and what not. Shannon recorded them on a working document. See attached. As a side note, there are more notes from other days, but at least our new notes have also been pushed up.

Keep following up on graphical sales flyer, custom emails, and adilas market.

Shannon and I started re-watching the video of Kelly Whyman doing a presentation from the Denver training event. See this element of time and look for the afternoon video on day 3 - the actual start time of the Kelly portion of the video is at 2:33:19 (ish) - https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3957

- One of the first things that she does is get the physical process that really happen and then she breaks those values into a work flow and defines who is going to do what?

- Setting and maintaining the expectations. Owners and operators are different. If things are too complicated, they, the users, stop putting things in.

- There are those who are good at frontend, backend, and maintenance. Different skills, talents, and interest levels.

- Shannon and I talked about "getting an investment approach" where the clients see what other successful people do. This was talking about other skills such as training, setup, maintenance, consulting, overseeing, etc. Ongoing help and other services.

- The setup and initial portion of the client's implementation is very important. They may need some ongoing oversight and/or help. How am I going to support you to get to your goals. Ongoing relationships.

- Try to operate out of the box first and then customize from there. Sometimes they jump too early on the custom bandwagon. Everybody loves the idea of custom but it can be a two edge sword. There might be a difference between small customization vs full or huge customization.

- Are you really ready to take on adilas? Is this the right system for you? You have to really want this (data feeding game). We talked about can's and should's... cost/time analysis.

- Maybe a way we can differentiate ourselves is based on concepts. We love talking about 3D world building, systems, interconnected data relationships, digital story telling, permissions & settings, and objects and data over time. There is an older PDF flyer that has a fun math equation of :: "Results = Mix(Functions, Players, Concepts)". See this older flyer for more info: https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_formula.pdf - Good stuff.

- Sell the sizzle

Anyways, Shannon and I only made it part way through the video from Kelly. We had some good talks and we have some homework to keep watching and taking notes. We will touch base again next week on Tuesday.

The morning meeting started with Steve going over some of his plans. Normally he has been taking Wednesday's off, but he had a couple of small questions. He is building a new page to help cross tie PO's with balance sheet items (some special tax project of sorts). He is using some new CSS templates to wire things up. He is getting good and is able to start seeing his way through the entire project. It is pretty cool to see him getting the ideas, concepts, and then being able to mix and blend the pieces to get the output that he is looking for. That is exciting.

Dustin was on with us as well. He is researching backend classes and API options for working with datatables for some of his projects.

Steve wants me to start working on the transitional invoices and adding the inventory in transit (asset) piece to the balance sheet. I went in and added the new code. It wasn't too bad, most of the work was already done, it was just showing it up in the correct place on the report.

Eric joined the meeting and had some questions about 3rd party solutions and push vs pull type requests. Most of our 3rd parties want to get data through the API sockets as a pull type request. We do have some that want the data pushed to them as things change (just in time or at the source of the changes). We talked about the differences in developing and also the differences in costs. Eric will be helping some of his clients move more towards the push type technology. We get better results that way and don't get flooded by too many pull requests. It is actually better for both parties, it just takes a little bit more planning and coding on the front end. Eric will end using that as a small revenue stream depending on what the clients want.

Wayne and Alan popped in. Wayne let me know about a couple of pages out in the adilas marketplace that were not very secure. I ended up going through a number of pages and adding in some URL validation to help prevent XSS (cross site scripting hacks).

Where people can go to get help. Adilas is producing by-products.

Concept of market is a place to offer these services.

Adilas Café options as well. Come and work, play, learn, buy, sell, participate, etc.

https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_for_business/adilas_market.cfm

Meeting between Kelly, Steve, and Brandon. This was a discussion about the current state of adilas, wishes, hopes, disappointments, frustrations, needs, wants, and dreams.

Kelly has been involved since 2010. She has trained, trained our trainers, done tons of tech support, and opened up tons of accounts on her own. She would like to help drive the business but feels like she doesn't have much say.

Steve was talking about payment and commission structures (monies paid and owed to Kelly). Kelly wanted to know, what is our admin structure? Steve said, well, we have dependables - people who just help and work with adilas. Kelly would really like to see our organizational structure.

We are seeing different people and they have different skills in different places... How do we mix and blend those pieces?

Kelly proposed a basic model... see graphic. She really wants to build out a standard structure. She sometimes get very frustrated by having to provide customer support for things that we are adding and doing in the background.

Question: Is it the size of a company thing or is it personnel thing? Kelly came back and said - It sounds like you need a motor (a person), someone to help drive the ship per company. We are starting to see that there are some dependencies. Some of the known dependencies are good consultants and good developers. Steve said, our solution is a tool, we need to find those that want to use our tools, in whatever state (our system) it is in.

It kept coming back to different people being good at different things. Nobody can take adilas from a to z. Currently, it is a very loose model right now. Steve kept coming back to having a person who helps to drive the adilas implementation per corporation. Kelly wants it to be standardized. She really wants some kind of structure to be able to hand off to a company so that they can run with it. Currently, there are a lot of moving pieces.

From our side... every corporation runs slightly different. That makes it really hard to setup a perfect standard and/or structure. We currently are having some of the best success with people who really want to jump in try and love to learn things. Kelly really wants adilas to come up with a more standardized structure - do this, do this, do this, we recommend this, ok you're set. The easier that we can make it, the easier we can get more people on board.

Adilas - all data is live and searchable - we need more options to get at the data better. Kelly wants all of the pieces live and searchable. We have a good start, but there are certain places that really still need some loving. Kelly wants to know what our plan is? What about funding and going out and trying to raise monies? Currently, that door is not an option. We are really trying to stay within our means. We don't like owing money and living under that debt.

We talked about some of the challenges that keep pulling at us. Tons of projects and tons of demands. We also talked about accounts receivable, reoccurring credit cards, and constantly chasing payments. We talked about some of the trouble makers (hard clients and customers) and what to do with them. We talked about online bill pay stuff and how to get the monies that are owed to us quicker.

How do we market our product? New sales, marketing, word of mouth, referrals, etc. The power of a good consultant. Those who have a good consultant seem to be able to keep it going. Another place where we sometimes struggle are in the developer arena. Those skilled persons are very critical. That seems to be the squeeze point (trained people and who does what and how do our people know what expect and who to ask).

Sometimes you can oversell things by saying, you can do anything. Kelly would really like for the process to be more standard and structured. Basically, putting training wheels on the system. Maybe we need an outside party to really run with their own standard process of setting up a client. It may not come from us (right now). It would be so awesome, if we could get people going without a great consultant. Turn it into a step-by-step wizard and/or step them through the paces by virtually holding their hands (Dustin calls it guardrails). If it gets better and better and faster and faster, it will become more intuitive and will take less handholding will be required. Maybe show a 1,2,3,4 setup process and/or show checkboxes to show what is needed. Help guide the users through the process.

Some people don't want to spend the time to watch a video. They want to just guess and/or fake it. There are also some who just want to be shown, by a real person. They almost want it so, so easy, that it isn't funny. It seems to come down to who wants to fund and setup these services. There are tons of things that are needed, but who is going to build it and who is going to fund that development? It gets crazy. Sometimes it is so much, we almost overwhelm people. It would be nice if we could turn things off, turn other things on, and/or limit them in certain ways.

Who wants to set up their own processes, because everything keeps changing? It gets tricky. We need it, but who is going to do it? Plus, it keeps changing and changing and has cascading cause and effects. It seems to be never-ending.

Kelly wants to know who is driving this ship and who is taking care of the financials? We keep flexing and rolling with what comes.

We may need more exports to MS Excel and/or CSV. We need access to the underlying data. This could be datatables (prebuilt exports and sortable tables), this could be normal exports, etc.

If I were a lifer (in it forever - a lifer), how would that look and where would it go and how would I be a part of that? Steve would like to put adilas in a trust - no employees, just dependables. There will always need to be a caretaker and/or person(s) that help it keep going, but it could run light and get direction from those involved.

Does anybody know adilas all the way through? No, we don't have anybody that really knows it all the way through. Kelly wants to see things get more organized and/or stable. As a side note, we know that we need adilas university (training and support) and the adilas marketplace (adilas world - who is able to help and who can do what). Kelly feels like we need to drive in a direction (goal oriented) vs just reacting to the pull of what is happening organically. Currently, we have outside independents and they tend to max out and growth is somewhat slow. The word "evolution" kept coming in and how it relates to the business model.

Different areas... communication, training, design and user interface (look and feel), development (code and functionality), and other services that are needed and/or offered (open marketplace). We need to keep bringing up all of the pieces. Keep finding people who want to play and are able to play.

As we get more developers... some of the pieces become less stable (different flavors and/or code quality).

There are a lot of clients that are looking for a solution. At some point, they will take what they have to as they keep looking for something better. Interesting.

There is currently no handbook for adilas. There is a lack of training materials and structure. That is a known issue that we are facing.

It was just Dustin and I to start out with today. We pushed up some files for him to test live. I was trying to track down a small bug that Wayne had passed over to me to look at. It was something to do with code out in the adilas market (adilas world). Wayne popped into the meeting and gave us a small report as to where things are at with AWS transition. After that, Eric and I went over where we are at on the special accounts project. I'm trying to push on that project and finish up the code review.

These are just general notes, but it was mentioned earlier today that one of the problems with our model is actually allowing the clients to control how much effort is put into custom code. They don't actually code things, but they do fund things. Sometimes they opt for the cheap route vs the best route for all parties. Sometimes this has an adverse affect on poorly written code or bad code.

Another small topic from today was dealing with the size of the shared database structures. Some of them are getting very big. That makes it hard for certain queries to run efficiently or as optimized as possible. In the very near future, we will be pairing the database schema (tables and field names and values) into a smaller per corporation type model. That should really help with some speed and performance.

Towards the end of the session I was working on a new application form for the state of Texas. This is used by trailer dealers and applying for special farm license plates and registration stuff. We already had this form in place, they just have a newer version that we had to code.

Emails and recording more notes. Added some additional notes (sub comments) to the element of time # 4506 dealing with a balanced approach and how to mix the different pieces. See this link for more info about number of clients, sales, system development, education, training, output, needs, byproducts, talent pool, services, and the adilas marketplace.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4506

4.73 - Support

-Support can come on many different levels - company, on-site, tech support, call-ins, etc.

-If you need general Adilas support please call 719-966-7102 or email support@adilas.biz.

-We cater to small to medium-sized businesses. Our main tech and admin crew is under 10 employees. In order to service our clients and to keep your costs down, we openly solicit the help of independent reps and consultants. We bill all of our clients directly on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual reoccurring basis. We pay a generous commission to reps and consultants. Reps and consultants are then able to offer their own services to help and support our clients. They bill and collect independently.

-Independent reps and consultants may be found at the Adilas Marketplace.

Met up with Shannon and we decided that the two of us would try to focus more on the education side of the puzzle. We may have to split our time, but we were thinking news and updates, help files, user guides, screenshots, videos, adilas university, adilas market, adilas café, sales and marketing materials, etc. Along those same lines, we will start meeting twice a week to help make some more progress in that arena. That is exciting.

Shannon spent some time adding some content to elements of time in the adilas university site. I had to help finish some emails out to an adilas consultant.

We were going to have a meeting with Kelly and do some online whiteboarding and business planning, but that didn't happen. Instead, Steve and Brandon had a couple hour brainstorming session about their own ideas on a business model and business plan. Super fun brainstorming meeting.

- Steve and Brandon were talking about the role of the adilas market, adilas university, and the adilas café.

- Steve was talking about ideas... are you buying or selling? What section of the market and/or café do you play in?

- Just jump in... see a need, fill a need - we love it

- Another piece that we may be missing is marketing and sales type literature and media pieces

- We would love to recruit some others to help with the heavy lifting - There are tons of great adilas users out there who have some great skills

- It takes time and energy to get things going - the goal is, once it gets going, hopefully it will keep feeding itself.

- Steve is having fun tackling the business model - analogy - like a friendly pirate ship. It could be a boat, a ship, a car, a plane, or anything that moves over time. The fun come in as you start asking questions. Are we friendly? Are we mean? How many sails do we put out? What direction are we going (what is our heading)? What kind of crew do you want? How big and how small do you want to be? Etc. Fun stuff.

- Sometimes as we write and record these log notes, it may expose some of our underbellies, but we really gain from it in multiple ways.

- Steve and I would like to be open to discussions from any parties. We also acknowledge that there is a cost to being open and listening to those ideas.

- There seems to be many cycles that interconnect and play as the ball gets kicked down the road.

- Zipper analogy of bringing operations and accounting together. We started this a long time ago, we want to keep going but some of the steps are bigger and harder than others to conquer. Problems exists and that helps keep things going. Problems force decisions and hopefully a solution.

- Working in teams and pulling through things together - it helps get the ball across the finish line and you build relationships along the way.

- A constant mode of refinement - dive and resurface, dive and resurface - build and break, build and break - the concept of maintenance.

- Building blocks of teams - forming, storming, norming, performing - where are we at in our team development process?

- As we keep coming together as a team, there will be some normalizing and efficiency as we keep going. Good stuff.

- Steve is always on the hunt for the better and better ideas. He loves the hunt, in theory and in practice.

- Different angles, different views - false summits, operations, accounting, task oriented, dreamers, managers, etc. Like a pie analogy, we need the whole (in the end), and certain people are doing certain pieces (delegating tasks and processes), but hopefully as you bring it all together and it becomes the whole.

- The proof is in the pudding - if you have a great idea... let's put it to the test... we don't have a monopoly on all of the good ideas. We want to be open to those around us. Ideas by themselves don't really stand too long... those ideas have to be put into action and start applying those concepts.

- You can fund a company through investment, equity, sales, or leveraging debt. We are leaning towards sales and equity.

- Talking about models, we are even seeing some morphing models (mixing and blending), client/services, budgets, and strategic customer care projects. Customer tune ups, targeted tech support, and other customer care and retention efforts.

- Hoist anchor! Starting to get the ship out of the harbor.

- Models - rep model, hub/shop model, 3rd party solutions and white label model - We are seeing a small mix between the basic rep model and the basic hub/shop model. - Russell's word "Dependable" model. A loosely bonded hub/shop type model where the bond is the dependable type and/or dependable people who service other parts of the service model. Basically, they stick around to help pick-up and service the by-products that are created (training, consulting, setup, design work, custom code, tech support, project management, training, and other by-product services).

- Being able to clone some of the main core players - Steve, Brandon, Shari O., etc. Small teams forming under some of these key players and creating loose bonds (dependable type bonds). Very interesting.

- Talking about sales and white label options, we have no boundaries and no zones - people could consume our product wherever they are - we don't plan on adding any boundaries and/or zones.

- Anybody could identify a problem and/or issue - what we really want and need is those who help come up with and are willing to work on solutions.

- Steve was saying that the employer/employee relationship is a kin to slavery - it can work, but over time, it has other costs and drains. Steve really wants to keep moving towards the dependable type model - It is very loose but it can and does work - We want to keep helping those around us - if you look at it... we have so many by-products, the by-products completely outweigh our normal products. Very interesting. One of the key pieces is, you have to want to play the game. If you are just coasting, it doesn't work very well.

- Finding that balance point - We were talking about the difference between a normal company that has an employer/employee model vs this loose community of dependable - We also talked about how some companies are replacing the traditional model with robots, AI (artificial intelligence), or automated services. Where are those balance points and what makes things tip to one side or the other? One of the core concepts that we have is, our main product creates tons of subs or by-products. We can allow others to pick-up any of those by-products by offering their services (basically an open market type option).

- Some of this is just happening and we are figuring it out as we go... We have plans, we try things, we fail sometimes, we go backwards and forwards, we try to listen, we harvest other's ideas, we experiment, we tweak, we refine, we circle back around. That seems to work for us. It is more of the try storming type mentality vs just a plan it and build it type model.

- Randomly enough, we keep getting people circling back around after years of talking with them initially (old sales leads). We also have other people who are looking for and needing some of the functionality that we are working on and/or already have. The general public needs keep advancing right along with us. Step by step building process. Keep building towards the full system (fully interconnected pieces) and even full world building levels.

- Talking about commissions and outbound monies and such - Steve used the word semi-dependable (not a full dependable, but still part of the whole team).

- Finding the glide plane - like an airplane coming in for a landing.

- Tag teaming based on abilities - Coach, put me in... I want to play or give me a shot.

- People putting in time to help move the ball forward - Steve would like to move the company into a trust at some point.

- We are excited that we are moving some things over to deeper and more expanded technologies - tech stuff and server models.

- Keep working to get out of the way

- There is some magic in having a business plan but it can have limits - we do need some direction but it also helps to have your head up and be looking around. Our current business plan is "we are heading North" or something like "we are heading to the top of the mountain" - we have a direction and a way to go about it, that's about it. Fill in the gaps and cross the bridges as they come up (we know they are out there, but we don't have a full plan in place for every little thing).

- What about enjoying the journey? There is some fun in planning out the journey and then responding to cause and effect relationships that happen based on those decisions. That sounds like world building, in a way. The five core concepts of world building are: Characters, relationships, trouble/problems, decisions, and consequences - see this element of time for more information... https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=3634

- Some people will like what we do and sadly, we may make some enemies - we want to keep it as an open model - there are tons of options out there. We welcome those who want to play and we'll keep refining and building as we go. We want people who are looking for a solution and are willing to help and invest in their solution. We want to make adilas consumable... what do you want and how can you make it work for you?

- Model of being able to charge for different components - it all needs to exist - what if we showed all of the 12 main players and what part of their bill gets charged out and/or applied to what part of the 12 main players? That could be pretty cool.

- We may want to open up the adilas ecommerce piece to all of our clients. Currently, they have to pay for the extended ecommerce functionality.

- Data - the new currency... people are offering features and functions for free, just so that they can collect data. Very interesting.

- Steve would like to help push forward the ideas of the adilas café - a virtual community of users and/or other companies that offer their services - that will be really cool - helping to push the ball along the path using the skills and talents of others (a community of adilas power users and/or outside services). Once again, the by-products are a huge part of the model.

- We do need some standardization pieces, but some of our model is the flexible ways you can do it... We need both side of the fence.

- We ended by doing a brief look at where we have been and where we are going (historical summary of invoices and client based financials). Good stuff.

Wayne and Eric jumped into the morning meeting. We went over a few things with Wayne and got a better idea of some timelines and what to expect with the transition over to AWS. Still lots of unknowns, but making progress. We also talked about some contingency plans and how fast we could switch gears if needed. See attached for a few new notes (bottom page with a date of 5/21/19).

After Wayne left, Eric had some questions about some of his current projects. Eric is very good at doing custom work and also trying to help circle the wagons and help people get onboard the main platform vs always doing the custom one-off jobs. Good stuff.

Steve and I chatted about using technology to help us promote our products and then also using technology to help promote the services and byproducts that get produced from the main adilas system and/or platform. The byproducts are amazing and we have some folks generating $10,000 to $20,000 a month, by themselves, just off of the byproducts and services. We want to keep pushing things more and more out to the open marketplace. We briefly talked about the adilas marketplace, the adilas café, and adilas world. Lots of options to get those power users more jobs and options to sell their skills and services.

At the end of the meeting, Josh popped in and had some git repository questions. Small session helping him get his stuff in order.

We are seeing a need to add an adilas URL (web address) on a per corp level vs on a per server level. Currently, most of our redirect options are all based on a per server basis. Also, we may need to go back in and change some of the existing links and hardcoded web links.

- We need some options for manual load balancing.

- Wayne was showing us his custom functions and how he is combining code into custom tags.

- We also talked about some of the aliases and how certain field names show up. As a side note, we will have to update our API socket documentation to note some of those changes.

- Wayne has been doing some mappings to certain relative and fully expanded paths.

- Lots of simplifying code and things. There is still tons to do, but we are starting to make progress.

- Having a centralized spot to help Wayne know about errors and/or issues with the transition to AWS.

- We need a community based process that allows us to publish wiki type information, definitions, best practices, etc. We may even want some of this wiki info to be automatically generated. We need to keep things up to date to make it relative and productive. As a side note, Wayne has setup and contributed to wiki type things and has some know how there. He will be a great resource on that stuff.

- Ways of harnessing the skills and knowledge to help others. Letting people be part of a cause and participating to the overall adilas community.

- Steve would really like the adilas users to have options to play, work, participate in the adilas community, learn, train, sales, place for their stuff, participate in the marketplace, sell their skills, contribute, etc. This could be part of the adilas marketplace, adilas world, the adilas café, etc. Lots of options.

- Being able to share our knowledge with others. Helping to speed up the process.

- Steve popped in and was saying that maybe we could use our WordPress and/or our news and updates section. We also have help files, web/API socket documentation, developer's notebook, user guides, elements of time, etc. We have also made and created a number of self contained PDF files with specific topics. We would like to make sections for developers (super techy), users (definitions, help files, tutorials, etc.), reps/consultants, community, and other sub sets.

- Currently, there is a deficit on the training and education side of things. We may end up going in and checking stats on some of the older inactive adilas users and see who did what. We also need to open up the adilas market and adilas café to all of the users who have some great and awesome skills and skill sets. That is a great way to even out our tri-facto model of clients/users, system, and education stuff.

- Steve was seeing and talking about co-founders of adilas. It doesn't come from just one person. It comes from a community effort.

Towards the end of the meeting, Brandon went back to doing some prep work on the adilas user guide. As part of that process, he spent some time reading an old history bio from the adilas team. See attached for a copy of the bio. It has a publish date of 2011. Lots of fun info.

Had a great meeting with Jonathan. He reported on some of his findings. He met with Shannon and got a light tour and then did some additional research. We talked about some of his initial thoughts and feelings. He said that it was kinda overwhelming. Pretty normal. Once he got into it and kinda started to understand that you could virtually move around and look at things from different angles, it started to make more sense. We spent an hour and talked about three main concepts. We talked about the adilas café (new entry point for adilas users), the ice berg analogy (reskinning based on industry-specific needs and wants), and other adilas concepts (photo gallery of ideas). Good conversation and good ideas already starting to flow. I loved it. My goal was to transfer some vision and let him start exploring and playing around.

These are some outside links and pages that we went to for background.

A link to some of our plans for the adilas café - https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=adilas%20caf 

I'd like to get Jonathan started on working on the mock-ups for the adilas café and/or the adilas world and/or the adilas marketplace. They are all somewhat tied together. Future home and hub for the adilas community. We want people to come here to work, play, shop, sell their skills and their goods, and participate in different ways.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=ice%20berg - notes and research on the ice berg analogy of reskinning the adilas engine

https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_for_business/photo_gallery_full.cfm - small concept photo gallery of core adilas concepts and direction

Small video recording with Wayne. He started out with a question... Is the world flat or round?

- People will often use examples to base their judgements off of.

- How we think and what we think we know. The perception of knowledge.

- Senses and how people perceive things - say choosing and seeing a color - lots of variations - first the physical pieces are different, secondly how does the brain perceive things. 

- Distraction, multi-tasking, true focus

- Training and a preset of memory items - recalling learned pieces and then mixing those things together as things happen in real time. 

- In certain scenarios, we start filling in certain blanks based on what are brains are giving us vs what is being actually shared.

- At times, some of the people involved can almost see a picture in their head of what is needed and where things are going and how things will work. They have the original vision even before they start into the project. Some people will start catching the vision as it starts to unfold over time.

- Questioning our own belief systems - checking things at the door (to the mind).

- Meeting expectations - Was what was delivered what was really asked for? This is hard to hit this mark. Often we are off by some degree or another.

- Small story of linked pieces (security based) and what people perceived to be the problem. Sometimes they pointed to one piece but technically, it may have been some other contributing factor or some other process that occurred. Some times the end user, using our site, they see a certain problem and assume that it means something. However behind the scenes we have multiple servers, different technologies, permissions, settings, user interface, etc. All of those things get mixed together to make the outcome.

- In Adilas, we have a mixed bag due to how many different things we offer and how many different ways these people use what we have to offer. That makes it a challenge. Wayne also started talking about some historical aspects and how things came to be. At the time, based on the needs, the knowledge, the skills, the technology, the outcome came from those mixed variables. If looked at from that historical perspective, things may make more sense vs looking at things later on based on a new set of variables.

- Group effort - it takes a village to raise a child.

- Wayne was having fun and wanted to serve in the church - As part of that, he moved to Portugal and wanted to get involved. He has been involved. Kinda like a senior mission of sorts. Sometimes higher leadership callings are a ton of work. Wayne was talking about different callings, responsibilities, and options to serve. As you get into things deeper, you end up learning tons from who you are working with and serving vs just teaching them in a one-way direction. It becomes a great two-way street of learning. We are constantly learning. Enjoy those learning opportunities.

- Often we think that we are right about something (pick a subject). If someone proves us wrong (in a nice way) and helps us think in a new direction, we become an advocate for that cause. This really comes into play when working on a team or in a team setting.

- Customers - super important. We get paid to do a job (whatever that job is). We may not get extra praise for doing our job. Our customers have certain expectations. They may not compliment you on doing your job. If they, the customers, have a problem... and you help them and fix the problem, you could gain a customer for life. That is where you get an elevated level of praise.

- Customers are always right except when they are wrong - kinda funny. At times, you even need to fire a customer. Wayne was talking about being a nice guy vs transacting business and still being a nice guy. There may be a difference. Being able to say no.

- Rationalization - still thinking of being in a start-up mode. We are getting better and better at that. It has been a slow process. We were talking about sales, but this could go into a lot of other areas.

- Steve was talking about some future goals and where we want to take things. We would like to keep progressing the ball down the road.

- Light talk about server issues and getting help from our team (aka Wayne on the server side). Good stuff.

- The dream and where are we headed... even with a dream, we have had multiple 90 degree corners that we didn't expect.

- The reoccurring revenue model is kinda like an insurance agent and basing things off of those reoccurring services and playing as a group.

- Pioneering the road. We are constantly unrolling and watching what is happening all around us. We don't have a book or a full plan to follow.

- When a new business starts... it tends to be on a smaller level. Everybody knows what is going on and hopefully following the same vision. As you grow, you start getting some new variables and they may not be part of that same vision. As it grows from there, it could completely change. It grows in needs, complexity, resources, etc. Sometimes the original startup people may not like and/or accept all of the changes and complexity.

- Light talks about changing job titles and job responsibilities. What are you passionate about? Do you like what you are doing right now?

- What is our model? Currently we are trying to structure our model so that it could keep persisting. We honestly don't know where all of these things are going. Wayne said... Ok, how do you get there (meaning the vision and dream)?

- What is it that we are selling? What is our model (in writing)? That is somewhat hard to put a finger on. It is so flexible and versatile it makes it hard. We have a lot of customization and lower priced offerings. Some of those pieces have been huge for us. From big to small - we are finding that if we can help the customers out with their dreams, things for us keep unfolding and unfolding for us and for them. Taking the next logical step. We don't want a tidal wave, but we would like to increase sales.

- Questions about managing pricing and updates (what is rolled out) - Who pays for what and who uses what?

- Wayne has a brother, Scott, who does a lot of consulting on sales.

- Steve's idea is you get everything vs selling a multiple module application. It seems easier to sell the whole thing and then just set the prices based on their sizes (business sizes). We talked about seed money and even doing some project fund matching to get the project pushed forward. We have full custom (black box code) and we have core products that everybody gets. Steve was saying that we are a somewhat community funded, open source product, but still slightly different. We are a software as a service type model (SaaS).

- Wayne was talking about direct metrics - What are our customers using and doing inside of the system? What can we measure and what can we check? Basically figuring out a price per value type metric. Subscription and what are you getting for your dollar value. We have even talked about giving the software away for free and living off of the other services (byproducts) that get produced. We have talked about charging for hosting, storage, processing, etc. vs just charging for the software.

- One of the extra services that they were talking about was "business coaching". Sometimes, as we go down the road, we have seen some of these same scenarios play out and we are gaining knowledge. Some of the knowledge and experience is worth quite a bit of money. What if the system could help coach someone through the process through navigation, processes, and training.

- Steve is trying to get into some of these CPA (certified public accountants) groups and helping them run with all of the off shooting products and byproducts. If we allow for some white labeling options, these CPA groups could really run with some of the other pieces of the puzzle.

- Steve turned some of his thoughts to the adilas café and getting this single login and then they could come and work, play, learn, train, buy, sell, and participate in the adilas community. We just build the software and then let the others who are around us help provide the other outside services that are needed.

- Steve would really like to help change the business model and the ways that employees and employers work and coordinate together. As a fun side note, we, at Adilas, are already doing some of this. It is very loose right now, but we are currently helping companies get interconnected and plugged into the correct pieces (reps, consultants, designers, customer code, business coaching, oversite, fulfillment, etc.). If we use the adilas café correctly, we could allow so many other parties and/or individuals to help provide a piece of the puzzle for any number of different companies. We would like to make that part of the adilas model.

- Wayne was talking about even outsourcing inventory control and inventory management. Often we think that topic, inventory management, resides inside the company, but it doesn't have to. More analytics, more oversite, more management tools, etc. We could build that.

- We, as a company, need to really look into the user login process and how to separate the users from the systems (single sign-on). They the users, need to exists outside the systems but still be able to play within the different systems. Eventually, we want to turn the request and accept process out to the users.

- The deeper we get, the deeper we are seeing more and more needs to be built out on the global adilas café model. The system is too big for one single person to know everything. It seems natural for the adilas community to help fill those needs.

- Wayne - What is your action list? Where do we head from here?

- Steve - Let's get the servers and database stuff super stable. Then we work on the single sign-on and the database split up (datasource and/or world building model). Build up the adilas café and the adilas community - this could be the adilas marketplace, adilas university, and the main system (adilas as a platform).

- Wayne wanted to know what the tick list was and then also how are we going to make that happen? Goals, budgets, timeframes, etc. Basically, going beyond the dream and into the logistics of getting there. Making assignments and allocating funds and time and resources.

- https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=adilas%20caf&sort=asc - link for some research on the adilas café concept.

- If we were to get super busy, say 10 times or 100 times more than what we have, we would need some major help. The adilas café and the adilas market would really need to be in place for that to happen.

- From Wayne - The art of leadership is helping other people do what they want to do because they want to do it.

See attached for the video recording of this meeting.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

After the meeting, Steve and I kept talking about some options.

- We could use the camp adilas project as a precursor and even be able presell an industry specific buildout. That could be really cool.

- Help push the adilas café and help people see that they could make some great money by learning adilas and providing different skills.

- If we got enough of the community into the adilas café, they could virtually help staff the adilas university model.

- Steve talked about giving away personal adilas accounts and then allowing them to schedule, train, or do work for other clients who need their help.

- Steve wants to build the ultimate business tool and then let others provide the services that come from that product.

- Light talks about playing at the wall (API sockets) and custom white label solutions.

- Our goal is to head North (speaking about a general business plan vs a perfect goal setting and fully budgeted business plan). Everything that we are doing is in a constant state of flux. That gets really hard to nail down.

- There is a fun paradigm shift taking place using Adilas and the adilas café and adilas market as tools to help solve the employer/employee relationship. Tons of great options.

- We are surrounded by tons of cofounders. Each person is playing a role.

- The next biggest thing is a step in the right direction.

- We are going to keep breaking our projects into more and more chewable pieces. That will help with energy, moral, and code sign-off.

Emails and other to list stuff.

Talking with Russell over the phone. We had a great conversation.

- Concept for fracture - Being able to remove any of the extra pieces. This goes clear down to the permission level. If they, our customers, only want invoicing and time management. That's all that they see. Even on the permission side of things. They only see what they have turned on. That may require us to stack and group the permissions better. It goes clear down to the ice berg vs the mountain model. We have to be able to remove all of the pieces otherwise the user still sees the mountain even though we are trying to just show an ice berg.

- The other really important thing for fracture is smaller getters and setters. This allows us to add/edit things in a very modular manner. If you want to change something, you can just change it. If you want to add something, you can just do it. This could help out with API sockets, quick calls, and even web components. Back to the old adage, build it once and use it many.

- We lose so much in our transition times - switching between projects. It is very costly both physically and mentally. It is real.

- Working models - if you look really close, we have a number of great working models and proof of concept stuff. There is some real value there. Keep building on that keep working to bring all of those working models and proof of concept pieces more into fruition.

- Empower the users - you can make it happen - we can help you build your dreams. A big part of what we peddle (sell) is potential and hope.

- We spent some time talking about the concept of elements of time. We have build in so many pieces that it becomes a virtual mountain. Russell was talking about a Leatherman (multi tool) vs a simple knife, a simple screwdriver, etc. We really want to help the users. Sometimes they want the big multi tool and sometime they just like the simple knife. We may need both.

- Because of the load, we are able to gain some traction.

- Talking about database pieces and options. There are multiple different models. You have file share databases, server databases, relational databases, document databases (objects and JSON storage), transactional data, aggregated data, object data, etc. You gain if you can mix and blend and get best of the different worlds - connections, storing, searching/filtering, and reporting.

- Helping other people to succeed. That is a huge piece of the puzzle.

- Creating the ecosystem that feeds the people who provide the byproduct services that are needed and wanted.

- Futuristically speaking - There may be some new business needs. This could be adding new departments underneath of adilas or it could be completely new companies (mother/daughter type companies). Thinking of things within the concept of the adilas café - we know that we will eventually need a company for the adilas market, adilas university, core adilas, tons of other options for the other products and services that are needed.

- As we get more into project management, some of our project managers may need some stacking underneath them. For example, Steve may have some projects that he pushed off to some other project manager(s) underneath himself to manage some of those projects. Organizational stacking (who reports to who and how is that organized).

Jonathan from Epic Enterprises came over to my house to meet with us. We started out listening to Steve and Eric over the GoToMeeting session. After a little bit, I started to explain some things to Jonathan. We went on mute but had the meeting with Steve and Eric going on in the background. Every once in awhile we would catch something and it would send us off on a tangent and/or direction change. We were waiting for Steve to join us.

Once Steve joined us, we had a good multi-hour meeting with Jonathan, Steve, and myself. Here are some of my notes.

- We talked about analogies between showing a whole mountain vs just an ice berg (how much do you show and/or reveal - it deals with perceptions of how much there is and how much needs to be learned).

-  We talked briefly about the need for the adilas café and a good starting place for our users to come in and be a part of the community. Some of the people come to work, play, learn, buy or sell their own product and services, and participate in the adilas community. We went over some concepts, graphics, and needs in that area.

- I pitched to Jonathan that we have at least 3 businesses that need to be funded, staffed, and managed. We have the main adilas system, the adilas marketplace (others who are buying and selling their services and products to help support the system), and adilas university (education and training).

- We talked about some progress from one server and being able to share logins (one login allowed access to multiple corporations, based off of permissions and assignments). We also talked about how that model still exists but gets tougher as we keep adding other independent servers. Currently, we can share logins on a per server basis. We can't do a single login and allow that user to access multiple servers. The logins are specific to each server right now. As a side note, not everybody needs to be bridged between servers, but certain users work in tons of different systems and on multiple different servers.

- Jonathan recommended a movie called "The Pentagon Wars" - dealing with scope creep. Basically a project that should have been fairly simple turns into 17 years of development and $14 billion to create it. A comical stab at the mismanagement of government spending and scope creep.

- We as humans, are designed to push too far. We tend to go to extremes.

- Making the system more human like... anthropomorphism

- People tend to be either: stable/reliable (45%), warrior/artisans (27%), idealist/humanist (14%), analytical (10%), other (4%) - all rough figures or ish

- Business is a projection of/from psychology.

- Going from order to chaos, order to chaos, and so forth - cycle that has been repeated over and over again in all ages.

- Suggestion - On the invoice homepage and the graphs... maybe add a projection line on the invoice homepage graphs. Show a forecast and/or projection. This could also be done with an average based on number of days. This came up due to the fact that the existing graphs take month over month data and create a graph. Well, if you have just started a new month... you only have a small number of days worth of data vs a whole month worth of data. Sometimes it makes the graph look like it is trending down sharply when in reality, things are actually doing pretty good. Visual helper.

- Talking with Steve and Jonathan - light intro and talking about their respective backgrounds and interests.

- Jonathan wants to help us improve our company.

- Consultants tend to do one of the following actions:  diagnose, analyze, and/or provide feedback. - Sometimes in that order or 3 step process.

- SaaS (software as a service) is a crazy business model.

- Question (dealing with approach) - How do you sneak up on the elephant? Talks about approaches and why's.

- A consultant informs and convinces. A consultant sees from the outside.

- A few things that Jonathan sees right now, without getting super deep: overdiversification, scope creep, scope seep, lack of structure, possible lack of leadership.

- We don't really like to babysit.

- We are trying to work on our to do list or our tick list.

- People have different skills - putting the people in the right place.

- From Steve, sometimes the environment changes how we act and interact with it - it is not just personalities and traits.

- We haven't spent much on selling and marketing.

- We would like to focus on the adilas café approach.

- From Jonathan, book recommendations - "Good To Great", "Rocket Fuel", and "The Go-Giver"

- Building a company is different than running a company.

- By helping our people better focus, that could help us be more productive.

- Steve would like to involve as many good people as possible - He is ok with not knowing everything.

- Steve wants to keep an independent model and/or have multiple cofounders.

- At some point, you will hit the borders of certain things unless you comply with certain principles.

- So many moving pieces - that makes it tough to both see and figure out the roll out and the plan.

- We may need a plan for who will run the business - we like to create it (dreamers and doers).

- Where does one start? Jonathan wants to start with the minds of the owners.

- We just build things... we don't even stop to try to sell them. We love the building process.

- Steve seems to be the creative type and the organizer type.

- Mixing and blending the persons and personalities - we need all of the players.

- We are trying to create a community.

- Analogy of the bee hive... well, if we have a hive, we may need a queen bee, a tree, and some flowers - we need all of the pieces.

- Steve loves to recruit talent and skills.

- Business philosophy and playing the game.

- Jonathan sees, as far as what we offer: stacked valuable services upon other valuable services.

/////////////////// challenges for Steve and I

1. Use more of Jonathan's time
2. Take a personality test from 16 personalities - Try it in different moods, happy, sad, tired, stressed, etc.
3. Trying to align to business principles
4. Steve and I, discuss some of our known disfunctions - see other notes - search for the key word rejecting

Steve was leading out on the morning meeting today. Both Dustin and Danny checked in briefly. After they were done, Steve and I spent over an hour chatting and talking about direction and options. We had an assignment from a business consultant to talk about a some disfunctions (places that need work). We spent some time and worked on one area. The disfunction area was rejecting structure. There are about five areas that we will end up looking into.

See attached for some notes. The main take away was we need to keep going and doing what we are doing. We would love to focus more on the adilas café ideas and concepts as well as opening up the market to allow our power users to help staff that part of the puzzle (buying and selling services - part of the adilas marketplace). The other topic that we talked about was employees and employers. Steve really likes the idea of the dependables and keeping a small core team of independents that can run and manage themselves.

Steve and I were going to be meeting with Kelly, but she ended up getting delayed while traveling and security in the airport. We ended up having our own little meeting. Good stuff. Here are a few of the notes from what we were talking about:

- Businesses need all of the deep functionality, they just want it as hidden as possible. Smooth and pretty just feels better, even if it does do as much.

- What if we keep flipping our model? What we mean here is... as a client or a rep keeps asking for more and more, what if we help direct them in such a way that we can get it done? This could be done by meeting with them, planning out what needs to be changed, offering solutions, listening, and taking down notes. Lots of possible options and then we gain from the source vs being pushed away from the source.

- Steve and I talked about the concepts that we are built on vs the code we are built on. Straight up, the concepts that we have built on are 100 times more valuable than the code that we have built on. Our code set is 1 of 1,000's of possible solutions. However, the main core concepts, those will need to be used every single time that someone does what we are doing. Even though you can touch some of the concepts, there is huge value there.

- We were talking about ways to get funding and the down sides to that. We talked about getting overextended and having huge amounts of debt. That is no fun either. Other talks about possible funding sources such as: grants, selling our services, getting partners, investors, loans, venture capital, donations, and leveraging other assets.

- MVP - minimal viable plan (the p could be plan, product, etc.) - I like the plan option for what we are doing and working on.

- What about the adilas marketplace (adilas world)? Lots of options out there as well.

- Everything that we see is fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces. Development process, permissions, settings, servers, API sockets, single tools vs bulk tools, tracking needs, etc. Fracture is the key word. Kinda like "Legos". We may need some blue ones, red ones, and some yellow ones. It just keeps going and breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces.

- Business management and who will take care of what

- Pain and virtual bleeding sometimes help to drive us towards change

- Somewhat of an open source type model

- What is our direction and our pace? Pick a direction and then let it grow. In some ways, it feels like we pick a direction and then plant the seeds, then in a day or so, we dig it up to see how it is doing. I think we need to pick a direction and let it grow a bit.

- Our model has always been slow and steady...

- We are only able to move forward as we get funding - we get funding from...
>> Reoccurring revenue
>> One time services
>> Seed money
>> Donations and other sources

- We are stable currently

- 3 things...
>> Look at what we have - deep, deep
>> We are building daily - progression
>> We help you by bringing value - multiple ways
-->> Low cost for what you want
-->> You are able to move the system in the way that you want it - allow custom

- Maybe make it known what we are spending on new functionality and R&D

- This is who we are... we are who we are and we plan on maintaining that

- We need to take things with a grain of salt

- Our current direction is directing projects over to one main source (Cory) and then diving things out from there - a director of development operations - Steve and I have decided that we will let this play out for awhile before making a major change or shift.

- Walls and helping to sterilizing things - getting some separation

- Like an essay - tell them what you are going to tell them (prep), then tell them (main content), and tell them what you told them (conclusion)

- You can do that? or You can do that! - We love it!

- We have a team that helps and supports us... that is huge

- We, as a company, need to have our clients get in line. Sometimes we give preferences and special treatment. We need to help standardize things.

- As a skill, we have people saying that they are proficient in adilas as a skill set. Pretty cool.

- Constant development and pushing the ball forward. We are building and refining every day. Keep it going!

When I got on the call, Steve and Sean were already talking about sales. Sean said that as he was calling some our clients, they wanted an easy way to add multiple things at once to a PO. Basically an add bulk option. For example: Say you were adding in bowling balls and you entered the main bowling ball product name. It may show you the 6 pound balls, the 8 pound balls, and the 10 pound balls. Currently, you have to click on one and say - I got 3 of these. You then have to do the search again and click on the next ball and add those. They would like to be able to add multiple values at once.

As a side note, there has been mentioned earlier, options for PO's to be like a reverse shopping cart for PO's. Currently, the shopping cart allows for a simple search and multiple items may be added to the cart at once. We would love to make something similar for PO's. Just another request for such a feature.

The guys were talking about internal funding options and even selling some of the code and development for certain business verticals. Say for instance WanderWays (camp adilas). We have already put in $60K+ on that project. If we wanted to, we could virtually sell all of that prep work and R&D and then let someone else run with it. Basically, a way of pioneering ideas and concepts and then finding good owners for those pieces. All part of an adilas core platform and virtual ecosystem that rides on top of the business platform. Fun ideas and exploring.

As a side note, we keep talking about "fracture" as an upcoming project for adilas. In a way, it is already happening. Maybe we just need to keep letting it happen and help it along the way with some loving guidance with little tweaks here and there to make sure it fractures like we want it to. Just for fun, I have a post-it note on my desk with a date of 6/22/17 with a statement from Steve about fracture. He said that it might be a fun business name. Over three years later... it is already starting to happen. I'm also excited about the other ideas that we've been gathering up over the past months and years that go along with that. Good stuff.

Later on in the conversation, we started talking about checks and balances. We drew out a model with the US government and the three branches (legislative, judiciary, and executive) and talked about how they help to run checks and balances on each other. We, at adilas, would love to have some pieces in place that did similar things. They could run independently of each other but could also provide some checks and balances to each other. That would be really cool. Just for fun, see attached for a quick screenshot. We are still figuring out the adilas side of things, but we liked the concept.

We also talked about core pieces, outside 3rd party solutions, and inside 3rd party solutions (hybrids). Lots of options. Eventually everything that we have has to interact with the core or main platform. That's where we need to focus and put the correct checks and balances in place.

Dealing with sales, Steve and Sean were talking about Danny wanting to get CPA's (certified public accountants) on board and pitching our services. If a company gets help from their CPA, gets tax help, tax prep, and other consulting, it makes our product more sticky (in a good way). Fun discussion and conversation.

Going back to the adilas checks and balances, we offer a ton of different services. In a way, all of those services could fit under the adilas marketplace. That's not a for sure, but we wanted to record the idea.

The last concept we were talking about was the system core and platform and how we could virtually design what verticals go on that platform. As they get developed and designed out, we could find people (other businesses) that wanted to run those business verticals. If anything went wrong or whatever, we could always buy them back and run them from our internal teams. Lots of options. In a way, we help people and companies to build and run their own white labels. We have developers, a huge dynamic platform, and tons of other services. We also allow others to build their dreams and run it on our platform. Lots of options to mix and blend.

Shannon and I jumped on our normal Tuesday meeting. Right as we started, we got a call from Russell and he wanted to show someone the things he was working on. Basically, a small breakthrough on his current project and just wanted an audience to bounce ideas off of. So, we invited him in to our meeting. As a side note, Shannon, Russell, and I are all brothers and sisters.

Anyways, Russell started showing us some of the new help file options that he is working on. The older system had one help file per page as a whole. Nothing super special and very much a set static page. Some of the new code that Russell is working on is a way to break the help files up into sections and dynamically make them popup and be more consumable. It also offers new options to put in business vertical, industry, or even corporation specific help options. All of the new stuff is there, hidden, but showable on demand without much effort. Light approach on the education mode that Jonathan Wells introduced in some of his prototype demos for the fracture project. Great stuff.

We ended up bouncing all over the place with Shannon, Russell, and I for the meeting. Here are some other notes:

- Help files can seem like a mountain of info... what if we could take those mountains and break them up in to smaller ice bergs of information. Once again, make it more consumable and a nicer presentation.

- Help files could be expanded into courses, videos, quick ticks, settings, and other help or education material. Don't limit yourself to just a plain old help file.

- Russell is prepping and paving the road for where we want to go and who we want to be. Some of that prep work will need others to help fill in the gaps but the virtual roads and ways will already be built. That's fun to think about.

- After Russell was done with his demo on new help files and options for helper sections, we switched and I pitched a few of the concepts that Steve, Sean, and I were talking about earlier today. See this element of time for those notes.

- Switching over to the adilas core platform concept (pretend that you have a floating platform that is supported by the adilas core - different businesses, industry specific options, modules, tools, features, and a virtual city with different buildings and structures resides on the floating platform)... Russell had a number of comments on this subject. He was going so fast that I couldn't catch everything. I should have recorded it. He has some great insight on this topic. Here is what I caught.

- If playing on the platform, what are my boundaries? What are the rules? How do I play? and What will all of this cost? These were questions that Russell wants to know and others who want to play will also want to know. A good starting place.

- Are there maintenance fees? commissions (possibly both ways), license fees, server fees, etc.? Put out and post all the specs that you can - help to sell it as a service. SaaS - software as a services and PaaS - platform as a service type models and mixing the two of them.

- If someone makes their own module, we would love them to be able resale it and/or offer it to others. Once again, what are the rules?

- Imagine being able to quickly choose from modules to build a custom or industry specific tool very easily. That would be awesome.

- What about getting a portion or percent of earnings for using the adilas platform? Just a thought.

- We need to charge based off the components that we offer and what they use. Be able to pass on certain client costs directly to our clients.

- What if there was a certain fee to get in there and play? This could be a service type contract or whatever. Just spitting out ideas right now.

- Back to rules and costs for certain things... servers, domain names, databases, storage, files, images, scans, documents and files, throughput, API socket calls, different modules, components, other pass along charges, 3rd party prices, etc. List it out.

- We could make it profitable by building it, supporting it, selling it, or even pitching it. Lots of options.

- We could also offer other services (virtual marketplace of services). One of which could be consulting for other companies.

- This is a side note, but we have said over and over again, that the services that are needed are more than 10 times the value of the actual product (adilas software). Whoever owns and/or participates in that part of the puzzle will be doing well. Just a small side note.

- If we build it correctly and publicize it correctly, people will come to us and say... Can I do this or that? I want to play.

- It came back to being able to make the application into quick plug and play modules that could interconnect, interact, and turned on/off very easily.

- We talked about pitching ideas... in multiple directions. People pitching us ideas and we, as a company, pitching ideas their way.

- We want really generic tools that may be mixed and blended as needed. Yet, being generic, you could also put a spin or small tweak on it to make it custom in a heartbeat. Quick and dirty changes.

- Help others realize their dreams. Have the ecosystem ready for those dreams to be built and realized. Russell kept saying, people will come to us, once they realize what they can do.

- Speaking about frameworks, conventions, and prepping for growth in different areas. Make it easy, pretty, and powerful. Prep the way...

- Endless possibilities, being able to mix and match to get the perfect flow or perfect mix of tech, ease, and power.

- If we open up our model, we could potentially even buy some of our clients products and pieces if we see merit, need, or wants. Open model.

- Both internal and external modules need to be able to play together.

- We did talk some about IP (intellectual property) and who owns what. It all needs to be spelled out in the rules and how you play the game.

- Think of Legos (kid's (big and small) building blocks - that interconnect) - We may need to make certain things opensource and standard plug-and-play type technology.

- Small talks about limiting and protecting our clients. We may certain limits in order to protect all parties. No limits sounds awesome, but that usually means that someone will abuse things and possibly harm other players. We also talked about ownership and other intellectual property stuff here as well.

- Just some ideas for core pieces that we, as a company, may want to bring up... adilas core, adilas platform, adilas shop (development), adilas services, adilas market, adilas university, etc. "See a need, fill a need" - Robots the animated movie.

As a funny side note... Russell was talking and I was scribbling notes as fast as I could. Front and back of multiple post-it notes. We may want to record the next session, Russell has some great ideas along these lines. Fun.

Today's subject was the adilas market (adilas world) and how to break down the doors and get in there. Russell and Nick built it, the adilas market or marketplace, years ago and we didn't have any documentation on it. Bryan and I went in there and were virtually backwards engineering things and figuring it out. We made some great progress without breaking anything, that was awesome. Anyways, we made a few changes and both of us know how to get in there now. We will keep refining that process so that it will be even more usable in the future.

We spent some time talking about custom code jobs and how things need to flow. We talked about old models and where we are headed with some of our new things and new models (where we are going). Good conversation. I asked Bryan to write me an email with some pros and cons of the different models (old fully independent and newer all under the adilas roof or umbrella model). Just trying to get some feedback and insight on rules and who is looking for what.

At the end, we talked briefly about some of the upcoming agile and scrum sprints that we are planning. Bryan is open to the changes and very interested in learning along the way. That is great.

Bryan and I working through a number of smaller questions. We checked out some cfqueryparams, uploading images for adilas marketplace, and talking about upcoming scrum sprint and some database work that is needed. All over the place but hopefully helpful.

I was also doing some research on git (code repository stuff) and how to go backwards in time to virtually undo certain code commits. Light research online. After Bryan left, I did some small updates to links for the adilas market and small updates on the adilas university professional profile inside the marketplace.

Thinking about different angles - What is most important right now? How can we change patterns? What have we learned from the past (retrospective reviews)? What could we do differently?

I on purpose stepped away from my computer, I tend to get drawn in if I stay at the computer, to try to think of different ways and angles to approach and try. I was doing some household work (cutting and splitting wood for the winter) and thinking of different ways of doing things. Sometimes I do my best thinking, when I'm doing something else that doesn't require the normal amount of focus (still active, but somewhat mindless work).

Anyways, I'm only going to record an hour, but it was way more than that. I also did some similar brainstorming a couple of days ago on the 19th (11/19/21) and needed a place to put some of my notes. See attached for a quick scan of my scribbled down notes. These notes are from the 19th, but fit in with what I was thinking about and brainstorming about. Most of these are just "what if's" but fun to think about.

- What if we used adilas to help sell adilas? What if a marketing option would be, find a company that needed some help (either getting started or moving forward) and then offered the adilas product as a service to help them get going in a good direction. If they needed some funding, use an arm of adilas to help with funding. Set them up for success, and help them get training, consulting, and even custom code to make their business a success. Once again, just ideas, but what if you set them up in such a way, using adilas and even marketing dollars, they are successful. If they use adilas and are successful, they most likely will stay with adilas as their software choice. That is one of the main reasons for this venture.

- This is part of a bigger plan. Call it client acquisition costs. Set a budget and then go for it.

- Setup a funding company to help people realize their dreams

- Use adilas as the software for the backend of the funding company as well as the primary software for the companies that are being setup - the adilas piece and using it, is the key

- Setup weekly check-ins with the client (companies that are being funded)

- Pay for adilas (monthly), any training, custom work, consulting - all using the funds that were loaned - in a roundabout way, using other people's money to fund your product or business

- Business consultant that helps them out - external person for their team

- Help make budget and plans, provide resources as needed

- Provide some kind of incentive or ownership deal (depending on how things were structured and initial or original ownership) - For example, if they turn a profit, do some kind of kickback plan. Maybe setup a 5 year or certain percentage per year type plan for profitable business and good management of the business

- Don't give all the money at once - allowance per month - a budgeted credit line - additional funds available as needed

- Adilas could really be a huge key... make sure that the company has someone to help run the numbers and do the adilas work - internal, sub contracted, assigned, or some other arrangement

- If they use adilas and are successful, they most likely will stay with adilas. That is one of the main reasons for this little venture. Providing good products and services and helping businesses succeed. Let it keep going in a perpetual cycle.

- There are tons of other notes about the adilas market and ecommerce marketplace in the adilas, developer's notebook. There was a guy by the name of Todd that gave us some good ideas but we were able to get to them at the time. They deal with a adilas cafe level market or adilas marketplace of sorts. Click here to see some of those notes.

- Once again, just some ideas... but the real key is adilas (as a platform, application, and product) could be the biggest key to making something like this happen and succeed. That is pretty cool! There is a value there!

Small little sales meeting this morning. I started out and was pitching some ideas for selling our services (and backend application) as part of the adilas marketplace. We have so much to offer. We could sell products, services, events, bookings, registrations, etc. We talked a bunch about the need for easy merchant processing and I was pitching ideas about what if adilas was able to do an eBay or amazon level market where we could help sell goods and services for others.

We could setup one special merchant account (a whole other business or part of a business) and then allow our clients to use that global merchant account. Not directly, but through our adilas marketplace. Everything would have to be tracked through the marketplace. Basically, end up being the marketplace for them (like eBay or Amazon). We would call it the adilas marketplace or whatever else we decide. All of the monies would go into the adilas marketplace account and then we would redistribute those monies and funds to the correct places (corporations or businesses that use our marketplace). We could flag and tag and track all of those sales and transactions. Piece of cake.

We could either charge them to be part of the marketplace or charge a small service fee to help make everything flow well together. We are really good at tracking things and being able to fully show all of the details. I think that we could totally do it, I'm just not sure if we are ready for that step or not. Anyways, I spent over half an hour with the guys drawing, pitching things, and letting them ask questions. Steve liked some of the ideas and said that we would need to really think through things a little bit deeper. I agree, but it does have potential. Later in the meeting, he also mentioned that maybe we could use Expo or something like that as an intermediate or intermediator type company. They could handle all of the merchant processing and/or clearing of accounts and funds and we could be the software side of things. Some good ideas. Steve said that he would talk with Mike about some possible options.

There was also some consideration given to being able to quickly have each merchant setup their own merchant account (quickly) and then we wouldn't have to deal with all of the liabilities. We just need a way to figure out how to check all of the boxes. We already offer corporation specific systems, multi-locations, multi-tenant applications, ecommerce, merchant processing, photo galleries, paperwork, forms, web pages, etc. A quick marketplace would just be another checkbox that we could check off and offer the full roundtrip service package.

More research is required, but it was some fun ideas and discussions. After I finished, the other guys did their daily check-in stuff. We also got into conversations about site translations and translators, into different languages. The other topic of discussion was dealing with other possible companies to get involved with to create a cyntergy on pushing our products and services. Sharing and dividing the load a bit.

Here is some more links to some ideas on the adilas market or adilas marketplace:
- Element of time # 667 - meeting with a client on ideas
- More research on the adilas market
- Link to existing web page - other possible options

Back to the main index for the master adilas plan

Master Adilas Plan - Jellyfish Model

Brainstorming Ideas and Topics:

- How big do you want to be? – See also the internal questionnaire responses and survey - tons of good info there - almost a mini plan by itself. Also, question 7 on the survey has a whole write up on the adilas jellyfish or jelly fish model and explains it further.

- The adilas jellyfish model - see attached - covers almost all of the departments and sub sections of what we are trying to be as a company. It is not the main product, but more of our internal and external departments, areas, and general areas that we will keep refining and working on.

- Possible numbers for the jellyfish model. Going from top to bottom and from left to right.
1. adilas.biz
2. Admin
3. Monthly Reoccurring Service
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Setup & Training
6. Tech Support
7. Design
8. Custom Code
9. Consulting
10. R&D
11. Project Management
12. Internal Development & Maintenance
13. Adilas University
14. Adilas Marketplace
15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World
16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

Areas, sections, and departments in more detail:

** for me - go deeper into each section **

1. adilas.biz

• Are we going to stay the same entity? Are we the same or are we different entities? Are we rebranding? Are we piggybacking?
• What version are we on?
• Adilas.biz or adilas lite? Branding? Marketing? etc.
• The thing that keeps us all together is the reoccurring monthly services subscription for the main adilas.biz system. It has been the glue that keeps us together.
• Offering upgrades from ship A (current adilas) to ship B (fracture or adilas lite)
• What are our goals for ship A? What are our goals for ship B? Are we building it up to sell it? Are we going to be replacing ship A? How do you transition between the two.
• We want to make our current product better. It then grew into a full or bigger rewrite. It seems to be changing more and more. Originally, it was pretty small changes.
• Timelines to get things done? What will it take?
• Ship A will be great salespeople for ship B, once ready.
• If people change from ship A to ship B, there needs to be an increase or at least a re-evaluation of monthly fees and services.
• Ship B, we are planning for tiered pricing and dynamic billing based on functions, sizes, usage, storage, and preset packages.
• Ship B, they can toggle on/off different settings, include other features, and change what they want. All of this will reflect on dynamic billing options.
• Talking about future plans - selling it, royalties, secession, retirement, etc.

2. Admin

• The admin's role is to manage the budget, make decisions as to the direction that we need to go, do HR type functions, payroll, manage the different groups and departments, communication channels, general running of the day to day business.
• This could be one person, multiple people, a board, a council, etc. Somebody or some entity needs to be in control.
• Co-owners, Co-Founders, CEO's, presidents, vice-presidents, board members, etc. We can figure that out.
• If we do one person, we need to have VP's or managers in the other departments.
• One of our problems is that none of us (on the current team) want to be that person or take on this whole responsibility.

3. Monthly Reoccurring Service - aka Billing (new name)

• This is billing, invoicing, receiving, dealing with monies coming in and reaching out to our clients.
• Accounts receivables
• This could be tied in with admin roles
• Debt collection, bad debt, accounting, financials, etc.
• Setting up new corps (currently) and sending welcome emails and collecting business contact info.
• Bank reconciliation, paying bills, prep the budget info, etc.
• We could automate some of this, in the future.

4. Sales & Marketing

• We like that they are together. This is anything to generate and keep new clients to keep coming in and paying for our services. This could be publicity, knowledge about the system, get new demos, entice our clients to buy and keep buying from us. Serving their needs.
• Currently, the main method of marketing is word of mouth and referrals.
• We have used sales reps, consultants, and light networking. Steve and Kelly have been some of our biggest sales type people.
• We want to listen to what feedback they are bringing back. Currently, the sales people and the developers almost live in two different places.
• Sales should have a good pulse on what is working, what is not working, and what people and our clients are asking for. We tend to get lots of good ideas from clients. Sometimes, what that takes or the priority, that can get tricky.
• How big do we want to be? Get everybody or get enough (sufficient)? Keep pushing into other markets or be content with good ROI?
• Helping with market research, looking around and checking out markets, and what do we need to do to penetrate those markets?
• We almost feel like being in no man's land - too big for just a few people to push on it, not quite big enough to really have the team that we need to push it. Do we push and go bigger? Or do we trim down and keep it like it is (not really coasting but strategically developing as we can)? There are associated questions about speed, reliability, and uptime.
• Along with sales and marketing, there are expectations that are set and keep changing (trends and expectations).
• We need to know who we are servicing. Currently, we are kind of all over the place. We have little accounts, medium accounts, and some big accounts. We could go any direction. We just need to decide. Where is the sweet spot?
• If we want to be big and grand, we will need some major funding and thus major sales and marketing. Or do we figure out the sweet spot and really refine and focus in on things.
• Making things more stable and more reliable. Keep improving.
• We have a lot to offer - no one has even heard of us.
• The new and upcoming business owners are going to be fully connected and have certain expectations. If you want to get those guys/gals, you're going to have to revamp things.
• Our current mix is very developer heavy. We really need to switch that focus and get things that people want. Easy, Powerful, and Pretty!
• We need this department to really keep us in the know on what is going on. Currently, we don't have anyone fully dedicated or assigned to this department. We've been missing this piece.

5. Setup & Training

• Originally, we didn't charge for any of this. We just wanted people to get on our system. We are now charging for this and even trying to presale some of the training, deployment, and setup stuff. We are finding and have found, that people who get setup correctly and have the correct amount of training stay longer on our system. It has a learning curve, and that proper setup and training goes a long way.
• Currently, one of our system admin persons has to go in and create the corp, do a bunch of the settings, assign the master users, setup the logos and colors, and get them going. Most of that requires someone from our team to hold their hand along that process.
• Futuristically, we really want to help automate a bunch of that. Have them setup their own corp, let them pick what industries they want to play into, help them with their settings (wizard style), and then even help them pull in their data (without any other involvement). Let them create a test account or a free version, play around, and then either upgrade or get some help.
• Offer services to help our clients. Also have a number of self-help tools and features to let them do it themselves.
• We would love to develop a number of preset packages and industry specific skins.
• We would like the setup and training to be coupled with education and the adilas university side of things. They are very related.
• Getting products, customers, vendors, and other info into the system easily. Currently, we have to do a bunch of that (data imports) on a one-by-one basis. We need to make that more global and self-help level.
• Provide a good starting point to help them succeed. Show them the benefits and advantages of doing it our way or how we help them succeed.
• This department or division could include the adilas university, training, tech support, setup, and training.
• Easy access to get help and direction if needed.
• We see a lot of user error type problems. Figure out ways of helping them stay in their lane better or put up guardrails or bumpers to keep them on track.
• It has only been recently that we have added more focus on the setup, deployment, and training.
• This department could also include on-going training and retention. That is huge. Things constantly keep changing and we keep adding on new features.

6. Tech Support

• Currently, we allow people to email or call for tech support. It's free but often bleeds over into full on training, not tech support.
• We could build out a report a bug or open up a ticket or an issue. Make it easier to get support.
• We could provide better help files, tips, how-to's, videos, tutorials, and in-person training events.
• Everybody uses the system so differently, that makes it kind of tough. It would be nice if we have tech support stuff that was industry specific or catered to a specific industry.
• Tech support really should be part of the training, setup, and deployment stuff.
• Tech support could be a small carrot for deeper training and/or offering other paid services.
• Helping to show the value of deeper training and education.
• Having a standard way of getting to training and even industry specific training.
• Offer some adilas university training courses - covering various subjects on scheduled dates/times.
• Really helping to push the training and education stuff. Tech support should be quick, temporary, and non reoccurring. Show them the benefits of getting properly trained.
• As we move forward, we are planning on simplifying things. That should help with the training needs and the tech support stuff. Helping them figure it out on their own.
• If people (our clients) really want more tech support, we could offer more robust or advanced support packages.

7. Design

• This could be websites, forms, reports, interfaces, dashboards, UI/UX (user interfaces and user experience). This is the pretty and easy part of it. The powerful may be from a feature or backend process.
• Most of our current guys are developers, not designers.
• We don't charge enough, as such, we tend to skimp on the design phases and processes. This tends to get skipped or minimalized.
• We tend to do function over form - however, most clients say that they want function over form, but really, they want form over function - they want it to work and look pretty.
• Our project management tends to be a simple one liner. Do such and such. No other plans, requirements, mock-ups, or fixed specs exist.
• Mock-ups, prototypes, samples, wireframes, flow charts, graphics, videos, etc. We want to show the plan, air it out, and then build to the specs.
• Modern look and feel and user experience keeps changing. We need someone to keep watching and keeping up with trends, expectations, and options. This needs to be monitored and maintained regularly.
• Figuring out and sticking to a style guide. We do have a section called the "adilas docs". We have been working on it, but it has not been fully adopted yet. We need to set those standards and then stick to it. This is our style guide, and we are sticking to it.
• Doing some test cases and getting user/client feedback. How did their experience work out and what did we learn from that?
• Planning in maintenance and upkeep.
• Our clients squawk at things not being consistent. I don't mind change but I don't like some change and other things not being consistent. We could also introduce settings.
• We could allow the users, or corporations, to choose their default layouts. Horizontal forms, vertical forms, stacked forms, or auto formatted. We also want to store those settings and allow them to change it on the fly on per user basis.
• We need some consistency - this deals with who the designer is, what we are designing and outputting, people's preferences and opinions, and where we are heading. We can all be different, but we need to be consistent.
• Allow people to try things out and/or fully switch over.
• There is a point when we need to keep moving forward so we don't have to keep supporting all of the older styles and themes. Help make that as smooth as possible.
• We have some needs for design work out in ecommerce, customer facing sites, portals, and even business websites or web presence stuff.
• We need designers to help with marketing and social media stuff. Once again, consistency, specific plans, strategic campaigns, etc.

8. Custom Code

• This is one of the things that really sets us apart from other systems. We love it and even encourage it.
• We currently have tons of black box options. That was a solution at the time. There are some great concepts there (black box stuff) but we did run into problems.
• The code base keeps changing. We have had people ask for things, we build it custom for them and then wrap back and make it standard. The ones who got the custom version are now off on their own vs being fully integrated into the main codebase.
• We offer a lot of this. Having said that, we don't charge enough.
• We would like to move as much as possible to data driven settings and permissions.
• One of our current issues in maintainability. If it was on the side (like a black box page) it got left behind. The main pages always got updated but anything custom was harder to test, and harder to main it.
• If we do custom code, we need to build in some maintenance costs to help maintain that.
• We could do a community type approach - who ever helps build it out, gets a commission or a usage fee for others using it. Kinda like a sponsorship or something. We just need to get enough to plan it out, build it out, test it, market it, and then do some sort of kickback or reoccurring usage fee. There may be different levels  - one-time, reoccurring, built in, full one-off custom code, settings, combined projects (we pay, they pay, we then get to use it).
• Custom code should be by our internal developers and internal development team. We need to make sure that it works and doesn't affect something else.
• We have had some maintenance issues. Who made it, what does it do, how does it work, what does it touch, what else does it touch up/down stream, where does it live, how can you get to it, and was there any planning or testing done to the custom code? Tons of potential far reaching questions.
• If we build something... we really need to get an ROI and market those pieces.
• We could do some pay as you go build outs. Monthly fees that get added to their bill. They could pay upfront and then get a payment plan, or set it up on a reoccurring basis, or whatever.
• We need to charge enough. We often shoot ourselves in the foot. We charge pennies to build on top of multi-million dollar platforms and applications.
• We need good planning, good project management, good estimates, and then good developing.
• Estimates - take what you think it will take and double it. Then double that. It's almost a 4x ratio. By the time you add the work to get the work, the work before the work, the work, the work in between the work, the work after the work. It all plays in.
• Paying for both quality and speed.
• On the estimates, we also need to think about opportunity costs and what are we not working on, while doing custom code work.
• Approving custom code. Just because someone wants it... doesn't mean we should build it out. How does it fit with our mission statement, goals, and overarching plans and rollouts?

9. Consulting

• Byproduct of the main reoccurring business services. Once we are in, the system starts generating byproducts and people need to know what is next, how to do certain things, where they could go, options, next steps, phases, etc.
• We haven't really tapped into this yet. We do it, but we could do it so much more.
• This could be tied into the training, setup, and education stuff. Teaching our clients the best way to use the system to get the most out of the system or platform.
• You start getting into paying for knowledge and experience and expertise.
• We have seen many of our power-users become consultants. They know the system, they know how to make it run, sing, dance, and play. That provides a value to others. Those people then offer their expertise and know how to help others.
• Currently, some of this is done on the side. Adilas has no part in it, and no kickback exits. We would love to bring this more inside but that takes money to keep those people on call or on staff.
• This could be a great thing to add to the adilas marketplace.
• We may allow some outside stuff to go on, but we need some rules. We could configure this any way we want, we just need some rules.
• This could be part of the adilas cafe scenario - our clients seeking out a professional to help them out.
• Do we want to manage this internally? What would that look like? Once again, we may need some rules here.

10. R&D

• Research and Development - You have to spend time here to move the ball forward. If you aren't going to move forward, nothing will happen, you will live and die. You have to keep up, especially with tech stuff.
• Exploring different avenues - there are costs for exploring.
• Cutting edge, bleeding edge, sweet spot, new ish, or older/classic?
• How much does it cost to be on that cutting edge?
• Vision, plans, and looking to the future. Where are we/you heading? Plans, how are you going to get there?
• It really comes down to where do you want to play (on the spectrum)?
• Training what is new.
• Maintenance for what was or has been developed. Technical debt.
• Stable and known or less stable and new - How quick will the older pieces change and/or be deprecated? If it's so new, it may not even stick.
• We make things and then it sits on a shelf. That hurts. There could be difference between development that didn't get fully funded vs totally new prototyping and experimenting.
• Is this something we should do? On not? Figuring out what it takes to make something happen.
• Looking into speed, efficiency, demand, cost analysis, needs analysis, scope, scale, and reality of doing certain things.
• Beta testing, prototypes, experiments, testing, pushing boundaries.
• Currently some of our R&D is mixed in with our code. We try things to see if it works. Without being consistent with other pages and code. We often have good intentions (prepping for the future - mini stubs or prepping for stuff) but then get pulled on to other projects. We do a lot of experimenting within our projects. Almost a revolving door or revolving code set. Basically, a fully working, living prototype.
• We are seeing a mix between custom code, R&D, and project management.
• Back tracing or reverse engineering things. Sometimes if you know what you want, you can then figure out a way to get there, that might be easier or better.
• Being aware of what's out there? How could I use some of that in my projects?

11. Project Management

• We have really been missing this piece. We do a ton of just in time project management. We are not very good at doing a more full design, plan, or architecture type layout.
• We do a lot of this one-on-one right now. One project and one developer.
• The project manager can and does act as the shield between the client and the developer. Buying some time or deflecting decisions.
• They help with quotes, estimates, and project specs, scope, costs, timelines, and details. Lots of potential back and forth communication is needed.
• We have spent a ton of time and money going back and fixing things that should have been planned out originally. We have also spent money where a developer makes a decision and just does something and doesn't ask or doesn't get any clarification.
• Teams - authority, accountability, and responsibilities - setting up clear expectations. We have played around here a bit. We need to refine things here a bit, based on our needs. We had some people who were so worried about how to do scrum that it didn't actually happen. We also had some problems with free riders. We want to use some small teams, but still need to get it refined a bit better.
• Dealing with teams, we were trying to do some training... and we didn't really have it all defined. Wasted time in meetings, talking about code, and what is needed. We then fall down based on assumptions or just verbal communication. It needs to be just a little bit deeper and more consistent.
• Team sizes and dynamics.
• As a project manager, not assigning yourself to a required task. Actually, make an assignment to do the project management.
• Someone needs to be available and be the virtual babysitter. Getting rid of hurdles and what is expected of them. Helping them stay on task/track. The project manager's job to help other people succeed.
• Slowdown
• We build and build and build... we need to slow down and test it, train on it, market it, and push it.
• Being able to plan it out so that we can reuse as much code as possible. Giving the developers guidelines, handrails, samples, and good instructions. If it's too tight, they don't want to do it (it takes out the fun of figuring it out). Figure out what developer needs what (how detailed) and then play accordingly. Developers need to accomplish something. Not just follow A-Z and you're done. It is a mix and a spectrum.

12. Internal Development & Maintenance

• This internally funded by adilas to work on adilas. This comes from revenue and budgets to keep the system up and running.
• Bug fixes, maintenance, changes, next steps, phases, testing, documentation, code review, etc.
• This needs to be tied into project management and custom code.
• This is the most defined area that we have inside of adilas.
• We get a plan from project management, we then build it out, test it, deploy it, and make sure that it works.
• We have had problems with guys following style guides. Everybody has their own ideas on what a good style guide is. This could be whitespace in code, tabs, naming conventions, etc. It also happens on the look and feel part of page or report.
• Alan had the idea of having a way of helping to force or standardize the output. Almost a forced style guide or validator of sorts. It all has to comply to a certain standard. Whitespace, naming conventions, comments, indents, variable names, components, etc.
• Keeping things separated - backend, database, objects, services, views, logic, functions, classes, etc.
• In object-oriented programming, you need good encapsulation (only contains what is needed) and low coupling (lower number of steps as possible).
• There is some great value in teams and getting different points of view. A better solution because we worked on it as a team. More well-rounded.

13. Adilas University

• This goes hand in hand with the training and deployment section. This is the training arm of the system. It may also tie in with tech support or consulting. We could combine some of this as needed. Similar type people and knowledge resources.
• General topics for training - One, how do you use the system? Two, how do you run your business? Consulting is a part of this as well - what are the best business practices and how to get the most out of the system.
• There could be standard stuff, custom stuff, and internal stuff.
• Each page would have how to videos, quick videos, and options for more or deeper training.
• We also need to offer some custom or live training events.
• For fracture, we experimented with a thing called the education mode. You could turn it on/off and the system would hide or show more options and information. You could turn it on from any page and all of sudden it would react differently. We have some great screenshots on this from Jonathan Wells. Along with this, the help files could be shown, side-by-side with the page that they are referencing. There were also options to toggle into the actual adilas university site as a tab withing the side-by-side help window.
• There is a known missing gap here on the education and training side of things.
• There could be free levels, basic stuff, and deeper more paid type levels of training and consulting.
• There could also be certification levels, requirements, status, and other testing and certification stuff.
• We are hoping that the adilas lite and fracture project will make it even easier to help train the users and because they can tweak everything, there will actually be less of a need for certain pieces of the education and training. They will still be there, just hidden as needed.
• This could be a whole other business entity, if needed.
• A new user really wants to be guided through - holding their hand. An advanced user may not want any of that stuff in their way, just let them do it quickly.
• Link to this from the adilas cafe.
• If we do certifications, maybe show or allow some of that basic info to show to other users, if they are seeking trained professionals to help them out.
• If we have trained users, those become a value to others who are looking for help or pros on those topics.
• Adilas University could be a stand-alone product, or it could be interwoven with the entire site. Both have the same content, they just either have a standalone navigation system or we help navigate for them based on what page the users are on (context stuff).
• There could be levels to the training... Think of a triangle - simple, basic, intermediate, advanced, and deep or backend logic or design level stuff.
• There may be both external and internal training pieces. Along with that, we may have to have permissions or something that open/closes those training modules for certain people or parties.

14. Adilas Marketplace

• Part of the adilas cafe. People could sell their products and services, buy products and services. Including adilas skills and other professional skills.
• Adilas creates lots of byproducts. This is a way to help harness and gather up those byproducts. 
• Options for 3rd party solutions, white labeling, advertising, marketing, etc.
• Online mini marketplace for adilas products and/or our users could sell their products and services on a mini Amazon or eBay type level (mini consignment type shop built for our users and companies that use our products).
• Possible payment solutions with interest, fees, commissions, and other small kickbacks for using the marketplace.
• Limitless potential for other byproducts and additional services that could be added on to this piece of the puzzle.
• This may need a separate team to help run, manage, and administer this piece of the puzzle. Automate as much as possible.
• Here is a rough draft - Russell did - way back - don't get stuck here... It could be so much more. Adilas Market

15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World

• A landing spot outside of any corporation or entity.
• A corp selector - where can I go (have permissions or access)?
• Get to the marketplace type stuff.
• Get to the adilas university stuff.
• Forum type stuff - ask Q&A type stuff. This could be answered by staff and/or other users. This would need a moderator or forum manager.
• Let people show that they have the skills that others (businesses and/or individuals) could be looking for. This may include direct messaging or some other way of communicating.
• White labeling options.
• Standardized portal - single sign in be able to jump between servers and corporations.
• Dynamic billing and making payments.
• Mini marketplace for adilas products.
• Sales and creation of new accounts - tiered pricing and auto setup options
• News and updates - configure news feed as needed.
• Interface with other companies and corporations. Get assigned, hub type model.
• Work, play (demo sites), buy, sell, training, social stuff, and participate.

16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

• This is the whole backend of the application or hardware side of things.
• Load management, reliability, up time, speed, redundancy, backups, storage, orchestration, etc.
• Lots of security needs and requirements. They will also be majorly involved in implementation of security.
• Code interacts with these things, but they are separate entities or divisions.
• We will need our own documentation, permissions, training, etc.
• Maintenance and upkeep, prototyping, standardizing, testing, databases, servers, hardware, clusters, network, security, IT stuff.
• Patches, updates, protection, hacker prevention stuff.
• Email servers, text or communication servers, web servers, database servers, backend logic servers (ColdFusion or whatever).
• Monitoring services, requests, traffic, load balancing, stats, specs, remote access, database indexing, automation scripts, tons of IT type stuff.
• Migration stuff, off-hour updates and maintenance, backups, restores, and other tasks.
• Move data around, put things into and out of cold storage, special bulk data manipulation stuff, zip and archiving things, etc.
• Future proofing things.
• Offloading bigger or longer processes.
• API sockets, API endpoints, and being able to load balance traffic, requests, deal with sessions, server config, clustering, and managing small microservices.
• We need a way to get rid or purge some of the pieces. The current system builds and builds. It never really releases or virtually poops (dumps).
• We would love to get a full data dictionary to allow our new frontend to be more data driven.
• This could be multiple people - DBA, IT/Server guys, etc. They could cross over, but these are high level skills and high level people or teams.
• Everything on the hosting side of things. This gets deep but just think - what do we need for hosting? - SSL's, domain names, hard drive space, spinning up servers just in time, pointer records, DNS, DSN, puppet, orchestration, bit bucket, code repositories, ColdFusion Administrator, Fusion Reactor, Papertrail, Nagios, tons of outside services and tools.
• Servers - hard drive sizes, backups, RAM, CPU's, configs, and the list goes on.
• This could go deep and deeper... Etc.

-------------------------

- Alan and I were playing with a mini version or what that might look like (see attached for a mini mock-up of the smaller mini model):

Adilas.biz - admin, monthly billing, and day to day running the company. They could do their own R&D (progress, speed, what the clients are wanting).

Sales & marketing - They could do their own R&D (advertising, pricing, features, marketing materials, etc.).

Consulting, tech support, setup & training, and retention. This could also be part of the adilas university (similar folk). They could do their own R&D (tied into sales, marketing, training, etc.).

Development stuff - project management, custom code, internal development, maintenance, & design. They could do their own R&D (code, frameworks, layouts, look and feel, etc.).

IT stuff - Databases, servers, hardware, hosting, etc. They could do their own R&D (speed, load balancing, redundancy, monitoring, etc.).

Marketplace and adilas cafe - This could be their own little piece or small team. They could do their own R&D (product research, options, pricing, hardware options, services, etc.).

We would love to see each of these sections or divisions (departments) be able to meet and interact with each other on a consistent basis (at least monthly or semi-monthly). Nobody is left on an island by themselves. Communication is huge.

Started playing with elements of time and setting up the main pieces for the adilas master plan. Here is a quick breakdown of the time id's.

Master Adilas Plan

All time id's are inside of adilas

2283 - Main Index

2284 - Jellyfish Model

2285 - Value Add-On Core Model

2286 - Adilas University

2287 - Adilas Marketplace

2288 - Adilas Cafe & Community

2289 - Fracture - Future Project

2290 - Budgets & Finances

2291 - Marketing & Sales

2292 - Other Timelines, Plans & Projects

Great phone call with Steve. We were talking about direction, options, and how to push the ball to the next level. We talked sales, staff, developers, projects, MVP, plans, adilas jellyfish model, value add-on core model, adilas cafe, adilas marketplace, and adilas university. Tons of different topics. We talked about raising prices, raising funds, selling percentage shares of adilas, and how to help make things smoother and smoother. Who is going to manage what and how to best define certain roles, jobs, and tasks. Great conversation and making progress.

Here are some other random notes:

- Client acquisition costs - Where are they at? Do we fully know or does it change from client to client?

- Increasing development or decreasing development?

- MVP's - minimal viable products and minimal viable plans and minimal viable persons

- Possibly selling up to 51% of adilas percentages and then reinvesting strategically in projects and pieces that we want and/or really need. Plan it all out and then push on what we want.

- As a side note, we went in a number of circles - ok, let's do this... ok, maybe we should do this..., no, let's do this... - next thing you know, you are back where you started. We did this over and over again. The funny thing is, we didn't come up with the same exact plans every time. That means that there is more than one option out there.

- Trying to work the long plan and long play

Working with Aspen to go over our plan for making the plan. Light review and discussing expectations and where we are going. Started in on adding some research links to part of our plan. Pushed up the new stuff to the google doc that John and I had started.

Here is a light version of where we are heading... (just barely starting - for the record, it looks nicer in the google doc)

Master Adilas Plan or Adilas Master Plan

1. Company Structure - Adilas Jelly Fish Model
2. Product Development - Adilas Value Add-On Core Model
3. Education & Training - Adilas University
4. Community & Outside 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace
5. Social & Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community
6. Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite - Fracture Project
7. Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other Business Plans

New note added on 8/14/23 - For a pretty good breakdown of these projects - just at a high level, see this element of time 10377 and it's photo gallery.

________________

Table of Contents. To-do

All time id's are inside of adilas

2283 - Main Index

2284 - Jellyfish Model

- Research on the Jellyfish model - link

2285 - Value Add-On Core Model

- Research - link

2286 - Adilas University

- Research - link

2287 - Adilas Marketplace

- Research - link

2288 - Adilas Cafe & Community

- Research - link

2289 - Fracture - Future Project

- Research - link

- Adobe XD mock-ups with options

2290 - Budgets & Finances

2291 - Marketing & Sales

- Adobe XD mock-ups with options

- World Building Concepts and Concepts of the Data Assembly Line - Pitching the concepts

- Research on world building, research on data assembly line

- Presentation Gallery - great start for an outline of what adilas does

2292 - Other Timelines, Plans & Projects

Random Monday morning. Phone call with John, going over ideas and game plan. Phone call with Cory to get a new project. I'm going to be fixing the AFB timeclock app. Checked in on the GoToMeeting session. Chatted with both John and Sean on the GoToMeeting session. I then got on a phone call with my sister. She has a number of small items that she would like to sell online through ecommerce.

- People over things

- People need help - for example, my sister and her little business. It's almost too small for anybody else to care about.

- Barter system - My sister is a master at that - "Come shopping at my house" - she has all kinds of arts and crafts that she makes, builds, and sews. Super creative. Along those same lines, maybe we could say something like "Come shopping at my software application". We could barter, trade, buy, sell, or whatever. Almost our own little adilas marketplace (of sorts). We have a lot to offer and goods and services could be bought and sold with more than just normal money. Fun idea.

John and I had a great session working on a S.W.O.T. (swot) analysis - that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You basically have a brainstorming session and list out different things under each category. We made some pretty good lists. Many of the same things could be viewed as both strengths and weaknesses. There was quite a bit of crossover between the different categories and topics.

John was working Adobe XD while I was listing things out. We had small conversations about each section. It was really fun. I took a small screenshot (not even a fraction of it). The document still needs some refining and work, but a great start.

Right at the end, we had the thought to do a SWOT analysis for smaller sub sections. Our first attempt was dealing with general adilas and the new fracture or adilas lite product that we are going to create. We could do a SWOT analysis for the main adilas (ship A), fracture (ship B or adilas lite), adilas university, adilas marketplace, our development team, etc. It might be nice to break things down a bit.

Met with my sister and my mom. Both have small little shops and want to sell things online and use things like Venmo and PayPal to get paid. Super simple ecommerce needs. Another thing that they really needed was someone to help them. They can both text, email, shoot pictures, and do other phone and computer stuff. They don't know how to make business cards, crop graphics, and/or setup merchant processing with store fronts.

Anyways, I thought that it was a great meeting and really helped me see the need for helping some of the small independent vendors and mom and pop shops sell their stuff. We could easily handle what they want... it's just a mater of making it easy and simple to do.

Futuristically, this may be a great little thing for the adilas marketplace. I would love to see a spot where a user/vendor could add their items, list them, we help them track things, and then we do all of the ecommerce stuff and get them paid out (with a small fee to make it all happen). We could easily do that.

Just thinking about some ideas for financial products for adilas and adilas lite (fracture).

- We could offer short term investments - 2-5 years for payouts on investments or loans. These could be higher interest rates as we would be paying them back quicker. May need to research rates.

- We could offer long term or longer term investments - 5-50+ years - These could be lower interest rates as we would be paying them back either over longer periods or potentially letting them sit in the long term liabilities (loans and long term payables) for long time periods. They, the lender/investor would still get paid, it would be more of a long term deal where they were making money off of the interest while still having the payable on the books and financials (balance sheet).

- There are at least 4 main entities that I can think of right now. They are the main adilas, llc (main or mother ship), the adilas shop (development, IT, and R&D stuff for adilas and special projects), the adilas university (education and training entity), and the adilas marketplace that could have a number of subs underneath and/or somehow associated with it. See the adilas jelly fish model for rough sketch of the corporate structure and how they all play together. Long story short, adilas creates a number of byproducts and has a constant need for other supporting products and professional services. That's pretty cool! All of these could be their own business or entity.

- On the adilas marketplace concept, maybe treat it like virtual real estate or a mini mall type venue. Tons of different options. See attached for a small graphic of what it could be like (just a concept). I'd love to see business funding, investments, marketing, and planning to join the existing ideas of accountants, CPA's, attorneys, bookkeepers, consultants, custom code, developers, graphic design, hardware, merchant processing, sales, tech support, and other third party solutions. It could be anything, either built under the adilas umbrella and/or a complete independent third party. Tons of options there. Along with this idea... maybe treat it like a railroad. We own the railroad tracks but others can own cars, businesses, etc.

- Back to other financial products for adilas - We could offer options for ship A - current adilas. We could offer packages or options for ship B - future adilas buildout - fracture or adilas lite.

- We could offer options for sponsor for certain features. This could be all internal, approved third parties, or a mix of whatever. Small side note, I was exploring this concept more on 6/14/23 about possible sponsors for modules and features.

- This is more for me, but I'd like to meet with some of my friends to get some ideas from them. Allen Marler, Sheldon Archibald, Matt Funk, etc. Good guys that I know and that I could learn from.

Before Alan jumped on, I was working with my sister on some ideas for a simple store front or consignment type ecommerce site. She has a bunch of products (hand built crafts and stuff) that I would like to help her sell using the adilas marketplace (future project or future business idea - planning for fracture and adilas lite).

Meeting with Alan over the GoToMeeting session. We started out and I was reporting on a few entries from yesterday. We reviewed what I learned in the Adobe ColdFusion Training Event (# 10256). Went over the scanned notes that I took. We also talked about the virtual obstacle course that we would like to build to test some of our ideas and prototypes (# 10294). Fun little review.

Next, we switched over to what Alan has been working on and playing with. Lots of fun learning and prototyping. Alan spent some time playing with REST API's and GraphQL options. He was really excited about certain parts of the GraphQL stuff that he was learning. Limiting data that is sent back to the users and making things easier on the servers.

Here are a few of my notes from our meeting:

- Alan was playing with GraphQL, Node JS server, Apollo, Prima, and other tools and features.

- Lots of queries, mutations (things or code that alters the raw queries), resolvers, and subscriptions (observer/subscriber type models).

- Small demo on what Alan learned from playing with GraphQL. This included unique ids, JSON web tokens, tons of files and folders (dummy setup files to put the pieces in place and then you go in and build them out - sort of a prebuilt file/folder structure for your app).

- Looking into web sockets and options to push/pull data - going through those web socket options.

- More talk about API endpoints, automation of the documentation, layers, transactions, locks based on transactions (with full rollback if needed), and throttling API endpoints.

- Tons of other topics such as: NoSQL databases, document stores, relational databases, query caching, ORM models (either object-relational mapping or object-role model), properties, tables, access layers, database updates, etc.

- We talked about using REST API's and having our bigger pieces maybe even broken down into smaller pieces. For example, instead of just having a folder for invoices. We may want something like: invoices/single, invoices/multi, invoices/search, invoices/export, etc. Basically, sub sections within the main invoice player group. We have 12 main application player groups. Each one does stull individually, as a group or a whole, and other sub functions. Maybe think along those lines.

- Spent some time going over security options, JSON web tokens, allowing servers to change the data but the browsers can't change the data. Frontend security, backend security, Node JS, Adobe ColdFusion, and options for both sides of the fence.

- Good meeting with some good research and R&D stuff. Good job Alan!

Lunch meeting with Jonathan Johnson from Epic Enterprises. Jonathan is a business consultant here locally in the Cache Valley, Utah area. Great little meeting and he was asking some great questions and feelers to check out parts and pieces of my plan for ship B, fracture, or adilas lite. We talked about pieces of the business plan and how to plan things out and proceed.

- One of the main topics was dealing with talent and getting excellent talent to help run the business.

- Went over our rough plan and talked through steps of the plan. See elements of time # 10179 for more details.

1. Company Structure - Adilas Jelly Fish Model
2. Product Development - Adilas Value Add-On Core Model
3. Education & Training - Internal and External - Adilas University
4. Community & Outside 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace
5. Social & Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community
6. Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite - Fracture Project
7. Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other Business Plans

- Lots of talk about division, departments, and managing the entity and the projects. Defining those roles and what is needed. Once that is finished, we will put or assign/invite the who (people and talent) to the what.

- We talked a lot about inviting and enticing the talent. Not all of the talent will be hourly or employee level people. Some of the talent or high-end knowledge workers contribute in different ways. That was a small paradigm shift for me, thinking wise. More of projects and contributions vs hours and physical output.

- What needs to be done for the product development pieces - plans, marketing, sales, and roll outs.

- Talking about building out a pitch deck to help pitch the project and product (the whole package).

- 5 main personality types - There are five major roles that need to be fulfilled in a company. Instead of just roles, ideally, you actually have people in place who can carry each of these roles and own it. Otherwise, you just have a smaller number wearing multiple hats. The five people are: An organizer, a doer, a creative type, a consultant, and a salesman. The goal is to align talents with tasks. I grabbed this bullet point from entry # 5295 - another meeting with Jonathan Johnson (early on, back in 2019).

- Talking about the root words in authority (author or create), accountability (count or manage), and responsibility (respond or react). Who does what and how that all plays into the mix.

- See attached for a napkin with some notes on it - Here is what Jonathan wanted me to do - 4 steps he wants me to work on... 1. Define the division and structure of the company, 2. Invite the talent to fill the roles defined, 3. Product development MVP, and 4. Build the pitch deck. All of these need to be at least good enough. Shooting for an MVP level on all of them.

Meeting with Alan on defining roles and responsibilities for parts of the adilas jelly fish model. See element of time # 2284 inside of adilas for details. Not finished yet but some great discussions.

Master Adilas Plan - Jellyfish Model

- The adilas jellyfish model - covers almost all of the departments and sub sections of what we are trying to be as a company. It is not the main product, but more of our internal and external departments, areas, and general areas that we will keep refining and working on.

- Possible numbers for the jellyfish model. Going from top to bottom and from left to right.
1. adilas.biz
2. Admin
3. Monthly Reoccurring Service
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Setup & Training
6. Tech Support
7. Design
8. Custom Code
9. Consulting
10. R&D
11. Project Management
12. Internal Development & Maintenance
13. Adilas University
14. Adilas Marketplace
15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World
16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

Tons more details and bullet points on element of time # 2284 inside of adilas.

Planning with Aspen. Doing some brain mapping on a huge board with post-it notes. See attached for some pictures. Lots of high-level planning for adilas lite, fracture, and sub projects within our bigger vision. Once again, see attached. We also got Aspen paid for her work.

Quick breakdown of the different projects:

#1 - Company Structure - Jellyfish Model - Knowlege workers vs hourly workers, define divisions, departments, the who (talent), combine areas as needed, optimize structure, overtime, and compensation. We also want to deal with the different personality types - organizer, doer, creative, consultant, and the salesperson (someone who does sales).

#2 - Product Development - Value Add-On Core - Players, features, each summarized (possibly in a video or multiple videos). Define the current core. Figure out industry specific skins. White labeling options. On the industry specific skins, go minimal for the start. Custom code - data driven, not code driven. BI (business intelligence) level - Model needs to be fully planned out because it doesn't exist as a standalone layer at this time. It is built into the system as a whole. We need to extract those pieces and make a better plan for those numbers, values, and pieces of BI. Enterprise - define it and prep the database to make the jump eventually.

#3 - Education and Training - Adilas University - Internal and external training needs - video clips, organize them (library of sorts), tracking education, SOP's (standard operating procedures) per industry, in general, and company specific options. Make all of this data driven. Easier interactions, easier interface, all dealing with settings (show/hide, rename, aliases, sort order, defaults, etc.). Once again, both internal and external training needs. Online and in person trainings. Minimize the need for education by building out a better interface (fracture and adilas lite). Dynamic content and settings. Program education directly into the interface. Be able to turn the education mode or help mode on/off based on needs and per person.

#4 - Community and 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace - Access from the adilas cafe or as a standalone app. Adilas creates tons of byproducts (both products and services). This could be things like consulting, design, custom code, data entry, bank reconciliation, accounting needs, etc. We want to offer ways to both buy and sell both products and services through a controlled interface. Think of a mini Amazon or mini eBay type marketplace. We need a spot to send, organize, and direct 3rd party solutions. Advertising and marketing efforts. More white labeling options (in the marketplace). This section could be further explored and has lots of potential.

#5 - Social and Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community - White labeling, standardized portal, single login, single sign on, able to jump to any corporation on any server where permissions have been granted. Options for work, play, buy, sell, train, social, and participate. User profile page. Interface with other corporations, get assigned, hub type environment. Mini marketplace for adilas based products and services. Sales and creation of new accounts (automated setup options). Tired pricing. News and updates, this wouldn't be forced on anybody but would be more available. We could allow them to customize their news and update feed. Dynamic billing and making payments for our (adilas) clients.

#6 - Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite or Fracture - Customize everything. Setup wizard, question to help with setup, industry specific settings and presets, sizes, features, and options to customize as needed. Show/hide almost everything. Other settings such as toggle on/off features, columns, reports, navigation, etc. Everything is configurable to some extent. Sort orders and the ability to move things around (vertically, horizontally, and free form). Settings and making all of these decisions data driven.

Inside of fracture (code name before we got adilas lite) we want to make some server changes, code changes, frontend and backend changes by using frameworks and different languages (code stuff). Entirely composed of API sockets. This will make everything more portable and will also allow other outside developers options to build custom pages, features, and interfaces. Another advantage of using the API sockets for everything, it will standardize how everybody interfaces and interacts with the system or application. It will also let other developers play along without letting them see the underlying code. They just see documentation, examples, and final output from the API socket calls or API endpoints.

Fracture will include testing plans, sections for unit testing, integration testing, automated tests, and good coverage on testing in general. Everything will be modularized and broken into smaller mini components. We plan on using dynamic billing for usage, features, storage, etc. Entirely new interface with the ability to setup your own navigation and your own dashboards. We want lots of white labels and white labeling options. Tons of industry specific stuff as well.

Be able to turn on/off the education mode. We would love to capitalize on numerous lessons learned from 20+ years in the business. Lots of prototyping, new databases with good indexing and normalization. Directly program in teasers and marking. There has even been some talk of using AI (artificial intelligence) to help with suggestions for products and features that they might use or want.

Everything will be mobile ready and responsive. Client-side and server-side validation. We also want to prep things and have a maintenance plan in place as well. That is something that has been somewhat missing from past versions. Basically, take what we have and build from there - learning from the past and building for the future. Everything has a life cycle, prep for the next phase or part of that life cycle.

#7 - Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other business plans - interactive wireframing presentations, SWOT analysis, funding and repayment stuff, timelines, mission statement, profit sharing, budgets per section, per person, per product/feature. Writing business proposals, project scopes, sales pitches, standardization, and master table of contents. Lots of good marketing and campaigns for sales. Sources of profit and ROI (return on investment). Prototyping, testing, and market research.

#8 - Other - Networking and meetings as well as more research. Get in there and get it done!

Lunch meeting with Alan. He was in town so we hooked up for lunch and to chat. Planning, talking about our team, roles, strengths and weaknesses, and industry specific skins. We talked about the jelly fish model, the value add-on core model, adilas university, adilas marketplace, and fracture (adilas lite) stuff. Fun little meeting. Both Alan and I are on the same page as far as vision. That's awesome!

Steve wanted me to meet with a guy by the name of Pete - he's a techy guy and a developer.

Met with Pete over Google Meet. He was showing me what he has done and what not. He was interested in adilas and the variety of what we are in and doing (not just a single business vertical). He gave me a good rundown on what he does, where he has worked, and some lessons learned. I really enjoyed our visit. Here are some of my notes - kinda random:

- Different ways of networking - one thing leading to the next, to the next, to the next. Some of the processes and needs are the same, but the people that make those connections are what really changes.

- Pete likes to get into a smaller organization and then really accelerate certain parts or pieces of that organization.

- He has done a lot of managing of teams and different leadership positions at different companies.

- He is interested in supply chain management and all of the pieces that touch that sector.

- On average, he seems like he likes to be with a company for 1.5 to 2 years. That's not bad, that just seems to be his turn rate.

- When possible, he likes to virtually steer the ship. He'll jump in and do SOP's, technology, decisions, and training. He's ok with bouncing around.

- If needed, it's ok to pull back and go into "maintenance mode".

- Introspection and looking inside yourself. Where does he want to end up and/or do? Great questions. It is management, software, hardware, training, or a mix?

- We talked a lot about professional services - Basically business needs and byproducts. This could be things like CPA's, Attornies, Designers, Developers, etc. Kinda like what we want to do for the adilas marketplace.

- We got into some code, backend, frontend solutions. We talked about nocode (no code) and lowcode (low code) solutions. He showed me a little bit of Bubble (bubble.io) and what they were doing. Just for fun, he said that he got a team to roll out a quick demo in about two weeks. It was just a demo, but a quick thing to show to investors and key players.

- Using API sockets and endpoints to do all of the main data play and heavy lifting.

- It's ok to strategically take a pause or a break.

- We talked about marketing and matching products and potential clients (users or customers). The difference between throwing a wide net or a more focused net (fishing analogy). Ways of creating your own mini marketplace.

- Pete showed me a cool, 20 question, walkthrough, to get a new service provider all setup with a professional service offering. Nice looking sequence and small decision tree based on the users input. It was setup like a little chat bot of sorts. Basically, a small Q&A with simple decisions, lists, choices, and in the end, it helped get you all setup. Pretty cool.

- Light talks about Geo fencing, Google places API, and other small wizard type interfaces. When you put it all together, you end up with a bigger wired-up mash-up with different pieces, libraries, and such. It looked pretty good.

- He was using some special discounts and coupons to help with billing stuff.

- Lots of byproducts - not the main products, but things or needs that get generated from the main product that become new products and services. Lots of byproducts.

- Everything was responsive web layout ready. He showed me lots of screens with simulation of what it would look like on different size screens. That was kind of cool.

- Pete showed me some of his rating systems and even pulling ratings from other outside services to create an overall rating for the professionals and their services.

- We went over some role based and team based permissions.

- Airtable - basically, a sharable spreadsheet through API sockets - simple database of sorts

- We went over some options for dynamic page content, drag and drop organization, and how that plays into the mix. He had a nice looking interface. This led us into more Bubble.io stuff. Imagine a map of clickable elements with light logic, nav, and flow built in. That is what it looked like.

- We got into some discussions on UI/UX pieces (user interface and user experience stuff). Lots of different libraries.

- Talking about change. Pete said a couple of times - I'm an agent of change management, not just change. The change management piece was important and where he likes to be.

- We talked about a few different analogies and ways to look at both companies and what they offer. An analogy of a triangle, you could look at the top, the middle, or the base (bottom). You could also look straight on (like a path or hallway) or you could look at the same thing from the side (see the beginning from the end or from the outside). Fun conversation about angles and how to look at things and analyze what you are looking at.

- We talked about the user feedback loop, what they want, what they are willing to pay for, what they expect, what they need, and even the phycology behind some of that (those choices or decisions). This conversation lead into a light talk about interactive education, helping people who are getting stuck, and figuring out why they are either getting stuck, frustrated, or losing interest. Lots of interesting ideas.

- Letting customers drive the next steps - by their feedback.

- Changing in the proper way and at the proper time - proper change management.

Good discusion. After the meeting, I got a prompt from Otter.ai to see the transcript (voice to text) or transcription. I popped in and read a few things. I didn't read it all, but that was interesting. I had never played with that before. Great meeting. We ended up and I told Pete that I would talk with Steve and we'll go from there. Good stuff.

I joined the meeting late, but Alan and Steve were going over SG&A costs when I got there. They have a client that is wanting to virtually plug the SG&A numbers. Steve was talking about how that is playing with fire and not good accounting. After that, Alan gave a small demo of his production and advanced recipe/build process for sub inventory. It looked great and had lots of heavy client-side JavaScript stuff going on.

We covered a bunch of topics. Here are some small notes that I picked up from the discussion. No specific order.

- Steve and Alan were discussing settings and adding more settings for production and manufacturing.

- Steve was asking for input on direction, on the sales side of things.

- Alan was proposing some industry specific skins to help with sales.

- Alan was also saying that we should circle back around and build out more reports or even dashboard level pages to show all of quick data, counts, and totals. He was saying, we should stick to our name - Adilas - All data is live and searchable - stay true to that slogan. Along with that, we were talking about some places that still need some help and a little bit of loving. Sub inventory was a big topic along with other histories.

- Steve mentioned that he is working on some job costing options and reports. Tying in expenses, invoices, deposits, PO's, and time cards to elements of time (the job or projects).

- Small observation - both SG&A costs and job costing are dealing with deeper tracking of sub pieces and components that make up a bigger thing or item. Kinda interesting. That's some deep terrain and more than just simple inventory tracking. It's a mix of operations being tied into accounting.

- There have been more requests for more charts, graphs, and eye candy type stuff. At one point, we really wanted to do some graphical homepages to show and highlight some of that data. We have all of the data. It just isn't presented in an eye candy and easy format to see and look at.

- Alan is thinking that people (our clients and users) are going to be looking for more and more efficient ways of doing things and tracking things. There seems to be a draw or trend towards efficiency.

- We spent some time talking about AI stuff (artificial intelligence). That is a big buzz word right now. What if we redid some of our homepages (made them more graphical) and helped to show trends and month over month, year over year tends and patters. That could be really cool!

- We talked about the history homepage and how it shows a great overview of what was done or worked on throughout the day. That is some great information and a great daily summary of what happened in the system. Steve was showing that piece to a perspective client and they were super impressed.

- Back to AI stuff. We may use some verbiage like, we do such and such, similar to how AI works, without actually saying that we are using true AI. We already do a lot of that type of stuff. We feed data in, we then train the system to do certain things with it. As we go along, we can see areas that we could work on and turn our interface into a more AI oriented type product. We're not that far off, even right now.

- More talk about comparing patterns, comparing trends, and showing business intelligence (BI) level stuff.

- Mike, would like us to work more on the backend accounting pieces to help round out the system. Mike is a CPA that Steve has been working with for years.

- We could gain a lot, even on the virtual AI level, if we started to build out reports that show the known issues. We have a whole page that lists places and scenarios where things can get off the tracks or in the ditch (virtually). Date problems, number mismatches, disconnects, cart before the horse stuff, etc. That would be super cool to get those pieces built into the system.

- We circled back to sub inventory and possible ways of fixing things up there. We would love to add part id's, part category id's, and other key attribute id's to help the retrieval be faster and smoother. We can get the data in, it's the getting it back out that makes it a little bit harder (current database relationship structure). Anyways, some talks about ways to sure things up and fix some of the underlying pillars in the system.

- Quite a bit of discussion about Biotrack and Metrc (state compliance systems). We spend a lot of time and money trying to keep these connections up to date and working correctly. It's a moving target. We also want to pass on some of the costs to our clients and users.

- Our clients have some great ideas and tend to tell us what they are wanting and/or needing. That is awesome! We just need to figure out how to charge them for those upgrades. Basically, who is going to pay for the changes? Sometimes that can get tricky - either way, it's still part of the game we play.

- Most of our clients want real-time data going back and forth (live - not batched or staged).

- Alan and Steve were talking about ways to simplify the current API connections.

- Light talks about what some of the other developers were working on.

- We would love to be able to bill for real usage and what features our clients are using.

- We keep seeing costs increase. This is costs to us, costs to our clients, and even costs that 3rd parties are pushing and/or passing on. Everything seems to be in a state of upward flux. Along with this conversation, there were talks about some of the 3rd parties limiting throughput and/or limiting the number of API socket requests without a price increase.

- We talked about changing some of the file names. Some of the pages started out as a cannabis related page. We are now making those things more general so that we can use them (the pages and features) for our other clients.

- Going where the money is (based on client requests).

- Steve wants us to quote/estimate some new code for a client. Alan was recommending that we break things into phases and stages. Good discussion on this topic.

- Steve is doing some high-end business consulting for some of our clients. Helping them make decisions and plan for the future.

- The last topic of the day was thinking and finding ways to harvest the services (service byproducts) that our clients want or need (adilas marketplace stuff). If we help our current clients, that is an avenue of funding that comes from inside vs having to get new clients. Basically, help them get what they want. Steve put it this way - make your choice and then build up that choice (meaning software choice and pushing that software further along).

Working with Shannon. Touching on the adilas value add-on core model and the adilas university overviews for the adilas lite and fracture projects. We also spent some time working on the adilas marketplace project overview. Good work session. We then added the overviews to the web pages where they belonged. See attached for our documents and progress.

Links to the project overviews:

- adilas jelly fish model

- adilas value add-on core model

- adilas university

- adilas marketplace

Working with Steve and Suzi. They are planning a demo site for a dog care (nails, baths, grooming services) business. Going over processes, routes, settings, processes, etc. It ended up being a small planning and consulting type session. Suzi does a great job and is very organized. Once we figure out the flow, we plan on passing that info over to Chuck (designer) to let him work his magic to help design a custom skin or mock-up.

One of the things that we may end up doing is adding a button to the element of time to allow a pet to be assigned. We are handling all of the one-to-many pet to owner details in flex grid tie ins. That's working pretty slick. We just need to populate that data around a bit more to help it show up correctly.

Another thing that we may need to do is a popup builder to show services that can be added to an invoice and also pushed over to an element of time to help the attendants to know what is scheduled, needed, and what was done per appointment. We went over some options.

After Suzi left, Steve and I jumped back in and went over other stuff. We talked about merchant processing. We went over some database updates that Steve is working on for invoicing time and sub timecards (job costing stuff). As a side note, Steve was mentioning that adilas is starting to sell some bookkeeping services along with the main system or main product. That's awesome. All part of what we want the adilas marketplace to do, speaking towards the future.

Steve also requested that we start working on the known issues report to help Mike out. This is a list of things that we have identified where things could go off the rails. Things like duplicates, certain dates that are out of order, mismatch between main and line items, sub inventory issues, etc. We have a page called known issues where we are listing all of these possible gotchas (data problems). It would be really cool to start working on some small reports to show those pieces that may have issues.

Working with Shannon. We finished up the adilas lite (fracture) project overviews. We then pushed up the overviews to the correct pages. That is awesome, we've been working hard on some of these overviews. Here's a list of projects. They are not done yet (as of right now) but we are making progress and getting things planned out.

Adilas Lite - Main Homepage
# 1 - The company structure - adilas jelly fish model
# 2 - The overall structure of the adilas platform or system - adilas value add-on core
# 3 - The education and training needs - adilas university
# 4 - The marketplace for the adilas community - adilas marketplace
# 5 - The virtual portal or primary landing spot for the community - adilas cafe and community
# 6 - Deeper dive into the adilas platform or system - adilas lite or fracture
# 7 - The budgets, finances, marketing, and sales plans - other business plans
# 8 - Come take a look!!! - adilas lite videos and research