Adilas Key Contributors:

Steve Berkenkotter - Main owner and business partner - original ideas, concepts, and training - sales, relationships, dreamer, visionary, custom code, coordinator, builder of the first industry specific skin, and the list goes on. Huge player in the adilas story and timeline. One of the original owners in Moring Star Automotive - where the system came from. There are three known Steve's in the system notes. Most of them are this Steve (99 out of 100 times). He won't admit it, but adilas was his brainchild.

David Berkenkotter - Steve's brother and business partner in Morning Star Automotive. David was a system user and helped us create the adilas quick search. He liked using that feature, the quick search, but it only existed on one page originally. He wanted us to put it on every page. That ended up being in the header. He was also one of the original partners in adilas. Power user in the system. Sadly, he passed away due to cancer.

Shari Olin - Commonly known as "Shari O.". She worked in the accounting department back in the Morning Star days. She has been somewhat of a mother hen to help all of us crazy chickens keep going. She helps with customer support, training, payroll, bill collection, and tons of backend office functions. Major power user. Just being silly, but she can have the mouth of a sailor but the heart of an angel. Part of the adilas admin team and a great friend.

Craig Leitner - Also part of the original Morning Star team. Craig was the automotive floorplan and bank guy. He is a power user in the system and does a lot of bank reconciliation and other tasks. He currently works with Steve and asks as the adilas controller (money flow guy).

Cory Warden - Originally an adilas rep and consultant. Cory become part of the team after being a rep for quite some time. She helps with customer care, client support, project management, and keeping the team on track. She also does all of the news and updates and other training material. Cory does tons of oversight type services for our clients. Power user and part of the admin team.

Sean Carlton - Sean was a manager at a Cannabis dispensary in Colorado that used adilas for years and years until they sold. Steve recruited Sean to help with sales, deployment, and training. Sean brings lots of usage experience. Often, he is one of the helpers if we need to send someone onsite to help with a deployment or training session. Power user.

Brandon Moore - I'm one of the guys that writes most of the developer's notebook entries. Originally, I was hired by Morning Star, the automotive dealership, to help with data entry, accounting, and website stuff. I ended up being one of the main adilas developers and architects. I build content, write code, help other developers and team members, and help with training. Helped start the project back in 2001 under the Morning Star name.

Chris Dunsey - One of the first adilas interns (developers). Helped with a number of projects. Ended up being somewhat of a consultant later on.

Shawn Curtis - Kinda a funny story. He was taking a developer's class at Bridgerland. He knew my brother Russell. He asked to join our developer class and became one of the first interns along with Chris Dunsey. Shawn ended up helping with payroll and other projects. Some of the photo galleries in the system came from Shawn's help. He also worked on the media/content (file upload) pieces. Later on, he did more payroll work and acted as a buddy to Brandon and did some consulting work. We worked together for years and years.

Russell Moore - Russell is my younger brother. Originally, he was added to the group because of his graphic skills. He ended up being a great backend developer and project manager. He has also acted as a trainer and mentor for Brandon along the way. Much of the current system came from projects and efforts that Russell was involved with. He has also been Brandon's AI tutor in recent years. Great help to the system. Huge contribution.

Chris Johnnie - He is an entrepreneur who teamed up with Russell to help create a company called "Adilas For Business" or "AFB". Eventually, both Russell and Chris sold their pieces back to adilas. They were honestly the first ones to really try to run as a white label of adilas. This was back in 2015 and 2016. Chris really helped to push the product to the next level along with Russell's help.

Danny Shuford - Longtime friend of Steve's. Danny helped with some website design, sales, and videos for adilas. He even got into creating custom PDF labels for clients. Light development work.

Marisa Shaw - She is Danny's daughter. Danny brought her to an adilas training event in Denver, CO. Marisa was the star student. She ended up helping with some graphics, flyers, marketing material, teaching, instruction, and planning. Power user. Very helpful.

Shannon Scoffield - Shannon is Brandon and Russell's sister. Her maiden name is Shannon Moore. Huge help and virtual assistant to Brandon. She has helped with training, project management, and content creation. Most of the major content sessions were or have been with Brandon and Shannon working together. When they, Brandon and Shannon, were traveling, Shannon was one of the primary adilas instructors. If she was teaching Brandon was taking notes. If Brandon was teaching, Shannon was taking notes. Power user.

Cheryl Moore - Cheryl is my mom. What an asset. She owns a small business and has owed a few different ones. When we were doing training sessions, she came to every one of them. She asked wonderful questions and was a great supporter. Sometime, I would use her as a test subject - can my mom do this? If yes, we are good. If not, we may need to keep tweaking it. Thanks mom!

Wayne Moore - Wayne is my dad. He was my hiking buddy and more than willing to talk about ideas and concepts on our walks and hikes. He helped out with video stuff and was a great coordinator for making other connections. He worked at Bridgerland (technical college) and helped us get setup with classrooms, computer labs, and other great connections. Huge cheerleader! There is another Wayne, Wayne Andersen, he is a backend developer, systems guy, and database guy.

Wayne Andersen - This Wayne lives in Portugal and helps with all of the backend security, server, and code testing. Major skills, writes code, helps push all of us to new technologies, partially retired but loves to play with tech stuff. If you search for Wayne and it deals with concepts and coordination stuff, that's my dad, Wayne Moore. If you search for Wayne and it sounds like a master backend guy, that's Wayne Andersen.

Alan Williams - One of the lead developer's at adilas.biz. Alan joined us in 2015 and quickly came up through the ranks. Trainer, CTO, team lead, master developer, prototyper, and system architect. Alan has helped with many projects and features over the years. He also helped Brandon with some of the prep work for the adilas lite (fracture) plans and project. Sometimes called "Dr. Alan" by the other developers. Example: This might be a project for Dr. Alan.

Bryan Dayton - Bryan has been one of the most versatile guys on our team. Originally, he joined a development class out of curiosity. He and Brandon live in the same town and know each other from church. Bryan has done more custom code or small system projects than almost any other developer. He also joined the team in 2015. He helps with sales, custom projects, pushing on projects that he thinks will yield a return. Lots of work on the adilas lite and fracture project. Very hard working and versatile.

Dustin Siegel - Developer who helped with numerous cannabis and cultivation type projects. He worked directly under Steve to help with that business vertical. Many of the original pages that Steve built were taken over and remade by Dustin.

Eric Tauer - Developer and custom code guy. Originally, Eric knew Steve and lived in Salida, CO. As a note, adilas is Salida spelled backwards. Eric has a background in database work and data warehousing. Eric has done tons of custom systems for clients. Often, Eric would pioneer certain features or logic, as custom code, and then we would bring those features into the main adilas application.

Garrett Kirschbaum - Adilas intern and then full developer back in 2015. Stressful time of building and expansion. He and others helped run the adilas shop with Brandon's help. Garrett was a great developer and helped us standardize a number of tools and features. He was the first developer to work on sub inventory, back in the day. He also did other projects and helped with some developer management stuff.

Charles or "Chuck" Swann - Charles was an instructor at Bridgerland for web development. He builds custom websites, does amazing mock-ups, prototypes, and is a CSS master (styling a website using code). Chuck worked with Russell to help with redesign work, projects, and vision. Chuck worked fulltime for a number of years and now works and coordinates work done by a small hand-picked design and development team. Anything that needs some design loving gets passed over the Chuck and his small team.

Steve McNew - Friend of Steve Berkenkotter's. This Steve helped prep some whitepaper documents to help with getting adilas standardized and some internal audit type stuff. Mostly white papers and putting things down on paper. He ended up getting hired by the local school district and wasn't able to finish the process, but he got it started. He asked some great questions, and we had some good conversations.

Abby Elkins - Abby is Brandon's daughter. Her maiden name was Abby Moore. Abby, when she was little (10-12 years old) helped with some of the original concept artwork for adilas. Later on, she helped with content for the presentation gallery and then the adilas lite plans (fracture). Currently, she is working graphic artwork for different adilas pages. She's now in her mid 20's and has some awesome art and content skills.

Aspen Moore - Aspen is Abby's younger sister and Brandon's daughter. Aspen helped Brandon with some planning and counseling (mental help). Aspen also did some general business consulting with her dad Brandon.

John Maestas - Developer, backend server guys, and designer. John came to us through Dustin. John was uses as a jack of all trades on the backend and frontend. He did numerous projects, documentation, payroll, and page redesign projects. John was also very help to Brandon in working on the notes and comments on the SWOT analysis document. Many other projects as well. Good vision of the future.

Kiva Berkenkotter - Steve's wife. She helped Steve with various projects and planning sessions. At one point, she was in charge of paying commissions and collecting monthly reoccurring payments. Huge supporter to Steve!

Heather Moore - Heather is Brandon's wife. What a trooper. Cheerleader, support, ideas, and consulting. Huge asset to Brandon (me). Thanks Heather!

Jonathan Wells - Designer and mock-up guy. He helped to map out the system and created a number of deep mock-ups for adilas lite (fracture) projects. Great job catching the vision and putting those pieces into a visual representation. We still refer to his work when talking about fracture (future project for adilas).

Jonathan Johnson - Business consultant from Epic Enterprises. Met with Brandon and Steve in end of 2019 into 2020. Really helped us see some needs and opportunities. Later, helped Brandon with some other consulting when trying to define the fracture plan.

Calvin Chipman - Windows software developer. Calvin also did a bunch of web-based work, database stuff, label printing, and API socket stuff. Calvin was the first developer to use the adilas API's to create a native mobile app for a client. He also built a number of special developer tools used by some of our team to speed things up. He's the tool guy!

Cody Apedaile - Bryan Dayton's cousin, Cody helped with a bunch of JavaScript code and changes. He also spent some time working on the UML diagram for the adilas database. We didn't get things finished, but he was working on a new build your own interface (custom to you) for adilas. We ran out of funding. We want to get back to that project at some point.

Dave Forbis - Dave was the official "high tech gofer". He did a bunch of things. Graphics, project management, brainstorming, planning, sales, and helped with managing developers for the adilas shop. He was another great student. He came to a number of training courses and brought so much to the courses. He was also a big support to Brandon during some rough times.

Josh - There are three Josh's. Josh Wheeler, Brandon's friend and developer. Josh Sagert, developer and adilas user (worked tons on the discount engine), and Josh White, Steve's friend from California. Josh White has brought us a number of bigger leads and bigger players, like franchises, and other higher-end clients. Anything recent is Josh White, from California. He helps with networking, sales, and dreaming of new things.

Suzi Distelberg - Sales, training, and deployment. She also worked with some custom projects and doing step-by-step user guides. She has helped with all kinds of projects and even gone onsite for setups and training. Great asset!

Kelly Whyman - Kelly is Dustin's wife. Kelly was single handedly the best independent sales rep that adilas had. She did training, consulting, and sponsored a number of custom projects. Kelly helped Steve and Brandon with reports, functionality, and other things. She got so good at things, state contracts snagged her up to work at state and multi-state level stuff.

Molly Hennessy - Molly was another independent sales rep and consultant. She had numerous clients and got into doing SOP's (standard operating procedures) and other high-end documentation and training. Molly was an entrepreneur and even started creating some of her own product and services. If you search adilas on google, some of the other results are from Molly. Super creative and a great consultant.

Hamid Karbasi - Developer - He has worked with Brandon doing small websites, training, and small tasks. He currently is a manager at a retail store and brings some managerial type skills to the table. Willing to talk about concepts and how they apply to retail and other environments. He is also lightly helping with some planning for fracture.

Gene Spaulding - Friend, entrepreneur, and businessman. Gene is an old college friend. We had a number of friends in common. He has been a small mentor to me over the years. Way back, before adilas, he helped me get my first business loan for a project that I was working on.

Sharik Peck - Friend, entrepreneur, public speaker, physical therapist, and businessman. Good influence and mentor in ways. Sharik and I used to exercise together back in the day. Many of fun walk, run, and weightlifting session. Learning some conference and training skills from him and his wife. They have done really well pushing their product lines and doing some marketing. Trying to get some ideas.

Bridgerland Technical College - Use to be Bridgerland Applied Technology College. Not a person, but a huge help. This is a local technical college in the Logan, UT, area. Brandon's dad, Wayne, worked there. Tons of assets. They provided classrooms, training options, computers, and even an small incubation spot (starter office space) for the adilas shop during the startup phase. Huge asset!

McCorvey's Pro Shop - Also known as Bowling World. Client that had multiple locations. The started out with around 30 and grew up to the 90+ location level, all using adilas. Long time client.

Emerald Fields - They were the first client that wanted their own fully dedicated box and server. They had multiple locations and requested some custom code, reports, and features.

Beaver Mountain Ski School - Client that we helped them track their ski school (snow sport) lessons. Students, instructors, classes, and schedules. Custom interface dealing with elements of time and flex grid.

Bear 100 - This was the first event or annual event client that we did. They used the system for about a week each year. They had 350+ runners and their families that would be on the site for multiple days straight. It was a 100 mile running race with 13 aid stations and a small social portal for the family and friends to watch their runners. This one was special as it had custom input options to upload CSV files to populate the database vs normal HTML form field entries. Records were sent in batches from remote places to adilas for storage and race progress.

High Valley Bike Shuttle - Online ecommerce and scheduling client. They also have a cafe and small retail store. Fun online scheduling and bulk flex grid projects.

Herbo - Mike Roundtree, owner of Herbo, was the first company to do a small white label of adilas. Mike has been a great asset to Steve and the two of them have worked on projects, plans, and dreams. Herbo also has a custom payment solution that they are trying to market and get rolling. Mike has been a great supporter for years. He is also a certified CPA and that credential helps us and him. We would like to get other CPA's on board as well. Thanks Mike!

Nxtlinq AI - AI assistant. These guys really pushed us to get an AI agent inside of adilas. Tons of development took place and lots of prep stuff. We wanted to do a 3-part plan for integrating AI. 1. Teach it how to navigate using the AI quick search (check - done), 2. Teach it all things adilas. and 3. Teach it how to be clear up at the consultant type level. We only got the first phase done. Lots of other plans and such, but we ran out of funding.

Grok AI - Steve loves using Grok. He has built a number of image generation options inside of adilas. He is also working with Grok to feed it data to help with analytics and AI insight. This is not finished yet, but we may end up using Grok as an AI assistant inside of adilas. We have simple and emerging connections available right now but need to really polish things up before going live with the AI assistant options.

ChatGPT AI - We have started using ChatGPT to help with code, explanations, explore resources, planning, and help with training and flow for people and other AI bots. Currently, Brandon, Steve, Bryan, Alan, Josh, Russell, Chuck, and Wayne are using AI in either ChatGPT chat sessions or some other form of AI. We have some using Copilot, Gemini, Claude, etc. AI is actually helping in many ways. ChatGPT is a big one for use. Anyways, they are earning their place in the adilas key contributors list.

There are so many more that I can't list. Developers, users, power users, reps, consultants, trainers, clients, accountants, friends, family, and even critics. They have all helped out the idea farming process and progression. Good stuff! We couldn't have done this alone. It takes a community to do what we are doing.

Phone call with Steve. We were talking about the current load and how much is going on. It's hard to keep up. Steve is feeling pretty overwhelmed. He and the other team members are running the ship while I am off on the side trying to work on plans and investor stuff. It's pretty rough. There is also some underlying tension from a miscommunication and overstep on my part. See EOT # 12731 for some back story.

Here are some of my notes from the meeting with Steve:

- We started out and I read a post-it note full of some things that I think Steve has issues with - my personality traits. See attached, if you want for the post-it note. We are all working hard, but we have different opinions on what will help and where to focus. Similar but also somewhat different directions. Neither one is bad, just different approaches.

- He is busy taking care of business and paying clients. He is trying to only work on funded projects and projects that have ROI (return on investment).

- Trying to fill in the blanks (needs of whatever is needed).

- Steve is shooting for full AI projects - code, planning, fixes, etc. Steve is heavily leaning on AI as the backup or fallback. He is totally going in the AI direction for as much as he can.

- He showed me a small website that a guy built using just AI. Here's the link. I pulled it up. It looks great. It is pretty impressive. It doesn't have any real content, just a shell, but it looks amazing. We talked and chatted about that for a while. There is some fear that some of these guys are going to take over and build what we have built over the last 20+ years. Basically, a question of what is stopping them from taking the next step and building it out on their own? I see it, what we have and offer, as way deeper than that, but there is some worry and unknowns.

- He is seeing or thinking that people don't want any real interface... they just want a simple chat type interface and AI will do everything for them. I was telling him that our full interface and existing pieces need to still be there. There is value there. It is nice to be able to do anything that you want (say an AI chat window), but there are also times and places for a quick and easy button or link. We need both. Our interface is not our real product.

- We talked about how Wayne is working with some AI agents to work on the database and some database updates.

- Steve is feeling a little bit of panic mode. He watches and reads a lot of tech news. Huge changes are happening all around us.

- Only working on funded projects.

- Relying on Craig for all money type decisions (controller level control for funds).

- There is an urgency to what we are doing.

- AI is going so fast, it is scary. He is scared.

- Small talk about IP (intellectual property) and how we can't stop AI. If they want to do something, they can just do it, change it a bit, and run with it.

- He wants me to look into complex binary (tech stuff). He is planning on doing some more research there. Basically, skipping the code and going right to binary level commands.

- Brief talk about how people interact with things. He was saying that people don't want to do any data entry. They just want the AI agent or system to do it. Something like this, I have a document, I upload it, I then have the AI agent enter it into the system. Thanks, all done. AI does it all. As a side note, there may be some automation things that we can do, but don't think that everything will be like that.

- Talking about taking care of the business right in front of us. I don't deny that... and I know that there is a need there. We have been doing that for the past 20+ years. It is also a small trap, in some ways. It keeps us from breaking out of our form or container. We are somewhat maxing out our current model.

- If you read between the lines, he and the team are busy, with paying clients. There is a demand for what we are doing.

- We finished up the meeting, and he was going to go jump into another project that is needed. He is working super hard. He is trying to fill in the gaps as best as he can. I'm super grateful for that.

- After the meeting, I was talking with Heather (my wife). We were talking about an analogy of a malt shop or ice cream shop. Say you have a line out the door, small rush, tables need to be wiped, and dishes need to be done. Everybody is busting their buts, except for one guy in the back who is dreaming of a better way to do it. That doesn't fly very well. Sad to say, I'm that guy. I'm not trying to hurt anybody, and what I am doing is super important, it just gets judged pretty harshly. I fully understand. I have been in there busting my but as well, for years and years. I just know that there is a better way. The story above changes when you say, this small rush has been going on for years and years. We have all been pushing on things. It is not just one night, where things get busy. That longer timeframe makes a big difference.

- Tying this back to adilas (above ice cream shop analogy). We offer custom code. That is awesome and totally part of our model. However, we get so tied up in doing custom code that we can't finish what we really need to. We end up getting stuck in that scenario, kinda like the malt shop. There is a balance. You have to have the money to keep going, and that is super important (work right in front of you). You also need to look to the future as well. I heard a guy say one time, there is a difference between working in your business and working on your business. We need both. It's a fine line and tough balance.

Phone call, texts, emails, and signing up for a line of credit with a company. We already have one (a line of credit), but this was a better deal. Small switch-a-roo on some light funding.

/////
Some new notes added on 3/10/26 - the rest of the story...

Small back story. I got an email from a business funding company (cold email, no prior connection). This was early to mid-February of 2026. I was actively looking for some business funding and investor type deals. I replied that we weren't interested in any loans, but we were looking to do a capital raise. I sent him a link to the investment options for adilas. The guy got back to me, we chatted, he said that he had a supervisor that dealt with investment type stuff. Anyways, the guy ended up giving me a number of leads of either banks and/or investor type people. We went through a number of possible options. Pretty good leads.

At one point, I texted the guy and asked him if he would ever work on commission to help sell adilas or get a commission if he helped with a capital raise. He replied back that he was on salary but thanks for the offer. We aren't buddies, but he was actively pushing on things. Cheers to him. I was impressed.

It's now Friday, 2/27/26. Multiple weeks have gone by, dealing with the guy and some of his leads. I have them all documented in the developer's notebook. There were some loan options, line of credit options, etc.

On Fridays, I am normally up at the local ski resort. I'm a snowboard instructor and have been since 1995 (long time). I go up every Friday. Anyways, I taught a 2-hour private lesson, made a number of runs on my own, and stopped for lunch. I decided that I had a ton to do back home, so I took off early to head back to town. When I got back into cell service, I saw a text from this guy. Super simple, give me a call when you can. I then gave him a call. He had another lead for me. Nothing new, similar to what he had already done. The guy said that he could beat our current line of credit. He then asked if I was interested? I said yes, I was interested in seeing what he could do and how they could beat the current rates. The goal was just to see what he had to offer.

Back a couple of weeks ago, I had to provide them some bank statements to meet with one of the guys. That is pretty common, no big deal. That's how the banks see what you can qualify for. At that point, they were trying to see what we would qualify if we got a loan. I had looked up the company, and it was totally legit. Anyways, I get connected with this other guy, some sort of an admin/supervisor who worked with this other guy. They were calling and texting me and seeing I was interested in using them, instead of our existing line of credit. Our other line of credit had a huge interest rate, so I was interested in checking it out.

All of the sudden, if felt like that, they were offering me a line of credit, and I could get it today (start the draw and funds would hit our bank in a couple of day). I think that they were trying to close some things before the end of the month (fill out some sales goals - last Friday in Feb). I just had to do a pull or a draw on the line in order to set it up. I had enough time, in between other things that I was doing, to look up what else we owed and how we might be able to use this small advance on the line of credit to wipe out other debt (debt consolidation) and even get some to help moving forward (lube the wheel). That was the goal. This could work out slick.

My bad, I did not communicate with Steve or anybody else on the team. I signed on the deal and requested a draw on the line. This whole thing, just sort of fell into my lap. It seemed like a great deal, I was looking for something like this, I had already had numerous interactions with this guy, and it felt good. It was just my name on the line of credit, and I really thought that it could help. So, I did it.

Fast forward to Monday, 3/2/26. I sent a text to both Steve and Craig that a large amount may be showing up in the bank and that I would get them some more information. By end of day on Monday, the amount had showed up in the bank. I then wrote an email to both Steve and Craig Monday night about what it was for and my plans. The email went out late on Monday night. Once again, my fault, and no or minimum communication. By early Tuesday morning, excuse my language, but all hell had broken lose. Emails were sent, texts were sent, and a cussing and screaming phone call had taken place by around 10 am on Tuesday morning.

On the banking and funding side of things, we had to stop things, back things out, and do a lot of phone calling and talking with banks and the financial institution that had given us the line of credit. It turned into a crazy mess. It got really ugly.

It is now just over a week later, and things are kinda calming down. My bad, I overstepped my bounds. It caused a ton of stress, bad feelings, pressure, cause and effect decisions, etc. I did not communicate. I know that. I was honestly trying to help.

After the meeting, checking emails and recording notes. Quick phone call to craig about some bills and amounts to send for payments. Light clean-up stuff.

Up helping with the Yogen Fruz deployment with Sean up in Tronto, Canada.

Here are some notes and recap:

Sunday - 10/27/24 - Drove to Colorado. Needed to get a passport and Utah didn't have a passport agency place.

Monday - 10/28/24 - Spent the day in Denver getting my passport. Had to go back to the passport agency a couple of times. One for the initial appointment and another time to pick it up and verify information. While waiting, did some research on my cart favorite buttons, smart groups, tiered pricing and rules and assignments for the smart group buttons. Met up with my brother for dinner.

Tuesday - 10/29/24 - Went to the Denver temple in the morning. Spent some time playing around with Affinity Designer and learning how to control color and saturation levels. Graphic stuff. Drove to Salida, CO. Met up with Steve at his house. We chatted about some upcoming projects and challenges. I really liked his house. He had redone some rooms, cabinets, counters, rest rooms, and such. Super cool! Craig came over and gave me a bunch of adilas checks. We talked about goals and ideas for the Canada trip and venture. After that, I met up with Mrs. Shari O. up in Buena Vista, Colorado and we had dinner together. Great time and fun chatting. I then got to go see Shari O.'s house and dogs. Super cute. Visited my friend Andy Maupin and then drove up to Denver.

Wednesday - 10/30/24 - Slept in my car in the airport parking garage - fun! Flew up to Canada and Sean picked me up in Tronto. We went to the hotel, got settled in and got some dinner. After dinner, we went and found a store to get some snacks and other food for the week.

Thursday - 10/31/24 - Trick or treat... We got tricked... :) We went to headquarters and met with some of their team. We got there at 9:30 am in the morning. We didn't leave until after 12:30 am, that night. Super long and stressful day. Tons of hardware issues. They wanted us to fully configure the old FranPOS units (7 year old Android tables with a locked software system installed). We were attempting to run adilas (web-based system on that unit). The browser part worked great (normal adilas stuff). The ability to interface with the peripherals and hardware were crazy tough. We couldn't get anything to work. Totally beating our heads against the wall. Trying all kinds of stuff. We did have some help from one of their team members (Harsha) and that was about it. At one point, it looked like that was the end... The main boss on their team was saying, it doesn't look like we will be able to deploy this software. Sean and I asked for leave to go to the computer store and purchase some things that we knew would work (new hardware). We were also somewhat waiting on another one of their team members who hadn't come in yet. He was a tech savvy guy who had been able to hack the locked code on the FranPOS on the last visit from Suzi from the adilas team. Without going into crazy details. We got some new hardware and started setting it up. We were also blessed and the other IT guy (George) from their company came and was able to get some things going through on the older hardware. Pretty stressful day.

Friday - 11/1/24 - Went to the mall (Square One mall in Tronto) to help get the system up live for the client. We were needing some help from the IT guy. He was a little bit late, we had it mostly running before he came. He put the icing on the cake and made it work. In the meantime, I ended up recoding some of the my cart favorite buttons, making them bigger, and styling the mini invoice (customer receipt) format. Sean was doing some training and by mid way through the day, it was going super smooth. If it wasn't for the hardware issues, we could have been in and out in just a few hours. Anyways, good day and they seemed to like the system. Answering random questions here and there. By the end of the day, they had done over 150 invoices (sales tickets) through the system.

Saturday - 11/2/24 - Went back to the store (Square One) to help out and see if they had any questions. Had lunch with the owner (Eric), great guy. I spent most of the day fixing small little things to help with flow and settings. Fixed a few information messages and added a new setting to control the auto print option for the mini invoice. Good day.

Sunday - 11/3/24 - Woke up early to update all of the time zones on the servers (daylight savings stuff). Sean and I went to church and then did some site seeing (Niagra Falls and such).

Monday - 11/4/24 - Back to headquarters. Worked on uploading customers. Sean was helping and doing some training. We spent some time and put together a small email with a list of to do items. We then had a meeting with some of their team to go over the email and to do list. That was really good. I met with a couple of people and setup some new accounts for some of the accounting people. Towards the end of the day, I got a chance to chat with the main operations boss (Phillip). I enjoyed that. Trying to show him what we do and how we do things. He has a lot of things going on.

Tuesday - 11/5/24 - Sean dropped me off at headquarters and I worked there all day. He took the rental car back and flew home. I spent most of the morning working on loyalty points and getting data entered into the system. Various questions, different sessions, etc. Towards the end of the day, I did some group training for four of the main people (Phillip, Rex, George, and Harsha). I thought it went good, hopefully they enjoyed it. There is a lot to cover. At the end of the day, I found a good spot to stop and did some light planning. One of the guys gave me a ride home (Rex). He was pretty cool! Just being silly but I got back to the hotel and said, "I'm alive!". I was super happy. We still have some things flapping in the wind but nothing that we can't tie up and/or fix. All in all, I was pretty happy.

Wednesday - 11/6/24 - Took a cab to the airport and got all checked in. I spent some time going over emails and what not. I hadn't checked them too much for the past week or so. Somewhat behind. Flew home and drove from Denver to Grand Junction, Colorado.

Thursday - 11/7/24 - Drove home from Grand Junction, Colorado to Logan, Utah. Stopped along the way and had a 2 hour phone call meeting with the adilas team (Steve, Alan, Cory, Sean, and I). Had a little car trouble but got home safe. What a trip!

Got a text from Craig saying that he needed an expense/receipt fixed. I fixed it and also added some code to help it not happen again. Basically, the expense got posted (final approval) before it was verified (seen by the bank). Added new code to help not let it get out of order when using bulk verify and bulk posting tools.

A couple of different sessions throughout the day working on the adilas presentation gallery. Just having fun today. Pushed up a number of new changes. I did some new graphic work and lots of theme stuff and verbiage changes. If you want to see the new graphic work, go to the main presentation gallery homepage and click on the different links from that page (modal popups). I also helped Craig out with a bank transfer to help with some projects and funding.

Reading reseller docs for Trinity Payments, NMI, and USAePay. Lots of legal stuff. I also met with Eric from USAePay over a Microsoft Teams meeting. He sent me some other forms to fill out. Signing and doing paperwork and contract stuff. Sent an email out to Steve, Cory, Craig, and Shari O. to let them know that new documents have been signed and are in the process.

Looking over a business loan application. Light research on a lending company and looking over some loan and funding docs. The lead came from Craig and Steve. Just looking around and checking things out.

Meeting with Craig and Steve to go over finances, bills, ideas, and direction. The meeting started out with just Craig and I. We went over a bunch of things and then Steve joined us later on. Craig brought a fun flavor to the meeting. Steve and I have hashed over some of these things so many times, we kinda get jaded or set in our ways. It was nice to have a fresh view and someone who would pose hard or uncomfortable questions. I really enjoyed the meeting.

All of the meeting notes are on Brandon's computer. Here is a small portion of them.

- We need to find the balance point - not running faster than we are able but still pushing it

- We have been spending some monies on certain projects - we really need to get a return. For example: Research on AWS (amazon), R&D for fracture, WanderWays, SEO

- Funding options -  The main 3 are: sales, borrow, investments

- Steve was saying, we have two main choices - steer towards deployment and fully funded projects - sell stuff or pull back and just do what we can - head back into smaller waters - slim down and tighter budgets. As a side note, we even talked about cause and effect if we were to actually gain from a small dip... lose some weight.

- Failure to launch - this is a problem if you never get off the launch pad.

- Picking our battles

- There is need for what we do

- Dealing with charging for our services - $65-100/hour

- Trying to sell a new car but it keeps having issues - makes it hard to sell - people are willing to pay more for certain products if they are reliable

- Fixing the servers - question: do we need more money or what to help make it better. On the positive side, people really use our products and they hit it hard, we really push the servers that we have. It's not like nobody uses it, the opposite is true - people throw everything that they have at them... we still need more.

- Maybe stop development - we need to sell things - harder done than said... - try to switch gears - cross training - maybe change the word or phase sales into networking... connecting the dots - get some more hunters out in the field - swap people around - focus on the deployment and setup process - focus on funded projects - on the dev side

- Being able to say "STOP"

- Learning when to put our foot down - limits and levels

- Selling the current 2021 model

- Switch who we are targeting - trailer dealers, bowling pro shops, etc. - sell what we have to offer

- It's just a $100/hour - managing expectations - sometime people want a perfect number or a nicely wrapped quote or project cost. It's just $100/hour. Otherwise, we lose our shorts.

- We get pulled off on tons of outside distractions - external distractions, custom projects, and outside 3rd party solutions

- The code is splitting - new school, old school, high tech, low tech, etc. scripts, tags, functions, includes, different styles

- Having a real game plan - we really need this - a full plan and then let everybody know about it

- Fracture is a real word - a life style - part of where we live and breath - keep heading in that direction. As far as we can see, things will keep fracturing. Plan on it and build accordingly.

- Like race car driving - we need a good driver, but maybe not the best driver, especially with an attitude, they may need to go

- You can always fill a spot... (even in management) - like a bucket of water, if you put your hand in, then pull it out, it will fill back in - finding that range that fits

- There are multiple battles - in front of us

- Using a talent scout, like my dad - maybe look around at the college (talent just getting out of school) or for people who have the skills - draft

- Find and gather up the low hanging fruit

Craig joined us and we talked more budgeting, ideas, and cash flow stuff. Steve had a list of ideas. We recorded many of them on an Excel document that we were working on. We'll make them public later on, as things develop.

Shannon had to cancel. She is still feeling under the weather.

Did a bunch of emails and some light tech support stuff back and forth with Wayne and dealing with the different servers and news and update stuff (WordPress account). Also worked on a small bug fix on some media/content reports and filters. Sent an email to Craig and Steve dealing with funds and plans.

We currently do direct deposit. Research this for Wayne etc