Reviewing a few sales and organizational structure documents (business training documents) from Gene Spaulding. He sent me a Harvard Business School document on the 7-S's. It was dealing with a model talking about strategy, structure, systems, staffing, skills, style, and shared values. They all need to work together (the 7-S's) and even help boost one another. It is basically a way to look at an organization and then analyze it on how it is doing (looking at the model). In the document they took the 7-S's, talked about each one, and even broke them down into the hard S's and the soft S's. Mixing and blending each section.

I then opened up and started looking at a sales document dealing with prospecting and building a sales pipeline. I got through the first few chapters. By the way, Gene helps teach some entrepreneur classes up at USU (Utah State University in Logan, UT). Here are some of my notes:

- Framework of process and plays - make a map - personal selling playbook

- The skill of persuasion - we all need it - we all use it every day - just some people make a career out of it - either way, we all use it, every day.

- Most businesses focus on revenue generation of some sort or the other. I know that is important, but... that's not my main goal. I know that it is needed, but sometimes, what drives me is doing what I feel is right. I have to figure out how to make those two things match up (revenue generation and doing what is right).

- Mix of marketing, selling, and customer success - looking at the big picture - see attached for a scan of the sales success pyramid.

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.

I went out to Gene's house. He gave me a sweet tour. Fun place. We then talked shop and options. He was very helpful and helped me see what we are trying to offer. Gene loves motor sports (motorcycles, snowmobiles, etc.). We talked about the fact that adilas.biz has built an awesome software engine. Okay, now, how you market that? How can we get other developers and entrepreneurs to see that advantage of using the kick butt adilas engine?

We talked about levels of risk and taking calculated risks. He was also recommending that I basically "find my seat on the bus" and then stay there (in the correct seat). I tend to bounce around. I believe that he was quoting from a book called "Good To Great". We all need to stay in our lanes... :)

Great meeting. I really appreciate his time. He is going to reach out to some of his contact and make some introductions.

Meeting over Google meet with some of the guys from SymLiv (https://symliv.com/). SymLiv is short for Simultaneous Living. They cater to gated communities, HOA's (homeowner associations), and other important security access venues.

My friend, Gene Spaulding, former banker and private equity investor, help to setup the meeting. The goal was to see if there were any common ground between what adilas does and what SymLiv does. Great meeting. There were four of us on the virtual meeting. We all live in the same area, in Northern Utah, and will most likely get together in person in the next couple of weeks. Here are some of my notes.

- Those where there: Taylor James from SymLiv, Tim Greenfield from SymLiv, Gene Spaulding, and myself.

- We talked about startups and accruing technical debt (old or unorganized code - anything like that).

- We went over what SymLiv does and where they are heading. See link above to view their website. They are very focused on a specific vertical and have big plans and more phases to do in the future. They were giving me some good advice as well.

- They had questions about adilas and what we do and where we came from. I gave them a small history overview and we chatted about all kinds of things. That was really fun for me. (history and investment options for adilas - small summary - see different sections on this page)

- We talked about SaaS (software as a service) and how that reoccurring revenue model is going and working. They highly recommended that we look into the transactional reoccurring revenue model as well. Something along the lines of payments, processing, small percentages of sales, per transaction fees, etc. This is what Tim said - "We are seeing that the transactional model is potentially bigger than the actual SaaS model." They were talking about multiples (raw numbers times a multiplier). I thought that was pretty cool.

- They were recommending that we either focus on making adilas a lifestyle business or change the focus and put an exit strategy in place. Basically, if we keep going, the way we are, we will have to keep working for years and years to come. That becomes a lifestyle, even if we don't have to do as much work. We basically maintain control and just grow things slowly over time (natural or organic growth). If the focus is more on exiting or getting bought out, then you play the game differently. Just some talks back and forth.

- All of the guys chimed in and asked questions and good dialog. I really enjoyed some of Tim's questions. They were deep and he wanted to know about certain aspects of things both technically and logistically. I thought that it was fun.

- Gene asked Tim, "What are your thoughts?" - I won't quote him, but Tim was basically like - If someone came to me, with a big dream, a plan and was saying the things that I was saying (just about adilas and what we are doing), he's not sure if he would believe it. Mixing operations and accounting and doing all of the things that we do is lot. That is super complex and may sound good on paper, but he just wasn't sure if he would believe it. He then said, if you were on the other side of that huge divide (meaning having done and/or doing everything that you had pitched or proposed) then that would change everything.

- We've put in the hours... We started back in 2001 and put in time, money (millions and millions), and have built it out. We have a working proof of concept, a working prototype, and have proved the model. Not only have we proved the model, but we've also made millions of dollars along the way. Way more than just a dream or vaporware. That's pretty cool!

- They recommended that we find a niche and follow that all the way. I told them that we are a general business package or generic on purpose and that our future goals include both white labeling options and industry specific skins (on top of the main adilas core). We would do that directly and/or allow for API socket usage and adaptation. Tons of options.

- How to make our customers "sticky"? I mentioned that we use the same term and sometimes do custom code to help those customers become more sticky (wanting to stay with us or stay around, while using our products and features). We played with some fun ideas, back and forth.

- Lots of talk about custom code and how to manage some of that. We ended up talking a lot about permissions and settings (some of the foundation pieces).

- They wanted to know the ratio between SaaS reoccurring revenue and other professional services (data entry, setup, training, marketing, custom code, design, consulting, etc.). I told them that currently, we are 70% SaaS model and the other 30% is other professional services. This brought on more conversations about multipliers and either focusing on SaaS multipliers or transactional multipliers.

- The more we talked, the more my head was going towards API sockets, API integrations, white labels, and other possible industry specific levels. That would help with marketing, development, training, etc. I love it!

- One thing that caught my ear was that they, SymLiv, are hardware agnostic (not tied to specific hardware). They also tout that they can interface with any other existing hardware, used in their industry, based on their current model. I would love to see what they have and/or are doing. We, at adilas, could really use that. We just barely got done with a very painful attempt to use some super old proprietary hardware for a company doing POS (point of sale) stuff. It would be super cool if we had a middleware type thing (some sort of software) that we could put on an older device and then be able to make a web, middleware, hardware bridge of sorts. We would really love that.

After the meeting, Gene gave me a call and we chatted for a bit. I recorded some notes and sent out some texts. I really enjoyed the meeting. It was fun.

Meeting with Gene Spaulding. Went into town and had some pizza, did some catch up, talked shop. Great lunch meeting. We talked about all kinds of stuff including investment options for software, buyout of adilas ownership (Steve and I), HOA's (homeowners association), other local computer and tech companies, and making choices.

Fun side note. Gene was a commercial banker after college. He was the banker that helped me get a small business loan to work on the Learn To Freeride project back in 2005/2006. Learn To Freeride was basically an app before apps were cool and popular. It was for learning how to do snowboarding freestyle tricks and moves. That was one of my old projects. Fun little flashback.

Just for fun... Here is a .zip file of the LTF Volume 1 product. It is about 640 MB but kinda fun. Enjoy!

My mind was going nuts all day. Literally a whirlwind. I didn't write down the start and end time on this one. But from about 12 noon until 11 pm ish I was brainstorming, thinking, recording notes, talking to people, phone calls, texts, etc. It was super fun. Once again, these notes don't have any specific order, they were just what I recorded on small little post-it notes. I should have used a bigger notebook... :)

- We need a matrix and the ability to monitor every choice and setting. Full data driven and choice driven billing for our clients. This needs to be baked into the beginning design for fracture and where we are heading.

- What about possible open-source code and/or having our clients pay for their own accounts? That would take some of the hardware and server pressure off of us. Just a thought. Along with this, we could set it up to use any domain name, any site/server or hosting company. Whatever. Keep it super open, if we want it to be.

- As far as hosting and packages, we could have our own options as well. Things like simple home use, shared servers, semi dedicated servers, full dedicated servers, clusters, etc. Make some options and then make them available.

- List out your services that you offer and/or have available.

- Packages and bundles - tiny, small, medium, large, extra large (xl), double X (xxl) or whatever. Maybe set some limits for the different sizes or limits withing a certain range (keep it kinda flexible). Allow for variable billing.

- Stripe seems to have some awesome automated merchant processing features. It may be fun to plug into this. We could also use something like Datacap and then have access to even more merchant processing options. Just thinking along these lines. This could be for our clients as well as for us, as a company. Currently, we are using USAePay for our internal merchant processing stuff. I'd like to expand and really open that avenue up a bit.

- You (meaning me) may need to fully jump off. Earlier today I was giving Steve an analogy of jumping off of a moving train. The best place is either on or off, not somewhere in the middle. If I'm going to jump, do it and get clear. You don't want to be too close to that moving train. Once again, just an analogy.

-  Some of this stuff is for me, but was part of the brainstorming session. Anyways, I'm going to list it anyways.

- I know some bankers. I'd like to meet up with them and just pick their brains. Thinking of Mike Hall, Brent Wallis, Kevin Moser.

- I could use some of my percentage ownership of adilas as collateral, if I needed to get a loan.

- I have a buddy that helped me out, back in the day with my Learn To Freeride (LTF) project. His name is Gene Spaulding. He currently does a lot of stuff with nursing homes, memory care, and retirement homes. Good resource. Maybe even checking with him if he needs a product to help manage all of his beds (rooms for his clients - elderly folks). Regardless, he's an awesome resource.

- I know a guy by the name of Jud Eades who is an entrepreneur, a friend, and a total stud. He does all kinds of fun stuff. I could see if he has ideas and/or is interested in helping me build a reoccurring revenue based product.

- I know lots of other business people who have ideas and different know how. I would love to tap into their minds. Just being silly, but started thinking about too many people and decided to stop (for now).

- Use eye candy to show what we have done

- Talk with my wife Heather

- I have a full business plan that I did for the LTF project (older personal project dealing with teaching snowboard freestyle tricks and moves - early to mid 2000's). Look at the LTF binder, just to get some ideas.

- Recruit help. Think about all kinds of avenues, people, places, things, etc. Be creative!

- Include the Lord

- Sufficient - That goes a long ways

- Apply It! - Whatever you learn, keep applying it. That seems to be one of the secrets.

- We (adilas) hired a business consultant a few years back. Get back with him and review of what you learned from Jonathan Johnson and Epic Enterprises Consulting.

- Check in with Aspen, my daughter and see if she wants to help. She has a great gift for organizing and such. I could use the help.

- Talk with my mom and dad. I would like to ask my father for a father's blessing as well. That would help me out.

- Planning things out and then funding that development.

- Strategic funding based on needs and plans.

- Willing to listen and record notes. I love sharing what I have learned. Writing things down helps my memory. The old saying - The faintest scratch is better than the sharpest mind.

- I'm willing to let others play a role and add to or even take away as needed.

- Freedom from the adilas grind - that's worth a lot.

- I may be able to do more and help more by not being tied down.

- Make a list of pros and cons

- Include some prayers (lots of them) and some fasting - ask hard questions of God and of yourself

- A couple of books came to mind - Who Moved My Cheese, The Go Giver, How To Win Friends And Influence People, Rocket Fuel, etc. Read those books.

- Be willing to help and give. I enjoy that.

- Follow a dream

- There is a level of excitement that I'm feeling. This is kinda fun!

- I have a book called "Differentiate or Die" - I'd like to read that. It was given to me years ago and it has been in my office but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

- Get some training

- Work on some funding

- Be a cheerleader

- Help fix the existing foundation. Make this part of the plan.

- Be open... to... whatever...

- Bridgerland - It's a local technical college here in my town. There are lots of options there. I know a number of people, they have training resources, and they have even asked for a demo (multiple times) of our products. I'd like to explore some options there including offering to help them build something that they could resell and/or pitch to other technical colleges. Almost a white label type option.

- I had a dream the other night about including other businesses in our planning and roll out. Keep exploring those ideas and avenues.

- Leverage your percentage of ownership.

- Ask... What do you need? How can we help? What do you want? Where is your pain?

- Go back and do it again. Trystorming and being willing to circle back again.

- Talking with Heather, my wife, and going over what I was making, what I could make, and how to keep a good balance. I'm not going to lie, there are parts of it that are just plain scary.

- We may need to get back to doing a family budget. We used to do that a long time ago. It's been pretty smooth sailing and we haven't done that in quite some time. We may need to circle back around.

- I'm kinda scared to dip into savings. Super grateful that we have some.

- During the day, we talked (Heather and I) about existing expenses, promises, and upcoming expenses dealing with raising a family (vehicles, wisdom teeth, other doctor bills, etc.). We listed a few things out.

- From Heather - We don't want to relive LTF! - Understood and I agree. Lots of lessons learned. If someone has time, some time in the future, I'd love to tell them about that project and product. Huge building blocks of my career, part of my life, and part of the journey. It wasn't all bad... :)

- Look at the risk/benefit trade offs

- From Heather - She'll let me do this - new venture - if we don't take out a personal loan and don't clear out our savings.

- We have been super blessed.

- We can't see the future. We don't know what is coming.

- Keep adding to savings as part of the plan.

- Light fun with numbers. We started adilas in 2008 from a project that started in 2001. The first adilas deposit was for $100. As of 5/31/23, adilas has made over $7 million and growing. That's kinda fun.

- The current goal is the business plan. That may end up being more than just one document. It may be better to say plans (plural).

- Need to call our accountant and check on taxes (for me personally)

- We have a number of projects planned for around the house that will still need to be completed this summer (paint back porch, cut down the dead tree, etc.). Heather wants to make sure that I don't get too busy and that I can still help out and do the planned projects around the house.

- From my daughter Amber - We were on the back porch talking - Here are some random thoughts that I wrote down from our conversation. From Amber - Do what makes you happy! Question - wouldn't having more be more stressful (meaning another whole adilas product)? I told Amber that I was trying to work myself out of a job. She had a few questions about that. Foreign concept to her. We talked about - if you are enjoying the job, it's not work. Good fun!

- More notes from Amber - You could always find another job. For example, snowboarding or whatever. Something that you enjoy! Maybe something part time or something like that. You could teach an art class, spend more time with your hobbies, actually get a job where you have a window (you work in a cave), get out and get outside, something. She was having fun giving me advice.

- AI (artificial intelligence) - this may replace certain jobs. Creativity and interpersonal skills - you can't replace that (currently).

- I like helping people - do something along those lines.

- Aber was being super kind - She said - You should draw stuff. I love the t-shirts, cards, your life jacket (kayaking PFD), and other things that you have drawn. Go have fun! You could totally use your drawing talents.

- Next I talked to Aspen for a bit - she was very logical and had some great questions. For example: I wrote down - Do you feel comfortable dropping all of your responsibility on other people? Who is going to do what you were doing? What about family timing (meaning with our family and who is doing what - in general)? What about retirement? Who is going to help with marketing? Etc. Very logical questions. It was great.

- I told her that I was playing a small game, similar to the old fable called "stone soup". Bring what you've got, throw it in the pot, we are making stone soup. She thought that "a community effort" was a better way to say it than calling it stone soup. She is probably right.

- A few more questions and comments from Aspen - If you have a passion about something, we'll trust you. Prove yourself! Different question, how will this look for taxes?

- Both grandmas and grandpas (Heather and I's parents) are a great resource. I'd like to let them know what we are doing.

- Talking to my son Tanner about what was going on - He said, it sounds like Legos (little building blocks).

- This is totally random, but also came from Tanner - We were talking about trying to skip things that we didn't like or couldn't do. Just being silly. All of the sudden, Tanner tells this story about one of his friends. His friend is in a wheelchair and has some disabilities. Tanner was really sore from doing something and said, I think that I'll skip leg day today (dealing with weight lifting and going to the gym). His little friend chimed in and said, I skip leg day everyday. Tanner and his friend had a good laugh at that. Anyways, it was super funny and broke the tension around the dinner table. Good stuff!

- Talk with Steve about some ideas

- Aspen recommended that I talk with Kelly (adilas power user)

- Called and spoke with my mom and dad over the phone. I then went over to their house and spent an hour with them talking about things. Great little visit. They recommended that I do some fasting and praying. My dad will be willing to give me a father's blessing this coming Sunday. Pay your tithing, server the Lord, and pray for help.

- My dad gave me a scripture to look up: 1 Nephi 4:6 - Led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.

- I told my mom and dad about a dream that I had on Monday night about including other business owners in this software re-write and that is exactly what my parents recommended for me to do. I thought that was very interesting and awesome!

On the morning meeting with the guys. We had both Wayne and Calvin pop in briefly. Most of the morning session, Dustin and I were working on his code to auto increment these huge RFID tag numbers. Basically, you start with a huge 24 digit and/or character tag and then increment just the tail end. It has tons of zeros, alpha/numeric values, and an incremental portion. We spent a lot of time going over the sub loops and loops within loops. We got it and it seems to be working great.

Around 11 am (ish), Steve was showing us some cartoons about a dog. Anyways, Kat, Danny's wife, was telling Danny (one of our sales guys and label developers) that adilas was kinda like a dog. You tell it to go and do something, and it tries to go and do it. Anyways, Danny took this idea and worked with a guy from his church and came up with some fun cartoon dog images. Really fun. The artist's name is Naters Art from the Salida, CO area. Adilas is the word Salida spelled backwards. Kinda fun. Anyways, Naters came up with some great images of this dog, rolling over, with a bone, searching, and tilting it's head. The developers on the morning meeting were saying that they could see some of these images being used as icons while waiting, searching, success messages, error messages, info messages, etc. Lots of good laughs. See attached for a screen shot.

11 am -  meeting with Gene Spaulding with the SAL Management Group. GoToMeeting

We started out the demo and meeting with letting Gene show us around in his spreadsheets and what was connected to what. Really cool and he has taken things to a huge and super deep level. Steve and Gene were able to briefly talk about how both of them started at the spreadsheet level and then eventually grew out of that and into a database type technology like adilas. Good stuff.

One of the main pages that they had was titled - Census and Roster - who is where and what is what (simplified operational and accounting data). This fed the rest of the reports and pages.

Steve - what would be mission critical for you guys? They answered that it was the census and roster reports (getting data into the system). Simple screen to gather that information and then disperse it as needed.

They do have a 3rd party that does all of the onboarding platform stuff. All the paperwork, contract stuff, legal stuff, etc.

They have looked at some of the big huge platform applications out there... they are kinda looking for something smaller and maybe more custom. We did a demo and I think it went pretty well. I had Dave Forbis and Steve on the call with me. They had a controller and head manager on the call. Good back and forth and we had some fun.