Good meeting this morning. Steve had just come off of a multi hour demo yesterday afternoon. He was reporting in and going over things that he had learned. Both Sean and I were listening as Steve was explaining and teaching us. Good stuff.

We talked a lot about solving pain points and how that helps make our product a viable solution. Steve got into some financial training and where things come and go (ways that monies move or track) and how that creates a cause and effect type relationship. As he was talking, I was plugging in numbers on the financial flow calculator to illustrate the flow of the monies. Steve had me build that page to help with just such trainings. The real goal is capturing and recording the story. The numbers then play into and through the story vs just being a standalone number (plugged or adjusted value). That is super important.

As a part of the financial flow, Steve was talking about being able to mix and bled while in the same system. If you run your operations on one platform and then try to do your accounting on another, you will always have disconnects. If you run things as they happen and then report back (roll call) then you can capture the story and thus get the financials or accounting (what really happened). That is where we are heading.

They were talking about software and different releases. With what we do, we release new things and features all of the time. Constant releases and constant refinement. That lead to a discussion on what are called "mash-ups" or "mashups". This is where a software company takes a number of different tools and applications and basically mashes them together to get a whole. There are pros and cons to that, but that type of business is also prone to major disconnects and paid points. We are striving to make a fully integrated system that lives and breathes on its own.

As the guys were talking, Steve was telling Sean how Kelly (adilas rep) was doing the demo. He brought up how well Kelly will say something like "We will help you and here is what that will cost." Both assurance, help, and tying it to cost, in the same sentence. Sadly, I'm not very good at that. It usually comes out something like, "Yes, we can help you do X and Y. And, oh, by the way, we should probably give you a quote." Or something like, "Great idea, I'll build that in and/or make a note of that (assuming all costs or taking it on internally)." Anyways, I'm not very good at the monetizing thing. Light discussions about styles and goals.

The discussion extended into talks about promises, expectations, and what those things really cost. We also talked about how much prep work and knowledge is needed to do certain things, tasks, or jobs. Sometimes those things are a barrier to entry. One of the things that we have found, mini gold mines, is getting first-hand knowledge by helping customers solve their problems. If you can afford it, those clients help by transferring real-life knowledge of what it takes and what is needed to get the jobs done. Invaluable, hard to put a price tag on those things. We love doing that when we can. It ends up in a net benefit. We tend to do what we call piggybacking. We build something for one client and get to pass that on for free or as part of the system to the next client. Then that client will help push something else forward that the other clients get to benefit from. It becomes a form of piggybacking. Kinda fun!

Custom work! That is one of the things that sets us apart from the rest of the software solutions out there. We love and are willing to do custom work. That may not sound that big, but it's huge. As we were talking, we were reminded of our elevator pitch (condensed sales pitch). It talks about us offering a standard package and then being willing to customize on top of that. That's pretty cool. Here's a link to our mini elevator pitch (also one to Sean's expanded elevator pitch). We really do offer a lot of options.

We will just keep working on sharing what we have and how it can help people solve their business problems and needs. As a small side note, Steve was talking about ecommerce and how that little solution is actually becoming a way to sell and interact with clients without even using the main internal tools. It's so simple and connects everything together, we actually have some companies that help people use the ecommerce options and solutions vs using our internal shopping cart tools. It keeps it simple yet limited in options. I just find it interesting that some companies are using that tool vs the internal tools. I don't think that I could have anticipated that. Interesting.