Meet a SuiteMate : Alex Flemmings

[Music] welcome welcome everyone welcome to the succeed with software podcast this is mike i'm going to be your host today and we're going to continue a series that we're starting we're calling the working title is meet a SuiteMate so yeah we call our customers we call our fans we call our the people that spread the word about SuiteDash we call them SuiteMates and we have a SuiteMate here with us today and his name is alex flemings all right alex is the owner and founder of a business called pixa works which is that looks like it's a play on pixel works but pixieworks is awesome and the short description of pixelworks is

A boutique agency that focuses on establishing a digital version of your physical business as well as an overall online presence i think that's a smart way to talk about it alex actually a lot of people haven't yet come to the conclusion which of course seems pretty obvious to those of us who live kind of in more of a digital world but the website your website your digital presence which you described there is really the same thing as your building your storefront in the modern world you know in the old days the banks and anyone that wanted to be in big standing in the community they like to build big impressive buildings you know and and that really uh

Solidified their statue in the community and also the trust with their customers your online presence is the equivalent of that today i think and uh so alex is here to tell us about how his business is working how maybe he went through a journey looking for software and now i'm just going to pass on to alex and let him tell us more about his business welcome alex welcome to the succeed with software podcast thanks for joining us oh thanks mike um by the way great intro absolutely love it well on the fly but yes it's 100 true right yeah i'm sure you you you can borrow that alex that's that's not copyrighted so go for it yes thank you so much

And um of course yes you nailed it you nailed it on the head yes we we tried to look at your digital business as how you would look at your physical business i think if you um pay attention to your brick and mortar or even if you don't but you know there are aspects in the way you would uh make sure that every part of your physical business is being taken care of this is how we should kind of treat your digital business you know so yeah you know you see that old thing in movies where a shopkeeper will come out in the morning every morning and ride spray off the sidewalk or sweep it off and

Just you know taking care of that you know website and your digital presence is a lot more than just let's make it one time throw it out there and how i check that box let's move on yeah it's much more than that and in the way that we're describing so continue yes yes um websites nowadays is is is different i mean back in the day um when uh somebody says hey build me a website um it would it used to be the cool thing to just have a website right right now everybody has a website and most of them are pretty bad and when you take a look at it you're just drowning in this large digital ocean and it's just like a pain to be found um you

Get lost in the digital noise actually right and then what's the point of having it right right yeah so that's where our business tries to kind of help you to navigate through that space because this a website nowadays it has to be more than just you know um establishing credibility first of all it has to look great and um it it has to attract the customer pull them in and of course you have to use it to communicate with your customers uh customer service is important also and um just having a overall relationship with

Your customers that's that's very very important right and you the way i like to think of it as digital presence your website i guess is one way to call that but digital presence is a better way because we want to think of your digital presence as almost like an employee right i mean how can i make this this presence work for me and do work for me and create productivity and reduce the amount of work that we have to do and once you start thinking of it like that and start thinking of workflows and automations you really your your business can open up in a way that you really never imagined absolutely yeah well tell us a little bit

Alex i think i'd like to get to know you a little bit more we've talked a little bit but uh this is a good opportunity for us to get to know each other a little more and also our uh listeners so tell me about your background a little bit and how that's relevant and and you know just as much as you're interested in sharing that we'd love to hear it oh yes well um sure i i'll share my street creds my my background is really in uh design and tech and i kind of have this love-hate relationship but it all began for me um as a what what what i would like to say a street designer like uh i wasn't formally trained or anything i just uh went to an office uh

A um it was a newspaper um in in ultras jamaica that's where i'm originally from and uh should i make the obligatory jamaican joke yes okay all right let's do it we have to do it it's required but yes yes what a beautiful country please continue yeah i love it yes and uh i i said to the owner you know i would love to um work with you and he said uh i'm going to teach you how to layout pages you know pagination so i got my start in there and i got pretty good at it and before you know it a larger company wanted me to work for them so they

Hired me as their junior designer and i worked my way up to a senior designer and then a creative director and then um yeah so so then i saw this guy come to the the office one day and he was in charge of all the filming and stuff and i was like that is so cool i want to learn how to do that and then i threw down graphic design for a second and i started to pursue uh filmmaking so i came to the united states to pursue you know my degree in that area and i completed it but while i was completed completing it i needed to make some money of course as a student i

Needed to make some money so i started freelancing on the side and while working for a client um doing all these fantastic graphics he said to me hey by the way can you make me a website and i was like yeah sure absolutely of course i didn't know how to make a website of course i can yeah well look fake it to me fake it until you make it is how you really get started in life i think if you really looking to go somewhere sometimes you have to try things and honestly you have to assure someone that really what you're saying is well yes i can do that and what you really mean is well maybe i haven't done it before but i will not fail i will make

It happen and you just do it yeah oh yes it was it was it was adventurous for me because i i used to i used to sit down with crackers and this large book from macromedia back back then oh yes sir yeah adobe didn't purchase uh flash or or uh dreamweaver yet so i'm right with you alex macromedia flash back in the old days i'm i personally made many many animations in macromedia flash yes sir yeah i hope we don't sound too like like grand grandfathers on here exactly yeah you know they canceled flash alex we were outdated oh yeah we're kind of

Outdated that flash is banned we're so old all right go ahead i'm sorry yes but it it never never nevertheless the sight turned out horrible but he loved it it was looking back it's it was it was so terrible but fast forward uh we got better new technology and before you know it we're at web 2.0 and all this craze and then the apple iphone came and then now websites had to be smart and then now we had to generate leads and then what once we got the leads we had to build a relationship and there is where my problems began i needed a crm i

Needed some kind of a portal to handle all these clients and um that's when my uh journey began searching for that portal that all in one thing yeah in the beginning of that journey and and i've been there and i've seen it from other perspectives as well i think you you really don't it's kind of like boiling the frog kind of example right you starts off things start happening then they happen more and you're celebrating and you're kind of thinking this is awesome my business is doing really great and then you reach that realization and what some point that if we do if this goes any faster we're going to spiral out of control we're just going to start dropping balls and that's when unfortunately

With the time that you really need all the organization that you didn't realize you need suddenly you have to find it you have to implement it and you have to do all that while you're busier than you ever have been and that becomes a challenge for sure yes and speaking about busy when you are a solar um entrepreneur is is that the term solar pres solopreneur is tough to say the real world yep tongue twister yeah when when when you're all by yourself you you tend to to to to wear many hats because here's the truth uh mike the truth is while working you know at my day job i

Was one of i was a really good employee i was really good at what i did several um awards you know employee of the month but when it came to running my business i was a terrible business owner i knew nothing about business i was just a great creator so i had to learn real quickly and one of the things that i learned is that when you are there by yourself you don't have a team you're just starting out you're freelancing you you tend to wear many hats yes and while you're wearing many hats you know you have to be you have to be your own

Accountant you have to be your own sales person you have to be the designer you you need to have many hands and one of the things that i used to overcome this was to use a software use several softwares back in the day there wasn't many softwares that kind of grouped everything together really um the the closest to anything out there you know it is a software that has the word hats in its name really i think i've heard of that yep so there's there's a few out there for sure and and the trend is

Moving in this direction and so you know we feel like we're right at the forefront of that kind of trend and and certainly our goal is to be in is still in that conversation at the top of that conversation in four or five years when the masses realize why am i using six different softwares you know so when that happens i think it's going to be a good thing for everyone but those of us who have been thinking this way for a long time will will be right at the forefront what i wanted to say there was uh first of all one man band is a lot easier to say than entrepreneur or solopreneur so maybe you could pick that one up and uh it also yeah

One man band and then uh uh in general yeah the the journey to go from where you were to to try to put all those software solutions together as you tell us about how you kind of started thinking well what do i need and then what did you try and how did what how did you try to solve that problem before you um were introduced to SuiteDash you know as my problems arise i've tried to find a software that would kind of solve that problem if i needed a scheduler i get a schedule up if i need a proposal um i used to oh let me tell you about writing proposals from scratch oh my goodness i it was a struggle if

I needed to you know build a client i have to get a different software for that and it's like it's work managing all these softwares and um the the closest i even got to that was this uh app by adobe called business catalyst and if any of my SuiteMates out there are listening right now you know the the heartbreak that we went through with uh a business card it was so hard to learn it was clunky stuff did not work and then after investing all our time uh they announced the end of life and and it just sent all the partners just scrambling and we're so heart broken

And mad and they didn't communicate with us well it was it was a heartbreaking journey and and this is one of the things that i i got really excited about finding a SuiteDash it's like having tutorials having uh this this this weekly um uh the webinar i think you mean webinars yes a community that you could talk to uh other persons in your same area same fields you have a question that alone in itself is just worth the investment i can tell you that um if we do our

Best to make it approachable approachable and and there will be you know of course with anything that you're going to try to approach that is powerful you're going to find that you have to invest some time to understand how it applies to you how you can put it to work but with with SuiteDash i really feel like and i know for sure that your investment will come back to you and saved hours in refinements and accuracy and in all the ways that you can set up these automations to [Music] trigger each other one thing goes to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing through your workflow and you're just managing that process

In a way instead of recreating it over and over i mean you know how many times have we have you tried to put together a contract or proposal like you're saying and you want to copy it from a previous job and then you you're staring cross-eyed at your at your word microsoft word or whatever it is trying to make sure that you don't make a mistake and include the old client's name and the new clients contract and then despite your best efforts you find out after you send it yeah i did that and now i'm kind of embarrassed and it's just a lot of work right a lot of a lot of tedious things that should be much easier it definitely is a lot of work and um i can

Tell you i don't miss that at all actually actually i was real happy i i mean finding SuiteDash but let me tell you a story let me tell you a story and i i'm not sure you you know this uh you know i know we were talking earlier but i'm not sure if i told you this but i wasn't looking for SuiteDash action i was i was on the web a client had asked me hey we need we need some kind of a portal to put our documents in and so forth and i was i was saying okay let me like i always do yeah sure we can do that and [Music] i was like okay

What am i going to do now because like i said i've tried everything so i know what works what doesn't work what you know and we're we're a company that focuses on the the client experience the customer experience if if the customer is having a bad time it's probably not going to work out even for us so i started looking again and i found SuiteDash and i was like okay cool i can customize it cool all right let me sign up and i did it and over a weekend customize a portal and attached it to their website they did their uh special presentation to

Some important uh personnels and they call me back on friday on a team all excited alex thank you so much we look so professional it was so smooth it was so easy it was great so now i'm looking at the software i was like you know what let me take another look inside uh-huh and i'm like you know what i need to use this for our company i was not paying attention closely mike this thing is amazing here man it's like a swiss army knife of business

Solutions it's fantastic that's awesome well alex yeah thank you so the the design of this software is not we started to solve the very problems that you are talking about so a little bit about my history which i think most people kind of know is that you know i've been in technology since before websites or websites uh we were building these things way back and so uh that led to an agency early in the you know early in that boom period of websites where we uh were picking up clients very um regularly and built a nice healthy client base and ran into all the same problems you're running into and and

You know we we started trying to build wordpress plugins to handle that and we did that but then we realized you know this is a lot of work to try to keep multiple wordpress plugins working on all these different plug-in combinations and theme combinations et cetera et cetera and sas was becoming software as a service was becoming of course the next wave and that was easy decision let's go to software as a service so we can control the server control the code control everything and provide a simple uh predictable reliable user experience so that's where we went and then we just decided started thinking how would we want this to work if we were a customer and the flexibility and the white labeling and all the things that we

Would like to see that's where we started as as requirements and we built what i think is a very flexible piece of of it's a framework a platform that you can take and put together in almost any way that you need it to work connect it white label it personalize it just extend your brand and and and look really professional doing it so i hope that's what we've done definitely definitely i i've had nothing but positive um results in fact i have already started using it with a few more of my other clients and um this

Thing is truly truly uh universal it's it's um it fits into every niche i think so far i've i've used it already you know for its hipaa compliance um you know sometimes we have sensitive information and this thing is is is rock solid in fact i've also used it in a way of a like sort of a membership site and i've also used this i use personally i use a project management um app the most with my team but

This and also i should mention this thing can be used as a digital asset management and like like a file repository basically some is similar what you mean or yeah yeah and my marketing friends can relate to you know having having like you know having their brands in one folder oh oh i see but yes yes absolutely yeah if you have if you're social media for example social media producer or something like this you can keep it's designed to keep everything in a way that's nice and clean we also provide for you designers out there and and agencies we provide a private folder for every client that the client cannot cannot absolutely not

See anything that's in there and that's where your vector files belong that's where your source files belong they're organized by the client easy to find always there and if you want to and then suddenly deliver that vector file to the client then you just change the folder to their shared folder and that's it it's done they they get it so uh yes those kind of things we absolutely thought about funny that you mentioned the membership site one of the niches that we're expanding towards and trying to just create proof of concepts to illustrate that SuiteDash can uh work just like is sort of the patreon sub stack space

Where creators are able to just create a membership area with different levels and you know some levels get to see these pages and some levels get to see those pages etc but 100 percent we can it's it's doable you can make a very nice white label no branding no patreon no sub stack and no splitting the revenue with those people uh i should say so yes it's very flexible it can be used in a lot of different ways yeah speaking about white label and i don't really want to sound like a a a a fanboy but i i really i really think that the white label is

Executed well in terms of the domain and i i'm not sure if this was intentional but i noticed that in the in the top right of the app there's this little um lifesaver icon even that seems to be white label i'm not sure because i've looked through and i haven't seen anything i'll admit alex is 100 intentional neurotically so as we said last week yes so here's so here's something that our white label and yes maybe i'll maybe i'm not sure if you've realized this yet but we intend that an agency like yourself okay you might you would be able to talk to your

Client and say i can provide for you this a software suite that's personal to you everything white labeled or you don't even say white label would you say i'm going to provide this for you they don't need to know who it is why it is you know who provided it then you're gonna you you resell essentially SuiteDash to them you are in possession of all their logo files and everything that you need to easily white label it set up everything we even just introduced what we call white label cname records so previously you would have to ask them if they were in control of their dns you would have to say hey please point your dns to app.SuiteDash.com but now we have six or eight different what uh very generic like portalsoftware.com you

Know just really plain white uh vanilla so that you can give them that and they they still don't understand or know and they don't need to it's not trying to sneak anything by them but more so just hey let's not raise these questions so they start to well what's that all about and you you maintain the control of your brand you maintain that service and you can uh white label everything pass to them you keep the super admin keys which means your login you'll always have that you create admin level logins for them pass that over they can log in use every functionality in the application but they can't access the white label settings they don't know they exist anything that reveals SuiteDash is is is not visible to them

Including the the documentation the onboard documentation is there for them to to understand and learn how to use the app without you it's all there on board and it's all white label there's no mention of SuiteDash in that documentation either so it's really set up for you to use as a tool to uh of course for your business but also is something that you can take and build a new vertical in your own business and make your make your clients happy make yourself happy and and no one uh and you and your brand remains in focus only not us so that's that it's all intentional and it's all by design to to help you do

Exactly so so our roots are uh exactly where you where your roots are alex we're we all think about we think the same we want to work with our clients in the same way and i think that's why we kind of know what to build that you would like oh yeah and you definitely did that i i i i really thank you mike i appreciate it well thank you yeah it's good to hear that it's nice to hear when your work is appreciated that's for sure so i'll i'll definitely not cut you off if you want to do that but of course i do also want to say uh SuiteDash is a work in progress is it's it's really come a long way it's very good you know

We're really really proud of what we have but we're also really really excited about the future and all the things that are coming uh down the road so yeah and and and that's the great thing about sas software right you might wait you when you wake up some days you have new features look up yeah okay thanks yeah and it's that's the same amount of money right yes i was about to say it's you know in the within the first month of using this it already pays for itself you know and i'm not just saying that it saves time it saves money it's it's already all together and um it makes sure that your

Brand like you said is at the forefront and if you are like a nervous wreck like i am sometimes when it comes to branding and white labeling and and and domain custom domains and all this stuff the impersonation tool is going to be your best friend the the impersonation mode you can see what the customer sees you know you can you can you can kind of go into stealth mode it's very very useful too yeah it's really cool we don't talk about it enough i think actually but so what alex is referring to is if you go into your crm from anywhere that

You can see a client or you're looking at clients information you'll have an option to quote unquote impersonate and what that does is when you select that for a particular client you'll have a reload in your browser and what you see when you had a reload is the exact pixel for pixel view that your client will see when they log in okay and you can navigate as the client you can even operate as the client like for example if you had um a client call you on the phone alex and say hey i i i don't wanna i don't have time for this or i'm doing something else can you just take a credit card over the phone well you know what you could do is if you don't have like a terminal or whatever else you might need to do that they have an invoice in your portal you can impersonate them and

Take the credit card over the phone and just enter it just as hear them process the payment just like they did and it's exactly the same thing and then when you're finished you log out as them you we have an impersonate like a toolbar and you just click log out and then it reloads right back into your super admin account or whatever account you're in that's it yes yeah and so you can always know what their what your customers will see or what they are seeing what their experience is like in in every case and it's great customer service without even you know trying to give customer service it's it's it's so important you know in fact this

Is this tool is what i use to uh create my custom dashboard one of my favorite features of SuiteDash is that i get to customize my own dashboard it's and i i i pushed it to the limit i will admit that's great we love we love customers like like yourself and of course all but man i love it when people are saying well here's what i did here's what i did and we've even had some customers i will admit we've had customers that uh when once i realized what they did uh i thought wow i didn't even think of that oh i didn't realize a that that would be a cool way to do things and b this

It's it's possible and somehow i didn't even we didn't know but yes with the tools because they are so flexible people are really stretching and pushing the envelope of what can be done and some of it is quite impressive yeah and this is why i like to call it the swiss army knife yes of all in one business solution it's it really is like you can use swedash in so many creative ways you add a little bit of css um at the bottom and you could customize this thing to the t it is is um wonderful i don't mean to be gawking it's just no that's okay that's okay i mean but

Let me ask this though alex i mean yes good i'm glad you appreciate it's awesome you have skills you you know you're you're a designer and developer not a developer but you you came up into that web through that web path and so you know about these things but in your opinion and maybe you have some experience with your clients what would you say if i asked do you think that just a regular business owner a person who's you know they got of course they have a phone and they're working they're they're running that phone okay they don't have experience building websites you know is there a learning curve yes i think the answer is yes but how steep is the learning curve maybe the educational resources that we provide do you think that you know what's your assessment of of the accessibility of achieving what

The kind of things that we're talking about let's be honest with you and i will confess when i first um stumbled on on SuiteDash i was doing this for a customer and i was quite busy it wasn't a week and then you know i did not feel like coding or doing any fancy anything you know and normally i don't do any coding my you know i have team members who do this but i did not customize this as a you know as a front-end developer i customized this as a regular person just wanting to get this finished by the weekend it took me a day and a half and i

When like a regular like a regular person would do i go on to the SuiteDash website and this website is beautiful now but uh back then you guys had a different type of website a different look but i was still able to find the tutorials and from that tutorials i was able to customize and do some advanced things especially in the quick quick tips section very very useful very very useful i was able to be up and running and looking really good looking really good looking really really good that's great um

I think you're some of the thing you're talking about SuiteDash academy which i'll just kind of pop up um screen shot up and there's a video training series and a how-to series and these are all designed yes good so these are all designed to give you just a really simple walkthrough how to set up your own white label mobile app etc etc i mean these are designed to be just drop dead simple look let's look at the screen okay read what it says and next next card look at the screen do what it says you know this is this is not in a way for us to say you know you're not smart enough to figure this out it's just in a way to say hey what you do for a living you're great at we get that but you can't be great at everything

Let us just make it easy for you yes so we we put in a lot of extra work a lot of extra effort to to produce these uh resources and to set you free and you were on a weekend right and you did it on a weekend which means you had very little uh exchange with our help support although they are active on the weekend but yeah so you didn't have to wait on anyone you didn't have to ask permission you just had all the resources and you just took off and in that weekend or the day and a half you customize your logo your emails your colors your custom url your custom login your white label mobile app and suddenly you have the infrastructure for your business that some fortune 500 companies don't even have right and

And it's all white label your colors your brand and nothing else is showing yes and it goes back to what i was saying earlier about the mission of my company uh because i'm a small business owner and i i i i experience on a daily basis what uh small business owners go through and i think SuiteDash helps to level the the it's a it's one of the tools that helps to level the playing field where you could be very professional branded you know the automation to to help manage your team or if you're a one-man band you know help with the automations will definitely

Help you great support great community and um you know i can't i can't stop saying how happy i i am to with with this uh tool that's great so glad to hear it okay uh how about this alex have you installed have you done the pwa install that on your device and do you use it as an admin side and maybe you have customers using it or set that set that up before well have i not only hey that's one of my selling points actually of course i was like you know you know we could uh set this up for you um and set up

Your very own app on you know for your your company did you know we could do that and uh and yes we did that gets their attention yes we do that gets their attention having your accompany logo on your company logo on someone's device so that every time they open their iphone or their android they see oh there's alex's logo there's pixelworks and uh you know how we'll talk about a way to set yourself apart from competition once that happens and you and you provide excellent service an excellent product then is there really any any way that they'll choose someone else or recommend someone else the answer is almost certainly no of

Course yes and it works well you know you don't have to go to the app store or anything you know you go down to you go to you you have the link you you save it on your device and it shows up like an app i've done this also for customers their logo it shows up on their device like an app and they love it in fact the android version will will prompt you to install it's it's it's really cool i i love it we are we are working on um a methodology that no so you say on android it has an install this app button that displays and that's because it's because android side has embraced pwas

Slightly faster than the apple side basically pwa is a cutting edge technology that is moving in the direction of replacing native apps in many cases and apple of course you know that they are kind of blocking certain apps from from the app store they really are motivated by profit of course their company i don't blame them of course but what they don't want is a bunch of boilerplate low value free apps for a million companies a billion companies all over the world in their app store they don't want that why would they right they got to go through all the admin to get it in there and who knows what kind of bad actors are there they don't want to handle that so what we see them doing and of course it makes a lot of sense is that they just exclude all these boilerplate apps

And if they're not bringing a lot of value and not everything's not happening right there in the app in the native app then they're being excluded and this is setting the stage for pwa to step on the scene where your progressive web app is 100 the same code base as your actual web app but it reconfigured itself to be almost like a native app i mean really really close and as they open the more doorways to things like push notifications and to uh camera and all these other things that are coming i think down the road the line very soon we are committed to being on the cutting edge of that and i and i can demonstrate that really just talk about one of the things where we're doing now is that we we have a an angle to create a

Certain type of uh connection with an iphone so that it would instead of it doesn't say install this app but it pops a little comment notification over top of the toolbar and says this application can be installed on your phone click here to do that so yes i mean that that can happen soon custom splash screens custom icons custom all kinds of things that you'll be able to do with that application and and still have it be white label so i brought pwa the progressive web app up because a it is a big part of our strategy it's a big part of your strategy is what i'm hearing and it's an important part of the future as we all understand that mobile is a very big part of the future yes

Um [Music] progressive web apps it's i think it's it's the future because uh some of the uh the builders and the platforms that that we use to to uh create some of these what sites are are also moving in that direction and i feel like um SuiteDash you know that's a good move for SuiteDash to also be in this space so yes and it also allows us to give the white to do the white label side of it whereas if we would have been if if you if we would go to the native uh what they call a native mobile app route which means installing from the google play store from the

Apple app store then white labels out the door there's no way that's happening right because we have to stand in front of apple and say this is SuiteDash this is our code please look at it we can't go to them a hundred times a week and say this is pixie works you know they just of course they just never let that happen so um pwa fits into the white label strategy as well and very nicely and i think it's worth saying it's important to say it doesn't cost you any extra this is not an upsell this is not a add-on the pwa it's just part of every account that we that we sell here uh it's or every account that that we activate here even the 19 a month account pwa you have your own mobile

App white label so okay i think we beat that one to death alex but but so so so mike if i if i may ask you a question please um what other things you have um up your sleeves i i recently visited the um the community and uh you demoed like uh some sort of like a lms coming up in the like you had mock-ups of some sort of uh learning management system that you were showing in the community yes so actual actual mock-ups uh in

Some of them working and some of them functional so lms is is well along in development and we are targeting uh sometime in october we're hoping we can still do it it might go a little bit longer but it's just we're in this sort of final phase of testing and packaging and and proving and making making everything work we are building in a uh on a built-in video hosting system that will allow for protection of your of your material of your valuable videos that you spent time making they're not going to end up pirated on some site for sale and you all all kinds of really kind of uh helpful

Implementations of lms so lms i'll spend maybe a minute just to describe our flavor of lms now look there's lms of for colleges and for schools and these kind of things those are more really targeted to an educational system right ours is really more targeted to make you making money basically to to create a product let's create a product that's consists of this these this information these courses these videos we're going to be able to sell that product we're going to be able to take payment immediately for that product add people directly into our crm on the way in select their circle start them on this email marketing drip make them sign this you know go here and do

This contract if that's a thing or anything that you like i mean imagine even like a patreon style style implementation where one of the things that you might offer your your members is the ability to take a class it's to access some some information that you put together in a very structured way and at the end maybe you have a fun little quiz for them and and that becomes even another asset that you can offer as a value add so lms is big uh support tickets is something that we're we're in a heavy planning phase for now and that will be the very next big feature after lms and it's it's really close to even starting development we're excited about that one um

I could go on for quite a while those are two very big ones but um i guess stay tuned join the community right because the community is where these things start to be discussed and brainstormed even i mean we've even been in the community before and said okay here are the things here's what we are looking to build let's you know here's if this is your chance give us all the feedback you want good bad ugly let's hear it and so we then we ask some clarifying questions and go back and forth until we really feel like we've heard heard the community and understand what they mean and and then we go back to the planning board and make sure we're covering all

Those angles so that really helps us and we thank the community for that and it just it's the best way to be as a company in my opinion as a software company trying to solve real world problems if you're not listening to a community and getting feedback and reacting to that in in an aggressive way then i think you're just kind of fooling yourself to think that you can understand other people in a deep way you just can't i can't understand the challenges you have in in burlington north carolina north kakalaki as we collect yes sir for those of you listening alex and i are both in north kakalaki right now so we get along about that for sure um but

I can't understand what your challenges are there i i can try to i can pretend to and i can even lie to myself and tell me that i do understand but but that's false i need to hear it from you for sure yes i'm i'm definitely excited about the support tickets because currently right now um i kind of use i know i can get work orders uh use work requests you know sort of like a makeshift uh support um ticketing system but i kind of use the the um can the kanban the project management section where in on the kanban layout i kind of have the you know tags that i can re-label and says uh completed um

You know in progress resolved sure um and i can actually customize and change the labels right the category and the menus to kind of fit it right now but having a dedicated support ticketing system sounds awesome i can't wait yeah so if you if you'll indulge me i would like to let me talk about support tickets just for a second and oh yes i'll preface all this by said making it really really clear to anyone that hears this we do not have this feature now this feature is not going to be next week it's going to be in somewhere between say three and four months from from now before you could expect to see it but we're heavily in the planning phases and so what what

It will be is pretty well known to to us and i want to say that because SuiteDash has all the other pieces and parts all the legos we like to say around here to accomplish so many things we can build a support ticket system that from day one will have huge advantages over of just plain support ticket system and i'll explain how so imagine that you are just a regular support or a business like a web design business and you need support tickets that's fine you're supporting your customers and so you're going to get the ability to offer them a way to send tickets in to manage those tickets get responses and and really cover their needs in a way that makes them feel special and taken care of great that's wonderful but

What if you are say an it support team that's um your way of using support tickets is that you accept a payment or a subscription uh to your services and then when people submit a ticket it becomes you know or maybe they need to sign a a contract with you and and and all these other things that can come along with okay now i need to you sign up here that's going to start you on a subscription then that's going to trigger a contract for you which by the way is a template and is automatically filled in on the fly as an automation and delivered to them for signing then when they sign that triggers another automation that sets into action the next thing maybe it starts a project for them and assigns

The right people and then the project starts and then you go into your your mode with the kanban boards and you you work the problem and then you respond to them uh directly from that maybe you can respond directly from the the kanban board or you can start a timer directly from there all these things is what we're moving towards so that uh this support ticket system becomes really a communication system that fits into all the other pieces that we have so that you can really build a high level uh support organization around it complete with the legal side taken care of complete with the timers taken care of complete with the onboarding the contracts all the all the uh things that you need

Around that the slas are all done and everything is happening but it's all in the same platform the same portal that is sort of another level with that a vanilla support ticket system will say yeah we can do all that but oh wait you want to take a payment first eek uh let's let's start talking widgets integrations and zapier and then for every other thing that you say that's their answer right so right and all those things cost more money by the way and um and then you're responsible for setting up all those pipes and hoses and if they don't work you're responsible for fixing them right so who has time for that as uh georgia brown i think said one day did i get her name right

Ain't nobody got time for that or are we or is this another way way to prove that we're dated alex right right okay all right so yeah what is that the topic no yeah maybe i'll send you a link later so maybe i'm the only one that's dated uh okay so yes the the roadmap kind of features lms support tickets those are a big deal for us and we're excited we we are also working now just one more thing to say and you know maybe this is something that you you might want to hear alex is that we are developing a certification program for SuiteDash what we call SuiteDash wizards

Okay and a sweet wizard will be your best friend as you start into the platform uh there will be opportunities to get sometimes in some cases complimentary session with the SuiteDash wizard like a kickoff session so that you can uh after you upgrade you'll get to schedule this session and you'll get to sit for you know get that session with it for an hour with a wizard and say all right here's my problem here's my challenges here's what i need to accomplish and then the wizard the SuiteDash wizard will say excellent and start working with you to organize that and make a strategy and send you send you what's in you on your way with a with an action plan and with a

Few extra answers that you wouldn't have had been able to get so easily any other way and those will be you know actual SuiteDash employees or sweet certified wizards trainers so this is something that we're putting together now that i think will have a big impact on on those that are starting and really help them guarantee their success yes and and actually i i i meant to talk to you about that because uh i i would be definitely interested in the wizards because uh it would be great if uh my team members would be able to you know be trained properly in a SuiteDash so that we can even someday

Become you know a part of your your wizard team too so that's cool yeah i mean and that is a challenge let's just talk about that you're talking about train your team one of the biggest challenges of of implementing a software into a business is the adoption right so you you might find a great incredible tool and you know for sure this is going to work for us yes but are you going to be able to get it past bill are you going to be able to get it past this other person you know this person who's maybe for whatever reason we all work with people that you know sometimes they just kind of want to be stubborn right or lazy or you know they they're just and of course there's no bill i'm just talking

But you know what i mean absolutely it's tough it's a challenge and and something like SuiteDash uh the the easier we can make it for you to pass this knowledge and pass this these procedures to your team the better and that's partially the onboard documentation the what is white label so that you have no problem letting the you just tell them hey if you if you have a question click the life saver re read a little bit it'll really help you i mean is it there's a lot of illustrations there and explanation so uh that's one thing we do in that direction is is provide that white label documentation without revealing that ourselves there uh and then of course another thing would be yeah this is the SuiteDash wizard program which sounds like exactly

A good fit for what you need okay uh well alex i always like to ask before we you know get too far or at this stage what could we be doing better how could we improve how can we make things better for you or your clients these this is this is what i'd like to know yeah don't tell me tell me what i could be doing better or what we could be doing better oh my goodness such a loaded question um i don't know what can i say about a company who actually listens to the users um it's if and and this

Is just throwing up if i have to say something yes it would probably be um loading speed or something i mean i understand it's there's a lot of moving parts you know it's you know a server load and you know i'm not a back-end developer i don't know what the challenges are but i feel like the trade-off though for all the wonderful feeders sure yeah let's address that let's talk about so SuiteDash is we are and i i have no problem saying that i think for sure we were the first all-in-one concept out there no one was thinking of this in my opinion six seven eight years ago so we started building

And of course um technology changes frameworks get better uh technology gets better so this is what we call SuiteDash is what we call a legacy project in the in the developing development world and what it means is some of our technology is is of course proven technology has been working for years and it's not unproven it's 100 safe secure and reliable but the mo the most modern technology is now what they call java javascript frameworks which means uh you've heard of react and you've heard of vue and angular and these are yes javascript frameworks and what the the big advantage to them is is once you load that framework into that browser it becomes what they call a one-page application

Which is really cool and so then you know you have the front end is sitting there in front of you like a piece of software that never and there's no reloads so everywhere you click you're going from one place to the other and you don't have to that full browser reload uh that was much more common in in the days when we were starting the project yes but now uh that still exists it's optimized to the maximum of what we what it can be optimized for and and we're working to do that all the time but we are also moving and already have moved in certain parts of the platform like say proposals or deals or there are several places template library and these other things that

Are built in this one page application style the lms is 100 one-page application so everywhere that we are working we are of course building only in the most modern so uh and even now this is a little bit of a sneak we're experimenting with a really cutting edge technology called micro front ends so for those of you out there that are developers or interested in technology you should look up micro front ends because i really believe this is going to be the true cutting edge next uh of software so we're we're experimenting there and if this in our experiments work out it means that we will be able to achieve a full one-page application

Status you know or and look um i have to say in our i have to say that SuiteDash is so big that achieving that will be a challenge it's not a challenge we can't handle but it's a challenge that i have to be really transparent about but this micro front-end concept has the potential to take us from take us to a full one-page applications uh place scenario much faster than maybe we used to think and i'm excited about that so um yes so loading speed is is something that can become an issue it's for me i sometimes i'm not um it's

Hard for me to to relate because i you know of course we do webinars where i'm live clicking from one place to the other and functioning and working and uh certainly 100 usable from for for just a certain standard but if you're used to seeing that one page application i can see i can understand and that's of course why we're addressing it in a very aggressive way so yeah thanks for let give me the opportunity to talk about that good oh well yes well at least i get to use uh my fancy loading graphics [Laughter] all right alex okay so yes [Laughter] i i'm okay with admitting that

Um well i thought we thought custom loader sounds really cool and then the joke around here is that one day when we net when we nail which we will the nail the one page application set up and nobody's complaining about loading time the joke is that one day someone will complain and they'll say hey can you slow the platform down a little bit because i really like seeing my loading so animated loader right so that is my goal to make that a reality i can't wait to see the first ticket come in then when someone asks us to slow things down so they can see their custom loader that's funny you say that awesome all right so uh i'm just curious if you've had an experience with um

Feature requests so one of the things we kind of pride ourselves on and we talked you talked about before uh if something is not existing in SuiteDash maybe yet or maybe you find yours find that there's a small little road uh a speed bump that you say well this is great but it would be a little a lot better like this we do our best to provide a form but a forum for you in this sense of the community and also vote.SuiteDash.com to give you a voice as a community to vote things up and increase that number and tell us as a community what you need have you had any experience with that feature request sort of pathway and what in what kind of results there what kind of experience i'm just curious mike

I'm glad you asked i mean for the most part there are several requests that i would like but by the time i take a look in the the upvote section it's already somebody else has already you know mentioned it or it's working on or about it by next week it's it's it's on it's active and i'm like wow you know you guys are really listening sometimes yeah yeah that's not not all the time but i can't i do have a little bit of pride in the fact saying that if you go to vote.SuiteDash.com which anybody can do right now it's not it's open to the public and look at the requested features

And and functionalities out of the top 50 i would say 75 of them are either in planning or completed or in active development so these are the things we're working on yes but um my if you allow me to be a little bit selfish here am i please take advantage of this opportunity here i have three requests okay good good good yeah i bet you i bet you are not the one the only one so please yeah go right ahead all right so uh what and and this is more of the the feature already exists i i don't know i'm not sure how easy this is to to to implement if it's just oh it's already working we

Can add this on or or what it is because i'm sure you guys are swamped with a lot of requests and working and planning you know but um one of them for me is uh like the ability like the ability to like duplicate or clone everything like clone a business or i'm a reseller so cloning a whole profile after i you know build up this fancy portal it would be cool i'm not sure if this is possible but to be able to just clone the whole thing after i created for a business i could just clone it sure reseller profiles alex is where you want to look okay so what we've got what we don't have and

I and i can explain all the reason why uh we don't have the ability to just clone an entire account it's the reason is is that when you're creating these in the database all these associations that they they go in as ids uh association ids and the ability to just kind of uh perfectly replicate that in another place and they operate the same way there's there's a few logical issues there but what we did is um created what we call reseller profiles which allows you to say for example build email templates and contract templates and uh portal page templates and all sorts of assets inside the platform that would be say for example applicable to a niche so maybe you

Want to create a portal that really caters to accountants and you want to build a lot of content there around accounts so that when you deliver when you when you pitch you can say hey not only am i giving you a portal but also i'm going to include my portal includes pre-written pre-formatted pre-done content related to email marketing drip campaigns contracts are all there everything's all there for you and then that reseller profile those resale profiles allow you that when you create a new reseller child account you can select the profiles that you want to add into that account and there those are automatically added into the account because

The branding and everything will be different in the end right so that part you really don't want to replicate but what we what we provide is to replicate the really core pieces of content that move from one to the other and then you're delivering a generic solution that you can then uh customize based on the client each clients individually so check out reseller profiles as a response and then whatever whatever is still lacking there then please yeah just can just follow the process and see what we can come up with yes i'll definitely check that out okay you know it's it's new and exciting so i haven't gotten to that party yet but i'm i'm going to uh of course when

We finish our wizard uh training [Music] um so here's another one all right are you ready mike i'm ready sir this one is going to be big the ability to add primary contacts to multiple companies so so here how here's how this came about right so we built a portal for a client and they loved it so much they they they came to me and says alex can you i have another company can you build one like this uh it's a happy problem to have but well you'll be happy to know alex it's a common problem it's a common request it's right up there i think with

Lms and you know where it's coming from primarily is from the cpa accounting bookkeeping niche okay so makes perfect sense you have a rock and roll businessman he does not have only one corporation right he's out there rocking he's got three four five some some of them own each other i mean this gets gets complicated right yes so these accountants they have they bring that client in they need to associate multiple companies with that single primary contact and so we definitely understand that we have a full that's a planned task that's just waiting for its turn to start but the way it will work is which is pretty cool is that uh as a part of this we will we will also make the ability to associate

Accounts and after a one-time confirmation so what i mean is if for example your client has a single account and they want to use a quick switcher to switch between them we'll allow them to to do that but only after we set up they go through a confirmation process which is really just an email confirmation but after that it's all self-serve you won't be involved so after we get this after they're able to be the primary contact to multiple companies they'll be able to use even that extended feature and then log in one time and just quick switch using a nice switcher from one company to the other and operate that way so i think that

Will serve your needs yep yes sound right okay good awesome awesome and um without pushing it too much uh so i noticed uh when i was sharing files to a client that and this is new that when you open a pdf there are some little tools that pop up that allow you to like do a view page or like click on there yes i i know this is an existing feature um it would be cool to be able to draw and comment on on these files whether we have like a pdf or a image i think that would be an

Awesome proofing tool and this is me again um using sweet SuiteDash parts and pieces of it in a completely different way no not completely different in fact again something that we we have heard and you noticed the change in the pdf preview it used to be a little more of plain vanilla but now it's much more robust and that you'll be happy to hear alex is is the first step towards exactly that what you're talking about those tools with you could draw on a comment on the right side there there is a a commenting stream that will build that will allow you to touch touch a pdf or an image and

Build a comment around it that can be replied to so yeah you're really kind of uh hitting the nail on the head here so that is a planned feature as well yes in in addition to pdf tools that will allow you to upload a pdf drag signatures over top and get your signature on an existing pdf whereas now we provide contract functionality uh but we but it's more like a word document first that gets placeholders that then gets generated out to a pdf but what if you have a pdf that's really uh specific and niche driven it's already built you don't want to have to rebuild it that's fine you want to upload it drag some little boxes over the signature signatures

And uh assign those boxes and then send that away for signature that is also very short term in our planning yes well thanks mike i i really appreciate you sharing this inside information and um you know with the plans um i'm not going to be greedy um i have a hundred more uh requests but i'm going to just go to a vote to the voting section of the SuiteDash website and go ahead and submit you know some more cool ideas um yeah throw them out there and say it's not just you're not really throwing them out there just to us you're you're you're exposing them to the community and who knows how many people will run across it and say actually that's a really great

Idea i could totally use that and then enough people say that the votes go up suddenly we're paying attention and light light bulbs go off over here and then next thing you know it's in the platform somewhere absolutely absolutely very nice okay well we talked about feature requests we talked about how we can get better and and and thank you very much for that all that feedback that's amazing um so i i think that you you have told us that you you're interested in SuiteDash certification and you're just in a perfect place for that alex in the future the future as a website designer in my opinion is unfortunately you know maybe not the brightest because

Website building has been sort of commoditized and as many things get right you as the technology of of web builders and things have gotten very strong to the point where a regular business owner sometimes a lot of times mistakenly believes that they can handle things right well i'm going to handle this i can do it i can do it and they do it and it's sort of half you know maybe it's not really functional the seo has not even been paid attention to many many things many things but so there so web designers still still of course need to be part of our world but what i think is stronger and i really see the future for a gentleman like yourself who is savvy with technology and

Understands how it can benefit a business if you walk into a business and you and you lead with i'm not a maybe not lead with web design maybe lead with process design or maybe lead with um complete web presence and automations or or lead with i can automate your business so that's for sure something that they don't know how to do and now you have become a provider of something that they have no visibility on which is you know of course of course business is a black box when you when you run a business when you have some a skill that nobody else wants to learn or do that's something you can charge for and that's the way business works if you walk in and say i can automate your business and

They say cool how's that work well here's how it works it's all white you know it's all only your brand and this is the and then you introduce them to the possibilities then suddenly you're a guide for them you're guiding them much in the way of the donald miller books and i want to mention also while i'm here really quick when you were talking about the challenges of going from a solopreneur or a freelancer to a business owner uh if you haven't read yet the e-myth um book that's probably 15 or 20 years old now uh just look up e-myth on amazon and you should read that book because that book tells you basically some of the summary of is as a business owner you are not it's not your job to do do the work yes of course you have

To do the work what your job is is to build processes and mechanisms that ensure the work always gets done no matter what and no matter who's doing it so you're basically just you're crafting a workflow you're crafting automations that ensure that the business can always survive and and one day can survive without you uh which maybe is a little bit of a a hit on you know your your your self-worth but yeah you think oh no one else can do it well maybe but actually the smart thing for you to do is figure out how someone else can do it and only in that way you can scale your business so if you are a small business and you're looking to get bigger the first thing you need to be thinking about

Is processes workflows automations and when you start from the beginning it's much much easier than pulling that trigger and re of realization and execution at the point where you are your back is against the wall you're dropping balls things have gotten so busy that now you have to pull everything apart and rebuild it to to reach that level it's really smart to try to think about that and those kind of challenges before you get in in a bad place so sorry a little side side note there oh i actually i absolutely agree with you in in in fact um i i'm i'm not worried about the future of website building at all actually the fact that i sometimes lead the conversation uh

In my sales pitch um i would say hey um yeah i don't think you need a website really um you know everything just a landing page and uh you know you know good automation and and you're right it's it's all about you know building you know processes that would help um clients to to to get a better investment on you know um a better return on their investment you know in fact that's that's one of our slogans uh you know get results you know because at the end of the day most business owners don't

Care about you know um a website or anything they they've been told by someone that hey you know you need a website but really what they need is more business and that's what we do and i think having great tools like SuiteDash and other tools that we use um enables us to level the playing field where we could um help our customers to navigate this digital um large vast digital domain yeah you know i i i can't wait to try out the features um in SuiteDash having everything in one place yeah i like that you said lev level the playing field um yeah i think that's really a

Core piece of of what's available in in that this kind this level of branding and functionality and the things that are in the mobile app and the things that are available to you for you know 99 a month at the most or something like that right which which uh mike is unheard of unheard of yeah i mean yeah i won't deny that to for all the things that we that we have you can look at just look at our website i mean the numbers just can't be faked and this is real so um you know what how can we do that because we started from the beginning with the concept we didn't we're not adapting you know we didn't start as a single single

Vertical and then try to add other things we started from the beginning and so that's the reason that we can say well we you know we're running one code base here we're running one software team one one organization we don't have three floors in an office building in silicon valley to pay for that's you know what 50 gs a month and we don't have uh those kind of things going on we're a remote team we're from all over the world most of us in the management's in the u.s but of course we have friends and colleagues all around the world and they all share this sort of vision of building something like this that's that's approachable and usable and actually affordable by a small medium business so we

Are leveling the playing field we're providing enterprise level automation and functionality to uh a business that's just getting started with a small budget i think it's yeah it really helps hopefully it's really helping a lot of people yeah great awesome well alex i think we have done a good job of just hearing your story hearing your feedback in in [Music] letting the listeners get some insight into what SuiteDash is what it can do what it is doing for you what it is doing for thousands of SuiteMates and so you know of course my goal is to illuminate that as much as possible tell me let's let's look at uh pixa works and

Let's just talk about how people can get in touch with you alex and and take advantage of your expertise to boost their business um yes uh so you can reach me at pixieworks.com s-p-i-x-e works um it's not a typo it's actually smashing a pixel and works together and that's a whole story in itself but www.p-i-x-e-w-r-k-s [Music] dot com and of course um you know smash that starter project uh button and there you go you know or reach out to us um by phone or email and one

Of our representatives will get back with you and see how we can best you know help you out get you up and running exactly and get more great results my guess is that if if someone calls you though they really have nothing to lose and what they can walk away from is at least with your good advice right yes and say well uh you know alex really knows what he's doing and maybe it's not right for me right now but now next time i have an interaction related to this i'm gonna have a lot more knowledge in my head and so you know this i think it's good to encourage people don't be afraid to pick up the phone we're not gonna you know alex is not gonna jump you and try to sell you everything under the sun he you know he's smart enough to know that the best thing

He can do is just to educate you just to say well okay tell me your situation if it was me here's what i would do you have these options you know this is approximately what you you know how that would work and and you know that's it just a friendly conversation about that and of course alex might mention that the possibility of a white label portal and invoicing and all those other things but in your best interest of course right alex i mean we're i think it's awesome to be able to empower all these businesses with this kind of stuff i'm glad you're you are um representing SuiteDash to those folks and uh in a way that's just you know natural and because you saw it work it

Worked for you or for your clients so and now you're excited to continue that and i appreciate it it's really awesome to meet you and hear your story and say hi to say hi to tamara for me uh maybe she's right there with you but someone i met tamara also the other day and just really enjoyed meeting some of my fellow fellow north carolinians but we have you know of course SuiteDash is international but it's nice to meet someone from down the street down the road um so it's been a pleasure alex thank you very much for joining us we'll let you go and get back to work um thank you mike for having us uh we really really appreciate this conversation and uh um you know keep doing the the

Good work uh this is an amazing tool and you are going to help so many business businesses small businesses levelless playing field getting more results because that's what we're into that's the business we're into and um i think this is the beginning of a great partnership um you know and lots more great things to come i'm very excited absolutely all right everyone thank you again alex thank you and everyone please just head over to pixaworks.com p-i-x-e-w-o-r-k-s dot com and give alex a a look and chat him up start him up and uh see what we can do there he'll he'll take

Good care of you i've seen some of his uh some of his work and just interacted with him and i just have a lot of confidence that you'd be in good hands there and probably a lot of other places but for sure with alex here thanks again alex have a great rest of your day thank you everyone for listening have a great day see you in the next one you