Meet a SuiteMate : Samuel Chang

[Music] okay welcome welcome everyone to the succeed with software podcast thanks for joining us today today i'm really excited to introduce our guest his name is samuel chang he's a SuiteMate that i've met recently as a result of a review a testimonial that he sent in which is always always great to hear how SuiteDash is helping and and hopefully improving the businesses and lives of uh SuiteMates out there so samuel is the ceo of vt member and vt member is a company that sources and hires trains and manages remote

Workers so virtual virtual assistants i guess is the is the niche sam but let me pass to you before i butcher your business and your in your elevator pitch too badly because i'm sure you have it down uh let me introduce samuel chang the ceo of vt member sam thanks so much for joining us on the succeed with software podcast of course thank you for having me i'm super excited to be able to offer a little bit of value to your audience and also to be able to jam with you so thanks for having me great so tell us about your business sam uh maybe when you started and then what what how you grew into uh this type of business maybe how you came to be yeah yeah yeah sure i mean i could start from the very beginning um kind of how i got into um how i got into entrepreneurship i love that yeah um

So originally actually my very first kind of stint that you know at entrepreneurship was um back in college i was uh i was actually a meat salesman back in the college so i went to university of western ontario so for the americans it's uh it's it's just it's just a university over here and we have actually one of the one of the high most prestigious business schools over here um or at least the most prestigious business school in canada is actually the richard ivey school of business and so i was actually part of that program and when i was in school i was my very first commission-based sales job was actually i was a meat salesman and so yeah selling me like i sold beef chicken pork or door but it wasn't like oh like a cooler and you sell a couple steaks here like no like we were selling like we were selling three to five grand worth of like meats

In one go and it didn't have a freezer we would sell them at deep fruits as well so we went door-to-door residential not to businesses and we sold like basically half a cow half pork like that kind of thing we sold like four thousand dollars worth of meat and made ten percent commission so that was kind of like my first stint i remember on my on my fourth day on the job i sold like i think 20 grand worth of meets and i made like 1500 bucks and i was like oh my gosh like why do i need school so after that um one of my really good friends actually got me out and got me a position working with a company called leadcore which is a huge multi-billion dollar construction company up here in canada um and with leadcore uh we basically i i basically kind of climbed the corporate ladder and you know we scaled that company from around 25 people to 350 people and we were one of the largest acquisition

Teams for uh for if if not the largest telecom company over here in canada so like we did we did around like 40 of their net new acquisitions for them so um so that's that was kind of like my first kind of stint and then while i was at litecoin this is actually kind of how the business idea came about um was that while i was at lead core um i was actually tasked to build an online sales university for like core so i mean i think you guys might be familiar with grant cardone university and so grant cardone um he we hired grant cardone for two years and we paid him like almost 300 grand and with that what we found in our industry because the attrition rate for door-to-door sales people are so high we realized that after two years well you know like everybody left right

So because everybody left we're like well we just wasted 300 grand on nothing because everybody left and now we don't have any you know we don't have we haven't retained any of the information so i was basically tasked to you know carry some of the information curious some of the scripts and all that and then build an internal sales university to essentially utilize um to train our team so as i was doing all that i was working like 80 hours a week because i got a green screen i got a media team here but then i was doing a lot of editing the filming like everything by myself so like 80 hours a week i was like dying so basically um at that time i read i read tim ferriss's um book which is four hour work week and then there talked about like oh like virtual assistants is like oh what is this so i go online and i'm like okay well cool and uh i just hired one so

I hired one and then after i hired one it shrank the number of hours that i had to work from like 80 to like i think like 50 hours and i was like oh my gosh this is awesome so then i was like okay what if i hired another one so i hired another one and i brought my working hours down to like 20 20 to 30 hours a week and so i was like what the heck i'm like okay so there's something here right so that was originally me hiring a virtual system for the first time and then you know obviously like working with virtual assistants whatever like we we hired more and all that kind of stuff but it wasn't really a business model yet um so during the pandemic that was kind of how i that was that was kind of when i transitioned because i was looking for something because obviously our door-to-door the door-to-door operations kind of shut down and it kind of wrapped up so i was looking for i was looking for

A business idea that i could essentially run um you know from asia from you know offshore like i could i could run from anywhere in the world um number one and number two i could service anybody everywhere anywhere in the world um and it just so happened that you know we landed on this business so what we do is we source we hire we train and we also provide the ongoing management of a virtual workforce for north american companies but we do it for less than half the cost of a north american employee so we do everything from data entry cold calling appointment setting graphic design video editing web development social media management we do everything under the sun pretty much virtually but we do it for eight bucks an hour and that's essentially what we do wow and uh and essentially you know we we work with many different kind of companies you know we work with telcos we

Work with sas companies as well like we do sales and appointment setting for them uh we work with a lot of you know individuals that have like podcasts or uh individuals that have um you know like videos that they record and they want us like curate that into tick tocks and syndicate that onto your instagram reels and that kind of thing so we do a lot of that we do web development graphic design we're building a web app as well for a learning management system based out of ontario so we do a variety of different things but primarily the ones that we the service that we actually are are are quite good at is the cold calling aspect as well as the as well as the graphic design video editing aspect of it as well because that's that's my background like i used to write a digital marketing company and then obviously i used to run a cold calling sales

Team so those niches are are areas of our expertise but that's amazing that's that's that was fun that was like a journey i loved it okay so uh so what what i recognize there first this this door-to-door sales start is so valuable i mean just really uh of course the first time you walked up to that door it's a little bit nerve-wracking you are not sure and then you gain confidence again confidence these are the kind of jobs that i always recommend for for young young adults looking to start in careers things like that or even waiting tables or any kind of you know job where you're able to we're forced into this face to face learn

A smooth way of dealing with people learn to handle rejection learn to handle the things that might not feel so good uh but but once you have that skill you can translate that into many many different places in the future there's no doubt about that i mean i i can i can honestly say that um everything that i have is attributed to door-to-door um yes quite literally and i would i would go as far as to say that you know any parents listening to this like you know your your kids if you want if you want to put them in a position where they can succeed in down the line or whatever um i i think every single kid should go through door-to-door i don't care if you're selling freezies i used to sell coupon booklets like i saw a lot door-to-door

But um it trains your mind to number one to be desensitized to rejection which is exactly what you need to succeed but even warren buffett said this a year of door-to-door sales is like having a master's in communication it's incredibly valuable you know so yeah so i 100 agree with you mine exactly yeah so i didn't know that uh sam we've just talked a little bit but that explains a lot that explains a lot because i can see how uh on the video testimonial where i first met you uh i could just see how comfortable you were and of course the instant instant i saw that was let's i think sam should be on the podcast and not not sure about his entire story but i want to hear it so this is great this is great man and congratulations on all your success um well

I let's talk about vt member so now you are uh have the challenge i think first of all of managing two sides of a business you have your your v your virtual remote workforce that you must manage and communicate with and then you have your client side which comes in a completely different door and you have to manage them so i guess how did you when you started what were your thoughts about how how are we going to do this you maybe have partners maybe have staff but in the end one person is going to need to decide how all the organization is going to go so i assume that was you totally yes it was i actually don't have any partners in this business um i do have a team of around 60

I think we're 66 people now on our team um and but but in the beginning like we started off with like myself and you know a couple of atms and it was so vtn by the way it stands for a virtual team member which is that's that's the kind of rebranded version of our va basically um but yeah in the beginning oh my gosh mike i could tell you that like we look for tools because like okay so when i'm managing you're right on the client side and we added many different tools like along the way and everything but on the client side obviously we need to manage the client communication right uh we so we needed an aspect for that we needed a we need to manage the client projects as well so obviously cold calling there's not a whole lot of tasks involved however if you're talking about like uh like like a podcast right editing the podcast and all that so they're they're individual

Tasks involved uh our administrative assistant clients like people that hire general virtual assistants from us right obviously they need to assign tasks and where do you assign tasks right so these are all questions in the beginning that like you know we're looking at many different software and then also like i mean billing and invoices and contracts like all that kind of stuff um like we were looking at docusign we're looking and they're just it was i if i calculated it i was like we're going to end up using like in the beginning i was like well i guess in the beginning my mentality was this my mentality was done is better than perfect and i think that's a good business uh business kind of you know direction to go into because if if you want everything to be perfect and you know you see perfection well perfection doesn't exist right which means you

Know you're going to be in a position where uh you know you're just going to be procrastinating right because so so for me in the beginning done is better than perfect so i i just started utilizing like you know docusign and calendly you know all these kind of different tools um until i found you guys but in the beginning like i i i i had to i had to basically like string everything together like bootstrap everything together you know so so yeah and that's the paradigm right i mean that that is what you know as a human being when you are looking to solve some solving a problem you look at the problem you find a tool that fits that problem and then you end up with a whole toolbox full of different tools bought from different places and that and that

Does make sense um yeah and it was it was it was difficult though managing like because we have to manage the team members um you know how we do it is that you know every client of ours they actually get access to three team members for the price of one so they get access to a local north american agent we have eight locally and then we also have they also get access to a virtual trainer the virtual trainer is the one who will manage the vtn and provide ongoing kind of micromanagement um so if you know if they're a cold caller that will monitor their hourly call volumes right um and then last but not least we have the um we have the vtm who's doing the work so there's layers of management with each client and everything however yeah managing that whole process it is quite a quite a quick task yes and and so not only do you have to go out and and slay

All those beasts right each one individual but then you have to convince train and and get up to speed every single person down down line organization and if something doesn't work out guess what you do it again and again and every time is is over and over so uh you know what we what we envisioned always with SuiteDash was let's let's make this one tool this one experience this one familiar ui and familiar way of working one login that can serve as many needs as possible and that will always continue to grow and always continue to expand and improve based on customer feedback and then you could start with us and then continue to grow with us into places that you never

Even thought you would use but hey it's available let's just try it it could really work for us there's no friction there yeah so uh good that's great that's great to that you're in that position now in your business you're starting to solve the challenges you're running into some difficulties yeah because you have multiple pieces of software and the expenses associated with it but don is better than perfect you're right and yes it's funny that you say perfect uh perfection is unattainable it's just i call it approaching perfection that's what we want and we'll go for that but uh but anyway let's talk about next just i guess where did that change you know where what about tell me about the moment where you said okay what maybe there's another way to do this and

And maybe that moment coincides with the moment you heard about or started thinking about software that can do more than one thing yeah so um i i knew i wanted to create like uh i think like the client experience is really important to me i think like um you know what when i when i looked at our service like the the barrier of entry isn't actually very high if you really look at it like you can go and hire virtual system like online like you can go on upwork or fiverr or whatever you can hire someone um so i was actually looking for yeah one way one way to streamline um but two i was actually looking for a way to differentiate myself from other companies out there and SuiteDash actually really helped me do that because with

You guys like for example all of my clients i can give them access to a client portal and they go on there and the moment they land on the main page that you know we customize with like the announcements and you know all that kind of stuff the building and contracts all that they look at the back end and they're like holy like because everything is branded like us right so when they look at the back end they're like what the heck like this like they in their mind like we built this you know what i mean right so um so in their mind they think we built this and so when they look at that they're like oh my gosh like it just makes our business look number one looks so much better and that was like from a client experience side so to talk about kind of the moment i think it was when i was invited because you know how like with each software like for example like a trello or like uh you know whatever like

You have to invite them to you know the board or invite them to whatever and so what i was like inviting like when i was onboarding a client i have an onboarding checklist and i was looking at the checklist and i was like what the heck like we're using like five different tools and then you know we're trying to bring them in like invoicing and all that kind of stuff and it was just like the management of it was just taking way too wait way too long um and also the the invoicing the sending the contracts like using um [Music] uh using like docusign like it was just like number one it was getting expensive but two it was like like why am i why am i spending all this time when there should be a tool that i can like put all the information and i click a button like with SuiteDash now like just to give you an idea how we set it

Up is that you know we we input their information and we create a custom field so that the customer feels autumn automatically populates the contract so essentially we just put we just put their name number email whatever in and then we put the number of hours that they're buying and put the put the hourly rate um we put their contract uh length right and we put everything in there and then we go to contracts and we click one button and then boom it sends them a contract and it sends them an email and then the crazy thing is it also follows up with their email uh in addition to that like i mean i mean if you're a business owner listen to this on the call um you know how hard it is or you know how detrimental to your business it is to chase your clients down for for payment because you know especially with startups like cash is king right and so you know and

Especially if you don't have a payment processing company that you know will will give you your funds right away you know for example like strike when you first start with them you know they i think they hold your funds for like seven days or something like that which means like you know if they paid late and then they hold your funds for seven days well now you're like half the month in and you're like you need to use those funds have to pay employees or grow your business and it just it becomes just the whole whole thing right so with SuiteDash like you know we use um we use the contracts like one click we send out the contracts um we send out the invoices and we have all of their payments saved on street dash as well so i just charge all their all my our clients credit cards it's so much quicker on a weekly basis um and from a from from a peace of mind perspective like every single every single week like because we do invoicing weekly um

It's it's just like it's it adds it takes away i guess like an entire aspect of our business that i have to worry about um to the point and it's automated to the point where i actually don't even like i do hire somebody for it but if i didn't really need to hire someone before i could literally do all the contracts all the building all the invoices all the charging of the credit cards within an hour like each week kind of thing that's awesome right which is phenomenal yeah well let's yeah let me let me flesh out some of that exactly the contract let's go to that so sure uh when you when you generate a contract you're generating for different contract templates so you might have four or five different types types of clients and you can create a contract template with each one

And in the contract template you're going to use dynamic placeholders that are intended to be replaced with the data that you talked about earlier the number of hours the contact specific information and so then when you onboard that person and you click that button that contract gets instantly generated with all that data and goes out to them with their exact data in in merged into that template so that gone are the days where you have to dig through a google doc and try to make sure that you searched and replaced all the places and then you export that and upload it to uh docusign or whatever and about halfway through the you know dragging the signatures over you think oh man i messed up and then you got to go back to the google doc that's yeah i've had that experience and

I didn't like it very much yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so that's the thing because we have we have canadian clients we have american clients right also we have canadian and then we have international clients so for example a two-year exact point like we have um international like service agreement and then we have a canadian service agreement right so then like depending on the type of client i just change the currency and all that click a button and then boom like it automatically generates and it's like onboarding a client used to take like probably like an hour and a half or whatever now i kid you not onboarding a client takes me like 15 minutes like it's ridiculous um that's great yeah and the best part so we're looking at your website i have your website and in the in the view here the branding is so strong i mean i really love these colors i love the way you you've

Done the website here so congratulations on that so but what i think i i see is someone who really cares about brand and as you said this the way to set yourself apart in this in this business and i think in every business is to provide an exceptional experience and i think that's what drew you probably to SuiteDash in that you can take uh your your website and let's look i think we'll just click the log in here right and if we click log in you'll see us your SuiteDash log in but guess what it doesn't say SuiteDash anywhere even in the url this is your url it's all custom fully secured ssl your logo everything here and all the email notifications that come from your from your portal or any kind of invoice notifications

No mention of SuiteDash completely white label and so therefore your brand is extended and and as you said your your clients are super impressed and they're they're probably unlikely to go anywhere as long as your service is excellent which i'm sure it is and of course it is yeah and and it's also and it's it's also a flex as well like even on our website um if you scroll if you scroll down to the video section of the website yeah we actually talk about it like we say hey like um so forth for example if you scroll down yeah um and you go to how we work right here play video okay yes okay yes if you click on the player video and you scroll to like maybe halfway halfway point okay right

I'll keep going keep going keep going keep going right here okay go back go back a little bit so right here i actually talk about i see like hey like we actually have um we have look at there it is yeah that's like built in and we can and so it's it's available on your iphone your android your whatever so we actually mention it directly like on like auto wi-fi on our website when we're speaking to our clients like hey you can manage your team members directly through your like app and when they when they when they when they see that and they think about that they're like wait what like you guys have an app like like and and in their mind they're like wow okay so like these guys aren't small right and it's also it's it's it's a it's a great branding it's also a great like um especially

When you're in sales calls and you show them this and you show them the back end it's really really good like it's really strong right i mean your your logo sitting on their their iphone or android totally you know a billion a billion iphones y'all is over it says right so i mean look you can every client one of your clients all they have to do is click on your custom url from their phone and it will be they they can inst they can basically install your app directly on their device their your logo is sitting right next to you know next to their tesla app or their uber app or there you are vt member and they can open up and just log in and process all business your staff can do that and what you're looking at right here is this is SuiteDash this is this is uh sam's virtu

Vt member account all white labeled installed on the device it's exactly what it looks like exactly so yeah that's great good job as you should leverage we had a uh podcast guest net miss laura and she referred to it as a swass software as a service yeah software is a server so yeah i mean maybe you can uh borrow that one day i don't know yeah sure we could just make up words now that's how that's the territory you're in yeah that's great man good job with this this is really beautiful and does a great job of extending your brand and promoting your business 100 absolutely okay um well good so let's talk about now how you you know you talked a lot about how you've

You've been able to streamline your resource your your time and then i hope you're able to use your time the time that you save and that's one of the things really is our part of our mission is not just to eliminate and just take a a hatchet to the amount of time that you spend doing repetitive tasks that are that really you should not be doing as you pointed out but we hope that you're also redirecting that time and actually getting your life back and doing things that you like to do i think you're in a part of the co part of the the world where there's a lot of nice outdoor things to do there's a lot of nice things to spend your time other than sitting in an office and so and same thing with the mobile app we hope that you can get out of the office and go be

You know who you want to be and be yourself and let automations do these things and let software take care of these boring things and if you you are needed you have your app and you you can be connected for sure yeah that's awesome well good uh so i guess when you started with SuiteDash you came across SuiteDash you saw it and you you realized that it would be a good fit for you um what what what are some of the things that maybe you didn't think about as you entered into the into the process into your journey that then became a sort of a pleasant surprise along the way you thought oh why didn't you think about this and now i'm starting to open up new doors and see new ways to do things anything that rings

A bell like that oh yeah yeah yeah big time so first things is um like we have different layers of individuals on our team so for example we have virtual trainers then we also have vtms um and each kind of role i wanted each role to have a different access like in my mind i wanted basically client to have a client portal vts to have a vt portal vtm's have a vtm portal and an admins to have an admin portal and when i was looking at a lot of different other softwares out there like those those roles and permissions weren't available um and it wasn't available to the degree that SuiteDash could do so that was one the other thing that you guys have that translate option where you guys can change basically how each um

Like you guys can essentially change up any any of the phrases like any other terminologies on here right so if you wanted to change anything to match your brand that was also a huge um like a huge win like i i really like what was really nice was how customizable you guys are um and then even since we started with you guys you guys added so many other features like even like since we started i don't even know when we started with you guys it wasn't it wasn't even that long it's like six months ago maybe max um but since we started with you guys like you guys have already added so many features and like i actually every single time i think like there's an email that went out this morning um but every time that you guys sent send one of those like SuiteDash oh like new feature like emails like i i actually i get like super pumped because i'm like oh like what else could you guys bring

But a hundred percent the progressive web app i didn't actually end up thinking that that was going to be a flex to be honest um but i can't even tell you how many deals i've closed because like that just sounded like it sounded so good right like for them like they the moment they see that because like keep in mind mike like i'll just i'll be very transparent with you like our business hasn't even been in business for that long like we we launched our company in in well so i inked the company in march and i didn't i didn't have my first paying client until end of june right and beginning of july till now we scale to like 80 clients basically man you're right so so for us um you

Know in the beginning obviously like i had to balance it right because when i was like obviously when we were selling telus telus is the largest telecom company pretty much in canada right and like when we say hey tell us like obviously people know of us but vt member nobody knew of us and so when i showed them that hey i have like a progressive web app component like where like i have an app component to my business they're just like oh my gosh okay well these guys must be legit kind of thing right and it helped me bridge a lot of like the you know maybe maybe the the skepticism right with working with the new company kind of the beginning with my clients so it was really good oh for sure and having this this presence this web presence and as you say these these tools that look like they if they think you built this they think you are

Somehow leveraged this into existence which surely must have taken tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars and these guys are legit they must be and uh so yeah it gives you that right away and and how fast do you think on on a very first time a semi-tech capable person even a low-tech capable person can start an account and have all these things branded and ready to go fully custom url custom login in what would be like a guess just and i'm not trying to lead you i think maybe a day i think would that be a fair statement if it took all day but you could do it yeah yeah so i wanted i wanted to be so okay so let's say

Like a tech person and a non-tech person because i'll i'll be transparent i did all the customization myself and i suck at tech like oh my god i suck at it like it's pitiful um how badly i am at it and i did it all by myself and it took me like maybe three days max yeah okay yeah yeah which which i the thing is i did it right so and i went to the back end and you know i did all the customizing and obviously that's also factoring in like oh like you know um writing the announcements and like copy and like all that kind of stuff and so so for me it's not very it's not very hard to set up and it's quite easy and then now that you guys have that have the wizard thing right i think um that's

Gonna be a game changer because there are so many things that like maybe like in the beginning there were so many things that like i i needed support on but then i was like emailing your team that was and it was like back and forth and i was like it was fine like it was good but then i was just like man i just wanna like get somebody on a zoom so i can like ask someone like how to do this kind of thing now now that you guys have a wizard or that that wizard functionality where you guys can book a book a call or whatever and you know you guys will help them do it that'll be a game-changer i think yeah so sam is talking about the SuiteDash wizard program which will you can book what we call a wizarding session and i have to give credit to my 13 year old daughter and her obsession with harry potter but

Yes we now have SuiteDash wizards and we sort of theme it like that so forgive any silliness there but we again we like to have we we like to work very hard but we also know that life is about life and so you may catch us being a little bit um a little bit silly like that every once in a while but after you as you uh getting started with SuiteDash if you're running in issues you can book a book for directly from within the platform with the SuiteDash wizard and even for our paid upgrades for thrive and pinnacle we're including complimentary sessions for people that upgrade from free trials to thriving pinnacles so yes this is this is your chance to this is the way that you can really collect your thoughts even and

You don't have to book it right away see that's the thing right you get a a coupon for the free sessions that you get spend a couple days with the software write down your questions right start to really figure out how things are going to go and book that session out a week later maybe two weeks and then really come to the table with a nice list and we'll help you solve it and if we can't solve it in that session we'll make sure that you find your way to a solution uh at some point shortly thereafter for sure yeah for sure good okay um well and you you you've talked about how your clients kind of freak out when they when they get inside and see this uh are are they really you would say that they're adapting to it well they they take to it they're not resisting this

Is the kind of thing that is this the feedback that you're getting because often clients can be hesitant but if if we make it easy for them then i think that's really the key yeah um so we we definitely make it easy for them and also all the virtual trainers are actually trained in the portal already on how to utilize it and so with you know them being trained like we always have somebody to kind of walk them through the back end and how to use the um how to use the file vault and you know the billing and all that kind of stuff as well so um so yeah so i think i think clients actually like this because um like like for example when we send somebody an invoice right it sends them an email um but when we send them an email they can actually pay for the invoice and look at the invoice without actually logging into the portal that's actually really nice so

There's always that functionality there so they don't have to log into the portal the portal is just something that like they can and that's what those are for the clients that are like more resistant right but for the clients that obviously are you know they're more they're more they're more open like they're more techy right they'll log in and they'll utilize that portal not a problem i just i like the fact that you guys have that one-click option where you know for people who are a little bit more resistant the magic link i was going to say yes you have the magic link feature enabled i think that's what you're doing what you mean um whatever you mean the non logged the non log yeah so like you know you know like um when i send an invoice or whatever they can pay for the invoice directly just by clicking that's one one link without having to log in and then they can pay for that invoice or like same thing with contracts they can click on one link and

Then you know they don't have to log in so that right there is is something that's really good as well because you know it it replaces docusign right um and uh and they can just do it directly on their on their side that's right so exactly kind of the direction i was going with with the conversation is that clients yes they they are notorious for being resistant and for being um for having problems i can't remember my password i don't want to do this it's too much trouble so we do everything we can in every place to provide a non-logged experience if possible in the sense of contracts yes we have the option to make it non-logged of course you can also require that it be logged in case you're uh constrained by some compliance framework or

Something of that nature so you can really customize is it okay it for my company do i really need them to be logged in to sign this contract if not i can make things a lot easier for them when they receive the email they click the link and then it's non-locked also things like file transfers i don't know how much you use that that those functionalities but you can do a you're good you can do a file request that you send to someone and that's a non-logged file request where they click a link it's just a very nice dropbox style place where they can upload files to you they can use it over and over again not just one time so they can just keep that it's great for getting photos or logos or any kind of files and we've tested that even up to five gigabytes where we test our file transfer you

Could deliver files to anyone in a non-logged way so there's just so many ways that you can use the platform without really forcing people to come and you know enter their password and get into the portal you don't always have to do that but if in the case that that is something that you need we do provide the magic link login which is just enter your email address and then we send you a link and you click the link and you're instantly logged in that's it so and and that's the thing cause like with with the file um with the file vault sorry i'll just touch on this um we have like we actually built an online training university for like leadership team building sales like all that kind of stuff we built it internally for our team members there's 250 modules

That we have to edit with raw files all that kind of stuff we use SuiteDash's like file vault as like the the main area that we use to house like all of our all of our videos and all of our raw videos all of the completed videos like all of that like we use SuiteDash to manage all that so that completely replaced our dropbox completely replaced our google drive because we utilized that um specifically because all of the team members they can have access to the same files you can share the files with only the team members like it's yeah we it's phenomenal yeah that's great man yep so it is it's the file sharing is very strong and we are moving towards and this is probably something you'll find useful uh a desktop application that

Will be what we call it's called portal sync and that will be an exact sync between your desktop files as just in something like dropbox or drive right up to your SuiteDash cloud files and that will sort of bridge a gap that some people you know of all of us i think find useful as of now that's not the case you know of out of transparency but then we're on the way there and it won't be too long that you'll be able to have that capability as well that would be a game changer that's a good one right yeah that'd be a change because then because right now you know if i need to transfer a file i got to upload they got a download they got to edit they're going to re-upload and all that kind of stuff and so if it's just linked then sure yeah it'd be a game-changer 100 yeah get it get it also

You mentioned something about an internal learning management style implementation so the lms functionality is on the doorstep of going live in the next week or two so we'll be releasing that in sight in a release cycle with three phases so you'll you'll find that in your under the under the tree for you pretty soon there sam nice yeah we have uh we we use an lms right now um because the lms actually has like interactivity components to it so for example if you're watching a video you know and i ask a question a or b they can select a or b and it'll change up the video um so that it it adjusts to the

Learning style and adjust the way that they want to be taught kind of thing um and then with quiz functionalities and all that kind of stuff so so but but but for for for like um uh other and i'm just curious actually now right please yes when the lms functionality comes out um it's designed so that we can create a course in there and we can actually like sell the course directly to like for example clients and if they can access the lms directly through there or is it more for internal or is it both it's for both it's for both it's designed to work for your staff or for your clients so that in the future you'll be able to onboard your staff and say okay this person needs to go through this course and the video the interesting functionality that you just mentioned is something we

Could definitely enable as well we're using a custom player that has a full api so we're already moving towards in phase two one of the completion requirements of the of a lesson would be that that you have to watch all the way through the video and that's confirmed via an api so uh certainly the capability would exist to do something like you said that and i'd like to talk to you about that in it you know after we record just to understand it completely but yes certainly the capability would exist that's interesting i haven't heard of that but all these things are are doable for sure and yes but the staff side of it is really what uh i think a lot of people will be interested in myself i'm interested

In you know we use SuiteDash look in our internally for as many things as possible and so one of the ways we're trying to push towards is to complete an entire onboarding funnel for new developers new sales staff new customer reps and these things like that so that when we get a new person you know depending on the the legal needs of that we can like you said enter the an email address a few data points first and last name country of of origin and click a button and the contracts go out and they they get on board into the platform get assigned to a course to whatever courses they need to be assigned to start working their way through the training you know they'll have their own

Dashboard it shows them how many paid days off they have left how many sick days they've taken all the hr side is what we're really pushing towards in in 2022 will you'll see that happening in a rather rapid pace yeah and that would be that would be something that's also a game changer because right now um like we do all of our time sheets uh on like a separate software but like we can implement you know if we can implement that everything into kind of one area where i can just see from the dashboard even from like you know from an area where somebody can sign in and log their time i don't even know that might be possible now but um basically having having one of my team members come in and um you know click a button and they would log their log their time for that day and then it would spit out a spreadsheet

Maybe at the end at the end of the um yeah something like that we're working towards that you can't do timers now we have timers now uh the way with that we structure those is we make them so that you can add them to either an invoice or what we call an invoice generator which is just a holding holding method for and in for the timers until that generator's appointed day and time comes where it then is activated and it takes all those timers and generates an invoice with all those timers uh it totals them up and sends it to the client and then it resets itself and so your team just constantly adds their timers in that way so for something like a freelance web shop with when it's using freelancers that's a really nice way to make

Sure everybody's working make sure all the timers get uh you know added to the right generator for that client and then nobody has to remember to collect all these timers and invoice them because the generators that's just one job it sits there and waits and waits for its time and then it does it so but reporting functionality like you like you mentioned is is on the on the horizon as well for timers so absolutely and that was the other thing like if we could have a functionality where we could click a button and we can you know generate like a total for the amounts that we sent out for invoicing or like that kind of thing that would report exactly also one of the my primary pushes in q1 2022

Absolutely yeah okay well good good that sounds like you're using a lot of the features and also have use case for the features that are coming out very soon and projected in the coming quarters so that makes me feel like we're we're on track to to continue uh serving your business and that's that's awesome yeah yeah it's amazing so what's what advice maybe let's talk about we'll wrap it up here in a little bit sam because you're clearly a busy guy and we'll get you going bennett i really appreciate your time but what advice would you maybe give to people that are looking at SuiteDash maybe they're just getting started you know i i think there is a little bit of

A learning curve and this is a part of our messaging that we really want to to emphasize is that you know the kind of results that you are so thrilled with and have really changed everything uh for you you had to put some some effort there and you know maybe just kind of talk about that and really the advice to new SuiteMates yeah sure um i think that i think that a business so i i guess okay so let me give advice to like business owners in general and then i'll give advice like new SuiteMates so i think like from a business perspective um it's always like we all like always look for ways to improve the product always look for ways to improve the customer experience always look for ways to improve um

Improve and try and solve problems before they come before they arise right um so i think that you know if you're if you're considering SuiteDash i mean for me i endorse 100 because and with for me i was also like i can probably say this confidently that comparatively to some of the some of the you know audience that's listening to this right now our our our our business is a lot probably it needs a lot more management than most businesses out there right because we have different layers of different layers of management we have multiple different clients multiple different employees [Music] and we have like many many different aspects of our business that we have to manage having one place that you can look to you know to to rely on for information and

Uh for automation like i always tell individuals like because a lot of the things that SuiteDash does i could technically do by hiring an individual right because i can because i have vtms and so i can literally have somebody you know generate the invoices and send them up i can have somebody um you know send out the contracts and all that i don't have to do that i just have to pay for it right which is costly so i always say this so the first step kind of in in in business is to try and eliminate right if it's not if it's not valuable if it's not revenue generating if it doesn't lower cost if it doesn't move your business forward in any way shape or form you know based on the kpis that you measure your business by eliminate it that's number one number two is then you automate it so eliminate automate and

Then outsource right so it so a lot of a lot of people they look at their business and they're like okay well what we could do is we can we can go and we can outsource right away oh we can hire this person to hire this person but i always i was i always would advise like and i used to do a little business consulting like i would always advise like take a step back for a moment let's take out all the things that take a look at all the things that are are in your business that you can just take out like you don't really need it right these are things that you gotta deal with first and then those that are crucial right then you look at ways to automate it right um and then once you automate it then the remainder miscellaneous task that's the thing those are the things that you outsource um and so i think the biggest biggest mistake that a lot

Of business owners jump to is they just jumped you oh i need to hire a person for this well before you do that um because obviously businesses need to stay lean you got to preserve capital because capital is how you grow so with that i mean look at options out there and i'm not saying SuiteDash is is the is the solution to everything but it it for the price that they have comparatively to what you get from like invoicing to contract to a file vault to announcements for your clients to like it's infinite like compared to what they're charging like it's basically free like i know like and i'm gonna say that like it's it's compared to what you guys are charging like what i get from it and how much it solves my business and like you

Know the whole progressive web app being a flex like all like all these added bonuses like and it's it's it's basically free and it's crazy as well to think about this because um you feel very supported because when your clients reach out to you oh hey this thing on the portal is not working well like instead of having your own like tech team or customer service team or whatever i literally just go to SuiteDash and go hey it's not working can you guys double check for me and it feels like you have an entire back end like um like tech support team that can help you as well which is phenomenal right if you built your own software even like you you won't even have that you'll have to hire somebody for that which is going to cost you an arm and a like right so um so that would be the advice that i did yeah and hidden in there i think hidden gems in what you said especially those first two which i love that the uh

Eliminate and then automate hidden in there is is the task of defining the processes right so because it is very tempting for early business owners to say okay let's just go hire somebody for that okay but are you really going to be able to tell them exactly what they should do uh you know and and if they leave and with with all your knowledge can you replicate that person without another full ramp up so what often does automations will often do and the reason maybe they are somewhat intimidating is you're forced to sit with yourself and really analyze okay what does my business really need to do does it need to go from this step to that step step then you have to define the steps and

Then you might you will very likely find that as you said many of the things you can automate and and the great thing about automations of course is they work in the background while you're out surfing or riding a bike or whatever but the second thing about them is they don't make mistakes uh once they start working and you have them dialed in you can count on that automation to do what it needs to do and do it well and do it repetitively and do it accurately and so yeah i think you're really wise to say that and then only with the things that are left over as you say look to outsource so that's good advice very good advice yeah yeah okay sam and finally i always like to ask this what advice do you have for SuiteDash what advice do you have for me and for our team as we move forward and

Thinking about how to move in the future um to be honest you guys like literally solved it with the email this morning which is the customer service like the the wizard aspect of it right that would be a game changer because in the beginning like obviously like i was trying to like utilize different functionalities i was looking at everything on the back end and when i logged in i was like this is pretty overwhelming um but having somebody that can guide them through that that would be that be a huge game changer um and then everything that like out all the things that i mean i would would have suggested i actually brought it up during this during this call so um okay good yeah yeah yeah so like reporting and you know all that kind of good stuff um yeah it's you guys are going in the right direction for sure like

That sounds great that sounds great for me and it's great advice and yes the wizarding program we are very excited about we are even onboarding new wizards and and completing training certifications so we have a wizarding program agency programs that can help you anyone out there that feels like you're not sure or you you don't know if you can pull this off there's a lot of help there for you a lot of documentation getting started videos and and i think sam has has shown that you can take a business that is young yeah i mean that doesn't mean that it really doesn't there's no final outcome that that we can pin on you on your business just because

You you're young sam and the reason is that you've been able to take and leverage tools in a way that lets you grow really quickly and convince customers to go with you because of the pro look that you're showing them and they think okay well if they can pull this off or you know what really the bottom line is if they care enough to spend this kind of time to make things look like this then they clearly are going to care about me and my business and i really think that's what they you're you're projecting confidence to them and impressing them with the way that you are set you're you're stating i will take care of you the way i take care of my portal and my website right yeah yeah exactly that's what it is okay

Sam well thank you very much again for joining us it was pleasure i really enjoyed hearing about your your journey uh to where you are now and i have a strong feeling that you're you're gonna be setting the world on fire for many years to come um thank you very much and i hope you have a great rest of your day thank you to all you guys out there listening this is mike this is the succeed with software podcast thanks have a great day [Music] you