In this episode of the MFGMonkey Podcast, we sit down with the Founder and CEO of METHOD Paul Jackson to explore strategies for optimizing manufacturing processes. As the manufacturing industry faces increasing demands for efficiency and innovation, Paul’s insights offer valuable guidance on streamlining operations and enhancing productivity. Join us as we discuss practical approaches to overcoming operational challenges and achieving excellence in manufacturing. Whether you’re a manufacturing professional or interested in operational optimization, this conversation provides actionable strategies to elevate your operations.
How to Get in Touch with Paul Jackson
If you’re interested in learning more about METHOD or connecting with Paul Jackson, you can reach him via the METHOD website:
- Website: Method
- Contact Through Website: Fill out the contact form on the METHOD site, and Paul or a member of his team will follow up.
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulalexjackson/
If you have any questions, comments, or topics you’d like to hear about in future episodes, please let us know. Subscribe today and help fabricate the future!
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Optimizing Operations for Manufacturers with Paul Jackson
In this conversation, Dustin McMillan interviews Paul Jackson, the founder and CEO of METHOD, a software company that automates small businesses. They discuss topics such as small manufacturing, business pain points, supply chain management, automation, QuickBooks integration, and the use of no code and AI. Paul shares his journey from running a landscaping business to starting METHOD and the importance of customizing workflows for small businesses. METHOD provides a CRM that syncs with QuickBooks and allows for customization without the need for coding. They also touch on the benefits of low-code and no-code solutions for small businesses. In this conversation, Paul Jackson discusses the benefits of automation and no-code solutions for small businesses. He explains how METHOD: CRM helps businesses automate their workflows and customize their own solutions. Paul also highlights the role of AI in streamlining processes and improving customer experiences. He shares examples of how METHOD: CRM has helped manufacturers and warehousing companies optimize their operations. The conversation emphasizes the importance of automation, delegation, and scalability for small businesses.
Paul, welcome buddy. How are you?
Good. How are you? Thanks for having me by the way.
Good man. Yeah. No, thank you for jumping on here. We have some exciting stuff to talk about. Today we have Paul Jackson, the founder and CEO of METHOD, and a speaker. You do some professional speaking, don’t you?
I wouldn’t call my speaking professional.
Hey, it’s this one in your bio. I’m just reading it.
I’ve given talks before about technology, AI, and whatever people want me to talk about, but I’m definitely no pro.
Cool. Yeah. I’m excited about what we’re going to talk about today. We always talk about what we’re going to talk about at least a week ahead. Just talking about small manufacturing and business pain points and supply chain management, which we’ve talked about a few times with other folks. And automation that we can, you know, be doing better. And then QuickBooks integration, which you and I kind of, you know, before we hit record, we kind of got off on a little tangent, and then no code and AI and then obviously how METHOD can help and all the things that method does. So, I’m excited for it.
Yeah, cool. And I don’t want to turn this into a METHOD sales pitch. So, I’m happy just talking about really any topic on technology and automation as well. I don’t want it to be just about method, but I’m sure we’ll go there in some parts.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, it’s always important to talk about what you guys do and things and your expertise. I guess what we will be talking about right before we start recording is just the importance of data and data out junk and junk out type of things and cash flow analysis and different CRM or I’m sorry, QuickBooks integrations and things like that.
Yeah, I can get some context of what we do and like have my career and how I got here that might help guide the conversation a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, so I’ll start with where we are. So, METHOD, a 100-person company, has been around for 14 years, and we make software that automates small businesses, like usually 10-plus employee businesses but goes up to 200, it could be as small as one. The way we do that is through what’s called no code, which is basically the ability to create custom apps or modify custom apps that don’t require code for those modifications.
But how I got here was not the longest resume. I ran one company before, I guess two companies, before METHOD. So, my first company was my high school and university landscaping and field service business.
Cool.
That’s why I paid for college and really cut my teeth in small business and figuring out how to run a P&L at age of 15.
Right.
Right. And in those early days of running a business, I was really in tune with technology and figuring out how to use Microsoft Access to automate my invoicing.
Okay.
And I would just geek it out on that. Ended up going to university for commerce, which is basically accounting and finance.
Okay.
So that gave me a bit of accounting chops. When I left university, I started a company called QXPRESS. So QXPRESS, the Q was for QuickBooks.
Okay.
I’ve been in this world for a long time. The idea there was to help small field service businesses who were doing repetitive work out in the field, getting work orders, scheduling them, turning those invoices into QuickBooks, and getting paid.
That was my first real software company, and I ran that from around 1999 through to 2010. I was acquired by a private equity company that ran a few software companies out in the New Jersey area. And so QXPRESS became part of their portfolio. I wasn’t really interested in moving to Wall Township, New Jersey, which is like where they filmed Jersey Shore.
Wow, yeah.
Yeah, so it wasn’t really my thing.
No.
One of my team members went on to work with them remotely, but no one actually went down there. So, we transitioned the company to them and sat around figuring out, what we do next? And we came up with the idea of METHOD at that point, it’s back in 2010.
Okay.
And the whole idea there was just really just to help small businesses. I can dive if you want until they are thinking of that. Okay, so.
Yeah, do it. I like it. I’ve got a couple of questions about that being acquired, the M&A was interesting too. So, let’s circle back to that.
Yeah, sure, I’ll circle back. That was definitely an experience. When I circle back to that, I’ll tell you how I ended up on the other side of the table, too, and learned a lot more.
Cool.
So yeah, the whole idea we found with METHOD was, we had a package software. This is the traditional software that small businesses and medium businesses use. It’s one size fits all. You can configure a few things here and there. If you have a work order, you can change your logo, and you can change whether you want to show or hide prices. But you can’t make custom apps. When people buy software, they buy it for their needs today and maybe a little bit tomorrow, but probably mostly today. And as they grow, their needs change. And whatever they bought may not fit them anymore. Our biggest pain with QXPRESS, when we’re running that, was we’d have our favorite customers outgrow us.
Wow.
They had to because their needs changed and what we provided didn’t fit them.
Sure.
And if we were going to make a different version of the software for 3,000 companies that were using QXPRESS, it would be a colossal mess. So, we had to basically break up with customers that were scaling and changing. After we sold QXPRESS, we sat around the board, and we’re like, what do we do now? The thought was, can we solve that problem? Can we solve the problem of people outgrowing software? What would that even look like? And we actually went to custom reporting. So, one thing we had built into QXPRESS was the idea of custom reports, where people could actually make their own reports. And so we had these guys working out in the field all day, not technology people, come back at night, and they would spend hours making custom reports. Like, wow, so people actually do that. They can configure. They can geek it out without being geeks. What if we made the whole software that way?
Okay.
What if the entire product was made where you could make your own features and you could have 3,000 companies using 3,000 different versions of your base software and no one person’s changes affect anyone else? Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing ever? And that was really the idea behind METHOD.
Okay.
So that’s taken us 14 years, but we’re still living out that dream.
That’s great. I shared with you that we’re going through this transition with CPAs and bringing on a new accounting firm to help us do reporting. And, I have asked you about another software and it sounds very similar to what you guys are doing there.
Similar idea.
So, the custom reporting is great. And I’m a big fan of HubSpot. And HubSpot, you can generate whatever you want. If you can think of it, it seems like, you know, on a sales end of things, I really nerd out over it. Custom reports and automation and things like that on a sales end. So yeah, this is really cool.
So, you wanted to circle back to M&A.
Yeah. I had so many different, you know, over the last 10 years, I’ve had multiple companies come and you know, want to buy us or whatever. And I’ve just never been interested in it. I just don’t feel like we’re even close to being there. So, it’s interesting to hear that you went through that already.
Yeah, I was young too, so I would have been 48 now, so 14 years ago, was 34.
Okay.
The choice A would be to keep growing the company as is.
Mm-hmm.
We were bootstrapped, and we didn’t have any venture capital and software companies, that’s unusual.
Yeah.
So, I could have kept growing it, but the idea of being acquired and starting something fresh was appealing. It gives a whole bunch of freedom to a young entrepreneur. You get a whole bunch of capital.
Yeah.
You can use that capital to do whatever, start another company, invest, or buy a house, or whatever it is you need to do.
Right.
But you also get experience in the actual process of being acquired. And that was super interesting,
Yeah.
Like going through due diligence and having auditors come in like KPMG came in to audit our processes and learn about what they were looking for and how they valued a business, recurring revenue business like ours. And then how other companies operate like the acquiring company had a platform in New Jersey, and we’d go down there and we’d learn how they do things, and we’d try to integrate our systems with theirs. And there’s just so much learning there.
Yeah.
That was actually a great overall experience to go through it.
Good.
So, I don’t regret it at all. And then once you’re acquired, then you have to put that in your resume, right? It goes, yes.
Yeah.
He’s someone who’s been through that.
Yep.
So that helps a young entrepreneur as well, I think. So, I would recommend it. I’ve got lots of friends who are founders in the community. And rarely does someone take a secondary, which means taking money off a table from investors, or goes through an acquisition and regrets it. And rarely do they stay retired very long as well. They start something new.
Right. Yeah.
So, it was an interesting experience to go through it 14 years ago. I still remember it very well.
Yeah.
It didn’t slow me down in any way.
That’s great. And they didn’t require you or your team to stay on for a certain amount of time?
There was an earn-out.
And the company you said was in New Jersey.
Yeah, so there’s an earn-out.
So, tell everyone where you’re at now, I guess we skipped right over that.
So, we’re in Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
You’re in Toronto.
In Toronto, yeah.
Okay. So that’s been a lot of a lifestyle changes going from Toronto pretty laid-back, very clean city to a Jersey shore.
Wow, I’m sure there’d be a whole bunch of similarities. Nothing wrong with Jersey Shore, just wasn’t my thing.
Right, right.
Sorry, what was the question?
I forgot. They didn’t require you and your team to stay on?
Right. No, they didn’t. But there was what’s called an earn-out. So, a certain percentage of the acquisition price has to be earned based on the performance of the company in that first period of time.
Okay.
So, for us, it was the first year. They required us to make sure that the performance was what we had projected it would be. And so, we met all our projections in month 11 and got our full acquisition price. And in doing so transitioned everything from support, and software development, to sales and marketing to their team. We did stay on, just not in their office, it was done remotely.
Right. And are they still, did they just roll everything up into their company or are they still operating under your original name?
They rolled it up. It’s funny though, so five years ago, which would be nine years after the acquisition, I had the VP of sales reach out to me and say,
Hey, Paul, we still have 2,000 of these customers using your system. We can’t get them off. Any advice? They definitely wanted to roll those customers into one of their other platforms. But it felt good in a way knowing that they were successful with the acquisition because they clearly were getting their money’s worth after all those years of still having those paying recurring revenue accounts.
Yeah.
But also, that the customers loved the system that we built for them otherwise they would have transitioned by then. That felt like a little bit of justification for all those hard work days.
Yeah. Do you know if they’re still on your system?
I think they had to pull at one point, so you have to migrate. And I think that probably happened after the phone call.
Wow. Interesting. And did you have a certain period of time, like a non-compete before you were able to start METHOD?
Yeah. We have a five-year non-compete.
Okay.
So, for five years we cannot, it was very specifically carved out, we cannot have METHOD make a field service software that competes in that market. I’m like, that’s fine.
Yeah.
What we’re trying to do is more horizontal. It serves many customers. Our biggest customers today are manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors.
Okay.
Not because we actually went out to those markets, but that’s who the software worked really well for.
Okay.
And so not competing in field service was just fine.
So, I guess tell us more granularly. I can’t say that word apparently. What METHOD does and how do you bring value to your customers?
So, two things it does really well. It’s a CRM. If you want to put it into a box, CRM would be the box that you put into.
Okay.
It syncs with QuickBooks really, really well. A lot of companies have that little checkbox on their website that says it syncs with QuickBooks.
Yeah.
The actual data tables are where all the information is stored. It mirrors what the QuickBooks tables look like.
Okay.
So, it’s like a direct port of customers into customers in METHOD. A direct port of the items and inventory parts in QuickBooks, directly port over to METHOD. You make an invoice in METHOD, it’s a direct port back to the invoice in QuickBooks. It’s a bidirectional, real-time sync back and forth. And that’s important.
Yeah.
Because the vast majority of companies, like small businesses in America are using QuickBooks, like the vast, vast majority.
Yeah.
And when you go from like a back-office system like QuickBooks and you try and get your front office people off that system, so that the accountants are in QuickBooks.
Right.
You want everyone in the front office system which handles all your like, customer workflows.
It’s important that the work they do syncs perfectly back to the back end. So, the accountants are happy, and they’re not wasting any time with double entry, and they’re not making mistakes. If you do something in one system, like make an estimate in one system, and you’ve to copy it over manually to another system, the chance of mistakes is pretty high. And it’s also very inefficient.
Yes.
QuickBooks is a very important piece for our system to get right. So I could go into geeking out QuickBooks world. I’ve been doing this for now, for about 24 years.
Yeah.
But I’ll probably stop there. The other thing we do is no code. So, the idea that everything that you see is malleable, it’s changeable. You can be looking at like an estimate form and you say, actually want to add a bunch of columns here, I want to add some buttons at the bottom. There’s a certain thing I do very often when I add one item, I add three other items that are very similar in a certain order, and I want to press a button to make that happen. You have all these changes you can make to every screen or roof form you see.
This is very interesting. And we have actually struggled as a company to get our warehouse management system to sync with QuickBooks. And it is one of those check boxes that, you know, we asked very specifically because all the accounting happens in QuickBooks, but all the on-floor activity in the warehouse happens in this other system. And we were told that it works, and it never worked, and it’s had rounding errors, and it is a huge problem. And you’re right, the errors that can simply be made because we are doing double-entry and things like that. We have triple-checks to make sure that whatever we’re double entering that it’s correct before it gets sent off, especially with invoicing and things like that. So, yeah, this is really cool.
I was just on your website kind of messing around here looking at a few things. Sorry that I got a little distracted. The CRM portion of METHOD you’re acting, you know, comparing it to a HubSpot or Microsoft dynamics or something like that. But then it integrates with QuickBooks because you’re doing all of your quoting and so forth through METHOD, correct?
Yeah, so the QuickBooks, the quoting you can do through METHOD, you can do in QuickBooks. If you do that in QuickBooks, it’ll show up in METHOD. Typically, especially manufacturer wholesale distribution like those companies, that’s one of the areas they take out of QuickBooks because there are so many custom workflows that go into making a quote.
Sure.
And there’s so much that you want your customers to see and self-serve that it makes sense to do that outside of cookbooks and into a system-like METHOD.
Sure. That’s really cool.
So, one of the other things that we talked about was inventory control and automating your inventory. So, this METHOD helps with that as well.
Well, we don’t. It was interesting that we have so many customers who use METHOD who are manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributions. We’re not an inventory solution.
Right.
So, they’re using us for something else. The inventory that you have in QuickBooks shows up in METHOD. At least your customer service staff can say, like, do we have inventory on hand? Yes or no. When you make a sales order, it will flow into QuickBooks to make sure that the inventory count is kept up.
Okay.
If it is really heavy inventory needs that you need with multiple locations and using shipping to track the orders, often people will actually keep that into their inventory software.
Right.
Whether it’s SOF’s inventory or what are the other ones? Locate. There are a few others in the QuickBooks world, like Fishbowl.
Sure, yep.
Sorry, I was just getting a call from my wife there.
Well take it. Bring her in.
So, I’m not sure if you’re watching the news yesterday. So, Drake made big headlines because, in Drake’s mansion in Toronto, he got flooded.
Flooded? I saw that.
Yeah, you saw that. So, she’s probably calling me saying our basement’s flooded too. We had a huge minute of rain yesterday.
Well, I didn’t realize that Drake lived in Toronto.
Yeah, he’s from Toronto.
I’m not a Drake fan. I know who Drake is.
We drive by Drake’s Mansion on the way to our baseball park every week, twice a week or so.
Okay.
It’s gigantic.
I’m sure. Yeah, for some reason yesterday, there was a bunch of stuff popping up on my Instagram feed of all these giant mansions. And maybe it was because his mansion just got flooded. I don’t know. But one of the videos that I saw was just people walking around and water just ripping through the place.
Probably Drake’s videos.
Yeah, wild. Yeah.
So where were we? How did get to Drake’s Mansion?
Your wife calling. I was trying to get her in on the conversation.
So much of the do-not-disturb feature of Apple.
I know I was doing the same thing. I’m like, my phone kept dinging. I’m like, I thought I turned this off, but your wife just bypasses that a hundred percent of the time.
Yeah, maybe if you call like ten times in a row it gets off the do not disturb feature.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you do have water.
It’s probably really important what’s going on right now.
Maybe we need to pause this, and you need to take the call.
I’m sure it’ll be okay. So, we were geeking it out on inventory, right?
Yeah.
It’s a lot of third parties you can use METHOD to view inventory, to create sales orders that will often be then sent to your inventory solution if you also need an inventory solution.
Okay.
Or the inventory needs you to have or find inside METHOD and QuickBooks. But we are not an inventory solution. That’s a whole other world of complication.
Yeah. So, you’re more supply chain management and automation.
Yes, yes, the sales order process is like one of the examples I love the most is a company called Container One. So, they take large shipping containers that are no longer serviced for actual shipping, and they sell containers to customers who might want to use them for their own purposes, like building a house or putting a shed in the backyard and whatever they’re going to use these containers for. But they have to acquire these containers after they’ve been purchased and track the purchase order from the sales order all the way through to delivery. And they’ve created this really elaborate system inside Method. They’re a large QuickBooks user. There are hundreds of people who work there. And it’s one of the larger QuickBooks users probably that are out there. But they didn’t want to go to an ERP. They just wanted to automate their supply chain using POs, connections with QuickBooks, custom fields, a little bit of API work. And they can do that using METHOD.
Okay, interesting. Are they doing any kind of modification to the container? Are they just buying and selling the container?
So, they buy and sell. I don’t think they actually do the modifications. I don’t think they go in and actually turn it into the coolest gazebo in your backyard for the pool.
All right. Sure.
I don’t think they do that work. And they deliver it from someone local to do that.
Okay. That’s really cool. It seems like the thing that METHOD delivers the most is just like you said before, your customer really can outgrow it and you’re able to modify and do different things in it, you know, make it into what you want.
It’s a custom workflow.
Yeah.
If you think about the types of software that small businesses would use, some of them make sense to be packaged software that is just generic, like Zoom. You don’t need a custom version of Zoom.
No.
Zoom is fine for everybody. It’s fine to be generic.
Right.
When you get into workflows where everyone’s workflow is slightly different and when you start connecting them to multiple systems, you really benefit from some degree of personalization. That’s where you start getting systems like METHOD. And that’s why a lot of companies are going to ERPs.
Right.
The big companies will go to ERPs because then you can get something coded. You’d actually get something custom-written through code to solve those unique problems. But small businesses never had that option. The small businesses would just be stuck with something packaged, like Zoom or Gmail, or their workflow management is packaged and must follow it this way. Which is what, if that’s not your only option, that’s what you’re doing. At the enterprise level, you’re starting to see the coded solutions kind of fade away and they’re becoming more low code or no code. Mostly low code at the enterprise level. So, you have something that’s prepackaged, highly configurable, drag and drop, and add some code to do some custom work. And that is now replacing coded solutions. Because it just makes sense, because your time to solution could be a matter of weeks or months versus years. And if it’s years for some custom solution to be built, the needs you had on day one when you made all your requirements are different than three years later when you have your coded solution coming back.
They’re gone. Yeah. Absolutely.
We don’t need that anymore. We need something different. So, it makes a lot more sense for the enterprise to use low code. At the small business level, no code, whereas there’s no scripting involved. That’s the holy grail for small business productivity. And so that’s starting to come in now. That will replace a lot of packaged solutions. Like if you have two packaged solutions, imagine that they both manage the same workflow of taking an estimate and turning it into an invoice and purchase order. If you have two systems, one is prepackaged, it works only one way, non-configurable, and you have one that’s malleable, you can change it as your company’s needs change. Who’s going to win?
Sure.
It’s always going to be the malleable one, right?
And in METHOD friendly where you know, somebody on in house can make those changes. They don’t have to, or are you guys making those changes for your customers?
Yeah, you have three options.
Okay.
The geeky dream in me is like, customization for all.
Right.
Everyone has no problem going in and customizing the system to their own needs. Think it, and it comes alive.
Right.
And that does happen.
Okay.
There are certain people who are inclined to learn how to do that, or it just comes naturally to them.
Right.
And that’s my dream. That’s why I get up in the morning to enable more of that. We’ll mention AI in a minute.
Okay.
We’ll get to that because that’s what makes it possible. The majority of people are like, listen, I run a manufacturing business. I don’t need to learn how to do no code. I’ll have someone else do that. The fact that it’s really inexpensive relative to other solutions or really quick relative to a coded solution, that’s enough value for me.
Right.
So, they’ll either pay a third party, like a partner. We have a partner network of people who do this all the time for people.
Okay.
Some of them actually specialize in distribution or manufacturing or contracting. We have partners that specialize. Or they just have us do it. I think I’ve got 22 people at METHOD who customize all day, that’s all I do.
Wow.
Is just building custom solutions. It’s the coolest job.
Yeah.
You get a different requirement every single day. Like, wow, I haven’t had that before. We build that thing out for you.
Yeah.
So, a lot will go that way. But hey, if we can get customers to do it themselves, then that’s why I started the company in the first place.
Sure. Yeah. And I definitely see a huge value in that. And for a company, you take us, for example, we certainly don’t have the capacity or the manpower to do our own code or no code, AI or no AI. You know, we’re concentrating on everything else that we’re supposed to be doing, delivering to the customers, I would love to have, you know, a team of people that were you know, banging out new systems for us. And because I do love systems, but it’s just, not an overhead that makes sense to add to the company. So definitely fine. You know, a company like yours or a third-party integrator that, you know, brings that value and they do it every day. So, they know all the tips and tricks and you know, they know what we don’t know.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. From an ROI standpoint, it does make sense that like you outsource that competency.
Right. Yeah.
But the geek in me like dreams of the day when you type into a text box or voice-activated, you say, Hey, I am a manufacturing business. I need to track warranties. My warranties I have a warranty date, an ID number, and blah, blah, blah. I need to make sure that these are tracked and alerted on a monthly basis where we have a certain warning. So, what might be and has it actually created a warranty system based on those requirements?
Okay.
So, we’ve gotten our AI work now to the point where you can have that kind of conversation and it will generate a basic app that will do what you’ve told it wanted to do.
Wow.
And when you get there, then maybe you do have the manpower to actually make your own no code apps, right?
Sure.
And then you can configure it yourself, but.
Okay.
It’s still like, of course, once you’ve created that, then how do you make some, how do you adapt it as you go? And therefore, you might still need to have some experience,
Sure.
But maybe you’re like, actually, that was kind of cool. Let me reverse-engineer how they did this. I can do this. I can do this.
Yeah, that is interesting. And the AI conversations blow my mind because it’s come tenfold, especially over the last 12 months. You know, we were maybe 12 months or 24 months ago, we’re talking about ChatGPT and now, you know, HubSpot, you can tell it or type in a blog that you want to, and then it’ll write the blog for you. It’s like, wow. And it’s actually really good. You know, you may have to go in and tweak it a little bit, but it’s really good.
Should probably tweak it a little bit so Google doesn’t pick up on the AI content. But yeah, it’s gotten good.
Yeah, absolutely.
We used a system ourselves called Jasper.ai for our content for a bit. It was remarkable. It was instant, nearly free, and would write content that you would normally pay a content writer to take two days’ worth of writing to do.
Yeah. And Paul Van Buren runs a company called Pro Shop. It’s an ERP system, mainly for machine shops. And he talks about it on LinkedIn, I was listening to one of his podcasts where he did an AI explanation of a request of the ideal machine shop and he just put in there, you know, I’d like an ideal machine shop that’s doing this and this and the best use of this many square feet and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it like generated a floor plan for a machine shop. And it was wild.
Yeah, it can make sense for it.
Yeah. It was really wild.
The heavy lifting has been done by other companies. So before, like five years ago, when you had software companies saying like, yeah, we’re doing AI.
Yeah.
They were doing analysis of data and statistical understanding of data to do predictions of what user behavior might be. And they’re basically making their own AI code. And then ChatGPT comes in. All those teams are no longer relevant. And so, that’s made it possible for you to have the bare bones of just like text to models that make sense, data models that make sense. So, all you have to do is basically as a coder is say, okay, I’ve got a data model. What do I do with that? And that’s incredible. Like then it’s easy.
Sure.
Like anyone can take a data model and be like, okay, this is a model of a dog and a dog walker. And I know what to do with these two models. I can generate some screens with dogs and some screens with dog walkers.
Right.
But getting to create those models, that’s what’s gotten really, really easy with AI.
Wow.
And that’s why you’re seeing such a huge explosion of powers that software companies have now with AI because all the hard parts have been done for them. All they have to use is the results that previously they couldn’t get without a huge amount of code being written.
Interesting. Yeah, my mind spinning in a million different directions. As you can imagine, I’m pretty simple. I would have no idea how the hell to even code. It’s so far above my brain power that AI just being able to say, you know, this is what I want to create with you blows my mind.
Yeah, I mean, every coder out there at one point was not a coder. They all had to learn it.
Right.
So, I’m sure you could learn too if you ever really wanted to, but with the advent of AI and no code, you have no need to and really don’t need to.
If I had an interest. Yeah. I was just trying to change our DNS in GoDaddy and I’m like, okay.
They make it hard.
Yeah. But then, you know, our IT company, AJ showed me how to do it. I’m like, that was really simple. He’s like, yeah. If you know what the hell you’re doing, I mean, it was like, yeah.
Yeah, it’s like talking a car to a mechanic, right? You’re like, I have no idea. And they’re like, fixed.
Yeah. There’s a story about a guy that was on a Naval ship that retired. He was a mechanical in a Naval ship retired and they couldn’t figure something out on, you know, on the Naval ships. So, they hired this guy to come back in. And he throws you know, I’m going to make a number up. He charges $20,000 to come back in. He’s there for 10 minutes, he turns one little screw. And he’s done and it runs fine. And the guy that did the hiring is almost kind of pissed off that, you know, he’s like, you’re only here for 10 minutes. And you turn one little screw, and he charged me $20,000. He’s like, well, yeah, anyone could have turned that screw. I just knew what screw to turn. So yeah, there’s value in the knowledge. Yeah.
Right. That’s all of us, isn’t it? There’s value in all of our knowledge. We all have competencies and that’s why, that’s what, go back to like microeconomics, that’s what trade is. Just like trading bacon based on competencies and the same thing in manufacturing and contracting software.
Right. Yeah. When’s AI going to take over, Wall Street?
It’s being used by Wall Street already. So, if the power goes, those who know how to yield the technology, not build the technology.
Yeah. That’s kind of a scary thing to think of when trades are being made with AI.
Yeah. But I mean, if you’re competing, if that changes how you trade, then you probably shouldn’t have been trading in the first place.
You’re a hundred percent correct.
Before AI, you’re trading against algorithms, or at least like a Wall Street data center that has a very fast pipe to the floor.
Yeah.
Like, you weren’t going to win anyway. So, it shouldn’t really change it for the average Joe who’s day trading at home.
Yeah. No. Yeah. That’s why I don’t do it.
Yeah, stay away.
Yeah, absolutely. What else is coming down the pipeline then for you guys? I mean, the AI piece is just unbelievable to me. And the no code and being able to, you know, just kind of customize your own solution or have you guys come in, or third party come in and help customize a solution, but what’s five years look like for you guys?
Yeah. More and more templates.
Okay.
So, the idea is that any company coming into a system like METHOD probably wants some things that are very generic, like a customer screenplay very generic. Some things that are pretty standard within an industry, like a work order system. And some things that are totally custom, like the dog walker, can use tractor dogs.
Right.
The more of these middle-tier templates that we can create ourselves, the easier it makes any small business to have something that’s really close to their custom needs. All they need is a couple of tweaks. So today we have templates for a field service. We have some estimate approvals that are used heavily by manufacturers. We have a nonprofit template for donors that can accept online donations. We have these templates, but really, the more we can generate of these in the next five years, the better. It just helps small businesses automate and get something personalized to their needs faster and cheaper.
Let’s dive into that a little bit more with manufacturing and with warehousing. So, what’s one of the coolest projects? You know, I guess two-part coolest project that you’ve ever done to help a manufacturer. And what kind of manufacturing was it? And then kind of the same question with warehousing and distribution. What’s the coolest project that you’ve helped warehousing and distribution do?
One of my favorite ones is the most simple.
I’m putting it on the spot, man.
No, it’s good. One of my favorite ones is one of the most simple ones.
Yeah, okay.
One of our earliest companies. This is nothing elaborate at all. It was a manufacturer of guitar picks.
Okay.
And they started off small and they had grown and they had hired us to help with the payment system.
Alright.
The way the CEO got paid for their guitar picks was based on the size of the purchase. So, if it was a small purchase, think it was under $4,000, then she would allow credit cards to be paid. Anything above $4,000 had to go through ACH.
Okay.
She hired us to lock people out of the payment system so that she could make sure that the right payment was going to the right spot. So, the reason why it’s my most favorite simple example is because it’s so idiotic, really, if you think about it, like in hindsight, because why would you want to, as a CEO, hold on to a payment decision process? So, we said, listen, how about we let your staff make payments, accept payments?
Right.
But we put logic into the payment screen that says if it’s above $4,000, show the ACH options.
Right.
If it’s below $4,000, show the credit card options.
Show credit card options.
And then anyone could take payments.
Sure.
And she’s like, no, that’s going to save me hours a day.
Sure. Wow. And she was making those decisions personally?
She was doing the payments. She was the CEO.
Wow. Sure.
Because that’s what happens. You start when your small company. You do everything until you can’t until it doesn’t make sense and you can’t fathom away of taking yourself away from things that are just crazy for you to own.
Sure.
So that’s the most simple manufacturer’s example. But then there are much more elaborate ones like, there’s a reliable trading told us they saved, I think, 56 % of their front office time, which is a huge cost savings. Because they took all the front office staff that were in QuickBooks and put them in METHOD. And they replicated a really elaborate item pricing system. So, they used no code to build a pricing system that allowed staff and customers to self-serve through the portal on the website to get prices themselves using this very elaborate pricing system. But also, they used a little bit of low code. Used our API to get, because they’re, guess, import or exporter. To get up-to-date prices and use the API to update them so they didn’t have to actually update prices themselves anymore because they were manually doing it inside QuickBooks before. And so, they saved a huge amount of time by letting their front office staff have access to real-time pricing with an elaborate pricing system based on like trade discounts. And save 56 % of their labor.
Wow.
That one’s pretty cool.
Yeah.
And what’s nice about it, too, is it’s just one part of their lead-to-cash workflow. Didn’t have to do everything inside of METHOD. It was just the parts that accepted estimates and sales orders, just that one part of the automated.
Yeah. Well. What kind of decrease in lead time? Well, and I’m using the wrong term, not lead time, but from initial contact to delivery, like what was and I’m having a brain fart here.
Well, I think what you’re getting at is the chance of a customer getting an answer instantly versus going through hoops. Like, talk to the front office staff, front office staff talks to the back office. Hey, Wendy, what’s the price of that right now? Wendy, are you at lunch? Okay, I’ll get back to you later on customer. The degree of communication link changes is immeasurable. I don’t know about reliable trading, but anytime you can put the power of information in your front office staff’s hands or in the customer’s hands through a self-service portal, you are going to win more deals. You’re going to have higher customer satisfaction. You don’t need proof. It’s just completely obvious that’s what happens.
Yeah. And I mean, anytime that you can shorten the quoting time is, I mean, the first dog to the bowl each, right? I mean, that’s the generic saying and, paperless parts to that. I’ve talked to their CEO multiple times. And I think what they’ve done over there is unbelievable where you can take a model step file or now even a PDF, you upload it, and the system will damn near quote live. I mean, they do have, you know, some people behind the scenes making sure that you know, the material pricing is correct and just kind of second checking it, but you could quote, you know, same day where, you know, some fab shops had taken a week to quote, you know, a hundred parts or a part.
Yeah, and they win more deals.
Yeah. You win more deals. You can demand a higher price. You, know, the time to get the part to the floors, you know, shorter. I mean, it’s just all around the wind.
We have a saying in software about the bucket of psych. Don’t let your customers empty the bucket of psych. And so, the bucket of psych is that every customer comes to your company with a bucket full of psych. They’re just psyched. And every little piece of friction you add in the process, take a cup, put a hole in the bucket, whatever you’re to do, but your bucket of psych is going to start going down, down, down. If you have a question about a price or a part, availability, or just how much it costs, and you don’t get an instant answer, the bucket of psych goes down. If it’s the wrong answer, the bucket of psych goes down. The longer you can keep your bucket of psych full, the more likely you’re having a customer come back, recommend you, and have less friction with their company.
Yeah, I mean, we’re so impatient as a society anymore. You know, you can get it on Amazon, you can buy something, and it shows up the same day sometimes.
Yeah.
I mean, we don’t have patience anymore as a society.
No.
We’re, you know, instant gratification. We want it. We want it right now.
And if you’re a small business and you’re competing with Amazon and the large Amazons of the world, it’s getting harder and harder. And that’s what I love about my job getting up every day and hearing how we give a little bit of automation to these small businesses so that they can now compete against the big guys, whereas they couldn’t before. That makes me feel good.
Yeah. And it’s a huge differentiator because there are so many small businesses that are so focused on just delivering and making sure late orders are getting out. They’re not even thinking about AI or generating something new that’s going to help them. I would have to think that the percentage of manufacturers and distributors, warehousing companies, is a pretty small group of companies that are really thinking about, how can we really improve our customer experience. How can we really take this to the next level?
Yeah. One of the things we do a lot of outside actual just customizing is really helping people understand what their lead to cash workflows are. One thing we recommend people do as they are scaling is to really map out their workflows from the time they get a lead to the time they get paid, each individual step to write them down. That way they can understand what they’re actually doing. Because a lot of times they can’t really articulate what they’re doing.
Right.
Some of those steps can be turned into an SOP, standard operating procedure. Some can then be delegated to people who should do that manually. And some can be automated, because it makes sense to automate those things. So, it’s a good place to start. Typically on this topic, actually, I like this one.
Yeah.
The things that you do want to automate are ones that are highly repetitive, which makes sense, you know, all of them, take a lot of time. Makes sense as well and is customer-facing. So, anything that’s customer-facing where the potential friction is exposed to the customer, those are typically worth automating versus ones that are literally obscured from the customer. And then the fourth one would be to find anything where there are key people in the company that are still at bottlenecks. Like the customer of the guitar pick company, Like, the CEO shouldn’t be making payments.
No.
So, if you have key people that are still in key workflows, even if it’s not highly repetitive, even if it’s not customer-facing or high volume, you should probably automate those first so that they can scale with the business.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And there are so many things that small business owners get wrapped up in doing just because they may be the only person that knows how to do it. And they have that, you know, tribal knowledge stuck in their head because they haven’t, you know, handed it off or attempted to, or maybe they attempted to, and it was a massive failure. And they’re like, you know, it’s too valuable like receiving payments if she couldn’t effectively teach somebody how to make that decision and she’s making it all the time. And that’s a pretty scary thing to hand off.
Yes, and we’re all guilty of it.
Sure. Absolutely.
All of us have scaled businesses, we’ve all been guilty of it. We’ve been at varying degrees of success in handing them off. There are still some things I haven’t handed off to 100 people, and it’s just the reality of it. You mentioned before when we talked before this podcast that you run a business and you’re only in the office a few days a week, and like an absentee owner, you must have done well in getting some of these things off your plate. So, you’ve mastered this to agree, I imagine.
Well, yeah, I’ve added people to my team that I have massive trust in and they’re extremely competent. It took me a lot to get there and there are still things that I keep my hands in and I probably mess things up more than I help these days.
But yeah, mean, without systems and without having people that you trust in and that you’re okay that people make mistakes and as long as they don’t make the mistake, you know, multiple times, that’s the only way to really get away from it. And we’re not huge, you know, what we’re doing is not so complicated that, you know, I’m the mastermind of all. You know, there are people that are way smarter than me that bring in to help, you know, figure a solution out. And they don’t need me to do that. I mean, if anything, I’m getting in the way.
But they need you to hand it off. They need you to hand it off, right?
Yeah.
They need to know how you want it done. And they need to be empowered with that information and all the tools that they have access to. That’s the hard part.
Yeah. This is the finish line. Get there. And, you know, and I don’t know how to get there. That’s why you’re here. And let’s come up with two solutions or one solution or whatever, and let’s get across the finish line.
Yeah, and this is really any small business that grows, whether they are manufacturers, wholesalers, distributions, or dog walkers. At any scale in business, they’ll reach a point where what was working before no longer works, and they need to make a change. And that change is hard. Automation is one way. Delegation is another way. Just writing things down is important. It’s absolutely required to scale, and you feel way better after you’ve done it.
Yeah. Absolutely. And I pray it’s near and dear to my heart because I, you know, my grandparents owned a Dairy Queen. And in the summer months, they were there from six in the morning until midnight almost every day, seven days a week. And then finally, they would take one day off, and then my dad would take one day off, and it was rotating. I’m like, there’s no way I want to do that. I mean, it was so much. I mean, if I wanted to see my dad or my grandparents, I, you know, would go to the store and hang out there. And then I smelled like a French fry for the rest of the day. And I ate way too like I loved eating and fortunately I played a lot of hockey. So, it kept me fit through those days. But yeah, it really always left an impact on me where I didn’t want to be anywhere for 12, 14, 16 hours a day. And there’s certainly a time in my career that I was, even as recent as two years ago. I mean, I was working 14, 16 hours a day because that’s what it demanded. And then you figure out how to scale up and hand those things off and you make mistakes, and you allow people to make mistakes and your quality of life is, in my opinion, way better.
Yeah, mean, earlier in my career, I was there.
Yeah.
At least 14 hours a day I would be burning. But I was before kids. It was fine. But then, as you scale, it doesn’t work anymore. You have to change it.
Yeah. And I still enjoy it and there a day. I worked last night. I was still working at eight o’clock at night. And there are still times that it demands that time. But I don’t have to be in the office to do that. You know, it’s just like us doing this. I really enjoy it. I’m at home. You know, I have a little studio at home and I have fun with it.
Yeah.
So, that’s what it’s about. Having fun and adding value and building a team that you can make an impact on everyone’s life.
Yeah, I still get every morning excited for work. I still love coming and knowing that I’m going to have some problems thrown my way. That’s the job. But hearing the stories of what we’re working on today from the people who are doing all the work with our customers, it’s cool. It’s a different problem every single day that they’re solving for customers. And small business owners really deserve like, all the credit that they get right now. They’re the heroes of the economy, right? Deservedly so.
Yep. And it is, I really find what you’re doing is extremely fascinating. There are 10 different things that are going through my head that is repetitive and we’re trying to figure out it’s like, well, maybe this could be a solution. We can talk about that offline, but if other people, you know, and we do this with everything in the description and we do a blog and we post everything on our website but tell folks how they can get ahold of you Paul, and what your website is and all that fun stuff.
The probably the best place I can send everyone is to a page we set up which has those how you think through what to automate is a little checklist.
Okay.
So, it’s method.me/MFGMONKEY.
Okay.
So that page we set up so that your listeners could get a little checklist.
Awesome.
If they can just write down their steps and figure out to automate, what to delegate, that will make my time here today worthwhile.
Very cool.
Yeah, And I encourage if you have any questions at all, definitely go there, and ask. That’s also the fun part for me is people email and ask questions and, it kind of inspires the next episode or there could be multiple questions that come in and you and I do this again and talk a little. Get in the weeds a little bit more about a topic or multiple topics.
Yeah sure.
I think that’d be fun too. And kind talk to folks about that. So.
Yep, for me the nerdier the better, I’ll dive in.
Yeah, very good. Well, man, I appreciate it. had a lot of fun. My mind was going in a million different directions, as always. So, I find what you do very fascinating. I think it’s amazing what you’re offering small companies and I’m on your pricing on your website. It’s unbelievably reasonable. I mean, you look at what NetSuite or some of these monster companies are charging you. You can’t justify that as a small company. So, yeah.
Yeah, it’s definitely somewhere between a QuickBooks license and a NetSuite license. It’s much closer to the QuickBooks side.
Yeah. Much closer to the QuickBooks side of things, even if it is in Canadian dollars.
No, it’s US dollars. We’re not that silly. USD.
Awesome. Well, thanks again. I look forward to seeing some of the comments that come in and I really, really enjoyed my time today.
Yeah, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. I enjoyed it.
Awesome. Thanks, buddy.
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