Jon (00:00:01) - You know, in my generation I had a list of tasks and I would go get my work done and somebody else would have their task. I didn't really pay too much attention to what they were doing, right? I just need to get my stuff done. Gen Z-ers, they wanna know their tasks, but they wanna know two other very important things. They want to know the why, like what's the company goals and objectives, and what's the vision for the quarter, and do I buy into that or not? And that may even affect if I have that job, if I don't buy in to those items. They also wanna know what their team members are working on and they wanna be able to comment on those or high five or, you know, give an emoji because they just, they need that constant collaboration that they're used to with, you know, Facebook or Twitter or, you know, different social programs that they use.

Ariana (00:00:43) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of business operations. One episode at a time. I'm your host Ariana Cofone. And on today's episode we have John Darbyshire, who is the CEO and co-founder of SmartSuite, which is a no-code workflow and automation tool. This episode was unique in the sense that we have got somebody who is not only a CEO who has invested in over 400 businesses, but he also himself is an operator. He is an operations nerd like all of us. And I will tell you the amount of times that we say the word process in this interview, is going to be exciting for some and tragic for others. But it's just a phenomenal conversation and the wealth of knowledge that he brings into not only SmartSuite as a business but to the conversation is super enlightening. I hope you enjoy. John, welcome to Secret Ops. It is fantastic to have you on the show. Thank you for being here.

Jon (00:01:52) - Oh, it's a pleasure. I'm looking forward to getting into all things ops here in the next hour.

Ariana (00:01:57) - Well, like all of our guests, I gotta start with your journey and your journey has been so interesting. I've got a gazillion questions, but I would love to know where you started early in your career and how you got to co-founding and being the CEO and being the CEO of SmartSuite

Jon (00:02:12) - In college I majored in finance and accounting, so that kind of started my journey kind of into that world, and I very quickly realized that I didn't want to do tax or audit type of work. I really gravitated towards the consulting side and I really started to excel. I worked at Ernst and Young and I found that I was a process person and Ernst and Young is all about process, and that's where I began to kind of excel in that part of my journey. Became a partner at Ernst and Young, very early in my career and had the chance to manage one of their global consulting practices. So our goal at that point was to build processes in place that we knew worked right in certain areas, and then to replicate that across the world with thousands of people performing that same type of work. So that's where I really kind of honed in on my skillset and understanding the value of process in building things.

Ariana (00:03:03) - Can I ask, because I think people are scared of process and I'm already gonna ask you more questions. What drew you to process? You know, what was it about that just made your brain say, yes, I wanna do more of that?

Jon (00:03:15) - Yeah. You know, when people would talk about getting something done in an organization I kind of lend or immediately go towards how do I get there? And I start visualizing and thinking about the different inputs that get us to the outcome that we want to have almost like a Vizio design that we used back in the day, you know, flow charts. My brain just kind of thinks that way and I realized that kind of at that early age, you know, early part of my career that I was a process person. And everything that I did kind of after that point focused from an operations standpoint with a heavy emphasis on, if you get the process right, you bring in the right people, you have the right technology, you can do some pretty amazing things. And for me, of those three, I felt like you had to get the process right first before you could bring in the people and the technology.

Ariana (00:04:09) - Hmm. How do you think the process is informed by the people? Because you do need to set that up before you bring more people on, but obviously you need the people to then inform the process. So how do you, how do you balance the two?

Jon (00:04:23) - Yeah, so you typically have a core team of people that are working on things, and then what happens is you need to expand that team into different geographies or different parts of the company. Like it continues to grow and that core four or five people that really hone in and understand the business process and the process that you need to put in place to get the right outcome. Like it's super important. And once that's right, it makes it easier to hire people. They know where they fit into the process, they kind of know what their role is, they know the outcome that you're looking for, and that changes over time as things grow. But at the beginning, it's super important to get that 80, 90% of the way there before you start bringing on a lot of additional people.

Ariana (00:05:05) - Yeah. So getting the key spokes in a bicycle wheel, he wants those foundational ones before you start going too fast down the hill. When it comes to Ernst and Young, I mean you were the youngest partner, that must have been quite an experience. What was that like? What did that feel like? How did it happen?

Jon (00:05:23) - Yeah, you know, it was interesting. I was at their competitor Price Waterhouse, and I was running a Midwest region for Price Waterhouse and we were doing really well on the consulting side. And one of the things that we did was we brought in a lot of visualization into the process dynamic, starting at the proposal stage, and then all the way through what we delivered back to the customer so they could actually see it, touch it, kind of feel it that was there. And our win rates were really, really high and Ernst and Young came and said, Hey, we're gonna, we'll triple your compensation. We want you to come in as a draft admit partner and run our global practice. And I said, no for a period of time. And finally it just hit me that it was just, they were offering so much on such a big budget to go do something that…I went ahead and made that switch. And it was a great switch for me because I came into a situation where I was a national partner reporting to some of the leadership team at Ernst and Young. So I just got access to people and information that I wouldn't have had if I would've stayed in my previous role.

Ariana (00:06:26) - Wow. So it ultimately led to a deepening of the ways of working that you were doing, cuz you had more access to information to be able to take what you were doing and, and make it grander…bigger.

Jon (00:06:38) - For sure. And I had access to people that have been doing this for a long time and were very successful at the leadership of BNY that became my mentors. And not that they always shared everything with me, but I could watch and observe how they were managing and doing things at a very young age. And it really molded me, you know, just in three or four years it really changed how I kind of thought about business or consulting as a whole.

Ariana (00:07:01) - Yeah. In those foundational years. So after Ernst and Young, how long were you there for, again, how many years?

Jon (00:07:07) - I was at Ernst and Young four and a half years.

Ariana (00:07:09) - What was the next step in your journey?

Jon (00:07:12) - Yeah, so I had the chance to really travel the world and meet with clients and kind of hear their concerns. And this is in 99, 2000 and online banking was just a thought. And it large organizations were thinking about bringing online banking to market for the first time. And I had an idea that, you know, we needed to manage the processes around what became governance risk and compliance at that time was online banking in the same way that you would manage a process around accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and just to understand what needs to be done to and the right people to be involved, the processes to have in place the systems that you secure so that you could actually offer online banking for the first time. So I just locked myself in a room for about four months and actually on my girlfriend Tara’s couch, which is now my wife…

Jon (00:08:01) - And I just tried to figure out that problem and one day it just hit me like, Ooh, I got it. I know how all these pieces fit together. We approached a customer and with a floppy disk with just an html prototype of how this might work. And it was EDS and they purchased it two weeks later, paid us… did a three year commitment, a little over a million dollars a year in commitment. And that's what started a company called Archer Technology. So I co-founded that with my wife Tara, and actually my mother ran operations, HR, Tara ran sales and marketing and I kinda ran everything else in the product side.

Ariana (00:08:38) - That is awesome. What was that like?

Jon (00:08:42) - You know, we were all really young at the time and I think we didn't know what we didn't know in that, we just jumped in and thought we're gonna go build this company and have these great clients. And it just happened. We didn't, it maybe even happened a little too easy at times that was there, I'd say like 29 of the top 30 financial services companies in the US became customers in the first three and a half years, and then 75% of the Fortune 100 in like the next six years.So we were working with some of the biggest companies in the world and then we moved into telco and pharmaceuticals and tech and like, it just exploded for us. And, we sold that company to EMC in 2010.

Jon (00:09:25) - That company is still around there, the number one player in the space. The numbers are huge and the six, 700 million a year in ARR and they're still in the same location in Kansas City, where we started the company, which is really cool. Same building, same everything. They just continued to expand. They now have thousands of employees, that are there. So that was fun. And Tara and I decided after that we started a family foundation and we thought we would just retire. I can tell you that after, two or three years of retirement, I realized that I didn't wanna retire. I kinda lost my passion for getting up each morning, like, what am I gonna go do? I played golf every day for a year at one point I, we traveled like just trying to like stay busy and I kept coming back to, you know, I love working with people and processes and I didn't want to get away from that.

Jon (00:10:17) - So at that point we started investing in a lot of startups, hundreds of startups we invested in…both directly or through venture funds. And I became more of an advisor and I very quickly realized that that wasn't my passion either, that I wanted to actually get in and do the work and build things. And the entrepreneurs I was working with, they didn't want an investor coming in and doing work with them, like it's their business that's there. So I finally realized, and I think my wife Tara told me that, Hey, you, you've got this idea that you've had for the last 15 years. You need to just go flush it out and, and build this new product that's there. And the idea was to build a no-code platform that could help organizations manage any business process in their company. And we often refer to processes as workflows and a workflow could be something like sales or marketing or, or product management, software development, HR, those types of things.

Jon (00:11:13) - Or it could be projects that you're doing that have people that have due dates and assignments. And what's unique about SmartSuite that we wanted to bring together is we wanted to bring together the traditional task management and some of the process relational database products together into one platform. So you didn't need to have four or five or six different products to kind of manage your business. We give one platform that would help organizations kind of have one place to come to manage their business. And the value from that is that when employees come in in the morning and you, and you need to onboard them for the first time, it's, you know, a single product that you're kind of onboarding when people leave, if you need to offboard. You don't have data in six or seven different places that you're worried about trying to find that information for the next person maybe that's filling that role. So there's a big need for that. But it also took a lot of time, it took us three years with about a hundred developers to build a core platform before we released it to our first customer. So this isn't a small little project management type product, think of it's more like an SAP, but for managing any process in a business and our customers range from one or two users to fortune 100 companies. Kind of everything in between.

Ariana (00:12:26) - Oh my gosh, I am trying to think of all the moving pieces with a hundred developers that you are navigating, right? What was that product development process like for you? I mean, how did you start it? Because you obviously had so much experience, not just from your working life, but then investing and advising. Did you come in with a clear idea of what you wanted it to look like and function? Or were you starting from scratch, meaning get around a table, grab a piece of paper, figure out what this could look like, figure out what the functionality looks like? How did it all start?

Jon (00:12:58) - Yeah, I have a coffee shop that's down the street that I call like my office for those that first year. And I spent maybe the first four to six months writing a 1200 page requirements document.

Ariana (00:13:11) - Oh my gosh.

Jon (00:13:13) - To just show how everything fit together. Because before we could start development, I needed the developers to understand the vision and how the pieces fit together so that we could talk about the architecture of what needed to be in place to support that we couldn't just jump in and start developing on day one. So that was like, it was a lot of time to kind of create that document. And then the next phase was, I need to a hire development team. Right? And, you know, hiring a hundred developers… that's a lot, you know, to make that happen. The first thing I did was I kind of…I made a decision that in the past I'd always built a company and hired people 30 miles around, you know, from where that office was located, right? I made a decision that I just wanted to hire the best people wherever I could find them that kind of fit in culturally with what we wanted to do.

Jon (00:14:01) - What happened was, as I was going through that first part of that journey, I found an individual in the Ukraine. I'd never been to Ukraine, didn't know much about it, to be honest, four years ago. But I kept coming back to this person online and having great conversations and I said, I'm just gonna come see you. Let's spend a week together, you know, I wanna show you what I want to do. And in the first couple of hours I realized like I found the person that I want to be the first developer and start building the team around. And then the second person was, you know, we spent a lot of time on the UI of SmartSuite that maybe we'll talk about in a little bit, but I wanted to find a designer that didn't have all my bad habits from the past on the way that I designed things. I wanted a fresh new look that was focused on millennials and gen's ears and of all places I found him in Bulgaria. So I went to Bulgaria, met with Stoigan, spent a week with him. He is a rockstar. And that's where the team started with those two hires. And then it's kind of blossomed over time.

Ariana (00:15:02) - All right. Well let's just jump into the trifecta because I've got so many follow up questions to that. So to remind my listeners, the trifecta is how we define operations in the simplest way possible, which is the fusion and the harmony of people, process and technology. So, you know, let's kick off with people cuz we wanted to talk about how design and technology and users are being married together to support each other. So let's dive into the design side of things. What I have to ask, what was it about your bad design habits? Like what was the bad design habit for you that you wanted to break?

Jon (00:15:41) - Well, you know, if you go back 20 years when I created the original designs for Archer Technologies, the things that we could do were very different than what's available with technology today. So the screens were just a little more boring. The font selections, just the controls that we could put on a page, not as colorful. I also often refer to that as, you know, this is not your dad's software. Meaning like that's what was built 20 years ago. SmartSuite is built on the latest, greatest technology that allows us to do things faster. It's much more performant. And when you start talking with millennials and Gen Z-ers that come from a different background, the fabric of collaboration is built in everything that they've done using devices from a young age. They expect all those collaboration types of things to be built in the product, but they also expect it to be colorful and interesting.

Jon (00:16:34) - It has to capture their attention. And we found very early as we started working with different designs with end users, that people’s facial expressions would change as I was watching them look at certain designs. And I could tell that visually they found something more appealing. So I spend a lot of time on calls with users and I'm showing them the product, but I'm actually recording their facial expressions as I show them the designs to kind of understand maybe what they're not telling me verbally, but they're gravitating towards with their facial expressions and specifically with Gen Z-ers. That happens all the time. And also found that they like to use multiple devices or multiple browser tabs at the same time in the same products. And it's more common. That doesn't happen that much in my generation, but it happens every day in the millennial Gen Z or kind of world. So we built things understanding that so that when things are updated, maybe on your iPhone, it instantly shows on your browser screen because you're setting right there as well. There's no delay, it just happens. And those are all like new fun techniques that I couldn't take advantage of 20 years ago that are available now.

Ariana (00:17:50) - Wow. So the canvas was different. Your paint colors, you had more paint to paint with.

Jon (00:17:55) - Lots of colors. So

Ariana (00:17:56) - Literally just the options. Literal options to be able to do all that. It's so funny. I definitely didn't even think about how I always used two screens next to each other. I always have multiple things. I'm always having my phone, my husband makes fun of me cause I've got like a million screens, I got a AirPod in. I'm looking like a crazy person. But that is sort of the norm of how our brains have been wired cuz we were raised with technology. So you sort of get embedded into the tech even though we're not fully embedded yet.

Jon (00:18:27) - Yeah, and I'm, I'm a big believer that tech can have a big influence on the culture of a company. And we've tried to design SmartSuite in a way that helps build culture, that it's fun, it's interesting, it's very collaborative with the single click. At any point I could be talking with somebody else on the team or I could see what they're actually working on. And this is a big one from Gen Z-ers that we found is that, you know, in my generation I had a list of tasks and I would go get my work done and somebody else would have their task. I didn't really pay too much attention to what they were doing, right? I just need to get my stuff done. Gen Z-ers, they wanna know their tasks, but they wanna know two other very important things. They wanna know the why, like what's the company goals and objectives and what's the vision for the quarter and do I buy into that or not? And that may even affect if I have that job, if I don't buy to, to those items. They also wanna know what their team members are working on and they wanna be able to comment on those or high five or, you know, give an emoji because they just, they need that, that constant collaboration that they're used to with, you know, Facebook or Twitter or, you know, different social programs that they use.

Ariana (00:19:34) - Yeah, I, it was so funny. I was helping a client write some documentation and the first thing I go is like, you gotta talk about the why we're doing this. Like why should they even read this thing ? And it seems so strange, but our attention span is so much smaller now, right? And so for us to really buy in and give our attention, we need to know why we should be giving our attention cuz we're being pulled in a million directions. I think that's definitely part of it. Also, part of it is like, all right, if I'm gonna spend my time doing this, it better be for a good reason. Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like it has to, you have to be able to, to make sure that you are understanding what is worth the time and effort. Especially because we're moving so quickly. So I feel like everything is a priority and you have to be able to wade through that quickly

Jon (00:20:19) - For sure. Yeah I think the attention span is the, one of the biggest single things that we focus on at SmartSuite and we look at people 21 to 38 as the people that actually do the work in most organizations. So our product is geared towards them now. Management kind of above that uses our product and looks at dashboards and makes decisions based on the information. But it's that group of people that are actually using it each day. So we spend a lot of time just trying to watch and understand how they want to use the product that keeps them motivated. And one of the times that I know that I've got somebody's attention is I can see that they use the product all day during work and they go home at night and maybe they have 30 minutes that they're just kind of decompressing, maybe watching tv, eating, doing something, but they're also pulling up SmartSuite and they're just clicking and playing around because they found it interesting. That's when I know we've kind of hit the spot, right? Where the product is interesting enough, that they want to come back in and see what other people are doing because it feels kind of social.

Ariana (00:21:23) - Totally. You've scratched the curiosity itch and they've gotta kinda look more at it. So when it comes to the design phase, the user testing, user research, how long was that phase in the development?

Jon (00:21:36) - It's something that happens every day. So I spend the first 45 minutes to an hour of every morning. My day starts at 6 or 6:30 in the morning because we have a lot of people…we're in nine different countries, so I have to catch people that are in the other countries and our designers Stoigan is in Bulgaria. So I personally look at and work with Stoigan on every design on every page in our product and every page on our website. Cause we feel like that is so important. It's not just that the feature works, it's the presentation of the feature and then we do initial designs and then we use a product called Canny that allows our customers to come in and submit feature requests. And then if somebody submits one, then other people can go and vote and comment. And let's say that maybe we have a hundred people that commented or voted on a particular feature. As we design that, now I can go back and post back and it auto notifies every person and I can get their feedback on the design, right? Not just the feature of how it works. So it feels like when we move things into development, it's like version 2.5 because we've had so much feedback on the initial designs and really tailored those before we just roll something out.

Ariana (00:22:46) - I'm sure you get some strong opinions because if this is the suite of choice–

Jon (00:22:51) - It is. I mean any software company, you know, you have to understand kind of who your power users are and the people that you maybe give a little more influence to versus there's always those edge cases and you have to be careful that you don't chase the 5% edge case for two people. That changes everything for the other 95% of the folks that are there. So it's a balancing game. But we also use our own product to track features back to customers so we can kind of track the revenue that the customers are paying us so that if we see like our 10 top customers are requesting this same feature, we know that's pretty important, right? So that's something that's gonna get priority over other features that might be on the list.

Ariana (00:23:33) - So you're learning to cut through the noise and sort of trying to see as the reoccurring patterns to lift those to the top to prioritize it for your development team and your design team to be able to think through and execute and design around

Jon (00:23:46) - Exactly. And the first part of my day is on that, and then at some point during the day, I spend an hour or two and an hour and a half with customers and partners just asking for and listening to feedback. Good and bad. And we love to hear the good because we want to know the things that people are finding the most value in, but we really wanna spend our time on what are we missing that you need to support a workflow or a use case that you have or what's something that's just not resonating with you in the way that it's been designed now that it's implemented. And that's where I get the best feedback is kind of in those direct loops that happen each day. So I try to do two to three customers or partners per day for 30 minutes kind of in those feedback loops.

Ariana (00:24:27) - That's a really unique reoccurring touch base as a CEO, I don't know how many CEOs are really doing those kinds of things. I guess why have you prioritized that, you've got a certain amount of hours of day to work. Why are those the most important?

Jon (00:24:46) - Well, the first part is I enjoy that more than anything else. So maybe I prioritize that. I think I learned at Archer Technologies as we were building that company what I called follow the customer, like the customers knew what they wanted. They didn't always know how to articulate it in a way that related to the feature, but they could always describe the problem or the use case in a way that I could understand. Then it was my job with our team to go figure out how do we listen to what the outcome needs to be and how do we get them to that point with this few of clicks and just ease of understanding as we can. And that created a really unique community of people that felt like they were empowered to give feedback into the product that went on to empower that company to just do really great things.

Jon (00:25:29) - So coming into SmartSuite, we wanted to take that and we started on day one. Let's get our user community rolling. Let's get our feedback loops in place. Let's just start having conversations with people. And we have KPIs that we track every week as a company and we have five or six that are just related to customer interactions. What are the, how many touchpoints did we have? How many people voted or commented based on feedback? And we want that number to continue to climb. If we see any decline in that, it tells us we did something that week that caused that collaboration to not be as robust as we want.

Ariana (00:26:07) - Alright. Let's talk tech, because we gotta get into this with this development team. Uh, so you are designing and you're iterating on current platform visuals and how it's functioning when it comes to the technology side. I'm just gonna start with what do you think is the most badass feature that you've got that you've brought into the suite?

Jon (00:26:29) - It gets a little technical, but we have 44 different field types that can be used in a process from simple things like, you know, dates and numbers and texts and statuses and things. But it, we get really, we have a really broad list and we've built in data validation for all the field types. So when you put in an email address or a phone number, like you know that it's getting validated as you enter the content so that you have…good data in means, you know, good decisions out is what you're trying to get to. And it also empowers people to be creative. Like if you're designing a workflow, we're gonna give you two or three different display options for the same type of information. Maybe it is a percent complete where you could do it as just a number.

Jon (00:27:10) - Maybe you want a slider, maybe you want an icon in a slider, right? And that's where the creativity that we found that the millennials and Gen Z-ers like is that they're building the process the way that they want and visually it looks on a screen the way that they want it to look. And you could go to two companies with really similar processes, which look very different. Like they have very different cultures and you can just see in the way that they've built the process, you know, one might be a little more fun and interesting than the other one that's just trying to get right to the stated goal. So the, everything inside of SmartSuite in our architecture really starts, that's the foundation… these 44 fuel types. It took us with that hundred developers almost nine months just to understand, to build all of that technology that we take advantage of today.

Ariana (00:27:58) - Whoa. The thing that I have found being able to customize your own view is the level of adoption of process within a team just goes just way, way, way up. So for example, any tool, if you're forcing someone to work in a particular way, especially a visual way, there's resistance cuz they've got their own way, they've got their own tools and you're sort of slowly just trying to get them to join the rest of the team. Whereas if out the gate you're saying, listen, the data, the foundational blocks of what we're doing, it's the same. It's consistent, it's being validated, but you can choose how this is gonna be visualized within your view. I feel like that is also helping people who learn differently and who digest information differently out the gates. It's making it more accessible.

Jon (00:28:45) - The most common way to look at data inside of processes is a grid, right? It's just simple. You put the data elements in there that's like your dad's way to do things, right?

Jon (00:28:56) - In SmartSuite, you can flip that to a calendar view or a timeline view or a kanban view or a card view or a chart or a dashboard or form. Like to do just what you were saying in that I may wanna see stuff in a calendar of what I need to focus on versus seeing it in a kanban that somebody else likes to work in each day. The data behind doesn't change at all. It's just the visualization of how you're looking at the data can change. And then most execs tend to love dashboards, right? So they can come in and just in a few minutes kind of understand the health of a particular segment of the business or our process by looking at five or six different charts that they've said are important to them. And then they could drill in and kind of hone in on maybe the areas of concern that they need to focus on. So different groups of people have different visualization options available as well.

Ariana (00:29:49) - I feel like dashboarding, you gotta have it out the gate now. Like it's a thing that every client wants, you gotta have it. And especially when you're tying it to lower level actions or goals and then even to the data, it has to go hand in hand. It's very rare that I have somebody that just wants to have one part of that pie, like only task management, you know, functionality. They wanna know how many tasks are being completed, when are they being completed, you know, what's our burn rate, what are we, you know…it's not just the functionality but it's how that is increasing productivity in your team's happiness and retention. It's all of those threads coming together so you can make some proper decisions, right?

Jon (00:30:29) - For sure. Yeah, I think it's two areas, just like you said. The first one is I just need the information to know the health and that's a series of metrics that are comparing us from last week to this week or last month to this month against a stated goal that we might have. And then all the pieces that are in there. And then you've got the people that are doing the work…they wanna focus on individual items and it's not enough to have just a chart. They want to click on that little part of the pie chart that might be red and they wanna see those five elements to make up the red right now and then they wanna do one click to go in and work on them. Right? So it's much more than just the dashboard, it's the dashboard is just the starting point to drill in to get to your work.

Ariana (00:31:10) - Yeah, totally. It's so funny I laugh because how many times somebody said like, Hey, something's going on with this dashboard. And I'm like, what? And I check and it looks fine. It's, it's cuz they've gone to like the lowest level of the data and I'm like, there was no way I was gonna be able to catch that before we got that up. But that's how people are really doing their workloads from that visual level because we digest information visually much easier than, you know, just the straight up data. So they're gonna start with that visual layer and then work their way down.

Jon (00:31:36) - Yeah. And even inside of charts and dashboards. It's interesting to see the types of charts that different people gravitate towards kind of based on their role. We have 13 or 14 different chart types and I could start to kind of break that down into groups of people visually on the types that they pick as well.

Ariana (00:31:53) - Which one was the most surprising when you started to look at that?

Jon (00:31:57) - I, I can tell you that the Gen Z-ers, like the stack bar charts and the pie charts the most

Ariana (00:32:02) - Hmm. Stack bar. Interesting.

Jon (00:32:04) - Yeah. And I can't tell you exactly why, but I can tell you that that group of people uses those two chart types the most inside of your product. And then executives, you know, people more my generation are not as colorful in the colors that they select to put on the charts. I say millennials and Gen Z-ers spend some time on each color of each element that's actually picked exactly how they want it. And we've actually increased our color palettes because of those comments that they want more options because it's important that it visually looks the way that they want it to look. It's not just a pie chart.

Ariana (00:32:42) - Well, let's run out the trifecta with process, and I'm gonna take this a little bit more macro because you've been in this space and you've been thinking about process and perfecting process for so many years. What, for our audience, would be a tip that you've learned that people should think about when they're building processes that might not be apparent out the gate?

Jon (00:33:03) - I've typically seen a couple of issues with people as they think about processes at the beginning. The first one is they've not done that process before and they really don't understand what a best in class process looks like, right? I learned that at Ernst and Young. Ernst and Young had process templates for every kind of business.They would go in to do consulting, you would just flip through and educate the customers on the processes and it made it very easy to make decisions. And most of the time the customer…what was built was very different from what they had in mind at the beginning because they didn't know. So at SmartSuite we do that with process templates. So we have 200 templates across 35 different categories of processes all the way down to like real estate, construction, churches, nonprofits, things that are specific. The majority of our customers click on that, pull up the templates, drill in, and that's the starting point for them to begin to really understand what a simple version looks like.

Jon (00:33:58) - And then we give them a more complex, or more mature kind of process. That helps them very quickly decide, oh, I want the simple, like that's what I've got in my head. That's why I wanna start. Versus no, I need the complex. And then they just tailor the process template that is there to kind of meet their needs compared to starting from scratch. If you're gonna start from scratch, the problem typically is…tools are so easy to just use now using no-code and drag-and-drop that you can just start building and you get done and you realize that's not right. Like if I would've taken an hour and and thought about the flow of the process and the people that were involved, it would've had a big impact on what I built. So we try to encourage our customers and provide them with examples of flowcharts so that they understand, even if you're not a flowchart expert, let me just take a piece of paper and kind of draw out what I'm trying to accomplish. Gets my mind thinking about how I would organize that not just in SmartSuite, but in any kind of productivity tool.

Ariana (00:35:00) - Oh my gosh, I love a flowchart . But it is funny when I have people that come to me and they're like, I need help with operations. And usually they're coming at me and they think they know what they need. They think they know the solution of what's causing the problem. I would say 90% of the time that is not the problem or that is a small percentage of the greater problem or the operations that we're trying to build. And the interesting mindset shift has been…changing people from, just because you're building something doesn't mean that you're progressing something. Meaning building not that you're being more productive or that you're doing something well. It just means that you're building cuz it feels good. Sometimes you have to take a step back.

Ariana (00:35:45) - You have to get a piece of pen and paper out, go and really figure out how is each of these pieces connecting? How are each of these technologies and how is our team gonna use all these things to really be able to get to where you wanna go faster. It's a hard mental shift though I find it very difficult. So having that best in class template makes a lot of sense to me. Most people don't need to reinvent the wheel. You did obviously cuz that's John's way. But like not everybody needs that.

Jon (00:36:15) - Yeah. For sure. And that’s the biggest part of what we provide that helps people get started faster and it's part of that education process. And then we provide videos around processes as well to help other customers share with another customer how they've implemented that process to give them ideas. And I'll tell you, another big problem that we see quite often is that people have a process in place that they've inherited over time. And you would ask them, why do we do this? And they're like, I don't really know. I just collect these 20 pieces of information every day when I do this task. And you look at the outcome and you realize none of the, the charts, the graphs, the reports that they're looking at includes some of the information that they're capturing each day. It's just kind of mindless work that's happening. So we like to spend time to really understand, you know, what is the outcome, what do you wanna see? Let's look at the data that we're collecting and let's get rid of anything that we're actually not using that's in there. And that happens more than you would think in more established companies where the process was set maybe by somebody that no longer has the job and now I'm in that role.

Ariana (00:37:19) - Definitely. Also, I think people who like process tend to over process things and that's where you get a lot of those steps where they're just like, let's just get it all written down and you ultimately want the minimum viable steps that you need to get the job done. Well that doesn't mean you need the most, but that is a, again, another shift. Making something simple is really hard, but to do that, you're gonna save so much time, money, your team’s sanity, all those pieces.

Jon (00:37:51) - Yeah. The other part of that is, you know, in today's world you can automate pretty much anything in any type of productivity tool, you know, and they even, we call 'em automations now where I can go and say, if these two things happen, go do these two things. So when this trigger happens, do these actions and we like to spend a lot of time seeing what people do and then say, I think we can automate like 20, 30, 40% of what you just did. You don't have to do that. You don't have to click here and then go over here and do something because you did it here first. Like, we'll just make that happen for you. And then it gives people more time to kind of think about and understand, you know, the work that they're doing. They can work a little smarter. Think about the outcomes.

Ariana (00:38:33) - There's nothing like the moment when you automate something for someone who didn't think it could be automated and you could just see the light bulb click. I've especially found that on finance teams where I'm like, I think we can automate that folder creation and you don't need to do that. And then it's like, let's automate everything! Which is a very hilarious, after effect. But let's, let's get to the inside scoop because John, I wanna pick your brain in this area in a little different fashion than we normally do with the inside scoop where we essentially get pieces of advice from you in a way that maybe we haven't heard it. So what I would like to start with is having invested in over 400 companies…what did you look for when you were to invest in a company? What were some factors, um, outside of, you know, revenue, potential profitability? What were some operational features that you were looking for?

Jon (00:39:27) - Let me first tell you about some of the mistakes that I made because that tells even a better story about that because–

Ariana (00:39:33) - Love a mistake. Love a mistake, made many of them.

Jon (00:39:35) - I tended to get very excited about at first coming in the idea that people had and the potential that it could have from an economic standpoint. And I had some friends at Bain Capital that when I would start investing, they kept coming back to me and saying, John, it's all about the people. Don't worry about the product. Great people do great things. Doesn't matter about the idea. It might be the third iteration they'll get there. I've learned that about halfway through my investing journey because some of the companies that I thought had the most potential, didn't have the right team and the people, it just wasn't coordinated and they didn't make it. Not just that they weren't, you know, hugely profitable, they just didn't make it at all. It was just shocking. And it led me to really understand how much time you need to spend with an entrepreneur and the people around the entrepreneur that are on that team to see how they interact with each other.

Jon (00:40:30) - And there's different types of entrepreneurs. There's some that are in the weeds on every detail and there's some that are more high level empowered people to get in the weeds, and those are two very different teams. So you need to think about the teams that are around those people on how that works. It's a red flag for me, if I meet with entrepreneurs now and they are so focused on how much money we're gonna make and they're talking about these grandiose projections four and five years and about their wealth and all of that, that for me is…I've learned my lesson. That's probably not the right conversation. I wanna find the entrepreneurs that kind of go back to Malcolm Gladwell's book outliers. I don't know if you're familiar with that, where Malcolm identified that, you know, to be an expert in something, you need about 10,000 hours of time.

Jon (00:41:19) - So I look for are they an expert in the field that they're starting that doesn't, you know, there are people that aren't experts that are successful too. But the ones that are experts, alright, they get a tick from me. Are they really passionate about what they're doing? Let's say they can't wait to come in. Like for me it's software development and I could talk process and software all day. If they don't love the idea, they're just doing it for some other reason. I don't give 'em that check mark kind of in that box. So when I look at do they have the experience, are they passionate? And then is there a market opportunity for what they're wanting to do? That's when those three things come together, that's when I now get excited about investing.

Ariana (00:42:03) - It also then makes so much sense why you really wanted to find the right people when you were first starting SmartSuite because you know how clutch those initial hires are because the culture is gonna start from those initial people that joined the team and then it's gonna grow from there. And having seen that, it really drove home that point. Hmm. That's a really good key takeaway for me. What do you think is something that operators do that they should stop doing like tomorrow? If you were to say, operators here ye here ye, this is my notice, I think you should stop doing this. What would that be?

Jon (00:42:39) - Yeah, this might sound weird, but I'm not a big fan of having a bunch of meetings every week and a lot of individual one-on-one sessions. I feel like it's all that time is taking away from the customer or the product that you're trying to build. And you've gotta find a way to have those types of conversations very quickly and then move on so people feel empowered to get stuff done. So I'm a big fan of agile development, not just from a development perspective, but I like to use the agile methodology across every part of our business, which means that each morning for 15 minutes, each team does a standup. And during that standup they talk about, here's what I completed yesterday, here's what I'm focused on today. Do I have any blockers that I need some help from somebody to get done? Everybody knows what's going on, they feel like they're in the know and then let's go. Right? And there'll be conversations throughout the day, but I'm just not a huge fan of scheduling too much burden on top of the day with just a bunch of meetings that don't lead to a great outcome for the customer or product side.

Ariana (00:43:44) - Yeah, I get that feeling when I'm in meetings and I'm just totalling up how much we're spending on this hourly meeting of 15 people and I'm like, Ooh, this is not worth that. Like this is not worth that. We're not getting where we need to go on this. It's like now it's like consciously painful to go through those, not because I don't love seeing people and engaging, but you also know that people get burnt out being in meetings all the time. You can only handle so much of that on a day-to-day basis.

Jon (00:44:11) - Yeah, and a lot of what happens in those meetings, if that information was available in a way that you could see it in a click or two and consume it on your own time in just a few minutes, you get the same outcome. And that's what SmartSuite is all about with the collaboration…I've got my list of stuff, but if I wanna see another team and what they're focused on of their objectives or initiatives for the quarter and the status, like just boom, there it is. And I, I don't need to have an hour meeting with 15 people to be able to get that.

Ariana (00:44:41) - Totally. I've taken meetings from more, you know…let's write something down on pen and paper. Let's create custom agendas every week to, Hey, we're gonna have the same agenda. We're gonna dashboard all these things you can view at any time. And man, those meetings go like fire and you actually end up having some really good discussion because in the past where you would spend 45 minutes doing status updates instead you spend 10 minutes looking at what you're constantly looking at from a dashboarding perspective, and then you can actually discuss what's going on, try and solve problems together, try and see where you need support. And I do think it helps from a satisfaction perspective for the team because then they're using the part of their brains where they can really start to solve problems in different ways and and enjoy that. You know, it's not just checking a box

Jon (00:45:25) - Exactly. Like what you said to me, we use KPIs in each process that we have inside of our own company and we spend time understanding that you could have 20 KPIs, but what are the four or five most important, and let's focus on those, right? So we go into the meeting, there it is, how did we do against last week, last month, last quarter? If something's in the red, we know that's an area that we need to focus that conversation on. But everything is green and, and moving up it's like, we're doing a great job, let's keep doing what we're doing. We don't need to have any changes there.

Ariana (00:45:55) - So as someone that has moved from operations into consulting for businesses, into being a CEO and a co-founder for our operators out there, what happens in the mental shift from being an operator into a a CEO and a founder? What do you think if people wanted to start something or if they wanted to found a business, what is that, that mental shift that they need to make to get that to happen?

Jon (00:46:23) - Yeah. Well the first thing I would say is if you're a really good operator and you have that 10,000 hours of experience, you're in a really great position to be a CEO and to start a company because you know what needs to get done, right? So a lot of great startup founders come from that background because they just have that knowledge. The hardest part is all the things outside of that framework that you don't know about. Maybe you're not a marketing specialist, right? Or you don't know product development and how that needs to get done. So it's important that you find a way to get comfortable with that very quickly, especially if you're a SaaS company that's there and there's a lot of great SaaS founders that aren't product people. They just have a great idea.

Jon (00:47:06) - So you have to find a way to communicate back with your team the expectations that you have. And the way that I found this most effective for me is we have quarterly goals. So we have four to five quarterly goals that says this is exactly what we're trying to accomplish. Each goal is supported by a series, typically six to eight objectives for the quarter. And then each objective has a series of initiatives that need to get done in support of the objective. If I do my job right and get that framework set for the quarter…I've communicated what my expectations are, even if I don't know the how of, how everything's gonna get done. And then the people understand what's most important to them that they're reporting back to me each week. And then I just use something very simple: red, yellow, green stoplight status.

Jon (00:47:48) - And I say, if it's green we don't need to talk about it. If it's yellow, it means you've got a question and it doesn't mean you're gonna miss the mark, but you've got questions. So I'm gonna focus each Monday morning on yellow, and if it's red, it means we're at risk of meeting a goal or objective that I've stated, and that's where my attention needs to flow into. So as an operator moving in, that might not be the right system for you, but I found that that's the right system for me to kind of get my head around what's happening in the business

Ariana (00:48:19) - Also, that just empowers people. I feel like there is some resistance to defining those goals initially when I'm working with companies because, you know, they've done it a certain way. They're moving fast and I'm forcing them to slow down and to define some goals and to define some metrics for those goals. And initially it seems very uncomfortable, but then what I found after is the ability to then have smart people do what they do best, which is…do smart things. It makes it so much easier, right? You've given them the clarity of what they should be working towards. If you've hired the right people, they will know how to do that or find out how to do that. And, and there's a lot less handholding that's needed and nobody wants to have to do that anyways. Right? So you're just empowering people that you've already hired to do the thing.

Jon (00:49:07) - For sure. And then I think when you reach a goal, there's a time for celebration that's there and you wanna be careful how you set goals and that you have goals and stretch goals, right? So that you want to meet those goals. And I think that builds the culture of the company to really rally around realistic goals that the team can meet and then give them the stretch, like, you go get this and we'll do X more for your bonus or something, right? Where they're like, okay, I'm gonna go get that number, but I'm gonna definitely achieve what needs to be done for the quarter.

Ariana (00:49:37) - Yeah, that's, that's a very good point too. If you make a goal so unachievable, there's just no morale behind it, if you've already set up to fail, it doesn't feel good. But if you have that stretch goal to keep running at… if you hit your goal or when you hit your goal, it is quite motivating and it's a celebratory time, and it's like, let's have some fun. We worked our tails off. Let's figure that out.

Jon (00:50:03) - Yeah. And that, I think that's key to the culture, right? Like if you have unrealistic goals and you're always hammering on people to meet those goals, it just becomes frustrating for them, right? If they, if you don't achieve something and you're a really smart person, like you're beating yourself up over that. So don't do that. Just set goals that make sense that you know you can hit. And then let's focus on one or two stretch goals as well.

Ariana (00:50:28) - Last question with the inside scoop, which is, okay, let's say we're having somebody listen and they keep hearing process, they're like, John Ariana process gross. I don't even wanna go near that. What would you say to them to convince them to give it a shot? To give process a try?

Jon (00:50:41) - Yeah. Process is all about helping people work smarter in their job and understand their expectations of what they're doing each day, and then the outcome that you expect from them. So some people don't call that process, right? Those are just, you know, when you sit down and, and you do a plan for a person for the quarter or for the year, you kind of document it. I think of that as a process, and I like to take it a step further in that each part of a person's job I like to ensure, is documented in a way that they just fully understand and embrace what they have ownership of. And they know if they don't have ownership, who has ownership of different things. When they have questions or they need feedback that affects them and getting their job done. So whether you call it process or not, is something that happens in every business every day, just in the nature of how you get work done.

Ariana (00:51:35) - John, let's fire some rapid fire questions your way. This is just about you as a human just to get to know you. So it’s supposed to be quick answers. Go with your gut, no pressure. If you don't have an answer either, we can all always give you another question. So, in your day-to-day life, what is your favorite part of the day?

Jon (00:51:53) - Talking with our design team each morning,

Ariana (00:51:55) - What is your favorite quote?

Jon (00:51:57) - Favorite quote? What gets measured gets done

Ariana (00:52:01) - Very appropriate. What is the best purchase you've made under $50?

Jon (00:52:08) - Man I'm having a hard time on that one. It has to do with something being outside in sports…whether it's football, basketball, baseball, but I'm just, I'm a sports guy and I love to be outside.

Ariana (00:52:20) - What are you currently reading?

Jon (00:52:22) - I'm rereading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell for probably the fifth time.

Ariana (00:52:28) - What is the coolest place that you've been to on earth?

Jon (00:52:33) - You know, I'm gonna pick Southern California where we live. I think once we moved here…and down by the beach, like, it just, it, it's like a permanent vacation. I just love it here.

Ariana (00:52:42) - What do you wanna be when you grow up?

Jon (00:52:44) - Hmm, that's great. You know, from a business side, I really enjoy being a CEO of a successful company. Not because of the company, but because of all the relationships with the people that that brings. So that's my network of people that I enjoy working with and that's bled into our social lives. So many customers and employees have become such good friends as a result of that. I enjoy that part and kind of the mentorship that I'm able to…now that I'm older, be able to provide back to some of the younger folks.

Ariana (00:53:16) - What is a skill that you have that people don't know about and would surprise them?

Jon (00:53:21) - I love interior design. Like all of our homes, my wife just says, go do it. And yeah, I love to do that.

Ariana (00:53:31) - Last question, which is, what is the most important lesson that you have learned in your life so far?

Jon (00:53:39) - Yeah, I think, you know, being older…I am now, how you treat people in situations matters good and bad. Whether you feel like you've been wronged in the way that you respond back or whether you feel that you're right and you're handling a difficult conversation, it's important to always think about the other side of that discussion because it could have an impact on the other person for quite some time. So I always try to take a breath now before I respond back if I'm in a situation that's a little sticky.

Ariana (00:54:07) - Hmm, that's a good tip. Last but not least, where can people find you if they're like Jon, man speaking some truths here. I wanna, I wanna connect with you.

Jon (00:54:18) - Yeah, probably the best way is on LinkedIn, so just Jon Darbyshire. Jon is J-O-N, and either LinkedIn with me or just send me a DM through LinkedIn and that's probably the fastest one.

Ariana (00:54:26) - John, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. Truly, it feels like such a treat to be able to just talk to you and pick your brain with all of the experience that you've had. So thank you so much and thank you so much for the Secret Ops listeners. Please make sure to follow us wherever you find your podcast and check us out at secret-ops.com. See you next time.