Critical Questions to Ask When Auditing Your Tech Stack - S1:E5

You're listening to Creative Friction, a podcast for ambitious creatives and agency owners that are looking for honest insights on how to scale their business sustainably and profitably. Each episode we dig into candid conversations about the most pressing topics in our industry, and offer up insights and resources to inspire you to take action. From talking about the latest and greatest in AI, it's unpacking how our industry can better represent reflect our modern world. We're here to guide you on agency growth, marketing strategies, and how to make a meaningful impact as a creative entrepreneur.

Hello, and welcome back to Creative friction, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs navigating the challenge of growing a business while staying true to your creative roots. Each episode is recorded live so guests can join in and ask questions that matter to them and their business. I'm Madeline Reeves. And I'm Jeff Meade.

And today we're here to talk about auditing your tech stack. Let's get into it. Okay, I want to ask the big question to you first, Jeff, why are we talking about this topic? What was the aha moment?

We had give it give us the backstory? Yeah, actually, it's funny, there were a couple of aha moments. And, you know, one we'll get into later, I had a personal experience where my costs got way out of hand. But it's what's interesting to me is just this has been coming up with a lot of clients, and a lot of folks I've been talking to where they're really trying to understand, you know, one, what software they should be using, but, but also, you know, how much should they be spending on software, like they are starting to see that line item get way out of control.

And so, you know, you hear it enough times, and you start saying, I think there's something here. So, you know, let's, let's dig a little deeper. So that's what really inspired it. You know, the other thing that came into mind when when I was thinking about this topic today is like it feels like cost cutting season for a lot of people.

I think that, you know, the past couple years have been, you know, pretty abundant. For some folks, it's been a lot of opportunities, but a lot of growth. And the last kind of six to 12 months, people are starting to think about how do I scale back. And obviously, we've seen, you know, like, we've seen all of the, you know, kind of people who are laying off, you know, this has been a big thing in my LinkedIn newsfeed this week, you know, and also, you know, seeing, you know, all of the people that are just kind of trying to figure out how they can be more conscious with their spending in tech, in an agency like, like, like mine, it's is our biggest budget item.

Besides you know, obviously employee cost. So I'm excited for us to talk about it further today. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. It really is.

How do we cut costs, right? Like we see the tech firms laying off people. And we, we don't want to be there. So how do we cut costs without looking at our people?

That's a good way to look at Yeah, yeah. So So also, I wanted to mention, too, and we'll get into what this resources later, but you had had such a fantastic newsletter on this topic. And if y'all don't subscribe to Jeff's newsletter, please go do this. It's so good.

It's so insightful. And, you know, for me, I when I saw this, I immediately wrote back and I said, this is our next talk. And so I'm curious to know what inspired that newsletter? Yeah, it was, you know, usually the, the fodder for my newsletter is really just conversations I have with people.

And sometimes somebody will say something. And I'll make a note to myself like, Hmm, that's, that's a question you have. And then a second person will say something. And then a third and a fourth.

And I'm like, Alright, this is this is buzzing right now. So I need to address it. And if these folks are having this question, and other people are, and that's really what it was, I just saw so many people just talking about this software costs. And, you know, I was like, this seems like it should be simple enough, but but it's not right.

Like, we just, I'd be interested to hear your story. You know, we would just we just collect software, right? They like these, these these new shiny objects. And we just, you know, we see something new.

And we say to ourselves, hey, let's try it. Let's check it out and see if it works for us. So I just heard so many people talking about, I was like, I have to address this. Yeah, well, it is.

It's funny, and it's something I'm really, you know, excited to get into further today, because we've been on a really interesting journey with our software. And I was actually talking to another founder about it this week. I was like, Look, here's the deal, like what I've learned in the past, particularly 12 months, is that your tech stack is basically meant to be broken. And in fact, if your tech stack is breaking, or you're reevaluating your tech stack, that's a good sign that your business has scaled or grown or evolved in some way.

But I will say is I am super guilty of that shiny object syndrome. So everything. And it comes from a couple things. I'm a tech aficionado, I love New Tech.

And I also work with clients in the tech industry. And so I get exposed to a lot of up and coming technology. And I'll think, oh my gosh, it's gonna solve all the problems, right? Like, I'm like, I found it, it's the one it's the answer.

And, um, you know, and for a long time, you know, especially in terms of operationalizing, my business, I really struggled with this, like I, I was looking back this week, and I realized that we have moved through six different project management solutions. In under five years, we have, you know, and many of those was like, three of them, I think, was in my first year of business. And I was so obsessed of finding the right tool to run my business on. And now my perspective is totally different.

My My perspective is the run your business, like it's not about the tools, at the end of the day that the tools are going to change, the tools are gonna break. It's not a matter of if it's when, but that breaking in that reevaluating is really important to one make sure your costs are under control and to to say, is this the right tool for the right team for the right season we're in for, you know, where we want to go and grow next? And so basically, you know, to summarize this, like, what happened in our business last year is every tool broke, like every tool was designed for the path of like, zero to maybe a half a million, or like, it was actually kind of more more intermediate tools.

It was it was tools that were designed for agencies, probably like 250 to two half million, right. But we had scaled were well beyond that. And so then it was like, you know, our team was too big for the tools, you know, they didn't have functionalities we needed, the processes are all of our processes broke, too. And so we've been on a journey, I'll just say that I believe it.

And it's funny, when you say the revenue marker, I often see lots of times, it's usually a people thing, right? And you've probably experienced it as you've brought new people in, people come in, and they have their own bias to software, right? They're like, Oh, when I was at this place, we did this. And there's times where you say to yourself, Okay, I brought them in for their expertise.

just have at it right? The challenge is often that you were using another software that everybody else got used to the new person brings in his new software. And it's almost like you have this little software battle going on. Right?

And you don't want to get rid of one because you haven't fully converted over to the other one. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's so funny, you brought that up, because my old life my old job was, I was basically a business global business development leader for tech companies. So my job was to come in and disrupt your tech stack, my job was to come in and get my reps and my bizdev.

And my marketing to be like, This is the reason we're better than that archaic tool you're using, and it was all cloud based solution. And so I've been very privy to the friction that comes comes forth inside of an organization when you have two teams, or you know, two sets of ideas as to how the tech should be run. But I was a little bit blind to it. In my own business, if I'm being honest.

And it wasn't Intel. This past year, we moved everything into notion. And like the backstory here is again, we went through like, we I'm trying to remember our OG stuff we like went through like airtable Keep dubsado. Gonna click up, yeah, I click up was when I've met you, and click just couldn't.

It's like, it's like, you know, it's a behemoth, right. It's like coming in with the Ferrari. And nobody knows how to drive stick. So like you, you know, we couldn't solve that.

And get with the team. It was just, it was friction all around it. And then we put in notion in place, and like our whole entire agency has changed within six months. That is so fascinating.

And this isn't a plug for notion at all. But I've heard that from so many agencies that have just converted to notion. And I haven't picked it up yet. I haven't played with it yet.

But I've heard so many people just like rave about what it's done for their agency. Yeah, it the thing that I think is really powerful about it. And again, this is not a plug where we've just and I've seen the same thing. I've seen a lot of friends in creative environments.

And what's so fun about that, too, is now I have other agency owners that I go, Oh, how are you solving for this notion, and we share templates and we show off the things we built. But it reminds me more of having a blank canvas and a paintbrush like you can build anything you want, right? But there's also this community behind it of creatives, who are really apt to say, well, this is how I built it and share that, you know, process or workflow or tool, whereas like clickup was like everybody was off in their own universe.

And I do think click web still works really good for like dev teams and things like that. But notion has this more creative flavor, I think to it, and I run a creative team, right and so it's not lost on me that the people who are really running with notion are typically creatives. Very true. Very, very true.

Yeah. Okay, so my next question I want to want to ask here is, talk to me about the software audit. Because this was, this was the piece that you know, and we're gonna give your process today. So talk to me about, what is the software audit?

If somebody's never done one, say somebody who's a newbie, and why is it so essential? Yeah, the good thing, and like you said, we will be giving this out in the show notes. So there's a template that you can use that I think it makes it really easy. But essentially, the audit is really an accounting of all the software that you use.

You know, I think it's, when I think about it, it's it's one of those things. It's almost like streaming services that we use at home, right? Like I, I can't, because you, you have a spreadsheet for that. And I just am like, whoa, that's expensive.

I just see it coming in. Actually, it's funny. A couple months ago, I had asked X my wife X kids, I was like, Alright, we gotta give up one of these. And so I said, which one do you absolutely want, so that we can give up one.

And it's like, they they were like in cahoots, because they all said something different. So we were gonna get rid of it, I was like, I was like, it's prime, we get rid of prime and my husband's like, but we're already paying for prime. And I was like, dang, that's so true. So but just like those guys, just like the streaming services, they make it so easy.

There's no friction, they take your credit card, you get billed every month, you know, I would say if they would just create some friction, you know, which which they wouldn't, of course, but if they sent you an invoice, and you saw the invoice every month, you would say, Hey, do we really need this software, but they don't write once they take your credit card, it just goes and goes. And so you know what the audit it really is looking at, at its very essence, it's creating a list of all the software that your agency is using.

And then after that, and you know, folks will see when they get the spreadsheet after that you start saying, all right, we have all this software who's actually using the software in the business, and what are they using it for? And I think the most eye opening part of the audit is the section where you talk about what do you use it for? Because you often find, oh my goodness, we have like three different tools for project management, kind of like what you just said, right? Like, I've seen people use some combination of like Basecamp, Asana, and now a lot of folks are moving to notion.

The thing is, they're still paying for Basecamp. And they have like a light subscription to Asana. And so this stuff starts to add up. And so once you go through all that, you start to see, alright, how much am I paying for all this software?

And then when you audit it, it really is. Alright, how many tools do we have accomplishing the same goal? And it allows you to go in there and just go back, talk with your team and say, Hey, is there anything that we can get rid of? Any?

That doesn't make sense, right? It's just a real simple way to do it. Because otherwise, you know, people hear the word audit, and no one wants any parts of that. It just, yeah, sounds super boring.

So but this makes it really simple. And that was the whole thing. I wanted to make it simple. So people can go through real quick and just say, Hey, do we keep it or not?

Right? Like, swipe right, swipe left, whatever. And you just just making it really easy? Yeah, well, what I love to use, it's more than just a cost comparative, right?

Like because because I think that like which one's the cheapest is a bit of a race to the bottom, especially depending on how advanced of the work your agency is doing. But I love this notion of comparing, you know, what is the tool being used for who's actually using it, I think is really important. And the only thing I will say about the software audit that I think is really vital. Is this, like next generation question of like, you know, what, then we can open up conversations of like, what other tools are out there, right?

Because like this might be something like this is what I found is like, these were things we plugged in three years ago. And like platforms that we were interested in at the time, but didn't have this one feature, they may now have launched now. And so we can get rid of this one thing, because now this other thing solves for it entirely. So like that's another part where I like to go, Okay, is it the best tool now?

Right, like, because it might have been three years ago, but you know, might not be any more. And so we did a lot of that in our in our business this past year. And the other thing here too, for me, is also this this element of like having an honest conversation about like, what isn't isn't working? You know, because I think again, it's like, you know, so we had this discussion around our tool does does design in a couple of different platforms.

And arguably I would say we need all three. So we do things in Canva. We do things in in Adobe Creative Cloud, and we do things in in figma. And figma is primarily our tool for anything related to do UI UX, and anything where we're like mocking up a user experience that's a primary tool particularly for like website flows, etc.

For us occasionally and we'll use it for email flows and things like that. And my My graphic designer and UI UX team, they they really like that tool. And it's really great for those things. So I'm like, keep it, it's not that expensive, it works well.

Canva you know, we use it a lot. It's not the best design tool in my book. I'm I'm a purist like I grew up on on Photoshop and InDesign, but for the usability factor, particularly when we're delivering things to clients, that are essential to their ability to be able to edit them over time. So I'm thinking things like templates for social media, media kits, where you're going to want to update your follower account, you know, things like that, it's really beneficial to deliver it to a client and a free platform that they can make use of without really messing things up that much.

As opposed to being like, here's an Adobe file, and you don't frickin have Adobe, nor do you want to pay for it. You know, which then creates a lot of like, you know, clients coming back and wanting edits after the the work products done, and you're like, you're not paying me for that. So no. But then there are some pure, pure things that I'm like you can only do in Adobe.

And so we have all three tools. But it's like, again, that assessment of like, what is the right tool for the job? What is the right tool for the right team? Like, I like how the audit opens up those kinds of conversations?

Yeah. And that's a good point. I mean, I think I may have used that as an example. But I see that all the time, right?

Like the account, folks don't want to touch the Adobe Suite, right? Like, it's just too powerful. But they'll they'll use something else. And so you see that lots of times where I'll come in and say, it's a lot of creative software you have but you start seeing like different departments just have their preferences.

Yeah, absolutely. And you you had this other piece here, too, is like, again, you know, I think people avoid the word audit with like a 10 foot pole. But ultimately, if we have something to audit, it means that our business has grown. So talk about that that piece, because I think that piece is really important.

Yeah, that's a really good way to look at it to where to put a positive spin on it. I mean, the beauty of it truly is, once you're doing an audit, you are saying to yourself, alright, we're growing, but are we growing in the way that we want to grow? Right. And so I think it's really about, you know, we look at all the different ways we bring money into a company, all the different ways clients are paying us for different services.

And I think we just have to be as vigilant about the costs. You know, one way I look at it is, you know, we'll look at revenue and say, Alright, what do we make this year compared to last year? Right, right. And there's this delta, there's this percentage change, when you start looking at your costs, you also want to make sure that it's going to increase, but let's make sure didn't increase more than, say, revenue or gross income.

And then if it did, then you can start looking at some line items and saying, Hey, what's going on here? And, and far too often, I see the software line going up, and I start saying, hey, what's happening? And just the kind of, hey, what's happening allows people to go in and say, Oh, well, we needed this for a client project. But then guess what the project is gone.

Right. And so it's just, it is it is a result of growth, the growth that's happening, which is a good thing, but it's just like a checks and balances like, and as you were saying, do we still need this? But but it's a wonderful conversation to have, because you only do audits, when you're growing, right? Like things wouldn't be changing that much if you weren't growing at all.

So it's like a great, great milestone in the growth of an agency, I think. Yeah. And again, the potential for you from a profitability perspective, we don't recognize it, I think, because the amount on a lot of these tools, like you said, they're like, designed to be frictionless. So a lot, there's most of them are under 100 bucks a month, right?

And so like, those sorts of transactions are not enough for me to trigger a long term thought process of like, what is this really costing us over time? Or do we still need it right? Like it just like the transaction just happens. But here's the backstory.

What started us exploding all of our software, basically, last year, was there was a so we used to do a considerable amount more of social media execution. And we still do it as a service, but very select very high end. It's very strategy centric. And but prior to that, we were doing a lot a large volume, a larger volume.

And so we had an agency edition, I won't name names, but I wouldn't recommend them either of a social media scheduling tool. That was like at the time when we bought it best in breed. And we got a deal that the contract we were locked into was two years and the cost was 800 a month. And so my line item for software was triple what it is now over a year ago.

And the first thing that fell off was we finally got out of that frequent contract and then I was like cut it as much as we can go through here and say what do we want? What do we not want? What is actually useful? So we like I said last year that line item was about trouble.

only 500, it was somewhere between 2020 500 a month just on software. And now that line item, we've gotten it down to 650. Like we this last month, January was 650. And not only that, but because I'm an analytics nerd, I built it into my management reporting software that I used to do my KPIs on my performance at the agency, which we should totally do an episode on that because that's definitely.

But I built in a trigger notification to my platform that says, if the line item increases marginally by more, I think I have it as either 10 or 25%. Right? I get a notification to my email to say like what's happening? Because Because they'll increase prices, and they won't tell you right?

Or they'll send you an email and it goes to spam or whatever. And so I get an email if that if my expense line for soft apps and software goes up. Then I'm like we need more of a convo or cancel something. Yeah, like that a lot.

That's really good. Yeah. So here's a big question for you when especially for our audience members, and I love that we we've got some some good feedback here in the chat somebody saying, I usually child options and that I choose the one that resonates best with how I like to work. I settled for notion and it's excellent.

So clearly the audience, like you notion to, and again, when are encouraged in this moment, comments, questions, we love them. We love to live in the in the stream. But Jeff, say I am a client, and you start to notice, you know that this might be the moment what are the things that kind of trigger your realization that it's time to conduct a tech audit? Yeah, that's that's a good one.

It really is. You know, when I'm working with folks really around like profitability, just you know, folks, Agron, you know, when people come to me, they're, they're kind of at a crossroads. They're like, Hey, we're growing, but we're not growing as fast as we should, or we have a bunch of leads, but operations is messed up. Right.

So there's a lot of things going on. And so the triggers for me is really about where do I find easy wins for them from a profitability perspective. And like I was saying, my cheat code is usually let's look at, I'll look at, I'll take a period, say a look at their most recent 12 months and compare that to 12 months prior. And I'll start looking at just like quick changes, you know, what, what's changed, alright, your gross income has gone up by this much.

And so that becomes my baseline, and I start looking at overhead costs. And, and then when I look at those overhead costs, like I was saying, if if any of that stuff is increasing more than gross income, that's my immediate trigger, right, like I'll just in real simple, I'll put together a spreadsheet that I'll share with the client. And it'll just have, alright, gross income has gone up by this much. This is our baseline, we're watching to see what else has gone up by more than that amount.

And once we see those line items, then it's a trigger. And it's always software, software is always one that goes up. And so it's like an easy win, you know, for when I share with the share with folks that template like, alright, just have this conversation with your team to see what's going on. Maybe it's okay that the costs have gone up just based on the type of work you're doing.

But you got to at least have that conversation. So so the real trigger for me is really just, I always want to make sure that there's no costs increasing more than your income is increasing. That's, that's like the big trigger. And it's real simple for people to do.

What what I'm sorry to interrupt. What I was gonna say was that what I love about this is you've always had this very shrewd financial lens when it comes to running an agency, which I think is really important and really beneficial to our audience, quite frankly. But But I'm curious, like, where did that come from? Because like me, I think a lot of the skills and processes you and I have built over time come from like, yeah, you got it wrong.

So where did that come from? Yeah, that's a good question. Really good diggin, it actually came when I was building out my agency and in LA, and, you know, we were doing pretty well. And it's funny, you know, that's, that's probably the agency that we were the most financially successful.

And I just remember, we weren't hitting numbers, where I was like, you know, numbers where your ego kind of gets big. But, but what was funny is I kept thinking to myself, I don't feel the way you're supposed to feel with this revenue number, right? And I remember at the time, we had a CFO, and I was sitting down with her talking, like, you know, what is going on here, you know, what's happening and she's the one that really put me on to the whole, you know, looking at our gross income and, and gross income was increasing.

But we had all kinds of stuff that was just costs that were going out out of hand like we had moved into a new space. So we were flossing. So it was like all these little things. We were playing in the park, but we just weren't watching cost the way we should because the money was coming in.

And, you know, looking back, speaking, assuredness, you know, all that growth was really attributed to one client, they, they were just throwing money at us. So it was stressful, right? Because we had one client driving all this revenue. And so you start saying, Well, this is fantastic, but their percentage of our entire business wasn't fantastic.

Which is anybody that I've spoken to, I'll always say, how big is that biggest client? And that just comes from my fear of what what was happening to us, you know, this one client, just, whenever they said, Jump, well, you know, everybody was over at their office. But yeah, I mean, really, it was, it was really, she was going through line item by line item. And it was really the first time that I really saw how to truly read those just line items and financial statements and what to make of it.

And, you know, we were making money, so we felt fine spending it, but we were just spending way too much relative to what we're making. And so that was kind of the lightbulb for me where I was like, I knew something was up because none of us felt like we were making it. But the number said otherwise. Right?

Like we would win industry awards, agency awards. And, you know, we were fine broadcasts and our revenue all that seems good, but no one felt we didn't feel it, we didn't feel like we were making money. So. So she's the one that really changed how I approach everything.

I appreciate that honesty so much because as you know, behind the scenes, we've been on a really similar journey at Fearless foundry, the past year or so. And, you know, we've said, we'll always be honest that this audience, and for me, you know, so, so full circle and a little bit of backstory here, I'm in LA right now. And my co lives down here. And I came down intentionally for a bunch of things, client meetings, stuff like that.

But also to attend an event last night with a bunch of female founders in the room, women that I really respected admire. And there was a moment last night where one of there was a panel of just incredible, you know, black woman founders. And, and one of the panelists said, you know, I was so obsessed as I think many female founders are with the idea of reaching a million dollars in revenue. And I got so close, and I was burned out so bad.

And I, I look back now. And I was like, I didn't feel I didn't feel like a million. Yes, I didn't feel like a million dollars. I felt like crap.

And she was like, I wanted wanted to go back to when I made $600,000.02 100,000 of it was profit, because that 900 Whatever. It 40,000 was profit. And I was like, it me like, that was me of like, yeah, we got really close, I think the closest we got was 947.

And we did 300% growth year over year for three years running. And I was like, I'm always proud of that, because I have a bunch of companies and experiences I can point to and say I did 300% growth there. I did. I'm motivated by that.

Right. But it almost killed me. Like it almost killed me, it almost killed the company. It you know, my team grew too big, too fast.

Again, all this cost got totally out of control. And now the only number that matters to me is profit margin. Right? Because that profit margin is the money I put in my pocket.

That is the money that I put back into my company that is the fancy team retreat I want to take this year, you know, it's all of those things, but it has really taken a different level of discipline, right? Because I think we live in an era where it's really fun to show off the money you're making, right? But then the more you're showing it off, the less you have in your pocket. So Right.

We we have a question and hit from Lewis Lewis says, What do you recommend paying monthly or yearly? Whatever that to you first. Okay, so this is funny, because I was just like, keep the money in your pocket. So So I have I have a like, it's not a definitive answer.

It's an either or so mine is, I pay monthly to start with, and then six months in, make a determination of it if it is become an essential piece of software that we believe will utilize for another year, with the one exception, the one caveat so and we do all the things that actually Louis mentioned earlier, we try on options we do compare and contrast things. We you know, we do the best we can with free trial environments to try and figure out what we're getting ourselves into.

But sometimes tools just don't take right like your team doesn't adopt them. The process you thought you had isn't the price you need, you lose the client and you bought the software. There's all these different reasons why a tool won't take so especially if I'm buying it, I'm not 100% sure that I will be using it in a year. I do it monthly for a little while and then assess Sn do the annual upgrade.

Because yes, it does bring the cost down. And even though that cost is up front long term, it's keeping more money in my pocket. However, the rare occasion a piece of software will come along, this happened to us this year. So we use HoneyBook for all of our proposal processes.

And that was a major unlock for us. And there's still things that I wish it did differently. But we had been through 123, like three different payment processors, or maybe for at least two different ends, and three different ways of building proposals before we got to how do you book and it's all in one for us. It does our CRM, we can do automated workflows, there's a lot of benefit.

And I had had a hunch about honey book a couple years ago, but the software wasn't really there yet. And I circled back to it. And they just had like an amazing promo, I think we paid $100 for the entire year. And I was like, That's so cheap that even if I fail, I'm fine.

Like, and so and so for me, I was like, there's certain instances where if it's under a price point that like, even if it falls off, I'm not going to be mad about it, then then I might, you know, make make a move. What about you? What's your thoughts? Yeah, I do it similar.

But I, so I actually do my big reviews in the year on on big costs. And so I'll usually take software, and, you know, they'll flash deals and say, Hey, if you want to do annual, but I'll always do monthly, and then come January, I just make decisions like alright, well, I've proven that I'm going to use this software. And then for me, psychologically, I'll then pay for the year, because when I track my monthly expenses, I'm like, Oh, I don't have to pay that out. So my months start looking better, just kind of month over month from the previous.

But that's like a psychological game. I played it myself. But but that's a good strategy too. Because again, at your end, you know, if you played your cards, right, you're sitting on the profit necessarily to make those investments for the year.

And as a former software sales rep, I can tell you that everybody is trying to make your quota. So that's when you are going to get the best deal on something. And you could go back and haggle with your your software's a little bit, especially the higher end tools, people will run promos, or you can go to your rep and be like, so I really want to sign on for next year. But you know, I'm evaluating my budget.

And you know, this is what I'm willing to pay. How can you meet me here, like the likelihood of you getting that deal at your end is a lot higher, too. That's a great pro tip. I love it.

Great question, Louis. By the way, keep those keep those questions coming for sure. So So here's here's a comparative question. You know, and maybe we'll do two scenarios, because because we've noticed our audience has it has a couple of different types of creatives in it.

So we've got our, our agency, folks, some of y'all are solopreneurs, some of you have more established teams. And then we also have folks that are in inside of marketing departments, which is cool to see as well. And so compare and contrast me that if you're an agency owner, versus if you're inside a larger org, who would you recommend is the one to conduct the audit? That's a good one, I think it's the so if I'm thinking of an agency's sub 15, folks, I would think it's probably going to be the person who kind of runs operations, right?

That like they should go through and just kind of assess because they don't want us touching it, they're usually the ones that have to buy the software, approve it. So I think they should go through and just say, Hey, this is what we're doing. You know, bigger companies, oftentimes, they have their departmental budgets. So it's, it's whoever is the lead there, I think they go through the the thing about bigger companies, what they do better than we do smaller companies is they have some checks and balances, or somebody actually comes back to them and says, Hey, you're always still using this, you know, it's, it's something we don't do.

Small agencies don't do which is, which is why I like the audit a lot. Because it really forces people to have that conversation. You know, well, we'll get software, use it, get something else. And, you know, we don't circle back with people just to make sure that it still makes sense.

Yeah, I, so I was like, ding, ding, ding, that's I mean, so my team is a little smaller than 15 right now. But we, my co handles this, Sarah, she's, she's wonderful. And this is, you know, she actually in notion built out a section called tech stack. And it's got all of its beautiful, it's all of the tools.

And then next to it, it's got, you know, some information about, you know, the price point and whether that number is monthly or annualized. And, you know, so we have a very visible place inside of our team environment, to see what we're using for what and, and to refer back to and so it's a part of kind of our ongoing operating rhythm. But we've I mean, I'm really proud of us because like I said, we've done a bunch of cuts this past year. And so now we're like, you know, I think it'll make sense we'll revisit it at year end is probably the next step.

But But yeah, that's that's for me. But I'm curious how many tools are you guys using? If you had? Oh, gosh, you gotta put me on the spot.

Let me let me pull it up real quick. Actually, I can't screen share live because it's, you know, my private hands. Yeah, let me talk through it. Okay.

Do you want me to? I was like, I'll tell you all about my deck stack if you want me to nerd out. So so it gets cut me off when I'm getting annoying. So, so this, let's see, let's lift it up a bit.

This number is gonna be higher than most people think it's most people would expect totally. Okay. Okay. 1-234-567-8910 1112 1314 1516 1718 1921 2220 320-425-2627.

My gosh, there's like, almost 40 things. Yeah. It's amazing. But in the end, to be fair, the other thing that we track in this list is things that I think often people will miss.

So it's not just like, it's not just like direct software we're using for clients we have in here, every domain we own as well, which is technically a piece of talk, you know, tech that's reoccurring, that you pay for. So we have every single one of our domains. We have. We also have here, if the tool is freemium, so we don't just track a tool that is, is like, you know, something we're paying for, we also track our freemium tools.

And yeah, there's a lot more than most people would expect, but again, at 4040 bucks, and it looks like okay, so including, I take out that yeah, we're right around 700 ish. Yeah, yeah. So I know my and then I know, my annually software costs for the year two from this spreadsheet. So Screw this, this notion setup.

So when I built my budget in January, I just put it all right in because I knew that Yeah, yeah. And okay, so frank is asking you domains as part of tech stack curious. So my thought process is that, how was it gonna hit my p&l is the way I think about this. So in our p&l, the charges from Squarespace are something that we put to apps and software cost, that's where it hits in my p&l.

So this notion setup that we've created is tracking anything that hits that light, I know that I'm in the p&l, basically. But the thing that to think about is like even though that Squarespace comes as one bill, what we're paying for is our websites that we own, as well as the domain charges. And again, from that auditing mindset, I want to know, do we still need this domain? Do we still want those domain?

And again, it's something that's like, it's 20 bucks a year, but sometimes we've like, bought them in the past for clients and forgot. And so again, it's this idea of having a list of these are all the reoccurring technology, things that I'm getting being charged for, and probably would forget about, right? And breaking it out with a level of detail. So that because because again, Squarespace just comes in as that one big bill.

Yeah. And I think you're creating the right behavior, too. Because the moment you guys say you double in size, right, all those costs, double, triple. So at least you have the team looking after those costs.

Yeah, yeah. So so that's a great question, Frank. So I really appreciate it and keep keep them coming. Tara is asking, Is that a notion doc, you'd be willing to share?

Possibly, or we can build a template out of it? For sure. I can talk to my team about that. So we'll we'll figure out putting that in the show notes.

Yeah. Or maybe we can add it to the audit and make it a little more robust. Right. Oh, I like that.

Let's combine the two. That's fun. Okay, we'll put the two together and put that in the show notes. But, um, speaking of questions, what questions do you ask your clients?

Or what questions do you tell your clients to ask themselves when they're auditing a tech stack? That's a good one. That's a really good one. And it really is around the the simplest question really is, hey, what do we use in this technology for, right?

That's an audit, it says that, let's just make sure if we're paying for it, if it makes this list, we know what we're using it for. And then this was something that you brought up, I think, is really helpful to know. Hey, in addition to the software we use, do we know about any bottlenecks or some things that we need to improve, right? Because lots of times we have software, and that I haven't met any software that people like, oh, we absolutely love this.

There's always something you wish it could do. Right? So I always say, Well, what are those things that you think needs improvement in your agency? Let's let's get that out into the open too, because maybe as we think about different software, we could figure out how to solve for this stuff.

The other one and I I asked this one. And I asked it a lot, because I want people to catch up. As an industry, we don't pay enough attention to security or data privacy as we should. And I see a lot of my colleagues and say, you know, who deal with like law firms, architectural firms, and they're dealing with the same kind of client information.

And they take it a lot more seriously than we do as an industry. And you start thinking about some of the information you have on your clients. And sometimes, you know, we're keeping that stuff and say, a Google Doc, or what have you, right. And it's really important critical information on these companies that we just need to be able to safeguard a lot more.

And I actually saw this with a client who had gotten their data taken, right. And I was like, Oh, my God did that, you know, we just have to do a better job as an industry around security and data. So I always throw that question out just to get people thinking about it. Yeah, I love that question, though.

I want to pause here because, yeah. And appreciate Frank saying, Amen. Amen. Ari privacy issues in the chat.

Because, you know, this is an awareness that I don't see inside of a lot of creative environments. And it's something that I think we need to take increasingly seriously. I again, come out of big tech. And so I had an edification around.

cybersecurity, that I brought into my agency from that press career. But it wasn't until somebody tried to hack our systems that I recognize, because I'm like, I'm doing this because I know it's the right thing. I know, it's the right thing to have a password vault, I know it's the right thing to use only that vault is the way that we share client login information, because think about how much client login information we have, and files on clients and all that stuff, all this proprietary information.

So I knew it was the right thing. But I was like, oh, yeah, it's a good thing to do. But I didn't think it was going to be an issue, right? And, and we had a situation where I won't go into all the details, but somebody who is no longer employed with with us tried to hack all of my security systems had somebody in their life who was a hacker type and was was disgruntled that they'd gotten fired and tried to hack all of our security systems.

And, and to this day, even if it's low level, we get a ton of phishing scams where people try and pretend to be me. And we'll send emails to our employees saying, hey, it's Madeline, and I'm, you know, I'm locked at an X and locked out of my Google Drive, can you can you get you know, can you get us a, you know, a login. And I'm like, so we have an another policy, which is a verbal two, factor authentication, if you get something that is an inquiry for me, this is a security policy that unless you were speaking to me on the phone, and I am confirming what's in the email, and the email is coming from me, my real email addresses, that is a no go.

But we get these constantly now. And I'm like, I'm not even handling that pool of data. Like I'm like, and so for me, I you know, I just encourage, you know, this is something that maybe some of our solar product owners haven't thought about quite fully, because you're like, it's just me who's gonna hack it. But there's so much money to be made these days.

I've had just like, my my cards, like the amount of card fraud I've had as an agency. Yeah. Things like that. And like our folks in the chat are saying, like, you know, the financial risk is huge, huge.

And the other thing I would say here is like, get the insurance, get the cybersecurity insurance, if anything was ever to happen, it is worth its weight in gold. And it doesn't typically cost a ton, but it will save your butt. If an employee makes a mistake. If a client makes a mistake.

Either way, you don't want to be liable for that. So, so let me thanks for letting me know that one is just so important. It is. And Tara, thanks for this note, I'm seeing privacy and security standards written into MSA is similar to insurance requirements.

Yeah, great idea. Yeah. And I think that's smart. And, you know, I see a lot of agencies that do have those requirements.

But you know, after the deal is signed, again, what tends to happen is, and people aren't doing anything, you know, they're not trying to do anything crazy. But lots of times people just want to share information easily. Right? And so, I'm just amazed at what you know, is sitting in Slack, right?

What, that's where it's so bad. It's like, here's the screen, right? And so it's just being vigilant about how do we safeguard our clients information? Because the truth is, as your agency grows, and you're handling more of that information, and especially if you're fortunate enough to be working with like a fortune 500 company, it's amazing.

The information that I've seen people have right, and thanks, Frank, you're right. Yeah, people aren't trying to be malicious. I mean, it's, they're just, they're lazy and it's just, you know, human nature. People take the Zero.

Yeah, yeah. So So while we're talking about security, I think it's important to share if anybody wants a tangible process this, I'm gonna share what I do with my team, because I'm pretty proud of the the procedures we've put in place. And to me, you know, this comes out of a knowledge of like, what does it mean to be SOC two compliant, working with, you know, I have clients that are, you know, part of the big four accounting space, I've got large tech companies clients. So the other thing that I will say, too, and I'm sure you would agree, Jeff is like, putting some of these things in place now make it so easy for you to step into the arena with the big dogs, because guess what, they're going to have their own T's and C's that you're going to have to abide by, and you're gonna have to have that insurance writer, and you're gonna have to have a security protocol, you can show so just go ahead and document it.

So my advice is, I absolutely agree with Tara having in your MSA is having in your contract, some level have a documented privacy and security standards, there's so many great ways to find these online, like you don't have to like scratch your head or hire an attorney necessarily, but go and find something and ensure your business in a way that matches that policy that you're putting out. And then you know, details your process. And then in terms of tools, since we're talking about tech today that I love, our primary tool for particularly password protection is one password.

I've used this tool for over a decade now. And I won't nerd out too much. But there's obviously lots of competitors, it is the strongest tool in my book. And the reason it is strong, particularly for agencies is there's three layers that are really important.

One is it allows our employees to independently store passwords, and you know, enable them to create very unique passwords, so it does the password generation feature. Second is that we have a way to create client specific vaults within the password vault where clients can add in their information. And then we can have user permissions to control who can and cannot see those individualized client vaults in which levels of access they have. And then third, and this is my favorite is that at a click of a button, I can get anybody out of there at any time.

So for me, like, rather than having to go in and change every single password, when I'm about to fire somebody, I just cut off their one password, and they're out of everything in an instant. That that's the jam right there. Because usually I've seen people just go through a spreadsheet, and they're like, Alright, I got to take them off with this, this, this and this. That's, that's key, we have to talk offline.

I've been using LastPass for a while. So I want to compare. And that's like the tech nerd in me in terms of their back end coding and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

Yes. Great. Okay. Well, any other questions you would ask?

You know, you would ask somebody when in this audit process, and again, audience, you know, we've got a little bit of time left here. So if you've got questions, as we talk through these ideas, please feel free to throw them in the chat. But any other questions you would ask beyond security? Or beyond kind of the ones you've laid out so far?

Yeah, no, I think that's pretty much the gist of it. We've talked about all of them, I think the beauty and I'll just go back to the the audit that we'll share is that it's just a really easy way for you to go through and have that conversation with your, with your employees, your team to see what you're using. And, you know, if there are any alternatives out there. And, you know, when I think about it, I also list the categories in there, which makes it real helpful for you to think about, you know, like, hey, what do we use in for financial stuff?

Isn't QuickBooks? Is it harvest? Is it HoneyBook? Right?

And making sure you're not using multiple tools to solve the same job? Yeah. And what I like about this, you know, Frank brought up this notion of like thinking about it, a tool, as you know, categorically is in front of a house is that behind the scenes is that service, you know, oriented or baked into a client service? You know, and also, again, this categorizing them by, you know, what area of the business is that tool being leveraged?

And for me, the big thing that I recommend, if you don't do this already, is the reason I think about technology as a cost center and was giving that example is because we calculate it as our as cogs as cost of goods sold, because ultimately, in order to produce our product, we need tech and we need people and so both of those we look at as part of our cogs, and then from there, we deduct expenses. So, so it's a different mindset than most people. But we did that very intentionally after a pretty in depth conversation with our outsourced CFO, because we were trying to think about, you know, how do we increase our profitability, and it changed dramatically when we started to think about, about technology, not as just an expense, but actually as a cost of goods sold.

So that's just something I would add there and that's, you know, that's where, you know, the the financial side of this is like One part or one part science, I'm sure there's other accountants who might not agree with that approach, right? But it's been really big for me to reach my profitability goals is to move it in that that way on my balance sheet. Or excuse me, my p&l? That's a good way to think about it.

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing, too, is it, it plays back to this role I have inside my company, which is we have a role that is your team, your tools. And so for me, you know, I'm pretty liberal. And the way that I let my team members say, this is, you know, this is the tool that is best for the job, like I really, so for example, we're doing an evaluation right now a new piece of, of, kind of a new outside vendor we want to bring on and the head of that team, it's like, Bring me your top, you know, whatever it is top two, top three, you know, tell me the pros and cons, you make the decision, we're already rented by me.

And you know, we can hash it out if you need to. But my rule is, it's your team, your tools, so long as we can make sure to bake it into our budget. But for me, that's also a fun way to give your team a little bit of autonomy, so that rather than having the friction that Jeff was talking about, where people were like, but I don't like this, this tool, you know, your team is actually then really involved in the process. And so they feel a level of ownership and accountability to utilizing the tools that they went out and said, This is the thing I want.

And they also feel like, they have the ability to actually self advocate that, that when that tool is no longer working for their team, they can step forward and say actually, this isn't the best thing. And so what I found is it's kept my employees more engaged in the process, it's kept them more aware of the cost of things as well. And and now they are ones who will step forward. And so this doesn't actually work anymore.

And so interestingly enough, my journey into notion came from an employee came from my head of of Digital Design and Media Alena came from her. And she is a creative, creative, and she was seeing all the chatter about it, and I was ever heard has been like a guest, we're just gonna live in clickup, forever, someday it might work. And she came in, and she was like, I found this thing that I really want to try it. And I feel like it's because, you know, she's a manager on our team that I've taught, if you see something better bring it to me, let's, let's figure it out.

And so to me, I just think that that is really valuable. But it also you have to find that balance between, you know, committing to a tool, and it truly implementing, and then, you know, this shiny object syndrome thing. So yeah, I like where you're going. I want to keep you going down this rabbit hole with the hole.

And Frank kind of alluded to this as well. But yeah, if you say kind of your team, your tool, or you also given them some sort of p&l responsibility, where there are no, no, but I so so but here's how they hear about it is that I have I have stayed, every company has what I call it, I have that quarterly. And we talk about profitability during that. And so we have really concrete candid conversations.

And they're also involved in the way that we price. So the team is involved in the way that we price and profitability. Profitability is the mantra, right? And so they understand that the tool impacts the cost of service, right?

Because again, I want them to have the thought process of, if we have to go buy this new tool to serve this client, the client better be covering the cost of that tool, like, you know, because that's one area that I see a lot of agencies screw themselves over, myself included, you buy the $800, social media thing, you lose all the clients, or you fire all the clients, and now you still have to this $800 social media thing, things I would have done differently. But yeah, it is a little scary.

But for me, I feel like I can do it because I have a small team. And I have a team of really people who are very accountable. And also that's only happening at the management level and higher. So it's not that every single employee is running amok buying, you know, software, none of them have access to the corporate card.

At the end of the day, my CEO was the one making the purchase. So ultimately, there's a level of filter that they're going through. But what it does, is it again, gives them ownership. Yeah, like, look, this is how you want to work.

Show us how you want to work, show us how to work, you know, because for me, I'm like, if you come up with a tool that's going to save you time like this, going back to our AI conversation, my tool is my team is heavily involved in our AI selection right now. Because I'm like, You're salaried, if you can do it, unless with the power of AI, you just upped our profitability, and we're going on a team retreat. So I'm like, I'm very pro, this concept is scary. But I can also see Frank's counter which is like this can get scary, you know, from the bigger you get kind of perspective.

So yeah, definitely having some corporate controls on it. Right. Perfect. I'm looking at the time here, so we're running up against the hour.

Any other things you want to wrap up in this conversation? I just want to want to, you know, highlight because again, I think there's There's the thought leadership side of this conversation. And then there's the tactical side. So my big takeaway today is just to tell you all some of the tools that I really love and think have made a difference.

Obviously, I mentioned honey book a notion those are game changers for me, in terms of both bringing my costs down to do things, and also just building efficiency. So how do you book really changed the way we were doing proposals and pipelining. And notion really changed our client management and our project management, other tools that I really love and just want to highlight real quick loom, my team is so much more efficient because we use loom. So loom is a video recording tool.

And we can use it to share either, you know, a work product with a client and a short video that's like walking through the thought process. And here's where we need your feedback, or we share looms back and forth in our team. And so the amount of meetings that eliminates is so good. We also love slack.

And slack does have a native recording video functionality to do this inside of your team. But slack does, it's not as good as loom. So I'll just say that, but slack is really big for us in terms of internal communications. And then one other one that I that I want to share that I you know, again, it was, you know, this process that we went on this past year, is we have just started exploring doing dashboards for our clients, I'm I really learned about dashboards, we got to do an episode on dashboards.

I love doing analytics. I love it. And so we went on this path of trying to find better ways to create automated reporting and dashboards for our clients around their marketing performance. So we can say, look at all the things we're doing look at all the traffic, we're driving, look at, look at all the value we're creating, you know, and include cooperating as part of the client service.

And so we've got two new tools we're testing this year that I'm pretty excited about data box is the one we're using for client dashboards because it can pull in HubSpot, Google all the things. And then metric cool is the the social media reporting tool that we're using that very similarly creates these really nice branded automated reports without you know, that used to take my team 10 hours a month per client is just put the reporting together. And metrical does it automatically.

So that one's big, too. Yeah. Anyone's that you're loving before we wrap? Yeah.

It's interesting. I think you name some good ones. You know, when I think of tools, I was go simple. I've had tools that have gone back and forth.

I was a clickup fan for a while, recently went back to base camp last year. But I see people use so many things. The one thing I always do when I go into agencies is I don't push any software onto people. I'm like, Hey, let's just see what works best for you.

But, you know, it's, it's one of those things where I think as, as people when this episode is done, what I would love is for people to check out the the audit, and really just give feedback. You know, I've had a couple people go through it, and it's worked wonders for them. But I think the more people that use it, you know, if there's anything that's missing, and then we can make it better for the community. I think that'd be great.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for those of you who are new to joining us live, you know, the way that creative friction works is Jeff and I show up here every other Friday to have these kinds of conversations. And then you know, our amazing production team goes away packages, these episodes, put together all those show notes. And so when the episode goes, goes live on all of the platforms, you know, Spotify, Apple, etc, and goes live on our site as well.

It'll include resources, and this, this audit will be one of those resources. So if you want to get access to that, please go find and follow us on your favorite podcasting platform. We are on all of them. I understand.

And then do you want to do you want to say anything about the episodes that are there now? Because if you haven't listened to episodes one through four, I would just say do but yeah, please do. Yeah, we had a good one. We had a really good one two weeks ago about you know, marketing tips for Black History Month.

And that's, that's gotten a lot of good. You know, what's been really cool is just having folks email just about and asking us, you know, hey, I'm gonna do this. What do you think about that? So I think it's been really good for the community.

It's, it's, it's kind of knowledge that you take for granted, but we put it out there and it's really people have really enjoyed it and have taken action against it. So really good episodes, I think you should check it out. Any projects you want to plug before we head out of here. Um, my big one that I'm excited about as my mastermind community is kicking off next month, so I lead a mastermind community for female founders that are looking to scale past six figures, all types of businesses, everything from EECOM to creatives.

i It's my whole heart. I lead this program for eight months out of the year so that I can see women grow and thrive and so the waitlist is officially open for that. So we'll put that in show notes and the program launches in March so I'm very, very excited. We already have a just a me Using collective of women who step forward to say yes to that.

So that's lighting me up. I've been sending a lot of outreach and email around it this week. And, and if you don't already also follow me and Jeff on social. So obviously her LinkedIn, but you know I share about those sorts of things here, but also on my social as well.

So yeah, perfect, perfect. What about you? What about you? Yeah, I'm knee deep and working on this profitability workshop.

And it's gonna be, it's funny enough, I was going to just take it to companies privately just kind of working with their teams really helping people just understand finance kind of the same things you were saying, working with your team around profitability. But there's so many people on teams who have never dealt with a p&l or any of that stuff. So I'm taking that on the road to some clients. But as, as I was talking to a handful of folks, I realized that I'm probably going to build it out to showcase at some conferences, so stay tuned for that.

Yeah, yeah. I love that for you, though. I think it's I mean, game changing, right. Yeah.

You know, you you change my agency with that work. And I think it's so powerful. So we're definitely we're definitely going to do a profitability episode in the next month or so. We've been kicking around ideas.

If If y'all have ideas, too, if there's topics that that are showing up in your creative world that you you want to find, you know, more ease or understanding around please get those to us. All right, thank you so much, everybody. Take care. Thanks, you guys.

You just listened to Creative Friction. Please leave us a rate and review if you enjoyed the show. And if you want to learn more about Fearless Foundry or the MEADE company, go to our website at creativefriction.com.

All audio and video recordings are owned by Madeline Reeves and Jeff Meade and are recorded live every other Friday on LinkedIn and released once a month.