| 0:00 |
i'll go ahead and get started here uh welcome to gosh this is the last |
| 0:07 |
presentation slot of the session except for the round table and i hope everybody |
| 0:12 |
has gotten a chance to post a few questions in the round table |
| 0:18 |
and if you haven't please go to the reception area and you'll see a link there where you can fill out |
| 0:25 |
a simple form there to ask any questions of the dnn leadership panel |
| 0:31 |
so i'll go ahead and get started here um for those of you uh that may have |
| 0:37 |
intended to be in a different session well surprise you're now in my session this is a bit about it's it's really a |
| 0:44 |
sponsor slot if you will but i've catered this uh this particular |
| 0:50 |
presentation to help not only those that may be interested in us and our services but also |
| 0:56 |
understanding some of the fundamentals of of our business and how it could us |
| 1:02 |
honestly apply to any any business out there especially those that are building websites because |
| 1:08 |
there's so much more to consider than just a website even if you're just a website developer |
| 1:15 |
and maybe you're in an organization or whatever they can apply some of these principles to that organization |
| 1:22 |
no matter the age of that organization so for those that don't know me i'm david |
| 1:29 |
poindexter also known as dn and dave um so |
| 1:34 |
shameless plug please go out to dnn dave on youtube and please subscribe to that |
| 1:41 |
channel um i need followers i really do need followers um so i'd appreciate that but now i'm a ceo of envisionative we're |
| 1:48 |
located in the uh charlotte north carolina greater area |
| 1:54 |
and i am the strategy lead for the dnn leadership team and on the board of |
| 1:59 |
directors of dating connect and co-president of southern fried dna and yada yada yada yada you can get |
| 2:06 |
in contact with me with any of those uh social platforms and github and all that |
| 2:12 |
below as well as our company um thank you so much for those that |
| 2:18 |
actually went and subscribed that was so fun it's so thoughtful of you so |
| 2:23 |
what makes up envisionative um or any real successful business i would |
| 2:29 |
say we actually start with a real solid foundation |
| 2:35 |
and i'll i'll go into a little bit deeper dive into each of these a bit and you |
| 2:40 |
know any good business needs some some good building blocks to build things with you know be that either websites or |
| 2:48 |
advertising campaigns or whatever it is that your service offers or your business offers or products you got to |
| 2:55 |
have those pieces to put those things together and make them into a nice cohesive |
| 3:01 |
offering there teamwork is vital um as many of us know it's |
| 3:06 |
always better to to have a solid team to work with and bounce ideas off of and |
| 3:13 |
help each other to improve over over time and really kind of give input and offer |
| 3:19 |
different perspectives the abundance principle is something that |
| 3:25 |
is pretty near and dear to my heart and we'll talk a little bit about that and always just having that mentality of |
| 3:32 |
growth you know no matter what obstacles you may face as a business or |
| 3:37 |
with clients that you have or projects that are challenging or whatever there's always opportunity for growth and |
| 3:44 |
refining and owning our craft a bit and then also just continually improving |
| 3:50 |
our processes there's always room for improvement so let's talk a little bit about the |
| 3:56 |
solid foundation this is actually an image of one of our clients here this local |
| 4:02 |
their concrete company and i thought it was fitting to use an image that of one of the buildings |
| 4:09 |
that they were pouring concrete for and you know a strong foundation in a business is |
| 4:15 |
absolutely vital because you know things really start falling apart if you don't |
| 4:20 |
have some core values and and all to really kind of stand on |
| 4:26 |
you know for us some of those core values are integrity um i live and die by integrity if i you |
| 4:33 |
know if there's something that's you know off or anything like that or you know just questioning the way that |
| 4:40 |
we do things or you know our motives behind things it's real important to have that solid |
| 4:47 |
integrity um in business respect for others is very important |
| 4:52 |
respect for our teammates respect for our clients and their ideas |
| 4:58 |
being honest with each other you know um sometimes we need to hear |
| 5:05 |
the truth you know about how we're feeling you know about a |
| 5:10 |
certain situation or a certain direction that a project is going and we need to |
| 5:16 |
be able to have that honest communication throughout a project or |
| 5:21 |
um anything that we're doing together um it just really helps even you know sometimes it |
| 5:26 |
not so fun to hear that honest truth you know but a lot of times it's really enlightening |
| 5:32 |
because you just you know you didn't intend for things to be that way but you know it's good to |
| 5:37 |
hear from the client that oh we came across a little wrong there so it's a two-way street for us you know and being |
| 5:43 |
really transparent in the way that we uh do business um sometimes we leverage the |
| 5:49 |
you know in a dnn space it's a pretty small community in the sense of you know |
| 5:54 |
providers and service providers and in the area and integrators and all that so |
| 6:00 |
we we love working with others if we are not the strongest or the best fit for a |
| 6:06 |
certain thing that we need to do we reach out and we work with somebody in the community or another company in |
| 6:12 |
the community and just being able to be transparent about that so there's no hidden agendas or anything like that we |
| 6:18 |
really like that so to that end we really highly value relationships um be it either a client |
| 6:24 |
relationship or relationships just with each other internally we really value those |
| 6:30 |
so that's really what makes up our solid foundation talked a little bit about building blocks and you know as you're starting |
| 6:38 |
out as a business or a new team within an existing business |
| 6:43 |
you you kind of piecemeal together some blocks that you could possibly build some structures you know and you see a |
| 6:50 |
nice little um this is kind of like jingle blocks or something like that not really building a jingle tower here but you know |
| 6:58 |
you could see how fragile that might look and that may just be the way that we start out |
| 7:03 |
because we're really just learning how these pieces are going to work together to build whatever offering we're going |
| 7:09 |
to do and later you want to kind of see this evolve |
| 7:15 |
to a more solid you know model if you will for our building blocks that |
| 7:21 |
really can be pieced together and they look really nice and clean as well as |
| 7:27 |
working well together so that it's not so easy for them to be knocked over or |
| 7:32 |
you know have some vulnerabilities like you see on the on the left-hand side there |
| 7:41 |
teamwork is vital as well and this one is you know this one's |
| 7:47 |
easier said than done because you know we're we're people we're human and we have |
| 7:52 |
emotions and we have egos sometimes and and all that |
| 7:57 |
but you know really valuing each other goes back to one of those core principles of respect |
| 8:05 |
um if we're respecting each other you know then you're believing going into a conversation that another team member |
| 8:12 |
has something valid to offer and that goes with our clients as well |
| 8:18 |
we like to be a team with our clients so we do a lot of creative marketing and |
| 8:23 |
you know advertising type things so a lot of times we we end up being a marketing extension |
| 8:29 |
for clients you know that may not have a marketing team or maybe they just have a single marketing director you know and |
| 8:37 |
they need a team to bounce ideas off of and bring ideas to the table with so we really |
| 8:43 |
value teamwork here and you know notice there this one's kind of become cliche-ish but there is |
| 8:48 |
no eye in team it was funny we we had an internal conversation just today |
| 8:54 |
of reminding ourselves you know of this how we communicate it's a we thing it's |
| 9:00 |
not an eye thing right you know and it's just something we have to keep top of mind |
| 9:08 |
talk a little bit about the abundance principle and i'll spend a little bit of time on this one because it's so key |
| 9:15 |
in communities like dnn community where it's open source |
| 9:21 |
and there's a lot of extensions out there that are used that are |
| 9:26 |
open source and for many years i mean i've actually been |
| 9:32 |
in the dna community since its inception and i for quite a few years |
| 9:39 |
i mean i would talk with people and things like that and i would interact on some of the forms and |
| 9:44 |
have conversations with people but i was a little more of a consumer and it became apparent to me over over those |
| 9:52 |
early years that this community was a bit different in that |
| 9:57 |
there are people that were just so willing to help others when there were |
| 10:04 |
questions and i was one of those people that need a lot of help and you know |
| 10:10 |
it just kind of became ingrained to me through experience with the dnn community that |
| 10:16 |
there's this principle you know of you give and you get as a result of that |
| 10:22 |
giving you don't give to get so um it's just uh something that's kind of |
| 10:28 |
woven into the fabric of our community and i see it every day and it's just something that is vital to |
| 10:35 |
us as a business too so we allow ourselves the ability to contribute to |
| 10:43 |
open source on the clock so to speak you know for for the company we're paying |
| 10:49 |
people for that time to contribute to open source and it's really great it's a it's a good experience |
| 10:55 |
i know i've valued that years over in um |
| 11:01 |
it's not always something that you can directly attribute a return on you know but |
| 11:08 |
kind of goes back to the principle it's not the reason why you do it to start with |
| 11:14 |
so if that is kind of core to the way you think then it can really change your mind |
| 11:19 |
because you you find out i mean it could really change your perception of it because you find out that you do end up getting |
| 11:26 |
something that's may not maybe like directly attributable to an roi or something but |
| 11:32 |
it comes back you know good karma whatever you want to call it what comes around goes around |
| 11:37 |
that kind of thing so we like to help others we need help sometimes and we are so |
| 11:43 |
appreciative of community members that are able to help us |
| 11:49 |
so um this one's a good one as well because a lot of times when we |
| 11:56 |
run into difficult situations where we may not know the answer to a question |
| 12:03 |
or you know if something is really impacting a client you know in a negative fashion |
| 12:11 |
and we just don't quite know how to solve it there's always that opportunity to just |
| 12:16 |
change that challenge from a challenge to an opportunity and |
| 12:21 |
you know kind of humble ourselves and it goes back to the community is a little bit here as well like a parallel to this |
| 12:28 |
you know i don't want to be afraid of admitting that i don't know the answer |
| 12:34 |
we're not super human right so sometimes we don't know the answer we can't find the answer google doesn't tell us or you |
| 12:41 |
know or we get misled by some post you know somewhere that led us down a path |
| 12:47 |
that just didn't pan out in the end well i want to be able to just keep |
| 12:54 |
going you know i want to find the answer for the client if we don't know the answer we're going to try |
| 12:59 |
to find it we're going to try to reach out to others in the community and see |
| 13:05 |
if we can really get that answer and sometimes the answer is we just couldn't couldn't |
| 13:10 |
figure it out but we try to go into a solution space of okay well |
| 13:16 |
assuming we can't get an answer to this what do we do you know so we just try to shift to that kind of that kind of |
| 13:23 |
mentality there and always just be growing it's always something to learn |
| 13:28 |
and kind of along the same lines is you know our internal processes or our processes |
| 13:34 |
that we have in place to work with our partners or our vendors |
| 13:40 |
and our clients how we communicate you know those kind of things just always |
| 13:46 |
being willing to refine and you know admit that yeah i thought that was going to work |
| 13:51 |
out much better than it did but we need to tweak that a little bit and you know not being so stuck to i |
| 13:58 |
mean we are a boutique agency if you will we're small enough it's where we're able to be a little |
| 14:04 |
more nimble with these kind of things and not be so stiff you know with these but you know as we've grown |
| 14:11 |
we've needed those processes if we have a new hire that comes in or we need to you know educate them on how we do |
| 14:17 |
something whatever it's nice to have it documented we are by no means perfect in |
| 14:22 |
this area but we're always willing to tweak and improve and admit when something's not working |
| 14:28 |
and there's also this aspect of some people operate in different ways |
| 14:34 |
so what works for one client will not necessarily work for another client we |
| 14:40 |
we have some clients that they live and you know die by their email or someone that we have other |
| 14:46 |
clients that you're just not gonna get an email response you're gonna have to pick up the phone and give them a call |
| 14:52 |
and for us to be adaptable in that way so you know our processes are |
| 14:58 |
not so stringent that it doesn't you know allow for those flexibilities and communication and |
| 15:05 |
things like that and use that as a small example but this goes into many different aspects of the business |
| 15:11 |
so let's kind of bring that we've now got the foundation kind of laid and what the core values and the you know of the |
| 15:16 |
business are um and some of the different uh pieces to the puzzle for us |
| 15:22 |
let's kind of bring it a little bit into our world right we've been asked by a client to you build a website |
| 15:29 |
well those requests come in many different ways different new shapes different |
| 15:34 |
forms and it it is beyond the technical bits |
| 15:40 |
right it's not in the end just a bit of code like you see over there on the right and |
| 15:46 |
you have a website now there are plenty of companies out there that will approach it that way |
| 15:52 |
um nothing necessarily wrong with it it's just we know there's so much more to the puzzle so we do like to ask the |
| 15:59 |
questions that are you know sometimes you're constrained by budget or you're constrained by |
| 16:05 |
other factors or timeline or things like that and you're just not able to go into all these different |
| 16:10 |
areas that i'm going to touch on here but those things still exist and they still probably apply in some shape form or |
| 16:17 |
fashion so it's nice to have the conversation a lot of companies will use more of a |
| 16:24 |
cookie cutter kind of approach and it's not a bad business model in the sense of you know |
| 16:31 |
generating revenue for a business but is it what the client actually needs in |
| 16:37 |
the end um we love to build uber |
| 16:44 |
beautiful sites you know just stellar designs but we rarely ever actually get to do it |
| 16:51 |
because it's more about what is needed for the website versus what |
| 16:57 |
could be done or what we enjoy doing so just being willing as a business to recognize the |
| 17:03 |
actual need know the audience and actually deliver that you know rather than something that we |
| 17:10 |
just want to do or the only thing that we know how to do you know kind of in the cookie cutter kind of approach |
| 17:18 |
so one of the things we like to talk about right up front |
| 17:24 |
is establishing a budget early on sometimes this is known |
| 17:30 |
by the client sometimes it's willing to be shared sometimes it's not for various reasons |
| 17:36 |
and that's okay but at the onset of a project we really all need to understand what we're doing |
| 17:43 |
and what our limitations are are we going to be driven by a budget |
| 17:49 |
or we can be driven by a timeline do those two line up |
| 17:54 |
together and sometimes we have to kind of read between the lines you know of what the |
| 18:01 |
actual ask is and we have to think okay well what |
| 18:06 |
what is it that the client really needs or is really asking for even |
| 18:12 |
though they're not directly asking for it and we have to again be honest with |
| 18:17 |
ourselves in some of these situations and know that sometimes we just |
| 18:23 |
have to say no because it may not be the ask is not the right |
| 18:29 |
questions you know coming coming to us in order to be able to deliver what we ultimately know is |
| 18:35 |
needed um i would love to share some specific examples but for obvious reasons i'm not going to do that but it's like |
| 18:42 |
it's just something that it's okay as a business to recognize you know that it's a setup |
| 18:50 |
for disaster or it's you're ultimately not going to be |
| 18:56 |
um delivering what needs to be delivered um in in in the situation sometimes we |
| 19:03 |
get this wrong too sometimes we have taken on a project that we really you |
| 19:08 |
know should have probably not engaged in but we just didn't have the foresight to |
| 19:14 |
know um you know most of our projects go just nice and smoothly you know yes every project has its bumps along |
| 19:21 |
the way and we'll learn from those uh mistakes along the way but |
| 19:26 |
um you know it's it's not a pure science but just being able to read between lines and knowing |
| 19:33 |
what is really being asked for a project if the budget isn't there to |
| 19:38 |
get the project to that level in a way that we do it and what we do |
| 19:43 |
well then it's okay it's okay to say no it's okay for your business to say no as well |
| 19:49 |
with things like that it you'll be happier in the client in the end will |
| 19:55 |
hopefully get what they need you know from a different provider that could potentially do what they're asking |
| 20:01 |
and achieve those goals within that particular budget so really talking about the budget up front is is |
| 20:08 |
really nice for all parties really so let's talk a little bit about branding because for us |
| 20:15 |
when it comes to a website i can't tell you how many requests we get of okay i've got this website client |
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