How CEOs Build Companies by Solving Problems They Don’t Understand Yet

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY

00:00 Cold Open – You Can’t Scale Without Solving the Right Problems
00:06 Intro & Meet Jeff Holman
01:03 The 2-Year Rebrand to Tectonic
03:30 Growing Up in Indonesia → Entrepreneurial Mindset
06:16 Early Hustle: Sales, Failure, and Starting a Business
10:02 No Business Plan – Just Survival & Opportunity
13:48 Building a Multi-Division Company
15:20 Rebranding Done Right (Why Most Fail)
22:17 Landing Google as a Client
26:10 Customer Service > Tech Skills
32:45 Why Discovery Matters (Avoid Bad Clients)
40:27 Advice for Entrepreneurs + Final Takeaways

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jeff Holman (00:00)
You'll never be able to delegate. You'll never be able to scale. Everything's solvable with time and money. You don't actually know the problem you're trying to fix.

Dusty Gulleson (00:06)
Welcome back everybody to the breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I'm so glad to be here with you today. And I'm glad to share some insights with you. I've already talked to Dusty a little bit before the show, and I'm glad to have Dusty Gullison here. Join us and share some insights with you. Dusty, welcome to the show.

Jeff Holman (00:23)
Thanks for having me. I enjoyed that little icebreaker segment. That was fun.

Dusty Gulleson (00:27)
Yeah, it's good to hear some questions that aren't always about, ⁓ you know, tell me about your revenue was last year or, you know, tell me about your worst experience ever, right? So it's good to hear a little bit of the background. In fact, I've got more questions than I wanted to ask you from that, but we'll do that another time. So we connected and I've been learning a little bit about your business ⁓ offline, but our audience doesn't know it.

You just went through a big rebranding though from e-resources to Tectonic, ⁓ a small project in the work for two years, you said, right?

Jeff Holman (01:03)
It's a small project. We have a wonderful, super talented CMO in his team, ⁓ Jason Clark. Actually, Jason came just through a merger of his old company, VIA Studio, back in the day. his team was just fantastic when it came to planning and strategizing for clients. And we said, you know what? We really need that in our organization. And ⁓ Jason led us on a two-year rebrand. Very systematic, very thoughtful.

⁓ our creative director was very instrumental in this, of course. Not many people do their own stuff, you know, it's always the Cobbler's children's syndrome, but, we were able to pull that off and, ⁓ many hours invested. So tectonic, and the reason why we did that, most people ask is we had acquired five companies over the course of last 10 years. and we're, ⁓ basically a vertically integrated technology company. And what that means is.

We have a managed services division that manages infrastructure, et cetera, for clients, help desks. We have a digital division that builds software, web, things along those lines. We have an AI division that builds automations and different AI tools for clients to have a branding and marketing side where, and really branding and marketing is actually a strategy thing that we're trying to tell people. So we do a lot of helping companies re-present themselves.

structure how they're going to communicate content, et cetera. And we've developed a couple of SaaS products over the course of our 27 years, serving higher education and corporate philanthropy for like non-standard application processes, workflows, or some grant scholarships, schools, et cetera. And then ⁓ we have a staffing group ⁓ where we do back office. So I grew up in Indonesia.

I'm a Michigan kid, so I grew up there and we created a whole team out there that provides back office process and accounting to companies in the States. we're kind of in everything, just because a lot of our clients have become coming to us, who've been clients for a very long time. have some clients have been with us for the whole time we've been in existence. And they're like, Hey, you solved that problem for us. Can you solve this problem? And I'm like, let's see. So we've grown into those divisions and it's been.

It's been an adventure for sure.

Dusty Gulleson (03:30)
There's a lot there, like I've got a lot of questions, especially about doing your own marketing. But before we get into that, or your own rebranding, I should say, before we get into that though, like what was, you grew up as a missionary kid, said, so you lived over in Indonesia. What was it, like what kind of led up either in your childhood or adolescence to you ending up running this type of company?

Jeff Holman (03:52)
funny. You know, I was born and raised on on the island of Java and grew up there. know, my dad used to kick me out of the house sometimes eight in the morning when I was five years old and I'd wander around the village from village and hang out. And I think that that young period of my life was really instrumental in me becoming entrepreneurial. And the reason why I say that is because I had immense amount of independence.

And so when I was growing up, could go, you know, I'd be gone for the day and come back in the evening and, I'd meet people and talk to them. And I spoke another language. And as I grew up, I went to national schools, which, you know, we had to get to a national school. We had to go on buses and this to get there. So my parents assumed we'd figure it out in a lot of ways. And for me, it was exhilarating. I remember one year as a junior or something and

It was the summertime I said, hey, dad, we're going to rent a boat and we're going to go surfing on the South side of Java with my friends. And he's like, okay, bye. And then we went and then on that adventure, that boat sank. we came back and said, I'm going to fly to Bali and hang out there for the rest of the month and surf. And dad's like, okay, bye.

Dusty Gulleson (05:08)
Your parents were missionary. What did they do exactly where they were this, ⁓ I guess, trusting or we'll call it, right. For what you're doing.

Jeff Holman (05:16)
They had planted churches before they, at this point when I was older, they were basically educators helping teach, helping develop their teams and churches there in Alberta. But I don't think they ever thought about it as a problem. you know, I'm your true feral child all the way. So when I came to the States, people were like, you know, you got to watch your kid. I'm like,

You know, them be that. So when I came back to the States, was like, took a year off because they told me I was a third culture kid and I needed to re-acclimatize to America, which I didn't. I quickly got a job, you know, and I worked at Babbage's. don't know if you remember that name. It was a, it was basically a software, uh, copy and sold. And so I got really involved in that, did really, really well. And then I thought.

Dusty Gulleson (06:03)
Remember the name? I don't remember what was.

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Jeff Holman (06:16)
You know, I'm to follow my parents' footsteps. So I went to a Bible college for two years and then I got kicked out of that as missionary kids. And especially people that, you know, have really strict authority when I grew up with not very strict authority. Yeah. Yeah. So I got kicked out. I started a company with Fran. Even before that became, I did healthcare insurance sales when I was 19.

I did so well at that. was amazing. So I enjoyed selling that. And then I started another company and then, you know, I decided I would go to move to Europe for a year, you know, get bored, you get restless. So I moved to Europe, lived there, traveled around Europe, moved to Israel for a few months and traveled around the Middle East. So all that kind of compounds into, there's, there was no really, like, if there was an obstacle, I figured it out. And I think that really led me to be able to start this company and.

And just hustle that and a lot of people say is that luck is a skill and I think, as my dad said, you get luckier the harder you work. You just work a little bit harder, you're gonna get a little bit luckier. But I think a lot of things in my life have been luck.

Dusty Gulleson (07:28)
Just a quick note about our guests. I host the Breakout CEO podcast to share behind the scenes insights from scaling businesses. As an attorney, I see the real challenges leaders face long before success becomes public. But client stories have to stay confidential. So we invite guest CEOs to share their own moments of struggle and success. I'm so grateful to our guests and my team at Intellectual Strategies for making this show possible.

Let's get back to the show. Because there are two types of travel as far as I'm concerned, right? There's, plan everything. We know where we're going to go, when we're going to be there. ⁓ We go to a certain restaurant for dinner. We go stay at these places for these nights or these, and everything's planned. And then we have other people who are just more like, hey, we're going to go this direction and we'll be back in about a week or a month and we'll just see what happens.

Are you, are you one of those two types?

Jeff Holman (08:30)
I'm both then to be honest with you. One, it depends on the circumstances. I kind of like to, I like planning stuff and making sure I know what it is. But when I'm there, I'm very malleable. But at the same time, a person is like, I want to get this opportunity came up and see if I can go do it.

Dusty Gulleson (08:52)
Because I think the latter is probably what lends somebody to be more malleable, as you said, to business opportunities as they come up.

Jeff Holman (09:01)
I think so too. I would say that. It's funny, I'm a very external thinker. I speak out loud, think out loud, and I'm impulsive in the sense that if I see something, I want to jump on it right away. I know that's happening. And 51 % of the time, I'm right.

Dusty Gulleson (09:22)
Which is good. It's better than the upset.

Jeff Holman (09:26)
Correct. you know, when you do keep on doing that, I when you keep on, think that independent streak and growing up and trying new things, it makes you more more able and resilient to be able to make good decisions. Cause you're, you've already factored in all that data before like, you know, my boat sank when we were surfing. You know, then I'm like, okay, I still have like a month of summer left. What am going to do? Talk to my friends.

Hey, why don't we just fly to Bali? Do we have enough money? Yes. You you can start problem solving it. You know, we can sleep in a hostel. You know, stuff like that.

Dusty Gulleson (10:02)
Yeah.

And how did, how did that path, like at what point did you say to yourself, uh, I'm going to start this business or, or was it even that direct? guess you'd started other businesses before. What is it about this business that has led you to be in it for, 27 years now?

Jeff Holman (10:19)
It's so funny. You know, there's a time that people would say, you know, what was your business plan? And I'll be like, what's that? My business plan is to survive. We got to make sure we live, right? Yeah. And so I would say that what got me started is I originally got, I had just married when I was in 98 and I had some friends in the DC metro area that said they,

They had an opportunity for me. Okay. I was like, cool. And so I moved over there and I said, all right, let's go. And that relationship fell apart after about six, seven months. ⁓ And so I was newly married living in DC, you know, dirt porgs, you know, at that point.

Dusty Gulleson (11:08)
Yeah. And that's not, that's not an ex, that's not an inexpensive place to live. Right.

Jeff Holman (11:12)
No, no, not even back then. And I had no degree, right? I didn't go to college. I got kicked out of that Bible college, never really finished a degree. And well, there's nothing like desperation to get you thinking and working hard. know what I mean? So, but at the same time I was like, I never, you know, I looked back on it. I was never like stressed. You know, there's some stress, but it was like, I got this, I'll figure it out. And I remember I was working.

Dusty Gulleson (11:29)
Yes.

Jeff Holman (11:40)
I worked at, I waited tables. I've always waited tables when I was younger or whatever. It's always easy to fall back on that and make enough money to make rent and basics. But I was like, man, there's an opportunity over here for this kind of need for technology. The web was just starting to get really gone in 99. And so someone at our church was like, Hey, I work over here. have this problem. was like, I can solve that. And they're like, have you done it? I'm like, no, but

you know, hold my beer, I'll be right back. I kind of situation and I solved it. And then, ⁓ you know, I saw, there's a huge opportunity. And that was during the days that there's vignette as a content management system. And it was like a million dollars to buy the license for it. And my childhood friend, her, her with her family lived in Indonesia. And so I said, I need a good program, but can't afford top right now, but we can later. And so.

Dusty Gulleson (12:24)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (12:37)
I figured out an H1B system. I said, could hire him and bring him over on H1B. Just my little self. And so I figured that out and brought him over and he would program and I'd sleep on the floor and he'd wake me up and I'd test and he'd sleep. then we just built content management systems for nonprofits and, and large ⁓ NGOs that couldn't afford the big license. And that's how we really got started. And then from there we found, created our own application management system for another client.

That became one of our SaaS products. then, the client said, oh, you can do this. And this was when managed services didn't exist. And they're like, you manage our network and help us fix computers. And I'm like, figure that out. So I built that out. And then, it just, one thing after another led to, even when people were like, hey, you brought your friend Danny over from Indonesia. We set up a shop offshore. I'm like, sure, let's figure that out. And it was for a friend that ran a fintech company.

They've been applying ever since 2005. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Dusty Gulleson (13:38)
Really?

How many divisions do you run now then? Because this is, it sounds like this is a really, really organic growth like path for the journey.

Jeff Holman (13:48)
The way we talk about divisions is the marketing storefront divisions that we talked about and then there's the central kitchen in the back. So real divisions that we're out there would be like our digital division which encompasses branding, marketing, ⁓ content, strategy, the online. Our MSSP which is ITonDemand.com which is its own dedicated, one of our largest divisions we manage networks all across the country and internationally. ⁓

And that's pretty, pretty robust. And even within that, we have a subset division called UpDesk Realty where we specialize in multifamily housing management firms, like big groups that manage huge apartment complex. was like multiple ones, right? Yeah. technology and ERP behind it. Our staffing, which is our offshore, is definitely a unique division because we don't co-mingle our employees offshore with the U.S. because of compliance reasons. And then ⁓

There's another one in there. our SaaS product orchestrate our online applications.net. And that manages scholarships, grants, non-standard application processes where there's multiple audiences that need to speak into the process. So like for corporate philanthropy, for Stanford University, Google, manage an application system for their scholarships, things like that. So we're broad.

and we're deep with our clients.

Dusty Gulleson (15:20)
Well, that brings me back to the, to the, the beginning, we talked about you rebranding and as I'm listening to you describe all of these divisions or services or, you know, target customer, you know, segments, like when you rebranded that, that was not a simple rebranding. That's probably why. Yeah. Yeah. And so how did you guys, how did you guys think about the rebranding? Like for me, you know, if I rebrand my law firm, you know, it's a small law firm. have a.

Jeff Holman (15:36)
That's why it's two years.

Dusty Gulleson (15:49)
you know, we do fractional legal services and some transactional things for startups. But it's pretty, it's pretty clear cut what we do. It'd be a pretty straightforward rebrand to do that. But if I had, you know, if I were a, I don't know, one of the big laws that had every division of law in multiple places across the country, maybe offices in the other parts of the world, all of a sudden you're, you're talking the complexity is just exponential. imagine.

Jeff Holman (16:17)
Yeah. I mean, both paths are very unique and different. Like the small company, rebranding is just as valuable as the bigger company. I think with a bigger company, thank goodness Jason and his team had experience with rebranding large companies. We work with some large brands, some bourbon brands, some manufacturing brands that have multiple types of divisions in them. And the approach is going to be similar as far as how you set up the strategy for it.

Because really rebranding is a little bit of navel gazing, but helping the client go, who are you? Who do you want to be and where do you want to go? Instead, a lot of Gorgias says, this is what we have, rebrand it. And that's not the approach, right? You do need to do a lot of introspection, a lot of ⁓ what does your brand represent? What's your persona? How do you want to...

represent yourself. So Jason and his team have a very structured system. They've developed over 20 years. That's very good to go through. And it's very methodical and process driven. And I think a lot of people avoid that. They just want to go straight to the logo and the new website. And the problem with that is you're not doing anything. We just put lipstick on a pig at that point. Yeah, exactly. And what it really comes down to is, you know, your web presence or

Dusty Gulleson (17:33)
change my colors or what

Jeff Holman (17:42)
is really the main person someone's going to see. And you've got to really invest in that persona so that when people come there that they go, ⁓ that's who that person is. not just at the end the day, colors are not as important as the messaging and structure and how you represent yourself. Yes, that's part of it, but it's not everything. I think that's the most important. That's why it took us two years. Who are we? Where are we going? ⁓ and you interview everybody in the company as much as possible.

Tell me about your perception of this company. And it's a painful process for a lot of people to go to sometimes because it's a mirror and a lot of the leadership does not like to the answers. They don't want to hear the answers that, know, John and accounting thinks we're a bunch of jerks. That's great. But the process uncovers things that you can fix, which is really healthy. So I recommend always doing a, you know, a rebranding if you haven't done one and then doing a brand alignment every five years.

Dusty Gulleson (18:28)
Yeah

Jeff Holman (18:40)
Is our brand who we say we are anymore? Do people see this? You send your surveys to clients and prospects and you get a lot of good data. I tell you one thing, after you rebrand, you see if you do it right, it does translate into revenue, I guarantee you.

Dusty Gulleson (18:58)
Why is that? Just because people then can see that you are in alignment.

Jeff Holman (19:03)
Because you're clearer in your communication. You were, I don't know how many people said, I didn't know you did that or, ⁓ that makes more sense what you're trying to say. ⁓ I can see how we can use both these services, especially with existing clients, right? We're like, you know, there's a lot of this light bulb event where people go, you know, I went to your website before, I didn't understand what you did, but now I really get it. And so there's so much opportunity costs. I don't think people realize this when you are

trying to sell them stuff. The more you say it in the less clear way you say it, the higher the barrier for them to want to engage with you is. And so when we cleared away the clutter, away, and we still have a lot, we're still cutting. There's stuff that we're still clearing away and we have a lot of subsidiary sites and stuff like that. But as you clear it away, you lower the opportunity costs to get to know, because you want people to get to know, no, I don't need you, right? Right.

You want to get a lot of the static out of the way and the people that really want you are like, that's exactly what I want. You're saying it the way I expect it. And I want to engage. And so it will accelerate revenue. It will accelerate client acquisition and it'll reduce a number of the static that's out there that people just, can you do this for me? Well, someone asked you that they're not your website's not doing a good job and asking you what you need.

Dusty Gulleson (20:24)
You know, you're making me think there's a tension here between the organic side of things. We kind of talk about your nature of, you know, traveling. I'm going to call it organically or whatever it is, but just there's that organic side. But when you've got an organic living ⁓ approach to things, all of a sudden you do probably have to prune a little bit more and be more careful. You do.

Jeff Holman (20:44)
I mean,

in the age of AI, know, it's getting so radical where how you speak and how you talk is, is going to become more more apparent because AI SEO or AIO or whatever you want to call the acronym. Yeah. It's really looking for intelligent conversation. And if your website is contradicting itself and that's what we do when our branding exercise, making sure that

The messaging is correct. It ladders its way down. If you're messaging Connor Dix himself, AI is not going to want to talk to you or rank you in a search result. There's more people using AI for research than Google anymore.

Dusty Gulleson (21:25)
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, I want to explore a little bit about some of the pivotal decisions you've made along the way and with so much growth and so many people, know, I'm sure you've had numerous opportunities that say, wait a second, is this the right thing or what are we doing next? And so those types of pivotal moments I think are very revealing, not only about how we think and the perspectives we have, but maybe how we

add on to those perspectives and we gain perspective so that somebody listening to this could maybe hear your story and say, oh gosh, I hadn't thought about expanding my perspectives in that type of way. What are some of the moments in the growth of your business where you've, I guess, said, hold my beer, I'm going to take care of this?

Jeff Holman (22:17)
you know, I think the first one I cause in mind just as on vacation in Canada, up in Kelowna with my wife's family. And we had just launched a couple of these, ⁓ SAS products for non-standard and we had gotten Stanford as a client. And I was like, wow, this is great. We only had one or two clients, three clients at the time. Yeah. I got a call from Google when I was up there and they're like, can you do this? I'm like,

I'm getting on a plane right now. I'm going to fly down. So I left my vacation in the middle of it. ⁓ and flew down to Google and I didn't have a presentation or anything. built it on the plane. Yeah. Landed ran into the boardroom, said yes to everything. Yep. That's not a problem. Yep. That's not a problem. Here's our basic. We'll add that walked away with a contract that day. And I think that really launched us because it's when you can.

get a Fortune 50 to say, yeah, you are capable of servicing us. Everybody else is going to be like, then you're capable of servicing us. So we know what standard, and Google has some really high standards and they're a wonderful client to work with. I enjoy it very much. And so Stanford, not that they weren't, but we only had one implementation there at the time. But I think the pivotal moments are when you take the opportunity and you just dive into it and do the best you can.

I thought I worked out, but I did.

Dusty Gulleson (23:45)
Yeah, what was your company like at that point in time? when I mean cuz Stanford's you must have been somewhat established or maybe very well established Stanford's not yeah, not a nobody by any means Yeah

Jeff Holman (23:57)
Yeah,

I'm trying to think back to that year. Everything before COVID is hard to remember right now. I it's part of the COVID effect. But I would say maybe 15, 20 people somewhere in there.

Dusty Gulleson (24:15)
We

Jeff Holman (24:17)
I don't think we had, and maybe I've just breached a million dollars.

I took us five years to-

Dusty Gulleson (24:24)
That's still pretty early stage then. mean you were

Jeff Holman (24:27)
Pretty

early stage, but we had a good product and no one else had it right then SAS wasn't a big thing at the time So we had we were really sassed before SAS was a huge thing back in 2005 I think it was 2006 ish. I have to look at the calendar. I have a history map that I had to

Dusty Gulleson (24:48)
But but that's what they called you about they'd heard about the type of products you were providing

Jeff Holman (24:52)
Someone

had ran into someone at Stanford and then that person said, we found them from here. It's maybe three or four employees at the time somewhere. And, you know, we just jumped at it. And then after we had the Google one, was just like, you know, sometimes you can get the client. Some clients are just really huge advocates for you. They go to a conference and they say, I use these guys and they're great. You should use them. And I think we had a great.

relationship with a gentleman at Stanford that was constantly just really kind to us and presented us. But we also worked hard to make sure we had a good service with them. A lot of people come to us primarily, and I preach this all the time, I said, we're primarily a customer service company that happens to do tech. And I try to stress that with all our employees, we work in all aisles, it doesn't really matter. Your goal is to make sure that they're experienced in talking to us. They walk away going, that was a good experience. ⁓

Yeah, we do technology and we have to solve technical problems, but customer service is primary. It's number one. That's all I care about really at the end of the day. You can always teach people tech, but if you can't teach people good emotional intelligence and how to listen and empathize with somebody, how to actually get to the problem behind the problem, because that's usually the issue.

Dusty Gulleson (26:10)
How do you ensure that your employees know that? Is it hiring? Is it training? I have an engineering degree and I have a little bit of engineering, maybe personality inside of me at times. And I'm like, not all engineers are always customer service oriented people, right? So training people or hiring the right people, there's a skill to that, isn't there?

Jeff Holman (26:36)
Yeah, well, I got to get to this all differently for sure. I think people that have emotional intelligence. It's hard to train that going forward. I think the only thing that changes people to be more empathetic. There's a couple of things. It is tragedy. Tragedy is a good empathy trainer as long as you don't get bitter about it. ⁓ Upbringing, you know, when you had good parents, you don't think that I had good parents that listened.

And I think you, you, and the other third thing I actually read this or my wife read a couple of years ago, people that read novels actually grow in empathy and ability to listen. And I don't know why I think stories, think hearing stories of other people and what they go through in their life actually is, is expanding for people.

Dusty Gulleson (27:25)
Wait, so I read a lot of business books. I haven't read many fictional novels.

Jeff Holman (27:31)
I myself to read, I alternate, do fiction, non-fiction, some science, then a history book, then a biography, and then I go back. My dad always had that routine, so I've always followed him on that routine. So I find that to be very, very helpful. it is true, like when you read like, you know, East of Eden, for instance, Steinbach or something like that, that's a, you feel with those characters, you empathize with them. And so you're expanding your empathizing muscle.

if that exists, but the ability to empathize because you get involved. mean, there's some times in movies, but I think books get to sit with it, right? Movies, it goes so fast. It's hard to, whereas a book is over a period of time. You sit with that character struggling, overcoming, struggling, overcoming. And I think that's a very healthy thing to do. But going back to your additional question, can you train that? I don't think so, to be honest. You either have at least the seedling of it that you can.

continue to fan that flame or you don't. I'm not saying people that don't have great empathetic skills are bad, but when you talk to customer facing side, when you're actually talking to customer, you really need that. I know some people that are amazing engineers that we don't want them in front of the client. Not because they're bad people. It's because they are different skill sets and they're about ninja problem solvers that are gonna solve that problem.

Dusty Gulleson (28:50)
difference.

Yeah.

Jeff Holman (29:00)
I had one employee, if you listen to this, he'll know who he is. I love him. He's a great guy. We call him John, generic John. John's been with us for a long time and John's, know, sincere as the day is long, just a great guy. But we had a problem with one of our clients couldn't get their email to work. We were at the time, hosted exchange and all that stuff. But we had a big data center with a of other things in it that we were hosting.

Dusty Gulleson (29:06)
Call him John.

Jeff Holman (29:30)
to how you need to fix right away. Cause this is a major client. So, okay. He says, uh, I need to reboot the server. I okay. As long as it doesn't cause you problems. It's okay. He said, yeah, well, they won't have email for like, I, you know, five minutes. It'll be back. Oh, you're doing the server. You rebooted the data center. So the whole, all these racks went down and rebooted.

Dusty Gulleson (29:55)
Everybody, everybody in the data center went down.

Jeff Holman (29:58)
Man, phone

lit up. Everyone's phone lit up.

Dusty Gulleson (30:02)
man.

Jeff Holman (30:04)
And he's like, you told me to fix it. I'm like, I know. Should have asked you more questions, I guess.

Dusty Gulleson (30:09)
He was very focused on one problem, but...

Jeff Holman (30:13)
And he was right, he found the problem that was really complex. He fixed it, he needed a reboot to make it take. But whatever, I don't know all the details, but it was pretty funny. It's pretty funny now, from this vantage point, it's funny. Back then it was like a stress pill.

Dusty Gulleson (30:32)
Yeah, yeah. Well, have you always been this way where you're just like, listen, Google called, I'm gonna, I'm gonna head down. I'll, I'll, you know, talk to them. We'll probably, probably make the sale and, ⁓ you know, and they'll be back. is that, is that just the approach you take or were there certain things that when you make these decisions that you're like, okay, now I've really got to dig in. Like I have to figure something out too, while I'm going. Cause it's, I don't know. I wonder if it's just a.

Jeff Holman (30:59)
Because everything I could tell our clients, everything's solvable with time and money. Everything. You have enough time, you have no money. And we show up at a client and there's a long problem. like, okay, well, this is how we're going to do it. One of the things that I feel like I've been gifted with that I do well at is I can break down a problem in a lot of small pieces. The executive function is strong with me in that sense where, you know,

Dusty Gulleson (31:04)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (31:26)
You know, we have to drive from here to New York. What are we going to do? I don't know how to solve this problem. I'm like, okay, how much time do we have? How much money do we have? Do we fly? You know, I can start, it just starts cascading in my head. All the different options are something, you know, just talking to a large energy client earlier today and they had this problem and I said, here are my, you know, spend an hour here. My 50 plus questions that I wrote down. And as they're talking, I was like, and they're

They felt underwater. was like, listen, let's break this into phases. can see here's the stepping stones. And I would say it's that we saw here's phase one. And I'd be like, yeah, that sounds about right. Okay. Here's phase two. We're not going to price it out, but we're going to say this is where you need to go. We don't know where we're going go yet. Here's phase three. Here's phase four. And here's phase five. And so I, I'm able to do that and kind of solution set as I go along. So, you know, when I do get a call and someone's like, Hey, can you do this? I'm like,

I'm sure we can. And there are times I come to a client and they're like, can you do this? I'm like, I don't want to do that. You never really know until you do the discovery. And that's my pet peeve in the industry is I don't think you should build anything without a discovery. And people that don't want to pay for discovery, you don't want to have as clients.

Dusty Gulleson (32:45)
Because they don't have the time or the money to find the solution if they don't have the time to do the discovery.

Jeff Holman (32:53)
People that don't have the time or money might agree to find the time and money if you explain to them why they discovered it. And the reason, if they don't value discovery, they don't value understanding the problem. Cause if I ask them what's the problem, this, and I ask them five other questions, they're like, I don't know. And I go, well, we need to discover it to figure that out. And they're like, no, just give me a price. I'm like, you actually don't value this as a problem to fix. You don't actually know the problem you're trying to fix.

And if you're not going to take the time to reflect on it and nine times out of 10 to be hyperbolic, the reason why people don't discovery is because people don't want to take the time to solve a problem. they, they, they rather just put it out there. And so they go back to their VP and go, they wanted to spend $50,000 for discovery. And I'm not going to do that. They don't want to risk, you know, they don't want to really solve the problem.

They're not good clients. I'm telling you 100%. If they won't do discovery, they're not good clients.

Dusty Gulleson (33:55)
Yeah. Well, do you find that having this, because not everybody has this solution oriented approach to life, right? I think there a of people who are very adept at finding problems, but not very great or skilled at proposing or finding solutions. And I've wondered in talking about other people, if the people who are really solution oriented, are they that way because they

Is it an attitude thing or is it like a learning mentality? ⁓ like I don't know the answer, but I'm sure I can find it and I'm going to learn what that answer is. I'm going to learn the problem. Like, is it a learning process that you go through to find the solutions or is it just an attitude and you're like, we can do it.

Jeff Holman (34:44)
That's two, two things. I think it is learning, you know. My mind went back to, I was very fortunate. My parents sent me to an international school in Jakarta called Jakarta International School. And the high school, you know, people were really into sports and they really into academics. Like, if you were a smart sport person, you were an amazing person. You know, people love, you know. And there was a lot of competitive academic high schoolers there. And...

It was multicultural, which was amazing. Japanese, Korean, Australian, European, you name it, all around the world was a melting pot. But we had both AP courses and international baccalaureate or IB courses. And I remember one course that I took was like the origins of World War II in Europe. It's very specific history course, right? It was kind of like a college, could pick these cool courses. It was only like...

maybe 10 people in that class, and we sat in a circle and he printed out what we had to read. You know, we read tons of stuff. And, but every week, at the end of the week, we had to submit like a 10 to 20 page essay. We make up our own topic, whatever. So you're reading and digesting this information and you had to look through it and figure out what do you want to talk about? And you have to create your own thesis and your, your arguments and

you know, supporting data. And I remember that coming, it was super hard class in that sense, because it was really rigorous. mean, I worked like two, three hours a night and homework. But I remember coming out of that and going, you know, if I look back, that taught me how to structure arguments that taught me how to structure, like to digest information and find the nuggets in there, what I'm trying to do. And I read something recently about maybe it was the seed, one of the

Anthropic leadership. forget her name, but she said, you know, what would you train your kids on or tell your kids to invest in? And she said, ⁓ the humanities. And she's absolutely a hundred percent right. You need to learn how to structure arguments. You need to know how to communicate problems. Cause if you want to build an AI bot today or an agent, if you don't structure the problem you're trying to solve and the expectations of how it's going to deliver, it's going to flop.

100 % of it. So I think people need to understand that, that a good education is not just technical stuff. Mind you, you need that for 100%. And you want a doctor that's been in med school. You want to go to a rigorous humanities school that really challenges your thoughts all the time. It's not just, I feel like it's checking the box. Here's an essay done. But, you know, when I'd go back to that class in high school, the teacher would have read through them all. on Monday,

Dusty Gulleson (37:17)
but.

Jeff Holman (37:33)
You'd be like, in a group setting, why'd you make that argument? It's not a good argument. And that makes you resilient. It makes you like, you have to defend yourself and then you have to be on your feet. There's one other class in high school I love, by the way. It was my impromptu speaking class. It was how to speak. It was wonderful. And one of the exercises they gave eventually was the teacher would give you a made up word and you'd have to talk impromptu.

for five minutes about it, like the rotator. That was a super fun class. And that taught me to be able to think on my feet quickly. So my kids hate it because I'll make up something for them and I'll be like, I'll start talking about something like, I'll be like, is that true? Like, absolutely. Back in 18 something, know, such a person. And I was just start going off and they're like, like, oh, I didn't know that. I'm like, that was a lie.

Dusty Gulleson (38:28)
After a while they're like, Dad, that's not true, stop.

Jeff Holman (38:30)
But it's fun to do. And they do to me now, which is crazy.

Dusty Gulleson (38:38)
That's funny. How old are your kids by the way?

Jeff Holman (38:40)
I have a wonderful 20 year old, soon to be 21, 17 and 14.

Dusty Gulleson (38:47)
nice, did they get the same feral upbringing?

Jeff Holman (38:50)
My wife would say no because I'm super, yeah, I have two girls and a boy and you know, the news cycle makes you feel like everything's in danger these days. It's important not to read the

Dusty Gulleson (39:02)
Well, I'm curious for other CEOs who are, you know, hearing this story and they're saying, man, Dusty's done all this stuff. He's built this multi-dimensional company. He's done deals with Stanford and Google and other like large corporate like, ⁓ and he did this probably because he's taken these impromptu speaking classes and this essay writing class and because he grew up in Jakarta and he, you know, he's been to Bible school. Like you've got a really diverse.

background that seems to give you an approach to maybe life and business that is, you know, full of, you know, prospect, I'll call it, Hey, we can do that. How do we do that? We'll figure it out, but we can do it. And, and, you know, we're the right partner for you. How does somebody who doesn't have the same background ⁓ and who also, let's face it, a lot of these guys are building a business and they're full of stress.

And they're, and they're not full of money at the moment. so time feels short and money feels distant. the two things that you need to solve any problem. How would you, how would you give some advice to somebody who's in that situation saying to them, listen, there is a solution here. ⁓ here's a, here's some hope. Here's maybe a tip or two to take away from this despite not having the same extensive background.

Jeff Holman (40:27)
I would say, know, nothing's not without friction. My story is not like all smooth, you know. When I first started off, know, was fighting to get this contract, I'd be dead. you know, I'd probably figure something else out after it, you know. You look at the CEO of Nvidia, how many times have they almost went dead, you know, and they're a trillion dollar less company, right? So first of all, don't worry about those. You're going to encounter, you know, as Jesus said, in this world, you will have troubles. You will.

Except that you have troubles. That's not a problem. So I would say to get there, the next opportunity, don't try to solve problems. you know, you don't have time or money. Okay. Figure out how you get over that obstacle. I am sure you know, Jack will link right. And, uh, his podcast, I love his whole thing. This is a problem. Good. Yeah. You know, what's the next problem? Good. And if you have an attitude that I'm to solve this and I have a good friend who

just did a business and it just went out the door and it was disheartening and he every challenge in the road. You know what? That guy's a hard worker and that stuff is going to feed the next thing. I just had another CEO message me that they're having a hard time this week and I said, good, don't resist it. Let's figure it out. Any help? Let's see what we can figure out. And if you ever read the book, Things About Hard Things, it's a great book.

Dusty Gulleson (41:49)
Yeah, we meant to.

I have not.

Jeff Holman (41:56)
If you send me your address, I'll send you about me. There's a section in there that's really good. So he's recounting a conversation with these two NFL coaches. forget, I mean, one was Pittsburgh, maybe one was Raiders and the Pittsburgh guy called Raiders guy and said, ah, my injury list is long. My staff is this. This was complaining. And the other coach said, you know, let's just call him Bob. Bob, no one gives a fuck.

It's like your mom doesn't, your dad doesn't. No one cares. No one cares. And he's right. He said at the end, no one cares and should care is you. So stop complaining and start solving. I would say this, the reason why I mentioned this point is someone that said, what should I do? Stop complaining. Look at what you got good going for you. It might not be much. Well, you have your attitude and if you have your attitude, you can do anything really.

Dusty Gulleson (42:54)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (42:57)
It's not gonna be perfect, it's gonna be overnight, it might not be great, but you can dig yourself out of where you are. You always can do something. You always can do something. But you're the only one that can.

Dusty Gulleson (43:09)
Yeah, I have a feeling from something else you said earlier that you might say, and start by just tackling the first stage. Like break it down, figure out what the first thing is to do, and do that one thing.

Jeff Holman (43:20)
Was it my wife's told me something was a grenade or maybe it was Bernie Brown or someone else said that do the next next thing. Do the next thing in front of you. Just put the next foot forward. If you don't know where you want. mean, you can be locked in process and, know, analysis paralysis. That doesn't help you just do the next thing. And then it doesn't have to be a hundred percent right. You don't have to be right. Just move, just keep moving. Stop.

Dusty Gulleson (43:24)
forget.

⁓

Jeff Holman (43:49)
Don't sit down, you know? It's like those people that sit down on a tired day end up laying down and dying, you know? Just get back up, keep going, embrace the problem.

Trust me, I've been there. I know it. It's not easy.

Dusty Gulleson (44:06)
Yeah, think that's my advice. I appreciate that. And with with this action oriented approach, where where are you taking tectonic next? What does this look like in three to five years from now?

Jeff Holman (44:20)
So we have a number of, so first of all, we're doing a lot more outward bound sales and brand awareness. Part of us talking on different podcasts, we have speaking engagements. we're positioning ourselves for that. We're upgrading a number of SaaS products, things that we're doing there, but we're diving heavy into AI.

I'm more of a cautious AI adopter. I'm not like, this is the future. There are some things you can say it's future, but automation has already been around. And I think people think AI is going to take things. AI is just automation, just like assembly line to a factory. is going to do things faster. And that perfect. so we do our initiatives right now are AI integration as part of our DNA, not part of as a project. So that's one. Two is brand awareness and forward.

looking, we're always looking to acquire another company that meets our profile, what we're trying to do. So that's really our three things this year. And I, I've stopped trying to plan for a number. think planning for a number is not very helpful. They're planning for, uh, uh, what you want to be is more important than how much money you have in the bank. You know, you can say, yeah, we want to be more profitable. That's great. So you might want to.

You can define that, but to say I want to move from 20 million to 30 million. I don't know. What does that mean? That's not a plan.

Dusty Gulleson (45:53)
Are you more of an impact guy? Like when you look at your career and you say, cause you talked at one point about, know, eventually finding rest, right? Like, like this is a long journey, finding rest. What, what's the, what's the satisfaction that you'll have, you know, when you're, when you're eventually resting and you say to yourself, Hey, that worked out. Like, I'm glad I did what I did. Is that, is that impact? Is it money? It doesn't sound like it's money, but is it, is it money? it, what is that?

Jeff Holman (46:20)
No one's going to remember you for your meetings, for the products you made, maybe, unless you're making like Starlink or something, I don't know. right, you know, the day to day, know what, the things, the impact you're going to have is in your relationships, where you invest in other people. That's the only thing that's going to last. That's the only thing that's going to cross over at the end of the day. Investing in even, you know, being healthy is good, but people that invest so much time in, you know, body sculpting and that's, it's going to be dust.

You know, take that time and invest in other people, care about other people. ⁓ that's the only change you can really make this lasting, ⁓ as far as I'm concerned. So that's, that's where the older I get, the more it's just like, I was such a waste of time buying that car was such a waste of money. You know, that experience even was a waste because it was so self-indulgent or whatever it might be. ⁓ but when you invest other people, both time and money, you, you actually pass it along and

And there's a lot of value there.

Dusty Gulleson (47:24)
Yeah. Well, with a family and kids that are the ages that yours are, that's a lot of opportunity to be had there. I've got kids that are between 16 and 26 at the moment and so much, so much to do with them at this point in time in their lives.

Jeff Holman (47:36)
there you go.

Yeah, what did that one guy say? I forget what Sia said. If your kid wants to hang out with you when they're older, you've won. And I'm like, that's true. So whenever my daughter calls me from college and I haven't talked to her in a couple of weeks and she wants to have dinner, I'm like, man, that's amazing. I love it. I've done something right.

Dusty Gulleson (47:57)
Yeah,

for sure. Somebody I was in a networking dinner a few weeks ago. And somebody said, what's a win from your recent life? And I said, you know what? My 26-year-old daughter who's doing a PhD in finance out in Texas got an opportunity to go to India. it's since passed and she decided not to do it. But she had an opportunity. And one of the first things she did was she called me. said, Dad, I'm going to India. I haven't been before. Do you want to come? And I'm like, do I want to come?

Of course I want to come. I'm there. You just tell me the dates. I'll go with you.

Jeff Holman (48:30)
I

just had a very similar thing with my dad. My dad's 85 and his relatives are from Norway and he wanted to go, he'd never been there. So I said, let me take you on a bucket trip. We're going to go to Norway and Denmark and Sweden. My son who was 16 at the time said, can I come? was like, damn, Skippy, you can, that's awesome. So was three generations traveling for two weeks. It was beautiful.

Dusty Gulleson (48:54)
That's fantastic. So rewarding. mean, all the business stuff is great. Having money to pay the bills is great and making smart decisions is great. But I agree with you. The relationships are something above and beyond for sure.

Jeff Holman (49:10)
100%.

Dusty Gulleson (49:12)
Well, Dusty, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time sharing some about your business and just sharing your insights with people because there are people who have tried to travel this path or are looking to travel this path that you've been down and hopefully they can pull away one or two insights and apply it in their business that help them get to the next level.

Jeff Holman (49:34)
Absolutely. If I could help someone, it'd be great. I'm always available for, you know, if someone shoots me an evil and asks me something, happy to answer.

Dusty Gulleson (49:42)
Very cool. Very cool. Well, you've been very gracious with your time today on the show and I want to thank you for doing that. And for all of our friends who joined us to listen in on this episode, thank you again for joining us on the Breakout CEO Podcast.

Jeff Holman (49:55)
Thanks, Jeff.

Dusty Gulleson (49:57)
Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way. Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of The Breakout CEO. I'm Jeff Holman, and I'll see you next time.

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