One of the more dangerous assumptions a scaling CEO can make is that the business will tell them when something is wrong.
Revenue remains strong. Margins look healthy. Utilization is high. Pipeline is full.
From the dashboard, everything appears to be working.
Yet the organization may already be approaching its limits.
That was the central insight from my conversation with David Khim, Co-Founder of Omniscient Digital. As his bootstrapped growth agency expanded through rapid change in both its own business and the AI-driven marketing industry, the earliest warning signs weren't financial. They appeared in overloaded teams, delayed hiring decisions, founder behavior, and conversations with managers long before any KPI suggested the company had a problem.
For CEOs leading companies through sustained growth, that distinction matters. By the time financial metrics begin deteriorating, the decisions that caused them are often months behind.
Growth naturally pushes CEOs toward measurement. Larger organizations demand better reporting, tighter forecasting, and clearer operating metrics. Revenue per employee, profitability, utilization, and customer acquisition all become essential management tools.
David built his career with exactly that mindset.
Coming from a deeply quantitative background, his instinct was to collect enough evidence before making significant decisions. Experience gradually reshaped that approach. Rather than allowing dashboards to define the conversation, he began paying equal attention to what the organization was telling him.
A record revenue-per-headcount ratio, for example, can certainly indicate operational efficiency.
It can also suggest something entirely different.
If the same number is being produced by employees who are consistently overloaded, postponing vacations, or showing signs of fatigue, then the metric is describing strain as much as success.
As David explained:
"Sometimes we start with the qualitative and then we look at the numbers."
That sequence represents a subtle but meaningful shift in executive judgment.
The organization becomes an operating instrument. Conversations with managers, observations about team behavior, and changes in day-to-day operating rhythm become leading indicators. Financial metrics remain essential, but they increasingly serve to validate—or challenge—the story leadership is already observing.
For scaling CEOs, this requires a broader definition of data. Not every meaningful signal fits neatly inside a dashboard.
The most consequential decision discussed during the episode centered on hiring.
Like many bootstrapped companies, Omniscient Digital hired conservatively. New employees joined only after sufficient client demand existed to justify additional capacity. The logic was sound. Hiring too early creates financial exposure, particularly without outside capital, and conservative staffing helps avoid future layoffs.
For years, that discipline served the company well.
Eventually it became the constraint.
Demand continued increasing while delivery capacity remained fixed. The company reached the point where it had to stop accepting new client work because there simply weren't enough people to deliver it.
David summarized the realization directly:
"We need to hire ahead because we didn't have capacity."
The problem wasn't execution.
It wasn't sales.
It wasn't market demand.
It was an operating assumption that had stopped matching the stage of the business.
The leadership team responded by rebuilding its planning process. Rather than waiting for work to arrive before hiring, they began forecasting future capacity using sales pipeline, recruiting timelines, and expected client growth. Hiring shifted from being a defensive financial decision to becoming an investment in future growth.
That change reflects a broader pattern many founder-led companies eventually face.
The systems that protect a young business often become the systems that limit a scaling business.
Recognizing when those systems need to evolve is a judgment call, not a mathematical exercise.
The hiring discussion led to another realization that many CEOs eventually encounter.
The founders had become deeply involved in nearly every important function of the company—strategy, client work, recruiting, operations, and leadership.
None of those decisions seemed unreasonable in isolation.
Together, they created an organization increasingly dependent on the founders themselves.
David captured the situation candidly:
"We're building a trap of our own making."
That observation reaches beyond founder workload.
It describes a structural problem.
When leadership remains concentrated around a small group of founders, experienced managers struggle to emerge, ownership remains limited, and organizational capacity expands more slowly than customer demand.
Solving that problem required more than delegating work.
It required changing the profile of people they hired, bringing in experienced leaders who had already operated at the next level of growth, and allowing those leaders to own meaningful parts of the business.
Growth became less about founder effort and more about organizational capability.
Given Omniscient Digital's focus on SaaS and technology companies, AI inevitably shaped much of the conversation.
David's perspective was notably practical.
AI has fundamentally changed execution.
It has not changed the CEO's responsibility to make good decisions.
Clients increasingly expect agencies to incorporate AI into their delivery. Internal workflows continue evolving. New service offerings emerge almost as quickly as existing ones change.
Those developments improve execution.
They do not determine priorities.
David described conversations with prospects who had already built capable AI workflows themselves. Rather than immediately selling additional services, his advice was often to continue using what already worked until complexity or scale created a problem that justified outside expertise.
The same reasoning guided Omniscient Digital's own evolution. AI became another operating capability to integrate thoughtfully, not a substitute for judgment about customers, pricing, hiring, or strategy.
As David noted later in the discussion:
"You're not paying us for the output. You're paying us for the outcome."
Technology can change the cost of producing work.
It does not change the value of making better decisions.
The episode's final leadership lesson moved beyond hiring and operations.
It focused on the founder.
Reflecting on his own development, David offered an observation that reaches into every aspect of organizational growth:
"The growth of the business is capped by my ability to grow."
The statement isn't about personal improvement for its own sake.
It describes the practical limits of founder-led companies.
Leaders who cannot delegate continue making every important decision.
Leaders who cannot create ownership prevent others from developing it.
Leaders who never create time to think eventually spend all of their time reacting.
David's own practices—journaling, coaching, therapy, and quarterly solo retreats—are designed to improve judgment rather than productivity. They create distance from the constant context switching that accompanies leadership and allow him to identify the decisions that deserve attention before urgency overwhelms importance.
That discipline mirrors the broader theme of the episode.
The strongest operating signals rarely announce themselves loudly. CEOs have to create enough distance to recognize them.
David Khim's experience offers a useful perspective for founders whose businesses are growing faster than their organizations.
The earliest warning signs rarely appear in financial statements.
They emerge through stretched teams, constrained capacity, founders who remain central to every decision, and operating assumptions that once supported growth but now restrict it.
Those signals are easy to dismiss precisely because revenue often remains healthy.
Waiting for the dashboard to confirm what the organization is already experiencing usually means the constraint has become more expensive to solve.
Scaling requires more than better execution.
It requires developing the judgment to recognize when the company has outgrown the systems that created its earlier success.
For CEOs experiencing that transition, David's full conversation on The Breakout CEO offers a thoughtful discussion of capacity planning, founder development, AI adoption, and the operating decisions that determine whether growth continues—or quietly begins to stall.
David Khim is Co-Founder of Omniscient Digital, a growth agency serving SaaS and technology companies. Having scaled a bootstrapped business through rapid expansion and AI-driven disruption, he brings practical experience in organizational capacity planning, founder development, leadership evolution, and helping growth-stage companies adapt to changing markets.
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY
00:00 AI Is Changing Business Faster Than Ever
00:40 Meet David Khim of Omniscient Digital
05:18 From Chemistry to Organic Growth
11:42 Scaling from Startup to Growth Company
13:17 The Hiring Mistake That Limited Growth
18:27 Avoiding the Founder-Made Trap
20:34 Why Strong Co-Founder Relationships Matter
24:01 Why Every CEO Needs Outside Support
29:15 Helping Clients Navigate AI Disruption
32:13 Building AI Systems That Create Leverage
34:54 Charging for Outcomes, Not Output
39:58 Grace and Space for Better Leadership
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
David Khim (00:00)
also need to hire ahead because we didn't have capacity. Sometimes we start with the qualitative. The growth of the business is capped by my ability to grow. We're building a trap of our own making. Give ourselves a bit more grace.
Jeff Holman (00:12)
Welcome back, everybody, to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman. I'm an attorney with intellectual strategies and I work with CEOs and I see some awesome and sometimes crazy stuff that happens behind the seas scenes with businesses I work with. And since I can't share their stories, I like to bring successful and scaling CEOs onto the show and talk about some of their breakout moments. And today we have a pleasure to to have David Kim with us. David, welcome to the show.
David Khim (00:40)
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation and just talk about some breakthroughs and perhaps hear some of yours as well.
Jeff Holman (00:47)
yeah. That'd be a a turn of events here. I might my mind might be preoccupied now that I'm now when I'm trying to ask you questions, but you know, we'll go wherever the conversation wherever wherever it flows. So I I'm excited to talk to you because you you're building an organic growth company, right? By building an an organic growth company, you're actually I f I feel like you're kind of on the edge of things. You know, you're you're out there, you're dealing with AI as much as anybody is, I imagine. You're trying to help companies
deal with AI as much as anybody in their industry is. And so you're seeing, I would guess, correct me if I'm wrong, as much or more disruption and movement and sometimes guessing and, you know, forecasting as any industry out there. I is that is that accurate to say that?
David Khim (01:35)
I would say so. I mean, it's in order for disruption to be happening, I would think that there needs to be some dis some stability to then disrupt. I feel like the disruption is just so consistent that it's just nor normal. Yeah. Yeah. So you're correct. We're it's interesting over the last couple of years, we've been faced with kind of two really big shifts in our industry that causes a lot of challenges for us, but it makes it very fun.
Where in the past we focused on SEO, Chat GPT got launched, and now the question is how do we appear in ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini? So it becomes another marketing channel that we need to learn how to work on, work in. And we've run a lot of experiments. We figured out we figured out a lot of things, at least to the best of our knowledge, that are working for our clients, which is exciting. But the other challenge we were faced with is how does our delivery model change as we integrate AI into how we deliver?
And how do we meet client expectations related to that? Where they're saying, I can do this with Claude. Why can't you do it quicker with Claude? So we do need to do some transformation internally about how are we using AI thoughtfully and making sure that we continue to maintain a high bar for what we deliver to clients. So it's fun. I mean, it's it it is a lot of challenges and it raises a lot of uncertainty and one reaction could be fear of change and resisting, but
The way that my co founders and I have approached ambiguity is to treat it as opportunity. And there to me, that is the only way to approach that if you want to build a business. Otherwise you get stuck in the past and you get left behind.
Jeff Holman (03:18)
Well, I'm sure we'll dig into some of that. I I'm gonna reframe it as turbulence, right? The the continual turb I this I had this image come to mind as you're as you're talking about this, you know. this this airliner flying through the sky. You know, I don't know fluid dynamics well enough. My background's electrical engineering, not mechanical or something else aeronautical or whatever. But I had this picture of this plane flying th through the sky and the at the nose of the plane, like like your business is essentially positioned at the nose of the plane. You're
you're in constant turbulence breaking through, you know, the the static air and allowing this plane to fly, but but but you're having to absorb and deal with and react to everything happening at the nose of the plane while maybe some other people, your clients or whoever are dealing with the position in other areas where the turbulence isn't quite so constant. So
David Khim (04:10)
Yeah. I mean, I'd I'd even empathize with our clients and say they're probably going through as much turbulence as we are, but perhaps in different ways, right? They get certain pressure from investors or leadership to evolve and do more because AI can let you do anything now. So there's definitely turbulence on all ends. And it's helpful when we can have that conversation with clients and say, Hey, we're also figuring this out with you. like we're we're on your team here.
Jeff Holman (04:36)
Yeah, I love that. And so your company, Omniscient Digital, deals it helps with organic growth with you know SaaS and tech companies, right? you're you're helping them essentially figure out how to reach their audience. I want to get into that a little bit and you know, might as well might as well let the audience know what you do, how you do it, and maybe if they want to get in touch with you how to how to do that too. But but before we get into omniscient digital and where you're at today, tell tell the audience a little bit about your background, like what led up to
you know, starting omniscient digital, leading it and and trying to trying to help SaaS companies with their organic growth. Has it always been organic growth for you or what's what have been some of those mild posts along the way?
David Khim (05:18)
Yeah, it's always been organic growth and it started because I well, funny, you you shared that you had an electric engineer electrical engineering background. I have a chemistry background, so I'm curious how we both
Jeff Holman (05:29)
you're smarter than me then, that's for sure.
David Khim (05:32)
I wasn't the best chem chemist, which is why I'm not doing it anymore. But where where we landed was I ended up at HelpSpot, which I think a lot of people may know at this point. It's a CRM marketing automation, sales automation platform. And I got to learn a lot and I saw the company grow from five hundred to five thousand people and and we decided to move on because it was getting a little too big for for me at that stage. But
During that time, I learned a lot. I got to work on very interesting projects and it always revolved around some form of organic growth, meaning we weren't just running paid ads. Like there was a team focused on that. They're great. That wasn't my specialty. It would be through SEO, through content, through partnerships. And once I got more exposure to other companies and people at other companies, I realized that a lot of companies needed help with that as well. So
While I was at HouseSpot, I was fortunate that they really encouraged people like people to be entrepreneurial, whether internal inside the company or having a side hustle. So I always had a side hustle. I was doing some form of consulting. And I made some friends who were my coworkers at the time, Alex and Allie, who are now my co-founders. But it turned out at the time that they were doing something similar. They were also doing their side hustles. And at some point we thought, why don't we just team up to do this and be able to work with
maybe larger projects with larger brands. And that's how it came to be. we ended up forming back in twenty nineteen. And we were fortunate that just through word of mouth and knowledge of our work portfolio and coworkers who moved on to other companies, that our reputation was enough to kind of kick start getting the first couple of clients. And that's that's how it all started.
Jeff Holman (07:15)
I have to ask because 'cause I started my law firm around the twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen time period. It was a kind of a fuzzy transition. So it's I'm not exactly sure when it was. But but when I did that, you know, about a year later we of course hit COVID and and I distinctly remember I don't know if I don't know if as a service based company you had the same experience. You know, we had a we had an office somewhere and a small team, but we'd set up to be, you know, completely distributed if we needed to be.
And COVID hit and and I remember thinking to myself, man, I I'm I'm grateful that our clients are kind of around the country and and you know, we can continue working for them. we we have this office, nobody goes in there anymore and we we eventually got rid of it, but but I I felt a little bit guilty in a in a way, and I don't know if that's the right word, but th for because of the fact that people would say, Hey, how's your business? you know, mine's I'm just struggling and this and that and
And and I would be able and I would say, well, you know, candidly, it's it's it's not really that different for us because we're set up in a way that we are distributed, we work for clients across the country, we we you know, we we don't rely on being in the office and so it was it was less of a disruption to our law firm. And I I wonder if because you're kind of in that professional services, B to B, whatever you want call it, that that were did you have the same experience through COVID or did it hit you differently? 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 clients' 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. Now, let's get back to the show.
David Khim (09:12)
Before I answer that, I'm also curious. I mean, just because COVID happened, I imagine people still needed legal counsel, right? So Yeah. I would I would think business probably got better for maybe people needed more legal counsel.
Jeff Holman (09:18)
Exactly. Exactly.
I mean, there are cycles where the economy worsens and litigation increases. we haven't traditionally been a litigation firm until our until our you know, we do a fractional model where our clients hire us to be kind of a legal team for them on a fractional basis. Yeah. And it if you if you start to be integrated with your clients, as those clients grow, eventually they get sued or they want to sue somebody. So we've we've brought litigation on. So we haven't haven't traditionally, I don't think at that point in time we really had much litigation, but certainly you know, economic factors will
will kind of trend w with or in correlation with the some of the legal services. But people were building companies the whole time, people were inventing things, people were branding. So we yeah, we did have a steady stream and so that didn't it didn't die off because of COVID because of COVID factors.
David Khim (10:10)
Yeah, I would think, you know, so many businesses got formed during COVID. I would imagine they need help with the startup paperwork and all that stuff. So Yes, yes. Yeah. good to hear that it didn't impact you as much. Didn't really impact us either. we were fully remote. What was interesting was at the time when we we w the three of us were at HubSpot, there wasn't really a remote culture. and Alex and Allie were two of the handful of people that were remote at the company. Funny enough. And they were based in
Texas and Chicago at the time. So by nature of that, yeah, we started as a fully remote company. So no rent or anything that we needed to deal with. But an interesting thing happened during COVID. Probably remember interest rates were near zero. The tech industry was at very frothy valuations and raising a lot of money. Yeah. I was at a startup that raised a lot of money and I got to see that firsthand. It didn't make any sense. So during that time, it was great.
For business, to be honest. Yeah. A lot of startups had a lot of money. They wanted to spend it on marketing growth and they didn't know how to do what we were doing. So we we actually benefited quite a bit. And I think our positioning in the market was very helpful as well because we were focused on business metrics that were harder to move. but we had case studies to back it up. Whereas I did hear from some competitors that were friendly with that they were having trouble. So I think we were fortunate in
our positioning, the timing, and how we set up the business.
Jeff Holman (11:42)
I love that. Yeah. Well, that's curious. I appreciate you sharing that. What what's been the growth trajectory for your business? As I look on your website and I see your team, I'm like, they you got a pretty solid solid group of people there. how's that how's it grown since twenty nineteen to where it is today?
David Khim (11:54)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, when we started in twenty nineteen, the me and my co-founders were part time. So we had taken full time jobs at other companies. We were part time. It was twenty twenty one that we jumped in full time. And once that happened, we did the triple, triple top line revenue on a small base, of course. We I recall tripling again the next year and we started going into a more reasonable growth where it was more like forty percent.
So growth has gone extremely well. Yeah. And the way I view it right now is we're at another inflection point where because of all the change, I won't say it's an all or nothing type of situation for how we're growing, but we are going a bit more aggressive with there's a change in the market, there's a lot of uncertainty. We have a pretty strong position in the market with a handful of competitors that we admire, and we know who we're up against. So
Let's invest here and let's grow. And one of the big decisions we made that I guess you could consider a bit of of a breakthrough was changing the the way that we hired. Cause we realized that the way we hired was actually negatively impacting our growth and stunting, stunting it. And I'm happy to go into more detail there. But that was probably the biggest unlock.
Jeff Holman (13:17)
What what do you mean by that? Well how how big was your team at the at this point when you were, you know, hiring w you know, w we'll call it the original way of hiring. How big was your team and how did it grow then?
David Khim (13:27)
I think we did it up until about 15 to 20 people. And we were kind of at a plateau for a year or two. And the way we did it in the past was and it worked. So I won't say don't do this, but it it stunted our growth after a certain point. But we were very mindful of not wanting to hire ahead of client demand. So we didn't want to hire to have extra capacity just to be ready for clients, because you don't know if those clients or contracts will actually go through.
'cause, you know, in sales, deals fall through. That happens. Right. Right. So what we did was we had this philosophy of we will only hire team members once we have enough sales pipeline and the team is stretched to a certain rate that justifies bringing on a new hire. Cause then there's work to then already be absorbed. And that was great. We're able to manage margins. We set the expectation with the team of like, here's why we hire this way. We don't want to overhire because we don't want to have to lay people off.
And we had team members who went through that and they they appreciated that we would not want to do that. we also, because we were bootstrapped, we also took the approach of hiring scrappy people who maybe didn't have as much experience and we would train them up. And that worked up to a certain point. But the breakthrough we had was hey, if we really want to grow this thing, we need to hire people who have seen the game before. We need to hire people who are more experienced, and we also need
to higher head because I believe it was last year, 2025, we had a month and a half where we had to say we cannot take any more clients because we didn't have capacity, we didn't have the recruiting pipeline built out. So that resulted in revenue growth that wasn't where we wanted it to be. and it was a self imposed restriction is the way I view it. So what we've since been doing is we have a capacity planning framework.
Where we can actually map our sales activity and pipeline, what we expect to close, how many clients we expect to have, how much capacity we need to hire, that we can now confidently say in the next 30, 60, 90 days, we're gonna need this much capacity. Therefore, we need to hire. so we're actually hiring ahead of demand now, but knowing that we have the pipeline to back it up. But also we're hiring people who have done it before. So
We're fortunately in a position where we grow we grew, we became very profitable, and we can afford to hire more experienced people who who actually are telling us what to do. rather than us feeling like we need to be the ones to problem solve everything.
Jeff Holman (16:05)
How did was it was it that moment in 2025 when you had to start turning away some clients because of lack of capacity that that was was that the first indicator that that things weren't working quite right with the team or with your with your hiring practices? Or were there other signals before that where you're like, this something feels like it's off, right? Something feels broken here.
David Khim (16:28)
Yeah, there were definitely signals before that I can't point to now, but that was the big in our face moment of this isn't working. So we need to make some pretty big changes in how we operate. And what what came after that was wait, are we hiring the right people?
Jeff Holman (16:45)
So it wasn't just timing. It wasn't just are we hiring at the right time? But are like if we're gonna change the timing of when we hire, should we also reconsider the qualifications or the experience level? Okay. Yeah. Became a is could I have to ask, is that a is that possibly a function of maybe the the the logical scientific background that that you have? I I know when I start opening up a puzzle and I'm like, well, I see a little I see a thread here.
And I start pulling that thread and I'm like, wait a second, that thread attaches to three other threads and before I know it, I'm like trying to trying to re recalibrate an entire system instead of just like snip that one thread off. I don't know if you do that too.
David Khim (17:25)
Definitely do that. I still do that every now and then, but I also I look at that thread and I ask, do I need to fix all the upstream things right now? Or can I start with this thing, put up put out that fire, and then address that later? Usually I can address it later. But what it did open up that can of worms of okay, we've agreed we need to hire a different profile of employee for individual contributors. We also agreed.
my co-founders and I that we need to hire a director level of leadership because we were in the weeds managing. We're also kind of in some of the client work, and we're also trying to do the strategy piece, which as you can imagine, that doesn't work out and it's not very sustainable. And there was actually a point where we had a pretty candid conversation of I think we're building a trap of our own making. Like this is not what I wanted to build a business to do.
where it ac we were actually pretty str stressed out and not very happy. So
Jeff Holman (18:27)
You didn't you
didn't want to be sales fulfillment, collections, leadership, finance you didn't you're probably feeling a I mean that's that's a stage that a lot of companies go through, fifteen to twenty people. In fact I had a I had a I worked at an engineering company at let's see, I was an intern in college and I and I sat down with the with the president for s you know, we worked closely together. He he was very nice guy. and we maybe had sixty or eighty engineers at the time. And but I remember him giving me a lesson one time. He's like, Jeff, it was really it was really easy to grow that this firm to about
I think his number was fifteen people. Really easy. Like like the works there, we just and it was really easy to grow from twenty five to where we are today. But fifteen to twenty five about killed us. That was the hardest stage of the entire business. Is that kind of what you're describing?
David Khim (19:14)
That's that's funny 'cause that's almost exactly about where where we have been for about two years where I've heard similar anecdotes, but it's more around revenue size of hey, zero to one million is pretty easy. One to five is very tough. Once you're past five million, smooth sailing. At least until you get to, I don't know, ten or fifteen or something. And so we're we're kind of in that phase right now. And I think we're gonna break out of it by the end of the year. But
That is yeah, I I I can't say that I enjoy doing all those functions all at the same time. I can do if I have to, but it's not sustainable and it it results in a very unhappy, grumpy, stressed out David.
Jeff Holman (19:58)
Yeah. Well and it we're I'm curious too 'cause these decisions when you have a couple co founders, were the conversations and we were you guys typically pretty aligned in in the conversations or was there, you know, a little bit of politicking or maybe some debating that had to happen? Ha not to not to expose any of the, you know, the intricacies of your of your partnership. But but, you know, I I'm curious if if there's anything there that
that you saw that might be helpful to other people who are also in partnerships and probably going through the same types of conversations with their partners.
David Khim (20:34)
Yeah. Fortunately, we're usually mostly aligned. There are definitely points where on specific nuances or details where we might disagree, but we're typically aligned on the in broad strokes of the direction we want to go and the type of business we want to build. I mean times where we yes, it helps a lot. I feel very fortunate. The times where we do disagree, we kind of just debate it out.
Sometimes it does get a little bit combative, but we know that at the end of the day, we're on the same team. We're not right. We're not trying to discredit anyone's intelligence. We're not trying to split off into a separate company or or break up the partnership or anything like that. So it helps to know that we're coming from a place of, hey, we want to all succeed together. it might also help that we each have gone through therapy and have our own coaches to help us work through like, hey, is it me? Am I the one that needs to
be a better communicator, but I think we could probably do better. Like there are areas where we could communicate more if we had the time and and space to do so and we weren't trying to run a business day to day. But I think we have a good space to work out those disagreements quite well.
Jeff Holman (21:48)
Yeah. I I think that's fantastic. And like any I mean, look you r you you mentioned lifting before, you know, doing your deadlifts or whatever. The like like lifting weights, you know, to build muscle, you you have to have tension for growth. And it's not always the most pleasant tension. And you know, sometimes it's yeah, I think there are also I had one one CEO I worked with for a while and he would I think he I think he abused us a little bit, maybe, took it too far sometimes.
But he he was always like, Jeff, you gotta have tension. You the there's tension between this department and this department or or this objective and this objective. It's just always there and you know, he I think you try to leverage that for for certain things sometimes. But but it stuck with me that yeah, I mean th there is gonna be tension. You don't get away from that. My wife and I work together. We don't always agree about what's
David Khim (22:38)
That work. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (22:41)
It works pretty well actually for us. But yeah
David Khim (22:43)
Able
to compartmentalize.
Jeff Holman (22:46)
Well, she's very patient with with my with with some of the things that I think we should do. So Okay. But she's also very good at implementing the things that should be implemented. So it got it. I know it doesn't work for everybody. It works for us pretty well. But yeah. Yeah. No, I'm glad you shared that about your about your your partnership. And I you know, I'm it's interesting that you're open also about the the therapy part of it. Like like knowing I like I work with I've worked with lots and lots of attorneys. I've worked with lots of of executives over the years.
And I've had some where I've said, hey, listen, if I don't know if you have somebody to talk to, I know leading at the top is is a lot lonier lonelier than most people realize. if you need somebody, I'm here. I'm a pretty good confidant because, you know, legal counsel. But you know, I've wondered a lot of times if some of the people that were in leadership roles had that had that outside support, whether that's therapy or some other thing. so it
you know, not to comment on anything deeper than that. I think it's fantastic that the three of you that you know that that that all three of you have have some outside support that you can that you can go to and you know lean on whenever you need to.
David Khim (24:01)
Yeah, yeah, I won't harp on it too much, but I strongly recommend it to every CEO. I mean, there's definitely the archetype where they just have a particular way that their brain works and they can just muscle through it all. I, for better or worse, am like that. And I I don't think I want to do it that way. But what I've learned about business from other people I've spoken to, and I'm curious how you how you work through this yourself, but I view it
I view the growth of the business and the growth of the team is capped by my ability to grow and get out of my own way and get out of other people's way. And work through whatever shit I have that makes me feel like I need to behave a certain way that causes me to get in the team's way or my own way. And if I don't work through that, then I'm gonna cap growth for the business. I'm gonna cap other people's professional development. I'm gonna cap the level of ownership they feel like they can have, and I'm gonna cap I'm gonna
limit my own growth. So yeah. It feels beneficial across all aspects of life. And I mean it it'll negatively impact my personal relationships too if I'm not working through that stuff. Yeah. Right. So I I highly recommend it to people.
Jeff Holman (25:12)
Yeah, no, I so y you kinda asked about what I do. I so I have two thoughts that I that I'd share on that. And that w the first one is maybe more practical. There's a book I recently read, it was referred to me by another attorney who who helps a lot of clients establish partnerships and, you know, new businesses. And he said, Hey Jeff, you gotta read the partnership charter. I forget the author's name right now, but it was interesting because I as I read that, so much of that book I mean there was there was the mechanics of
Making sure you all agree, making sure there's candor among among the group and openness and and all of that. But it felt very like a like a therapeutic type of book, right? Like if you if you can do everything mechanically that he's saying, you've probably just worked through all most, if not all of the therapy type s issues that might come up in your partnership too. Come to find out, the guy, the the author that wrote it, and I I wish I had his name with me right now.
David Khim (26:09)
It's David Gage. I just looked it up.
Jeff Holman (26:11)
David
Gage, that's right. David Gage, his history is as a therapist. And I'm like, wow makes sense why this so so you got a therapist who who moved into consulting and ended up writing you know, establishing a business, helping people resolve partnership disputes and writing a book on how to, you know, called the partnership charter on how to establish partnerships. I'm like, that makes that actually feel so natural. I wouldn't have guessed it before reading the book, but having read it, I'm like, this is there
Partnerships require therapy in some in some manner. whether that's a marriage or business partnership or other, you know, intimate partnership, like you need therapy. And and if you can't have candor and talk openly with the people around you, I I've seen partnerships, I've seen businesses where those things just fall apart. And it's it's not because they're not good people, not smart, not skilled, but
But if you don't have the, you know, if you can't be open with the people around you, or if you can't see past your own, you know, you name it, ego, fear, ulterior motives, if you can't see past those and actually talk openly about the bottom line, I I don't I I mean, it's it's kind of no wonder the lot of partnerships don't really work well because you know, even by looking at them from the outside sometimes that people just aren't open about.
what their real issues are. So
David Khim (27:42)
Yeah, it's it's interesting. I I made a comment earlier where you said that you work with your wife and I said, how does that work? Just out of like sarcasm, because I'm sure you have a great partnership. But one thing I've learned is, you know, when me and my now wife Lisa were getting married, we were like, Hey, let's read these books, figure out how to like be a better partnership together. So we read books like Seven Principles for Making a Marriage Work. we read some books on prenups.
And as I read those books, I thought, wait a minute, these are very relevant to how I should work with my business partners. And at the same time, I'd be reading these business and leadership books. And I'm like, wait a minute, these same things can probably apply to my relationship. So it's all related somehow, which I know some people might hear that and not get both of those perspectives, might like, How does that work? But in in odd ways, building a business, learning to be a better leader has taught me how to be a better partner in life.
Yeah. Being in a relationship with Lisa has taught me how to be a better business partner as well. So yeah.
Jeff Holman (28:48)
I love that. Well I'm not gonna I'm not gonna necessarily recommend that you have that you ask Lisa read the partnership charter because I think it'll be too dry. But you've probably already you've probably already covered a lot of it with the other stuff you've been doing. congratulations on your recent on your recent wedding also, by the way. So thank you. Well let's let's jump back into omniscient digital and and your and your stuff there.
David Khim (29:14)
Tangent there, huh?
Jeff Holman (29:15)
I mean it's a it's the stuff we get to talk about, you know, it's it's not the stuff that you would talk about if your employees are all sitting in the room, which is why I think it's so important we get a we can we can tangent here without a problem. more recently, as you've as you've made the hiring changes, you know, the way that you hire, who you hire, the timing of your hiring, what are you seeing either in your business or in the the SaaS companies that you're working with? What are
What are you or they doing to kind of stabilize or or try to manage the turbulence of this environment that we're in, especially that you're in and helping your clients with?
David Khim (29:59)
Yeah, I'd say there are two things. One is making sure that they have a narrative to tell to leadership of what they're doing. And part of that we we help them with, at least with the growth story and what we're investing in and how we're gonna help with business growth. That part feels pretty straightforward, right? If like as CEOs, we want to hear from our team like what are you gonna do about this? Like, what's the plan? Yeah, what's the story?
Give give me something I can believe to know that this is gonna be on the right track, knowing all the challenges that we're having. The second piece is is gonna cl sound at this point a bit cliche, but leaning very deeply into AI, a lot of our clients are going they're going through layoffs. we got a text message from a client today saying, Hey, me and my team just got impacted by layoffs. So we're gonna have to cancel the meeting that we had scheduled for later today.
But the companies that are going through that and the one, the people who see that coming or have gone through it but ha are continue to be with the company are figuring out how do I use AI to do all the things that now fall into my shoulders. Cause I don't have the team anymore. So the only way that I can do the work of 10 people or at least try to is if I find a way to be thoughtfully using AI. And we're helping some clients with that.
where we're saying, well, let's let's walk through what was being done. Let's walk through what's expected of you, that your management and leadership expect of you and prioritize what actually needs to be done. We're not just gonna try to do the work of 10 people, but maybe there was 50% of that work that absolutely needs to be done. That's critical to the success, both working together and for your success separate from what you're doing with us. And we'll figure out, well, what are the workflows we need to build? What's the tooling that needs to be done?
What are the re what's the reporting that needs to be done? How can we essentially in in some cases break out of our scope of our agreement to support you? And a lot of that has to do with helping to build AI systems for them so that they're they feel like that work is still getting done. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (32:13)
I was just gonna ask and I think you just answered it, if if this is actually expanding the scope of the work that you do and it sounds like it is. Sounds like you guys are a and I think you have to be you have to be kind of flexible to that, right? 'Cause 'cause we're working on the frontier right now.
David Khim (32:27)
Yeah, it's it is really interesting because it this is, I'll be candid, it's where I wanted the business to go. I where I saw that the business going, but now it's a f more of a forcing function of, hey, that thing we thought we would do in a year, clients are asking for it now. Yeah. I was just in New York visiting some clients and at some conferences, and one of them was saying, Hey, I need my CEO to be on LinkedIn more because that's he has a big audience and that's where all our potential prospects are.
But he doesn't have time. And but he's such a great speaker. He's doing all these talks and all this stuff. And I explained to her this whole workflow I had of every day I have Claude go through all my calls, identify which ones are sales calls, pull out the most common questions, turn those into LinkedIn posts and blog posts, automatically upload those to my scheduling tool and all that. And she said, I want that. Like, how do you build that for us? And I was just sharing something, thinking, Yeah, he he can just build this. But she said, You can.
Can you build it for us? So just very basic things like that that feel obvious to us, because we're scrappy, we're bootstrapped. We have, we have to figure these things out. By sharing them with clients, they say, How do you do that? I can probably figure it out, but I don't have time. Can you do it for us? And it's forcing us to question, well, is this a new service? How do we position ourselves now if we also do essentially AI systems build-outs? that's a big question we're working through right now.
Jeff Holman (33:54)
Yeah, and it's well, but it's impacting every industry. I mean, I'm i in law, I'm you know, we talked earlier maybe in the icebreaker, it's the same way that you are. You're we're starting to say, how do we do how do we integrate AI to help provide better services to our clients? But also how do we how do we respond when clients come to us and say, hey, I've already got most of this done. I just, you know, I just need you to sign off on this that it that it's done right. It's I did it I did it
All on AI last night. Here's a thirty page document. Just, you know, it shouldn't take more than half an hour to look at it type of thing. You run into that too, I'm sure, where people are like, Hey, we started to build this. Can you just can you finish it or can can you build off of this? Like how do you in fact, we ought to pause right here. We don't have too much time left because I know you got a call coming up, but I want the audience to know that I think I think David's gonna give like the answer that we've all been looking for for the last twenty four months right here. Is that right?
just teasing. How I how do you respond to, you know, the request from clients to try to leverage AI on their behalf at lower budgets than what you would normally charge?
David Khim (34:54)
Okay.
There are two ways that we approach it. I have actually had prospects come to me and say, Here's what we built with Claude. Here's what we're doing. Here's the results we're seeing. What can you do? And I'll actually tell them, you should just keep doing that. That's pretty good for Yeah, that's pretty good for what you've done. And until you get to a point where it's at a scale where you don't know what to do next or it's hit a plateau, you don't you don't know how to grow it, or it's just too big for you to maintain. Bring us in then.
But at this stage, you're doing what I would advise you to do with such a small budget. for the clients who we already have and they try to make a case of doing it for a lower budget. To be intellectually honest, there is a case where, yeah, maybe we can do it at a lower budget now that we can use these AI tools. The other piece that we speak to on RL calls calls with clients is you're not paying us for the output. You're paying us for the outcome. And yes, there's some form
formula for how we charge for the work that goes into the output. But at the end of the day, if you're paying us $10,000 a month and we get you a million dollar contract, does it matter if you're paying us $8,000 a month or $10,000 a month? Probably not. Because that contract's going to more than pay for the work with us. And that happens very frequently because we work with B2B clients. Maybe it's not a million dollar contract, but it'll be a couple hundred thousand dollar contract, biggest contract that they've landed because of the work that we did.
So that helps ease a lot of the conversation because they can say, yeah, we have gotten those leads. You're right. Yeah. Like why am I trying to negotiate this when we're getting that ROI from from the work together?
Jeff Holman (36:43)
And your first your first example there reminds me of what a tennis coach once said to me. I'm like, Hey, I've got this racket. I've been playing with it for a couple of years. Like I see these fancier ones coming out. Like like when should I get a new racket? And he goes He just goes, Jeff, is that one working for you? I'm like, Well yeah, I don't I don't have any problems with it. I just saw the fancier ones and the new models are coming out. He's like he's like, Well then keep the one you got, you know, trade up when when you notice that this one's not working anymore. So yeah
David Khim (36:54)
But he's
Jeff Holman (37:10)
That seemed way too simple, but you know, I I hang on to rackets a lot longer now, I guess, because it
David Khim (37:15)
I feel like the answer to a lot of our questions tend to be simpler than we'd like to accept. I mean, even I mean, I I'm curious what it's like for your world, but for us, sometimes clients come to us with very complex questions, expecting a very complex solution based on what they see on social media and everything that people are pitching them and things like that. And I'll say, actually, you don't need to worry about 80% of that stuff. Yeah. It you can do it later.
But what you need to focus on is the twenty percent right now. And we can do all that other stuff later, but those things are marginally beneficial to you. it's it's hard for them to hear that 'cause you wanna hear that you we're gonna do this very complex thing, but really it's how are we gonna help you focus on the right thing?
Jeff Holman (38:02)
Yeah, we see that in two ways. We see people coming saying a lot of our inventor types really want to to build patent portfolios and and build extensive trademark portfolios so they can, you know, buy all the letterhead or put, you know, what stickers on their wall. And I'm just like, hey, start simple. You like like let's it legal isn't generating revenue for you, probably. So let's get you the basics, then you can generate revenue, and then we can have conversations if you're still really interested in in a portfolio.
We can talk about that later, as you you know, scale the scale the legal as your revenue scales. That's one
David Khim (38:38)
Build
a business before we try to get legal to protect.
Jeff Holman (38:41)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then the other way we see it, is is that when people come to us with really complex proposals, i it's usually because they're violating some type of compliance or regulatory issues. It's like these this is not meant to be this complex. The reason you're doing it is 'cause you're trying to avoid what the rules actually say. So it's kind of a red flag a lot of times with the
David Khim (39:05)
I don't know, does that mean you want to take it on or you don't want to touch it?
Jeff Holman (39:10)
That
means I want to be really careful about what I tell them before I before I let them sign up. So Well, David, I know we're coming to a close here. I really appreciate the insights that you've shared. And I'm I'm excited to see where omniscient digital grows with the team and everything. for those CEOs that are out there scaling a business, maybe they're SaaS CEOs saying, I need to get a hold of David to, you know, have his team work on some stuff for me. Maybe there are other CEOs just saying, Man, I
I probably should get a therapist or whatever. Like take away something. What would be what would be your kind of number one insight that you would want to share with somebody that would be, you know, like you were a year ago, say. You were in the trenches and and if you could tell yourself one thing one year ago that you know today, what would that be?
David Khim (39:58)
Yeah, I'll I don't have an immediate thing, but I do have one thing that might be helpful. And each year I have a mantra for myself that's just kind of a thing I repeat to myself as a reminder of how to get through challenging times. Some years it was just the word breathe. Some years it was something like a faith, not fear when things were really challenging. This year is grace and space. And I think as CEOs, we tend to focus on the next thing.
Or what's the thing I need to do, or what's the fire, and all these things that we need to to juggle, which is all valid. I think we could give ourselves a bit more grace and kind of let ourselves know that we'll get to those things. We don't need to beat ourselves up now. We can do a little bit of it, but move on, and give ourselves that space to to process what's happening and be able to look at the whole field and figure out where we actually need to focus versus getting tossed and turned because you're stuck.
in the middle of everything. You don't have space to zoom out and actually prioritize what you need to do and where to actually spend your time and energy. And that mantra has gotten me through a lot this year already. Yeah. And hopefully it it's kind of what folks need to hear as well.
Jeff Holman (41:14)
That that's it's very grounding advice. So having something to kind of bring bring your focus back to throughout the year. Cause it is it is chaotic running and running a business and growing a business like you're doing. So yeah, it is fun too at times. thank you so much, David, for coming on the show. It's it's really been a pleasure hearing even a a little bit of of a slice about your your business and what you're doing and the lessons that you've learned and the breakthroughs that you've had. So thanks for coming and sharing that with us.
David Khim (41:26)
It's fine.
Thanks for having me. I really appreciated the conversation.
Jeff Holman (41:45)
Yeah, it's been fun. And to our audience who listened to this week's episode of The Breakout CEO, thanks again for joining us. 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.
