Interview with Steve Baines of Forcivity – Small Business Show 95

The Small business show episode 95 for Wednesday, November 30, 2016. Greetings, folks and welcome to the small business show here at BusinessShow Co the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean.

How goes it, Mr. Gene?

It goes good, Good, man. I am after a few days, I think I'm getting back in the swing of things, this work stuff after being.

Off last week, the turkey coma and the vacation trip to New York.

Yeah, yeah, it was good. New York was good. I didn't actually have turkey, so I had, you know, good for you. Massive prime rib, but it still put me to sleep anyway, you know, so it's good today.

Shannon, I wanted to interrupt you because we're not alone. We have a guest with us. I'd like to welcome Steve Baines of Forcivity. Steve, thanks for joining us.

Hey guys. Great to be here.

Yeah, man, thanks for coming.

Thanks. Definitely.

So as I was introducing you, I realized there was one question I did not ask you in our little pre show conversation. Are you the founder or the co founder of Forcivity?

So that's a great question. So today I am the co founder. Originally I was the founder, but kind of the way the business evolved is I partnered up with somebody I've been friends with for a long time but also had a business relationship with. So founder morphed into co founder in a matter of about 30 days or so.

Yeah, yeah. That's actually probably not uncommon for a business. I mean, it starts in somebody's head, but, you know, it's not rare for that person, in retrospect, to not be the only founder. Yeah, for sure.

Exactly. And I mean, we kind of, we've been incubating this idea for a long time. Actually a couple of years. But, you know, we both had jobs. You know, I was running my consulting business and my partner Max was off working in the corporate world and he was actually my client at one time. And we had run into situations over the years where like, you know, there's got to be an app for that. You know, somebody's got to build an application for that. And we just eventually reached the point where we're like, you know what? We're going to do this. You know, enough talking about it, you know, no more being a entrepreneur says we're just, we're going to pull the trigger on this and do this.

So tell me what you do at Forcivity. You live in the salesforce ecosphere but that's about all I know.

Yeah. And that's basically like saying, I live on earth.

Right.

Because it's such a huge ecosystem. Salesforce is very big on being sexy. Everything they do now is very flashy. They had wave analytics a few years ago. They just released Einstein, which is everything around artificial intelligence. But what. What ends up happening, though, is everybody ignores the things that really are the true problems with Salesforce. And they all tend to center around data, you know, because everybody has moved so many of their applications to the cloud. Everybody's like, well, it's so easy to let me. You know, let me just give this vendor my credit card, and all of a sudden, I've got this great application that I can use from anywhere, anytime. The problem with Salesforce and, you know, other applications like that is when they do that, they're actually giving up a tremendous amount of freedom and access to their data because they're now all of a sudden constricted and constrained by all these rules that they have to adhere to. And maybe years ago, that was okay because Salesforce was such a fledgling app, and people really were using it just for, you know, kind of Salesforce automation and contact management. But what's happened now is businesses are running their entire business on Salesforce. So they literally have all. All of their enterprise data locked up at Salesforce, and they can't get at it. So they want to report on it, they want to access it, they want to do things with it. You know, they want to touch it and smell it and feel it, but they can't, because Salesforce has created all types of restrictions around it. So the problem we solve is we basically are opening up the kingdom to data through our platform so people can get right at it. They can do things with it. They can create reports that Salesforce literally can't create because of the limitations that they have. And it's really. It's interesting because as we present this to people, they're actually giving us use cases and ideas for use of this data. So it's been. It's been pretty cool, huh?

That's pretty cool, man.

So I have a quick question for you, Steve. Did you develop the concept, you know, for freeing this data, if you will, you know, by using the product in other. In other ventures that you've been involved in? Are you. Are you the customer, so to speak, for this.

For this product? I was for a while. You know, my first exposure to Salesforce was, you know, I think probably about 12 years ago or so. And I don't even think they had an API at the time. I think it was basically you just logged into salesforce.com and that was it. You just used it as is. But even back then, I experienced some. I experienced some of these challenges and I had to go out and seek tools to help me do my job better. What ended up happening is I left corporate America and started a consulting business that focused specifically on Salesforce optimization, integration, development, so on and so forth. And I ran into the same roadblock over and over and over again. And I found I was constantly going back to the same tool sets, multiple tool sets, to help me solve the same problems over and over again. So that's really what got me to the point that said, you know what? I'm going to monetize this somehow some way, rather than putting money in other people's pockets. Gets so it's. I kind of had this really cool side effect with my consulting business of getting eight years of market research under my belt before I even thought about starting. Versivity.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I commend you for realizing that as you're going along and keep. You're kind of building the business plan, if you will, because you're solving this problem for yourself and then branching out into, you know, turning it into a revenue stream. That's great.

No, it's. It's. That's really smart because you. I've heard of and I've. I've experienced this. I think we probably all have, even those of us that aren't necessarily utterly afraid to start businesses. We, I think we all have a healthy fear of it because we've done it. But you know, you, you, for over years, you, like you said, you collect this data, and it's the data that could be the business plan. And a lot of times you just scratch the itch enough to make it work internally and sort of forget about the fact that, well, there's probably a bunch of other people that want this exact same solution. We created our own content management system 18 years ago with Mac observer. And I kick myself now for not marketing it. I should have for sure.

That literally was the ground floor for content management systems.

Literally. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But I mean, it was one of those. Those things you just, It's. It's very easy to get stuck in your own world and solve your problems and do great things and not, you know, necessarily expose those solutions as. As yet another business opportunity.

Yeah, yeah. And I really wanted to be careful to make sure that I wasn't just, you know, developing something that was cool, you know, because, I mean, the list of things I wanted to build was a mile long, and some of them were, you know, little things here and there. It's like, yeah, sure, I'll pound out an application, and hopefully people start to download it, and suddenly I've got tens of thousands of dollars coming in. So it was hard to resist that temptation at first to just say, you know what? Let me just build everything under the sun, and hopefully something will stick. So Max and I spent a lot of time talking about the different variations of what the product should be, you know, what should it have, what shouldn't it have, you know, what's first version, so on and so forth. So it took us a while to really kind of hone the message down and pare it down to what it is today. And I think it's safe to say that it's really nothing what we thought it was going to be. It really has evolved into something that obviously we're very proud of it and we're excited about it, but it's very different than what we started with. And it's quite a journey and a process to go through that.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

Well.

And that's sort of the lesson that every entrepreneur winds up learning is oftentimes you don't build the thing that you thought you were going to build, and that's okay. That's just part of the process.

Yeah, it's tempting to go out and try to sell it, and people give you feedback, and it's tempting to want to say, well, let me pivot and accommodate you, and then let me pivot and accommodate you, and next thing you know, you're, you know, 10 miles off of your. Your center, Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't say yes to every feature request, which is really difficult to avoid doing, especially at early stages. When you're showing this to the person that could potentially be your first customer or even your first beta test, like, oh, I want this and this and this. Awesome.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we'll put that on the list. How about that? You know, down the road, maybe.

I say roadmap a lot.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. That's a good safety word. That's your. That's your parachute, right? Yep. Oh, it's on the roadmap. Yep. But this is. So you had a consulting business, and now you have this, but in the middle somewhere. You worked for someone else. And I know this because that's how we met. If memory serves me, you had developed something or had some business that was acquired as part of the beginning of your employment for this other company. Is that right?

Yeah. What happened was I actually fell into consulting accidentally. I was working for a company that was acquired by Dell, and when I say Dell, I'm talking about the Dell, the mothership down in Austin, Texas.

Sure.

And, you know, at the time, it's, you know, I'm a small company startup guy, and I really didn't have any interest in working for, you know, a behemoth company like that.

Right.

Because you, you know, you know, if we, if any of you guys experience it, you know, eventually you become a number and you're just another one of the 60,000 people that work there, you know, and at the time the acquisition happened, you know, summertime was coming, had a little bit of a bonus, a severance bonus. I'm like, you know what, I'm going to take the summer off. I'm going to kind of figure it out. I actually tried to start another startup, but couldn't get funding because the VC climate was so dried up. But what ended up happening was Dell came to me and said, you know what, we still need some support for all these services and systems that have been put in place. Would you consider staying on? And in essence, what happened, long story short, is I parlayed that into my first consulting gig. Sure. With that, with Dell becoming my first customer. And that relationship grew over the years. And six, six years later, I had a full consulting practice with about 50 clients running it out of my house. So what had happened at that point is I actually landed a very large contract with them and it was bigger than I could handle and I needed help get, you know, executing the project. And that this discussion with a vendor about helping with that project suddenly turned into an acquisition discussion. And I was like, that sounds interesting. Let's talk about that. It kind of happened. It kind of happened accidentally.

Got it.

You know, but I think in the, in the back of my mind, I probably hoped it would happen as well, because it's. Consulting is a grueling business. It is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Right. But you're trading your hours for dollars. Right. You're not leveraging. There's very little leverage happening.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the timing was right. You know, as far as, from a business perspective, what direction I wanted to, you know, take my life. So we did the deal. But at the same time, one of the things that we had talked about as part of the vision of that acquisition was, let's build some Software, let's build some products. Because, you know, at the end of the day, the thing I love to do the most is write code. It is just such a fun and satisfying thing for me to do. I love designing software. So that was our vision, was, let's take some of this service revenue we're generating and let's build some products. Let's throw some things out in the market. Let's do it intelligently, but let's see if we can get something going here. That's when I met Dave. Dave actually was a potential consulting client, so. And Dave, if I remember correctly, I think at the time, you guys were talking about building a product.

That's right.

We're looking at us to help with that. So, you know, kind of as the years went by, you know, I was there for a couple of years, and, you know, he just kind of reached the point where I had the itch. It really wasn't happening, you know, as fast as I wanted it to or the way that I wanted it to. So, you know, after a lot of consultation with, you know, my wife and my friends and my family, I said, you know what? This. This is happening now. Not getting any younger. I'm taking the leap and I'm going to do it.

So what was that like? Because this wasn't your first rodeo, right. It's not like you were a career man at some company and decided, all right, now this is finally when I'm going to. I'm going to do this. But you sort of have the blissful ignorance of what a startup might be like. So off you go and you're excited and everything. That's not. That's not you. You knew all too well what a startup was like and you did it anyway, which is awesome. Yeah, right. But. But that. That must have been a different. It's, It's. This is not your typical story.

Well, it's. You know, I think if you probably. If I stood back and kind of analyzed what I did, I probably would consider myself to be crazy because I did know what I was getting into. But this time it's a little. It's a little different. The last startup I did, I had the benefit of already having a very healthy consulting practice going.

Right.

You know, I had a nice, you know, nice roll of, you know, cash coming in. Things were good, and I was approached by a group to start a new venture, which, in essence became my second job for four years. And it was. It was safe. It was easy. It's like, sure, yeah, I'll do That, I mean, it's like, I like being busy. So, you know, when I'm at home at night or on the weekends, I'll work on this. And it was fun, and it was. It was a very. To me, it was a very natural thing to do. It's like, I'll just also do this. How this time is different is I had a job. I didn't have 50 clients I could lean on. I had some money in the bank, and this time I was like, okay, I'm starting this myself from scratch. And, oh, by the way, I'm going to act actually funded as well. Which key difference from last time? So, in addition to literally starting with the bank's blank slate, I'm using some of my own money to pay the bills. Literally starting with nothing. It's like, okay, I have to create a product. I've got to hire people, I've got to build a website, got to do all this stuff. So I think, safe to say this time has been. It's been a completely different ride. It's been much more exhilarating. It's been much more terrifying at the same time. That's right. But I wouldn't. I wouldn't trade it for the world. This is absolutely the vein that I'm supposed to be in life. No doubt about it.

And you get to write some code still, right? Is that. I mean, is that very much a part of what you do?

Absolutely. I was writing code an hour before I got on this with you guys, so that's great. I don't do it as much as I'd like to, but I still like to keep my fingers dirty.

Well, and you gotta hang on to that.

You identified what you like about it and you kept that alive. Yeah, no, that's totally right.

Yeah, that's good. And I think that, you know, that journey that you just described, if you have to kind of be a little crazy, right. I mean, most people turn around, they stop when they have that conversation, and they have it with someone or even in their head, and they'll say, no, you know what? That's a nightmare. Or that's the way. So you have to create your own reality. We talk about that a lot on the show, and it sounds like you did just that.

Yeah. And I got to tell you, you know, Shannon, it's. There have been many mornings where I've woken up and I've been like, okay, you know, you got to, you know, get a rally, because it's like. It's like riding a roller coaster.

Yeah.

You Know, and, you know, I'd be lying if I said there's some days I'm like, what the. What the hell am I doing here? And it's like, you know, I could have a nice, cushy job, you know, never have to worry about money, stability, or anything like that, but I'd be miserable. You know, that's just not. It's just not what I want to do, you know, so it's.

You.

You got to take the good with the bad when you're doing this. And I think you got to be a little bit crazy and a little bit unstable to do something like this. Yeah, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Yeah, that's good. And recognizing that, you know, that you're going to have those days is. Is critical. And. And, you know, we. We mentioned this thing. We have that. Your success list and building on it, Even the little things. Yeah. Hey, on a bad day, I got into the office and I still rallied and got everything going for everybody that's, you know, depending on me. That's a. That's a success. When you do that over and over and over again.

Right? That's great. Sometimes it changes hour by hour.

Wait, I thought you were in your office today, not mine.

Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, when Dave and I call each other before the show, we always spend like 20, 30 minutes. Oh, what's going on? It's. It's very cathartic, you know, to sit there and share that experience. And this is kind of the reason we do this shows. So everybody that goes through this goes, oh, you know, hey, I'm not alone. You know, this is just a common thing. You're gonna have to power through it and, you know, get over it.

So it's been great because, you know, the. The guys that are working with me, they've all lived the startup life before, so they all. They all get it. So, you know, it's kind of like, you know, when you've. When you've been through similar situations than other people, it's like there's some things that, you know, you can just leave them on set. And you all know what you're thinking, so it's been nice because, you know, we can kind of lean on each other. We know what to expect. You know, we know that, you know, when we have a bad meeting with a customer, that that's normal, and it doesn't mean that we gotta, you know, close the business down, you know, the next day. So it's great to be surrounded by guys like that.

Yeah, that is awesome.

That is a hugely valuable lesson right there. And you can't always get yourself involved or hire people or partner with people that understand the startup mentality, but when you don't, it is much harder because like you said, there's conversations that when everybody's been through it at least once, can just be unsaid. Whereas otherwise, you're talking everybody off the ledge all the time. And it can be exhausting and it can kill businesses. In fact, I could tell you a story about it killing many businesses, but we'll, we'll save that for another day.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely can crush the mojo.

Yeah.

You know, and I tell people all the time, it's like when you're this early on in a business and you need people to get work done, you don't choose them, they choose you. Yes. You know, and I'm such a firm believer in that because, you know, I want people who are here and who are participating because they believe in what's going on here, not because I, I sent them an email offering them a job. And there's a, there's a big difference because if, if anybody approaches working up at a startup as that's my job, they're probably not cut out for it.

Nope.

Because the reality is startups are your life 24 7. And that's, that's, you know, that's just the reality of it. And then there's, There are millions of us out there who thrive off of that, you know, who kind of love that energy and that, that vibe. So that's. I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who get that and love that.

Yeah, yeah, but that, that's an important thing. And I even tell people, and we've been doing Mac observer coming up on 20 years, and anytime we hire somebody, I tell them we run this like a startup, you know, and we, we've learned and we can help you, you know, carve out time that is away from this when you need that mental health break and vacations are important and all of that, but we kind of just live this and it's a family and it's okay. And if that's not for you, then that's not for you, and it's okay. Yeah.

Right, right. And it is okay. That's okay. This is, this is what it is, you know, and if you either can choose to do it or not do it.

Yeah. You got to manage those expectations. You know, your business may get to the point. Well, you know, probably will get to the point where you do have to hire what you may consider, you know, regular employees, you know, folks that come in and. Yeah, and it depends on what kind of business you have. Right, right, right. So you definitely want to have that inner circle, at least, whether they're partners, like in your case, or advisors or something, because you're going to need each other to prop each other up and to live it, like you said.

That's great. Absolutely. Can't do this alone, so you may as well surround yourself with people that like being in the same kind of boat as you.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And you're right, you can't. Very few businesses, other than perhaps a consulting business, can you do alone. And even that oftentimes. No. But. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because, you know, the last startup I did, you know, one of the things we struggle with the most was the team, because there were a number of people involved who had never done a startup before, let alone a technology startup, you know, and they were like a fish out of water. And it was. It was exhausting to manage them and manage their expectations. I think, Shannon, you had mentioned that earlier, and it was. It really detracted our focus away from what we should have been, you know, working on, you know, so. And that's one thing I told myself when I started for Civiti, is that I don't want to make that mistake. You know, I want to make sure that the people who are here should be here for all the right reasons, you know, and if they. If they shouldn't be here, then, you know, they, you know, they should feel free to say, you know what? This isn't for me, and that's okay.

Yeah, that's great advice.

Yeah. The hard part is when you've got one of those people and you tell them that they're not cut out to be here and they don't believe you. That's its own issue.

Yeah, well, it's. It's not easy delivering bad news, but.

No, it's not. But it has to be done.

Yeah, it has to. Especially. Especially at this stage of a company.

For the sake of the business. Right.

Yep, that's right. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, you have to identify, you know, it's. It's that. I mean, it's part of that whole, you know, hire slowly fire quickly mentality. But it's. It's that kind of thing. Like, if you identify that somebody's a fish out of water, then you just got to tell them, this isn't. This isn't for you. Yeah, yeah.

And it's. You know, that's. You know, I learned that advice, you know, early on in my career. I had. I had a great boss who, you know, is my mentor to this day, and he said, hire quickly, fire quickly. And it's. You walk this fine line of making sure that you're not viewed as a hatchet man. So it's like, you know, you have an employee who's working there for a week, and you let them go. I mean, you always have this fear of everybody looking at you like, well, don't piss that guy off. Yeah, sure.

That can be helpful, though, sometimes.

Yeah, that's true.

A little fear. Appropriate levels of fear.

Yes. Just a little. Just a smidge.

Just a smidge. That's right. Yeah. All right, well, Shannon, do you have any questions for him? I mean, I got a slew, but I'll let you roll.

No, I think we got some good stuff out there. I like the, you know, talking about hiring and firing. You know, I always tell our managers, I say, look, you know, when you have to fire someone especially quickly like that, it's also a failure on our part. And so, you know, we try to tell our team that as well. It's like, hey, we made a mistake here. We should have vetted this person. Or understood. And not. It's not always the case, but it sometimes can be used as to kind of diffuse things around the office when something does happen, which inevitably it's going to. And you can say, hey, we screwed up. We kind of got the wrong guy, or whatever. But just. Just one idea.

Yeah. Cool.

We've been through a lot of this. We, as you know, we like stories here. So I want to ask you a question that we ask everybody that comes on the show. If you could go back to when you first got started with your first business, what one critical piece of advice would you give yourself based on everything you've learned since then?

You know, that's a great question. And I think if I think about all of the decisions I've made and choices I made, mistakes I made, the one thing that I always go back to is be very careful about who you select to be your partners.

Yeah, that's really good.

Yeah. Because it's very tempting to kind of say, oh, we like each other. We know each other. Let's start a business together. And the reality is, is that you couldn't be more incompatible or, you know, it severs a friendship, or the person you agreed to partner with really has no clue what they're doing. You Know, and it's. I look at almost all of the business ventures I've done since I left the corporate world, and if I think about, you know, all of the scenarios or topics that really caused me a lot of angst and really made me rethink my position, they all tend to focus around the people I was partnering with. And it's not necessarily that they were bad people or I was a bad person. It was really just more about compatibility. And it's like, you know what? We're not a fit here in this business. This doesn't work. And, you know, at the beginning, you, you hope it works and you think it's going to work, and sometimes you don't know if it's going to work. You, you know, you give it your best effort, but, you know, realizing it's like, oh, boy, you know, this is just not going to work out. So I think that would be the one piece of advice, is be very diligent about who you, who you partner with.

That is very enlightened and seasoned advice. Yeah, I think that.

Yeah. And, oh, you know, my experience, there's, there's doers and, you know, like, Dave and I have been partners for, you know, over a decade in one thing or another, actually, even longer than that. But we both are doers and we kind of naturally morph into this. Oh, you do this. I do this. But there's a lot of people that have the concept of partner as well. I'm going to get with this guy that is a doer, a maker, if you will. And you really have to be careful to your, to your point and vet those folks out. Doesn't mean they may not have a place in your organization, but may not be as a partner. So I think that's great advice, and I would highly recommend people think about it long and hard.

I think I'm going to put it on a plaque that I sit in my office here, too. Yeah.

That's awesome. That's great. Well, it's great. I've really enjoyed learning about what you do, reading all your information on the website and your LinkedIn profile. It certainly seems like you've done a great job over the years managing the, the flow of data. You know, if there's one common thread that I could see is like, hey, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna get the data out, whether it's in the healthcare fields, whether it's this or Salesforce, and that's awesome. It sounds like you've had a. Had a great time and are continuing to do it and are leading a charmed life, which is what we certainly believe in on this show.

I love it, every minute of it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

Thanks for, thanks for joining us, Steve. This has been a blast. It's been, it's been more cathartic than a lot of the shows that are built to be that way. So this is good.

It's been my pleasure, guys.

Really appreciate it. Thanks again. Appreciate it.

We'll see you on Facebook, folks. Come and join us there. You can find our great Facebook small business support group at face. Actually, you know what, Go to businessshow co Facebook. That's the easiest way for you all to get there. We'll see you there. We'll see you here next week. Thanks so much. Thanks again, Steve. See you again.

Take care.

Sam.