Interview with Dallan Labrum of ProdataKey on His Insights from the Data Market

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Conscious Design Podcast. I'm Ian Peterman, your host, author of the book on Conscious Design. And today I have Dallin Labram, husband, father, and VP of Sales and Support at Pro Data Key, a data and security company. Welcome to the show.

It's good to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about, you know, Pro Data Key and, and your journey here. This isn't your first rodeo, so to speak, so I'd love for you to share your journey.

Sure. Um, man, the journey, the journey's been long, but, uh, you know, learning— I basically, the overcap is just learning, learning how to really sell something, I think, is going to be the overarching, overarching theme. And I'll talk to you a little bit more about that. But you kind of wanted me to go over kind of what I thought one of the most important things in business was, which for me is having a hierarchy or a core structure of values. One thing that I've done at every company that I've been, that I've worked at, is either developed or emphasize their vision, mission, and core values. Because, you know, if you look at companies, most companies fail. Most companies that get started don't make it past 10 years. And one of the reasons is because when they get to a certain level where the CEO can't necessarily, or the owner of the company can't affect every single person, Right. and they haven't implemented core values, They'll find that the core values that made them successful are not being shared throughout the company. So the first thing that I did when I got to ProDataKey— we work in physical security, so we create readers, controllers, basically anything for commercial access control, but we are an innovator in the cloud access option. The first thing I did when I got here was ask, what are— what's our vision? What are, what are we trying to accomplish overarching? What's our overarching goal? What's, what's our mission as a team? And what, what are the core values that guide us when we have to make tough decisions?

Right.

We had, we had a mission, but we didn't have any, we didn't have a vision or core values. And so I actually had the opportunity and was given the initiative from the COO and CEO with our Director of Sales, Tim Baker, to create those here, which is Honestly, one of my very favorite things to do in the world is to look at a company, because you can't just go into a company and just arbitrarily implement any values that you want. You have to look at the company, you know what I mean? You have to analyze what made the company successful, and then you have to focus on those things. Did you have something?

I just say you can't— yeah, you can't, you can't successfully— it won't stick either. Like, yeah, that's the other thing is it won't— you can't just, can't just draw some words out of a hat. And say, here you go, here's your mission statement, uh, word scramble for you.

Yeah, and you know what's funny is, you know, I've had the opportunity to do this about 4 times, and every single time I get very excited, um, you know, and I, and I think that my ideas are the best. And we come up with what we think is pretty much a finished, uh, a finished, uh, outcome, a finished structure with vision, mission, core values. And then we run it by the company, the team, and man, we get so many critiques, right? And those are actually good. It's good to get those critiques because you have to get buy-in, right? And any top-down initiative is going to get less buy-in than an initiative that one of your team members comes up with. So we started from scratch again, it felt like, because we'd come up with what we thought was the best. We looked at the company, we looked at what got us here, And then we started getting feedback from the whole team. Now, this was harder than just arbitrarily implementing what I thought were the core values, but oftentimes you'll find, Ian, and I think you can agree with this, the hardest thing and the right thing match up a lot. They do, they do. So a lot of times the thing that's more difficult is gonna be the thing that's gonna give you the best results. And so here we went, taking literally everyone's input on this. And changing a core value here and changing what we thought the definition was. And, you know, it took probably an additional month past what I thought it would take us just to come up with it. But what we ended up having was a vision, and the vision, I believe, should be something given to us from the leadership. We have a mission, and we came up with core values, and I'll kind of share with you what we came up with if you're okay with that. All right, so the vision that our leadership came up with was to create the most valuable, effortless, and secure physical security platform so that our partners can thrive. And I thought it was really interesting because initially I, you know, I had agreed, okay, let's just do the first part. And one of our team members brought up, well, why is this our vision?

Mm-hmm.

And I said, you know what, you're exactly right. Within the vision, we have to have the what and the why, right? That's really important. What do we want this company to become and why do we want it to become that way? What's, you know, 'cause money is not a great answer, right?

No, that's a terrible answer. That's a cop-out answer. I'm doing it for money.

Well, yeah, it's the high turnover answer. I'll tell you that. It's definitely the high turnover answer. If you don't wanna retain your employees, Because money works really well.

Right.

But really the goal is so that our partners can thrive. And one of the cool things that— cool thing is we came up with this vision and what we saw during COVID is, you know, services software really actually thrived during COVID where a lot of, a lot of more on-premise style old server-based systems failed during COVID And one thing that we saw is our partners We call everyone our partners that we work with, but our dealer partners especially that resell our product that have created a recurring revenue base really thrived during COVID They weren't quite as negatively affected by the initial shutdowns because they had this base of recurring revenue that, you know, that helped them be able to make good choices instead of emotional reactionary choices. And man, did that vision line up with exactly what we were doing in the industry. The second thing we came up with is a mission statement. And a lot of leaders conflate these 2. They conflate a vision and a mission. And you'll see this almost anywhere you go. At any company I go into, I look at their vision and mission, they're almost interchangeable. And they shouldn't be. And one of the easy things— I got this from Simon Sinek. I'm not gonna, you know, everything that I'm talking about right now are things that I have learned from other people. So I'm not, you know, I'm not really a super creative, but what I What I do seem to do is I can recognize good ideas when I hear them. And Simon Sinek said, let's see here, he says, if mission, then vision. And that's a really good way for leaders anywhere to gauge what our vision should be and our mission should be. So our vision was to create the most valuable, effortless, and secure physical security platform so that our partners can thrive. But our mission is to empower our partners through exceptional support and intuitive, secure solutions. So if we empower our partners through exceptional support and intuitive, secure solutions, then we will have been— we will be creating the most valuable, effortless, and secure physical security platform so that our partners can thrive, right?

Right.

So, so that's a really good way to look at those 2 things. And, and, uh, You know, one thing that I've found, anybody who scoffs at this, you know, scoffs at this idea, are typically the problem in companies, the cancerous person. I'm being dead serious, man. I've seen it quite a few times.

No, I'm laughing because it's true. And anybody listening, they'll be very— they'll know that's the uncomfortable conversation nobody wants to have.

Yep.

Because it is true. It's so true. That's the easy identifier.

Yeah, most companies that, you know, I've consulted with quite a few companies on this very thing, especially after they hear me talk about it and hear how passionate I am about it. And a lot of these companies already have a mission, vision, and core values, but it's a, it's a joke. It's a running joke.

Well, it's a checkbox. I feel like it's one of those things that when you're told, you know, are you gonna start a company, and they go, okay, well, if you're gonna file your paperwork, you're gonna get an EIN, you're gonna tell the IRS, you're gonna write your mission, vision, values, and then you're gonna open a bank account. And it's just like one of those checkboxes.

Exactly.

You just do it and nobody actually thinks it through, let alone the part like what you're talking about of going back and talking to the team. A lot of times it's just leadership goes, well, we wrote it down here. And nobody actually thinks about the fact that your team has to buy in and agree and follow, because otherwise it's never going to be— it is, it's a joke. It's just a plaque on a wall that everybody walks by and never reads because it doesn't actually apply to them and they don't connect with it. And that's—

Exactly.

That's not what you want. That's not, that's not the mission or vision that you really want to have happen.

Exactly. Exactly. That's a great point. And you know what's funny is I can trace almost every single— when I go to a company and I, you can feel right away, you know, if they're, if they're all bound by a common goal and vision or if they're not. And usually, usually companies start off pretty good. And the problems begin is when they have a core value like trust and candor, but they don't trust their employees to make decisions and they are not open with their employees about anything. Well, if the employees are like, this is one of our core values, but no one in our company lives by this, it's really hard to buy into that.

And it only takes one, right? It only takes one not being followed for them to— for anybody, right? It's, it's a trust-building exercise. And if you don't follow one of your core values, then it's easy to then question, well, are the other ones actually being followed, or are they just You know, surface being followed so it looks like people are doing it, but nobody actually is. And that's just— it just sows in more trust issues, which never works for a business.

Yeah, exactly. And trust, trust is one of the top, the top things that should exist at a company, right? And one of the reasons why trust doesn't exist a lot is because people don't hire right. They hire people they don't trust and then therefore they have to micromanage them. That's a whole other tangent. But just, you know, so vision, mission, and then core values. Again, you know, once these are established, it is incumbent on especially leaders to stick to these and to sometimes make a hard decision that maybe is the opposite of because money, right?

Right.

One thing that I've noticed is, is that if you focus on the things that make you money, your company will make way more money than if you focus directly on money. And it's really interesting, you know, a lot of people ask me why I'm so passionate about this. Well, one of the reasons why is because this— being passionate about this has made me a lot of money. I'm going to be honest with you, getting people rallied around a common cause and common values, they will, they will love what they do. And people who love what they do are very different than people who do what they do for a paycheck. You know what I mean?

Absolutely.

You get a whole different quality of work, whole different quality of interaction. It's the difference between, you know, somebody bringing up what they do in a grocery store or people avoiding bringing up what they do in a grocery store to somebody because it's, it's, I'm not getting paid right now. You know, I don't care. This isn't really part of me. It's just something I do to do the things I want to do. And, uh, so anyway, going into core values just a little bit, this is what we ended up coming up with. And these are almost entirely different than the, the ones that me and my director of operations came up with on our own, but they're so much better. And a lot of times it's hard to choose between 2 things. You can't have 50 core, core values.

Right.

So sometimes, sometimes you'll couple, couple like words that go together. So our number one core value is partner fanaticism. And one of the reasons why we chose partner fanaticism is that's our main focus, right? Everything we do is centered around supporting our partners. When they succeed, we succeed. So what that means is, in a situation where maybe a mistake was made and maybe it's ambiguous whose fault it is, we take responsibility and help our partner out and we do the right thing. That almost always comes back to you tenfold. Almost always. If you take care of somebody, even if they're trying to manipulate you or lie, even that you have just built trust with them. And a lot of times they'll refer their friends, family, and everyone to you. Taking care of people, being a fanatic, going above and beyond. I tell my sales team all the time, I was like, dude, there's somebody out there with better sales skills than me, than you, than whatever. So what's gonna set us apart? It's gonna be, are, are we willing to do more? Are we willing to do things differently? than them, right?

Right.

So that's a key, key to differentiation. Um, our second set of core values is trust and candor. This is super important at any company, right? People, people have to know, like, what's going on. So we wrote on here, it's essential for us to be transparent with ourselves and our partners to create meaningful and lasting relationships. If there's an issue that arises, it's important to be transparent about it. It's important to tell people, hey, we actually can't do this, or we can do this, right? Be open about your limitations, be open about mistakes, but you also need to be smart, right? It's like, you don't wanna exclusively advertise about the things your company doesn't do well. Like that doesn't help anybody.

At least balance it out, right?

Yeah, yeah, balance it out. And ask good questions and find out, hey, is the right thing to do to bring this up right here? You know, is this something that they need? And if they need it and we don't have it, let's bring it up and let's be honest about it, right? Instead of saying, yeah, we can do that. A lot of companies do that. They're like, yeah, we can do that with the anticipation that by the time this is ready to go, we'll be able to do it. And then when the time comes, they can't. And so a lot of times people, at least I am this way, and you tell me if you're this way, Ian, When somebody's honest with me, I like immediately wanna do business with them 2 times more than I did before. When I feel like somebody just was honest with me, even at their own expense.

Oh, definitely. It's anybody that's honest and especially when somebody says what their limitations are, right? And then that's the like, yeah, no, I can't actually do that, but I can do this. And that's an immediate like, oh, they're not trying to just, be everything to everyone just to get the sale, obviously. So yes, yeah, it's a definite positive towards especially the beginning of a relationship, right? You're just getting early on, that's, that's very important.

Yeah, people— it's been proven that people will use an inferior product or even a product that doesn't meet all their needs if they trust it, the company, and the person who's offering it to them.

Yep.

So that's really interesting. If you can support somebody and take care of them and be honest with them, they'll probably still go with you as long as you can meet their basic needs. So our next one is being data-driven, right? Our decisions must be supported by data so that we ensure our partner success as well as our own. This one's kind of a scary one for me because a lot of times data-driven causes you to be reactionary, right? When you, when you are a data-driven company, that means, hey, um, I will not even take one step forward unless I know for a fact that I'm going to get at least what I've put into this out of it. That's not what I mean by being data-driven. It is important to make changes within the company. Every company needs to make money. Like, that's— everybody already knows that. That's why focusing on it is so arbitrary.

Well, we all, we all got to eat. Nobody's— there's no mystery about it, right? There's not like magically you don't have to pay your rent and things like that if you start a company, right? It's all there. We all know it.

Yeah. Well, there have been multiple times where I have wanted to do something and I'm like, this is surely going to make us a ton of money. And my— whoever my leader or manager was allowed me to do it and I ended up being wrong. And so the next time that opportunity came around, you know, we opted to not do it just because, you know, What I thought versus what the outcome was didn't match up. And that's hard for people to admit these, especially these days where we're basically walking around with every bit of information, right or wrong, at our fingertips. You don't hear a lot of people say, hey, I was wrong, right? And that's why being data-driven is so important. It helps us calibrate. The next one we have here, which is really— it's our 4th core value set. Unity and fun. Um, you know, emphasizing unity and fun ensures that ProdataKey's team is motivated to live our mission. It's no, it's no secret that old-school business tactics are failing. You know, people are fleeing these old-school micromanaged companies that have nothing to offer outside of a meager paycheck, right? And so unification around a cause which is what basically what the vision, mission, and core values do. They unify us together, but then also fun. We have ping pong tournaments here, and I'm not saying a ping pong table is always the answer. It's definitely how these things are implemented, but we go to movies together. We try to find activities that we can do, you know, that make us closer together. And the interesting thing is before the mission, vision, and core values, You didn't really have a lot of people coming together on those things. They're like, no, I don't want to go to a movie with you. I just worked with you for 8 hours. I want to go do something else.

Right.

The dynamic changed from that to I'm working with my friends, which there's nothing wrong with that. I become friends with everybody that I work with and not just friends, they're my closest friends. I spend more time with them than I do with my family. And so— Right. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that it's actually, you know, separating business from personal That's good luck with that. You're going to end up with some sort of emotional distress problem because you're almost leading 2 lives, you know.

Well, I think, I think that's a really good point because we have this, um, we do separate it because most of us, a lot of people, they— what they do, what they consider work, isn't fun.

Yes.

It's back to that mentality of I'm doing it so that I can go Rather than, I'm doing a job I actually enjoy. I actually enjoy the mission of the company. I'm here because it means something to me. And that kind of, yeah, I wouldn't want to be friends with those people either because there's nothing in common. We're not even, for 8 hours a day, we're not even sharing something really in common. We're just both doing a thing to go get a paycheck. And that's not—

Right.

That's not really friendship bonding material right there. You don't make friends doing that. that. You make friends going and doing something you enjoy together.

Um, yes.

And that's— so that's a great point that you saw that shift.

It was a big shift too. I mean, we have, we have people who stay late just to hang out and talk and to play ping pong. Like, you know what I mean? They're— they like enjoy, truly enjoy each other's company because they are allowed to unify around a set of core principles. And also you know, they're on a team, a real team. Like, we are really working towards this. We really— like, our— the feedback that we got during COVID from our partners, I think, was a huge thing for us because we got almost unanimous feedback that we really did help our partners thrive. And not only did we help them thrive, we helped them thrive through arguably one of the hardest times in recent history. Right. And if you can be part of that in any way, that's huge. And if you can get your team to really believe that that's what they're doing, because it is, Then that's huge. People can tell when they're being lied to. So if you go to somebody and you're like, hey, Dallin makes a good point, I want to make more money, so I'm going to implement all of this— like, your, your real true motivation has to be caring about people. It really does. If you don't care, then, then it doesn't matter.

No, it makes it worse. Then people leave because they know that you're full of it and you're, you're just doing it to manipulate. Right, and then it's— you'll get away with it for a little while and then people will figure it out and it just, it will backfire.

Yep, I agree.

I would— could you go into a little bit more? Because you had this transition, right? You took— we're basically working for a paycheck mentality, right? And I'm sure there were people that were very dedicated and you implemented this. So how what was your process to— obviously you got buy-in and interest by asking everyone, right, of going, hey, we're doing this thing, give us your feedback. But then how, how did you turn around and begin to kind of implement and actually have this, this shift happen? And, and how did you kind of curate that, I guess would be probably a good word, And making it not just a, oh, thanks for your input, here's the thing, and then we all go back to status quo of it's a thing on the wall we all walk by and nobody, nobody does anything about it.

Exactly. So one of my, like, eternal principles, I call them, is you cannot control people, you can only control yourself, but you can't— you can't influence people. So I just started talking about them. I start— I brought them up at meetings. I asked the question, does this decision line up with our core values? In meetings that I was invited to attend, I asked if I could present 5 minutes at the beginning on one of our core values. I implemented within my sales team, every single sales meeting we have, we review and focus on either all of them, we review all of them, or we pick one and they can actually do something fun about it. They can talk about how they do this in their own lives. They can talk about generally how core values influence businesses, like from a, from, from a 10,000-foot perspective. They can take this and present on it in any way that they want. And once I started doing that, a lot of other departments started doing that as well. And what they found is not only is it a phenomenal icebreaker, but it gets everybody thinking in alignment, right? It gets everybody like, yes, yes, this is why we do what we do. So one thing, you know, just real quick that was really huge with this is, you know, during COVID we looked around and we noticed that a lot of our competitors were hiking up their prices due to the increased cost of components. And anytime I see a trend, I personally want to break it, right? But also sometimes trends exist because they need to exist. But we looked at our financials and we're like, you know, We really don't have to increase prices. We could easily increase pricing right now and get away with it. And just because everyone else is doing it and we, you know, we could make 5-7% more this year. That is an enticing idea, just from the flick of a pen.

Especially in the middle of a pandemic when everything else is going down. If you can flick in the opposite direction, great.

Yeah, incredible business strategy. But when you compare it up against our core values of partner fanaticism, that doesn't help our partners at all. It's in the— in trust and candor. Boy, that's— I mean, we're definitely not, you know, if we were going to make a price increase, we wouldn't be like, hey, we don't really have to do this, but everyone else is doing it, which would be really what it was.

Right. That's the honest answer to do that correctly.

Being data-driven, like, our data showed that we could just stay the same and actually be doing quite fine. It's not constant improvement and it's not good stewardship. So we looked it through, it did not line up, and we all voted unanimously to not do it. And, you know, a lot of people appreciated that. And I'm not saying there's not gonna be a time where we might have to.

Right.

If things keep going the way that they're going, maybe at the end of this year we may have to increase pricing. But what I am saying is, because we have these core values, we were able to look at this and make a decision that was better, actually better for our partners than it really was for us. Because it matched up with what we believe and why we do what we do. So, you know, that was huge. And bringing it up in meetings, you have to have key players that buy in. I went to key influencers within the company and I said, hey, listen, I really want to implement these core values. Thank you for your help with this. What do you think the best way to start getting people talking about this and start merging this into our culture is? And they came up with ideas. And one thing that I know for sure, someone will implement their own idea, even if it's not as good as yours, way better than they will implement your idea that you push on them. That's just, that's a fact. There's so much data to show that. Even if, even if, even if it's like, you know, as a leader, you're like, man, that is a bad idea. We've tried that before. You know, look at, look at the risk reward. Let your employees pull the trigger on some things and learn and grow with you. So the worst case scenario, they fail and they come back to you and they trust you more, you know, right? We shouldn't be afraid of failure. Right.

Well, that's kind of circling back to what you talked about, the long-term, right, of how does culture impact. And you talked about, you know, business failing, right? And something I think we talked about earlier, or one of the times we chatted, is one of those— we talk about how many percentage of businesses fail, right? It's just some, you know, within 10 years it's like 85, 90%, something in there, right?

Yeah.

And the interesting tie-in that I don't think people really click in but really points to the value of this is That most of those failures aren't within the first couple of years, right? We kind of think like, oh, well, you know, most of that must be in the first couple of years, but it's really like year 7, 8, 9, right?

Yes.

When you're scaling and you've gone, you know, as we've talked about, this isn't your first company you've gone through and seen scaling. And it's just an interesting correlation there of when you start really growing, right? Because it is like 7, 8 years, that's when, that's when that hockey stick growth typically starts to happen. And you start hiring not 1 or 2 people at a time, but maybe you're hiring 100, or some of these companies are hiring 1,000 people in just a couple years. And that's where all of a sudden it breaks down. And then you have a failure.

That's right.

So doing this, you know, that's something I just want to point out to people, that it's— this is a long-game solution. It's not gonna, you know, it's not gonna solve necessarily all the failures of the 1 and 2 and 3-year-old companies, because those are, those are, you know, technical difficulties or, you know, other problems usually that are not associated with your company culture. But the long term, because it's also a point where you're like, you guys are making, making those decisions Based on your values, you probably kept some, some customers that may— if you had raised prices the same way, they might have been like, well, everybody's raised this and now it's time for us to reassess.

Right.

Should we stick with these guys or should we go over here? And you probably didn't even trigger that, that thought or conversation in your customers, in your partners, because you were— you made a different decision. And that's also something I think companies don't think about as much in that long term of, well, when you get to that point, if you don't have the culture to hold those kinds of decision-making, you're going to trigger those other— those other partners, your clients, your customers to then have them rethink and reevaluate, do they want to be with you still? And when they do that, if they can't— if they can't say that you're holding up to your end, Then you're going to start losing customers as well, which is not—

Right.

Highly detrimental, obviously, to a business.

Yeah, it's bad. People, people can tell when you care about them, and, you know, it doesn't matter if they're your customer or not. If, if people feel like you care about them, they're 40 times more likely to do business with you, and 40 times is huge.

Anything you can 40x is Yeah, I mean, why would you not?

It might be 40%. I may be misquoting that.

It might be 40%. Even if it's 40%, you know, what is it, the average conversion rate for sales is like 5, 10, and 10. You're like, you're the rock star. There's probably only 3 of you per industry that can, that can do that. And so even 40%, if you can do 40%, Why would that— that's 4 times the best you could hope anywhere, right?

So that's a really good point. That's where I just always— I always like to make sure that I'm giving correct data. And if I can't remember for sure what it is, I like to make sure people know I'm not sure on that one.

So we'll say somewhere between 4 and 40 times better than what you got. So either way—

Which I would take any of that. Yeah.

Anybody would take 2X. So if we could do it, you can do more just by caring, which is all—

Let me just say this, Ian. It's really good.

Yes. Yeah, there we go. It's really good. It's really great for everyone involved to just do that.

Agreed.

Well, is there, as you've gone through this journey a few times, is there anything else that, you know, company that's possibly looking at themselves or a startup wanting to not end up crashing, is there any other things that you would, you would suggest for people to think about or, or look into in making sure that they're creating this, this harmony inside of their businesses, this joint vision that allows you to be more successful?

Yes. Start as early as you possibly can, but don't, you know, if you already have 1,000 employees, don't let that put it off. You just have to focus on the right things. You know, if you're implementing a vision, mission, and core values simply to align your employees, to bring peace and to disallow, you know, to lower the discord that exists, people will know that you're using it as a tool, right? These should not be tools to control your employees. That is not the goal of a vision, mission, and core value. They should be accountability measures for everyone, including from the CEO all the way down to whoever's washing your building and cleaning it. Like, this should be a set of values that you guys can share in common that allow you to make the correct decisions, that allow you to, in the hardest times, to make the decision that is right. Right. And that is the hardest thing in business because, I mean, There was a really interesting poll during COVID I can't remember who did it. It was kind of a fringe group, but they had about 30,000 people answer it. And they asked this question, do you believe that the CEO of— and I'm just going to say pharmaceutical company because I don't want to get anybody or degrade anybody— do you think the CEO of pharmaceutical company would choose to not bring a drug to market if it meant it would seriously damage or hurt his company. And there was like only 2% of people that said that they thought that they would do the right thing. 98% of people said absolutely not, these guys are going to push this drug to market and try to make as much money off of it as they could. That is, that is really what I'm passionate about fighting, is that sort of thing, because everybody knows that Those companies that get so big like that, they are because money companies, right? They're— it's almost a joke to think that they're trying to help you.

Right.

You know what I mean? That's why I think small businesses still are able to evolve and grow and come out of nowhere, especially when you have giants like Apple and Amazon out there. How can somebody start up— some guy started up a little game shop right here where they sell board games. He's killing it. And his stuff's 15%, 20% more expensive than Amazon, but he knows the games inside and out. And when you go in, you know this guy's passionate about it. There's still— people want to work with people who are passionate about what they do and who they feel would do the right thing no matter what.

Right.

And that's what vision, mission, and core values are. They're, they're a guiding star. They're the thing that will keep a free economy free, and it will keep people having hope and trust in businesses As opposed to believing that every business is just looking to make a buck at everyone else's expenses. And that's, that's what I'm passionate about. That's what I'd love to see. We're seeing it more and more. We're seeing interaction from large companies, you know, huge companies like Divi is a company around here that I really look up to. Their leadership's constantly on LinkedIn pushing and doing good initiatives and the right thing. I hear from a lot of their employees that, you know, they feel like their leadership cares about them and they feel like they would honestly do the right thing even if it costs them money. And I think if we can kind of implement that expectation among people, get rid of the jaded glasses and implement an expectation that businesses should be centered around a vision, mission, and core values that hold them accountable to doing the right thing no matter what, I think we'd see a lot of cynicism leave our economy, at least here in America. We'd have people, we'd have companies doing the right thing. We'd see better products. We'd see less people getting hurt by defective products that maybe shouldn't have gone to market, but do because money. And, uh, you know, that's, that's the overarching thought and perspective of this whole thing is these, these are guiding stars, man. These help us do the right thing and it helps everybody in the long run.

Yeah. Well, I think that's a, that's a perfect, you know, full circle here back to You know, do— because money is not— can't be the answer. And, and consumers are, are not— you know, we've, we've entered this era of consumers are not okay with that being the answer. They're not okay with that being the status quo or even a generalized okay answer. They're looking for brands that are, are, you know, what are you doing for sustainability? What are you doing for your— Society? What are you doing for your employees? How are you—

Right.

You know, how are you being ethical? Uh, how are you blocking unethical behavior even? And those are all things that, you know, because money doesn't tie— doesn't tie into any of those things. And, and it's not, um, it's not unprofitable either. And that's the other kind of kind of thing that is— people are beginning to wake up to is that being an ethical, you know, vision and mission-driven company who actually, you know, follows their mission and vision and values, uh, isn't somehow limiting you, right?

Yeah.

It's not, it's not this limiting weight that slows you down and doesn't let you know, be competitive. It actually is how you remain competitive and be successful. And so it's, it's a good shift. We're definitely— I feel like we're in this tipping— we're already past the tipping point of this is the way things are going. And if you don't have— I feel like the companies that are connecting better with their customers are the ones who have these mission, vision, values, and they're sticking to it. And they're public about it. This is, you know, they're not burying it even inside their own company or, you know, they're sharing it with their customers. They're saying, this is what we're doing. And so they're adding kind of an extra layer of accountability. You talked about earlier accountable to yourself, but now you're accountable to, well, all of our customers just read it on our website, right?

Right.

Everybody knows what our values are. So if we make a public decision, Which is basically in this day and age, any decision is public. We don't— it's— we don't live in a pre-internet world anymore. What you, what you do is, is public, and people are gonna check. They're gonna go, well, does that follow what they said their vision and values are? If yes, then great, we love them, that's fantastic, we should support them. And if not, then—

Right.

We all know what happens when it's not, right? So—

When it's not, when push comes to shove, they're going to make the wrong choice. It's almost a certain thing. If you, if you look at a company and they're, they're not living by any code or core values, when push comes to shove, they're going to make the choice that seems in the moment emotionally like the one that's going to make them the most money or save them the most money, as opposed to the one that's going to protect their partners. Or, you know, unity in funds, a tough one to live by. Asking your team members, what can I do to make your job more fun? I mean, imagine the answers that you get for that and imagine your responsibility, because I'm asking you so that I can know, so that I can do something about it. I'm not just asking you for, you know, for my own enjoyment.

Right.

I wanna know what can I do so that when you tell me something, if I don't react to that, the next time I ask you something, you're gonna be less likely to be honest with me or even answer the question. So I feel tremendous amount of pressure from my team when they give me an idea. They're like, hey, this would make work more fun. I almost always do it. Right.

As long as it's not illegal, unethical, or, you know, doesn't break some other thing, then it's— yeah, it has to be. I mean, it should be a yes because it's—

Well, that's the cool thing. As long as it lines up with our core values and it will make your job more fun, I want It's gonna cost me way less to put in a few grand right now to make your job more enjoyable than it will be to fill your position in 6 to 10 months. So—

Right. 'Cause somebody will, I mean, that's the other thing is we live in a global market. Somebody will offer that fun thing. Somebody out there will see a talent and go, what do you want? Like, well, I just want, you know, ping pong table. Okay, you mean I can buy a $500 ping pong table and you'll come work with us? Done. We're sold. Like, that's, that's the kind of, uh, thing. And that's a great point of, you know, it's investing. It's also investing in your employees. And that's—

Yes.

Something that we can't— as, as any smart, conscious business in today's world, you can't ignore that. You can't not invest in your employees because it's too— it's super costly to not do it.

And it's also really satisfying as a leader because, you know, we're PDK, we are an organic growth company. We don't— we are not beholden to any VC money at this point. We are, and we're growing like crazy. But it's interesting, our competitors will reach out to our guys all the time, they tell me, and offer them more money, and our team will turn it down. And it's because, I mean, we are really competitive pay-wise, but we are also extremely competitive in other ways that these companies are blown away when they can't just take somebody for, for $10,000 more a year. They're, you know, they're blown away. It's like, what else is important? And that's, that's how you know, you know, you're at the right place is, you know, I would never call up somebody and try to poach them from another company, let alone call them up and just expect that offering them more money is going to do the trick.

Right. Well, the fact that it does means that they're not happy, right? That means there's a problem. So it's good to be at a business where that's not the case, when you know you're not part of the problem then.

I agree. And we're striving not to be part of the problem. And I'm not immune to the nuances of business, man. I mean, every single day we have a meeting where we have to bring this up. to keep us on the right track, right? 'Cause it's, there's some things that are super tempting, you know, it's always tempting because the opportunity for more money is out there all the time as a business, whatever. And a lot of people just wanna wring, you know, wring their client base dry, get as much as they can, sell out to some larger company and be done. And that's—

Right.

That's another kind of, you know, detrimental model that I think we're seeing It's going to be dying a little bit more and more every year because people, if you're going to be gone in 2 years, I, I'm not going to do business with you. That's starting to be a trend. People want to do business with companies that are going to be around.

Right. Stability. Stability is important.

Perfect. Yep.

Well, this has been an amazing conversation. We've covered a lot of, a lot of ground. Um, and for Anybody that's interested in talking to you about this or connecting with you, where's the best place to do that?

You can email me at dallan@prodatakey.com, D-A-L-L-A-N@prodatakey.com. That's probably the best way to reach out to me, or you can reach out to Pro Data Key on any of our social media platforms. You know, we, we do help a lot of our partners. Construct core values, mission statements, visions. You know, I do a lot of sales training for our partners, all of which is free. We just want them to succeed. We want to give them all the tools that they need. And we have seen a huge, huge growth around our partners who, you know, I've always wanted to have a set of core values that my team goes around, but we're just so busy, right? And then all of a sudden they get 150 employees deep. And they're starting to see huge amounts of churn in their employee base because, you know, the owner usually are— these are tremendous people. It takes a lot to start a company. Because they're tremendous and have all of these abilities, it rubs off on everybody until about 25 employees. Once you get above 25, it's hard to impact that many people real time. And that's where—

Right.

Core values, vision, and mission come in. It's a way for an owner to maintain his or her core structure within the company without having to be next to each person all the time. And it's hugely valuable. And if you want your company to have longevity, I would highly recommend coming up with a vision, mission, and core values and implementing the, the help of your, your trusted team to find something they can buy into.

Perfect. Well, thank you again for, for making the time. I appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Well, have a good one.

Okay, sounds good, Ian. Appreciate you.