How do you measure your success? Higher Pixels CEO and founder Tom Rossi says success isn’t just about the dollar amounts, but about the time spent building beautiful products. Follow Higher Pixel’s journey to find their niche, core values, and their knack for using their team’s strengths to keep them excited to get out of bed Monday morning.
How do you measure your success? Higher Pixels CEO and founder Tom Rossi says success isn’t just about the dollar amounts, but about the time spent building beautiful products. Follow Higher Pixel’s journey to find their niche, core values, and their knack for using their team’s strengths to keep them excited to get out of bed Monday morning.
Welcome to this edition of a service journey with rocky destefano. The premise of this show is that everyone is leading something or someone, whether you're a parent leading your family, your coach, leading a team or a team member leading a few or a CEO leading an organization. We all are on a journey. We're on a path and being a leader, thus the title of the show, a survivor's journey. Thanks Larry, and I hope that everyone listening will be able to walk this journey of leadership with us. What you know, a couple of weeks ago on your podcast you had a. The title was why team members leave managers. Yes. It's a great show. Oh yeah. Well, I can say that, right? It's in the past. So you know, this thing came up on the Internet that I could not believe. And it was, it was. It said one a man from Illinois was arrested for getting$200,000 worth of a newer yes dumped on his former employees property. Well, come to find out this is a piece of fake news. Well, and, and this is terrible because I can tell you that now this fake person, his name was Brian Morris, was 54 and, and of course this is not all know any of it's true, but in the fake news world. Yes, he was Brian Morris, 54 years old who had just won a$125 million dollars from the lottery and he quit his job. It's so, so it's down to. He didn't like his boss pretty much. Well, and he didn't like his boss a lot. And you know, in that episode we talked about how people don't quit organizations. They quit because they quit, they quit meters. Yeah. So I thought that was a pretty good story. I wish you would have been. I really wish it had been true. Well, and so I want to share what he did to[inaudible] and maybe this will just be, if it was not true, I still hope it. I hope somewhere it's true, but it's not true, but, but maybe we'll plant a seed for a future story because what he did was he, he literally bought dozens of trucks filled with manure and he play, he asked the manure company to deliver it to his address, however he gave them this fictitious bosses address and so it took the police 15 minutes to get him to respond and by that point, literally tens of thousands of tons of manure. He basically was, you know, very in a very real way saying to his fictitious boss, get your shit together, which I. which I love it. I love it. You just had to get that word in there. Yeah. This is pg 13. Okay, so here's an idea that I've got. If you who are got the headphones on listening on your phone, on your way to work, if you've got a story that you could relate that maybe it would be a reason why you have a team member when want to leave your manager. This is great. You know, let us know on our website there's comments section dot the bottom. We look. We'd be glad to hear from you. Yeah, it would be, you know, Larry, I like that idea. Tell us your worst leadership experience. Right? Not that we're looking for it now. We are here. I've got to. I've got to confess this right now. All right. I have known you for how many years? Eighteen years, something like that. Yes, I was. I was in between as they say in the trade one time and I came to you and I said, rocky, I needed a job. You gave me a job, you know, and it's going to lead into a worst leadership experience because this is going to lead into the best boss I ever had in my life and that's why we're doing the show. Continue because you, you allowed me to grow, allowed me to have fun and doing my job and when I was time to leave you said great. Let have a good time. You know? Yeah. The know and grow talent. We. Yeah, we did. And I actually was appreciative of having you as long as I did. So I worked. Yeah. Well thank you very much. So then should we also say on our website you can also put your best leadership experience because that would be a good idea. So let's just not go dark. Let's also say if you had a boss that has touched you. Well let me. Let me rephrase that. If you have had a boss that has impacted your life, very good, very good. That slaves don't talk to us about any inappropriate touching. Well listen, today rocky, your guest is Tom Receding and he's an entrepreneur from St Augustine, Florida. What's his name? Larry. Tom Rossi. Ron Ssi. Okay. Did I get that run? I know the first time you said receiving. Okay. Well I think as a type of pasta. Yeah. So he's a nice guy but he, you know, he was an entrepreneur since its early days in St Augustine, Florida, synagis. How do you say? St Augustine? St Augustine. He was a paper boy and that's where I started. May at 56 papers on the route. Yes, yes, yes. I did not go well, but today is the founder of high pixels, which is a Jacksonville based product development company that has a passion for building simple, elegant and beautiful software and it's called a software as a service, those kinds of applications. And, and you know, the reason why that we've asked Tom to kind of join us today is, you know, he, he lives by some pretty set principles and one of them is that success is not just about dollar amounts, but it's also about
Speaker 2:time spent building beautiful products and then he also loves spending time with his wife and his four kids and volunteering at his church. So He seems like a great guy. Tom, welcome to a service journey. Hey Tom, thanks so much for being on today's podcast. And what I'd love for you to do, if you could just tell me a little bit about your story and how did you get here.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure. Well, I think I've always enjoyed, um, kind of the risk reward of being an entrepreneur. You never, ever since I was a kid now is. I mean, seriously, I was a newspaper boy and so it was, people would always tell me, oh, you're going to be an entrepreneur one day, and I said, know I'm going to be an engineer because that's was going to go to school, you know, I was getting housed in the astronaut and uh, it was years later that, I mean I had graduated from college, I was working at an engineering firm and the Internet was just starting to kind of peek a cut out and how it was going to impact businesses and ministries and I just, I was so excited about it. I, I quit my job and started, you know, the company to be able to, to just learn about it and figure out how it was going to change. Um, you know, business ministry. What year was that? Ninety five.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you, you, you really are talking about the beginnings of the explosion right there. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah. I was, I was working for a government contractor and I got a, I was going to a conference and I got the registration form and it had this nasty string of letters up at the top of it and I asked one of the other engineers, I said, what is that? He goes, oh, that's a web address. What is the web address? And uh, and that was probably 90 into 94, beginning of 95. And uh, after that, as soon as I thought, I was like, oh my gosh, this is, this is crazy.
Speaker 2:So, so what led you to, you know, getting into the software world? Was there something that you felt like you could, you can inherently solve that maybe was missing?
Speaker 3:Um, I think I wanted to get ahead of the curve to be able to understand how it was going to impact businesses and ministries because I knew it was going to change. I just didn't know how it was going to change. And you know, even more important than that though I think was a recognition that there's people like me that love, you know, they love what they do. But they also liked to do other things, they like to be involved in ministry and they like to be able to serve and it's really difficult to do that in some businesses. And so I really wanted to build a business that encouraged, you know, the kind of behavior that, that I do and then I would want from other people, which is not all, it's not all about work. And I was a young life leader and Elizabeth visit a classic example. So I was a young life leader and if you don't know anything about young life as a high school ministry with young life, a lot of it revolves around going to camp. You go to, you have these incredible camp, you know, trips in the summer. But if you are a leader on a camping trip, it, you were exhausted when you get back and you'll come back and you can burn through your vacation time. And everybody in the office is like, Oh man, I hope you had a great week. You know, you must be refreshed and you're like, it's the opposite. And so when we started the company, one of the things that we said was we want to promote ministry and so we recognize going on a mission trip or doing young life or things like that that's not really vacation, that's just partly vacation. And so we, we had ministry matching program and things like that to be able to, you know, encourage the behavior and not take, have them, you know, lose all their vacation time through serving, things like that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Fantastic. So what would it take to start like a web based application for like for clients, what does, what does the process look like?
Speaker 3:Well, so for us, we were a client services company for years, so when I first started the company we didn't know what we were doing and we just pretty much a consulting firm. So we would work with companies to understand and then we started building applications for them as we kind of fell into that niche of where they really needed a website presence. And so we would work with them in doing that. And so, um, that's, that's what we started really until about 2001, 2001 the client's client side of our business just got devastated when nine slash 11 happened. It, it really, it hurt when we were about 50 percent a secular businesses and 50 percent ministries that we were working with and both sides of the house when he's devastated the, the, um, the secondary businesses had a hard time raising money because all the capital got locked up. Nobody knew what was gonna happen and the nonprofits they were suffering because they didn't, they didn't know what was going to look like. There was a lot of money that was going towards nine slash 11 type things. Um, they just, they groves all of their capital expenditures, which everything we did with the capital expenditure. And so at that point I'm sitting on a staff of 20 people that, you know, I've grown to love and I know their families and you know, what are you going to do? There's no work. And so what we did was we said, well, we gotta do something. And so we started building our first product, that's how it happened. So we launched our first product as a result of really not having other stuff that we could work on. And that first product was a political insights, which still exists today. We still have people that use it, but at the time, um, there's before facebook and twitter and all that, and it was just a, it was just a real simple way for people that were involved in campus ministry, like young life or intervarsity to be able to log in and build out a webpage with a calendar and a photo albums like that. Yeah. So you really were before
Speaker 2:your time there for sure. Yeah. So, so do you still have a core, because it sounds like back back then it was 50 slash 50 secular and Christian, do you have a core market today? Do you lean heavier on one segment?
Speaker 3:Well, so now we are strictly a product company. So we launched that product called m science and um, as people kind of left the company when we just shrunk down, shrunk down from down until it really was just me. And then, uh, one of my friends that I worked with, he had an idea, he saw what was going on with insights and he had an idea for his own product. And so I said, well, let's get together, let's partner up and we'll kind of rebuild the company around instead of being a services company that's building bell about being a product company. So when, when my partner Kevin came on board, um, we launched our next product which is called tick, which is a time tracking application. So one of the things that we struggled with as a client services company was being profitable in the way that we spend our time. So you'd sell a project, right? And it's going to be whatever, 5,000 hours of work, you know, distributed across your team where you burn through those hours. And next thing you know, you didn't make any money on the project. Wow. And so, uh, Kevin had a really mature idea for how to approach time tracking and hitting your budgets for projects and that became our next project, which was called tic. And um, so do you have, do you have a few developers writing code? Is that what they were doing? What you were doing at that time? It was just the two of us. And then grow from there. Then we're like, wow, we really liked this product is. So we started kind of building around that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Um, so now talk to me about today, you know, fast forward a few years and sure, how many people right now are working for your company? And I think your company is software software as a service s a n, s, k a s.
Speaker 3:yeah. So at what happened is after we launched a, you know, a couple of products, we kind of found our niche, what, what it is that we want to do. And so we create. The way that we say is we create simple software that solves seemingly complex problems. So we take something like podcasting and podcast hosting which can really be intimidated and we make it very, very simple. Neil, our very first product, that was it. We, we took something that was really complicated. How do I build a website just to be able to communicate with, you know, the kids and what's going on in the ministry and we solved that problem simply so right now we have, there's about 12 of us on the team and we have several different products so we haven't emphasized park which we still support and then we have a bus route which is our podcasting application tick, which is time tracking shrink here, which is a, a kind of a real specialized software in the physician space. We wanted to to kind of experiment in the physician space because there's so much opportunity to solve complex problem there. And so we have a product called treme care, which is the most profitable way for physicians to be able to run their own in office pharmacy. That's what we.
Speaker 2:So, so talk to me about[inaudible] and I apologize your company's name is higher pixels and I was actually moved by your mission statement of making products that work. You know, it seems like that should be everybody's mission statement, but I've worked with some software that really is kind of buggy and yours is known to be very friendly. You must have seen that as a big issue that could be solved.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we definitely. It goes without saying that software should work and nobody wants to build software that doesn't work. Where the real opportunity existed for us was to make it simple. You know, one of the products I didn't mention is one called donor tools and donor towards the product that we launched that helps with managing donors so you can enter in donations and things like that. And it's a good example of that. The opportunity is everything that's out there we think is way too complicated. So we said we're gonna, we're gonna solve it and a very simple way. We're not going to do all of this craziness that's out there. We're going to focus on what can we do really well, what, what will feel simple to the user so that it's just intuitive. Um, you know, they don't have to go through training and webinars to be able to just understand it. That's, that's all of our software is designed that way and that's kind of the opportunity that we, that we look at. Is it a complex problem or is it seemingly complex that we can solve in a simple way?
Speaker 2:You know, we, uh, I work with several nonprofits. One of them uses donor tools and literally, literally word for word Ha. They said this is the easiest program we've ever worked with. And so what I've noticed, and you must do a really good job with managing your team, is that something that seems to flow for a designer might not flow for just somebody off the street. And then you end up spending a lot of time having to learn it. And I think that's really been maybe one of your successes is somebody can walk right in and feel good about it. Yeah. How do you know? How do you get to that?
Speaker 3:I think it's funny because I think it goes back to what we were talking about even before we started recording. It's how you engage with people, right? And that is not my ability. If I would've designed any of these websites, they would not be friendly and they would not be simple and they would not work well. I'm a technical. I'm a technical guy, right? I don't care about colors and how it's laid out. I want to, you know, whatever I want to look more like the database. It's just easier for me to program sure. But Kevin, who, you know, came on as a partner and when we got into this, uh, into this space, we had always worked together and complimented each other really well because that's his, that's what he's really good at. And so giving him the freedom to be able to make design and interface type decisions and be empowered in that area. And then he doesn't. Same with me on, on the, on the technical side. And then now within our pixel, even have another partner, a Marshall and Marshall really helps us out on the financial side. He's much more into the those operations takes things and he also has a deep background in the physician space. So over our string care product, he provides a lot of talent and ability that complements of the rest of the team.
Speaker 2:I, I love seeing that approach too and I try to emulate that even in my own organization where, you know, I'm getting older and so I understand what I'm good at, but I also understand where I need help and um, uh, you know, unafraid to ask for people with those skillsets to kind of come alongside and formed this great team. And it sounds like that's what you've done at higher pixels.
Speaker 3:That's the goal, right? We're always telling people we want, we want them to be able to really find out what their gifts are being used them in their job because that's the, that's what really gets you excited. We talk about Monday morning, are you excited to go to work or excited? And if you found that match Monday morning, you know, you hit the feet, your feet hit the ground and you were ready to go. And that's, that's what you want, you want to. And people appreciate that when you help them find that for themselves. And sometimes it's saying, look, this isn't your thing.
Speaker 2:No, you know what you are at, you know, we call it talent in transition. And so I know that, you know, you can tell when someone is getting fulfillment from what they do and if they're not, then one of the kindest things that you can do for them is kind of help them figure out what their passion is and sometimes maybe even help them find the career in that field. And it's so, so, so now you have a very specialized team member that you're looking for. And what I'm hearing more and more as this term that there's a war on talent. So, um, how, how hard is it for you to find great team members? And then when you do find them, what do you do to try to keep them on your team?
Speaker 3:Sure. Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I think
Speaker 2:I haven't answered it myself yet. Time I'm, I'm asking you so you can help.
Speaker 3:I can only speak to a little bit of it from, you know, we have tried to stay small and so we don't want to be huge. We don't want, we don't, it's not our intention to have 100 people working in the company or anything like that. We want to stay as small as we can because we feel like with small teams, it really, it, it really allows us to fill our days with the things that we want to fill our days with. And um, and so we don't, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about how can we, how can we hire more people now when there are leads that come up, that's when we typically will go to the network for the people that are already here of trying to find people that are talented in those areas. But we don't, we don't really hire a lot. And I think, I think that works well for the people that are here because you have to about, you know, how do you keep people. And I think that we're able to do things with our, with our team, because there isn't this high turnover, there's, you know, a new person at every, every time you go to a meeting that there's a new person there. And so when you look at how we structure our, our values within the company, a lot of it revolves around the team and providing opportunities for the team to enjoy the work that they do. Um, because I'm kind of the team and I want to enjoy what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:I love some of the things that you're talking about because first of all you're saying we have a small team so that allows you to know them and them to know you. And I think that's a basic need as a human we have to feel like, hey, we're part of something. And, and my, the people I work with know who I am. But then once you find these people, you're using them as a network to bring other people in who already kind of know the culture at your place because their friends are telling them, hey, please come. Here's what it's like. So I would imagine that you probably have a better shot of retaining good team members once you do need them.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of truth to that. It's counterintuitive I think for, for some people because they kind of put the product first when really the product is accompany the product team and so you really have to build that way. It just doesn't, it doesn't come naturally, I think to some people who, who um, you know, maybe they haven't been burned before or they haven't had that experience yet. But I know for us we've, we've learned our lesson and we appreciate the life that it gives us with the focus on the team and the company. Not so much A. I mean, we want great product, but we get great products by focusing on the team. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2:absolutely. You know, I think, um, talk to me a little bit about, and this is maybe a very close to us because we're using buzzsprout. What is very easy to use by the way. Yeah, we, we love it. And I'm telling you, I, as I shared, I knew nothing. So I walked in and said, hey, you know, how can we do this? How did you come up with the idea to do bus where you just kind of first to the market where you noticed, hey, there's a lot of these podcasts happening.
Speaker 3:What was, what was the idea behind it? It's funny because you've heard, you've heard the history of how we got there. And so after we launched that product insights and we worked with those campus ministers, the guys that were doing like young life and in intervarsity and camp campus ministries, a lot of those people went on to be pastors and churches and they said, well, can we keep using them sites? You know, it's not campus ministry but we, we know the tool and we want the photo album and want the calendar or wanting to use it for our church. And so next thing you know, our insights product was not just being used by campus ministries, but it was being used by churches and all kinds of different organizations. But those churches wanting to get their sermons online. And so we were constantly having to write these complicated instructions for them to get their sermons posted on the Internet and we said, you know, what did we just need to build a product? We might never make any money off of this thing, but we need to build a product and make it easy because churches, it's just too difficult for them to get their sermons online. And so this was, I don't know, 2006, 2007 when we start having these conversations about it. And that's where buzzsprout came from. So when we launched in Buzzsprout, it was, it was really designed for churches to be able to easily post their sermons. Now that's a podcast, but nobody called it. The attorneys didn't call it a five based on calls it, their CV ministry used to go deliver dvds. And so that's when we launched the product. It was great. We had it set up and it would send us an email anytime posts, anybody posted, uh, you know, an episode out there for the, for the Internet. And so Sunday at 12:00 you started to get emails from these small mom and pop churches that they knew nothing about technology, but they were uploading their sermons and getting them online, you know, quicker than my church, which was like a young hip shirt. But you know, they wouldn't launch theirs until probably Tuesday. Uh, and so it was really, it was a cool experience and it wasn't long before when he got out there that other podcasters started using it.
Speaker 2:And, and, and, and hopefully your churches using bus, they are, you know, what, what's that, you know, in the Bible, Jesus, you know, it's kind of like the people that respected in the lease. Whereas his own community at first know maybe it was no honor your account, hey, you know, we really thank you for being on. And before we go, we kind of have a fun segment and we call it a, it's this one or that one and we put you on the spot, but it's not too bad. It's just kind of in a fun way. And so we're gonna kind of tell you to people and we want you to kind of tell us your favorite one and maybe why. And it's okay to pass if it, it won't be controversial, but in case you want to your more than once. Okay. So, so here's our first one. I'm elan musk or Richard Branson.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay. I thought you might say that. I love all that. Yeah, I love sex. I love that we launched a roadster into space.
Speaker 2:Hey. And I was wondering if maybe, you know, cause your, your childhood desire to be an astronaut, you know, hey, you still may get your shot if he's a okay. Next one. Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
Speaker 3:Oh, Bill Gates. You know, it's amazing. Everybody is saying Bill Gates to tell us why did a remarkable thing in that he made the jump from, you know, having his life so tied up in his business to recognizing that it wasn't going to give him the ultimate fulfillment that wasn't gonna. You know what I mean? That wasn't going to be the thing that, that he was going to be remembered for. I'm going to spend the rest of my life working with my family in serving the world to do incredible things. And so Bill Gates I think is an incredible, incredible act to follow.
Speaker 2:I think you're hitting on something and you know, I work around a lot of very young people and what I'm finding is that they're, they're actually extremely hard working, but they, there's that legacy piece and there's also that, you know, they, they really are cause driven more than I think any other group in, in history. Um, maybe that's a little bit presumptuous to say, but I'm going to stick with it. All right? Uh, next would be Steven Spielberg or Walt Disney.
Speaker 3:Ooh. Ooh, this is the hard one. This is the first pause we've gotten. Yeah. I don't know. I might have to go with Steven Spielberg. You know what? I will crown you as being a forward thinker because you are the first one to say spellbreak. Tell us why. Well, I do like it. I like movies more than the movies that I liked. I, I love what he did in setting up a, you know, when he's much more than producing movies, but I do like the way that Steve, I like whether it's Spielberg and push the movie industry and on the side fly guy. And so I, yeah, I am too. So I would tend to lean to Spielberg but I think it just, you and I were kind of on an island right now. Alright. So a star wars or Harry Potter. Oh my gosh, that's a no brainer. Star Wars,
Speaker 2:you know. Okay. Yeah, I'm, I'm right there with the. Although I have three daughters and I have read religiously every Harry Potter book seen every movie with um, uh, you know, they, it's almost a prerequisite to be in our house.
Speaker 3:And I love, I love the books, but man, when it comes to the star genre, like in everything around star wars now with all the, all the content that's coming out and it's, I love it.
Speaker 2:All right. Last one here is Broadway or rock and roll.
Speaker 1:A personal question to me. I have to be honest. I know, I know. I, I
Speaker 3:say rock and roll so that I sound better, would probably be Broadway. I'm finding myself thinking more and more of a. wait. What's the, what's the show that just came out?
Speaker 2:Hamilton and dear Evan Hansen.
Speaker 1:Well, with Hugh Jackman. Greatest. Greatest showman. Yeah, the greatest showman, you know. And tell me a huge fan of les mis.
Speaker 2:Tell me about the makeup of your houses that you have for kids. Are they boys or girls?
Speaker 3:I'm the oldest is a boy and youngest is a girl. My oldest is 14 and my youngest is four. I've got a nice spread.
Speaker 2:Yeah you do. So I have all, I have 21, 18 and 16. All girls I know more than any middle age man should know about Broadway. And, and if I don't know it is five years ago I knew nothing. Now I know more and it's the language I speak to my girls with. So you know, you fit right in here. Well, I'm, I'm not sure if you've passed the test or not, but um, you know, we just really want to thank you for, for being on the show and you know, as I mentioned when we were talking beforehand, we were really, uh, I was really impressed with kind of your mission statement about, um, you know, running a business and there is an element of fun and wanting to come to work and success being more than just about profit. So we, uh, definitely, uh, thank you very much for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:So, so, uh, final, final thing would be tell us a, either a favorite leader or maybe a life quote that you stand by
Speaker 3:right now. I find myself really inspired. I'm Andy Stanley has a lot of influence over me. I listened to his leadership podcast, I listen to a sermon and I think he's a great leader of our time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I would have to agree with you. One of our, our, one of my good friends actually works for him and he is the real deal
Speaker 1:for sure. Wow, that's neat. Hey Tom, how do we contact you? What, what can we do to get you some more business?
Speaker 3:Oh, 10 people. The higher pixels.com. And see if there's a product that catches your interest for sure. Uh, for, for podcasting, donor tools that, you know, nonprofits that are looking for a simple way to track their donations, things like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome. So just use the title, go on the Internet and, and, and you got 20 some people in the shop, so it's going to be 12. 12. Oh Wow. And I must say your support system is excellent. They give me answers every time I have a question and we have questions. Oh yeah, I believe it's Priscilla. Is that WHO's in support? Yeah, she's very good and I really appreciate it. So thank you for being with us here on a server's journey. Thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate your expertise here. Remember to subscribe to the podcast so you could hear what all of rocky wants to share with you about being a good leader. Learning to lead by serving. And if you subscribe you'll be getting a server's journey moment. It's a quick pick me up to help start your day. If you like what you hear, tell a friend like us and share us on facebook. Also from time to time, rocky has some great personal stories that you would like to share with you and you can get those on the website. That's a server's journey.com. So rocky, until next time I'm. You're ever faithful companion Larry. So Larry, does that make you the robin to my Batman. Got Close. We're close. Hey, I like that. I've never been called Batman before. If you take that hood off, maybe we could see in a police, you know the, the, the mask, the mask, the mask man, yet I think you don't want to say anymore, but. Oh, okay. Hey, we are all on a journey and it's how you serve in that role. And, and really that's what all this is about, that we sharing on a server journey. So I am rocky Desta final and I want to thank you for joining us as together we learned to be better leaders.