Owning an online business can mean making quick decisions about what software you will use or what features you may need to forgo to meet a project deadline. But did you know that through the course of making all these decisions, you are likely accumulating technical debt? Listen in as Emily and Corey from the Being Boss team explore what tech debt is, how it shows up in your business, and the painful problems it can cause.
Get full shownotes for this episode here >>
Owning an online business can mean making quick decisions about what software you will use or what features you may need to forgo to meet a project deadline. But did you know that through the course of making all these decisions, you are likely accumulating technical debt? Listen in as Emily and Corey from the Being Boss team explore what tech debt is, how it shows up in your business, and the painful problems it can cause.
Get full shownotes for this episode here >>
Welcome to Being Boss, a podcast for creatives, business owners and entrepreneurs who want to take control of their work and live life on their own terms. I'm your host, Emily Thompson, and in this episode, I'm not only joined by my podcast companion Corey Winter, but I'm interviewing him on building a good online presence for your business from the start. Or in other words, not accumulating a little something called tech debt. You can find all the tools, books, and links we reference on the show notes at www.bing boss.club. And if you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to this show and share us with a friend. Having a fulfilling career and succeeding in business are what we're all here to accomplish. Right? Well, if it resonates, then I've got a new show for you to check out that's all about educating you on how to best market yourself in the new digital age. It's called Big Brand Energy, hosted by Sophie Wilson, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals with episodes on building an authentic brand and how business and online dating are the same. You'll get a fresh take on online marketing in the new year. Listen to Big Brand Energy wherever you get your podcasts.
Corey Winter:So I'm a companion again.
Emily Thompson:Well, I figured if you were gonna make such a fuss about being a pal bro, a bro, pal, then I would lateral move you back to companion.
Corey Winter:It's a lateral move. Okay.
Emily Thompson:Yes. In my mind it was lateral.
Corey Winter:Oh, okay.
Emily Thompson:Previously.
Corey Winter:Okay.
Emily Thompson:Um, so you are back to companion, but you're also interviewee today. How does that feel?
Corey Winter:A little stressful. Not sure I can actually. Put out words. We'll see how this goes.
Emily Thompson:Good thing you edit it.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:Then I'm very excited about this one. A couple of weeks ago or every couple of weeks, the Being Boss team gets together and we're like, okay, what, what? What is Emily talking about, basically over the next couple of episodes, and everyone always throws out some really good ideas, you should all know that all of these episodes that you are delivered, it ain't just me. There is a content team that is helping me come up with ideas and help create agendas and ask questions and those sorts of things. And a lot of it comes from the Being Boss community. If you are not a member of the Being Boss community, I highly recommend you go check that place out. There's all kinds of conversations that are being had on obviously creative entrepreneurship. And a lot of those conversations do make or do inspire the conversations that we are having here on this show. So we were recently in one of those meetings with the team and Corey yells out tech debt.
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:And I was like, I don't even know what that is. What are you saying to me? Are those words?
Corey Winter:Those are words.
Emily Thompson:And you went on to explain
Corey Winter:Yes, those are words. So I have. A bone to pick with.
Emily Thompson:Oh boy.
Corey Winter:The internet as a whole.. Emily Thompson: I got a And specifically with people that build things on the internet, because there's this little phrase, it's a little, little buzz buzzword, buzz phrase called tech debt.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:It was a term coined by Ward. Ward. Ward. Ward Cunningham.
Emily Thompson:Ward
Corey Winter:Ward.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:Ward Cunningham. He is a computer programmer. Uh, he has been in the game for, for decades. Uh, he's actually the original inventor of the Wiki. Not Wikipedia, but like the thing wiki. He invented the Wiki and he coined the term tech debt. Uh, it's a term specifically used for coding and programming, but it can be used in a broader sense, just technology in general. And the idea is that it's the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
Emily Thompson:Mm.
Corey Winter:And so this is all gonna tie into working smarter, not harder, really. Actually, maybe even the opposite, working harder in the beginning so you can work smarter later. and this has come up a lot in the client work that I do, so much so that I think it's kind of accidentally become what I specialize in because I've had a lot of clients come to me that previously maybe worked with another developer or did everything themselves, and they did things in a way that is not sustainable. And so trying to change anything in the future or trying to do things, just changing things up in general is even harder than it should have been if they had just done things in a different way to begin with. So that's my bone to pick with the internet is that a lot of things that just have not been done well because they weren't thought all the way through.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. That is a nice little bone to pick. Love that. For you and the internet, whenever you started explaining this to me a little bit, it all made sense and for me, I, I recalled years at Indie Shopography where there wasn't a phrase for this, but I was literally trying to sell people on not having tech debt.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:and what this looks like. And why this matters. Just sort of bring it into some context. I know it's not just websites, it's so many things back in.
Corey Winter:All of the things.
Emily Thompson:Right? It's all of the things. Back in the day, whenever I was working in websites, it was around building e-commerce sites and people would come to me going, well, what's the difference? And, you know, going with you and this like big e-commerce platform as I'm just getting started in business and just going, and starting at that point it was like a very small and not very highly functional Squarespace site.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:or whatever it may be. Back. I mean, this is 10 years ago y'all, plus years ago, um, Squarespace was a baby with no functionality back then. And so it was like fully functioning website or just like a blanding page, and I was explaining to them, you're gonna pay one way or the other. The question is, do you wanna pay again in a year? Or do you want to do the thing that you are trying to build with the things that you need to build the thing that you wanna build and not having to do another rebuild super soon? Because the goal is that you outgrow the basic thing really quickly. That's why you're here.
Corey Winter:Yes, exactly.
Emily Thompson:Is start the business and do the thing. So it often looks like, I think probably the context for, for everyone listening to this is websites. You can also think like some payment processor aspects of this as well. Also, I think email marketing platforms is a really great
Corey Winter:mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:um, thing to look at. Whatever we're having this conversation, what am I missing?
Corey Winter:So those were actually the big ones that I was gonna really pull examples from. So yes, definitely build on your website, email marketing platforms slash customer relationship platforms, uh, but also, Team management, things like project management software.
Emily Thompson:Ooh, yes.
Corey Winter:Team, team communication software. But also this could apply to in-person hardware as well. If you run a retail shop, so like your POS system and things like that. So just computers, anything, any, any tech.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:In your, in your business could apply to this.
Emily Thompson:Yep. Right. It's opting for the cheap and fast now as opposed to investing in the good now so that you don't experience growing pains quite so quickly.
Corey Winter:And,
Emily Thompson:yeah.
Corey Winter:Yes, and this is all essentially one big metaphor for monetary debt. So it also has interest. So if technical debt is not repaid, it can accumulate interest, making it harder to implement changes in the future.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely. This is what I was always selling people on when it came to e-commerce back in the day, right. Where this is gonna be a big project and I would always get questions of like, well, can't we just like migrate things over like in a year whenever I'm done? Yes. If you wanna basically pay just as much as you would pay for me to do it right, right now, because those migrations, um, I think are usually more difficult than just setting it up well, the first time. I also think of literally all the times that we have moved email marketing platforms. Oh my God.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Like that is literally. Corey's job . So like I'm like the least fun thing ever, but I haven't done that in a long time. Thank you, Corey.
Corey Winter:and i, I was actually gonna say, I'm gonna save the bigger examples for later in the episode, but actually now that you mentioned that moving e-commerce or e email marketing systems, One big example comes to mind, that's actually something we're currently dealing with, uh, at Biddy Tarot. And for the most part, I'm not gonna mention client names or anything during this episode because most of these issues are painting a customer in a bad light. So I'm not gonna mention customer names or anything during this episode, but I will mention Biddy Tarot right now. Uh, specifically because we have been using Ontraport, they have been using Ontraport for 10 years. Like they're one of the oldest Ontraport clients. And Ontraport is not really meant to be used for companies of a large scale, like a, a company that has, you know, seven figure eight figure businesses. They're really meant for like mid-size businesses. But back when Biddy Tarot started using Ontraport, it was a mid-size business. But now we have ingrained Ontraport so heavily into the business, like with all the APIs that tie into delivering content and empowering our e-commerce systems. All of our products, everything goes through Ontraport. We have hundreds of thousands of contacts in Ontraport, thousands of emails, who knows how many transactions and things. We are so integrated into the Ontraport ecosystem. It's impossible to get out of it. Like we want to move to a better platform for the size of business that we are, but we, it's almost impossible at this point because we did not, or I say, wait, I was not here during this time, but the team as a whole did not anticipate the growth and so they kind of locked themselves in and now it's almost impossible to get out of it.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, that's a really interesting scenario. It gives me anxiety.
Corey Winter:Yeah
Emily Thompson:Really just hearing you say those things because I see how that can happen. I also do want to say that time is a, big element of this conversation as well.
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:Whereas I imagine in that scenario, and I can think of a couple of like personal scenarios as well, you know, back in those like baby days of the internet, love that or baby days of like regular people doing e-commerce on the internet, right. There weren't very many options, and so you just went with what was there.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:And then things grew and changed, and then other options became available that were better options for what you do. But you were already in this thing and you didn't migrate then because things were gonna, or like new features were coming or whatever it may be. And so it's easy to just find yourself with debt
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:With tech debt as a product of operating on the internet, which really even makes it more important than to really sit down and have the kinds of conversations very early on around what your goals are, what sort of business you want to grow. Um, and really this is a, a reason to think about business plans in a way that, you know, we don't really talk about a ton here, um, but is really important for building this infrastructure for your business. So anyway, that's just like nutshell what we're talking about today.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:I hope everyone can understand why. So important, how it really does affect each and every one of us in some aspect or another. I have some really great examples of how this has affected my work over the years and multiple different kinds of businesses, and I'm excited to dive in.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:So Corey, first question for you, sir.
Corey Winter:Yes,
Emily Thompson:actually, really quick. Okay. If you wouldn't mind giving me like a 32nd. Why you can talk about this.
Corey Winter:Ooh, ooh, put, ooh, this is gonna stroke my ego. So
Emily Thompson:I know.
Corey Winter:I, I have a huge tech background in my career. I have been building websites for 20 ish years now. Uh, but then my technical expertise has, has grown. So I obviously, we worked full-time on website development at Indie Shopography for several years. Uh, my expertise grew into podcast editing about eight, nine years ago. Um, and then at Biddy Tarot and other clients, I have grown my expertise into email marketing systems and funnel building. And, and the whole wide range of people, uh, have worked with huge clients, uh, to clean up their tech systems. Uh, so it's really my specialty nowadays is focusing on tech debt that clients and companies have in helping them address those issues and figuring out the path forward. So this really is my specialty nowadays for Being Boss, but also for Biddy Tarot and all of the clients I still have.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Oh, I love that because you have done this for us for years. Um, I love that it has like such a nerdy little name. Alright, perfect. So then let's like really dive into this and a couple of key little aspects to this really big conversation. First, why does it matter and really what does it hurt to accumulate tech debt? Why should people listening to this think ahead.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:and plan for bigger, better solutions as opposed to going with the fast, cheap, and easy of right now.
Corey Winter:Yes. And I, I do wanna preface this by saying tech debt does not have to be a bad thing. Just like financial debt does not have to be a bad thing as long as you are aware of the debt. But we'll talk about that in a second. Uh, so as far as what tech debt hurts, there's four big things. The first big thing is dissatisfied users or customers. So if you're putting out some kind of customer facing thing, maybe something like a new website or e-course platform or anything like that, if you're building it or maybe going to a pre-built platform that maybe does not have all the functionality you need, it results in a bad user experience. Which turns into possibly refunds and, and poor reviews. And poor recommendations and just a bad customer experience.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Or like I imagine part of this is also lost sales.
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:I was having a conversation with someone recently who, and now that I think about th this, it is a tech debt issue of using an old platform or using the platform she'd been using for years. But because she'd had it for so long, it did not have functionality that allowed her team to easily build sales pa, sales pages.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:So it was like a little more intense for them to do it. They thought they could do it. They went in, they thought they did it, launched the thing, didn't test the button, didn't.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:So she launched the thing and had people going to it, and it took a couple of hours for someone to finally email and be like, I tried to buy this thing and I could not. An issue, like a dissatisfied user, literally lost sales because using an old platform that was not as easy for her team to utilize, um, to create the things she needed to launch what she was launching. Yes. And that actually ties into another one of these. So the next
Corey Winter:thing is limited innovation. Uh, so when tech debt is severe, developers or if it's, you know, maybe your team or something, uh, needs to continue servicing the issues instead of devoting time to building new innovative features. So if your team is spending all their time fixing things instead of building new things, that's tech debt.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Oh, that's literally interest.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:That you're paying.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm. Yes.
Emily Thompson:Oh, and. Labor hours.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:Snap. I love that. I mean, I don't, I love that , but like, yes. That's real. That's real. Real. Okay. I wanna share another aspect of this too, or, uh, maybe a way you can see re red flags.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:or whenever I am searching for a new platform for anything like, you know, social media manager, email, marketing, platform, whatever, whatever. I always go look at their change logs.
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:Or like their announcements for new features. Are they managing their own platform? Are they creating their own new features? Are they like listening to the customers and creating little buttons and widgets and all the things that they need? Or have they not updated their own software in three months? Because sometimes the tech debt isn't just your fault, it's also the fault of the platform.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:And so that's a way that I, um, it's a way, or one of the things I do when I'm searching for new, for new. Platforms for things as I'm checking their updates to see how active their team is.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Because if their team is not active, this limited innovation is gonna happen even faster.
Corey Winter:Yeah. Uh uh so actually I'm glad you said that. So over at Biddy Tarot, we're, we're all up in our metrics reporting project right now. We're trying to reinvent how we're doing metrics reporting and data calculations and everything just to kind of centralize it and make sure we're getting a clearer picture on all of our conversion points and stuff like that. Uh, so we're trying to find a new dashboard platform that actually integrates with Ontraport and everything that can build, like pretty graphs and stuff like that. And we came across one service that does have an Ontraport integration, which is relatively rare and it looked great, but I dove a little bit deeper into this platform. Their website, the copyright date. Was like four years old.
Emily Thompson:Ooh.
Corey Winter:Their Facebook group had
Emily Thompson:red flag.
Corey Winter:Their Facebook page had not been updated in a couple of years. And so it's just not painting a pretty picture that this was actually a platform that was, that was constantly being kept up to date. And so that was kind of like a red flag, like, yeah, maybe it works right now, but will it work a year from now?
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:So I would not recommend signing up for that, because you might have to start all over again if this software ever actually stops working.
Emily Thompson:Yep. Oh, that's, yeah. Check those things.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:You, uh, you also mentioned integrations. I also like to look at what mm-hmm. things integrate with because if there's just a couple, they're not doing much. If they have like a really great integration list, um, then they're doing their job. If they have too many integrations, I'm like, something's a little odd here. Are these all real?
Corey Winter:Yeah. So we're getting into kind of like the prevention things. So what to look out for, uh, let's,
Emily Thompson:oh, am I getting ahead of us
Corey Winter:No, you're fine. You're fine. It all.
Emily Thompson:Totally.
Corey Winter:It all ties in.
Emily Thompson:I am.
Corey Winter:It all ties in.
Emily Thompson:Okay, good.
Corey Winter:It's totally fine.
Emily Thompson:then what's, what next? What is another one of these four?
Corey Winter:Yes. So number three is longer development cycles. Uh, so yet again, this is all coming from a tech perspective, like coding and stuff, but it could be applied in a broader sense. Uh, so as tech deck debt worsens, it becomes harder for developers to work within the existing code base, splitting time between developing new features and correcting old ones, which slows the build process and delays time to market. So this could apply for obviously website development, but also maybe email marketing funnels and stuff like that.
Emily Thompson:I mean, I think about this with our old website projects.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:I never loved it when someone came to me with an old clunky website and wanted to update that thing.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Right. Absolutely not. I will create for you a whole new website and I'll do that painful migration process and I'll do the thing, but going in and one, figuring out someone else's code or figuring, actually same thing for email flows for like people build email flows differently. I can't look at your email flows and make any sense of it. And I know that you can't look at mine and make any sense of it. Like we build them completely differently. And so it's going to take twice as long for me to just get in there and figure something out, like what I'm looking at before I go and start tweaking and building, um, as opposed to just doing something fresh over here completely separate from that thing that I don't understand.
Corey Winter:Yeah. This is kind of where the bandaid solution comes into play. If you identify a problem and you implement a simple fix with the idea yet, oh, we'll back and fix it later, but then you never come back and fix it later.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:Then when you actually come in to do something new, it's a whole bigger issue because you're not only having to try to build something new, you're also having to deal with this age old issue that is gonna take hours and hours and hours to fix.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:So the idea is that instead you should keep things more maintained, more up to date on a consistent basis. So when it does come, tend to do something new, it's a lot easier and simpler.
Emily Thompson:Amen to that. What's the fourth one?
Corey Winter:The fourth one? That's a scary one. It's,
Emily Thompson:yeah.
Corey Winter:Security problems.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Real, real.
Corey Winter:So this one, yet again, tying more heavily into the code side of things, but nowadays it could factor into two factor identification or making sure your passwords are regularly changed out and stuff like that. So poorly written code is often poorly secured, which can introduce unexpected vulnerabilities to enterprise software systems. So applying this in a broader sense, if you go make your password, password, that's uh, first of all just lazy, so come on. But also that's pretty poorly secured, uh, and it's gonna open you up to vulnerabilities. So taking the time at the beginning of the project or beginning of creating your account to set a more secure password or what have you, it's gonna save you issues in the long run.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. I'll also say even looking at the platform thing again, A platform that will allow you to create a password that it's just password. It's also a red flag.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:They should be more secure And security is a real one and it's become more important. It's always been important.
Corey Winter:It's always been.
Emily Thompson:It's become more at the forefront of conversations, especially since GDPR, um, happened a couple of years ago. If you look, Google it. Where in the EU they did some legislation around keeping people's personal information safe on the internet, that, that affected all of us in one way or another.
Corey Winter:So I have, I have two thoughts. So that was, that sucked because that was kind of forced upon us tech debt, because
Emily Thompson:yes,
Corey Winter:everybody on the internet had to scramble to implement these changes to keep customers data private and give them options to opt out of things. So that was things we were not prepared for, like no one was prepared for.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:And so when that put, when was put into effect, everyone had to scramble to address that debt immediately, which kind of sucked. But this also ties into our examples section of this podcast.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:uh, which is where I get to kind of tell some Corey stories. So.
Emily Thompson:Great, this is gonna be a four parter now.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:Everybody.
Corey Winter:So the big scary one, kind of tying into the security we were just talking about, uh, I had a client whose website was infected by malware.
Emily Thompson:Mm.
Corey Winter:And it created a whole snowball of big issues.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:And so going back, I guess three years ago, they paid no attention to securing their website. So they didn't have any kind of firewalls in place. They didn't have any kind of like captures or anything on their admin interface. So if some kind of robot or or bad actor wanted to get.
Emily Thompson:They were low-hanging fruit.
Corey Winter:Yeah. Low-hanging fruit on unsecured server, everything. So their site got infected by malware. Uh, you know, and it was all kinds of, popups and things. I'll just put it at that . Um, so that created issue number one. Just their site was taken over by, by unseemly things, which had to be addressed because they were actually, this was a law firm and so they were having like, clients that were coming to them for legal things and their website was showing them porn. So, big issue. Right?
Emily Thompson:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Corey Winter:Um, so first of all, that just that malware was a headache to clean up because it was infecting all parts of the website. It was on the backend of the website. It was on the server. It was in the database. It was all over. It was a nightmare to clean up. Two years later. The website is still showing up on malware blacklists because robots of these security providers that scanned the website back when it was still infected, they have not updated their listings for this website. So a lot of security providers still think the website is infected. Even though it's com, it's confirmed clean by multiple providers.
Emily Thompson:Wow.
Corey Winter:So this is causing the website to be blocked by different internet providers. So AT&T actually one of the bigger providers in the country is actually still blocking this website for, for a lot of people. Even though the website is clean, it's been verified clean, but AT&T still thinks it's infected.
Emily Thompson:That was an awful story before it turned into an awful- er story.
Corey Winter:And actually it snowball. Because of malware infections, it's actually, it's a domain reputation thing. So it's infecting, or it's affecting their email deliverability as well. So they're having issue emailing clients because their domain name is also being flagged as malware.
Emily Thompson:Oh.
Corey Winter:So it's affecting their entire business.
Emily Thompson:Ew.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Okay. Uh, you started, I think with, was that the best one?
Corey Winter:That was
Emily Thompson:Or the worst?
Corey Winter:That was the scariest one.
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Corey Winter:So number two, my second example is a coding thing. So more like just development, poor development practices.
Emily Thompson:This is why you hire a good website person, everybody.
Corey Winter:This, this is why you, you should.
Emily Thompson:Not your cousin.
Corey Winter:Do your due diligence when you're hiring someone to build something new for you. Whether it's a website or your email marketing, what have you. Just when you're hiring an outside somebody to come build something for you. Make sure you're hiring someone that comes with glowing recommendations and, and can show their work. Because I have an example of a client who was launching a brand new community platform, community website where people could pay to have a membership to access things like e-courses and a community forum and free webinars and all this stuff. A big paid platform with a bunch of content. Because their previous version of the community was running on a platform that was six, seven years old. And if you have been on the internet.
Emily Thompson:That's ancient.
Corey Winter:Yeah. For a community platform.
Emily Thompson:In internet years.
Corey Winter:Yeah. So with all of the innovation that social networks and, and things like that have had the past few years, a six, seven year old platform for a community, super old, it's not what people are expecting anymore. So they finally put in all of the money all the time to hire an agency to relaunch their community offering and the team for this company before it launched flagged that the way it was being built was not ideal, at least as far as the code went. It was not being built in a very database friendly way because this was a pretty high trafficked community. So thousands of members, if thousands of members are accessing this, there's gonna be a lot of data on the backend. So it's gonna be a huge database, and if the servers not to the task, it's gonna load slow and stuff like that. Uh, so it was flagged that the code and everything on the backend was not being done in a very sustainable way. And it was kind of ignored because it was a very important project to get launched on time because the date had already been announced for when this project or when this new community website was gonna be launched. And so it launched and the problems that were flagged ended up being a problem. It was so slow. Customers were flagging that they were being timed out. They couldn't access anything. So it's just a huge bad launch. And so that actually ties into dissatisfied customers, but also, uh, a longer development cycle because now that the website is launched, another person has been hired to actually go in and fix all those issues that should not have been issues to begin with.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:Scope creep out the wahzoo. It is triple what it should have been, what it should have cost, because not only did they have all of the original payment for the original team, that built it. Now they have to have someone else to come in and fix all the issues. That should have been not an issue to begin with.
Emily Thompson:If this had been done perfectly.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:at what point in this journey should something have happened differently?
Corey Winter:As soon as that issue was flagged.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:It should have been okay to extend the development cycle and not launch a broken product.
Emily Thompson:Hmm.
Corey Winter:So even if it takes longer to build something, it's okay as long as you eventually put out a working product that's actually ties into a video game issue. Cuz I love video games. A couple of years ago, a video game Cyberpunk 2077 launched and it was a broken game, but like it was supposed to be like the next big thing in video games. It was completely broken. PlayStation and Xbox ended up issuing refunds, which they never do. And it was all because in the quality control phase of that video game development. They completely ignored the fact that it was a broken game. They just, from what they were saying, it was fine, but no one actually bothered to raise the flag that, oh, this is gonna cause a lot of problems when it launches. Maybe we should wait until it's actually fixed before we launch it. And so it's a whole thing. So anyway, it's just once you flag that there are issues, slow down, take more time, get it right, wait till it's ready, and then launch it.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Hmm. I wanna look at, I wanna talk a little bit about what this looks like from doing things as best you can from the beginning. I'm gonna use myself as an example, because coming from websites, I understand the importance of this. And so whenever I launched Almanac. You know, launch really small, 2018, handful of products, whole shebang. It would've been very easy for me to go back to any of the platforms that I had developed websites on before and build something that I was used to building that had the ability, or had the functionality that I needed for right now, but was not going to help me get to my goals.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:because my goal was absolutely in-person retail.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:So instead of doing what was fast, cheap, and easy for right now, I could have done it myself. Um, I could have done it super quickly in a platform that I was familiar with. I instead looked at my growth goals and made the decision to go with a platform that I don't know I had built on it like twice before.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Like two times. Not 50. Like some of the other platforms. Two times. Two times before I ended up going to Shopify because it had functionality that I knew I wasn't gonna use for like two years at least. And to this day, six years later, I'm, is it been six years? Holy cow. It has been six years. That came outta my, Nope, it's been four. What is time Timey wimey right? So four years later still on the, in the exact same website, exact same platform. Inventory's in there. Team is using it, training is happening, functionality is growing right as we are in there growing. I made a decision four years ago. For something that I wanted in four years.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:basically, and I invested in doing the big thing then that has me fully functional now, and I have not had to do any major rework to that piece of my technological existence.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:In all of that time. And I probably won't have to for the foreseeable future. Knock on wood.
Corey Winter:Yeah. You had forethought. Good job.
Emily Thompson:Indeed. Indeed. And, and that's what I want. That's what I want for everyone. I want everyone to sort of see the difference in that as well. I think this client you were just talking about with, you know, having had this community built that came to a point where things were not good, needed to move forward, made maybe not the best decision to move forward despite the problems. I wanna make this point that like that first iteration, even though it ended up being the problem, it wasn't the problem.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:Like you do the best you can with what you can, knowing what you know when you know it. But the moment the flag came up is when the problem.
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:Existed and then you move forward from that. So not everyone is a able to make the decision that I made in terms of our like, and whenever I say like website platform at Almanac, Shopify is the system that runs our business. It's our POS, it's tracking our inventory. We do have a separate inventory tracking system that is a whole other conversation. Um, but that was a decision that we made then for now, and I love that for us and is something that I want everyone to think about when they are investing in something because I don't think I'm going to find myself in a situation like this client did because I was at a point in the life of the internet when I could make the investment and where I wanted to be in four, six, 10 years.
Corey Winter:Yeah. So I have one more example I want to, to mention because it, it kind of, it's slightly outside of the tech thing, so it's not gonna be about coding and stuff, uh, but it is tech related. So a little bit more people can, uh, relate to this one. So it's another horror story. It's about being delisted from Google.
Emily Thompson:God, that's like internet suicide.
Corey Winter:Yes. Especially for this company. So this is another client and their entire business ran on their blog. It was a seven figure business and vast majority of their traffic, 90, 95% of the traffic came from Google search and their blog functioned by running ads as well as sponsored blog posts. And so occasionally in my, maybe every couple of weeks, they would publish a blog post that was paid for by some third party. Now with Google, they require you to flag in some way in that post that it is sponsored content, such as if they click on a link and it's a link that could generate money for that business, you have to label it as an affiliate. They had not been doing this for years.
Emily Thompson:Oh God.
Corey Winter:And so when
Emily Thompson:I felt that in my gut.
Corey Winter:Yeah. So when Google finally realized that all of these sponsored posts and affiliate links were not being labeled, they delisted the website entirely from Google. Years and years of Google search results had been wiped overnight, and it obviously tanked their business because all of the traffic ceased to come in. And that dried up their revenue almost overnight because they relied so heavily on traffic from Google. And when you get delisted from Google for, they were flagged for being spam essentially. When Google flags your site as spam, it is a task to get re-listed cuz you have to go through a verification process and unless you do every single thing exactly how they want it, you can have to rego through the verification process. And the verification process takes weeks sometimes. And so they had to go post by post to address every single link that they had not flagged or, uh, labeled as an affiliate link. It took 'em, I think, three months to finally get re-listed in Google and you had to think when 95% of your traffic is coming from Google and that's what's generating your seven figure income and you're delisted for three months. Their revenue tanked. It destroyed their business.
Emily Thompson:Oh, I wanna barf.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:I wanna barf over that one. You know what's coming up for me with this one, and it's something that I've experienced a couple of times before and I think we're probably gonna talk around this in a minute, is this is why internet business needs to be taken as seriously as non-internet business.
Corey Winter:Yes.
Emily Thompson:I feel like there is this idea that getting, and it used to be used to, you could get away with all kinds of shit. Kathleen and I used to call it the wild, wild west of the internet. Right? Where you could just like show up and put links and sell things and it didn't you, you didn't need terms and conditions. Like whatever, you could do anything. Now they care and they is everybody.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Google the government.
Corey Winter:The over lords. Yeah.
Emily Thompson:What's the difference between the two? Right. And so, You have to know, um, you have to stay up to date on all of these things. Um, if you have not subscribed to our lawyer, Autumn Witt Boyd's email list, go sign up. She's always doing nice little updates of some things that are happening in the world that are incredibly important. But I feel like so much of this stuff also just comes from not knowing. You don't even know that you need to do these things. I think sometimes you do know and you don't do it, and that's obviously a problem. But I think a lot of these things can also come from not knowing, which is why it's important to like have your good resources. Uh, awbfirm.com, right? And also have a tech guy, not tech guy. A tech person, not in your pocket, but on speed Dial slash fast email.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Slack on Slack. How about that?
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Um, because these things are incredibly important. Someone needs to be looking out for you. If this is not your forte, and when all shit hits the fan and no one saw the thing coming, you need someone to fix it for you.
Corey Winter:Yeah. You wanna talk about the causes of tech debt
Emily Thompson:Absolutely.
Corey Winter:And what to look out for. Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. I feel like everyone probably currently is thinking of their horror story.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:One way or the other. Right. Everyone has them and I, what is, what is one of ours? Can we share? Is there a Being Boss or an Almanac one?
Corey Winter:Uh, I mean, I don't let you have these issues, so No.
Emily Thompson:I know I was, I love that none of these were about us. Just so you know. We are, uh, I GDPR was one for everyone.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:You mentioned that one. Um, actually I have a little Almanac one and it's because I didn't get you to do it.
Corey Winter:I think, know what you're gonna say, so Yes.
Emily Thompson:Um, you probably don't.
Corey Winter:Hmm.
Emily Thompson:Um, so whenever we moved our email marketing platform from Convert Kit. Which is not for e-commerce, we just put it there because.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:That was something I was familiar with. Okay. So you hearing that something I was familiar with went with something that, a platform that wasn't really for the kind of business we did, but like, just needed fast, cheap and easy, let's make it do. Went with Convert kit. Worked okay for a couple of years. Time to move to Klayvio, which I do highly recommend for users of Shopify in particular. I think, uh, the functionality is really what, uh, great. Do recommend, not an affiliate. So moved over, which was a whole scenario in itself. Moved over our funnels, moved over our contacts, like did all the things and I had, I had hired someone to help me do some markety things and I was like, can you set up our Klayvio for us? And she was like, sure, I'll make it do. Um, one of the things that did not get moved over correctly that I then had to fix, uh, about a year later when I realized that it had been done incorrectly was moving over birthday tags. So we had been working for years to have our contacts tag themselves with their birthday month so that we could send them a coupon code during the month of their birthday. It was one of our regular marketing things. Had done it for years, loved it. Had people waiting on their birthday coupon, whole amazing thing. She'd created the tags, but because she was not a Klayvio expert, she didn't know that she didn't do it right until it came time for me to create a whole new year of emails and tag everybody with this tag convert kit has been deleted, so I can't go like double check and like reimport people with the right tags. Nothing I could do about it.
Corey Winter:Hmm.
Emily Thompson:All of that data was. Every single bit of it. So I had to come up with another solution, which was actually implementing a reward system that I had been meaning to implement anyway as an alternative to birthday rewards. Um, but that one for me was, that's a very minor little nightmare. Um, but hurt my feelings, didn't hurt my feelings. Like it, it made me sad to have lost that data and that ability to nurture my customers in that way. If I'd gotten you to do it, it probably wouldn't have happened. I'm sorry.
Corey Winter:It's okay. Now you know. Now you know. You learned.
Emily Thompson:Right?
Corey Winter:You learned.
Emily Thompson:So there's mine. So all to say, we all have, we all have them for sure. It's fine. But what causes them, Corey?
Corey Winter:So there are the four quadrants of technical debt. So 4 types.
Emily Thompson:There's literally a graph in our agendas. This has never happened literally ever in like four, almost 400 episodes. There has never been a graph present in an agenda. And I'm looking at one right now. Corey, you have out bossed me.
Corey Winter:I know, right? Uh, Corinne, when you were making the show notes, we can include this Asana link in the show notes cuz Asana put together a great article that kind of summarizes all the aspects of a, of technical debt, um, with graphs. So I stole one of our graphs, uh, and they break it down into four quadrants of technical debt. Uh, so the first one is prudent and deliberate. This is the decision to ship quickly and deal with the consequences later. So this type of debt is most commonly used when the stakes of the product are relatively low and the benefits of a quick delivery outweigh the risk.
Emily Thompson:Mm. Speedy much.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Right. Just get it out there. Even if it's broken. That's never cute, y'all, you're gonna pay for that later. So that is prudent and deliberate tech debt. What's next?
Corey Winter:Number two, reckless and deliberate. So knowing how to produce the best product, but by prioritizing speedy delivery over it.
Emily Thompson:Oh, so that's just like, screw it.
Corey Winter:Yeah. Yeah, like the flag has been raised, but you're just like, ah, whatever. Uh, so number three is prudent and inadvertent. So this is when there's a desire to produce the best product, but you find a better solution after imple implementation.
Emily Thompson:Oh, like my birthday tags?
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Right.
Corey Winter:So this is,
Emily Thompson:shouldn't have done that
Corey Winter:accidental, but you realized it after the fact.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Yes, yes.
Corey Winter:And then the worst of all the reckless and inadvertent. So this occurs when a team tries to produce the best product without the necessary knowledge to do so. The team is often unaware of the mistakes they're making. So this is just, you're not knowledgeable, that you're not having the best practices. And maybe you should have done more research before doing the project.
Emily Thompson:This is everybody. Yeah. Yeah. We are all reckless and inadvertent in some aspect of our business, uh, in terms of like everything but really tech debt. And this is like, this is you, you know, using email marketing and not realizing that you don't have your double opt-in, opted in.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Right. Or you are using a website hosting platform that's not as secure as it should be.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:And you don't know it, you don't realize it, or. I don't know, a million other, or you're not tagging all of your links with affiliate and you get blacklisted by Google.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Right.
Corey Winter:Just completely unaware. And, uh, it, it bit you in the butt. Um.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:So let's talk about some actual causes. So the first one is insufficient, um, up front definition. So this is also just scope creep essentially, or not defining the project with, with definition de defining project definition, uh, details.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:Uh, so.
Emily Thompson:So the solution to that is like at Almanac where I was like, okay, I know where I wanna be in a couple of years. Let's make decisions based on my growth goals.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:not just where I am right now.
Corey Winter:Yep. Uh, and another one is business pressures. So where the business considers getting something released sooner before the necessary changes are complete. So this is kind of tying back into that community thing where flags were raised but they released the product.
Emily Thompson:But deadlines.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Deadlines, which are usually made up. I just wanna remind everyone. You, you, a lot of times you just make them up and you can remake them up and change them as needed. They are not end all, be all, you will not die in 99.9% of the scenarios, there's like, there's a, there's a weird James Bond scenario out.
Corey Winter:Yeah. probably
Emily Thompson:there somewhere.
Corey Winter:Probs.
Emily Thompson:Okay.
Corey Winter:Uh, and then, then the, the big one, the big, big one is just a lack of process or understanding where businesses are blind to the concept of technical debt and make decisions without considering the implications.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I, I think this is also the big one too, because you don't even realize that these decisions are gonna have an impact until later. I have a really great example of this one. Can I share?
Corey Winter:Oh, okay. Yes.
Emily Thompson:I have an e-commerce friend. Uh, no, a retail friend who, um, a couple of years ago decided to put some CBD products in her store.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:And so she put them. on her POS system, which I believe was Shopify, if I'm not mistaken, just to come in the next morning. And she had been kicked out of Shopify.
Corey Winter:Ooh.
Emily Thompson:Because Shopify, in their terms and conditions, did not allow the sell of CBD.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:And so they just have bots that are, you know, crawling everything. And if they see key words like CBD, they're not gonna ask questions. They're gonna kick you out.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:And so her team goes to open the store the next day. There is no point of sale system. There's literally no way for them to sell anything they have. And Shopify's not taking phone calls.
Corey Winter:Yikes.
Emily Thompson:So they have to close down the store for the next couple of days and implement an entire new inventory in POS and and website system because it was tied to their website, because they made the decision to list a product that at that point, I don't know what the rules are now I won't touch the stuff because that is a horror story.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Um, but because they had put a, like, what's it called? Like a, not a, um, regulated product on like, it was like CBD bath bombs or something. It wasn't anything crazy. They just put some bath bombs in her store. I've also heard this around, um, putting some. Scientific names to like smudge sticks.
Corey Winter:Okay.
Emily Thompson:So like you really have to watch some words for some of those things, but also read the terms and conditions for the things you sign up for so that you don't have a lack of understanding. You fully understand as much as possible. And also have friends that tell you stories because that can keep you from lots of trouble.
Corey Winter:Yeah. We have a few other things here and I know we're running out of time, so I'm gonna try and just touch on all of these. Uh, so the next one is, or the next cause for tech debt is tightly coupled components. And so that sounds very, very code, but it's really just where things are not modular. So when you need to replace one thing, you instead have to replace the entire thing. So what comes to mind is, uh, funnels, email funnels, uh, and I will call out Biddy Tarot specifically this time. Uh, cause I've been all up in their email funnels. Uh, so Biddy Tarot they have had multiple funnels, uh, in their email system for, for years, for years and years and years, really four main ones. So they're all based around webinars. So they have a webinar funnel for one product, a webinar funnel of one other product, and the way they were built is that there was no easy way to change out one sequence of emails without breaking the entire thing. And I, I say sequence of emails.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:it's like it was phased funnels. So like there was the first email sequence, which is like.
Emily Thompson:It was complex.
Corey Winter:Yeah. It's like there was webinar invites and then once you register for the webinar, you get the post webinar emails and you get like the downsell emails and all that. But because of how it was all wibbly wobbly inside of these automations, you couldn't take just one little itty bitty piece out of it. Like if you had to replace one email because the messaging and that email was out date or something to replace, that one email would just crash and burn the entire funnel. It didn't have to be that way. If pl more thorough planning had been put in place to make that more modular so you could take things out and replace them as things need to be up to date. It would've created a more simple, easy to maintain system. So yes, just making sure things are modular and easy to plug and play with. So that's another big one.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:More flexible.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, it's funny, I love that you say that cuz it's something than with my website background. I think about whenever I'm building things, I want to be able to move things, change things, take things away, put them back together. Or even think about this at Almanac and how, you know, Shopify has like inventory system, but I have like another inventory system so if something ever happens to one, I have another, I can change one and keep things in like, once you think about this, y'all, you start thinking about this.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:um, as to how it is that you're building, what you're building. Continue.
Corey Winter:And I'm just gonna list these off and you can pull from it what you will. Okay. So the rest of the list, and this is not an all exhaustive list, like this is just the highlights that I pulled from my research. Um, so other causes of tech debt are lack of documentation or systems and processes.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:Lack of collaboration, lack of ownership, lack of knowledge, last minute changes, and lack of standards.
Emily Thompson:Oooo. Standards.
Corey Winter:Oooo you said standards.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, you also, you missed one lack of testing.
Corey Winter:Ah, yeah.
Emily Thompson:Which is incredibly important too. Yeah, for sure. Love it. Okay. Then quick, how can you fix it? What does it look like to be better and or, Do it better if you've already started.
Corey Winter:I think just the, the big one that comes to mind is doing your research.
Emily Thompson:Yep.
Corey Winter:Like you'll just go all in to, to building something new if you don't really know what you're doing.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:Like it's, it's okay to go read some articles, watch some YouTube videos, take some courses, just take a little time to do some prep work. I think it's just the really big thing. And then other things, make sure you're addressing debt as just a regular part of your to-dos. So if you have a team or if you're just working alone, if you know that there is debt that needs to be addressed, like, you know, you put a bandaid fix in place because it need to launch tomorrow, but you know you have time next week to go fix it, make sure you are keeping track of that debt. So monitor that debt. Keep a list in your, in your task management system. If you have a team, if you're meeting regularly, make sure there's always time in that meeting, whether it's at the beginning or the end to address the debt. So you're, there's, there's visibility on the issues so it never loses sight and so it doesn't fall off off of your to-do list.
Emily Thompson:Right. And then also just regular maintaining. I cannot recommend enough that every single person that has a website that they are currently using to run their business have a web person on retainer.
Corey Winter:Mm-hmm.
Emily Thompson:and not just on retainer for security purposes, but on retainer for maintenance. If you are not doing this yourself, having them go in and check your stuff, make sure things are still working, like even if they're just testing it. Incredibly important because platforms change, new features become available, things get tweaked and broken. Um, especially if you have, you know, a VA who's like, you know, nosing around in your email software, like make sure someone is there who knows what it's supposed to look like to fix things when buttons accidentally get pushed, whatever it may be. I do. I think it could be a potential first-ish hire contract or employee.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:That, definitely contract. I think for 90% of the people listening. Um, having someone on retainer to do these things for you, whose job is to know what your tech debt is too, but also to be constantly maintaining it is incredibly important. I've had someone on staff. Or contract before that. Um, from about like my first sixes six-ish figure year.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:Right. So like really early on. Because when you're building websites, when you're building email marketing stuff, when you are building integrations, when you are moving from, maybe not for the purpose of this, but like even someone who's gonna move you from Trello to Asana or whatever it may be, that's not a web guy or a girl or whatever web person could be. Um, but like having someone, having someone on retainer. So that you can at least call them when something happens is incredibly important.
Corey Winter:Yeah. Amen. Uh, so I think the last big one, the last preventative thing you can do is really just, uh, mindset shift into how you approach creating new things and managing your to-do list. And it's the agile approach, the agile project management or agile development of creating new things. And this is the idea that you do more iterative development rather than trying to do one big thing all at once and just put it out there. So the idea is that you get it to a good place, you release it, and then you plan, you actually create a plan to do consistent, smaller updates.
Emily Thompson:Mm-hmm.
Corey Winter:So you're constantly addressing issues, you're constantly growing, whatever it is that you built, but you planned for that to be a consistent, iterative approach to consistently maintaining it and growing it.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. I love it. Corey, this is great. I also just had a, I just thought about all the tech debt I have both in my Dropbox and in Notion, just so much stuff hanging around that needs to be,
Corey Winter:that's the kind of thing that
Emily Thompson:dealt with.
Corey Winter:Maybe even if you're aware of it, it's kind of daunting the longer you put it off.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:And it just kind of snowballs.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Corey Winter:But debt gets bigger
Emily Thompson:snowballs into all kinds of things.
Corey Winter:Yeah.
Emily Thompson:And finding things gets harder, not just for me, but for everyone. I literally am paying interest on my tech debt. Everybody, literally,
Corey Winter:you're not paying your monthly down your monthly minimum payment. You're just accumulating that interest.
Emily Thompson:Yeah. I'm accumulate you. You're right. You are right. Okay, perfect. Corey, this has been great. I hope everyone listening to this has gotten a little bit of a push to deal with something in your technical existence that you have maybe been putting off because you're paying interest whether you like it or not.
Corey Winter:And again, this does not have to be. Technical specifically like this, apply these thoughts to just the way you run your business as a whole. Just absolutely apply these things everywhere in your personal life too.
Emily Thompson:Yeah.
Corey Winter:If you're, if you're putting off doing those dishes in your sink, come on. That's taking up time from later. Like go, go, go clean your dishes.
Emily Thompson:Go. Go. Do your
Corey Winter:Go do your laundry.
Emily Thompson:That's the lesson for today. Go do your dishes, everybody. Alright, Corey, because this is a legit interview of you, what makes you feel most boss?
Corey Winter:Doing this episode where I actually, know what I'm talking about.
Emily Thompson:Oh, I do love that for you. This has been a good one. A very good one. Literally the nicest agenda anyone has ever made for this show. Ever. Nice job.
Corey Winter:Yep.
Emily Thompson:All right thanks! All right, boss, because you're here, I know you want to be a better creative business owner, which means I've got something for you. Each week, the team at Being boss is scouring the news, the best entrepreneurial publications and updates and releases of the apps and tools that run our businesses, and is curating it all into a weekly email that delivers the must know tips and tactics in the realms of mindset, money, and productivity. This email is called Brewed. We brew it up for you each week to give you the insight you need to make decisions and move forward in your creative business. Check it out now and sign up for yourself at beingboss.club/brewed. That's beingboss.club/brewed now until next time, do the work. Be boss.