In this awesome episode we welcome Jacquelyn May from Zooli Web Solutions.
Jacquelyn is in a unique situation compared with most of the Podio Partners we have on the podcast as she is a bit of a “poacher turned game-keeper” (or the other way around?) in that she used to work inside Citrix and Podio and has now spun out a successful consultancy of her own.
This is a great chance to listen in to a partner who has spun up a successful business building and consulting on Podio, share some of her insights and dive into some of the niche business models she has expertise in (Solar Companies for one).
Show Links:
Check out Jacquelyn’s Zooli Website
Check out Jacquelyn’s Solar Project Management Setup Guide
Try out smrtPhone for free for 30 Days
Want to be on the show? Register Now
Watch now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7e-BxkG24Gs
In this awesome episode we welcome Jacquelyn May from Zooli Web Solutions.
Jacquelyn is in a unique situation compared with most of the Podio Partners we have on the podcast as she is a bit of a “poacher turned game-keeper” (or the other way around?) in that she used to work inside Citrix and Podio and has now spun out a successful consultancy of her own.
This is a great chance to listen in to a partner who has spun up a successful business building and consulting on Podio, share some of her insights and dive into some of the niche business models she has expertise in (Solar Companies for one).
Show Links:
Check out Jacquelyn’s Zooli Website
Check out Jacquelyn’s Solar Project Management Setup Guide
Try out smrtPhone for free for 30 Days
Want to be on the show? Register Now
Watch now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7e-BxkG24Gs
Welcome to powered by podio automation is everything. supercharge your business with podio. Get ready for another episode of supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming your weekly dive into the awesome impact workflow and automation you can have on your business when it's powered by podio. Join us each week as we learn from the top podio partners in the world as we investigate system integrations and add ons and hear from real business owners who have implemented podio into their business. Now, join your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of Gamechangers for this week's episode.
Jordan Fleming:Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of supercharged! I'm your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, here to talk all about the power of workflow and automation when your business is powered by podio. Now this week, I'm delighted to be joined by Jacqueline may of zooli. consultancy now, Jacqueline is a podio partner, who I have known for years in a virtual sense, I've known she's existed. And I've seen her across the podio ecosystem. And that's because Jacqueline actually jumped the fence. She used to work for podio and citric she used to be involved right out of the gate. With the development of podio. From a support point of view, and grew with the company. We talked a bit about how she got involved about our journey within the orcas ecosystem. And then how she has now spun this out into a very successful partner business where she is helping people enact podio into their own businesses. It's great chat, it's great for me to finally get a chance to chat to Jacqueline, after so many years of seeing your name, we get to learn a bit about some of her focuses some of the areas that she works in a lot. And of course her amazing experience in podio. I do of course always invite you to check her out on her website. And of course, the link is in the podcast page. As always, please, please, please like, subscribe, give us a view, give us a star rating on whatever platform you're listening to this, it really does help to promote the podcast and make sure that as many people as possible learn about the power of podio. Thanks very much. And let's join me on my chat with Jacqueline. And I'll do that and I'll just we'll just kick off. I've started recording already. And so I mean, you and I've not really ever met much. Um, comparatively.Yeah, I don't know if we've ever met in person, which which is a podio partner. It's a bit like it's, it's a pretty small pool. And yeah, you and I have not really met, although, obviously I see you. quite active within the partner community. How long have you been with to two questions? How long have you been a podio? partner? And how did you make the journal journey to that?
Jacquelyn May:So I've been a podio partner since 2017. I actually got my start up, as I'm sure you know, working on the podio team. So I worked for Citrix starting in 2011. I was actually working in Santa Barbara in their call centre for the go to product. So doing tech support for go to my PC, go to bt, you know, people can join a meeting, they call me. So I joined the podio team very shortly after the Citrix acquisition. I was lucky enough that I had just moved up to San Francisco. And the a position opened up on the podium is 14 so I was actually one of the first Americans that they hired. And so I definitely jumped on that opportunity. Because you know, podio is super cool product is like, you know, the new cool thing at Citrix and also just getting into the San Francisco office like there was limited their help shop.
Jordan Fleming:Didn't they did right. Like, yeah, something in my head.
Jacquelyn May:It was on, like sixth and mission Street in San Francisco. Like not a good area. Oh, no, I was Dallas before that position. But I did hear stories about it was Casper and Christian. I think I think they lived there too. And they did a little pop up shop. But I only heard stories of it. I never got to see it.
Jordan Fleming:I remember I like I I've been I've been podio filed for so long. And I remember that. I do remember that. But so you started out. So you migrated you moved over to podio. And and what was so what was the role at that point then?
Jacquelyn May:So at that point, so I joined at the exact same day as Sarah So Sarah and I were kind of counterparts so she was in the you know, Europe support and then I was us support. So they really just needed somebody you know, at that point, it was like developers were still handling every technical ticket that came in and so it's basically we need somebody to be on the front lines and then you know, obviously you know something He needs to go to developer than it does. So, you know, we were just kind of covering all of the frontline channels. At that point. It was just, you know, support tickets via Zendesk community forums. And then like a few other like little outreach channels. Like we had I don't know if you remember we had a, an account that we named Sarah Mae. So we just kind of combined ourselves together and every new person to sign up for podio got an automated message for
Unknown:both of us. Oh, my
Jordan Fleming:God, that's taken. Yeah, I remember I had to, I remember because this was back when you we still at the affiliate sort of pro or the whatever the hell it was called programme. And I remember being like, bet, you know, begging someone in Citrix to stop that for my new clients. Because they were getting confused. Yeah, they were like, wait, wait, I thought why is this person messaging me, I
Jacquelyn May:you know, that I definitely got a lot of like, half the response to new get where people just kind of confused, who are you? Like, do you work for my company? or? Yeah, that was, like, you know, part of the struggle when you sign up for podio is, you know, it's kind of just this blank slate, you don't know what you're doing. So it can be helpful to get, you know, a little pop ups like, Hey, I'm here with any questions. So, you know, it, I think it was, you know, a successful, you know, channel that we offered for people, but it definitely did cause a little confusion as well.
Jordan Fleming:Wow, okay. Yeah, I do. I, you've totally brought me back that taking me back a lot of years now, in my podio journey, because I'd forgotten that completely cheese was a
Jacquelyn May:lot of a lot of little tidbits. But yeah, so then I was just handling kind of all us support for for several years. And then, you know, eventually, obviously, the product grew. So they hired a team out in Raleigh. And yeah, so I've been a partner since 2017. So, you know, I was lucky enough to, you know, work through the globey flow acquisition. So then I got put on globey flow support and got to, you know, learn the ins and outs of that, which ended up being crucial to being a partner. You know, that's the vast majority of what we do. So I really just had all the tools that I needed to start my own business. And, you know, luckily, I still have many contacts at Citrix. So that's where I was able to get my first few clients. And then just from that, it's been really great
Jordan Fleming:as well. Nice. And, and so moving then to, you know, working on a day to day basis, developing, implementing, supporting on a more hands on basis, then, are you you know, are you focused on really like the podio globey flow, but are you focused on the extension bit? Are you focused on the business process development type thing? What's, how do you find you've approached it given particularly given you've come out of a Citrix environment, which is a very different beast than that?
Jacquelyn May:Yeah. So I mean, it's kind of just whatever the client needs, you know, a lot of time that ends up just being, you know, podio and globey flow, but I do a lot of integrating to external systems as well. So you know, QuickBooks Online, you know, calendly, you just, you really just any other tools people are using, you know, as long as it has an API, of course, like as you know, like podio can integrate with it. So, you know, podio and globey flow are definitely my heavy focus. But I've also just expanded, you know, my capabilities to be able to really work with anything that people need. I do a lot of work with Zapier as well. I prefer to just go directly through API's when possible, but sometimes people are kind of set with Zapier, so we'll do that, too.
Jordan Fleming:Yeah, I've been dissuading people this week actually about using Zapier. I, it's not that I'm adverse to the tool like I it has its place. But I will you know, if the choice is go direct to the API, or go via Zapier 100% time, it'll be go direct to the API.
Jacquelyn May:Definitely, yeah, like a lot of the integrations. It's like, I do a lot of integrating with QuickBooks Online, just that's kind of just what's landed in my lap. And they have a really robust API, and it's just so easy to work with. And sometimes people will come to me and say, Well, I see Zapier does this, why can't I just set this up? And you can say, Well, you know, you could set it up in Zapier, and it'll take me an hour versus the five plus or however many hours to set up the API, but it's not going to do everything you want. It's going to be you know, probably slower, it's not going to like have like, all the full functioning that you want. So, you know, you can definitely go with the bargain bin version, but you know, my recommendation is just do it right the first time then we're not gonna have to, you know, pay double to then go back and rebuild it all.
Jordan Fleming:Yeah, and I don't know what you think, but I certainly feel like there's a I think there's been a I think people, I think people assigned to Zapier a greater capability than it has, I mean, and I think that there's, you know, globey flow such globey flow spoiled us in terms of writing terms of drag and drop, or wiziwig type interface where you can work with the API globey flow exporter first, because it's only for podio. It means it goes so deep into the platform. Whereas Zapier is only meant to touch the skin, you know, and the moment you want to create, but then update or delete the thing you've created. That's it, where everything goes to shit when it comes to Zapier, and AI gives you what you need.
Jacquelyn May:Exactly. And I find, you know, doing things where you need, like, I know, Zapier has like a past feature. But you know, in globey flow, you can have a flow that runs like, you know, five to 10, or however many paths you need. But with Zapier, it's like this whole, like heavy interface. So you know, it does it, it's just, it's kind of a beast. So it's easier if you just, you know, have an actual developer interface to work through. Absolutely, no, absolutely.
Jordan Fleming:And have you found I mean, obviously QuickBooks Online, one that you, you know, you're doing a lot of working lately, or the moment where, you know, when people come to you for integrations, or or, you know, they're coming for you to because they're using another system, and they want you to to make the process work within podio. Well, where do you find, like, do you find yourself ever pushing back and saying, Well, why don't you do this same thing in podio? Or do you, you know, or advising against? How do you feel the podio structure fits against other systems, given that you're doing so much of that integration?
Jacquelyn May:Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it happens all the time. I have people who are using, you know, other CRM tools, for example, and they want to integrate with that with podio, where, you know, podio does CRM very, very well. So there's, there's really no reason not, you know, if you're already using podio, for something else, why not just move your CRM processes into podio, as well. So there are a lot of cases where I push back, you know, there's certainly software that handles certain things that podio doesn't do so well, like invoicing is one of them
Jordan Fleming:QuickBooks tax? I mean, why would you ever try and build your own? Exactly,
Jacquelyn May:there's no reason for that. My 100. Yeah, exactly. So you know, there's no reason to, you know, move all your invoicing into podio, we can get those two talking together, great. But, you know, if there's something like a CRM, or like any sales tool, or like project management, they're trying to get that to talk with podio, then there's no reason not to just consolidate into one and I find, you know, there's usually, you know, we say pushback, but there's usually not a whole lot of pushback, because when you explain it to them, people are usually more than happy to consolidate their products, you know, that's less that they have to pay for. And it's also just easier to have everything in one tool instead of having to, you know, like, switch tabs and context, switch over to somewhere else and teach people, you know, multiple different products and stuff like that. So, and plus, you know, if they're at the point where they're hiring a podio partner, usually, they're already pretty happy with podio. And they see the value in it. So if they find out that podio can handle a certain thing for them, they probably just didn't realise it. So then to hear like, Oh, podio can actually accomplish this really well for you, then great.
Jordan Fleming:Like, that's a great point. If, if they're, if they're bringing someone like you in chances are they're bought in enough that really, the more you can make the podio ecosystem sing for them, the happier they're going to be
Jacquelyn May:exactly like that's part of our jobs as partners, right is to make sure that they're getting the full value out of the tool. So a lot of times, it's just because there's so much that you can do with it. They just don't know what they don't know. So, you know, they're happy using some other tool that they were using before podio. And they hadn't even thought about bringing that over. So yeah,
Jordan Fleming:it's part of our job. And QuickBooks is an interesting one. Because I've always, you know, we've over the years, we've done a relative amount of work with different sort of creative agencies or agency structures who tend to start jobs on receipt of an invoice payment, right, the gear, much like probably most of us where you know, you want to play, you got to pay. We're not gonna do a lot on spec. And I've always felt in an underutilised part of QuickBooks, people have this fascination of pushing things like, Oh, I want to generate invoices. Okay. Yeah, great. That's easy. That's, that's fine. But I've always felt an underutilised. One was the ability to trigger workflow based off things like paid workflows, you know, or paid paid invoices, etc. and really being able to Saturday, check the moments where your team may just be running ahead and doing work that you've not been paid for yet. And that kind of integration can actually provide quite a bit of structure to make sure that bad decisions human error doesn't. Doesn't happen, right?
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, absolutely. Like that's one of the reasons I like working with QuickBooks as API so much is it's almost like podio where they have just about everything. They have web hooks to So you can say, you know, payment comes in trigger a glow before webhook. Now let's look it up, update the project, say, okay, green light.
Jordan Fleming:Now it's okay.
Jacquelyn May:Exactly, then they have like full look up to. So on the podio side, you can say, okay, someone is working on this project, we need to go look up in QuickBooks, make sure that this is actually paid up. It's not okay, we need to go tell this person to cut it out and wait for the payment to come in. So it's really, you know, just about anything like it's very rare that I run into something someone wants to do between podium QuickBooks that I can't do it. I think it's really like, one time there hasn't been it's a good
Jordan Fleming:API. It's Yes, it's all and I think your point is incredibly, you know, important that I think a lot of times people think of, of workflow as only about saving time, right, manual labour, which, of course, is a early part of it a lot of times, but actually, the point you just made, you know, go look this up, has this been paid? Are we still within the contracted amount? No, generate an invoice and wait till it gets paid before we keep going work? That's not about saving someone five minutes of time. That's about saving your business from overextending themselves.
Jacquelyn May:Definitely, yeah, that's a huge part of what I do, too, is like, like you said, not just improving efficiency, but it's also just making sure things don't fall through the cracks. Especially when you get to you know, like mid to large size teams that have you know, a lot of people with their hands and their work, it can be really hard to make sure that kind of like all the boxes are checked before things move forward. So, you know, a big part of what I do is kind of building those, you know, not even just checking something like QuickBooks, but just checking things within podio itself to say, okay, you can't mark this item is complete until X, Y, and Z are complete first, stuff like that.
Jordan Fleming:Sure. And, I mean, those are all like, again, great examples of workflow, not just being about the nitty gritty, you know, save five minutes from doing x, but actually have a bunch of sanity checking in ensuring that, that the process that we've agreed that we're going to file is followed. And that I see that fold down all the time. All the time of that. And, you know, what you've just described is a really interesting use case for that. What sort of other I mean, QuickBooks Online, what else see sort of your calendar stuff? Are you talking? You know, just kind of the calendly invites things? Or? Or do you? Do you find there's, there's some interesting things you're doing with, with calendar integrations that might be relevant to people?
Jacquelyn May:Not super, I think that just was fresh in my mind, because I've been working with calendly a bit lately. So it's just nice, you know, like sending emails, for example, out of globey flow, you can say, Okay, well, depending on which team members assigned to this client, I'm going to send this email signature with this calendly link, that kind of stuff. And then, you know, it hooks in with, you know, you can set it up to hook in with your podio, calendar, Outlook, Google, all that. So it's nice to you know, even though it's not a direct podio integration, it's still it's like close enough that you know, it feels like they're tightly close together. Yeah,
Jordan Fleming:calendar calendar, things have been hot on our minds lately, as well, I think mainly because office 365 You know, when you're dealing with an office 365 environment and a calendar, Zapier will fall will will, will fall down for you completely and and you know, so then you need some method of authenticating a calendar and dealing with the ability to create, edit, modify, delete all those bits, right that Zapier is just going to screw you on and not not work. And we've been having a lot of kind of best practice decisions around that lately. For some reason. I don't know why.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, I try to avoid using Zapier for anything calendar related for that reason, I've just I've just run into issues with it, it's usually better to just try to figure out how to make podio work directly with Office 365. And just teaching people you know what the limitations are, so that you can kind of figure out like, what the process needs to be for everyone and make sure that everyone's calendars are reliable and staying updated.
Jordan Fleming:You must have seen quite an evolution then, as well, given your particular history around the sort of which I think it's still called globey flow inside of podio. The globey flow workspace, I think, I don't think they've renamed I
Jacquelyn May:think so. Yeah. globey flow for podio users. Yeah.
Jordan Fleming:But you must have seen that quite a you know, quite a history in that forum and in that kind of workspace environment. And and really, that, you know, given the you got involved and work through the globey flow, acquisition, the transition of globey flow into podio. And Citrix was an interesting time for people. Oh, yeah. Not one that I think necessarily was handled brilliantly at times by CES. But But an absolutely necessary one.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Fleming:Were you ever involved with the podio workflow bet, you know that that kind of that theoretical nod to workflow, which is like create a task?
Jacquelyn May:So not not from a Yeah, not from a product management perspective. So I didn't help with the, like design or anything. But of course, you know, we all would test things in alpha before releasing them even like to beta and just make sure everything makes sense and stuff like that. But I think if I recall correctly, that feature was developed at the same time that Andres was working on globey flow. So when globey flow launched, it was kind of like, Oh, my gosh, it's like, well, here's this thing that we've all been testing, and very excited to release. And Andreas has just released this thing that just does 100 times more like okay, well, we're gonna release it anyway. But we'll see how it goes. So, you know, I mean, the tool was still, you know, good for what it was it obviously just didn't hold a candle to what globey flow could do. Which is why, obviously, Citrix ended up purchasing it several years later. But yeah, I think the the goal is to just kind of like release a, you know, simplified version, and then build on it later. But then, you know, when someone already released something, that's,
Jordan Fleming:you might as well work.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, let's just buy that. So yeah, it was very interesting to see the product evolve from like a work management tool to where you store and organise things to a full, like low code automation tool. So it's really just you see, you know, the use cases evolve over time. And I think that that's something that has been really interesting to watch.
Jordan Fleming:It's a fascinating marketing exercise as well. It's not one that I think Citrix necessarily gets right a lot of the time. But it's also a difficult one, I have no, you know, I it's difficult for me, because you can't you know, what, the moment you put podio in a box, your box is wrong. And and the moment you try and you know, you try and start going down the road, let's compare podio as a CRM, you're, you're missing the point, kind of right. And it's a tough one, isn't it?
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, I think that's always been the struggle is what's the one liner to describe what podio is, and like, even, you know, working with podio for 10 years, like, what isn't podio? That's the better question. So it's really hard to describe and like that means that it can be kind of hard to like, get people on board with it, because you really have to get your hands dirty, and and used to, like really see the value and understand why it's such a unique tool. See, I think that Citrix is definitely struggled with that. But you know, no, I think they're starting to come around. And, you know, embedding that into workspace, and I think they're understanding that, you know, the, the low code automation is huge. And it's, you know, becoming, I mean, now there's like a fancy term, right, like low code, that's kind of a new thing that people are, you know, starting to get on board with, I know other products like air table, or are starting to add their own automation. So I think that's kind of where things are going. And Citrix is is privy to that. So hopefully, we'll start to see some cool things coming out.
Jordan Fleming:Yeah, it would be you know, I, I go up and down every day on my, you know, my, my emotional spectrum of of every day I go up, and I don't even build anymore, like I've not built in podio for two years. Oh, wow. Probably like, not really. I mean, I, you know, the team does, but I don't I mean, I like Jesus, I wouldn't even know, half the time with it, whatever the team does, I'm just like, holy shit, I have no idea. You know, technically, we've, we've got this. For those who don't know, obviously, if you're in podio, you know, that there's the there's the direct message chat functionality. And we've got a lovely chat group of podio partners that is, is quite fun and useful as well, people help each other. But half the time when you guys are, you know, talking about problems you're having, I'm looking at and going. No idea what this even mean. I think
Jacquelyn May:it's also because by the time we get to the point where we're reporting a problem in there, it's like we've exhausted every other option. So it's like, you know, we're the people who know the most about the inner workings of podio. So if we're having a problem, it's probably a pretty tough one. So, you know, last week, I think I posted something I was like, if they haven't heard of this, then no one's heard of this. And I'm just out of luck. So I think that's just kind of how it is like sometimes, you know, I'll see other people posting there. I'm like, I have no idea what they're talking about. So I'm just gonna let that go.
Jordan Fleming:Well, I do you know, I've had more and more feeling that you know, that that, that lead podio B podio. To do what podio does best. And then surround podio by really good tools, where, where it's necessary, and we certainly find it You know, we've done a tremendous amount of externalising podio, data data lately. Did you do any of that? Really?
Jacquelyn May:I haven't No, I I'm getting to a point where some of my clients are getting to the point where they should consider, you know, building their own, like external database. I've just I've never dabbled in that. But it's something that I probably should look into expanding my my knowledge of grabbed
Jordan Fleming:grab 30 minutes with Andrew, he's okay. He I'm not kidding. He's, he's incredibly impressive in from to me, given that he came into this, not with a technological love, but no background in coding. And like, like most people, like, like, probably yourself and me and all that. But the the limit, he's now taken it to in terms of have the ability to code the, you know, the, the work that he's dude does, for all of these systems, we build that interact with podio, and push and pull and do and display and chart all this. I'm constantly like Jesus. But it also, from a podio perspective, I think it's a really great one to look at, because it just fills it fills that little gap where people want to see their data or share their data in a in a way that potent, the podio interface is just going to kill you on forget calc fields that we all know is like, the worst thing. Yeah, just, you know, there's just I, the podio UI is a double edged sword. It is, on the one hand, brilliant, because it absolutely makes building a great strong product possible quickly. On the other hand, it is so restrictive, that most business knows people just go Oh, God. Right.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, I do think it's really impressive to see. And because it was built API first, just to see all of the really cool extensions that have come out of it, you know, like smartphone, obviously, and globey flow, but, you know, people kind of find those missing gaps and fill them in, because it's so easy to just build something that works on top of podio. So, you know, I think that's kind of where it's found its places, it's the central hub, and then you can kind of build what you need to work on top of it. So that's been really cool to see as well. I think that's kind of what Citrix is leaving out to it's like, well, we don't really need to build all these new features. Everyone else is just kind of building them for us. And then if people want to pay for that externally, then great.
Jordan Fleming:I see I agree with you. I mean, I'm selfishly agreeing with you, obviously, not one of them. But but but but I actually, you know, I agree with you in the sense of why tried to make podio be all things in terms of its development, when actually the extensions allow you to build very specific use cases. And really, really well and otherwise Citrix would be stuck trying to, you know, like be all things to all people in all ways, you know, you know, that's impossible. They're gonna be they're gonna ruin podio.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, I think if you asked anybody, even if just like partners, what are your top five features that you would love to add to podio, every single person would have five completely unique new features. And like, that's just how it is like, and like your top five might seem super obvious to you. You can't believe they don't have it yet. But that might be at the bottom of everyone else's list. And I think that's just kind of how it is. And that's why it's it's kind of hard to find the direction for podio because everyone has their own wish list and you can't make everyone you know, perfectly happy.
Jordan Fleming:I understand. I think I think Citrix is has I think Citrix has got it right. I think you're right, I think you've hit the nail on the head. Actually, I think they've got it right. If they can just nip up performance. Yeah, then I think they are right in in the way they are going with it and not being just like, you know, every quarter someone will pipe up on globey flow and be like, boom, boom. Like, it's you can tell your watch by it, right? It's like every, you know, three months, someone pitches. And I, but I think you've hit it completely right, let, let podio be podio let everything else be everything else. And as long as podio functions. Well, when podio sings, it sings. It does is just that it sometimes doesn't sing.
Jacquelyn May:Not all the time. Sometimes it's not in the mood.
Jordan Fleming:You guys struggle like you're in PST, right? Yeah. You got I don't know. Do you guys get the because Joel was saying the other night we had a partner podcast, a podcast with Joel and Pete calf and Mike dementor. And he was saying that the PST people don't get much of the bad. No,
Jacquelyn May:yeah, I think I'm fortunate enough to sleep through most of it. I think I think it's East Coast morning is when you start to really see it and then you know, by the time we sit down in the morning, like eight, nine o'clock, it's like maybe just starting to To peter out a little bit. So yeah, I think we're pretty lucky in this timezone. But I definitely hear from my East Coast clients of, you know, what's going on every single morning. By i think i think you're right is and I know that, you know, that is the podio team's focus to is stability and you know, performance. And it's really hard, like, when you see like how much people are doing with the system, like even some of my own clients, you know, it's like, there's like millions of actions. It's crazy. So it's, it's already pretty impressive that they're able to keep up with what they do keep up with, and it's, it's multiplying, like, every few months. So it's, you know, it's not an easy task. No,
Jordan Fleming:No, it isn't. And I don't have any, I don't have any illusions that it is, either. Because I also, I mean, even just, you know, I know, the infrastructure work we've done in smartphone to make sure that we can cope with, you know, upwards of 1.8 million minutes of calls every month now. And, you know, that, that, that doesn't sound like a lot, but every one of those needs to be processed, maybe head right. And there needs to be seamless, it needs to sing. So yeah, when you're talking about billions of actions, which is what the pw a is doing, you know, and and all of these calc fields and all these things, you do get a scope, a sensible scope for why it's, it's not an easy thing,
Jacquelyn May:right. And people are always finding creative ways of breaking it too. Because like, you know, they have throttling and all that. But you know, every once in a while someone will come up with some kind of calculation that by some ways it like is grabbing too much and calling like, endless loops or something. So it's like, it's it's like, you have to patch every hole. And people are very creative about finding new ways making new holes. So
Jordan Fleming:when you've seen the, you know, you're one of the very few partners, actually, I guess it's probably just you and Bill,
Jacquelyn May:who used to work for Citrix? Yeah, yeah. So one of my former colleagues, Britt she was a partner for a while and yeah, now she does not anymore. No. So those are the only ones I know of those. That's just the three of us.
Jordan Fleming:I met Britton, Copenhagen. She came? Yes. Because she lived in Copenhagen for
Jacquelyn May:she did. So she worked in the San Francisco office with me when I first was hired, but then she she would go back and forth. But I think she was primarily in the US. And I don't know what she's up to anymore. But yeah, so she was doing real estate. Yeah, real estate stuff for a while.
Jordan Fleming:And I met her I think the first time we ever did a podio partner meetup, the European ones that went for, well, they were going strong every year until she built
Jacquelyn May:the partner programme originally to like, that was all her. Nice, I think so. Yeah, maybe it's a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure she's the one who like built and ran it the first time. I remember she, we had a big partner conference in man, it must have been 2013. He's like, very early into my podio career. But you know, we brought all the partners in San Francisco office. And that was kind of like their kickoff. But yeah, that was a very long time ago.
Jordan Fleming:Wow, amazing. Amazing. And in terms of like, Are there any, you know, obviously, I'll post on the podcast, all of your links, and you know how people can find you? Because, of course, you know, finding a good podio partner is a great thing, if you're trying to scale your podio system. And Jacqueline's got an enormous amount of experience. Are there any particular sectors that you know, really well? Is there anything you really like? Just, you know, give us you a bit more on what how you like to look for people you'd like to work with things you'd like to do about podio? so people know. Sure.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah. So I've kind of fallen into a solar niche. I worked full time on the podium environment for a solar company, shortly after I became a partner. So I, I learned all the ins and outs of solar project management. So that's, you know, solar construction companies putting panels up on people's roofs. And it sounds simple, but it turns out, there's a whole heck of a lot that goes into it. So I I've become a bit of an expert on that process. So
Jordan Fleming:we've got a couple clients. So it's good to know,
Unknown:we've got a resource, I know if I can help
Jordan Fleming:it, because you're very right. It is a very, there's a lot of specific things in this
Jacquelyn May:market. Yeah. So like, the first client that I worked with, it was it was full time for about nine months to get kind of like everything up and running. And it's because, you know, it takes a lot of time to like, you know, meet with all the different teams learn what they do. Okay, how do we translate this into podio? How do we make sure that everyone knows how to use this? And, you know, like we were talking before, how do we make sure things don't fall through the cracks? Because in in that use case, there's a lot of different handoffs between teams, because you know, you have like designers figuring out payloads and you have to communicate with, you know, permitting, then kick that off to the instal crew, and it's like, there's a lot of handoff that needs to happen. So it can be really easy for things to slip through if you don't have the systems in place to kind of notify people Hey, This project has been in, you know, this stage for five days or whatever, probably need to follow up and make sure like, are we waiting on something? Or do we need to, you know, remind someone that they need to follow up on this
Jordan Fleming:one also that you bring a phenomenal good use case for a number of reasons. I think there's a, there's also an enormous sales drive within a sort of the solar industry, right? There's an enormous element of prospecting, prospect management, follow up sequencing, you know, and, you know, there's, you know, even before the complexities of running a solar project from start to finish, once you've won it, there's a huge, it seems to me from the ones we've worked with an enormous prospecting lead gen, elements of leads coming in from different sources and door knocking, and this and that, that, and there's a lot of mix in there to make sure you don't duplicate that you get workflow properly, you follow up you schedule appointments, and all that. That comes into two, right?
Jacquelyn May:Definitely, yeah, and every company does it differently. So it's one of these weights, it's been really interesting for me to work because I now have several solar clients. But you know, some people have their own internal sales teams, some people only work with third party dealers, some people do some mix of the two. So you have to kind of figure out how to make a system that can manage all of that. And I've actually found proxy mini apps are incredibly helpful for that, because they say, Okay, well, now, how do I give my dealers access to just their projects, and let them you know, upload their files, utility bills, all this stuff? It's like, well, proximity is perfect for that. Because, you know, you could use the item share tool, but they're gonna hate that, because then you have the shared page and not theirs. You can't do that. So yeah, I have gotten a lot of people set up with mini apps, and it works great for exactly that purpose.
Jordan Fleming:Yeah, many apps have been, if there was something that Andreas like, on the Hall of Fame of things, Andreas has knocked out of the park, which is a pretty big fucking Hall of Fame.
Jacquelyn May:Top there, right.
Jordan Fleming:He's up at the top. And I love him dearly. And I can't wait to be able to do chicken wings and drink beer with them again, which is what we do someday. But on his top Hall of Fame bits, obviously globey flow is is at the top because like it revolutionised podio, I mean, podio wouldn't have been where it is now. But I think many apps, you know, proc foods brilliant, but the mini app concept and the way you can structure mini apps and bring them, you know, the multi layered approach and, and like, like, as you say, show them this, they can click in they can do this, but they can do that, but being able to build those so quickly. And so, you know, just I, to me, that's just, it is a hidden if you don't, if you don't use many apps, if you haven't explored them, I think it's something every developer or every person who is serious about podio should take a look at.
Jacquelyn May:Definitely, totally agreed. It honestly wasn't the first time that I used it, it was almost like that the podio aha moment when you realise like all the value that it can bring, it's like mini apps like, Oh my gosh, there's so many different ways I can use this, I have so many different people who would love something like this. And I even know people who have paid developers 1000s of dollars to make custom login portals that basically do what a proximity app could do. So it just adds so much value. And especially because like podio, you know, does not have the best access controls. That really gets around it. Like when people want to like, Oh, I wanted to share a specific view with someone, it's like, well just use a mini app. And that'll take it right care before you
Jordan Fleming:while you're on the you're 100%. Right. I think the only drawback to the miniapp. And why we still use, we still build custom portals for a lot of clients is you can, when you're dealing with lots of data, the speed of filtering through that data and in miniapp is going to necess is going to be slow. Whereas if you are dealing with like I love the mini app environment is absolutely brilliant. The moment the data set you're going to be interacting with is too large, it's going to slow to a crawl. And that's where if you are doing like a hook sync to a SQL database, you can you know, you can filter through 20,000 40,000 Records in a split second there any app is gonna crawl for that. So there's a horses for courses there. But I think the miniapp is I agree with you on a percent man. It's it is an aha moment of the ability to to externalise podio. I call it the I shouldn't because it's been mean but it's a bit. It's the cheap and nasty way of externalising. poda podi data. And it's 100% brilliant.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, and there are some other options too. I mean, like, you know, globey flow has like this, the CMS ama and there's another there's like w au portal. I don't know if you've ever asked for Yeah, I guess. But yeah. I just find, you know, Prague for many apps, it's it's just the best and the easiest way to do it. And I really liked it, you know, you can customise the way it looks to pretty easily because a lot of people, like I set it up for people who just want it because of branding. They're like, I just need to show someone and I need my logo.
Jordan Fleming:And it's not blue and podio.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, like, Alright, many apps the way to go. Yeah, I
Jordan Fleming:agree. And I mean, do I also find it and I'll be curious to get your input on this. But I think that your my view of podio has always been, it's a, it's a very difficult system to learn, you know, it's gonna take you two to three months to get over the podio. hump and, and really sing with podio. And if you have got someone who only needs to go into podio, once a week, or once every couple weeks, they're never gonna do it. And they're gonna hate every second of it. So give them a mini app. Don't wait, don't make them don't just don't do it. Like,
Jacquelyn May:yeah, that's a really good point.
Unknown:Don't do it, it's gonna
Jacquelyn May:save it to them in a spreadsheet. So you know, it's something familiar, and they can see the data they need. And that's it.
Jordan Fleming:The people who work in podio on a day to day basis, and get over that couple of weeks, or months of like, once they get over that. Yeah, I think most people that I've ever seen just fly, they Yeah, they just run the table, and then you can build in new stuff. And they're like, okay, you know, like, no problem. But the people who if you're, if you're, if you've got customers, or you've got people in your organisation that need to do like one thing every couple of weeks, don't.
Jacquelyn May:Yeah, it's not really for them. Yeah, and I don't think podio is, I mean, you can definitely get very complex with it. But at least for the end user, who just needs to kind of you know, interact with some apps, it's not terribly complex, it just takes time to get used to because it's fast. So it just takes a lot of time to figure out, you know, where do I need to click? What's the structure? There's a lot of little tiny buttons that's like, Okay, well, where's the filter menu and all this stuff. So that's why it takes time. It's not that it's it's difficult. It's just
Jordan Fleming:you're absolutely right,
Jacquelyn May:figuring out like getting in the habit
Jordan Fleming:of where to go and where to click. It's familiarity. And once you once you live, once you breathe podio then you're may it's amazing, but you're not you're I think you've hit it exactly right. It's it's just, you got to get over that little bit of Oh,
Jacquelyn May:yeah. And then you find that it's not too bad. But yeah, I'm sure I don't know if it's Randy, when you were doing build outs, but sometimes on screenshare it's like, it's such second nature to me now that I'll just be clicking around like oh, filter here. They're like, wait, wait, wait, slow down. What was that? Like? Oh, okay. Yeah, I have to remember, not everyone is click this tiny little button 10 million times. So you have to like kind of
Jordan Fleming:chat with Andrew Bell, because I'm forever being like, slow down. You know, you will be on a client call and he'll be like, so all you do is you're
Unknown:going all the time.
Jacquelyn May:Then you see them start to glaze over like okay, I messed up.
Jordan Fleming:Now as well. Jacqueline, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast, I'm excited to finally get a chance to chat to you. I can't highly recommend people drop jack on the line. I'm going to be posting the contact information on the podcast homepage in the podcast description and everything. If you're looking, you know for help with podio globey flow, integrations, all that sort of thing. Please drop a line and Jacqueline. It's an absolute pleasure to finally get a chance to chat with
Jacquelyn May:you as well. Jordan, thank you so much for having me. It's great to chat with you.
Narrator:You've been listening to a supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming. Subscribe today on iTunes, Google Play or Spotify for your weekly dive into how you can supercharge your business by making it powered by podio Be sure to check out our website we are game changers.com where you can learn more and arrange a 30 minute call with Jordan Dale. Do you understand how podio supercharges you