Jeff Prosek is the Director of Operations. andCustomer Success at Adyton PBC, an early stage startup delivering digital innovation to DoD and other government and commercial customers. We discuss his career in the Navy and spend a good amount of time exploring the consulting world and his experience with Boston Consulting Group, before he ultimately joined the Adyton team in late 2019.
#business #leadership #communication
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Jeff Prosek is the Director of Operations. andCustomer Success at Adyton PBC, an early stage startup delivering digital innovation to DoD and other government and commercial customers. We discuss his career in the Navy and spend a good amount of time exploring the consulting world and his experience with Boston Consulting Group, before he ultimately joined the Adyton team in late 2019.
#business #leadership #communication
Support the show here! https://paypal.me/aaronspatzpodcast?locale.x=en_US
Visit boldstrategygroup.us for more episodes, including episode transcripts!
You're listening to America's entrepreneur, the podcast designed to educate, entertain, and inspire you in your personal professional journey. I'm your host, Aaron Spatz. And on the podcast, I interview entrepreneurs, industry experts, and other high achievers that detail their personal and professional journeys in business. My goal is to glean their experiences into actionable insights that you can apply to your own journey. If you're new to the show, we've spoken with successful entrepreneurs, Grammy Award winning artists, best selling authors, chief executives, and other fascinating minds with unique experiences. We've covered topics such as how to achieve breakthrough and business, growing startups, effective leadership techniques, and much more. If you strive for continual self improvement, and enjoy fascinating and insightful conversation, if the subscribe button, you'll love it here at America's entrepreneur we're gonna dive right into today's show. I'm really, really excited to welcome yet another amazing guest. So we're gonna welcome Jeff Prozac to the show. So Jeff comes to us from a from a navy background. Following his naval career, he joined Boston Consulting Group before moving to his into his current role with additon. And so I'm gonna let him do all all the explaining. So, Jeff, I just wanna welcome you, man, thank you so much for being a part of the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Good to chat. Absolutely. So yeah, give us give us a quick rundown of your background. What What led you to join the US Navy?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, so I come from Cleveland, Ohio, originally. Not a military family, really, I guess, my my parents generation at all. I had my my grandfather who served in World War Two. So was not somebody that talked about that much. But yeah, kind of what led me to the military. I think, as a kid, I really loved history. And I like to study these things and read about these things. And sort of got interested in this idea of the adventure that comes with, you know, being in something like the Navy. And so I started getting interested in a little bit in that and what I might do after after high school, and then my brother was a year older than me, was also thinking about the same stuff. And this I'm sure influenced me a lot with a lot more than I probably would admit. And so he ended up going to go into an ROTC program at Miami University in Ohio, and was interested in submarines, which I was not interested in. And I ultimately went to the same ROTC program, but really focused on aviation and excited about the idea of trying to fly in the Navy. Which I did so yeah. So it was, you know, neither of us really knew the military or grew up with anything military related. And we both ended up diving into that same thing. He's still active duty in the in the Navy, and a couple years from retirement now. And I spent about 10 years in the Navy, most of them on the active side couple years in the reserves when I was in business school. So it it worked out to be a really great experience. That's awesome. Yeah,
Aaron Spatz:I mean, and everybody's career choices and their ventures, they're always really unique. And I'd love to hear, like their experiences are unique, because it's really interesting one like, so did you guys go through? Like he was a couple years older than you? So like, Were you guys at the same same unit at the same time was like, was there any overlap?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, we were we were and well, yeah, so it was and there's a couple other, you know, brothers or siblings that I remember crossing paths with and these sorts of things. And just one of those, I don't know, it's like one of those small worlds of the military that I'm sure you you experienced a lot to where it just I flew at the squadron in Hawaii and there were two cousins that were in the squadron together which is just kind of like how does this work out and these guys were cousins and they both ended up flying p3 Orion's in the Navy and in the same same unit, you know, and deploying together so it's just funny how those things work out. And then the plane that I was on the p3 Orion was primarily a submarine Hunter, and was an old Cold War era really ugly, slow for engine turboprop, you know, ancient airplane that was designed to hunt Soviet submarines back in the Cold War. And then in my generation, of course, we did a lot of training for that same anti submarine warfare mission. And then we would deploy to fifthly to the desert because Iraq and Afghanistan were going on if they don't have any submarines, but we were doing a lot of Overland intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance type missions, but we still train like crazy for the anti submarine warfare stuff. So my brother was stationed in Pearl Harbor. I was stationed in another part of Hawaii on a Marine Corps Base actually. There Marine Corps Air Station in Kaneohe Bay Yeah, but anyways, we flew I remember one time we flew on his on his boat, which was kind of just a cool experience like flying above and thinking, Well, yeah, my brother's down there. He's the one we're trying to track right now and you know, dropping buoys and simulating torpedo drops and stuff on his sub that's trying to do a beta for training. So that was kind of a cool experience. And then eventually, we got to the point where we realized that we had enough flexibility to just be like, Hey, I think I should spend some time on your sub. And you know, he, we were able to work that out of like, yeah, my brother is gonna come on the sub for a few days, and do this, and we could kind of, you know, work something out. So it's fun to actually be able to spend some time on our way with him on the sub when he was when he was out there working.
Aaron Spatz:That's freaking cool, man. Yeah, I think there's probably a little bit more of that that goes on then than what I think a lot of us are, are, are maybe noticing, because like, when I was when I went through, when with the RTC, there was a I mean, it was a fairly large unit, a good group of people. And now that you're saying this, like, Man, I wonder how many these people were related to each other in some way. Maybe it was like a distant relative, but I think I think there probably is a good, good amount of that. And then really neat, too, is like, when you're when you're out, you're actually you're actually doing your job, like you're out in the fleet. And you're able to like cross paths. Like it's pretty, it's pretty special. Right? It's not, it's not something that that you're going to encounter, you know, all the time. Yeah. So, yeah, that's really cool. Well, we'll talk us through then your your decision, in terms of deciding to punch out like, what what did that look like for you?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, it was a really tough decision, it probably took me probably a good year of going back and forth in my mind, and talking with my wife and sort of like, and I, I think that was because I've actually really enjoyed it, I enjoyed the time in the Navy a lot. There was a lot that I am extremely grateful for that experience. And I felt like I was doing well enough, it was a stable thing. I was kind of like, I know where I'm going to go. Next, I know what this set career path is. And there's some, some comfort in that, I suppose. But at the same time, I really felt this, ah, that was like, I feel like I've done what I need to do here. And it's time to take something else on. And it's time to give myself some other options that that really lets me take a little bit more ownership of my own, you know, my own trajectory here of where I choose to go. And what I choose to do, which is, you know, you've only got so much of in the military, so. So I ultimately, was wrestling with it a lot. And I ultimately started getting interested in grad school programs, largely because of the GI Bill, the post 911 GI bill that of course, made it really changed all of the calculation for me on is it worth it to go back to school, or that's still a really tough thing for people to try to decide. And there's a lot of pros and cons. And that changes, you know, pretty frequently, I think, as there's more and more veterans programs out there that are not necessarily in person, you know, full time grad program, and all sorts of different things that have come up in the last 510 years. But for me, it was sort of like I viewed this as like, I was fortunate that I could leave the military and people valued military experience in the in the business world. So I felt, I felt confident that there were opportunities out there that would be really interesting and, and compelling coming out of the military. But I also felt that I don't really know what I want to do for sure. And I'm really worried about going somewhere and then immediately regretting it and thinking I kind of like that military, I actually like that better, I should have just stayed in and I was terrified of that. And I kind of my dad used to always tell tell me to try to do things that give yourself options. So when I was looking at things like MBAs, it's like, man, there's a whole set of options here that are not on the table for me right now. But become on the table. If you go through a program like that, that I don't even I don't even know what they are. I remember going starting my MBA and talking to people that were like on a project or a product manager at Amazon. And I thought like, I have no idea what that is no clue what that job entails, what that's like, and then I could tell them like, Oh, I'm a flight officer in the Navy on these p3 Orion and they're like, I've never heard of that. I've no idea what you do, right? So anyways, I guess Long Story Short was I just started thinking to myself, this really opens the opens the window of things I could do and paths I could go down that I've never heard of, or not really doable from where I'm at right now. But they are doable from that step. And I can leverage the GI Bill and do this in do this full time and really dedicate myself to it for a couple years, you know, in person and then see where that takes me. So it felt like the right thing to do. And I'm really happy I did it. It's you know, it worked out really well was a great experience, the MBA program, and I really do think it did open up a lot of things that otherwise I wouldn't have known about.
Aaron Spatz:Yeah, no, I mean, it's a it's a great, like, it's a great observation and like I liked the way that you said it in terms of just giving yourself options, right. And so when you're able to when you're able to generate those options, because for a lot of people and like your story is very similar to a lot of people's right like there's not a maybe a very clear, clearly defined path which once you get out in terms of what it is you want to Do and so it's kind of like, well, you know, what do I want to do. And there's I mean, we could talk for an hour just about that, you know that that whole thing. And so it's a, it's a journey, and it's a process but your credit, jumping in on you know, on an MBA program, then that gives you an additional, an additional access additional options to other things that you may that you may decide that you want to do. And so it looks like just from your background, then you're able to, you're able to roll into Boston Consulting Group. So I mean, what was that? What was that experience like for you?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, that actually worked out really well. And that was kind of it was the right step. For me, I think, at the time, talking again, about a little bit of optionality and a little bit of the realization, of course, that man, I don't know anything about the business world. And I've done this thing where I learned flying airplanes, and doing these sorts of tactical missions. And I had no idea about that beforehand, of course, and I built up the skill and I did this stuff. And now I'm starting from scratch again, in business related things. And I, I can work well with teams, I did that a lot in the Navy on crude airplanes. I'm good, with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of kinda stressful situations and trying to take on some responsibility and navigate it. But these are kind of nebulous, you know, things. And I didn't have any knowledge of the business world. So. So similar idea of optionality and also how do you build up some skill set on things, and that's really, it's a, it's a fairly well established path, at least at that time. For veterans, like myself to say, I go to business school, and I might do consulting and learn some stuff. And for that very reason, the veterans did really well have generally done really well at consulting companies like Boston Consulting Group, because they come in and say, like, I can handle the stress, and I can handle the uncertainty. And I can work with a small group, and I'll figure the other stuff out. And their model is basically like, you come in, and you have no knowledge about this, you know, industry, for example, that we're going to work with. But as you build that knowledge up, you're going to work with people that are deeply experienced in that particular thing, you'll learn a lot. And the value you bring is like the fresh set of eyes that says, I can do some of the analytics work, I could do the business stuff. And I'll be the person that points out these things that are, are seem obvious to you, but actually, with a fresh set of eyes, maybe I bring a different perspective. And then gradually, you know, you become one of the people that are the experience people. And that's more ingrained and knowledgeable and you have those junior folks on your team that bring the fresh set of eyes, takes a little while for that process to happen. But so for me, it was kind of it was nice, because it was similar idea. I don't think this is going to close the aperture of things I can do. But it's going to help me identify industries where I would say, I like this, this is good, or the opposite, of course, just as important. And I definitely did some of those projects where I thought, okay, I know I don't want to work in a company like this, or I don't want to work in this industry is just not doesn't really excite me. And it helps me kind of narrow down. What do I want to try to do? You know, going forward, if it's not continuing with consulting, and made it a little bit easier to narrow that that field down?
Aaron Spatz:Yeah, well, I mean, if you don't mind, let's I'd like to take a couple minutes and talk about the consulting role. Because this is actually a topic a lot of people are interested in. I know for a lot of veterans that have either are getting active duty military that are getting out or recently separated veterans that are trying to kind of get there, kind of get their bearings. Consulting offers a whole variety of different opportunities and kind of like to your point, a lot of times and like I've seen this personally just having a new, like a fresh set of eyes on on a situation because sometimes it is like it is like all the difference in the world. It can really, it some really big breakthrough moments can occur when you've got a fresh perspective and admitting they may point out something that's very obvious, but you're like, Man, I just I hadn't seen it like that before thought like that before. But like, take me through what it's like then, like if someone was ever curious about joining a company such as BCG, like what is what is the day to day like what is the what does that lifestyle like?
Jeff Prosek:Ah, yeah, and and this has probably changed with within the last year, of course, your COVID. But my experience there and I started with BCG in 2013. So a few years ago now, but you work on small teams on projects. And so an awful lot of those are big, established companies. They're trying to run projects on things they know they have to get better in certain areas. They've only got certain skills on the team. Sometimes it's helpful to bring these skills that they don't have on on board for a short project. Sometimes it's a capacity issue as well. You people are fully utilized and you don't have a lot of extra people capacity to run these projects down. You want an outside perspective, you want that sort of thing. And so, what you typically have is projects that may be your three months or so give or take can be longer it can be shorter and you him might have a team of, let's say, three to five people from a company like BCG, who for those three months, you're dedicated on this project. And usually that team is made up of a partner that is very, very experienced in that industry or that functional area, they may be, it may be a project on digital marketing, let's say and that partner is an expert has spent a decade or more on digital marketing kind of excellence across industries, or they might be, or they might be an industry person. So maybe it's an oil and gas project. And they've worked in oil and gas for the last 20 years, they know everything about oil and gas. And then you have sort of as you think the similar to the military, they're sort of, they're like the, you know, squadron commander or company commander or whatever, whatever you'd think it would be. And then you have people below them on different different rungs. And your experience in that industry typically adjusts as you get down. And then you have somebody like me, when I first showed up, which was I don't know, the first thing about, you know, oil and gas, or working at a telecom or whatever. But I can do a lot of the I can do a lot of the day to day, like we're going to do some data work on their data, we're going to put together you know, I'm going to conduct some interviews with their people, we're going to talk to outside experts and do these sorts of things that, that I can do even without the expertise. And then, as we said, also having this fresh set of eyes, which just like doesn't make sense. Why is it done this way? And, you know, sometimes the answer is I don't know, we just have always done it that way. And so you have that team that that kind of works together on that project, to whatever the specific objectives are. And then a little bit of talking about the lifestyle, a lot of that was, of course, the Monday Thursday travel, hop on the plane, Monday morning, to go out to wherever that client site is, and sit there and work there with the clients come back Thursday and spend Friday in the office locally. And a lot of uncertainty to around. Alright, after that three months is up, I don't know what I'm going to do. I might be I could work on who knows what is it's going to depend on what work we're doing as a company three months from now, which we don't, we don't yet know. So there's a it's it's a it's an unpredictable thing. And companies like BCG have done a lot to try to make it much more predictable, much more manageable from a lifestyle perspective. Because it does tend to burn through people pretty quick that do a couple years of that and say, You know what, I got to get off the road a little bit, I got to be able to plan my life a little bit more. And so they've taken some pretty big strides to improve that. And I think with COVID, working remotely, they've also learned that you don't necessarily have to be on site, four days a week, every week, there's probably some other model we can do here. And I would say the plus side of all of that uncertainty is that you get to do a lot of different things. And so sometimes things that you maybe wouldn't raise your hand for. And then you go and work on a project and think that's actually really interesting. It's a functional area that I hadn't thought about. But actually now that I got to do some of it, I like it. And I want to do more and get better at that. Or an industry maybe I hadn't thought about but but I want to do more. So it's it's it's a fun way to try stuff out. And you certainly aren't going to get bored during it. I think that was a good advantage of it. From my perspective.
Aaron Spatz:Yeah. Yeah, well, no. And like thinking about it, too. I'm just thinking from, like a holistic business sense is like, there's not a whole lot. Like there's got to be other, I'm thinking just out loud, that there's probably other areas of the business that have recurring revenue streams. But when it's project basis, project based man, so it's like it's done, and then that, you know, that that project is built for and the company has to continue to attract in secure more business in order to keep everybody moving forward. So that's, that's a lot of work, I think on on on the sales front, or for firms like that with a lot of pressure.
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And it's, and that's why the relationships and the kind of recurring businesses were such an important thing there because you'd love to, you'd love to be able to work on projects and actually have some some value that you proved out together, to where those those companies that say, okay, great, this went, Well, we've actually got five other things we're trying to figure out. How do we think about what we do next? And how do we work this stuff into, you know, kind of bigger programs. And then what a lot of people at companies like those did was they worked as a young person with somebody kind of a mid level person on these projects. And they they demonstrated the impact that they were able to provide, so that yours years later, that person that was a middle level, you know, person at a company is now much more senior and has and the person at BCG is much more senior and they can continue those relationships to kind of kind of do something that's really beneficial for both sides to keep working together. But it is a lot and I did a I did a year in our Stockholm office for Boston Consulting Group, which was awesome. Yeah. And it's a great place to live. And it was just my wife and my own flakiness or like wanderlust or whatever, and had been in Dallas for a few years. After, you know, one of the things for leaving the military is I'm sure, from your childhood and from your your active time. That idea of moving around kind of at the whims of at the whims of your employer in the military. A big thing for us was like, we're going to put down some roots and, you know, stay in one place and do that. And so we, we did that in Dallas and then quickly got this itch to go somewhere else to sew. But there's offices all over the world. And the job is the job is the same, the roles are the same. So there's a lot of really great international programs. So we just on a whim said, well, Stockholm sounds like a nice place to go. And we've heard good things, and we've never been there. And they were, they had a need for people with my background working on technology projects and digital projects at Bi level. And I talked to one of the partners there. And next thing I know, it was like pack up the you know, eight suitcases and our three year old and we're heading to Sweden for a year and show up there. The first time we've ever been. But, but it was talking about the sale is in relationship, there was so much of that work that was just kind of like building relationships with people and proposing ideas and thinking, working with them on the side on things that they're trying to solve even that are not a big project. But the idea that we want to demonstrate that we can actually really help out and that there's some good value here. And so much of it is as you know, relationships and building up some trust where somebody says, Yeah, I trust that you're actually going to be able to come and deliver something useful for us. So it was a lot of fun. But it was really getting into that more of that sales side at that level and becomes a lot more stressful, like you said,
Aaron Spatz:Well, you hit on a great point, which is just just building those building those relationships. I mean, that's really I mean, it's how it's how businesses formed as how businesses continues to advance and, like back the back to just the general consumer. And we'll we'll move away from this topic here in just a couple of seconds. But I just, it's a great opportunity to kind of talk about some of these other topics that I sometimes get questions asked of me about some of these things I love love to get other outside perspective here is, you know, like you're working in consulting projects. One of the, you know, one of the most sticky discussions related to that is, you know, timeline right expectations management, what are the objectives of that consulting engagement? What does that look like? And so, without I mean, obviously, without giving away like BCG, internal proprietary processes or anything, but like what was the what was the general way? Again, this is really for the for the benefit of those that are just very interested in what the consulting role offers is like, what's, how is all that manage like, so like, you've got a you've got a contract, you're going to work on a project, a small project team, you've got three months to do whatever this project is like, how do you go about setting expectations with a client at the beginning? How do you go about having these different stops and checkpoints to maintain? You know that we're on track? Or like, how do you deal with a roadblock or a all of a sudden there's a setback that's going to really push? Push the timeline?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah. Yeah, that's a great, great topic that gets really thorny. And so not speaking on on kind of BCGs. Yeah, absolutely. Not qualified just to speak on the on their on their kind of view on this. But just from my own perspective, there was always this focus on can you scope this thing properly, upfront, of here's what we're going to do. And here's what we're not going to do. And the view from BCG, and I always, at least the way I always understood it was, let's always try to over deliver on what we promise, and which is a great, great thing, of course, but I always, in any of those situations, there's always this push and pull on when we would love for from the client perspective, we would love to have more, right? I would love it to be more and faster and cheaper. And so, and from the from a company like BCG perspective, they also have to think about what costs are we putting into this. And that means like for people, that's really only people cost. So from their perspective, it was how many people do we need to do this? Well, they would like to do this cheaper and do the same amount. So there's always this tug of, you know, can we do this with fewer people, and that gets into this issue of are we just going to burn out the few people that we have left on this project, right. So it's a tricky balance. And I think, to your point around, you know, changing expectations, managing expectations, things happen. And that gets a little bit to the relationship aspect of having these lines of communication open. And this idea that this is not, we're just doing this for this engagement, but we want this to be successful as a relationship going forward. So let's manage the expectations of what we do in this project, we'll think about how that rolls into our effects, subsequent projects. And I remember talking about the time in Sweden, the senior partner that I worked with, all my entire time there was I remember him talking about somebody on one of the clients sides, it was very transactional. And I realized that's like a four letter word to this guy. You know, it was this is transactional. And this guy, all he cares about is what are you doing for me today and at what cost? And that's kind of not the not the best relationship for anybody you would much rather it be. Let's think about what can we What's this look like a year from now, two years from now and how that influences sure the timelines and things we said we're going to do in s3 period. But we would love to be a resource for you down the road, even if that means we eat some costs or something up front. So I think he viewed things that way. And some of it was also I would, at least in my perspective was like choosing what not to do. And if it's somebody that's very transactional, and is going to be pretty immobile on the flexibility of what can you do, and when and I want to add more, at some point, I say, Alright, let's move on and spend our time elsewhere. Because that's not going to be a positive thing for anybody.
Aaron Spatz:Right? Well, in transactional business, I mean, there's, there's a case to be made for sure. I mean, you go buy something from the grocery store. That's a transactional based engagement, but you could also make the greater the greater the greater argument that at times, the relationship with that brand, will will absolutely play an impact, even if it is a transactional based purchasing. But then, on the other side of that spectrum, kind of to like the, the consulting role was probably the best example of this. There's another there's tons of other like, legal, medical, like there's a lot of other things that are just very, very, very, very heavy relationship focused. And because you've got to you got to build a maintain trust, right. And so like, you've, you want to build a work with people that you like, you want to work, people that you trust that you know, and all those things. And so that, that, how does that happen? I mean, it's you've got to build a relationship with people. And so some people appreciate that. And it's, I would, I would argue, it's, it's, it's more applicable than not in a business setting, but then there are times when it's like, Dude, I just need a carwash. Like, yeah, you know, this is definitely transactional. Right?
Jeff Prosek:Right. Yeah. I'm sure you deal with this all the time, right, with your on your consulting work and the things you do, which is you probably have people that are kind of like, look, I'm looking for the cheapest person that can do this one thing for me. And sometimes you'd probably think, yeah, all right, well, I don't want to be that guy, necessarily. But if you want to do something where we think about how do I do, how do I prove something out for you early? Because I'd love to, I think we can add value. And that's sort of maybe a buzzy cliche, or whatever. But at least on the BCG side, it was this hyper focus on like, what value are you adding to this? And I see, yeah, I see it all the time now with, you know, other other entities I work with. And now we're working a ton across the the military and you know, and there's people that you're like, Man, this guy is adding value way above his, his or her position, because they're just into this stuff. And they're excited about it. And then there's other people where you're like, what's your role here? I want to spawn I have to bite my tongue to be like, What do you Yeah, exactly. You're kind of just getting in the way. And that's not just the government or DOD, of course, yeah. Right, everybody. But yeah, it's, it's always a, an interesting one. And a tricky thing to figure out those sorts of relationships. And how that works,
Aaron Spatz:is like, and I found for me, like, what's worked for me, one to your point, man, like, you're, you're bringing bringing back some dark memories at times, too, because I know, like, just getting getting started out, man, I had to be everything for everybody, right? And so it's like, you've got that, when you've got a financial leverage, we'll put it that way, we'll put it nicely. That that's a very high motivator, when you're when you're the one needing that those resources. But when you get more established, or you have other other revenue opportunities, or other things going on, that you're able to float yourself, then it's like, okay, is this is this something is really going to make sense? Like, are we even a good fit? Like, is this gonna, like, can I add value? Or is this going to be just continuously just examined through a microscope the entire time, you know, and so, and there's, there's merit to those discussions, obviously, but I, I get your point, and I'm in violent agreement with you, when it comes to like, finding opportunities to add more value to an engagement and, and I think where, where things can get a little sticky, is then you've revised up expectations. Right? So like, how do you how do you deal with that, then that's like, if, if people are used to you performing at a certain level, even though the commitment was here, but you exceeded here, then that becomes the new bar. So like, how do you account for that?
Jeff Prosek:Oh, that's a good yeah, that's a really good one.
Aaron Spatz:There may not be an easy answer to it. It's just if you have thoughts on it, great. If not, that's okay.
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, I like it. I like to think you know, Aaron, it's yeah, you can Oh, you try to say we're gonna always over deliver and then at some point there's some limit upper limit to that. Yeah, I don't know. I tried to I think in my experience and thinking back on my the time with consulting, I was not the best Excel wizard that we had. I was not the best modeler you know, on those kinds of things. I do think what I where I were talking about the adding value thing. Yeah, I do think where I added the most value was just spending the time with people like Do the other stuff, do the do the stuff on Excel that we need to do or do the kind of business analytics or whatever. But spending time with people and kind of just trying to be build up this honesty with them about like, look, there's there's things that we're gonna do. And then we're not we're not we don't always have some sort of silver bullet are the best answer on everything, but we're going to get there together. And so the relationship point, I remember one, and one of the first projects I did was with the big oil and gas company, and they were looking at a lot of their kind of back office things. And they wanted one of the many parts of it, they wanted to look at the corporate aviation part. And so the team said, Oh, you, you have an aviation background, you should go work with the, you know, the corporate aviation people. And so they had a handful of Gulfstream jets that they're flying executives around and doing various things. And they wanted to take a look at what's the best way to be doing that. So, but the person that was running that was a retired Coast Guard, see 130 pilot, and she was amazing. And she was kind of a little bit gruff, and a little bit like, I'm not going to be super trusting anybody to come in. But by the end of the time, it's a credit to her I think, and just to the time spent there, it was, like she and I became really great friends, we had a common background. It was great. And I think I had built up enough trust with her that she knew that he's not going to be asked me on stuff, you know. And so if we keep thinking of what do we do next? Or how does this work next, like she she wasn't going to be unreasonable about always expecting something that was kind of crazy, and that we'd be pretty honest of work, can we really bring something that I think you guys aren't going to be able to bring in house? That well? And where's it? Where are we at to the point where we say, okay, let's let's manage expectations, but that just that also took a few months of me traveling to traveling every every week, and sitting, you know, sitting in our office with her to get to that level to
Aaron Spatz:Yeah, again, like just pulverizing this horse here is like, it goes back to just building those relationships with people. I know, it sounds so like, so easy. But it that's I mean, that's, that's the foundation of it, right? It's like when you've built the weave, and some relationships can be, can be formed. And you can build those bridges of trust a lot faster than others, others take a lot of time, you got to show up, you got to be consistent, you got to do all these things. But if they, they understand your heart behind her, they understand your intention. And there's a healthy communication and a healthy mutual respect, right? It's not this, you know, you're not getting beat down by that person in your in and in, you're not talking down to them either as if they're stupid. So like there's a mutual respect and understanding as to what each other brings to this engagement. And so when you do have to have the tough conversations, you can have the tough conversations, and but like deal with that situation, and not like, you know, start world war three. Right. So yeah, that's awesome. Well, I appreciate I appreciate you kind of going down that rabbit trail, bear with me on on the consulting sex. That's always it's always fun to talk about. I always love to hear other people's perspectives. And, man, it's great, great opportunity to go to go to Stockholm for a year. That's, that's freaking sweet now, so
Jeff Prosek:it wasn't good. So pretty good place to go. And it was a, we chatted with a guy who had just gotten back from there are doing a similar thing. And he was a he had been a Navy SEAL. So it was it was nice to like, Who is this other military veteran that was here and like that he and his wife was were awesome. They had kids and giving us an idea of what is it like to to move, you know, to live there with kids and make that work. But then we also set this weird precedent of these US military guys coming here to Stockholm and working on these projects. You know, there was a nice little path that we had set up, but it was a great place to live. And just it was from a family perspective. It's pretty hard to beat. So it was a cool experience for us. For sure,
Aaron Spatz:for sure. That's awesome. Well, then let's let's shift gears then. So let's let's jump into your your exit from BCG and what and what brought you to additon?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, and that so that actually goes back to the Stockholm thing, which was when I worked with, I think three different projects there that were very atypical for BCG and most of the BCG stuff is bigger companies, a lot of larger companies that have been around for a while. And just through happenstance, when I was there, there's a pretty pretty vibrant startup ecosystem there in Stockholm and some some really big companies that came out of the Spotify of the world. And so I started doing some work with some companies that they're sort of I don't know at what point you stopped calling a company a startup but there they were still the founder is still the guy that started this in his dorm room, you know, but it was 889 years ago or whatever and now they're big some of them were bigger one of them's I don't know how many billion dollar kind of valuation big company, but still was figuring so many things out because they started at nothing. Eight years. Go. And now they're trying to keep up with this explosive kind of growth. And one of them was a much smaller company doing digital music and a really neat company and worked with them for a while on some, a few different projects. And it was just, it really piqued my interest and got me excited about this idea of something smaller. Like that seems like a really fun thing to do next, as really taking some ownership and like being part of the, I'm part of this thing, I'm not coming in from the outside, but I'm actually part of it, I'm going to be part of our success. If we continue to succeed, I will be part of our lack of success if we don't, right, and because when you're in a smaller company, you take you have to play up a little bit, you take on a lot more responsibility. And so I got really excited about that idea. From having done those projects, and I decided coming back to the States, I decided I'm going to start looking around and take my time and I want to find is there kind of a good cultural fit with people and accompany because that's I decided was maybe the most important thing in terms of what they want, what are their objectives? How do they think about this business and what they're trying to do, I wanted it to be an area that I cared about, and that I would actually feel every day like, Hey, this is worthwhile, and something that I'm doing. And it's not, you know, just a business that I don't particularly care about, but for the purpose of making a successful business. And I also decided, I'm too old to do two guys in a garage startup at this stage in my life. And where I was with a family, I need to think probably something that's a little more established and has had a few funding rounds and is like a real company. Before I joined this, and I wasn't thinking about the defense or the military at all. And I hadn't thought about that world in seven years or so. And so I ended up at this company additive, which was two guys, it was three guys. And they joking jokingly said to me that they don't have a garage, when I joined. And it was it was focused on defense. And it was like this was not where I intended to go at all but but I was thrilled to join and really excited about it. And it was a guy who I had worked with at BCG here in the Dallas office, and he and I had worked on some projects together, he'd been an Army Special Forces, NCO and noncommissioned officer. And so that's the Green Berets had done that after college, and had made friends with another guy who had gone to college and then enlisted in this program to be a Greenbrae. And the other guy had gone on to a company called Palantir, which was building a lot of software and data analytics stuff for the military, and was there pretty early on and that company had really taken off. And so the two of them had stayed friends and decided now we got this business experience, a software experience, this tech background, we've lived in these shoes, and we still know how bad so much of the software and technology is for people that are out there doing these jobs that we used to do. So. So anyways, my friend from there was telling me to leave BCG, and we're starting this company, and we're going to bring mobile software to defense. And I thought, Oh, I don't know, that doesn't sound like a great idea. Because for sure this already exists, right? Somebody would have already solved this problem in the last seven years, since I've thought about it. And and then if they if they haven't had what would give you guys the what makes you the ones that are going to solve it. And he was sort of telling me you won't believe it. But they did things that have just we take for granted in our in our business world. Now it just never made it. And there's reasons. There's a lot of reasons why security and compliance and things like that, but also a little bit of this culture of change and culture of innovation, if you will, I suppose. So on the side, I started to spend some time with the two of them on what they were working on and say let's talk a little bit about some different use cases. And how could this work. And I started to pull in some friends who were still active, to get feedback and do some design sessions and things like that and figure out these things that are still happening, as I'm sure you remember very well here. And that happened on the green notebooks still, you know, that happened on a whiteboard. And we started looking at things like flight scheduling in the military, which most people on the outside would think is some sophisticated process by which you decide how you put airplanes in the sky. And it's a whiteboard in a room with a bunch of magnets on it, you know, and that's how you do it. And so, at the same time, I started to pay attention to what was going on in this world of DOD innovation, if I think of that sort of buzz phrase as well. And especially here in Texas, in Austin, a lot of a lot of things were happening in Austin and there's things like army futures command, which was the Army's effort to modernize and think five years down the road. The Air Force has something called AF works, which is their kind of incubator and support ecosystem for new technologies and bringing new things to to Airmen. And I started getting a little bit immersed in, there's all this momentum and all this dialogue around, we used to be great at innovating in the military. And now we're not and we've gotten really bad at this. And we have to figure out why that is. And we have to figure out how do we accelerate back to, to do this? And a big piece of that was, how do we as a military leverage, companies like ours, quite frankly, these small companies that are out there that would otherwise never have a chance to compete, but actually can bring some ideas and something valuable to the table? And how do we how do we give them a path to be able to try some stuff? And you know, see if things work, and if they do work? How do we scale that stuff out. And so these things kind of came together where I was, I got really interested in that mission. And the the goal there because I thought, Man, I used to do those jobs, and my buddies are still doing those jobs. And a bunch of them don't realize that they're just the tools they have, or, you know, completely lacking. And a bunch of them realize that the tools they have are really lacking, but they don't know what to do about it. And I might actually have something that can contribute to that just from having done the other work that I did so. So like I said, I started with this idea, like, I can't go to the two guys in the garage, and I don't really care about the defense world. And then it became No, I need to be a part of this. And I'm excited to be a part of it. So. So that was enough for me to say, and talking to my wife to say I think it's time to make this leap from from BCG. And I talked to some friends of mine who had left BCG and had gone to small startups. And you know, and learn a little bit about the pros and cons of that. And this roller coaster, which I'm sure you, you deal with a lot in your own business building. Aaron, where you're kind of remember talking to the guys that had started the company and saying, yeah, a friend of mine, and went to a little more mature startup. And he was telling me, there's some weeks where I think, Hey, this is a real thing. We're gonna this is gonna be a real thing. And then the next week, he'll think I don't think we're going to last you know, it depends on how that changes. And the two guys who had spawned out of this company, additon. Jameson JJ had said, Oh, we have that like daily, you know, within a day or every other day kind of thing. So there's a little bit of mentally preparing myself for leaving a company like BCG or having been in the Navy where no matter what I do, I will not sink this company, I'm not going to be able to single handedly cause any real problem for this company. Likewise, like I'm not going to take be able to really contribute so much that I'm going to, you know, shift the trajectory of where this company goes necessarily. But when you go to a small company like that, there's there's a much higher risk, and there's a much higher opportunity to really be part of something and help it become a bigger, a bigger and more valuable thing.
Aaron Spatz:Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a, there's a big calculated risk with that, right? As you're there, the, the, the volatility of the company may be incredibly high. But you've also got a tremendous opportunity at the same time. And so it's like what it wherever you fall on that on that risk reward, scale, and doing that just doing that own, like the assessment of that. But then getting to see, again, just because your background, your experience, like you're able to kind of, you're able to kind of see where this could go and what it could become and lining your, your thoughts up with, with the company leadership and kind of where that's going. So I think it's terrific. I think it's terrific, what you're what you're able to do. So.
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, yeah, thanks. It's been it's been a lot of fun. And I think it's a, it's very easy to be really empathetic on the side, because we were in that world. And so I think that's a huge part of it, especially thinking of software products, and so much of it for us. And for me, personally was kind of our use all these things in my personal life. And they just, they generally just work well for me. And nobody taught me how to use Gmail or Google Calendar. I didn't have to read a big manual for it. And if somebody asked me, you know, how do I like that? Oh, it's great. Yeah, I don't know. It just works, I can just figure it out. And then as you know, the stuff that I used in the military was like, here's the manual, if you bring up stuff to people, and they roll their eyes, and it's just sort of the process for doing those things. Through no fault. I don't necessarily try to poke holes at the companies that have brought stuff before this has been great. Their admins have great things that have been been built over the years and certainly with newer companies like Palantir, and great stuff that they've done. But but there was just this disconnect between the way that something like software good software was built and the the structures of procurement that just lent itself to making very, very bad software. And so some of these things are changing now, which is a great thing. And it makes it much easier for companies like ours are really focused on the empathy of the user of like, what do you actually do and what do you like about this and what makes this useful to you versus what doesn't and being able to do things quickly and do things quickly? So it's meaningful to us we'd like to joke around about, you know, there's nothing wrong with figuring out how to send cat photos faster around the internet, right? But like for us, it's a personal thing of, Can we do something that's useful for people that are doing a really hard job that we we understand, because we've done that job before. And if we can make their job a little easier, then that's a good use of our time. So it's been it's been a great, it's been a blast so far.
Aaron Spatz:Well, to the extent you're able to share, like give, give the give the listeners give the viewers a little bit of a sense of what what the company is up to, like I like I know, you said, defense, mobile technology, all that but like, is there anything else? Anything more that you're able to share? On that front?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, sure. Sure. So we have our main product is called muster meu str. And this really came out of we started with this idea of can we do things with a mobile phone? And can we build all the security and this kind of compliance that you need to do to do military things on your phone first, and then can we build some particularly useful use cases on top of that kind of back end or that platform, and we had started with flight scheduling things, like I mentioned, we worked with the Air Force on some projects there. And we had done some grading training stuff, which was really what my experience had been, I'm an instructor on a flight. And I take a piece of paper, and I fill out this great sheet in flight of all these criteria, and Aaron going out and performing this particular training mission. And then at the end of the flight, we land and I take my piece of paper to the hangar and I try to find one of the computers that we have that's available, and I spent 45 minutes typing my notes, you know, that I wrote into the computer. And we said, Okay, this can be solved with a nice mobile interface and catch data better where it happens and take out this data entry task. So we were running along on these things. And then when COVID-19 happened, we had a bunch of these units that we worked with that were no surprise to you telling us, Hey, we're trying to just figure out in the morning, like who woke up with a fever, and who can't come in today, or who's who's gotten a COVID test, but they don't have the results yet. And so we don't know, and then need to quarantine and all these sorts of criteria whose spouse is sick. And of course, we still need to make missions. So we need to figure out not only are we taking care of those people, but do we have the right people here so we can continue to operate and conduct missions. And of course, it's the military. So we need to report this up to the boss's boss's boss, and that person wants all the data. And so there's just more than a tool to be able to do this stuff. So people had to get really creative. And and they were telling us Yeah, I mean, we have a couple of senior enlisted folks that spend most of the day on the phone just calling on the phone less calling everybody in San Aaron, do you have a fever today? No. Okay, and then I'll type it into Excel. And then I'll take this Excel sheet, and I'll hand this to, you know, the level above me. And there's some junior officer that takes these Excel sheets from six units, and then they spend a few hours making PowerPoint slides out of this. And then the next day, the boss's boss gets the here's the 24 year old or 24 hour old data. So we said well, we could fix we could do, let's do something to help with that. Let's just do this over the weekend, we'll build a quick thing and and that weekend project has has consumed our lives for the last year now. And it's become this thing called muster. Because it really became this idea of what are all these things that are happening on text chains, or phone trees, or happening in some data track or somewhere where you're always collecting information from your people. And as you're always needing to provide information, you're always needing to disseminate information. And you'd like to know who got that and who didn't. And somebody has to report on a lot of this. So you'd actually like for that to be data that you can export and can use. And that's really what this muster thing has been. And it's become focused on accountability. And I think we've, we've just sort of tried to get as much input as we can. So I think we've probably had 15 plus different organizations across the fence that have started using it for just day to day operations or for deployment preparations or for emergency management type things. And we probably have, like 7000 or so in users that have used it. So now we're to the point where we realize like that's a nice backbone of something that's just happens in a very messy way right now. And and does it give? Does it save people time? Does it give leaders actual real time data that they can use to make decisions? And does it take all this stuff that's just sort of messy and analog and put it in a place that's that leverages the fact that everybody's got a phone in their pocket? And and we use that in a way that's that brings some some value to them as individuals into their organization. So yeah, we're excited. We're having a lot of fun with it. And it's interesting, because it's sort of I thought going in that this is not a problem that a lot of people are in the military saying, I need to solve that problem. And I'm going to go online and try to figure out how can I solve this problem, but I felt like it's a problem where if they see it, they go Oh, yeah, we should Should I? Why didn't we have this? Why haven't we done this 10 years ago? And then we had a, we had a navy Senior Chief, contact us last fall and say, How can I start using this muster thing? And we said, how did you find us? And he said, Well, I've got, I've got 120 sailors in Dubai, and they were spread out in hotels, staying in hotels, the ship was in Dubai. And he said, I've got 120 kids, you know, 20 year olds, spread out in those hotels and Dubai. And I'm trying to just like, do daily musters and figure out, where, where's everybody? Are they, okay, who's on liberty, who's not who's turned in their thing, or whatever. And I thought, There's got to be a way it's got to be an app for this. And I went to the App Store, and I typed in muster, and I found you guys, and we thought, we thought absolutely nobody would ever do that. But we are. And he's become a great, you know, a great friend of ours and a great advocate for it. Because I think there's that percentage of people that are probably more than I realized that not only are saying there's, this is not the best way to do things, but are saying, I got to find a solution. And I got to be somebody to try something new. And you know, and I want to be one of the first ones to try it. And so, and he's been great. And we've had, we've gotten to know, several other kind of good advocates like that. And so it's fun to see, to see that bubble up kind of bottom, you know, bottom up in the military of people that are looking for ways to do things better. Yeah,
Aaron Spatz:well, in what you're doing there too, and which I think is really cool is you're not really having to create a demand for it, like the demand is there. So it's your simple like you are addressing a problem, you're solving problems in very in a very unique novel way that is not currently used with within military and then that's, it's been very well received, you're like, holy crap, I guess this is exactly what we need. It's so much easier. I mean, like, the, the imagery that you that you shared earlier, just with the whole, like, you know, spending hours on the phone, figuring out where buddy is, and like, then you've got five or six of these subordinate units reporting up, and then they've got to take all that crap, you know, consolidated, synthesize it, and then generate PowerPoint. It's like, it's when you when you say it, you don't realize how stupid that sounds, because it's like, it's so it's so archaic, man. It's like, and then to your point, and you slipped it in there really smoothly, but it's like, but it's, and it's already 24 hours old. Right? It's like it's already the data is already stale. And so with what with what this platform offers you is offers you the ability to, like get get, essentially real time data and across a distributed force. And then I'm sure that there's a whole bunch of other back end features that are able to generate all the you know, all the all the AI charts and all the other crazy crap people don't want to see. Right. Yeah,
Jeff Prosek:yeah, yeah. And it's the data point that you mentioned is interesting, too, because and talking about how this is this, when you think about it, this is crazy that we do these processes this way. So much of that is just time of people, of course, which part of us the cynical side of us also thought, yeah, I don't know if the military cares about people, right? As much as a business does, because their business knows like, this is an actual p&l impact. Right now, if this person is spending their time on like, very low, low value, mundane, repetitive tasks that I can automate with some software, that's probably a better decision for me, I could use that that person, you know, expenditure on something else, that's higher value. That's great for the military. And I don't know, maybe, maybe the answer that people is, is no, we have to be fives, and they sit all day on the phone, but very happy for us, we in talking to some of these folks, different commanders of things and said, Man, if I could give an hour back to my people, that's a huge win. And I would love to do it. But the other part of it on the data was talking and talking about the innovation ecosystem in defense right now. There's a fair amount of that the cynic in me is also like this is this is a lot of innovation theater at the moment, which is probably fine as a first step where things need to be anyways, but there's an awful lot of we're going to have events, and we're going to talk about how innovative we're going to be. And you sort of like we need to where where does the rubber meet the road, we actually do some stuff. But a lot of what that talk is, is we're gonna have AI and ML, this will be autonomous. And this is kind of these buzzwords that you can throw out and that are very flashy. And we're, we're sort of on the other side of that saying, EPA walkthrough. If you walk through one of these units, and you see the whiteboard, you realize, wow, there's a lot of data on that whiteboard that's written in in marker, right, that's never going to go into how do you take AI and figure something out that ultimately, here's the whiteboard on the marker, you actually need a data source of something where work happens. And that's kind of where we think like you need the secure mobile there to generate that sort of operations data at the time when it happens. Not not after the fact or, you know, somebody talked to us about we wanted to do predictive maintenance on submarines and, you know, great, there's great predictive maintenance tools that industry has been using for a long time. You trace this back. And I'm sure you saw the same stuff. Ultimately, it's grease pencil that's written on something right
Aaron Spatz:now, good old grease pencil man.
Jeff Prosek:So we try to make this argument a little bit on our side of like, you know, some of these things start, it's actually helpful to start with both, think about AI great. And in the meantime, you could do these things that are mundane tasks for people daily, and actually generate the data. And that'll help you in two years when you've got your AI system that you want to use. So but we do get really, we do get really excited about spending the time with people and we've bounced around, certainly before COVID A lot of different bases and sitting down with people and then now kind of ramping up with traveling again, here, hopefully soon coming out at COVID. And, you know, you definitely see people that that get really excited if I want to be part of the solution. And And so talking about the innovation theater, there's there's those windows now for people like us, in our day in the military, there really was there really weren't a lot of avenues of what do you do about it, but now there's more and more of those for people to be part of the solution, which is pretty cool, I think. Yeah, that's
Aaron Spatz:yeah, that's pretty awesome. And yeah, just it'll be really neat to see how you guys solve some of the obvious concerns, right? There's gonna be like, information security is a huge, right hopsack being all the geo locate devices, and you know, all the all the SIGINT related information security related concerns that people are going to have, especially if it enters the world of now, we're dealing with, you know, lower classified information systems are, you know, what, at what point is this interacting with this? And there's a lot like, there's a lot of concerns that I'm know that people are going to have, but it sounds like you guys are you guys are right on the edge of this. And there's been several, several there. I mean, you brought up Palantir. Right. I mean, they're, that's a great, a great example. I mean, I actually, I actually was able to use that software in Afghanistan. It's a tremendous, tremendous platform. Right. And so it's great to hear Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was back me. I feel like I feel like I'm talking like an old like a, like an old timer here. But that was, as I was almost what you're we're now 21. So that was she's, like 10 years ago, man. I feel like an old man. So
Jeff Prosek:you're Yeah, you were pretty early on in their stuff to that? I'm sure. It's I know. Yeah.
Aaron Spatz:Yeah. It was a young kid. It was a really young in fact, I don't think they I don't think they were public yet. I don't think they were they may have been, I don't know. But they were they were very, very small. And but making a huge impact, right. And so it's like I'm thinking, thinking of how you guys are able to kind of corner something that's a very, it's a very real concern their head, there's like, there's probably like, you guys probably have 100 templated. Like case study or use cases for this, right? In terms of, like you said, flight schedules, you know, like actual muster of people, gear accountability, like, like, I'm just thinking of all the obvious things. And there's, there's a whole there's a whole list of those.
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, that's funny, you bring up gear accountability, because that's one of the things parallel things that was talking about stuff that bubbled up and it was an Army army Greenbrae a different one, from the two that it started the company who's just like, This is terrible. I got to count up all my equipment. This was I had never done this, we didn't do this in the Navy, but it was like bring all your stuff, lighten up on the ground and,
Aaron Spatz:and doing doing doing SSL three gear inspection like you're, you're doing like SSL three layout. So you'll have like, you'll have your, your radio, and then whatever. And I'm trying to like my vocabulary list of this is long gone. So it may come out of the shadows here in a minute. But you'd have this equipment, then you have all the other secondary equipment that's affiliated with that. And it's all serialized, and you got to maintain accountability of it. And then, God forbid you lose any one of those items. You will spend a weekend in a training area looking for me and I remember we'd we'd spent hours looking for, like a random radio antenna. Right. We eventually found it. It was hanging, it was dangling there in a freakin tree. Yeah. It snapped off somebody's radio we're going through but yeah, it's nuts. It's nuts. And it's, it'll be neat to see the need to see the path that you guys are on. And I just I appreciate you one. Jeff, I appreciate you spending time with me talking about your career. You know, I appreciate you, you know, us being able to go into some of the consulting world stuff because that's all that's always fun. It's it's it's a fascinating world to kind of talk about. And then, of course, the new things that you guys are working on in the company that you've been, you know, been able to be a part of. So I think it's I think it's pretty cool. How can people learn more about you about the company what's what's the best way people can reach out and stay connected to you?
Jeff Prosek:Yeah, they can. I suppose if they find me on LinkedIn, I'm always happy to connect on there. And the last name Prosek PR o s EK. Jeffrey is the first name and so that's a great way to get in touch I suppose. And then our company's name is additon. add y to n. And our website is added ten.io at EY, t o n.io. And so if they want to learn more about what we're up to, that's great. We're always happy to take as much input as we can and move ahead and, and it. Yeah, Aaron, thanks for having me on. It's been great to chat. I love the show love what you're up to. And, and one day when we're when we're through some of the COVID stuff. We'll look forward to grabbing that coffee or beer here in town as well.
Aaron Spatz:Darn right now that sounds that sounds like a great time. Thank you so much, Jeff. I really appreciate it. Yeah, likewise. Thanks for listening to America's entrepreneur. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review or comment on your preferred social media platform. share it out with friends, family, coworkers, others in your network. And of course, you can write me directly at Erin at Bold media.us That's a Ron at Bold media.us Till next time