Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now it's just in 48. Justin, you were the founder and CEO of Phi C labs. You are found on the web at fi C labs.com. Justin, it's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:19 Josh. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 00:01:20 Absolutely. Well, give us an overview of your work. And and again, I know that Fike Labs is part of a larger consortium, but I'll let you kind of maybe fill in the gaps on that.

Speaker 2 00:01:29 Yeah, that's the perfect word for it. So, Fike Labs is kind of the, the mainstay or the the primary business that we run day to day. It's a development and creative agency that builds web applications, mobile applications and websites. Our clients tend to be SMB, a lot of B2B. some enterprise clients. Remax is one of our larger clients, a lot of startups that have been acquired. So we've built a lot of different technology. and that has allowed us to then spin off and build our own products and create our own venture studio and do some angel investing and and getting in with some of the really cool startups that we found through our agency. So as that, as FICA has grown, we've been able to kind of build this larger group that we're calling fractal.

Speaker 2 00:02:15 I'll talk a little bit about that later, and kind of what it's like to be a serial entrepreneur and use one, you know, use your services business to build up some internal products and things like that. So but yeah, core product, core business, 11 years old, FGC labs, development agency, about 50, employees. So. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:02:34 Wow. so, you know, some may look at kind of the, software development, app development world and wonder how that world has changed over the past 11 years. Certainly you've had the longevity in it to, kind of stand the test of time. what is it that Fike has been able to do to differentiate yourself where maybe other, you know, lesser folks have have not stayed around or not been able to continue to maintain growth and, and, you know, kind of thriving in an environment where, you know, maybe a lot more is done by AI, maybe a lot more is done by, you know, cheaper labor from different parts of the world.

Speaker 2 00:03:19 I mean, I can't pinpoint 1 or 2 specific things that I could say would differentiate us. It's, in the sense of it's a very difficult thing to stay alive. 11 years is a very difficult thing in agency side to keep going. what we've really done, I guess the one, one thing that if I go back and look at it, it's diversification in innovation. So if I look at how the path of our agency has gone, I've left and come back quite a few times going out build products that are sort of outside of the traditional, kind of status quo technology. I went and did blockchain stuff. Did I stuff came back, brought that knowledge back to the agency. So that diversification of knowledge, that diversification of investment into different pieces and then have some internal products that we built up to kind of bolster what we're doing, has been really influential. It came from ironically, it came from when I was in grad school. I worked at a bar and our bar group, spun off about ten restaurants, and it's and it's, in a ten year and a five year span.

Speaker 2 00:04:19 Right. So what they did was they would they created a consortium of businesses, and they allowed that different group to create buying power, create a diversification of employment opportunities that retained longer term employees. Because if you think about bar, restaurant and bar workers, they're typically only working 2 or 3 shifts from one business and they're picking up a couple. Well, if they all stay within the family, you're retaining that talent. So the diversification that fix done over the years allows us to retain talent longer because it gives them different options and different tracks for their employment versus a traditional agency, which is we're going to place you at a client and, we'll call you in six months and see how that's going with that client. right?

Speaker 1 00:05:01 Justin, I'm sure that in your world, you're seeing a ton of evolution taking place, obviously, is AI, which has been around for quite some time, but certainly hitting the mainstream a lot more. And I would say, you know, in a bit of Moore's Law, we're seeing certainly some evolutions that are kind of exciting.

Speaker 1 00:05:20 How has that impacted your world?

Speaker 2 00:05:22 So, you know, I mean, obviously there's the fear of losing out to AI and saying, hey, it's going to replace the work that we're doing that there's no doubt if we were lazy and complacent, that definitely would take our position if we weren't trying to stay ahead of it. It's trying to stay innovative. there's applications out there with a few prompts. They can give you boiler plates that took me 3 or 4 years to develop through my team and hone and perfect a couple prompts inside of AI now, and you've got that same boiler plate that I had and it's ready to go. And you've got a small SaaS product. Now, I know that those applications are still going to require maintenance over the years. Somebody's going to screw them up. And then here we come in and we fix it and save the day. We did that with WordPress back when WordPress scared everybody that web developers were not going to be needed anymore. When Wix came in, when Squarespace came in, somebody's always making a mess with these low code tools, no code tools, and we're always there to bail them out of trouble.

Speaker 2 00:06:12 So I know that what we're doing is creating more democracy or democratizing the web application and development and software process, which is beautiful. I think it's a really cool skill to learn. I think everybody should have to go through at least a JavaScript class just so they can learn how code works, and they have some empathy and understanding of what's going on behind the scenes. So I think that's it's a beautiful thing. That's it's democratizing that piece. There's going to be lint. There's going to be, tech debt forever. It never goes away. I it's it's always been there. So in many ways, as long as we stay ahead of the curve, I'm starting to to teach our, our group the frameworks that are being generated by AI. So that way when we go back into repair them, we know the framework already. So yeah, I'm and also obviously it's helping our workflows. We're using it left and right. copilot on from good on GitHub. And Microsoft has been changing the way we code, making things cleaner, making things more effective.

Speaker 2 00:07:08 It's it's just a it's a great environment. Now I'll talk about the ethical and, you know, doomsday concerns another time. But from my perspective right now there's it's been it's been really fun.

Speaker 1 00:07:19 Yeah I just and I think most of us that have listening I you know, I think there's been times where we've had successful engagements with developers and, and then there's been times where we've had very unsuccessful engagements. you know, maybe I'm okay. I've got a I've got I think all of us have been in business for any length of time and, you know, and kind of more that high tech world. We have many, many stories to tell and lots of blood on the ground from having our nose bashed in a few times.

Speaker 2 00:07:50 I don't like hanging out with people with scars. You got some scars we can hang out.

Speaker 1 00:07:53 Yeah. That's right. Right, right. so tell me a bit about maybe your advice or your best practice for aligning with someone that is going to be providing tech solutions. Primarily, we're thinking about software and apps.

Speaker 1 00:08:09 I think that there are a lot of big promises out there.

Speaker 2 00:08:13 Yeah. I think it comes with any vendor that you're working with. Right? It depends on how you want to treat your vendor. Is your vendor just a transactional interaction? And you expect to send an email and you get a product back. You're probably not going to get the best results because you're not actually giving the right direction, or you don't have your requirements fleshed out. If I'm building a house and I just say, hey, buy me, build me a house and I send you a picture of a house, you're not going to get the exact house that you wanted. You didn't. You don't haven't done all the specs, right? Or if you're a builder in construction or commercial real estate type stuff. Right. So with software development, it takes the same amount of engagement and interaction as you would with any other vendor. And I find folks who know, don't get me wrong, there's contractors out there who fleece people for their money.

Speaker 2 00:08:56 They they just subcontract half the work and they don't actually know what they're doing. And they're just they're just glorified brokers of of talent at Fisk. We only hire people who have technical backgrounds. Every person you talk to has is either a designer actively, or was a designer for 3 to 4 years, or a developer for 3 to 4 years. That's our I can't I personally can't work as well with my team if they haven't been in a position where they're developers. We don't have those kind of project managers to kind of shuffle stuff. So a lot of times I think the, war stories that you hear are often when there's non-technical project managers, events, tossing work to developers, and there's no kind of empathy or spec being given and drawn out. So then you end up having from the client perspective, they're thinking, oh, I'm not getting the product that I want. And the project manager doesn't really have the technical know how, so you kind of lose that translation. So that's why I don't love a lot of the agency models that are out there today where you have a non-technical project manager, outsourcing to whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 00:09:55 I don't care if you're a US based or India based, Eastern Europe based it it has more to do with the culture of ensuring that everybody in the in the positions that are doing the communication have both sides of the aisle. So that's one thing that we've changed, and, or that we've kind of shined with is, yeah, as a boutique agency, as we do not have the fence tossing of mindset. Everybody's engaged, everybody's involved.

Speaker 1 00:10:18 Yeah. Justin, tell me a bit more about your organization. And I'm curious as well. just about it seems like you do a lot of great work within your local community, and it seems like you're very actively involved. and that that likely leads to continue to opportunities. Am I right there or, you know, what else do you do from a, you know, maintaining growth perspective?

Speaker 2 00:10:43 Yeah. I mean, there's a natural curiosity, right? Like coming out, hanging out with you, Josh, and seeing what you're up to and asking questions to you and like saying, you know, how do you engage your community? What do you do up to? I go have beers with some friends, who are all business owners.

Speaker 2 00:10:58 Basically, my whole professional career, I've found a peer group that I'll either go have coffee with or I'll go have beers with something like that where we just sit down and talk. So there's only so much you can learn from a book. You need to know what that person's visceral emotional reaction and guttural reaction to things that they've been through, like our, our, our shared, you know, scars that has more of an impact on you than you realize versus what I read in a book. I can go read Malcolm Gladwell until I'm blue in the face, but until I've had that in in intrinsic pain or fear and I've overcome that or engaged it, you're not going to really know what it's like to be a real entrepreneur. So that community is that group that you go and talk to, that you learn from, you look at their reactions to it, and you can see how serious someone is interacting with it to the point of the community side. It's an interesting community for us as developers and as a remote business because our community isn't.

Speaker 2 00:11:51 I mean, I'm in Folsom, California. I'm in a great co-working space. We have a little private office, and there's some really fun people out there that I love to hang out with. But that community isn't the only community that we interact with as a remote agency. So community is folks like you. Well, other podcasts, other influencers inside the space. So it's important to engage, right, and get to know how to make that growth happen or maintain innovation in, touch with with what's going on.

Speaker 1 00:12:15 Yeah. Only because, I've, I've never chatted with someone in Folsom, California. is there any signage or any. Is Johnny Cash have any presence there? So. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:12:28 Tell me there's someone who's never been like, there's a prison museum. You go, you go drive in our office. You go right underneath the Johnny Cash bridge, which is connects to the Johnny Cash bike trail. It's. We got nothing else. Okay?

Speaker 1 00:12:41 He he's he's acknowledged. Okay, great.

Speaker 1 00:12:44 Put it on. Help! Put it on the map. Right.

Speaker 2 00:12:46 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:12:48 Yeah. Well, Justin, in terms of, like, app development, software development, you know, we obviously we talked a little bit about AI right now. you know, for folks that are maybe in, you know, they're thinking about like they've got something it's been on the whiteboard, they're thinking about undertaking it. and you know, maybe it's an app, right? That that, you know, supplements, some of the other work that they're doing or they want to, you know, app, amplify, you know, something that that that might be a little bit more browser based. you know, again, just in helping folks be a smarter consumer. What things in the shopping around process or, you know, and chatting with developers, you know, what things might you tell them? You know, you should be asking for this. You should be wanting to know about this. You should probably be looking into this technology versus that technology.

Speaker 1 00:13:42 Anything immediately come to mind?

Speaker 2 00:13:44 Yeah, I mean, we're we're in a really interesting time where we have I mean, not that this is the first time this happened, but we're in a rapid development period where products are coming out like crazy to do different things with AI. I mean, I had a really fun time with my kids doing, Disney covers from different artists because now there's great song AI products out there and just having fun with it, right? these are and that, that was those are probably three month old applications. So it's and it's just and there's going to be three more of them within a few weeks. And then there's going to be two more, video modification ones we We talk about, taking a taking video like this. We'll take this podcast, we'll clip it up into a bunch of, clips and put it online using Opus Clip, this beautiful, AI tool that helps with video. So it's happening so fast, which can create fear, right? It could create FOMO.

Speaker 2 00:14:39 You'd be like, oh, I'm missing out. I'm not using the latest, greatest AI tool. So my competitor is and they're going to beat me. It could also be, oh, I don't know what they're doing with my content is where are we at. And this is this is a very interesting time. It was it reminds me a lot of when I was in blockchain where there was a lot there was a huge race in to create DApps and decentralized applications and invest into cryptocurrencies. And some people made millions and some people crashed, right. Some people lost a lot of money. there's several applications that never saw the light of day. So the main thing is right now, the same way that we approach the the decentralized situation in crypto was get to know the team behind it, make sure that they're reputable team who's building this? Is it somebody who slapped together a GPT rapper who doesn't know what they're doing? And then next thing you know, your data is just getting flooded everywhere. Or they're not taking care of your your your private information.

Speaker 2 00:15:28 All of that is is to be considered. So look at the teams developing. Make sure they have a good track record. Now not everybody's going to take that time to do it. So I get it. No one's going in there to see, you know, who's building every tool. So that would be the first thing is look at the teams building it and then consider your business use case. Are you just playing with a toy. Are you actually solving a problem. Because sometimes you're just playing with a toy and it's a major distraction.

Speaker 1 00:15:51 Yeah. Justin, your website is f y c labs.com. to a friend that's listening our conversation and they're like, okay, Justin seems like a pretty good guy, what would you recommend their next steps be?

Speaker 2 00:16:06 So I think depending on where they stand. So there's if they need a website, they need a web application. They need somebody to help guide them through a lot of this. That's a great place to go to fi C labs.com engage with our team.

Speaker 2 00:16:18 Like I said we're about 50 folks on the team and we're all experienced designers developers. And you're going to get really good talent there. The interesting thing that's happening now is we're starting to build this fractal group, and what we're trying to look for is to create a bigger community of entrepreneurs and people who kind of want to invest into this group that we're building. So we have over 11 angel investments through this group. We have four services businesses that we've started in eight venture studio, product startups that we have. This group is going to be doing really cool and interesting things. And if you're looking to kind of see what a group is up to and like you, maybe maybe you're an angel investor yourself, maybe looking for a fund to get involved with. We're starting to put together some more opportunities for other entrepreneurs to get involved in our larger group, because, again, the diversification allows us to build more. We have more scalable products versus agencies love them, but difficult to scale. They take they're very cash intensive.

Speaker 2 00:17:09 These other products, we can get a little bit further up and get better margins, So I encourage people to go to fractal Group. IO, check out our manifesto, see what we're up to. You'll start to see the different products that we're working on and really engage with whatever solution it may be. Maybe you're maybe you're an SDR looking for an opportunity to hustle a few products. We really need SDR right now. We need them to get our products out. We need marketing folks. We need influencers on this group. And there's a really cool opportunity to partner with us as we grow this larger, kind of ambitious goal.

Speaker 1 00:17:42 We should chat. Yeah. Justin 48 again. Your website, Fike Labs. Com Justin, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:17:52 Josh, awesome to meet you. Take care.

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