Meeting Title: Insomnia Cookies Project Overview Date: 2025-09-08 Meeting participants: Justin Breshears, Amber Lin


WEBVTT

1 00:00:49.280 00:00:50.400 Justin Breshears: Hey!

2 00:00:50.640 00:00:51.920 Amber Lin: Hey, Justin!

3 00:00:51.920 00:00:52.839 Justin Breshears: How are you?

4 00:00:53.090 00:00:58.230 Amber Lin: I’m doing good, a little tired. We just had lunch, so I’m in my food coma. What about you?

5 00:00:58.230 00:01:03.880 Justin Breshears: I am right there with you. Give me one second, let me put my headphones on so I can hear you better.

6 00:01:08.239 00:01:10.069 Justin Breshears: There we go. Okay.

7 00:01:10.369 00:01:15.809 Justin Breshears: Yeah, my… my 6-month-old son decided to, be up all night, so…

8 00:01:15.810 00:01:16.510 Amber Lin: Mmm.

9 00:01:16.510 00:01:18.050 Justin Breshears: Sleepy today.

10 00:01:18.050 00:01:28.810 Amber Lin: Oh, that is tough. I was thinking that we’ll do, a 15 to 20 minute meeting, and then we can talk tomorrow, and just want to give you what you need for today and tomorrow, and then…

11 00:01:29.020 00:01:32.469 Amber Lin: then I think more questions will come up, and then we can keep talking.

12 00:01:33.000 00:01:44.339 Justin Breshears: Yeah, sounds like a plan to me. Yeah, I’d love to learn a little bit more about the project specifically. That’s the one area where I haven’t really gotten a chance to dive into yet, and so, I mean, especially the one that I’m gonna be taking on.

13 00:01:44.480 00:01:48.619 Justin Breshears: I’d love to learn, like, more about how y’all run these, and…

14 00:01:49.310 00:01:50.050 Justin Breshears: All that.

15 00:01:50.650 00:01:54.569 Amber Lin: Sure, yeah. So, how much do you know…

16 00:01:55.280 00:02:02.260 Amber Lin: In each area, and do you want to talk about any of those, or do you just want to focus on Insomniac cookies?

17 00:02:02.990 00:02:07.849 Justin Breshears: I mean, I’d like to learn about all of them.

18 00:02:08.190 00:02:13.889 Justin Breshears: and just kind of, like, the differences and everything. But I mainly…

19 00:02:14.310 00:02:18.269 Justin Breshears: We gotta start somewhere, so we might as well start at Insomnia, right?

20 00:02:18.270 00:02:23.289 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah, let’s do that. So, let me share screen, I’ll walk you through.

21 00:02:26.620 00:02:28.439 Amber Lin: -Oh, wrong page…

22 00:02:28.700 00:02:40.039 Amber Lin: So for each client, we have a… So if this is the home page, and from here, you can go to the client page.

23 00:02:40.210 00:02:41.840 Amber Lin: Which is over here.

24 00:02:42.070 00:02:49.479 Amber Lin: And then each of our clients will have its own page. So, let’s go to Insomnia Cookies right here.

25 00:02:50.460 00:02:55.160 Amber Lin: And… We put our…

26 00:02:55.470 00:03:03.810 Amber Lin: Let’s see, this is a little bit messy still, but the main documents, I’ll send that to you, are…

27 00:03:04.520 00:03:09.649 Amber Lin: This one, this is the roadmap.

28 00:03:10.770 00:03:18.020 Amber Lin: And, marketing reports… Yeah.

29 00:03:21.470 00:03:23.850 Amber Lin: Let me send that in the chat.

30 00:03:28.740 00:03:37.470 Amber Lin: That’s the main roadmap that we have. So, what we have done for them so far is that they have a marketing

31 00:03:37.640 00:03:48.740 Amber Lin: it’s a daily KPI dashboard that they want to fill, and Insomnic Cookies, since they sell cookies, they sell on, different platforms, so they sell…

32 00:03:48.960 00:03:54.879 Amber Lin: I think they use Braze to track their website.

33 00:03:55.360 00:04:15.019 Amber Lin: flow, and then they have Uber, DoorDash, Grubhub, and then some other sources. So what we do for them, essentially, so far this month, has been, one, taking over the manual flow, the manual filling in, so getting the data and putting that in, and two, is to automate that workflow.

34 00:04:15.260 00:04:24.950 Amber Lin: So, that would be Project 1, as you see here. So, we have these sources, and currently, we are done

35 00:04:24.980 00:04:35.330 Amber Lin: With automating everything that we have access to, and we’re still missing some access to one a few, but that’s on them, and we’ve been nudging them on the access.

36 00:04:35.860 00:04:39.870 Amber Lin: So, that’s on the automations, and for the…

37 00:04:40.060 00:04:47.700 Amber Lin: The manual fill workflows, we have a… Document that…

38 00:04:47.800 00:05:00.330 Amber Lin: outlines the steps to do that, because they also want to SOP on how to do manual fill, so that’s everything we’ve created so far. And let me add you to the linear right here.

39 00:05:00.550 00:05:17.169 Amber Lin: So… let’s see. In Sonia, I did… I don’t really have any cycles going on, mostly because it’s just so… such a small project. We mostly just track it here. I have the different milestones. So let me first add you to this project.

40 00:05:21.940 00:05:25.539 Amber Lin: And then you should be able to see this now, and…

41 00:05:25.700 00:05:33.349 Amber Lin: So let’s go into the project that we have been doing so far. So that’s the daily scorecard automations,

42 00:05:34.060 00:05:48.419 Amber Lin: here are the milestones. So, each of these milestones are a source. So, Braze, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Daily Sales Fast, which is a Excel report that they gave us, and Uber, Grubhub, DoorDash.

43 00:05:48.810 00:05:58.020 Amber Lin: And then finally, assembling it together. So these are the milestones we have. As you can see, we’re mostly done, except for the stuff that we’ve been blocked.

44 00:05:58.320 00:06:16.820 Amber Lin: And Casey is just adjusting some errors here and there. So, currently, because this is such a small client, it’s mostly just Casey. He’s our AI engineer, and he also does automation. He’s branching into data stuff as well. So he’s a great team member to have, and I know that once we do expand.

45 00:06:16.940 00:06:34.350 Amber Lin: there will be more things to do. And so far, I don’t know what they have added, but these are the additional requirements, mostly on reporting, on creating new reports, adjusting current reports that I’ve added to the milestones.

46 00:06:34.530 00:06:42.889 Amber Lin: Here, and then the tickets under, so I think I should give you a pretty good overview of what we have done and what we have planned.

47 00:06:44.420 00:06:45.220 Justin Breshears: Okay.

48 00:06:45.390 00:06:51.919 Justin Breshears: Yeah. I’m still… Working on figuring out how to navigate through everything.

49 00:06:52.070 00:06:55.529 Justin Breshears: Yeah, totally. Let me know if you need any time to walk through.

50 00:06:55.530 00:07:05.499 Amber Lin: Rico also knows how to use Linear pretty well, so we can grab a session, tomorrow, then we can walk through this if you need.

51 00:07:05.500 00:07:09.250 Justin Breshears: That would be great, yeah, I think, like, a linear overview would be super helpful.

52 00:07:09.250 00:07:12.079 Amber Lin: Sure, okay, let me grab… let me just do that now.

53 00:07:14.400 00:07:18.370 Justin Breshears: Afternoons are gonna be pretty good for me.

54 00:07:18.370 00:07:18.950 Amber Lin: Okay.

55 00:07:20.010 00:07:22.719 Amber Lin: I’ll probably grab a time here.

56 00:07:23.160 00:07:24.890 Amber Lin: Then I’ll think… maybe…

57 00:07:24.890 00:07:26.369 Justin Breshears: You’re in Pacific time, right?

58 00:07:26.370 00:07:28.480 Amber Lin: Yeah, I’m a PST, so…

59 00:07:28.480 00:07:29.049 Justin Breshears: Okay, cool.

60 00:07:29.050 00:07:31.939 Amber Lin: My 12 p.m. will be your 2 o’clock.

61 00:07:32.090 00:07:36.900 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and that’s perfect. Anytime after that, after 12, your time would work for me.

62 00:07:36.900 00:07:38.500 Amber Lin: Okay, sounds good.

63 00:07:52.120 00:07:56.669 Amber Lin: And I’ll record that session, so… for future PMs to come through.

64 00:07:57.210 00:08:03.970 Amber Lin: Yeah, and right now, let me see the project management plan. I might not have…

65 00:08:04.340 00:08:09.180 Amber Lin: I might have made it, I might have canceled it, because it just didn’t have much in there.

66 00:08:12.410 00:08:22.670 Justin Breshears: That was one of my main questions, is, you know, your SOPs are your… or not SOPs, your SOWs, and your… I guess, what y’all call the project management, and I would love to see those.

67 00:08:23.200 00:08:46.320 Amber Lin: Yeah, so this is something that Alex, who’s our advisor, created for us. So, essentially, it has the purpose of this project, the scope of work, what rituals we have, and then just… this is mostly documenting different things and our operational rhythm. So, who are the stakeholders, what do they care about? How do we communicate any risks and changes in the sprint schedule? So I think this has…

68 00:08:46.320 00:08:47.270 Justin Breshears: Beautiful, yeah.

69 00:08:47.270 00:08:49.809 Amber Lin: That’s great. It’s just been hard.

70 00:08:49.920 00:09:05.180 Amber Lin: for a lot of projects to put down, a sprint schedule. The other ones are easier information that exists, but a sprint schedule needs actual planning with the client and planning with the project leads. That has been a bit hard.

71 00:09:05.520 00:09:21.139 Amber Lin: especially, a lot of our clients start out really short, so there’s not really a sprint schedule, and then when they expand, I can get it initially, but some of the pro- a lot of projects, I went on midstream, and so we don’t have a sprint schedule yet. So that’s part of.

72 00:09:21.140 00:09:21.580 Justin Breshears: Yo.

73 00:09:21.580 00:09:22.940 Amber Lin: the goals this quarter.

74 00:09:22.940 00:09:29.130 Justin Breshears: I was kind of getting that idea from the conversation in the meeting earlier that, like.

75 00:09:30.030 00:09:35.880 Justin Breshears: kind of estimating the work in a time frame is kind of tough, the way everything’s set up.

76 00:09:37.400 00:09:39.690 Justin Breshears: So… Yes?

77 00:09:40.300 00:09:41.600 Justin Breshears: Are y’all…

78 00:09:41.770 00:09:54.240 Justin Breshears: working on, like, a two-week sprint kind of cadence, or it’s just kind of, like, every week, whatever comes in, y’all are handling and tracking time? I guess, how are you currently managing it?

79 00:09:54.240 00:10:13.679 Amber Lin: For me, so on my plate, I have… my main clients are Eden, Urban Stems, ABC, they’re the bigger clients, and they… I run them on two-week cadences. And Insomnia Cookies, I just… I just do daily stand-ups, I mix them in into the ABC meeting, because it’s the same team members.

80 00:10:15.040 00:10:30.240 Amber Lin: For Ellie, I just picked up last week, so there’s not really a ritual in place, I just put that in, and we’ve been stuck. And I… let me show you Vico’s calendar. So, I think for default and interlude.

81 00:10:30.280 00:10:39.099 Amber Lin: I don’t remember if they run on one-week sprints or two-week sprints, but these are smaller clients, and the engagement is…

82 00:10:39.200 00:10:45.929 Amber Lin: pretty much led by UTAM, and it’s… I think it’s decently fixed, it’s a small engagement.

83 00:10:46.470 00:10:54.920 Amber Lin: So, I think we’ve run on weekly updates, so there’s not a… I don’t think there’s a two-week sprint, because there’s not that much to plan.

84 00:10:55.360 00:11:03.229 Amber Lin: But I think on those ends, I would love your feedback on if a one-week sprint is appropriate, two-week sprint is appropriate.

85 00:11:03.280 00:11:21.939 Amber Lin: On Eden, we essentially run on a one-week sprint because we get so much ad hoc. We used to do two weeks, but now we do, like, every week we do a quick weekly planning, and then do a mid-week grooming to push some stuff out. So Eden is essentially on one-week sprints.

86 00:11:21.980 00:11:23.619 Amber Lin: But…

87 00:11:24.000 00:11:30.039 Amber Lin: the cadence in linear is still 2 weeks. So that’s up to change if you think there’s anything better that we can do.

88 00:11:30.970 00:11:31.570 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

89 00:11:31.890 00:11:37.210 Justin Breshears: I was curious. So… For, like, insomnia.

90 00:11:37.650 00:11:44.629 Justin Breshears: Is there a certain amount of hours per week that you’re trying to hit of work?

91 00:11:45.740 00:11:54.670 Amber Lin: I don’t think we have a hour target. We, however, do have a…

92 00:11:55.010 00:12:12.220 Amber Lin: allocation for Casey’s time. So, I think this will be important to us all, is operating, is where we assign the time allocations. So, let me just grab Casey’s time. So, this is another thing that

93 00:12:12.480 00:12:13.180 Amber Lin: Whoa.

94 00:12:13.540 00:12:21.849 Amber Lin: we’ll have to learn to navigate as well, so let’s go here. I went to timeline, and then here… let me find Casey.

95 00:12:22.130 00:12:28.090 Amber Lin: So, he has… he’s full-time, so he has 40 hours, and currently.

96 00:12:28.600 00:12:35.800 Amber Lin: I think AI is just internal work, so he probably spends about…

97 00:12:36.320 00:12:40.739 Amber Lin: 10 hours on ABC, 10 hours on Insomnia Cookies.

98 00:12:41.920 00:12:57.670 Amber Lin: So that’s the allocated amount. I think we can… if anything, if needs come up, we can still change that, but we don’t have that robust of allocations and keeping people to their allocations in place. I really just got started, say.

99 00:12:57.970 00:13:06.550 Amber Lin: this last month, or maximum last two months, so everything is not sol… solid yet.

100 00:13:06.770 00:13:09.150 Justin Breshears: Yeah, no, I wouldn’t expect it to be, it’s just…

101 00:13:09.490 00:13:14.519 Justin Breshears: trying to figure out where I can come in and help out. So you just started a couple months ago?

102 00:13:14.640 00:13:15.849 Justin Breshears: The brain portion.

103 00:13:15.850 00:13:19.350 Amber Lin: I started in March, so… In March. 6 months.

104 00:13:19.820 00:13:20.560 Justin Breshears: Nice.

105 00:13:20.690 00:13:21.220 Amber Lin: Yeah.

106 00:13:22.290 00:13:29.260 Amber Lin: And… I think right now, I’ll just note down what we have right now.

107 00:13:29.590 00:13:41.239 Amber Lin: We barely have any planning on grooming for Insomnia because it’s a set project. All the milestones are set already, there has not been any new additions.

108 00:13:41.470 00:13:43.710 Amber Lin: We also…

109 00:13:43.930 00:13:58.190 Amber Lin: on Insomnia, Robert handles the direct communication with Insomnia, because they’re very strict with their contract. However, we do share one account to access the different sources and do our work.

110 00:13:58.730 00:14:05.450 Amber Lin: So, I’ll add, daily… stand up.

111 00:14:10.980 00:14:14.310 Amber Lin: APC, I’ll say Amber…

112 00:14:29.520 00:14:31.290 Amber Lin: And,

113 00:14:46.230 00:14:51.520 Amber Lin: And then we currently… Weekly…

114 00:14:58.840 00:15:04.630 Amber Lin: So I think, especially now that it’s getting bigger, there’s a lot of things we can improve on, and I just want to see…

115 00:15:04.790 00:15:09.110 Amber Lin: How would you like to pick up this project?

116 00:15:09.780 00:15:19.570 Amber Lin: I just did the stand-up today, and currently, Casey’s just looking at… Bugs, so these 3 bugs.

117 00:15:19.770 00:15:27.919 Amber Lin: And I think what we probably need to do is to get the new scope from Robert, if there’s any additions to the…

118 00:15:28.170 00:15:31.170 Amber Lin: Project…

119 00:15:32.040 00:15:40.899 Amber Lin: 2 and 3, because we are pretty much done with Project 1, so we’ll just see how it is, and then we can plan the sprint schedule out. That’s my thoughts.

120 00:15:41.320 00:15:52.439 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think it’s a good plan. Okay. I think if we can have me just, like, come alongside in, like, the stand-ups or whatever is currently going on, watch you for a couple of days.

121 00:15:52.550 00:16:03.140 Justin Breshears: get to learn linear and how you’re managing it in there, and then, yeah, get that new scope and get it set up here in the project management plan. I think that’ll be a good way to get me started.

122 00:16:04.470 00:16:07.839 Amber Lin: Okay, let me add you to…

123 00:16:08.980 00:16:12.759 Amber Lin: Insomnia, let me add you here…

124 00:16:19.770 00:16:20.690 Justin Breshears: Great.

125 00:16:25.150 00:16:28.429 Amber Lin: Let’s see… oh, also on Clockify…

126 00:16:29.000 00:16:31.380 Amber Lin: So you can log your time there.

127 00:16:32.170 00:16:48.970 Amber Lin: Currently we just… I personally log all project-related hours to the project, so I can track how much time I’m spending on each project. I’m trying to advise the team members to do it the same, but it’s… I know it’s a lot of detail, so at least

128 00:16:49.070 00:17:07.389 Amber Lin: I asked them to do the main project work to be logged onto the projects. But we can also enforce stricter stuff about how people log their hours, because that helps us track, essentially the cost, and that goes into our KPIs about the margins as well.

129 00:17:07.880 00:17:15.300 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s huge. And, I mean, it’s how we’re billing, right? I mean, we’re billing the client based on our time, so that’s huge.

130 00:17:16.150 00:17:20.790 Amber Lin: So I just added Hugh, so you should be… you should have the insomnia cookies.

131 00:17:21.119 00:17:22.770 Amber Lin: One.

132 00:17:22.770 00:17:23.339 Justin Breshears: Okay.

133 00:17:23.880 00:17:30.830 Amber Lin: And then all our access should be in… the Insomnia cookies vault.

134 00:17:30.930 00:17:35.079 Amber Lin: That one, I think you’ll have to ask Rico to add you.

135 00:17:35.230 00:17:51.760 Amber Lin: We just have access to the sources that we’re using to fill, but honestly, you don’t… you don’t really have to access them, because mostly Casey does the automations. If you want to check our previous work so far, it is in…

136 00:17:52.230 00:17:55.499 Amber Lin: The roadmap, and it’s in the…

137 00:17:57.240 00:18:11.039 Amber Lin: this one. So in the daily scorecard SOP. So you can see here of, okay, what are the sources, what do they look like, what are we asked to do, and that’s kind of, that’s it. So every day, we help them fill this in.

138 00:18:11.240 00:18:14.659 Amber Lin: Fill these… fill that scorecard.

139 00:18:15.000 00:18:17.300 Amber Lin: In with the different sources.

140 00:18:17.700 00:18:20.859 Amber Lin: And then we’re on… on the side, we’re doing the automations.

141 00:18:22.480 00:18:32.340 Amber Lin: Okay. Yeah, based on your understanding so far, can you tell me what you think we’re doing for Insomnia Cookies so that I can make sure that we have the right understanding?

142 00:18:33.210 00:18:35.230 Justin Breshears: Like, the… like, but we’re…

143 00:18:35.550 00:18:40.019 Justin Breshears: kind of work we’re doing for the client, like, what they’re asking us to do, is that what we’re saying? Yeah.

144 00:18:40.760 00:18:54.069 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, we’re gathering, you know, data from different sources of where they track their sales, and putting it together for them to… in, like, a report or dashboard or something, so that they can track it, right?

145 00:18:54.440 00:19:09.450 Amber Lin: Yeah, totally. And we’re… every day, I think at 10 EST, we have to fill in this scorecard and a few other sheets to make sure they have the most up-to-date data, and on the side, we’re trying to automate that, so it’s getting easier and easier.

146 00:19:09.450 00:19:14.749 Justin Breshears: I was about to say, yeah, so that’s manual right now, but we’re working to automate that.

147 00:19:14.750 00:19:15.340 Amber Lin: Yeah.

148 00:19:15.560 00:19:20.390 Amber Lin: Yeah, totally. And then, in the future, I think with the new scope, we have some…

149 00:19:20.530 00:19:27.989 Amber Lin: reporting, Power BI, the different reports that they want us to do, but it might… it might change depending on what…

150 00:19:27.990 00:19:35.250 Justin Breshears: So, building from the automations, once we’ve got these numbers being automated, now we’re going to start building reporting for them.

151 00:19:36.080 00:19:37.669 Justin Breshears: Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

152 00:19:37.990 00:19:43.839 Amber Lin: That’s all. Let me invite you to tomorrow’s Insomnia Cookies meeting.

153 00:19:43.990 00:19:49.240 Amber Lin: So it’s essentially our stand-up for… Abc.

154 00:19:49.460 00:19:52.890 Amber Lin: And insomnia, let me add you there…

155 00:19:53.780 00:19:58.159 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think it’ll be good just to kind of watch for a couple of times, see…

156 00:19:58.310 00:19:59.700 Justin Breshears: See what’s going on.

157 00:20:00.210 00:20:08.020 Justin Breshears: Just kind of get a feel for how y’all are running things. In the meantime, I’ll be looking through all the stuff on Notion as far as the artifacts and stuff.

158 00:20:08.600 00:20:16.079 Amber Lin: Awesome. When is your regular working time? What’s the time period that you like to work so I don’t put meetings on the wrong time?

159 00:20:16.390 00:20:27.370 Justin Breshears: That’s a great question. I was kind of telling Utom it’s… it’s hard right now with, like, my full-time job, it’s just kind of unpredictable. Like I said, afternoons for me will probably be the best times.

160 00:20:28.930 00:20:32.380 Justin Breshears: But I will be reachable on Slack all day.

161 00:20:32.550 00:20:34.020 Justin Breshears: So, if I…

162 00:20:34.130 00:20:40.510 Justin Breshears: I’m needed, I can respond. It’s just, as far as, like, meetings go, it’s probably gonna be afternoons that’ll be the best for me.

163 00:20:40.510 00:20:45.409 Amber Lin: Okay, so after moves, you mean CST 12pm and after? Yes. Okay.

164 00:20:45.410 00:20:46.529 Justin Breshears: Yeah, for the most part.

165 00:20:46.530 00:20:51.799 Amber Lin: Okay, so the Insomnia Cookies is at 12pm CST, so that should be good.

166 00:20:51.950 00:20:54.119 Amber Lin: I’m gonna move the other stuff around.

167 00:20:54.120 00:21:01.450 Justin Breshears: Yes, I can… Let’s see… yeah, I can do 12 my time tomorrow.

168 00:21:02.680 00:21:03.560 Justin Breshears: That’s good.

169 00:21:05.290 00:21:06.030 Amber Lin: Okay.

170 00:21:06.960 00:21:11.120 Amber Lin: Sounds good. Alright.

171 00:21:11.810 00:21:12.679 Amber Lin: That’s it.

172 00:21:12.900 00:21:14.230 Amber Lin: I’ll see you tomorrow, then.

173 00:21:14.730 00:21:16.439 Justin Breshears: Sounds like a plan, thank you so much.

174 00:21:16.440 00:21:17.120 Amber Lin: Alright.

175 00:21:17.320 00:21:17.990 Amber Lin: Bye!

176 00:21:17.990 00:21:18.600 Justin Breshears: Fuck me.