Meeting Title: Insomnia Project Efficiency Planning Sync Date: 2025-09-17 Meeting participants: Rico Rejoso, Justin Breshears, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:00:14.220 ⇒ 00:00:15.930 Justin Breshears: Hey, Rico, how are ya?
2 00:00:16.750 ⇒ 00:00:18.589 Rico Rejoso: Hi, Justin, good, how are you?
3 00:00:19.420 ⇒ 00:00:20.560 Justin Breshears: Doing good, man.
4 00:00:23.200 ⇒ 00:00:25.670 Rico Rejoso: I’m just going through this stuff.
5 00:00:27.760 ⇒ 00:00:30.800 Justin Breshears: One second… put phones in.
6 00:00:35.660 ⇒ 00:00:37.580 Justin Breshears: There we go, should be able to hear you better.
7 00:01:11.900 ⇒ 00:01:13.020 Amber Lin: Hi!
8 00:01:14.970 ⇒ 00:01:15.500 Justin Breshears: Hey, Amber.
9 00:01:16.340 ⇒ 00:01:18.250 Amber Lin: I think…
10 00:01:18.760 ⇒ 00:01:36.760 Amber Lin: First, just want to check how the transitions are going. I met with the sales team, and we just met with the AI team, so Rico should be onboarded starting next week. I still need to do some stuff on the sales team, but I know you guys are also meeting on…
11 00:01:36.770 ⇒ 00:01:38.789 Amber Lin: Default interlude, right?
12 00:01:39.900 ⇒ 00:01:42.079 Justin Breshears: Yes, we have a sink for later today.
13 00:01:42.370 ⇒ 00:01:43.150 Amber Lin: Okay.
14 00:01:43.990 ⇒ 00:01:48.979 Amber Lin: That’s good. Let’s see what other to-dos we have.
15 00:01:52.360 ⇒ 00:01:56.230 Amber Lin: Oh, I need to review the SOPs you sent.
16 00:01:57.220 ⇒ 00:01:59.250 Justin Breshears: Yes, would love your feedback.
17 00:01:59.260 ⇒ 00:02:00.070 Amber Lin: Yeah.
18 00:02:03.690 ⇒ 00:02:05.910 Amber Lin: Let’s see if there’s anything else…
19 00:02:09.940 ⇒ 00:02:12.579 Amber Lin: Check on their time tracking.
20 00:02:18.440 ⇒ 00:02:26.420 Amber Lin: Also, I have a… I have a question. When I saw the… the message that you sent, I think for insomnia.
21 00:02:26.550 ⇒ 00:02:31.790 Amber Lin: How did you ask the teammates, and how do you approach,
22 00:02:32.120 ⇒ 00:02:40.289 Amber Lin: finding the… or reducing our… improving our actual billable rate. Like, what did you ask the team members?
23 00:02:40.290 ⇒ 00:02:55.940 Justin Breshears: Yeah, Rico had the same question, so good to talk about. So I went based on, like, in the Monday meeting, you know, the goal that was discussed is we want to be at a $150 per hour rate, ideally. So for these, like.
24 00:02:56.050 ⇒ 00:02:59.119 Justin Breshears: Fixed monthly cost projects.
25 00:02:59.360 ⇒ 00:03:01.360 Amber Lin: The idea is to…
26 00:03:01.360 ⇒ 00:03:13.180 Justin Breshears: you know, have that billable rate, you know, be the actual, based on the time that we spent. So, what I did was I took the 150 per hour rate.
27 00:03:13.530 ⇒ 00:03:18.389 Justin Breshears: That gave me a 66 and change hours per month that we can spend.
28 00:03:18.480 ⇒ 00:03:20.420 Amber Lin: On that project.
29 00:03:20.820 ⇒ 00:03:23.780 Justin Breshears: then I asked the team in the check-in, I was like.
30 00:03:23.900 ⇒ 00:03:27.540 Justin Breshears: How many hours are you devoting to your tasks this week?
31 00:03:28.360 ⇒ 00:03:35.400 Justin Breshears: they said 10 and 10, and then I put in, you know, maybe I was putting 2 to 3 hours in myself, so…
32 00:03:35.500 ⇒ 00:03:36.769 Amber Lin: With that.
33 00:03:37.190 ⇒ 00:03:41.419 Justin Breshears: I estimated that we were currently doing 88 hours per month.
34 00:03:41.850 ⇒ 00:03:44.360 Justin Breshears: It was, like, a $113 rate.
35 00:03:45.030 ⇒ 00:03:47.159 Justin Breshears: So the goal there is, like.
36 00:03:47.450 ⇒ 00:03:49.970 Justin Breshears: How do we get more efficient with our work?
37 00:03:50.150 ⇒ 00:03:58.370 Justin Breshears: Where we’re dropping the number of hours that we’re spending on it so that the effective rate that we’re getting is 150 an hour, right?
38 00:03:58.620 ⇒ 00:03:59.640 Amber Lin: I see.
39 00:04:00.740 ⇒ 00:04:11.940 Justin Breshears: So that’s… that’s kind of how I did the math there, and I think, like, if we can free up, like, time on this project, obviously it can be spent on other projects, and we increase our overall margin, you know?
40 00:04:12.540 ⇒ 00:04:17.220 Justin Breshears: So, that’s… that’s kind of where I was going with that, because I think…
41 00:04:17.510 ⇒ 00:04:27.170 Justin Breshears: Casey spent, like, 15 and a half hours last week on the project, and I was sitting there going, like, why? You know? Because his stuff should not be taking that long, so…
42 00:04:28.050 ⇒ 00:04:46.139 Justin Breshears: the idea is to see where we can, you know, save some money on… or save some time on that aspect of it, and, you know, reallocate that to some of the other initiatives that we have on the project, instead of just adding a bunch more hours to the project and effectively reducing our margin further, right? Because we’re only getting the $10,000 a month.
43 00:04:46.490 ⇒ 00:04:49.240 Justin Breshears: That’s set in stone, so…
44 00:04:49.440 ⇒ 00:04:50.180 Amber Lin: But I was…
45 00:04:50.180 ⇒ 00:04:51.290 Justin Breshears: Gotta.
46 00:04:51.290 ⇒ 00:04:57.000 Amber Lin: How we… how we do that, because we can push tests out.
47 00:04:57.150 ⇒ 00:05:05.130 Amber Lin: But I feel like in the short term, I know we talked about improving efficiency, I just don’t know if that’s possible, say, within this week or within a cycle.
48 00:05:05.240 ⇒ 00:05:05.730 Amber Lin: So.
49 00:05:05.730 ⇒ 00:05:09.420 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, it won’t be possible, like, right away.
50 00:05:09.420 ⇒ 00:05:11.440 Amber Lin: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go ahead.
51 00:05:13.540 ⇒ 00:05:14.659 Amber Lin: No, I almost done.
52 00:05:16.240 ⇒ 00:05:19.799 Justin Breshears: Like, it won’t probably be possible, like, in this cycle.
53 00:05:21.020 ⇒ 00:05:32.170 Justin Breshears: But, like, it’ll be case-by-case for projects, you know, how you go about tackling that, but, like, in the case of Insomnia, like, Casey’s time should only be spent really on
54 00:05:32.460 ⇒ 00:05:35.250 Justin Breshears: the Daily Impact scorecard going forward.
55 00:05:35.740 ⇒ 00:05:48.390 Justin Breshears: And one of the ways I can see increasing the efficiency for him on that is unblocking him with the manual ones that he’s doing that are taking a little bit more time. So if we can get him, like, meta.
56 00:05:48.420 ⇒ 00:05:56.420 Justin Breshears: and Google Analytics access to automate those, then that’s one way that we could make his daily time less.
57 00:05:58.310 ⇒ 00:05:59.340 Amber Lin: Okay.
58 00:06:00.530 ⇒ 00:06:03.010 Justin Breshears: So it’s about brainstorming with the team on, like.
59 00:06:03.300 ⇒ 00:06:12.579 Justin Breshears: okay, you’re spending 10 hours right now, what could we do to, you know, reduce that time? And that was one way that was identified.
60 00:06:13.000 ⇒ 00:06:24.020 Amber Lin: Hmm, okay. I see. I’ll try that, I’ll try that for Eden. We did grooming today, and we did end up pushing out some tasks, but overall, we’re still at, like.
61 00:06:24.450 ⇒ 00:06:29.680 Amber Lin: 70 hours, and the goal is 46.
62 00:06:29.880 ⇒ 00:06:34.209 Amber Lin: To get to 150, so we’re quite far away.
63 00:06:35.040 ⇒ 00:06:45.060 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and that’ll probably be a case where you pull in the account owner, you know, whether it’s Bhutam or Robert, and, you know, you align on the scope of, like, what
64 00:06:45.490 ⇒ 00:06:48.980 Justin Breshears: Because you don’t want to sacrifice on, like, what we’re delivering, right?
65 00:06:49.400 ⇒ 00:06:57.319 Justin Breshears: So, you gotta align on, like, scope of, like, okay, well, what… what keeps the delivery on track as far as, like, what we committed to?
66 00:06:57.590 ⇒ 00:07:00.160 Amber Lin: But, yeah, managing the sprints…
67 00:07:00.160 ⇒ 00:07:06.519 Justin Breshears: Where, like, okay, can we accomplish that in 50 hours? Can we accomplish that in 46, or, like, whatever, you know?
68 00:07:06.520 ⇒ 00:07:06.980 Amber Lin: Hmm.
69 00:07:06.980 ⇒ 00:07:07.680 Justin Breshears: And…
70 00:07:07.820 ⇒ 00:07:15.779 Justin Breshears: You know, the answer may be that you can’t within the current rates, and then that’s a conversation when it comes time for, like, renewals or new contracts, where it’s like.
71 00:07:16.330 ⇒ 00:07:31.770 Justin Breshears: hey, we’re consistently, like, spending more time than we’re estimating, so we need to ask for more money in future contracts, you know? And that way… the only way you’re gonna know that, though, is if you’re tracking the margin that we’re currently at, you know?
72 00:07:31.920 ⇒ 00:07:36.200 Amber Lin: So, yes, we can try and reduce it in the current, You know, set up.
73 00:07:36.450 ⇒ 00:07:46.269 Justin Breshears: But it’s also about informing, like, future contracts so that in the future, like, we are asking for a proper amount of money monthly to cover, you know, the margins that we want to hit.
74 00:07:46.890 ⇒ 00:07:48.649 Amber Lin: I see.
75 00:07:51.520 ⇒ 00:07:54.569 Justin Breshears: That’s all just takeaways that I had from the Monday meeting.
76 00:07:55.070 ⇒ 00:07:55.630 Amber Lin: Yeah.
77 00:07:56.010 ⇒ 00:08:00.729 Amber Lin: Makes sense, it’s just… just a faraway target, and it feels like we’re not there.
78 00:08:01.330 ⇒ 00:08:07.589 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and like I said, that we may not be there right now, but this will help us in the future, even if we’re not there right now.
79 00:08:08.070 ⇒ 00:08:12.200 Justin Breshears: Because 150 is the goal, right? But it’s not necessarily a reality right now.
80 00:08:12.760 ⇒ 00:08:13.330 Amber Lin: So.
81 00:08:13.330 ⇒ 00:08:15.849 Justin Breshears: So, it’s more about planning how do we get to that goal.
82 00:08:17.650 ⇒ 00:08:18.330 Amber Lin: Yep.
83 00:08:21.100 ⇒ 00:08:21.740 Amber Lin: Mmm…
84 00:08:24.490 ⇒ 00:08:32.099 Amber Lin: Thank you. That’s all on my side. Any other questions or to-dos that we should remind each other of?
85 00:08:35.400 ⇒ 00:08:36.630 Justin Breshears: I am…
86 00:08:36.850 ⇒ 00:08:41.639 Justin Breshears: finishing up my Sprint Management SOP, so I’ll have that one added to the list of ones to review.
87 00:08:43.140 ⇒ 00:08:51.770 Justin Breshears: hopefully you can do that today. And then, yeah, I just need to get up to speed on default narrow loot and inject myself there.
88 00:08:52.390 ⇒ 00:08:53.220 Amber Lin: Okay.
89 00:08:54.000 ⇒ 00:08:55.220 Amber Lin: Sounds good.
90 00:08:57.460 ⇒ 00:08:59.779 Amber Lin: Okay, thank you both. That’s all in.
91 00:09:00.370 ⇒ 00:09:01.989 Justin Breshears: Alright, have a good deal.
92 00:09:01.990 ⇒ 00:09:02.399 Rico Rejoso: Thanks, guys.
93 00:09:02.400 ⇒ 00:09:04.059 Amber Lin: Yeah, you too. Bye.