2025-09-29_finance_sales_forecast_spend_allocation

Meeting Title: Finance: Sales forecast & Spend Allocation Date: 2025-09-29 Meeting participants: Megan’s Notetaker, megan, Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran, Amber Lin, Justin Breshears

WEBVTT

1 00:00:52.490 ⇒ 00:00:53.970 megan: Hey, Rico!

2 00:00:54.840 ⇒ 00:00:56.330 Rico Rejoso: Hi, Megan, how are you?

3 00:00:57.500 ⇒ 00:00:59.139 megan: Good. How about you?

4 00:00:59.550 ⇒ 00:01:00.420 Rico Rejoso: I’m good.

5 00:01:02.500 ⇒ 00:01:04.879 Rico Rejoso: Alrighty, maybe while waiting…

6 00:01:08.000 ⇒ 00:01:14.030 Rico Rejoso: I think there’s a few things that Utah mentioned to me that I may need your help with, but I still have to graph.

7 00:01:14.420 ⇒ 00:01:16.050 Rico Rejoso: A few.

8 00:01:16.560 ⇒ 00:01:25.239 Rico Rejoso: Like, for… let’s see here… like, the, client discount that sh… that should be included in the contract.

9 00:01:25.470 ⇒ 00:01:33.759 Rico Rejoso: I should be draft… I mean, I’ll be drafting that, and I’ll have you check it to verify before we use it moving forward to our new clients.

10 00:01:33.760 ⇒ 00:01:42.210 megan: Or what is it? Sorry, I’m having… I’ve got my, speakers turned all the way up, but I’m having trouble hearing you. You said a client discount?

11 00:01:42.790 ⇒ 00:01:49.639 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, this one, I mean, Uten proposed, like, a client discount, like, 2% if they pay, early.

12 00:01:49.850 ⇒ 00:02:03.749 Rico Rejoso: So I’m going to, like, include it on the contract, so moving forward, for new clients, we can have that one. I… I’m still not sure where or how to draft that one, but I’ll check AI and maybe get that done.

13 00:02:04.450 ⇒ 00:02:06.260 Rico Rejoso: And also get E-Verify.

14 00:02:06.580 ⇒ 00:02:22.769 megan: Okay, it’s a little, like… it’s… it’s not as straightforward, though, like, operationally, because if it’s for a short period of time, then we pretty much have to, like, put it on and then take it off for the discount if we are trying to do that, so…

15 00:02:24.130 ⇒ 00:02:26.360 Uttam Kumaran: This is for the early payment discount?

16 00:02:26.360 ⇒ 00:02:27.800 megan: Yeah, exactly.

17 00:02:27.800 ⇒ 00:02:28.420 Rico Rejoso: Yes.

18 00:02:28.590 ⇒ 00:02:30.349 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, we were just discussing that.

19 00:02:30.720 ⇒ 00:02:34.929 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess the last time we chatted, Megan, maybe it was something we, like, we basically put…

20 00:02:35.390 ⇒ 00:02:38.100 Uttam Kumaran: For… we have it for the next invoice.

21 00:02:38.960 ⇒ 00:02:41.500 Uttam Kumaran: Like, right, I think that’s… yeah.

22 00:02:41.500 ⇒ 00:02:43.279 megan: That could work, yeah.

23 00:02:43.280 ⇒ 00:02:46.069 Uttam Kumaran: I think that was what your suggestion was last time.

24 00:02:46.070 ⇒ 00:02:53.119 megan: Yeah, it could still… yeah, that sounds like something I would say, so… yeah, because otherwise.

25 00:02:53.120 ⇒ 00:03:02.569 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, otherwise it’s too, like, yeah, I don’t know, you have to basically get them to accept it, and then we add it, and then reissue it, so I think last time when I brought it up, yeah.

26 00:03:02.570 ⇒ 00:03:11.810 megan: I mean, as an alternate to that, too, like, what would your thoughts be on just imposing late fees? So, kind of just going the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

27 00:03:13.340 ⇒ 00:03:19.880 Uttam Kumaran: I… I guess, like, I don’t have a strong opinion. My gut instinct is that…

28 00:03:20.230 ⇒ 00:03:27.760 Uttam Kumaran: Like, it’s better to incentivize the positive than to… You know…

29 00:03:28.380 ⇒ 00:03:33.389 Uttam Kumaran: impact the negative, but I don’t know, my goals are the same.

30 00:03:33.780 ⇒ 00:03:39.360 Amber Lin: I do think this week we’ve been getting better. This week, we’ve just been missing, I think.

31 00:03:39.360 ⇒ 00:03:41.739 Uttam Kumaran: So this is… this isn’t… this isn’t about hours, this is about.

32 00:03:41.740 ⇒ 00:03:42.590 Amber Lin: Oh, okay.

33 00:03:42.590 ⇒ 00:03:43.890 Uttam Kumaran: Client-client payments, yeah.

34 00:03:43.890 ⇒ 00:03:45.240 Amber Lin: Oh, I… I see.

35 00:03:45.240 ⇒ 00:03:47.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

36 00:03:47.370 ⇒ 00:03:55.289 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know, Justin, do you guys have… do you guys… do you know if you guys… did you guys do a lot of, like, late fees for client payments at Kalen, or, like, were you aware of that at all?

37 00:03:56.110 ⇒ 00:03:57.960 Justin Breshears: I do not know.

38 00:03:58.390 ⇒ 00:04:02.090 Justin Breshears: I was not involved with the… Accounts receivable there.

39 00:04:02.090 ⇒ 00:04:03.240 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

40 00:04:04.290 ⇒ 00:04:14.349 megan: I mean, for the most part, people are pretty good… the clients are pretty good at paying, on time. There’s a couple that we have to chase, but yeah.

41 00:04:14.350 ⇒ 00:04:20.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s why it’s mostly for me, is about just, like, if they… if they’re, like, one button click from just getting it to us.

42 00:04:21.480 ⇒ 00:04:26.030 Uttam Kumaran: you know, within 5 days, that’s actually more of, like, what I’m hoping for versus, like.

43 00:04:26.280 ⇒ 00:04:29.989 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think we’re chasing anybody anymore, as much as we were before.

44 00:04:29.990 ⇒ 00:04:37.070 megan: And I don’t know that we need to give up revenue willingly, to be honest. I just don’t think it’s that big of a problem, and… Okay.

45 00:04:37.130 ⇒ 00:04:50.320 megan: we’re already paying, you know, for the… I know what you’re talking about with, like, the… have… having their… it easy for them to just kind of pay in the portal, or we’ve got a few clients who pay us through bill.com or some of their AP tools.

46 00:04:50.990 ⇒ 00:05:07.579 megan: So, having it easy for them, all of those, like, we pay transaction fees to QuickBooks, even just to collect, like, a… like, they take, like, 1% or something of every payment that gets processed in there, so we’re already paying those fees, and then it’s, like, it just all.

47 00:05:07.580 ⇒ 00:05:08.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

48 00:05:08.130 ⇒ 00:05:11.520 megan: away at margin. I just don’t think it’s really…

49 00:05:12.050 ⇒ 00:05:12.410 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

50 00:05:12.410 ⇒ 00:05:16.769 megan: Big problem that we should, like, voluntarily give up revenue.

51 00:05:17.100 ⇒ 00:05:17.630 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

52 00:05:17.630 ⇒ 00:05:20.010 megan: So, just my two cents.

53 00:05:20.330 ⇒ 00:05:21.470 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, fair.

54 00:05:27.710 ⇒ 00:05:32.670 megan: Yeah, well, cool. I had sent around some

55 00:05:32.760 ⇒ 00:05:52.660 megan: info, and I was starting to look into Clockify, but I know, so Justin, I don’t think you and I have met, so Utam, I’m not sure how you want to, frame up the meeting, or if you wanted to start somewhere, but I’ll just start with saying hi to Justin, because.

56 00:05:52.660 ⇒ 00:06:08.329 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think that would be great, and I would… yeah, I would love, Justin, maybe you can set the stage from goals on the delivery team side, especially going into this quarter, and I think, you know, of course, a lot of… one of your core stakeholders is

57 00:06:08.410 ⇒ 00:06:14.689 Uttam Kumaran: And one of the, you know, is finance in terms of some of their operational work, but also it’s probably one of the key

58 00:06:14.710 ⇒ 00:06:29.070 Uttam Kumaran: metric, you know, like, data providers for your team as well. So just, yeah, feel free to take it from there if you want to just set the stage, and then I think Megan has some things prepared, and we’ve also prepared our budget sort of doc the other week, so yeah, take it away.

59 00:06:29.630 ⇒ 00:06:39.320 Justin Breshears: Yeah, it’s nice to meet you, Megan. I’m Justin, obviously. Came on, to Brainforge to, lead delivery side of things, so,

60 00:06:39.910 ⇒ 00:06:42.629 Justin Breshears: Really, one of the things that…

61 00:06:42.780 ⇒ 00:06:55.920 Justin Breshears: one of the key metrics that I’m going to be looking at is, obviously, our margin on our projects. So, I’ve been trying to get a better handle on, like, where our hours are going and, you know.

62 00:06:56.390 ⇒ 00:06:58.339 Justin Breshears: Comparing that to…

63 00:06:58.610 ⇒ 00:07:09.929 Justin Breshears: dollars coming in on these projects, and how many hours we’re spending. So, cracking down on that right now to try and get a better, consistency, I would say, in how we’re reporting our hours, and…

64 00:07:10.000 ⇒ 00:07:21.239 Justin Breshears: looking at our margin on our project. So, I think that’ll be a relevant, you know, topic on this call, and in my interactions with you and your team, and,

65 00:07:21.950 ⇒ 00:07:26.119 Justin Breshears: Yeah, basically, one of the things is trying to…

66 00:07:26.630 ⇒ 00:07:44.070 Justin Breshears: not only, like, improve margin on, you know, our projects on an individual basis, but free up Wouton and Robert’s time to go and get more business and grow revenue side. So, really, that’s where I’m slotting in and trying to,

67 00:07:44.180 ⇒ 00:07:50.490 Justin Breshears: provide some… some benefit to the… to the company. I don’t know if there’s anything else, that you wanted to mention any time I’m out?

68 00:07:52.720 ⇒ 00:07:56.350 Uttam Kumaran: No, I think… I think that’s roughly it. I think,

69 00:07:56.520 ⇒ 00:08:00.859 Uttam Kumaran: If there’s anything you want to talk about, like, specifically about our goals.

70 00:08:01.190 ⇒ 00:08:03.780 Uttam Kumaran: For this quarter, that would be helpful, too.

71 00:08:05.280 ⇒ 00:08:08.420 Justin Breshears: Like, as far as the specific margin goals that we’ve discussed?

72 00:08:08.420 ⇒ 00:08:15.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, margin goals, and then also, like, kind of, like, how we’re thinking about, like, allocation metrics. So, so Megan is aware of, like.

73 00:08:15.970 ⇒ 00:08:28.459 Uttam Kumaran: Megan, of course, understands all of, like, the dollars and cents after, but I think operationally, I think it’s helpful for the context about what we’re tracking towards in terms of our… the operational metrics around

74 00:08:28.770 ⇒ 00:08:35.650 Uttam Kumaran: The billable, like, billable hour, margin, and, like… Allocation, the average allocation.

75 00:08:35.650 ⇒ 00:08:42.639 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so, you know, beyond the margin, the allocation piece is definitely something that I’m trying to take a look at, too, because

76 00:08:43.679 ⇒ 00:08:44.930 Justin Breshears: we’re…

77 00:08:45.200 ⇒ 00:08:58.759 Justin Breshears: that’s gonna help with our forecasting for headcount and what types of headcount that we need. So if we need to grow in certain areas or skill sets, and we kind of need to know,

78 00:08:58.900 ⇒ 00:09:12.880 Justin Breshears: have a better idea of, like, how our current, you know, resources are allocated. And so, one of the things we talked about is, kind of standardizing how we look at projects, and assigning, you know, different allocations depending on the role.

79 00:09:12.880 ⇒ 00:09:26.609 Justin Breshears: So, for example, in the project manager department, we talked about, just 20% of the PM’s time per project makes sense, versus 25, or even greater on some of the more complex projects.

80 00:09:26.610 ⇒ 00:09:36.870 Justin Breshears: And getting an idea of, you know, how much of each person’s time is required on each project, so that we can know where we’re currently at, and then know where we need to grow.

81 00:09:37.220 ⇒ 00:09:51.070 Justin Breshears: in our headcount on there. So, allocation’s an important piece, that I’m looking at, and then, margin goals, you know, we’re looking at trying to get, 40% to start, on each project for…

82 00:09:51.210 ⇒ 00:09:57.220 Justin Breshears: Margin, and so, especially on these fixed fee engagements that we have, where we’re

83 00:09:57.630 ⇒ 00:10:09.309 Justin Breshears: you know, setting a $10, 000 or a$ 15,000 monthly, making sure that we stay within, you know, the budgeted hours to hit that 40% margin. So,

84 00:10:09.690 ⇒ 00:10:15.339 Justin Breshears: right now, I think we’re maybe about half and half, or a little bit, more…

85 00:10:15.880 ⇒ 00:10:28.820 Justin Breshears: a few… a little bit more projects that are hitting that margin range, but then some that are not. So, currently looking at that in the sense of, you know, how do we need to sell new deals in light of

86 00:10:29.680 ⇒ 00:10:32.779 Justin Breshears: How many hours it takes to deliver on certain things, so…

87 00:10:32.880 ⇒ 00:10:48.949 Justin Breshears: The 40% margin metric is definitely a big one, and then looking at allocations across the board, we talked about today, seeing if we can maintain a 90% billable allocation across the board. So,

88 00:10:49.300 ⇒ 00:10:57.000 Justin Breshears: you know, making sure that overhead, time off, you know, things like that kind of fall within that 10%. That’s not… well.

89 00:10:57.280 ⇒ 00:11:01.229 Justin Breshears: Those are the two key metrics that we’ve discussed recently.

90 00:11:04.350 ⇒ 00:11:09.190 megan: So, I think it might be a good place to start.

91 00:11:09.300 ⇒ 00:11:13.160 megan: Then it’s just,

92 00:11:13.390 ⇒ 00:11:30.389 megan: kind of what, like, the current state of where the business is already, and I’ve talked, you know, burned Utam’s ears off with this over the past few months, but, like, overall, I think what you talked about makes sense, and having those targets and

93 00:11:30.390 ⇒ 00:11:42.859 megan: you know, managing the allocations. I think we have, like… the reality is that, you know, the company has a liquidity situation right now of, you know, we’re constantly, like.

94 00:11:42.890 ⇒ 00:12:00.629 megan: borrowing from the next month to pay people from last month, and even though revenue’s been growing, we haven’t yet been able to get out of that cycle yet. And what’s really dragging it down is that there’s just a… we just continue to see

95 00:12:00.630 ⇒ 00:12:12.180 megan: a lot of work. I was even in Clockify today, looking just to see, like, you know, if things had improved. Since we’re pretty much near the end of September, we’ve got, like, nearly a whole month.

96 00:12:12.180 ⇒ 00:12:20.969 megan: It does look like people have gotten better at tracking on an ongoing basis, so that’s good, but I’m still seeing a lot of work

97 00:12:21.220 ⇒ 00:12:40.880 megan: allocated to internal, non-billable customer activity. So, I guess on that front, I’m just a little, you know, if we… if we continue having that as a trend, then we’re gonna be in a really bad situation by Q4. Like, I mean.

98 00:12:41.340 ⇒ 00:13:00.970 megan: well, Q4 is, like, next week, so it’s… it’s kind of critical, like, I… it’s… I think, you know, targeting, 50%, margins on the billable helps. I know you’re saying 40, but we really need to be more at the 50%, and…

99 00:13:00.980 ⇒ 00:13:23.949 megan: And so, like, you know, I was even just comparing what we’re seeing now for September and doing some quick math, which, which I can… I’m happy to pull up and share my screen, because I was just running some numbers and things, but, I thought that we really need to start there, because, like, just doing some quick math, it looks like only about a third of the hours

100 00:13:23.950 ⇒ 00:13:30.009 megan: I’ve seen for September are truly tied to client activity. That’s… this is a huge problem.

101 00:13:30.220 ⇒ 00:13:43.959 megan: So, we’re not going to be able to pay the bills for what’s owed to people for August. There’s some that’s owed for July, it’s a lot less, but we’re… so we’re entering into October with now

102 00:13:44.130 ⇒ 00:13:50.460 megan: You know, some… some bills from a month ago that aren’t gonna be paid.

103 00:13:51.170 ⇒ 00:14:10.089 Uttam Kumaran: So can we start there? Because I think that’s helpful for Justin, and I’m sure, Justin, you’re like, let’s just pull it up, because that’s where I want to start to understand what is the breakdown of those hours that aren’t client-facing, but this is also where, like, I want to make sure a couple things. Sales and marketing are all

104 00:14:10.190 ⇒ 00:14:12.170 Uttam Kumaran: on Clockify, so I want to make sure that

105 00:14:12.450 ⇒ 00:14:20.940 Uttam Kumaran: we’re looking at the hours that are available to be billed, and then their distribution, right? Because I can’t…

106 00:14:21.170 ⇒ 00:14:24.020 Uttam Kumaran: There are hours being billed for sales and marketing.

107 00:14:24.170 ⇒ 00:14:28.119 Uttam Kumaran: Those are not… like, we’re not comparing those directly with

108 00:14:28.390 ⇒ 00:14:33.950 Uttam Kumaran: what’s going to service Revenant, necessarily, you know? So… Yeah, go ahead, Justin.

109 00:14:33.950 ⇒ 00:14:36.980 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I would… I’d be curious to know if…

110 00:14:37.800 ⇒ 00:14:46.240 Justin Breshears: Well, one, I think there’s a problem with reporting in general, that I’ve seen. I don’t think people are reporting all of their hours.

111 00:14:46.480 ⇒ 00:14:52.459 Justin Breshears: And I would like to see, like, How are you comparing, like.

112 00:14:53.390 ⇒ 00:15:01.849 Justin Breshears: If there’s a certain amount of billable hours, are you kind of taking the hours that maybe either aren’t reported, or

113 00:15:02.520 ⇒ 00:15:07.239 Justin Breshears: I guess aren’t categorized as billable and just assigning them non-billable, or how does that…

114 00:15:07.490 ⇒ 00:15:11.040 Justin Breshears: breakdown, if that makes sense. How does that breakdown look, where…

115 00:15:11.310 ⇒ 00:15:17.520 Justin Breshears: Because I don’t know what the, like, total available hours for each person is.

116 00:15:17.640 ⇒ 00:15:30.679 Justin Breshears: And I don’t know if, like, hey, they only, you know, put 10 billable hours this week, but they have… we have them for 20, we’re paying them for 20, are we just counting the rest of the 10 as non-billable, stuff like that. I guess I would love to…

117 00:15:30.680 ⇒ 00:15:31.000 megan: Absolutely.

118 00:15:31.000 ⇒ 00:15:32.270 Justin Breshears: Kind of where we’re at.

119 00:15:32.270 ⇒ 00:15:46.709 megan: It totally depends on how they’re inputting it, so this is why I’m a little concerned that maybe if the data’s not being input correctly, that we’re not… we’re not billing for it. That’s why it’s ending up as OPEX.

120 00:15:47.050 ⇒ 00:15:57.309 megan: Which is a huge problem, because then that’s directly tied to revenue, and it’s miscategorized just because, of how it’s labeled in Clockify, so I don’t know.

121 00:15:57.630 ⇒ 00:16:07.610 Justin Breshears: I’d like to start with looking at that first, because I don’t know that to be the case. I just don’t… I know that people aren’t necessarily getting their hours in… in a timely fashion every week, and so I would be…

122 00:16:07.800 ⇒ 00:16:12.850 Justin Breshears: I mean, my gut instinct says that maybe, like, the reporting is an issue right off the bat.

123 00:16:12.850 ⇒ 00:16:13.489 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this is where…

124 00:16:13.490 ⇒ 00:16:14.680 Justin Breshears: I think, like…

125 00:16:15.100 ⇒ 00:16:27.090 Uttam Kumaran: we should… we should not be seeing that, like… this, again, I think we… yeah, I just want to make sure that the people that are billing the clients are not billing internally, right? So that’s the first thing I just want to look at, is of the amount

126 00:16:27.090 ⇒ 00:16:36.490 Uttam Kumaran: that’s being built internal, like, who is that? Like, who isn’t that 561, basically? Like, if those are… it’s all salespeople, then I… then sales and marketing, that’s…

127 00:16:36.930 ⇒ 00:16:37.839 megan: I may have sales…

128 00:16:37.840 ⇒ 00:16:38.270 Uttam Kumaran: fair.

129 00:16:39.070 ⇒ 00:16:46.200 megan: I can show you. I was pulling, so… because I was asking the same questions in my head.

130 00:16:46.530 ⇒ 00:16:51.179 megan: So this is what… this is what’s pulled over,

131 00:16:51.370 ⇒ 00:17:02.640 megan: So, Tom’s got some automation that’s pulling from Clockify. There’s a little bit of a lag, so the hours in here might not, you know, match up, to what’s in Clockify, but it’s close enough.

132 00:17:02.940 ⇒ 00:17:16.110 megan: So, I’ve got, and I mean, you guys would know more than me, like, with some of these people. I see both, like, Raymond and Sam have booked, like, over 100 hours.

133 00:17:16.240 ⇒ 00:17:20.970 megan: Towards internal… So, I’m…

134 00:17:20.970 ⇒ 00:17:27.620 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is where, like, my question to the delivery team is, like, I’m clearly seeing here, like, folks like Henry.

135 00:17:27.780 ⇒ 00:17:35.539 Uttam Kumaran: Mustafa, Sam… Shreya, I’ve booked… Quite a bit of time for internal work.

136 00:17:35.950 ⇒ 00:17:45.810 Uttam Kumaran: my gut instinct is that Mustafa and Sam are billing stuff for the platform, so this is where, I guess, what I’ve asked for over the last two weeks is.

137 00:17:46.110 ⇒ 00:17:50.729 Uttam Kumaran: to set the caps on the internal work, right? That’s why we’re gonna meet today.

138 00:17:50.930 ⇒ 00:17:56.830 Uttam Kumaran: An outcome from this meeting today is, what are the budgets for internal work.

139 00:17:57.320 ⇒ 00:18:12.720 Uttam Kumaran: for each of the internal teams. So, like, how much time should sales be able to bill? Should our PM team be able to bill towards internal? Should AI be able to bill towards internal? Right? And then…

140 00:18:13.100 ⇒ 00:18:15.180 Uttam Kumaran: what is that worth? For example.

141 00:18:15.460 ⇒ 00:18:20.100 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think this is right. Like, I don’t think Sam was billed 100 hours

142 00:18:20.280 ⇒ 00:18:22.530 Uttam Kumaran: to internal, right? Like, I assume.

143 00:18:22.530 ⇒ 00:18:26.190 Justin Breshears: Like, what’s… what is straight-up billing to internal? Like, what if we have…

144 00:18:26.190 ⇒ 00:18:26.660 Uttam Kumaran: That’s also…

145 00:18:26.660 ⇒ 00:18:27.980 Justin Breshears: internally.

146 00:18:28.300 ⇒ 00:18:32.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so these are all… But, yeah, this is… I have the same question.

147 00:18:33.180 ⇒ 00:18:41.000 megan: I don’t know Clockify well enough to drill down quickly, but, I was under the impression that that’s… those types of things are being monitored weekly.

148 00:18:41.280 ⇒ 00:18:43.059 megan: So, a little surprising.

149 00:18:43.060 ⇒ 00:18:43.490 Justin Breshears: That’s…

150 00:18:43.490 ⇒ 00:18:46.260 megan: We’re asking those questions on the call.

151 00:18:47.110 ⇒ 00:18:47.680 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

152 00:18:47.680 ⇒ 00:18:49.279 Uttam Kumaran: Well, we’re starting to do it now, I mean…

153 00:18:49.280 ⇒ 00:18:50.159 Justin Breshears: on that, yeah.

154 00:18:50.160 ⇒ 00:18:52.709 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re just starting to do that this month.

155 00:18:52.710 ⇒ 00:18:53.670 megan: Yeah.

156 00:18:53.670 ⇒ 00:18:58.409 Uttam Kumaran: But I guess that’s my point, is that, like, I think the point to the delivery team that I made is that

157 00:18:58.530 ⇒ 00:19:08.849 Uttam Kumaran: And Rico, I think this is where I’ve asked you, is we have to make sure that anything that gets billed internally is pre-approved, basically, or there’s at least a cap.

158 00:19:09.130 ⇒ 00:19:16.810 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, this is the problem with the AI team, is if something… somebody asks them to do something, they’re gonna go do it, unless someone says.

159 00:19:16.910 ⇒ 00:19:25.850 Uttam Kumaran: wait for us to figure out whether this is worth doing, or if we’re allowed to do it within budget. So, like, folks like Hannah, Justina.

160 00:19:25.970 ⇒ 00:19:34.310 Uttam Kumaran: like, I would say I… in this meeting right now, I’m not as concerned to talk about non-bill… like, non-billable folks, which is…

161 00:19:34.480 ⇒ 00:19:44.770 Uttam Kumaran: marketing and sales. So, like, Soledad, Raymond, Hannah… Like… I could go figure out.

162 00:19:45.080 ⇒ 00:19:56.880 Uttam Kumaran: what they’re working on, but those are all sales-related expenses. So it’s everything else, right? It’s, like, all of Sam’s hours, which… this just seems like a miscategorization completely.

163 00:19:57.400 ⇒ 00:20:05.790 Uttam Kumaran: Mustafa’s time, right? And then… I know Wish has some time here, like, almost half of his time

164 00:20:05.920 ⇒ 00:20:09.759 Uttam Kumaran: is… is billed towards internal, right? So this…

165 00:20:10.020 ⇒ 00:20:14.049 Uttam Kumaran: On the surface, these seems like pretty obvious miscategorizations.

166 00:20:14.670 ⇒ 00:20:16.640 Justin Breshears: What’s the timeframe on this?

167 00:20:17.250 ⇒ 00:20:26.929 megan: This is the month of September, so, I mean, I’m just… it’s… it’s pretty consistent with what’s just out in Clockify, too, and I just pulled up this month.

168 00:20:27.310 ⇒ 00:20:31.650 megan: You know, there might be a little bit that comes in after this, but…

169 00:20:32.130 ⇒ 00:20:41.810 megan: I mean, even, like, copywriting, brand design, like, even just… I mean, once you start adding up, like, 30% here, 10% here, 8%.

170 00:20:41.810 ⇒ 00:20:45.049 Uttam Kumaran: But these are all… but these are all sales-related things, so I’m not…

171 00:20:45.170 ⇒ 00:20:47.059 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know why we could be, like…

172 00:20:47.710 ⇒ 00:20:54.820 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to talk about sales in the same breadth as servicing revenue, because it’s not fair comparison.

173 00:20:55.150 ⇒ 00:20:58.099 Uttam Kumaran: Like… Do you see what I mean?

174 00:20:58.100 ⇒ 00:21:02.310 megan: Design, copywriting, and sales, those, like, all.

175 00:21:02.310 ⇒ 00:21:07.929 Uttam Kumaran: These are all… these are all internal. Yeah, these are all internal sales-related.

176 00:21:08.450 ⇒ 00:21:09.760 Uttam Kumaran: Expansions. Expenses.

177 00:21:09.760 ⇒ 00:21:13.330 Justin Breshears: So what is the Brainforge internal bucket?

178 00:21:13.580 ⇒ 00:21:16.170 Justin Breshears: Is that working on the platform itself that we have internally?

179 00:21:16.170 ⇒ 00:21:18.409 Uttam Kumaran: Well, that’s what I’m saying, is like, I don’t know…

180 00:21:18.520 ⇒ 00:21:21.660 Uttam Kumaran: Of the hours that are billed there.

181 00:21:21.890 ⇒ 00:21:33.149 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think… like, this is where… if HAM is… I don’t know what that time is… is really going to. Like, I don’t know what… meaning, like, they’ve… they’ve definitely worked that time, it’s just not categorized properly.

182 00:21:33.470 ⇒ 00:21:38.540 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s… that’s my concern, is, like, my gut feeling is that we’re not reporting time very well.

183 00:21:38.650 ⇒ 00:21:52.899 Justin Breshears: Just based on, kind of, what I’ve seen so far. And so, like, Brainforge internal, like, that seems like kind of a catch-all bucket that I really don’t know, like, what that time was spent on, you know? Because, like, Shreya building 22 hours to it in a month, like.

184 00:21:53.500 ⇒ 00:21:56.019 megan: How do I just drill down? Sorry, I mean, you.

185 00:21:56.020 ⇒ 00:21:58.590 Uttam Kumaran: You can go… you can go… you can go to Reports.

186 00:21:58.860 ⇒ 00:21:59.390 megan: Okay.

187 00:21:59.390 ⇒ 00:22:02.080 Uttam Kumaran: And then you just go to… you could just click Summary.

188 00:22:03.240 ⇒ 00:22:06.559 Uttam Kumaran: And then you can filter…

189 00:22:06.680 ⇒ 00:22:09.829 Uttam Kumaran: You can filter to just the Brainforge internal.

190 00:22:11.790 ⇒ 00:22:16.370 Uttam Kumaran: if you just… I think you just… or if you just type in Brainforge internal client, I think it’ll.

191 00:22:16.370 ⇒ 00:22:18.829 megan: Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

192 00:22:19.260 ⇒ 00:22:20.170 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

193 00:22:20.170 ⇒ 00:22:23.220 megan: Oh, oh wait, actually, I think project…

194 00:22:23.890 ⇒ 00:22:25.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, every project.

195 00:22:26.990 ⇒ 00:22:29.299 megan: That seems to be where it all was.

196 00:22:30.500 ⇒ 00:22:32.170 Uttam Kumaran: And you can just hit apply, yeah.

197 00:22:35.620 ⇒ 00:22:40.239 megan: But I mean, if there’s client stuff in here, then…

198 00:22:41.110 ⇒ 00:22:46.499 Justin Breshears: Yeah, because, I mean, correct me if I’m wrong with Tom, but two-thirds being internal seems…

199 00:22:47.110 ⇒ 00:22:52.580 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, but again, I think we’ve clearly seen, like, there’s… there’s a huge miscategorization. That’s why I’m not, like…

200 00:22:53.140 ⇒ 00:22:59.990 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not freaking out about this, because this is just, like, it’s really obvious looking at the worksheet that there’s just misconversations.

201 00:23:00.110 ⇒ 00:23:08.510 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so let’s attack the biggest ones first. Awash… and Sam… Look like pretty big miscategorizations.

202 00:23:08.810 ⇒ 00:23:09.620 megan: Yeah.

203 00:23:09.620 ⇒ 00:23:15.799 Uttam Kumaran: So those are pretty easy for someone… and this, again, like, I think, Justin, what I’ll… what I’ll ask you is, like.

204 00:23:16.670 ⇒ 00:23:24.279 Uttam Kumaran: who is, like, accountable for that? Is that Rico, because he’s kind of PMing all the internal stuff? Or, like, how do we want to tackle.

205 00:23:29.280 ⇒ 00:23:30.570 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, I think…

206 00:23:30.730 ⇒ 00:23:41.739 Justin Breshears: ultimately, this is my focus right now, so… if we have Rico heading up all the internal, then I’m gonna lean on him for enforcing, but…

207 00:23:41.910 ⇒ 00:23:47.089 Justin Breshears: this is, like, where I want to crack down and own this… this part of it, because…

208 00:23:47.090 ⇒ 00:23:47.870 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

209 00:23:47.870 ⇒ 00:23:53.739 Justin Breshears: We have to be tracking this correctly in order to even have, like, fruitful conversations in these calls.

210 00:23:54.250 ⇒ 00:24:03.260 Uttam Kumaran: There’s also a difference between the price for every hour, right? So, it’s not really… this is also where, like, yes, there’s 500 hours, but some people

211 00:24:03.460 ⇒ 00:24:21.599 Uttam Kumaran: some people are a lot less than others. So, Raymond is doing video editing work for us, and this is where, like, I want to have another conversation towards the end of this meeting about budgets, because I don’t… I can’t tell you right now whether this is good or bad.

212 00:24:21.780 ⇒ 00:24:25.640 Uttam Kumaran: Like, it’s not fair to say, yes, it’s a third of hours.

213 00:24:25.930 ⇒ 00:24:33.589 Uttam Kumaran: that doesn’t mean anything, because I… it’s just, like, what’s the… what is it related to a budget? And so, for me, I think a couple key things is, like.

214 00:24:34.160 ⇒ 00:24:39.609 Uttam Kumaran: We need to… I think for the delivery team is to figure out, does Sam spend?

215 00:24:39.800 ⇒ 00:24:41.379 Uttam Kumaran: And the away spend.

216 00:24:42.060 ⇒ 00:24:48.089 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s also important to figure out the cost for Shreya.

217 00:24:48.200 ⇒ 00:24:54.690 Uttam Kumaran: there’s not really anything else that I’m, like, looking at this and very surprised about, because…

218 00:24:56.920 ⇒ 00:24:59.320 Uttam Kumaran: These are all people that work on

219 00:25:00.400 ⇒ 00:25:03.250 Uttam Kumaran: These are all people that work on sales, and look, Hannah’s just too…

220 00:25:03.450 ⇒ 00:25:10.240 Uttam Kumaran: 2 hours, so this is probably just a miscategorization. And so what we can do is, one, we should just basically erase

221 00:25:10.440 ⇒ 00:25:12.339 Uttam Kumaran: All of these, and then…

222 00:25:12.530 ⇒ 00:25:16.409 Uttam Kumaran: I can just delete this project, so there’s no way to bill to the project.

223 00:25:16.520 ⇒ 00:25:17.370 Uttam Kumaran: At all.

224 00:25:20.180 ⇒ 00:25:26.389 Justin Breshears: Is the cost taking into account, like, the cost of the… each individual person and their race?

225 00:25:26.570 ⇒ 00:25:27.430 Justin Breshears: Yes.

226 00:25:28.050 ⇒ 00:25:35.259 megan: It is, but some of them, like, I… I don’t know. Some of the newer people, their rates aren’t pulling in here, and I don’t know the formula.

227 00:25:35.450 ⇒ 00:25:40.090 megan: well enough to add it. Some of them I did go through.

228 00:25:40.390 ⇒ 00:25:44.069 megan: Over here, this is also September.

229 00:25:44.240 ⇒ 00:25:56.440 megan: And I pulled the rates based on what I, like, what I had on the tracker. And we’ve got some people that are a fixed rate, too.

230 00:25:56.800 ⇒ 00:26:04.850 megan: So I did go through and do that, and some of them are, like, right on. Like, you see this one is, this one is…

231 00:26:05.150 ⇒ 00:26:12.420 megan: The fixed rate, I mean, it kind of struggles with the… because the hours move around, so that one’s a little unique.

232 00:26:13.020 ⇒ 00:26:21.249 megan: So, actually, most of them are correct, but there’s a few of the newer people that are, like, not on here, so I don’t know how to fix that.

233 00:26:21.250 ⇒ 00:26:30.709 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and me being new, I didn’t know that I should be billing to internal codes, too, so, like, I have only billed, like, what I’ve done for clients, so…

234 00:26:31.040 ⇒ 00:26:37.859 Justin Breshears: I know, I’ve had a… Miscategorization of my hours, just by omission at this point.

235 00:26:40.650 ⇒ 00:26:56.810 megan: Well, the hours are what we use both for AR and for AP, so, I mean, we’ve… I… we do need to track, like, internal hours, like, if people are putting in time and it’s work that they’re going to be paid on. But Utam, question for you. When…

236 00:26:56.810 ⇒ 00:27:07.060 megan: since… since this is automated from Clockify, if there’s changes made in Clockify after it’s been pulled on this sheet, do we have to go back and refresh it, or does it…

237 00:27:07.060 ⇒ 00:27:08.970 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’ll pull everything, yeah.

238 00:27:08.970 ⇒ 00:27:09.450 megan: Okay.

239 00:27:09.450 ⇒ 00:27:10.590 Uttam Kumaran: Every time.

240 00:27:10.780 ⇒ 00:27:20.610 megan: So I think just since we’re getting to the end of September, like, it’s pretty, pretty important that we get a good view of, what that looks like.

241 00:27:21.130 ⇒ 00:27:29.120 megan: Because if we… like, most of the information that’s in here is going to be correct, but if we look at that internal work here.

242 00:27:29.290 ⇒ 00:27:32.200 megan: Well, actually, looking at here…

243 00:27:32.490 ⇒ 00:27:37.130 megan: It’s gonna be close enough, but we’re missing some of the rates in here.

244 00:27:37.290 ⇒ 00:27:42.020 megan: So we got 21 there, and then I know this…

245 00:27:42.280 ⇒ 00:27:47.940 megan: And so brand design and copywriting and sales are all related to sales, right?

246 00:27:48.540 ⇒ 00:27:48.990 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

247 00:27:48.990 ⇒ 00:27:58.490 megan: So that’s 7,500 there. And again, I expect these numbers will go up a little bit, just because we’ve got a couple more days, to account for.

248 00:28:00.040 ⇒ 00:28:08.110 megan: So, but yeah, I think if… especially if any of this is rebuildable, we really need to get that cleaned up, like, like, tomorrow.

249 00:28:08.110 ⇒ 00:28:13.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s fine. I think that’s pretty easy, like, that’s why I’m saying, like, none of this is, like.

250 00:28:13.850 ⇒ 00:28:20.980 Uttam Kumaran: That’s easy to do. Like, Oasis hours are gonna go to some other client. Same with Sam. We just have to figure out what those are.

251 00:28:21.270 ⇒ 00:28:23.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So that… that knocks us down.

252 00:28:23.610 ⇒ 00:28:25.169 Uttam Kumaran: That’s 15 grand.

253 00:28:25.650 ⇒ 00:28:29.280 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s most of the problem here, so…

254 00:28:29.910 ⇒ 00:28:36.009 Justin Breshears: Is there a way to do, like, a parent entry that all of these roll up to? So for, like, sales, you could have brand…

255 00:28:36.010 ⇒ 00:28:36.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we can…

256 00:28:36.570 ⇒ 00:28:42.059 Justin Breshears: I’ll be writing all that roll up to it, because that would make it easier to get totals for each department.

257 00:28:42.060 ⇒ 00:28:51.380 Uttam Kumaran: do that. So one thing we can do is I’ll just… we can just go back, if we can get clear understanding of their hours, or if they can go back and recategorize, then I’ll just remove

258 00:28:51.480 ⇒ 00:29:02.970 Uttam Kumaran: Brainforge internal, because it just won’t be available to build towards. And then we can just make sure that there are, for every type of project, there is a project that exists. I would like to have…

259 00:29:03.490 ⇒ 00:29:09.099 Uttam Kumaran: the sub-sub-projects within, like, a sales, for example. That way.

260 00:29:09.370 ⇒ 00:29:14.040 Uttam Kumaran: What we’ll hopefully be talking about today is how much time should be allocated.

261 00:29:14.180 ⇒ 00:29:15.590 Uttam Kumaran: Right? To those.

262 00:29:15.810 ⇒ 00:29:22.080 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I want the budgets for, because we should have a clear understanding of how much time is available

263 00:29:22.320 ⇒ 00:29:28.970 Uttam Kumaran: for each of these internal categories. And that should ladder up towards our OPEX ratio, like, our margin.

264 00:29:29.180 ⇒ 00:29:30.670 Uttam Kumaran: Polls.

265 00:29:30.840 ⇒ 00:29:37.860 Justin Breshears: We should have, like, a billable delivery bucket, and all the ones, all the projects underneath, and then, like, a sales, and all that.

266 00:29:38.620 ⇒ 00:29:39.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

267 00:29:42.540 ⇒ 00:29:47.079 megan: I had done a little bit of work on that as a starting point.

268 00:29:47.690 ⇒ 00:29:51.269 megan: Oh, did… was there something you wanted me to pull up over here?

269 00:29:51.620 ⇒ 00:29:58.620 Uttam Kumaran: No, I just wanted to make sure, like, we… if we’re good on that section, then I think we can… I feel good to sort of, like…

270 00:29:58.840 ⇒ 00:30:02.209 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll figure out this Brainforge internal thing, and we can close that out.

271 00:30:02.360 ⇒ 00:30:07.460 Uttam Kumaran: But… Unless there’s anything else there, then yeah, we can move towards this sort of budget.

272 00:30:07.460 ⇒ 00:30:26.470 megan: Okay. Yeah, especially… I think that’s the most immediate action item, so I think, Justin, if you want to work with the team on that, just because we’ll, we’ll want to get those invoices out on, ideally the first, so if people can make sure that all of that’s been reviewed and documented.

273 00:30:27.800 ⇒ 00:30:34.900 megan: by end of day tomorrow, then… because I know the sooner we get invoices out, the sooner we can get them paid, so that’ll be good.

274 00:30:36.920 ⇒ 00:30:42.799 Justin Breshears: Okay. So, Utam, do you want me to, like, let everybody know that they need to review

275 00:30:43.030 ⇒ 00:30:45.649 Justin Breshears: their September hours, and…

276 00:30:45.830 ⇒ 00:30:50.959 Justin Breshears: Make sure they’re correct, and do you want me to do that before or after we, like, remove that?

277 00:30:51.130 ⇒ 00:30:55.969 Justin Breshears: Rain Forge internal bucket, like, do we want to go back and have everybody redo all those hours?

278 00:30:56.250 ⇒ 00:30:58.850 Uttam Kumaran: I would just start with the, with the…

279 00:30:59.560 ⇒ 00:31:03.830 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, ideally, yes, every single one of those people should recategorize.

280 00:31:04.100 ⇒ 00:31:07.909 Uttam Kumaran: Most importantly is to get Sam and OH to recategorize, basically.

281 00:31:11.820 ⇒ 00:31:14.600 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, we need to get those new buckets.

282 00:31:14.800 ⇒ 00:31:16.619 Justin Breshears: set up, and then I can…

283 00:31:16.730 ⇒ 00:31:19.920 Justin Breshears: And ask everybody to redo those.

284 00:31:20.220 ⇒ 00:31:21.240 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

285 00:31:23.190 ⇒ 00:31:31.269 megan: So this one was really nothing fancy, just taking the spends that we’ve seen by month.

286 00:31:32.640 ⇒ 00:31:45.980 megan: And recognizing that kind of prior to, like, definitely May and prior, when we were bringing on the books from the previous provider, where things were just a lot messier,

287 00:31:45.980 ⇒ 00:32:07.509 megan: really, the past few months, we’ve got a lot better data, so I can show you a little bit more of what I mean there. But this is basically just, like, we know what people got paid, and then, you know, if we’re either tracking if they’re on a fixed or, variable rate, but it’s pretty much just tied to what we paid them last year, or the last year… last month.

288 00:32:07.550 ⇒ 00:32:19.220 megan: And carrying that forward, so there’s really not any major science behind that, other than people who might have off-boarded since then have been removed from that calculation.

289 00:32:19.350 ⇒ 00:32:34.259 megan: So, just to have something just to facilitate this meeting as a starting point, I used that, kind of based on what we know, because I know Ricoh’s really good at keeping, this payroll changes sheet updated.

290 00:32:34.260 ⇒ 00:32:40.490 megan: And I know that he updated the August numbers, so, you know, we’re kind of looking, especially with, like.

291 00:32:40.490 ⇒ 00:32:46.340 megan: Annie moving off, and a couple others. We are looking at a improvement.

292 00:32:46.560 ⇒ 00:32:53.099 megan: For September. Now, I say that when I know we’ve got, like, some,

293 00:32:53.670 ⇒ 00:33:02.639 megan: like, other people, like, Justin, I don’t even think you’re on here, for example, so… So, like, some of that, I think, is, like.

294 00:33:03.020 ⇒ 00:33:07.690 megan: You know, I think it just needs to be refined.

295 00:33:09.190 ⇒ 00:33:09.950 megan: So…

296 00:33:09.950 ⇒ 00:33:13.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Okay, yeah, I guess I…

297 00:33:13.570 ⇒ 00:33:16.060 Uttam Kumaran: I just want to make sure, since we’re… we’re just…

298 00:33:16.910 ⇒ 00:33:29.330 Uttam Kumaran: we only have a short meeting today. I just want to make sure we can talk through the budgets, or at least show a little bit of a forecast of, like, what we’re going to do this next quarter, because I really, today, want to make sure that we solidify, like, what the…

299 00:33:29.470 ⇒ 00:33:36.760 Uttam Kumaran: Cash budgets are for Internal work, so that we can back into, like, the points for those teams.

300 00:33:36.910 ⇒ 00:33:41.259 Uttam Kumaran: So, if we have a clear view of that, Oh, good.

301 00:33:41.260 ⇒ 00:33:44.860 megan: I’ve got some targets that are revenue-driven.

302 00:33:45.300 ⇒ 00:33:51.029 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, let’s start with here, and then Amber, do you wanna… maybe after we go through this, we can also go through our…

303 00:33:51.750 ⇒ 00:33:55.079 Uttam Kumaran: Doc as well. Yeah, sure. Budget doc? Okay, cool.

304 00:33:55.480 ⇒ 00:33:56.849 Uttam Kumaran: Great, please, yeah, go ahead.

305 00:33:57.260 ⇒ 00:34:04.460 megan: Yeah, so, I mean, this is really just pulling from, the revenue forecasts, which…

306 00:34:04.660 ⇒ 00:34:20.469 megan: we keep up to date with new sales and kind of track based on when things are closing. So kind of using what we know is booked. This isn’t always going to have, like, everything that’s on the forecast. I don’t know…

307 00:34:20.659 ⇒ 00:34:24.400 megan: How often that part’s updated, I really just play on the contract.

308 00:34:24.409 ⇒ 00:34:25.170 Uttam Kumaran: Exactly.

309 00:34:25.480 ⇒ 00:34:28.899 Uttam Kumaran: We’re up… Rico and I are meeting every Monday and updating this, so…

310 00:34:28.909 ⇒ 00:34:30.239 megan: Okay, perfect, because that’s what I.

311 00:34:30.239 ⇒ 00:34:33.419 Uttam Kumaran: The active is really the ones that are, like, post-sign.

312 00:34:33.619 ⇒ 00:34:36.149 Uttam Kumaran: Well, those are, like, the ones that we can really…

313 00:34:36.379 ⇒ 00:34:39.419 Uttam Kumaran: kind of bank on. The rest is just a little bit of forecast.

314 00:34:40.250 ⇒ 00:34:47.409 megan: So, okay, so this actually is using the forecast of 110, and then that kind of drives.

315 00:34:47.409 ⇒ 00:34:51.490 Uttam Kumaran: Down here, I’ve got the ideal ranges, so…

316 00:34:51.489 ⇒ 00:35:05.500 megan: I’m… I’m going, you know, 50% for target COGS, just to try to help alleviate the cash situation until we do have more of a cash flow positive situation. And then 20% for OPEX.

317 00:35:05.620 ⇒ 00:35:13.970 megan: Now, that was kind of what I used as a starting point, just, again, because I’m trying to focus on, like, getting out of the paycheck-to-pay

318 00:35:15.040 ⇒ 00:35:18.690 megan: So, so those are probably pretty low, like.

319 00:35:18.800 ⇒ 00:35:38.199 megan: But, you know, we also have, like, software and other things to account for, so I think that these are probably better targets, but the way we’ve got everything categorized right now, this OPEX even includes sales and marketing. So, yeah, so that’s kind of what I was using as a starting point.

320 00:35:38.480 ⇒ 00:35:47.640 megan: And then… Yeah, so then this pretty much tells us, based on

321 00:35:47.750 ⇒ 00:35:55.159 megan: up here, so this $62K, which as we mentioned, like, probably is missing a couple of the newer people.

322 00:35:55.270 ⇒ 00:35:57.820 megan: But that’s coming from down here.

323 00:35:58.120 ⇒ 00:36:01.060 megan: And so, based on the revenue forecast.

324 00:36:01.420 ⇒ 00:36:09.089 megan: And the ideal targets of this amount of spend, then, you know, if we’re tracking

325 00:36:09.200 ⇒ 00:36:15.239 megan: We’re… that we’re actually tracking a little bit less than that, so,

326 00:36:15.450 ⇒ 00:36:32.059 megan: Which would be good. So that’s kind of what I was hoping to see for, like, the next few months, and then obviously we don’t have, like, the… the December, like, contracted revenue, so I think those numbers are a little light, but I think these that are closer in.

327 00:36:32.380 ⇒ 00:36:42.129 megan: you know, really starts to help. If we can have some months that are closer in spend, then, you know, that’ll help us get out of the…

328 00:36:42.260 ⇒ 00:36:44.569 megan: The… the rat race.

329 00:36:45.710 ⇒ 00:36:56.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so just what I want to kind of, like, highlight while you have, this up is, one is, like, this is really, like, the big chump we’ve been making on the sales side.

330 00:36:57.100 ⇒ 00:37:04.610 Uttam Kumaran: So we are selling, like, As much as humanly possible, and so this is where…

331 00:37:04.900 ⇒ 00:37:08.279 Uttam Kumaran: Again, a lot of the sales expenses that we’ve

332 00:37:08.420 ⇒ 00:37:17.719 Uttam Kumaran: accrued through this… these months, which is, like, Justina ramping Hannah up, we brought Jake…

333 00:37:17.850 ⇒ 00:37:26.260 Uttam Kumaran: all of that is sort of moving towards this revenue. To think about, like, expenses, right, every expense should have

334 00:37:26.780 ⇒ 00:37:30.800 Uttam Kumaran: ROI. At minimum… at least it should offset, like.

335 00:37:30.920 ⇒ 00:37:40.930 Uttam Kumaran: its own dollar, right? Where it’s worth putting a dollar in to get a dollar work out. But sales is a little bit different. Sales, we’re putting a dollar in to get 5 out, or whatever it is, right?

336 00:37:40.970 ⇒ 00:38:00.130 Uttam Kumaran: The problem is that the period of payback can be a few months, but this is what, sort of what we’re seeing, the fruits of that labor is starting to breach 110, 117. The next challenge that comes is, how do we keep these where they are?

337 00:38:00.410 ⇒ 00:38:03.500 Uttam Kumaran: Right. And this is where we have a conversation about

338 00:38:03.790 ⇒ 00:38:15.460 Uttam Kumaran: percentage of revenue getting spent to cost centers, right? So these aren’t, like, fixed where, like, oh, you get $30 K,$ 20K. In order to make sure that we can guarantee

339 00:38:15.910 ⇒ 00:38:20.690 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, and this is in our budget sheet, which is, like, what is that… Margin…

340 00:38:21.070 ⇒ 00:38:29.409 Uttam Kumaran: After, we want to make sure that these stay fixed. Which means, and this is also positive, as we sell more business, these teams get more budget.

341 00:38:29.800 ⇒ 00:38:34.040 Uttam Kumaran: Alright? And for the… for the COGS, I think it’s actually…

342 00:38:34.230 ⇒ 00:38:38.219 Uttam Kumaran: I think, again, that’s the most data we have, and…

343 00:38:38.590 ⇒ 00:38:57.240 Uttam Kumaran: typically in consulting, there are, like, it’s very clear how to hit that. You know, we have a couple things. One, we try to source candidates for great rates, we increase our rates, like, I think we’re doing the right things there. I think we’re gonna start to optimize even further, to sort of stretch people more,

344 00:38:57.380 ⇒ 00:39:01.619 Uttam Kumaran: And so I’m not as worried as I am about this 50 as I am about the 20.

345 00:39:01.780 ⇒ 00:39:11.939 Uttam Kumaran: And there’s a couple things. So one on the 20%, or I don’t know what we ended up putting in the notion, is one is, like, we can’t increase

346 00:39:12.790 ⇒ 00:39:19.080 Uttam Kumaran: We just really have to make sure that we’re not increasing sales and marketing expense at the same

347 00:39:19.400 ⇒ 00:39:30.250 Uttam Kumaran: At the same, like, rate, meaning we just have, like, at this moment, I feel like we have to just optimize with the team we have to bring in that 110.

348 00:39:30.490 ⇒ 00:39:34.600 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I’m not gonna be really looking to add a ton more

349 00:39:34.730 ⇒ 00:39:47.180 Uttam Kumaran: expenses on the people side. The other thing is, like, as we get more people, our technology expenses increases, and we have, like, one-off legal and accounting fees, those we can’t really do much about.

350 00:39:47.330 ⇒ 00:39:55.550 Uttam Kumaran: But this is where, like, I think we’ve talked about, okay, how can we move to annual licenses, things like that, so there’s probably some optimization here, but…

351 00:39:56.580 ⇒ 00:40:03.780 Uttam Kumaran: The easier expense and the more important expense is to, one, have very fixed budgets for internal work.

352 00:40:04.060 ⇒ 00:40:14.429 Uttam Kumaran: So this is where I think we want to understand, in order to hit this, what is the budget that the platform team gets, the sales team gets,

353 00:40:14.700 ⇒ 00:40:20.890 Uttam Kumaran: and whatever other internal group, like, what do they get? And then there should be a clear approval process

354 00:40:21.140 ⇒ 00:40:22.450 Uttam Kumaran: For it to exceed that.

355 00:40:22.740 ⇒ 00:40:27.700 Uttam Kumaran: if… I would say if we’re not able to do that, the easiest thing for me to do is just

356 00:40:27.920 ⇒ 00:40:32.459 Uttam Kumaran: Nix all spend on the platform until we can figure it out.

357 00:40:32.650 ⇒ 00:40:37.860 Uttam Kumaran: that is a… we could do that. I’m just putting the options out there. The second thing is to…

358 00:40:38.830 ⇒ 00:40:43.629 Uttam Kumaran: Just blanket cut 30% of, like, our sales activities.

359 00:40:44.040 ⇒ 00:40:52.590 Uttam Kumaran: that… that’s gonna be… this is gonna be the… the challenge, is, like, there are these, like, larger levers I can pull in order to achieve it, but it’s gonna be, like.

360 00:40:52.850 ⇒ 00:40:55.780 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be messy, so I would… Trade off.

361 00:40:55.780 ⇒ 00:40:56.540 megan: Right? Yeah.

362 00:40:56.540 ⇒ 00:41:11.660 Uttam Kumaran: it’s gonna be messy, and, like, there’s… it’s gonna be no rhyme or reason, which I know nobody on this call likes to do things without, like, a clear plan. So… that’s what I want to make sure that we do this in a way where everybody knows that

363 00:41:12.020 ⇒ 00:41:14.779 Uttam Kumaran: What those budgets are for internal work.

364 00:41:14.980 ⇒ 00:41:16.920 Uttam Kumaran: The second piece is.

365 00:41:17.150 ⇒ 00:41:28.609 Uttam Kumaran: 50%, this is 50% of a large number. Meaning, if we can get an extra 5 points of margin here, that’s worth a lot more than

366 00:41:28.720 ⇒ 00:41:33.310 Uttam Kumaran: like, cutting a software tool, right? So it’s actually important that, like.

367 00:41:33.590 ⇒ 00:41:36.789 Uttam Kumaran: We try to find, for these categories that are

368 00:41:36.940 ⇒ 00:41:42.159 Uttam Kumaran: large percentages of revenue. An extra 5 points is really tremendous here.

369 00:41:42.260 ⇒ 00:41:49.450 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so this is where I think, Justin, we will continue, like, we’ll work together to innovate on how we do that.

370 00:41:50.110 ⇒ 00:42:03.889 Uttam Kumaran: But I can tell you, and again, I told this to you, we’re continuing to sell higher rate, better term, you know, deals, so I think the biggest thing to push on sales is how can they continue to do that with

371 00:42:04.550 ⇒ 00:42:07.309 Uttam Kumaran: You know, with less… It’s definitely paying off.

372 00:42:07.310 ⇒ 00:42:18.989 megan: For top line. So one thing that’s obvious to me is on the P&L today, we pretty much just have the, the COGS, so direct billable time, that’s pretty obvious.

373 00:42:18.990 ⇒ 00:42:26.110 megan: And then, really, everybody else. So, I think a couple things that are obvious to me.

374 00:42:26.110 ⇒ 00:42:50.189 megan: I don’t think it… I don’t want to disrupt anything for September, just because we’re so close to beginning that close, but for Q4, we can, we can add new categories for however you’re actually really managing the business. So, sounds like sales and marketing is an obvious cost center. We can just add a line item and start booking all that activity across brand design, copyright.

375 00:42:50.260 ⇒ 00:42:53.850 megan: Copywriting and sales into that department.

376 00:42:54.050 ⇒ 00:42:57.650 megan: Based on the fraction of people’s work that’s going there.

377 00:42:57.650 ⇒ 00:43:14.689 megan: And then, you know, and then I think there is a key difference, too, between, like, operations, and then… at some point, there’s going to be internal work, too. There’s the project management side of things, so there’s… there’s more of, like, an operations piece of it, and maybe we repurpose the current

378 00:43:14.690 ⇒ 00:43:21.749 megan: category for that, so it’s just this one, just OpEx. We could rename them.

379 00:43:21.780 ⇒ 00:43:22.350 megan: And then…

380 00:43:22.350 ⇒ 00:43:22.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

381 00:43:22.770 ⇒ 00:43:40.179 megan: platform delivery, so talk to me about that a little bit, because it sounds like that’s a key area, that’s more expense-driven, but it’s kind of going into supporting everything else. So it sounds to me like we probably want to have that broken out as a fourth area.

382 00:43:41.360 ⇒ 00:43:49.440 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s exactly right. So the work on the platform is to support efficiencies across the business.

383 00:43:49.570 ⇒ 00:43:58.950 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so we are… so that is a lot of the internal AI work. For example, the Clockify automation that came out of that team, they built that.

384 00:43:58.950 ⇒ 00:44:01.909 megan: Right. And so, that goes to support.

385 00:44:01.910 ⇒ 00:44:16.119 Uttam Kumaran: the speed at which we can make decisions, right? There is some ROI there, but again, I think the biggest concern for me is, like, that team should be able to unlock money as the business gets more efficient, right?

386 00:44:16.180 ⇒ 00:44:25.980 Uttam Kumaran: for me, I… one of the things that I want to… I’m trying to put as their OKR is for them to go assist the PM team to find 5 points of margin.

387 00:44:26.140 ⇒ 00:44:43.930 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, that’s what I asked them. I said, maybe your OKR should be that, like, your job is to go help them do that, and then that unlocks some more margin, some more budget for them to work with. But, like, again, like, on the ultimate level, we’re… if we can just… so we don’t have to do any of that

388 00:44:44.290 ⇒ 00:45:00.600 Uttam Kumaran: to still build a pretty good business, and so that’s got to be the first to go. And I’m okay with that, and so I want to make sure that we at least have what is the upward bound, and that way Rico, who’s the project manager, can basically tell that team, we only have this much time per week to work with.

389 00:45:00.790 ⇒ 00:45:05.609 Uttam Kumaran: And so this is how much we can deliver for that. But that is an internal-facing

390 00:45:05.880 ⇒ 00:45:09.329 Uttam Kumaran: That is, like, an internal team that supports every team in the company.

391 00:45:09.760 ⇒ 00:45:14.940 Uttam Kumaran: But I don’t know, Justin, all of our teams, I think we have pretty clear delineations for.

392 00:45:15.080 ⇒ 00:45:17.189 Uttam Kumaran: Now, like, I feel pretty good.

393 00:45:17.920 ⇒ 00:45:20.630 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and how we can break the company up this way.

394 00:45:20.630 ⇒ 00:45:33.160 megan: I can… I can definitely help from a reporting and tracking and even budget setting, so, so that… I can definitely take that and run with it, and we can get that more planned out for,

395 00:45:33.190 ⇒ 00:45:44.309 megan: for Q4, I’ve also been, just as we’ve been going in a new time, seeing some of the iterations, too, of the, financial forecast model.

396 00:45:44.310 ⇒ 00:45:57.589 megan: I’ve got some software I’m using for that. It’s… I still think that all of the various inputs, just because of, like, how granular the, you know, things are, it’s like, people are working on different projects, there’s a lot of data to manage.

397 00:45:57.590 ⇒ 00:46:16.060 megan: So I think all the different views that we’re using and tracking, they work for now, and then kind of using something more forward-looking, for that forecast side, then we can really make reporting a lot better once we get to that point. So re… so adding those new categories.

398 00:46:16.060 ⇒ 00:46:31.660 megan: defining those budgets, and I can take that away, too, just based on, where we see the numbers preliminarily start to fall for September, and then where we need to be, kind of, based on that October and November,

399 00:46:32.070 ⇒ 00:46:42.240 megan: sales targets that are forecasted, because I think they’re probably, you know, they’re probably close enough, and October, November are far enough out that.

400 00:46:42.350 ⇒ 00:46:53.009 Uttam Kumaran: They’re gonna be in the ballpark, it sounds like. And I don’t… and we don’t log anything to forecast until it’s basically in signing. Like, I’m trying to do a little bit more scrutinizing. That way, it’s like…

401 00:46:53.400 ⇒ 00:46:58.130 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s sales, so you can just basically… you can… it can seem really inflated.

402 00:46:58.830 ⇒ 00:47:03.920 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, sales has… we have metrics on, like, how we’re doing as people move through the funnel.

403 00:47:04.110 ⇒ 00:47:09.990 Uttam Kumaran: But… Yeah, I think maybe it could be helpful at this point, Amber, if you want to share

404 00:47:10.110 ⇒ 00:47:13.660 Uttam Kumaran: our Notion doc with everybody, and I’ll walk everybody through

405 00:47:13.800 ⇒ 00:47:17.800 Uttam Kumaran: how we’re thinking about this. So again, like, I think for me, I have two sides of my brain.

406 00:47:17.940 ⇒ 00:47:22.389 Uttam Kumaran: Or maybe it’s, like, 3 sides, which is, like, one, sell as much business for as high as possible.

407 00:47:22.630 ⇒ 00:47:31.759 Uttam Kumaran: Well, that we’re doing. I think we’re doing a… I think that we’re doing a better job at. Don’t know how much more we can optimize there. Second thing is to deliver it.

408 00:47:31.950 ⇒ 00:47:33.760 Uttam Kumaran: For…

409 00:47:34.020 ⇒ 00:47:42.200 Uttam Kumaran: like, as cheap as possible, basically. I think there are still some ways for us to get better. The other thing is to reduce churn.

410 00:47:42.690 ⇒ 00:47:58.419 Uttam Kumaran: I think this is something where, Megan, we haven’t talked a lot about, but we’ve sort of seen maybe around, like, 15% churn in the business. But that’s one thing that, when Justin came on, we indicated as, like, that’s a clear opportunity, because right now, we’re not…

411 00:47:58.540 ⇒ 00:48:05.300 Uttam Kumaran: we don’t forecast that any of those customers are going to leave us. I guess we have forecasted that their contract is expiring.

412 00:48:05.490 ⇒ 00:48:06.050 megan: Right.

413 00:48:06.050 ⇒ 00:48:08.479 Uttam Kumaran: We should actually be expanding.

414 00:48:08.590 ⇒ 00:48:18.330 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, we should see that we’ve… we’re confident that the renewal’s gonna come in, and it’s gonna come in higher, when in our past, we have had regrettable churn.

415 00:48:18.430 ⇒ 00:48:37.350 Uttam Kumaran: regrettable attrition. Like, we have had customers that have left us, primarily due to just delivery, like, not due to, like, any sort of, like, extenuating circumstance. And so that’s the one thing that Justin will be attacking as well. And then the other piece is… is sort of cost of doing business. Like, we have to do legal, finance, there’s just…

416 00:48:37.600 ⇒ 00:48:46.240 Uttam Kumaran: things we do, those we work to try to do as cheaply as we can, but those are something where I don’t think there’s much, like, optimization.

417 00:48:46.440 ⇒ 00:48:49.529 Uttam Kumaran: Where there is optimization is on…

418 00:48:50.020 ⇒ 00:48:54.670 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, cost of sales, and putting caps.

419 00:48:55.170 ⇒ 00:48:57.329 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so I really want to make sure that

420 00:48:57.750 ⇒ 00:49:03.839 Uttam Kumaran: the internal project… as we manage our internal projects, there is a really… it’s still a client…

421 00:49:04.110 ⇒ 00:49:06.180 Uttam Kumaran: Team relationship, where

422 00:49:06.410 ⇒ 00:49:14.479 Uttam Kumaran: I may be the client, or Robert’s the client, or an internal person’s a client, but there still is a budget that we’re delivering that work for, right?

423 00:49:14.760 ⇒ 00:49:21.619 Uttam Kumaran: And it may be at 100% margin, whatever, but that’s what I want to make sure that there is an upward limit. So yeah, Amber, if you want to…

424 00:49:21.910 ⇒ 00:49:24.929 Uttam Kumaran: Go ahead, you can… you can kind of share what you went through.

425 00:49:28.600 ⇒ 00:49:36.819 Amber Lin: Yeah, so when we did this planning, we said we were going to target 50% project margin, which is…

426 00:49:36.980 ⇒ 00:49:42.020 Amber Lin: the COGS, and then we said we want to aim for 10%

427 00:49:42.210 ⇒ 00:49:55.119 Amber Lin: net profit, so before taxes. And then that leaves us about 40% to allocate for operating expenses, and also, tooling costs. I just counted all of that in operating expense.

428 00:49:55.550 ⇒ 00:50:15.170 Amber Lin: And then in this document, we broke it down at 86K MRR, which is our… I think, around our current, MRR, and I have the monthly budget and the weekly budget, because we track our, every week we do our review, and this is a good checkpoint to see, okay, are we at our weekly budget?

429 00:50:15.380 ⇒ 00:50:20.729 Amber Lin: So how we broke it down is that we have,

430 00:50:20.860 ⇒ 00:50:28.920 Amber Lin: we looked at the ROI of different activities within each, within each section, and right now.

431 00:50:29.100 ⇒ 00:50:47.869 Amber Lin: Sales and marketing are… well, sales is the most short-term, impacting ROI, and then marketing and engineering is slightly more long-term, and PM and delivery is in the near term. And the other ones are just occurring expenses that have to…

432 00:50:47.970 ⇒ 00:50:49.180 Amber Lin: Keep going.

433 00:50:49.290 ⇒ 00:51:06.990 Amber Lin: Right now, based on our allocations, we’re gonna say about 18% to sales and supporting sales activities, because when I looked at the P&L, there was, like, travel expenses, food expenses, event expenses, and they all go into support sales and account closing.

434 00:51:07.500 ⇒ 00:51:15.819 Amber Lin: So, for sales and marketing, together we have around 3K, or more each week.

435 00:51:16.060 ⇒ 00:51:34.409 Amber Lin: Which is… which gives us about 18% to allocate for the sales team, whatever, events they want to support, traveling needs, and other… and also just COGS… not COGS, the hourly budgets that we allocate.

436 00:51:35.450 ⇒ 00:51:36.900 Amber Lin: And then…

437 00:51:36.900 ⇒ 00:51:45.159 megan: too, I think especially as it comes to, like, like, tools and software, and even, like, my team do things, for example.

438 00:51:45.160 ⇒ 00:51:46.020 Amber Lin: And I’m like…

439 00:51:46.020 ⇒ 00:51:54.099 megan: At some point, there’s kind of, like, a natural, like… it’s not going to be percentage-based, because some of those are a little bit more fixed.

440 00:51:54.190 ⇒ 00:52:04.070 Amber Lin: They’re not, like, as directly tied to revenue, so as revenue goes up, those things should be a lower percentage over time, even though, like, the dollar amount might be consistent.

441 00:52:04.070 ⇒ 00:52:06.870 megan: Yes. Software is a great example, so…

442 00:52:07.080 ⇒ 00:52:16.109 Amber Lin: Yeah, and I was thinking that we have more scenarios as the revenue grows. Currently, I still just did it in terms of percentage.

443 00:52:16.110 ⇒ 00:52:22.499 megan: I do think the tools would grow somewhat proportionately, sure.

444 00:52:22.500 ⇒ 00:52:33.710 Amber Lin: headcount, but say finance and HR, those things wouldn’t grow as significantly, but if we keep them at a similar ratio, I haven’t updated these yet.

445 00:52:33.710 ⇒ 00:52:45.269 Amber Lin: I think the increase wouldn’t be too significant, and we can always, after this meeting, after we consolidate, we can make a better projection that keeps these things the same.

446 00:52:45.800 ⇒ 00:52:46.480 megan: Yeah.

447 00:52:46.770 ⇒ 00:52:47.440 Amber Lin: Yeah.

448 00:52:47.440 ⇒ 00:53:06.399 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess this is also where, like, if we… yeah, I just wanted to talk about this. So this is where, right, the… look at the highest category, it’s sales and marketing, but this is people. And so this is where, I think, for me, it’s to understand, okay, really specifically, like, how many lin… like, how many linear points does this turn into?

449 00:53:06.800 ⇒ 00:53:12.199 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And then… are we above or below that? And so that’s where I think.

450 00:53:12.300 ⇒ 00:53:21.140 Uttam Kumaran: I want to sort of see that. And then, for associated sales costs, travel, these are all things that we, like, we can affect and we can keep low.

451 00:53:21.750 ⇒ 00:53:25.990 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think we spent, like, an egregious amount on this, to be honest.

452 00:53:26.120 ⇒ 00:53:28.479 Uttam Kumaran: But I do think that people…

453 00:53:28.860 ⇒ 00:53:35.479 Uttam Kumaran: are gonna be the biggest bucket. Similarly for AI engineering, I can tell you we’re higher than that right now for the internal platform.

454 00:53:35.560 ⇒ 00:53:38.640 Amber Lin: So I think a couple of decisions to make there is, like.

455 00:53:38.640 ⇒ 00:53:45.449 Uttam Kumaran: What is our existing run rate in terms of weekly cost for sales, and what should it be?

456 00:53:45.670 ⇒ 00:53:54.250 Uttam Kumaran: And then, like, what, okay, so what do we cut, right? Similarly, for the internal platform, what is it? What should it be? Okay, so then, what should we cut?

457 00:53:54.550 ⇒ 00:53:56.370 Uttam Kumaran: I would say if we… if…

458 00:53:56.550 ⇒ 00:54:01.620 Uttam Kumaran: If we have to make a hard decision, we should just stop development on internal stuff.

459 00:54:02.160 ⇒ 00:54:06.669 Uttam Kumaran: You could make that decision today. I want to kind of let you guys think about that.

460 00:54:07.260 ⇒ 00:54:12.089 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, that’s an easy one. Not so easy on the sales side, like.

461 00:54:12.270 ⇒ 00:54:18.099 Uttam Kumaran: There are things that we can stop, like, we can stop a lot of the video work, we could stop some things that are…

462 00:54:18.230 ⇒ 00:54:23.579 Uttam Kumaran: not as high ROI. Like, for example, if you go down to your allocation by category.

463 00:54:23.780 ⇒ 00:54:29.430 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So we want to optimize for the things that are the highest. Account executive.

464 00:54:29.780 ⇒ 00:54:34.929 Uttam Kumaran: Right? We basically want to… the dollar should go the highest ROI stuff first.

465 00:54:35.060 ⇒ 00:54:37.210 Uttam Kumaran: So the cuts will come out of the lowest.

466 00:54:39.000 ⇒ 00:54:51.169 Uttam Kumaran: But that’s how I want… that’s kind of how I’m gonna think about it, is like, what are broad categories that we can cut working on? And then ideally, how do we make sure that we’re spending the money where the ROI is coming from?

467 00:54:51.480 ⇒ 00:54:58.570 Uttam Kumaran: The sales team is getting better at measuring this. The internal AI work, again, this is a little bit of a bet on ourselves, like.

468 00:54:58.840 ⇒ 00:55:04.750 Uttam Kumaran: For example, if $100 spent on internal AI Gets the delivery team.

469 00:55:04.910 ⇒ 00:55:09.810 Uttam Kumaran: 3 points of margin, then there is an ROI there, right? So this is, like.

470 00:55:10.130 ⇒ 00:55:12.660 Uttam Kumaran: This is sort of, like, how I want to talk about

471 00:55:12.800 ⇒ 00:55:17.090 Uttam Kumaran: this sort of internal work as, like, the ROI needs to come from cost reduction.

472 00:55:17.580 ⇒ 00:55:27.829 Uttam Kumaran: Or the ability for us to get… for every dollar that goes to an AE, let’s say it’s an AI-enabled AE, now they can get $3, right? So…

473 00:55:28.290 ⇒ 00:55:31.999 Uttam Kumaran: this is how I want to think about the internal AI work as well.

474 00:55:32.390 ⇒ 00:55:40.110 Uttam Kumaran: but certainly, like, the money should first go to servicing existing clients, and then to sales.

475 00:55:40.250 ⇒ 00:55:44.130 Uttam Kumaran: To bring in the next… $3, you know.

476 00:55:46.160 ⇒ 00:55:50.069 megan: I think you’re right, I think it makes sense to, like.

477 00:55:50.230 ⇒ 00:55:55.670 megan: Push out some of that internal optimization, just for the short term.

478 00:55:55.960 ⇒ 00:56:00.879 megan: Because if that’s an easy lever to pull that can at least, like, kind of

479 00:56:01.380 ⇒ 00:56:09.880 megan: stop some of the bleeding, then we’ll be able to be in a better position by the end of the year, which is really the goal. And then, going into 2026 strong.

480 00:56:10.400 ⇒ 00:56:11.000 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

481 00:56:11.400 ⇒ 00:56:13.619 megan: Yeah, or at least break even.

482 00:56:13.620 ⇒ 00:56:14.250 Uttam Kumaran: Sure.

483 00:56:15.040 ⇒ 00:56:26.180 Amber Lin: Something I do want to point out, since we are doing blended rates, I did have some problems when I was converting our budgets into our hourly allocations, because

484 00:56:26.340 ⇒ 00:56:41.209 Amber Lin: Say if I… 10… Sam’s rate is 10 times Casey’s rate, so when we allocate points on the AI team, we need to allocate based on person and not based on

485 00:56:41.210 ⇒ 00:56:48.730 Amber Lin: just overall points, because if Sam does, say, 10 hours of work, that would be disproportionately affecting

486 00:56:48.730 ⇒ 00:56:51.299 Amber Lin: the cost on the AI team.

487 00:56:51.330 ⇒ 00:56:54.010 megan: So that’s a consideration we need to see. That’s true.

488 00:56:54.010 ⇒ 00:56:57.949 Uttam Kumaran: That’s a product… that’s also a question maybe for you, Justin, like, how should we…

489 00:56:58.390 ⇒ 00:57:05.739 Uttam Kumaran: like, how should we do… like, I didn’t… I didn’t have an answer for Amber last week on, like, how we should do that, but… seems a bit like…

490 00:57:06.230 ⇒ 00:57:08.089 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a bit tedious to, like.

491 00:57:08.790 ⇒ 00:57:11.950 Uttam Kumaran: One person’s point is worth this versus the other.

492 00:57:12.350 ⇒ 00:57:16.849 Uttam Kumaran: So, wondering, like, what you think we should do here.

493 00:57:17.600 ⇒ 00:57:30.840 Justin Breshears: I mean, I think right now our advantage is that we don’t have a massive number of people to do this exercise with, so I think we do need to look at it on a person-by-person basis first. If we had a thousand employees to look at, that might be hard.

494 00:57:30.840 ⇒ 00:57:31.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

495 00:57:31.320 ⇒ 00:57:42.299 Justin Breshears: But in that case, we would have better defined, like, roles, probably, and we’d do it on a role basis. But right now, it probably does make sense to kind of be like, Sam.

496 00:57:42.450 ⇒ 00:57:47.999 Justin Breshears: Right now, we need you more billable than non, so we need you to eliminate your internal

497 00:57:48.150 ⇒ 00:57:50.539 Justin Breshears: work to X percentage.

498 00:57:50.960 ⇒ 00:58:06.220 Justin Breshears: And then have the people, like, if we do need some internal work, have the people that are hands-on keyboard being the cheaper resources for now. Sure. We gotta… we gotta shift that billable versus non-billable to achieve any kind of margin rates that we want.

499 00:58:06.590 ⇒ 00:58:07.190 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.

500 00:58:09.860 ⇒ 00:58:14.719 Justin Breshears: So, like, we did earlier today, where we’re trying to find ways for, like, Awish and Sam to take on…

501 00:58:15.830 ⇒ 00:58:24.949 Justin Breshears: Some more client work. That’s a worthwhile exercise. That’s what I would do before cutting sales, because sales is going to bring in the top of the funnel.

502 00:58:25.400 ⇒ 00:58:28.199 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

503 00:58:30.900 ⇒ 00:58:31.610 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

504 00:58:34.410 ⇒ 00:58:38.710 Justin Breshears: We gotta get our reporting right, with our hours, and get all that stuff right.

505 00:58:38.710 ⇒ 00:58:48.760 megan: Well, that’s exactly it. Like, the reporting needs to match, you know, kind of, like, how the work is being tracked, which is much more clear to me now with,

506 00:58:48.830 ⇒ 00:59:00.069 megan: this great work that Amber’s put together, and just the input from you guys, so… I… I’ve got a really clear idea on what I can do on my end to help, and then, we’ll see where…

507 00:59:00.070 ⇒ 00:59:12.900 megan: September’s landing here pretty soon, and then we can use that as a way to kind of, know what levers need to be pulled, and then that… I can use that combined with the forecast that we know.

508 00:59:13.080 ⇒ 00:59:18.070 megan: And then, yeah, pull together the right reporting.

509 00:59:20.320 ⇒ 00:59:20.890 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

510 00:59:21.760 ⇒ 00:59:22.310 Justin Breshears: Yup.

511 00:59:22.680 ⇒ 00:59:26.149 Uttam Kumaran: So I think that’s a clear thing that I can do, is we can limit

512 00:59:26.490 ⇒ 00:59:36.159 Uttam Kumaran: I think one decision to make, Amber, is for number two for the AI, is to just limit it… actually, I don’t know if you want to go through the rest of your doc first.

513 00:59:36.160 ⇒ 00:59:54.590 Amber Lin: Yeah, I… the rest of this doc is mostly assignments. I do want to show this, so that’s how the allocations will convert to hours. I just did this based on rates, so for here, let’s say we put Sam at 5 and

514 00:59:54.590 ⇒ 01:00:14.070 Amber Lin: Casey and Mustafa each at 10, and also Awash at 5 for the internal data and AI work. That gives us about 1,000 per week, which is within our allocated budget. So when we do our team allocations, we’ll say, hey, Sam, just take on 5 points. I think this is the way we should approach it.

515 01:00:16.120 ⇒ 01:00:18.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this matches just what Jesse mentioned.

516 01:00:19.210 ⇒ 01:00:32.240 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and what those 5 points are used for is important, too, that we can get down to a very tactical level and say, your 5 points shouldn’t be, like, coding some, you know, thing, right, that we could do cheaper, right? We could have somebody at a cheaper rate.

517 01:00:32.240 ⇒ 01:00:38.000 Uttam Kumaran: It should be basically… yeah, so what I’ve told that team is support You guys.

518 01:00:38.260 ⇒ 01:00:38.630 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

519 01:00:38.630 ⇒ 01:00:43.320 Uttam Kumaran: I basically said, like, this quarter is going to be about supporting delivery to help them achieve their

520 01:00:43.450 ⇒ 01:00:48.520 Uttam Kumaran: OKR metrics. Yeah, I think that 5 points needs to be… 1,000 for 1,000, yeah.

521 01:00:48.820 ⇒ 01:00:52.180 Justin Breshears: Right, and the tech lead point should be…

522 01:00:52.400 ⇒ 01:00:58.549 Justin Breshears: towards the maybe higher level of strategy stuff, that, hey, where are we identifying the highest ROI?

523 01:00:58.830 ⇒ 01:01:01.960 Justin Breshears: You know, projects that we can do to support delivery.

524 01:01:02.400 ⇒ 01:01:10.229 Justin Breshears: And then have the 10 points for the other guys through the actual implementations of those things.

525 01:01:16.210 ⇒ 01:01:29.079 Amber Lin: Yeah, also coming up is tomorrow’s allocations, monthly allocations meeting, so if we get everything solidified today, we can dial those allocations in for tomorrow, and then we can start from there.

526 01:01:32.180 ⇒ 01:01:35.470 Justin Breshears: That would be really helpful for me, to know exactly

527 01:01:35.990 ⇒ 01:01:45.939 Justin Breshears: what the total amount of capacity we have across the team, and what it’s allocated to. Yeah. That way, when we get the reporting down, we can track against that.

528 01:01:46.310 ⇒ 01:01:51.239 Amber Lin: Gotcha. Let me make sure you’re invited to tomorrow’s meeting.

529 01:01:51.480 ⇒ 01:01:53.900 Amber Lin: loans tomorrow afternoon.

530 01:01:54.180 ⇒ 01:02:03.119 Amber Lin: Tomorrow afternoon at the same time. So, right now we have… actually, let me share screen. I don’t know if we need everyone…

531 01:02:03.800 ⇒ 01:02:09.259 Amber Lin: to be there. We have… Sam and Shreya, they’re…

532 01:02:09.380 ⇒ 01:02:12.090 Amber Lin: Should this just be a delivery?

533 01:02:12.290 ⇒ 01:02:15.890 Amber Lin: Related meeting? Should we have? So, Sherry, I’m Sam here.

534 01:02:15.890 ⇒ 01:02:20.050 Uttam Kumaran: I would probably just do this delivery and me, and Roger.

535 01:02:20.360 ⇒ 01:02:21.040 Amber Lin: Okay.

536 01:02:22.140 ⇒ 01:02:26.290 Amber Lin: I think that will save people some time, because they won’t… .

537 01:02:26.910 ⇒ 01:02:35.809 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, it’s mainly, like, I don’t think they’re gonna be contributing decisions. Yeah. I feel like now that you guys have a context of capabilities, it’s fine.

538 01:02:37.520 ⇒ 01:02:38.380 Amber Lin: Okay.

539 01:02:38.860 ⇒ 01:02:50.499 Amber Lin: Yeah, then I will… with the rest of today we have some time, I’ll finish out, the base case for these allocations, and then,

540 01:02:50.700 ⇒ 01:02:59.540 Amber Lin: I’ll enter these in, we will enter… we’ll enter these in together, and then tomorrow we can say, oh, we need to adjust here, adjust there.

541 01:02:59.810 ⇒ 01:03:02.339 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s the biggest thing, I think. One is…

542 01:03:02.340 ⇒ 01:03:02.980 Amber Lin: Hmm.

543 01:03:03.410 ⇒ 01:03:08.349 Uttam Kumaran: Next week, I want to make sure that the changes we did in this meeting

544 01:03:08.520 ⇒ 01:03:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: we actually have hit, right? It’ll be our first week into the quarter. We want to make sure that we are on track in terms of these budgets.

545 01:03:17.550 ⇒ 01:03:21.450 Uttam Kumaran: And again, like, the internal work is the easiest thing for us to affect.

546 01:03:21.690 ⇒ 01:03:35.430 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s us. So I can just say, stop working on that. And it’s not like it has to go through clients and things like that. So, I want to see that we are on track to hit or be lower than that $9.50 a week, basically.

547 01:03:35.730 ⇒ 01:03:38.379 Uttam Kumaran: So starting today, and again, we’re already one day in.

548 01:03:38.700 ⇒ 01:03:40.560 Uttam Kumaran: I want to make sure that we are

549 01:03:40.970 ⇒ 01:03:51.080 Uttam Kumaran: by Monday of next week, that we… we’re looking at this, and we can tell, okay, it’s… we spent $900, we’re… we’re doing okay there, you know?

550 01:03:53.100 ⇒ 01:03:56.689 Uttam Kumaran: I also want to find out internally where we’ve exceeded.

551 01:03:58.170 ⇒ 01:03:59.100 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go ahead.

552 01:03:59.530 ⇒ 01:04:16.939 Justin Breshears: I think we also need to know, if we stop the internal work, can that work be shifted to billable work? Or is it just completely stopping that, and are we actually stopping that cost? Like, how many people are hourly, and that, like, that just reduces the overall hours, or…

553 01:04:17.080 ⇒ 01:04:20.280 Justin Breshears: We have everybody that’s on, kind of, a fixed monthly.

554 01:04:21.130 ⇒ 01:04:24.240 Justin Breshears: Where that actually doesn’t affect our operating costs.

555 01:04:24.240 ⇒ 01:04:30.040 Uttam Kumaran: Casey and Mustafa, it’s… it… they’re both hourly, so it… they just free up that time.

556 01:04:30.250 ⇒ 01:04:31.170 Uttam Kumaran: Which I think is…

557 01:04:31.170 ⇒ 01:04:31.760 Justin Breshears: good.

558 01:04:31.990 ⇒ 01:04:34.180 Uttam Kumaran: Good, right. Me neither.

559 01:04:34.180 ⇒ 01:04:38.360 Justin Breshears: Because we got other customers coming on, so we’re gonna need to free up some billable time.

560 01:04:38.570 ⇒ 01:04:41.419 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, for Sam, in a wish, they’re fixed.

561 01:04:42.050 ⇒ 01:04:49.079 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s… But again, any available time for them should also just go to client building.

562 01:04:49.740 ⇒ 01:04:57.600 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we need to find buildable work for Sam then, because I know that is… his is probably the one that is the most skewed towards non-buildable right now.

563 01:04:57.600 ⇒ 01:04:58.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

564 01:05:01.120 ⇒ 01:05:04.990 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, that’s fair. And then the other thing is, I think,

565 01:05:06.550 ⇒ 01:05:09.460 Uttam Kumaran: If we can’t make the case internally that

566 01:05:09.610 ⇒ 01:05:15.090 Uttam Kumaran: the internal AI work is gonna really… if… for example, if you’re like, hey.

567 01:05:15.230 ⇒ 01:05:24.999 Uttam Kumaran: just by getting the reporting better, and just by communicating with clients better, we’re gonna get that margin. Let’s just wait another quarter to really, like.

568 01:05:25.310 ⇒ 01:05:29.490 Uttam Kumaran: invest time in working with the AI team on this, and we should just do that.

569 01:05:30.200 ⇒ 01:05:33.179 Uttam Kumaran: Because I… I would rather save the money.

570 01:05:33.370 ⇒ 01:05:36.280 Uttam Kumaran: And then make sure that you guys can manage everything.

571 01:05:36.600 ⇒ 01:05:42.659 Uttam Kumaran: Versus investing money there, and maybe they spin their wheels on a couple things. You know, like, that’s… Yeah. Yeah.

572 01:05:43.280 ⇒ 01:05:51.080 Justin Breshears: I think that’s probably smart, is let’s… let’s get a better baseline of where we’re at currently before we decide where we’re gonna invest those dollars.

573 01:05:51.490 ⇒ 01:05:52.469 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

574 01:05:53.710 ⇒ 01:05:54.440 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

575 01:05:54.980 ⇒ 01:05:55.680 Uttam Kumaran: Fair.

576 01:05:56.350 ⇒ 01:06:01.350 Amber Lin: Okay, does that mean we’re pausing internal work that’s next? Internal AI work that’s next?

577 01:06:01.350 ⇒ 01:06:07.679 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would vote to do… I would… I would basically vote to say anything non-critical, like.

578 01:06:08.280 ⇒ 01:06:12.259 Uttam Kumaran: Keep this, whatever needs to keep the lights on for the platform.

579 01:06:12.750 ⇒ 01:06:15.110 Amber Lin: So, we’ll say switch to maintenance.

580 01:06:15.250 ⇒ 01:06:21.729 Justin Breshears: I mean, I guess before I would say that, though, is there anything that we have at, like, the one-yard line that, like.

581 01:06:21.980 ⇒ 01:06:29.559 Justin Breshears: okay, it makes sense to push that across first, before pausing that, because I don’t want to pause something when it’s, like, very close to go live and being…

582 01:06:30.240 ⇒ 01:06:31.510 Justin Breshears: really helps with it.

583 01:06:31.710 ⇒ 01:06:33.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, not from my mind.

584 01:06:34.410 ⇒ 01:06:35.020 Justin Breshears: Forgot.

585 01:06:36.760 ⇒ 01:06:37.620 Uttam Kumaran: Boom.

586 01:06:39.980 ⇒ 01:06:42.590 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, there’s just some stuff that’d be so nice, but…

587 01:06:42.900 ⇒ 01:06:46.339 Uttam Kumaran: fine, like, I can’t do it, can’t do it.

588 01:06:46.740 ⇒ 01:06:47.420 Justin Breshears: I mean…

589 01:06:47.420 ⇒ 01:06:48.060 Rico Rejoso: we’re…

590 01:06:48.830 ⇒ 01:06:49.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, go on.

591 01:06:50.070 ⇒ 01:06:50.980 Justin Breshears: Go ahead, Rico.

592 01:06:51.200 ⇒ 01:06:58.070 Rico Rejoso: I mean, I think one thing that we’re working right now on the AI side was the, PM and sales workflow.

593 01:06:58.330 ⇒ 01:07:09.729 Rico Rejoso: That, Sam is trying to automate, so he’s trying to… I mean, I think he’s setting up a meeting with, the sales team to get their workflow and automate some of the stuff.

594 01:07:10.280 ⇒ 01:07:12.520 Rico Rejoso: That’s… should we continue with that?

595 01:07:15.220 ⇒ 01:07:15.750 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.

596 01:07:16.250 ⇒ 01:07:17.410 Uttam Kumaran: Don’t do it.

597 01:07:17.410 ⇒ 01:07:29.160 Amber Lin: I would rather that UTAM do the reporting, help on the reporting side, because that also counts towards this category. I would rather have that reporting than to have the sales or delivery automotive.

598 01:07:29.160 ⇒ 01:07:29.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

599 01:07:31.120 ⇒ 01:07:36.190 Justin Breshears: Agreed, because sales delivery… Manual stuff right now isn’t a huge lift.

600 01:07:36.710 ⇒ 01:07:37.650 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

601 01:07:37.900 ⇒ 01:07:39.560 Amber Lin: Hmm. Okay.

602 01:07:40.490 ⇒ 01:07:40.960 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

603 01:07:40.960 ⇒ 01:07:52.509 megan: I don’t want to disrupt, but I know you guys are, you know, talking about great stuff, but I don’t know that I can really add a whole lot more value here. So do you mind if I just bounce out?

604 01:07:53.060 ⇒ 01:08:01.739 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s fine. I think the… probably the only things, just to make sure, is one, can we provide Megan with what we want those categories to be?

605 01:08:01.850 ⇒ 01:08:04.289 Uttam Kumaran: on the P&L, guys, so if you think…

606 01:08:05.470 ⇒ 01:08:10.159 Uttam Kumaran: If we think it should match what’s in this… ideally, it should match what’s in this stock.

607 01:08:10.300 ⇒ 01:08:13.419 Justin Breshears: That way, it’s really clear what the through lines are.

608 01:08:13.420 ⇒ 01:08:15.999 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t care about these subcategories.

609 01:08:16.580 ⇒ 01:08:19.430 Uttam Kumaran: care about. We can see… by team.

610 01:08:19.740 ⇒ 01:08:20.060 Amber Lin: Yeah.

611 01:08:20.069 ⇒ 01:08:23.329 Uttam Kumaran: And ideally, it’s the same teams that we have on the delivery side.

612 01:08:23.540 ⇒ 01:08:25.290 Uttam Kumaran: Thus, clip can be close.

613 01:08:25.500 ⇒ 01:08:29.000 Uttam Kumaran: And then we’ll go ahead and push on all the Clockify cleanup.

614 01:08:29.380 ⇒ 01:08:29.880 Uttam Kumaran: Today.

615 01:08:29.880 ⇒ 01:08:36.379 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think it should match what we have here. It needs to match so we have accurate reporting.

616 01:08:36.600 ⇒ 01:08:37.850 Justin Breshears: Can’t have hours supporting that.

617 01:08:37.850 ⇒ 01:08:39.589 Uttam Kumaran: Revenue accounts are matching.

618 01:08:39.760 ⇒ 01:08:42.760 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, the revenue clients are matching, so it’s…

619 01:08:43.109 ⇒ 01:08:44.099 Amber Lin: Yeah, okay.

620 01:08:44.739 ⇒ 01:08:45.979 Uttam Kumaran: Sounds good.

621 01:08:46.180 ⇒ 01:08:56.209 megan: Well, I’ll go ahead and drop and let you guys continue brainstorming and planning, but yeah, I’m very clear on my takeaways and how I can move this forward.

622 01:08:56.790 ⇒ 01:08:58.420 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Thank you, Megan.

623 01:08:58.609 ⇒ 01:08:59.199 megan: Thank you.

624 01:08:59.200 ⇒ 01:09:00.409 Justin Breshears: Nice to meet you.

625 01:09:00.410 ⇒ 01:09:01.489 megan: Yeah, you too.

626 01:09:02.729 ⇒ 01:09:14.009 Amber Lin: I do want to ask about our allocations for the PM team. Right now, we’re sitting at also around, say, 5%, which gives us about 1,000

627 01:09:14.169 ⇒ 01:09:17.659 Amber Lin: per week at our current MRR.

628 01:09:18.249 ⇒ 01:09:28.289 Amber Lin: like, we have Rico on the internal projects, and then Justin’s probably doing more than 5 hours supporting internal stuff.

629 01:09:28.649 ⇒ 01:09:29.589 Amber Lin: We also have.

630 01:09:29.590 ⇒ 01:09:33.020 Justin Breshears: That’s the thing, is I… I have not reported any of my internal.

631 01:09:33.020 ⇒ 01:09:33.470 Uttam Kumaran: sucks.

632 01:09:33.479 ⇒ 01:09:35.859 Justin Breshears: So, I need to… I need to get on that.

633 01:09:36.510 ⇒ 01:09:40.330 Justin Breshears: Yeah, what’s your estimate currently weekly on internal stuff?

634 01:09:41.120 ⇒ 01:09:42.189 Justin Breshears: Goodness.

635 01:09:42.380 ⇒ 01:09:46.680 Justin Breshears: I mean, initially, my total estimate was around 20 hours a week.

636 01:09:46.680 ⇒ 01:09:47.090 Amber Lin: A lot.

637 01:09:47.090 ⇒ 01:09:52.160 Justin Breshears: couple weeks, I’ve done a lot more than that, so…

638 01:09:52.939 ⇒ 01:10:00.480 Justin Breshears: I don’t know, because I have such a small sample size to pull from, but I don’t know if I have a good handle on exactly what I’m doing. I need to just start the clock.

639 01:10:01.160 ⇒ 01:10:01.550 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

640 01:10:02.650 ⇒ 01:10:03.260 Justin Breshears: frame.

641 01:10:04.210 ⇒ 01:10:09.220 Amber Lin: I have a question of, do you think we should…

642 01:10:09.510 ⇒ 01:10:25.639 Amber Lin: get some more budget, and pause Alex for a little bit, so that we have more wiggle room, because we don’t have that much budget for now. And if Justin join… Justin is joining us full-time, then I think he can help fill in the gap that Alex was filling in for.

643 01:10:26.010 ⇒ 01:10:34.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, this is… I guess it’s a question for y’all, like, do you see where Alex is providing alpha, and do you think it’s, like, we should…

644 01:10:34.690 ⇒ 01:10:38.120 Uttam Kumaran: Because what I suggest to Amber is to put a cap Alex’s time.

645 01:10:39.970 ⇒ 01:10:41.230 Uttam Kumaran: But also, like.

646 01:10:41.920 ⇒ 01:10:50.439 Uttam Kumaran: It’s up to you guys. If you see that it’s helpful, or if we have what we need, for now we can stop it. He’s not gonna be offended either way, so you guys let me know.

647 01:10:50.730 ⇒ 01:11:05.710 Amber Lin: Well, I want to hear from Justin, though I do think that when Justin joined, a lot of the feedback that Alex was helping me with is now filled, and I do think we’re building on a lot of things that,

648 01:11:05.790 ⇒ 01:11:17.820 Amber Lin: And I think if we just get 2 hours from Alex each week, he’s not going to contribute as much if we have… compared to if we have just to spend more time, because he has so much more context.

649 01:11:18.680 ⇒ 01:11:23.290 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to be anybody that comes in and says, you know.

650 01:11:23.650 ⇒ 01:11:26.159 Justin Breshears: I’m taking over anybody else’s, like…

651 01:11:26.160 ⇒ 01:11:28.020 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, never does, I mean, that’s what I.

652 01:11:28.480 ⇒ 01:11:30.720 Uttam Kumaran: Because there’s a stopgap, so…

653 01:11:30.720 ⇒ 01:11:35.629 Justin Breshears: It has been in the back of my mind that it is now a little redundant with me being in the role.

654 01:11:35.870 ⇒ 01:11:36.309 Amber Lin: Mmm.

655 01:11:37.220 ⇒ 01:11:39.210 Justin Breshears: just basically what Amber said, like.

656 01:11:39.370 ⇒ 01:11:50.060 Justin Breshears: we’re doing a lot of the same stuff, and looking at processes, and coaching, and things like that. And yeah, like, I am now much more in the weeds to actively, you know, working with clients, so…

657 01:11:50.890 ⇒ 01:11:52.849 Justin Breshears: A little bit more context than he did.

658 01:11:53.660 ⇒ 01:11:56.180 Uttam Kumaran: Do you want me to… do you think it’s better I just say, like.

659 01:11:56.350 ⇒ 01:12:02.489 Uttam Kumaran: Keep him as we need, and then don’t have him, like, on anything recurring, basically.

660 01:12:02.930 ⇒ 01:12:06.679 Justin Breshears: if he’s good with that, again, I don’t want to be the guy saying, well, it’s not.

661 01:12:06.680 ⇒ 01:12:07.449 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, yeah.

662 01:12:07.450 ⇒ 01:12:08.150 Justin Breshears: Is this what.

663 01:12:08.150 ⇒ 01:12:22.939 Uttam Kumaran: I’m saying, don’t be worried about what happens, I just try to get what you guys need. Don’t worry about… don’t worry about what the outcome is, or how I handle it. But for me, it’s like, I know that you guys are redundant in some ways, but it can be helpful to have someone who’s, like.

664 01:12:24.440 ⇒ 01:12:26.670 Uttam Kumaran: In case you need them, so…

665 01:12:26.670 ⇒ 01:12:38.210 Justin Breshears: I like having the sounding board and the, like, hey, you know, I did this process, like, review it, you know, let me know what you think, like, stuff like that was super helpful, it’s just, is it helpful enough to justify the cost?

666 01:12:38.210 ⇒ 01:12:38.860 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

667 01:12:40.110 ⇒ 01:12:40.450 Amber Lin: Hmm.

668 01:12:40.450 ⇒ 01:12:44.520 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so… so what I’ll do is I’ll just… I’m gonna… I’m gonna tell him,

669 01:12:46.260 ⇒ 01:12:49.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m just gonna tell them that, hey, we’re gonna move to more, like, as-needed model.

670 01:12:50.100 ⇒ 01:12:58.169 Uttam Kumaran: we’re not on retainer or anything with him, and he’s… he’s been really helpful, so I think we’ll just have him as needed. I think.

671 01:12:58.660 ⇒ 01:13:00.899 Uttam Kumaran: If… for me, it would, like…

672 01:13:01.060 ⇒ 01:13:06.869 Uttam Kumaran: I think, Justin, what we can start to do is, if we need to leverage him now for even higher level things.

673 01:13:07.080 ⇒ 01:13:17.009 Uttam Kumaran: me, you, and him can work together, at least it gives you one more sounding board, because I’m… I’m sort of now getting to the level of my depth in terms of, like.

674 01:13:17.150 ⇒ 01:13:23.050 Uttam Kumaran: consulting, you know, PM world. So I think it’s helpful for us to have someone in our corner as needed.

675 01:13:23.320 ⇒ 01:13:24.410 Uttam Kumaran: Versus, like.

676 01:13:24.630 ⇒ 01:13:35.229 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll have to go find someone else, or in case we have, like, a project that we want to work on, or hey, can you go draft some framework or something? So I’ll have them stay there. I think that’s totally fine.

677 01:13:35.380 ⇒ 01:13:39.130 Uttam Kumaran: So, easily in that, we’ve basically got ourselves another, like.

678 01:13:39.770 ⇒ 01:13:43.440 Uttam Kumaran: I think a grand or two, a month, basically.

679 01:13:47.170 ⇒ 01:13:47.840 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

680 01:13:48.190 ⇒ 01:13:52.249 Justin Breshears: Which I think will be eaten up by me actually reporting my internal costs.

681 01:13:52.470 ⇒ 01:13:53.860 Justin Breshears: Yeah, yeah.

682 01:13:53.860 ⇒ 01:13:54.520 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine.

683 01:13:57.160 ⇒ 01:14:16.689 Amber Lin: Yeah. I’ve changed this… oh, I am not sharing the right screen. I changed this, I bumped it up, so I put Alex at 1, just in case we need him occasionally. So that puts Justin at 8 per week for internal, which is about, like.

684 01:14:16.820 ⇒ 01:14:23.509 Amber Lin: I think that’s a reasonable amount, so I think we’re pretty good with this allocation.

685 01:14:23.710 ⇒ 01:14:24.810 Amber Lin: And then…

686 01:14:24.810 ⇒ 01:14:27.680 Justin Breshears: 8 per week for me, for internal work?

687 01:14:27.680 ⇒ 01:14:30.800 Amber Lin: Yeah, is that good, or is that too low or too high?

688 01:14:31.190 ⇒ 01:14:35.410 Justin Breshears: I mean, right now, I don’t have the billable work to justify 32.

689 01:14:35.860 ⇒ 01:14:38.300 Justin Breshears: Hours, so.

690 01:14:38.780 ⇒ 01:14:41.330 Amber Lin: But also, right now, you’re not at 40.

691 01:14:41.570 ⇒ 01:14:44.849 Justin Breshears: Right, right, right. The idea is to get there.

692 01:14:45.650 ⇒ 01:14:50.120 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I think I’m… even right now, I’m probably spending more than 8 a week on internal…

693 01:14:50.120 ⇒ 01:14:51.070 Amber Lin: Hmm, I see.

694 01:14:51.070 ⇒ 01:14:57.809 Justin Breshears: Because, like, last week, I think I reported, like, 5 or 6 client-facing.

695 01:14:58.610 ⇒ 01:15:04.660 Uttam Kumaran: But see, look, what… you just got a little bit extra budget, and I don’t… I don’t mind this being a bit higher, because…

696 01:15:05.520 ⇒ 01:15:10.299 Uttam Kumaran: there’s one, there’s, like, a floor. We have… we have so much backlog of stuff we have to do.

697 01:15:10.530 ⇒ 01:15:11.060 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

698 01:15:11.060 ⇒ 01:15:17.070 Uttam Kumaran: So, like… And we just cut a lot of the AI stuff, which I don’t think we’ve considered.

699 01:15:17.240 ⇒ 01:15:17.890 Uttam Kumaran: So…

700 01:15:18.260 ⇒ 01:15:19.719 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t mind it.

701 01:15:19.870 ⇒ 01:15:21.879 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t mind it being higher, because

702 01:15:22.100 ⇒ 01:15:33.230 Uttam Kumaran: again, the ROI on the stuff we’re doing now is all of the existing client service work. Like, Justin’s time is going to affect everybody else’s time and all the clients, basically.

703 01:15:33.830 ⇒ 01:15:34.530 Amber Lin: Okay.

704 01:15:34.530 ⇒ 01:15:44.510 Justin Breshears: Yeah, so… It’s probably… if I were to look at it like a full-time allocation, like, in what I’m seeing in the role right now, it’s probably gonna be, like, half and half billable enough.

705 01:15:46.760 ⇒ 01:15:56.799 Justin Breshears: Just because, like, oversight or, helping with these higher-level things on other projects, like, isn’t gonna be, like, directly buildable.

706 01:15:56.800 ⇒ 01:15:57.169 Amber Lin: what it is.

707 01:15:57.170 ⇒ 01:15:58.740 Justin Breshears: going, like Usman said.

708 01:15:59.030 ⇒ 01:16:04.919 Justin Breshears: directly affect our ability to look at those. So, it’s a little bit of a tougher…

709 01:16:05.070 ⇒ 01:16:12.069 Justin Breshears: Thing to measure, because it is… it is non-billable, but it is also… Affecting global work.

710 01:16:12.870 ⇒ 01:16:13.480 Amber Lin: Yeah.

711 01:16:13.850 ⇒ 01:16:19.529 Amber Lin: Okay, that puts us, then we’ll adjust the allocations for…

712 01:16:19.640 ⇒ 01:16:28.020 Amber Lin: the AI team. If we’re doing maintenance work, is it okay if we just have Casey and Mustafa do it instead of Sam?

713 01:16:28.520 ⇒ 01:16:29.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

714 01:16:29.320 ⇒ 01:16:30.040 Amber Lin: Okay.

715 01:16:30.040 ⇒ 01:16:33.269 Uttam Kumaran: But again, like, that maintenance work should go through Rico, so…

716 01:16:35.160 ⇒ 01:16:38.170 Uttam Kumaran: Like, maintenance… there is no, like, ongoing maintenance work.

717 01:16:38.300 ⇒ 01:16:38.990 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

718 01:16:39.630 ⇒ 01:16:47.899 Uttam Kumaran: There isn’t any, so, like, a lot of their work is, like, net new stuff they’re working on. They’re… the platform is working, and it’s sitting there, like, you…

719 01:16:48.460 ⇒ 01:16:50.569 Uttam Kumaran: Apart, unless there are errors.

720 01:16:51.140 ⇒ 01:16:52.740 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… there shouldn’t be any new work.

721 01:16:52.880 ⇒ 01:16:54.000 Amber Lin: Yeah, okay.

722 01:16:54.170 ⇒ 01:16:59.479 Amber Lin: then that gives us more budget to work on the delivery, and that evens out, so I think that’s good.

723 01:16:59.900 ⇒ 01:17:05.709 Justin Breshears: Which means, Rico, that if anybody says, hey, can we get this automation built out, or something, right now, the answer is…

724 01:17:05.710 ⇒ 01:17:06.310 Amber Lin: There’s enough.

725 01:17:06.310 ⇒ 01:17:10.839 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna say, I’m just gonna be me, so you just have to remind me.

726 01:17:11.050 ⇒ 01:17:11.940 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not gonna happen.

727 01:17:11.940 ⇒ 01:17:14.540 Justin Breshears: Utah. No.

728 01:17:14.680 ⇒ 01:17:22.459 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know why then, because then I have to fight for it, you know, or I have to be like, well, then, fine, I’ll go sell something. I’ll go sell something.

729 01:17:24.940 ⇒ 01:17:25.740 Amber Lin: Okay.

730 01:17:26.770 ⇒ 01:17:35.659 Justin Breshears: I mean, the point of this exercise is we get to a point where, like, we’ve got the machine rolling at the right allocations and breakdown, then we can

731 01:17:35.900 ⇒ 01:17:41.180 Justin Breshears: You know, really see where we need to invest, like, you know, a bigger piece of the pie into it.

732 01:17:45.330 ⇒ 01:17:55.290 Amber Lin: I’m looking at… let’s see, Ryan spends 20 here…

733 01:17:56.100 ⇒ 01:18:01.429 Amber Lin: I’m just trying to see the marketing side’s allocation, so marketing and sales.

734 01:18:01.580 ⇒ 01:18:10.110 Amber Lin: This is a little bit messy, but above here are… The sales… the sales allocations.

735 01:18:10.420 ⇒ 01:18:15.779 Amber Lin: So Justina is gonna be 10 on outbound, and Hannah helps a little bit.

736 01:18:15.980 ⇒ 01:18:18.539 Amber Lin: Brian helps with the automations.

737 01:18:19.240 ⇒ 01:18:20.990 Amber Lin: Helps a bit here.

738 01:18:21.610 ⇒ 01:18:31.499 Amber Lin: I think this is just according to our current availability. We… I haven’t reduced anything, this is just what they’re currently… their current available hours.

739 01:18:33.470 ⇒ 01:18:36.569 Amber Lin: I think I said before Ann, which I said 15.

740 01:18:37.940 ⇒ 01:18:40.009 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so this is where it’s, like.

741 01:18:41.640 ⇒ 01:18:49.060 Uttam Kumaran: What’s helpful for me is to know Like… Where we were at, last week.

742 01:18:49.200 ⇒ 01:18:51.219 Amber Lin: And then if we missed it.

743 01:18:52.210 ⇒ 01:18:56.519 Uttam Kumaran: Who, if it’s, like, Okay, we, we just, like, missed…

744 01:18:56.970 ⇒ 01:19:01.450 Uttam Kumaran: the way we planned, okay, so that’s like a delivery team, or if it’s like, hey, we truly…

745 01:19:01.990 ⇒ 01:19:06.880 Uttam Kumaran: there’s no other way to reduce costs, then it’s up to me to make a decision on, like, what is lower ROI stuff.

746 01:19:07.120 ⇒ 01:19:13.250 Uttam Kumaran: for example, like, Anne is doing some design work, we could pause some of that. But I just want to know that we’ve optimized

747 01:19:14.620 ⇒ 01:19:22.990 Uttam Kumaran: The fact that we just put caps on stuff and slow-rolled first, versus me telling someone to slow down or to pause.

748 01:19:23.100 ⇒ 01:19:27.110 Uttam Kumaran: indefinitely. That’s, like, a much larger chop.

749 01:19:27.940 ⇒ 01:19:33.240 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s why, like, if… if we’re… if we feel comfortable with the budgets.

750 01:19:33.690 ⇒ 01:19:36.279 Uttam Kumaran: Then we can go… we can move this week.

751 01:19:36.610 ⇒ 01:19:40.399 Uttam Kumaran: and start to look on Monday, or if you guys wanna…

752 01:19:40.880 ⇒ 01:19:44.690 Uttam Kumaran: Give me a sense of, like, what we did last week internally.

753 01:19:45.190 ⇒ 01:19:48.339 Uttam Kumaran: And if we were given what we were able to do.

754 01:19:49.240 ⇒ 01:19:55.479 Uttam Kumaran: via just project management tactics, slow roll, and if they’re still over budget, then I can start to cut some initiatives.

755 01:19:58.730 ⇒ 01:20:04.980 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think my question would be for Rico, like, do you feel like you were able to sort of analyze or look at

756 01:20:05.170 ⇒ 01:20:10.260 Uttam Kumaran: all the sales, marketing, AI tasks last week, and… And…

757 01:20:10.720 ⇒ 01:20:14.430 Uttam Kumaran: Feel like you’re able to look at, like, the points per initiative.

758 01:20:26.900 ⇒ 01:20:36.729 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I’m not sure, to be honest, because, previously what I was assuming was just that, based on the hours that they’re spending with the company, I just tried to

759 01:20:38.270 ⇒ 01:20:45.400 Rico Rejoso: make sure I assign points that is equivalent to that, so that they… we can utilize the hours that they’re… I mean, that we’re paying them with.

760 01:20:46.230 ⇒ 01:21:02.620 Rico Rejoso: That’s for the sales and marketing team, but for, like, the AI team, we have, like, a cap hours for them, like, 10 for both Mustafa and Casey, and 15 to 20 for Sam. That’s what we’ve been doing on the previous week.

761 01:21:05.510 ⇒ 01:21:09.690 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so then, I guess, like, are you clear with how we’re gonna change things this week?

762 01:21:09.960 ⇒ 01:21:13.470 Uttam Kumaran: like, for AI, it should drop to, like, Nothing.

763 01:21:14.070 ⇒ 01:21:20.300 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I think my question was just for AI, like, what tasks could they take,

764 01:21:20.530 ⇒ 01:21:22.440 Rico Rejoso: Or requests that they could take.

765 01:21:24.030 ⇒ 01:21:27.810 Uttam Kumaran: they won’t take… there’s no requests. Like, there’s just no new work.

766 01:21:28.340 ⇒ 01:21:29.070 Rico Rejoso: Okay.

767 01:21:30.460 ⇒ 01:21:36.460 Uttam Kumaran: So for them, there’s no new work at all, and I would just… We basically have to pause.

768 01:21:37.740 ⇒ 01:21:42.870 Uttam Kumaran: for the sales team is where I want to understand, like, what are all the tasks they took on last week.

769 01:21:43.120 ⇒ 01:21:45.510 Uttam Kumaran: And what was their spend last week?

770 01:21:47.990 ⇒ 01:21:51.049 Uttam Kumaran: by those categories. So I don’t know, like…

771 01:21:51.540 ⇒ 01:21:55.409 Uttam Kumaran: If you feel comfortable doing that yourself, Rico, if you need help to do that.

772 01:21:57.420 ⇒ 01:22:00.880 Rico Rejoso: I could, I just don’t have, like, the numbers now.

773 01:22:01.700 ⇒ 01:22:02.560 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay.

774 01:22:07.150 ⇒ 01:22:08.509 Rico Rejoso: I can get a report, like.

775 01:22:09.040 ⇒ 01:22:13.059 Rico Rejoso: Maybe tomorrow or later, I’ll work on it. I haven’t looked at it yet.

776 01:22:13.870 ⇒ 01:22:14.450 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

777 01:22:15.320 ⇒ 01:22:19.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s basically what I would like to see, is, like, how did last week’s sales

778 01:22:20.520 ⇒ 01:22:22.260 Uttam Kumaran: Numbers, where do they go?

779 01:22:22.780 ⇒ 01:22:26.969 Uttam Kumaran: And then I think the easiest… yeah, there are some decisions we can make after I look at that.

780 01:22:27.140 ⇒ 01:22:29.390 Uttam Kumaran: So…

781 01:22:32.880 ⇒ 01:22:43.689 Rico Rejoso: I think, one, for marketing and content team, we have that on linear, and I could just categorize that one, but for sales, since Justino wasn’t putting any,

782 01:22:44.070 ⇒ 01:22:48.190 Rico Rejoso: any tasks or tickets on linear, I don’t know how I can track that.

783 01:22:49.100 ⇒ 01:22:49.680 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

784 01:22:50.240 ⇒ 01:22:52.040 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, that… but that’s, again, like.

785 01:22:52.230 ⇒ 01:22:55.500 Uttam Kumaran: Those… those teams have to create tasks in linear.

786 01:22:55.850 ⇒ 01:23:04.660 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, the only tickets that I created were, Marcus completed on sales, but other than that, any other… just, you know, didn’t…

787 01:23:05.010 ⇒ 01:23:14.469 Rico Rejoso: creating the tasks, even if I requested during her first week, on linear, so I don’t have a reference on that one. She just… she just did all the things that I…

788 01:23:14.640 ⇒ 01:23:17.650 Rico Rejoso: I put in the engineering mark as completed afterwards.

789 01:23:17.850 ⇒ 01:23:18.520 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

790 01:23:19.090 ⇒ 01:23:22.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, even if it’s at the end of the week, as long as we have

791 01:23:22.590 ⇒ 01:23:25.550 Uttam Kumaran: The list of tasks that are there, but again, like.

792 01:23:25.950 ⇒ 01:23:34.730 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s up to you to manage those teams daily, and make sure that all tasks they’re executing on, even if, at the end of the day, they go back and just put in the tasks they did that day.

793 01:23:35.050 ⇒ 01:23:36.640 Uttam Kumaran: That’s better than nothing.

794 01:23:37.590 ⇒ 01:23:40.279 Rico Rejoso: Yes, we’re doing that on the content marketing team.

795 01:23:40.960 ⇒ 01:23:41.540 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

796 01:23:44.660 ⇒ 01:23:49.470 Amber Lin: I have one question if the discussion is over.

797 01:23:51.300 ⇒ 01:23:53.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel good on my end.

798 01:23:55.210 ⇒ 01:23:59.240 Amber Lin: Justin, remember in the morning we talked about the…

799 01:23:59.340 ⇒ 01:24:07.590 Amber Lin: delivery reporting, and I know, Udam, you said you were gonna take over and do that. Do you want to meet

800 01:24:08.170 ⇒ 01:24:14.360 Amber Lin: To get the requirements from the delivery team, or do you know, did you remember from the meeting what…

801 01:24:14.500 ⇒ 01:24:16.260 Amber Lin: Justin said he needed.

802 01:24:17.100 ⇒ 01:24:19.350 Amber Lin: Yeah, I basically know. I mean…

803 01:24:19.350 ⇒ 01:24:26.460 Uttam Kumaran: Everything we looked at today. Yeah, I know, I know what we need to look at. Yeah.

804 01:24:26.460 ⇒ 01:24:41.809 Justin Breshears: It’s really just OKRs and capacity planning, I think, is the biggest thing. So, just mapping the reporting for the OKRs so that you can just pull up on the Monday meeting and pull up the dashboard and look at them every week.

805 01:24:43.220 ⇒ 01:24:48.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I mean, I’m gonna basically try to make sure that any of my questions we can answer, which should… should…

806 01:24:49.230 ⇒ 01:24:52.160 Uttam Kumaran: pretty much get us to where we need to go. And then, yeah, from…

807 01:24:52.530 ⇒ 01:24:57.859 Uttam Kumaran: I want to make sure that the data from operating, which has our allocations, is very clear.

808 01:24:58.330 ⇒ 01:25:02.919 Uttam Kumaran: Once we report on it. So, like, what is the total amount of hours we have to play with?

809 01:25:03.290 ⇒ 01:25:04.950 Uttam Kumaran: Where are they all going?

810 01:25:05.260 ⇒ 01:25:11.559 Uttam Kumaran: And then we all want to look at the overall average… billable percentage.

811 01:25:12.000 ⇒ 01:25:14.790 Uttam Kumaran: Overall, and by person, by week.

812 01:25:15.460 ⇒ 01:25:16.150 Justin Breshears: Capital.

813 01:25:16.420 ⇒ 01:25:22.080 Uttam Kumaran: And that’ll give us kind of… that should tell the story. And then, in that process, I will fix whatever, like.

814 01:25:22.290 ⇒ 01:25:25.069 Uttam Kumaran: Data pipeline problems that needs to get there.

815 01:25:25.490 ⇒ 01:25:32.730 Uttam Kumaran: I think… yeah, I think that’s important, and look, I think you guys are gonna have now… you have a little bit of extra time, so you have Sam’s time.

816 01:25:32.850 ⇒ 01:25:37.019 Uttam Kumaran: You have some time for Mustafa and Casey, you have Oasis time.

817 01:25:37.330 ⇒ 01:25:40.469 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think the clear thing is to…

818 01:25:41.110 ⇒ 01:25:42.540 Uttam Kumaran: I think we’re gonna need to…

819 01:25:42.800 ⇒ 01:25:44.979 Uttam Kumaran: See how many clients we can stack.

820 01:25:45.920 ⇒ 01:25:47.949 Uttam Kumaran: Without going into the market again.

821 01:25:48.420 ⇒ 01:25:52.729 Uttam Kumaran: or engineers. But I think, roughly, you have another 30 hours or so to play with.

822 01:25:53.050 ⇒ 01:26:00.839 Uttam Kumaran: So, 30 or 40 hours, so I feel… I don’t feel so… Worried, if that’s truly true.

823 01:26:01.200 ⇒ 01:26:10.249 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if it’s not true, then… then, okay, that’s one thing, but you also… I asked… I messaged Zoran for another 10, seems like Henry has another 10, so…

824 01:26:11.190 ⇒ 01:26:19.140 Uttam Kumaran: I think that’s the big thing I want to see, is, like, before hearing that today, I was a bit nervous, like, okay, we have 3 or 4 new clients.

825 01:26:19.280 ⇒ 01:26:22.919 Uttam Kumaran: now it seems like, okay, we can… we can hit those. We should be pretty good.

826 01:26:23.860 ⇒ 01:26:28.729 Uttam Kumaran: I would say the… the… You guys are gonna get the logistics of it all.

827 01:26:28.880 ⇒ 01:26:30.939 Uttam Kumaran: Because it’s still only 3 of you.

828 01:26:31.150 ⇒ 01:26:35.970 Uttam Kumaran: but… I like them.

829 01:26:36.470 ⇒ 01:26:37.860 Uttam Kumaran: That is,

830 01:26:38.540 ⇒ 01:26:44.690 Uttam Kumaran: at least you have the firepower versus both… having both of those problems, you know, so… Yeah.

831 01:26:44.690 ⇒ 01:27:00.320 Justin Breshears: Yeah, no, that’s… that’s what I’ve been the most concerned about, because I just didn’t know, like, where capacity was, so as long as we can have a good handle on who’s available, then yeah, I can figure out staffing. And I’ll tell you, Casey and… Casey and Mustafa can do data analytics stuff.

832 01:27:00.680 ⇒ 01:27:05.190 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think another thing to you guys to think about Is that how does…

833 01:27:05.810 ⇒ 01:27:12.800 Uttam Kumaran: how to take people from whatever they’re doing and just… every… all those people I mentioned are pretty, like, chameleon in the types of work they can do.

834 01:27:12.910 ⇒ 01:27:15.340 Uttam Kumaran: So, don’t be afraid.

835 01:27:15.970 ⇒ 01:27:21.319 Uttam Kumaran: To just leverage them where we need. I don’t think… I think all of them are pretty capable.

836 01:27:21.500 ⇒ 01:27:26.050 Uttam Kumaran: so I’m really hopeful that with that squad, we’re pretty good.

837 01:27:26.400 ⇒ 01:27:30.099 Justin Breshears: Yeah, that’s gonna be a huge note for future headcount.

838 01:27:30.100 ⇒ 01:27:30.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

839 01:27:30.810 ⇒ 01:27:33.460 Justin Breshears: Like we’ve talked about today, like, we need to…

840 01:27:33.750 ⇒ 01:27:37.349 Justin Breshears: Make sure that we got people that aren’t siloed in just one thing, because…

841 01:27:37.600 ⇒ 01:27:44.019 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, if you don’t have that exact type of work available for them, then yeah, you got people sitting on the bench.

842 01:27:44.540 ⇒ 01:27:45.200 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

843 01:27:45.370 ⇒ 01:27:48.200 Uttam Kumaran: So even short-term, I know… yeah, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

844 01:27:48.680 ⇒ 01:27:52.039 Justin Breshears: I was just gonna say on a different topic, but,

845 01:27:52.410 ⇒ 01:28:04.480 Justin Breshears: We probably need to have, like, a time-tracking guidance doc for the company, because there’s going to be a lot of different, like, questions of, is this billable, is this non-billable? Just went through this at my last gig.

846 01:28:04.480 ⇒ 01:28:05.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

847 01:28:05.340 ⇒ 01:28:16.660 Justin Breshears: And so, once we get, like, our buckets down in Clockify, then we need to, like, explain each of them, and say, like, this is the type of time that you put in here.

848 01:28:17.190 ⇒ 01:28:19.960 Justin Breshears: Because even just looking at it right now, yeah.

849 01:28:19.960 ⇒ 01:28:20.310 Uttam Kumaran: you can.

850 01:28:20.310 ⇒ 01:28:20.790 Justin Breshears: I was looking.

851 01:28:20.790 ⇒ 01:28:27.539 Uttam Kumaran: this really quickly, because I just made the Brainforge internal thing private, so no one should have access to this.

852 01:28:27.990 ⇒ 01:28:34.279 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, well, actually, I should… I gotta remove… I’ll remove everybody, but after this, nobody should have…

853 01:28:35.350 ⇒ 01:28:37.960 Uttam Kumaran: You won’t have access to build to this project.

854 01:28:38.070 ⇒ 01:28:42.770 Uttam Kumaran: So, I think the goal for us is just to make sure that everything here

855 01:28:43.710 ⇒ 01:28:47.219 Uttam Kumaran: is as… as we want it, of course, minus. Yeah. Right?

856 01:28:47.220 ⇒ 01:28:54.379 Justin Breshears: Because, like, the delivery excellence meeting today for an hour, like, we gotta make a decision on, like, what bucket do we want to put that in, because.

857 01:28:54.380 ⇒ 01:28:58.730 Uttam Kumaran: So is that… should that just be… should I just put… so, I guess, again, a couple things. One.

858 01:28:59.130 ⇒ 01:29:05.559 Uttam Kumaran: I can put internal and external, like, in the title. The other thing is, anything internal is billed towards the Bay Forge client.

859 01:29:06.060 ⇒ 01:29:08.260 Justin Breshears: Yeah. These are all Brainforce Client.

860 01:29:08.260 ⇒ 01:29:09.060 Uttam Kumaran: Stuff.

861 01:29:10.160 ⇒ 01:29:12.730 Uttam Kumaran: So, I may leave it there.

862 01:29:12.960 ⇒ 01:29:15.030 Justin Breshears: That’s fine, I think that’s sufficient.

863 01:29:15.030 ⇒ 01:29:17.329 Uttam Kumaran: I could do now the sub-department.

864 01:29:18.500 ⇒ 01:29:26.970 Uttam Kumaran: department, right? So this is… this is sales. If I was to do this, Right? Copywriting would be…

865 01:29:28.000 ⇒ 01:29:32.139 Uttam Kumaran: How would you… Copywriting, like, marketing.

866 01:29:34.340 ⇒ 01:29:39.209 Uttam Kumaran: And then I can go into… This is brand design.

867 01:29:40.310 ⇒ 01:29:41.270 Uttam Kumaran: Marketing.

868 01:29:41.570 ⇒ 01:29:42.330 Uttam Kumaran: That way it’s free.

869 01:29:42.330 ⇒ 01:29:42.920 Justin Breshears: neat.

870 01:29:43.120 ⇒ 01:29:47.380 Uttam Kumaran: Very clear… I can go into… okay, that’s fine.

871 01:29:48.050 ⇒ 01:29:49.740 Uttam Kumaran: data platform.

872 01:29:51.050 ⇒ 01:29:58.000 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, this is, like, this is just internal data team. So, what do we have for the AI team? We have AI automation.

873 01:29:59.070 ⇒ 01:30:02.470 Amber Lin: That would just be the internal engineering, right?

874 01:30:04.290 ⇒ 01:30:15.449 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so, yeah, AI automation, SATA platform, that’s all internal work. Hiring, operations, project management, internal. I’m just gonna put delivery on here.

875 01:30:17.050 ⇒ 01:30:19.159 Uttam Kumaran: Is that easier?

876 01:30:20.360 ⇒ 01:30:21.170 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

877 01:30:21.170 ⇒ 01:30:21.780 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

878 01:30:21.780 ⇒ 01:30:28.580 Justin Breshears: Because… Like, the delivery excellence meeting is not necessarily just a PM meeting, it’s a delivery meeting.

879 01:30:28.970 ⇒ 01:30:31.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so I would just shove it all into here.

880 01:30:31.770 ⇒ 01:30:32.390 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

881 01:30:33.380 ⇒ 01:30:36.180 Uttam Kumaran: see, these are all… these are all client.

882 01:30:36.950 ⇒ 01:30:38.600 Uttam Kumaran: So, not too…

883 01:30:39.330 ⇒ 01:30:39.740 Justin Breshears: by itself.

884 01:30:39.740 ⇒ 01:30:40.170 Uttam Kumaran: expired.

885 01:30:40.170 ⇒ 01:30:40.830 Justin Breshears: mandatory.

886 01:30:41.250 ⇒ 01:30:42.359 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ve pulled it out.

887 01:30:42.360 ⇒ 01:30:47.710 Amber Lin: Or, say, all-hands meeting, or, say, people’s one-on-one, one-on-ones, where would they go?

888 01:30:48.150 ⇒ 01:30:51.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know, we should make one further.

889 01:30:51.630 ⇒ 01:30:52.470 Uttam Kumaran: So…

890 01:30:52.470 ⇒ 01:30:57.099 Justin Breshears: I mean, you should probably have, like, company meetings or something like that.

891 01:30:57.960 ⇒ 01:30:58.500 Amber Lin: Oh, sure.

892 01:30:58.500 ⇒ 01:31:02.330 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s just do… Let’s just do all company meetings.

893 01:31:08.590 ⇒ 01:31:12.840 Uttam Kumaran: Bill, how about I do this, like… Company…

894 01:31:17.350 ⇒ 01:31:20.750 Uttam Kumaran: All company… blah blah blah.

895 01:31:26.870 ⇒ 01:31:37.650 Justin Breshears: You could just put internal meetings, and then in our guidance doc, we can say, like, all hands, one-on-ones, you know, anything that is not directly contributing to another bucket.

896 01:31:38.960 ⇒ 01:31:43.010 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, so I’m just gonna leave it like this. All company 101s internal.

897 01:31:45.040 ⇒ 01:31:47.080 Uttam Kumaran: And then, in the guidance, we can…

898 01:31:47.270 ⇒ 01:31:50.140 Justin Breshears: that for sure. I just want to delete this one.

899 01:31:50.530 ⇒ 01:31:54.750 Uttam Kumaran: I can create new projects, and then we’ll just consider, like, this stuff.

900 01:31:55.110 ⇒ 01:32:01.890 Justin Breshears: Brainforge internal is a little too pleura. It’s like, what exactly were you doing? Meeting, or were you working on something?

901 01:32:02.470 ⇒ 01:32:03.340 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

902 01:32:04.560 ⇒ 01:32:08.100 Uttam Kumaran: And then, okay, ABC comes equals ABC again.

903 01:32:08.400 ⇒ 01:32:13.790 Justin Breshears: It cracks me up that, like, a lot of the same problems that I just dealt with at my last job was, like.

904 01:32:13.790 ⇒ 01:32:18.610 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s so funny, dude, but imagine, like, think about, like, that size versus our size, so…

905 01:32:18.610 ⇒ 01:32:26.550 Justin Breshears: Oh, dude, it’s… it was nuts. To get anything done was, like, months. We’re making decisions in an hour. That would take months.

906 01:32:26.860 ⇒ 01:32:27.910 Justin Breshears: Elsewhere.

907 01:32:28.810 ⇒ 01:32:31.979 Uttam Kumaran: And then let me just archive some of these, because these are all done.

908 01:32:34.920 ⇒ 01:32:41.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s why, like, in today’s meeting, I’m just like, I need… let’s just… But yeah, make some decisions.

909 01:32:45.390 ⇒ 01:32:49.059 Justin Breshears: And this is gonna help us clean up where we’re wasting time, too, because it’s like…

910 01:32:49.340 ⇒ 01:32:55.379 Justin Breshears: Okay, well, if we’re billing too high internally, like, where did that time go?

911 01:32:56.070 ⇒ 01:33:01.470 Amber Lin: Yeah, I want to point out our, what is it called? Utilization.

912 01:33:01.490 ⇒ 01:33:02.850 Uttam Kumaran: It almost… Yes.

913 01:33:02.850 ⇒ 01:33:07.750 Amber Lin: All of us are at 100%, or even, say.

914 01:33:07.860 ⇒ 01:33:10.589 Amber Lin: 80 or 90% every single week.

915 01:33:10.790 ⇒ 01:33:14.330 Amber Lin: I think it’s fair to expect the 80%

916 01:33:14.430 ⇒ 01:33:26.100 Amber Lin: every week, and then we fluctuate. But because… I feel like because we’re tracking, a lot of the time it just gets thrown into a bucket, it’s hard to see people’s utilization.

917 01:33:27.850 ⇒ 01:33:33.160 Justin Breshears: Well, that’s where I think the reporting needs to clean up, because it’s like, you say we’re at 100%, but like…

918 01:33:35.150 ⇒ 01:33:39.640 Justin Breshears: we’re doing meetings like this, right? So, obviously, some portion of our percentage is being.

919 01:33:39.640 ⇒ 01:33:40.000 Amber Lin: dedication.

920 01:33:40.000 ⇒ 01:33:41.799 Justin Breshears: and non-billable, so we’re really…

921 01:33:41.800 ⇒ 01:33:43.869 Uttam Kumaran: Probably 90, I think 90 is fair.

922 01:33:44.330 ⇒ 01:33:44.960 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

923 01:33:45.810 ⇒ 01:33:47.329 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and like, again, yeah.

924 01:33:48.080 ⇒ 01:33:48.670 Amber Lin: Okay. Which I…

925 01:33:48.670 ⇒ 01:33:53.409 Justin Breshears: I think is about right, because, like, if I’m looking at my calendar right now.

926 01:33:53.740 ⇒ 01:34:04.189 Justin Breshears: I mean, 10% of my time being… if I’m 40 hours a week, 10% being 4 hours for completely internal, like, meetings and stuff.

927 01:34:05.390 ⇒ 01:34:12.990 Justin Breshears: makes… makes sense. I mean, I’m not seeing a ton of just, like, overhead meetings on the calendar, unless y’all are involved in more of them.

928 01:34:14.890 ⇒ 01:34:15.739 Justin Breshears: Y’all being Amber.

929 01:34:15.740 ⇒ 01:34:23.290 Uttam Kumaran: My time, I’m not… if I come in, that’s gonna skew everything, so… I should be 100%… No, absolutely.

930 01:34:23.290 ⇒ 01:34:28.849 Justin Breshears: You kind of exist outside of this, right? Because, like, you’re also not, like, drawing, like, a…

931 01:34:29.160 ⇒ 01:34:35.840 Justin Breshears: you’re not a contractor, so, like, you’re not… No, I should… yeah, I should be billing, I should be putting my time in.

932 01:34:37.880 ⇒ 01:34:39.319 Justin Breshears: You’re, you’re an enigma.

933 01:34:40.260 ⇒ 01:34:42.410 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it seems like that way.

934 01:34:44.630 ⇒ 01:34:50.830 Amber Lin: then I feel like we should adjust a little bit on our budget allocations to allocate some of it to just…

935 01:34:51.120 ⇒ 01:34:58.539 Amber Lin: pretty much just internal… even company-building meetings. Currently, I just put it under the operational…

936 01:34:58.670 ⇒ 01:35:01.229 Amber Lin: bucket, but I don’t know if that’s enough.

937 01:35:01.550 ⇒ 01:35:13.680 Justin Breshears: But that’s… that’s the point with those, is they should have some kind of purpose, and so they should fit into one of those buckets. Like, I mean, what is this financial meaning, right? That’s a more operational… that’s how we’re classifying, like, this meeting.

938 01:35:14.550 ⇒ 01:35:16.549 Uttam Kumaran: I would put this under delivery.

939 01:35:18.060 ⇒ 01:35:19.490 Justin Breshears: The finance meeting?

940 01:35:20.150 ⇒ 01:35:23.750 Uttam Kumaran: well… Like… Well, because otherwise…

941 01:35:23.750 ⇒ 01:35:25.349 Justin Breshears: We need the guidance dog.

942 01:35:25.650 ⇒ 01:35:31.949 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, well, yeah, I guess because finance… as I talked to, like, Megan about, like, setting up QuickBooks and stuff.

943 01:35:32.320 ⇒ 01:35:35.900 Uttam Kumaran: So, I would say this is a delivery-driven meeting, like.

944 01:35:36.630 ⇒ 01:35:38.369 Uttam Kumaran: That’s how I would think about it.

945 01:35:39.050 ⇒ 01:35:39.640 Justin Breshears: Okay.

946 01:35:40.210 ⇒ 01:35:55.790 Justin Breshears: And so, that’s also a consideration, but, like, Amber and Rico both have, like, non, kind of, delivery responsibilities, so, like, I don’t know if we can necessarily classify any of us as being, like, 90% billable at this point.

947 01:35:57.240 ⇒ 01:35:57.960 Uttam Kumaran: Fair.

948 01:36:01.120 ⇒ 01:36:03.859 Justin Breshears: Yeah, this is where it gets sticky.

949 01:36:06.280 ⇒ 01:36:15.139 Justin Breshears: This is why… and I hope I wasn’t, like, out of… out of… off base, like, talking with Megan on the horn, but this is where I was talking about, like, I think our reporting needs cleaning up on, like.

950 01:36:15.140 ⇒ 01:36:22.009 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, I mean, that’s why, like, she… oh, that’s why she just spent, like, the first 10 minutes on that, and I was like, it’s completely wrong, like, can we just talk about, like.

951 01:36:22.010 ⇒ 01:36:28.080 Justin Breshears: Yeah, like, when she said that only a third was billable, I’m like, there’s no way. There’s no way.

952 01:36:28.080 ⇒ 01:36:32.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, but also, like, I… I mentioned this to her last month. I was like.

953 01:36:33.890 ⇒ 01:36:37.729 Uttam Kumaran: just… always shouldn’t be on there, like, so something’s wrong. We don’t, like…

954 01:36:38.260 ⇒ 01:36:40.930 Uttam Kumaran: Let’s just get… let’s get through this.

955 01:36:40.930 ⇒ 01:36:41.370 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

956 01:36:41.370 ⇒ 01:36:49.630 Uttam Kumaran: So, I don’t want to talk about it that much. Okay, Sam completely billed, like, just the account. I was like, yeah, no guidance to do that, so he should just change that.

957 01:36:49.890 ⇒ 01:36:50.600 Uttam Kumaran: Right.

958 01:36:50.600 ⇒ 01:36:54.600 Justin Breshears: So, yeah. But Q4, cleaning this up, Q4 should look a lot better.

959 01:36:54.990 ⇒ 01:36:55.650 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

960 01:36:56.320 ⇒ 01:37:11.719 Justin Breshears: Yeah, like, I just don’t know where we can set that OKR for utilization right now, which is why I kind of wanted to use Q4 to see where we’re at, because, like, Amber, Rico, myself, we’re all kind of more difficult because we have these other responsibilities that are going to be non-vailable, you know?

961 01:37:13.050 ⇒ 01:37:14.040 Justin Breshears: So…

962 01:37:14.570 ⇒ 01:37:18.580 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s why I’ll give you… I’ll give you utilization as a whole, and…

963 01:37:18.690 ⇒ 01:37:24.390 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll give you utilization on an individual basis, so you can cut it Again, it’s…

964 01:37:24.830 ⇒ 01:37:27.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I hear what you mean in that, like.

965 01:37:27.710 ⇒ 01:37:30.280 Uttam Kumaran: It should be 90% minus, like.

966 01:37:31.270 ⇒ 01:37:33.710 Uttam Kumaran: Leadership, or minus people that are stretching.

967 01:37:33.710 ⇒ 01:37:34.340 Justin Breshears: Yeah.

968 01:37:34.510 ⇒ 01:37:35.590 Uttam Kumaran: So, okay.

969 01:37:35.590 ⇒ 01:37:42.040 Justin Breshears: Because, like, if you… if you said, hey, go hire a PM, and they’re gonna be solely a PM, then yeah, I would expect them to be 90%.

970 01:37:42.040 ⇒ 01:37:43.360 Uttam Kumaran: I see, I see.

971 01:37:43.570 ⇒ 01:37:47.049 Justin Breshears: You know, but, like, Amber, Rico, all, like, they have.

972 01:37:47.050 ⇒ 01:37:47.640 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

973 01:37:47.640 ⇒ 01:37:52.239 Justin Breshears: responsibilities, you know? Yeah. So, like, I don’t know how much we can expect from the B-90.

974 01:37:53.360 ⇒ 01:37:58.250 Uttam Kumaran: But if I was to tell you 90% of…

975 01:37:59.420 ⇒ 01:38:02.660 Uttam Kumaran: non-PM billable hours, what would you say?

976 01:38:04.050 ⇒ 01:38:04.880 Justin Breshears: What do you mean?

977 01:38:05.250 ⇒ 01:38:07.100 Uttam Kumaran: Like, if everybody but you three.

978 01:38:10.380 ⇒ 01:38:11.960 Uttam Kumaran: Should be 90%, right?

979 01:38:12.240 ⇒ 01:38:16.150 Justin Breshears: Yeah, like, you’re talking, like, if we hired a dedicated PM, and that was their.

980 01:38:16.150 ⇒ 01:38:24.209 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, if I was to say, like, let’s… if I was to do that average billable… average utilization for everybody but U3.

981 01:38:24.350 ⇒ 01:38:27.620 Justin Breshears: Like, who’s, who’s cli- who’s, who is on a client?

982 01:38:27.840 ⇒ 01:38:31.890 Justin Breshears: Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, like engineers and things like that, yeah, absolutely. I mean…

983 01:38:31.890 ⇒ 01:38:32.480 Uttam Kumaran: Engineers.

984 01:38:32.480 ⇒ 01:38:38.200 Justin Breshears: If you’re… if you’re looking at it like we just paused all internal work, then they should be 100%.

985 01:38:38.670 ⇒ 01:38:39.780 Uttam Kumaran: available.

986 01:38:40.100 ⇒ 01:38:44.140 Justin Breshears: Outside of, maybe, You know, if we don’t count the all…

987 01:38:44.140 ⇒ 01:38:50.570 Uttam Kumaran: Like, Sam and I talk about recruiting here and there, and Sam, me, and Awash talk about engineering standards.

988 01:38:50.860 ⇒ 01:38:53.580 Uttam Kumaran: Like, once or twice a week, so… Again.

989 01:38:53.580 ⇒ 01:39:00.960 Justin Breshears: I think 90% for, yeah, hands-on technical resources on clients is totally fair, because then you’re looking at a 40-hour work week.

990 01:39:01.140 ⇒ 01:39:08.310 Justin Breshears: if you’re spending more than 4 hours on, like, internal meetings and stuff for those people, like, there’s a problem there, I think.

991 01:39:08.510 ⇒ 01:39:10.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Okay.

992 01:39:11.180 ⇒ 01:39:14.390 Justin Breshears: So yeah, I think that’s a totally fair… Benchmark.

993 01:39:18.180 ⇒ 01:39:19.939 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great, so…

994 01:39:20.330 ⇒ 01:39:25.810 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I feel like we have some good decisions from today. I can maybe, like, I know we have a…

995 01:39:26.320 ⇒ 01:39:29.480 Uttam Kumaran: we have this PMO sync after this, I think…

996 01:39:29.840 ⇒ 01:39:37.080 Uttam Kumaran: at the end of today, I think we might send some decisions out to the company, or maybe we can wait till tomorrow, but I would like to tell them

997 01:39:37.370 ⇒ 01:39:41.059 Uttam Kumaran: Give a sense of, like, what sort of alignment changes we’re making.

998 01:39:41.290 ⇒ 01:39:45.319 Uttam Kumaran: I hope also today we can sort of confirm our OKRs.

999 01:39:46.670 ⇒ 01:39:47.689 Uttam Kumaran: You can lock everything in.

1000 01:39:47.690 ⇒ 01:40:01.190 Amber Lin: Yeah. I was just thinking about that, I think what Justin brought up of at least accurately tracking all our internal spending and tracking it against budgets, not necessarily hitting our budget goals, should be one of our OKRs.

1001 01:40:02.780 ⇒ 01:40:07.380 Uttam Kumaran: But then I would push back, and I would at least try to go for, like, you’re within 10% of budget.

1002 01:40:07.960 ⇒ 01:40:16.479 Justin Breshears: Yeah, I mean, we should try and hit the budgeted metrics too, knowing that maybe we don’t, based on, like, maybe information that was being misreported.

1003 01:40:16.890 ⇒ 01:40:17.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

1004 01:40:17.530 ⇒ 01:40:19.180 Justin Breshears: find out based on trade, but we should add.

1005 01:40:19.180 ⇒ 01:40:21.259 Uttam Kumaran: It was just the budget, but yeah.

1006 01:40:21.260 ⇒ 01:40:27.230 Justin Breshears: Yeah, we absolutely should still shoot for the goals that we have budget-wise. And then…

1007 01:40:27.630 ⇒ 01:40:35.789 Justin Breshears: you know, see where it falls after Q4, but I think an additional metric should be 100% of time as accurately reported.

1008 01:40:36.290 ⇒ 01:40:39.530 Justin Breshears: Yeah. On a timely basis, too.

1009 01:40:39.530 ⇒ 01:40:40.260 Amber Lin: Yeah.

1010 01:40:41.900 ⇒ 01:40:42.490 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

1011 01:40:43.960 ⇒ 01:40:57.430 Amber Lin: I think also the marketing are within budget, it’s just the other time that’s not in these buckets are not seen. So, you’re totally right. Some are not logged, some are is not used, and we don’t know that.

1012 01:40:59.350 ⇒ 01:41:02.480 Justin Breshears: Yeah, and we definitely need it on a timely basis, because, like.

1013 01:41:03.040 ⇒ 01:41:11.319 Justin Breshears: that when we get on our delivery excellence meeting, like, we should have all of the previous week’s time entered, and that was not the case today, so…

1014 01:41:11.320 ⇒ 01:41:11.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

1015 01:41:14.750 ⇒ 01:41:17.300 Justin Breshears: Otherwise, those metrics are going to be very helpful for us.

1016 01:41:20.710 ⇒ 01:41:29.629 Justin Breshears: Great, so I can work on a time tracking guidance doc through inevitable or frequently asked questions that we’ll get.

1017 01:41:30.290 ⇒ 01:41:33.999 Justin Breshears: And… we can make that announcement tomorrow.

1018 01:41:34.680 ⇒ 01:41:35.250 Amber Lin: Yeah.

1019 01:41:35.520 ⇒ 01:41:43.229 Amber Lin: And we need to send Megan the categories, where is… are we going to send that over along with the time tracking guide that, Justin, you’re making?

1020 01:41:43.570 ⇒ 01:41:45.510 Justin Breshears: Megan doesn’t need the time tracking guidance.

1021 01:41:45.510 ⇒ 01:41:45.980 Uttam Kumaran: That’s weird.

1022 01:41:45.980 ⇒ 01:41:46.500 Justin Breshears: internal.

1023 01:41:46.500 ⇒ 01:41:47.180 Amber Lin: Okay.

1024 01:41:48.230 ⇒ 01:41:48.820 Uttam Kumaran: How old is that?

1025 01:41:48.820 ⇒ 01:41:49.970 Justin Breshears: I can just chat.

1026 01:41:50.200 ⇒ 01:41:52.369 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s under the categories that you had.

1027 01:41:53.790 ⇒ 01:41:55.579 Amber Lin: Okay, sounds good.

1028 01:41:57.660 ⇒ 01:42:04.990 Uttam Kumaran: And then, Megan’s gonna be helpful for sending Like, what the actuals are.

1029 01:42:05.290 ⇒ 01:42:09.850 Uttam Kumaran: But the problem is, like, there’s gonna be all these caveats in the finance world.

1030 01:42:10.100 ⇒ 01:42:13.309 Uttam Kumaran: And so, like, I just don’t want you guys to have to think about, like.

1031 01:42:13.700 ⇒ 01:42:18.320 Uttam Kumaran: There’s just so much they’re managing that’s, like, not to do with the operational metrics.

1032 01:42:18.560 ⇒ 01:42:23.740 Uttam Kumaran: So, I want this team to be able to run like…

1033 01:42:24.230 ⇒ 01:42:28.830 Uttam Kumaran: Our estimations, because they’re gonna take some… it’s gonna take some time for them to close everything out, so…

1034 01:42:29.910 ⇒ 01:42:34.489 Uttam Kumaran: But ideally, at the end of the month, I would love this team and that team to, like, regroup.

1035 01:42:35.050 ⇒ 01:42:37.480 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll be like, okay, what, like, for example, next month.

1036 01:42:38.680 ⇒ 01:42:40.989 Uttam Kumaran: Around this time, we should have another meeting that’s, like.

1037 01:42:41.740 ⇒ 01:42:45.110 Uttam Kumaran: did we rock it? Like, did we hit… did we hit everything we talked about, you know?

1038 01:42:50.320 ⇒ 01:42:51.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

1039 01:42:51.450 ⇒ 01:42:57.599 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, well, yeah, I guess I’ll talk to you guys in, like, 30 or so, or whenever this is.

1040 01:42:58.310 ⇒ 01:43:00.000 Uttam Kumaran: 15.

1041 01:43:00.000 ⇒ 01:43:03.060 Justin Breshears: We plan to y’all get a little snack break.

1042 01:43:03.060 ⇒ 01:43:04.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, that break.

1043 01:43:05.830 ⇒ 01:43:06.560 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

1044 01:43:06.560 ⇒ 01:43:07.220 Justin Breshears: Alright, see ya.

1045 01:43:07.220 ⇒ 01:43:08.189 Amber Lin: Okay, I assume.

1046 01:43:08.550 ⇒ 01:43:09.220 Uttam Kumaran: Bye.

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