Julian: Hey everyone. Thankyou so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have TomKieley, CEO of SourceDay. SourceDay is the industry leading cloud-basedsoftware solution that automates the purchase order management process formanufacturing and distribution companies to manage their direct spend.

Tom, I'm so excited to chat with you,not only because of your experiencing the startup space and, and the companiesand, and what you've gained in terms of, operating successful companies and whatyou're operating now, but. This interesting thing about, not only manufacturingdistribution, but this, this idea around managing spend, which is becoming sohyper important with all companies, regardless of industry because of the macroclimate, because of whether it's VC funding or just.

Learning to operate a little bit moreefficiently. A lot of companies are really focusing on how to manage that spendand the different process that, that either, take up a lot of resources Oh, orcould use more injection of resources based on other things. But before we getinto all those fun topics, what were you doing before you, before you startedSourceDay?

Tom: Yeah, I appreciatethat overly generous introduction and excited to be here today. Thank you foryour time. Yeah, I had a roundabout career of getting into entrepreneurship andco-founding SourceDay with my, my co-founder, Clint McCree. But immediatelybefore SourceDay, I was selling enterprise.

So mostly B2B software. Sas, of course,cloud since kind of cloud has, has existed. But I started my first softwarecompany in 2008. It was completely bootstrapped nights and weekends working,hours of 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM with. A sole developer who is actually still withus stage than SourceDay is today. And, and got a great deal of exposure tothose founders of those organizations and.

Really the journey that they hadgetting, from, startup to exit. And, and being acquired by Dell was anincredible experience for them. And being a part of that was an eye-opener forme and really a. Part of that is what helped me drive my, need to go createright gift.

And just knowing that I had this desireto go do something different. And while I had a great career at Dell, I knewthat, I was a little bit higher risk profile than most of my peers and feltlike I needed to go do something to, to kind of feed that hunger. Took manyyears of experience in watching those companies that, that Dell acquired getintegrated into, that culture and that motion of selling into enterprise, andlearned a lot about that.

But then met my co-founder, Clint, as Imentioned earlier. Who ran a manufacturing company for 10 years here in Austin,Texas, and experienced many of the struggles that, that I experienced early onin my Dell manufacturing days with just supplier visibility on parts and, andmaterials that need to be in place at the right time, at the right quantity, atthe right price, so that you can actually fulfill your customers orders.

So it was, his vision and my backgroundand experience and, building technology. From the ground up that brought ustogether to create an enterprise platform to, to really even almost create acategory in, in an already defined large spend management category that youmentioned, but specifically for the direct.

Material spin, which is the components,pieces, and finished goods that go into final products.  

Julian: Yeah. And what, whatis the issue with, with supplier visibility? Is it, tracking the difference inprices over different, time given time periods? Is it comparison betweendifferent suppliers?

Is it cataloging that information? Whereis, where is the gap of understanding? Is it, is it on, a technology level? Isit on a recording level? Yeah. Where, where is that gap and, and why is it sohard to see that supplier visibility?  

Tom: Yeah, it's a greatquestion. When we went to market in 2015 with our first product that we'vecontinued to evolve and, and grow and expand upon today with over 250 customersglobally the, the customers that you know before SourceDay, they're using Excelemail manual process.

And, and really it's, it's the conceptsnot of indirect spend management, which is, better known for through sap,Ariba, and Coupa and, and other players. It's a very large market managingspend and expenses and travel and those pieces, very critical spend that needsto be managed and, and accounted for.

What was happening for manufacturers,retailers, distributors direct to consumer product brands. Once they had thesevery sophisticated ER P systems, so think Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, sapNetSuite, Epicor, Infor, those ERPs have getting really into the weeds here.They have what's called demand planning engines or MRPs.

And those demand planning engines areactually using sales forecasts, inventory levels, lead times, build materials,all different data points that basically drive and predict procurement demand.And, and that procurement demand is ultimately created in the form of apurchase order. So these ERPs will create a purchase order.

And then our customers reSourceDaywould, would take those pos and either Excel email, PO fax in some cases thatwe still see even to this day, get sent to their suppliers globally and thenhave hopes of really getting those every single PO line, which could have 10dozens, hundreds of PO lines per po.

Get those parts and pieces on time andin full. So if you have 10 lines on a po, each line may. Several quantity perline, and you need all of those components to fulfill your sales orders in yoursales demand. So all of that is a lot of moving parts and pieces and, andmaterials. Even if you're selling one simple product all the way to somebodymanufacturing, fuselages for air airplanes you have a lot of components and,and suppliers and you rely on every single part down to a penny part so thatyou can actually assemble.

Kit, manufacturer, drop ship, whateveryour business may be, you're finished in final product to then absolutelyrecognize revenue. So what, what our data has shown and what we knew when webuilt SourceDay was that all of these pos have significant change throughouttheir life cycle from when the demand gets created all the way through to whenthe.

Ships the product over 68% po changedata across that which is generally uncaptured and risk.  

Julian: Wow. And, and, anddescribe the PO thing. What, what does that stand for? One more time. What wasthat?  

Tom: Yeah, it's a purchaseorder. So it's just a physical document that, it'll have simple Ts and Csshipped to instructions payment terms.

But most importantly it will have the,the line items that basically dictate here's the manufacturing part, numbers,the quantities, the SKUs, the, the dates that we want them to arrive by prices,et cetera. Critical data points. Yeah, we need as a.  

Julian: Yeah. And what's thedifference in, how quickly say a PO can change versus the, the whole entiretyof that order being fulfilled in the initial order, in instance, from,understanding what the order is, getting your materials from your supplier,building the product, getting it, and shipping it out.

What's the difference between thosetimes?  

Tom: Yeah, it's gonna bewild, right? So, I mean, we have, we have customers that range all the way fromhealth and beauty apparel all the way to large aerospace, defense packaging,oil and gas medical device, you name it. And, and the lead times can vary.Sometimes we have customers that have a single day lead time.

The PO gets cut and the parts show upthe next day. That's in the best case scenario. Most customers parts as, as wesaw, get highlighted through Covid really is, weeks to months and sometimeseven year plus long lead times. Yeah. So a PO needs to be cut well in advanceand then also have very tight communication and collaboration with the supplierand the buying team to know when can I expect those parts and components toshow up and really get down into the nitty gritty.

Hey, if you can't ship me a hundredpercent today, we do some split lines, meaning we'll take the line, split itinto 10 releases, and ship on 10 different dates so that I can get them asquickly as possible, and then start to ship and manufacture a kit and get myorders out the at the door. So it's highly complex a lot of changes, and reallythe buyers without any technology outside of the E R P.

Are unsung heroes that are chasingparts, chasing suppliers, chasing updates, chasing shipments so that they cango and tell, the shop floor, sales, finance, operations. Here's what you canexpect. Here's what we can forecast. We can actually ship. And here's therevenue we can expect to recognize this quarter.

Without that collaboration, without thatvisibility, while it sounds super unsexy to say we're just pushing PO and lineitems back and forth, that's really the lowest common denominator If, ifcustomers don't have good data and good quality around what parts they canexpect to show up when they have zero predictability in revenue.

Julian: Yeah, and just if you,I don't know if you have any numbers, if you could touch on. How, what are someof the, the negative outcomes or consequences of not having that understanding?Or for things to change in a split second, if you have this, this order that'ssay, you're waiting on this product, you're waiting on, these materials, andthen things change.

What are some of the, negative outcomes?Is it, is it, having oversupplied on on some particular, I don't know, ingredientor, or, or information or yeah. What are some of the negative outcomesthat.  

Tom: Yeah, it's a great,great point and a great question. Just think a couple different options, right?

So if, if you're a consumer and you goto the, the, the store, your local grocery store or, or another big chain, bigbox store, and the shelves are empty. That big box store didn't anticipatethose shelves to be empty, right? They're typically expecting autoreplenishment and auto fulfillment of orders from their tier one suppliers.

Those tier one suppliers. However, theyrely on tier two and tier three other suppliers and, and if the tier onemanufacturer of. A health and beauty product didn't get the packaging materialthey needed to ship their finished product. They can't put product on the shelfat a, at a retailer. Yeah.

Without packaging. So the, the simplekind of complex complexities of all of the pieces and components that go intogetting a finished product on the shelf in a store, it's not just the ingredients,it's the labels, it's the packaging, the shipping, the boxes, the containers,freight, everything that goes into it to get it to the shelf.

Yeah. Any one of those suppliers or, orcritical components misses at any quantity, then you're gonna have emptyshelves going into a business experience. We, we have customers in aerospaceand oil and gas and automotive, that short of. Actually chartering a privatejet so that you can actually have parts sent to you the moment they'reavailable from the supplier so that you can keep your manufacturing linerunning because every minute your manufacturing line is down, you know it's anopportunity cost.

It's a hard dollar cost. You've got tosend people home, and then you've gotta pay overtime and run extra longerhours, longer days. To catch up on the lost time. So it's, yeah, it's nothaving that visibility and predictability of what you can build, when you canbuild it, what you can ship, what you can expect to be able to deliver tocustomers that, that you rely on from your suppliers.

That are outside of your four walls,they don't have your visibility to data and, and you need to bring them asclose to your business as possible.  

Julian: Yeah. And it seemslike it would affect anyone, whether or not the, the the, the, the life cyclefor something to transact is in a day or in few months, if, if it's a fewmonths delays can cause an issue with your current client base, even if it's ahigh ticket item or if it's a low ticket item that transacts at high volume.

If you don't have that volume of supply,then your buyers are going somewhere else. So it seems like imperative foreveryone to have this intelligence. And tell us a little bit more the audience.How is SourceDay solving that problem? How are you shrinking, the, the, timeof, of communication and information sharing, but also what kind of outcomesare you seeing that your, your companies that you're working?

In that positive direction and not onlyknowing more about their, their, that life cycle, but also maybe evenstrategizing around how they can better predict, what their supply's gonna getand how they can serve their customers.  

Tom: Yeah, I mean it's, itcan be a wildly varying different amount of problems and, and challenges thatwe solve.

Some of the most common challenges wesolve are. Organizations just simply overbuying material, right? So that theycan ensure they don't have a stock out, whether it's, nuts and bolts,capacitors, chips tires, wheels, whatever it may be. They, they oversupply,right? So they, they keep excess inventory in some cases, three, four xinventory that their systems say they need, and they do that just to hedge andmake sure, I'd rather not run out.

The challenge behind that is it's notjust the, the capital costs, right? You now have to. Storage, warehousing. Youhave people costs behind all of that. You've got taxes and insurance costsbehind all of that. The, the costs continue to climb. The more you inventory,the more you warehouse. And then you also have parts that become obsolete, andnow you've got scrap that you have to waste.

So in a lot of ways, we help some of ourcustomers, or they have shelf lifes on some of their parts and materials wherethey just simply become obs. We're helping them have less scrap, less waste. Soin a world where, yeah, environmentally friendly organizations are trying to dotheir best and, and, and do their part and not waste and not having too muchscrap, we're legitimately helping those organizations have a more just in timemanufacturing process where they don't have too few.

Parts and pieces and materials.Hopefully, but they certainly don't have too many, too much, right? Yeah. Sowhere, where you have to go scrap and, and resell or just simply throw away andput it in the landfill. So a lot of our customers, what, what we're helpingthem do is. The, the demand for the procurement of the parts and pieces orfinished goods that they're buying, it gets driven by sales forecasts.

Now, the challenge is those sales forecastschange at a high vol volatility, right? So it may say, this customer's canceledtheir order. This customer wants their order faster. I, I need it now insteadof in six weeks. And this customer will say, Hey, I think I've found some. Ican push this order out, so I don't need it for six months, so don't ship ityet, but it's still a valid order.

So those are, what's better known is,move in, move outs and cancellations and that can happen across tens ofthousands of po lines at any given moment. And when you don't get that data infront of your suppliers to take action on it, they're just shipping based offthat stale, stagnant PO pdf copy that you sent them back on day one.

And so what, what source. Thriving forthese customers is real time, high quality orchestration of those changes thatthe demand engine is, is proposing, if you will. And so we helped customerssave as much as a hundred plus million in push outs and cancellations of buyingparts and pieces that they otherwise didn't need right now.

And otherwise that, yeah, had they notgiven those signals to the supplier. Those would show up, they'd sit ininventory, they'd become scrapped, they'd become waste, they'd become capitalcosts. And now you're impacting your cash flow, right? So you're, you'realready, yeah. Potentially needing to use that cash to go get more customers orto pay and hire and grow more team members.

But you've got it tied up in capital andinventory costs that you can't do anything about. So we hope our customers havemuch more. Communications with suppliers on real time demand as it's changing.As a statistic, we've, we've processed hundreds of billions of dollars in spendthrough our platform.

And, and what's come from that reallyis, again, 68% of the pos that we process experience at least one change,meaning a date change, a price change cancellation, a pushout. And then six to12 changes on average per po and those changes going unrecognized oruncaptured. You now as a buying organization or even as a supplyingorganization, are operating under over half of the data being inaccurate in anygiven moment.

So you're either gonna be spending toomuch or spending too little when you need to be.  

Julian: Yeah. Sounds like anightmare situation either way, right? I mean, if you're not tracking well, andI'm curious, what is SourceDay doing better than, than the incumbent for betterthan other ERPs? And what I mean by better is delivering.

Delivering information more quickly,making changes more available, and also collaborating, it sounds like, acrossdifferent tools of information from different suppliers that you can actuallygain insights without having to go through and compare yourself for purchasingyourself. How are you doing it better than other ERPs in those categories?

Tom: Yeah, it's a goodquestion and I'll, and I'll clarify, right. We're partnered with ERPs in kindof extending the power of the data in the er. With the suppliers, so we don'tcompete. With, with the ERPs, we actually have tight bidirectionalintegrations, meaning we read data out of our e r p partners, e r P systems,and then we write data back in real time.

So every day we're reading millions ofPO lines into SourceDay's platform. And our platform is a true single instance,multi-tenant network. So think of it as if, if you're a buyer organization, Andyou've got a hundred suppliers. Each one of those suppliers, more than likelyin our platform, supports 10, 20, 50, a hundred other customers.

So if you're a supplier you log intoSourceDay, you're gonna be managing more than one customer's orders and asingle place giving you better visibility and, and tighter, more accurate dataon what you should be shipping as a supplier. This prevents you from undershipping to the, to the customer's.

It prevents you from over shipping tocustomers' needs and then having to accept returns. All of those things costmoney. And in today's market, it's, it's a highly competitive world if you area buyer and you need to go pivot from one supplier to another supplier, cuzthey're just not performing, it's not that complicated to go and, and findanother supplier that can meet your needs.

So SourceDay is driving accountability betweenthe buyer and the supplier. Using true, actionable, objective and measurabledata points. So we capture scorecard data that shows how are your suppliersperforming against your order demand with their true actions, not subjectivedata, but we literally can show here's their on-time full delivery.

Here's how many changes that they've putonto your system. Here's how much price variance they've impacted you, eithergood or. Here's their lead times as they're trending, and we can also start toshow aggregate data. So we can show you anonymized supplier aggregate data tosee here's how you are performing, buying these parts and components,commodities compared to other organizations that are buying the same componentsand commodities.

Yeah, so now you can see are your leadtimes better or worse than the market? Is your on time delivery from thosesuppliers? Better or worse on those commodities? Price variance. Are you payingmore or less than the market rate and start to really have good, visible and predictabledata? That our platform and because it's a network, enables the power of havingtrue buyer and supplier accountability based off of actionable behavior.

Julian: Yeah, it's incredibleto see that amount of insight being able to, to strategize, but also. Make thebest decisions for your company, your organization, whether you're on the buyerside or supplier side. And I'm curious how, how has that already changedbehaviors? You mentioned changing, for buyers at least, changing suppliers tosomeone who can satisfy the order.

Is, is now becoming increasingly easierand you have a lot more insight, but how does that change other behaviors fromthe buyer's perspective and from the supplier's perspective in a. Efficient andproductive way as, as that's what it seems like, right? It's more information,faster, learning how to, to adjust and being able to make those decisions,whatever behaviors that you've seen from both sides that are extremely positiveand productive.

Tom: Yeah, it's a greatquestion and really I liken it back to, before Salesforce was really measuringand, and tracking and monitoring sales effecti. And, and specifically sellerseffectiveness. All that data lived in Rolodexes and, personal notes andjournals and, where sellers were keeping track of their opportunities.

Then Salesforce came around and you hada cloud platform that really gave visibility of that. So SourceDay is that, butin a network fashion where, It's, it's, it's, it's one organization buying fromhundreds of suppliers, and then you multiply that hundreds of times over. So,we have over 16,000 suppliers in our network selling to over 250 customers inour network.

The customers or the buyingorganizations that, that are using SourceDay to really, get out of Excel andemail and manual processes. So that they can actually have accountability thatto your point, then change behavior. So the, the number one kind of mostsimplistic thing that any buyer, supplier purchase order relationship should dogets down to kind of the, the nitty gritty of when you cut a purchase order,you send it to a supplier.

The supplier at a minimum should raisetheir hand back to you and say, Hey, I've seen it and I'm processing it. Thathappens, almost never. Good suppliers may do that. The other suppliers, you asbusy as they are, it's hard for them to do that, right? They've got hundreds ofthousands of customers.

Sure. And they're processing orders forall of them. So it's, giving them a tool that allows them to have betterconnectivity and collaboration with their buying customers, which then alsoenables and empowers them as a supplier to perform at a higher level. So buyersorders are constantly changing as a supplier.

You've gotta keep up with, Excel versioniterations, email updates, who's got the most recent, source of truth, who ownsthe most recent action item? What am I actually supposed to be shipping to? Whoand, and when and to where. So, our platform has changed. The behavior of itnow becomes the source of truth for a supplier to know what they need to ship,when they need to ship it.

And if something has. There's an audithistory trail that shows the behavior of those changes. Yeah, and, and goingback to the acknowledgement we, we've got data that, can kind of show a storyor a line of suppliers, will try to do the best they can when they initiallyacknowledge.

But inevitably they have to come backand push a data out or cancel an order or change the price. And that's justnormal behavior. And it's not something they're doing maliciously. But itstarts to give trends and data around, what are the true actual lead times forcomponents?

What's the actual and true pricing forcomponents that, that aren't contractually set. And how can we as a buyingorganization start to be more predictable when we need to go buy from oursuppliers and our partners to help them be more successful and help themdeliver a better result to us in our partnership of being a buyer and asupplier, so that the behavior starts to drive predictability and, and atighter.

More expectation driven network and, andrelationship.  

Julian: Yeah. And, and justthinking, I know you mentioned earlier, but tell us a little bit more about thetraction, how many customers you have. You've mentioned a number earlier. Wouldlove for you to reiterate that. What are, what's the traction you've seen thusfar and what are you particularly excited about in terms of the next stage ofSourceDay?

Tom: Yeah, absolutely. Ithink, we, we've been told we were a category creator in, in kind of the directmaterial procurement space. Where we're the only purpose-built supply chaincollaboration procurement platform that's orchestrating real-time changes at avery detailed demand-driven level with suppliers and buyers.

So, we have over 250 customers primarilyheadquartered in North America today. And then over 16,000 supplierorganizations globally using SourceDay to fulfill purchase order demand totheir customers at a more on time and more accurate cost. So excited about thedata, what, what we're doing with our customers and how we're helping them havemore predictable, more accurate data in terms of being more lean, not buyingan.

Not buying too little in ensuring thatthey can fulfill their customer orders, really at a hundred percent fulfillmentrate at the lowest cost possible. And that means not overbuying an inventoryand having, extra warehouse space you have to rent. And all the cost associatedwith that. So the data that we're doing behind all that is incredibly powerfuland otherwise impossible to capture cuz it lives in fax, email Excel document.

I've even heard customers more recentlysay that they print, hand write on each po line notes, scan it, and then sendit back to the supplier. That's just not scalable, right? It's a nightmare inthis fast things world, every, everyone wants instant gratification and, andthey want everything the minute they order it.

And we, we had the technology to helpmake that more valid and, and, and more of a reality.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. It alsoseems like if expectation isn't met, the communication between resetting thatexpectation is even that much more important for, everyone to be in line with,with the objective, which is awesome to hear.

What are some of the biggest risks that,that you think SourceDay faces today?  

Tom: That's a goodquestion. Obviously we're going into some even more uncertain economic times.So, you gotta hope for the health of these organizations to continue to investin technology. I think the, the most powerful thing is, is we, we have.

Experienced some of the highest andfastest growth that we've had over the last three years, and we're fortunate toalso have just raised a series C round of funding of February of 2022. Thatthat put a significant amount of capital into the business for us to continueto invest in r and d.

I think we'll see other competitorsenter the market and as an innovator, an entrepreneur, I'm excited about that.I welcome that. I think innovation and competition is good. It creates anddrives further innovation in the market. And it also, more importantly, itcreates awareness of the problem we're solving and the market is large.

Are more than one player. I feel reallyconfident and excited that, in this type of a period, in economic uncertainty,you will start to see a lot of entrepreneurial creativity and, and newcompanies Yeah. Be formed and technology created. So, I think that's maybe lessof a risk more of kind of an excitement for us and a challenge for us tocontinue to innovate, continue to deliver value to our customers and, and thencontinue to be the leader in, in direct procurement.

Julian: Yeah. And ifeverything goes, what was the long term vision for. SourceDay?  

Tom: Keep delivering guideto our customers. I mean, we've, we've been venture-backed, which means we'veraised capital from from venture capitalists and, and growth equity funds overthe years. We've raised just under 60 million since inception.

I think will continue to innovate anddevelop we've made significant investments in the last 18 months in our productand data to make sure our customers are getting more value. I think, in thismarket we're gonna continue to be efficient and lean and focus on growth andvalue for our customers.

More than likely, we'll continue toraise capital to continue to fuel the business and, and see where the futuretakes us. We've got some several strategic partnerships that we're real excitedabout that are gonna help continue to grow our customer base and expand ourreach into the market.  

Julian: Yeah. And I alwayslike this next section, I call it my founder faq.

So I'm gonna hit you with some rapidfire questions and we'll see what we get. First question, I always like to openit up. What's particularly hard about your job today?  

Tom: That's a greatquestion. I've got three young kids and, and a wife that does all the hard workraising the family. I think it's, it's balancing, that with, the, the 115SourceDays that we.

Mostly in North America and and then youknow, the customers and making sure we're exceeding our customers expectations.I, I, I try to strive to create a, a great challenging and fun place to work.And I think, that continues to be my focus and it's, it's certainly not withoutsignificant effort.

So continually focused on my work lifebalance. But, keeping our, our team members challenged and, and motivated everyday is, is a big piece. My focus.  

Julian: Yeah. Well, what'ssomething, I always love to ask this question. What's something you spend a lotof time on that you would like to spend less on?

And it's something you spend less timeon that you would like to allocate more to?

Tom: That's good. I, I, I'dlove to spend less time, looking at the numbers. We were fortunate to just hireour first full-time cfo. We had a fractional cfo since inception. So our newCFO joined about six weeks ago.

And I'm excited that, I'll have somebodyin the seat full-time to, to help. Whereas I spent a lot of time looking at thenumbers and planning and doing fp and a and I think all that stuff's veryinteresting. But, I'd rather work, on the. And focus on growth and team andemployees and get, get more into keeping our culture what SourceDay great.  

Julian: Yeah. And I guess morebroadly, speaking about kind of just the overall system of buyers and suppliersand, and running, it's not, it's not like it's a two-sided marketplace becausethere's, there's this interjection of technology from SourceDay, which is sofascinating connecting two parted. What are the challenges for other foundersout there who find themselves building something similar?

About building for two differentconsumers. At the end of the day, it's almost like two different businessesthat you're building for. How do you manage which one to focus on and how doyou kind of align everyone's expectations into one product? What are thechallenges you face and how do you overcome them with that?

Tom: Yeah. All, all of themare challenges. I, building a marketplace is incredibly hard. I think, we, wesaw that with all of the amazing consumer marketplaces that exist today withYeah. Airbnb and Uber and, and all of the others that have just created suchincredible categories and leaders.

In a business enterprise, marketplacesare even more challenging because you now have. Business entities need to do businessand you're trying to change how they did business for the last 50, 60, ahundred plus years. Yeah. So change management becomes incredibly hard. And,and I think the best thing that organizations can do for themselves that, we'veat times even lost our way on this and trying to innovate too fast is listeningto your users.

Right. Not just your paying customers.Yeah. But, but the users of the platform. Or on the other side of, of thenetwork that may be using it for free, but they need to get value out of it aswell.  

Julian: yeah. And thinkingabout, kind of, because it's so reliant and a lot of the information is, isrelying on understanding other solutions and other platforms to, to kind ofcreate this aggregate of information.

Have you found yourself in a positionwhere it's been challenging if somebody say, not within a certain network, ifyou have a buyer, Not within a certain, maybe not using an ERP system or, orvice versa. On the supplier side. Is it challenging to get people kind of integratedin technology if they haven't, if they haven't, used some type of system in thepast?

Tom: absolutely. I mean,that's probably one of our biggest challenges. And as I mentioned earlier, we,we've run into suppliers that still prefer to print, hand write, scan, and fax.And I think that, that, that was good. Right. For a long time. That was the.You that they had. But in this day and age, there's so much more you can dowith your time if you, if you use the tools that are available to you and, and becomea more strategic partner to your customers.

And honestly, those that don't adoptthese technologies like SourceDay and, and really, evolve and, and change intothe future, are gonna have a hard time hiring. I think one of the biggestchallenges that they'll struggle with is, how many, students and, and kidsgetting out of, high school and, and.

Higher education are wanting to go to ajob where they're gonna have to print and fax and scan pos, it's probably zero,right? So you need technology that's gonna, give, give these workers that youneed in your organizations. The, the, the interest level and, and the data andkind of the tools to help make them more successful.

Get out of the, nuts and bolts of theorganizations and actually be strategic Yeah. To the, to the company.  

Julian: Yeah, that's anamazing point, which is, the whole hiring prospect and attracting talent andbeing kind of, you don't have to be cutting edge, you don't have to beinnovative, but at least up to date with whatever is being commonly used.

To enable your, your, your, your, workforce.And in so many companies, the companies that I have adopted seem to be doingway, way better exponentially than, than those who are slowly adopted in, in somany different ways. Absolutely. Yeah. Last couple questions I always like toask, because I love how founders in, extract information from the knowledgethat they ingest.

Whether it's early in your career ornot, what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Tom: Yeah, that's a aninteresting question. And I say from people, it's definitely my parents. They,they have driven me. My father was never an entrepreneur per se, but he wasalways a financial leader at organizations founded by early stageentrepreneurs, and, and I learned a lot watching him.

You. Build his career through severalorganizations that had successful exits and him and, and my mother who workedhard and tirelessly to, to put my sister and I through school and give us theeducation that, that we were capable and, fortunate to get. So I think very,much owe everything to my parents and, and the, the support infrastructure thatI have around me as an entrepreneur.

I, I don't know that I should do a, ashameless plug here. As of the day we're filming this, we're actually gonna belaunching our own book tomorrow. So I'm excited about the launch of that book.My co-founder and I. About our stories. It's called startup Lessons Learnedalong the way. But I also really loved hard thing about hard things.

And then Tony, he's book on culturedelivering happiness. Sorry, just slipped my mind. Delivering happiness is anincredible book for founders. If you care about culture and if you want tobuild an organization that people want to be at, that want to be proud aboutand and excited about coming to work we give that book to our employees as apart of onboarding.

Julian: Amazing. And you'llhave to, you have to give us the a link to where our audience could go and getthe book that, that you and your founder wrote. I think it'd be so exciting tokind of share that content and even get some feedback on. What they enjoyedabout and, and anyways, anyway, the audience could help.

I'm sure they'd be happy to. But lastquestion is, I wanna make sure we didn't leave anything on the table before wegive, a chance to give us your plugs and LinkedIns and all that stuff. Is thereany question I didn't ask you that I should have or that you would've liked toanswer? Did we leave anything on the table here?

Tom: No, I think I wouldjust leave it with, put people first. Right. One of the things I always tellearly stage founders that, that I mentor. Is, you've gotta be passionate aboutthe business you're building and, and be excited about doing it fornon-monetary reasons. And if you, if you love what you do and get excited aboutwhat you do, people will, great people will come work with you on that path.

And then the monetary things, if youcare about that, they'll come, if you're successful and stay focused on, whatyou care about most.  

Julian: Yeah. Fall in lovewith the work, I think is, is. Such a, such a powerful message because itdrives all the other outcomes. And, and, and it's funny, I just talked toanother founder who quoted a Bill Walsh book, which is, the standard andexpectations of performance and how, those expectations lead into the outcomes.

So it's awesome to hear, kind of asimilar anecdote. From you and, and, but people driven as, as companies arefocusing on that, I think that's the right thing to do. And, and, and cuz it'sa collaborative effort. But I'll stop by rambling here. It's been such apleasure. I know we're, we're a little bit lengthy on time, but it's been sucha pleasure chatting with you Tom.

Last little bit is where can we find youas a founder? Where can we support a SourceDay as a company? Give us yourLinkedIns, your Twitters your website. Where can we be a part of it and connectyou?

Tom: Yeah, absolutely. Wehave a SourceDay YouTube page. We also have our LinkedIn, but myself as well,TOM KIELEY. Tom Kieley, I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Julian: Amazing. Such apleasure chatting with you, and I hope you enjoyed yourself on the podcasttoday. Thank you so much for joining us.

Tom: Thank you.  

Julian: Of course.

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