Navigating the Journey of Leadership with Aj: The Daylight Experience

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:00:56

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast. I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger.

And on this podcast we hear from amazing influential leaders, their game changing insights and what has helped them to become the great leaders that they are and to help you become an unstoppable leader today. So today I want to welcome to the show aj. He is the CEO, right, and of Market Circle.

And they have an amazing product called Daylight, which is a CRM. You do sales and you do project management on that software as well. And I cannot wait for you guys to hear his insights.

He has an interesting journey of how he got to Canada.

I'll let you check out his LinkedIn profile to read some of that if you have something about bugs, because he's got a little story about cockroaches, but. Aj, welcome to the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight.

AJ: 00:01:56

Thank you for having me on. I'm excited to be here.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:01:59

Oh, I'm so glad. So, so first and foremost, you, you know, you're, you're in Canada. What compelled you to start Market Circle in Daylight?

AJ: 00:02:14

So the, the root of that is that the previous job that I had, I got walked out politely and, you know, just various political things or whatever, like internal company politics. And so I got walked out and, you know, I had a nice package. So it wasn't like they walked me out for nothing.

And so I decided to start a consulting gig and I did consulting for a little while. And while I was doing the consulting, I saw this, this thing on, on ebay about ebay.

This, you know, one of these shows about ebay, and I go, well, you know, who does auctions? Like, you know, real businesses negotiate. So I decided that, you know, how hard could that be?

Make a website that, where you can put something up for sale and you can ask a price and somebody could counteroffer a different price and you can negotiate. After a certain number of negotiations, if it's great, the, you know, the deal is made and you move on. And so that's, you know, I was naive.

I was very naive and I decided that, you know, I'll, how hard could this be? So let me do it.

So I started that, you know, the next day I started after looking at that show and I decided, like, I got to do something like this is, this has got. Can't be that hard. So that's how Market Circle started. It's not what we do today. We had to pivot a number of times, but that's how it started.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:03:41

So you Started. So that's, so it was a marketplace.

AJ: 00:03:46

Yeah, at Market Circle. That's why, you know, we could get, we couldn't get Market Square or Marketplace because the domains were taken.

But Market Circle was available, so I, I grabbed it.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:03:56

Okay, so you, your company is going, going along. So tell me a little bit about the trajectory of going from, you know, Market Circle to Daylight.

AJ: 00:04:07

So what happened was as we were building up Market Circle, I raised some friends and family money for that particular thing and we built a system, we had transactions, and then I was going out there to find VC money to take it to the next level. And I managed to get to the very, very top VCs in the valley through hook and, you know, hook and crook.

So I got there, I was supposed to do a presentation, but the day I got there was when the dot com bubble burst. So I never got to make my presentation. I was, again walked out. And so we were, we were now stuck with the situation. We've built this thing.

We have this. Do we close the company and of course friends and family money would be lost or do we do something else?

So myself and, and Mike, who was with me at the time, he's still with me as our coo, he said, well, you know, why don't we just do consulting again like we did before and you know, pay back or like you did before and, and pay back the, the investors. And I said, you know what, that's probably the right thing to do. So we did consulting again. So we went back to consulting.

And during that process, I was a sales guy, you know, I, I, but I was also coding, so I had to wear multiple hats. And what would happen is I would forget to follow up when I was supposed to follow up.

And when I did follow up, I'd forget where I left off, which is, you know, doesn't look professional at all. Right, so you're not, I'm not going to close any deals like this.

So, so what happened was we had to do something and we were on this esoteric developer, you know, Apple developer platform, and there was no applications for it for, for managing that kind of thing. So we decided, you know, again, how hard could it be? We made our own. And that was the birth of Daylight.

So Daylight was to help me not lose track of when I had to follow up. And then when I did follow up, not lose track of where the hell I left. I left off with these people. So that's how Daylight was born.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:06:20

And now how long has Daylight been running?

AJ: 00:06:22

the application we started in: 2000

ng money. So, so it took till: 2007

So in: 2007

en the next pivot was in like: 2013

then we became a software in: 2018

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:07:35

So Apple pushed you. So you're not, you're not. I mean I see online that you are a Apple. It obviously works on Apple and Mac products will also work on.

Is it something that you're also putting together for non Apple products?

AJ: 00:07:56

So we do integrate with other systems via, you know, the server side stuff in the back end. But, but not specifically. Maybe in the future, but not at the moment. Right now it's all Apple ecosystem.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:08:11

Okay, so how many people work at Daylight? How many employees?

AJ: 00:08:17

So we, you know, it ebbs and flows.

We've had, you know, if we were to look at the total number of employees plus contractors that are basically working full time, but they're in different countries and whatnot, we're looking approximately 50 people.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:08:34

Okay. Oh, that's, you know, it's a, it's a good size. Not too crazy.

Here's, here's a, here's something that's kind of been ruminating in the back of my mind. You know, the idea of, of the sales, you know, sales and, and leading people. Right. You know, how were the times that you got walked out?

AJ: 00:08:56

Yes.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:08:57

How have those times influenced you as a leader in running now the company that you have with 50 employees?

AJ: 00:09:07

So you know, it, what, what it taught me is, you know, you may have disagreements, but you're human and you have to, you know, you want to be treated with respect and you should therefore treat people with respect. You know, so it goes both ways.

So that's, you know, and, and thankfully each time it was a case of, you know, it was polite, it was not, you know, bad or anything like that. But I do remember very distinctly Saying, thinking to myself, well, thank God it wasn't bad.

And, and remembering that, you know, I would not want to do something like that to other people because we've had the situation where we've had to ask people to leave. Right. It's happened a few times. And so you want to do it respectfully.

And, and, and really, sometimes it's the best decision for, for them and for you. Right. Because they're not. Whoever it is.

You know, we've had people that have been with us and they're not doing well, and we're not doing like that part of, you know, and it's impacting us because they're not doing well, but they're, they're in the wrong. They're in the wrong situation. So I had.

It took me a while to remember to, to have the perspective if they're not doing well, then, you know, they're not in the right. And, sorry, they're not in the right environment, so they're not doing well. That's not right for them. It's not right for us. It's not just about us.

It's about them, too.

So, so, you know, you, you kind of build up this idea of empathy and understanding the other person's perspective, so that when you have to make these difficult kinds of things, whether you being walked out or you walking somebody else out, that you do it respectfully.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:10:55

So that's really cool. So. So, listeners, I really want you to kind of take note to this because I think this is really, really important.

I mean, what we're talking about here actually is a part of it is the emotional intelligence and values, right?

So making sure that the values of the people that are in your fold or that if you're the leader or if you are part of a team or part of a company, that your values are aligned.

And if you are, if you can use, you know, empathy or the emotional intelligence to share with somebody that either maybe they're not in the right position or it's not. It's not the right fit. Not because they've done something wrong. It's just because it's not the right fit.

AJ: 00:11:38

Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's not. They're not able to excel and, and it, you know, it affects them negatively because they know they're not able to.

They're not excelling. Right, right. But they're, they're, you know, they're stuck.

And so the best thing is sometimes, and it's harsh at the time, it appears harsh at the Time. But then later when you know, you, you, you know, we, we stay in contact with people whatnot. They, they end up finding a good job and they're happy.

Right. Because they've found a better, a better environment for them.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:12:12

Right. And it's actually, and it's not burning the bridge.

It's basically almost like saying thank you to the person who, almost like, you know, you saying to the person who watched you out, you know, almost like thank you very much for opening the future for me. Right? Yeah. And opening up the future. Like, you know, a door closing means another one gets to open.

AJ: 00:12:30

That's right.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:12:31

That's right.

And as a leader, we have to remind the people in our charge that just because they're not a right fit for our company or our team, there may be another place. There's probably, there's a better place out there for them.

AJ: 00:12:48

Correct.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:12:49

And that's a great key thing for leadership.

AJ: 00:12:51

Yeah. And, and you know, there's, there's there.

This is when, when it's really diff, you know, you're in a predicament, you know, you know, these are, it's a good person, it's not a good fit. And you have to kind of work up to the, in your mind that, you know, I have to do this. Right.

It's very easy when somebody is a total jerk and totally doing the wrong thing. Because that's easy. Right. Like, you know, that's, it's, it's the ones that they're trying is just not working. Right.

And you, and you in fact to like them as people. Right.

But, but nonetheless, even the jerks, you walk them out nicely, politely, you never know when you'll, you'll run into them again or you know, they can refer somebody. That's great as well. Right. That's happened too. We, we've had situations where somebody didn't work out for us at all.

We walked them out and it was at the very beginning. Like, you know, we realized early on that this wasn't going to be a fit and they referred somebody that ended up working out great for us.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:13:52

So that's actually really, that's really, really great. So what part, you know, as a, as the leader you are, I mean, you got, you, you've, you've been able to see when you've needed to pivot right.

In your business. So what were some of those signs? You know, I mean, obviously, you know, obviously walking at the dot com, you're like, okay, now I gotta do.

AJ: 00:14:14

Yeah, yeah, that was, that was, that was pretty you know, that was pretty.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:14:18

Right? That was like a cut and dry. Yeah.

But have there been other points in your, you know, in your leadership and in the journey where you've even been like, you know what, there's something going on where you've almost like you, you realize there may be in a blind, there may have been a blind spot or something that you didn't see.

AJ: 00:14:38

Yeah. So that happens all the time. Unfortunately, you know, this is the, this is the reality. Right. You don't know what you don't know. Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:14:46

Right.

AJ: 00:14:47

And, and so, or there's a saying, you know, you are where you are because you don't know what you don't know.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:14:52

Yeah.

AJ: 00:14:53

And, and so then how do you, you know, so what happens in that situation is that you sometimes something, you know, talking to customers or, or just the plain realizations when you're not hitting the metrics that you set for yourself, like, you know, you're expecting X number of signups. It's just not happening. Why? Why? When you dig into it and then you look at other companies, what have they done, what are they doing different, etc.

Something will illuminate, like something will come up and says, okay, well, this. And so then you have to kind of make, take some decisive actions when you, when, when, you know, that gets highlighted and you validate that.

That's true. And then you got to act decisively to then make the change so that you can either adjust or pivot. Like in some cases it's an adjustment.

But an adjustment would be a pretty, you know, can have a pretty big impact by other cases you're pivoting altogether. Right. Because the market situation has changed so that, you know, your old offering is just not going to cut it.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:15:57

Right, Right. So something that, you know, I'm a Mac user, I love my Mac.

So, you know, I guess a couple kind of questions that are kind of coming to my brain are, you know, you've got, you have daylight, you know, what made you pick Mac? Sort of number, sort of question, number one. And number two is how are you marketing it now? I mean, is it, you know, and how are you promoting?

AJ: 00:16:27

So, so there, so there's. So those two, two good questions and two separate. Yeah, let's, let's, let's answer the first one first, which is the, you know, why Apple. Right.

So when, when, when I kind of imagined daylight way back in the day, the idea was then it still is to help small businesses grow. Right.

The idea of, you know, you're starting perhaps by yourself and you have, you're ambitious and you want to grow a business to 5, 10, 15 people in size or, or what have you. And when you're, when you're in there, you're doing everything, you're, you're, you know, especially at the beginning, you're wearing 10 hats.

And at the time, you know, running Windows computers and all this kind of stuff was a headache. Like, you know, you needed an IT person to, to keep systems running.

So for us it was an easy decision to say, okay, well the, the Mac is easier to, you know, manage and easier, easier with the user. So that's why we gravitated that way and we built an application that is native. Like it's not, you know, browser based or anything like that.

It's a native application.

So that's why we chose to first on the Mac and then we stayed there because it kind of re, you know, it kept getting reinforced that it was easier to run stuff. You know, Macs are easier than Windows. We know that. Everybody kind of knows this. Right. So that's the, that's the reason for that.

Then the second one is how do we market? So in the past, so word of mouth has always been there. Word of mouth is still there and was there from the beginning.

What we do in the past was first we would be advertising or talked about on various Mac sites. So a bunch of Mac people would learn about us. So that worked until a while, then that kind of went away. And then it was all about AdWords. Right.

So AdWords is, was, was a big thing. Now AdWords are, you know, on the dwindle for us. And so what's changing now?

Now it's more social media, podcasts, et cetera, which is why I'm, you know, doing podcasting. Right. So, so, so it, it's changing and we have to adapt to change. But word of mouth is still a strong element in terms of how we get new customers.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:18:57

Yeah. And so did you see a shift in your business or have you seen a shift in your business? You know, with, you know, was it Covid?

Did Covid have a huge impact as people are doing more work from home or you know, what has been something that has been like. Well, that really.

AJ: 00:19:17

I'll give you one example that where we made the wrong decision. So.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:19:21

Okay, yeah, that's wrong decisions are always good decisions.

AJ: 00:19:24

Yeah, yeah. In, in: 2023

Part of our, our system is we integrate with Apple Mail and then in Apple Mail you, you know, you can see all this daylight stuff in Apple Mail. And then you can link things and we copy the email in. It's part of the history, et cetera. Right. So it's pretty involved in integration.

And in: 2023

And so, you know, we had this idea in the past that, you know, this day could come and we, you know, the idea was that we would add mail capabilities in daylight. That was like our kind of plan in terms of, you know, if this falls apart, then we have this plan.

And so on the, on the, on iOS, on the phone and on the iPad, we have mail working. And so the idea was, was that when this hammer would drop, we would then bring that to the Mac. But wrong decision.

When we looked at the extension thing that they gave us and we looked at the data, you know, we had a few people on staff that were very data driven. Like, you know, they're making their decisions with data as opposed to perhaps talking with the customer and data. Right.

Or, you know, if you're only talking to the customer, you also don't have the whole picture. If you're looking only at data, you don't have the whole.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:21:08

Right, you really need to marry the two together.

AJ: 00:21:10

Right, well that's the lesson. But, but at that time it was, you know, data, data, data.

So we looked at the data, but we happen to look at the wrong data to, to see that, okay, you know, these many customers will be impacted, therefore let's go with the extension idea as opposed to the built in mail capability. We went with that. It took us quite a bit of time, but we got something out. It's working, it's currently working, et cetera.

But customers don't love it. They in fact hate it.

The wrong decision there was to go through this roundabout way to get the functionality as opposed to just buckling down and putting the mail client, the mail functionality right into daily. And so that, that, you know, we, we lost a number of customers because of that. And, and, and that, that had a significant impact on our business.

So now we're, you know, we're, we're righting the wrong.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:22:15

Right.

AJ: 00:22:15

And mail is coming in daylight, like it's an early access, we have customers using it, et cetera. And that's the right decision. So you know, the, the moral of the Story here is don't just look at data, data, data.

Don't just look at customer, customer, customer.

Just because at the time when we were making this decision, you know, whenever I'd be talking to customers, they'd be like, you know, that's one of your unique differentiating factors. And then the data was like not lining up. And so, you know, in that case, you should go with the customer.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:22:47

Right, right. What's, what's differentiating you is really huge.

AJ: 00:22:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now we'll get that back. But, you know, now we've had this lull in between and some pissed off customers.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:22:58

Well, hopefully you'll get them, get them back.

AJ: 00:23:00

I mean, because we will get them back. I mean, the ones that are looking at it that have early access are real. There's a lot of positive, very positive comments.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:23:08

So that's, that's really, that's really, really great. You know, and I, and I love this because, you know, it's, it's, I love how humbled you are about that too.

It's, you know, because, you know, it was, it's a blip. It was a lesson learned, you know, mistake maybe, I don't know. But, but learned lesson to then say, okay, now this is how we need to go forward.

And I think it's a key leadership process and tactic too to share with your team and to others that, you know what, we're not always right, but we can acknowledge that when we made a decision that wasn't the right decision and we can fix it and fix it.

AJ: 00:23:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the first part is acknowledging the fact that the decision was wrong. Right.

And that what I hope to accomplish with that in terms of the team is that when at different layers, when a decision is wrong, that they're not afraid to come to me and say, hey, we made the wrong decision here and I'm not going to freak out. Right. Because I made the wrong decision too. So, so, so if I can make wrong decisions, so can you. It's okay. We can figure it out. Right?

Don't be sloppy in the first place. But you know, if it happens that, you know, we made the wrong decision, that's fine, let's fix it.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:24:43

Right?

And, and I think that's a, again, I just, I really want leaders to understand that this is actually just a really key leadership lesson is that when we acknowledge the fact that we've made a mistake, it's not, you know, there's always a way to fix something if you acknowledge it, if right, if you acknowledge It, Right? Yeah, like in. Or, you know, I'll share something that happened the other day.

I have a VA that sent out that was putting together a, an email for me and she's new and she thought hitting schedule was going to alert me to proof something. It ended up going out. It went out to a thousand people. It was completely wrong.

AJ: 00:25:31

Right.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:25:32

But I was like, okay, well we learned obviously nothing we can do about it. But it was for me. I was like, okay, you know what? Hey, guess what? This is what we need to do. It's not a freak out.

Don't get angry and upset about it because there's not. Because it's a. We can learn from it. We learn and can go move beyond. It's not gonna. Didn't change anything crazy, you know.

AJ: 00:25:56

Right, right.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:25:57

But we can always learn from things. We can't acknowledge it. Acknowledge the people.

And if the person and, and if the person or if there's some group or a person who's made a mistake to acknowledge it. When you hide things, it doesn't. It gets worse. Right?

AJ: 00:26:13

It gets worse. The, the. On the flip side, you know, if they make the same mistake twice, that's a red flag.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:26:19

Yes. Right, right, right.

AJ: 00:26:20

So, so, so, so, yeah, so. So acknowledging the mistakes is, is important and the fact that mistakes can be made. Okay. We can fix it, right. This, this, you know, it.

And it's going to become more and more common in my estimation because there's so much information now and, and it's very easy to get caught in, in a rabbit hole of information in the, in an echo chamber that you make this decision and then you turn out, it turns out to be wrong. Because when, you know, when it meets the market, it's going to be different.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:26:56

Right.

AJ: 00:26:56

So, so it's important to recognize that and a. Get early feedback so that you can change it as soon as possible.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:27:07

Yeah, early feedback is really cool and really important to have so that you can get the customer's feedback because they're the ultimate end user. Right. Whether they like it or not like it. And finding those key people to interview and to have on your, you know.

AJ: 00:27:27

As you're sounding like an advisory. Yeah, you have some trusted. Some trusted.

So what we do, what we do about this is, is, you know, there are, there are a set of customers that are like trusted customers that we, you know, I can call up anytime and, and just ask them and whatnot.

And then what we also do is we always try to get some new ones, new customers because the, the older customers, they're they've already figured it out, right? Versus the newer ones and the situation changes, right?

That's kind of like a leading indicator on various markets when you're talking about new customers starting new businesses, right?

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:28:07

So speaking of new business, so as you're thinking about, as you, as you started this, if there is somebody who's starting in the throes of starting a new business, what is like one of the biggest tips that you, or insights that you could share? You know, your business has now been going and you've had a couple different businesses, right? So something that you could share.

AJ: 00:28:29

So the, the one thing I like to say is that starting a business is like a rocket off the launch pad. So if you look at, you know, to start a business and get it going, it takes a lot of energy, right?

Once you get it going, it's, it's much easier to maintain, right?

But at the beginning, you know, you have to put all the full thrusters and, and go full, you know, expend like 90 of your fuel just to get to, you know, low, low parts of the atmosphere, right? So, or high parts of the atmosphere. So it's the same thing in a business, right? At the beginning, it takes a lot of effort.

There's a lot of, a lot of things you don't know. You're gonna have to spend that extra time figuring the stuff out.

You're gonna have to humble yourself and, and, and call people and talk to people and, and whatnot. So, so that you can kind of, you know, that, that takes a lot of energy.

That's like, you know, 12 hour days, 14 hour days sometimes until you get to a certain point.

Then at that certain point you can, you know, you have enough money coming in, you figured out your business, you can scale it now and then you can scale.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:29:39

Yeah, so that's true.

And when you're talking about scaling, is there, is there a point in time when you're like, okay, now, you know, we've been here, now we're ready to scale. Is there like.

AJ: 00:29:52

So, you know, we have the luxury or we have the luxury of seeing many businesses, right? We have lots of customers, thousands of customers around the world. And so I see three kinds of key phases.

The first phase is what I call a leap phase. You know, you're leaping into business, you're leaping off a cliff, maybe in your mind, right? You're like, I don't know what I'm doing.

And so you're figuring stuff out.

And then the next stage, I call the growth stage, and the, and the growth stage is you're still, you know, you're figuring out your repeatable income, kind of like, like how your repeatable sales process, your repeatable execution process.

And then the third one is scaling where you're basically throwing more resources because you're just duplicating that, that, that system that you have. Right. So that's the kind of three phases that I see.

And of course, in the scaling one, there's, you know, that there's a lot of sub phases there because, you know, when you're adding, when you have 10 people, it's different than managing a company of 20 people.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:30:55

Right.

AJ: 00:30:55

Or 25 people. So for us, we had these plateaus. Five, then 10 to 12 was another plateau, and then 25 was another plateau.

Right now we're this, you know, another, yet another plateau. So, so there are these, you know, within the scaling part, there's these plateaus that you hit and you have, you have to kind of break through.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:31:17

Yeah, I love it. So, so tell me a little bit about obviously the software and how much, because obviously it, it's something that you obviously worked with.

How much did it change? Because you were used, you started it for yourself.

AJ: 00:31:31

Yes.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:31:31

Right. So how much did the, did Daylight change your, that, that consulting business?

AJ: 00:31:39

So it, at the, at the beginning it was, you know, we were selling, we would do custom development work, custom software development work. And so each kind of deal was between 50 and 100, $120,000, that kind of size. Right. So the, the sales cycle was longer. It's not a quick sales cycle.

Right. The sales cycle was longer.

And what it kind of taught us was, or taught me or, you know, was that we were able to kind of more, you know, we were able to kind of have a repeatable kind of pattern. Right.

And so that's, that's what it taught me is that ultimately like, if, if we were to scale, you know, if we stayed in the consulting business, it would have, we would have just basically scaled out these little pods like, okay, you know, you need to, you need, you, you have a few people working for a customer. They're doing some custom development work. This is the kind of patterns that we follow.

And, and then this is how you deliver and then this is how you verify and this, etc. Right. And so there is that, that pipeline of, of, of of of things.

So then you're just repeating that what we did was we, we did that, but then we pivoted to being a product company.

So it changed in, it changed how we, it changed Our business fundamentally because we were able to get enough revenue so that we could build a product. And then the product, we build it up enough so that we didn't need this, this first revenue.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:33:11

Yep. So now daylight, we, you know, as a company, you do sales, you know, so CRM.

AJ: 00:33:18

So, so let me explain. So we, what we did is a little bit different than what your typical quote unquote CRM thing. Right. So when, when.

The very first thing that I remember looking, when I was looking at this is why do CRMs fail? A lot of CRMs used to fail back then, and they failed because they approach things from the top down, meaning management down. Right.

So management wanted these kinds of reports or whatever, and then people downstream had to kind of put the data in so that the report could be true.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:33:49

Yeah.

AJ: 00:33:49

And so I was like, I don't want to do that. Right. So.

And also not only I don't want to do that, but that's one of the reasons it was failing because people weren't putting the data in and therefore the report would not be true.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:34:00

Yeah.

AJ: 00:34:01

So instead we flipped it around and we built productivity stuff like, you know, proper calendar, task management, and so forth. And we call that our base layer. Right.

These are these, these things, you know, that, that is part of this general productivity like task management, calendar management, contact management, and then we put another layer on top of it. So not contact management, but notes and stuff like that. Then the next layer is contacts, people, companies and users.

And on top of that is the first part of it is you have to get new business. Right. As a, as a company, you can't exist without customers. So getting new business.

We called it that because people had an aversion to the term sales. When we said sales, they would be like, they would, they would associate that word with dirty car salesman.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:34:54

Right?

AJ: 00:34:54

No, I don't do sales. Like, I'd be talking to customers and they'd be like, I don't do sales. Like, what are you talking about?

Like, how are you making money if you don't do sales? Of course you do sales. You just, you're just offering a service. Right. And what you're doing. So then we came to the term getting new business.

You know, you get new business development.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:35:13

Right?

AJ: 00:35:14

Right. Yeah. Which is sales. Right, it's sales. So you have to do that. And then finally when you do that, you've made some promises. Right.

When they've signed on that dotted line on the agreement, you've made some promises. So the next part is you got to deliver on Those promises, which is where the project stuff comes in.

Again, these all sit on top of tasks, notes and meetings and appointments, etc. That, that is our base layer.

So that's what makes us different than all the other things out there, is that we have all of this in, in kind of like one place and you don't have to, you know, integrate with five different systems, etc. It's all in one.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:35:51

It's all in one, which is actually really fantastic. Absolutely love it. So what is next for what's, what's next in your business?

AJ: 00:36:00

So what's next for us is, you know, the, the again, you know, the male thing that we spoke about, that's the current, you know, main focus.

And then after that it will be more integrations with, with things like Google Calendar and, and so forth and figuring out how we can leverage AI to help small businesses. Kind of like, you know, again, same thing. How do they grow?

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:36:26

Right.

AJ: 00:36:27

And how can we leverage AI in a reasonable, with a reasonable cost as opposed to crazy costs? Because then.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:36:35

No, well, I absolutely love this and you know, as a, as a Mac user, I love it. And so are you. Do you. Just because I'm, as a curiosity, do you. I saw online that you integrate with HubSpot.

Is it something that you also integrate with something like a GHL or ghl go high level.

AJ: 00:37:01

So, so we have, we have like an API and some people, including the HubSpot one for example.

Other people did the integration, we didn't do the integrations, but we have, we have an API so, so programmers can, can, you know, talk to our back end and so forth. So that's how that happens. So we have a few of those.

We have one very strong partner that does a whole bunch of integrations including in the app itself.

Like, like they, you know, we have a plugin mechanism and they're able to kind of get in there and add some functionality that perhaps we haven't gotten to or, or is very specialized.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:37:35

Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. So what's next for you aj?

AJ: 00:37:41

So for me, you know, the, the I'm, I'm enjoying what I'm doing now. Yeah. And I have, I have two kids. I have a 17 year old daughter and a 21 year old son.

So right now my focus is kind of making sure that, you know, that, that that phase of life for them is critical and, and to me family is very important. So that, that's my main focus right now. Run, run the business.

Making sure that it remains competitive, that customers are happy with what we have that the word of mouth continues. And then secondly, making sure that the family's all right. So that's my main focuses. And then at some point, you know, maybe I'll.

And in the meantime, you know, I do take vacations and stuff like that, so.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:38:24

All right, so any particular trip that you got planned coming up?

AJ: 00:38:28

So we have a trip to Turkey coming up. And, and, and then also a trip to Dubai. So a family trip.

So we do these family trips where, where we go, all four of us, rent a car, drive around, you know, it's. It's a lot of fun.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:38:49

I love it. Oh, my God. Well, aj, I could talk to you forever. How can people connect with you?

AJ: 00:38:57

Two easy ways. Number one is our website, Daylight app. D A Y L I T E app. That's where you'll see our application and you can try it out. There's a 14 day free trial.

And of course, you can also connect with our advisors. They're happy to talk to you. They're not salespeople, but they're, you know, they'll advise you and, and then on LinkedIn.

So on LinkedIn, it's my full name. It's Ali Khan. A L Y K H A N Jetta J E T H A as you just find me on LinkedIn, connect with me and I'm there. I'm not on other social media as much I'm.

But I am on LinkedIn and you can find us through, through my. Through our website.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:39:36

Oh, well, fantastic. Well, I will have all those in the show notes too.

So people, but please reach out and if you have any business questions, I mean, aj, you've been so successful and I, I have to tell you, I think at some point I may have actually tried Daylight and I'm actually thinking like, oh, now I gotta come back and really look at it again. So I'm gonna be doing that.

AJ: 00:40:01

We'd be happy to help you with that.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:40:02

Yeah. But seriously, guest listeners, please connect with aj. Check out Daylight, because it is really, really robust.

I was on there, looking at it today and I'm like, oh my God, this is really fantastic. So connect with him.

And if you have found listeners, if you have found this podcast, which I hope you have educational, or you've gotten some tidbits and snippets that you have written down, please share the podcast with your friends and colleagues. This is the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.

We want to make great leaders out there, great leaders, make great, happy employees, and that makes a happier world. So I'm Jaclyn Strominger, and I thank you all for listening, and thank you, AJ for being a great guest.

AJ: 00:40:48

Thank you for having me on. It was really good, and I love I could talk to you forever as well.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:40:52

Thank you.