Skunkworks By HalfSerious

Daniel Olfelt is the Co-founder and Chief Architect of When I Work, a workforce management platform that helps companies manage their shift-based employees. They specifically focus on scheduling and attendance. He has grown the company from three to 180 people in about 13 years and scaled the company’s technology and infrastructure from zero to over 50,000 businesses.

Daniel was a Senior Lead Engineer at Meditech Communications and Software Engineer at White House Custom Colour before co-founding When I Work.

In this episode…

As a business leader, what can you do to focus on the most important things for your growing business? What strategies can you use to manage your employees better and create the mind space to put out the most important fires? How do you even handle innovation in such an environment?

For Daniel Olfelt, having an efficient frontline support team is vital to his SaaS company. In addition, paying attention to his customers' feedback, delegating and managing his employees well, and focusing on what he loves and brings the most value to his business has helped him grow a better company.

In this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, Eric Bourget is joined by Daniel Olfelt, the Co-founder and Chief Architect of When I Work, to discuss his four rules for focusing and scaling a SaaS company. Daniel also explains how he built his platform, works with big customers, and filters company ideas. Stay tuned.

Bobby Hakimi is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Convoso. The company was founded in 2006 and works with CEOs of small to mid-sized businesses and directors and managers of call center ops. Convoso has the most advanced dialer solutions, and its omnichannel contact center software converts more leads faster. Its newly launched AI technology has personalized one-on-one conversations with leads using a real human voice and only transfers pre-qualified prospects. Before Convoso, Bobby was the Co-Founder and CTO of Enternet Media and Conspy & Co Inc.

In this episode…

To build a successful business, a company needs to have the right systems in place that ensure efficient communication within the company as well as with its customers. Poor communication can cause misunderstandings, loss of great opportunities, and unsatisfied customers.

That’s why Bobby Hakimi and his team at Convoso created a platform that helps to improve a company's communication with its team and with its customers. They also invest in current technology and use company culture to attract the best employees and stay competitive in the market.

In this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, Eric Bourget interviews Bobby Hakimi, the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Convoso, about how his company implements Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Bobby also talks about staying up to date with technological changes, explains how their platform helps improve communication with potential customers, and talks about his company's structure. Stay tuned.

Eric Bourget is the CEO and Founder at HalfSerious, a company that works with visionary SaaS businesses to bring innovation back to the companies they started. He is a specialist in designing and delivering custom SaaS solutions and has helped dozens of CEOs, primarily non-technical, go from vision to reality.

Eric is also the host of the Skunkworks Podcast, where he interviews entrepreneurs who have successful SaaS businesses that have hit a plateau around innovation but are trying to rekindle that spirit.

In this episode…

Technological advancements have made it easier for fintech companies to access cloud computing services faster and at a lower cost than they could a couple of years ago. This has increased competition in the industry as companies strive to woo consumers and grow their businesses.

When a fintech company with over 200 employees approached Eric Bourget, the CEO knew that they needed help to accelerate innovation. Eric and his team at HalfSerious started with an initial design phase and created a prototype for a new system before handing it over to the client. By the end of the process, they had helped the company accelerate growth by about five to seven years. 

In this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, Eric Bourget, the host of the show and the CEO and Founder at HalfSerious, gets interviewed by John Corcoran, the Co-founder of Rise25 Media, about how he helped one of his clients rebuild its business and accelerate innovation. Eric talks about the steps his company takes to create new systems for his clients, the most common concerns companies have when they start working with him, and the improvements the clients see from the changes. Stay tuned.

Dick Hyatt is the CEO and President of Decisiv, a SaaS company focused on service event management for primarily medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles in North America. He has built and scaled six companies.

Before Decisiv, Dick was the Senior VP of Sales and Marketing at Amteva Technologies, which Cisco Systems acquired. He was also the Executive VP and COO at Hayes-Ligon Corporation, where he was responsible for product development, research, sales, marketing, and channel development.

In this episode…

Are you looking for ways to grow and scale your business? Do you have principles you use to help your business thrive?

As a veteran entrepreneur, Dick Hyatt knows that to build a successful business, entrepreneurs have to start by focusing on their customers' needs. This can be done by leveraging technology to learn more and communicate better with customers. Dick also advises entrepreneurs to use his six principles for scaling, which include using anchor tenants, identifying tangible ROIs, and incorporating the three-thirds principle.

Dick Hyatt, the CEO and President of Decisiv, is Eric Bourget's guest in this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, where they discuss Dick's guiding principles for scaling a business. They discuss the need for identifying tangible ROIs, the benefits of having anchor tenants, and the best strategies for hiring employees. Stay tuned to hear all about it!

Brian Helwig is the CEO of MSP360, a company that provides simple and reliable cutting-edge backup and IT management solutions for MSPs and IT departments worldwide. MSP360 enables companies to leverage AWS, Microsoft Azure, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi clouds for offsite backup storage.

Before MSP360, Brian was the Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Operations at Netwrix Corporation. He also served as Director of Worldwide Customer Technical Support at Veeam Software.

In this episode…

Have you ever considered bringing in an outsourced CEO to help grow and scale your company? If so, do you know what to look for and how to set expectations for the position?

As a person who works with company founders to help them scale their businesses, Brian Helwig's approach focuses first on understanding his client's customers. He also works with the company's founders to learn more about their goals and objectives and uses data to create the right systems to help the company increase sales and grow revenue.

In this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, Eric Bourget interviews Brian Helwig, the CEO of MSP360, about his approach and strategies for joining a company as a CEO to help it grow and scale. Brian explains how he leverages a client's existing team, sets up expectations with the founders, and talks about the right way to compensate a CEO. Stay tuned.

Eric Bourget is the CEO and Founder at HalfSerious, a company that works with visionary SaaS businesses to bring innovation back to the companies they started. He is a specialist in designing and delivering custom SaaS solutions and has helped dozens of CEOs, primarily non-technical, go from vision to reality.

Eric is also the host of the Skunkworks Podcast, where he interviews entrepreneurs who have successful SaaS businesses that have hit a plateau around innovation but are trying to rekindle that spirit.

In this episode…

When starting a new business, many entrepreneurs see innovation as critical to building a successful company. It requires them to think differently and learn how to create unfair advantages. However, many ignore innovation when the business becomes big, which can hurt the growth and future of the company.

According to Eric Bourget, SaaS business owners need to stay on top of their game to be competitive, and the best way to do this is by continuously innovating. Such businesses must find consultants, agencies, or a professional who can guide them through the process.

In this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, Eric Bourget, the host of the show and the CEO and Founder at HalfSerious, gets interviewed by John Corcoran, the Co-founder of Rise25 Media, about how he helps SaaS entrepreneurs get their innovation mojo back. Eric explains the four steps for rediscovering innovation and explains how leaders and their teams can get involved in the process. Stay tuned.

Stefan Midford is the Founder and CEO of Natural Insight which he ran for 18 years and eventually sold. Natural Insight is a leading provider of cloud-based workforce management software that delivers cloud solutions to consumer brands, retailers, merchandisers, and marketing agencies to improve field execution across the retail ecosystem. To date, Natural Insight has collected in-store execution information on behalf of hundreds of brands and managed over 51 million assignments in more than 180,000 stores worldwide. 

As a serial entrepreneur, Stefan’s most recent venture is Capango, where he is the Founder and President. Capango is a company focused on reimaging the recruiting experience from the eyes of the job seeker. It uses automated resume creation and integrated chat and video interviews to connect great job candidates to amazing work opportunities.

In this episode…

Technology has made it possible for small businesses to start and grow quickly and has given them the opportunity to compete with large and established international brands. The cost of acquiring or investing in new technology has gone down. Small brands can now enjoy the same advanced technology used by the big brands, which allows them to scale operations globally.

However, it is essential for those businesses to find creative ways to avoid redundancies in their SaaS software platforms which could affect their daily operations. They have to think strategically and leverage both existing and new technologies to focus on their brand, differentiating strategies, sales and marketing strategies, and how to produce better products for the market.

In this episode of the Skunkworks Podcast, Eric Bourget interviews Stefan Midford, the Founder of Natural Insight and Capango, about leveraging technology to manage a data insights business. Stefan talks about the companies he started, how changes in cloud computing have impacted his work, and the value of focusing on customers' needs when building a business. Stay tuned.

Len and his partner at SimboliQ decided to develop and launch a product when they detected an opportunity in the uniform management space. In this episode, Len is very generous about sharing the challenges and rewards of a technology service business trying to execute a product strategy.

Martin Plante is the CEO of GHM Academy. In this episode, we talk about how Martin's quest to make maps exciting for his son turned into a brilliant business idea. His love for teaching, creativity, and programming (if you could believe it!) is what got him to where he is today.

My guest today is the President and CEO of Natural Insight and Capango, Stefan Midford. In this episode, we talk about how Capango, the dating app of employers, came to be and why it's important to pivot and seek out creative solutions to existing problems in your market.