JJ Rosen on Being In The Right Market at the Right Time

JJ Rosen is the founder of Atiba, an end to end technology services company with a thirty year history of serving clients of all shapes and sizes. JJ is a native Nashvillian - an increasing rarity. He talks about his childhood summers as a roadie with his Dad, how his obsession with computers began, and how being in the right market at the right time can mean you don't have to advertise your business.

Key Takeaways

• JJ: "My my dad was in the music business. He did this thing called mobile recording, where he had this 18 Wheeler truck, in the back of it was a recording studio. And so he would go around the country recording all kinds of live concerts and albums. By the time I got to maybe, seventh grade, my summers, I was a roadie. It was really fun for maybe a week or so. Then I quickly saw that oh, this is pretty hard."

• JJ: "To be a techie, it was all about how you had to be real good at math or something. You had to be kind of a math nerd. I just pictured. "Okay, I'm not that." But as it turned out, a lot of tech is more about creativity."

• JJ: "We've gotten deep into AI. The attitude at our company was, okay, this is both a threat and an opportunity."

• Tom: “I don't think large language models are going to be with us as a permanent thing; they may turn into a parlor game. Sort of an amusement. It's just statistically predicting what might come next. That feels like a fatal flaw. There's a structure problem that is fatal. "

• JJ: "We went years with no formal marketing. We were working and lucky to be in a field where there's been some demand. So just trying to do a good job and grow with referrals. Over time, as we  grew, you shift from being reactive to being proactive. That's what I felt would be good to do. That's when we started investing in marketing. "

Transcript

INTRO: How is the software development team like a band and what's it good for? These are some of the questions we asked J.J. Rosen, founder of Atiba, an end to end technology services company with a 30 year history of serving clients of all shapes and sizes. The son of an entrepreneur, J.J. is a native of Nashville who studied psychology in college before he discovered his love of computers and all things tech. His first job was helping the state of Tennessee collect more child support payments at a time when none of the statewide offices had personal computers. From those humble beginnings, JJ grew Atiba into a 100 person services, business and networking, security, software development, managed services and digital marketing. And he's our guest on this episode of the Fortune's Path podcast.

Tom: JJ, it's so lovely to see you. Thank you very much for coming to the basement studio.

JJ Rosen: [00:01:00] Thanks for having me. This is great.

Tom: [00:01:03] You grew up in Nashville, right?

JJ Rosen: [00:01:04] I'm one of the few left that's born and raised. That's right.

Tom: [00:01:10] You’re a dying breed.

JJ Rosen: [00:01:11] Yes. So I grew up kind of on the west side of town in West Meade area. And my parents still live in the same house that I grew up in. And so aside from going away to college for a couple of years I've been here my whole life.

Tom: [00:01:34] Town's changed a bit for sure.

JJ Rosen: [00:01:36] Yeah, [there’s] a lot more to do. But it's a lot busier and all that. So it's sort of the the pros and cons of progress, I guess.

Tom: [00:01:46] Well, one of the things I do want to talk about is sort of how tech has changed in the 30 years you've had Atiba. But before I get into that, I'd like to hear a little more about kind of your origin story. What kind of a kid were you?

JJ Rosen: [00:02:01] Let's see. So I was the older child, just me and my sister. So I was the, I'll put up some quotes, the responsible one. I always liked school a lot. I would study really hard. And so yeah, I had a great childhood. My my dad was in the music business. He did this thing called mobile recording, where he had this 18 Wheeler truck, in the back of it was a recording studio. And so he would go around the country recording, you know, all kinds of live concerts and albums. And so by the time I got to maybe, I guess, seventh grade, my summers, I was a roadie. So I did that for my summers. And that was really fun for maybe like a week or so. And then I quickly saw that oh, this is pretty hard. But anyway, I grew up doing that in the summers and I went to University School of Nashville.

Tom: [00:03:22] Where our kids went.

JJ Rosen: [00:03:23] Yeah, I went there from elementary school all the way through high school. I started there in third grade, so I didn't quite make the full thing. Right. And so anyway. That was a big part of my life, I really liked USN a lot.

Tom: [00:03:42] Our kids had a great experience there. Anyway, I'm interested in your your being a roadie in seventh grade. Who did you see with some bands? Do you remember any of them?

JJ Rosen: [00:03:54] Yeah. So there you know, everybody from, like Journey to the Rolling Stones? There was a lot of country bands. Yeah, and I wasn't a huge country fan. Right. And so but there would be kind of the old school country. It was kind of neat, which I've gained an appreciation for in my old age. And so, but it's interesting when you're doing that it quickly becomes more about work. Like I kind of remember thinking, oh, this will be neat, I'll be backstage. But quickly, I remember after even a few weeks, it was a little bit more about work than and it's nerve wracking. It is, it's intense. But kind of seeing all that and watching my dad have his own business and I kind of liked, I guess I, for better or for worse, I kind of grew up where you know, the model was, you know, have, like, this skill set, like what my dad was doing, like a recording engineering, but then also learn the business side. Right. And so in the back of my mind, I was trying to look for something like that, you know, for my future is could I get good at something and then sort of tie a business to it?

Tom: [00:05:14] But for a while you were thinking about graduate school. I mean, I read a little about you. You studied psychology, and then you thought about grad school.

JJ Rosen: [00:05:22] The problem I had is I didn't quite know what I wanted to do until after college. And so I thought psychology was interesting, and I thought maybe I could try to become, you know, a great psychologist. And so I was I sort of defaulted to that, and I was moving that direction. But I wasn't totally sure. I guess, like a lot of you know, people in college.

Tom: [00:05:52] Who's ever sure?

JJ Rosen: [00:05:53] Yeah, I was always of my my, you know, group of 3 or 4 friends from growing up. There was one who always wanted to be a doctor. His dad was a doctor, and he just grew up always wanting to do that. And I was always jealous of that because it seemed like, well, that would be good just to know for sure, like what you want.

Tom: [00:06:13] I knew I didn't want to be a doctor.

JJ Rosen: [00:06:15] But I didn't know at all. And so I was sort of leaning towards some kind of path in psychology. And then when I got out of school, I got a job with with the DA's office downtown. And that's when I discovered computers. This is all totally accidental. And then it turned out I wish I'd known that that I liked computer a little bit earlier. That would have been useful.

Tom: [00:06:46] Yeah. So I I read a transcript of another interview that you did, and you talked about how you were helping collect money for child support.

JJ Rosen: [00:06:57] Child support coordinator was my job title.

Tom: [00:07:00] Yes. And then maybe write a newsletter. Right. So you were an entrepreneur from the very beginning? Yeah. Completely undefined role.

JJ Rosen: [00:07:07] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Tom: [00:07:09] Talk about that feeling when you first got there and you asked your boss, what do I do? And his answer was basically, "I don't know."

JJ Rosen: [00:07:15] So I got this job, and my idea was that I would just, you know, try to get a job out of school, work for a year or so, save up some money. And I thought, well, I'll either discover some, I'll have some epiphany that I determine what I really what my passion is at that point, hopefully. Or if I didn't have something different pop up that I would go back to grad school and that psychology interest that I had. And so yeah, I interviewed for this job with the DA's office was a state, state of Tennessee job. And the when he told me the title was child support coordinator, you know, I had no idea what that meant. It didn't sound super interesting, but it was a job. And so and so yeah. He said basically it's sort of undefined. It's a new position. We just want to we just want someone to think of ways to help us improve our child support collections. The DA's offices in Tennessee manage for people who hadn't paid their child support. And so and so it wasn't actually a tech job to start. And when I started kind of looking at, oh, what can I do to be useful, I noticed that none of the offices around the state, I think there was 32 of them or so, like in every county, kind of none of them had any computers.

JJ Rosen: [00:08:45] And so I kind of thought, well, I can like at the time it was like word perfect. It was then I was like, well, I can type a paper in word perfect. Maybe I can just get some computers for them and have them shift it over from typewriters to word processing, right. And so and then that kind of led to just getting totally addicted to all things computer and programing and setting up networks and all that. And so that was a great job to learn on. And.

Tom: [00:09:14] How long were you there?

JJ Rosen: [00:09:15] I was there for just over a year. Not long, but I guess I was 22. I had nothing else to do, so I just I got deep into it where I would you know, I'd be like the pulling all nighters at my little cube downtown and. And I just got totally into it, so it was fun. But you know, I pushed pretty hard that year to get up to speed on tech stuff.

Tom: [00:09:51] It's there's a lot in that story. I mean, that, to me reflects where you are today is the founder. And what is your formal title?

JJ Rosen: [00:10:01] I say founder just now. I just leave it at that. Okay.

Tom: [00:10:04] Just call it founder. Is the founder of a near 100 person tech services company. And so you're you're being hired for a job that has no definition, which is pretty common in consulting.

JJ Rosen: [00:10:21] Yes, you're right.

Tom: [00:10:23] And you're also have a lot of faith in the ability of tech to bring efficiency to a process and not necessarily having to have it defined as to how it's going to bring efficiency. So it's like, well, you know, writing on WordPerfect for me was better than writing on a typewriter. It'd be better for them too.

JJ Rosen: [00:10:40] Yeah, yeah. That's one thing I think I was surprised at and discovered that technology- I always sort of pictured you know, in the in high school or in college- to be like a techie, you know, it was all about you had to be real good at math or something. And so you had to be kind of a math nerd. And I just pictured. "Okay, I'm not that." So it's probably not me. But as it turned out a lot of tech is about at least I've found is more about creativity. And so you're sort of always like, hitting an issue that's maybe difficult to solve, but, you know, there's some way to solve it. You just got to think about how to get around this. So this you know, this computer won't turn on, right? So, okay, let me try to figure out, okay. Could it be this or that? And so a lot of it is like just finding the path, thinking outside the box both for programing and the IT side. And so I've kind of found that, that having a little bit of a think outside the box creative type approach to it was was fun and helpful.

Tom: [00:12:03] And do you hire for that kind of thinking now?

JJ Rosen: [00:12:06] Yes. So so I remember, like, you know, for the first couple of years when I quit my, my day job at the state and started a at the time I was a computer consultant, it was sort of the job title, like in the Yellow Pages that you would find I found I guess after a couple of years, I started trying to hire some people. I started getting too much for me to do by myself. Yeah, there was at a little bit of you were forced to hire people in a consulting type place that weren't just the pure geeks. That's why we get our slogan, like the half geek, half human. You needed a little bit of of of both sides and not that being a pure geek is bad. I there's definitely a lot of days where I feel that way, where I just want to sit down, heads down and and code. But definitely the consulting world where it's like a lot about solving business problems, not just necessarily technical problems. You know, that's what I found was the best fit, you know, for me to try to hire.

Tom: [00:13:16] Do you still write code?

JJ Rosen: [00:13:18] Here and there I do. I probably spent you know, there's that book or, you know, the e-myth that, you know, is very popular that that says you know, don't work in your business work on your business. And I pretty much violated that for about at least 20 years. And so I, I like coding and I like really all aspects of, of of tech. And so for a good chunk of the time I was still coding all day, like I was you know, working on clients. And I would sort of try to combine that with running around over lunches and at night kind of manage the business side.

Tom: [00:14:03] I know you also write like you have a blog for the Tennessean. You write for your own? Yeah, for your own website?

JJ Rosen: [00:14:08] Yeah.

Tom: [00:14:10] Are there any similarities between writing code and writing in English?

JJ Rosen: [00:14:13] Oh, absolutely. So I guess it's been a good ten, maybe 12 years ago. I started writing this biz tech column for The Tennessean here for the paper. And same thing there. I thought, well, I'm going to be terrible at this and I don't know that I, I don't know that I'm really great at it now, but I've you know, I was like okay, I don't know how to do this at all.

Tom: [00:14:38] You look Like you've studied.

JJ Rosen: [00:14:39] Well, so I tried to you know, kind of I read a couple of books on on, you know, how to write and and then quickly, though, I found it's very similar to writing a, you know, writing is very similar to coding in that you sort of like you're starting something. It may not be working. Sometimes you have to kind of edit or in the coding world debug write. And there's a lot of like "if then" encoding and "if I put this here, then what can I say in writing?" And so it has a little bit, oddly enough, of a similar mindset. And then I'll credit and again, I'm not, not really. I don't find myself to be anywhere close to like, what a great writer would, would be, but one of my best friends. His name is Ray Waddell. Yeah. He's an incredible writer. And I was talking to him one day about. Okay, I'm trying to do this and that. And then he was gave me a ton of tips. And all along, he's been very, very helpful. And and so usually anything that I write that is at all seems even at the level of. Okay I'll give Ray the credit that he kind of said, okay here's a different way to go about this.

Tom: [00:16:10] Here's some guidance.

JJ Rosen: [00:16:11] Yeah.

Tom: [00:16:11] So there's there's a great saying bad poets borrow, great poets steal. Can you can we say the same thing in software development that like really, we shouldn't be in some ways, the less original stuff you have in it, the better.

JJ Rosen: [00:16:31] Yeah. Yes. So so in general there's definitely some spots in software development where you're having to just build something that hasn't quite been done the same way before. But the majority of it is almost leveraging what already exists and tweaking it and making it your own. And so there's a coding skill, but there's also like a treasure hunting skill in software development where just finding an example of something that, that okay, this this sort of worked. Or here's some open source that I found or here's something online. Are you.

Tom: [00:17:15] Using AI for that source? Now for that.

JJ Rosen: [00:17:17] Search. Yeah. So it used to be you're just googling for that, right? And there's still a lot of that. But now, you know, with AI, you can almost build yourself a template pretty quickly. And so we've gotten deep into AI. And, you know, kind of our the attitude internally we had at our company was, okay, this is both a threat and an opportunity kind of thing. Sure. And so thinking through the opportunity side, we're like, okay we can build software faster. We can probably do a better job of QA and testing with AI. At least we could we could do that. Lower cost.

Tom: [00:17:56] It's supposed to be great at writing unit tests.

JJ Rosen: [00:17:58] Yeah, it's great with that. And and then we also saw some opportunity in just building AI based applications ourselves, you know, like for, for clients, but but learning how to code you know, and, you know, AI applications. And so yeah, that treasure hunt used to be when I was first getting into this, it was again, that was always there. You would be going to the bookstore and browsing around in the books, the expensive computer books, trying to find, like some sample that's like, okay, yeah, I can use that. And then it I guess I'm showing my age, but then eventually it became well Yahoo! Yeah. Yeah we're about Google.

Tom: [00:18:42] Yeah.

JJ Rosen: [00:18:42] And then and then now there's a lot of AI help. So so it's like great tools to, you know, help you become more efficient.

Tom: [00:18:51] So I had another guest. We talked about AI I extensively and his one of his comments was that it's only about 40% accurate.

JJ Rosen: [00:19:01] Yeah. It

Tom: [00:19:04] I should I should caveat that by saying in terms of coding advice, it's about 40% accurate.

JJ Rosen: [00:19:09] Yeah, yeah. So I found and probably more importantly, like we have like a group of sort of you know, team leads that lead our developers. And so they're always all working together to get feedback. That yeah, it's not completely accurate, but it's a good starting point. And so it's, you know, it's almost been like if you have a junior developer. Yeah. Who can, you know, definitely be productive, right?

Tom: [00:19:38] Who's very fast and always cheerful.

JJ Rosen: [00:19:40] Yeah. That's right. And so so that's that's been useful. That's helped even with it not being totally like, hey, just write this and you're done. Right?

Tom: [00:19:49] It's a place to start. So yeah, I saw you wrote an article about AI where you tried to write a country song. You were more proud of your lyrics than I thought they were. Right. But I guess, I mean, the analogy still holds that it's like. Well, as you said, this is a place to start. Yes.

JJ Rosen: [00:20:04] Yes. And, you know, I guess in theory, it'll get better and better. And so but I still feel like when it comes down to it we've always kind of had that where there's places to start. There's samples of things you can use out there. There's ideas, there's stuff you learn. And so I kind of feel like the AI is providing basically the same thing. It's just it's just faster.

Tom: [00:20:40] Yeah. I'm gonna throw something out just because I like to speculate -you have a podcast? Why not speculate?

JJ Rosen: [00:20:48] Yeah.

Tom: [00:20:49] Yeah. I don't think large language models are going to be with us as, like, a permanent thing. I think eventually they may turn into just like a parlor game. Sort of an amusement.

JJ Rosen: [00:21:00] It could be so you know, it's interesting, you know, the way they work you know, at least, you know the things you see, like ChatGPT you know, it's it's, you know, essentially kind of predicting what we want to hear. Words will come out. Yeah. And so and so I've not found that whether you're writing a column or whether you're writing a song or writing code I haven't found where you don't need to still do a pretty good amount of work yourself.

Tom: [00:21:41] Yeah, but there's So there's the hallucination problem.

JJ Rosen: [00:21:46] Yes.

Tom: [00:21:47] And that to me, feels because there is no actual concept of meaning in an LLM, as you say, it's just statistically predicting what might come next. That feels like a fatal flaw. So this kind of gets to programing in general where I've tried to write novels. I'm bad at it. And one of the reasons why I'm bad at it is that I can't think the whole thing. Yes. And so there's a, there's structure problems in the, in the process of the creation where you're like, I cannot this structure problem is fatal. And there may be sometimes that happens in software. So I think particularly enterprise software like you inherit a set of enterprise software, it's like this was fabulous for its first five years of life. It was okay for the next five years of life. And here at ten years, it's really in trouble. Yeah. And I think LMS could turn out to have a similar issue.

JJ Rosen: [00:22:47] I think that could easily be a path. The you know, and in some ways you know, there are some similarities to if you're using LLM to help you do something, it's, there's similarities to if you're using a search engine or even now, like, you know, the the ChatGPT is coming out with their own search, but you know, like, I can't I can search for something on Google. I don't know what biases. Right. I'm the person had who wrote this, right? You know, I can't validate the even necessarily where it came from, right? It could.

Tom: [00:23:26] Just be total garbage that they put in.

JJ Rosen: [00:23:28] Yeah. So I think, you know, a fairly similar path. So it could happen with AI. But it'll be interesting.

Tom: [00:23:37] Yeah, I mean, it definitely. It's they're fun to play with. They're amusing. And, and I were playing around with places to live. Yeah. And so it's it's much better for a use case like some I want to I'm looking at places for retirement. Yeah. I want places that are less expensive than Nashville, that are walkable, that have low crime rate. It's terrific at that at producing a list. Now I have to go look at the list and find out. Is this list actually worth anything?

JJ Rosen: [00:24:03] That's right. Same as if you, you know, were found a list on on Google. Google. You know, I guess you know, when nothing's really there's no gatekeepers. And you know, nothing's, you know, vetted and you don't again know the source. I agree with you. There's still the same thing you issue you have when you Google something you have to like decide okay. Is this. You know people I know you know they call it like Doctor Google where you'll Google for like every kind of health thing.

Tom: [00:24:35] Doctors do that.

JJ Rosen: [00:24:36] And so you know, I would imagine it's the same with AI where you know, if you say I have these symptoms. Yeah. You can't tell whether it's.

Tom: [00:24:46] Legit or not. Yeah.

JJ Rosen: [00:24:46] This is, like, a terrible thing or like a minor, you know, element.

Tom: [00:24:49] So it's speaking of Google, I know that you guys have recently. I don't know if it's recently, but one of the services you offer is digital marketing. Yes. Which seemed was surprising to me for somebody who started out kind of in networking and then evolved into software development and the security. Yes. Tell me about how you went into the digital marketing space.

JJ Rosen: [00:25:11] Well, so at our core, we're we're computer nerds and techies. And so what happened is way back, we were we'd be doing for, like, a website or even for something like optimizing SEO or that type of thing. We'd be doing sort of the technical side, like, you know, the programing part or optimizing speed of a website. You know, various of the tech tech aspects. And we would partner with others to do design and digital marketing type of work. And so we ended up years ago acquiring one of those, those companies small, not a gigantic thing, but a kind of a small firm that was doing that. And so that's how we we did that mainly just because we were some of it was just having the reducing dependencies and the speed to, like, help a client. And so so the digital marketing for us is still fairly small. And, and we still partner with others as well. And so so, so that's been a little bit of a small, little niche. And some of it also around that was we needed that internally. And so a lot of the I think for that really are our biggest client is us. Yeah. And then we have, you know, some, some kind of niche things we're doing, you know, for others.

Tom: [00:26:46] Are you seeing success with that?

JJ Rosen: [00:26:48] For our own market. Digital.

Tom: [00:26:50] Yeah. Just for you.

JJ Rosen: [00:26:51] Guys. Yeah, yeah. So we we went years with really no formal marketing. Just basically we were just kind of working and I think we were lucky to be in a field where there's been some need, like some demand. Definitely. And so and just trying to do a good job and just live off of off of referrals when you know, over time, as we kind of grew, you know, you kind of want to shift from being like the, the reactive, you know, to, like, people just call you to being proactive. And at least that's what I felt would be good to do. And so that's when we started investing in in marketing internally. And, you know, coinciding with with acquiring that, that that small company. And so when we did that yeah, there's been an ROI on that. So it's digital marketing, I guess, like, almost like advertising. It's hard to perfectly predict what's going to happen. It's impossible. And so so there's a little bit of just trying to take calculated risks in terms of investments and what you do around marketing, at least what I found. But overall, yeah, it's had an ROI. So it's, it's it's been effective.

Tom: [00:28:06] So let's kind of talk about that. That's a big step in the evolution of a business to decide that to commit to growth. Yes. And like oh I'm going to invest in marketing. And so I have to support this investment. I have to get something back from it. So I'm committing to growth.

JJ Rosen: [00:28:23] Yes.

Tom: [00:28:24] And did you go through any what was your decision making process for that?

JJ Rosen: [00:28:29] Well, for the growth in general, I think that's a really interesting topic, actually, because there's there's that saying that that you hear a lot of, you know for a business, you know, if we're if we're not growing, we're dying. And I've not found for myself, I think this is a lot of the stuff is subjective, and to each their own. I've not found that to necessarily be true. And so because, you know, there's you can, you can try to grow too much and that can also lead to the death of a business. And so I think there's sort of a balance there. And so in terms of growth, a lot of it, at least for me personally is has been we want to grow, you know, out of, you know, we want to give everybody raises every single year. And so everyone can make a good living. Whose work? You know, I work with. And we want to keep on being the best we could be at our actual work on the technical skills. So there's, like, a growth around that, that I think is always there. But I don't I haven't found that. I think you can have a good business and, you know, maybe more importantly, kind of a good lifestyle without trying to just take over the world. Absolutely. And so I've never had the goal of, like, okay, can we grow to be like, an international, you know, conglomerate? It's mainly been to grow. Like I said, to find interesting, neat projects to work on and to keep on becoming as good as we possibly can, as on the geek side. And then to, you know, have a method to take care of of all of us, you know, so we have a good place to work.

Tom: [00:30:16] Do you think about the legacy of the you have two kids or do you say they're 20 and 21?

JJ Rosen: [00:30:20] Yes, yes.

Tom: [00:30:21] Liberal arts kind of kids.

JJ Rosen: [00:30:22] Yes.

Tom: [00:30:23] But you were a liberal arts guy when you started.

JJ Rosen: [00:30:25] That's right, that's right.

Tom: [00:30:26] All right. Do you see a place for them in the business?

JJ Rosen: [00:30:29] Well I think they. When they were little kids, they saw me, like, you know, sitting there late at night on my laptop. And they seem to. Our kids seem to be like that. Doesn't that look like any fun at all? Yeah. So and so they've we've I've never you know, neither push them or, of course, or have they had a ton of interest about my kids? And going into to the same business. And I think that can be good or bad. I think there's a lot of things like, you know, with, with all of us, you want to make your own way and and sometimes, sometimes that's a very healthy thing where it works out perfectly. But in our case, I don't I don't see our kids are both very creative types. Yeah. In terms of an actual art. And so they're, they're, I think both, at least for the moment, going there. So you know, a lot of the goal for succession a Mayan has been to essentially make, you know, try to improve on the business side to make it where it's less dependent upon any single person. There's redundancy. And so, you know, it can I'm hoping the business is kind of one of those sort of like the the Warren Buffett style that you, you know, invest in and the, the holding, you know, you're kind of holding it forever. Yeah. And so, you know, that's, that's what I'm trying to do is make it where the business runs. Well. So, so it can keep on going.

Tom: [00:32:07] Would you like to be less involved in the day to day have it consume maybe fewer of your hours in a day?

JJ Rosen: [00:32:13] Well, so like most people who start as business and, you know, there's like the good and bad weeks, right? And there's some times you're like, oh, I love this. And there'll be a day you're like, oh God, this is just so hard. And it's hard. And so I've definitely gone through that over the years and it's been like 30 something years. So that's kind of over time sort of settled out a little bit. So I'm loving it. So I this is actually been one of the best times for me in the 30 years doing this. I feel like I keep on wanting to really, you know, I like optimizing things and trying to, like, sort of self-actualize.

Tom: [00:32:53] So is this kind of your your the product right now is the business you were talking about working on the business rather than in the business. Are you spending more time working on the business?

JJ Rosen: [00:33:02] Yeah, yeah. So we adopted I don't know if you've heard, but it's very popular, this sort of management framework called EOS. Oh yeah, I know it. And so and I'm usually not super into those things. Right. Because I can't tell if you know, if it's a marketing type thing, like someone wrote a book and. Yeah, or how real it was. But I researched it pretty heavily a couple of years ago, and I called probably 20 friends who had, you know, were using it. Yeah. And they were like, this actually has been pretty useful. And have you.

Tom: [00:33:36] Modified it for Atiba.

JJ Rosen: [00:33:37] So. Yeah. So we started doing iOS. Yeah. And part of that was the strategy to, you know, get the founder, you know, more in the strategy part. Than, than you know, the visionary they call it. Not all.

Tom: [00:33:51] Founders are cut out.

JJ Rosen: [00:33:52] For that and a little less than the day to day. And so so I've been trying to adjust a bit to that role. Yeah. And it's been great. It's worked well. And so you know, that's sort of the idea of the e-myth thing is shifting to that. I've also gained where it used to be. I thought of myself more as just a techie who sort of is doing this business stuff almost on the side. I've sort of shifted a little bit to where now I've gotten super interested in the business side. Right? And like, how do you how do you optimize that? Are you.

Tom: [00:34:29] Involved in business development and your sales process, or have you turned that over to.

JJ Rosen: [00:34:34] I'm doing some of that. But now we have, like, you know, a business development team, a small team that's doing most of the heavy lifting. And so it's given me a little more time to you know, do the deep thought on, you know, okay. What does all this AI stuff mean for us? Right? Or, you know, what new cybersecurity services can we begin to offer? There's probably.

Tom: [00:35:04] Openings at CrowdStrike. Yeah.

JJ Rosen: [00:35:06] That's right, that's right, that's right. And so so yeah. Yeah. So I've enjoyed I'm enjoying that sort of getting into that side of it a little more than I used to be.

Tom: [00:35:17] So the, phrase half cake, half human. Is that yours?

JJ Rosen: [00:35:21] Yeah. Yeah. So I used to sort of describe myself or and then as we started hiring people, our company, as you know, you know, the half geeks, half humans and that you know, we try to, to not just be purely about the tech part, but think about a customers needs, business needs, their worries, their budget. You know, what deadline pressures they have, what the their competitors are doing. As well as, you know, have a really big focus on empathy, both internally and with other people externally. And so I would sort of just describe, you know, I would use that phrase a little bit. I don't know where I came up with it. And then somewhere along the line, our marketing folks, right.

Tom: [00:36:07] Said, hey, I like that.

JJ Rosen: [00:36:08] That'll be our slogan. Yeah. And so you started putting it on your website and and marketing material.

Tom: [00:36:15] I think it's a great slogan. I think it so I'm assuming that the people you work with, let's say you're hired by a business owner or you're hired by investors, they're talking to you because they are not tech experts. They recognize the need to have tech expertise, but they themselves are not tech experts. So they have some fear of that lack of knowledge on their part.

JJ Rosen: [00:36:39] That's exactly right. So and that's something that we talk about a lot pretty much forever. In our, our crew is it's, it's kind of the same thing. Like for me, if I go take my car to a mechanic. Yeah. I'm sort of at their mercy. Like totally. I have no idea. You know what they're talking about half the time. I don't know how long things are supposed to take. What's I don't. So there's like a little bit of a fear of like, is this the right to. Can I trust this person? Or this, this business. And, you know, it's almost maybe the same thing. You know, if you go to a doctor you know, oftentimes you you know, you're unless you're a doctor yourself you're, you're having to kind of gauge both the, the doctor's skill set and their bedside manner, essentially. And so I'll, we'll kind of share that a lot that, you know, that's the way most of us feel when we go. So that's so we could sort of say that's the way a lot of our clients might feel about talking to a computer person. You know, I'm, I'm getting told different things by different people. How do I know who to trust? You know, can I validate that someone knows what they're doing? Are they trying to sell me something, or are they. And so you know, trying to have empathy for that, like I said, and and be sort of like the trusted mechanic, you know, the mechanic around the corner that you're like, okay, I trust them. They know what they're doing. And they go back.

Tom: [00:38:19] To them over and over.

JJ Rosen: [00:38:20] Yeah. So that's been been sort of the, the, the the goal.

Tom: [00:38:24] So do you have a particular customer profile in mind when you guys are going into the, into the market. Do you like. Well, this is what an ideal Atiba customer looks like.

JJ Rosen: [00:38:34] So that's been interesting as well. Because we're kind of the end to end. So we're doing most companies services companies are either maybe the IT side or the software development side. And then a lot might be niched even within a platform or technology or vertical. We've been covering all of it. And that's that kind of came out of the whole computer consultant title. And job description back when I first started is you were just the computer person. You did all of it. Yeah. And you kind of needed to know all of it. And I found there's so many dependencies between the hardware side and the IT part and the development side. And that's helpful, you know, where you kind of do need to a little bit of an understanding or at least have expertise you know, across the entire stack. And so when we, you know, I guess part of the goal is finding customers that are you know, good to work with, like, it's it's enjoyable to to to do that trying to find where there's a, you know, interesting technical challenge. Right. Like, a lot of those are the ones that seem to fit us.

Tom: [00:39:58] Do you mind if I take a shot at sort of describing an ateba customer. No, no, no, you can say like that's so totally. Yeah, yeah. So I would think you probably would not want startups.

JJ Rosen: [00:40:10] So we're we've still, we've been working with everyone from, like, a one person startup to like, a gigantic enterprise. And we've not filtered really on that. Interesting. The startups are really interesting, but they.

Tom: [00:40:28] Don't have any money.

JJ Rosen: [00:40:29] But oftentimes there's a budget constraint And so and there's definitely times when it's, it's unaffordable to, for either the startup or for a developer to, to, to work on something. And so those we may not be the best fit or I guess, you know, it may be hard to find the best fit for the startup from the technical side. But we'll often in my, my sort of old age being interested in the business side. Right. You know I'll, I'll try to think on. Okay. Is there a path for you even if it's not with us? Yeah.

Tom: [00:41:09] So is it more of an emotional match?

JJ Rosen: [00:41:12] I think there's there's some of that. You know but I'll also say that I like, I'm, I like being around people and learning about their dreams and life stories just like you and I are doing here. And so I'd say a lot of times I'll kind of click with someone. And you know, be like, hey, let's figure out how to, how best to help you. Yeah. So so I think there's a degree of that. There's also let's see a lot of things I've found that you know, on the software development side that when there is you know, sometimes a medium to larger company with a smaller IT department. Yeah. Those oftentimes to be seems to be where we fit in. Well. On the IT side the IT support and managed services. That's been all over the board. That's been from like a one person lawyer, you know, law firm you know, to like, you know, a medium like the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. Their IT support. We do. Nice. You know, to larger things you know, like big healthcare companies that people know in Nashville.

Tom: [00:42:28] So when you give advice to your assuming you do give advice to your business development team and they're like, JJ, who should I be going after? Yeah. How do you answer that question?

JJ Rosen: [00:42:39] So generally for our, our IT services you know, we're they're normally targeting actually oftentimes companies that that maybe already have that type of service but just aren't happy with it. And for the software development side we're mainly, you know, trying to essentially it's not so much of a business development or sales, it's more just meeting people and networking and seeing what comes of it. So so our business development folks we've never been very salesy. In fact someone told me once your sell is that you're not you're not very salesy, right. Sure. And so it's a weird thing, but I think that's true. So we've not really focused on you know, you know, how can we make the sale? It's more just meeting people and, you know can we give honest, good advice that would help them? And will that turn into a long term relationship? There is a.

Tom: [00:43:46] So let's talk a little bit about that. How did you price when you started the business and how do you price now.

JJ Rosen: [00:43:52] Really good question. And I think there's a lot of subjectivity around that type of thing as well. I've not found an exact, you know, formula, but when I first started for better or for worse, I priced things really low. Sure. And so I remember the sort of the, one of the first clients I had, it was a real estate law firm in Clarksville. And this is, you know, the early 90s. And they wanted an application that would generate all the paperwork you do at a closing, you know, for when you buy a house. It's a lot. And so and then they also there was a small office maybe five people they wanted, you know, little network set up and computers. And this was kind of their first foray at the time into all this. And so I think I spent like 300 hours writing this, and I given them a, I think I charged them $500. And so and so it's a learning.

Tom: [00:44:52] Experience.

JJ Rosen: [00:44:53] At the at the time I thought it was okay, I need to land this to get momentum. Yeah. And I think that does help. So I think early on in something momentum is important.

Tom: [00:45:04] So I gave away my first clients.

JJ Rosen: [00:45:05] Yeah. Yeah oftentimes that'll that'll be the case. And so so I'm not sure that I wouldn't have done I think that was okay to do. It was actually kind of funny. I had driven up to Clarksville on a Saturday to install the computers, get the software up and going. It's just really nice guy, this kind of country lawyer and and got everything set up. He gave me a check, and I go to get back in my car, my Hyundai. That was sort of barely running to start with, but it wouldn't wouldn't start at all. And so I'm knock on his door and I say, do you know, is there like a garage or mechanic here? I can't get my car to start. And he said, well yeah, I've actually got a buddy that, you know, has a mechanic right around the corner, like, I'll see if I can call him. And and so the guy came over and brought all his tools and worked on it, and I think he had to go to AutoZone or whatever part store to get stuff. I mean, he spent hours and hours trying to get my car working and it was kind of embarrassing. You know, it's like the clients right there.

Tom: [00:46:11] That's right.

JJ Rosen: [00:46:12] My cars. So at the end of it, I think I owe them a I think it was going to be like maybe $900.

Tom: [00:46:18] A lot more than you'd made.

JJ Rosen: [00:46:19] Yeah. So I was like, oh God, this is just disastrous. And so he the guy, the client, his name was Philip. He said, hey, like, I'm just going to pay for this for you. And I was like, no, no, you don't have to do that. And he's like, well, I got to tell you, like, I think you undercharged me a little bit because like, you know, like I thought I was going to pay like 20 times.

Tom: [00:46:46] What you what's your chair?

JJ Rosen: [00:46:48] Yeah. And I was like, well, I did do a lot of work on it. And he's like, I got it. And so and so there was a lesson there. That's right. A little bit.

Tom: [00:46:56] $500 plus. You need to fix my car.

JJ Rosen: [00:46:58] Yeah, yeah. That's it was a good, good trade out, kind of and so I think the pricing now you know, we've it's tricky because we want to do, like you know, we want to, of course, always be priced, cost efficient and make sure that whatever we're working on is like an investment that pays off for the client that we're working for. Yeah. At the same time, we've focused on having just senior level people. And we, you know, try to we pay them, you know, a lot. So so.

Tom: [00:47:37] You don't have a lot of juniors in your.

JJ Rosen: [00:47:39] We don't have a lot of juniors. We tried that and it was just too stressful, like Yeah. And it was, it was almost too much technical risk. You're introducing and risk to projects. And so we kind of committed okay. We're going to find, you know, we're going to go for trying to find like, you know, really the senior level, like folks that fit and have a pretty high skill set. And so that's what we've, we've focused on. Yeah.

Tom: [00:48:05] It could be fabulous for you. Yeah. Now you can have hire the junior people. It just happened to be eyes.

JJ Rosen: [00:48:10] That's right, that's right. We have had good luck with hiring a few junior people with the idea that they could quickly become senior. Has it worked? That has worked about half the time. Yeah. And but that's been great. So we we have, I think, 3 or 4 people out of the Nashville Software school which I'm a huge fan of and when you know, who were all totally senior level, just brilliant. That's fabulous. And they really got there within like a year. And so in that case, we sort of took the chance, but we really didn't have them on any projects externally. We just it was basically a year of kind of a learning and kind of shadowing somebody else.

Tom: [00:49:02] So so that's brings me to the topic I want to talk about, which is the hidden risk inside of software. I have a, an idea and I'd love to get your feedback on this. And someone who codes if the a lot of the value and the risk of a piece of software is established in, like, the first 100 days. Yes. So there are some you're going to have some basic assumptions that you're going to use during those first 100 days or first, you know, just the very beginning of a project doesn't have to be that long. Some software projects go start to finish. 100 days.

JJ Rosen: [00:49:42] Yep.

Tom: [00:49:43] And if you're wrong and your basic assumptions, it can create a tremendous amount of problems downstream.

JJ Rosen: [00:49:52] Yes, absolutely.

Speaker3: [00:49:54] So.

Tom: [00:49:54] It's a little bit like if I'm forming a band and I decide we're going to be a LED Zeppelin tribute band. Yeah, it turns out all of us only play the piano. Yeah.

JJ Rosen: [00:50:04] That's right, that's right. So I think, you know, like, in your world, you know, as a product person and you know, product management and design, we.

Tom: [00:50:14] Can pivot, though. See, the thing about in product that's. Oh, well, we'll just do x. Yes. And sometimes it's like, well, the software doesn't actually support what you're talking about. So there's there's like the well, should we there's a temptation to rebuild. Yes. Well, let's just we'll just tear it down and we'll do it over again. And I my thinking about this has changed a lot. I used to think like, about every two years you're looking at not a tear down, but certainly a significant refactor.

JJ Rosen: [00:50:44] Everything.

Tom: [00:50:44] Yeah. Right. And now I've come to learn that it's like, actually, if you make good assumptions up front and you establish a solid foundation up front, you get ten years out of a lot of code.

JJ Rosen: [00:50:55] Yes. So I think that's true. There's definitely that need just like the blueprints for the house. So it's, you know, the better the blueprints are. And it's probably impossible to make them perfect. But you know, the more accurate you are. And some of that comes down to you know, obvious things around requirements. Some of it is around understanding the business needs or, you know the users and all these types of things that that can be a little more fuzzy sometimes. But I think having that you're trying to de-risk that thing like, oh, we we it turns out we went the wrong direction. We're gonna have to just start over. And then the other thing I found is important to do is the way you architect the software, you know, so you know, there's like this sort of microservices architecture in ways to, you know, essentially kind of modularize things as best you can. And there's trade offs in all of these. Sometimes you're, you're, you're making something more configurable and changeable, but it might take longer to build the first time, but it'll save you down the road. Or sometimes you're just trying to knock out an MVP just to see if anybody even wants to use this at all.

Speaker3: [00:52:14] Right?

Tom: [00:52:14] So what do you do when you guys are brought into organizations who are there? Well, along in business, they have plenty of customers. And they're not quite fish nor fowl in terms of their their architecture. So it's like it's evolved over time. And they have some things that are microservices. They have other things that are kind of based on SQL and scripting and that kind of thing. How do you help them evolve?

JJ Rosen: [00:52:45] So good question. Because like, very, very common and I found this not just in small places. You know, where this this, you know, idea of this technical debt. Yes. Has been building up over the years. And so so I guess one thing to talk on that one topic, the technical debt, where, okay, we're having to Band-Aid this right now. It's not the right way to do it, but we don't have enough resource to, to do it perfectly. Or this is an emergency. Just fix it and we'll go back and we'll have some debt. We have to pay off later to do it. Right. And so I found that the idea of technical debt is actually when done intentionally. And that's the key is to have to know when you're doing that. Yes. And have it be a decision you've made on purpose.

Tom: [00:53:42] I had to borrow money to buy my house.

JJ Rosen: [00:53:44] Yeah, yeah. That's right, that's right. So it's exactly the same and same analogy, like, okay, this is a bet. We're making that. Okay. I think it's going to be worth buying this house now. Yeah. And I think long term it'll help, but I'm going to have to pay it off. And so same idea. So technical debt which programmers as a coder you tend to never want to have that.

Tom: [00:54:08] Yeah, they're always like.

JJ Rosen: [00:54:09] Cringe because you're wanting to do the best you can. You want it to optimize things. You want to make it scalable. Want to use.

Tom: [00:54:14] The coolest, newest technology?

JJ Rosen: [00:54:16] Yeah. But you know like even on that one example on scalability for software, you know, if it's unlike, you're likely you're going to have to scale that much anytime soon. And especially for a smaller business, a startup you know, the risk of building overbuilding, you know, might be greater than the risk of of just getting it done and getting revenue in. And so I think there's a balance on that. All could be debatable, but I think it's healthy to, to do it with intention. And when you know, when you go into a place and there's a lot of technical debt already? I don't think, at least to me, again, pretty subjective, right? The automatic thing is like, oh, this is all terrible. We got to, like, redo it. Yeah. I think you have to think of okay, what's the constraints that we have? Is there a budget constraint, a deadline constraint, and what can we do within those constraints. Yeah. Is essentially the idea. And so what's the most bang for the buck?

Tom: [00:55:21] Yeah. You have to place the content, the technical conversation in a business context.

JJ Rosen: [00:55:25] Yeah, that's exactly it. So I think that's important to do. And so there's definitely been things that like okay, this is in an old programing language. Yeah. But yet the company is doing great. Right. And it all works. Right. I mean there's you know like not always we say okay now we got to redo this right now. You might be let's do this carefully slowly over time.

Tom: [00:55:45] There's also like, I feel like if you're moving to mobile, that's an opportunity to completely rethink your business.

JJ Rosen: [00:55:51] There could be exactly. You know, is there an upside for for redoing something that can introduce you into something, a new opportunity. But yeah, I think it's a lot of times there's a technical decision there, but there's a business decision that is probably even more so you know, important, at least in my view.

Speaker3: [00:56:10] Yeah. I mean.

Tom: [00:56:11] If you're you're probably not a research organization or a pure technical organization, the only reason you have technology is to generate revenue.

JJ Rosen: [00:56:17] Yeah, yeah. So what's practical? Yeah. And so, so, yeah, I think that's an interesting kind of risk to try to mitigate. And, and definitely very common where you walk into something and there's all kinds of issues. There's definitely some times like hey no way around this, this is going to all fall apart. Yeah. From the technical side. Right. You know, what do we do. But there's a probably more so often at least that I've seen times when okay, this is kind of, maybe there's a few kind of some chewing gum, kind of like here that's kind of and some duct tape, but it's working. You know, so let's just think this through. What? What's the most bang for the buck within the constraints you have? I like.

Tom: [00:57:05] That so I have two really one really geeky question and then one less geeky question to to bring us home to the geeky question is that is continuous integration continuous deployment. In just saying like what you see in the there's a lot of your business in Nashville.

JJ Rosen: [00:57:26] It's a lot is, but it's kind of scattered over the years. But yeah there's a good chunk is.

Tom: [00:57:31] Yes. Okay. So when you look at the Nashville tech ecosystem, how many people would you say have achieved that nirvana of continuous integration, continuous delivery?

JJ Rosen: [00:57:44] I think that is a I think that's a the right way to, you know, it's a goal to have. But I think most you know it's not the perfect Nirvana state.

Tom: [00:57:58] What holds them back in general?

JJ Rosen: [00:58:00] I think oftentimes, you know, it's almost like with like, agile development. Yeah. Like, you know, you kind of, you know, have a sprint and like, the requirements are frozen. Well that's easy to say until you know you.

Tom: [00:58:12] Actually have a sprint.

JJ Rosen: [00:58:13] You have a sprint and the, the, the salespeople or the CEO said hey I've got to have this.

Tom: [00:58:20] Yeah I need this right now.

JJ Rosen: [00:58:21] Now for us to, to, to, you know, make the sale or stay in business. And so I think I found a lot of those things to be guidelines. And then you kind of try to work within that. To, to, you know, to do what's best for the, for the business.

Tom: [00:58:40] So pretty decent gap between what you might say as best practice and what reality is.

JJ Rosen: [00:58:45] I think so. Yeah. Yeah. But, but at the same time I don't think that's necessarily a bad. It's always great when you can get to like projects that we work on, usually for larger places on the software development side where you can fill every role. You can do all kinds of automated testing. You can build really good requirements. But again not everybody can do all that. And so it's almost like like let's say you have you own a restaurant. I mean, the best possible service. And I guess that you'd have would be that you have a way a waiter for every single table. And a chef into each, every single. But, but you would not be able to sustain that. You'd not be able to stay in business. That would be too expensive. So you say, okay I can't do that. I'm going to have to have a waiter cover multiple tables. And it'd be nice to have this perfect, but it's just not practical. So the practicality test, I think a lot of a lot of things with software development is I think is important.

Speaker3: [00:59:52] Okay.

Tom: [00:59:53] And then the the other question I wanted to ask is are software are really good software development teams kind of like a band.

Speaker3: [01:00:03] Yes.

Tom: [01:00:04] And in what.

Speaker3: [01:00:05] Way?

JJ Rosen: [01:00:06] I think a great team, maybe not just software development, maybe just in any other aspects of things that are hard to do where you need multiple people. It like a band or maybe even like a really good sports team, you know, where and so and a lot of it I found is, is just the group dynamics no pun intended, the dynamics of but the you know, I think like, we've kind of tried to have this culture. I noticed early on when I was first getting into this that a lot of computer folks were a little bit competitive with each other. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, I think a lot of us have felt this imposter syndrome, and you're kind of trying to fight that. And or maybe, you know, just the natural, you know, competitiveness. And so and so I saw that and I thought, well, that's not good for a company or a project. So I was we've always I've always had this thing and not just me that, you know, now you know, all of us have had this thing, like you know, it's okay if you're not good at something or you don't know how to play this, whether it's playing on your guitar or writing this code. It's. There's no shame at all in saying. Hey, I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I'm going to need someone else to play this, right? Or need some help. And so there's no fear of being fired or being kicked out of the band. And so, you know, that has been, I think, important for the health of a business and for for delivering for clients.

JJ Rosen: [01:01:50] I think there's also like in a band besides for there being roles that people can, can play I think it's been important to have personal chemistry. Yeah, absolutely. On a team. And so so, you know, part of you know, part of that is, you know, hiring people that are, you know, just simply kind and it's a weird sort of thing to interview for. But you know, we're trying to find people who you know, are kind and, like I said, empathetic to their peers. And if someone's having if someone makes a mistake. The other person, you know, you'll cover for them or have their back. And just like in a band, someone plays a wrong note. Sometimes you got to cover other guys can kind of. And so but you see that in bands too, where a lot of bands, you know, break up and everyone gets mad at each other. And so you know, trying to to manage all that is, I think, something that's important. Because longevity in this having a long ramp is, I think, an important part of business. And so, you know, that's that's part of the idea. But I think there are a lot of similarities. And I think even the most talented you know, coders or it people, you know, if you don't have that chemistry like a, like a good band or a good basketball team, you know, can can do more damage than a less talented team.

Tom: [01:03:30] Clubhouse poison.

Speaker3: [01:03:31] Yeah. Yeah.

JJ Rosen: [01:03:32] That's right.

Tom: [01:03:33] Jj, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah.

JJ Rosen: [01:03:35] Tom, thank you so much for inviting me. I think it's really great you're doing this. And it was definitely fun and interesting for me. Talking through everything, too.

Speaker3: [01:03:43] Thank you.

Tom: [01:03:53] The Fortunes Path podcast is a production of Fortune's Path. We help SaaS and health tech companies address the root causes that prevent rapid growth. Find your genius with Fortune's path. Special thanks to JJ Rosen for being our guest. Music and editing of the Fortune's Path podcast are by my son, Ted Noser. Look for the Fortune's Path book from Advantage Books on Fortune's path comm. I'm Tom noser. Thanks for listening and I hope we meet along Fortune's path.