In this episode I talk with Doug Goodwin and Nick Dokich from Ulimi, a Northern Kentucky based software company. I met Nick and Doug through networking in the Cincinnati tech scene. We discuss how they started the company and their big game changing idea. They also share their expertise in using voice and chat automation for workforce development, the challenges companies face and solutions they offer.
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Sam Schutte 0:00
In today’s show, we have Doug Goodwin and Nick Dokich. They are from Ulimi, a Northern Kentucky based software company. I met Nick and Doug networking in the Cincinnati tech scene. And we’re going to talk about how voice and chat automation is impacting workforce development. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Nick Dokich 0:14
Thanks for having me.
Sam Schutte 0:15
Yeah. So Nick, you’re the CEO of the company. And Doug, you’re VP of strategic partnerships, maybe a good place to start, Nick, if you want to talk about how the company started, how’d you get the idea.
Nick Dokich 0:25
Yeah. So I think there’s definitely two parts to that question. The idea was surfaced. I think when I first came out of college and went into the career world, I’ve been doing HR for about 10 years now. And I was always the kind of like the millennial in the boardroom. The one being like, hey, like, why is why do things have to be this way? Why have to be so difficult? I sort of fell backwards into chatbot and voice about two two and a half years ago. I went – I was consulting. One of my friends came up to me and said, Hey, you know, had this great idea. I need some business sense. Can you help me out and through that, you know, unfortunately that you know that part of the company is no longer with us, but I took those same ideas, I wanted to apply it back to workforce. So we’ve been doing this for about about two years. But last year was our first real rollout of products and lines and services. And we’re really now finally seeing some some true ROI. So we’ve been here for about been doing this for about two and a half, three years, which kind of makes us archaic in this industry. That’s right around when everything started really coming down the pipeline.
Sam Schutte 1:23
Okay, and can we maybe describe, Doug, you know, what is the product? You guys have? What is Ulimi?
Doug Goodwin 1:29
Yeah, so it’s interesting, and it’s, it’s probably why I joined the organization in the first place, I was actually looking for a software company to help grow and build and get to market and I just love the idea of voice and chat. I feel like those are the great equalizers in technology. You don’t have to have a tech degree or high level skills to speak. We could all speak and I just love the concept of the simplicity, building everything mobile and build everything with it. As in chat, and making it making things very accessible. So the products have really kind of evolved and materialized into really three main areas. One is how to attract people into a company, giving people easy access to learn about job postings, but also learn about the culture of an organization and and find out what they’re getting into before they even talk to a human being at an organization. The other area is really developing people, performance management, reporting, you know, everything that goes into growing a human being into an organization, I think that’s just been phenomenal. And then the other is optimizing their skills using technology to extend what they’re capable of.
Sam Schutte 2:43
And the platform runs on Amazon Alexa hardware primarily, and I guess there’s a cloud component.
Nick Dokich 2:49
So we’re actually platform agnostic. So that is just definitely what’s one of the major delivery mechanisms that we have each customer’s different. You know, that’s one thing to that, you know, we’re actually we’re We’re a new tech company, but we’re old souls when it comes to you know, integrations and how we do different things. And what we found is that every client has a little bit of a different need. So we can deploy it anywhere they want Facebook, Slack, Google, Alexa, chat, SMS. You know, it really just depends on what the client needs. Sure.
Sam Schutte 3:17
So from a voice recognition standpoint, you primarily use Alexa?
Nick Dokich 3:22
50/50 now, I think yeah, I think now it’s probably about 50% Google, 50% Alexa, and then we’re actually hush hush, we’re we’re building our own. So.
Sam Schutte 3:29
Oh, cool. Awesome. When you look at that Google product, and then the Amazon product, what kind of made you choose those versus others? Um, you know, obviously there’s like Siri and Cortana and all these other that are out there. Why did you sort of get on board with those?
Nick Dokich 3:42
Yeah, I think part of it was just me experiencing Alexa for the first time and using it in a consumer world and seeing like, Wow, this is awesome. Like, oh, man, like, I can talk to software now. Like, you know, what, what can I do? And we’ve noticed, just like in the industry, Google and Alexa just have to have a better linguistic models now. There’s some arguments that can be made either way, but from a platform standpoint, now, both of these platforms are still version ones of each other. So there are some bugs in both of them, which is kind of weird to think that Google and Amazon can have bugs in their system. But you know, as they’re building them out the ease of use from a, from a designer standpoint, and from a developer standpoint, really leverage allows us to work on what we want to work on. So I kind of describe it almost like video games, you have PlayStation and Xbox, we make the video game. So let’s leverage the hardware and the hard work and the terabytes upon terabytes of data that they have. So that we don’t have to go off and do that.
Sam Schutte 4:34
Alright. And just as an example, to people and when I’ve seen your product to and demos I’ve seen of it as, for instance, you know, if I’m the CEO, I can ask the voice recognition device, say Alexa or whatever, what’s my throughput? What am I you know, number of units made? Or for instance, you know, financial reports, I can ask these questions and depend on the device. Will you tell me that data show me that data, pull up a report, rather than me having to go in and search and find it? I could ask him that on I could ask it that on my watch it I want.
Nick Dokich 5:01
In motion, on your boat, wherever, you know, wherever you have a mobile device, and that was a really big thing. There’s we call those sit reps. So you know, situational reports. So you know, as a business owner or you know, in any type of position, you’re not going to ask a device, hey, what is my quarterly earnings by client by this by? It ended up but you might just ask, Hey, how much did we build? So and so last month? Yeah. And so it’s really about getting, you know, the right piece of information to the right person at the right time in the right way.
Sam Schutte 5:25
Exactly. When you built the very first prototype of the product, what was the first kind of thing you did with the platform that was cool that you made you kind of decide to build it out more?
Nick Dokich 5:33
Yeah. So we first initially started with Facebook Messenger experiences, and it was actually fairly limiting because it was very there was it was all flow and not any true natural language processing or AI going in there. And we did that mostly for e commerce and things like that. And we noticed that the ROI wasn’t really there. So I don’t really even consider that our first real product or forte, our first real foray into you know, going into that would be what we call recruitment manager. And it was built for staffing companies that had recruiters that were recruiting for multiple jobs. So not for the candidate coming in. But for the recruiter who says, Hey, you know, I forgot the second shift differential of so and so client, how many open jobs do I have for this client, you know, they can and then also help them just throughout their day. And we, it was pretty interesting. Throughout that experience, we built this beautiful product on, you know, first first of its kind platform. And we noticed that no one was using it. And, you know, we built this custom for you guys. Like we didn’t weren’t using it. And it just it was another page to go to so we ended up doing is we actually put the chat bot into a Google Chrome extension. So no matter where they were, they could just, you know, click on that as their, you know, they’re in LinkedIn, they’re looking at someone for a position, Oh, I forgot what this positions responsibilities were, I can go ask it right there, copy and paste it to whoever they need, and ended up saving about 35, you know, to about 40% of their day. That’s clicked button. So that was a very interesting use case. And then also, we had that was our first You know, first really experienced touching any of the Google or Amazon things. And so that was just also a very interesting experience of navigating their world.
Sam Schutte 7:09
If you’re talking about like for, I’m not an HR expert, but you know, if you talk about onboarding employees or something like that, so what does that experience look like? I mean, they’re sitting there with voice recognition device, and they can ask it questions about So hey, you know, what, how many weeks vacation do I get? Or what kind of they use a really look like?
Nick Dokich 7:27
Yeah, so I mean, it’s, it’s all over the place. Right? So it’s, it’s, we we primarily focus on that recruitment side. So asking just your your your first questions you have about a job, right? What is the pay rate? What are the working conditions like, what am I actually going to be doing, but then having it respond back, conversationally, so not the archaic? Here’s a job description here is 10 paragraphs that half of them don’t even matter, just let’s get down to brass tacks of like, what are you actually going to be doing? So we handle that and then we also do have some clients that are more in the HR general space that you’re speaking of? Where they ask questions about benefits. Hey, who can Can I add so and so as a dependent, I just moved, I just moved to a new state, I need to update my address, where And today, I mean, we actually have one where we’re getting a lot of coming in for tax season, right, I have an issue with my w two, line 15 is wrong, different things like that to where it will feel these questions. But also, there’s still the ability to have a live agent or a live person in there to kind of gather those, but the real, the real thing there is just to try to limit the repetitive tasks and the repetitive questions so that you can free up that person’s time to spend on the things that are actually valuable.
Sam Schutte 8:31
And so and where do you typically kind of locate these if you’re doing it that way? Um, you know, would be like imagine if you know if you’re a bunch of Tax Questions, maybe need to like little private office and you go in there just a little Yeah, Amazon Alexa sitting there and you ask it as much as you can, if you can, it says Call this number or something.
Nick Dokich 8:47
Yeah, so that’s a really good question. I guess I didn’t answer the first one she said but um, yeah, the the deployment methodology is very important, as well as the audience and so there are things that you’re going to want to say and hear this Other things that you’re going to want to type and see. So primarily when it comes to that HR general stuff that’s in actually its own its own world, probably on an intranet sitting somewhere there, whether the chat box might be accessible, it already knows your employee ID, it knows who it’s talking about permissions and stuff like that. From a voice standpoint, those are more of your outward facing type skills, they can still be internal. So in the case of like the recruitment manager, you can have one Alexa unit and with 15 recruiters sitting in a room, hey, Alexa, what’s so and so did it up. And then also, you can just use your mobile device because every mobile device has a microphone on it. So but that’s a very good statement there. It’s like you don’t want your confidential data just to be out there. And then in the terms of Alexa, at least, Alexa has a side suite kind of they call Alexa for business. So you can actually release Alexa skills only to your business and not out to the what they call the marketplace.
Sam Schutte 9:50
Yeah, and I think, you know, this is something that I’ve had, I’ve talked to other people about sort of similar challenges if they’re working at a really big company and they need a specific like, You know, benefit policy or something answer getting that, that the answer to that question can be very difficult because people have built these huge internets that you can just try to find, you know, some PDF buried about, like, you know, what your maternity leave policy is or something. And so, but who has time for that? Right? And do you want to pay some who’s gonna pay that person when they’re doing this? Or is that their time or your time? Right, right?
Doug Goodwin 10:24
I mean, just think about how hard it is just on your own computer. You know, yeah, that’s something you need a document, you know, you’ve got it. And you spend, you know, an hour looking for something that you know, you put in a file six months ago, you’ve got it, you know, it’s there, but you just can’t remember where you put it.
Nick Dokich 10:40
No invoice has changed the way we search. So like, No longer can you just put a couple keywords into Google, you need to actually ask it a question when you ask it a question. You see more rich results and been better things and you know, and to this point to like we I always use the PTO example as well. So if I’m a standard employee making 10 to $20 an hour and I want to know what my PTO balances, you should be able to just Receive your PTO balance. But even beyond that, in the chat bot, the chat bot isn’t intuitive. But you can fake intuition by following that up with you have 12 hours of PTO, which is X amount of days. But would you like to schedule a day off? As inevitably what we need to really think about is what is the intent of the question? The computer doesn’t care what the words are. So you program it as you need to, but really, from a design standpoint, it’s, you know, what are they asking? And more importantly, why?
Sam Schutte 11:25
You know, it was a great point because like, we use paychecks for our payroll, and it probably takes me anywhere from five to 10 minutes. If somebody says, if someone were to ask me what their balances of PTO, it takes, you know, login and then redirects and all this kind of the employee ID But to your point, like they’re probably trying to find out, am I how much can I roll over? Yeah, my allowed to carry negative balance. Can I mean ultimately, they want to know, am I allowed to take off Friday or not? Mm. Right. Yeah. And not, you know, so that’s, that’s interesting, trying to read in the intent. What’s kind of been a more recently a real kind of game changing solution you can put in place was a customer
Doug Goodwin 12:01
You know, actually I think we were just thinking about game changers, I think in voice, I think it was coding phonetically.
Nick Dokich 12:08
Yeah. That was that was a big one actually. Yeah. So, what Doug’s referring to is, we did something with, you know, kind of both the cities Northern Kentucky as well as the Cincinnati area. And we were doing something for the universities. And so we wanted to use colloquialisms like “UC” for University of Cincinnati, and Kay, you, you know, different things like that. Well, you know, Alexa doesn’t understand phonetics. And you know, as great as the software is there’s still some challenges that need to overcome. And you know, this is maybe getting a little bit too of the secret sauce, but, you know, we’ve programmed it for so “UC” is not only the letters, but it’s “y o u s e e”. So, because those those words are, you know, very commonly used, so anytime it hears you it’s going to first think it’s “you” versus a letter, and so we were just able to sort of hack it, I guess, as it were to do that and that really made made it shine.
Doug Goodwin 12:56
And it also it really comes down to the person speaking so When I would say “NKU” couldn’t recognize it, but when the program would say “NKU” it could. So I must have a slight, you know, there must be some something in my voice a little clang or something. But when we, you know, spelled it out “in k you”, it picked up me saying it every time.
Sam Schutte 13:17
You know, interesting.
Nick Dokich 13:18
And I think to to so like, that was just one of the, I think a great insight and thing that we were able to figure out. But most recently, I think our biggest success was what we did at JTM. We, we beat out a you know, a major national competitor of performance management and instituted that and was able to save them about 73% reduction in time. You know, beat them on price, all sorts of things. But I think the coolest part of that was that we had 99.8% adoption, there’s three employees of the whole organization that did not do their performance reviews, first time in history. So that was everyone from, you know, the lowest of the low all the way up to the CEO Tony Maas. He was actually joking about how easy it was. He could even do it. So I think for us, that was a really big win at, you know, a very complex use case.
Sam Schutte 14:05
Yeah. Well, and you know that that’s a 70-some % is a big number. Yeah, that I mean, they have, I don’t know how many hundreds of employees, or maybe even thousands. So, you know, it’s a big savings and just what they will do that save time, you know, so you all are based out of Northern Kentucky. And we were talking a little bit before about sort of the funding and startup playbook because I think you said you major in entrepreneurship, is that right?
Doug Goodwin 14:27
Minor, minor. Yeah.
Sam Schutte 14:30
So in you sort of said, you flipped that on your head a little on its head a little bit?
Nick Dokich 14:33
Yeah. So I was lucky enough to go to University of North Carolina go heels. And they had a entrepreneurship minor. And actually, I was a B school dropout. So you have to when you go to UNC, your first freshman year you have to apply into business school, even as an undergrad. And I hated morning classes until this day, I’m still not a morning person. But I ended up you know, finding out that business school is actually more finance. And then entrepreneurship was obviously my passion. I mean, I remember my, I think my first actual, you know, you know, job or whatever was me selling, you know, energy drinks out of my backpack in middle school, right? So I guess I had that spirit. But as I was sitting in that minor, what they really did was they, they taught you how to make a startup, and not how to make a company. And I see that also, you know, unfortunately, a lot of times in this area, and just in the startup scene, nationally, in general, they put a lot of weight on getting funding and less weight on solving a problem or making a company, it’s all about where do I get my next dollar? What’s my next series, A, B, you know, all that type of stuff, and then going to exit. And what I found was like, so I can sit there and I can make presentations, and I can, you know, do PowerPoints and slide decks and you know, here’s this, you know, beautiful business plan that’s all marketed and has cool little pieces, and we have a Facebook page and yada yada, yada, but like, are we actually building anything that’s going to solve the problem? And so, you know, we from a startup standpoint, like we didn’t take any funding, we found clients that had problems, and we solve those problems and we were actually a lot like, we We’re lucky enough to find really cool partners, true partners that will allow us to build software for them, and then modulate that backwards and to make our platform. And that’s been a very successful model.
Sam Schutte 16:10
Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. I think you’re right that not just locally but but really across the nation. I mean, startups are often measured on what they raised. That’s what success is, is they raised, I mean, you know, you, there’s the ones you can read in the Business Courier, whatever what they raised and all this great, and it’s like, Yeah, but over their sales, what do they do? What are they doing? And, and I think obviously, there’s, there’s a lot of startups out there that haven’t been able to kind of solve the problems you did, like for JTM and stuff, and that those type of significant savings and problem, you know, pain solutions and stuff for them. I mean, there’s companies that have raised probably 12, you know, $20 million, and are still trying to get their first customer like that, right. And it’s kind of like, what’s the point?
Nick Dokich 16:48
You know, yeah, it was funny. We were in like an incubator, or whatever type of space and I remember, I kind of wasn’t eavesdropping, but it was an open space you can hear and they were having a conversation. They just raised a million dollars and They didn’t even have a product or an MVP. And the question was, can we even legally do this? And so and so state, I saw it on the whiteboard, I’m like, you raise a million dollars, you don’t even know lift legally, you can do this. So that to me, just was kind of like mind blowing that like, why why even waste your time anyways? Right. So I definitely have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, I think in general for everything. And that also is kind of the precipice of Ulimi, like when I was in HR, I was sick of doing it the same way. Like, we’ve all been there looking for jobs, you know, and like, I’m both and I’ve been on both ends. It sucks, like, quite frankly, like looking for jobs sucks HR functionality. A lot of those processes just flat out suck. So why can’t we make something to handle that so that we can have time to do what we need to be doing to engage to do all these other different things, you know, and so that’s where it’s like, it’s almost like this anger for inefficiencies. And just like bad process has trickled kind of everywhere within our organization. It’s just like, just, you know, we try to try to like look at the status quo and do something different because there are real problems and we can solve them or at least try to help.
Sam Schutte 18:01
Let’s talk a little bit about your HR background. I mean, did you work there extensively before you got into software?
Nick Dokich 18:06
Yeah, so I was like, right out of school, I was a leadership consultant. So I traveled the nation, you know, mostly in higher ed, teaching people about recruitments. Law, teamwork, this the soft skill stuff side of HR. And then what brought me up to Cincinnati was actually our CEO and co founder we work together about 60 years ago, in a call center space, and I was able I was the director of culture. Back when that didn’t even exist. I’m pretty sure I that guy just made up that position at the time, but it was on a business card and I was pretty happy about it. So I was in charge of about a 2000 employees, nine locations and really figuring out in a call center environment, that’s 24 hours, seven days a week, very unforgiving, very low pay. And that’s really where I cut my teeth within that was in those types of industries. So call center, three PL warehousing stuff where it’s thankless, thankless work, it’s quasi repetitive in some ways. It’s actually super complex and You know, you don’t get any sleep or any rest. So you know, from that was where we really started to think about, okay, how can I measure the performance of somebody so you think about it, I’m gonna use, forgive me, I’m not a big sports guy, we’ll use a football analogy. But like, if you if you look at a football team, that’s one of the best ways to track work performance, right? Because the football team is a job, right? The end goal is, you know, making a touchdown. But there’s all these different players and all these different positions that also aren’t on the field and off the field, that people are doing this, but you can pull up fantasy football, what can you do, you can track all the stats of every person, right? You can run different types of, you know, algorithms or different scenarios and be testing, right? Why can’t we do that for work? Why can’t I sit there or at least or have an artificial intelligence or something there and say, Hey, you know what, Nick, you’re a little tired today. So maybe you don’t need to do those emails, put those off until tomorrow. Spend your time creatively doing this, right. Or even better, like, Hey, this is this job description that we found. And we actually think it’s gonna match you because of this, this, this, this and this. Yeah, right. So now it’s us being smarter at the way we work and then freeing up our time, and that’s Think that from my HR background, I was just sick and tired of, we kept pushing engagement, we need to engage our employees need to retain them, we need to motivate them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, how can you engage your employees if you don’t have time to talk to them? So let’s make this so that we could have time to talk to them and actually try to do these things that don’t necessarily have a playbook, you know?
Sam Schutte 20:18
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I think just, you know, evaluating, and figuring out what the, you know, who is performing well, and who’s not can be so challenging sometimes. I mean, you know, I talked to a lot of software development companies and teams that, you know, maybe they have 20 or 30 developers, and they, they have no idea what the problem is, and why they’re not sort of succeeding, how do you identify, you know, who’s doing it wrong and, and hear about these classic sort of schemes out there, like, you know, there’s been companies in history that said, Okay, well, you know, we’re going to incentivize the software developers that will get bonuses based on who writes the fewest bugs whereas the fewest bugs right, you know, but then they do the work out something with QA and you know, there’s there’s an end up Doing some kind of crazy stuff and it doesn’t what does that really tell you? Because, you know, like, you know, I think in that stories case, their performance went down because the guy who wrote the most bugs is also getting most stuff done, right? Because of course, he’s pounding it out. Right? Yeah, he’s making a lot of bugs is written 1000 lines a day or 10,000 lines a day. Right, right. So that’s just an example like, how do you really measure it? Mm hmm. So I’m curious, you know, if you if you went back to that call center company today, you had a blank check, and you had your Ulimi technology? What would you solve their call center?
Nick Dokich 21:31
Oh, I mean, there, we had this idea called “thermostat” and it was very much we would be able to like that company with all these different locations has about 200 different clients, they have inbound, which is I’m handling customer service, and outbound, which I’m making sales. Yeah, sales metrics are easy to track, right? But being able to take that take all of the learnings and the trainings and things that they do their cross trainings, the certificates, anything like that, and then look at their actual performance, and see when they can either be promoted, moved. You know, a lot of times it could be, hey, this is just this works gotten really mundane, you know, move it back. But I’ll be honest, if I had a blank check, I would just automate the call center via voice. Right? And like, that’s definitely yes, it would reduce staff, you’d still want the human element. But I, you know, from my experience in there, it was there’s about 75% of those interactions can be automated, and those 25% they could actually spend with the customer. Yeah, right. And then that’s also part of engagement technique for their brand. So I think that’s probably fine. If I had a blank check, that’s probably what I would do.
Sam Schutte 22:28
Interesting. And, Doug, you had talked a little bit about, you know, workforce challenges and workforce management challenges and, and finding people and, you know, so why is the solution needed in that space, particularly, that you’ve kind of started to focus on it?
Doug Goodwin 22:42
Yeah, I mean, so if you look at the, you know, data from last year, there’s some great research been done. So just an hourly type, blue collar area work alone. 80% of the time that someone actually applied for a job now if you ask every buddy who hires that, they say we can’t find people Get 80% of the time that someone applied for a job, they did not get the job. Okay, so and then 66% they didn’t even hear back from the company. So they’re they filled out an application, and it went into a black hole. And it went nowhere. Now, if you start to go back and look at people, and ask those people who did apply, about the process, amazingly, 20% of the people who got the job, they got the job they’re getting the paycheck said the process was good. Okay, 20% – and 13%. That didn’t get the job. So yeah, the process was good to think about the gap there between, you know, in the process where people are saying, hey, yeah, this is making sense. And that other 80% that said, Hey, this doesn’t work. There’s something and we’ve got it, and we can fix it. But you can’t, you know, human beings. I mean, Nick’s mentioned a couple times, we’re already stretched to that. There is no more capacity. We’re in a culture that is built to do more with less, and we can’t create more time. From a humans day, so the only thing you can do is optimize that human’s ability, and you got it. And you can do that with a smart technology. And actually take some of those repetitive tasks off their plate and give them time to do the things that human can do really well, the the intuitive, the creative, and then start to really engage and make things happen.
Sam Schutte 24:20
What’s the right way to use AI in that sort of situation?
Doug Goodwin 24:24
That’s a great question. So I think if you start to think about where does a prospective employee begin, they’re gonna go to a job board or they’re gonna hear a referral, something about, hey, this company’s hiring, they’ve got jobs, you’re gonna go to the website, you’re going to go to, you know, one of the job boards or whatever, and you’re going to look up, look up a job, if you’ve just got a generic job description there. You’re not really learning you can apply for but that’s, that’s getting back into the Hey, I applied at 88% of the time. I didn’t, I didn’t hear from it, but with smart technology, that person then has a conversation with that company. Yeah, it’s a computer. That’s fine. They learn about not only the job they learned about the working conditions, they can learn about the culture, you can actually serve a video, you know, hey, this is what a day in the life looks like. There’s lots of things you can do with technology. So before that person, and then you can score them they go through, and then Are there other jobs available at the same organization that they might be able to apply for two. So instead of applying for one, apply for two, or three or four, whatever, and then by the time that human recruiter ever talks to that, that candidate, they already know that they’re qualified, they already know that there’s a high level of interest. They know that all of the basic questions, you know, anything that’s going to keep them ineligible from working there. All of that’s been answered. Now, that human recruiter is really just about validating that information. you’ve eliminated, you know, the majority of that process.
Sam Schutte 25:46
Isn’t that sort of role the human and that is because, you know, a lot of people who hire folks sort of like, do I feel like I like this person or not, do I want to work with them? I mean, that’s kind of hard to automate.
Doug Goodwin 26:01
You know, there’s no question and you don’t want to eliminate human recruiter, what you want to do is alleviate them from doing all the repetitive tasks they have to do just to get the person. I mean, how many times do they have to ask I9 questions? I mean, those are standard. You can automate that real well.
Nick Dokich 26:15
There’s a lot of time back and forth to just scheduling the interview. Right, so and so might be working a different job. Hey, they’re not here. So their wife answers the phone. Oh, yeah, I’ll let you know. I’ll let Chris know he’ll get back to you. He gets back to you at 5:30. Well, the recruiters already gone, so that he’s leaving a message and he’s also probably sending an email so then that person’s gonna look at their email on their phone, probably around 9 pm right before they go to bed, they might shoot one back off and then they’re gonna go back into their room and you know, listen to the voicemail and then they’d better call Chris again and be like, Oh, wait, forgot he’s not, you know, he’s not available during this time. So then Chris is gonna have to figure out what he can take work off. You see where I’m going here. And so there’s a lot of inertia than that back and forth. I always equate it. This is a this is a local, you know, kind of analogy here, but it’s like going up 71 what happens inevitably by Redbank you slow up, but you don’t slow up because guess there’s construction there, but it’s because there is too many cars on the road, you can be driving a Ferrari, it’s not gonna go faster than 50, you know, right there. So if we can eliminate those cars off the road, then you can be more focused and get to your destination faster.
Sam Schutte 27:13
Do you think that sort of, um, you know, by utilizing AI and sort of scoring with they’re looking at them and looking at all the data, you know, what parts of the video were they paying attention to what, you know, skill assessments, you know, is it possible that folks can this to your point, you know, they can’t they say they can’t find folks to take the job, right. And that’s any career, any profession anywhere, they can’t find truck drivers, they can’t find programmers, they can’t find welders, right? Um, but yet, I know a lot of folks who are, you know, young kids are like, 20-23, or whatever, who, they don’t really have that skill, but they would be great at it if they just spent six months at it. Right. Right. You know, so can you you think that the, by not being so arbitrary, like it’s a checkbox, yes or no either have the skill or I don’t, that these kids would have a better chance to get into those positions.
Nick Dokich 28:00
I think so to that skills are codified very rigorously nowadays. And if you really look at it, it’s hard skills, soft skill, but there’s only like a couple things that you have you have your hands, you have your brain, and you you know, you have your attitude and your effort, really. So it’s kind of I’ve always used to say it’s like, okay, so if you’re cutting hair, right, you have to sit there and talk to customers all throughout the day. So why couldn’t you go find another customer service position? Because you can utilize that skill in that position? Even though on paper, you would sit there and think, oh, why would I ever you know, why would I put a hairdresser in a call center position, right? And I remember even when I was job searching, you know, back a few years ago that like, Oh, you have no experience in this industry. I’m like, well, you can learn an industry, but do I have experience doing either something tangentially function, you know, and that I think honestly, Doug, I think you can personally speak to this because your previous role is not anything like this, right?
Doug Goodwin 28:53
I have no HR background whatsoever. My background has really started out IT. So technologies clearly, you know, clearly in my DNA, but I love data. I mean, I can just crunch data all day long. And you know, all sudden I realized the moon is up and I’m like a way because I can go home. And that’s kind of my background. In fact, I helped get the craft beer industry, you know, in from in terms of using data and how to get that to market. I went out looking for a problem that I wanted to solve. And I was really tired from small town. And I was really tired of going through small towns in Ohio and seeing the devastation. I mean, people were just, it’s, it’s a train wreck. And I just realized that, hey, people can’t find work. And we’ve got to figure out how to fix it. And then when I met Nick was like, a light went off for me. And my passion just, you know, kind of exploded out of my chest. I was like, bam to do this.
Sam Schutte 29:40
I guess. I mean, obviously, you know, since you met each other, this, you know, local community here in Cincinnati. I mean, that’s certainly a positive outcome from that. I mean, how else have you found you know, being a technology company based, you know, here in the region? What are the ups and downs you think are upsides and downsides to being in Cincinnati and we’re one of them. The real, you know, great resources have been helpful to you thinking that you’ve done so with the chamber and stuff then Kentucky chamber.
Doug Goodwin 30:06
Yeah, I think I think the chambers I think I think the thing about Cincinnati and Nick picked up on this is you are one conversation away from meeting almost anybody. And that’s the I mean, let’s I mean, the joke is, you know, where’d you go to school? They mean High School, of course. So that’s kind of our job. But But in a way, that’s true. And that’s, once you embrace that, that’s actually a good thing, because you can get to almost anybody you want with just a, you know, a couple phone calls. And I think that’s wonderful. And I do think the Northern Kentucky chamber has been wonderful. And now we’ve kind of expanded that to the Kentucky State chamber. And it’s we’re seeing results from that we’re getting into, you know, doorways that we couldn’t get in just a few months ago.
Sam Schutte 30:42
Because Yeah, and you have a number of couple speaking events and engagements and stuff coming up throughout Kentucky, I think.
Doug Goodwin 30:47
Yeah the 20th of February. We’re going to be speaking at the Kentucky workforce summit in Lexington. That’s exciting. And then in March, I believe it’s the 26th if I recall the Northern Kentucky, has a Northern Kentucky chamber is sponsoring a future of work symposium and actually Nick’s the keynote, keynote speaker, and then I’ll be running one of the breakout sessions.
Sam Schutte 31:10
Right. And so, you know, when you’re at sessions like that, or any kind of conferences, you know, what, what are really your target industries? You know, like the main target you want to get into? I mean, is it, you know, low paying job to call centers and stuff? Is it high paid software developers? Is it all? You know, what do you think you really want to target?
Nick Dokich 31:29
Yeah, I mean, I think we could talk a little more to the targeting. But I always say if you have at least 50 employees, I can guarantee ROI if you have at least 50 employees.
Doug Goodwin 31:37
Yeah, and I think the biggest demand right now are those hourly workers kind of, I don’t say low skill, but but maybe more common skill, not necessarily the high end tech. I think that’s where the game is being played, although it’s going to shift over the next couple of years. And and more skills is going to be needed. And I think that kind of gets back to what we were touching on earlier. We’ve everybody already has a work staff. How many of those people Or one skill away or one step away from being upscaled and a large number. And we’re not really focusing enough on on getting people moved up the ladder so that you can help not only today, but what are we going to need a year from now or 18 months from now.
Sam Schutte 32:14
And Doug, you’ve done, you’ve done work before about with groups that are trying to train folks in new technologies and new skills and stuff. And to be pretty active in that scene. What do you think here locally in Cincinnati is the real, you know, where the real gaps in our skill sets?
Doug Goodwin 32:27
You know, it’s interesting, I don’t think it’s tech, I think you can learn tech pretty easy. I think the hard thing is to learn soft skills. You know, how to how to communicate, or how to communicate and how to talk to a customer and more importantly, how to listen. And I think those are the things we need to focus on. But what’s I was just telling this story. Many years ago, I worked at a regional bank, it doesn’t exist anymore, and I was developing a teller system, but the person I replaced myself was with and I was the lead developer was an actual teller. And what I noticed every time I went into the bank she was doing if she was on break, she was doing a crossword puzzle. And I just found that intriguing. I just got to talking to her and people who do crossword crossword puzzles are inherently logical human beings, they know how to solve a problem. So I actually brought her onto my team and she ultimately ended up being my replacement when I moved on.
Sam Schutte 33:17
So obviously, there are competitors in this space to you there’s that are sort of entrenched products have been out there a long time. You know, when you look at those, I guess first off, if you want to say who some of those competitors are, but but where do some of those struggle? Were they not deliver? And why? Why is your product better solution?
Nick Dokich 33:38
So in the voice realm, we are actually at least last year, I know there’s a couple more companies that have popped up but we were the first and only company doing voice applications for business. Most of the companies out there we’re doing custom stuff for you know, B2C type things, just random ad hoc engagements. And then really, it’s just been a really strong community of developers who just want to build stuff out. To put in perspective, I think Alexa has now has over 100,000 skills, of which I think less than 1000 or use daily. So, you know, put that in perspective now from our web app standpoint, we, we definitely compete with the bigger boys, you know, I’m not gonna name him by name, but everyone knows the ADP is of the world and yada, yada, yada,
But their biggest challenge, man is that, you know, there’s a couple, there’s a couple things that go on there. One, which is a it’s not a unique challenge to any organization is when an organization grows over the course of decades, different people make decisions for different reasons. And you end up having a sort of a hodgepodge thing and less of a, you know, less of a tangible, you know, good user experience. And I think that’s really what everything boils down to, at least from my opinion is I mean, you you know, you use HR software. It is like pulling your teeth. So we actually when we were in our design phase, designing this, we went through all the apps that we liked, and I was like, You know what, I love searching for hotels on vrb I love the way that Google does this, I love that this is this and this. And so we took those elements from a good user experience standpoint and then making it mobile. And I think that’s also that the key there is 90% of the technology in the HR space says they are mobile, and they’ll have apps. But those apps are just giving you information, you’re not actually interacting with the product. So I don’t really consider that app that’s like a, I don’t know, portal, if you want to call it that, or whatever. But you’re limiting the functionality. And so when I was in the warehouse space, you know, I’m HR, I have a 15 minute question, I’m gonna go at Sam, well, Sam’s probably, you know, 1000 feet this way. And inevitably, when I’m walking down 1000 feet, four or five, six people are going to see Oh, HR is in, you know, in the warehouse, I need to go tell him and ask him something, right. And then I’d have to write things on the back of my hand, or grab a sheet of paper or this I have to go back to my desk and I have to sit at my desk and type and figure all these things out. I’m like, why can’t we just do this in motion? You know, why can’t we you know, why can we do these HR processes that are, you know, that are necessary and then they’re good and yes, we want to engage with arm I don’t want an employee Not to raise their hand. And you know, that’s that’s the worst thing, but it was getting in my way of doing other things. So I really believe that it comes down to button clicks user experience and having something that like, is mobile friendly. or mobile, or mobile optimized, not friendly. I mean, it’s a full. Yeah.
Sam Schutte 36:17
Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, I agree. I think it’s interesting, I find that, you know, the more the sort of boundaries and expectations are pushed by the companies that really have good user experience together, but their apps or even with their websites and stuff, it makes anybody else in that space who’s all behind seem like you’re getting into like a Model T or something, you know, and nobody wants to ride around town and Model T right. You know, and you know, and so, if you look at like I’m I’m very lazy when it comes to buying shopping online, right? Like if I can’t just buy it with my thumbprint, the Apple Pay or something of just knocking on my credit card number I hate. I’m just terrible. It And it’s funny, because 10 years ago, like, wow, I can just type my credit card in. And that’s awesome. Yeah, I don’t have to tell the person over the phone or write it down on paper or do the carbon copy and swipe thing. But that’s not enough now, right? And so, you know, look at, like, for instance, a payroll software we use I mentioned, I mean, you know, it’s like this web portal, you cannot do it on your phone. There’s no way. It’s like a some weird web based wizard. It’s terrible. And in the meantime, I can shoot an invoice out from my phone. No problem. Easy, right? It’s like two clicks. Yep.
Nick Dokich 37:31
And I think there’s something to say about that, too. Because, you know, I HR has always supported the organization, but organizations seldom support HR. It’s not a moneymaker. Right. So just like that, like yeah, of course, I’m gonna spend money on invoicing because that’s sales. Right? And we still and that’s a little bit of what we combat that a lot as well. There’s still a lot of conversations we have where it’s like, well, do I want to spend this money at the end of the day eight, you know, having a human being is the one common denominator that we all have, like if you’re going to do work or own a business at some point. There’s going to be human and HR is going to be involved at some point. So why not optimize that and make that experience better? Especially because that’s happening daily?
Sam Schutte 38:07
Alright, so since you know, all those customers have slightly different problems and another’s, you know, it’s like you have to kind of customize stuff to them. And how do you kind of close that sale? How do you What’s your sales process, if you sit down with, you know, let’s say a new 50 person company that, you know, as an engineering firm, and they’re going to be very different in the call center, the different than, you know, GTM, for instance, you know, but they need to see something they need to see a product. Right, right, demonstrated something, yeah, that’s not going to match their problem. So how do you get over that hump?
Doug Goodwin 38:37
Yeah, I mean, I think I think, the first thing is like how we kind of develop our leads, and we there’s a huge gap and education in our region. And maybe it’s just because we’re Midwest, flyover country, I don’t know. But people don’t really like connect the dots that, hey, I can use a smart bot, to do work that a human could do and then free that human being up. So I think just invariably, we go out And we educate. We know the speaking engagements, podcast, those kind of things. So I think that’s, that’s the beginning of it. So we’re actually talking to people who already are predisposed to that, hey, I can use smart technology to advance you know what we’re doing. And then we’ve done some these guys have done some great jobs of just giving us good demo sites to go out and use so an actual live product, even though it’s a fake company, we made it up to date, as you know, we have a little fun with it. So it does, you know, bring in some humor in there. But you know, you actually show them something because you got it they got to see it. It’s got to be to
Sam Schutte 39:36
Try to show them you have a demo like server kind of forever kind of industry if you know, he’s going to be out demoing to engineering firms, you make a fake engineering firm, and so on so forth.
Nick Dokich 39:44
Yeah. As best as our ability. Right. Some industry is better than others.
Sam Schutte 39:48
Yeah. And so and I guess, yeah, because you got to try to figure out like, what are their
Nick Dokich 39:51
goals? What are their this?
Sam Schutte 39:52
Yeah, what’s your what’s your guess?
Nick Dokich 39:54
And I think to to Doug’s point as well then, like, once we get into this conversation, we know there’s some interest there. We have a very, very heavy discovery phase. And we’re very consultative in our approach. And so I think that, like, as cool as building this stuff is, and yeah, it’s really unique that we can do that. Like that there’s value there. But our real value is figuring out what makes sense to where to place the AI because like, at boot camp, people are like, Hey, can you automate Doug? It’s like, yeah, we can we could, you know, we have clients are like, hey, here are all of our email records and our chat logs. Can you make an AI does it it’s like, Yes, we can. But do we? Should we is the first question and then if we should, what parts should we because you know, this technology still is very, and I noticed this even with one of our bigger clients, it is probably the most, the most robust from a, like a depth of knowledge and a breadth of knowledge perspective. And we’re seeing some issues because the technology is really made for these short, very narrow focus type things. I want to order a pizza. Okay, what type of topics Well, you’re not going to say a Volkswagen as topics right? But in HR, the world benefit could be health benefits. It could be life insurance, it could be, you know, 401k is considered a benefit, right? So you got to think about these things, both from a vernacular standpoint, but then also from a business use case parameter standpoint, and then really figure out okay, does it make sense to automate this or not? And then we do that by two different ways. One is button clicks, and then one is just the overall time and like, kind of the output of that, right? So it’s like, it’s taking your 20 button clicks to get to this, we automate that what is that time equation times your hourly? yada, yada? Yeah,
Sam Schutte 41:30
Well, and I think that’s what’s to me very powerful about the way you guys are operating your, your sort of business model, because, you know, so my company is custom software development company, right. And so, one of the strengths we have is that we can come in and build completely, you know, tailor made to what they need. And because of that, because we can take it down to like the most infinite grain of like, just what they need, we can get a really high ROI, right? Your product company and you just have a product, right? You have an app or whatever. Then it’s like, what can I do this? This this? Nope, you just you just does this. That’s what you get right? You’re not gonna get crazy, crazy hard, high ROI. And I’ve seen this because that’s why people say, Well, we tried salesperson didn’t work for us. Like you think that that’s a crazy statement? Like, if this product like is so expensive last time and it didn’t work for you? Yeah, what do we what are they missing? Right? But since you guys are in the middle like you really are software plus service right? So you have this product so that so you know you’re not you know the problem we have where we’re always starting off at zero and trying to paint some picture of something that doesn’t exist at all right? And that product but then because you’re doing a lot of customization to and really no customer you have just going to use like some off the shelf product with no changes. But that’s what lets you get that high ROI because you can you can change and tweak it and the trick, of course is just figuring out how to price all that.
Nick Dokich 42:50
Yeah, right. That’s that’s always the that’s the rub.
Sam Schutte 42:52
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that’s, you know, there’s a number of companies like for instance, helium SEO in town here. Tim warm runs that. And you know, he’s an SEO company. There’s a lot of SEO companies, but they have this AI software they wrote to their software plus service. So they do SEO better, they would say, because they have this product that sort of taken start off with a lot of, you know, intellectual property and value it right. And it kind of makes sense. Because if you’re an SEO consultant, you’re starting at zero, you have nothing to bring to the table, other than just your brain. Right, you know, right there, you’re in a weaker position. So how can you automate your brain a little bit?
Yeah, you know, and so, I mean, it’s, I think it’s a very powerful model.
Nick Dokich 43:31
Yeah, it’s a we call it it’s heavily, heavily, heavily templated. And we mean that too, it’s like so for utterances, like we probably have 3000 ways for you to ask how much like how much does this job pay? What is the pay rate of this job? Right? And so we use those types of things. Those are very generic right? Then we’ll take the business data, which is what are those actual jobs, we’ll scrape those jobs and then you can ask questions upon those jobs right. So and then as we keep doing this more and more, it actually potentially could get to a point where it is templated at least in industry, right or template it by job role or template. It Yeah, that’s kind of, you know, we’re hoping to get to a place to where, you know, the job application process is dynamic, you know, and it’s asking questions based off of your resume. Right? And not just general questions and things like that.
Sam Schutte 44:10
Don’t utterance different ways to say the same thing that Yep, yeah. Mm hmm. Yep. phrase, just a phrase. Is that your guys term? Or is that an industry that’s industry? There’s no copyright and trademark. Okay. So what are what do you think some of the, you know, sweet spots outside of where you’ve been? What are you gonna be doing next? What’s your vision for the future?
Doug Goodwin 44:33
You know, I think it’s so funny because I feel like every week, somebody comes to us and says, Hey, you know, they’re looking at click 360, which is our performance management platform. And they’ll say, Hey, you know if you could add this, and so we just had one like yesterday, and it was like, that’s a game changer. So obviously not gonna say it, but I feel like every day or every week, we’re somebody is coming to us. You know, they’re seeing the product and saying, Have you thought about it in this way? And so I think it gets back to that listening. We’re listening or paying attention or saying, okay, we can do this. And then when you’ve got that flexibility, that it’s not just a product, you can go back and say, Hey, guys, what if we do did this? And they say, Yes, we can. That’s a huge difference.
Nick Dokich 45:15
Yeah. And I think also too, it’s interesting. I’m kind of bringing this full circle on voice. So voice as a technology industry, obviously, is very new. And as consumers interact with it, there are things that people have even written about, right. And so that’s like, whatever good time to sit down and do a blog. I will but the, you know, I think about the fact that my fiance will say thank you to Alexa, when she gives her a correct answer, which is like it’s a machine. It doesn’t care if you think it or not, but because of the nature like people will have to remember that conversation is the key to culture in society as it is today. Right? We first before we wrote down stories, we had an oral history, right? That’s and how do we pass information, you pass information visually, you pass information by teaching and even look at schools today. Most of that, yeah, there’s technology involved with that. Let’s see. When speaking, you know, to and from back and forth, and so I see a future to where like, these devices or these types of experiences are interwoven in our daily lives just as the cell phone has, right. So you think about like when you first got your first computer, how awesome it was a good dialogue. You know, all that stuff, and you were waiting for it. And it was really cool. And you log on to aim, it still would take forever, you’d set your status and all that stuff. Right. And that was your hub. Like how much did you love you sir? Yeah, right. Like, how much did you love that spot? Like, I’m like, visually in the one in my house. It’s like, we had one computer in the house. And like, when I had my time on it, it was amazing. Well, guess what? That’s in my pocket. Actually, I have two phones, right? So sometimes I’m the weird guy who like I’ll be on my iPhone. I’m looking something up on my droid because it’s better. I like the user interface over here and yada yada yada. I’m weird, but like that, but I see it like now these devices are going to have voices, and you’re going to be able to also speak to it. So it’s going to kind of be this weird, kind of heady space of like, Is it a pet? You know? So we always we always ask this question when we go We’ll start building for a client is is it media or isn’t A tool? And the answer more often than not, is it’s a little bit of both. And so if we could have technology, be fun and engaging and productive, that’s where I think I see the future and then give me the ability to work how I want when I want, where I want, and then ideally, save me some frickin times like I spend with my family. Like, that’s, that’s the future that I want.
Sam Schutte 47:22
Exactly. What What do you think? Um, you know, the one thing I like you said, you know, a lot of those technologies are still kind of in their infancy, and they’re pretty new. And like you said, version 1.0 or something, maybe even. I’m curious, you know, if you do anything, or if you think there’s a it’s coming where it’s, you know, it’s not just, well, what is your question, but who’s asking, right, because that’s the thing that drives me nuts about some of these devices is I, you know, I wish I could tell, look, these three kids ignore everything they tell you don’t turn the volume up and down if they tell you to, right. Yep, I don’t think I don’t know if we’re there yet.
Nick Dokich 47:52
Now with that, I think they’re getting very close up in the voice recognition and it is started. Yeah, it’s the authentication. There’s a little piece of that built into Alexa and Google Now, it’s not, it’s not the best. I mean, it’s not to say that a another user can’t use your device right? There. We’re working through that. And they’re also the big challenge there too, as well is the wake word. Right? So it’s as funny as it is people get annoyed to say Alexa did it? They just want to ask the question. And then there’s that side of like this always listening to me. So they are working on a few initiatives, though, to kind of in I don’t know how they’re going to do this. But essentially, Alexa could have numerous wake words. So you can say, hey, Chevrolet, I want to do a Mike’s Car Wash, let me buy this, you know, so they, so that’s kind of like what they’re working on towards. But I still think that this technology as great as it It’s way better than the IVR of you know, of yesterday. It’s definitely has a lot of great use cases. But it still has a little bit it’s still in its infancy, you know, from a for a being able to use it at the permission level in which you’re describing, right. So it’s still not a full blown app, right. It’s just it’s it’s more of a Just a standalone experience. But as they start fusing these things together, we’ll start seeing more and more and like what we’ve been working on was, how can I talk to a webpage? So right now I could have my Alexa, which ours has screens, I don’t have screens. And we’ve, we’ve actually, we’re one of the first people to put video on the screens, we were able to actually link into web pages, which that was never done before even last year. And you know, now it’s like, okay, I want to talk to a pivot table. I want to talk to a website and I want the website or the web app or the whatever to react to what I’m doing. I think that’s where we’re going to see the real, like the true precipice of I mean, just straight up awesomeness, like that’s your Star Trek, like, hey, go do this. And then the screen does it and you can see all these things and things are being tracked. And now you’re really you’re like, that’s the next evolution of human computer interaction.
Sam Schutte 49:43
Yeah, I mean, if I could ask the secretary of state of Ohio’s website, you know, when our sales taxes to you know, just basic finding that information right now is a nightmare right now, just simple thing, but they’re in 50,000 PDFs right now, and I’m very cool. What are your goals for growth? You know, I mean, do you want to, you know, close $100 million finance around? No, that’s not what you want to do, but, you know, triple triple every three months for the next 10 years or you know, organic word of mouth and what’s, you know, what’s kind of your model for what you want to where do you want to be, I guess in terms of size and stuff, say, two years ago,
Doug Goodwin 50:22
we sat down and we just we wrote down goals and for so our goal for this year for Click 360. We want to have 5000 people on the platform before the end of the year. I actually think that’s modest. I personally would like to get 10,000. But I mean, that’s 5000 lives that we’re actually affecting, helping people to actually improve themselves and develop their career. I think that’s significant.
Nick Dokich 50:44
Yeah, I think from a voice perspective, I mean, we’re looking to grow regionally, a little bit more on the east coast. We’re staying on this side of the world for a little bit here. You know, and we want to grow, you know, get out. I mean, we’re really passionate about this area, and it’s kind of weird, like the Cincinnati 275 loop defines HR procedure for the rest of the world or the rest of the nation, at least, you know, so it’s like very active Twitter and all these different things. And it’s like, if we can affect change here and really solve a problem, then we know that we can go scale that out into the, you know, the rest of the world. So the, from a growth standpoint, I think it’s like, let’s just continue to grow in this area as well. I mean, outside as well. But really focus in on keep solving these problems that we can and get more and more use cases.
Sam Schutte 51:25
But uh, so what do you think what’s like the most personally rewarding project you’ve been working on recently, just outside of work or with customers or outside of work?
Doug Goodwin 51:35
That’s fantastic. I’m getting along. Excellent. So about two years ago, I just, I’m getting up there and get a little gray hair and I could just feel my body falling apart and I discovered something called F3, which is a men’s workout group and I actually founded my own and Anderson. So we have F3 Anderson. So every Saturday morning at 7am. There’s a group of guys that we get together and we go through a full fledged boot camp style workout for an hour, and then we head over to a local coffee shop and we just hang out for an hour drink coffee and just have conversation. It’s just it’s I mean, I mean it’s gonna be like 24 degrees tomorrow I’m already looking forward to it so that that for me is probably been the single and from you know, from my personal life that’s that’s something that I’m really passionate about.
Sam Schutte 52:19
Yeah, get a burn off stress and, and you know, get that commitment grip commitment and accountability that you’re going to be there Yeah, exactly.
Nick Dokich 52:27
Yeah, so in for me, unfortunately, I don’t have much free time. On a personal note, you know, I’m getting married this year. We bought a house last year and the company really started taking off so my you know, free time is dwindled, but um, I’ve been very passionate about, you know, speaking in this area. So I think I have a pretty unique story to tell, you know, I could be I was homeless when we were born. And I always feel that like, I could just as easily be someone on the the assembly line as I am here talking with you. And so I have a very strong passion of effecting workforce change for that demographic, because I feel like you know, throughout their lives I mean, no one, you know, you don’t care about high school, they don’t care about it at work. And it’s, you know, if you think about even just a temp, like temps, temp staffing, people are 1099 make up 60% of our US workforce, which is wild. So if you think about that the majority of Americans, everyone listening to this and everyone in this room knows someone who is working one of these types of jobs. And so for me, being able to tell my story, and being able to sort of like in try to like talk with people and innovators and, you know, people who are decision makers and things that we can actually make some change in this in this region. I, I think that’s one thing that we always talk about is like, this isn’t a This isn’t a, you know, us just saying this for good marketing. This is something that we really believe in. And for me being able to speak is one of my like, favorite passions is share that story.
Sam Schutte 53:42
Awesome. So if people want to hear you speak and hear more about your background story and everything you guys are working on, I think you really have a lot of passion for helping people with your solutions. Where can they go to find out more information about what’s coming up here? What’s your website?
Doug Goodwin 53:56
www.ulimidoes.com. Okay, what if they want to reach out to you and just give you a call at 513-316-8968 or you can just email me at Doug@ulimidoes.com.
Sam Schutte 54:13
If they’d like to see a demo of what you’ve got, and you know, we’d be happy to walk through and do some kind of screen sharing imagine with Absolutely. And so I guess just in closing, so, you know, what are the three main things if folks are struggling with something around workforce management or performance? What are the three things that they should reach out to for help with?
Doug Goodwin 54:29
If you’re having trouble finding people, if you’re having trouble developing people, engaging people or just retaining – just bucket under retention. And then if you need to upskill your workforce, so optimizing them?
Nick Dokich 54:44
Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. It’s a recruitment, performance management and if you don’t have enough time in the day,
Sam Schutte 54:50
Awesome. Yeah. Well, Nick, Doug, thanks for coming and talking about Ulimi and all you’re doing really appreciate on the show.
Nick Dokich 54:57
Thanks.
Sam Schutte 54:57
Our first show with three speakers, so I’m glad the technology worked pretty well. Real good, great and glad we have Doug’s radio voice to get us through and hopefully can have you on some time again and check in with y’all see what’s going on.
Doug Goodwin 55:09
That’s great.
Nick Dokich 55:10
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Doug Goodwin 55:11
Thank you.
Sam Schutte 55:11
Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
