Human Creativity and Machine Efficiency in Marketing

Damon Pistulka  00:03

All right everyone, welcome once again it is Friday and you know what that means? It is time for me action ecommerce success. I am your co host Damon Pistulka that oh that way. Pretty guy right over there. Curt Anderson, co host we’re gonna be talking today about human creativity and machine efficiency and industrial marketing all my goodness. We’re gonna have fun Curt. Take it away my friend. Let’s do this.

Curt Anderson  00:33

Dude, that was a mouthful. Happy Friday. Damon, how are you man?

Damon Pistulka  00:36

I’m good. I had to practice that for like 20 minutes before we got on just so like Yeah, yeah,

Curt Anderson  00:42

it’s still all right. So this is I hope you got a good night’s sleep because this is going to be phenomenal. This is a great program. We we have this gonna be a masterclass. Alright, so I hope everybody’s sitting down for this one. This is an honor privilege to introduce our dear friend John Joyce. John how are you doing?

John Joyce  01:00

I’m doing great I’m doing great thanks for having me on guys. I can feel the energy my honor my energy and surprise you still have it but yeah, let’s go well you

Curt Anderson  01:11

know demons in the morning I’m like lunchtime your you know your your past happy hour where you’re at. So let’s let’s dive in. John, we’ve got a ton of cover lots in common. I just you know what an honor privilege ID to meet you in Austin, Texas at the industrial marketing Summit. Daymond speaking of the industrial marketing summit guests who was at the Dutch Dutch are markings on it. Who this fine that I got that fine young lady right there. Whitney Houston was in the house at the summit. Whitney, you met John So John was just a powerhouse speaker. You know our friend Wendy Covey, the whole crew John. Joe seven from grill somebody six. The guys that Adam it cadenas they put on a through little party. Hey, Harry’s here today. Harry’s

Damon Pistulka  01:54

from hot Chicago. I think it’s gonna be like nearly 100 degrees there this week. That’s gonna be

Curt Anderson  02:00

hot Chicago. Hey, David. We’re gonna be live in Chicago next week. Man. We are gonna be streaming live from Chicago next week. But hey, John, let’s dive in. So we have so much to cover industrial marketing expert here. But before we go there, I have a quick question for you. curious mind would love to know. When you were a little guy growing up John Joyce, when you were little guy growing up? Who was your hero? Who did you look up to? And who is your hero when you’re a little guy?

John Joyce  02:26

Yeah, that’s funny. That’s a funny question. I would say probably my dad is super, super obvious answer. But, you know, my parents, my mom and dad. And I think actually, both of them are a huge part of who I am. Because my my mom was a pianist. And my dad ran a software company and was a architect, Software Architect. And that creative side and that logical side, were both driven into me, you know, my whole life. And I am a, I’m a musician in a creative guy on the marketing side. And also I love coding and building systems and all that kind of stuff. So there, I went through that teen phase where I hated my parents, I’m just gonna admit it, like I was like, the last thing I want to do is be like my parents, and then came back out the other side, like with so many things that are from my parents, and now both of them are have passed, and all those things that they just serve as like little reminders of them, you know, so might be a canned answer, or kind of like a typical answer, but I definitely would have to say, probably my mom and dad know, hey,

Curt Anderson  03:35

you know what, John, that was a beautiful answer. Not canned whatsoever. Just completely inspiring. Mom and Dad’s name. Names, please.

John Joyce  03:44

John. So I’m John Jr. J. J. J, if there’s not enough J’s in there, and my mom was Ruth. Why? All

Curt Anderson  03:55

right. Well, John, and Ruth, well, hey, God bless them. They’re looking down just smiling on their on their little guy right here. What a great answer. You know what David was at Mark Twain that said, you know, when he left the house at 18, came back at 22. He was amazed at how smart his father got over those years. Right. It’s yeah, totally. Does that. Does that resonate a little bit with you? I totally.

John Joyce  04:14

Yeah. And I have a 17 year old 20 year old. So I, I seen it from both sides of the equation here.

Curt Anderson  04:23

I’m right there with your brother. I’ve

Damon Pistulka  04:24

got a step above 25 It’s just starts to switch. Yeah, it will

Curt Anderson  04:29

turn around and not so. Hey, this is awesome. I think I think Carrie jumped in. Oh, I think Harry’s got a 17 year old to possibly hear I think yeah, we jumped in this week about that. So John, thank you for sharing so it sounds like a great combination in piqued my curiosity musician. What do you play? Drums. Oh, you’re a drummer. Nice drummer. See? You know what I was a

Damon Pistulka  04:50

little guide to what kind of drums though?

John Joyce  04:55

Well, that’s the jam band and doom back from the index from Morocco the jam bass From the music store, but you know, all different kinds. I mean, I’ve had timpani electronic drums full kinda like Rush drum set that goes all the way around you. Just a little, little teeny kid. You know, now I don’t even have a kid I play. I play other kids when I go places. If there’s a kid, I don’t have any of my own equipment, except for, like African percussion or basically ethnic percussion because it’s portable. Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Curt Anderson  05:29

Awesome. Well, hey, Whitney’s got another kind of hurry. I’m gonna pull up demon Dasha marketing Summit. I hope to go again next year. It was awesome. Totally agree. So John, we’re gonna dive into that. So again, drop a note in the chat box, let us know that you’re out there connect with John on LinkedIn. He has just a wealth of information, all sorts of great things going on, John. So let’s go here. So you’re an Akron zip back in the day. And so what led So you talked a little bit about Mom and Dad, your engineering side? Creativity side? Yeah. What inspired you What led you into marketing and really what led you into industrial marketing?

John Joyce  06:06

So for me, when I went to school, they they kind of said, You should be an engineer. And they stuck me in engineering. Because I had the the I tested for the aptitude or whatever. And that was fine. But I to me, it got boring, fast, like I thought, Okay, this is to no offense engineers out there. I know. And we work with lots of you, and we love you. But it was too cut and dry. And so I wanted something a little more organic. And so I got super interested in studying people. So I actually ended up studying ancient history and psychology. I’ve double major in ancient history and psychology, because I feel like they’re harder to figure out people. And then I said, Well, I love systems. I love creativity. And I find people fascinating. And I need money. So how do you put together people and how they work and systems and communication and creativity and money? And the answer was marketing. So I just ended up really going into create a creative field, I was a graphic designer, like I went, my first job out of college was graphic design. And then that led up to marketing. And then I started an agency and then I became a consultant. And I’ve worked in, in companies outside of companies, etc, etc. Industrial marketing in particular, is interesting to me because it’s complex. So it’s not just an emotional play, like, hey, our shoes are cool, you should buy it. It’s not just that, that easy. That that’s that easy. But it’s way more complicated. It’s like a long game and your any of your, you have so many different channels, and so many different verticals, and so many different messages and stakeholders. And all of that makes it complex. So I love that I love complex problems. So that’s why industrial marketing and just it to me it hit all the things that I find interesting, and is a job that allows me to feed my family at the same time, right. So that whole ek guy thing if you know if you’ve heard of that, where you’re combining what you love, what you’re good at, and what makes money and what the world needs.

Curt Anderson  08:25

Right? Absolutely love it. All right, that was fantastic. Damon, we got another caller. We

Damon Pistulka  08:30

got some comments. John says you take my 17 and 20 year old chicken out for teenagers.

John Joyce  08:36

I’m good. God bless you, Harry. Yep.

Damon Pistulka  08:38

Whitney says fascinating. And then Samira. We’ve got said she’s saying Happy Friday,

Curt Anderson  08:45

happy marriage. So you know. So again, we’ve got John Joyce here. So drop a note. Let us know where you’re coming from the chat box connect with John on LinkedIn, you will thank us he’s just a dynamo powerhouse industrial marketing phenomenon. So John, just share a little bit about your journey. We’re going to lead I’m going to get up to we’re what we’re working on today. You’re deep in doing a deep dive into integration, data, analytics, those types of things. Walk it now. I don’t know how deep you want to go. We were talking before we went online a little bit about your you’ve made a little you went across the pond as I understand it, right. So you went across the pond. Now you’re coming to us live from Portugal. You want to just what? Damon This is so inspiring. I don’t know how deep you want to go, John, but just share a little bit how you brought your family over to Portugal, Portugal?

John Joyce  09:32

Yeah, yeah, no problem at all. So yeah, people find it interesting that I’m in Portugal. I mean, Portugal has been recently discovered by America. Yeah, when we moved here, actually, nobody. You would say I’m in Portugal, and they’re like, is that like, the capital in Spain or something? And you’re like, well close. You know? No, it’s not Insightly America either. It’s an actually its own country but it is next to Spain. Now people are very aware of Portugal, especially in the states, like over the last few years, it’s gotten super popular with Americans. So most people nowadays probably heard about it, or it’s on their list to go or they’ve been already. But anyways, the reason why we got here was kind of like a whole confluence of circumstances, which were actually the most difficult time in my life as a, as a man, you know, just, it was I don’t think I slept for three years. And what essentially happened was at that time, this is going all the way back to 2010. I had an agency, a small boutique agency, and I loved it, it was going great. It was literally right across the street from my house, the perks of being a business owner. And we were doing industrial marketing and other types of marketing and that subprime mortgage crisis happened. And three of my biggest clients were related to homebuilding and real estate. And so that was like, they were the 80 of the 8020. Yeah, and so they all disappeared, actually, one of them is still around, actually, two of them are still around, but they, they hit pause, like in a major way. And we held our breath for two solid years on the 20. And basically just couldn’t do it any longer. And I had to sell the agency. So I sold the agency, we, we had put all of our money and everything into it to keep it going for two years. So this is actually my master class in what not to how not to run a business. So people always say, Well, you have experience and knowledge about this or that and I can say I don’t know anything about anything, I can tell you 100 ways not to do something that I’ve because I’ve made a lot of the dumb mistakes. Yeah, well, this is one of those things, throwing good money after bad. And just basically holding on to my ego and saying, I’m not gonna fail, I’m not gonna fail, I’m not gonna fail. And but and then what we did was just fail, ultra spectacularly. And we ended up losing literally everything except our house. And then at that same period of time, my mom died and my sister died. So then, my dad was already gone. I have one other sister, but like, so three quarters of my childhood family that was in the area was gone, my business was gone. And the church we were serving in at that time, had a leadership catastrophe. And I’m not going to go into details on that. But that also blew up. And then so then, in that crater of what was previously our life, we were looking around and saying, okay, that sucked. But we actually now have no ties to any reason to stay in Akron, Ohio. We, I mean, we’ve been here at that point, we 25 years or something like that. And, you know, our own family won’t even come visit us here because it’s boring. So why are we here? You know, no offense to Akron, I’m gonna say, I’m gonna offend everybody, I guess. Anyways. So at that point in time, we said, this is kind of a wit, a sort of freedom. And so, you know, sometimes you can have that paralysis, actually, when you could go in any possible direction, and you’re like, I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. Well, we just decided if we’re going to do anything crazy, now’s the time our kids were five and eight at the time, and we thought they’re kind of portable. It’s not going to destroy their world. And let’s put the house on the market, our last remaining thing and everything in it and, and we sold the house and had an estate sale and sold literally everything we owned down to the glasses and stuff from the, you know, kitchen drawers, and then packed up and moved overseas. And initially, we went to Morocco. So we we went there for about half a year, a summer, a long summer of the longest summer of my life, because I’m gonna tell you also, it was the hottest summer in the history of Marrakech at at 120 plus degrees and Ramadan. But anyways, that’s a whole other story. From there. We went to Lisbon and we’re like, Okay, this business, our speed, we kind of did get here. And we moved from Morocco to Lisbon. So this is our third continent now at this point, and we just, we just loved it. And so we, to end the story just stayed here. Basically, we have we have come back to the states for work at certain periods of time, but for the most part over the last 812 years, we’ve been here nine of those years. So our kids mostly grew up here, but they did get the chance to come to the ride the school bus at school being banned, you know, do some other typical American things but but they also ride the train speak Where to ease and know what a pistol than that is?

Curt Anderson  15:05

Oh my gosh. All right Damon dude. Like, did you expect that story? Nope. You didn’t see that one coming. Hey, we’ve got a few comments. Yeah, we do emojis if you want to grab those

Damon Pistulka  15:17

Yeah, yeah, we go first and first of all, we got, you know, Ronaldo era. You know, you start talking about something in Europe and Portugal you got a novel. Yeah. Samira is saying how on earth people didn’t have any idea but and I’m no I’m no world traveler. I was back when they were when I was 25 is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I’ve thrown out there so much fun. And then Whitney. She is gemology there from listening to the story. Because I mean, that’s that’s a tough deal. You’re in and it had to be. I mean, business.

John Joyce  15:51

I’m not gonna lie. I’m not Yeah.

Damon Pistulka  15:55

family thing. Holy heck, that’s a lot. That’s a lot to deal with. That’s for sure. You know, business. We, that sucks, too. Yeah, that’s all bad. But family you can’t replace you know, that’s the thing that stinks about that. But yeah. But then we got we got Samira. She’s dropped in a couple of comments. And Whitney again, what a time of uncertainty. But I tell you the uncertainty that your courage with your spouse and your kids to just go, Hey, we’re selling it down to nothing. And we’re going I mean, that’s cool as heck because you want to talk about the beginning of a new adventure. Guy that way, when he’s saying here, living in Morocco must have been a unique experience. Other than the 120 degrees, right? But that’s your

John Joyce  16:39

love Marrakech. I mean, we go back all the time. We’ve already been back twice this year. Yeah. So I highly recommend it. If you haven’t been there, go there. It’s just a completely cultural different experience.

Damon Pistulka  16:49

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s good stuff, though. Good stuff. And then Harry dropped a comment. I’m always inspired by people who demonstrate resilience, and you are a shining example. Bravo.

Curt Anderson  17:01

So hey, everybody, give a big round of applause. Certainly. And, you know, we, we have a lot to talk about, we need we’re going to dive into industrial marketing some other things. But this is life, you know, in Jack. Yeah. What so John just told me this story. Before we went on live, John, thank first off, thank you for sharing your story with with us here publicly, you know that that’s not an easy story to share with, you know, strangers or on a livestream like this. So my hat’s off to, but talk about I mean, this is the understatement of the day, turning lemons into lemonade. Sorry, yeah, lemonade, right. I mean, like, I need something much more dramatic than lemon into lemonade. But dude, for you and your wife, to sit there. And everything that you went through, you know, the more, you know, the more you had no, in the mortgage crisis was not had nothing to do with you, you know what I mean? It’s like, you know, so like, here’s an unforced, you know, unforced error that came into your life. Mom comes into poor health, that’s an you know, these things come your way. And you sit back and so many people could have folded so many people currently, you know, I’ve been curled up in a, you know, that, you know, that baby position multiple times. And like, here, you guys step up and take a trip and a change of a lifetime. Can you just share, you know, scary, exciting out, like, what were you? What do you remember? 2010? Like, what was going through your mind as you’re like, Oh, we’re really doing this?

John Joyce  18:28

Yeah, I think there was a huge amount of just the desire to escape, just going to be honest. So like, after the kind of catastrophe that in that whole process took took years. So it was like, you know, two to three years to say, of going through all of that. And then I think we just wanted to hit the reset button, you know what I mean? Like, like, let’s just do something completely different. Like, you know, we just went out of here, have you ever been through like some, like, say, a really bad toxic workplace, I’m just going to try to make an analogy, and you’re going in there for years. And when you walk into it, it kind of makes you sick, just to like, just to like go through the door or to smell the carpet when you walk in like, Okay, you make associations. Well, like, all of life was kind of like that, where it was like, no matter where you look, and it’s just like, Okay, this, this whole life we currently have just, I feel kind of traumatized from it. And now it’s just making me sick. I gotta get out of here kind of a thing. And so, you know, there was just it at the time of leaving. There is a really a sense of joy and excitement of just like, Oh, we’re gonna do something completely new. Yeah, you know, we’re gonna go somewhere completely new. And then the rial idea of like, okay, that’s not a vacation like moving somewhere, it’s different, like you’re figuring everything out, you’re wasting all kinds of money, making stupid mistakes, getting ripped off learning things, doing things the wrong way, going in the direction, changing direction. And then you invested in this direction and all that down the toilet, and now you’re going in this direction. There was a lot of that, because we weren’t like as prepared probably as we should have been, and just kind of jumped, you know, so there was excitement, but then smack in the face with just the reality of trying to live overseas. And then Marrakech was, for my family, in particular, too much of a culture shock. I mean, we had been overseas, we’d been in the Middle East, I worked in Saudi Arabia for a while, like, we knew what we were getting into. It wasn’t like, we had never been in a, for instance, a Muslim country, or like a place that’s got a different climate and different culture, any of that kind of thing we had been. But still, the reality of it was, was hard. And even coming here, there’s so many challenges, people come here all the time. And don’t, don’t make it so to say, because, like, it’s harder than you think it is, integrating into a new culture, learning all the new things, even just a dumb government bureaucracy, like how do you get the power turned on and different things like that. But, you know, the fun of it outweighs all the difficulty of it, at least for us, because we like the. So that’s the bad you temper that with all of the excitement of like, this is completely new, you know, and you’re exploring and you’re in the medina of Marrakech, getting lost, like you walk literally five minutes down the road, and you can’t get back to your house. It’s like that, you know, and it’s like, sights and smells, and awesome people, like we met some of the most awesome people, we still go, our little neighbors across the street, because we lived in the actual Medina, which means the old part from like, 600 ad, and we, our little neighbors across the street from us, in seabin Sleeman, we still go see them, like we’ve seen them multiple times, you know, since then, and that was, like 12 years ago, you know, so like, we made great friends and had great experiences. And in Morocco, and also here, you know, so that’s what’s kept us going and kept, kept us exploring, and that’s the, that’s the positive side of it. And then Portugal is daemonset is just like a beautiful place. Like there. It’s just so lovely. There’s just so much sun in. You know, there’s European culture, interesting architecture, different food, different music, cheap wine, if you like wine, you know, great climate. There’s not much to complain about, honestly, except the taxes. It’s Europe, but they have the UN HR program, so are used to anyways, well,

Curt Anderson  23:01

that’s fantastic. And so And last thing. Well, last thing, you as you mentioned, you’re quite, you know, it’s a very popular destination. Now, a lot of retirees you hear Portugal, this Portugal that? I mean, you really were pioneering in 2000, would you say yeah, 1112 When you first so you, you know you kind of use you sparked a wave, it sounds like

John Joyce  23:23

Well, yeah, when we came here, there wasn’t many Americans here. But now there’s loads like in the post COVID time, a tons of Americans have started coming here from California, especially if you’re coming from California. Portugal’s a bargain. If you’re coming from Ohio, it’s actually a little expensive on the real estate side. But everything else is cheap. Cost of living here is low. So yeah, there’s been an influx of, of Americans, I’d say, in the last, you know, three or four years, but when we got here in 2012, the country was in the crisis with, you know, when all the European countries are going bankrupt, remember that period of time Portugal was in that in 2012, when we came here, so it’s like a big recession. But it’s not anymore. I mean, they’re doing they came out of that period, excellently and are doing well. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  24:19

well, good for you. So let’s go here, John. So you make a huge pivot with your life, your family, go to another, you know, two different continents. Talk about business a little bit. So if you want to share, you know, how did you What was your mindset? What was your game plan? How did you resurrect your business, and then we’re going to dive into today?

John Joyce  24:37

Yeah, so just to continue the storyline. I had an agency before we left, I sold that agency, I kept a few clients who I was just consulting with one on one when I left to come to Portugal, and one of those clients actually just started taking more and more and more and more and more of my time that was Brennan industry. So eventually they said, John, would you come back to America and create a marketing department. And so I came back to the US and built a marketing department there. And during the time I was there, the company went from, like 40 million to like 250 million and became a global company. It wasn’t just me. I’m not taking credit. Yeah, but it did happen. Well, I would say, Yeah, I played so far,

Curt Anderson  25:23

I would take as part of it. Yeah, take your part of it. I

John Joyce  25:28

mean, the logo I designed is like 20 feet on the building, you know, I definitely have to mark. But anyways, I stayed there as long as I could. But at some point, I felt like there wasn’t enough opportunities staying within that company. So I set off again, and use a lot of the experiences, I’ve had over 30 years of doing industrial marketing, to launch back out into a business. So I started my company, which is called Bridger I O. And what that company does is technical integrations for industrial applications. So things like tying manufacturers into distributors, ERP systems like motion supplier connect, or IE eight, MIT’s Direct Connect, or bringing your CAD system that’s on your website, bringing those leads into your HubSpot, Salesforce or dynamics, and different things like that different problems that I had solved along the way for manufacturers and knew that there was a need to solve these problems, like if you have, if you do defense contracts with the Department of Defense and have cmmc rules, there’s all kinds of security requirements, it can be very difficult to integrate something. So I have an on premise integration platform that helps with that, that allows you to put that in your DMZ and still do integrations with selective database replication. So without getting too technical, different types of integrations for industrial applications. So that’s how I started the company. Now, that company is growing, you know, gradually, while it’s growing, I’m kind of bootstrapping it with fractional cmo work. So I work with just a few select companies leading their industrial marketing, while I’m growing this technical side of the business. So it’s kind of one two scenario with both of my areas of interest and expertise. And

Damon Pistulka  27:32

it’s interesting, because what you’re doing, is that creative and like you said, the coding kind of thing mixed together with your marketing. And that, because those integrations, I mean, that’s no small feat to make some of those custom integrations work, but they are significant problems. I mean, it just the amount of like, like you said, and these these integrations, you you often find people are a we’re going to do a manual until they realize that that is not going to work, or be they’re going to go okay, we’re going to do some sort of import, export, whatever, you know, to these things, which, over time, just proves to be or some, you know, sleight of hand automation that really doesn’t work until you get the real integration. And you go, Oh, this just works. And we, and we don’t even think about it anymore. Because it’s integrated. right in on that. It’s really interesting seeing how you companies go through that process until they find that integration, that custom integration that really works well. Because it’s, you can waste a ton of money if you don’t do it. Right.

John Joyce  28:45

Well, so a lot of people think my platform has an integration capability built in, you know, it’s got an API, my other thing has an API, I can make them talk to each other. And if you haven’t customized it, you might be able to turn it on and just have them talk to each other. Even something is super basic and fundamental as connecting HubSpot and Salesforce, okay, those have a built in integration between both of those software’s that you can just turn on that’s like an authorized integration. But if you’ve changed things, so all you have to do is change the state field to picklist values in, in Salesforce. And now all of a sudden, your HubSpot integration won’t work anymore. And you’ll just you’ll look in there one day and there’s like 500 errors for unable to do an integration. Well, that’s an extremely small example. But like, as, as companies scale and have systems that are more tailored to their specific business requirements, you know, there’s none of these kind of like off the shelf solutions really work. You still need. You’re basically hiring a software developer who’s using that so addition to build an integration that actually works with your custom objects, your custom data, your custom requirements, whatever they are. So, you know, it gets, it gets complicated and outside of the realm of just like, oh, Zapier will do this, um, it gets out of that realm, like, pretty fast if you’re doing anything, any kind of real customization and usage of data that that’s mapped towards how your business actually works. And not just the default HubSpot, like how it comes out of the box, or whatever, insert your software here, and so on. Yeah, if you get if you get any additional requirements put on you, like GDPR, you know, if you have branches in the EU branches in the US, if you have government compliance issues, or any kind of proprietary system, all of a sudden that complexity level just goes up really fast. And, you know, so people need help figuring out those situations. Well,

Damon Pistulka  30:57

like you said, these, the these kinds of solutions aren’t off the shelf. I mean, when especially when you’re looking at all the different kinds of systems that you’re hooking together, or need to hook together. Right, you talked about Salesforce, and HubSpot, they they are probably a rare example of two that actually will even talk to each other out of the box at all. You know, for sure, yeah, we’ve run into it with in E commerce applications before where you’re trying to connect suppliers to a third party integration hub that’s moving between all different platforms and suppliers and moving everything from orders to payments to you know, and when you look at that it’s all custom work to get those things talking because nobody says it exactly the same way. No,

John Joyce  31:40

and what and then in the, in the murky, intertwining. So of that those integrations, what leaks of data are happening? Yeah, do you do you know, like, here’s data, I have seven data points over here, and I’m putting him into this system that has five spots for it. So what am I losing? You know, do I even realize I’m losing it? Is that actionable, helpful information? So you can you can very easily string together a leaky system, you know, that brings some piece of information over, but is it really bringing over the information you need the way you need it? And that’s where, you know, you really start, it does get more complicated, fairly quick, you know,

Damon Pistulka  32:27

well, and not use, you’ve mentioned one huge thing, know what you’re leaking, because even in the simple systems, like I’ve been working with, is, if you’re processing 1000s of orders a day, how many are you missing? Right, because the way systems timeout, and all these integrations work, you can just just drop 15 minutes worth of orders, well, that didn’t get transmitted or some reason while you go 15 minutes, but that can be 1000s of orders that can be or hundreds of orders, and then you go on the other end, that just means I’m missing deliveries, and all these other things that make the cart that your integration stuff that you’re talking about, just just fascinating to me, and we don’t need to go down the rabbit hole too far with this. But because it is I mean, it’s it’s it cost you average sized businesses 10s of 1000s of dollars, if not a month, every quarter and hundreds of 1000s of dollars year because it’s eaten up in labor and mistakes.

John Joyce  33:22

Absolutely, like you just made me think of a story of one integration I did, which one of the first ones I ever did, and I won’t mention names, but it was a connection between a, it was a e business integration where people could place orders, and they came in through this integration. And the connection. The over the internet, like the internet interface connection, would create a 1% error. Okay, and it at first didn’t notice it. But literally what made you think made me think of it was he was saying 1000s of orders a day. So when when it ramped up to 1000 orders a day, which is where it did, then that’s 10 orders a day that were just erroring you know, and then at first didn’t realize that was happening. So we had to build a whole redundancy system. So it was like the order came in, it got set over here, then there was a whole separate process that send the order in and then re verify that the order was received and then went back and said, Okay, we can mark that when it’s done. Instead of just like piping the data from here to here. It had to go through a whole storage redundancy double checking system, which is three times more work than just moving the data from here to here. But then it was 100% You know, 100% effective no matter what happened. You could you could be offline for three days. And you would come back online and all those orders would just come right in you know, yeah, but you know Not every system is built that way, right? And the people who are buying systems are planning some of these systems don’t know, you know, even if how resilient is your system? How robust is it? You know, what kind of backup plans are there for things like bad latency or your own internet connection at your office goes down, you know, things that are out of the control of, you know, anybody in the chain, except you, you know, and now and those things, even if it’s just intermittent like this was an intermittent error, like you couldn’t catch it, doing it, it was so rare, you know, you couldn’t catch it doing it. So it was like, just an example of where, okay, all of a sudden to live at peace and not lose 1% of these organs. You have to build a much more complex system. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  35:49

So, like, 1% is 300 orders a month? I mean, just put that in perspective. Yeah. Oh,

John Joyce  35:54

yeah. It adds up quick. When you get it as a daemon. We’ve

Curt Anderson  35:59

got some great comments on

Damon Pistulka  36:00

the comments here. I will start back here with all awasi. Thanks for being here. Made it in. Thanks so much. He’s got a bunch of good comments here and go through those. And then we’ve got Whitney says, I know one American family living in Portugal and loving it. That’s awesome. Whitney now you know, to Yeah, Dale, Dale Underwood. Integration is easy for anyone who doesn’t have to do it.

John Joyce  36:28

Amen. It’s as easy as like anything. It’s easy, but it’s that simple.

Damon Pistulka  36:34

There you go. It Gail’s dropped it in today. Again, we’re obviously working together. There you go. Friday, Gail. Yeah. Happy Friday. We got Lana here. It’s dead. Yes. And then not apples to apples. No apples to apples. That’s yeah. Everybody thinks it goes together. And it’s like you said with sales, Salesforce, how strong they go, oh, yeah, we got the API integration and the people that are buying it on the other end? Of course, we don’t know what that really means. We’re gonna Oh, yeah, it’s got an integration that he tried to make it work. And it’s like, yeah.

Curt Anderson  37:09

I know, we could keep you all day, John, is you’re in you’ve got a lot to do in Portugal. So let’s go here. You mentioned defense, you mentioned cmmc. Can you do just for any folks out there where, you know, we just we cover that quickly? For anybody out there in the defense industry? Or just were that that is pertinent? Just can you do a little deeper dive, just share some of your, your expertise there? If you would?

John Joyce  37:30

Yeah, sure. So if you if you work with defense industry contracting, now, and even more, like into the future, because there’s this whole roadmap, I mean, it’s only gonna get worse, or more that worse, because it’s a good thing, it’s only gonna get more intense, more worse, over the next several years. You have heard of cmmc, cyber security maturation model. And so it’s like, basically, you have to as a defense contractor, you have to, in order to get contracts, meet up to the standards, and there’s a, there’s a few different levels in the newest version of it. And some levels are harder than others. But depending on what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it, your requirements for cybersecurity could could be could make it very difficult to get to share data. Okay, because the whole The whole reason for all of this is because foreign foreign governments aren’t targeting like a US government computers, they’re actually targeting like manufacturers trying to get data on like weapons systems, or all different kinds of things. And because our defense industry bases like all kinds of little manufacturers and people all over the place, they’re all at different varying levels of security. And so the government enacted this, this system to kind of bring everybody up to a higher level and said, you can’t have a contract unless you meet these basic requirements. But those basic requirements make it difficult to share data, because by nature, they’re like trying to make a brick wall between you and the rest of the world. It doesn’t make it impossible, it just makes it more challenging. So that’s one area where I’ve been able to help companies to share data where, for instance, you can actually connect anything to their ERP. So they might have an ERP, and it has a REST API. And it is compatible with various kinds of integrations, but you can’t get to it because it’s not legal to allow it to be accessible to the rest of the world. Like you can’t just put it on the internet. You know what I mean? That’s a massive violation. So yeah, you You have to come up with systems of getting around this kind of thing. And so I have an on premise integration platform that I can put in your data center in a DMZ, for instance, with a replication of your, some subset of your database, that’s not information that we’re trying to control. And then that can be a live connection between your systems, your own systems in your DMZ and outside of your DMZ and my system can provide an integration point built around your data. So that’s all custom built around just raw database data that’s brought over from your system, we still don’t put data into your system, we there’s, there’s ways to get around that too. But this allows us to get data out of your system and share it. So for instance, an application is you take your product data and pump it to your website, that’s can can be sort of straightforward sometimes. But in this kind of situation, it’s, it’s kind of technically impossible. So, you know, you’re, you have kind of air gaps between those systems. So how do you get around it. So this allows you to do things like that sharing information with people downstream from you take orders in from your ecommerce system, even though it can’t talk to your ERP and all that kind of thing. So it enables you to kind of be compliant with the requirements and still do the things that you want to do with your data.

Curt Anderson  41:33

Wow. Okay, that is juicy. There’s a lot of manufacturers that could use that that expertise right there, John. So that was that was great. Damon, any, any any comments, thoughts that you have, as far as integration? I know, you’re doing a ton of different integration. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  41:50

I mean, this what you’re talking about there, and we used to deal with the old fashioned way, when I was back in the aerospace and you’re doing the defense contracts that were you needed clearances, stuff that, you know, you just, you had to work off a paper A lot of times where they actually back in the day, you were moving stuff on on disk, or USB drives and stuff, because you couldn’t get the the datasets and everything we needed to manufacture without, without doing it that way. But yeah, that’s awesome, though, to be able to do that and create, like you said, the air gap so that you can keep everything secure, like you need to, but still allow ordering, because that’s one of the biggest pain in the butt, I think is, you know, to get how do you how do you let somebody order something? Ideally, let somebody see the status on order? How you, you know, just, and how do you make sure you’re not, I don’t know, all the requirements, but you know, not showing exactly what they’ve ordered, you know, right, in, you know, making it so much so that the person on that end knows what they bought, but the rest of the world may not, you know, so it just good stuff all around. Yeah.

John Joyce  42:53

Yeah, I mean, I think the problems that are out there are kind of interesting in there. And they’re fun to solve. And as you get to know, like different businesses. I don’t know if you’ve worked with enough. industrial manufacturers, like, they’re all unique. They’re all interesting. They all have like, they’re, they’re so experienced, and their depth of knowledge about the one thing that they do, it’s like, so deep in their processes and everything, or it’s always fascinating to like, get inside these companies and kind of learn about them, see what they’re doing. And just to, they’re good people, and it’s fun to help solve their problems. You know what I mean? I haven’t met a, I haven’t met a bad one. Yeah. And I don’t know if I’ve been lucky, but so far, like, they’re all good people, you know, you come away saying like, Oh, yeah, and that’s a great people. I love working with them. Nice.

Curt Anderson  43:47

Awesome. So John, as we start winding down, I’ve got a couple of questions left. But before we, before we wrap up, best way for folks to reach out connect with you to take a deeper dive. If this is just music to their ears, learning about integration, some of these other areas of expertise that you have, what’s the best way to find and reach you?

John Joyce  44:05

The best way is on LinkedIn. I’m, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. And, you know, you message me, you know, I’ll be responsive. So just reach out and say, Hey,

Curt Anderson  44:15

awesome. Well, definitely connect with John. So John, I want to wrap up with a couple of quick questions here. So first off, if anybody out there that just came in a little bit late, there’s an amazing, incredible inspiring story that John shared, I encourage you invite you welcome you hit the little rewind button and go back and catch John’s story. And it is it’s it’s you’ll get chills. It’s it’s moving. It’s inspiring. It’s a wonderful story, John, as you’ve had this 30 year entrepreneurial journey, any if you were to go back to your younger self, or maybe in 2009 Or say you know your kids, there’s a younger entrepreneur out there. What would you say what’s the best advice that either you’ve ever received or that you would love to pass law? On to another entrepreneur, What’s the best advice that you would love to pass along?

John Joyce  45:05

I think if I had one thing that I’ve learned is not to invest your entire identity into a single business idea, you know, but to know that businesses come and go, just going to be honest, you know, they, they come and go, there’s some businesses that are 60 years old, and nobody starts a business thinking, Well, nowadays, people do start a business thinking I’m going to sell it, software companies do it all the time. But you know, just to, if you get too invested in in your personality, you you can’t see and make logical choices that you need to make, you know, so that’s what I would say, I would say, don’t get too overly invested in your identity, with your business, you know, be looking for new things to do, you don’t know, you may want to start a different business or do something completely different from what you’re doing. And, and it might be a better business than the one you started last year. You know, so just always be looking for opportunities and don’t don’t kind of, don’t kind of tighten the grasp on any one idea too tight, but hold everything kind of like with open hands. And, you know, it’s all in God’s hands. Really, right. Oh,

Curt Anderson  46:22

what a great answer. Man, I absolutely love that it’s on God’s hands. And you know, in Damon, we talked about that, you know, sometimes don’t be so married to your solution to solving the person your customers problem, you know, just let’s think of Kodak right, let’s think Blockbuster Video. So I think John, brilliant, brilliant advice. Don’t get too married to your particular solution, but just really dedicate yourself to that customer’s problem. You’re gonna go a long way. John, one last question for you, my friend. So now even though you’re in Portugal, I know they played baseball in Portugal.

John Joyce  46:57

Not a lot. They actually have American football teams here which American

Curt Anderson  47:02

football teams Nice. Okay, so Alright, so now you’re from the Akron area. Did you happen to grow up? Were you a Cleveland? Now? Guardians, were your guardians fan at all? Well,

John Joyce  47:11

I was on the west side of Cleveland. Yeah. So yeah, Indians fan now guardians. Nice. I’m not a huge sports fan. But you know, I’m definitely you can’t miss the the the Indians guardians. Yeah, if you live in the area. They

Curt Anderson  47:28

have a great drummer there, by the way, right and center field. So I have a quick question for you. It’s kind of baseball related. So let’s say hypothetically, just I’m asking for a friend. Let’s just say hypothetically, if you say there’s a guardians game going on, it’s like bottom of the ninth there’s two outs. And there’s a person on second base and they need somebody to come up to the plate hitting and winning. Right? Okay, you with me? So the manager of the Guardians, X Indians looks down the bench and says, Hey, Joyce, grab your helmet, grab your bat, get up to the plate and hit in the winning run for us. All right with me. So you pop on your helmet, you grab your bat, you’re walking to the plate venum position that you are as you walk up to the plate, what’s your walk up side?

John Joyce  48:15

Even in this, this question is set up for like 20 minutes of sports and then printed to the last second. Jeans? I don’t know man. That’s a good question. It have to probably have to be sent in by either rush or Metallica rush. Tom Sawyer from rush.

Curt Anderson  48:36

dropped. Yeah. Tom Sawyer from rush. Yeah, anybody who’s under the age of whatever, just Google it, you know,

Damon Pistulka  48:43

they should go back and listen to it.

Curt Anderson  48:45

Go back and listen to it. It’s a fun. So John, John. Great. And thank you for playing along. And I appreciate that. So, John, any parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share? As we close out? We mentioned connect with you on LinkedIn. Awesome business advice. You’re the integrating guru. Any parting thoughts as we close out?

John Joyce  49:03

Just thanks for having me on, guys. It’s one it’s an honor and a privilege and two, it’s it’s been super fun. You guys are great to hang out with and great to chat with. Should uh, should have done this sooner.

Curt Anderson  49:16

We should have done. Yeah.

John Joyce  49:18

I mean, I’m not faulting you. I’m not trying to make you mad and pissing everybody off. But

Curt Anderson  49:25

it’s all right. Not. So. Hey, thank you for sharing. Dad. John, senior. Thank you for sharing. Ruth, thank you for sharing your story on bringing your family to Portugal. Again. I’m having a talk with my wife tonight. I’m trying to I’m going to point out on the map where we might go so anyway, wonderful inspiration. Thank you. We appreciate you. We wish you and your family just continued massive success. God bless everybody out there. Daymond. Let’s thank everyone in advance. But before we do that, and we close out for today, but he just if you could just go out and be someone’s inspiration, just like John Joyce. Well As for us today, how about it? Let’s give John a big round of applause, Damon? And let’s thank you everybody in the chat box and David munchie closes out for today.

Damon Pistulka  50:08

Yeah. Thanks so much for being here. Jay. John, awesome conversation. I’m telling you, if you got in here late, you’re out there listening. Go back to the beginning and listen to the inspiring story as Kurt said, and then listen to how John is helping people integrate these challenging systems and the things he’s doing in in industrial marketing. I want to thank first of all, Whitney for dropping in. Thanks so much. We got Harry with us today. We got all awasu got Samira and Dale and Lana. Hey, just thanks so much for being here today. Everyone. Appreciate you. And we will be back again next week. Have a great weekend. Thanks