Diverse meeting this morning. All kinds of stuff and topics were covered. Here are some of my notes:

- Steve and Sean were touching base on things. Lots of talk about sales, leads, and demos. Steve really wants to focus on demos.

- Cory jumped in and had a bunch of questions. Cory and Steve ended up talking a lot about internal build PO's, packaging, and rounding errors. They then got into custom labels and printing issues as well.

- We talked about budgets and discussions on staffing and who is doing what. As part of that discussion, we were talking about maintenance and how that needs to be more of a fixed cost vs a semi-fixed cost. It has a different role and is required to keep things up and going. Anyways, I thought that was a good breakthrough and made sense.

- Education and training between departments. Not knowing what others do and what it takes to do certain jobs and tasks. We would also like to come up with some kind of performance matrix and/or performance monitoring for the people who work in the different areas. This could be as simple as a sheet with general tasks and categories and how much time is spent doing what per week. I challenged John to see if he could help put something together for the IT and server guys.

- On the servers, here are some general categories where time and effort are spent - just a starting place: bugs, merging code, managing branches and pull requests, deploying code, server monitoring, server performance, database stuff, configuration, automation, maintenance projects, enhancement projects, emergencies, client requests, CPU's/RAM/physical server stats and usage, slow pages, slow queries, other software monitoring, emails, research, prototyping, server updates, AM and PM shifts (who's on call), etc. Good discussion and a good start. We'll break it down into smaller pieces as we go forward.

- John and Steve were talking about sales and how to get your foot in the door. They were talking about getting to the actual decision makers and how does that work. Talks about in person contacts, phone calls, and just dropping off flyers.

- Burnout rate, if you are doing the wrong thing, burnout happens even faster - personalities to job/task matching - ideally.

- In general, our people, our team, are wanting a little bit more structure and stability. Just an observation. They love the flexibility, but it has a backside or underside which means a lack of structure and stability. There needs to be a good balance.

- Steve was asking John about payroll and what is needed there. That's a big one that needs to fall in the constant maintenance department. It is one of the pieces that keeps evolving and changing due to federal and state changes and mandates. The payroll section (just code wise) is huge. Once you are in, you have to keep up with the updates. Otherwise, you actually create holes and liabilities. Steve mentioned that our payroll system does what it does and then eventually, the accountants and CPA's, at the end of the year, make any final changes or adjustments. Just a small note.

- Steve wanted John to focus on just one thing vs jumping all over the place. That would be good for all of us. We tend to get pulled in about ten different ways (every day). Tough to stay perfectly focused. Anyways, the idea is there and that helps, just trying to stay focused. Focusing and doing one project or subject at a time. Old saying - A fox that chases two rabbits catches neither.

- Getting code merged into master branch as soon as possible. If everything is on big side branches, it just takes more to manage and even know that it exists. Out of sight, out of mind.

- Talking about budgets and billing. That got into commitment levels and the need for some bending on both sides. Setting expectations on both side of the fence. Small talks about independents vs employee/employer type relationships. Some tough conversations, including requirements for billing and getting invoices turned in on a weekly basis. It is required and helps us with budgets and monitoring costs.

- We would love to do some cross training and get Wayne to show John and others what he does and also for John to show Steve and I what he does or they do. Just so that we could spread the knowledge around and have a back-up plan if needed.

- Light discussion about Wayne being the night or graveyard guy and John being the day guy - this is for servers and IT stuff.

At the end of the meeting, it was just Cory and I on the meeting. Sean, John, and Steve dropped off at different times. We spent some time going over things and doing a small recap of the meeting. Lots of good things were covered. We also talked about setting up trial period or probation periods and then setting expectations and then acting/reacting accordingly (management stuff). We also talked about moving some of the required maintenance stuff over to fixed expenses vs semi-fixed. Basically, some of those pieces are required to keep things up and running. Anyways, we are learning and hopefully applying what we are learning.