Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Doug Rixmann on Building Culture and Fighting Fires (Literally and Figuratively)
9 Plays15 days ago
Doug Rixmann knows a thing or two about putting out fires—whether it’s in his volunteer fire department or in the day-to-day chaos of multi-unit restaurant operations. In this candid chat, he shares how OwlOps evolved from a homemade fix for his family’s QSR business into a must-have tech tool for franchises of all sizes. If you’ve ever tried to manage a store with a broken ice machine again or a missing soap dispenser still, this one’s for you.
About Doug:
Doug Rixmann is the co-founder and CEO of OwlOps. OwlOps is a task and maintenance management app that helps you improve communication, enhance accountability, and eliminate the paper shuffle in your restaurant operation. He’s a computer science professional and a dedicated volunteer firefighter, always driven by a passion for serving his community and solving problems. Doug likes to keep active outside of work through CrossFit-style workouts and pushing his limits by training for triathlons. He’s a happily married father to two teenagers, and he loves to travel and explore new places with his family.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi everyone, welcome to today's fireside chat, Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build, where we talk with people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes.
00:00:18
Speaker
My guest today is Doug Rixman. Doug is the co-founder and CEO of Owlops.
Doug Rixman's Background
00:00:25
Speaker
Owlops is a task and maintenance management app that helps you improve communication, enhance accountability, and eliminate the paper shuffle in your restaurant operation.
00:00:36
Speaker
He's a computer science professional and a dedicated volunteer firefighter, always driven by a passion for serving his community and solving problems. Doug likes to keep ah active outside of work through CrossFit style workouts and pushing his limits by training for triathlons.
00:00:54
Speaker
He's a happily married father to two teenagers and he loves to travel and explore new places with his family. Welcome to Mustard Hub Voices, Doug. Hey, thanks for having me. It's ah good to be here.
Volunteering and Career Synergy
00:01:07
Speaker
First question before we dump in, how did you get started volunteer firefighting? Yeah, so, well, I guess it's that takes me back a long time. I've been an active ah volunteer with Norfolk Fire Department here for the last 11 years. But ah wow when I was going through university, i I hit and missed a bunch of things. I started as an engineer, and then I went to business school, and then I went to kinesiology. And in the midst of all of that, I took a firefighting program, which I really, really enjoyed.
00:01:43
Speaker
um then I knew that I couldn't just do firefighting. I had to have something to fall back on. Went and computer science, but ended up serving in my university town as a volunteer firefighter.
00:01:57
Speaker
And then when, finally, when 11 years ago here in in the town Simcoe Ontario, um I decided that I'd rejoin. And ah yeah, it's it's it's great.
00:02:09
Speaker
It's a great little addition to, to serve the community, but also as ah an entrepreneur working from home, it gives me a little bit of ah an outing. but Yeah. get Gets you out of the house, get you out of the house, get you out of the basement. So yeah, it's, it's a great, a great thing. I love, I love doing it. I love helping people, but ah there's a little adrenaline rush with ah some of that too.
00:02:32
Speaker
Very cool. Yeah.
Owlops: Purpose and Growth
00:02:33
Speaker
So tell tell me a little bit about Owlops. How do you explain it to folks in other industries? ah Yeah, well, so I mean, our our core focus has always been multi-unit QSR, quick service restaurants. So explaining it to them is pretty easy. You know, we we always I created it for my my my family's Tim Hortons operation.
00:02:59
Speaker
um So it was very easy to explain it that, you know, we help out with all the little odds and ends when you're leaving at the end of the day and someone's yelling over the counter, oh, by the way, the soap dispenser is hanging off the wall.
00:03:11
Speaker
um You know, whatever it might be, there's all always these things that would typically get yeah a napkin message slid under the door or or whatever way that you use to communicate, text message and everything else.
00:03:25
Speaker
um So QSR, it's it's pretty straightforward. um For other industries, ah it's just simply, i like to say it's it's a way to communicate um for people that don't aren't typically back at their computers. It's a project management tool, a task management tool, where you don't want your team sitting back yeah at a computer.
00:03:48
Speaker
You want something that's super easy, simple simple um for your team to be able to use just to keep everybody in the loop as to what's going on. So tell me more about those organizations that, that, that Alops is best for. I'm really curious maybe, or that you thought would be attracted to it, you know, before and and shortly after, you know, you launched Well, it's interesting because, um my family's Tim Hortons was at the time four locations, I think.
00:04:17
Speaker
And I was in 2009, my brother contacted me and said, there's gotta be a better way. Had a great team. Um, you know, the but they were dropping the ball on a lot of the little things.
00:04:29
Speaker
And so our thought was there there was tools out there, but they were very big, expensive, but seemed to be designed for larger, larger, larger groups. um So we, I just created this thing just for my family, just for him and his team.
00:04:45
Speaker
And, ah you know, it it was just first for simplicity. Yeah. the the what we thought at the time was it might actually be good for like a mom and pop shop you know charge very very small amounts of money for them to be able to to use it in a very very small organization and we were kind of thought thought the big guys were served but the little guys the guys that have one two three locations that that was going to be our target um what we found is that
00:05:18
Speaker
one, two, and three is not really our target. The the guys that really find this interesting are, five to eight, up to 50 to 100. And one of our customers actually has 1200 restaurants that uses um this as ah as an operations tool.
00:05:35
Speaker
So what what our original thought was, was like that mom and pop stop shop. um But now really, our niche is kind of that 10 to 50 locations. And there's there's groups that use it outside of that range. But that's kind of that niche of of where it's just a no brainer.
00:05:53
Speaker
and And franchise ah in the franchise world specifically, right? um I mean, is there something particular about franchisees that drew you in or was it primarily the fact that this is where you find those multi unit owners?
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, the the starting point obviously was with, our family and and being involved with QSR. um yeah The immediate growth of the business was because of our network within QSR as well. So our first five customers, I think, were other Tim Hortons operators.
00:06:27
Speaker
And then from Tim Hortons became McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subways, and and on and on. And that's been our core focus.
Owlops' Early Days and Evolution
00:06:36
Speaker
Being a small company, you don't want to spread yourselves too thin. um You know, the marketing groups always say riches are in the niches.
00:06:44
Speaker
um You want to keep focused. But what we've seen in the last little while is is growth outside and in other multi-unit environments, sea stores, convenience stores, gas stations. We're getting into some small hotels.
00:07:02
Speaker
um and And other people that um utilize or have multi-unit, that they just need a better way to communicate, a simple way to communicate, cost-effective, very simple implement.
00:07:15
Speaker
Love that. So before OwlOps... How did you get here? I mean, what did your career journey look like? You know, what what did you what did you think your future would look like?
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah. So, well, after jumping from the engineering to business to kinesiology to firefighting, I went on and I actually i did complete a computer science degree.
00:07:40
Speaker
okay So that was my that was my degree that that I came out of university with. And then i was i got a job with, lo and behold, a point of sale provider for Tim Hortons.
00:07:53
Speaker
Oh, okay. So it mixed my background from like when I was 12, working in my family's business, up until you know it mixed my background of Tim Hortons and computer science, put that together, and I end up here in Ontario working for a point of sale provider for Tim Hortons.
00:08:14
Speaker
Ironically enough, probably putting out fires. just the other kind. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The point of sale, uh, is always about putting out fires. Um, yeah.
00:08:26
Speaker
And, uh, so that, that was my start. Um, and that, that company did movie theater point of sale as well as, um, qsr and tim horton Barbies and some others.
00:08:40
Speaker
um and Yeah, that was that was really my start. um I went on and did some other things between there and now where I started this business. But, um you know, I was working in manufacturing, senior level a manager in charge of IT and marketing and you products and and different things.
00:09:03
Speaker
But then quick service restaurants pulled me back in. yeah Yeah. what What made you, I know that we, so, you know, Owl Ops kind of was born out of, out of solving this problem, but you eventually productized it, right? What made you want to launch a tech company? Were there specific problems you were obsessed with solving? Was this one of them? I mean, I'm always really curious about what drives others to this sort of entrepreneurial journey.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah. um i I'm not in entirely sure that there was any one particular drive. um Being a senior manager in the company that I was in, i was working long, long, long hours and had two young, young kids.
00:09:45
Speaker
And there was some transition going on with that company at the time. Coupled with the fact that in 2009, I created this for my family And over a number of years, we we were kind of like, we should really make a product out of this. we can This could be something that that other people could use.
00:10:09
Speaker
But we'd always be like, ah, but that's a you know that's okay. But I have a good job and you know it's stable and and I'm doing this.
00:10:21
Speaker
And then the next year we'd be like, you know what? We should really make this into a product and get it out there. And that happened for three years, four years. And then people started asking us, some people in our network, can I use that too?
00:10:36
Speaker
And what I had created on the couch for my brother's company who were using BlackBerrys as their device didn't work for other types of devices.
00:10:47
Speaker
And so I started looking at what would it take to make that change? And I'm kind of an all in guy or not in at all. And i was you know very gainfully employed working with this other company, but decided, you know what?
00:11:04
Speaker
Other people started asking for it. Let's make a go of it. My wife and i talked about it, thought it was the right decision. And that was in November of 2013.
00:11:17
Speaker
um Made the decision, left my other position and decided to give it a go. I love that. I mean, that's a that's a great story. um ah Tell me about the name, Owl Lops.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah. So originally it was called fix it Fixit, fixit.com, F-Y-X-Y-T.com. And because when we created it, it was all about maintenance. it was That's the whole purpose of it was what could we do for maintenance?
00:11:50
Speaker
Okay. Very shortly after I took it to market 2013, 2014, our customers started saying, hey, that's a great accountability and communications tool.
00:12:02
Speaker
Can I use it for other things in my business? so Things like, hey, can you bring me a box of cups? Can you you know get me a scraper from or hairnets from the head office?
00:12:15
Speaker
um Those types of requests that, again, were text messages, were napkins slid on the door, put up on the whiteboard. And so we've started to broaden our, you know, we were pigeonholed as fix it and people couldn't spell it.
00:12:31
Speaker
Back when. but Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Back in the day when we were trying to be niche and cool and, and, uh, you know, a little retro, or, I don't know, trying to be cool with the the spelling.
00:12:45
Speaker
Um, but anyway, people couldn't spell it and we started to broaden from just maintenance. And so i was trying to think of what to do with it. And, uh,
00:12:58
Speaker
It's in church on a Sunday and probably not listening to the sermon very well. And my, my wife, I remember was next to me, probably writing her a grocery list for, for the upcoming week. And i but kept on thinking like some of the really key softwares that are out there, MailChimp, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
SurveyMonkey. um There's a lot of things that were animal and purpose, animal and purpose, animal and purpose. And so started thinking and, you know, you're you're also trying to figure out what things are available and what domain names might be available and what else has been used or whatnot.
00:13:40
Speaker
Anyway, came up with OWL being wise, knowledgeable, ah and then Ops being operations. Yeah. And so OWL Ops. It works.
00:13:50
Speaker
It works. and It's worked. Yeah. We have to correct people's southern pronunciation owl sometimes,
Challenges in Quick-service Restaurants
00:13:58
Speaker
but um but we get we get called owl's op. We get called owl ops, but some people just call us the owl.
00:14:07
Speaker
Oh, yeah, we're using the owl. As long as they're calling, right? um Exactly, yeah. Then it's I guess it's all okay. I love that. I mean, and I love... Its purpose help um it helps people, i think, rapidly identify, communicate about, and solve these you know problems that exist.
00:14:31
Speaker
you know Problems you know being a very generic thing. I think term here, which is which is really, really cool. you know and And giving people those kind of tools obviously then I think help lead to a better experience all around in employment, right customers probably, right because you're really enabling people to, i think more rapidly, I think solve their their their general problems. But how often do you see people challenges getting in the way of progress right that that maybe the app can't solve?
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, um so one of the one of the fundamental pieces or one of the, i guess, we call it our performance matrix um that we we introduce this to to our ah potential customers.
00:15:20
Speaker
And it shows like what you're saying with the people side of things and how people are feeling in your team and what your culture is. So on one axis how quickly you are getting things done.
00:15:34
Speaker
And the other axis is how many things you are actually getting done. Cause you can get a lot of things done, but it's very, very slow. And true what that is, is complacency. People are not very and like, ah, it'll get taken care of, but there's no urgency on the other end of that, where you're getting, getting things done quickly, but you don't get many of those things done.
00:15:56
Speaker
You're in a firefighting mode. right and some people like that because it's fast paced but if you ask your maintenance guy if he's just always he's always spinning his wheels he's always getting chasing the next emergency and your managers aren't very happy with it right so on On both sides, your complacency, your firefighting, or just everybody's angry because you're not getting anything done and nothing's getting slowly.
00:16:23
Speaker
So we talk about culture. And if you're in any one of those zones, we can help move you along. But the challenges that we see in implementing is... Sometimes, and I think this is primary, the the biggest um concern or the the threshold to to success with something like this, is that the sometimes the the operators, the the owners are catering too much money.
00:16:55
Speaker
to the lower end of their, um you know, the of their assets, their people assets, as opposed to really trying to, you know, make life easier for their top guys.
00:17:07
Speaker
Their top guys are, you know, they want the next technology, they want the the best tools, they're not afraid to try things. And I think sometimes the the complacency or the the fear of upsetting, you know, some of the lower end of your of your workforce kind of um restricts you from moving forward.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective on that. How do how do good leaders elevate that lower tier um or is it just a matter of better incentivizing or catering to the top tier so that they pull them along?
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah. r Yeah. I mean, do you, what do you generally see? ah Well, what I find is it's it's tough, especially in the QSR realm where there's so much turnover.
00:18:06
Speaker
yeah um hundred and What? annually? it's it's large and depending on which state you're in or or where you're centered.
00:18:18
Speaker
um you know So it's a definite challenge for ah the owners, operators, the director of operations to kind of balance it. It is a balancing act.
00:18:29
Speaker
You don't want to push too hard, but you also want to help them with you know getting to that next level, which will ultimately help them because if they have a a restaurant that works for them, then they're dealing with less customer complaints, which if you've ever dealt with a customer complaint, it's not a feel good moment when you're going home after somebody's been yelling at you because, you know, every time I come in here, the ice cream machine is broken or there's no ice for my soda or or or whatever. Right.
00:19:04
Speaker
so putting those systems in place will help overall, but there's a resistance to put some systems in place because,
00:19:15
Speaker
with many of the brands that we deal with too, corporate is continually introducing new things and new initiatives and new products. And so they're drinking from the fire hose to a certain degree of always having something new coming up.
00:19:32
Speaker
So they have to be careful with introducing too much new, even if some of that new will benefit the team. Yeah. yeah But seeing changing the culture to to help, you know, to, I think it's the reason of why, why are we doing certain things?
Importance of Communication and Data
00:19:51
Speaker
um And that can be even the corporate things. So why are we introducing a new chicken sandwich? Well, it's to help compete against this and this. Sometimes I think engaging your team or they don't engage the team because, ah, well, you know what, they're, they're just here to do their shift. They're just do, you know, their QSR employees, right?
00:20:12
Speaker
But I think a lot of people would do a lot better if they were informed of the why behind things.
00:20:20
Speaker
It's interesting, right? Because, you know, talking about people issues um that restaurant leaders yeah or or, you know, even just multi, you know, multi-unit leaders in in a variety of different industries, not even necessarily just restaurant, um things that they might overlook when they're trying to fix, you know, tech problems, ops problems or introduce new things.
00:20:44
Speaker
I would assume that you know clear, direct comms is a big issue here, and it's kind of exactly what you're talking about. I mean, if you leave people out of the conversation and just expect them to blindly follow you, I mean, some people will, um but better engaging them so that they kind of understand the the purpose for which they might be doing something, right?
00:21:04
Speaker
It seems like something that OwlOps solves. Yeah, communication is is one of the the fundamental pieces of what we do, um whether it's the the act of communicating. So yeah we we we do generate text messages, we do generate in-app messages, we do at generate emails through the system, but we also have the the active list of things that people need to do um or you know that anybody among the team can collaborate with.
00:21:38
Speaker
um But like, even in my my, you know, senior management days, working with a manufacturing company, I remember a strat planning session.
00:21:49
Speaker
And we had a number of them over the years. And every single time, everything boils down to communication. Oh, if only we communicated better, if only we communicated better, that will help us achieve, you know, whatever KPI or whatever objective we're trying to do.
00:22:06
Speaker
And that doesn't have to be in a strategic session of an executive team. That hat can be, you know, my, my son was working ah at a McDonald's and, you know, he knew and good thing, good from the, from the managers and the owners of that place.
00:22:23
Speaker
He knew what the drive-through time, you know, objectives were. And so he would try to beat that or, or meet that communication and and goal setting is huge. And,
00:22:36
Speaker
you can't hold someone to account on a goal that they don't know about. Yeah. When they don't even know what it is that they're being held accountable to. Exactly. When you're helping businesses solve these issues,
00:22:50
Speaker
What patterns have you noticed in how teams succeed or stumble, right? when when when When putting your recommendations into practice, right? Setting up streamlining processes and things like that. I'm curious to hear like common threads that you see in those that do well and those that, you know, frankly don't.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Being a little bit of ah an online business, it's it's tough to see the, you know, the real feet on the ground type of things. But some of the good practices that we see are weekly meetings with your managers. Okay.
00:23:29
Speaker
Where, and and I know my brother does this, and they and they use our dashboard. and what he found years and years ago when they started doing this every every week,
00:23:41
Speaker
was when the when your team knows that there's going to be a meeting and it's a regular meeting and there's objectives, um they would go in the night before so that they all knew exactly what was going to come up on that dashboard and they would make sure that everything was up to date.
00:24:01
Speaker
So by making it available and and having those open conversations amongst the entire team, you're not hiding anything, there's no cloak and dagger. type of thing. We're not trying to get you.
00:24:12
Speaker
We're going to talk about these things, make sure and we're here to help. So it's a matter of making sure that yeah it's out there, you know, make sure that your team knows that um this is not private information, ah you know,
00:24:29
Speaker
putting a soap dispenser on the wall ah in ah in a washroom, isn't, you know, private information. It's just something that we need to get done. Right. So we're going to talk openly about it. There's no hidden agendas of trying to, to pull a gotcha on it.
00:24:44
Speaker
Um, we're going to use this tool to help get things done so that we're satisfying our customers so that they're not complaining that, you know, everyone's going to have a better, um, you know,
00:24:58
Speaker
I know, better day because of it. And, and as a management team, you're not going to waste your time following up about, you know, mundane little things.
00:25:11
Speaker
You're going to now use your skill set to help elevate your team. So i think openness is, is one of the big things being open with your team, making sure that you're, you know, that, uh, you know, your team understands the, the,
00:25:27
Speaker
the objectives and what we're trying to accomplish. Yeah. um Again, it comes back to communication, open communication. Communication, alignment, right? Accountability, all things here that sort of influence outcomes in these, in these situations. And these are all things that Owl Ops supports.
00:25:46
Speaker
who Right. Yeah. Tell me some other ways that organizations can make things better, either beyond using Owlops or what are some other things Owlops can do that maybe we don't we haven't touched on or that others don't really know about?
00:26:03
Speaker
Well, I think it's taking action from data. you know I think that's one other piece. you know you can You can use a tool like this for a year, month or three years.
00:26:15
Speaker
if you're not going to take action on the things that you learn, then you know, you yourself as ah as a ah leader in your company, um you maybe, maybe you need to take that step.
00:26:27
Speaker
So what I mean by that is, you know, we're putting all this information together based on the inputs from your team. And so now, ah you know, you'll be able to see that, oh, look, our our cream machine, you know, the coffee dispenser or or something, sugar dispenser, we're having continual issues with that certain piece of equipment.
00:26:53
Speaker
How can we, does that mean that we need to do training? Does that mean that we need to do a better preventive maintenance? Does that mean that, you know, we need to go back to our manufacturer and say, you know, what's going on?
00:27:06
Speaker
So taking the information that you have, it's it's so easy to do day to day and get get you know fixated on day to day. But that's when you as ah an executive team, as an operations team needs to take it back and go, okay, the last year we've had these things.
00:27:23
Speaker
Now, do we need to implement the preventive maintenance? Do we need to preventive cleaning? Or do we need to inspect them more often? Yeah. So implement a digital cleaning checklist or something like that.
00:27:36
Speaker
All of these things that we can help with for sure. But, um, you know, we're a tool that helps you do them. You have to, you have to, you know, it's not just plug in the tool and, and everything's going to be hunky dory.
00:27:50
Speaker
Um, you, you really need to, use your smarts as an operations yeah you know person, the expert in the business. And that's what we always say. You're the expert in your business.
00:28:01
Speaker
We're the expert at Owl Ops. We'll help you do whatever you need to with Owl Ops or tell you we can't. um right But, you know. I love actually that you brought this up. So, you know, Mustard Hub is all about data, people, signals, et cetera.
00:28:18
Speaker
I'm really curious, you know, when it comes to, data and systems um or these kind of, you know, actionable insights. Do you ever notice a disconnect between, you know, what people are tracking, what actually drives those results, right? What things that your users are actually paying attention to versus what might benefit their organization, right? Because there's a lot of things out there and it's really filtering that noise from, from those signals. Do you ever see that being that disconnect?
00:28:49
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. you brought up some really good, for example, you brought up some really good ones about, you know, there's things here that we notice are happening repeatedly, right? Because we're seeing this happening repeatedly, here are the things that we need to now go and evaluate.
00:29:05
Speaker
you see some? Yeah, sure. and And again, going to the data, and one of the the interesting things that we pulled out of the data there, when we were doing analysis after, i think, 2 million tasks or something that were logged in the system,
00:29:21
Speaker
The word again and the word still appeared in about 10% of the the you know the tasks or work orders that were entered.
00:29:33
Speaker
That's really, really interesting. So seeing that, you you got to start to think, okay, well, what can we do so that It's not the ice maker is still not working or the hand dryer is broken again.
00:29:53
Speaker
Right. So what can you do? and And again, it comes back to taking the information that that is there. and figuring out how number one, how do we read that information? So what who's going to do that?
00:30:08
Speaker
How are we going to read that? And then what are we going to do about it? So again, is it a preventive maintenance? Is it, um you know, what what is causing that, right?
00:30:20
Speaker
But it was interesting. I think it was 10, 11% had those two words it. ah eleven percent had those two words in it that's ah That's a really fascinating statistic. yeah if ah if you So if you could design a dashboard to reveal one just key people signal inside an organization, right?
00:30:43
Speaker
From, you know, through the lens of of what OwlOps does, what insight would you want to surface? Hmm. That's a an insight related to ah a performance of of a certain person? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, what what ah you know it's what's interesting is you brought up that like, you know, over 10% of these messages, right, have some indication that there is a persistent problem.
00:31:19
Speaker
Right. Could be related to, you know, a manufacturing issue could be related to a ah people problem. Right. um you know Obviously, I don't know. I'm not in the organization. i'm not I'm not looking at all of their data and their information, but it seems really interesting and it would make me, you know as ah as a manager, as an operator, really curious. Is this because there's a person that isn't um you know doing the things that they need to be doing?
00:31:51
Speaker
um But also, if we're having problems with you know any of our you know um
00:32:00
Speaker
any of our tools, Also, as an operator, i I need to make sure I'm i'm doing the right things so that we don't have those problems. um do I would say that the the information that we give is probably more related to a certain piece of equipment as opposed to the performance of a person or not.
00:32:22
Speaker
It can definitely guide you down the right path to put action plans in place for those people. So whether, again, we need to implement a ah digital walkthrough,
00:32:33
Speaker
on a weekly basis for our for our managers, or we need to implement that preventive maintenance schedule every 90 days for our ice maker cleaning, whatever it might be.
00:32:44
Speaker
yeah um the The one people side of things, and this is something that that's interesting, and then we see this especially in larger organizations that have 30 to 50 locations, where you can definitely see that some restaurants don't have many maintenance issues.
00:33:02
Speaker
So the interesting part of that is that we all know that that's not true. So yeah um now there's there's varying degrees of, you know, whether whether a brand new location that's just out of renovation or or whatnot will have less.
00:33:20
Speaker
But to have zero or very close to zero means that they're not engaging with the system or that they're texting a maintenance person directly.
00:33:31
Speaker
and And that does happen you know in every organization, in every company. There's the sweethearting that goes on. you know I get my stuff at the top of that maintenance person's list because I text them directly.
00:33:43
Speaker
um So there's definitely a people play in, you know, in this. um what yeah But being able to read that and see, oh, well, you know what? These three locations, they never report issues.
00:33:57
Speaker
maybe Maybe there's a training issue. Maybe there's something else, a people issue. Maybe, you know, they don't fully understand the reason why we need to do that for our technicians to have one list to go on.
00:34:09
Speaker
So there's definitely people play in it, um not just tasks and work orders and and ah you know a software system. You made an interesting comment earlier about about operators and leaders um not necessarily focusing enough on their their high performers, ah catering a little too much to the lower performers. And I'm curious, like maybe with some future focused thinking, what what what do you think you know tomorrow's leaders would need to grasp about people in and in culture and nurturing talent that I think a a lot of the things that you're seeing today
00:34:52
Speaker
or a lot of those leaders that you're seeing today are are missing?
00:34:57
Speaker
Well, i you know obviously, i have my tech hat on generally when I'm when i'm thinking those things through. um and I think there's a ah reservation from leadership to not necessarily push, but introduce technology because of their concern.
00:35:15
Speaker
i think things are changing, though. I mean, ah you look at my kids and their ability to adopt technology. um it's way different than what we've seen in the past 10 years where, you know, you have a maintenance guy or an older, you know, store manager who, you know, people are concerned of rolling something out because, well, you know,
00:35:39
Speaker
Gertrude, is she doesn't you know adopt technology very well. Or George, who's the the old maintenance guy, he doesn't even know how to turn on his phone and he needs his grandkids to to turn it on for him.
00:35:53
Speaker
I think more and more of that's going away. So from a tech standpoint, I think technology is what our our new labor, our new workforce is looking for. They don't want to fill out a paper form.
00:36:06
Speaker
They don't want to, you know, they want an app to do certain things. So I i think those things are changing. i think the engaging with your team about the why, again, it's communication.
00:36:19
Speaker
Why are we doing this? This is going to help not just you, because there's always going to be the what's in it for me. um And so the onus is on leadership to make sure that the restaurant manager or the you know general manager of the convenience store understands you're doing this because this is going to, hey, remember a couple of weeks ago when you said that yourre you know the the cooling cabinet is isn't working again?
00:36:47
Speaker
This is going to help us, right? This is going to help us keep track of that. And it's going to help you. and it's going to help our tech guy. it's going to help our leadership so that we can give you better, you know overall.
00:36:59
Speaker
So yeah it's just, again, like the communication of why. um And then, you know, leaning on your strong leadership. you know, you're strong, the people that are strong in your team to maybe take a lead role in some of this yeah and, you know, maybe push it a little bit more so that they understand even further of why and can help.
00:37:22
Speaker
I love that. I, and I think that that's, you know, something that's I think really important even to us here is, is leading with why it's a big, big part of what we do and, and, and, why we do it.
00:37:35
Speaker
As you see companies get more deliberate about how they support their people, right? And and we've seen a huge shift, you know, over the last 15 years or so, ah really focusing on, on,
00:37:50
Speaker
curating um almost this experience, right? It looks different than it did 15 years ago, looks different than it did 30 years ago, 50 years ago, et cetera. And as they become more deliberate about supporting their people um you know in a lot of new ways and using a lot of new technologies to do that, how do you see your own work or or even OWL Ops adapting or evolving?
Future of Owlops: AI Integration
00:38:13
Speaker
Well, I mean, the big the big word of tech these days is AI, right? Yeah. and And we use it um continually within the development of AI, or sorry, the development of Owl Ops.
00:38:29
Speaker
um We use it as our own tools to be more efficient more efficient um within our small team. um I think integrating it more and more with the tools that we have out there is probably going to be one of the next steps okay for for us anyway. Yeah.
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah. i think I think that integration, which, I mean, it's going to be interesting in the next five years, let alone the next two, you know, where that's going at such an exponential curve.
00:39:08
Speaker
yeah It's going to be interesting to see how that all plays. i mean, I think right now we're all making guesses, right? It's it's it's changing so rapidly, you know, and tomorrow it could literally be something else, right? Yeah. And, and I mean, the, the use of it for, for me is, is, you know, I think at this stage anyway, it it's doing things from a computer science standpoint that I can still do.
00:39:36
Speaker
It would just, it just be.
00:39:39
Speaker
and that my dev dev team can do. It just speeds up that pace. But now can we implement that so that you know it's helping you know whatever our customer is, whether it's restaurants or a convenience store, so that it helps them to do things quicker as well.
00:39:55
Speaker
and So that that's really where we're looking at is how can we help our serve our customers better um but with the use of it. So that's kind of the focus that we're taking.
00:40:06
Speaker
I love that. and Very relevant, right, to to everything that's going on now. So that's I think that's really smart. um So business leader comes to you on advice for how to get it right with their people and their team.
00:40:24
Speaker
And you just have a quick minute, right, before you walk your separate ways. What's the one thing the one thing that you tell them? We have a multi-unit operator. that looks to you for a little bit of advice, right? Because Ops has truly transformed how they are fixing some of these problems in their business.
00:40:45
Speaker
And he asks you, how do I get it right from day one? What's the one thing that you can tell me? Well, I think it's, we've we've we've said it, um it's communication.
00:40:57
Speaker
yeah you have to You have to have good communication and good management structure Most of these guys that that we deal with, they have a good management structures in place with district managers, area managers and and teams.
00:41:12
Speaker
um But making sure that, you know, there's town halls happening, there's, you know, that every now and then you hear from the top guy ah about why we're doing things.
00:41:25
Speaker
And just make sure that your team is engaged. And yeah, I think concentrate on the communication and everything else is going to, you're going to hear about
Doug's Advice on Communication
00:41:37
Speaker
everything else. Cause if you've got good communication up and down,
00:41:41
Speaker
um obviously use tech where it makes sense, but get the communication going first. and I love that. Doug, that's great. That's great advice for for everybody in any business, in any industry. Yeah, absolutely. Multi-unit owner or not.
00:41:59
Speaker
um Appreciate it Thank you. thank you for Thank you for being here, for sharing with us all of your insight, your background, your story, and telling us about Owl Ops. Everybody needs to go ahead and check out um that piece of software. I think that it's pretty incredible and does ah some really great things. So I just wanted to thank you again for being here. Well, thanks for having me.
00:42:21
Speaker
Appreciate it. And thanks for tuning in to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. I hope you got something out of this conversation. Please share it with a friend teammate and check out mustardhub.com to see how we help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge.
00:42:41
Speaker
Until next time.