Welcome to the everyday p.m. podcast podcast where we
discussed project management principles for your MBA life.
My name is Ann campea and I'm a certified project / program
manager with over a decade of experience working for all of
the industries, retail consumer, goods Tech marketing.
You name it. I've been there.
I've been a p.m. there. I am so excited to welcome.
John Darby Shaw. Fire who is the CEO and
co-founder of smart sweet which is a no code platform built for
workplaces. And every field imaginable, just
like all the fields that I've been able to double in as well,
John's experience at ey and dozens of Fortune, 100 companies
helps him enhance the productivity of people and teams
by aligning their work around common goals.
John is passionate about creating experiences that enrich
a company and realizing the potential of individuals.
So John What a, what an introduction.
I love your background. Welcome to the everyday p.m.
podcast for those of. For those who have not met, you
yet, please take a brief moment to introduce yourself to my
audience. Sure.
And thank you and it's a pleasure to join you today.
Yeah, I'm co-founder and CEO of a company called smart sweet.
We are a Work Management platform that helps manage any
process or project inside of an organization on a single
platform. Most of your listeners are
probably familiar with project management type products, like
right in a sauna and Monday click up here table.
So we provide those similar types of capabilities on the
project management side. But in addition to that we
provide kind of the More extensive Process Management
type activities as well. So you can have a single
platform to kind of manage all of that together.
Oh gosh, what a dream and how you figured out how to do.
That is incredible, because I've been in the full Gambit of all
the systems, right? And where you have multiple
systems. You have to engage in multiple
systems everyday as a p.m. So what a smart, sweet sounds
exactly like its title. It brings everything together
and what an amazing of feature for project managers to jump on,
because I know for myself that it can be overwhelming
sometimes. So thank you for being that
person that has created this for us first and foremost.
So tell us a little bit about how you got there.
How did you get to being the CEO and co-founder of smart?
Sweet. Yeah, you know, my career
started kind of early on for me in the big X consulting firm.
So I started out with price Waterhouse.
I end up running their bid, west region Consulting practice, and
then after three, or four years of Ernst ago, lured from you,
Way to run their one of their Global Consulting practices.
So, that's where I really grew up in project management and we
had about 1,500 Consultants globally.
We had a global pmo that was set up to kind of manage and
understand all of those projects.
Get a team of people that built methodologies around the
delivery of services. So we were consistent across all
the different areas that are there and then we had very
detailed project plans, right? That each team would follow in
the delivery of those services. So that was kind of my
introduction to project management and pmo's by to the
best organizations around, you know, project management that
their entire businesses around repeatable processes.
And, and so that really stuck with me.
And my career, I left Ernst & Young and founded a company
called Archer Technologies. We helped manage governance,
risk, and compliance processes, and projects inside of some of
the leading organizations around the world.
I think 75 of the Fortune 100 per customer.
Customers 29 of the 30, top of the biggest banks in the world,
where customers? So really the Enterprise level
that was there. We sold that company.
And in 2010, I had the chance of two.
I thought I would retire for a while and we started a family
foundation and did some really fun things with youth programs
women's initiatives and entrepreneurial programs.
But to be honest I got bored. Like that wasn't my passion, I
enjoyed it but it wasn't my passion.
My passion was really you know link software that help support.
Processes and projects for people and meeting people to
understand that each person's a little different, how they like
to manage things. And I'd like to take all that
into consideration to build a platform that kind of solves
that problem for everybody in their unique ways, what an
incredible journey and I love that you, you your background,
really speaks to how smart sweet became an idea in your head is
what I'm guessing. The, the idea of smart Street
was born of your experiences, In your professional Journey.
So was there a moment exactly where you thought?
Oh, I've got to create something to fill this Gap that I'm
seeing. Yeah, so that first one
happened, when I was at Ernst & Young, I had the chance to kind
of just travel and to meet with so many customers and we were at
that time, we were delivering services and the clients would
say in six months, can you come back and do that same service
again and we give them the same recommendations for what was
being done. Mainly around organizations,
trying to go online for the first time with online.
Making or an online presence, right?
And they needed to make sure that the systems were secure and
the processes were in place to keep those things secure.
And the idea was to think about managing at that time, cyber
security components in the same way that you would manage any
other process in a company like, you know, accounts payable
accounts, receivable HR. So my the idea Archer was too
for the first time to find what those processes would be inside
of governance risk and compliance.
And we were the first company to do that, that's why that
Companies been so successful today.
They're the leader in that space.
And what we found of customers is we built a notebook platform,
that, that solve that problem. So, that every customer could
could basically customize the processes to fit, exactly how
they wanted them to be or the projects that they were managing
associated with those. What we found is that a few of
our largest customers were using our platform to manage all kinds
of things, outside of cyber security so that idea kind of
stayed with me to help organizations manage any Says so
fast forward, you know, ten years after that, when I decided
that I really want to kind of get back into this game and help
solve that problem. But for any size company, I
don't care if you're one or two users or we have a customer,
that's 2,000 users. We wanted to bring those same
Enterprise capabilities to the masses at a level that's not
been done before and also at a price point that's not been done
before. Meaning, our entry-level pricing
starts at ten dollars per user per month and you get the same.
Features with the exception of single sign-on and some access
control things as our Enterprise accounts yet.
It's there. So we felt that that is what we
would help us be Unique Kind of in this new space.
Yeah. I was going to ask you.
You actually answered my question before I even got to
it. It is what is who is who is the
you know, key consumer of smart sweet and it sounds like you
captured a wide net of people who can come in at an affordable
level and really just get the full Enterprise experience.
Out feeling, like even the company has to be of the size
that would need Enterprise type software and my does that make
sense what I'm trying to do? Yeah.
Oops, it absolutely does. You know, I would always be
frustrated. I let me back up this little
bit, but when my, after we sold our Technologies, you know, we
did our family Foundation, but we also invested in young
startup companies, we invest in about 400 different companies.
So I had the chance to sit down with a lot of Founders.
Yeah. And new CEOs.
And the same topic came up just over and over, which was they
had this great idea but how do I build the business and run the
things in the business? So I can work on the idea,
right? So a lot of people are using
spreadsheets and Google Docs. Some people are using project
management tools to manage processes.
Some of the other way around processes.
They are maybe they purchase Salesforce to do some other CRM
but it didn't talk with other things they were doing and we
spent a lot of time talking about how do I Each the process,
some projects in the company and sometimes more time talking
about that, then we did the idea that they had, you know, as a
Founder. Yeah, who's there.
So that's the core problem for any business that we're trying
to solve is like, to give them a single place to do this work,
that solves all those problems that they have.
Some in a typical organization, like you were saying earlier,
maybe has six to eight different products that they use to kind
of have somebody do their job, so they're kind of switching
tabs and jumping around a lot. So, we were trying to stay Say
how can we solve that problem where you don't have to have all
those products but maybe you want to have two or three
because maybe you do love to have Salesforce as maybe your
key CRM and you just want to integrate data from them back
into, you know, our product. So we try to make it easy for
you to keep the things that you really like.
And then everything else you could kind of pull into a single
platform. That's great.
Doesn't sound like you need to be of a specific archetype to be
able to utilize smart Sweden. I know we're getting kind of
into the weeds. I'm just so fascinated by this.
Because I have a feeling those that are listening.
Either have gone through this type of issue.
We've probably seen a lot of small businesses that wanted to
start up died because of the fact that they were trying to
solve for this Gap, in trying to start up their own small
business. How do you make things work
together? How do you bring it all
together? And I imagine in those
conversations with, those people who are kind of the top of their
small businesses trying to run Them or trying to get them
started. As they spent so much time over
here trying to solve for this, that they couldn't even get the
idea off the ground. And I think that's you present
such a great opportunity for these people to be able to do
so. And not really think about that
whole execution, operational piece of it, which is fantastic.
So with with that being said, your management and Leadership
philosophies because as we think about you started this as a
small business, obviously grown. But for those that are looking
to start Up their own small businesses or startups.
What are some of the leadership or management philosophies that
you would impart on them? Yeah, I would say just from my
experience and having the chance to work with so many young
companies along the way. But then also seeing how the
larger companies that are really successful at the Goldman Sachs
how well they manage all of the people and processes inside the
organization, right? It's very different from Goldman
Sachs to maybe another financial services company and the way
that they're more manageable. Seeing things and what I have my
own principles. And what I found is that things
start with objectives and key results to a lot of people call.
Okay. Arts, which are before I can
understand before I start going and doing the work, let's
understand. Like what's the objectives that
we're trying to obtain and let's break that down by month or
quarter and then all the work that we're doing in the
organization. Should tie back to that.
And if it does, the two things have to happen, either, don't do
that work. Or we need to change our
executive objectives to kind of match the work.
That's actually Getting done in the company that helps keep
everybody aligned, right? And once you know the objectives
I'm really big on identifying measurable results.
So you know, what am I trying to get from this outcome from this
objective that I have in a way that I could say, I either met
that didn't need it or I'm kind of in a Range that's there.
And then once that's done then it's all about planning the work
and working the plant, right? That's where the project
management comes in. There's a whole host of
different tools and ways. That you could manage projects
of different sizes and complexities, that's there.
But what's important is that you pick the one that's, that's that
works for the way that you want to work, right?
It could be as simple as a spreadsheet, or it could be a,
you know, something more complex, like, smart sweep that
you have in place that's there. And then, you know, just
managing to that each day that you come in on, what's on the
plan, what needs to get done? A lot of young entrepreneurs
startup Founders, their days. Get really busy with all the
things that are happening. And what get set aside is
working the plan, right? So they have to find the balance
between the things that happen each day and then having the
time set aside to X and get the things done.
That manage that mean the most of the business.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can imagine they, I don't have
my own business but even doing this podcast feels like running
my own mini business. And even even that is sometimes
a heavy task to be able to coordinate and understand when
content has to go up and all those Things that you have to
think about as a small business or startup that again, I'm going
back to your software, but I think it's, it comes down to,
there's there are tools available that can help
alleviate some of that stress of somebody who's in that position.
Now, when you were starting up your smart, sweet business, did
you use your own business? Kind of, as the first use case,
to make sure that what you detectives you wanted to get out
of the software, we're actually Functioning and doing all the
things that you wanted it to do. We absolutely did.
That's a great question. We use our product to manage
every process and project in our company and stem every employee
in our, in our company, uses our product, all day, every day to
do their job. And that's a necessity for us.
If we expect customers, if we're pitching them to do the same as
well. And we feel that there are a lot
of vendors, even on the project management side that don't
manage their internal processes with their own projects
software. That they have in place and
that's a big, big red flag. That means it might not scale to
the level that you need or something.
So we take a lot of pride in that we do that but we also it
helps us understand where we haven't done things.
Maybe the best way that they could be done in the most
efficient way. So our team can find those
problems first or those user interface, little quirks that we
need to change before they go to the customers as well.
Yeah, makes sense and then ultimately, you know, I think
every business and every piece Wants to find full value in
their processes and ultimate and look for continuous Improvement
and process optimization, and that sort of thing.
So, once you've got a business to kind of a level of their,
okay, now they're they're using the system it's working for
their business and it's giving them some sort of workflow that
is making things a lot smoother. How do you then ensure that the
business can fuel further? Ization at that point.
Like what's the next step for them?
Yeah. So one of the things that we try
to do, that's maybe a little unique and I think this comes
from my background at Ernst. A gun is that out of the box of
our product. We have 200, best-in-class,
templates, and templates is a bad name to describe this but
it's a best-in-class process on how to perform something,
whether sales marketing HR customer success.
We have 200 of those templates. So somebody doesn't understand
yet what a best Practice looks like on how to solve that
problem. We give them that capability to
download a that. In 3 seconds, it has demo data.
They can play with it decide if that's the process that's best
for them. And we give them a couple
choices. We give you something that's
more simple and we give you something that it goes up to
more complex with the bigger guys who views.
And that allows people to very quickly download those and then
tailor those to fit exactly how they want to do that.
So a typical customer for us comes in to manage either a
couple of Objects or maybe sales or HR process.
But what happens over time is they start to realize that,
okay? I don't have to pay any more
money and I could start using all these other process
templates that are here to kind of help us get going in our
business. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
There's oftentimes, what I've found in my role as that we,
I've been at companies where we've either made something
internally and that's kind of been our main system of record
or we purchase something out of the box, but don't really get
the full features. Go that in the depth to
understanding, how to use the templates and Reporting and that
sort of thing. So seeing it kind of across all
levels, but it sounds like there's a full breadth of
offering once the business is ready for it.
They can dive you a little bit deeper and get even more value
out of smart sweet as well. So, and and John, I by no means
meant for this to be an interview about smart.
Sweet. I don't know how it turned into
that, but I did want to make sure that we highlighted all the
good things. Things that this can do for a
project manager, because I do think it in the suite of
everything that we do on a day-to-day to be able to bring
things together is such a great feature of the software, but
kind of going back to you and your leadership role with the
company. When you talked about starting
your small business or startup, there's a lot going on and then
at the same time, you're dealing with having to get the right
talent in the door and then ultimately building a culture.
Great workplace environment for the people that then work in
your business. So I know that there's a lot of
businesses whose kind of struggle to find their identity.
Even long-standing businesses, bigger businesses, whatever.
I've seen it across the board, right?
So for you as a CEO and co-founder of your own business.
How do you ensure that the workplace environment is
something that people are attracted to and how do you
create that company culture? Sure no, great question.
So my background is kind of showed me that the best cultures
that I've seen kind of come from collaboration that's kind of
built in to the way that people work each day and regardless of
you can either do this organically, just through
different events and things that you do at the company or you
could do it through software. Or you could do a combination of
both, which I think is the best way.
And that's the work that the software and the environment are
both trying to support the collaboration.
And you know what I found? Is that different groups of
people like different levels of collaboration, right?
You take baby baby, boomers. We like to collaborate.
I'm kind of in that group, but they're not quite as social as
Millennials, right? Millennials grew up a little
different. They want to interact with their
software in the way that they're doing the work, that's closer to
Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.
The way that they've kind of grown up with things and you
take the Jim's ears, which they absolutely grew up with a phone
and an iPad and computer, probably all three Right there
was there and at times they like to work remotely on their phone
and do the same type of work that they do on their computer
or their tablet. In some cases.
When I meet with them, they'll be working on their computer,
but they'll also be doing something on their phone in the
same software at the same time. Like, yeah, they like to do a
lot at the same time, but the key thing that I've, I've kind
of taken away from that, is that they like to know, they like to
be able to share their personal profile of who they are with the
people that they work with, they like to be able to look at those
profiles of the other people to get to know them because they
might not all be in the same office or if they're in the same
office different floors are different departments.
They like to be able to see work streams across departments or
across people to kind of see what's getting done in the
company that's there. So they feel like they're a part
of something that's happening and then they like to see what
are the goals of the company and where we act and attaining those
goals. Most companies have a sales
goal, right? Or Revenue goal that's in place
and people, they like to know, You know are we at 70% of that
goal or we had 110 percent like where are we at and to me those
things that I just mentioned are what helps build that culture
right in the company of people working together and then if you
bring that together with some outside events that are in place
where people are give a good extorted Archer.
We gave each employee in the company three days off per year,
to go get involved in their Community to say days off,
right? Some people.
Went to their kids schools and did great stuff with the kids.
Other people did Habitat for Humanity on a Friday or a
Saturday, that was there. But what happened was employees
got together and did things together, right?
So, they started building those personal connections outside of
work, but they carried over to work and work became personal at
the same time, right? It wasn't just a job like they
started hanging out with those people more, their families hung
out more. And it was just It was a fun
culture and I learned a lot from that and I try to carry that
forward. You know what we're doing today
at smart speed and anytime that I talked with a small business
about culture, I try to say you know, here's kind of the
framework that I think you should start with.
Oh yeah of course that sounds amazing.
I love collaborative collaborative cultures.
I think that it's and it's something that is you can't
force it, right? You can create the events to get
the people together, but Ultimately it's the human aspect
of just people want to meet other people and sometimes
personalities. It's a little bit harder to be
social and that's okay. But you create the environment
for that and then I think ultimately you get there anyway.
And so when we try to tie that idea of how to build your
culture and what you just said back to project management, the
same things, the same tools, the same principles that you're
basing on your company on and You built your culture.
Absolutely. Apply to somebody who is trying
to build a team culture, or trying to tap into the emotional
intelligence of the people that they have to work with as
cross-functional partners. And so a lot of that is when you
kind of walk it back, it's not really something you study in a
book. It's just you just put people in
a room together and kind of just watch how they interact.
So I love that John. I love that.
You were able to do that. Yeah I think it's all about, you
know. Judging them through the
processes that you put in place in your company.
And I'm also a big fan of the agile processes for project
management in that you know, agile allows you to have
stand-up meetings each morning for 10 or 15 minutes with each
person on the team can just quickly share.
Here's what I did yesterday. Here's what I'm doing today.
Do I have any blockers that I need help with, right?
And that's about each person having the chance to just share,
but it's more about everybody else having a chance to
understand what's going on right at feeling like there.
Are part of the team that's there and we've taken it at
smart. Sweet.
Just even a step further in that we have slack channels and
channels inside of our own product that in sometimes we
have people also close those. Right.
So not everybody can people Miss stand-ups for various reasons
set at times but they can go back in the channel at any time
and just kind of look back through and just get a sense of
all, these are all the things that I've accomplished or these
are the things that my team has accomplished kind of over this
period of time. So just that sense of
accomplishment. Which meant I think is key for
the motivation like yeah. Yeah, that's great.
And then we're in this environment.
Now we're with the great reshuffle or great rehab.
I don't know what part of this whole kind of thing that's going
on due to a lot of factors here. But we see a lot of people
leaving certain places and it's interesting that you bring up
something as simple as being able to go back through
documented. Conversations of your
accomplishments. And it's when you break it down.
It's just a conversation. You had with somebody probably
problem-solve something and it's there and you can go back to it
and be proud of it and I think we sometimes we often get so
burdened with work that we don't do that piece enough for
ourselves to be able to just say, hey I actually did a pretty
good job on this and let me remind myself amongst all the 15
things that are on fire right now that as a p.m.
I know how to do my job and I love Of that little tidbit about
people kind of being able to go back and see previous
conversations of how they problem solve before and having
those conversations on The Daily.
Now, I know you brought up that you had left your foundation
because and if I'm watching your history, let me know.
But you left the job because you kind of fell out of love with
it. You lost your passion for it.
I think is what you said. And I think to wrap up this
interview, I'm curious because there's a A lot of people who
are leaving jobs to look for something that they are actually
more passionate about, not just the jobs from before, where you
would go in. This is my paycheck.
I got to check all the boxes. Go home.
Repeat, rinse, and repeat. People are now leaving jobs and
sometimes not having something lined up.
People are leaving jobs because they found another job taking a
pay cut or taking a lateral move just to find something there.
Passionate about we're in this culture and in this environment
of people who are pursuing something that they would want
to wake up and love to do every day.
So going back to your professional Journey, you did
that, you ditch something that you fell out of love with and
you found something else. Now, would you say that was the
best decision you've made in your professional career and
then the follow-up to that is. Have you found your passion
since then? Sure.
Yeah, I think it's the answer your question.
It's probably not the best decision I ever made but it's
one of the more rewarding and fulfilling you know decisions
that I made. Like when we started Our Family
Foundation that's very fulfilling and rewarding after
45 years what I realized is that my true passion I enjoyed
helping people and all the great things that we could do within
the foundation with giving and our time and attention of money.
But my true passion was working with people and designing
software to solve problems. Like that's how I'm built when
people talk to me about things in the back of my head I'm
thinking about it in a process way, right?
Yeah. Just I'm built that way.
So I felt I could do it do a better job helping that way and
being successful in giving back then working in that situation
are working in that environment. I can tell you that in our own
company, we have employees in nine, different countries, that
work with us and over the last year and a half.
We've had quite a number that have changed locations, right?
And before, you know, So, when we had hired people we'd hire
people around us. But particular geography, maybe
30 miles around an office, right?
And if somebody wanted to move, we were like, you can't work
here anymore. Like, you have to come in the
office. So we found this part of our
culture, to be able to support that.
It's okay, that people move and what we found, especially with
the people in their mid 20s to early 30s.
A lot of them are moving, two or three times like they're moving
somewhere for six months and enjoying life.
They work really hard all day but at night and on the weekends
there. Have new experiences and I think
you're going to see more and more of that, especially with
the younger generation where that's just, they get bored
easy. And they need to be in
environments where there's a lot happening and going on for some
period of time passed on. This has been such a great
conversation and I love that you recognized in yourself, what
you're truly passionate about. And I think that is a dream for
some people to figure out for themselves to.
So, and it's nice to find and find somebody who has figured it
out. A out and is now doing that in
their professional career. So any parting words for
audience, any words of wisdom that you want to leave us with
Before I Let You Go John. Oh, I don't know if I have any
words, but I think that one thing that I often say, when I
get the chance to kind of give speeches is that, you know, you
need to really take ownership of your own life and if you have
people that are in your life that are holding you back for
some reason, right, they're not Gordon who you are now or make
you who you want to be need to reach.
Think that group of people that tried that, you have that
supporting you, because you need those people around you, to
support you, to find your passion and to be really happy
in life. And I find that a lot with
friend groups at the younger Generations, where two or three
people will really be excelling and maybe two or three friends
are holding them back, right? They have to kind of figure out
that Dynamic that's there or maybe your girlfriend boyfriend,
you know, situation like that. But I often talk about About,
you know, you have to have that in a lot of times for you to be
fulfilled and to find your passion you need that person or
group of people behind you. That's helping push you, you
know, to kind of get them. Absolutely.
Not only be your own best
Advocate but have that Army behind you, right?
This is this has been wonderful. That was great.
I love that. I'm taking that with me.
We're recording this right before the weekend.
That's gonna be my positive mantra for the weekend and thank
you John for Being us on the everyday p.m. podcast.
This has been such a wonderful conversation with you and I just
want to say that for you and your company and for smart
sweet. For those that are listening to,
I'm going to plug it for you because it is an amazing type of
software. So if you're looking for that
for your company, definitely, I'm just going to say hit John
up because he's been on the podcast.
So there's your direct line to him.
But John, if folks want to follow, you continue the
conversation about just, how do I find my passion?
How do I start up my business? How do I get connected with
smart? Sweet?
Where can they find you online? Yeah, you can find me online at,
you know, on LinkedIn at John Derbyshire, Jo-Ann, spell, John.
And I'm happy to connect with you and have the conversations
there. You can also find us at smart
sweet.com and you can hit any of the pages there with the contact
us send anything there will get routed to me as well to get back
to anybody. Amazing amazing.
And you guys can support this podcast.
By giving us a five star review on Apple podcast.
It's Google podcast. We're on all of the podcasting
platforms. So give this a listen and if you
want to watch the video version, it will be there on my YouTube
channel, youtube.com forward slash and campea.
Leave us a great comment, click the like button.
Subscribe, click the bell, for notifications of when new
content goes up all of those good things so that will do it
for John. And I and this installment of
the everyday p.m. podcast. Thank you everybody for joining
and listening. And until next time, take care.