#225 Uncovering the Power of Technology and Process Automation with Marquis Murray

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Hello Andrew, come back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to have with me on the show Marquis Moray. Marquis, thank you very much for being on the show with me. The way I like to do it, I let my guests introduce themselves because I believe this is you know the best thing anyone can introduce themselves better than anyone else. So the floor is yours. 

0:00:24 - Marquis
Perfect. Thank you, mehmet. Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm Marquis Murray. I'm the CEO and founder of Systems Improvement Consultancy. We work with companies of all sizes, mostly midsize and enterprise clients, helping them get the most out of their technology. We work with a lot of the business leaders to help them create visibility into the work that their teams are doing. We do that by improving their processes, implementing software, helping them improve and optimize their workflows. We train them on various software platforms. The most important one that we train around is a tool called Asana. We're also up-spot partners and so we do a lot of work in this space and I just absolutely love it. I love getting the opportunity to come in, dig in with the company, understand what's wrong, what's not working, and then showing them the possibilities of what process optimization can do for them as they come out of the other side. 

0:01:19 - Mehmet
That's great. So maybe it's a little bit of a classical question, but what have led you to start your own company, Ditto? 

0:01:29 - Marquis
Yeah, great question. It was really out of a need for better systems, both in my previous business that I ran, as well as what I saw as a need for a lot of the customers that we were servicing at the time. So my background is in operations. I worked in the corporate side for a long time and then I left that when my kids were born about eight years ago, and I jumped into the marketing space and opened up my own marketing agency. And so because I had a bit of a background in marketing, even in the operations role, it really came naturally to me working on building campaigns and deploying websites and doing branding for customers. 

But what I found was that one as my business was growing, as my agency was growing, I had to bring on new people and I was getting bogged down in having to train these people as they were coming on and I was repeating myself over and over again, saying a lot of the same things and, whether it's onboarding or constant training on processes of how we do things within the agency, I was finding that I was spending a lot of my time having to take away from the roles and responsibilities that I had to answer a lot of these questions. So one day I really got fed up and I said, hey, I don't want to answer these questions anymore, I'm going to record a video. So I pulled up loomcom, I recorded videos on how I did it, and so I gave that to my team and I said here are the videos, this is how you do it. Don't ask me any more questions. 

So it really came from a place of frustration. More than anything. I was craving that time back and I was just tired of having to repeat myself, and it's really a problem that I created for myself. And so that was really the beginning of it. And then I found that a lot of my customers that were in the creative space also needed those systems. Right, we were gathering and generating leads for them, we were building beautiful websites for them and brands for them, but they didn't have a streamlined way to deliver services to their clients. So we started implementing tools like HubSpot and Asana for our marketing customers so that they could create consistency around the work they were doing, create visibility and ownership around the work they were doing, sort out their tasks and projects and then also house all their customer information inside of one system and then work to automate a lot of the flows between their different operations, and so that's really where it came from. 

And then, like everybody, we all have a COVID March 2020 story and at the time, a lot of our marketing clients said, hey, we got to back out of this, we don't have to spend anymore. And they put it on pause, and I lost about 70% of our business within a few days and I had an opportunity, as people were going remote for the first time and working from home, to take what I had learned around systems and documentation and software implementation and provide those services to these companies that were now displaced for the first time and remote for the first time, and so we started delivering and implementing project management tools for them and helping them document their processes, because they no longer were in office spaces where they had physical files or could go over to someone's desk, and so we created these virtual offices and systems and processes for them. So that's probably the shortest version I can give you to catch you up on the last eight, nine years, but that's where it all began for me. 

0:05:14 - Mehmet
That's a great story and a lot of concepts, like we mentioned. And the reason I was telling you, marquis, I get interested in getting someone who speaks about this because I believe it's a little bit underrated topic and because companies, when they are small, they are in the face of startup and they start to grow and scale. So, as you mentioned, there will be always these guys that they know how to do it but it's not documented. And then, as a consultant, I fist many times and they go and say, guys, how are you doing this? Like, explain to me or describe to me how you do this today. And I always see them. I used to see them think a couple of minutes before they're giving me. So why it's important actually, in the first place, to set up what we call it as consultants, sop or standard operating procedures. So why it's important and what's the best way to do it. And of course, I know I said a little bit broad questions, but maybe on a high level, if you can tell us. 

0:06:21 - Marquis
Sure, and I deal with this every day and I always encourage people to think, to think differently about process documentation and SOPs. A lot of people, when they're faced with the task of documenting how they work, they feel like something is being taken away from them or their job is being threatened and they wonder why do I have to document this? And they get their backup a little bit. The exercise that I often will bring customers through and encourage them to think through this lens is this one we know there's the very morbid example of what, if you get hit by a bus right then all of that information that you have in your head is now gone forever. 

But I take a different route with it, and the way that I think about this is, whether you are a business leader or a knowledge worker working within a team, think that if you needed to take a day away, take a few days away, take a week away, right, whether you are ill or you have to take care of family member, or you need to go on vacation, or you want to go on vacation or you're away at a conference or whatever happens. Life always happens. If you needed to be away and you had, and there was no way that you could work, do you have a system, a set of documents or a set of processes where you could hand them to someone else and say here's how I do these things that I will not be able to do over the next so and so period? Right, do you have that documented? Because what we're doing in our documenting is we're taking what we call institutional knowledge and we're putting it in a place that can be shared with people so that our teams can support us, and then so they go down this exercise and they think is everything that I do documented so that if I needed to bring someone else in. I could do that by thinking that way we're putting them in a place where they feel like, ok, they've got some autonomy in this, there's some freedom that can be experienced through this as well, where they don't have to be the only person in it, the only person that understands those concepts, the only person that can do that tool. 

Because as teams grow, as people are promoted, we often need to bring in new people and train them, let's say and so where do you really start? And so I always encourage people to think am I the only person that knows this information? Would others benefit from having this information? The answer is always yes. Someone else is going to benefit from it, and someone else likely doesn't know it as well as you know it. And so why not document it once and for all so you can create those standards, create a bit of space and freedom for yourself, and create some kind of succession plan or backup plan where, if you cannot be there, you have that documented so you can provide that information to someone else. So when we start thinking about it through that lens, it's less about the knowledge worker feeling like they could be replaced and more about they're documenting this, so they cannot be replaced. Their systems, their process can be repeated for years to come and then improved on as needed. 

0:09:32 - Mehmet
And I think, marquis, this is maybe a task which looks hard at the beginning, but once they standardize it, it becomes easier for the next project. And this is where I think, like you mentioned, you use or rely on technologies like Asana. So how do you handle objections? And I know the answer. But just for the broad audience who might be in a domain similar to yours, because I used to work in the IT department back in the days, I used to be a system admin and people usually, whether in the IT department or in different business units, they are always afraid or, let's say, they always push back on new tools, right, whether it's like a CRM, something like Asana for project management and process optimization and so on. So how do you handle this objection that usually comes from the stakeholders within the organization? 

0:10:35 - Marquis
Yeah, First, I'll ask do you know why they push back on new technology? Have you ever thought about it? And no one likes change. No one likes change. Exactly Change is uncomfortable. 

We're used to doing things a certain way. Why change the process? The system has always been that way, so why would we need to do it any other way? And something that I always will say, even when I give talks live, is just because it's the way you've always done something, it doesn't mean that it's the right way to do it right. We've all heard about the 10,000 hours. It's Malcolm Gladwell that made that popular. You practice something for 10,000 hours, you become an expert. 

The problem with doing something the wrong way, though, is you can potentially spend 10,000 hours perfecting something, but it's not the most optimized way of going about it. So if we just flip that conversation on its head and get to think about it differently, then change becomes something where it's OK. We're now exploring a better, easier, more streamlined way of doing this, so that's how I typically will approach this conversation. It's not that the way you're doing it is wrong. I don't know that it's wrong, but there is often an easier way, and so, when we're approaching some of these problems. We're looking at it and we're able to do the work, dive deep or even pull up case studies from previous customers or experiences to say, hey, we did this for a customer in your space. They had a model that was similar to yours. Look how much time we saved them. Look how much inefficiencies we were able to eliminate. Look how many manual touch points we were able to remove from the process. Look how much simpler it can be for you right now. 

And so that's where we start is we show them what the other side can look like, and we often want to engage and understand what are your current pain points? Where are you getting stuck in the process? What feedback have you received from customers or internal stakeholders around the kinks in your process right now? And so, when they can make it personal and when they really think objectively right, just pull themselves out of the situation for just a quick second. When they really look at it, they start to understand okay, maybe there is a better way, and they become more open To this change, right? I do a lot of talks like this, where we talk about the future of work and you have to show them what the future can look like for them Start speaking their language, and that often is done by just gathering information from the people that are connected to that process. So, again, whether it's customers or internal stakeholders that are part of that process, getting feedback from those people so they can hear it from someone else Often is the best way to improve that process and get the buy-in around the need for change. 

0:13:34 - Mehmet
That's 100% true, marquis, and it applies not only for this specific, I would say, area or domain. It can apply to anything that it's trying to enhance the workspace, to enhance the way they do business today. I like always to connect it either to saving time, saving money, reducing a risk and sometimes increasing revenue, avoiding church. So it's like a holistic approach that usually people need to get it Now. One of the things that you know it's important to have this documentation is to later on start working on optimization. So I want you to run me through. You know what you call it like standardizing operating system. You know like and why it's crucial like not only to document how you do the processes today, but how later on you can optimize. So, if you can like, at least tell me on a high level you know what are the steps required, after the documentation is done, to start working on the optimization. 

0:14:54 - Marquis
Perfect. So the documentation, if we are in a process optimization stage, would typically come later. But I think you're asking about the maintaining and the optimizing of the processes after they've been improved. So, yeah, what we're looking for is really just a system around. When we're reviewing these processes and you know how often you know we need to be making improvements. 

Oftentimes this comes from user feedback, customer feedback. If we are so inclined and we want to know this information, we're sending out surveys to our users. We're sending out surveys to our customers. We're doing 360s with our team and we're gathering information all the time. And one question if we take the 360 as an example, it's do. I have all the tools to do my job well, and we'll often get a lot of feedback from questions like that. If we submit a customer survey and ask for feedback on their experience through the sales process or their experience through the delivery process, we should always be collecting that information. And what we do with my team we recommend for a lot of customers. 

We run on the EOS platform and so we have what's called the issues list, and so anytime an issue comes up with a customer or something internal, something's broken and we need to fix it. We're putting it on that issues list and then weekly leadership is reviewing those items. Right? We're discussing you know what is currently happening, you know what opportunities there are to improve. Why would we improve If we did improve it? How would it get us closer to our goals or our vision? What will be the impact on the end user? We're discussing all these things, asking the questions, and then we put it into the solve stage, where now we're doing the research on what tooling can be implemented, what steps can be removed, how can we maybe introduce automation, right, and then we're sandboxing some of these changes. So I recommend, at minimum, you're looking at your processes at least once a quarter to see is this still relevant, is this helpful, is this moving us forward? Is this a hindrance, right? And then you're documenting all those things on a list. So that's what that would look like from a frequency perspective. And then again, no matter what model you're following, I think you should be having internal meetings with your team right now, like on the EOS. You know, they say once a week we should be having those level 10 meetings, but that's what that would look like. 

And then you take your current process and I'm a very visual person and a lot of people are. They understand things just by drawing them out. And so that's where we start. We take the process and we draw it out. You can open up something as simple as Miro we use Lucid, or you can use old fashioned pen and paper but you're drawing out where the process begins, and this would have been something you started before, even documentation. So you have these flow charts already. 

Then you're looking at the process and you can objectively say okay, at this point in the process, when we submit the document for approval, it typically takes longer or that person doesn't get notified about the document upload and then the process stalls Right. 

So that's a pain point in the process. 

So those are some of the things that, as they come up, we're putting them on the issues list, we're reviewing them, talking about them and then we figure out how can we improve that stage in the process and what can we clarify. 

Maybe it's a training opportunity for our team, maybe it's a new tool, maybe something's broken, and we look at improving just small parts of the process rather than blowing it up and doing a rejig of the entire end to end workflow. So we look for those opportunities as we go along and update as we go, so that keeps us kind of on our toes, that keeps the process is improving slowly and that allows us to be continually improving right rather than the continuous approval a lot of us go through. We get to a point where the process it looks good, it's steady, we test, we iterate, we let it stay there for a little bit, we gather feedback and then we work to keep improving right so we can understand and receive feedback from the people that are impacted. So long-winded answer to say as often as you need to, but at minimum, you know, once a quarter, and make sure you're looking at your processes and doing it step by step rather than all at once. 

0:19:15 - Mehmet
Yeah, great, and I believe also, marquis, they need to. It's not like a one, it's like, as they say, it's like a marathon, not a sprint, right? So, because it's something that needs to keep an eye and they need to do maybe some analytics integration, so they need to keep seeing, you know, the results and where they can do more enhancement. It's like like it's not like a one. You know, task done and then removed from the task. You mentioned something I'm passionate about, honestly, which is automation. So automation has been around for quite some time, but sometimes, you know, still I'm surprised that a lot of businesses, you know, they know that, okay, you know there is something called automation out there, but they don't really. Maybe they didn't try, maybe no one came and told them like, guys, you can do you know automations here. So what are some of the examples and you know some of your favorite things about automation, how it can enhance the business, if you can give us like a tangible example, for example, from a business that maybe you worked on. 

0:20:24 - Marquis
Yeah, sure, for me I can talk about my role first and then I can talk about some of the things that we implement for customers. But for me, I'm the CEO of the company, I am the principal sales person, right? And so anytime a lead will come in, it goes into our HubSpot CRM and for a while we did all of our automations and emails and tasks inside of HubSpot. But Asana is our work management tool, and so we've taken the sales pipeline out of HubSpot and put it inside of Asana. Right, we've done that for a couple of reasons. I want to have all of our teams tasks in one place. I was finding that I was going back and forth between both tools and things were getting missed, and so we made that decision keep the CRM in HubSpot and put the pipeline in inside of Asana, and so one of the automations that we've set up is that anytime someone books a call on our website or submits a contact form, one of two things happens. If they submit a contact form looking for more information, a simple task is created for me with their request inside of Asana and I've got their information right there, I've got it linked back to the HubSpot contact record and I can respond to that email or make that phone call and then if someone books a call using a link, they would fill out a form when they book that call. So it would include everything from how many people they have inside the organization we're trying to qualify them a little bit what their role is, what services they feel that they need from us, and they can select from a list of services and then what they ultimately need. So then that sets off an automation that creates a task inside of my Asana deal pipeline. It pulls in the company name, it pulls in all the information they submitted. Now I can see it all inside of custom fields on the date that that meeting was booked, where that call was booked. I have a sub-task now created for me with my notes and questions that I'll ask from that call and the part where they filled out the what they need from me. That's all in there in my notes. So then I can go and I can prep, gather information and it's all being pulled into one task, one place. All the dates are assigned, and then I have people on my team that help me sort things out as well and upload call recordings and things like that. So that's one of the ways that I use it. 

There are so many other use cases, like we do a lot of internal marketing for my own podcast or my own YouTube channel, and so there's lots of automations we can apply there, but how we will apply it for customers? We work with a lot of marketing departments, so whether it's a director of marketing or VP of marketing, we're often helping them build out systems for their teams so they can work better. So oftentimes, like one of the use cases is, we're working with marketing teams that are receiving requests for design and intake all of the time and they're having to sort out who has capacity to take on that work, what the layers of approvals are to get that piece of work approved and then put into the production pipeline, and so we can automate the entire process, from the collection of that data to the assigning of the appropriate person based on capability and skill or availability and capacity to take on that work. And then, as the work requests moves through the pipeline, there are different stages and people that need to be involved in the approval of that. So, whether it's giving and receiving feedback, that can all be automated inside of Asana. If it's giving approvals or requesting changes. That can all be automated. And then now we can use variables within Asana to pull in very detailed information, to add to comments, to provide feedback. 

So there are so many different, again, use cases. What we can use it all depends on what you want it to do. But I often will say like, if you can think it, it's most likely we can do it, whether through the API and custom coding or through a native integration, like I've talked about with Asana, or through third party integrators Zapier. We do a lot of work with make. We used to work with quite a bit as well to build automations. But again, if you can think it, we can most likely do it. And so, yeah, that's a bit about how we do it right now. 

0:24:45 - Mehmet
And so my favorite ones yeah, great, actually we shared the same favorite ones, I can say, Marquis, couple of weeks back, just for the sake, because I'm trying to let's call it evangelize automation in across companies and I work a lot with startups and small medium businesses and they think that we don't need automation, and I like always to tell them, guys, actually you need automation more than maybe enterprise, like maybe I'm not exaggerating here because you have less resources, less people and you need to do a lot of things. So I love all the tools that you mentioned, especially make for me, and Zapier also as well, are my favorite tools, you know whether for marketing automations, crm automations, and you know we can talk for hours, maybe, about this. 

0:25:39 - Marquis
Oh yeah. 

0:25:41 - Mehmet
And I really I love these automations because it makes the life really easy, right? So, and you know, I know that one of the missions that you have is to eliminate burnout in workplace, right? So why are you passionate about this? What drives this passion for you, marquis? 

0:26:05 - Marquis
The simple answer is because I've experienced it. 

0:26:09 - Mehmet
Yeah. 

0:26:10 - Marquis
I know what burnout feels like. It doesn't feel good, and as a leader in a company, especially as a CEO, I almost can't afford to get burnt out, because there are people that rely on me every single day, their responsibilities that you know I currently manage that. If I'm burnt out, I am shutting myself off to the world, I am closing down, I am second guessing myself in. Post-syndrome starts to set in. I'm not the best version of myself for my team. I'm not the best version of myself for my family, and especially at home. They can see it, they can feel it. It impacts my relationship with my kids and my wife, and so that's where it comes from. Why I'm so passionate about it is because and I've had my own struggles and still deal with sometimes crippling anxiety and you know, been in therapy for years and I think everyone should be in therapy. You know one way or another. 

I think it's definitely needed. But why I'm so passionate about this, especially from a customer perspective, is you know, a lot of people think about their ideal client avatar, their ideal client persona. You know whatever that is, and they think what's their demographic? You know? How much money do they make, where do they live in the world, what kind of car do they drive. You know what is their family look like, what are some of their goals. You know, and that is important, that's all important information, and LinkedIn gives us all of that and there's various other outreach tools that give us all of that. But why I'm so passionate about it eliminating burnout is because I know that there are people behind those demographics. 

I know that there are real people that on any given Tuesday night, are on their couch. They've had a long day at work. Things are crazy, deadlines are being missed, things are falling through the cracks, their boss is asking for a status update and they don't know where to look. They're trying to herd cats all day and they're dreading maybe going back the next day, but they have to do it. They go back every single day, and so I think about that person and what they might be going through in their day that would lead them to, in my, you know, experience go on YouTube and search out how to, you know, make my team, you know, use Asana better, or how to use Asana for, you know, advanced functions, and they find a video of mine and then they go down a rabbit hole. And I've received emails and comments about this where they said I binge, watched your videos and I think what could be going on in your life. That you're on the couch on a Wednesday night after work searching up on YouTube, you find someone like me, you connect with me. 

There's something there that goes beyond the demographics we can see right. 

There's a real person that has real goals, that's maybe fearful of losing their job, that maybe for a performance review, up for a promotion, they want to impress their boss and they've taken the time to watch these videos or go to conferences or take courses on their own time so that they can improve, so that they can make the steps and advance in their career Right. 

So that's why this is so important to me. It's because the services that we're delivering are helping people to improve how they work, make their days easier, you know, remove that, that dread of not knowing where or how the work is happening. We're creating visibility for people inside of systems, we're creating standardized processes for people and we're making work easier for people, right. And if, at the end of an engagement, someone comes to me and they can say, I'm so glad I started watching your videos, or I'm so glad we made this investment and their boss is now happy because they have something happy to report on, then that's a win for us, right, and that gets us one step closer to eliminating team burnout, aligning teams and delivering and solving real problems. So I can talk forever about just that, but that's why I'm so passionate about this. 

0:30:32 - Mehmet
Yeah, like you know, for me, I was always being asked like why are you passionate about technology and being you know? Because I work as a consultant for for a long time. And I said you know the moment when you help someone to fix something, or maybe they are struggling in doing something in a way, and then you show them another way to do it. Like you know, I remember, like a few years back, you know, I've seen someone you know, like he's repeating the same task. It was not automation, but kind of streamlining out, say, the way they he used to do the things. So he was like copying something, putting it in Excel and then. And then I told him, hey, like it was not automation, it was simply just you know a formula, it's a V, look up in Excel. And they said, look, if you do it this way, you don't have to manually copy. And you know, when this guy, he told me you know what, like I can't tell you how much time you save me. I don't have to stay in the office till late night, I can go and see my kids, and you know, like you know, like that was like a different feeling for me and I can understand you, marquis, you know, when you mentioned this, because, yeah, there's a real human being behind this. 

Yeah, he's now in the office, he worked for this company, but he's a human being. Well, she's a human being at the end of the day. And she got family. He got family, you know, and he got kids. Kids, she got sister, he got brother, and you know. This is why I believe you know technology and any technology. We were talking today about process enhancement and optimization and automation, but any technology, you know it should touch the human part, and I love this, marquis, really, really I love it too much. Now, talking a little bit about you know shifting gears, about entrepreneurship and scaling. So you successfully exited two businesses. So what do you think are the key factors for a, let's call it, profitable exit For? 

0:32:34 - Marquis
a profitable exit. Consistency, mm, hmm, that can be from a documentation perspective when we think about change management, consistent in how we communicate that change, especially because we're talking about real people, right, I think that a lot of the success I've had was because I've had a team behind me that understood where we were going and I think that was communication around where we were going, why we were doing the things we were doing, why it was important to document and I think team buy-in and adoption was probably the biggest reason for those exits, because I couldn't do it on my own. I couldn't document everything that I needed to on my own, I couldn't train on all the touch points that needed to be trained and improved upon on my own. I needed my team there, I needed them to buy in and there needed to be consistency in how we delivered and how we went about our day-to-day. That ultimately led to success, because when you're consistent, you create these repeatable processes, that over time and we would always do post-mortems and retrospectives so we can say how can we improve on it? And every time we got better, we got faster, we got more streamlined, it became second nature. 

So if we're talking about profit here, that goes down to the day-to-day. 

We measure that by project, we measure that by team member, we measure that by task, we measure that by burn rate and so when you go down that deep into what you're looking and seeing, improving a process and improving how we deliver is improving our profit margins and so, over time, this just you have this compounding effect of the improvements that you're making and ultimately, by the end of it, I had a company that for talking about the previous consultancy, I had a company where our processes were airtight or delivery. It wasn't perfect. We still have customer feedback and things that went sideways a little bit. It wasn't butterflies and rainbows all the time, but we had consistent processes, we had consistent delivery. I think that's ultimately what it was and that was because we paid attention to customer feedback, implemented that feedback, paid close attention to what our team was saying and assessed and discussed and solved for the things that would ultimately make the difference to reduce expenses and reduce timelines and make for a more streamlined and enjoyable process for all parties involved. So, yeah, yeah. 

0:35:34 - Mehmet
Yeah, like again, it's all about people. I can see this Markey. It's about people from both sides, from internally as the team and externally with the customers, and putting human firsts. I like this approach. 

So, a lot of my audience are people who are eager to start. So they are not there yet, but they are eager to start. So, because you have done it multiple times right? So what piece of advice you tell someone today, whether maybe they are just about to graduate from college or maybe they are. They've been sometimes in the corporate world and they are looking to do the change they want to follow their passion. So what piece of advice you tell these people that want to go and start their businesses and they have the dream to scale it? 

0:36:38 - Marquis
Spend the time to get really good at one thing and just don't stop doing it until you could consider yourself to be an expert. Because something that I often think about is if we went back to a time you know, and we used, this used to actually exist. So it's interesting to see, like, how we came from there and now we're here. But think back to a time where money didn't exist, right, there was no value placed on coins or you know animals being traded. We all just were trying to exist and provide a service, so we could, you know, live. That's all it was about. So we could live. So you had the person that you know studied really hard and learned how to become a blacksmith, and you had another person that studied really hard and learned how to bake bread right, and we would share and we would barter and everyone would get along and we all needed each other. And the people that spent the time studying and working hard at that one thing became authorities, became the go-to in that space, right? 

A lot of the businesses we see today, whether it's board or Kellogg's and I know they're owned by massive corporations now but, right, they all started from a you know someone's kitchen. They all started from someone's garage. They all started from someone's, whatever it was, and they spent the time and dedicated. It's becoming really good at that. One thing yes, things will come up and there are what we call shiny objects, and there are lessons you'll need to learn and there are services you'll need to deliver that aren't aligned with what you ultimately want to do. And that's all about learning. But I think once you find that one thing that you, like, are passionate about, don't stop doing it. Don't stop doing it until you have put in the time, you put in your 10,000 hours, and you become an expert at that, because it will pay off in some way, shape or form 100% and all the books that I tried to, I would say, read to get this how to become expert. 

0:39:07 - Mehmet
They go back to the 10,000 hours concept. If you are a fan, like myself, I'm fan with some, of course, the motivational speakers, like Robin Charlmer, for example, is one of them, and in one of his speeches he was mentioning about when they asked Picasso to draw a woman. She came approach him and she asked him Mr Picasso, can you draw me? And then he drew her in one minute and then she took the picture and she said, excuse me, you need to pay me. She said it's not free. She said, yeah, but it took just one minute from you. I said, yeah, but I spent all my life to draw that fast. 

It's not like something I came up with, so I needed to put some time, I need to put some efforts in it and, yeah, there's nothing that comes easy. And yeah, and guys, to your point, marky and this is something I advise from my side don't be tricked by the shiny things that is out there. They tell you that we are not a get rich quick scheme, but actually they are, because they try to manipulate and unfortunately, we are seeing a lot of these things these days and I'm telling guys okay, he's good because he did it, but he's asking you to copy him. But it doesn't work this way. You need to do it your own way. There is no playbook. I tried it when I was younger. I was thinking, yeah, I can be smart and I can jump from here, I can copy things. But it doesn't work this way. You need to put your hard work down, marky, as we come up to the end. I know you have your own podcast. Can you tell me more about it? 

0:41:04 - Marquis
The podcast is called In Systems we Trust, so I would have people like you on and we would just talk about the systems and the processes that you've built, the frameworks you've created that are helping you to improve how your company works. So we talk about automation, we talk about work management tools, we talk about project management on that show and, yeah, it's one of the things that I love to do, because I love operations, I love process improvement, and so you can catch that podcast anywhere where you listen to podcasts. There's a video version on YouTube if that's more your speed, but yeah, I'd love for you to go check that out. 

0:41:43 - Mehmet
Great, I will make sure I will put the link and also I will put the link to all your websites, your company website and the podcast also, of course, marky, usually I have a final question, and it's not a question to trick you, but is there anything that you wished I had asked you or something you wished that we discussed, and you want to talk about it very briefly? 

0:42:10 - Marquis
Oh man, I've never been asked that before. You have come to understand that I'm about the people right, and even on my podcast we talk about technology and automation. We always get down to the really interpersonal stuff. We want to talk about the people and the feelings. I always want to go there. You started going there when you asked about. You know why I'm so passionate about burnout. I wish you would ask me more about. You know the bad side of things. You know what the other side of things look like and how we yeah, I think you know what things look like when they weren't so good, when we weren't exiting companies and scaling teams. I love talking about the struggle and the grind and the rise and the real things that happened behind the scenes that people don't tend to talk about. When they're trying to sell, you get rich quick courses and things like that, but everything else was great. 

0:43:10 - Mehmet
Okay, like maybe, if you want to, you know, talk about this in very shortly. Like, feel free, you know. 

0:43:18 - Marquis
We would need a whole other podcast to talk about that a whole other hour, but let's just say it kind of tied into what I was saying about never, you know, giving up finding that one thing you're passionate about when I left marketing and when I was really looking for something more, when I was running my marketing agency, it wasn't that COVID happened and I jumped into Ditto and started it. 

I was already thinking about making this change. I just didn't know what it would look like. Turns out, I was never the marketing guy, it's just something that I knew. I was always the operations guy. I was always thinking about, you know, the fact that there was a place for everything and everything had a place. I always believed in order. I always believed in systems and I worked at that. 

I explored that, I looked inside myself. I went away on retreats and spent time alone just thinking about what value I really brought to the world and what's that? One thing that you know, people would fly me across the world to do work with me, right Like. I explored that and I uncovered it and there were late nights and there were tears and you know, sometimes when I had a long day and I was feeling down on myself I mean with the struggle, with anxiety I would finish my day curled up in a ball on the floor of my office because it was just so difficult and it would have been easy to give up. 

It would have been easy to go find a job somewhere, Provided I went through the 500 interviews you need to go through these days. But it would have been easy to give up and say you know what, this is too difficult, I'm going to do something else. But I stuck with it and I explored and dug deep in myself and overcame many odds and, yeah, happy that I did that. So, again, I could talk about that for three hours, but there's always another side to it. 

0:45:11 - Mehmet
Yeah, great, and thank you for bringing this also, marquis, because some people sometimes they, when I started to, I would say pivot you know the podcast because the title is the CTO show and people, they thought it's all about technology. I had the vision. I didn't know how to do it Right. So, okay, how I can. Okay, I want to talk about technology, but I want to talk about people. I want to talk about you know other aspects of technology, which usually they are, I would say, you know the technology. Maybe it's like the one when we give the example of the iceberg, right? So there's the top and the hidden parts, and I want to these hidden parts to come up. So this is why I had you know someone who talks about just burnout, like he's a chief burnout officer, one of my guests. You know, we talk about. You know hiring in tech. We talk everywhere. We talk about marketing, we talk about sales, and the reason is because I believe, and I'm happy that we share the same, you know, vision, I would say, or the same beliefs, that it's technology. Again, maybe I'm repeating myself Technology is not about you know the shiny things. It's about people at the end and how we can add value to the people, change lives, you know, get things moving forward. The future of work also, like, because I've talked about it as a you know, I delivered also a session about it a couple of months back because I believe, you know, yeah, we were going to a change and you know to the point that you mentioned about, you know how, back in the days when there was no money and this is like a takeaway for me today how everyone was specialized someone who go as a blacksmith, you know, the other as a baker, and so on. So I'm hoping, you know, I'm hoping that one day we will come back to this where, you know, people will really, you know, give value to what really matters, not the shiny things only outside. Like, I'm trying, you know, and I'm going to keep trying. This is why I do this show daily, this is why I keep, you know, I don't give up and I hope that I will be able to continue this way. So, marquis, really thank you very much for being on my show today. I'm, you know, very pleased to have this discussion and, as I mentioned, you know, people who want to connect and I will gain the podcast of Marquis. It will be in the show notes also as well. So thank you very much for being with me today, marquis, and this is for the audience. You know how I end every time the episode. 

Guys, keep the feedbacks coming, and it doesn't have to be only oh, we like it, it's amazing, fantastic. I like to hear critics as well, because this is how I think I can enhance myself and hence the show. So don't be shy to send these notes also as well. And if you are interested to be also a guest on the show, don't be shy, just shout out to me. Like all, my guests are, majority of the time, international, from the US, canada, australia, new Zealand. You know all the all the part of the world. We're going to have guests also from, finally, from Singapore and Japan very soon, so stay tuned for that. So don't be shy. Reach out. Timezone is not a huge issue, I can accommodate that. And again, thank you for tuning in and see you soon in an episode tomorrow maybe. Thank you very much. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page