Episode 35, Talking South Carolina Podcast Interview with Guillermo Avila of 365 Digital Technologies Mauldin SC

Episode transcript:

Angela Barrett – “Hey, gear. Geothermal. Is that. And then say it right or I still screw it up.”

Guillermo Avila – “No, you know what? You’re on the right track, GMO Avila.”

Angela Barrett – You’re. Good morning. How are you today?

Guillermo Avila – I’m doing well. Thank you.

Angela Barrett – “Good. So you are here to school me to to teach me. Because you are in a field that I don’t know a whole lot about. And that is the world of, digital. Outside of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And lost. So help me out. Tell me what, 365 Digital Technologies does.”

Guillermo Avila – “So what we primarily do is we do at its core, project consulting. So, a lot of companies will hire us to run, like, their enterprise level projects. Unfortunately, a lot of our businesses also in what we call project rescues. And that’s generally when a client has gone over budget, maybe by a million, $2 million. They’re maybe a year to two years past when that project is supposed to be delivered.”

Guillermo Avila – “And they’ll call someone like, me and one of my teammates to come in and try to get that back on track so they can stop bleeding and hemorrhaging. So a lot of our focus is on managing and delivering on projects.”

Angela Barrett – “So first let’s back up and talk about what, for those of us who are not as knowledgeable in this area. A large enterprise project is to give you give me an example of what that might be.”

Guillermo Avila – “Sure. One rescue that we did was for, a website for a biotech company, for instance. So, unfortunately, they had a a bad implementer. They were about $1 million over budget and still had no website. And so when I got the phone call, we look at something like that and we try to break it down in pieces, you know, as to why it wasn’t delivered and what we can do to get it delivered.”

Guillermo Avila – “So in this case, it was an e-commerce site for a biotech. And they had they had nothing to show for the money that they put into it. And so our job is to go in and figure out how we can pick up the pieces and, and try to get them a product delivered. And sometimes that requires us getting a new vendor, or sometimes we can use the same vendor, but, you know, my my job is to come in and be a bit agnostic as far as who the vendor is.”

Guillermo Avila – We were just concerned about getting that project up and running for the client.

Angela Barrett – “And when you say vendor, you’re talking about like a your website host, that kind of thing.”

Guillermo Avila – “Or we have in this case it was the, the the vendor that was actually developing the website for my client. You know, after, more than a year, they still hadn’t delivered a, product, and they were so far over budget that we had to regroup on that. And so my job is to go in and figure out, like, do we have the right people in place to deliver what our client is looking for?”

Angela Barrett – “And so, again, help me, because a website, unless it is, you know, a website for, I don’t know, let’s say hospital where you’ve got thousands and thousands of providers in different divisions and things of that nature, but they aren’t that difficult unless you’re taking that kind of stale. Right? I mean, they yeah.”

Guillermo Avila – “Then, you know, when we look at something like this, it’s not like a website like you would think of for just throwing something up on, you know, just for presents, you know, where you can, you know, maybe have someone do it for, $1,000 or maybe cheaper than that. The thing that that was the complexity around this is you’re dealing with with a client that was integrating all of their warehousing, all of their inventory, you know, they’re forecasting off of it.”

Guillermo Avila – “They’re doing predictive analysis off of it. So it’s very, very complex when you look at what’s happening behind the scenes, just for someone to be able to, to find or purchase like a vial of something very, very complex, just to be able to show what’s in the inventory.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah. So in like in my real estate world, it would have been my CRM, which something else obviously, develops and I just get the plug in, you know, names and numbers. Yeah, that makes more sense now. Certainly. So, All right, so tell us what else you guys do. They’re at 365 Digital Technologies.”

Guillermo Avila – “So that’s that’s a big piece of what we do is the project management side. But we also do, CIO advisory. So, CIO is typically the chief information officer for, for the company. And so typically, we come in to serve as an ad advisor either to the CIO or in some cases, we come in as the interim CIO until a new one, is hired, or in some cases, we’re just asked to stay on, you know, can you give us ten hours a week?”

Guillermo Avila – “We can’t afford someone full time, but we’d like to have maybe someone on a on a retention level. So sometimes we do things like that. The real big thing that we’re getting into right now, we’re actually getting ready to pull the trigger on it. Probably within the next 2 to 3 weeks is we’re going to spin up our, AI and machine learning practice.”

Guillermo Avila – “And so we’re getting ready to hire some developers to help us. Right? Applications for, biotech manufacturing, supply chain sectors and start integrating in with some of their platforms. So we’re pretty excited about that. That’s something we’ve been working pretty hard at. And we think the time is right to go ahead and pull the trigger on that.”

Guillermo Avila – So we’re going to add the the AI and machine learning piece to our project management. The CIO advisory side.

Angela Barrett – “So tell me, how a is going to what will I be doing here?”

Guillermo Avila – “So it depends on the on the sector. One of the first things that we want to do is do some predictive forecasting. So, one of the things that we want to get into is let’s see if we can use machine learning and AI to help us forecast maybe customer sales. In some in in your world, it may have been we’re going to try to see if we can help you figure out, potential customers for real estate.”

Guillermo Avila – “Who are those people out there that are more likely to buy than not, and try to use AI to kind of break down for us who that market segment is. So you can more zero down on that. And that’s basically what we’re what we’re trying to do with, some of our clients is to try to help them develop some, some add ons to help them with forecasting for sales, maybe for raw materials, anything like that.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That’s interesting. And AI is everywhere. Like it or not, here it is. Embrace it and go. Right.”

Guillermo Avila – “Exactly, exactly.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s that’s, In in my world of things, AI is used. Not so much yet. Except, in a couple different areas, but it’s hard to replace AI right this second anyway, with true photos or true videos of a home or an area. You know, everybody really wants to see what that is. And, but some of the like you said, statistics and stuff like that.”

Angela Barrett – “Sure. But it’s all again, way over my head.”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, I think that some of the worry that people would have is, you know, AI is is going to replace my job. And if you look at like real estate, I’d say it’s going to enhance the experience. But you can’t remove the human element from that. You know, there’s some there’s still something about you sitting in front of someone who’s a first time homebuyer, and you’re really encouraging them because they’re scared.”

Guillermo Avila – “AI is not going to be able to talk them off the ledge of being scared, but somebody like yourself can sit there. That human interaction is something you can’t remove. So all we’re looking at is where I, serves as a as a conduit and as a help, but not a replacement. And so that’s, that’s kind of the approach that we take with it right now.”

Angela Barrett – “You guys are in Malden, South Carolina, right?”

Guillermo Avila – We are.

Angela Barrett – “But that is obviously not, a location where you generate most of your business because I would imagine you have them everywhere with large companies.”

Guillermo Avila – “Correct. We actually have no customers in Greenville. So we’ve got our clients are anywhere from Seattle, DC area. We just finished up a project in New York. We’ve got them all over the country. And my, my consultants are all over the country as well. So, all of my folks work remotely, mainly because a central office doesn’t make a lot of sense because our our, our, our guys are having to go wherever the work is.”

Guillermo Avila – “And so, they’re onsite really all over the country. But we’re based out of Malden for sure.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. And love Malden, actually. So let’s talk about some of these companies. And how, how does it happen that they fail? I mean, where’s the where’s this break down and how does this happen when, like, you said, they’ve paid out millions of dollars and still have nothing to show. We’re we’re we’re where do you see most of that break down.”

Guillermo Avila – “So typically what we see and this is more often than not is you have someone at the top level who could hire someone like me to say, hey, can you help us manage this project? We have this three, $4 million project. We could really use you and your teams help to help us manage and get this thing to success.”

Guillermo Avila – “What’ll typically happen is a CFO or someone at that level may look at the costs of bringing someone like me in and say, you know what, I think we’ll take a shot at managing this in-house. And for the most part, that’s where we’ve seen it go pretty badly. Is that in an effort to save money, it actually costs them more money and so, I’ll end up getting a phone call.”

Guillermo Avila – “We had one, one, client up in, the northeast where they were two years past their budget. $3 million past, their budgetary, restraints. And, was very, very, a lot of friction when I walked in. You know, everyone’s angry. Oh, yeah. Everyone’s angry. Everyone’s upset. And when, you know, we start asking questions again, it comes back to, you know, we we thought we could manage this in-house by ourselves.”

Guillermo Avila – “And so now they have to bring in a company like ours to go ahead and level set and get them over the finish line, which, which we, which we’ve always been able to do. But again, it’s coming at a, at a point where they’re having to spend more money in order to get them to the finish line, and it doesn’t make up for the money that they’ve already spent, which are usually, you know, 1 or $2 million, you know, over their budget.”

Angela Barrett – “Right. And so and, and we’ll put it in some very simple forms and I’ll, I’ll let you tell me what you think. But one of the ways to avoid this, and this is where, I love to tell my, the lenders that I work with, obviously in my line used to hire new hires, and the attorneys stay in theirs, you know, because we that’s the problem when people start thinking they can handle these large projects, when they really don’t know the deep details, like you would know in what needs to be placed when, where and how, a is that what you’re thinking?”

Angela Barrett – “Is the miscommunication. I mean, sure, they manage $1 billion company, but this particular project is very particular. You tell me what you think they can do to avoid that. I’m just saying stay in your life.”

Guillermo Avila – “Well, you know it. It’s funny because in a way, it it it sort of is, when, when we come in for some rescues, whether it’s for manufacturing or, biotech, pharmaceutical, whatever that might be, what we find is it’s exactly that you’re having, a group of very, very competent people that that want to believe that they’re able to do something that they’re not skilled in.”

Guillermo Avila – “And project management is one of those skill sets that if you’re not careful, you could really lose your shirt over it, you know, and in these cases, our clients thought they could manage it in-house, and they just didn’t have the in-house expertise to do that. And, so generally when I see the, white flag being waved and it’s help is needed, usually by that point things are are pretty bad.”

Guillermo Avila – “And usually there’s no there’s no secret sauce in a sense, for us it’s just going back to some of the basics. And so once we start adding in some of those basic things, we start to see the, the project, start to get traction again and we get them over the finish line.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. You know, and there’s, this is what I have found. And different parts of the world, the work sector is that you’ve got, like you said, these, you know, geniuses that run this business. But when it comes to breaking it down and seeing the little details as it goes along, because they see the big picture, they’re here.”

Angela Barrett – “That’s right. You know, and then but to be able to break that down and make those steps happen when they need to happen and how they need to happen is a whole different ballgame. At least from the experience that I have seen. But I think that’s kind of what you were saying. Is it running $1 billion company as a whole is one thing to break this project down, you know, is something else, and you do need experts for that.”

Guillermo Avila – “Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and it’s in its part for us is to when we partner with the client, I have one client in particular. We’re still engaged, with them for, for quite a few years now. And, one of the things I’ve asked them is, you know, what? What is the value that we add when we’re with you guys for these projects?”

Guillermo Avila – “And he always says, you guys are my watchdog. He trusts us. So when they bring in a vendor to implement something that could be a 3 to $4 million project, he’s learned, he doesn’t have the in-house expertise to do it. They bring in my folks to do it. And our job is to protect the project. And so we will let him know if we think that we’re seeing something that’s going to take the project, like off the rails.”

Guillermo Avila – And he appreciates that. And that’s why he just calls us our watchdog. You were the ones who helped protect his company’s interests.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Now let’s talk just a minute, because we’re talking about some of these these companies and big companies. But what about your smaller companies? Who struggle, you know, some of the entrepreneurs or the small businesses that are already there help. I guess you guys probably deal with them, maybe on a different scale, but let’s talk about them for a little bit.”

Guillermo Avila – “Yeah, we do we we we do partner with like more mid-sized market. And then on the smaller scale we do a that would be more advisory. So, if someone is looking for a, an interim CIO or even, what we call like a fractional PMO. So that would be, kind of, a rent project management office.”

Guillermo Avila – “So we’re just kind of a rental of, of our talent, and they use us as they, as they need it. And so for those smaller to mid-sized companies, we go in, normally in advisory roles and just let them know what they need to do to be successful in projects. In some cases, they may bring on one of our team members on a part time basis to help them do that and just get them over the hump.”

Guillermo Avila – But we do a lot of advisory for the small mid-level market just to make sure that they’re equipped. Then they’re able to get over the hump.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Because, when you do have a small business or even a mid-sized business, you don’t always have all the pieces, and even big companies don’t have all the pieces, I guess, or else there wouldn’t be you guys. But, there’s there’s a lot of especially in that. The world that you’re in, in the technology world, there’s a lot of companies, small and medium, that don’t have that kind of piece.”

Guillermo Avila – “Oh for sure. I mean, one of the things that you’ll find, and it’s one of the reason that I left the some of the bigger consulting firms to start my own is that the price point for those firms are not meant for small to midsize companies. And so if a smaller midsize company is looking for help from, you know, one of the big five, they just can’t afford it.”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, those rates are coming in sometimes at 250 to 85 an hour. And, you know, you’ve got a small midsize company just doing everything they can to survive. And so where we come in is we we don’t have anywhere near those rates. And our job is to just protect, that client’s interest and just get them moving.”

Guillermo Avila – “I mean, we’re we’re a small company. We’re only, this may will be six years that we’ve been in business. We’ve got ten consultants right now. We’re looking at bringing in some more. We’re still a small company in our own size, but, we value that small to midsize company mindset to want to grow. So we we don’t ever neglect those, those clients.”

Guillermo Avila – “We we always deal with them. But on a different level, than some of the enterprise level, projects that we take on.”

Angela Barrett – “So for somebody who’s contemplating starting a business, what would be some of the advice that, that you would give from your from your world, your perspective?”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, my wife and I talk about this, a lot when when my wife and I started the business almost six years ago. You know, you’re going in as a small business owner. We’re in the consulting side. It was. I was the only one consulting. My wife is running everything on the back and everything from dealing with the contracts.”

Guillermo Avila – Attorneys try to. The company gets stabilized in some way. And and we’re putting in a ton of hours just to launch a company. And one of the first things that I would tell any small business owner is no one is ever going to care about your company as much as you do. No one. You have got to put the time in it.

Guillermo Avila – “It’s it’s it’s sometimes, frustrating when you work an entire day. Maybe you didn’t get a client that day, but you’re the one who puts in the hours to do it. And so when you do land a client, it’s your success. Like this is all yours. And, luckily, I was able to start this thing with my wife.”

Guillermo Avila – “So both of us got to be able to split duties in terms of launching a company. But when when you look at the struggles of a small business owner, it really is, sometimes you feel like you’re all by yourself and, you know, it’s. Yeah. And you feel like the world’s against you in some ways. And so part of what we have learned is that, man, if we’re giving any counsel to anyone, you have got to put in long hours.”

Guillermo Avila – “This is not an 8 to 5 type of gig. If you’re looking to start a small business. One one thing that’s that’s so funny, Angela. And I don’t know if you ever run across anyone like this when when we run across, sometimes friends or family, there’s this misconception that because you’re a small business owner, you can take off whatever time you want, you know, hey, if you want to take off 2 or 3 days, isn’t that great?”

Guillermo Avila – “You own the business. Like, because it really work that way. You know, if I got.”

Angela Barrett – “Work, actually.”

Guillermo Avila – “Exactly. If I don’t work, we’re not making money, you know, it’s we’re nowhere near to the point where I can just take off, for eight weeks and think that it’s not going to impact our business. We are very, very sensitive to the amount of time that we put in. And so for I think for the small business owner, it’s really you got to realize your success is going to be really determined by the grit and time and effort that you pour into your business, because you’re the one who cares about it the most.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there are days that you have to remember, the why why again, am I doing this?”

Guillermo Avila – “You gotta remind yourself every day. Because there are days when you wake up, you’re like, why do I do this to myself? And it’s just we, you know, there’s something that we wanted to do different as a business that was different than the consulting channels I came out of. And, we have to remind ourselves that the reason that we do this is because we want it to be different, and we have to live that out.”

Guillermo Avila – “And the people that we hire and, the way that we we live out our company principles with our clients.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. And I think the, the, the nice thing about working with small business or, if that’s if you, if you’re looking for service, working with a small business because they are a big corporation and they do care not only about, you know, their business, but about the client, because that one client makes a huge difference in the business.”

Angela Barrett – “And so you’re going to give that more, attentive, service because you have to whereas a corporation can go for we don’t need them all.”

Guillermo Avila – “I’ll tell you one thing. We did, Angela, and this was one of the best, things I ever invested in. I, I had, a gentleman out in the business world who, really large in the YouTube space and someone I, I respect professionally. And I bought 15 minutes of his time and he said, listen, ask me anything you want.”

Guillermo Avila – “What can we do to help you with your business? And I said, you know, when I’m going up across the the mega giants of the consulting companies out in the world, I’m a ten man shop. They’ve got 30,000 people on their bench. How in the world do I differentiate myself from that? And he gave me such great advice that I use it, when we’re trying to, to make pitches to, like potential military contracts or anything like that, he said, I actually had a presentation, that week with the, that we were planning with the Navy, and he said, you know what?”

Guillermo Avila – “To speak their language. When, when you when when you approach them and you talk about the value that you had as a ten member team, remind them that one of the best special forces that the Navy has is a small team of professionals that do a lot of damage. That’s what you are. You guys are the Navy Seals of what you do.”

Guillermo Avila – “And it was like, brilliant. I realize, yeah, we are small, but we mobilized quickly and we’ve got some people with incredible experience. We may not have that large army, but we are very specialized in what we do and we’re really good at it. And so to start speaking that language of like, we are the special forces of project consulting, and we do it really, really well.”

Guillermo Avila – “That’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve been given, and it helps me differentiate myself from some of those giants that are out there.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, yeah, I actually like that. I like that a lot. And it brings it back down to that. Human touch level, that people can relate, I like it. So what’s the big next step for? I know you said you had one project come up. What’s the next step for 365?”

Guillermo Avila – “So, you know, it’s it’s been a little interesting, I think, in terms of where we’re at, business wise, we had to do some regrouping. We were, we were potentially looking at doing, hopefully some big things, for this year in the government sector. But I think with a lot of the changes that have happened, we’re we’re backing off of that a bit and we’re regrouping on the commercial end.”

Guillermo Avila – “So what we’ve strategically said is the next big thing for us is to start, continuing building out the CIO advisory piece. But we are going to put quite a bit of effort now into, launching the AI and machine learning, practice, our consulting side, project consulting has been going great, and we’re continuing to grow there.”

Guillermo Avila – “So for us, I think the next natural thing is, is to start building applications that our clients need, trying to leverage, AI and machine learning. So that’s going to be the big thing that we’re focused in on now.”

Angela Barrett – “We’ll call. That’d be great. The, you know, I have to ask 365 is that because you worked three, six, 365 days?”

Guillermo Avila – “That’s right, I never sleep. That’s that’s our would, you know, our clients, most of them, you know, especially, most, most of all of our clients, they all operate, almost every day of the year. And I think it was important to when we named the company to, to reference the fact that, we’re recognizing that our that our clients never sleep.”

Guillermo Avila – “And it was important for us in the name to, to realize that we’re going to be there for them, with that same level of effort, because they’re they’re putting out products that people are relying on. My pharma companies are developing, vaccine solutions, things like that, that, that people need. My manufacturing folks are developing things that people need on an everyday basis.”

Guillermo Avila – “And if they’re operating 24 seven, I should be able to operate 24 seven in that mindset. So that was that was pretty strategic for us. When we named the company.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. I like it. So now what would you say today in your the six years that you guys have have been opened and up and running your most successful story? I know you can’t say company names or names, but just giving you the basis of the most successful story you’ve had so far.”

Guillermo Avila – “Yeah. I think, it’s one that we, that we rolled off here, rather recently. It was a, a very large ERP implementation, which is it’s a, it’s a platform that combines all your manufacturing, distribution, logistics. H.R I mean, it’s it’s a very, very large platform, that Microsoft has. And the client was two years past, there.”

Guillermo Avila – “Go live. I want to say that they were close to, 2.5 million past budget and, they were they were on their last leg. They were bleeding out trying to say, how are we going to go live with this product? We went in in about six months time. We were able to get them to, an initial go live.”

Guillermo Avila – “And then about 4 to 5 months later, we went with a second go live. And so we were able to get them in about a year’s time back on track. But it took a lot of a lot of effort, and just a lot of regrouping. But we were able to get them live and, you know, I think it stopped the bleeding that, that they had because it was running, it was going to run in the millions.”

Guillermo Avila – “If they weren’t, if they didn’t call us in.”

Angela Barrett – Let’s call that is a good story. And and good for them and good for y’all. What is your favorite part about what you do running the company? The actual getting in there and doing the work? Or is it give me give me what your favorite part of it is.

Guillermo Avila – “You know, it’s funny because I thought when we started the company, I thought my biggest satisfaction would be, shaking the hand of a CEO or CFO after a project and and just the satisfaction of saying, hey, you guys got us where we couldn’t get to thank you. And it ended up being something different. And where we’re at now is, where in the beginning I thought the mindset would be we can get them where they need to be at and, you know, we could walk away and go on to our next project.”

Guillermo Avila – “And what’s happened is it’s evolved into, that C-level suite saying, to me and my team, can you guys keep working with us to make sure we never have this happen again?”

Angela Barrett – Yeah.

Guillermo Avila – “And, you know, it was funny. I had one CFO tell me that in such a huge compliment. The CEO went to him one day and said, listen, is it really necessary, you know, to keep Garima and his team around? You know, there’s there’s an expense having them around. And the CFO told him it is cheaper having them on our team than it is not having them.”

Guillermo Avila – “You know, and the whole point was the amount of money that they were losing, running these projects into the ground was far more costly than having 1 or 2 of us on the team there, and that’s just a huge compliment when they have that much trust in and in my team to get those projects delivered. It’s it’s it’s the biggest compliment.”

Guillermo Avila – “It really is. Absolutely. It’s something that we, we hold dear, that we’ve got clients that believe in us enough that they want us to stick around and keep running other projects for them.”

Angela Barrett – “Yeah. That’s nice. That is I don’t disagree. That’s a that’s a great. Thing when somebody, you know, in my world gives you a recommendation or calls you back to do the same thing again. And, you’re right, that is probably one of the best parts.”

Guillermo Avila – Yeah. It’s awesome. Yeah.

Angela Barrett – “Well, I thank you so much for, talking with me today and, helping me, learn a little bit this morning. I appreciate it. And, we’ll have to get together maybe in about a year and see, what are you guys and how much further you’ve come from today?”

Guillermo Avila – That would be awesome. I would totally welcome that.

Angela Barrett – “Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much.”

Guillermo Avila – Thank you. Angela.