Momentum Episode 32:
How Empire Blueprint Uses Jotform Enterprise to Empower Teams & Clients

How can a company dedicated to helping clients achieve a better work life balance ensure the same for its own employees? Today's guest, John Pierre, CEO of Empire Blueprint in Melbourne, Australia, set out to answer that question by taking a holistic approach to automating workflows and streamlining processes within his organization. In this episode, we explore how Empire Blueprint leverages Jotform Enterprise to transform data collection, boost operational efficiency, and ultimately make life easier not only for their clients, but for their team as well. Welcome to Momentum, a podcast by Jotform where we talk about technology, productivity tips, insights, and best practices that help us move forward in business and in life. Let's get started. Three, two, one. Lift off. We have a liftoff.

Hi, John. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Hey Pat, thanks so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. We've been looking forward to this for quite some time. I know we started talking about maybe doing this about a month ago, but I really appreciate you coming on the show to chitchat about Enterprise.

Thank you so much. Makes the two of us also been excited to get on and then glad that one of us booked it because time just has a way of getting away from one. So we're here. We've made it 100%. Yeah. I guess let's start at the beginning. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Empire Blueprint and yourself?

Yeah, sure. Well, I probably should apologize for appearing in a flannel shirt. Empire Blueprint is a digital consulting firm, which I'll get to in a minute, but I'm also a farmer by night. Empire Blueprint by day, co-founder of that. We're a digital consulting firm. What that really means in plain English is we work with manufacturers and cabinet makers and we build systems and tools, train their staff and we support them to grow and scale. I co-founded that two years ago and it's been an awesome experience since. We're currently a team of I think 12, almost 13. Somebody else is getting hired in the next few days and predominantly we're based in Australia but I was just out in the US two months ago because we're launching some products there as well. So that's who we are and we've really found our niche there in manufacturing which has been awesome for us.

At the beginning we started we were like okay what do we do we have so much knowledge and all these tools and then we found that this was the people that we could understand and we could relate to and so about 14 months ago we fully pivoted to focus on that niche and haven't looked back since. So it's been awesome.

Wow. I didn't know that you were so new just two years now.

Yeah. That's pretty crazy. It feels like it's been a lot longer. I think it had been in my mind for a while like anything that's good or one that's creative but from the thought process to the action of doing it had taken a while but it's been two years and actually it could be two years since we've formally been going. I think in year one there was three or three we joke there was three and a half three full-times and a part-timer and then we've since grown to a team of 12 and not only are we Australia and US in terms of services and offering but our team is also right now across the globe there's four or five of us in Australia and the rest is spread out across different countries and obviously we have the joy of balancing different time zones. So yeah, it's been an interesting period that's for sure.

Yeah, we know all about that over here. What would you say is your mission at Empire Blueprint?

That's a great question and we keep finding ourselves redefining it every time we get asked this. But currently today is to make tools and systems accessible to manufacturers who are typically outdated or behind. When we look at the future, we think of something like AI and for a lot of people it's scary and there's fear around it. What we try and do is bridge the gap. We want to be the people that they can count on when they're introducing AI systems, anything that's new or that they're unsure of. And we want to be able to remove that uncertainty. Also, we've learned a part of our mission is to simplify the language and simplify the uptake or the use of that technology inside those businesses which are traditionally male, older, and probably some of the last people to adopt some of this amazing stuff that exists. So our mission is to take what's complex, simplify it, and package it neatly so they can understand it and the better part is so that they can actually start using it today and not have to wait till tomorrow.

Yeah, the stubborn old guys like myself, right? And I guess you had to ask what the mission was a few months ago, it was probably more longwinded. So, we found over the past two years, we had this huge idea and it was really vague as we're progressing, which has been awesome. We're able to refine it and define it a bit clearly. So I dare say next time we speak I'll probably have a nail to a sentence. But we're definitely there to simplify the chaos and to give tools that are easily usable for those people who would normally have waited or been on the receiving end of getting whatever whenever.

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people are in that boat right now. That's great. A lot. What would you say are the main challenges that your clients typically face adapting to this new technology?

I mean there's so many and I guess without sounding rude to anybody it always starts on a personal level. So the age isn't necessarily a barrier but the mindset we found is one of the biggest barriers is I won't be affected. I've been around forever. It's far away. You know there's some limiting beliefs there that would force us to say well whilst you may have been correct or you may think you're correct, we would highly encourage you to think outside of the box. Times are moving faster than we ever anticipated. And so some of the problem areas that people know what they should do inherently. I think God created us with this innate ability to understand what we should do. But a lack of either clarity on how to execute or a lack of ability to know how to take that first step. So it's been interesting. People know what they should do in their business, but watching them do it, giving them the right tools again and taking away from the confusion because right now I think we live in a world where information is everywhere. And how do you decipher what's just information and what's knowledge? And then once you've got that knowledge, which I think is the highest level of information, how do you then use that in your business and make it actionable? So we find a lot of our clients just almost confused. So in the sea of information, they're lost and drowning, which is ridiculous because there's so much there.

Well, that's precisely the problem. They almost don't know where to begin and then they don't know who to turn to.

Yeah. Trying to find the trees through the forest, as they say. So we hope to be a north star, a guiding light, a beacon that says, "Hey, cut the crap. Don't worry about all the noise. Here's what you need." And I guess just back speaking to who we do this for, manufacturers and cabinet makers, because we understand them so well, we're able to really communicate with them in their language and meet them at their level, which has been the most amazing thing because once again, the tech is so advanced and the tech is so smart and can be so grandiose at the best of times. And you've just got tradesmen who have just made this happen and they've just learned along the way and the gap in knowledge is massive. So we see ourselves as the people who are responsible for we have a moral obligation to help them bridge the gap to be able to connect the systems with the people.

Yeah. That's amazing. What would you say made you start looking for a more integrated or holistic solution? What wasn't working for you that made you decide to go in that direction?

Okay. It's probably a two-part, it's probably a three-part question which I can answer just to give context. So, before I got into co-founding a tech startup, I was running the hair and beauty supply shop for 10 years of my adult life. I was selling hair products to women and now I'm selling software to men. So, that's a cool story in and of itself, but I was really good at being efficient and I understood what needed to be done. It then happened to be I had retired by 28, lived life on the 100 acre farm that I own and done nothing for six months thinking I got lucky. Quite quickly that dream became a nightmare because I was single, young and alone and all of a sudden I was just like this is horrible. And so a friend calls me out of the blue and says hey I know what you've done with your business. It's completely unrelated but you're an efficient operator. Do you think you could help me? I've got a piece of software. Do you think you could integrate it? I'm like yeah no at the time I was watching Yellowstone. I started reframing my fence to look like it and I was getting carried away, built a camping site and so I stole but within 2 months I obviously say yes. That then led me down a path of understanding the power of software. Now I'd used it before but never to that degree. Once I advanced from that was called the job man, the first software that we started working with. Once I got past that first barrier of issues they were facing in project management I quickly realized that whilst they said that was the issue it wasn't the issue. It was one I'd want to say two ten if you will 20% of the larger problem and so I think my hand was forced in two ways. A I had already committed to helping them and they thought they had a solution but I was forced to find a more comprehensive solution. And so as I dove deeper into the business learning an industry to me which was foreign and new at the time we're talking now that just over 2 years ago so April 23 I was I had to find a way to make it work. And I also felt that I was just getting so much incoming data. I just sit there with like a barrage of data, you know, like someone just shooting me with a bloody fire trying to drink out of a fire hydrant or a fire hose, I think is the expression. And I had come across our co-founder at the time, John Luke, and he'd used Jotform before and said, "Hey, I think this is going to be the solution to most of our problems. As we know, there's no silver bullets." But he was right. It helped me solve, I think, 60 of that missing 80%. And since then, we've just not only have we ran with it, but I think we've flown with the software that you've created and with the way that we use it. And that was highlighted by Richard when we first signed up. We were asking questions before we began which were well ahead of where we were at the time. And so from a trajectory point of view, we've just maintained that and we've been really really happy that we've made that decision. We built a lot of our business early days. It's still early days, but a huge part of that business was initially built on and remains built on the Jotform platform and the software.

Wow, that's crazy. So, did you start with like the free plan and then you slowly worked your way up or did you go straight to I think for two days?

Two days. I think for two days you plan. At the time I was helping lead another business. I was CEO of another business which in Australia is NDIS for healthcare and I'd signed the two companies up at the same time. That one still uses like I think a free plan or the one up from there because they just do a few forms and it's quite basic. Okay. The second I realized what could be done I had these epiphies go off and I write at the farm where I live. I've got a huge wall which has now become a whiteboard. But I used to write on the wall and I was like finally I found a solution that can take these questions and problems and statements out of my head, put them somewhere they can be easily accessible to others and then I could actually map what to do with the data on the other end. And so yeah, whilst we started on wherever we started, I think within the week we closed the deal and moved to enterprise and we haven't even considered to look back since. I don't think it's that we haven't looked back. It hasn't even been a consideration because we have such a heavy and important reliance on what we do with the software.

Yeah. What would you say was like early on was the thing that made you think this is the solution like enterprise specifically? What was it about enterprise that made you make the jump from the regular normal plans?

I guess to be honest obviously there's two things to consider here. One is there's well there's other alternatives it wasn't just Jotform so we did our due diligence across three or four that were at that level and John Luke he takes all the credit for that and rightfully he should he's the one who settled on this because he's used it he's done his due diligence and said this is the one and then I said okay well now you've got to justify the cost right we ran some quick numbers and said if we don't do this it was likely to cost us four to six months extra in development time to get off the ground. And so, however you value your time, however much or little, four to six months is for me is a huge amount of time. And when he said, "We can bridge that gap a lot sooner. We can get MVP up and running. We can start actually making some money. We can start crushing some of your goals, but more importantly, we can take some of that burden off your shoulders and get that stuff that was in your mind out. I was all for it." The reason Enterprise was critical was because we were using the system in a way that wasn't the norm. How can we really just gone and built forms and it's been the end of it for us. The way that we report out the back of it, the way that we spit out PDFs and that we do other amazing stuff that I didn't even know was possible. I still keep learning stuff today was really what sold us. And then what's kept us is the continual advancements. I mean, you've got AI agents, you've got your boards, workflows, the app just keeps growing and doing a lot more. And that we're actually able to get rid of some other subscriptions that we have and bring everything in house. A, it's better from a costing point of view and B, we're able to be more centralized. So, it's a better user experience for both us, our team, but also our clients.

Can you talk me a little bit through the enterprise resource planning implementation process? It's something that you talked a lot about in the case study that we did with you. I'd love to hear more about the ERP setup and implementation and what it looked like before and after Jotform.

So it starts like this in the same shirt. So back in September last year, my brother and his wife gave birth to their beautiful son and I did a two-day stint just staying in them for moral support in hospital as a big brother should. And I also had a looming deadline and I needed to meet that deadline and I wasn't going to miss the birth of my nephew. And so I stay up, I do the thing. I think for two or three days I'm in the same bloody shirt. Like I haven't gone home and then I go straight to the office. I then start playing back audio. I have 16 hours of audio that I've recorded over three days from a client I was consulting with. And I think I end up asking between 15 to 1,700 questions. Wow. Well, how do I know this? Because yours truly had to sit there, listen to the audio and then actually just type out and digest it and figure out what I was trying to say. I was trying to make this repeatable and scalable. Good news is since then, thanks to you guys, we have and I'll get to that in a minute. So, in my head, I'm racking my brain like this can't be life. It cannot be this hard. We should there's no way there's no way we can scale this. Like, it's too much. And so, what I end up doing is realizing that there was a pattern in what I was saying. I've been doing it for a few years now and then realized that every question I was asking in a word doc we've been using Jotform for smaller things but never for something of this size. Then I have the epiphany. I'm like, I wonder. And so I start building out it. I start building it out first of all in a word doc. And that moves to an Excel spreadsheet, which was ridiculous. The biggest one we'd had to date. I give that to my tech team and I'm like, I need you to build this in Jotform. They're like, we can't. We're going to break the system. I'm like, well, it's okay. Try. And so I think they end up building a form which is like 1,700 questions across two days that I ask. Wow. And they're two full days. So it's 16 hour days. They then build out 2,000 conditions with conditional logic formatting and like a bunch of wizardry which is I mean I knew about it when they were building it. They're like you're asking for a lot. I said I know we don't know if the system can take it. I'm like it can't and we don't know if we're competent. I'm like you've got this. What do you need like more caffeine more time? You've got it. Just get through it. And so I think there's two or three of them working on it for the course of seven days straight. And they get there and at first it glitches. At first we glitch because I'm reframing what we want and then they figure out how to make this thing work and we get to a point where we now have built out a form inside an application which our trainers who if you watched any of my YouTube content as corporate cowboy when I fly or our trainers fly they now get to take this app with them. We obviously have an audio recording device to capture the data, but we've also got the question set. And now what used to be something that only I could do because I was the smartest or no one could be like me is it was a complete mess right? It was I just hadn't taken the time required. And I think this is great for any business owner. It's like I'm not, you know, I can't be duplicated or I need a clone. It's like you can do that. You've just got to put in the time and there's a lot of time and a lot of effort. And so once I put in the time and effort running on bugger all sleep because of the birth of the nephew I just was on some kind of high and I power through I create the questions within two weeks from his birth to the form being created I've got a tool the following day so I think they finished on the Sunday the Monday I'm in Queensland on a project and I remember just reaching out to the group saying you bloody legends like you just did this freaking awesome thank you so much and so now I had a way of storing data and the better part was and that I'd love to share this with anybody who's listening is because we understood early on that we were building out such a big question set and coding was important. We're able to code what we were doing and then the audio transcript can be run through an AI model, pick up the pieces and then go out and fill out the form. And so that was awesome. Why do I tell you that? Because that's for us how we started in the ERP space. ERP is enterprise resource planning. It is a tool like any other tool for big companies who have many moving parts. And so for us, manufacturers use it all the time. It's got CRM built into it. It's got payroll built into it, accounting functionality. It's the mother lode, if you will. And so we use it as a way to capture data for certain ERP systems like Jobman, like Energy, like ODU, like Microsoft Dynamics. And we capture the data when we're in consults with clients. And then we're able to retain it and present it in such a way that when my team goes out to build the systems for the people who have consulted, they've got this awesome repository, if you will, that is neat, tidy, perfect, everything straight away. They literally pick up the PDF and know that that data belongs in those fields. And so what we saw now was our build time, it was ridiculous. Our build times of system went from 8 to 12 weeks to like first it went to 6 to 10 and then it went from 4 to 8. Wow. And that's huge when you're talking to anyone from an implementation point of view because that's time saved, that's effort saved, that's headache saved, and for me as the founder, it's phone calls I don't have to get like, hey, what's this? What did you mean when you did this? And now it's scalable. And so I couldn't have done any of that and my team couldn't have done any of that without Jotform Enterprise. We couldn't be as good as we are and as powerful as we're becoming as we're growing in the ERP space for manufacturers had we not done it the way that we've done it in Jotform.

Wow. That's amazing. Two logic steps. I apologize if it was the long way home, but I think it's important to give context.

Yeah. And by the way, the system handles that. You know, that's the best part. There was times where it was slow, but certain updates have happened. We've also become wiser in how we break and share information and it's really been a powerhouse of its own. I mean I could see companies solely running their whole enterprise just on in many ways especially from a collection point of view and back to what we were saying you've got the workflows the AI agents like god knows what's coming next. It really is becoming a powerhouse an exciting one actually.

Yeah. I'll pass that along to everybody upstairs. Yeah. I guess moving on a little bit to your client side of things. You've built custom apps for your clients using Jotform as well, right? What do those apps typically do? What do they look like? What's the process of that?

So, they look prettier than anything I've seen so far. And so, what happens is we started building them out as a gift. We wanted to get our repetitions in. We wanted to see how far could we push for the subscription we're paying and what could we achieve out of it. And boy oh boy did we meet that criteria. So you go from creating forms and just sending people links to putting them inside an app which is a pretty user interface. Then we kind of leveled up on we're like okay so now I can get them capturing all the data they need to capture. But the system that we were creating for them, which at the time was solely Job Man in the ERP space, they still had to go into the browser and find it. We said, "Well, we can just embed that in the app." So, we did. And then I said, "Wait a minute. I'm traveling the world telling the world what I do for Empire Blueprint, who I am, and where we're going. And I've got a YouTube channel, and so does Empire Blueprint. So, why isn't that on the app?" And so we start thinking, okay, the app now on their phone, see if I can find you one, is the central piece of their world. I mean, there is no world outside of it. I mean, we're so proud of it because what it now did was take data collection and answering basic boring questions into the palm of a user who for us would be on the factory floor in real time. So for us it's a lot of iPads in the workplace or tablets and you've just got these men who are just walking around saying this is so bloody easy like as if we didn't have this all along and that is all credit to the software but also to the team internally we said wait we can still one up what we've done and I repeat in the early days we were just gifting these apps we were just saying let's build it and try they become such a they become a sellable item for us and so we've got predefined apps that a client can take and say I want my business to look and operate in that world to look like that. It's been a game changer because you're just putting what you need where you need it but in people's hands like this is the end goal I think of any business especially as we head into the future.

That's so cool to hear. And also at all levels of staff, may I add? From management and founders and directors through to factory workers and then even field workers and on-site installers. We've never really seen such a collaboration or a centralization of data in one place, especially in the industry that we service.

Yeah, that's amazing to hear. So, you built that all completely from scratch using Jotform. I take no credit for it. I sat there and said, can we do this? That's not good enough. Can you fix that? John Luke's the team and the division who build apps, all credit to them, but they are a powerhouse of their own. They simply operate in the world of app creation and process enhancement. That is all they do. We've got staff and teams dedicated just to make that happen. You can take credit. You just I told them what to do.

Yeah. I told them it was my bright idea. But no, they came up with the idea and I was just able to relate back what the clients wanted in the field as I was traveling and getting the real life experience and then really simplifying the language just to make sure that it made sense. Again, bridging their capital. All that we aim to do is bridge the gap between AI the future and manufacturers.

And you're able to change that as you go along and try and figure out new ways of making it better, more streamlined. There's no two apps that have stayed the same for any one client. Every time we get new information, we've gone through and done an update. We now have a monthly update that happens for anybody who's interested. Once they've taken the app, it's like, "Okay, here's what it costs the app and here's what you can have." And we do our monthly updates and minor changes. It's been a hit. It's been an awesome hit. Really has.

That's so cool. Switching gears a little bit. I know you're using Jotform Enterprise for HR and onboarding as well. Is that on your side of things or on the client side of things?

Well, it's twofold. The answer is both. It started with us. It always starts with us. How do we become the best business that we can be? How do we become profitable, scalable? How do we have better people? How do we maintain and acquire the talent? And so everything I think in business is people. So much so that we believe God didn't create people for systems. And that's why we build systems for people. You know, that's how that's our ethos, if you will, to that degree. And so with people at the center of everything that we do, it only made sense to try and refine the process of our own nature. Because as we were progressing on our journey and as we are, we're starting to get a lot better talent. It's like, well, this is awesome. We didn't expect we'd have these kind of people coming on board this early. It's been amazing for us. As a human, it's been quite surreal if I can be honest. What that meant was now they were demanding more and we now needed to up our game. And so when I sat with John Luke, I said, "Hey, we need to fix something." He goes, "I know what to do." We sat there for two days at the farm on that big whiteboard which has now taken over my dining room and wrote down almost every question that we asked that is getting us a result and what we needed to ask what we didn't. I think we built 50 to 60 forms off the back of our HR process through our seven stages.

John Luke and the team went and put that into our internal app and then an onboarding app. If you're the applicant when you sign up with EB, when you're inquired to work with us, it takes you down whole process. That process is purely guided through Jotform. And so it's been amazing what it's also done once we did that. It gave us the idea, well, hold on, this is sellable to our clients. This is we've just solved a problem and here's a solution was and so the HR app was born for manufacturers whereby they can onboard staff, train staff, manage staff really performance management and then when they need to if they need to leave and everything else in between. So it's been awesome.

Wow. Did the app start out that way too? Like you built your own internal app for Empire Blueprint?

Everything. Wow. Everything asked, everything was just you've built so many great forms team, but like I'm busy and I'm foolish at the best of times. Where the hell do I find this thing? You know, okay, you've sent me a link somewhere. I don't want links on links. Can you give me something? I want easier. I want better. I want faster and simpler. And so that was their own doing. I do want to add one thing because I love quantifying things. I think it's very important. We saw an average our clients who are the cabinet makers in Australia when I say clients this is the demographic we were targeting initially with the app would take between 22 to about 29 hours to onboard. Wow. We did multiple case studies and we had everyone knows this paper like that and signatures upon signatures and repetition of data. By the time we were done, the average report time on how that 22 to 29 became was one and a half to three hours. And I mean it's at that stage we were like, "Holy smokes." Like this is something else. We'd done it internally. I knew how much time it saved me. My dog was loving me for it. The cows at home were happy because I was back at home more often. But I'd never seen it in a client environment. So much so that after doing it for the first client, I get a call out of the blue six months later. So we do the project and we walk. Support's done. We're all done. I get a call and she says, "I'm pregnant." Said, "Okay." She said, "Thanks to you. It's been six years working at my husband's business. I've been trying to get out. Can't get out. I'm in HR. I'm in admin. I'm in accounts. I'm everything and nothing kind of role, which is the most important ones, by the way. And everyone's got someone who does that." So the time was absolutely killing her. And then the stress and the toll on her body had obviously had an impact because she was always stressed about her business and her husband and like like any good people do they try to do their best for their business and for their team. So after us within that six month period she called and said I'm not saying that this is the reason why but I dare say that because I've got time back and because I'm not as stressed because things can now run without me because of what you and the team have built. Thank you Empire Blueprint. Thanks to you guys I'm now pregnant and I'm expecting a baby boy. Wow. And you know, you hear stories of people like starting out to do good and to like do something nice and say, "We care for money and we care for business, but we care about people." You hear that, but very rare is it to get a true story where someone says, "Thank you, who took the time out of their day." And then to go on and say, "Because of you and the work that you did, you gave me my life back." And so once we heard that again I speak about we feel like we have a moral obligation to bridge the gap because there is so much things out there available and there's such a great group of people who know they exist they just don't know where to start and so when you tell me what is our mission I can't say that at the start it's to help families stay together or get together or grow it sounds a bit odd but at the end I know underpinning all of this is giving people time back to do what God created them to do and that is to be together with that love not to be at work. Of course, we must work hard, but not ridiculously hard and all the time. This is not how we were created as humans. And so fundamentally, everything we do is not only is it saving time, does this give the person back life, does it give them back time that is valuable? And if the answer is yes, we put all our effort into making that happen. And since then, we've had so many case studies come out and say, with the time you've saved me, my kids are now saying, "Daddy, I'm home." I mean, the pregnancy one was the first one. And so it will forever stick with me. But wives who called and said, "Well, thanks to you, he's finally home for dinner." He just hadn't been home for 10 years. So we didn't do anything. No, you did. What did we do? You just took away the burden of his daily things. He still works just as hard. He still does lots of hours, but you've now given him, and I think to anybody watching this, I really want you to hear this. Empire Blueprint has given him the option, whereas before he had no option. As business owners, we can tend to put ourselves in a position where you just got to work to feed the beast and then therefore you become a slave to it. Empire Blueprint with Jotform gives people the option to have their life back. Then it's their choice as to what they do with it. They want to be home great. They want to golf great. That's amazing. And for some they say, "We don't want to be home with a nagging partner. We'd rather stay at work." And we say, "Sure." And we've given you the option. And so that's what we do, right? Rebuild tools and give the option to have their time back and do with it whatever they please.

Literally changing lives. That's amazing. That's an incredible story. It sounds good to say it out loud without context. I'm always hesitant because everyone's on a mission to make the world better, but I don't want to sound fluffy, but definitely we have and we are and we do that by using tools and just speaking the language of people and simplifying as much as we can along the way.

Yeah, I love that sound bite of, you know, we build don't build people for systems, build systems for people. Took me a while to get it right, but we believe God didn't create people for systems, so we built systems for real people.

Yeah, that's a once by accident cafe. I was practicing in early days what we do and it was like I'm not getting it. Like she's not getting it. I've said everything and then I just looked at I said, "Okay, I'm going to try something." and I just blurted it out and she looked at me I'm like again she's like she nodded I said and then I quickly wrote it and so quite quickly that became something that I've carried with me since that point in time which is I think that's the crux of who we are and the reason why we exist. If I could pin it down to one thing it's exactly that belief and then from there everything is based around the people first and it's just beautiful what you can create when you have the user experience in mind.

Yeah. Our core value is prioritizing people. Everything else is second.

Yeah, that's a great motto. Yeah, you got to trademark that.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to. Yeah, that's great. Going back to kind of the more mundane stuff, but like you also use the e signature side of Jotform for a lot of different things, right? Jotform sign. Do you mind walking us through what that process is like?

I guess that's a really straightforward answer. We were using DocuSign. Didn't need to pay the additional subscription. Jotform came up with a sign. It was a no-brainer. We're already paying one subscription. Most of our weld is there. We were raising our scope of works through Jotform. So, it made sense to keep it in the same environment. Anyway, so our scope of works tools, which allow us to quote, propose, and then move forward with work, were already built as templates in Jotform. We were populating data from one generic form that would fill out 20 pages of T's and C's and all the agreements and all the fun stuff, if you will. And then all that was missing was we'd have to download it and then upload it into DocuSign to be signed. So it was just it wasn't even a thought process. They've come up with it. Great. Cancel that one. Move everything there.

And it's fast, it's easy, and it's once again I speak back to being centralized. Having it all under one roof really makes a difference. We then started teaching our clients on how to do that. So when they were sending out things for their clients, if they were designing kitchens, a bathroom, if they were building out beautiful bedrooms and furniture in hotels, this is who our clients are and what they service, new homes, apartments, hotels, and anything in between, anything you can think of, anything that you probably touch. But think of really common areas. So kitchen and bathroom, they're able to get signoffs way quicker, way easier through Jotform Sign. It just sped up the whole process for us and for the clients at the service.

DocuSign's awesome and so is any other signing thing. We've gone through a few there. I think that I don't want to be saying anything wrong about them. They're awesome and great, but when Jotform came up with it, it's just like why do we need two of it? You know, reminds me of the tacos. I like, can't we have both? You know, soft or hard tacos? We only need one. And so, I think I asked me and I did this. It was a no-brainer. Just makes sense.

Yeah, it made sense. Made sense. It made dollars, so we got to save some money as well.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's kind of the name of the game. You were talking at the beginning of clients who have just tons and tons of backlogs of data and older clients who are kind of rooting through that sea of data. Can you kind of talk about how you're able to use Jotform Enterprise to kind of bring all of that data under one roof and kind of consolidate everything and automate it?

Yes. So, we use Jotform heavily for data collection. What we're now working on outside of Jotform is our own tool. We're currently creating our own software which will be dashboards. And what that allows us to do is to visualize all the data that has been received through Jotform. We bring it into the Jotform world. We package it the way we need it and then we go and visualize it elsewhere. What that's done is anything that was paper is now been once off. Normally they would scan it and file it. We said, "Whoa, whoa, boy. It's the language I use. I'm allowed to, right? I live on a farm. That's okay." So I'd go into I could go from the barnyard to the boardroom and I'd probably still use the same language. What in the world are you doing? Whoa, stop. There's got to be a better way. How about you enter the data in here once and you never have to worry about the filing cabinet again? And so for a lot of these businesses, we've been able to pretty much eliminate the filing cabinet, but just keep it there as like a relic. It's almost become an empty. It's there, but empty. We then take the data that was once on pen and paper. Somebody internally has the crappy job if you will because it's a job that needs to be done of uploading the data into a form into a tool into an app that is then housed inside the team environment in the way we build we create the different teams for our different clients. It is then filtered the way that we need it and now we're currently working on outside of Jotform which we're proud of which is a creation of our own from a visualization point of view. If you've reported on metrics and numbers, we're now able to tell you, for example, how many people did you hire? How long were they in the hiring process for? What is their median age? What is their skill set? What did they study? And we're able to start taking those predefined questions and that's all because we've understood the challenge at hand, ask the bloody right question, I mean ask it well, thoroughly figure out how they're going to get the answer and then map that data back to somewhere where anybody who needs to see it can see it. So now we've got worlds where our clients can log on and they can see from the onboarding process they're able to pop as a manager it populates a different screen which is a live dashboard how many candidates are going through age sex studies qualifications and you don't have to go back and filter through each one so it's become an absolute powerhouse for how we collect and store data.

I remember I was reading in your case study that you had turned some 5 to 10 million dollar companies into structured businesses by being able to take all that data and kind of centralize it into one hub. Can you maybe share with us a success story that comes to mind?

I won't name names, but there was a company that was at I think it was like 9 to 10 million and making it five percent. Our average clients it's between 5 to 25 million in Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada. And that's in manufacturing. But if we would niche down one more time, we say cabinet making and what you'd call joinery or mill works. And so this company was on 9 to 10 million. There was a bar like that's where they were. We didn't get involved to help increase their top line. They were fine with that. They already at capacity. The issue was they were only earning 5%. Their bottom line just absolutely like just sucked. I mean, that's me being involved. The reason was they had too many people doing the same thing because they could never get it right the first time. So, after we enter, I think we were on that contract for 12 months, we end up seeing that 5% overtime, and it's not all due to us, but we take a huge portion of the credit. I think it shifts from 5 to 13%. And what it really looks like is this. It's very simple. Is if you don't know what you're doing, you need more bodies to do it and it's going to take longer. Once we got in equipped with the job with our knowledge of the industry and the tool, we said, "Wait a minute." So, we'd sit there, we'd work for what they were doing, we'd then go off and build the form. The form would actually mirror their current process. Now, instead of needing three people, they needed one. So, the other two were either reskilled or said, "Well, we needed a reason. You weren't performing anyway." So it moved on. Overdoing that for 12 months and storing that data how it could be used and not having to ask the admin lady, ah where's that again? And then there's half an hour lost. The time lost was a huge contributor to that additional 8%. But also the time saved in not having to go and find what was already at your fingertips because you don't know where the hell you buried it. Two, and then there's a third thing. I apologize now because what you knew what you were doing, you were able to start repeating the process. This is what they've gone on every time they were doing the same thing like hiring for example or a quality control on a kitchen they've just built which had a defect. Every time someone scratching his head yeah not sure what happened why it's just bloody hell. How can you not know what you're doing? Like you've been doing this thing for 10 years. There was no formal way of documenting the process. Enter Empire Blueprint. All of a sudden like what are you doing? Like you know what you're doing. Why is anyone writing this down? So we first workflow the process. We then go out, we build our forms to capture data. We then build our apps to give them back to say when you do that QC, can you just take a few pictures because the app allows you to do that. Can you take a few pictures and if it's wrong, can you draw a red circle and say this is why it's wrong and who did it. All of a sudden, you had a business that was cohesive. You no longer had to run between departments to get across message. You could just hit submit and bang, whoever needs to get an email was notified. And so it was like wizardry for them. And like that's the ultimate AI for a lot of our clients were like that's nothing like it hasn't even started but like how do people want to go paperless all right when they're still using pens and so for us it was give me the pen I'll give you an iPad okay and so it started like we JL wrote an article about going penalist before you go paperless because it's a lot of it as I said is is the mindset and the thought process so how we've helped them is we've given them structure where they had none we've given them a format when they had none they knew everything in their head but they could tell knew nothing on paper. Everything lived inside someone head. And if somebody got old and retired or somebody was fired, it was the end of the world. You had to go through that whole two-year learning curve again. And all of a sudden, not only HR or onboarding, but training was a real cost to the business. So once you start removing these things, because we ended up developing a training system for them. We put it inside an app. We put YouTube videos inside the app. We put in forms. We put in widgets. Like it was comprehensive. There was assessments. They couldn't believe that that was the same business. We said, "We haven't done anything new. We've just taken what you've done and put it in a way that's easily consumed by your staff." And the uptake was ridiculous. So again, over the course of that time, the idea for us wasn't to increase sales. Our marketing team wasn't involved on this build. It was our process enhancement team and our workflow development team. We got together and collaborated internally. I would go out with one of the juniors and consult. We'd find out what they were doing, right? Come back and I tell the team, "I need you to build X, Y, and Zed." they'd build it and we did the iteration for 12 months. You saw a client who'd worked for 30 years at 9 million earning 5%. Move up within that 12 month period up to 13. They couldn't believe it. Yeah. And because people think to make more money, they've got to sell more. It's like you've got holes in your pockets. How about you plug them first before you go and get more? And so that was our philosophy and it still remains that way is fix the problems first, nail it, then scale. I think a lot of people just want to grow, grow, grow. I just like what are you doing? That's so much more work and you're only getting a little bit. How about you fix what God's given you already? Make sure those problems don't exist and then you can scale to the moon. Yeah. And that's what we do for all day every day.

That's great advice. I love the analogy of the holes in the pockets. Like you need to sew those things up. And the more pressure you put on something like that, the bigger they become. If anybody's ever got anything, little hole in your pocket, you lose a 5-cent coin or a dime. Over time, somehow you start losing bigger things. And at the end, your mobile phone ends up down to your sock. We've all had some crappy experience like that. Yeah. You could have stopped that when it was that big. You thought if I do more of the thing that will fix it. No, you didn't. Not only do you have to do more work because now you got to manage more sales and a bigger team that's doing that. You now also created a bigger problem. You think you've done something good, but I promise you had you spent that time in fixing your systems, the growth you would have got just in keeping the margin and increasing the bottom line and that extra profit would have far outweighed the additional sales that you worked for. And so I think people are really interesting. We always look more more more. How about we start looking at what can we do better that we've already got. That's our approach is relax with them all. Promise you we'll get there. I'm not going to do more of the wrong thing. We're going to do more and better of what's working. And then I promise you we'll double down on what's working because then you've got a scalable, repeatable business that can grow. And then you can plug in AI stuff and now you're on. Now you're cooking. Now you're going to crush it. Cooking with gas.

Yeah, that's all great. Really great insights and great advice for businesses to scale. Especially businesses that have been kind of stuck in one thought process for a long long time. I know there are so many businesses like that that are just kind of stuck in the pen and paper. Fundamentally, it's a human flaw. It's just the way that each of us as people address the topic. I mean, I don't hide the fact. I make not quiet about I think I'm quite loud, but not in a rude way. It's like people listening, you have the ability to change what you do to have a better life and to have a better business. The way of thinking that got you here got you here. It's not going to get you there. So if you unless you say I'm happy here, which is fine, but if you've got a goal to grow there, you cannot rely on, well, I used to do this. It worked. Used to, my friend, not anymore. Leave it at the door. Thank God it got you where it's got you. Now it's time to level up and move on. And you can do that by really taking a long hard look at, okay, what's the business doing well and you just need to double down on that. You just need to keep getting better at the basics. That's the stuff you can automate in the future. That's the stuff that gives you the competitive edge. It is a focusing on what is the client say is work. What is that user experience that they're enjoying that allows me to keep showing up as the best option every time. And that's all we do is we keep going back every day and doing the basics better and better up until we say, "Okay, we can't make this experience any better. It can't be any faster. It can't be any more seamless." Then we say, "Okay, now we have something that we're ready to show the world."

Yeah, that's amazing. Kind of ushering people into the future and kind of changing that entire mindset. Our clients love using the language, will you hold my hand? And at the start I know it's a weird concept but then I'm like you know what yeah and so yesterday I was speaking to a beautiful lady should be 60 about ready to retire that wants to throw in the towel. I'm like wait we can help you with your business. You don't have to do that just yet. Moral of the story was she said I just have one question. I said sure. What is it? She said I just want to know and I was waiting for it. Will you hold my hand through the journey? Of course. Yeah. Of course. So sometimes that's all people need is someone to guide them through it. And so that's our job, right? Is to be there to support them, encourage them, and guide them along the way.

What's next? What's next for Empire Blueprint? What do you optimize next?

Yeah, what do we optimize next? This is exciting for you. So right now the Jobman software that we'd relied on obviously we did the custom implementations for ERP, but I was just in the US as I shared with you earlier this morning. We're just launching our team in the US. We're launching a training product which is awesome. So it gives the champions inside the businesses real life insight how to build the system. So now we don't have to go out building it anymore. I can train the trainers and our trainers will teach the students who will internally become the champions. And so I've got a few workshops coming up remotely like this. I've got one in Nevada, one in Texas, one in Idaho is really exciting for us. But what we're doing is bringing our skill set that we've now honed in for two years on Jobman and on other ERP systems. We're bringing that to students in a way that's like package. So it's really easier for the CEO, director, founder to say, "Oh, I want that." You just buy the thing and this is like you buy the thing and here here's the results. But the best part for you guys is we're building all of that in Jotform. So right now I'm tasked with building out another mega question set which is split over 16 sessions over eight weeks. And yours truly is tasked with what's everything. So those 1500 questions I spoke about earlier when my brother gave birth to his beautiful son Isaiah, I now have to reframe all of that as though I'm teaching students. That's going to now go into forms into our app. And the first iteration of that was actually almost like in time for this was completed yesterday. Because we have a show in 10 that we have an expo in Melbourne in 10 days that we need to be exhibiting at. And that is going to be our holy grail. That's our hail Mary if you will. The scalability as a company is look at that. Don't you want to get that? Don't you want to be trained like that? And so we're super super excited. But that's what I'm currently optimizing at the moment.

Wow. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Just for context for anybody watching, it's taken me two and a half days to figure out one framework. I will now be able to do the remaining 15 within one day. So anybody watching this who's on the grind, who's trying to make stuff happen. It's just like it's taxing. It's tiring. Sometimes it feels like it's all for nothing.

Yeah, I get it. That's business. That's life. Don't give up on the basics. Don't you dare think of stopping. Just keep going. Sometimes the first one can take three to four to five times longer than you would even anticipate. Like it's wild. But then the fact that one could take me two and a half days, but then 15 could take me a day. Like that's saying something. And that is purely credit to anybody who just gets in and does the thing and has a system like Jotform which can document the process and give it what I like to call a logical sequential flow. So things just make sense innately. We're human. We want things to be easy. Guys, if you can understand this concept, and I know that you can, you can nail that and you can use Jotform to document and hold that for you. What's waiting for you there on the other end is out of this world. For us, this it's changed our business and allowed us to grow. Couldn't have done it without it.

I can't think of a better place to stop. It's truly inspiring which I didn't expect to be inspired by this, but really some amazing advice and very inspiring to hear. And you making me want to come out and visit your farm and come over to Melbourne.

50 minutes out of the city north of Melbourne, 100 acre farm. We run black Angus cattle. Gives me the name corporate cowboy. If anybody's watching this, you like to follow more, please. You can see me on YouTube to get to follow my antics between being a farmer, a friend, and a founder. They're the three things I think I get credit for and everything else in between. But thank you so much for having me on. I'm really really glad that we did this. And I also probably look forward to doing this again either with you because our podcast is about to start, but even whether that happens or not, I'd love to touch base with you in 6 to 12 months and get to share with you our journey and just how far we've progressed.

Yeah, that would be amazing. I would love that. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure.

I really enjoyed it as well. Hopefully we can chat again soon. Thanks so much, Patrick.