in this episode of ZacCast, The Origin Story, Patrick and I chat about the many failed ventures we've had in the past 10 years of side hustling, and how we finally found a niche that needed scratching. Also, we talk about some puns. What lessons did we learn, and how have we tried to apply them to our jobs in city management? Stay tuned to find out. This is ZacCast, episode one. Here we go. Hey, Patrick.

Hey, Chad. What's up?

Just figured we could talk about how we got to this point.

Yeah, why we're doing a podcast at this point?

Yeah.

You know, that's- it's kind of the how did we get to the point where we feel comfortable enough doing a podcast?

Yes.

There you go.

Took a little while. So, uh, we, we mentioned a little bit in the, the teaser, the trailer, if you will, uh, you know, h- how we met, where we... sort of our goals as we were getting into this field. Uh, but it probably would be a good idea, 'cause a lot of people don't know us.

That's correct, yes.

How, how did we go from being city managers to running a company? Um, and not just your traditional consulting company, but, like, a legitimate software as a service company.

Yeah, absolutely. So I, I think, I think the first thing to say is, is that, um, I think we always had that goal from day one. Uh, I think when you and I met each other, and to kind of start the whole story off, you know, Chad and I both went to the University of North Texas, uh, for MPA. Um, I'm a big Aggie, he's a big Longhorn fan. You know, we kind of meshed together in class. I was loud, he was quiet- ... all those great types of things. Uh, but the talk, originally, I, I think we both had this, this tilt towards government efficiency. Uh, and we noticed that we happened to kind of work in the same place, in the same area, uh, for the same community, and so we started to carpool together in grad school. Uh, and that was really the opportunity where we got to know each other, 'cause it was a good 40-minute drive each way. And as we started to carpool, we started to kind of have these, uh, really interesting brainstorming sessions, where we would talk about all the things that we could do to improve, uh, you know, what we were about to get into, was w- which was government management, city management specifically. Uh, so, you know, kind of getting us started there, we, you know, we came up with a concept of we, we were always going to have this side hustle. We, we knew that we would have a side hustle from day one.

Very millennial of us.

It was very millennial of us. Before anybody, like, really knew that millennials would do that, right? I mean, we were-

Yeah

... we're, we're obviously both at, like, the beginning of the millennial line.

Yes.

Right?

There's, like, a crossover generation, I can't remember what they call it.

Yes.

But it's, like, the, like, '80, '82 to about '86-

Correct

... where you s- you didn't get the internet until, like, high school.

Yeah, we had to da, da, da, da, -

Yes

... internet. Yeah.

Yeah. But we're still technically in that, in that cohort.

Correct.

Yeah.

You waited for the CompuServe, uh, DVD in your mailbox.

Yeah. So you would get AOL CDs, and they would give you 10 free hours.

That's correct, yes.

Which seemed, at the time, like this amazing amount of time to surf the web- ... but it's not, and then when you think about how slow everything was -

That's correct, yes

... it took you 10 minutes just to get logged in.

Very much so. So-

Yeah

... uh, so-

10 hours did not go very far.

Yeah, so, so we started... obviously, we started this relationship. We, we were driving, we came up with these brainstorms. We knew we were gonna side hustle. Uh, I think we both admit we're millennials when it comes to that from a management perspective and, and work. Uh, and the ideas just started flowing. Uh, and I don't think we ever truly understood, you know, where those ideas would take us or, or that we would be successful with those ideas, but, uh, here we are, doing a podcast.

Yeah. We pretty much just looked for anything that would, that would hit.

Correct.

Right? We tried -

Yes

... a lot of things. I think the first thing that we tried, uh, we called it My City Hall, and it was one of those apps where, uh, residents could, you know, report potholes and things like that-

Mm-hmm

... kind of before that became a thing. Um, it never took off, but that's okay, because even though a lot of people use those or a lot of cities pay for that service, it seems not to be a very useful service. Like, I, I've never really seen any city that's used one that's been super happy with it.

Correct. Yeah, I mean, I, I think, uh, I think cities have, have found it hard to get, uh, the actual resident to participate within those programs. It's cool to have it, it's become kind of a-

Just like PR.

It's PR. Yeah, I mean, it really is. It's just a marketing item for cities. I think as we go through this list of all the things we tried and we failed on, one, one of the things that's gonna come up is we were before our time a lot on things like this, right? So, uh, we would hit the market early and have this great idea, and then eventually somebody would come behind us, and cities would actually start paying for it.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so we'll see that a couple times as we move down the road. But when we're talking about My City Hall specifically, I think that was when we thought we would be, like, in the app world.

Yes.

You know, we, we thought we would focus in the app world at that time.

Yes, that would've been '09.

Yeah, 2009, right around there.

So, like, early iPhone apps, Android apps. Yeah.

Yeah. Correct. So, you know, and, uh, brilliant idea at the time, uh, ran across a couple of cities that, uh, you know, a lot of people just didn't want to spend the time, uh, to, to deal with that. And at that point, I don't think we were necessarily, um, pushing to residents within city government like we do now. Um, you know, now, now obviously we are- we're pushing hard information out to then get information out of the residents. And, and, you know, today, it's- there's a lot less pull and there's a lot more push from cities.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so it's, it's a little bit more of a beneficial product now, uh, but the usership is still...

Yeah, and if you think about, though, in, in reality terms-

Yeah

... like, if you're reporting a pothole, it's not exactly safe to run over a pothole and then pick your phone up. So - ... like, by the time you get to a, you know, a s- a place where you can actually report something-

Correct

... um, it's kind of out of your mind.

And in most states, illegal if you're doing it while driving.

Yeah.

Yeah, remind people.

So after that kind of tanked, um-... so I actually, um, uh, started working for the city of Weatherford, and, uh, this was right during the, the recession. Um, we had to slash a lot of services.

Mm.

Especially one of the big things was parks maintenance. So, uh, so w- we actually built an app.

Always the first thing, by the way, parks maintenance, that gets slashed for some reason. Sorry, parks guys.

Well, streets got slashed, too.

Streets got slashed as well, yeah.

That's just a big pool of money.

Yeah.

Uh, but anyway, so, uh, so the parks crews got slashed pretty hard, and everything that they were doing was so paper-based. Like, they would be driving all across the city to pick up work orders. Um, I mean, half their day was literally just driving to and from places to pick up and drop off work orders. So we built this iPad app, uh, that basically put all that stuff in the cloud. Um, it had some, some automation in the first iteration.

Still in the app world at this point, by the way.

Still in the app world.

Yeah.

Um, it was well-received, like, our guys loved it.

Mm-hmm.

We won some kind of award from the Texas Parks and Recreation Association.

It's pretty cool, actually.

Yeah.

We won an award. We were excited.

But when we started trying to productize it, it was just a brick wall.

And, and the big question is, why was it a brick wall, right? It was a gre- it was actually a, a really good product. I think we were proud of what was built and what became of that product, but, um, we, we figured out very quickly, uh, that it changed processes at the city. It changed how normal cities do things.

Totally upended the workflow-

Yeah

... of the, not only the manager, but the day-to-day operator.

And-

It was, if you're gonna use this, you're gonna change your operations.

Correct. Yeah, and I think you need to explain that a little bit. So, um, specifically, how did it change the operations? Because I, I think talking about the efficiencies that we built in this app explains a lot about who we are.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so kind of go through that a little bit.

Okay. So, uh, one example is- um, in order to... So every facility, uh, every work order was tied to a facility. Facility was geocoded so that the app knew where it was located.

Mm-hmm.

So, for example, if you were doing a park inspection, you couldn't fill out the park inspection unless you were physically at the location.

So we had to make sure that the guy was actually doing his job first.

Yes.

Yeah.

'Cause w- it is not uncommon for, uh, for employees to just drive by a location-

Mm-hmm

... check everything off, and move on to the next one, and just, just rapidly get through without actually doing the work. So we wanted to ensure, you know, as sort of a QA, QC-

Mm-hmm

... that they were physically at the location when they're, when they're filling out the form and the inspection. Um, that's a pretty major change. It's an actual, like, accountability, you know, oversight-

Yes

... uh, situation.

You say that so softly, accountability and oversight.

Yes.

It, it, it was, it was tough. I mean, it was tough putting this product out there when, you know, these people lived on these independent islands by themselves-

Mm-hmm

... and, and now we were gonna track them. And this was even kind of before, you know, the, the world of, like, GPS vehicle tracking, like the FedEx and the UPS, and, you know, what's gotten-

Well, at least in terms of using it for analytics purposes.

Yes, correct. I mean-

For, for oversight purposes, it was a thing, but-

Yes. Yeah.

We had very tentative or preliminary, uh, sort of AI systems that would, that would help the mid-level managers find crews that, um, were better at certain tasks, and help them organize work based on who's- who is already assigned what task, and where are they gonna be doing it in, you know, different parts of the city, and on what day do we expect them to do this? So that they wouldn't be assigning tasks or even have to think about trying to logistically, uh, set up work in a, an efficient way.

So to say that i- in, in, like, more simple terms, if a parks crew member was able to fix a sprinkler system faster within the app, it would start to prioritize to that parks crew member that they would go fix that more often.

Right.

Yeah.

And it would recommend, uh, on certain things that they didn't have an urgency to it, it would recommend batching those things when they were already assigned something in that area.

Correct.

Um, it would have, uh, it would have randomized, uh, QA, uh, callbacks.

Mm.

So after a work order was completed, it would, uh... every now and then, it would send a note to the manager and ask them to rate the work that was done.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so that you have, you know, you have some performance appraisals sort of in real time, but that was also fed back into the system to help make recommendations. And it's important to note, none of this was, uh, was, at least the way that we had it at the time, was dictated. It was more of a recommendation system.

So let's talk about the bigger reason why it really wasn't sold. It automated a lot of functions that were at the middle manager level-

Yes. That was-

... in parks departments.

That was one of my underlying goals is, is this a possibility?

You are a terrible man. I... Yes.

I hate to say it, but-

We were trying... We were in a recession. We were trying to save cities money. Uh, it was a significant recession, and our thought process was, is that we could save a lot of middle management dollars within large-scale parks departments and, and get that done. And we, we pitched it that way, and we learned-

Mm-hmm

... very quickly that was a brick wall.

When you tell people, the people that you're selling to, that you're trying to get rid of their job, it does not go over very well.

It does not go over very well, which, you know, kind of leads us on to the, the next big product, uh, that we went after, which was, uh, which was the, the app for, uh, specifically for events-

Yes

... right, that we looked at. Really cool idea. Once again, on that train, we were a little early to the station.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And so, but we came up with this idea that we were going to conferences, we were at conferences all the time, it'd be really cool to have a conference app, right? And our big pitch of that conference app was, um, we wanna go in, we wanna put all your sponsors and information in there, and we will sell... basically give it to you for free, but we'll go sell these sponsorships for the app.

But it's important to note, we were selling to the convention centers-

That's correct, yes

... as opposed to... So, so this was before everyone had their own convention app.

Correct, yes.

So this would be a, uh, something that they could offer as a differentiator when trying to recruit conventions.

Mm-hmm.

Is, "Hey, we have this service. You can provide this-"... this branded app to, to your patrons and your visitors, and doesn't cost you a dime.

Yes, correct. And so, so we, we felt like, "Hey, you could- you could have this, you could get it out there, you could sell it to these people, and we'll go out down the street from the convention center and get the restaurant down the street to have some, like, automated app," you know, uh, commercials inside of the app so that people know, "Hey, you can walk down the street to Del Frisco's," right?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, and so we, we went about this process, also hit a hard brick wall.

Yeah, this case it was a legal wall, but -

It was a legal wall, yes. We love our friends at this city. We won't say who it is. We have a lot of friends that work there, but a really tough legal department.

Yes. So but the interesting thing is that if you kind of notice, like, there's, there's a lot of variety in the things that we tried. There's... It's not like we were on, on one particular niche, uh, it was more of these are things that we're kind of dealing with, and is there a solution to them?

Yeah.

Uh, particularly with the, the parks application, 'cause I was directly supervising the people that were using it. Um, but even the events app, I mean, that wasn't something that we were responsible for managing, but we were going to these events and, you know, carrying around reams of paper and-

Literature.

Yeah.

What always gets me at these events is they always give you a free bag, and the reason they give you a free bag is so that you can carry around all the stuff that you have to carry around to go to the conference, right?

Yeah.

Um, and so our idea was, let's take all the stuff that comes in that free bag and put it into an app.

Yeah, we even had a, a system where the vendors could have digital literature.

Mm-hmm.

And basically, when you're at... It would just use Bluetooth. When you were at the booth, they could send you their digital information.

Yeah, the more we talk about this, it still sounds like a great idea, 'cause the apps that are out there are still-

They're not very good

... terrible. Yeah, they're not very good. So we, we, we have lots of other things-

Yeah

... that we're, we're doing right now, and there's no reason for us to do that, but it just seems like a good idea as we talk about it.

Yeah. But you get... So maybe someone else can take the, some of the-

Yeah

... tidbits and, and run with them.

Feel free. We gave you all the ideas on the podcast, guys. Go for it.

So but the general point of trying to scratch our own itch leads us to the one that actually hit.

Correct, yeah.

So when I came over to work with you in Hudson Oaks-

Mm-hmm

... this was a little over five years ago.

Yeah, a little-

Six years ago.

Almost six-

Six, six years ago

... almost six years ago.

It was the fall of 2013.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Hudson Oaks is a really interesting city.

Very, very much so.

Uh, relatively, it's a small city-

Mm

... but fast-growing, full service, with no property tax.

Yes.

So-

Which in Texas, is pretty much unheard of.

And we will have a lot to say about the benefits in the future-

Yes

... of those kinds of constraints. Um, but it really makes you re-evaluate how you, how you do things. But in our particular case, it meant that sales tax was so- such a critical element of our operations, we needed to have a tool that could really help us understand it.

Correct, and, and to be clear, we, we built this because we needed something, uh, on the ground in real life. Uh, mu- much like the parks app, right? Uh, and working in Hudson Oaks is so interesting because especially in a down economy, sales tax is so elastic and it drops so quickly, that your decision points don't have six months. You, you need to be able to look at it now, uh, and that's what we were stuck in. We were stuck in an environment where we didn't get to see sales tax but once every like five or six months, and we needed to be able to go through and analyze our sales tax in real time, so that we could look at our businesses and make sure that their performance was where it needed to be, uh, help them if we needed to, to reach out to them from, uh, a retention issue, uh, but also to start making smarter economic development decisions long-term-

Yeah

... for the community. I think that was one of the biggest things we looked at, too.

Yeah, and not to be, like, salesy, but even to this day, most of our competitors are more focused on audit.

Correct, yeah.

And we really wanted to tackle this problem from an analytical perspective.

In fact, when we built the product, it didn't actually have audit in it.

Right.

Yes, correct.

So we spent, I don't know, six weeks just really building out a minimum, minimal, minimally viable product-

Correct

... that we could use, and we basically just imported the data that came from the Texas Comptroller and-

Mm

... put it in some maps, and some charts and graphs, and-

ZAC one, the original

... ZAC one.

The original baby. The infant that everybody says is pretty, but really wasn't as pretty as we thought it should've been.

You gotta see the baby.

Yeah, you gotta see it.

So we used it for, I don't know, a couple months.

Couple months, yeah.

And then just reached out to a handful of, uh, you know, friends and, and close colleagues, and showed it to them, and-

I think over a couple happy hours, we may have run into some folks who-

I think so

... we had some conversations, usually over happy hours, all these things happens-

That's one of these, "Hey, you should see this."

Yeah, you should see what we did. So and really, I, I think at that point, I'm not sure we actually thought we had a product we were selling. That's the interesting about ZAC-

Mm

... 'cause I felt like, I felt like with the other products, we were intently trying to sell.

Right.

Right?

With ZAC, we literally just built it so that we could use it.

We just built it so that we could use it, and then we just wanted a couple friends to look at, "Oh, look what we did," you know?

Yeah. Pat us on the back.

Pat us on the back. Give us, give us a, "Attaboy, good job." Uh, but I think what we, what we ended up getting is, is we started getting friends that were intrigued, right? Uh, you know, one of the great things about going to U- UNT, uh, and being in the MPA program in Texas, is that we're very close-knit, right? And so everybody who works in the industry here, uh, in our program, we could kind of reach out to and we knew, and so i- it kind of started from there. Uh, and so we had a few people that tried it, gave it a shot, and I think after maybe, like, the second or third person who took a look at it, we were like, "Okay, maybe we should go try to sell this." And so you looked at me and said, "Okay, it's your turn to go work." Right?

Yeah, 'cause if you don't know us, I'm the programmer, and Patrick is the, uh... I, I'm the Steve Wozniak, Patrick is the Steve Jobs.

Which by the way, he hates it when I say that. I'm so happy to get that on recording for everybody else to see on the podcast.

Hey, Steve Wozniak is doing just fine.

He is doing just fine. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

So but, you know, absolutely. So then at that point, I think, uh, we went to... And, and at this point, guys, I, I think it's important to say that, uh, it was not as fully developed as it is now, right? Uh, it probably was still a little buggy at that point. It was certainly a minimally viable product. Uh, and, you know, so we went out there and we sold for dirt cheap. I can't even remember what the original cost was.

$600.

$600. We, we weren't even-... we weren't even proud enough yet to charge real money for it. Uh, so we went out and, and, uh, and met with a few local cities in our area, uh, and s- it sold right away, uh, through friends of ours. And from there, I mean, you can continue and tell them where we went from there.

Yeah, so we obviously had day jobs.

Correct, yeah.

So it, it wasn't something that we were pushing. It was more of a hobby.

Oh, absolutely.

If we could, if we could go have a couple nice steak dinners-

Uh-huh

... at the end of the year, uh, f- uh, you know, a- as a result of it, then that would be fine with us.

In fact, I think some of our competitors still think it's a hobby, even though we- ... we're over 90 cities in the state of Texas, right?

So we really didn't take a, uh, a hard-line approach to sales for about three years.

Yeah, probably.

Um-

Almost three years.

So we finally got to a point where, uh, an inflection point, you know, uh, do we want this to be real?

So what number of cities was that? Was that like 17 cities before we were?

It may have been like... Yes.

Okay.

It was 20, under 25, for sure.

So over like a two and a half to three-year period, I pretty much went out there and sold 17 cities in my spare hour a day.

Right, like at lunch.

At lunch.

Making a couple phone calls-

Yeah

... and then go back to work.

Correct. And to understand schedule-wise, Chad's full-time now in Zach, but just to understand what, what the side hustle looked like for us, um, we would go to work, and, and honest to goodness, we would work eight to 10 hours a day, Hudson Oaks, because we love it. We love what we did. Chad loved what he did. I love what I still do. And we would do that, and then we would come home at night, and we would basically work.

Yeah.

And-

This was pre-kids-

This is-

... at least for me.

Yeah, I think I had had one on the ground maybe at that point. So, uh, but even after kids, I mean, we always had an hour a night or an hour and a half a night-

Mm

... where we were at least checking into or doing something. You're programming, and I'm checking into client relations, whatever that may be. Uh, so it's pre-sales team. We're at, like, 17, 18 cities, somewhere around there, and then we got to that decision point.

Yeah, so we brought in, uh, Allison, which if you are a client, you know Allison quite well.

Yes, absolutely.

And, uh, she just took it and ran with it. Um-

Which is an interesting story on its own. I think, I think... You know, we'll get Allison on a podcast for sure and tell her story. But, uh, Allison just happened to be a friend of, of mine. Uh, her and her husband and our kids, we all go to school together and knew each other, and, uh, I think we just happened to be over dinner one night, and she was talking about working for a software-as-a-service company, uh, in the larger city next door to us, and she didn't love it all that much and, uh, had no idea, 'cause we don't e- we don't really even talk to our friends about owning a software company. You know, we don't talk about that. And she had no idea, and I just kind of pitched to her.

Also, if you're not in the industry, it's really... I found it really difficult to explain that we have a website that helps cities analyze their sales tax data.

That's correct. It's very hard.

They're like, "Oh, okay."

"Oh, sure. Yeah." Uh, so, uh, you know, really just over a dinner, having a conversation, there probably were a few drinks involved. There usually always are. Uh, you know, she said, and, and I just... I, I got home that night, and I looked at my wife, 'cause she's a good friend of my wife's, and I, and I said, "Hey, I really think maybe Allison would be a good choice for Zach. Chad, I've been talking about hiring sales, and, uh, she's got some software service experience, and, uh, I think she'd be a great choice." And then it took off from there. I think you and I had lunch with her, like, the next week?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Came on board, had no background in sales tax. Very quick study.

Very quick study. No background in cities at all-

Mm-hmm

... right? So, uh, very quick study, and now she, she knows as much as we do in that world, so it's pretty impressive where she's come from.

Yeah. So since then, we've gone from around 20. We're now in 93 cities and special districts across Texas.

Correct. Give us a week, we'll be at 95.

Shooting for that, that, uh, that big 100.

Yeah, that big 100. Whoever the, the 100th client is, they're gonna have a good day. So...

So through all of this, and a, a lot of these things that we'll talk about here in a second will be sort of sprinkled in through pretty much all of the discussions we have on this podcast. But if you could say, like, what are the maybe two top things that you've kind of learned throughout all this process, especially when it relates, you know, to running a city, but even just generally?

Uh, yeah. So I mean, I think the first thing would be y- you know, understanding where Hudson Oaks is and, and what we do. We run so much different than any other city out there. Uh, we've almost become a little bit of an incubator for the larger cities. We have lots of relationships with the bigger cities, where we, we talk about what we do and how we do it. Um, I t- I think the biggest thing that the side hustle's brought to the real-life equation, that's, that's what I call my real job, is the real life. Uh, and, uh, I think the biggest thing is, is the, the spirit of, of being an entrepreneur, right? Uh, and how that's filtered through all of our staff. We try to do things differently. We basically tell them, "If it's been that done- if it's been done that way forever, that doesn't mean we have to continue to do it that way. And if you've got a great idea, bring it forward." We have a really open relationship. In fact, you know, we have no doors on the offices.

Literally.

Literally no doors on the offices. Uh, my staff loves that and hates that at the same time, I'm sure. Um, and, and to symbolize it even, even more, we took the doors off and turned them into our desk, which is pretty cool. But, uh, the reality is, is that, uh, you know, I learned really fast that in order to survive as a city without a property tax, we had to be creative, and we had to really think about doing things differently. Uh, and we, we needed to be, uh, more strategic in our decisions. Uh, I had a mayor once, uh, who's moved up in the political life, but he used to always say, "Our job is to be the speedboat, not the aircraft carrier. We've got to turn fast and move fast." Uh, and so I think, uh, you know, for us specifically, that's, that's what we focused on. I, I think the other thing, you know, big for us, uh, you know, really, and Zach is, is to listen to the client, listen to the people that actually have the problem, and try to solve that problem. Um, I, I think that was really hard early on because we were trying to create products that make them better at what we knew they needed to be better at, but we didn't always listen to what their problem was, right? I mean, and so-

Yeah, it helped because we tended to have the same problems-

Correct

... since we were trying to answer the same questions.

Yes.

But we're also a small city, 2,200 at the time.

Yep.

A couple million in sales tax revenue.

Mm-hmm.

It's a little bit different than, you know, a city of 200,000-... with, you know, $50 million in sales tax revenue.

Yeah, correct.

So just the scale is different, the questions that need to be asked and answered are different. Um, and sometimes the speed with which those questions need to be answered is different.

Absolutely, yeah.

Um, one of the best things about our software is that it's really there when you need it.

Mm-hmm.

The data is updated once a month, just that's how, that's how it works.

That's how it works in Texas, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That, that's the, that's the legal environment that we operate in.

Mm-hmm.

So we get a lot of traffic that first week, and then not a whole lot until the next month.

Correct, yeah.

Uh, so we have a lot of time to have personal relationships without having, uh, specific technical questions about the website or things like this. We can really kind of interact with our, our customers.

Absolutely. Yeah, we don't take vacation on sales tax week, that's-

That's the one week that we can't.

That's the one week we don't take vacation on, for sure. But, uh, yeah, I, I think, uh, you know, we've learned a lot being in the industry, right? Being in city government has taught us a lot. Uh, it's, it's a big differentiator for us, uh, that we have those connections and those relationships, uh, and, and that we've been able to really identify with the client, "Hey, what, what do you need?" In fact, if you take ZAC 1 and you look at where we are now with, like, our release of ZAC 3 that's coming up here pretty quick, um, i- if you take that and you look at where we are today, most of what we've added into that process and in that program is, is client-driven. It's specific things that they've said to us, "Hey, this is what we want," right? Uh, and I think I've been able to take that into my real world, uh, in Hudson Oaks and listen to my residents, "This is specifically what we want." You know, we have lots of conversations. Everybody wants a park, right? Everybody wants to spend a million bucks. You don't have a property tax, you, you can't go build huge parks. You can do some really cool things in parks, but you can't go build huge parks. Uh, you still have to have a professional conversation with people. Uh, but I, I feel like, uh, you know, we've really... Uh, I've changed who I am because of, of the processes that we took in a side hustle. Uh, and that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool to see where we've gone.

I definitely think that every aspiring city manager should be looking for ways to side hustle.

Absolutely, 100%.

Looking for opportunities of, you know, uh, inefficiencies in the market, in your operations. You're dealing with this stuff on a daily basis. You're gonna have some unique insight to answer these kinds of questions. But the thing that I like about it, or the reason that I recommend it, and also even though it's apparently frowned upon on Twitter, uh, recommend learning to code-

Geez, yes

... is it gives you such a different perspective on problem-solving, because you don't have the same constraints that you do as a s- as a city. You know, you're operating in a very specific legal framework with-

Mm-hmm

... uh, a very different board of directors-

Correct

... who's accountable to your entire resident base. Um, versus when you're working on something, trying to solve a problem on your own, you get a little bit more freedom, and I have found that I've always been able to bring that back to my day job.

Yeah, absolutely. So I, I mean, I think one of the interesting things about, y- you know, that you and coding, it brings it out of it. One of the fun things is when we talk to our clients, or we, we go to conferences, or we, we talk to folks in the industry from a software standpoint, and they ask us the questions like, "Oh, well, how much did it cost you to code that, that program?" Right?

Six weeks.

Six weeks. Of Chad's time, late at night. Yeah, right. And, um, you know, I think what's unique about us is we do everything. You know, everything's done in-house. You know, uh, Chad, from a brainchild standpoint, comes up with all that code base. We- we're able to... We're, we're very- we run ZAC like we ran Hudson Oaks, or like I still run Hudson Oaks, right? We, we run it from a standpoint of very connected, small. Uh, even though we've grown a lot, there's no doubt that we've grown a lot, uh, we still cherish those direct relationships that teach us what people need, and, and you're able to adjust it on the fly, right? And, and that's special.

The other thing that I would take away and apply to city government, and we actually wrote a, a blog piece about this maybe a month or so ago.

Mm-hmm.

Um, not long ago, I was asked by one of our clients to just do a quick overview of where they are and give my impressions. So I had the opportunity then to, like, dive into ZACTax for a different city that I don't have a ton of familiarity with, and almost see the product with fresh eyes.

This is the dogfooding.

The dogfooding, yes.

Oh, yeah.

So seeing ZACTax with, with totally fresh eyes, a brand-new set of data, and doing a real big, deep dive-

Mm-hmm

... to try to answer questions, um, was eye-opening. 'Cause it's been a few years since I've really had a fresh s- look of- a fresh look at someone's data, which was Hudson Oaks' data.

Yeah, correct, yeah.

Um, so generally, since I wrote the software, I know where to find things.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but there were some things that I had to go straight to the database for, because they were just questions that should be answerable, but you couldn't answer them.

Yeah.

And the reason is 'cause I'd never had to ans- answer those questions- ... myself.

Correct, yeah.

And no one had brought it up at the time, so, um, having the opportunity to actually use my own product as a customer-

Mm-hmm

... or as a consumer of that product, was very, very important. And I don't think that city officials have the opportunity or take the opportunity to do that enough. Like, how many times have you actually been through your permit process as a developer?

Yeah.

Or as a resident trying to build a fence without having- without knowing someone, you know?

That's correct. Yeah, without, without having a friend, right?

Yeah, so-

Or somebody that you know they're in that process. Yeah, no, I, I think that's a good point. Uh, I, I think that's a... I, I got a text from one of our developers in Hudson Oaks the other day that basically said that, you know, "Our permit processes run like a, uh, like a military warship." And, uh, and I responded back with, "Yes, we're in battle stations all the time." Uh, but it's, it's true. Un- unless you go through that... And I, you know, I've got the benefit of my father is a commercial developer, right? Uh, and so, uh, you know-... I, I think specifically in Hudson Oaks, we, we did in our development process, we, we dogfooded that process, uh, where we looked at why does it have to be so difficult? And, uh, I can't tell you how the number of cities that we talked to, you and I talked to, that struggle with their planning departments, um, that still put pre-development meetings together with 12 people in a room and cost the developer a million dollars before they walk out of the door, right? And it's, it- you know, and, and we don't... Uh, there are good developers, there are bad developers, there are obviously good cities and bad cities when it comes to planning and development processes. But, um, you know, you're right. If, if every city manager would build a pool in their own city and just go through the permit process as the pool builder, they'd learn a lot, a lot of things that they could change in their process, for sure. Yeah.

Well, cool. I have had a lot of fun talking about, uh, reminiscing sort of about where we came from, but-

Absolutely.

Um, I think it's about time to wrap up. So you have any parting thoughts?

No, not at all. I, I think, uh, you know, we've, we've- we went into it in detail for sure, but, um, we're, we're really gonna continue to talk in our, in our podcast about our experiences in government and then, uh, you know, different points of view, uh, current events, all that type of stuff. I'm real excited about where it's gonna continue to go.

Cool. Well, we will have show notes at ZacCast.com/1. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.

See you next time, guys.