#125: Angie Dianetti (Radcom)

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:00:00]:

the human performance field hasn't really been updated in 30 or 40 years, and most of the gurus in that field are at the late end of retirement, we'll say. And What we wanna do at Radcom is revitalize, we wanna humanize it and modernize the human performance field. And That gets me excited.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:27]:

Let's discover what people are building in the greater Cleveland community. We are telling the stories of northeast Ohio's entrepreneurs, builders, and those supporting them. Welcome to the lay of the land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today, I have the real pleasure of speaking with an Diane Eddie, the president and driving force behind Radcom, a company specializing in performance improvement Consulting, which Angie founded back in 1996. And under Angie's guidance, Radcom has earned the distinction of a weatherhead 100 outstanding growth company seven times over since then as one of Northeast Ohio's fastest growing companies that Angie has successfully navigated through various challenges over the years spanning the dot com bubble burst, offshoring, reshoring, the great recession, the pandemic, and more. Angie is fervent about assisting business leaders in fostering a performance culture where engaged employees adhere to high standards and hold themselves accountable. And with a unique combination of training expertise and technical documentation know how, for more than 20 years, Angie and her team at Radcom have helped clients do just this and solve their most pressing problems by empowering their teams to carry out their jobs more efficiently, drive positive results, and infuse continuous innovation into their daily lives. Today, we are also joined by guest cohost, Dan Eisenberg, a familiar name from lay of the lands 112 conversation with Daniel Hampu, the president of the Bird and the Morgan Foundation. Dan, a professor at Columbia Business School and a former Harvard Business School professor, is the founder of Scalarator Northeast Ohio. Dan and Angie's paths intersected in 2021 when Angie enrolled in the Skalarator Northeast Ohio program designed to support organizations with sales between 5,000,000 and 15,000,000 in navigating growth and scaling challenges. Angie's passion for her business is inspiring. And it was a pleasure to delve deeper into Radcom's evolution driven by Angie's adaptability and resilience. I hope you all enjoy our conversation after a brief word from our sponsor.

Lay the land is brought to you by Impact Architects and by 90. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio, Impact Architects has helped 100 of those leaders, many of whom we have heard from as guests on this very podcast, realize their own visions and build these great organizations I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love. If you 2 are trying to build great, Impact Architects is offering to sit down with you for a free console station or provide a free trial through 90, the software platform that helps teams build great companies. If you're interested in learning more about partnering with architects or by leveraging 90 to power your own business, please go to i a.layofland.fm The link will also be in our show notes. So, Angie, I'd I'd love to begin our conversation by really just hearing about what motivated you to start a company around this problem of technical writing and documentation in the first place. You have such an eclectic background from petroleum Engineering to banking you know, what transpired looking back on those early days leading up to the creation of Radcom that inspired

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:04:19]:

this jump? You know, there's a couple things. 1, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So being in business is just a natural thing and something I My husband and I had just kind of always assumed would be part of our future. My my dad started his first company as a young probably older teenager started in landscaping. And by the time I was born, he had trucks and employees and all kinds of stuff. And then he shifted completely out of that industry into the oil and gas industry, which is where the petroleum engineering degree came from. but really starting Radcom was really a very classic emith type story of a technician Wanting to get out from underneath others, we can do it better. So not a whole lot of thought at that point went into solving a business problem.

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:19]:

Well well, maybe help us set the stage here so that we can all follow along as to, you know, what technical documentation and technical writing actually is. You know, what is the the the nature of this problem? How has it evolved over time? and what were the ways in which you envision that you could do it better. Sure.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:05:40]:

So technical communication is very much just communicating complex technical ideas. So early on, you know, we're in the late nineties. there was a lot of that kind of work, and we did it as because we could do it cheaper. We almost were, like, independent contractors. having come from working for other companies where the documentation was very much an add on. Yo. So if you're writing software, you need a help file. If you are developing product, you need user documentation, those kinds of things. But the problem is there wasn't a whole lot of respect for the technical writer. And what always happened on those kinds of projects is the product launch date never changed, but as development got overruns and overruns and overruns, and then your time to produce the documentation got shorter and shorter and shorter. And we were hoping, I think, to be able to provide a little more respect for the tech writer and look for opportunities to sell it where it wasn't just an add on to something else. So we did a lot of standard operating procedures, did a lot of ISO documentation in their early days. So but, yeah, that was early, Rad, Tom. every time there has been, as you know, since 1996 when we started. And today, the economy has been a roller coaster. and my philosophy has always been let's look at our skills and what we have. Let's look at what the market needs today and figure out how we can leverage what we already do to solve today's needs. So we, yeah, we very much just started off in dotcom, held files, things like that. We worked in manufacturing, medical device, and then things got offshored, and then we moved to financial services. We started adding so we changed industries. We changed our service offering to add in instructional designs. We're doing training and then train the trainers. Then we added e or, well, web based training first before elearning was named eLearning. And then, like, over COVID, we did a lot of what is called Vilt. which is virtual instructor led training. You know, because that was a big need, all of a sudden, you can't bring people into a training room, you know, we got busy doing that also after 911 because travel's done. You can't bring people into training, so let's how do you take exercises designed for our classroom and do them online. Like, so now what we're looking at is The tech com industry has gotten very commoditized. And Yeah. When you've got things like fiber out there, you can go get a tech writer or instructional designer independent for a lot of your needs. We've got a lot of offshoring, so you wanna elearning develop well. It's a lot cheaper to develop it with programmers in India. You've got artificial intel intelligent and CHPT that we'll soon be able to do a large chunk of the heavy lifting of tech to come. And so, again, once again, I've looked at what are the skills that we have and what can we do to get out of this commodity land. And so we are now focused seen very heavily on human performance improvement because 2 of the biggest solutions to human performance problems in the workplace our documentation, standard operating procedures, and training because employers wanna fix their people. but only 11% of performance problems can actually be solved by training. So we're going in that direction. We're developing intellectual property. It's really fun stuff. And I will say, I'll give the scalerator a plug now. You know, that was the beginning of my transformation And part of it was from Daniel's book to worthless impossible stupid, I think it was called. I because I'm a nerd. I had to read the books of all the professors before I started Scalarators. So, you know, just because that's just what I do. But I finally feel like an entrepreneur as opposed to a business owner. And that was a big for me I have, for 26 years, for 25, because I think I, you know, I started a few years ago now. making the transition from business owner to entrepreneur, where I'm actually looking to finally create something that doesn't exist not just collect a paycheck as my own boss.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:57]:

That's a it's a fascinating distinction there, one that I actually don't think I've heard as explicitly is that you introduced a lot of threads there that I I wanna pull out, and, hopefully, we can circle back to all of them from, you know, your culture of adaptability and and resilience over time as the technology world just evolves. I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned early on, though, which was about just respect for documentation. And that actually resonated a lot because I have come to believe that, you know, mature companies who really have their stuff together need to have enough of this foundational process, infrastructure, documentation in place so that all hell does not break loose if those who are leading the organization you know, take a little time off, for example. And one of the real challenges I experienced building, my own company was around this idea exactly. after we had closed on our first capital, and we're able to grow the team from 10 to 40 people. I constantly was thinking about this problem that 80% of the company has only been at the company for less than 6 months. And so you have this vast majority of people who you're trying to get onboarded and empowered to do their best work. And they, in an ideal world, need to have unrestricted access to the institutional knowledge that is just dormant in the minds of the people who have who have just happened to have been there longer and understand the history and why decisions were made the way they were and how it all works And so often it really came down to documentation as this point of empowerment. And so when I when you talk about respect, like, I've learn the hard way, I think. And I have this deep respect now for those who have good practice around this, I think, from the hard way. how do you get entrepreneurs, companies to overcome that reservation of prioritizing documentation

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:12:53]:

First of all, documentation is and you say it that way, we're gonna prioritize documentation. It's gonna bore the for everybody. No. So, I mean, except for maybe a few of us, you know, technical writers, engineers who really get into it, but The reality is you actually hit on it more with your it it's the revolving doors that are of the companies have right now. that's not going to get better. Because when you look at those average numbers, you are actually looking at people like me have been doing the same thing for 30 years or in those averages. The each if you look at it generationally, each generation is their longevity in a job is shorter and shorter and shorter. And companies who want to have staying power who wants I mean, the tremendous amount of cost in wasted labor and, you know, waste wasting wasted human resources. That's why you have you do this. This it's not you have to flip it off of the expense side of things and make it a strategic move that a company is making. So if you know, when we start in on a project, we start with a company that's got a performance problem. They We got a call from a company that our people please come update our standard operating procedures because our people aren't following them. You know, this is not your problem is not updating the procedures. I'm happy to update them, but the problem is look at what's going on in your environment. Performance problems, 80% of performance problems are incentives, environment, it's feedback loops, all of those things. So we've gotten to the point now where, yeah, we'll do your operating procedures. We'll document this stuff for you. But let's back it up first. And let's say what does your employee need to produce? Now what do they need to do, not behaviors, Not none of that. What is you look at the business results and then you look at a position of what are the outcomes that that position is. So if I'm an employer, I am paying you to produce this result for me. and let's get rid of the mutual mystification of of what it is you are expected. very few employees actually come to work wanting to do a bad job. So if we tell them Here's the expectations. And then you we are also then developing tools for the managers to manage to that output sheet. So A matter of fact, my one of my employees is speaking. I think maybe even today at the ISPI conference. ISPI is the International Society for performance improvement, and her topic is goodbye job descriptions, hello performance profiles. So a job description, first of all, typically describes a person not the actual job. So let's dig into the job. What are the output And then once you have the outputs, you back up 1 of the behaviors, and then you back up a step further and define what the behavior influences are to put a whole list thick package of how to succeed.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:16:28]:

This is great. I love the framing of human performance improvement, and it sounds like that's huge. Can you give us an an idea of the market? Who are your customers? How do they find out about you? And then how how big is the opportunity?

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:16:43]:

So that is the part that we are still working on. So, traditionally, I have sold to the $1,000,000,000 and up companies. and that's where it's become commoditized. So I'm we are putting this -- Can you drop any names for us? Try to think which ones are contractually allowed to say. utility in Northeast Ohio, a International Construction Company, So so right now, we are actually targeting a much smaller market and because we we're we've put this together in a way that we can develop value very inexpensively. So we are now targeting 25,000,000 to 250000000. mostly currently in manufacturing, but the reality is anybody who has employees can do this and we can get started relatively inexpensively and the ROI, it it in theory is great. We've only done so far about 10 of these projects, but it it it is growing, and we're working on getting those metrics so that we'll be able to show the actual dollars and cents ROI. But the one client we did work for, it was a northeast Ohio company, and we just did a performance analysis. that showed that this was the company that wanted us to update their standard operating procedures. We still haven't done their standard operating procedures because our report showed them about 15 other things that would cost less than $5000 to fix all of them, and we're gonna have an amazing impact on the rework they were having to do that all those kinds of things. We don't have enough longevity on it. Part of our processes to start capturing these metrics now with that we are doing documentation training with a performance improvement mindset and filter.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:18:52]:

It it sound when you said it's a smaller market, I assume what you meant is that it's a market that's made of smaller customers. -- what I meant. Yes. It is actually a much

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:19:02]:

much larger market.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:19:04]:

Yeah. Well, the market must be huge. It sounds like a multibillion dollar opportunity.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:19:08]:

I would love to have that dream come to fruition while I'm still young enough to enjoy it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:17]:

So I'm curious as you have made this transition in your, you know, perception of yourself as a business owner to an entrepreneur as as Radcom is a company has evolved in its offerings and and and kind of, you know, worked on its adaptability through different offerings over time, knowing that it's it's constantly evolving, the offering, the market, the How do you describe Radcom today just as a as an organization, and we can, you know, work our way backwards too to understand how it's evolved? We are a performance improvement consulting company.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:19:54]:

We help business leaders get the most out of their employees. so that you as a business leader can get back to doing what you do best and you're not solving people problems all the time. Sounds simple. It does. But the the nature of those problems as you've suggested changes over time. Right. And part of it where it's been a challenge for us with this new way of thinking has been people the companies that we've helped so far in this world have come to us from different aspects. Yeah. 1 has a production problem. Several of the projects that we've done are really more what we are terming career pathing problems. So you had a municipality that needed to differentiate all of their workers were called service technicians. I don't know if that's actually it, but we'll just use that. But the real but they had multiple pay levels. So you had Actually, in that, you had service technicians 1, 23, which is what they have now, which each had different things, different outputs that were expected of them. So now their staff, they they they take those job performance profiles. And, you know, I'm a I'm a service tech 1. Here's what I need to do to be a service tech 2. Here's what I need to be a service tech 3, and you can then provide coaching and training on how to get all those competencies. So instead of starting with training as a solution, we're starting with what do you need to be able to do And then also fixing then what training we would give those people instead of it being what do they need to know? It's what do they need to do because most corporate training today is very tight on what do people need to know And can you repeat back to me what I just told you 5 minutes ago? And, you know, that's it it it it's a waste of time and resources and instead let's develop training where people can actually practice the skills that they need to be able to do.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:22:19]:

So I wanna, you know, piggyback on what Jeff was asking about. You've gone through some really significant transitions. I don't know if it feels that way to you, but it sounds that way to us. And one is from an owner to an entrepreneur, Another one is from a few big customers to lots lots of smaller, medium sized customers and from document a documentation company, which sounds, as you say, sounds boring if I can say it, even though it may not be, but to a human performance improvement company, which sounds really exciting. You also went through a 6 month program to scale erater, which we've done quite a few times here in Northeast Ohio with over 70 companies and half a 1,000,000,000 of revenues. In what way did the Scalarator help you facilitate that transition. What were what were some of the the

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:23:10]:

the takeaways from that? So I think, you know, we did a real deep dive on on our clients. and what they wanted, what they needed, was part of it. The biggest things I personally got out of Scalarator is I tended to ignore kind of the free money on the table of like the so because of Scalarator, I decided to go ahead and get the funding. And I did the PPP loans earlier, but I but I like that. I don't need that. I'm you know, our our everything looks good. And because of the encouragement of the group, I went ahead and did it. And so we are in a really solid cash position. that we would not have been in if I had not followed that advice of of looking for cash in places. I also gave me the courage when business started to slow down post COVID for us because people start bringing their people back in the office and and and economy, we always tend to follow a little bit behind other people's dips So, you know, we're good when when it fur the economy first starts going, but then when it starts going back up is when we start to struggle a little bit, but because of Scalarator, I really focused on capacity. and building. You know, in the past when things would start to shrink, it we would you know, let's just lay everybody off and get real small. And instead, I said, you know what? We've got great people. We've got this idea that I think is a as you you've called it a $1,000,000,000 idea, Daniel. So, you know, that I felt was a $1,000,000,000 ideal and and something that was going to I mean, I'm sixty one years old. I was like, I don't want I told everybody I got 1 more recession in me, and then I'm out. You know? But Yeah. Now I have something that's actually worth building for something that's gonna have my company have value beyond my retirement date. And I think that came from not even necessarily the learning and scale scalarator, although that that is good I think it came though it it's those peer to peer relationships. Yeah. I still get together with Kirk Linton all the time. You know? And as I've been developing this service offering, he's been my gut check for it throughout. So that is the real value of Scalarator to me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:25:54]:

When you think about Radcom projecting in into the future, as you've done there. You know, what what ultimately is the the impact that you're hoping to have with this organization? What what does success look like?

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:26:06]:

Success? You know, in a lot of ways, I feel like I've already had success. I because I've built a really awesome organization of People who hold themselves accountable, we run the business on EOS, which is a traction, and I moved this year strictly into the visionary seat. So I I have people who just do their jobs. We've we've built a lot of this performance system into our own organization. So it it is I've built what I set out to build originally. Now with the performance stuff, I mean, I love the fact that This can actually help every business scale. You can't scale unless you have these things. What stops most businesses from scaling is the business owner who's doing everything. And so, you know but if you can get them to sit down with you and say, how do you do this? Why do you do this? what we call an exemplary performer is, you know, you look at the person who's doing it well and let's let's let's figure out how to replicate that and you move the whole performance curve up. And whether it's the business owner, if it's the high performer, and you need them to be able to let go and go do business owner things so the rest of us can actually so we can scale this thing because you can't scale on yourself. Or if it's a manager, that needs to you know, you're growing, and and you no longer can do everything you did before, but you need other people to pick up what you used to be able to do, we can go in and help build that so that you don't have to worry about it being done right or well. So the and if every company in Northeast, Ohio or or the world would would do that employers are happier or you're building wealth. It's just an amazing thing. The human performance field is hasn't really been updated in 30 or 40 years, and most of the gurus in that field are at the late end of retirement, we'll say. And what we wanna do at Radcom is revitalize we wanna humanize it and modernize the human performance field. And that gets me excited.

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:37]:

Sounds exciting. Yeah. It it is very exciting. Again, a few questions as a follow-up here. But my sense is that relinquishing those responsibilities as a business owner, delegating it it truly might be one of the hardest things that happens, as you mentioned, as as the bottleneck to scale, how do people typically navigate that transition of of being able to to let go of of what maybe they are not you know, they they're used very much to being in full control. of of that situation.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:29:13]:

Part of it is not trusting that anybody else can do it right, that they nobody else can do it as well as as you can. Nobody else cares as much. And the reality is, it's partially because as managers, entrepreneurs, we think we're really clear on our expectations and we think that everybody sees our vision but we're really bad at actually communicating and helping people to see the vision. So, you know, These kind of tools help get rid of that, what I call, the mutual mystification of what success looks like in a job. But it goes both ways because it's you know, the one key thing I would ask an entrepreneur is what And in EOS, we call it letting go of the vine. What do you need to be able to let go of the vine? because that's what an entrepreneur needs. They need to be able to to trust and know that it's that it's handled. before they can say I don't need to handle it. And one of the biggest things we tend to do when something goes wrong is instead of fixing what went wrong, fix the process, provide more resources, whatever, what do we do as entrepreneurs? We jump in and try to save the day and fix it. And if you cannot scale a business, if that's what you do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:41]:

Yeah.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:30:43]:

I it hurts. I've I've experienced this pain and problem. I've made that mistake. I don't I don't know if this is true for you as well. Jeff, for me, it's also the flip side, which is I'm afraid that people will be doing it at least as well as I do it. and maybe even better. And so who needs me? And and

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:31:03]:

my experience is if you hire well, and you provide these things, Daniel, that is exactly what will happen. And it's a it's a beautiful thing when you let go of something and you let somebody else take it on who has now time to a 100% focus on just that piece instead of the ADHDness of most entrepreneurs. Now all of a sudden, somebody who is good at it and has time to focus on it, they they can they will do a better job. But what I've also found is I also then do a better job on the stuff I've kept because I've not bothered by having to worry about those things.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:48]:

How often are people that you're working with coming to you from a proactive place versus one where They know they are having a problem and they need your your help in retrospect.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:32:01]:

You know, usually, it's the it it it's when something bad happens, is when they finally decide that this needs my attention and focus to solve it. And it will be you know, right now, it's sometimes the guy who's been here for 40 years is retiring, and nobody knows what Joe knows, you know, and they're panicked. Or, you know, they there will be customer complaints, and so they start looking into seeing what's you know, why is their product quality control bad. We gotta fix this because we're losing orders. We're having to pay for rework. We are a lot of material waste. You know, which is why manufacturing is where we are kind of focusing a lot of our work because it's easier to see the measure, the the the the cost of not having this. But in any industry, It's time to proficiency for all for the employees when you have high turnover. It's all all the good people are leaving And there there is because they aren't seeing a career path for themselves. They don't see a future for them at our company. Those are the kinds of problems that clients have come to us for, but usually it is not proactive. No.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:29]:

Yeah. That I I didn't imagine it it it would be. But

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:33:33]:

-- If it were, I would definitely have a waiting list.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:39]:

As you also have gone to market, you mentioned earlier, you know, an avoidance of the commodity part of the business. As you've transitioned to the work you're doing now, what does competition look like in this space? And and how do you think about differentiation?

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:33:54]:

You know, there really isn't much certainly not locally. There's there there is not much There are a few other companies that are in the performance arena, but there's so much work that I I I don't really haven't figured out if there's even a need to come up with a specific differentiator for for it. I think the plan is to if it does become a grow because if it's really popular, this you know, everybody else and their brother might start doing it. It it's developing the intellectual property, our own process, You know, I haven't gotten the trademarks and patent stuff yet because I haven't developed it solidly enough to go there, but that is the plan.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:44]:

It's interesting because I it's not often there's just not not competition. Why do you think that that is?

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:34:51]:

I think let's you know, we've always what in Radcom had very little competition in what we actually do. We have competition in little areas. Like so when we, you know, e developed elearning, there's a bazillion elearning companies out there. So there's competition in that little piece. But we also do instructor led training. And so there's competition in that little piece We do standard operating procedures tech writing, so there's that little piece. We what differentiated in that us in that world is we did a holistic approach to your documentation and training, not just, you know, whiz bang, really cool, eLearning with lots of bells and whistles that doesn't actually train anybody in anything, but it looks cool. That that is how we've differentiated in the past. So the performance there like I said, there are a few companies. There are companies that call themselves performance based many of them are learning companies, but looking at it as learning isn't the only solution and it as I said, it only solves the problem 11% of the time. So we're trying to build out all of the other things. Let's get the coaching and the feedbacks systems and all of these other pieces, let's make sure you're you're in in sending people properly. because often incentive programs are so convoluted that people don't if if people can't use your incentive program to actually adjust their behaviors and actions then it's useless.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:36:34]:

When you talk about human performance improvement, it sounds something very tangible. If I'm a company, I come to you because you're actually gonna improve the performance of my people, that's like, wow. Right? Do you actually measure the impact of what you do on on their performance?

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:36:55]:

We are working on that. The problem is that most of the clients don't have measures. But so the first thing we ask And and this even goes because they usually come to us with a they want us to train or they want us to write standard operating procedures And that's probably because from 26 years of marketing that way. But the you know, that's what we're known for. But it's also the mindset is for many is I gotta fix my people. So they'll come to us with that kind of of a mindset. So, you know, the what what we are looking at is do they do it right sometimes? If they're doing something it right. Sometimes it's not a knowledge problem. If they're not doing it right, why aren't they doing it? And we look at the holistic picture So what we will ask them is if right now your performance is x and you wanna get it to y, but most of them don't know the x yet. So what we're starting to do is to help build that in as, alright, let's start with, what is the x today? What it and what do you need it to be? And let's look at how do we move from x to y. Yeah. Well, you'd be Stephen Covey, x to y by when.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:17]:

Right. No. I mean, it makes sense. You can't really measure improvement if you can't measure at all.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:38:24]:

Often, there's this vague idea that they're just that I'm not getting what I'm need to be getting, but it's it it's getting them to sit down and say, okay. are you measuring what you need to be getting? And this the smaller the company is the harder that conversation is because the big companies are used to measuring. So it's been that's been a challenge.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:47]:

As you reflect on the whole journey so far of building you know, Radcom, you know, you'd mentioned somewhat of the vision at the onset was, you know, we can do this better, cheaper How is your thinking on it evolved? What is what has surprised you about the evolution of of Radcom over time that that you didn't anticipate when you started? Well, you know, when I started, I never really thought that I would be not actually doing writing anymore.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:39:13]:

I know. That that was a part of it. I think the complexity of being in business was something that I never really thought about as getting started and all of the things that that means and how hard it is to know all of that stuff, how lonely, sometimes being the owner can be the boss. But as far as the growing of the business, I think it's the resiliency of the being flexible. We would not be in business today if we weren't able to be flexible and always be looking for what does the customer need today because it's not ever gonna be what they needed yesterday?

Jeffrey Stern [00:40:00]:

Yeah. I I would be remiss also. I think if I if I didn't ask, you know, having worked with with so many companies across so many different industries on this core problem of of of training and documentation and improvement just overall. do you find that there's just generally low hanging fruit that, you know, if folks listening in can apply to their own business that that is likely maybe something they're not thinking about that they quote.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:40:29]:

I think probably the most important thing is start with your business results and 1 take the position that you feel is the let least productive. It's not getting you the results that you think it needs and get down and dirty clear about what That function is it needs to be providing to your organization. And then step back and figure out how how do we get that? So it's a sales team. And you need, you know, the your sales team to be bringing in x number of new deals per quarter at a certain volume, and they're not do and that's not happening. You gotta, you know, dig in and look at what are that that's the deliverable. Now let's look at what are the sub outcomes for each of those things and just dig in and make sure you have a process because we too often just kinda hope it happens.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:36]:

So it's it's understanding

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:41:38]:

success criteria. Yeah. What does it look like to be successful? In any given role. And all those roles need to roll up to the business needs. You know? Often, you'll have so just a story. You got a factory and yet, you know, diff different production lines. Okay? And, you know, the Line 1 produces something that has to go to line 2. And line 2 is producing for the a product for the customer. So line 1 is hitting all their numbers, and you're stockpiling all those parts for at the end of line 1. But line 2 has a different priority and is waiting for a another part from another department and can't use all of those things that line 1. So line 1 is highly productive organization. Line 2 is not producing, but it has not yeah. So you've built up all this waste of these products that line 1 is producing with nowhere for them to go, sitting in your inventory. When your real problem is, fixing line twos supply problems so that they can start moving again. They're not even it's not a performance issue. It's not Well, why are they producing a 1000 units an hour and you're not producing, you know, 10? Well, Again it's a system. Business is a system. We have to look at it as a holistic system.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:18]:

So before we kinda bookend the conversation here, I wanna leave some space for you to, you know, touch on anything that you think is important as part of your journey, as part of building Radcom that we haven't necessarily talked about yet.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:43:33]:

Oh, I you know, one of the things I think that's been really important for us is building the culture. We have a really amazing culture program. Everybody is very, very involved in it. It really has helped be able to let go because I know I've got all the right people. They live our values. But we don't just live our values. We we make it part of just we celebrate our values. I think that's the key. We celebrate people's successes. We recognize people based on their values. And that has been huge.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:14]:

I like the framing of culture as, you know, how the the the people in the organization might make decisions -- That's the whole point. -- in the room. Right.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:44:24]:

It's the whole point of culture. You know, culture gets fruity. It is probably the most important thing as a business owner that you can do is make sure that you have the culture Because you have a culture whether you know if if you've named it or not, you know, be intentional about it. And it's it it has been a game changer.

Dan Isenberg (Scalerator NEO) [00:44:48]:

Elaine Isaac and one of the faculty you probably remember Angie defines culture in part as what people do when no one's watching.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:57]:

Yep. Awesome. Well, Angie, I'll ask you our traditional closing question, which has very little to do with anything that we've talked about so far. But it's a fun one, which is not necessarily your favorite thing in Northeast Ohio and Cleveland, but for a hidden gem, something that other folks may not know about.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:45:19]:

You know, there's so many. The microbrewery culture. I mean, Northeast Ohio has I think 60 microbreweries, maybe more. I mean, Cincinnati has a speed, but not by much. And we're Ohio is number 5 in the country for microbreweries. So so I like I I like to visit all of the local ones as much as I can.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:49]:

Yeah. No. They're they are they are great. I share that sentiment. They're they're just all over the place. They are all over the place. And, hell, I more entrepreneurship in Cleveland. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Well, Angie, I just wanna thank you again for taking the time to come on and share your story. It is a fascinating one, and I really enjoyed getting to listen in.

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:46:11]:

Yeah. It's been a lot of fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:13]:

If if people had anything that they wanted to follow-up with you about, about your own journey, about Scalarator, about Radcom, or otherwise, what would be the best way for them to do so?

Angie Dianetti (Radcom) [00:46:25]:

LinkedIn is always good. a Dianetti. My email address is adianetti@radcomservices.com. And as you can probably tell, I love talking to people.

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:44]:

That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey lay of the land dotfm, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or at sternjefe, jefe. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland Founders and Builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.