Navigating the Future of Mobile App Development That Users Love

[00:00:00] Chris Whitaker: Welcome to another episode of The Wireless Way. I’m your host, Chris Whitaker, and, uh, yes, I am grateful that you’re here. I know you’re busy. There’s a lot going on in everyone’s life, so thanks for checking out this episode. This one’s going to be an interesting one. It’s really right up my alley, but it’s kind of a newer topic that I haven’t touched on a lot and, uh, I was, uh, introduced to this guest recently, and I said, “I got…

[00:00:21] Chris Whitaker: We got to come on. Let’s talk about this.” So I’m excited to introduce to you, uh, my guest. Ghazanfer Mansoor is the CEO of Technology Rivers, a software development firm, recognized in Washington, DC for creating AI-powered solutions, innovative SaaS products, and HIPAA-compliant healthcare technologies. You know, we see that a lot.

[00:00:42] Chris Whitaker: Regulated industries have unique needs. Uh, he helps startups and services, a business scale faster, automate processes, and build technology that drives real-world impact. Uh, we talk about that a lot. As author of “Beyond the Download: How to Build Mobile Apps that People Love, Use, and Share Every Day,” he shares practical insights and proven strategies to help app developers and entrepreneurs build mobile apps that not only acquire users but keep them.

[00:01:11] Chris Whitaker: That’s why you built them in the first place, right? Um, helps keep them engaged and growing. So, in addition to being a thought leader and a speaker, uh, he hosts the Lessons from the Leap podcast, where he uncovers the bold decisions, failures, and breakthroughs that shape entrepreneurial success. Ghazenfer, welcome to the show.

[00:01:31] Chris Whitaker: I’m glad we were able to get this planned. How are you doing today?

Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me, Chris. Yeah. I’m really excited to be on this podcast.

[00:01:40] Chris Whitaker: Yes. No, I’m excited to have you, cause yeah, this, this is a unique angle. This is a different approach. As I was telling you pre-show, you know, a lot of my work goes around the actual mobile device, connectivity, you know, IoT, even satellite, but the, the talk about how we’re actually using these devices and the apps and how we’re collecting the data and the work you’re doing, I’m really excited to, to jump into that. Before we do that, you know, the first question I always like to ask guests, you know, we have your bio. That’s what’s on the back of the book, but what’s not in the bio? What else can you tell us about your journey and how you got here?

[00:02:16] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Okay. Yeah. So, I originally grew up in Pakistan, and I have a computer science degree. I moved to the United States in 1999 as a software engineer working on a Java project. So, my first project was actually when I landed in Virginia, I was working on an AT&T project through EDS. So that’s how I got into the telecom space as well. Then I did some consulting work with Quest and then moved to Reston, Virginia.

[00:02:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I joined a company where, interestingly, they got a project from a European telecom, which is about building a wireless community. This was a time when it– the phone was those small flip phones, WAP, DML-based software. So, we were creating wireless communities at that time. That was around 2000. And then I did, uh, a wireless home controller for a Palm, so it was another POC that I did.

[00:03:03] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So I got involved in mobile pretty early, and that’s how I got into mobile. So, the company I was working for saw the opportunity, and they created this wireless accelerator group that spun off into another startup, Defy Wire, which was a mobile product development platform. So, it has the features of building a secure mobile platform, like a BlackBerry enterprise server, like a MDM type of features.

[00:03:27] Ghazenfer Mansoor: None of those were available at that time. But the challenge was the devices were not ready at that time, so we deployed on Sharp Zaurus and all the different types of devices. But when the iPhone and Android came, everything changed. I think the main– one of the main reasons, obviously, along with all other nicer things, with the control on the devices as well, the carrier, the OS owned by the same company.

[00:03:52] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So once you have full device control, you can do a lot more things. You can provide a sandbox that gives you flexibility on how you’re building things. So obviously that was a game changer, but that continued. That helped me stay on the mobile path since then. Based on those experiences, I also wrote a book that you mentioned, “Beyond the Download.”

[00:04:12] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Now I run a software development company, uh, helping businesses improve Um, operations through AI and technology, building products primarily on the healthcare side, and building HIPAA compliance. But at the core, our work is helping companies stop relying on people power growth versus, um, system power growth. That’s the gist of it.

[00:04:33] Chris Whitaker: You know, a lot, a lot of the conversations I have with partners around mobility, you know, it’s like, if you’re not gonna sell the phone or the SIM card, you know, sell the MDM, the mobile device management software to help secure the device, help with productivity, and, you know, you can control what apps your employees download. Can you share a little bit, what are the risks that companies take by giving their employee a corporate phone, not having an MDM on it, you know, and that employee can– is logging into salesforce.com, they’re, they’re getting their email on it, maybe their HR app is on there. Are there risks associated with the employee having free reign to download any app? I mean, are there bad apps that could wreak havoc?

[00:05:11] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, and more than that, there are bad apps. I think Apple is pretty safe from that angle because Apple provides an environment where you can only do certain things. They have a strict review process where you’re limited to whatever the app is built. So there’s less likely, but again, you’re pu- punching in the information. That information is stored on some cloud server. You don’t know what happened. So that part could still be unknown.

[00:05:46] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And then most importantly, you left the phone somewhere. You forgot at the restaurant or wherever. There is no MDM. How would you remotely remove the data? And, and that’s the risk companies run into. And if those apps are, let’s say, your financial app, your HIPAA app, you want to make sure those apps are created in a proper way so that even if you lose the device, even if there’s no MDM, is your data still secure? And I think, and that’s where we come in when we build those apps.

[00:06:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Even if you don’t have MDM, that’s one of the obvious protocols to follow when it comes to HIPAA, but that’s more on the infrastructure side. But when it comes to building an app, at least you still want to have functionality in the app so that- The data is not leaked if it is lost by mistake.

[00:06:33] Chris Whitaker: So you’ve built and scaled technology businesses across several different industries. When you look at AI today, you can’t hardly open up a news app and not see AI somewhere. What excites you most and what worries you most for service-based companies when it comes to this topic?

[00:06:57] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So AI is a game changer, and I think a lot of people are still struggling even to figure out what it is. So there was a lot of hype about how people use ChatGPT, Claude, and all these different tools, that is all AI. AI is way more than just these. These are just the tools on top of the actual AI. So obviously, there’s training, there’s a whole lot of stuff that you could do. And those complications will– come in when you’re putting your own company’s data. It’s not going to be the same as if I just query on Google or ask ChatGPT.

[00:07:15] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So I think the exciting part is that AI is finally allowing businesses to scale without a linear headcount, especially the service businesses. Those opportunities were left. All these service businesses were relying on different SaaS products and tools. Now is the time. You can build your own workflows, automation. You can build your own decision support system. Some of those things could be done really quickly. You don’t need to buy another SaaS product paying $1,000 a month or even, uh, $200 a month. So that changes margins, that changes valuation, that changes speed. It gives you more flexibility, it gives you more- uh, efficiency.

[00:07:54] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So obviously that’s the exciting part. Worry is most; a lot of those companies are bolting AI on instead of redesigning how the work is actually flowing. Because AI is only going to give you the data, what you’re putting into it. If your data, if you are train- training the AI with the wrong data, you’re not going to get the right result, and that’s a big misconception people have. There’s a lot of hallucination in AI. How many times you query ChatGPT and it says, “Great question,” and it will always say yes. It’s, even if- Yeah … it has no answer, it will guess it, and that’s the very scary part. You don’t want a guessed answer to be put into any proper work. So, you have to make sure what you’re inputting, so your data, so that AI can give you a proper recommendation.

[00:08:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So if AI is just another tool and not embedded into your operations, then it’s become an expensive noise instead of a leverage. So, I think the important part is knowing how to really leverage AI.

[00:08:51] Chris Whitaker: Right. Right. And that makes… I, I’ve, I’ve had several guests on and, you know, it’s hard to have a technology podcast and not talk about AI, so thank you for your insights there. I agree 100%. Um, you know, go back to your book, um, you know, Beyond the Download. I love that title. What, what events led you up to going, “I need to write this book”? What, what took you to that moment?

[00:09:28] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So as I was talking earlier, I got into mobile a long time ago, and as I started this business in ’15, where we started building apps for other customers. In the past, I was working on different consulting projects or as part of my job I was doing, but that’s when I really started building for other startups, helping them create. So, we are s- we started seeing different patterns. All these different apps that we created, about 60 different mobile apps in 11 years.

[00:09:47] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So those apps, we learned so much from these different apps that I thought it would be a good idea to share that experience. So, we started seeing the pattern that people would download, oh, their pr- Let’s say doing an ad or something, they would celebrate the download, but then panic when the usage dropped because they’ll start getting the users, and then they’re gone. So I think a lot of people are building more like a project, not as a product that needs to earn a place in somebody else’s life. So, in order to get the retention, in order to have people going back to an app every day, you need to do things differently.

[00:10:33] Ghazenfer Mansoor: How many apps do we all have on our phones? Are we going to open all the apps, uh, every day? No. There are only f- handful, but what are those handfuls? There are some that will be doing a certain thing for you, like maybe some personal, some social, some work-related, some personal. And every person has a different opinion. It could be you may love puzzles, you may love games, but there are hundreds of games. Which one are you playing more and more?

[00:10:51] Ghazenfer Mansoor: What strategies can you employ so that you keep bringing those users again and again? And the more users, meaning Apple knows it, Google knows it because they are seeing all that information. Your users know it. You are connecting with others, whether it’s a reward system, whether it’s onboarding, whether it’s the communication part, whether it’s the exciting things happening inside your app. Those are the things that people would look at and come back to again and again.

[00:11:17] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, you have to create that experience for the user to create a remarkable app so that people are not only just downloading, but actually keep using it. So, I think these are the strategies. There are thirty plus different strategies that came from those real experiences by looking at the pattern, looking at the client’s mistakes. So I think, um, I wanted to give some kind of a playbook for people who are building those apps so that they have an idea what to look for, not just writing another app.

[00:11:43] Chris Whitaker: Hmm. You know, so for businesses that– I’m, I’m thinking about a, uh, there’s a shuttle service I use. I live in North Georgia. I take the shuttle service to Atlanta Airport, you know, so I don’t have to worry about traffic and parking. And I can only book it on their website. And they’ve been around for, gosh, maybe twenty years, you know, which is probably the problem. You know, they were kind of around pre-apps. But they– I was like, “Hey, when are you going to get an app?” You know, cause trying to reserve a shuttle, uh, you have to buy your ticket, you know, and get on the list, uh, it’s kind– it’s difficult on a browser on a, on an iPhone. It’s a lot easier if it was an app environment. So, what’s been your experience from working with companies? Are there valid reasons why somebody would have a customer portal that is only accessible via a browser at a website versus making an app out of it? What are you seeing there?

[00:12:47] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So there is no right answer for this one because every application is different. Every business use case is different. So, you have to look at what you- First thought it was expensive. Maybe they just didn’t want to spend the money. I mean, that, that was my obvious thought. Maybe they just don’t want to spend the money that- Users want an app experience versus having to go to the website, you know? Exactly. I mean, it does make sense. Like when, when people come to us, many times they say, well, they want to build an app and web and this. We said, “Great, but you want to start with one because you want to see how you build the app, the flows, the user experience, everything. Once you’re excited about one, then move to a second platform.”

[00:13:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Could be a mobile first and then web, or web first and then mobile. Because many places you go look at Facebook or LinkedIn, they were all browser-based initially, but then moved to mobile later on. There are so many others that are just web, but there is a necessity for it. Where are– I mean, you, you have to track. I mean, and this is one of the chapters we also talk about in the book. Tracking is important. If you don’t know what your users are doing, how do you know? You can’t take action. So, when you track, you know where, let’s say, your users are coming from your iPhone Safari, your iPad. So then based on that data, you can plan your next version.

[00:14:00] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yes, there’s a cost, but if your people are always on a phone, it is more likely that they’re going to be moving on to something else. And there are many examples also available at this time, whether it’s that shuttle service or any, if they are not moving, they could lo- lose opportunity to another competitor because right now the reason people are going to that website and keep booking because that’s the only service probably available or that’s probably the best service. Yeah. Yes, their logical reason is, “Oh, we don’t care because our customers don’t care where to…” What if your competitor also starts the same service? Same thing, but now it’s more convenient on, um, on the app.

[00:14:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You get a push notification fifteen minutes or thirty minutes before. I get notifications all the time, “Okay, your flight is ready to check in,” or, “Your flight is delayed by one hour.” So do I change my plan? Yes. I mean, if I get a push notification or text, obviously then I miss it. How many times will I go to email? I don’t check emails all the time. I probably would check twice a day at most, and then it would also be hard to get all the email. So I’m most likely going to miss my email anyway. So that means- That’s right I will be more tempted to use an app rather than a web. So it’s really every company has to look at where the users are and what- Does it, does it make sense to build an app? So that- Like, if it’s an Uber or DoorDash or any of those, you’re getting food, like you got to have the app. For some it does- That’s right it’s okay. It does not make sense.

[00:15:32] Chris Whitaker: You know, AI, y- I’ve read articles too, you know, AI, Chat, ChatGPT, and all the others are making it easier for software development. Are you seeing customers coming to you going, “Hey, look, we tried this on our own. We tried to do it in-house, and we can’t get it to work”? I mean, w- does that happen, or do most people know, “Hey, look, we don’t have the skills to create an app,” and they’re kind of someone like you? I mean, uh, um, are you having to clean up other people’s mistakes or take an app that’s not working so well and, and fix it?

[00:15:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I would say a good percentage of our work is actually f- fixing those broken projects. That’s a very common use case. We have an internal developer, we’re building it, it’s not working, or it’s been a year, or we worked with this other company. So I mean, one of the common themes I’ve seen many times, let’s say if I meet somebody says, “We are looking for a mobile app developer,” my next question is, “Why do you need a mobile app developer?” Because many times when somebody’s looking for a backend developer, mobile developer, web developer, that’s one piece.

[00:16:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The projects are not done by just the developer. Those are the pr- I mean, we can talk at some time about failing projects, but those are the projects that are when you just have a developer building it. Developers are smart, but not every developer is going to be doing all the work for you. So, there’s a user experience part, there’s an architecture part. It’s like building a house. There are different components. The people who are building the house, you can always hire them, and they may say, “Yes, I can build it,” but there are a lot of things that go behind.

[00:17:10] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The compliance part, there are, uh, approval processes. The same thing happens on the software side. You need one conductor, one group, one person who understands and connects all those dots. Technical challenges, there are scaling problems, right? So, when you’re hiring, when you have an internal team to build those initial products, you are expecting that one developer to be doing the eight people work. And that’s when, when we work, these are all different roles, whether they’re working on a part-time basis or full-time, depending on the specifics of the project.

[00:17:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: But in reality, each app requires many different roles. You need a QA, you need a project manager, you need somebody who prioritizes the product features, somebody who can write the backend services in a way that is scalable. You need architecture, you need somebody to do the app development, you need somebody to do the QAs, somebody to do the security assessment. All these things, it’s, it’s a combination of a team. Now, if you start, let’s say only hire eight people, that’s expensive as well.

[00:17:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, we do get that all the time, where people are coming, they have those existing project problems, and now our job is to take over. Sometimes it’s a rewrite, and sometimes it’s improving where they left it out, and there are many different reasons why those projects have those challenges. So we look at all of those and do the assessment and figure out what needs to be done.

[00:18:22] Chris Whitaker: No, that makes sense. Yeah, cause I was, I was thinking about, you know, how to ask that question about, you know, we see projects go sideways all the time, especially in IoT. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like over half of the IoT projects never get off the ground because, you know, you got multiple suppliers involved, you got different hardware, there’s all these complexities, and you just outlined several. I mean, just the people, the resources, uh- Developers are great at what they do, but, you know, there’s always a, uh, marketing element, I’m sure. You know, the marketing people want to have a say so in it. The sales team and the CRO, they want a say in it because they got to figure out how to monetize it. Uh, a- any other areas you see, uh, where some of these projects go sideways, and they need someone like you to kindly come in and, and, and fix it?

[00:19:10] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Yeah. So obviously, those were part of the problem that we talked about when we got the project that was broken. But I think the most important piece, if you look at it, is why these projects failed, it’s really the clarity of the problem. Mm. In fact, every… Even in hiring, those, like, many times the roles do not work doesn’t mean the people are bad. It’s not clear what the requirements are. You’re expecting one person to do another one. So, imagine the same thing. You have a project, you’re expecting X, and the way it was conveyed or maybe not fully conveyed, somebody else built Y. That was all… I mean, yeah, both were right, but then which one is right?

[00:19:53] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So clarity of a problem is the key. So, knowing the re- going deeper on the requirement and making sure what you want to build is what is being built. So, most of the time I’ve seen my team jump on features. So, they want to build, “Oh, we want, uh, have better onboarding. We want to have a credit card. We want to have this feature, this feature.” So they jump on all the features before really deeply understanding what needs to be built and what are the main pain points that we are trying to solve, and what are the workflows?

[00:20:25] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Because everything we talk about, any task, any requirement feature that you do, we’ll look at how it is tied to the main project goal. Is it solving that problem? Is it helping us move the needle toward that? Then probably it does make sense to go that route, right? And then misalignment between the project goals and the technical decisions. The goals are one, but technically you’re building totally different. People are married to many concepts or solutions. “Oh, I want to do it this way.” And that’s another part that comes in many times. “I want to do it this X way.” Does it matter whether it’s a PHP or Java or Node or Re– iPhone or any?” Because many times, we have those requirements as a solution. So, the solution comes later. First, you really need to figure it out. What, what do you want to build?

[00:21:19] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So if the business goals are not clearly defined, if the success is not clearly defined upfront, how would you compare against what is built? So, your project is already off track if you are not tracking the project against the project goals.

[00:21:35] Chris Whitaker: That’s right. Yeah. I like to summarize. Tell me if this makes sense. You got your current state, you know, this is where you are today, and then you got your desired state. I mean, as you know, it’s kind of sales 101. It’s like, “Hey, here’s where you are. Where do you want to be? Let’s outline that, cause if I don’t understand where you want to be, it’s kind of hard to develop something that’s going to get you there if I don’t…” It’s like a trip, you know? If you don’t get… tell me what city we’re going to, we’re just going to get in the car and drive, you know? We don’t know where you’re going.

[00:22:04] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Exactly.

[00:22:05] Chris Whitaker: You know, I see that a lot in a lot, even with IoT and other projects I work on. But sometimes even the customer, they’re, they’re, they’re like, “Wait, we want to deploy AI into our business.” Great. What are we solving? What, what’s the problem? I mean, what, where are we going to apply AI to? If you haven’t thought that through, I mean, then that’s another question. It’s like, well, let’s do an analysis. Let’s do an audit of your tech stack and how are you using technology in your business. Yeah. They, they, they know they need an app, but yeah, to your point, I’ve seen apps, you know, I think, I’m thinking back over the years, I’m like, “Why did they bother?” This is either it’s not that helpful or it’s kind of clunky. I mean, back to the experience, if it’s, if, if I can’t figure out how to use it or if it’s not adding value, I’m not going to go back for more, you know? Sure. You know, l-looking at the, you know, you’ve been– you, you built this company, you’ve built global teams. Kind of a change of techno, a change in topic, man, what, what’s harder? The, the, the technology stack or the aligning the culture and the communication with-within the organization?

[00:22:56] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, culture and communication every time. That’s the struggle we all go into all the time. Technology keeps changing. You can change the tech, but when there’s a misalignment in the team, that slows down everything, the toxicity and all of those. So just one wrong communication also impacts a lot. So definitely misalignment in the culture and the communication slows down the team. So, you ask about the global team, so obviously, so we have people in multiple countries doing different things. So, it’s- It’s a challenge, but at the same time I feel like it’s a blessing as well because what it pushes us is the process. Mm-hmm.

[00:23:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, in a traditional way, and we still see that problem in our– There’s one place where we have an office, a lot of people come, 30 plus people come to one office. So, there are different challenges we see. When people are in the office, and if you see this everywhere, people are there, there may be a lot of meetings back-to-back, but is the work done? Not necessarily. Because there’s a social part as well, you’re talking to people. You go to somebody’s cubicle, tap on the shoulder, you get the status, all of that. But that is lost between those two people.

[00:24:09] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Remote with global teams gives us the processes, setting up those clear expectations, pushing towards the documentation. So whether it’s recording your calls, whether it’s about meeting notes, whether it’s about any documents, any features you build, anything you do. Like, so there’s a lot more clear expectations and the shared outcomes. That would do more than the tools and technology. Mm-hmm. So, I have this favorite thing where I tell people, “It’s not the tool that makes you, it’s the data in the tool that makes you unique.” Mm-hmm.

[00:24:44] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So, think of it this way. So, you have a CRM or you have a project management system called Jira. We use Jira, but obviously- Yeah … you could use whatever, Trello or all of those. So, in your project management tool, if you don’t have the tasks properly articulated, if they are not giving you the right picture, what is on everybody’s plate, how many hours of work, how would you define your team, how do you know your team is fully utilized? So any data you can extract only when the data is input, and it goes back to what we were talking about AI as well. Your data is the one that’s giving you the right output, right?

[00:25:21] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So same thing with technology. Your technology’s only useful if you are putting the data right. If you don’t have the right customer’s information in your CRM, it’s not going to give you the right reports. So technology amplifies. Culture is the one that really helps you. I would say, well, technology amplifies whatever culture already exists. Yeah, when it comes to harder, for sure.

[00:25:41] Chris Whitaker: Yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, especially from a global perspective, not only, you know, you have regional concerns, maybe some language barriers. But, do you find I mean, there’s this, I don’t know if it’s an accurate stigma or whatnot, but you know, technical people, the developers, coders, IT people, you know, they’re a different type of person than the sales team, for example. You know what I mean? You know, so- And not to mention the technical talent, you know, it’s, you know, I talk to a lot of IT professionals. Man, every six months they grab a new job because someone offered to pay them a little bit more money, or they give them a car or, or let them have unlimited Cokes at their desk, whatever. Yeah, so I guess having that right culture, I mean, cause I, I tell people all the time, I, I advise people that are looking, that are like, “I think I’m, I’m going to leave this job.” I’m like, “Why? You know, wherever there are human beings, there’ll always be some problems, right? You know, so more money doesn’t necessarily make the problems go away. Are you seeing anything, like, unique, uh, to keep, you know, talent where they… Working with you, for example?

[00:26:38] Ghazenfer Mansoor: A-a-and, and, and you, you, you said it right. It… You have to look at what- Uh, like what motivates people. Obviously, that’s part of the culture that you have to figure that out. Uh, tech people, I mean, I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t call it just for the tech, it’s about actually everybody. There are some people- That’s true. Every- everybody … who would be with the company for as long as the company exists, and there are people who are switching every few months. Different reasons. Many times, it doesn’t matter how good the culture is, there are people who are just going to be hopping because they’re looking for better money. That’s right. Yes, so you do have those, but more important, as we run the business, making sure what we do so that we retain those people because they are coming up with those, with that knowledge.

[00:27:25] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So one of the things that my coaches taught me is find your top people and find what excites everybody. So, once you figure it out, what is the excitement for that, and then you can retain accordingly. Some may need titles, and others may need more money. Someone may need flexibility. That’s right. Every per- like you have a kid and maybe support, you need to support somebody outside the office, so you need certain flexibility. In some cases that’s not it. There are people who are single that are staying in the office even after work. They need access a lot more then. So, every person is different, but we have to find what those are. And as you were saying, there are problems everywhere. You have to figure it out. That’s right. How to get that work, and it’s in every relationship. Yeah. That’s true. That’s, that’s, that’s some good advice. That’s some good tips there.

[00:28:13] Chris Whitaker: Kind of changing gears again. With all your experience in business and technology, I mean, advising a, a, a new company founder or a CIO, and when you, when you’re talking to people in your network, is there one piece of technology decision that you advise them on that they’ll regret not making sooner?

[00:28:35] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, one of my stances is building and growing 10X through technology. Building a proprietary technology can help you get better valuation, better growth. So, I think building a proprietary internal system instead of relying entirely on off-the-shelf tools, I think that’s one of the decisions I’m sure many founders and CIOs will regret not making sooner. Sooner or later they will have to because think of this way, in every service business, what is your differentiator? Is it a better service? Better people? People will move on at some stage. Your competitor will catch up on all of those things. So, pricing or whatever are the differences. Do you have a lot of competition? What is the difference between you and your competitor? Even if you’re using an off-the-shelf tool, they have access to Salesforce. They have access to all those different tools that you are using, whatever, whether it’s a system for your specific business or industry. Or generic. That’s available.

[00:29:32] Ghazenfer Mansoor: How do you create a differentiator? A differentiator is by creating that proprietary internal tool that will bring efficiency to your specific processes. So, you want to see how data moves from one person to another one, how are your flows, where you can bring efficiency. You have to identify your bottlenecks and what the manual processes are- that if you automate any of this, could bring a lot more efficiency. And efficiency meaning, I was talking earlier, system power growth. The more efficiency you bring in through the system, you’re growing based on the system. And again, that doesn’t mean you reduce the people. Your people will be a lot more productive. You empower them by providing the tools so that they can achieve 10 times more.

[00:30:20] Ghazenfer Mansoor: We always have more work than we can handle. Don’t like in any company where you have less work, you always have more work. It’s just that people were not able to or taking longer. Now they can achieve all of that. So creating custom workflows, that can become your intellectual property, and that’s what drives defensibility and valuation. I mean, the way I look at it, so these tools, the off-the-shelf tools, that can help you run the business. But the system that you build, that will help you scale the business.

[00:30:52] Chris Whitaker: I like how you s- you summarized that at the very end there. I had two questions I was thinking I was going to ask you. Here we go. Um, get- getting back to the book too, I don’t want to leave that aside too long. Who, who did you write that book for? You know, who, who’s the ideal audience? You know, if someone’s listening and they’re like, you know, they love books, you know, how would you describe someone that would really want to read your book? What kind of person would that be?

[00:31:22] Ghazenfer Mansoor: The book is written for any, I would say, app owners, any entrepreneurs, any leaders who are bringing mobile to their business. Could be an entrepreneur who’s starting a new startup, app startup, any health tech entrepreneur who’s trying to build a new app for their healthcare problem, any business leader who is– who may be exploring that, and even for developers who are writing or the product managers who are writing the code for that app. So knowing- Uh, how to build some of these things does make a difference. Okay. But mainly for products, uh, I would say mainly for app owners.

[00:31:52] Chris Whitaker: Is that group of people growing? I’d be curious to know if, I haven’t even looked at the stat. Like how many new apps are coming online daily? Is it, is that, is that still a booming thing? I mean, is the App Store still just full of new apps every day? I don’t, I don’t know the stats. Uh, I haven’t looked at it lately. Yeah. But it’s still, it’s for surely not stopping. Yeah. People are still building apps. Yeah. So many times, as you may have just the web, but you may need to move to an app for a variety of reasons, because now you have already tested your idea. Yeah. Now it’s time your people start asking for the app.

[00:32:38] Chris Whitaker: Yep. Yep. Well, yeah, that’s, uh, I, I got, I think of a plug to a company that I love to use a lot. I love boating, and Freedom Boat Club had an app- a couple years ago, and then they started going through y- the, the corporate was buying the franchisees and all. So I guess it was just, there were probably a lot of broken links between different databases and all, so they got rid of the app for, it felt like two years, and you had to go to the website to book, to, to reserve a boat. But thank goodness, I don’t know, maybe a year or so ago, they got the app back. And, you know, yeah, it’s just, it’s just, I’m more likely to want to go to an app experience than the web because especially on a small little screen, you know, it, it’s… A- and you’re right, you mentioned the push notifications. That’s a nice benefit. I mean, you can turn it off if it annoys you, but if you’re busy and you have a lot going on, and if it’s an app that you engage with daily, uh, again, if you’re a traveler, flight information’s important to know. So now this has been interesting and if you’re, I mean, y- you raised, uh, you, you mentioned about the traveler, for example.

[00:33:30] Ghazenfer Mansoor: So let’s say Maps is a good example. If you’re going somewhere, you may not have access to the internet there, so you download inside the app. So yes, you can download certain things outside as well, but apps do have the offline feature as well. So, if there is no internet- Mm-hmm … you can still access. So, we built an app for golf balls. So it’s a golf ball scanning app. So, when you’re playing golf, you may not always have a good reception, but if it works offline more, then you can access any, any of this. So that’s where the app does make a difference.

[00:33:57] Chris Whitaker: You, uh, I mentioned in the bio you have a podcast. Um, I, I’m, I’m interested to know, I, I love the, the, the, the title, you know, Lessons from the Leap. How did you come about that title? What does that mean?

[00:34:10] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, it took us a long time to really figure it out, w- w- uh, the title. So we explored so many different names. So, this was the one that resonated the most about who I wanted to talk to, who are the people. So, I love entrepreneurial stories. I love talking to entrepreneurs, business leaders. So I wanted to talk to people to get to know them, learn the different leaps they have taken- Mm. Okay … in their entrepreneurial journey, and how they got to where they are today. A lot of podcasts on a similar topic, obviously, people are talking about their journeys, but this one is more talking about the leaps that they have taken.

[00:34:52] Chris Whitaker: Love it, the leaps. The leaps of faith. You know, the jump in the chasm, if you will. I mean, yeah, if you’re an entrepreneur, you know, I’ve had– I, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I have so much respect for anyone that’s willing to You know, some- sometimes put their house at risk. I mean, they take out a second mortgage and they get a business loan. I mean, there’s a lot of leaps I can imagine. Well, that is fascinating. Is there anything we haven’t talked about or any, any last information you want to leave us with before we wrap up?

[00:35:25] Ghazenfer Mansoor: I think we, we pretty much, uh, yeah, covered everything. I think, uh, the mobile apps, the 10X growth technology, uh, AI. I think, yeah, one thing I can add on the AI part is I touched earlier where we talk about the AI being used in a traditional way. A lot of people still use search, but then just knowing the prompts is one thing, but that’s more of a usage of AI. But the real importance is how organizations are leveraging AI. So AI obviously requires a lot of data, your own data, training on that data. But the bigger part is when you have sensitive data, whether it’s your internal data for your company, it could be the regular– regulated industries, financial data, tax returns, anything, your PHI, healthcare data, any of that, that requires more sensitive, more extra care than just a regular.

[00:36:15] Ghazenfer Mansoor: People just upload the documents in ChatGPT and do the queries. But you can’t do that, especially if it’s not your own data. So, there are different strategies that are needed to implement in that so that your cloud LLM, whether it’s OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, whatever, they’re not using that to train on that data. And secondly, how do you give that limited data and in different ways, like say maybe in vectors rather than just real, so that it could give you an answer based on that data with the limited data without even still storing it. So there are different architectural approaches, there are different styles of how you- How you build that kind of application.

[00:36:57] Ghazenfer Mansoor: And this is where I’ve seen many AI projects fail. That’s complicated. There are certain things you can do. There are certain things you cannot do. So just loading data in AI doesn’t help. So, knowing how the sensitive data, the private data works with AI, that’s very crucial because that’s a big risk, you’re adding if you’re just adding the data into AI. So make sure you understand that concept, that architecture, how your team, whether it’s internal or external, are taking that data and using AI. So you still can use and you should use AI, but do it the right way so that you are not giving your data for public training.

[00:37:37] Chris Whitaker: As you were talking, I was thinking about an IoT project a couple years ago with a concrete, uh, mixing company. Um, and they had IoT sensors all over the factory and all. And their problem was they had… I can almost remember the call, “We have all this data. We don’t know what to do with it.” We have– They had no way. They didn’t… This was really, this was probably really a couple years, you know, before even AI is what we know it as today. But that’s why I tell people AI is kind of pointless without good data if you don’t have the information. And, uh, I like your point too, you know, of, of, you know, public training for A- AI versus, you know, your own private corporate needs. Well, uh, I really have enjoyed it. It’s kind of gone by fast. I do want to kind of land the plane, uh, Ghazanfer, so thank you for your time today. Please check the show notes, folks. There’ll be links to, to his book a- and, and links to learn more about him and his organization. But, uh, really, thank you for making time for us.

Ghazanfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me.

[00:38:31] Chris Whitaker: Yes, my pleasure, man. It’s, it’s always, it’s always good. This is another area, um, we talk a lot about mobility and mobile devices and, and IoT and wireless. You can’t overlook the apps. Reminds me of a story I heard, friend of mine that worked at BlackBerry. I wanted– I should ask you about that. My friend worked at BlackBerry and, and, uh, she was telling me, uh, it was the year that iPhone came out, and they were at an all-hands meeting, and someone raised their hand. They were doing a Q&A session with the CEO, and someone said, “Hey, what’s our plan to combat the App Store that Steve Jobs just, you know, released, you know, for the iPhone?” And the CEO of BlackBerry said, “Hey, that’s just a fad. No one needs all that on their phone. People, business users only want email, text, and, and phone calls. No one, no one’s going to care.” And she said you could hear a collective sigh across the whole room. Everyone knew that was the beginning of the end for BlackBerry because they just, they kind of missed the boat, you know. Do you remember that? But were you doing apps back at that time?

[00:39:34] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Well, I mean, we’re– I mean, we, we, we built on BlackBerry. We knew it. Obviously, not every per- everybody knew the impact as, as it had later on. I mean, people did not guess it. But I, I think that’s a good point because we also talk about this in our business, talk the stories of Toys “R” Us, Babies “R” Us, Blockbuster- Yeah … as well as BlackBerry because it’s It’s the time when are you willing– A-are you going to be competing or are you going to be just watching and saying, “Well, this is not going to come”?

[00:40:05] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Unfortunately, uh, I don’t know if it’s unfortunately or fortunately, but we hear that a lot from people. “Oh, AI, we’re not ready for AI. This is not for us.” And they feel like AI can’t do anything. These are the comments I hear quite often, even with today’s time. Now it’s just a matter of time all these people will be crushed because sooner or later, these organizations will figure it out, and they will go, because that’s the only way you’re going to be competing. So the people who are just waiting that, “Oh, AI is not going to impact anything and not going to change anything,” or, “Our jobs or our business cannot use AI because of this,” they will be shocked that one decision will come one day that, “No, we’re going to do it, and we have this.”

[00:40:43] Ghazenfer Mansoor: You have a FedRAMP, like the same– There was the same approach for clouds as well. Now the government is on cloud. All those comer- But you could have a private, same as the case. You could have a private AI L-LLMs. So, all of those things are happening. It’s just a matter of time. So, your chance to co- go after and compete, or you sit and watch others take you over. So, do you want to be crushed or do you want to crush? So that’s the debate we have in our companies as well. I tell them stories about Blockbuster and these companies all the time. They saw things coming. They were so arrogant that, “Oh, nothing is going to happen,” and did. They missed it, yeah.

[00:41:20] Ghazenfer Mansoor: Really- And I was listening to Steve Jobs, uh, that interview that came a couple of days ago in front of me when somebody was interviewing the BlackBerry has so much dominance at this time. So it’s the same time when you’re talking about this one. So, there was an opposite interview that I watched two days ago. During the interview, the question was like, “What are you– Are you worried about that– Will you see any adaptation?” He didn’t say anything bad about them. He’s– All he said is, “We believe users need this. We’re building this, and we believe users will come.” That’s right. And that’s like, I think whatever was the ten million or one million was the goal for the first year. He was very confident that he would get that many iPhones sold in the first year. Yeah. And that was one of the quotes, by the way, also– Sorry. Yeah.

[00:42:06] Ghazenfer Mansoor: One of the quotes I had it noted I– like, the Steve Jobs quote is one of my favorite verses, “Customers do not know what they want until you show it to them.” And it resonated so much in our business that we see it all the time because we are talking to our customers many times, we have to push them back. We have to show them, “Hey, you need this one.” Again, not in a way, but said, “Well, here is another way of doing it,” because- Many times customers have no idea. You want to guide them; you give them direction because this is the experience we have. If they see the light, if they see some benefit based on what we are recommending, there’s a high potential they could be successful. Because we have seen other cases as well where customers said, “We talked to them. We told them yellow, they did yellow. We told them green, they did green, but we’re not happy.” Because other companies have not done– have done what the customers told, but the customers didn’t know what to do, and that we see that common in, in the app development.

[00:43:06] Chris Whitaker: Hey, Ghazenfer, it was great meeting you. Uh, thank you for your time again. And as I mentioned earlier, check the show notes. There’ll be more information there, and don’t forget to check out my website as well, thewirelessway.net. Connect Us button on the website, you can check it out and send any recommendations or suggestions or feedback. And as always, as you were listening to this episode, if, uh, a customer came to mind or a colleague came to mind, you know someone that might be interested in this book, you know, please share this episode with them. Uh, they’ll appreciate it, I appreciate it. I know Ghazanfer would appreciate it as well. We could sell a few more books. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s got bills to pay. But, uh, thanks so much again. I enjoyed our conversation today.

Ghazenfer Mansoor: Thanks for having me, Chris. It was a really great conversation.

[00:43:40] Chris Whitaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you bet. Even though I thought we were finished, but as always, I always had another question. So, uh, thanks for hanging in there with us guys, and we’ll see you next time on The Wireless Way.