Todd Merrill:

Hi, welcome to Tales from the Sky Lounge. It’s a podcast about business consulting and venture investing. We get out there in the world and we talk to people who are making it happen and we get their stories. If you could like and subscribe, it would really help us get our story out there. 

So today we have Adam Lehde. Hi, Adam.

Adam Lehde:

Hey, Todd.

Todd Merrill:

Great to have you today. Yeah.

Adam Lehde:

Hey Todd, thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m looking forward to chatting.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Well, why don’t you kick us off in who are you and what are you working on?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, for sure. So, Adam Lehde. I run a company with a co-founder called Happen Technologies and we do software development. We do both custom software projects and some staffing partnerships. So yeah, located here in St. Louis, Missouri. And I grew up around here. My partner is from Ukraine. So, we met and had some staffing out of Eastern Europe. So yeah, looking forward to chatting with you today.

Todd Merrill:

Wow. Very cool. So, a lot to unpack there. So, first question, you’re an owner of a small business. There’s always an interesting origin story. Where were you and what were you doing? Tell us that story about how Happen came together and then how did you meet a guy from around the world?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, for sure.

Todd Merrill:

It’s kind of a cool thing, right?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, not when I first saw it coming, for sure, especially not working in Ukraine. I grew up in a tiny town in Illinois that no one’s ever heard of and didn’t see myself traveling the world and back and forth, working with a bunch of Ukrainian people. I couldn’t have even told you where that was, honestly. But so, Mykola and I met in 2016.

So, my background is in mobile development, and jumped around at a few different companies here in St. Louis before landing at the Nashville car rental team at Enterprise. And Mykola started there, I think, in 2016. And we became good friends, started to learn a little bit about his passion for Ukraine and the people back there and the talent, honestly.

He really had this vision of starting an outsourcing company back to Ukraine. I, on the other hand, hated outsourcing. I kind of had seen my career go from several years of hands-on development, kind of working my way up to senior engineer, but really with a passion for product.

I wasn’t quite as passionate about solving a problem with the right architecture or the right technology. I was more passionate about solving the right problem. And so, I found myself in a lot of meetings with stakeholders and business analysts and then whatnot that engineers weren’t typically invited to. So, I eventually knew that my career path was headed toward product management rather than development. And so hearing about Mykola’s passion for the talent in Ukraine and kind of pushing back and forth on each other of me wanting nothing to do with outsourcing based on my past experiences and him being pretty convincing about the fact that things could be different and certainly were in Ukraine.

He convinced me to try it out and I convinced him that we needed to be more than just an outsourcing company. And so, we’ve built out a business model of a hybrid team, where we have the strategy and the client engagement side of things here, and we utilize the excellent talent back in Ukraine. And we’ve since expanded a little bit outside of Ukraine as well. But that’s kind of where we kick things off and do a ton of work.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. I just got a phone with somebody in the investor realm and we’re talking about projects and that kind of thing, what they will and won’t fund. And I think I brought up outsourcing as a thing and they were very specific about, well, we don’t want to outsource to country X, but we do when there’s a hybrid model. So, when there’s a definite U.S. presence and then you take advantage of the talent that’s elsewhere for a different price point or a different set of talents.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

So, I think that’s super valuable to have that as a different team.

Adam Lehde:

Prior to this, I just hadn’t seen that work, and I clearly hadn’t worked with the right firms or the firms that were doing it right. I had seen a lot more, just hurry up and put people in seats, hurry up and rotate through. You’re constantly working with a different person, people turning over a lot, and I just thought that’s what outsourcing was. And so to see it done so differently and then be able to even expand upon that has been great, honestly.

Todd Merrill:

So, my early days, I had a gig at the phone company, BellSouth, back when that was a thing.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, yeah

Todd Merrill:

We’d have these folks; people would sign a six-month contract and then they’d come and they’d kind of write some crappy code for a little bit for cheap and then they’d be gone. And there’s a policy that you had to keep people rotating through or else, you know. It was kind of weird. So, I guess that used to be what we’d call outsourcing or staff log. But now it’s a lot more sophisticated in there. I mean, you guys bite off your true partner where you look for a project or a longer term.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. So, we partner with companies in a couple different ways. I would say we have two different engagement models. In some of our partnerships, we engage in both models. So, the custom software side, we’re biting off a big chunk of the strategy and helping them build out that strategy and then implementing it for them and then later supporting it. But even on the staffing side of things, it’s not a six-month. It may start as a six-month engagement occasionally, but our goal is to be there years. We have multiple people who have been on their contracts for years. We had one girl who just wrapped up a QA contract. That contract has been active for almost five years, I think, with the same exact position on the same team.

Todd Merrill:

Wow!

Adam Lehde:

So, that’s what we’re after. Not the quick go-in, get back out. We want to build long-term partnerships for sure.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Well, I’ve had exposure to some of your talent. Truly smart, smart, smart people in Ukraine. I mean, like master’s, PhD. It’s not uncommon to get somebody of that caliber that just wants to write code for you.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Well, so Ukraine is an interesting part of the world. Obviously, you’ve probably been over there a couple of times. What was your initial cultural impression of a Midwesterner? It makes its way to Europe.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I’ll clarify your question. So initial impression when we first started working there or impression when I first went over there? Because those were a couple of years apart and pretty different answers.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. So what do you think? I mean, walk us through that journey of…

Adam Lehde:

…yeah, so I guess I’ll start with…

Todd Merrill:

…you’re cool if you’re from Ukraine. Ukraine must be kind of interesting, right?

Adam Lehde:

So, I’ll tell you the first time we ever staffed somebody. I’ll tell you about that kind of cultural experience for me. And then we can move to whenever I actually went over there. So, the first person we ever staffed was with a local development shop here in St. Louis. We still work with them quite a bit. I was on a call with them and their end client and our developer. We’d staffed a senior .NET developer with them, and it was kind of a daily stand-up type call. And it was our first day working. And they went ahead and asked her, “What are you doing?” Clearly, just onboarding was for the most part her answer. But she’s like, well, I was waiting for so-and-so to reach out to me, and I didn’t hear from them. So, I just went ahead and picked up a task and I did it. And I went ahead and put a pull request out there and no one is responding to my messages so I went ahead and picked up another one. So, I hope that’s okay. And I was like…

Todd Merrill:

… heck yeah.

Adam Lehde:

That was a little direct in front of the client. I was a little like, man, okay, hopefully that’s okay. And so they’re like, okay, we’ll contact you right away and we’ll get you something. Well, then the next day, same exact thing. Well, I’ve done two more tasks and I still haven’t heard back from so-and-so. This person was super busy, who was trying to help her out. And he’s like, “I’m so sorry. You’re right. I did not reach out to you. I will contact you.” And she’s like, “Well, I’ve just been doing tasks. I might be doing them wrong. I’m not sure if I’m, you know, but I don’t want to be doing nothing so I’ve been cranking out what I can.” And so that directness, I was not used to.

Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

In my previous outsourcing experience, it was very like, yeah, sure, we can do whatever you want kind of thing, and it was very passive. And this was very direct. And now, granted, this dev was probably even more direct than a lot of our devs, but she got a lot of stuff done.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

And she was excellent. And she worked there about a year and a half or two years. And when she left, the client was like, can you go find us another one for her?

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

They were so excited about the way that she got things done and just very efficient. So, I think that culture shock was, I won’t say culture shock, but it was new to me. Like, being that direct and that, no, I can’t do that. You asked me, and no, I don’t think that’s reasonable. Here’s what I can do. And I’m like, oh, okay, I thought you would say yes to that because I’m just used to hearing yes. But I love it. It’s way more effective conversation. You get ownership. If they say they’re going to do it, they own it. And yeah, it’s great. I can send a message. And if they say, yeah, they’re going to do it, I don’t have to check it in the morning. I can just pull up a meeting and pull open the link where my deliverables should be, and I know they’re there. So that’s a great feeling.

Todd Merrill:

What you see is what you get.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

Versus Midwestern nice, where, you know.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. My business partner, Mykola, I actually was joking with some friends about it this because he lives pretty close to me over in St. Charles. And I was telling him regularly when he first moved over here, he’s like, “Does that person like me or are they just being nice?” Because it’s a common thing here, right?

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

Like, you’re just nice to people. It doesn’t matter if you like them.

Todd Merrill:

Right

Adam Lehde:

So that’s funny.

Todd Merrill:

Right. Yeah. All right. How about the first time you went over there? What did you learn when you went?

Adam Lehde:

First time I went over there, I’ve only been there once because unfortunately with the circumstances that are going on over there right now, I haven’t been able to go back. Probably would be, I mean, I could go, but my wife probably wouldn’t like it. But we went over in 2021, my wife and I for about two weeks. And honestly, it was the best trip of my life. Like it was a blast. So, we flew into Lviv through Turkey, which was another side story, but I got stuck in Turkey for a while.

Todd Merrill:

We will ask you that question later.

Adam Lehde:

But yeah, so we flew to Lviv, got in really late at night because of our delay. We’re supposed to get in the morning and ended up getting in really late at night, but they still wanted to, you know, Mykola and his now wife, then girlfriend, wanted to show us the city, and so we went out on the town at midnight and went to some cool restaurants and a couple of bars. And I don’t think we went to bed before 2 a.m. a single night that entire trip.

Todd Merrill:

Man!

Adam Lehde:

And part of this is because of the, what kind of shift? Like, there’s like a whole shift in the technology space so that they can work a lot more U.S. hours.

Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

Their overlap is like, you know, they’re eight hours off of our Midwest time slot and so if they shift their day by, you know, starting at 10 or 11 a.m., they can overlap till lunch or later for any time zone in the U.S. So that pushes their nightlife later because they’re getting up later. They’re working later. So, we were just up so late every night, but it was an absolute blast. There’s so much rich culture there. The buildings were just hundreds and hundreds of years old, but so well-maintained. And incredible food. Just super welcoming people. Like, it was awesome. Super cool.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Ukraine is a big place too, right? We think of it as one little state in America.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

But it’s really bigger than that. Right?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I saw very little of it, to be honest. So, when we flew into Lviv, our goal was to spend some time there, go to this kind of, I’ll say like a retreat-type weekend, like good destination-type place up in the mountains where they do a lot of skiing and stuff like that. We went and spent some time there and then spent some time with Mykola and his family back in their village where he grew up as a kid.

Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

And so, we did all that, but we were going to try to squeeze in a trip to Kiev, but it was six hours, I want to say. Maybe even seven hours of driving. And it was just not reasonable for the first trip, but yeah, so it takes, you know, I want to say it’s like a trip from New York to Chicago to get across a good chunk of the state. So it’s a long way.

Todd Merrill:

Wow!

Adam Lehde:

So it’s very, very spread out.

Todd Merrill:

And then your talent, is it from all over or do you kind of have like little packets of people who know you?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, there’s kind of a couple of packets. So, we have three partnerships in Ukraine. Two are right on the border of Poland, which is Lviv. So, it’s just a couple of hours or less from Poland. And then one South of Kiev, a couple hours South of Kiev. And so, those are where our partners are based. We’ve hired people from around a couple other cities. We have a couple of people in Kiev. Actually, one of the guys you know well is based in Kiev. And so a couple of people that are, but a lot of people work out of the offices those two cities.

Todd Merrill:

And from one of the things, you know, as we’ve worked together, that surprised me, or kind of was, oh, okay. I didn’t understand that moment for, the people that are there in software engineering and work these global jobs are truly elite people. Like they’re very, very talented, but they’re very privileged within that country as well.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

And they insulated and, you know.

Adam Lehde:

It took me a while. It shouldn’t have taken this long for me to realize why. But like, you know, I see so many resumes, you mentioned like, you know, PhDs and stuff. I saw so many resumes with crazy schooling. Like, you know, we have a senior QA who worked for us for a long time, who was a scientist, a practicing scientist who taught at a university in the evenings. you know, PhD level, instructor, and a couple of different rocket scientists, literally rocket scientists.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

It’s not uncommon at all. And so, it wasn’t until, I don’t know, probably a year ago or so. Like I was reflecting on that with somebody and realized it makes total sense because of the fact that the way the economy boomed in technology there, like people started leaving all kinds of jobs. Like, they’d go to school for whatever they were interested in. They would get a job in that field and then they would realize, you know, your top people in those jobs are the go-getters, right? They’re the ones who are chasing or they’re chasing the dream. Right? And then they realize, wow, the dream is really in tech because I can make four times this if I’d go in technology.

Todd Merrill:

Yes

Adam Lehde:

So, they go back to school or they start taking some side classes and next thing they know they’ve jumped careers over into tech and they’re making way more money. So it’s the level of education is crazy.

Todd Merrill:

Wow! And then, you know, we talk about the economy shifting around, technology is ever-changing if nothing else. But since, you know, the COVID stuff, the pandemic, I think that changed a lot of work habits where remote was more embraced than it was before. If you’re going to go remote, may as well go for it, you know.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, for sure.

Todd Merrill:

Get the best talent on the planet, wherever it is. Do you find that that was a shift? Like, is that still a thing? Are you seeing like return-to-work kind of impacting that or is there still an openness?

Adam Lehde:

That’s interesting. I haven’t talked about that in a while, but I think it was a huge shift for the Midwest, right? I don’t think it shook California very much. If you think about they were already, you know, the startup culture was already work remote. They may have some people in the office that, you know, playing ping pong and stuff whenever they wanted to, but like…

Todd Merrill:

… yeah

Adam Lehde:

I think that the top growing younger companies already knew you really needed to allow remote talent to get the people you really want working there.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

But I think the Midwest has some of those companies, but they also have a lot of like big giants who have grown slow for pull from the bootstraps and build out a company over many, many decades. And I think they’re a little more resistant to change, and COVID kind of forced that change on them. And so, I think it was a big culture shift for them.

I was at Enterprise and they made that shift to work at home. They were allowing it some, like they would let you work at home a day or two a week, certainly depending on the team you were on. And I was certainly on one of the more flexible ones, but to just up and let everybody work from home, you know, that possibly was a huge shift for them. And I do think it shifted salaries all over the country. It shifted like, you know, talent that people could reach. So, I don’t know to what degree. I know it went back. Like, there’s definitely a lot of companies pulling people back in, but I think it’s already had time to go back again. Like, they got so much flack for bringing people back in that then, I think they started to back off again.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

So, I think it’s kind of settled in now to where people were like, well, if you’re close enough, we want you to come into the office a few times a week. If you really hate it and raise too much fuss, okay, fine, stay home, I guess. Like, I think they’ve kind of settled in.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

So, but… I kind of think.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. We talk about this a lot with a lot of people, you know, there’s some jobs that you’re just grinding, like, man, I don’t care where your cave is, just go there and grind. It can be, but then there’s a lot of jobs where it’s creative and coordinated, collaborative. Maybe some of the more senior level jobs where you really, you know, being in the same place with the same whiteboard, so to speak, really does help. Yeah. So, it’s kind of this weird, like, well, you know, totally remote is not great for everybody.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

But it’s important to have that option for a lot of people, you know, but like everybody in the office doesn’t make sense either.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. And it’s interesting, like, I was an Agile coach for a while. Whenever I was kind of working my way towards product, I went through project management in Agile, you know, Scrum mastering, Agile coaching, that kind of thing. And I really valued the in-person thing of teams just getting around a big whiteboard and brainstorming and whatnot. And it was kind of difficult at first for me to shift to, you know, I’m not in person with my team a lot of the time, but technology has made it where it’s much easier to do that. And I think especially, you know, the younger generation, but I think honestly in tech, even older generations that have stayed up with tech, they’ve gotten used to the technologies and collaborating over technology that I don’t think is as much of a hindrance to not be in person. I think it’s more important to have the right people on the team. And that far outweighs the ability to be in person. Whereas, it is nice to be able to get together and sit in a room and see the people, at least most people, have feet, you know, once in a while, it’s not necessary. So, yeah

Todd Merrill:

I can remember very vividly coming to a company that was cybersecurity, a lot of really geeky, nerdy, introverted people, you know, we all had cubicles.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, yeah.

Todd Merrill:

And then it wasn’t Slack yet or Teams, it was IM, right? And then rather than getting up, going over, say, hey, can you help me with this? They would type to each other. And then I thought, God, you know, this is so weird. But then it was like, oh yeah, this is way easier, you know? Then you have like a record and it’s kind of funny how things change and norms shift. And it really is kind of a communication skill set. We used to type with typewriters, five pages, you know, five-paragraph essays.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

And now it’s kind of, you know, you have to figure out Zoom and what your camera looks like and all that stuff.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I feel like it’s changed in the development space. I feel like that requirement has changed a lot of, like… I don’t know if it changed the people or changed who, like, it attracts. But I feel like there was this stigma. The developers were these super nerdy people who sit in their cubes and don’t know how to talk to anyone. I mean, there are those people, right? Like, we all have those friends. But it’s not like that to most people. Like, that’s kind of the exception of the people who prefer that. There are some guys who just are like, can you leave me alone so I can do my work? And you give them tasks accordingly so they can just crank them out, but I feel like it’s a lot more common these days to have the devs who want to be involved in the business discussions. They want to be talking about what is the actual business value of this feature versus not doing it or doing it differently. And they don’t want to just be handed tasks and crank them out.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

So, I don’t know. It’s an interesting shift. But I think it’s kind of came from the way culture went and technology culture, I guess I’ll say.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Well, you talk about startup culture invading the Midwest. So, I mean, that’s it, right? It’s not just like work habits. It’s like, hey, how do, you know, I want to be a partner in the business, emotionally, intellectually, if not economically.

Adam Lehde:

For sure.

Todd Merrill:

I want to understand kind of what’s going on so I can help. Go back to Ukraine for a second. So, another trend is, you know, the obvious hostilities in Ukraine. Everybody is like, well, you know, I don’t know if I want to…it’s dangerous. Your wife won’t let you go. You know, some parts of it are definitely more dangerous than others. But for sure, it’s a lot of safe places. You know, with the election, we have a pretty good chance that, you know, all that could kind of come to a stop here. Assuming that that does happen, what’s that look like for Ukraine as a country? I mean, is it, you know, an acceleration? Is it business as usual? Is it going to be, you know, what do you think is going to happen? If three to six months from now, we find ourselves kind of done and rebuilding, whatever that means.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. Speaking as a country, not as a business, I think it highly depends on what’s decided, right? Like, what kind of resolution is brought forth? Because I think the coming administration talks a big game, right? They certainly seem to have some plans that they feel they can implement fairly quickly. I think there’s some fear that to implement something fast is going to require quite a bit of secession on both parties that may feel forced.

I think Ukraine definitely wants the war over. They definitely, I mean, they didn’t want it in the first place, right? They don’t want Russians coming and invading their home. So, I think there’s a ton of desire to find a resolution, whether or not what’s proposed will be forced versus or like coerced, I guess I’ll say, versus a plan that works well for people. I don’t really know. It’s just speculation at this point, but I certainly hope so.

I hope it gives people a way to move forward in any sort of normalcy because there’s certainly a large portion of the country that has very difficult daily lives. Thankfully for most of our developers, it’s a heavy emotional toll, but it’s not a major physical toll on their day-to-day work lives, right? Like, they’re hundreds and hundreds of miles from active conflict and not like happen to go fight a war in the morning and come back home and then develop. Like their day-to-day life, they can go order coffee and sit on a patio and drink coffee in the morning, but whether they want to is different, right? Because their emotional state is their country is at war, their homeland is being fought for. They are losing family and friends.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

So, there’s certainly an emotional toll that is taken and certainly want to see, you know, some action from the U.S.’ part of whatever they can do to help.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Well, let’s all hope, you know, everything gets calm and everybody can focus on more productive things.

Adam Lehde:

For sure. For sure. I would love to be able to. This was not on my business plan of, you know.

Todd Merrill:

Right

Adam Lehde:

The day this started, I was like, I’ll check the playbook, but I don’t think I know how to run this one.

Todd Merrill:

Right

Adam Lehde:

So…

Todd Merrill:

Well. I remember you telling me a story about how one of your devs was, you know, his whole paycheck was donated to the cause, right?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. The entire time he worked with us, he donated his entire paycheck, yeah.

Todd Merrill:

That’s incredible. Some really good people.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the ones who are working, they see that as their mission. That’s the way they can contribute and they just donate the hell out of their salaries. We have people who on the weekends go and work at food banks, packaging food and, you know, just whatever they can do to help out the people who are actively fighting.

Todd Merrill:

So, if everything calms down and we get going again, you know, there’s some spare cycles in everybody’s lives. Do you see the startup culture permeating over there? You know, we’re going to see some really cool startups emerging from all these really talented folks.

Adam Lehde:

Oh yeah, for sure. I feel like Ukraine has always had that. I can’t tell you the number of times where I’ve sent a link to Mykola about like, hey, should we check out this product? And he’s like, “Sure. Did you know it was built in Ukraine?” Like…

Todd Merrill:

… no kidding.

Adam Lehde:

It happens often. I think there’s even some of that going on right now, but a lot of it’s more focused, right? Like, there’s all these drone companies and all these things going on, but it’s all, you know, a lot more focused on helping the conflict be resolved.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

But for sure, I think we’ll see that. And I think their technology sphere is so strong that it’ll be a big part of rebuilding their economy for sure.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah, very cool. I want to go back to something you said earlier, your early career. You were a mobile dev, right? So, like, boy…

Adam Lehde:

…yeah

Todd Merrill:

That’s been a crazy arc, you know, of innovation. So how did you, you know, get into mobile development? What was that like? Were you just kind of like next guy up? And you thought something new, I’ll try it. How did that, how’d you get into mobile?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I wish I could say that I was always interested in it and had the first iPhone when it came out but I didn’t and I wasn’t. And so I went to school for development, but it was before mobile was really a thing. The iPhone came out while I was in college and, you know, a couple of rich friends had it. And I’ll probably get a message for like… I wasn’t rich. I just had… I don’t know if I can get some track to that.

Todd Merrill:

Little exotic, right?

Adam Lehde:

Right. And so, but, you know, getting out of college. I had a friend from my church back home who worked at a company who was trying out some mobile stuff and they had some internships that they wanted to give out. And there were three positions and he got me one of those positions. I came over and I was driving an hour each way to St. Louis to do an internship, making very little. And honestly, it was horrible. The internship was genuinely terrible. I’m not going to say everybody there was terrible, but there were definitely some, there’s definitely some really unhealthy culture.

Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

And worked underneath a mentor who was pretty showy and would regularly talk about how much he paid for his clothes and talk crap about how much other people did not pay for their clothes and tell people to dress nicer and whatever. And that kind of culminated with the end of my internship. The other two interns quit. I was the only person to finish the internship. One quit the second day and then the other one quit after one month.

Todd Merrill:

Oh, my God!

Adam Lehde:

And then as I was leaving, my mentor, who was the senior architect for the team, took me in his office and he told me, look, I can tell you’re a little upset and I want to give you some tips for life. So, I’m going to speak to you not as your mentor, but as your friend here. This guy was not my friend.

Todd Merrill:

Ha ha ha! Okay.

Adam Lehde:

But he said, “So you’re not cut out for this job. You’re not going to make it in technology ever and you just don’t have what it takes to be a developer. You need to go back to school and you need to pick something else. I don’t want you to get hurt, and the longer you try this, the more you’re going to get hurt. So, I just want you to know that.” And like, I don’t know what my face looks like, but I’m sure it wasn’t happy. And so, he’s like, maybe if you like really, really push, you can, I think maybe, you could do some manual QA work or something, which is one, I couldn’t even do manual QA. I don’t have the attention span. Like he was wrong. I don’t have the skill set to even do that. And so, he tells me all this. Well, then I left his office, you know, clearly pissed and about an hour later, he comes against me and brings me back into his office. He’s like, “Look, I can tell you took that pretty hard. I’m going to give you five actionable items of like, if you follow these five steps, like maybe there’s a chance you can, I’m wrong. Maybe there’s a chance I’m wrong.” And like, “You can actually be successful.” And he’s like, “So here’s your five steps. Step one is you have got to put your family second.” He’s like, “I know you’re married young, but I can tell that you put your family first. And like, that is not going to happen in this career. You can’t.” He’s like, “I stuffed towels under the door so I can’t hear my kids cry.” He’s like, “You need to put your family second.” I have no idea what he said after that.

Todd Merrill:

Ha ha ha!

Adam Lehde:

He said those five things. He said five things. So, I left there and I walked out of there that day with my head held high. Like…

Todd Merrill:

… yeah

Adam Lehde:

Like whatever I’m going to do, I’m not going to do that. And I threw a resume together and put it out there for, you know, whatever I could find. Got all kinds of calls because the amount of people in St. Louis with iOS and Android on the resume was …

Todd Merrill:

From zero

Adam Lehde:

…very few, maybe one.

Todd Merrill:

Yes

Adam Lehde:

I got several calls and ended up interviewing at a place called Aspect. It’s more known here as Quilogy. It had been bought out recently. And interviewed with a manager named Chris Hayes. And we hit it off like two peas in a pod. The second I had that interview is like, I called my wife after, and she was a little worried about, is this just what the tech industry is? Like, are they all going to treat you like this? And I was like, I don’t know what the next steps are, but I know I got the job.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

‘Cause, him and I hit it off awesome. And have been good friends since. He’s been at a few companies around St. Louis and we stay in touch and love that place. Like, excellent culture, excellent people. I learned a lot, and yeah, from there kind of built up my confidence and realized that one bad place doesn’t mean that that’s the way life has got to be.

Todd Merrill:

So culture and…

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I started learning mobile for real.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

And, you know, kind of jumped around between Android and iOS for a while. And before landing on native iOS is what I really enjoyed doing the most. And yeah, stayed doing that for several years.

Todd Merrill:

So you were Java, Java guy, right?

Adam Lehde:

At first. Yeah.

Todd Merrill:

Wow!

Adam Lehde:

Java first, then iOS, switched to Objective-C for iOS, and then eventually Swift.

Todd Merrill:

Wow! Very cool.

So, you ever miss, I know you probably have an opinion, but, God, it’s like this, never-ending quest for man, you know, all these cross-platform development things. You just want them to work. You’re like, ah, if I could just…

Adam Lehde:

… yeah, it’s the dream, right? Can I write something one single time and put it on any single device someone hands me?

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Is it there? Is it going to get there?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. So, I have messed with it. Actually, the job that I went to after Aspect, I worked in PhoneGap. I think later was Cordova.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Lehde:

I don’t know if anyone’s still using it. I haven’t run into it.

Todd Merrill:

Ionic, I think, finally sold out like last year.

Adam Lehde:

Okay

Todd Merrill:

But it’s still a thing.

Adam Lehde:

Haven’t run into it, in recent years, but, so yeah, we built a delivery app for Anheuser-Busch, in PhoneGap. It was not my decision to use PhoneGap. It was already the platform, but, yeah, so it was like jQuery Mobile-based and worked in that for like two years. You had to build all the local plugins, all the native plugins built in Android and iOS. We had to build them all twice. Anytime you wanted to touch the device or frameworks, but it was not great. That kind of, you know, set the tone for what I thought of cross-platform.

Then at Enterprise, the conversation was had quite a bit about switching to React Native. It had been around a little while, you know, Facebook was using it clearly and then a couple of other bigger companies were getting on it. Enterprise then hired a company to build out the Enterprise mobile apps all on national car rental. And then they had someone build out the website and then the Enterprise app and they use React Native for that.

Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

And I assume used React to build out the website, to share some code base and, it went okay. I think they liked how fast it was built. It certainly didn’t feel like a native mobile app and the big team of mobile developers we were on like hated on it because it felt like you were using a website even though it was technically an app. So still kind of hated React Native and just any cross-platform at that point. Pushed pretty hard against it.

In fact, we’ve petitioned against it kind of as developers. We put together reasons why we shouldn’t use it and stuff. And to leadership’s credit, they listened, you know, they did not convert national, at least at that time. I think eventually they did just for simplicity sake to have all their stuff on the same platform, but, for years they did not.

And then started, you know, we started to Happen and, you know, whenever you are no longer a developer and you have to kind of explore all the options, you kind of lose that partiality to certain platforms and have since realized that there’s a lot of great use cases for React Native. We’ve built a couple of different apps for people using React Native. And I won’t say that I’ve grown to where it’s my favorite platform in the world, but it’s very useful. It’s still not to the point where you can code one single code base and deploy everywhere, but you can save a lot of time with it for sure. Whereas if you give me all the, you know, unlimited budget or a really big budget for things, I’d still prefer to build things Native for more complex applications, for a lot of use cases, React Native works great.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

It’s a lot more economical.

Todd Merrill:

Well, just kick this around for a second. Cause you know, I’ve tilted at this windmill for over a decade, probably more than that, but it’s like, why, you know, with HTML5, right? You get location services and some other nice things. Like why don’t we just build mobile-friendly web apps? You know? Why do we need to be…

Adam Lehde:

…as opposed to apps in general?

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. What do you need to be in the store. Cause the app stores are always changing the rules and there’s a lot of legal junk you got to go through. And there’s a financial tax.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I can’t quote statistics right off the top of my head, but there’s a ton of statistics on if you’re looking for repeat users, like it’s one thing if you’re like, let’s say you have an event coming up and you’re just wanting to do this. It’s a really expensive event. You want people to do it one time, like a web app probably makes total sense. But like when you want customer engagement repeatedly, you’re never going to get the same out of a web app. Like, all right, I’m going to use a website, right? A mobile website. Your people will say like, “Oh, you could just save the link onto your phone.” Sure, you can, but nobody’s going to. No one does that. Right?

Todd Merrill:

Right

Adam Lehde:

Like, it’s not how people use phones. They use apps. And so, most of people’s time on phones is spent in apps. And whereas a lot of that is on the browser, if it’s on the browser, it’s because they’re browsing, not because they’re using a product. They’re using a product, they’re within an app.

And so I think that’s just how you get more user engagement and you can control the user experience a lot more. I mean with us, I’m still not going to always talk somebody into using an app. Like, there’s definitely times where someone wants an app and it’s like, I mean, you don’t have a use case for an app because you want this thing that someone’s going to use once every other year. I’m going to delete that app so fast. Like I’m not going to use… I don’t want to take up space on my phone for…

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

And I’m not a, like keep my phone. I probably have, I won’t even admit how many apps I probably have open on my phone right now. I’m not one of those who keep everything nice and neat. But if you want me to download an app to do an action one single time, it’s not what they’re for.

Todd Merrill:

So, but if it’s over and over and over and over.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. But if you want engagement, you can’t expect people to be logging back into their browser, you know, window every time.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

It’s not a good experience.

Todd Merrill:

So maybe rapid prototype on a web app and then once you get it kind of settled, then spend money.

Adam Lehde:

Maybe, but that’s not necessarily that much faster, right? It depends on what the purpose of your prototype is, but if your prototype’s purpose is to get stakeholders in, then it should just be like a Figma prototype. That’s clickable that shows kind of how it works. And if your prototype is you want to prove that users will use it, you’re not going to accomplish that with a web app because you can’t prove that somebody is going to daily use an app by putting it in the web. They’re not going to use it. So, you’re going to set yourself up for failure. If it’s going to be a prototype, it has to be in the environment that someone will actually use it. 

Todd Merrill:

Make sense.

Adam Lehde:

So, I don’t know. It kind of depends on where your goals are.

Todd Merrill:

Well, and it’s that usability argument, right? You know, just like colors on a button matter, you know, will you even open the app matters, you know?

Adam Lehde:

Right

Todd Merrill:

One little hesitation, you’re going to have a huge drop-off and uptake.

Adam Lehde:

For sure. Go ahead.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah. I was going to go back to your wife, you know, your early lessons of family prioritization., I feel very strongly that, you know, family is important. Jobs come and go, projects come and go, your family is going to be there forever. Do you feel good about that decision? And then, you know?

Adam Lehde:

Yes, for sure.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah 

Adam Lehde:

Coming up on 15 years married, 15-year anniversary is in January. So…

Todd Merrill:

Hey, congrats!

Adam Lehde:

I feel very good about that decision. Yeah.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

So, I totally agree. And that’s something that Mykola and I have kind of put first from the start is if this company is not allowing us the freedom to love our families better and ultimately spend more time with them, what’s the point of it, right? And allow other people to do the same. Like, why are we doing it? So that’s kind of always been at the forefront of, you know, starting Happen.

I’ll actually tell you a story where I screwed that up, honestly. Early on, I think I was, there was so much pressure to make it work, right? I’m still working a full-time job and having meetings over lunch and basically trying to fake it till I could make it kind of thing. And I was wrong on so many different things about what that was going to take. But one of the things was that I thought I had to respond to every single person immediately. And so, you know, my phone would go off and I’d go find it and pick it up and respond to somebody. And it was exhausting in the evenings, right? Like, my wife wants me to help take care of my newborn at home, and I’m sitting here at the evenings at the dinner table, responding to emails. And I’ll never forget the statement she said to me. She’s like, “You’ve been very clear with employers in your initial interviews of what kind of employee you are, right?” Like, I’ve always told people if you have an emergency a couple times a year, I’ll be your guy to stay late. But if your definition of an emergency is every single week, you’ve got a project deadline that you want me working crazy hours, that’s not me. Like, I go home when work is over.

Todd Merrill:

Right

Adam Lehde:

And so she said, you know, but with your own company, you’re constantly on. Like, you check your phone all the time. Like, I think she’s like, it’s up to you to define what kind of company you’re building. And are you going to build a company that you would work for? And I was like, oh, man.

 Todd Merrill:

Yeah. Smart.

Adam Lehde:

So I, like, went to work the next day. I was like, Mykola, we got to talk. And it wasn’t him. It wasn’t like he was pushing me. It was just something I needed to hear and still reflect on, like, I want to make sure I build a company that I would work for and that people want to work for. And then, yeah, we try to push that very, very strongly.

Todd Merrill:

And then take that one step further, you know, what was the … so one step further, when you, yeah, at some point, you came to a decision, hey, I got to do this full time. I got to jump in and burn the boats. So, what was that moment? Was there a catalyst? Well, you know.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

What’d your wife say? She seems pretty smart.

Adam Lehde:

So, it was a half decision, half a push.

Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

So right when COVID hit, Enterprise took a big hit and they started laying people off, right? So, the first round of layoffs, they laid off my manager and his manager. And so suddenly there were, I don’t know, 170 people like, hey, Adam, do you know where we can find such and such? And I’m like, I don’t even know who you are. Like, why are you asking me this question?

Meanwhile, our son was born and I, you know, then took time off for this. It was, you know, a month in. So, I had to step out of work in the middle of like nobody has a manager. And now I have to go spend time in the NICU with a newborn.

And then they made a second round of layoffs. And I was cut in the second round of layoffs. Literally had the remote meeting while I was in the NICU. Like video call, found out that I’m laid off in the NICU with my second child.

Thankfully, when the first round of layoffs happened, I had called one of our customers with Happen, which had just been something we did on the side, you know, and trying to get going. I called one of those customers and I’m like, you know, you’ve been talking a lot about converting your kind of organization over to Agile. They had been in the past were more of a Waterfall-based organization. It’s like, we’re doing some development stuff with you guys. Agile is what I’ve been doing for Enterprise for a while now. Like, you know, leading at that time, we had a team of about 30 people that I was leading. And I was like, why don’t I come on and lead your Agile transformation for you? So, I’ll come on as a contractor. He knew, you know, what I was doing with Happen, obviously. And I’ll leave Enterprise and come on and run kind of, or help organize your Agile transformation.

In the meantime, I can also lead some projects for you and, you know, we can continue this partnership with Happen. And I won’t double-bill you for any hours, right? You’re just going to, if I’m leading a project with Happen, I’m still the same person for you.

So, over the course of about a month, we had more conversations and talked to the rest of his leadership and ended up being a great thing for both of us. And so I went full-time for Happen, was a contractor for his organization and loved it. It was great. Like, they’re just an awesome group of people, which I already knew. I knew that I would mesh with them well. And it was the perfect opportunity to rather than go get a different job, to ease my way into full-time with Happen.

And so, yeah, it was great. I got on a couple different projects with them, started kind of meeting their whole development team, doing one-on-one meetings with them, kind of learning, you know, how they think and operate, and then started kind of implementing this big change throughout the organization to how they deliver projects. And then went down to halftime and then quarter time, and then eventually stepped out of it completely. And now we just do some project work and some staffing with them.

Todd Merrill:

Nice. Well, do you want to talk about your workout routine? It’s kind of an oddball, curveball from nowhere, but like how do people deal with stress as a business owner, you know, is a big deal. You seem to have your priorities really well in line.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. It was funny that that came up in our conversation the other day. It was something that I really, really needed in my life. I think working out is one of those things that for some reason most people either do too much of it or not enough of it. I feel like there’s very few people who just like, yeah, I kill it at that. I do my hour a day or a couple hours a week or whatever it is. And I was definitely on the not enough of it clearly. And so, I had a couple of friends who had joined this. We called it a cult, I guess. I thought they were in a cult. And they were like you got to join this. You got to join this. It’s great. And I’m like, what time did you say it was? And they said 5:30 in the morning. I’m like, nope. 5:30 in the morning is the middle of the night. I am not interested. So kept on pushing on me, kept on pushing on me. And I got to the point where I told literally one of my best friends in the world, I was like, you should go find a new thing, and I don’t care what it is to try to convince me of. I mean, throw a dart and I guarantee you have better odds than getting me to show up at one of these. Like, it is not going to happen. And now I’m on the regional leadership team for this organization. 

 Todd Merrill:

Okay

Adam Lehde:

So yeah, it’s called F3. It stands for Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith. It is an all men’s workout group. It has five core principles. It’s free. It’s held outdoors. Rain or shine. It’s open to all men. It is peer-led in a rotating fashion and always ends in a circle of trust. So, what that equates to is a bunch of guys getting together at local parks, like all around the world. It’s most heavily attended in the U.S., but there are groups all over the world. And just guys get together at local parks. A different person leads every day and does work out. And it’s super fun. And, you know, the circle of trust thing is just, they ask you to share whatever’s going on in your life, share your wins, share your losses, you know, share your struggles. And people will lift each other up. And they’ll ask throughout the week, “Hey, how’s that thing going that you said was tough?” Or, you know, “How’s your mom? You said she was sick” or whatever. You know, they say it’s faith-based. It’s not a Christian organization or a Catholic organization or something like that.

It’s like, there’s people from all different types of religions or some atheists and there’s all different belief systems, but it’s more about believing that you’re not the center of the universe. And so it’s really cool. I think that’s probably why I keep going because I probably wouldn’t do it if it was just about the working out part, but it’s that kind of community bond-type thing to show up there with a bunch of guys and climb up and down a hill or lift concrete blocks or play ultimate Frisbee in the dark with a light-up Frisbee or, you know, just, we do all kinds of crazy stuff, it’s an absolute blast.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

It’s been a, it’s been a huge change in my life and I feel a lot better physically and better, you know, mentally. So, it’s definitely made me a better person. It’s been great.

Todd Merrill:

And I think you said something about, you know, if you had to pick one of three things, you know, where that was, the F3 was one of them. The sacrifice, right?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I said something about like, if you made me like make a big change about my job or if you made me move to a different state, or you told me I couldn’t be a part of this group anymore, with F3, I would change one of the other two before I would completely stop being a part of this group. I think there’ll be a day where like, you know, we’ll look up as a society and be able to see a visual impact that this group of guys made. And not that it’ll just be through the guys, but just through the families that the guys, you know, had impacts on. And it’s just a big deal.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

It’s cool to like, I’ll travel. I was in Greenville, South Carolina, and drove to a – we call them beat downs – drove to a beat down, in downtown Greenville with a bunch of guys that I never knew, like show up, you know, tell my name and work out with them. And then by the end of it, feel like you’re great friends because you’re all speaking the same, you know, calling everything the same language and doing your workout together. And then you end with some coffee and hanging out and kind of sharing what’s going on in your life. And I don’t know, it’s just cool to be able to go and do that anywhere, and have that available. Completely free.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

So it’s really cool.

Todd Merrill:

How cool is that? That is awesome.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah

Todd Merrill:

All right. Last question. you know, it’s about travel and getting out there in the world. Surely you got some awesome travel stories. I know you mentioned Turkey earlier. You got any great travel stories you want to share with us?

Adam Lehde:

Look, I haven’t done enough in Turkey to recommend Turkey. I’ll say that if you get stuck in Turkey and you’re really tired, whatever they’re charging for the airport inside of that hotel or the hotel inside of that airport is worth it cause I paid way too much to sleep five hours. and I would do it again in a heartbeat ‘cause I was very tired. But good travel stories, man. Mykola would answer this question a lot better cause that guy travels everywhere. But when the opportunity, comes up, go to Ukraine. That place, l, to give an example, we ran into a lady, in Lviv and I don’t remember why we were talking to her. She asked us some questions and she was from a very random country, like nowhere nearby there and not from the U.S. I don’t know where from. And we asked her what are you doing in Ukraine? And she’s like my trip got canceled because of COVID restrictions in this other country I was just to go visit. So, I just picked a random country on the map. She literally like closed her eyes, spotted a map, put her finger down, and decided to go to Ukraine and like loved it.

Like, I’m saying how it was one of the best trips she’s ever been on. She’s traveled a lot of the world. And like, it is such a rich culture. It is very, very impressive. And honestly, because of that, it’s kind of messed up Mykola’s standards and Mykola has went around the world a lot and he’s seen a lot. And so I think, you know, he’ll go to someplace that we think of as real touristy and amazing. He’ll be like, I mean, it’s okay. I can do all that in Lviv. So, and he’s not lying. You can. It’s got a lot to offer. So, yeah, that was a big thing. I really, really enjoyed that.

Aside from that, my wife and I don’t haven’t done a ton of extravagant travel. I’m more of a like go to retreat into the woods and do some fishing and some hiking. And I’m a quiet vacation person. I like to kind of get away. And when I get out there and my cell phone doesn’t work, I know I’ve succeeded in vacation.

Todd Merrill:

Ha ha ha! That’s awesome. Well, maybe we’re going to jet together when the dust clears in Europe and take a trip over there.

Adam Lehde:

Sounds good. Sounds good. And look forward to it.

Todd Merrill:

So, Adam, if people want to follow up with you after this what’s a great way to get in touch with you on the internet?

Adam Lehde:

Yeah. Well, they can find me at our website, Happen Technologies.com. We’re on there and LinkedIn as well. You can look us up on LinkedIn, either my profile or Happen’s profile. I can throw you some links that you can put out there.

Todd Merrill:

Yeah

Adam Lehde:

If you’re local in St. Louis, reach out, we’ve got an event that we do monthly, called Bourbon Club that we sponsor. It’s at the reserve here in the Creve Coeur area. And we have about a hundred people come out monthly. So, if you’re looking to do some business networking and enjoy having a drink of whiskey, reach out and I can get you on the list.

Todd Merrill:

It sounds awesome. Well, it’s been great having you, Adam and, bye for now.

Adam Lehde:

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Todd.