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Welcome to Travel Buddy
Join us for a conversation with Nowell Outlaw, CEO of Switchfly, as he reflects on the company's recent milestones and looks ahead to the future of travel and loyalty technology. Nowell discusses the impact of company culture, the drive for speed and efficiency, and the evolving role of AI in shaping customer experiences. Discover candid stories about walking away from the wrong customers, infusing work with a sense of fun, and strategies for staying ahead in a rapidly changing marketplace. If you're interested in practical leadership lessons and the intersection of technology and travel, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss. *Chapters* (00:01) Reflections on Company Progress and Strategic Moves (02:49) Shaping and Living Core Values (06:42) Embracing Whimsy in Team Culture (09:03) Accelerating Customer Onboarding and Operational Speed (11:07) Market Trends and the Need for Velocity (14:53) Leveraging AI for Efficiency and Knowledge Coordination (28:59) Personal Milestones and Upcoming Travel Plans *Connect with Switchfly* Website: https://www.switchfly.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/switchfly/ X: https://twitter.com/switchfly YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SwitchflyOfficial
Transcript
Brandon Giella (00:01.198)
All right, today we have back on the show, Nowell Outlaw, CEO of Switchfly. Thank you for joining back again. Good to see you, Nowell. Last week, you guys had a All Hands meeting, thinking back toward 2025, how things went, looking forward to 2026, what you're expecting, what you're hoping for, what aiming for. Talk to me, what are some of the big takeaways from the All Hands last week? What are some of the key themes and things that you guys have accomplished or thought about and what you're reflecting on this year?
Nowell Outlaw (00:08.204)
Bye bye.
Nowell Outlaw (00:31.629)
Yeah, I think the, the interesting thing is that, you know, I think like every business, you have the perfect dream of how everything will work when you're doing enterprise software. And then you have the reality, right? So, I joke with people that in a lot of ways it's five steps forward, four steps backwards, right? you know, the company, spend a lot of time that, you know, and, and my other joke with people was last year would be.
Well, we're 48 weeks into our 10 week plan. We actually went through a huge process last year of setting up our own Indian offshore subsidiary, which has its own just fun things and things you have to go through to do that. But then we also negotiated with a partner and hired the 22, 21 people.
Brandon Giella (01:03.886)
Yes.
Nowell Outlaw (01:26.573)
over to Switchfly and these are employees that have been with us for a really long time and so it was really strategic to get that done. But what you end up doing is you spend a lot of time thinking about stuff that you don't normally think about, right? And now you're doing it and it's a 12-hour clock difference, right? So you put in the request, it takes longer. But you know, the biggest thing is, since I know you have a...
A newborn, right? You learn sign language, right? And the joke that I have with people is this, right? Which is the more, right? More for babies, right? And so with, you know, with the management team and other people, it's just more, right? I want more bookings, more customers, more whatever. And, you know, the company had its ups and downs, like, you know, like all companies. We were able to close nine new customers, which is awesome.
Brandon Giella (01:56.288)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (02:02.35)
More. Yes. Yes.
Brandon Giella (02:10.136)
Yes.
this.
Nowell Outlaw (02:23.373)
When you look back, Switchfly has been around for 20 some years, and it's been a roller coaster. And having that repeatable playbook that we can close clients with has been really important for us. So it's good. Would you like more? Yes. Could you do more? I'm not sure.
Brandon Giella (02:24.024)
Amazing.
Brandon Giella (02:49.774)
Yes, and there are hopes that AI is gonna solve everything for you, and for every business out there. We'll talk about that in a second. I'm curious, one of the notes that we were discussing is, okay, so you've got business seems to be really improving, lots of exciting things to look forward to in 2026. What are some ways that you see the team culture, internal culture evolving over time? Things that you're maybe doubling down on or emphasizing or letting go, or why do you see that mix?
Nowell Outlaw (02:56.353)
Yeah. Yep.
Nowell Outlaw (03:05.517)
Correct.
Nowell Outlaw (03:18.017)
Yep. So I think culture is one of my personal like things that I pay attention to in a big way. Right. And when I first got here, the, the number one thing that we did was define core values, right. And making sure that, that people, both that are, we're hiring and the people that are here understand and lean into those core values. Right. And, and I will tell you without
Brandon Giella (03:21.326)
you
Nowell Outlaw (03:47.242)
hesitation, that has been one of the best things that's happened here is we have core values that people lean into, right? And so an example is when we do employees of the quarter, right? We measure based upon how that person has amplified or personified a core value in the company, right? It sounds like a little thing, but you know, when we do our bonus reviews, when we do our
I just did an assessment for someone who works for me. The assessment on your performance is based upon demonstrated evidence against a core value, right? Customer obsession is one of them, you know, being stronger as a team, right, as an example, you know, are we being frugal? And, and I learned these core values basically from Amazon, like Amazon uses these as part of their hiring process as do we, but a lot of companies talk to
No, we've got some core values and they're on a piece of paper on the wall over there and have they really implemented into the core, right? And that helps drive a culture that people really lean into, right? And so even not just for me, but down into individual teams, people are, you know, questioned like, does this align with the core value? Right? And does this align with an objective?
Brandon Giella (04:47.374)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (04:56.142)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (05:06.488)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (05:08.939)
And the core values are equally as important to me as doing OKRs the right way.
Brandon Giella (05:15.478)
It's so important because there are so many decisions and trade-offs you have to make every single day, little ones, big ones, and to have some kind of schema to say, that doesn't align with where we're going, that doesn't align with where we're going, aside from the strategic priorities that you have. But I think also, I'm curious your thoughts, you if you get a lot of business, there's a lot of demand, there's sometimes like, I don't know if this customer would be the right fit for our core values, there's some of that as well that can help clarify how I approach this deal.
Nowell Outlaw (05:37.549)
Correct.
We've had, we have had that. We have walked away from a couple of customers or potential customers that it just, it's not a good fit. And you sit there and go, you know, these, the customer sounds great, but then when you sit down and you start engaging with them, I these are long-term partnerships, right? This is, these are not quick in and out kind of deals. They're multi-year engagements with these customers. And if,
If it's not a good fit, you don't want to do those deals.
Brandon Giella (06:12.717)
That's right. That's right. There is such a thing as bad revenue. That's what I've heard before
Nowell Outlaw (06:16.629)
Correct, correct. there are customers who aren't up to the challenge or don't understand what their side of the equation is. And so we spend a lot of time helping customers get there with how to market travel and how to do these things. But if they're not able to do that work, then you kind of have a one-sided relationship.
Brandon Giella (06:42.477)
Another question I had for you is something that's been important for you over the years that I've known you is whimsy, being whimsical. How do you define that? Because I know that's a core tenet of your brand and the way that you talk to your team and the way you represent yourself. What does that mean to you? How do you think about that and how is that evolving over time?
Nowell Outlaw (06:50.893)
Correct.
Nowell Outlaw (06:55.797)
It is.
Nowell Outlaw (07:03.313)
I think it's usually about not taking ourselves so seriously, right? And, and it's, you know, having been around, you know, venture capitalists and big financing and even our owners, right, are huge $80 billion fund. And, you know, when you put slides from the Barbie movie in the board deck, which is really funny, it changes the dimension of how you can connect with people. And, you know, I think it's.
Brandon Giella (07:07.681)
Okay.
Brandon Giella (07:24.429)
You
Brandon Giella (07:27.853)
Yes. Yes.
Nowell Outlaw (07:32.423)
You know, it depends. It's a different kind of company as well because you know, travel should be fun. Travel should have a whimsical feel, right? If I was selling something serious, right? So, you know, cancer drugs, I'm probably not going to be using, you know, Barbie kind of stuff and things like that because it's a more serious tone. But I think that, you know, in what we do, bringing fun to the mix is important, especially with, you know,
Brandon Giella (07:38.305)
Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Giella (07:49.822)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (08:01.366)
all the noise out there in the world of everything that's happening, it's okay to have a little fun at work, right? And especially remote. mean, we're, you know, we're, most people are remote here, right? And bringing that fun into the mix when we have PI kickoffs every 10 weeks. And some people dress up for those and it's, it's super fun. Like we lean into the themes and bring that because, you know, I believe that
that people want to work at someplace that's fun, right? If it's just mundane and boring and basically feels like an insurance company, I'm sure insurance companies can be fun. But then, you know, who wants to give it their all at a boring place?
Brandon Giella (08:32.429)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (08:39.191)
Yeah
Brandon Giella (08:44.343)
That's that's right, amen to that, amen to that. Okay, wanna, last question before kind of shifting to look forward into 2026. What are some things that you guys are able to do now or emphasizing now or pivoting toward now that you weren't able to do two, three, four years ago?
Nowell Outlaw (09:03.566)
I think it's velocity, right, is the biggest thing, right? So being able to onboard customers faster, right? And, you know, even when you think back, you know, three years ago, Switchfly or three and a half years ago, we're really a tech platform. And we really couldn't do all of the travel servicing for, you know, merchant of record and call centers and all those kinds of things. All of that's been put in place, right? But then now,
you know, the question and the problem is, well, you know, if a customer three years ago took six months to spin up, can I do it in three? Can I do it in two? Can I do it in one? Can I do it in a week? Right. Because the faster you can get that done, the better the project is. Right. And I think that, you know, we continue to push on that and make things go faster and faster. The trick with it is can the customer move at the speed that you want them to move at?
Right, that becomes a limitation. And now what we're experiencing is, you know, yeah, we're our side, we're done, we're ready to go. Customer needs another three weeks, right?
Brandon Giella (10:00.745)
you
Brandon Giella (10:08.141)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the IT hookups, the integrations, the approvals, the compliance, all that kind of stuff can take a while, Okay, shifting gears a bit, looking forward into 2026. I'm combining, I wanna hear what you guys are working on, thinking about emphasizing projects, milestones, whatever that might look like for 2026, but I wanna ask it in such a way about the way that the market is developing as well.
Nowell Outlaw (10:13.72)
Cut. Cut.
Brandon Giella (10:35.725)
So there are things that are developing within travel and loyalty over 2026, some trends and themes. And some of them are maybe just like, nah, that's superfluous. We're not going to focus on that, whatever. But there's some things that are developing that maybe you're also aligning your team around, whether it's product development or cultural or whatever. And of course, we have to talk about AI. So I want to get your thoughts on AI and how you guys are thinking about it as well. But how do you see 2026 playing out?
in the market as well as how you guys are adapting and thinking this year.
Nowell Outlaw (11:07.694)
I think the market is changing, right? And what I mean by that is what we've seen is we've, know, travel, everything about major credit card brands have had a travel solution, a white label travel solution for years, right? Doesn't pick your financial services company, right? Chase, American Express, Citigroup, I'm sure Wells Fargo has a select, all those guys have a solution.
What we're starting to see though is that, you know, if you look back five years plus, right, there was a lot of consolidation in the space that we were in or are in. And those customers that use those other tech platforms, those tech platforms have become slow, right, and antiquated and not able to move at speed, right. And so as an example, I had a
not our customer, but a customer of one of these platforms. And they're like, yeah, we put in a request and it takes nine months to get something. And I just, I think in today's world, especially with AI and some of that other stuff, boy, you better fix that stuff because customers don't, no one wants to wait months and months and months and months and months for stuff, right? They want to be, why can't you solve that in 35 seconds, right? And that's true. And in order to,
win the business, right? You have to be able to demonstrate that you can operate at a velocity, right, that helps them drive growth. And what I consistently see is that, you know, if you were selling to insurance companies, financial services companies, and all of those guys, they spend millions of dollars in implementation, professional services, and all those things. And the loyalty space
Brandon Giella (12:45.569)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (13:04.524)
people don't necessarily engage like that. They want you to make money based upon the revenues that you're able to drive with them. So it's more of a revenue share thing. They don't want to write million dollar checks for standing a system up. And so you can't take on year long, two year long implementation projects. You need to have systems that can basically talk together and work right out of the box.
Brandon Giella (13:32.236)
So if I'm hearing you right, 2025 major theme was velocity. The things that you can do now that you couldn't do years ago, 2026, still velocity, still that major theme, the way the market's developing, the way technology's developing. And you mentioned Amazon. I want to see if this fits with you. How you learned like core values from kind of an Amazon model and maybe velocity. There's something there to that as well. I ran out of a hair product this morning.
Nowell Outlaw (13:36.206)
Correct.
Nowell Outlaw (13:42.03)
Correct.
Brandon Giella (14:01.485)
So I got on Amazon, I ordered something and it said it's gonna be there between 5 and 10 p.m. And I'm like, that's amazing. Like the amount of machinery and operations and technology and all the things you have to have in place to do that, that it's gonna be here in five hours. That's incredible. And I know that that speed demand expectation is making its way into enterprise as well where it's like, yeah, why not? With Claude Code, I should have this tomorrow, right?
Nowell Outlaw (14:27.547)
It's correct. it's, you know, uh, uh, acquaintance of mine who used to be at Amazon used to talk about the flywheel effect and everyone talks about that, but you know, you're dealing with scale and velocity. You have to have that in the back of your brain. Right. And so what I think about is anything that slows down the flywheel, right. Of it getting faster and faster and faster, you have to fix. Right. So if that's.
Brandon Giella (14:49.516)
Hmm.
Nowell Outlaw (14:53.679)
you know, how the programmers are releasing code or how often they do that or your contracts or, you know, something in your sales process, you have to approach it from how do I break this process down to make it more efficient? Right. And that's what AI is starting to help with, right. Which is how do I make my sales process more efficient? Right. How do I directly target people? How do I not spam them to death, right. But get the correct leads coming in. And, you know, and
things if you put in big complex processes, it just stops the flywheel and then you're not able to scale the company, right?
Brandon Giella (15:31.744)
Something I've been talking about with my team is coordinating knowledge. So there's so many dispersed platforms and stakeholders and all. How do you, I mean, that's a, to get the best use out of AI, to move at speed, you've got to coordinate a bunch of disparate knowledge between different people and platforms and so on. Bring that together and then get the PRD set up or whatever it might be and then boom, you're ready to go.
Nowell Outlaw (15:35.331)
Hmm. Correct.
Brandon Giella (15:54.496)
Do you find that that's something that you guys have had to work on and that's helped increase that flywheel as maybe just coordination and getting that efficiency in place?
Nowell Outlaw (16:03.363)
Yeah, we started that last year for sure. I'm not, I mean, maybe a year ago so that now, you know, the biggest thing I think with companies and tech companies is the silos of information. And the interesting thing about AI and, large language models specifically is when you can connect them to Slack teams, right. And even email. And now you could have a new person coming in and saying, no, I have this problem.
Brandon Giella (16:06.604)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Brandon Giella (16:24.928)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (16:33.135)
corporate knowledge base, how is that fixed? Right? And a good LLM can say, you the programming team had this bug, da-da-da-da-da, this is how this was solved, right? Instead of that person saying, you know, on a team's thread, anyone, you know, I'm having this problem with whatever, anyone seen this before and everyone stops and everyone goes over there and they have to try to answer, yeah, you know, and the guy who's here 10 years ago, like, this is how we fixed it. You know, then all of that stops.
And so putting those tools in gains you a massive efficiency just in people's time and knowledge.
Brandon Giella (17:10.828)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. What are some things that you're excited for with AI? And then what are some things that you think maybe the general public is over excited for? It's a little too much hype. how are you kind of threading this needle? Like AI is changing everything and nothing at the same time. You know, like there's some things that are like that is gonna be done by hand forever. And then there's some things like AI is totally changing the game. How do you feel about those things?
Nowell Outlaw (17:36.24)
I don't know. I I was doing AI stuff 10 years ago, right? And when you think about AI and what it's capable of doing, now when I look at it, I do think that there's crazy amount of hype, right? In, this is, you can vibe code, Brandon, I can vibe code and I'll build Microsoft Word, right? Like really? I mean, there's...
I don't know, one or two lines of code beside Microsoft Word that makes it do everything that it can do, right? You know, at the same time, you know, when you look at AI, I look at AI because we use it internally in engineering, we're definitely like pushing it into the engineers hands to help automate their tasks and make them more efficient in their job. All technology is about making things more efficient, right? Now, is AI going to rip out
my programming team, so I have one guy and he's able to do the work of 30. No, but do I take now 30 guys and now I'm able to get the work of 40 or 50 out of 30? Absolutely, right? And we've seen those kind of compressions of work to get it done, but the trick is it is another tool, right? So it's, hey, I know efficiently how to use this new tool to do my job better, right? And that's where I think it's going to improve.
Are there going to be mass layoffs because of AI? They've probably already occurred in a lot of ways. But it is just another tool in the tool belt of things that you can use in order to do things better. think where consumers, if you think about if you've ever been on the phone with Medicare or
Brandon Giella (19:20.031)
Agreed.
Nowell Outlaw (19:34.575)
the Department of Fish and Wildlife or the DMV or things like that that move really slow. And the person that's the other end of the phone is like, please hold. I need to route you to Department B. And then you get to Department B and they say, please hold. I'm going to route you to Department C. And you're like, please just answer my question. I think that the sad thing is those people in those roles
Brandon Giella (19:56.085)
Yes.
Nowell Outlaw (20:02.788)
don't realize that when I get a AI based chat bot and it answers my question like that and it's right because they're just passing the buck. Now as a consumer, I'm super satisfied with using the AI tool and I'll elect to use that before calling somebody because it's more right, right? More right, if that's a word, more better, even worse. But here's the thing is like,
Brandon Giella (20:19.755)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (20:23.968)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (20:28.191)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (20:33.06)
So the consumer's getting what they want in a faster, more efficient way. And you're getting rid of the headaches of having to deal with a call center person. And I do think that in AI specific to travel, that that will be an area of focus, right? Because when consumers have to get on the phone with an agent, right? And you're dealing with an agent in the Philippines, right? They're very good, but there is that language frustration.
Brandon Giella (20:43.669)
Mm-hmm.
Nowell Outlaw (21:02.512)
Even you see it with people, and I love people in India, but there is a language issue. And so what happens is the consumers can get frustrated and they have this, you don't understand me mentality. And those are the processes that I think that will be most helpful to the consumers through the adaptation of AI. The other piece is everyone's like, well, booking.com and Expedia.
Brandon Giella (21:27.178)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (21:32.219)
You're going to be able to go into your LLM, you're going to type in, you know, you're going to plan your whole trip out and then you're just going to hit book and it's going to take you to booking.com or whoever and it's just going to drop it in and you're going to be able to put it in there. I think that's great. All we're really doing is we're switching out the marketing and ad spend that's now going to Google in Google ads, right? From those companies over to
new AI companies, right? And so now they're just going to capture it a different way. From the consumer, is it a better experience? It might be, right? It might be something that they're helping on. What we see is you might plan your trip using the tool, but you're doing your shopping in a core platform like ours.
Brandon Giella (22:00.512)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (22:18.623)
Yeah, I could see a mix of both. mean, this brings up the Super Bowl was last night. There was a big hullabaloo about the Anthropic commercial kind of calling out Chachabee Tea and OpenAI about the ads being inserted into the feed. to your point, that actually could be really helpful if I'm like building the kind of itinerary, you know, but yeah, this remains to be seen how that's actually going to work. yeah, I do currently what you're saying. I plan it out in some AI tool, but then I go and actually book the thing because I needed to be just so.
Nowell Outlaw (22:30.832)
Nope.
Mm-hmm.
Nowell Outlaw (22:41.103)
It's.
Nowell Outlaw (22:46.768)
Correct. Correct. it's, you know, and you still see errors all the time. Like I use these tools daily, right, for all kinds of different stuff. And I, you know, I'm correcting it still daily on, wait a second, you know, last year was not 2024. I this like yesterday over the weekend. I was like, this is 2026. And it's like, oh, you're right. And you're like, oh man, come on, dude. You got to know what, you know, simple things like that.
Brandon Giella (22:48.351)
you know, yeah.
Brandon Giella (22:53.247)
Yeah, correct.
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (23:01.6)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (23:13.565)
Yeah
Nowell Outlaw (23:16.528)
And so I do think that there's a consumer, the thing that I don't like about the tools is how they come across like they're human, right? It is just a tool and you know, I'm thinking for you, welcome back. Like there's some things in there. It makes it more relevant, but you still have to realize that you are dealing with mathematical models, right? And what they've been trained on. So, you know, I can train a model to
Brandon Giella (23:27.487)
Yeah, yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (23:46.488)
ignore French culture and you know in its recommendations it's not going to recommend going to France. You know it's easy right so.
Brandon Giella (23:52.427)
Yeah, yeah. Everybody I talk to is, where do you bring in the human in this? Either it's a transaction or it's customer service or whatever and to that point, the empathy, wisdom, judgment, things like that are always going to be important.
Nowell Outlaw (24:07.569)
Yeah, I have a really good friend who's a super smart guy in the Bay Area, right? And he's like, look, you're either adding to revenue companies, right, tech companies, you're either adding to revenue or you're helping reduce expense. That's it, in tech, right? And most people will spend money on things that grow revenue versus, you know,
Brandon Giella (24:21.77)
Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (24:34.217)
those projects like let's spend a million dollars because it's going to help me drive my revenues and do all this other stuff versus the projects that are just reduced expense, right? AI has an opportunity to hopefully drive both, but you have to figure out where in the company you're going to apply it, right? So, you know, and I hate to say it, the AI cost reduction is salaries, right? You know, the...
The AI revenue growth is getting more deals, making salespeople more efficient, making more calls, making more leads, making do all that kind of stuff. So, you know, one is a growth thing and one is an expense reduction.
Brandon Giella (25:15.198)
There's a lot of creativity and innovation. I liken it back to the printing press. There's so many amazing things that come out of the printing press because we were able to transmit ideas much more quickly, standardized things. I'm excited about that.
Nowell Outlaw (25:25.553)
Correct. Correct. And even answers that, you know, it's, do I want to sit there and search and do all this other stuff? And, you know, versus the LLM, which is a more intelligent way to reply to people, which I think is great. mean, you know, and it doesn't matter if it's Google, Claude, ChatGPT, you know, I do think that there needs to be some oversight.
Brandon Giella (25:36.437)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brandon Giella (25:42.794)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (25:54.384)
let's say over, you know, the things that those engines are answering for consumers. And, you know, you see a lot of people, I was joking with a guy at a trade show in November, and we were talking about, you know, large language models and stuff. And he's like, yeah, I was sitting there looking over the shoulder of a guy at the airport. And he was, he was sitting there asking chat GPT how to break up with his girlfriend. I was like, whoa, that's kind of crazy. Right. So that's right.
Brandon Giella (26:00.65)
Yeah.
Brandon Giella (26:20.285)
Hey, it take all the insight we can get, you know. Yeah. That's great. Okay. So we've talked a lot about speed, velocity being a 2025 theme, definitely going into this year with focus on velocity and speed. AI is going to be a huge portion of that. Expectations for the customer, expectations for different brands, firms within travel and loyalty, your own expectations for your own team.
Nowell Outlaw (26:23.491)
It still probably wasn't right, but so.
Brandon Giella (26:48.286)
Velocity is the name of the game. Are there some things that you're thinking about that might be slowing down that emphasis on speed that you're maybe trying to work through? Okay, how could we solve this? Or what are you seeing maybe trends in the market that you want to get ahead of? Or is there anything like that that you're thinking about that could slow down that flywheel that you're building?
Nowell Outlaw (27:11.089)
Yeah, I think the truth is you're in an industry that only moves so fast. So I can't snap my fingers and add 3,000 customers in a minute. That's not possible. And so even though the tech can go really fast, what can you do to get potential customers to get from the starting line through the finish gate faster? Those are more critical things.
Brandon Giella (27:21.866)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (27:39.41)
you know, can you compress cycles in order to get them to make a decision faster? Right. And an interesting thing is like we, we are very responsive. People, enjoy that the phrase our CTO uses is are we fast Twitch? Right. And we are very fast Twitch as an organization. But if you're dealing with a customer and they're also dealing with other, let's say competitors or other vendors that aren't fast Twitch, you get just drug down into the, well,
You know, we don't have our responses back, right? And these old processes that, you know, we're doing an RFP and we have eight weeks to respond and you're like, okay, we got a response back in a week, but we have to wait seven weeks, right? For this eight week process. And there's nothing you can really do about that.
Brandon Giella (28:26.218)
you sort for a marketing agency and we had a saying that you can go no faster than the slowest and It's kind of like that with like whatever the slowest link in that chain is that's the speed we're gonna move no matter What is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah
Nowell Outlaw (28:37.073)
Correct. Correct. And so you figure out, how do I just avoid that and go around it?
Brandon Giella (28:45.642)
Okay, okay. Well, is there anything else that you're looking forward to in 2026 that you're excited about, focused on, would love the people to know, thinking about industry trends or internally, things that you guys are working on, excited about?
Nowell Outlaw (28:59.153)
You know, yeah, I mean we've got a bunch of stuff that we're working on not not anything I'm going to talk about here Personally, I'm you know, I got another My my younger son's graduating from college which will be good and in In May which is good. And so he'll start his fifth year and my wife and I are gonna go do another hundred mile hike In Switzerland this summer. So that'll be good. Yeah, so you know, I think things are
Brandon Giella (29:06.762)
Dang it.
Brandon Giella (29:22.386)
Alright. Wow. Okay. Okay.
Nowell Outlaw (29:28.367)
moving forward as best as we can, right, so to speak.
Brandon Giella (29:31.89)
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Okay. Well, that's a precursor to my final question is, do you have any trips coming up? What's your travels itinerary coming up? I know last time we talked, you were like, yeah, I'm going to this place. I think it was like Istanbul and then the Southeast Asia and then all these different places. So yeah.
Nowell Outlaw (29:35.991)
Okay. Do I have any trips coming up?
Nowell Outlaw (29:46.651)
Yeah, I think the last time we talked, I think I did the trip around the world. So let's see, I mean, we've got some customer trips. I think in March, I'm going to India in April, just to meet our team. Like we have a whole infrastructure there now, which is good. Personally, just a bunch of stuff coming up and we're gonna, my wife and I are gonna do this Mont Blanc hiking adventure for.
Brandon Giella (29:50.836)
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Nowell Outlaw (30:14.226)
nine days in September, which is good, but it's, you know, day one, 2,600 vertical up and 4,000 vertical down. And, you know, that's like, so probably not every day, but every other day I'm, you know, doing steps up and down just to, just to make sure we're in shape for that. So it's pretty, you know, pretty fun. It gives yourself a goal.
Brandon Giella (30:22.057)
Nope.
Brandon Giella (30:35.526)
Okay, impressive. Yes, my goal is to go take a nap now listening to that because I feel like there's nowhere on my agenda is that outdoor activity. That's awesome. Yeah, that's cool.
Nowell Outlaw (30:45.958)
Yeah, it's fun. mean, it's give yourself a goal and like it's, you know, for me personally, it's like, okay, that's the goal. And then here's the plan. And so, you know, go, go, go, go, go. It's the same with work, same with life. Like what's the goal and how do we progress forward against that? So.
Brandon Giella (31:01.758)
Cool, okay, I'm glad some people are wired that way. That's very important. So that's great, that's great. No, well thank you very much for recapping all hands and where you guys are at at business and what you're looking forward to this year. I know AI's top of mind, but it sounds like AI is a means to the end and the end being speed. Gotta move faster, it's what customers want, it's what we're doing, it's what the market's doing, and we're getting there.
Nowell Outlaw (31:19.73)
Correct. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's really about keeping your customers happy and delivering what they want. And I mean, you can build all kinds of AI stuff, but if the customer at the end of the line is not happy, you have not done a good job. Cool. All right.
Brandon Giella (31:37.874)
Amen, yep, 100%, totally agree. All right, well, we will see you on the next episode, Nowell, thanks again. We'll see you later.
Nowell Outlaw (31:43.129)
All right, thanks, Brandon. See you.
