Is It More Efficient To Build Or Buy For Your Business?

Neal Quesnel

CEO

WhatArmy

Should you Build or Buy? In this episode of In the Now, Neal Quesnel, CEO of What Army, discusses his decision to invest in software to improve and differentiate his website service business. He could have bought third party software to do the job, but he decided to invest significant time and resources to build a new, custom-made software product from the ground up.

While many service businesses fail when they try to create products, Neal uses creativity, innovation and discipline to create a highly useful product that helps him grow his business and retain clients.

If you’ve ever faced this difficult decision, then Neal’s experience may help you think about the best way to turn your vision into reality. Listen to his interview with David Reske now!

Neal Quesnel

Get a Free Marketing Analysis and Consultation

Nowspeed can review your Website, SEO, PPC, Email or Social Media Campaigns and identify ways to make an immediate impact!

Episodes

All
  • All
  • Brand Identity
  • Build to Last
  • Business Focus
  • Business Mergers
  • Business Strategy
  • Career Strategies
  • Content Marketing
  • Customer Insight
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Finding your Purpose
  • Global Business
  • Growth Strategies
  • Healthy Workplaces
  • PPC Services
  • Sales
  • social media marketing
  • Work/Life Balance
Raffi Yardemian

How To Create A Winning Sales Process

Raffi Yardemian
Fractional VP
Sales Xceleration
Jim Johnston

Working At For Profit Businesses Vs Non-Profit Organizations

Jim Johnston
CEO Advisor
Self-Employed
Case Randy

Leading With Emotional Intelligence

Randy Case
CEO Coach
C12
Michael Bloch

How Healthy Conflict Creates A Healthy Business Environment

Michael Bloch
CEO
Building Bloch
Pete Hayes

What Is Really Important For Business Growth?

Pete Hayes
Co-Director
Chief Outsiders
Dan Stokes

How To Create A Meaningful Brand Identity

Dan Stokes
Executive Vice President
JStokes
Can You Change Your Career Focus? 1

Can You Change Your Career Focus?

Kate Lee
CEO
By The Horns
Joel Bennett

What Leadership Skills Create a Mentally Healthy Workplace?

Joel Bennett
CEO
Presence Quest
Dave Will

Turn Marketing & Entrepreneurship Ideas Into A Business

Dave Will
CEO
Propfuel
Andy Bailey

Andy Bailey

CEO & Coach
Petra
Wendy Pease

Should You Rely on Humans Or Machines Translation?

Wendy Pease
Owner, President, Author
Rapport International
Carl Gould

Should You Build A Fan Base Or Sell To Everyone?

Carl Gould
Author, CEO, International Speaker
7 Stage Advisors
Glenn Grant

Is A Company Built To Last or Sell The Same Thing?

Glenn Grant
CEO
Selfassembled Ventures
Astrid Domenico

Should Your Growth Focus Be Broad Or Narrow?

Astrid Domenico
CEO
OpFocus
Bruce Eckfeldt

How To Scale Your Business With A Sales Team

Bruce Eckfeldt
Founder & CEO
Eckfeldt & Associates
Eric Crews

What Is The Secret To Frictionless Growth For Your Company?

Eric Crews
CEO
Crews and Company
Rich Manders

How Should A CEO Grow & Evolve With Their Business?

Rich Manders
CEO
Free Scale Coaching
Michael Synk

How To Position Your Company In The Buying Process

Mike Synk
CEO Consultant
Self-employed
Mike O'Hara

How To Integrate Work-Life Balance

Mike O'Hara
CEO
Impact Enterprises
Eric Curtis

What Are Breakthrough Marketing Strategies For Non-Profits?

Eric Curtis
CEO
Curtis Strategy
Michael Brown

How Content Marketing Can Benefit Your Business

Michael Brown
CEO
nDash
Evan Zall

What Is Purpose Driven Marketing?

Evan Zall
President
Longview Strategies
Mark Roberge

How To Promote Your Own Music

Mark Roberge
How To Promote Your Own Music
Bamrock Entertainment
Gwen Murray

What Gives A Brand It's Relevant Identity?

Gwen Murray
CEO
Up & To The Right Solutions
Bill Flynn

What Makes A Good Leader In A Company?

Bill Flynn
Author, Business Advisor / Coach
Catalyst Growth Advisors
Chris Spears

Chris Spears CEO of Improve HX

CEO of ImproveHX.com
ImproveHX
Sky Cassidy

Sky Cassidy interview

CEO
Mountain Top Data
Mark Hewitt

MARK HEWITT EQENGINEERED CEO

CEO
EQENGINEERED
Brad Chisum

Brad Chisum / Founder & Parther of THE LAUNCH FACTORY

Founder & Parther
THE LAUNCH FACTORY
Dave Young

Dave Young the founder of $PLAY, PlayArcade, LifePLAY

Founder
$PLAY, PlayArcade, LifePLAY
Chris Stephenson

Chris Stephenson Head of Operations NLP at NUIX Co-Founder of Topos Labs

Head of Operations
NUIX Co-Founder of Topos Labs
Javan Mershad

Javan Mershad CEO of MICTIC

CEO
Mictic
Michal Cymbalisty

Michal Cymbalisty Domination Finance

Co-Founder, Business Strategy
Domination Finance
Christopher Cummings

Christopher Cummings Principal Product Manager PRECISELY

Principal Product Manager
PRECISELY

Want to be a guest on the show?

Episode Transcript

In the Now: Neal Quesnel

Neal Quesnel grew tired of using over a dozen third-party tools. So, what did the CEO of WhatArmy do instead? He built a new, custom-made software product that sets his website development and support company apart from the competition. Listen to how he pulled it off in this week’s episode of In the Now.  

Read the interview snapshot and listen to the full conversation here

Nowspeed: My name is Dave Reske and welcome to this edition of In the Now where we focus on uncovering the myths and misunderstandings of marketing and leadership with some of the world’s most interesting people. My guest today is Neal Quesnel. He’s the founder and CEO of WhatArmy, a WordPress & Shopify website development and support company. He will be talking about if it is efficient to build or buy your business. I have known Neil for many years, and I’m thrilled that you are taking the time to be on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Neal: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Nowspeed: So a little background about Neil. He’s a lifelong innovator and a Forbes published author. He efficiently built and co-founded WhatArmy, which internally developed this product we’re going to talk a little bit about called Watchtower HQ, which helps MSPs and digital agencies save time and money while increasing efficiency by managing their clients’ websites. 

So, first, Neil, I’ve always loved the extreme focus that WhatArmy has had on the business model around WordPress, maintenance and support, and I really want to talk more about that. But just to start, I’d like you to smash a myth about an agency building their own software. How does a services company also get to be a software company? Can it actually work?

Neal: Yeah, well, I think every agency has the ability to do it. It’s just kind of falling into the right niche and saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of other tools out there. None of them are kind of the right tool that solves the problem that we’re trying to solve. Why don’t we use our internal resources to create that?” So, that’s what we did. When we created it internally initially, I think that’s one thing and it’s a kind of an easy cobbled together process just to fill your needs. When you try to turn it into customer-facing software, that’s when it turns a little bit more challenging.

Nowspeed:  Yeah, it sounds like a really hard thing to do, to be honest. I’ve attempted to do this myself a few times. First, tell us what it is and how it helps your business. What is the software?

Neal:  Yeah, so when we started, we were kind of a website monitoring maintenance security company. So we were using a bunch of tools like Pingdom, MxToolBox, Manage WP; we’re using all these tools together. There were probably 10-15 tools that we were using. You have to log in, set up every individual client that you have. And, then, on a monthly basis, go in, rip down information, and make sure you’re monitoring everything across this wide net of different tools. 

So, we said, well, these are great. The unbundling of everything in the mid 2010s to make one niche product was a thing, right. We decided, well, we need all these things bundled back together. So that was why we created it to put each individual tool that we needed into one place so we can manage all of those client websites within that. One login and one-click access directly to their websites to make updates and changes and access. They’re staging environments, all that fun, exciting stuff.

Nowspeed: So, this is more about internal efficiency and making life easier for your team or was it also about giving you a differentiation in the marketplace? So you could do everything better than your competitors?

Neal: I think probably both because a majority of our competitors are still utilizing that swath of tools if you will, rather than narrowing down and just utilizing one. So it definitely gives us that ability but, at the same time, I guess they’re one and the same, right, because if we’re able to be more efficient, then we’re able to execute in a more favorable light for our clients relative to our competitors. And that just kind of gives us a reason to utilize WhatArmy.

This is a conversation you don’t want to miss. Watch the rest here