David Dittenber is Co-founder of BYOD — Bring Your Own Data. The company creates easy-to-use digital tools to improve operations and enhance customer experience. David is a longtime restaurant operator whose mission has been to leverage technology to address common problems with everyday operations in the restaurant industry. With BYOD, he has come up with an answer to restaurant systems that don’t work together effectively and haven’t yet utilized rapidly-increasing advances in technology.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- David Dittenber’s answer to the timeless question of “what do you do?”
- How being raised in a small town shaped David’s view of entrepreneurship
- Why BYOD’s virtual assistant is named Mabel
- David describes an instance where Mabel could help a restaurant manager in real time
- How David sells BYOD to potential customers
- Why BYOD tries to adapt to restaurant operations rather than asking restaurant operators to adapt to BYOD
- What obstacles has David had to overcome with his startup?
In this episode…
Entrepreneurs are considered an important facet of the economy because of the role they play in stimulating growth by taking risks on innovative ideas. Often, they see a problem and find a way to solve it through innovation.
That’s exactly what David Dittenber did when he founded BYOD — Bring Your Own Data — to help restaurateurs process and use information. BYOD has a virtual assistant called Mabel which takes data from an individual restaurant’s operations software, reservation software and point of sale, and delivers it to managers in real time. It uses machine learning and artificial intelligence in a practical way to help restaurants save money by ensuring that things don’t fall through the cracks.
On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Bela Musits chats with David Dittenber, Co-founder of BYOD, who tells people he is an entrepreneur when they ask what he does. He shares how his years of experience in restaurant operations led him to his latest entrepreneurial endeavor — a virtual assistant for restaurant managers. David talks about how BYOD works, the problems it solves, the challenges associated with launching it, and how he came to appreciate entrepreneurship growing up in a small town.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Sponsor for this episode
SpotOn:
Today’s episode is brought to you by SpotOn. SpotOn has transformed the merchant service industry by providing the tools and support your business deserves at a price that puts money back into your pocket!
SpotOn’s team wants to empower all of their merchants by merging payment processing with simple customer engagement tools, all in one easy-to-use platform. As a business owner, you are focused on managing your daily operations and engaging your customers. You don’t have the time, energy, or excess funds to devote to multiple complicated platforms! That’s why SpotOn is focused on helping you build long-lasting customer loyalty while saving you time and money through our all in one system.
Whether you are a merchant or a consumer, SpotOn wants to be more than an average payment processor. SpotOn aims to exceed your expectations by valuing simplicity, maintaining flexibility, and celebrating innovative collaboration. Let SpotOn help you do business the right way.
Partner with SpotOn today! Visit spoton.com today to schedule your free demo or to view SpotOn’s products. You can also call SpotOn at 877.814.4102 at any time. Let SpotOn help you make the difference with your business!
Rise25:
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Co-founders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at support@rise25.com or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Co-founders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25, we feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.
Bela Musits 0:20
Hello, listeners. I’m Bela Musits and the host for this SpotOn podcast episode, where we feature top restaurant tours, investors and business leaders. This is part of our SpotOn series. SpotOn has the best in class payment platform for retail. And they have a flagship solution called spot on restaurant, where they combine marketing software and payments all into one. They have served everyone from large chains like Dairy Queen and subway, to small mom and pop restaurants. To learn more, go to spoton.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help b2b businesses get return on investment clients, referrals and strategic partnerships to custom done for you podcast. If you have a b2b business, and wants to build a great relationship with clients, referral partners, and thought leaders in your space, there’s no better way to do it, than through podcast and content marketing. To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at support@Rise25.com. Today’s guest on the podcast is David Dittenber. David is a longtime restaurant operator, who together with his partner founded BYOD, which stands for bring your own data, they create easy to use digital tools to improve operations and enhance customer experience. Welcome to the podcast, David. Thanks for having me, Bela. Sure. So you have a long very background, you’ve done a lot of different things. So my first question for you is if you’re at a social event, a non work related social event, and you get introduced to someone. And after that introduction, they say to you, Oh, very nice to meet you, David, what do you do? How do you answer that question?
David Dittenber 2:22
You know, that’s a great question. And I I’ll tell you, from my years of, of operator restaurant experience, I usually get introduced as, as a restaurant tour that’s now an entrepreneur, right. And so I My background is mostly like I said, operations. I started in a in a dish pit and in a little restaurant in a town called Andre Michigan when I was 12 years old, right? So I’m still a, an operator by heart. But I think that, you know, my parents and the family, they were all entrepreneurs and had their own business. So I always had a little bit of that entrepreneurial blood in my veins also. So I would Yeah, operator, but but entrepreneur, I guess would be the short answer. But you know that I think that can go in different directions based on who the audience is.
Bela Musits 3:11
Yeah. So So were you one of those kids with with entrepreneurship, sort of in your family? Did you work in the family businesses? Or, you know, did you have a newspaper route and mow lawns and do that kind of stuff?
David Dittenber 3:23
Yeah, I started, I tell people that I started, I think I was born with a shovel in my hand, right? Like my family were all they were mostly farmers, and, you know, did a lot of outside work, you know, and so then my mom was a seamstress. My dad was a truck driver. So, you know, pretty common, you know, all American kind of family, right. And so, most of the family, they were either in the farm, so we do a lot of stuff that would revolve around that type of work. But I’d work in my mom’s business, she’d have us, myself and my brother trucking around things in the summer, you know, dragging her stuff around. But that led me to kind of working with some of the entrepreneurs in this small town, right, the people that were, you know, the restaurant tours, or had that type of kind of graduated from, you know, family business into that next kind of, I don’t know, you know, that next job, if you will, and that, I think, kind of inspired me being around those people that, you know, that was their life, right. They got something they worked hard, they, they, you know, they went to the shop, they went to the grocery store, they counted the money, and they were mowing the lawn right. And so, you know, I always had that kind of small business bug from, you know, early and then into kind of my early influencers of work.
Bela Musits 4:42
So, yeah, you know, those, those little small rural towns, I think, are really great from an entrepreneurship perspective, because they’re not, they’re not company towns. There is no one big employer that everybody goes to work for. So if you’re gonna hang around you, you sort of ended up starting your own business or working in a small business and learning about all those aspects of it. So I think it’s a great place to kind of get that type of experience and sounds like that’s what you got.
David Dittenber 5:10
Yeah, 100% I think, you know, I was with a couple of mentors of mine that we have breakfast with everyone one’s a healthcare administrator. And one is, he started a construction company. And, you know, they, we talk a lot about it, you know, I was just initially reaching out to them to talk a little bit about how can I grow professionally? And how can I do things, and come to find out, they grew up in very similar backgrounds, one room schoolhouses, and, you know, I think my graduating class was 23 people. And, um, you know, it’s just interesting to see that, you know, those that small town mentality, and again, a lot of it has to do with the work ethic and things like that, you just don’t know any different, right? Like, it’s not like we grew up with anything other than, hey, this is what we’re going to do. So it was just interesting to hear, you know, even people that are now in their 80s. You know, that’s a similar experience, where I thought that this was, I thought growing up that coming from a small town was almost a disadvantage. Right? You know, that it was very difficult. But the reality is, I think some of those work ethics and things that come out of that background and the smaller settings, I think you’re right, it gives you a little bit more exposure to things that maybe you wouldn’t get in a in a more populated area.
Bela Musits 6:16
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So tell us a little bit about BYOD.
David Dittenber 6:17
Yeah. BYOD. It’s so a virtual restaurant assistant. Her name is Mabel, Mabel is kind of the the delivery person, if you will, and she’s based off a longtime manager that worked for me, her name was rose. And kind of the we call Mabel, the person that makes sure that things don’t fall through the cracks. So, so the idea is, is you know, the that we have so many different, you know, I remember being in restaurants in, you know, in the mid 90s, where point of sale were just starting to be introduced. And that was going to be the saving grace, right of that, that digital evolution going from tickets to digital. Fast forward 20 some odd years or 30 years. And now all of a sudden, we had 30 different, you know, platforms at one point between payment and operations. And the reality was, they were all disparaging, right, so BYOD, the idea was, bring your own data, each restaurant, footprint has its own, you know, operations software, reservation software point of sale, we wanted the owner to be able to bring that data in and then be able to use it, well, we do a little bit differently, versus, you know, we’re kind of an anti dashboard company, if you will. So the way that the data comes into BYOD, and then Mabel delivers it to the managers in real time. So we’re not waiting till that p&l meeting at the, you know, the next month or six weeks later, we’re trying to make those decisions and operations as they happen eventually, versus kind of letting them stack up. So the theory is, is that, you know, you save time you save money by having things that don’t fall through the cracks and are dealt with in the moment. And that’s kind of that whole, you know, utilization of machine learning and artificial intelligence in a practical way to be able to do some of those things.
Bela Musits 8:18
Yeah. Can you give an example of one of those instances?
David Dittenber 8:22
Yeah, for sure. So, so, you have a schedule, right? You know, everybody I grew up, and I’ve seen restaurants that go anywhere between a fancy scheduling program to it been written on the back of one of those napkins, you know, are placeholders, you know, the the schedule comes up, you’ve got the shift happening, let’s say it starts to snow and rain and sleet. And the business isn’t what it’s supposed to do. You know, if the manager keeps on a full staff, when it’s not needed, right in our keeps them through the end. You know, that’s a problem, right? You’re gonna run high labor costs. So what Mabel would do is she would take that schedule, she’d compare it towards what’s happening in the business, she’d send an alert to the manager to say, hey, you know, server bail is not busy bail, it can go home, right. And so that then keeps the operations going. Everything happens real time in the moment. Another example would be like a health related concern, romaine lettuce gets recalled by the FDA. You know, we get a lot of those communications, whether it be through email or you know, alert from our food company, but if that’s an email box someplace, and somebody does that, so what happens is, we have we have Mabel actually reading the emails and things like that, that would come in and send a lot a message immediately to the manager to say, Take Romaine take Caesar salads off the menu, the menu, right because we just had a product recall. So you know, not just you know, operational savings, but all you know, operational concerns that would go on via a manager kind of in the moment, right? Same kind of thing with reviews and that kind of thing.
Bela Musits 10:07
Wow. Wow. Excellent. So, talk a little bit about, let’s say I run a restaurant, I run a small and we do breakfast and lunch. Yep. And, you know, I have, I’m the cook, my wife, my wife, you know, works behind the counter. And we have a couple of waitstaff and some other food prep people in the back. How do I enter you know, so I’m interested in this, tell me what it takes for me to roll this into my restaurant, what’s involved?
David Dittenber 10:38
Sure. And that was one of the things coming from operations, I’ve had so many tools that were pushed, you know, from top down right now, just the deriving technology, but didn’t really, you know, working with people in the trenches, so I want something that would have been easy to adopt, and easy to integrate. So we actually can integrate with anything that the restaurant has in place, right, we also do some things with video cameras, right. So you know, your video cameras, your already existing hardware, we built it in a way that the data streams are just coming into, into BYOD agnostically, right. So it doesn’t mean that you have to comply with any change over and you know, that kind of thing in order to get it to work, you know, the the machine learning piece of it. The more data that Mabel gets over time, the better she’ll get at predicting things about your restaurant. But you know, that that really is, is the only thing that kind of develops over time, you’re right that the rest of it is immediate, it’s very quick to install, essentially, we plug into the point of sale, we either plug into the initial scan, or the scheduling application or whatever that you have right now. And you’re off to the races, seeing kind of immediate results and immediate alerting, you know, within hours of inception of the program.
Bela Musits 12:06
Wow, wow. And so what’s sort of the, I imagine with, you know, with a lot of products, there’s sort of a sweet spot from from a size perspective, right, um, these restaurants are a little too small, these operations are a little too big, or they already have some sophisticated systems that they’re using. So you’re not going to displace that, what’s sort of the sweet spot for you guys?
David Dittenber 12:29
sure that the we our ideal customers, kind of what we refer to as mid market or enterprise. So that’s where, you know, most of the scalability in a lot of them are the same technology. Foundations, right, so it’s easy to just kind of go from one to the next. So that equates to a restaurant, that’s, you know, $2 million in, in up and receipts, as well as, you know, a group that is anywhere between five and 50. Right, but we’ve been doing a lot more on the enterprise side, just because of the conglomeration, right, there’s a lot more groups out there, you know, buying multi unit franchisees or so we’ve had to adjust that. And that’s really what we’ve been doing over the last six months is really making sure that we have a scalable model for big operations, right that, you know, 100 to 500 or more, right, so that that’s where, you know, and again, if you look at kind of the alignment of the industry, you know, a quarter point of $500 million in sales is a big deal, if you can go in there and save that versus a quarter point of that Mom and Pop restaurant, right. And again, growing up and, you know, growing up in that independent environment, this would be a, you know, it’s a tougher sell, to sell to kind of that old school operator, and I would still consider myself an old school operator. But you know, we’ve talked so much about technology and all these other platforms like third party and so forth, I believe for the success of the independent also, they need to see past, you know, kind of the way we’ve always done things and look into how technology can help them be more profitable and more efficient. So I don’t ever want to say I wouldn’t want to do that, because that’s truly where I grew, you know, kind of grew my roots, if you will, but it’s definitely a harder sell in that onesie. twosie market just for the reasons that you kind of talked about, right? Sure. I think the other thing that you have to have Baylor’s you have to have somebody that’s a little bit more digital digital forward, you know, companies like spot on are great to work with are great to integrate with and they’re truly, in my opinion, you know, going out and creating products that allow the owners to you know, have more access to their data and allow them to use it right. So they’re an integration partner with us and I love kind of those forward thinking people that can also but you know, what’s interesting is those same independents that didn’t want to change Over two things like cloud based point of sale, you see that starting to happen. So we know that even in those instances, if they’re a little lagging with regard to adoption, they’ll ultimately get there. Because we see that technology upgrade on that side, which is a great thing for the industry, especially for the independent. My opinion.
Bela Musits 15:17
Yeah, well, with any new technology, there’s the early adopters, right? Then there’s the crowd. And then there’s the late to the show people. But eventually everyone gets there, if it’s a good if it’s a good piece of technology. Right. So that brings up an interesting point. How do you sell this this product? Right? Do you use direct salespeople? Do you have distributors? How does? How does your sales channel work?
David Dittenber 15:43
Sure, we just started we’ve been in development now for the better part of two years, right. So in the last three months was our first commercial launch, we did some, some small, you know, tool launching, if you will, kind of through COVID Things like contact tracing and things like that, to help make the platform a little bit more robust. But um, you know, we’ve been working in partnerships with the state restaurant associations, Michigan, Florida, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, to name a few. And so kind of working through their association members. We’ve also worked with, you know, some other industry partners like DirecTV for business, right? So we’ve been kind of utilizing their sales channels to get our inflow of business, which has worked out really well for us. And, you know, the, the best part is, is we can show value to already existing customers versus trying to just go out there and say, Hey, look at us, right, you know, which is, as you know, very difficult to kind of grow a product from the ground up. So, yeah, we’ve been trying to use those existing channels, and, you know, b2b partnerships. I think you mentioned it, companies that we’re working on a thing right now one’s called service star, which is a, an allergy of food allergy company, we’ve worked with, like I said, spot on, and others to be able, because those sales channels that are already existing, you know, I think what you were kind of saying is the validation of another line is the true way. And again, those late adopters, usually, you know, when you talk about them, they’re usually very pragmatic. They just want to see the results and make sure it works. Right. So I think that b2b model is really whether it be through association or industry partners, or, you know, just other companies that are like minded, like us, I think, are very important to that growth.
Bela Musits 17:39
Yeah. Have you guys gotten to the point where you, you do some direct advertising, or you go to trade shows, or those types of things?
David Dittenber 17:47
Yeah, we have we, and again, a lot of our lead into commercialization, we’re out there, just getting the word out. So you know, the National Restaurant Association show some of the State Association shows and regional bills, we’re doing some regional stuff here in Michigan, and then around in Florida, which are a really successful for us some of the member mixers and things like that, you know, definitely, you know, in the end, the restaurant industry is all based on hospitality. So they need to, you know, they need to see you, right, and we need to be able to kind of tell that story that we’re operators, we’re not just a technology company, so a lot of that you need to be seen. But on the other side of it, you know, we really, through those Association channels, and some of those other partners, that’s where the majority of the business so it’s, it’s good for us, because we can deal directly one on one with people and their needs also versus kind of that blanket, because, you know, you start saying machine learning and artificial intelligence. And you know, frankly, with all the buzz going on right now, it tends to get lost a little bit right, or people get a little freaked out by it. So it’s important to be able to be at the at the places where you can see and talk to people just pushing that message out.
Bela Musits 19:03
Yeah. So if I’m a, again, a small to medium size restauranteur, do I would I typically have sort of somebody on my staff or maybe it’s me, that sort of the technology person because it just seems to me, I think back, you know, 30 years, the the waitstaff wrote the order down on a piece of paper, they took it, they handed it through the window, and someone picked it up, they cooked it and out it came and that was it, and now everything’s computerized and so there’s just, you know, inventory control, resit, like you said reservations, all that kind of stuff is just all all technology based. So would I have it seems like I have to have somebody who’s at least the first level Troubleshooter for me because if something goes down, I’m like, out of business. I can’t take orders.
David Dittenber 19:52
Yeah, and so you know, it’s a really, I think, even post pandemic it became more difficult for For that regional operational person, right, especially in a multi unit that they’re trying to cover and, you know, let’s say eight to 10, restaurants, yeah, outside of it, right. So you’ve got, you know, in bigger groups, you might have five regionals, you know, reporting up to a, a director of operations. So, you know, every client is different, right, and how they handle that, because you’ve got, you know, kind of the Chief Technology Officer, or some of this even would go into the, like the security officer right at the top level. But on the operations level, you know, you have to, you know, you have to have the people that understand that what you’re trying to do is help them run their operations better. So, you know, the true proof in the pudding, in my opinion, is around those operational people, right. And then usually, that leads you back to a director of ops that’s trying to solve some problem, whether it be, hey, my, Labor’s too high, hey, my food cost is too high, you know, my communication across, you know, kind of the regions aren’t where it needs to be that sort of thing. So, and again, being a startup we’d have, we’ve had to kind of go smaller than bigger to start, right, we’ve had to go in and prove, you know, and some betas and things like that with the regionals that we could indeed solve their problems. And more importantly, it’s as easy as we say it is to get it up and running. Because the number one reason that an operations person or even a C level person is going to be apprehensive about new technologies, just the time and the adoption rate, right. And so it’s not really the money, right, and we’ve got a good case in terms of ROI, what we can save, and what we can make them. And then what we can just save them, because we do have all the tools kind of integrated that comm for free with our platform. But at the end of the day, their biggest challenge is, where’s the time going to come from? Right? That’s right. And so I think that’s been the challenge, wherever you’re going to enter out whether it be, you know, sea level, or operations or kind of that operations lead, you know, you have to prove to them that this isn’t going to be like, Hey, we’re going to sacrifice our guest experience to go in for a new technology platform, because they’ve done that so many times. And it’s just, you know, it’s detrimental to the guests. Right. And that’s what we’re all here for, we’re here to make sure that the guest has a good experience.
Bela Musits 22:22
Yeah, yeah, excellent point. Excellent point. And anyone who’s been around for a while, you know, they’ve, they’ve had some not so great experiences with adopting new things, they haven’t worked out like they wanted them, either the staff hates it, or their customers hate it, or it doesn’t deliver, or what if it doesn’t, then some of these are really critical to your operation, right? If they go down, your restaurants closed, you can’t function. So some of these things are really, really important. So people are cautious by with after they have some experience, they get very cautious, I think, and rightly so. So I think that’s one of the big challenges for any entrepreneur starting a new business, is this sort of getting that confidence? And being able to, to convince the new potential customer that yes, indeed, you can rely on us? Yeah, I know, we’re a small company. But you know, we’re focused on this to making sure it works for you. Yeah, and what,
David Dittenber 23:18
you know, this, a little bit of the backstory just quickly is, on that note, I wasn’t an operator, but I went and made sure that we, from a technology standpoint, went and had people that understood what we were trying to do at a much higher level. So we were lucky, being from Midland, Michigan, they have a bunch of really smart data architects, and so forth with Dow Chemical being here. And you know, these were guys that did, you know, this type of integration with people like SAP, or if they didn’t do things correctly at the right times, chemical plants were going to blow up, right, so so so again, it was all about trying to make some utilize technology to make something that would do exactly what you just talked about, have a really small imprint, in terms of what they had to change, let’s let’s adapt to their operations versus making, you know, their operations adapt to technology. And so it’s a trust factor. It’s a and I think, again, you know, artificial intelligence and machine learning is this big buzzword right now. But people have been burnt by it before, right, automation and all these really sexy, cool words. And then all of a sudden, after a few years, it goes by the wayside because they tried to do too much and we wanted to do something that was practical, simple and affordable, that utilize the technology in the right way that could really you know, show difference and have influence versus oh my god, I’m gonna have robots running around the restaurant, right? That’s so that’s kind of practical, simple, cheap. I always say affordable, but I’m more on the cheap realm, right being an operator, right?
Bela Musits 24:59
So Excellent, excellent. So I want to talk a little bit about sort of starting this business from an entrepreneurial perspective. So like, what were some of your sort of big challenges in the early days,
David Dittenber 25:12
you know, just the, you know, coming from a person who had done multiple LLCs, and multiple businesses, and I felt like I had a pretty good handle on, you know, kind of the aspects that you needed to run business, whether it was liability management, insurance, you know, accounting, all that type of stuff. But startups are, it’s a, it’s a different animal, right? You know, and we were self funded for the majority of our journey up until about six, eight months ago. And I didn’t know anything about convertible debt, and, you know, safes and all that type of stuff. So there were, there were a lot of things on that side, that we really needed to get good representation around us that had been there and done that almost like we did with the technology, let’s not go out there and reinvent something, let’s go to someone who has done done this before, knows where the pitfalls are in, I still want to, you know, put an asterisk behind that it still doesn’t mean these businesses will be successful, you can do everything, right. And it’s a very difficult process. But I we surround ourselves with a good team of people. And then like I said earlier, I’m big in a mentor network. And we’ve been really lucky to have people that whether it be from big business, or you know, just people that can give you that insight to make sure that you’re you know, and so we have a really great advisory board, I think the challenge was coming up with the Advisory Board and the people that can challenge you to stay and move in the right path. Right, versus, you know, being it, I think that the other thing that is it would be very easy to say, as an operator, I’m so in love with the solution. And not that you’re not passionate about the solution. But sometimes you need to adjust those paths based on what the market and what the customer needs. Right? That’s those are a lot of things that people would advise us on to be like, let’s continue to move forward and those areas, so that that was a lot of the challenge, just really kind of wrapping your hands and head around all those things and getting them to work together. Plus, just, you know, realizing how difficult it is to get in front of people to validate yourself in a market. That’s, frankly, Doggy Dog technology is a different animal. Right. And so you need to you know, those were those were some of the things that were challenging and continue to be challenging, right, they’re ever changing.
Bela Musits 27:43
Yeah, excellent. You know, at Rise25. Here, we’re sort of big fans that publicly acknowledging people who’ve sort of been influential in our lives and have helped us Is there anyone you want to give a kind of a shout out to that’s that’s, you know, helped you along the way and be really influential?
David Dittenber 28:00
I have a, I have a few. And then yeah. And, you know, the first one was an early mentor of mine, his name was John, Lord John was a former healthcare executive that moved into town, in the Bay City where my first restaurant was, and John was a guy that, you know, had a network, and you had to earn that trust and the ability that he would, you know, that you weren’t going to go embarrass him. But you know, we really, he was really great at kind of preparing me for some of these situations that you really, you know, you can’t simulate right, you can read about them, but you need to, you need to be around executives and people that have been there in order. And John was really great, and introduced me to some great people, like some people locally here that I respect. Dave Kappeler, who’s the former CIO of Dow Chemical. And then one of our lead investors is Andrew Liveris, who’s our, who’s the former CEO of of Dow Chemical? And Andrew just retired. So just being able to be around people like that. Yeah. Right. But you just, you know, and they, they, they introduce you to other people within networks that just are it’s, it’s, it’s almost surreal, some time coming from that town that I talked about, you know, sitting in some of these places that we, you know, just grateful to be able to have some of those great influences around it. Yeah.
Bela Musits 29:22
That’s great. That’s great. Thanks for doing that. It was very good. So where’s a good place for if listeners want to find out more about you guys? Where’s the best place for them to go?
David Dittenber 29:32
Yeah, the two best places are website byod.ai. And then LinkedIn is just BYOD. And yeah, both of those. You can go schedule a demo. We have some informational videos that we have on there that kind of go through the the integrations and you know, kind of trying to simplify it a little bit. So yeah, all the information on those two sites.
Bela Musits 29:54
Perfect, perfect. Well, we’ll make sure that all that information is in the show notes for our listeners. And so is there something that I have not asked you that you’d like to share with the audience? No, I think,
David Dittenber 30:07
No, I think, you know, the last point that you were talking about in terms of, you know, people that are influential. I just think that I, you know, I, whether any of the talks that I do, or anybody that I’m around, I just encourage people to reach out, right. They think that there are not opportunities are but with groups like Rise25. And think, you know, there, there is a robust network of people that have been there and done that, you know, and people that are in these industries, I just really, you know, encourage the young entrepreneurs to reach out to anyone that they feel, and what’s the worst that can happen, they’re going to tell you now, or they don’t have time for you. But you know, if you do get that opportunity, you want to make sure that you’re prepared, because there’s nothing worse than showing up at a sea level meeting and act like you’ve never, you know, you’ve not done any preparation. So, yeah, that that would be it. I love that I love the concept behind Rise and I’ve listened to a couple of the other podcasts. I love what you guys do.
Bela Musits 31:04
Well, thank you very much. Thanks. That was great way to close this podcast out. David, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I really enjoyed our conversation.
David Dittenber 31:14
Yeah, me as well. Thanks for having me, Bela. I appreciate it.
Outro 31:16
Thanks for listening to the Top Business Leaders Show powered by Rise25. Visit Rise25.com to check out more episodes of the show and to learn more about how you can start your own podcast







