How To Build Elite Teams In Tech With Ben Johnson

Leading a technical team brings unique challenges, and in this episode, I sit down with Ben Johnson, CEO and founder of Particle 41, to dive into the art and science of building elite teams. Ben shares how he’s grown Particle 41 into a company known for its impact in software development, DevOps, and data science. We discuss his leadership journey—from early entrepreneurial days to becoming a successful tech founder—and explore how he motivates his team, using pressure as a gift rather than a burden. Ben's disciplined approach to personal productivity and work-life balance offers actionable insights for anyone aiming to lead at a higher level. He shares a unique perspective on 'being' versus 'doing' in leadership, underscoring the importance of focusing on who you are as a leader rather than just what you accomplish. Plus, Ben discusses his forward-thinking approach to AI in software development, where understanding the 'why' behind the code will become a key differentiator in the industry. Tune in to uncover valuable lessons on capacity, efficiency, and purpose-driven leadership.


Connect with Ben Johnson:
Connect with Ben Johnson to tap into his wealth of experience in scaling businesses and building elite technical teams. Visit his LinkedIn or book a 30-minute conversation through Particle 41's website to gain insights that could drive your team’s growth.


Books Mentioned:

•  The One Thing by Gary Keller

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Chapters

• 0:02 Introduction to Ben Johnson
• 3:07 Building Particle 41
• 4:29 Leading High-Performing Tech Teams
• 7:42 Successful Business Exits
• 10:04 Balancing Work-Life Capacity
• 23:58 Looking to the Future with AI
• 26:53 The Power of "Being" Over "Doing"

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is an honor today to have Ben Johnson on the podcast. Ben's a serial technical co-founder with a track record of success and hands-on open source programming experience. He has a wide range of being both a board-level advisor and founder, but also an in-depth understanding of how things work. Through his 20-plus years as a software developer and leader, he has gained extensive experience with remotely distributed development teams and business hacks. Ben's a CEO and founder of Particle41, a dev firm founded by industry veterans that aims to help companies accelerate their initiatives through software development, devops and data science development, devops and data science With a constant focus on results and ways to improve. He is having fun building highly scalable and highly secure applications. Now I'm so glad you're here, ben.

Ben Johnson: 0:55

Thanks for being on the show. Thank you, william, it's great to be here.

Intro/Outro: 0:57

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:12

William Attaway, I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader.

Ben Johnson: 1:27

How did you get started? Yeah, well, I won't go too far back, but my entrepreneurial journey started early. I had a paper out when I was 13 and owned a Commodore 64. I was fortunate to be one of those kids. So you know, my first opportunity in tech was to start an online travel agency before Orbit, I think, Travelocity and Expedia were around but to take a business from brick and mortar travel agency where people called in and even walked into the office to book their plane tickets and taking that online and doing it in small town, west Texas, where we had to build our own data center.

Ben Johnson: 2:07

You know really the epitome of that garage entrepreneurial experience where, yeah, and pre-cloud before, a lot of the barriers of entry have now been really given to industry leaders. Like you know, now if you need a server, you go, click a button. You don't contact the guy down the street to put together all the components in a white box server, you know. So, yeah, we built a really cool online travel agency to 70 million in annual travel sales and made it through a lot of industry things, including 9-11.

Ben Johnson: 2:49

And then I did a travel media company, a finance media company, and in media companies you get this great intersection between data, software development and cloud engineering, just really got to put together uh, you know, a package of uh or a stack for media companies that served me in both travel and finance. And then, of of recent, I built a company in 2015 in the legal services industry and sold it to LegalZoom in 2018. And then, um, also built a SaaS company called DocWorks and sold it to DocMaster. So just really enjoy the building process building businesses, building tech stacks and tech products and seeing them compete in the marketplace.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:43

Tell me a little bit about particle 41, like what, what is it and what makes it different?

Ben Johnson: 3:51

Yeah, so our vision at particle 41 is to embed elite teams everywhere and our core values spell elite. We uh, we empower leadership, innovation, teamwork and excellence and really, as a technical co-founder in all my previous I really wanted the kind of vendor or the kind of partner that I've now created in Particle 41. So we are a tech partner that comes alongside businesses, makes them stronger, a little more flexible through industry best practices and software development, data science and DevOps or cloud engineering, and we just love to do whatever it takes to help businesses compete at the speed their market demands and, you know, get that competitive edge.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:42

So leading a tech team is a little bit different than leading other types of teams. What are some things that you've learned about leading that particular unique kind of team?

Ben Johnson: 4:57

So I find that my teammates love challenge. They're driven by challenge. They're driven by pushing the envelope around. What's possible um, they like. The reward for a software developer who does a super good job is they get more work to do. The next sprint it's um. So it really has to be an altruism about being elite and being able to figure things out quickly and self-learn and address challenges.

Ben Johnson: 5:28

I call it agony and absolution the agony of like why doesn't this work? And then the absolution of man. This works and it scales and it performs well and people are enjoying using it. And we actually like pressure. Pressure is a gift. Pressure is something that comes from success. If you build a software product that people want to use and they want more from it and it's moving them forward, then you will get a lot of pressure. Pressure is a gift. If you're in a project that doesn't have pressure, chances are that that product will not make that project or product will not make a difference in the market. So we I really find that my teammates thrive on challenge. How does that play?

Dr. William Attaway: 6:14

into efficiency, like as you're, as you're working with a team and seeing them thrive on that challenge. How do you, how do you keep them focused and as efficient as possible?

Ben Johnson: 6:24

that challenge how do you keep them focused and as efficient as possible? Yeah, I find that it's all about identifying the one thing. You know, the one thing that I need to do in software development is really good at time compression and prioritization. We get it in our agile best practices and then, as we lead businesses, as I do, c2 advisory, really focusing on what is the? What is that one big rock that our customers are most asking for, where we, where we will get the most pressure If we say, hey, we're going to build this for you, and then um, building into the demand that our customers are pressuring us for, right, like the thing they're most asking for. That's the thing we should be working on and that should be the one thing that we're trying to deliver as quickly as possible.

Dr. William Attaway: 7:13

You've had such a variety of different experiences and you touched on these earlier. You know building a company and then selling it, and building another company and then selling it. This is an experience that a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders want to have. They want to build a company and then they want to have a clear exit strategy, and we know that exit strategies that are successful are ones that are long planned. It's not. You don't just wake up one day and here's a beautiful exit that takes no preparation. Can you speak to that? Can you speak to what that has been like for you to build something and to a point where you are able to exit in a positive way?

Ben Johnson: 7:51

well. So there's two types of businesses that entrepreneurs will find themselves in. There are lifestyle businesses, which, uh, turn a profit, but then the the founder, the owner, spends that profit to afford themselves their lifestyle, and sometimes they extend that lifestyle to their other most key employees and they work together for 10 years and they enjoy the whole ride. It's a different mindset to build a company for true equity value. A lot of times that takes sacrifice in the short term and it also takes a certain eye for what's going to be truly valuable in the market. It takes a little more of a risk, but a risk for a reward.

Ben Johnson: 8:37

So for us it was very much looking at the market, looking at a hole in the market, and keeping communication open with the people who we thought would be interested in that. So in legal services, we identified this hole between the DIY form, your LLC type consumer website, and the great big guys that serve Fortune 5000. And really and I think this hole still exists to some extent this middle market of people who have businesses formed in multiple states was kind of our target, and then tools to serve the professionals that typically address that market. So the result was not only a B2C strategy but also a B2B strategy that occupied that center ground and I guess the saying is the riches are in the niches but not just trying to rub two lines of code together to really build a platform. So we became an arms dealer of automation and an arms dealer of data management in that middle space and it created something truly valuable.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:54

What does your rhythm look like when we talk about your habits, around your personal productivity, around the rhythm of your life and what this looks like to support what you're building in your business or businesses?

Ben Johnson: 10:14

Yeah. So I used to tell myself a long time, you know, many years ago oh, I don't want to do that because I'm not capable. And so I've struck struck in this word capable from not only my vocabulary but my company's vocabulary. In leadership, we often look at our teams and we say, well, that person's not capable. And what I think is more true is that person does not have the capacity.

Ben Johnson: 10:40

So my daily habits have been for one primary reason, and that's to increase my capacity. So I wake up at 5.30, I do some faith-based meditation, I read my Bible, I pray, I go right into a workout and get some exercise so that I can create a mental clearance and focus to go into my day. I'm really thinking about what is the one thing that I need to complete today that will either make future activity more efficient or directly help me hit my goals. And and then, yeah, I, I, I work a hard day and then at a. Then I go focus on my family, because we're I think work-life balance is a little bit of a misnomer. It's more like work-life counterbalancing, where you know we're always going to spend more time at work than we do with our family. So we have to keep counterbalancing.

Ben Johnson: 11:37

There may be some days where you know I just need to take a day off and have the wife and I need to go do something fun, um.

Ben Johnson: 11:44

So I think it's more of a counterbalancing and, um, not necessarily this balance Balance is a misnomer, because I'm not going to spend equal time with my family that I do with work, um, and then you know addressing things like you know, if I have a bunch of carbs at lunch, I get tired in the afternoon.

Ben Johnson: 12:04

That's going to decrease my capacity. So staying a little more, a little more keto in the diet, little low carb, actually really helps for me to stay mentally alert throughout the day and be able to maximize my, you know, maximize the cycles I can have in a given day. And I think if, if we look at life not through a filter of good or bad, but efficient or inefficient, we make uh, we make more interesting decisions, um, and we also don't set ourselves up for ups and downs. If I look at, oh, you know, so-and-so, you know that future client called me back, that's really good, then I might get a, you know, get a high, uh, only to maybe get a low if the deal doesn't quite pan out the way I had expected. But if I look at it through efficient or inefficient I can maintain a more, even kill, and make wiser decisions.

Dr. William Attaway: 13:02

I love the holistic view that you have there of thinking about building a life that is healthy and sustainable, not just from one aspect, but across the board, from starting your day incorporating spiritual disciplines, from faith to physical disciplines, right To mental and intellectual disciplines. You seem like a very disciplined guy. Have you always been that way?

Ben Johnson: 13:26

No, no, this has been a recent effort. About two years ago I got involved with a mastermind group called Rise Up Kings, and Rise Up Kings focuses on four pillars faith, family, fitness and finance and I really think those four pillars represent four very important areas that are involved in that counterbalance. And through the accountability through that group, I was really able to put some of those measures in place and get accountability for doing that right, Doing the things that I don't necessarily want to do, which I think is the definition of discipline.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:07

Truly and that really, that may be the answer to the next question that I have, which is around your business, your team, your clients that you work with. They need you to lead at a higher level today than they did five years ago, and that same thing is going to be true five years from now. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your clients, your business, are going to need you to have three, four, five years from now?

Ben Johnson: 14:40

Sure, I think it's just that constant learning, right, yeah, if I'm counterbalancing, then many men they'll neglect their family and then they'll be going through a divorce which sucks capacity. So I'm just trying to maintain an efficient lifestyle, that that maintains efficiency and doesn't, you know, throw throw off one of those, one of those pillars and in fact I feel like if all I did was work all the time, that'd be really comfortable for me. I, like, you know, like a lot of times that's easy and we we might be even say, you know, we go to our wives or our families and we say, but I'm working all the time, I should deserve that. And then we set ourselves up for excuses in those areas where excellence is really performing in all four of those pillars.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:34

I love that. When you think about your business today, what is one thing that you want most?

Ben Johnson: 15:41

What I want most is to help people succeed. It may seem cliche, but I really enjoy people. I enjoy helping them and I just want to do that more to fill, I want to find out that top end of capacity and help more businesses grow. We created the business off of Particle 41, which is the 41st element in a periodic table is niobium, and the reason why I chose that is it's added to steel. It makes it stronger and more flexible. Steel. It makes it stronger and more flexible.

Ben Johnson: 16:22

It's not an element that you see a lot of by itself. It's always an additive. Back in the 80s there was this pop metal jewelry that had an anodized sheen. It was rainbow colored. That's niobium jewelry because it can be anodized. When you go to a petroleum plant, you'll see a steel pipe that's like blue, has a blue sheen to it and that's the niobium anodized. So it allows you to anodize the metal, but it also gives it some flex, which increases its strength. So that strength and flexibility is what I really strive to do and one of the reasons we added CTO advisory, which is, in effect, kind of a CEO coaching make sure you have the right vision and goals and plan and tech roadmap in place to succeed in your industry, and I really enjoy collaborating with CEOs and being a good partner.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:20

I don't think that's cliche at all. That's exactly why I do what I do Executive coach pouring into and investing in people to see them succeed. When they win, I win. That's right. I think that's the heart of what we both are involved in.

Ben Johnson: 17:36

That's right, and the best reward for writing good software is that people use it and it makes their lives easier. That's good work.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:45

That's so true, If you could go back and talk to yourself. You're 20 years old, knowing what you know. Now, what would you love to go back and tell yourself?

Ben Johnson: 18:01

Basically that you're good enough, like you don't need anybody's approval, because I think when you're seeking other people's approval, it's hard for you to. If you're looking for value, I think we're either absorbing or we're giving, right, we're taking or giving, and I would have, uh, I would probably tell my younger self that you're, you're good enough, you got it going on, you're fine, um, and you're, you're at the level, you are at the level of of these folks that you're looking, subconsciously looking for approval, but really, um, the reason why I would tell them that is so that I could, because if we're insecure or we're trying, then we're naturally going to be in a taker mode.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:52

Often, somebody who leads at your level is a continual learner, and you've alluded to that several times in this conversation. Is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening? Hey, if you haven't read this, you should.

Ben Johnson: 19:10

Yeah, so it would depend on the leader. At Particle we have three books that are required reading to kind of be promoted to leadership, and the one thing is definitely top of that list. I've probably been saying the one thing too many times on the podcast, but that one is great and it's a really good book. And then there's also one that's hard to recommend because people think there's some kind of ulterior motive, but it's leadership and self deception and, yeah, that one is, is like love, love. That one, um, I can't remember the third one right off the top of my head in my experience, the human capacity for self-deception is pretty much limitless and yeah, we all do it, right, we all do it exactly it's.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:03

It's a ditch we can all drive right into, and that that book was one of the formative influences in my journey to help me be able to identify and help other people to be able to identify when we are driving toward that did.

Ben Johnson: 20:17

Yeah, totally Well, and I think like treating people as people instead of people as objects. Even in my parenting, sometimes I see my kids as objects of behavior, or objects of behavior rather than humans, with challenges. If I take a minute to, okay, wait a minute, you know? Uh, it's hard for a 10 year old to sit still. Um, I just, I'll approach my kids different if I see them as humans rather than as objects of performance or objects of behavior.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:27

Yeah, and that goes for your team too. I mean, one of the things that I often say is that when you treat your team members as actual 3D human beings, instead of as what they do or what they produce, instead of as what they do or what they produce, they will lean in, because people, people want to be known and seen and heard, and you're exactly right, that's. That's so true with with your kids, with parenting as well. When somebody feels known, seen and heard, they lean in, they don't run away. Yeah, absolutely, and thinking about the future, where do you?

Ben Johnson: 23:00

want to go from here, um, I think, you know, from here, I just uh, you know I would love to, uh, I'd love to operate at a little bit higher level in this in the sense of, you know, really broadening the network of CEOs. I'm helping, um, I, I just want to be the guy and I want to expand that reach. That's why, you know, we started a podcast of our own, that's why I'm here with you. Right Is to expand that reach of people who, you know, when they think of a technical challenge, I'm the person that they call. We're also looking at the role of AI in the software development process and we're looking at how the people who are going to be up with automatically generated piles of garbage if we don't know the reason behind it.

Ben Johnson: 24:06

And we've seen such a rapid amount of abstractions in tech that many of our intermediate technologists in technology today don't really know why they're doing the thing. They just be leveraging the abstraction, because the abstraction has made things simpler. One technical example of this is when I first started that travel company, I had to configure switches. I had to understand network topology, why IP addresses were numbered the way that they were. This is something we have to train now, and we often have to train it to very experienced cloud engineers, because they don't really need to know that. They just write the code that builds the cloud environment, and so for them to design a network is just not something they've had to do. So we train some of those fundamentals.

Ben Johnson: 25:02

Well, why is the network built the way it is? What's the right way to design it? And it's just kind of a lost art, and I would imagine then the metaphor would be if you have a perfect translator, who will know Spanish? Perfect translator who will know Spanish right, who will really know it? If there's a perfect translator where you just speak your, your language, and it's translated to the other person fluently, then, um, over time, would people not be be bilingual or um? And then I would imagine there'll come a time where the bilingual people who can verify the interpreter and test it and know that it's saying the right things, would be very valuable. And so we're. We want to. In the future, we want to be the people who understand why and can validate the typing that the AI does, can validate that this is really the best solution for that particular problem. Love that.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:01

Every time we talk, I thoroughly enjoy the conversation and I learn so much, and I so appreciate your generosity today in sharing so freely from what you've learned so far. Often, people are going to walk away from an episode like this with one big idea, one big takeaway. If you could define what you want that one big idea to be, what would you like people to walk away with?

Ben Johnson: 26:26

Yeah, that one big idea that's really changed my life is the difference between doing and being. So we are human beings, we are not human doings. And if we, many of us, uh, we go through life thinking, well, if I do these things, we could use success as an example, if I do these things, then I will have success, and then someday I will be successful. But what if you could, today, say, I, I am successful. Therefore, as I go through life, I am having success. And then so you be, you do and you have, so you are successful, and you affirm that I am successful.

Ben Johnson: 27:11

You look at your life there are a lot of successful proof of being successful. And then, because you think of yourself as successful, of course you're going to do the things that continue to be in that state of being, and then you will have success. And the feeling of being rather than doing is you're not chasing it, you're living in that state of being, and that pivot, or that transformation is, I think, essential to being able to combat anxiety and dissatisfaction and catastrophizing and worry and all these kind of negative things, the thing that you want most. And so, therefore, just act like it and then you will reinforce your own positive belief that you're successful rather than chasing something and having life have to prove it to you from a lot of doing, and that would be my biggest takeaway to focus on being rather than doing. Well good advice.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:17

And I know our listeners are going to want to stay connected to you and continue learning from you and more about what you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Ben Johnson: 28:26

So on my LinkedIn, there is a book appointment link. On my website, particle41.com, there's a book appointment link. I am very easy to sit down and have 30-minute conversation with. So that is what I want the most is to uh to talk to. If you're interested in talking more, I would love for you just to book a 30 minute meeting with me, and um, that is very easy to do. So, yeah, particle 41, book an appointment. Um, or uh, find me on LinkedIn and and uh, let's talk.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:59

Thank you so much for your time and for the generosity of the insights that you've shared today. Oh, my pleasure, Thank you. Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, Catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 29:41

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 30:25

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