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In this episode, we talk about prioritizing big revolutionary ideas vs small iterative improvements, and a whole lot more
Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:01.77
tylerking
We're good. Ah yeah, how much it's it's December it's the end of the year I don't know do do you feel like like hey a years completed yes or like oh no I didn't do what I wanted to do this year? Yeah, um.
00:02.84
Rick
What's up this week Tyler
00:17.13
Rick
Definitely more on the ladder about you.
00:19.86
tylerking
Yeah I think I always feel the latter even if I had a good year. Um, but which which isn't say I didn't have a good year this year. But ah my I think my my way of combating that is by saying like do I feel like a lot happened like. Are things different from a year ago and if a lot happened then I feel good and I think a lot happened.
00:38.81
Rick
That is true. Yeah, a lot happened I felt you know it. But I think the the second question behind that is like did you did you have agency in what happened or did it happen to you like did you affect the happening or were you just like in a tornado.
00:51.60
tylerking
Yeah, absolutely yeah for sure. But like the saddest thing I hear older people say is when they're just like oh yeah, a decade flew by and I didn't even notice and I'm like I just want to notice time passing and I feel like I still like.
01:04.47
Rick
Oh god.
01:10.35
tylerking
I I don't notice time speeding up the way a lot of people seem to as they age sorry that got way more deep early on right away than that 5 segment meant. Um, yeah, um.
01:15.90
Rick
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's yeah it like true that this is this was not a boring year.
01:28.44
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, especially for you? Um, so in terms of what's actually going on with me so this is we're only a little less than halfway through December but this is so normally Thanksgiving comes sign ups tank like no one's signing up for crm during Thanksgiving and then they. You know it's better after Thanksgiving but basically between Thanksgiving and New year like it's a much lower baseline than normal. This is our first year I think ever where that is not true. Um, yeah, we're still low like our whole year this this whole year has been lower than we normally see. But since Thanksgiving are really.
01:56.43
Rick
Nice.
02:07.50
tylerking
It. It would normally start trailing off the whole second half of the year and it's actually slightly ticked up the whole second half of the year
02:15.40
Rick
Ah, you know I'm I'm going to ask like do you have any idea why or is it just sort of like yay.
02:18.52
tylerking
Yeah there's not There's not a clear sign of anything. There's a lot of input like we've been working all year very deliberately on growth stuff. Um the best I can guess is that some of it's working. But this goes back to a conversation. We've had multiple times in in recent episodes that. I think what's working is we're spending a lot of money on ads and stuff and indirectly that leads to signups but like it's mostly there's not like any particular trackable channel that's meaningfully going up. Um, so I think it's just but but our ad budget is twice like we're spending something like thirty thousand a month right now. Whereas before we spent 10 to 15 so I would I would attribute it to that. But I'm not sure.
02:58.19
Rick
Well do it again.
02:59.50
tylerking
But yeah, well so that's the thing if if so my optimistic hope is January hits. Normally we bounce back up but we'll definitely bounce back up somewhat that's always happened or maybe maybe this year's different if we bounce back to like. Normal like before this year when growth was good. Um I will I will say I have no idea why that happened I'm glad it did happen. But I think at that point we just have to keep doing all the stuff we've been doing having no clue. Like we're doing 10 new things. Maybe only one of them is the cause of all of this but we just have to keep doing all 10 I think yeah so you know obviously it hasn't happened yet. So I don't get to celebrate but I'm more optimistic than I have been all year
03:34.41
Rick
Yes I agree I'm totally on board of that and just be happy.
03:47.31
tylerking
Ah, because we've not seen a slowdown post nightgiving.
03:50.77
Rick
Are you are you feeling? um mean this is related to recession topics. Are you feeling safe from this recession or do you feel like it's still are too early to tell.
03:59.89
tylerking
Um, so right now I said we're we're not ah like Tank. We're not tanking the way we normally do this time here. What I really mean is free. Trial signups are not down Churn actually is higher than it should be right now. And especially involuntary Churn which I think is random I Don't think it's like custom by involuntary I mean people's credit cards failing I don't think it's like oh our product got less competitive and you know it's got nothing to do with us I don't think um.
04:15.79
Rick
Um.
04:29.69
tylerking
So there are some signs it's It's a small sample size I'd want to see more before I start panicking but there are some signs that our growth efforts are working and some kind of economic conditions are impacting us. Potentially.
04:41.70
Rick
Would it be nice if you could offset that there's also this thing with with your product because you're a lower cost alternative. There's a potential for like any business closures reductions that lead to cancellations could also be offset by downgrades from like a more expensive crm. So.
04:54.81
tylerking
Um, yeah.
05:00.54
Rick
There's an interesting sort of ah recession proofness in your business model being the lowest cost option.
05:06.31
tylerking
Yeah I was just asking Alex who does more or less sales for us. Ah like what are people saying um and he did say he's hearing price more often. As a reason why people are looking at us. Um, again, we're talking you know. 2 or 3 conversations. So I don't I don't want anyone listening to this to be like oh I'm going to go quote Tyler and say there's a macro thing going on here. But maybe.
05:26.76
Rick
Ah, well there are other proof points that support Tyler's proof points.
05:28.78
tylerking
Yeah, right? Yeah yeah, I've I've thought since the because you know we started in 2009 like right? Basically at the bottom of the great recession and I'd always thought like okay, there will be another recession. Hopefully we will still be in business for it. Will it be good or bad for us for a long time I told myself it would be good. Because but like you said we're a low cost alternative and all that I don't think that's I think that's a little too rosy. But I think it's probably I think we do better than the average Sierra company and most of our competition is either publicly traded or has raised venture money that. There are companies that could go out of business just because they can't raise another round even if everything else looks good.
06:14.52
Rick
Um, you mentioned Alex who's doing sales and he also does business development for you guys does he have his sort of ear to the ground in terms of like these smaller serns that could go under as part of a recession like this and you could just like gobble up all the users.
06:29.30
tylerking
Um I wouldn't say he has I've talked about this with him I wouldn't say neither of us really know. But we're both trying to pay attention. Um, yeah I don't know.
06:40.39
Rick
So so yeah j d and I have been talking about this so one of the biggest boosts we've got. We've had 2 sort of inflection points this open enrollment period and both have been related to ah one was related to an agent deciding. They didn't want to be in the business anymore and he referred referred us this entire book now it was small but. Was significant and the other was related to an insurance company that is exiting the market and we got a lot of their referrals to help their people that were on their plan. Ah that we're buying from this insurance company that's leaving the market help them find new insurance in the new year and it's just like a reminder that like when people.
07:09.35
tylerking
Um, ah.
07:16.80
Rick
You don't know when someone's going to like be like I'm done. Um, but when they are like there's a huge opportunity in that and being the first call. Um, it takes a lot of upfront business development and relationship. But like there may be something worth like a small like nurture of like hey like.
07:16.92
tylerking
This. Um, yeah.
07:33.14
tylerking
Um, yeah, that's interesting.
07:34.69
Rick
We're here and and so that's something that I'm J D and I are figuring out how to replicate like we know agents are going to go out of business next year. Ah.
07:40.60
tylerking
Yeah, so you're saying though you need to you need to already have a relationship with them before it's not like you hear they're going out of business and then you call them up and say hey what's up.
07:51.20
Rick
It's too late. Usually there to have a plan and then ah it's hard to find out about those things too in the moment. Um, so you want to be that call when they're going like it's I have ninety days runway um I'm trying to decide what to do and you're you're a soft landing option.
07:55.70
tylerking
Um, yeah.
08:05.53
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, um I should I should know more about the serum industry than I do like I know the big players obviously but like like I think it's possible that monday.com goes under soon. Or or by go under by go under I mean gets acquired or something I mean obviously they won't disappear but their stock prices dropped like 80% or something like that and they're still nowhere close to profitable. So like if you're funding yourself off of they are publicly traded. So it's different from a Vc thing. But.
08:19.41
Rick
Um, what.
08:36.42
tylerking
If the only way you can survive is by raising money for investors and your stock price just dropped 80% you're in a tough position. But obviously we're not buying monday.com like they're they're massive. Ah I don't really have my my I should do more? Yeah, this is a good point from you thank you that
08:43.68
Rick
Yes, you are. Ah.
08:53.69
tylerking
I should know who the companies smaller than us that have raised venture Capital are.
08:58.80
Rick
Great yeah have a list and it's just like maybe you have a maybe you set up you or Alex sets up like a quarterly or semiannual call with them just to be like hey how's it going. Are you going out of business yet.
09:06.95
tylerking
Yeah, but this is like I think all like most of the people who listen to this are probably bootstrapers and like this is maybe too simplistic of a model but bootstrapping is like buying bonds instead of stocks sort of right? It's like during the good times you grow slower. Everything's worse. But when the bad times hit.
09:23.98
Rick
Um.
09:26.22
tylerking
It It doesn't hit us nearly as hard I don't think.
09:29.89
Rick
This is a perfect transition to what I wanted to talk about today. So I'll I'll tee this up with just two updates. Um, we have a ton of momentum right now and it feels. It felt like all year up until kind of the last three or four weeks we were talking about what? Ah what are we doing? How are we doing it. It was a lot of how you know, um and now it's just like execution and there's no questions. It's just execution and they're just like it just feels really really good.
09:51.65
tylerking
Um, yeah.
09:55.91
tylerking
Yeah.
10:01.53
Rick
And it feels like we have this momentum that we can replicate in some form outside of open enrollment because last year we spent a ton of time talking about how are we going to do this how now it's just like autopilot like we're exactly um so that feels like a big inflection point for us. So we feel this momentum that we can carry in outside of open enrollment now for our business.
10:08.80
tylerking
Yeah, you wake up in the morning and you know what you got to do.
10:21.16
Rick
If you're a first time listener. We have a very seasonal business where most of our work like opportunity exists between November first and December fifteenth and or in or January fifteenth when open enrollment runs um every year in Utah in the United States so um but but we do feel like There's some momentum there. We like some number of science per month that offset churn you know and we grow. Um, and we're still on track for to double um eighty plus clients I you know I wouldn't be surprised if we creep closer to a hundred um which would be thrilling honestly. Ah.
10:42.48
tylerking
Um, ah.
10:49.70
tylerking
Wow wait.
10:56.34
Rick
but but um that that kind of leads into this. Um I started a book on the so I went to San Francisco last week for an executive offsite with windfall which was incredibly demanding. Um, and so if I'm if I'm if I sound sick or depressed. It's just because of lack of sleep. Um, for the last week but um, you know. 1 of the best things about getting on a plane is I I don't ever I used to open up my laptop and try to work now I just open up my Kindle and I I just I'll I'll start like 5 books and then the first whatever book like catches my attention I'll I'll do it. It's always new books. So. Today this trip I I picked up Warren Buffett's um, Biography called the snowball have you ever read this incredible writer whoever wrote it I don't know her name but like it's really really good. It reads like a novel. Um, which a lot of good biographies. Do but like this one's good. Um, and there Warren Buffett is a start to license.
11:32.99
tylerking
Now.
11:48.26
Rick
He is a public investor but he is a startup to last mindset have you studied him much. Okay, he's very quirky. He's very quirky. He's very interesting but like there are a couple there are two I'm only ah a few chapter 7 or 8 chapters in but like.
11:52.32
tylerking
I mean I I think I get the average amount of Warren Buffet content I wouldn't say it's um.
12:04.93
Rick
There are two takeaways that I that I thought were really interesting. 1 is less relevant to the conversation that we just had and it's about the inner scorecard um people who are hyper successful long-term ah grade themselves internally based on their own setup criteria versus an outside scorecard Vc funds funding.
12:24.47
tylerking
The half.
12:24.50
Rick
Is an outside scorecard. Ah you know bootstrapping is much more of an internal scorecard. Um, and then the the big takeaway for me that really like is has me jazzed about the ah the growth that we've had so far is. Being okay with modest gains and this is something he stresses Well he doesn't stress but the writer stresses that he stressed um, being okay with modest gains and I feel like I'm never okay with modest gains at leg of Health and I feel like if I were like I would be a happier person. What are your thoughts on. Like being okay with modest gains.
12:58.92
tylerking
The phrase I've always heard and maybe we've said this on this podcast is like short term impatient long term patient. Um and that resident I think I'm the opposite of you I think I'm good at the patient part and I'm bad at like there are times when you need to be impatient and you need to like.
13:04.40
Rick
E.
13:16.82
tylerking
Mix things up and stuff like that and I I get too complacent. So I think I'm in the opposite side from you I think you need a little bit of both. What.
13:22.32
Rick
Yeah, yeah, so anyway, this this whole this mindset thing here just like kind of make me go Okay I can I can look at leg up health as not growing as fast as I want it to or I could be content with.
13:39.30
tylerking
Um, yeah, um.
13:40.14
Rick
The growth that we're having and just keep going and default alive is like another thing that comes here like to my mind here where it's like if we keep growing and we just we we don't like I can retain Jd. Um, and I can keep funding. Um, we're going to eventually like. Like be really really happy with where we are it compounds? yeah.
13:59.32
tylerking
Yeah Jason Limkin always says it compounds and like like if even if this year isn't what you want it to be if next year will be better than this year the year after that will be better than that. Um, eventually stuff's good. I'm curious. So ah, there's the Warren Buffett thing and the patience and all that you started this by saying you feel like you've got momentum. Well maybe there's a discussion for another day but like the impression I got from you saying that is like you want to keep that momentum up after open enrollment. Do you have a sense of what that means.
14:30.97
Rick
Um I don't think I think it's just staying focused. Um and not getting distracted like I don't I don't think there's anything that we need to do other than just keep doing what we're doing I don't I don't think it's a complicated thing. Um, so I don't I know I I.
14:36.78
tylerking
Um, yeah.
14:45.95
Rick
but but I do think like I want there are some things I want to do that. We're not doing currently that I do want to do next year and I think that those need to be done too. But um I think like legup health if it doubles again next year I'd be really really happy like there's been a goal in front of legup healtht.
14:53.55
tylerking
Yeah.
15:04.84
Rick
For the last year I think or 2 we want to get to 400 clients and it's like I don't care if if we double. We'll get to 400 clients eventually we double every year so I'm just really I'd be really happy if we doubled again next year which is a drastic ah haircut. Compared to 400.
15:23.73
tylerking
Right? right? Well Okay, you said there are some things you want to do next year last episode we talked about the ah the employer side um like up benefits is that one of the things you're talking about because I've got.
15:35.36
Rick
Um, absolutely.
15:35.51
tylerking
I've got a shout out that I'm going to say now instead of waiting until later that I think relates to this.
15:40.96
Rick
Okay, yes, so so um and we'll talk more about this next week when we do our mega episode I think it's two weeks okay so um, so so yeah, we I um, one learning we have is that we um.
15:43.73
tylerking
Yeah, we're doing an end of year recap in in two weeks but the next episode. Yeah.
15:57.29
Rick
Our messaging gets employers attention. We did some testing over the last few weeks like we have the response rate we have on outbound employer like small employers is ridiculous like just about everyone responds in some way shape or form. We so have anything to offer them. Yes.
16:09.23
tylerking
Um, okay can I give you maybe some food for thought to bring into our our episode in two weeks I saw something on Twitter I'm not going to say who it's from because they were quoting someone else and they didn't tell who it was from so I'm not going to give this person credit for this for quoting someone and not saying who it was. But what they said was um, what you want a bit for a business is boring and complex if you've got a 2 by 2 matrix like you know the normal 4 4 square grid 1 axis is boredom and 1 axis is complexity and basically the idea is that because everything is a supply a supply and demand curve. There's way more competition in the ah like exciting simple businesses and there's not very much competition in the boring complex businesses. Um, you have been great at targeting boring complex things in your career.
17:01.62
tylerking
Especially Zane benefits and people keep which we both worked at it. It was as boring as it gets. It's not even selling health insurance. It's selling software to administer health insurance and other benefits and it's incredibly complex. You were battling with insurance regulate like state commissioners of insurance or whatever.
17:10.18
Rick
But.
17:18.78
tylerking
Ah, you had to like all these legal regulations and all that you were as far in the boring complex direction as you can possibly go there. Do you agree with that leg up Health is still pretty boring and complex but less less of each I think.
17:29.40
Rick
Yep.
17:35.67
Rick
Yep.
17:35.96
tylerking
I read this and I was like should Rick be more boring and more complex. What do you think about that.
17:45.24
Rick
Um I think like boring I I totally can I think I think we're speaking the same language when you when he says complex in this context like what is the like like measurement for complexity. Is it. Is it like difficulty of execution. Um.
17:58.82
tylerking
Yeah I mean again, this was a a quote from someone I I don't know who it's from so I don't have a good way. I mean I guess I could Google boring and complex and see what comes up but um I interpreted this to mean you are selling like there's a lot of really great things about your business which is like. You're not actually offering the key product. The customers buying you have software and stuff but like at the end of the day. What they really want is insurance. Um, which is great because it means like your site going down doesn't matter that much and like if there's a really horrible situation. It's United Health care dealing with it. Not you. But.
18:22.55
Rick
E.
18:32.94
tylerking
You had a huge advantage at people keep of like being willing to wade through all these regulations and do all this crap that no one else is willing to do. That's the complex part to me that you're not, You're not really, you're you're doing something sort of complex which is being an insurance broker. But you're capable of doing much more complex things than other insurance. Brokers are.
18:50.15
Rick
Thousand percent and we're doing that with like a health even within like up health like the concept of a monthly update like that's fairly complex in our business model. It doesn't seem complex to the outside world but like all the logic in there and the things that can go wrong like it. It actually is complex.
18:55.88
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, right.
19:05.64
tylerking
Well yeah, and I'll stop being around the bush here like what I'm saying is when I read that leg up benefits strikes me as a more complex product where you could potentially.
19:08.47
Rick
But yeah, your regulatory complexity is 1 aspect of complexity product. Complexity could be another. Um, but yeah.
19:22.11
tylerking
Be even further from what other people want to or can compete with.
19:24.83
Rick
A thousand percent you're you've nailed it. So you're supportive of of building leg up benefits. Usually you're not supportive of me doing multiple things like.
19:29.82
tylerking
All right cool. We'll talk more about that I um, my concern with it is the like because this is not a full time thing. Do you have time to do all of this but ah. 10 years from now I think you're more likely to have what you want because leg up benefits worked than you are because leg up health worked but I don't know I'm an armchair entrepreneur here. You know like the armchair quarterback or whatever like ah I'm sitting here telling the.
19:51.79
Rick
Yep yep I can I can argue with that. It's a what's an armchair entrepreneur.
20:03.36
tylerking
Professional Athlete what they should do from my armchair. Um, anyway, ah yeah, so I've been talking a lot recently I'm basically a professional notion admin now like I've spent weeks just fussing about with notion. Um.
20:05.38
Rick
Oh got you? Yeah, got it? Ah, what else is on your mind.
20:16.68
Rick
Um, can we is there a way to build this product like better. Yeah.
20:21.41
tylerking
What building notion better I I got to say a I get why everyone tries notion and hates it at first and it's so frustrating and complex and b once you get it once the whole mental model is in your head at once I cannot believe this product exists. It's so amazing I think. I would never want to compete with them I agree if if if I could like go back in time and work on anything. It would be notion before notion existed but it's actually I think it's quite well done I don't really see where a person would meaningfully improve on it and and what what.
20:41.85
Rick
Um, it seems like something you should have built like yeah.
20:58.91
tylerking
Detractors would say to that is they'd be like well I was editing something and a glitch happened or would it like all the complaints are stuff that doesn't matter. It's annoying but it like in terms of what it can actually do. It's like it's perfect or I shouldn't say it's perfect, but it's really really good anyway. Ah yeah I'm a notion admin. So I I talked about how.
21:02.65
Rick
Um.
21:13.65
Rick
That's awesome. Yeah, so but but notion admin sorry.
21:18.83
tylerking
Like I had been applying that to project management and actually that's going really? Well I think the dev team's actually like moving faster because of this new system. But um, we also applied it to the approach we take to bug fixes and this is one of those things that when you're you know 1 or 2 or 3 people. You don't need a process for it. It's like someone reports a bug you decide whether or not to do it. You just everything can be ad hoc but when you have a team of customer service people they need to know how to report bugs and how to communicate what's going to happen to the customer and then the devs need to know like it's really easy to get into this mode where. Well the the customer service people really want this bug fix. So I'm just going to do this right now and all you ever do is fix bugs so you do kind of need process around this so that's kind of what I've been working on recently. Um I always hesitate to bring these things up on the podcast because like it's hard to articulate like you just have to look at my notion document. But. The main thing we did is the the flow we had before is there is always 1 developer on kind of triage duty at any given time we have alack developer on call. Yeah they're not like truly oncall like five p m hits and they're gone. But yeah, during the day they're the one who gets the idea to.
22:22.84
Rick
Developer on call right now.
22:34.21
tylerking
You don't want every developer to get distracted when a bug comes in, you just want one to um and then that person would assign the bug out and a different developer or maybe the same person would fix it. We didn't really have a good way of like not fixing them right away though. So The 2 things we changed 1 Triage person instead of constantly monitoring slack to respond right Away. There are 2 times per day pre-scheduled where they go in and just like triage everything So that person gets less distracted. Um, there's still like an escalation ability where it's like no this can't wait like you you need to look at this right now. But the idea is.
23:03.20
Rick
Interesting.
23:11.65
tylerking
Only 10% of bugs really deserve to get escalated so there's less distraction for the triage person.
23:17.64
Rick
Do you worry that this is really interesting and it actually applies to um, a portion of my job at windfall. Um, so I run revenue operations which is effectively managing the no code in low-code tech stack that um. Customer facing representatives use including in marketers which actually becomes a product such project management role in some capacity but like we have this like you know process where people will submit as Sonana tickets to request things and it's very difficult to receive those and not feel like you need to work on them right? away.
23:36.14
tylerking
Yeah, right.
23:49.27
tylerking
Right.
23:51.93
Rick
Like because it's it's it's ah it's someone's problem that they're reporting effectively like and how do you if you have good people that people have a bias to like solve problems when they see it. Um, so I guess like 2 questions one is do you do you worry that? Um, so there is this like natural like immediate paydown of. Bugs that keeps bugs from like building a huge backlog that happens when you let people solve things in real time even if it's not the best use of their time. Do you worry that by by deep by not letting that happen like it's happened historically that you're going to have this huge buildup of bugs that could take away from. Long-term project ah proactive work later.
24:28.73
tylerking
So hopefully no and here's why the point of this exercise is not to work on fewer bugs. It is to reduce context switching. Um, what would happen before is we'd get bugs throughout the week well so actually before answer let me say the second thing. The first thing is we're only triaging twice a day. The second thing is. The the typical behavior is you snooze the bug till the following Monday and it gets worked on then as opposed to like work on it right now again we have policies and documentation for like if one of these things is true work on it right away. Um, but the hope is fifty plus percent of bugs get wait for the following Monday instead of working right away. So the hope here is the total if you think of this as bandwidth versus latency the bandwidth has not changed the same number of bugs are going to get fixed in roughly the same amount of time but it'll be a week instead of a day. The difference is a developer can get. Let's say they work on 3 bugs in a week they can do. Back to back to back bugs and then get back. They have let's say four full days to just focus on their project instead of bouncing back and forth.
25:30.64
Rick
Yeah, interesting. Yeah, it's like it's like ah the the equivalent would be like Disneyland instead of waiting in line to get food. You ah schedule pickup of your food. Um and eat it all at once. It's interesting. Yeah.
25:44.33
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, so you know it's new. We'll see how it goes. It's the cons. It's the concept of defragging your your calendar. This is not a new concept in any number of ways. But um, it it'll take a cultural change because like you said that.
25:45.60
Rick
Ah, much more efficient.
26:00.17
tylerking
Especially the serum coaches. But even the developers too. They're like a bug came in the customer wants a thing. Let's do it but you know most companies don't even respond to these right.
26:10.11
Rick
Yeah.
26:12.95
tylerking
It's not like do we fix it today or do we fix it next week it's like it's not getting fixed ever. We're still way way more responsive than most.
26:21.92
Rick
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see the if there's any customer impact at all with the expectations. You've said historically my guess is that there won't be um, which is probably your assumption too. Um, you know? yeah guess Yeahm coaches are the ones that are going to have the hardest time probably with this because.
26:26.40
tylerking
Yeah.
26:36.60
Rick
It's really hard to like take someone's problem. Give it to someone else and then wait. Um, especially if if historically like it's been fixed.
26:39.60
tylerking
Yeah, we're trying to absolutely we're trying to help with that by putting systems in place where it's like here's what you say you say you know thanks for letting me know I'm so sorry about that. Ah I've sent this on to the developers. It's on the list I'll give you an update on Monday. And if you just set reasonable expectation and then you snooze the email until Monday. So it's like I don't even see it. It's out of sight out of mind. Yeah yeah, and even before even though like bugs got fixed sooner which is good for serum coaches they we had never defined. It's so funny as you scale a team.
27:02.21
Rick
When you say that it's like this is better for the crm coach too. They stop worrying about this too until monday.
27:16.16
tylerking
You don't think about the things that won't work anymore. We never told anyone like when are updates supposed to happen on bugs and so as a result serum coaches like all the bugs are notions serum coaches would go in and like multiple times a day be like any updates on this any updates has anything changed and I was thinking this is annoying for developers. And as soon as we made this change I kind of went to Michael on the serum coaching team was like nervous. He would be mad about this and he was like oh great sear coaches will finally know when to expect an update That's all we wanted. So I should yeah yeah, it'll it'll change. Management's always hard but I'm I'm excited about this.
27:51.29
Rick
That's great. It's great. Um, what else is ah anything else related to this before we move to the next one I Just had a random topic pop into my my mind and um I don't know why this happened but I think it's probably.
27:55.70
tylerking
Now that's ah, that's it for that. Update back to you.
28:07.36
Rick
I was thinking about you and Mike like just like people talking in the office. Um, ah Jd has been ah I think this is okay for me to talk about on the air and if j d if this is not okay, just let me know and I won't do it in the future. Um, but like. J d's trying to just decide where he wants to land ah from an art like he's been aving across the country with his family for the last year and a half two years maybe um and so they're like oh we've seen the whole country where do we want to live and obviously covid happened and I got partial to remote work. But I miss.
28:38.99
tylerking
Yeah.
28:39.42
Rick
Working in an office I do I frick and miss it and so there is this like part of me it like wants to sell JD really really really really hard on moving back to Utah so that we can you know build a company here. Um I probably yeah ah and so you know we're starting to have that conversation. Um.
28:48.98
tylerking
Ah, is he definitely listening to this by the way like.
28:58.40
Rick
And I don't know how hard to sell him on moving here like it's a very personal decision out of where to live and I like am very biased here. So I don't know like I don't know we're starting to have the conversation and there's nothing really to say like we're going to have the conversation but like. If you were me how hard would you push your cofounder to be in the same. This is an interesting conversation.
29:19.84
tylerking
Yeah that's a tough question but I let me start with a very vague nonanswer which is when people when I I made a lot of this well sorry I'm going I'm going to take a really roundabout way. I saw someone some like shower thought quote on Twitter the other day that was like everyone's worried that if like if you were a time traveler and you went back in time and you make one minor change. It'll change the whole course of human history right? That's like a common time traveler sci-fi story nobody thinks if I change my behavior today.
29:51.90
Rick
E.
29:55.73
tylerking
In some minor way it might change the whole future. Um, but it's true, right? Minor decisions we make that maybe we don't even think about much right now have this huge impact There are so many examples of this with less knowing serum things that I did not put much thought into that are now like. Major major major parts of my life based on this decision I didn't think about at all from that lens if you think over the next twenty thirty years you a you want j d to be a major part of the company and b you want to work in person with people. You could be putting yourself in a tough spot where you can't satisfy both of those at the same time if he's not in Utah um, at obviously it's his decision. But.
30:39.57
Rick
That's well put I think I think like I think um, selling him is the wrong question I think forcing some really hard reflection on the trade-off potential long-term tradeoffs um having that conversation. Those conversations I think is. Absolutely necessary and that was really helpful actually um, as long as we have those conversations and we understand like what the positive and negative consequences are for the business of of each possible. You know, ah option then I think um I think that well ultimately what will happen will Happen. We'll be okay with it. So.
31:13.58
tylerking
Yeah, um, absolutely I'm glad I help. Ah you know this but just for the listener. So my my brother bracken who's the other co-founder of less annoying. We sort of ran into this where when we started I was in San Francisco he was in Boston we work remotely very well together that was never a problem.
31:15.70
Rick
That's really helpful. Thank you.
31:30.10
tylerking
But then when it came time where we had already hired some people that the employees and it just made sense to have an in-person thing. There was like someone had to move or not move but like we can't both be in Boston San Francisco and like something had to give so we moved to ststlouis everyone except bracken. But he had to accept in that moment like ok well probably can't be like a leader at the company in the same way. He still is a leader in the sense. He has a major impact on decisions but people don't see him like we have this great in-person culture and he's not there. And j d probably if he doesn't go to Utah and if you think you won an in-person culture one day that's probably he he would probably be making a very similar decision to what bracken made.
32:14.41
Rick
Yeah, and I I believe and I should talk to JD about this but I believe j d wants an in-person culture too. Maybe not five days a week but like it's there's something to be said for working with people and building something together. Um, that isn't replicated remotely. It just isn't.
32:15.69
tylerking
Um, yeah.
32:25.12
tylerking
Yeah, for sure I agree there's there's still a lot of reasons to be remote, but that's not 1 of them. Yeah, cool. Um I wanted to share.
32:31.76
Rick
So that was not a planned topic but I'm glad we talked about it. So thank you.
32:40.41
tylerking
So we talk sometimes about like these little shorthand we have like cats on the roof being one of them I'm not going to bore everyone with what cats on the roof means but the point is I can say that phrase and Rick knows exactly what I mean as opposed to me having to like if anyone wants to know what it means go to lessening business dot com my blog. There's a blog post about it. It's like a thousand plus words. That's how long it takes to explain the concept. But once you know the phrase you can say it to people you know and trust and they get the the meaning immediately I we I have another shorthand like this that I wanted to share with you just because I think these are cool. Um, so this one we call it following daylight.
33:10.80
Rick
What are they.
33:15.48
tylerking
And let me use it in a sentence me and bracken are the main people who who use this. Ah we have a weekly one on one I'm like hey what's been going on what what he been up to you last week and he goes mostly I've been following daylight and I just immediately know what he means instead of him having to like him and haw and us having this whole discussion.
33:31.78
tylerking
What following daylight means is this Um, you know how when you're working on a project I think this is especially true with Dev and like he does infrastructure devops stuff. It's really really true there but any project while you're working on it. You see opportunities to do other things that are valuable but that aren't maybe like core to the project you're working on. So an example being we're upgrading our database from mysql 6 to mysql 7 or whatever the numbers are right now. Ah, we also have a bunch of database tables that we don't use anymore. Should we delete the tables while we're at it. We also want to change the collation on this table should we make that schema change while we're doing the upgrade. There's all these other things you can do. And I think anyone working on projects faces this challenge of like when do you go on these side quests and when do you not? I'm sure you've experienced this before? Yeah yeah, um.
34:18.10
Rick
I Mean it's very similar. It's very related to the bug conversation. We had.
34:24.19
tylerking
And it's it's easy like you're It's tempting to say we'll never go down those side Quest stay focused on the main thing but the thing is like while you're doing it. It is easier right? It. It's like this project might take 50% less time if we do it now as opposed to treating as a standalone project. But the downside of course is then the project bloats out of control and you never finish the core thing. So the analogy we have made with falling daylight is Imagine. You're in this series of underground tunnels and you kind of know vaguely where you're trying to go and you keep seeing other tunnels going off to the side should you go down them What we've decided is if you see daylight on the other end meaning you know exactly where it Leads. Yep.
34:58.27
Rick
You see how long it's going. You know how long it's going to take. Yeah.
35:02.27
tylerking
You know how long it's going to take. It's not going to wind around. It's not going to turn into other things you can go do it finish it and then get back to the main tunnel you're in, do it if you don't see daylight probably don't do it.
35:12.39
Rick
Is this a self-creation or is this like something you stole from someone else is a really I Really like this one.
35:16.44
tylerking
I think self- creation or at least if if I got it somewhere else. It was subconscious. No maybe I should write that I'll put that on the list see. Yeah.
35:23.59
Rick
Do you have a less annoying business blog post about this. You should? yeah no I like this one. Thank you for sharing it. Ah now when when he says following daylight What? like what do you say.
35:35.60
tylerking
Well yeah, so before we had this shorthand he would be like well I'm supposed to be working on the database upgrade but I did these other things and I would I would have to be like it's not that I don't trust you but like let's just talk about it and make sure by him saying I'm following daylight What he's saying to me is.
35:44.33
Rick
Um.
35:52.59
tylerking
Trust me, this is not going to get out of hand and I'll get back to the main thing and so I'm just like cool.
35:58.94
Rick
Yeah, um I haven't made much progress on the main thing but I have made a lot of progress on other things and I promise I'm not working on something that has no end insight.
36:01.87
tylerking
Yeah, right like I have put thought into scope creep and I'm not worried about it. So it's a useful shorthand. Um, yeah back to you.
36:10.76
Rick
Yeah that's great I like it. Um, okay so these are 2 um, so so these are 2 windfall related updates. Um, so ah 1 this guy called out I was telling someone because I was in San Francisco Francisco this week for that for ah, an offsite. Um, we had our holiday party on Saturdays I was you know, hanging out with people and they're asking like tell me about leg of health and so I was telling them and they were they were saying wow a lot of what you're learning at windfall is relevant to leg up health in terms of digital marketing I'm like yeah actually. Really is so I'm still learning a ton about the digital marketing space I'm no expert but I'm still like going deeper and deeper and that is really really valuable. Um, so I just wanted to share that like I I think sometimes I don't call that out as part of the value of of working at windfall that is very relevant to.
36:56.62
tylerking
Ah.
37:06.84
Rick
Um, leg up. Um, and so um I don't have any like specifics to share here. Ah, just that like sometimes you can find um, good good reasons to do things and like feel good about something. Um, even if it's hard. Um.
37:18.91
tylerking
I have.
37:24.82
Rick
And maybe not necessarily what you want to be doing with your full time like obviously like no, it's no secret like I'd rather be working on like up health full time than working ah at another company full time and this is but this is 1 thing that's like oh yeah, like this is part of the benefit of doing this among other things. Um.
37:37.20
tylerking
Yeah.
37:40.87
Rick
The other thing that I am I'm developing appreciation for for scale for scale is the concept of certifications during employee onboarding and this um this isn't necessarily like ah what what? I mean by certification is an assessment of someone's. Knowledge related to a particular topic and as you grow and if you're growing really fast and you hire employee onboarding pardon me. Yeah, so when you hire people at your company and I think this is true of like any size Company. You want to know at some level that they've.
38:01.00
tylerking
Are you sorry you're you're talking customer on or employee onboarding here. Sorry okay.
38:16.61
Rick
Learned what they need to learn to be successful in their jobs aligned with your brand and like not going to really screw things up like you know and and so like you want to minimize the downside ah increase the chances that they're going to be successful and like stay like. Aligned strategically with like some of these key decisions that you've made and I'm I'm developing an appreciation through observation and then also like ah Wow I'm seeing it work. Ah for the concept of certification and if you're really thoughtful about about employee certifications especially during someone's first ninety days. I Think you can give someone you you have control like this this lever that gives someone like very clear direction but also a clear feedback loop on whether or not um, they're progressing and um.
38:58.72
tylerking
Um, ah.
39:06.35
Rick
So I'm I'm working a lot on certifications right now at windfall. Um, as part of my hiring efforts to try to give people peace of mind during their night first ninety days and also control um, onboarding but I'm I'm curious like do you use some some version of this at at less knowing Crm and if if not like why not? um. You know I'm I'm curious like your your thoughts on this topic.
39:27.30
tylerking
Yeah, no, we don't and mostly just because I've never thought of it before I just wrote this down on my task list to talk with the like Michael and Robert the 2 people who tend to onboard people. Um I think this is really interesting. So 2 reasons for it. 1 There's a lot of onboarding. That never gets put to the test and it's especially like company values and history and mission and stuff where it's like you could do your job without ever knowing that but you really want people to know it? Um, and we always I think we do a very thorough job of training people on that. But I've never but then like three years later when it comes up again. They're like. I I don't remember that. Um, maybe that's natural. Maybe they they won't even if you have a certification but maybe they never learned it in the first place we never really verified that so I like that. But that's less important to me the more important the thing that really excites me about this It's really hard just in general.
40:07.34
Rick
Um.
40:23.39
tylerking
When you hire people when stuff goes. Well, it's great. It's easy that this person doesn't need to be managed. They don't need a performance improvement plan or whatever. It's really hard to switch from that mode into things aren't going great. We need to course correct here. Ah, because it it builds up is this really like big conversation that should shouldn't be big. Do you know what? I mean um, it's it's hard I struggle with this Michael and Robert both struggle with this I think everyone who's not a sociopath struggles with like I have to make this person realize things need to change.
40:59.13
Rick
And it's ambiguous now.
41:01.52
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, it is not their fault right? They we've um, a term that ah came up at one of these times that this happened a different employee was talking to me and said I think this person who's being onboarded is happily floundering and I thought that was really interesting. They thought they were doing great and they had no way of knowing that they weren't.
41:21.20
Rick
Oblivious failure.
41:21.90
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, um, so what I love about these certifications like in my head What I'm imagining is someone comes in and like takes the test day one and fails it of course and then you're like we're going to take this test a few more times and by the end of it. You're going to pass it and.
41:30.66
Rick
Really.
41:37.95
tylerking
They can know exactly what's expected and see their progress I think that that sounds really cool to me.
41:44.23
Rick
Yup, so good I wasn't sure how how you would feel about this because there is some stress that it does create around like the past fail. Ah you know feedback loop. Um, but I think I think the benefits outweigh the the cons is as long as you deliver this stuff the right way. And you're you're partnered with them in terms of getting them to success versus like hazing them. Um.
42:07.40
tylerking
This is a thing that um I had a learning on kind of the hard way. So I always took the approach of like treat. Everyone like they're doing well and then make exceptions and we have this employee led kind of dei group called idea that one of the projects they did that I actually really appreciated. They came to us. And said we need performance evaluations for everybody at the company every six months and we're like why everyone's doing great and they're like yeah but the 1 time if someone's not doing great it you you need to have a forced pre-planned mechanism to let them know, um and that that I already went through that learning. But this is just another step of it that you said it might be hard. They might be worried about failure and stuff like that. But if they're failing this is going to actually protect them. Not the other way around.
42:54.33
Rick
Agreed Yes, it's It's yet the the point of it is not to set people up for failure. It's to set them up for success I Think that's and and actually like protect them from failure. Um, yes.
42:58.90
tylerking
No yeah, if some someone not knowing that they're failing is the worst thing and I've done that multiple times as a manager where I've let someone temporarily fail without knowing it.
43:11.78
Rick
I Really like that I hope that um I need to I need to write that down um of people need to know not and not people not knowing say that again people not knowing that they're failing is awful like that is like a bad thing I mean you want to avoid it.
43:23.00
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, so I like it. Um I'm what we'll We'll think more if if if we get any riffs off of this or if we actually like are you implementing this or I don't know what you can talk about.
43:33.80
Rick
Oh yeah yeah, I can't go to details but like ah yeah, I'm I'm going to be deep into like ah figuring out how to apply this concept. Um, and I'm leaning towards like there's kind of 2 play two like. Extreme approaches. You could take you could have like 1 certification. That's everything or you can break it down into small pieces. Um and have like lots of certifications and so I'm leaning towards the latter. Um, lots of small certifications. Um.
43:52.98
tylerking
Nothing. Yeah I like that because then they can see progress is it's like it's almost like a dashboard where everything starts red and then it's like oh things start turning green as I develop proficiency.
44:10.30
Rick
Yeah, so generally like the way I'm thinking about is'm I'm I'm hiring. Um I've recently hired ah a manager meaning this person's going to build a team. Um, so they not only need to learn all the things to do an individual contributor job at first but they also need to learn how to like hire people. And so the the list of certifications I was like what do I want to so what do I want to be able to certify this person on it's like lots of stuff related to the day-to-day job. But then there's also like how do we interview you know what are manager expectations like certifying people on certifying this person on like their ability to interview. Well follow our hiring process.
44:41.71
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
44:46.43
Rick
Ah, manage people appropriately set expectations and so it's actually pretty Um, there's a lot but I but I but I think it ah the the cool thing is this is a measure this is like ah build once sell twice kind of thing. So like I think that I can pave some road here for the rest of the organization. Um, and ah.
44:50.51
tylerking
It.
45:01.35
tylerking
Yeah I love that in almost every way I always say like small companies should not act like big companies because that like gives up your whole advantage, but this is one where like it's never too early to.
45:05.78
Rick
Really really help a lot of people.
45:18.76
tylerking
Kind of have the right process around when you hire someone empower them to succeed. Let them know like like we give someone a document on their first day here's what the next ninety days are going to look like here's what's expected of you during that time. That's kind of big company shit that I think actually really makes sense for smaller companies to do too.
45:31.92
Rick
Um e.
45:36.56
Rick
Yeah, exactly yeah, everyone's got a first ninety days whether you got 2 people or thousand people let's make it as successful as possible. Um, cool. Thank you for that conversation I wasn't sure how you're gonna react to it.
45:41.12
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, yep, um yeah know I like it. Ah I've had this on the list for a while now and we just haven't gotten to it but webflow logic have you have you seen that.
45:55.20
Rick
Is this the user login stuff or is this something different. Oh this is the zapier competitor.
45:58.46
tylerking
No, this is um, they announced it I don't know a few months ago I think but since yeah, yeah, so since you're such a heavy user of webflow and no code I thought I was interested in your thoughts that? Yeah, basically they're building kind of automation rules. Um, and and like workflows and stuff into webflow.
46:16.54
Rick
This This is extremely powerful in my opinion for low sensitivity data. Um and like apps that you could use as lead generation tools I don't think like I think anything that's boring and complex is likely going to. Be limited in what you can feel comfortable putting in Webflow. So We have a lot of limitations a legup pal of like what data we can put in about people into webflow and then use some of this logic to manipulate. But in terms of like a non-pii personally identifyable information app like where it's more generic.
46:35.36
tylerking
Um, yeah.
46:48.91
Rick
Like there's a lot of I think this unlocks a lot of top of funnel creativity in terms of um, tooling and content.
46:51.65
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that webflow obviously like right now if I have a criticism of the no code universe. It's that it's just a million different tools integrated together and each one is a point of failure. These things are changing and like. There's definitely benefit to the idea of like 1 platform There's also downside which is like now you're limited by what that 1 platform can do but are you bullish on the idea of what webflow obviously wants to do is be like you don't need a bunch of tools. We'll handle your authentication. We'll be your backend database will be all of it.
47:24.77
Rick
Um I love it The the only problem I have is I I don't know how secure like have have you looked into the security of webflow like when I first started using webflow for nocode. The big limitation was privacy and security. Um public.
47:38.34
tylerking
That's because every item in a collection is like a webpage but it doesn't have to be public though right? you have to like make a page that displays that information I think but yeah, it was so for people who haven't used webflow webflow setup where think of wordpress or like a blog type thing but they kind of.
47:42.71
Rick
Yeah, um, correct Yes, that's fair.
47:56.55
tylerking
Abstracted it back from that where instead of saying like here's your blog here your blog posts. They have these things called collections and you can make whatever collections you want, You can kind of design your own database. But the idea is each item in a collection has a corresponding page on your website So like a blog post would have a view post. If you have like blog categories I would be a separate collection that links to the posts in each category would have a page listing all the blog posts in that category B I Don't think you have to expose it.
48:24.61
Rick
I like it for marketing automation I don't love it for app automation primarily because of the concerns I have around database management as it relates to sensitive information and then integrating that information with like other sensitive apps especially like.
48:27.92
tylerking
Oh. Um, yeah.
48:41.51
Rick
I Think about leg up benefits complexity related to ach like it seems very limited like scary.
48:43.37
tylerking
Yeah,, that's fair, it does seem like so I haven't really used airflow or as I'm sorry airtable much but it does really seem like even setting aside no code as a software engineer I've always thought the thing that doesn't get talked about enough is like the database is the core of every app. Like when we interview developers The the one of the key parts of the interview is like does just write what the tables and fields in each like like basically we ask them to design our our database if you can think through the database you can think through everything um I would like airtable seems great for this I worry that. Webflow will never really focus on database enough to to like give it what it deserves.
49:26.86
Rick
That That's well said like yes, that's where like if I if I compare like the airtable experience versus webflow experience. It come back to like the the security of the database. The flexibility of the database. Um and like ah the connectivity like. Ah, of that database to other apps and airtable is stronger. But again like I probably for legup benefits due to the sensitivity. It's probably not even airtable. It's probably some more advanced. Um, you know I.
49:50.53
tylerking
1 of those. Yeah, we've talked about some of these before that are like actually like a real database backend and called through an api but that no code tools can access although I don't think there's any inherent reason why web floor airtable are less secure than that.
50:02.45
Rick
Um, yeah, exactly. Um.
50:07.91
Rick
Um, that that's that would be an interesting conversation because I don't know enough but like I just have this I don't know it feels less secure for some reason why? what? But why would it? Why wouldn't it be less secure. It's the same thing.
50:19.22
tylerking
Yeah I mean 1 way might be like your employees probably in webflow. Every user quote unquote of the tool has access to all the data so that might be 1 that it's like as you grow your team. You don't want everyone to be able to access all the data even though. Every time there's a scandal with a big tech company like Twitter just had this like every employee had access to everyone's Dms and it's like how do these big like we we've had that since 2010 we've had protections on this since before we even had employees I can't believe these other companies don't but they don't anyway. Little ramble what you got a rant shout out here.
50:52.65
Rick
Wild. Yeah well I just um, sable doesn't think this is a big deal but I sure do sable's my wife we're going on our first I'm calling our first real date like we've but we've been on like a few dates since Oliver was born. Um, Oliver is twenty months old. Ah but like like it was like an hour long and like we had to like release like it felt like we were rushed. Um this feels like the first real date. We've gone on in twenty months and we're going to the jazz pelicans game I'm a huge pelicans fan because of like I just like their team right now. Plus zion like I really think that zs is fun to watch.
51:14.12
tylerking
Earth.
51:28.29
Rick
I'm I'm going to ah a basketball game and a full like a real date night with like I don't feel like without any urgency to like come home and I'm really looking forward to it's on Thursday this week. Yeah, it's one of those dates where it it feels so and like so free and and.
51:34.79
tylerking
Nice. That's awesome. You go like going out to dinner first or just getting nachos at the ah arena.
51:47.59
Rick
And it's unstructured I don't know what we're gonna do. We're gonna get in the car and we're gonna go on a adventure. Thank you.
51:49.50
tylerking
But that's good for you I'm happy for you. Also it terrifies me because you know Shelley and I are still unsure if if we want kids and when I hear that I'm like by this definition we go on date night 5 times a week like.
52:03.58
Rick
Well, a lot of its mentality like um, ah if you feel okay, leaving your child with someone else then you know that this is easier I I do not have a problem leaving I love you Oliver. But I have no problem leaving you for a day you know like um and and doing things that are important. Um, but I think that's just a parenting decision more so than ah than ah than a than a a necessity anything else. You want to chat about.
52:17.95
tylerking
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
52:30.33
tylerking
Yeah, we've got we're 52 minutes here I've I've got a topic we could go into although it might take us over an hour. What's your preference. Um, yeah I'm interested interested in your thoughts if if you're if you're not a rush all right? so.
52:37.76
Rick
Yeah, your call Man. No Rush No Rush No rush.
52:46.68
tylerking
We are trying to figure out so okay, the situation for people haven't been listening less knowing cr m we at about three and a half million in revenue we're still growing but we're not like we cut expenses increase every year you have to give employees raises and. You know our hosting fees go up by a little because we're storing more data stuff like that. So the growth rate we have right now is roughly or maybe a little less than what we need to support increasing costs in the future. We're growing but we're not growing enough right now. It's obvious what our priority is. It's growth. Um. Once we get back to a point where growth is we're happy with it like I don't want to be a company. That's just like super short term growth at all cost focused. What would we focus on next and the the basic split is option. A is. Try to go after kind of our long term strategic vision which I'm happy to go into more detail but the basic summary is like we want to be more than a sierum we want to be a general productivity tool that small businesses can use to get a lot of their work done not just like right now basically just sales and customer service uses us I want the whole company to use us for a variety of things. Um, that's where I want to be. In the future. The reality is no one's asking for that. Maybe we build it and it's totally flops. But that's what I want to build. Um, there's also a lot of opportunity to just be a better crm. Our current customers are using us as a crm. Ah there's obviously way more room to grow in the serum space than we have so far.
54:17.35
tylerking
So the basic thing we're trying to side between is like does it make sense to if if growth is fine. How much do we devote to long term strategy. How much do we devote to just being a better serum.
54:26.63
Rick
So I'm just going to call out that I have the exact same topic said differently directly across from this one. It's like like what you're really talking about is at a higher level is do you want to make incremental improvements today on something that you know works or do you want to work on something that has the potential to make a revolutionary future. Come.
54:44.39
tylerking
Yeah.
54:46.44
Rick
Contribution and what's your split on investment. There is it 100% incremental improvement 0% revolutionary future contribution or some other mix of investment.
54:55.22
tylerking
Yeah I think that's right and let me add a ah different angle to look at it from 1 question is let's say the goal. No no question is the revolutionary one is it faster to go at it head on or is it faster to do the incremental stuff. Build up a stronger base and then use that to build the revolutionary thing but there's a slippery slope there. We're 13 years in we've always said we're going to build more than just a crm. Um, and we haven't so like at some point you have to bite the bullet and do it.
55:29.40
Rick
So what are your thoughts on this I mentioned where like I I mean if you think about where we are like we're very early stage. Um, and I'm definitely leading more to revolutionary bets but like legup benefits is much more revolutionary and of an investment next year than leg up like. Investing and just growing leg up health. Um, so so I'm I'm earlier stage I'm definitely leaning more on the revolutionary side. Um, where are you in your current thinking.
55:52.29
tylerking
Um, um, if you'd asked me this prior to these growth issues I would have said revolution like basically we were saying let's do a little growth. Let's we thought of the um rather than these incremental improvements we thought of it as customer happiness. Customers are asking for stuff. Let's build it for them which might be slightly different from what I'm talking about I'm talking about the people who like how do we stay competitive against other crms which is slightly different than what are our current customers asking for as the iterative thing I would have said back then though, let's do the smallest amount of that we think we need to to maintain. Base and let's go after the strategy increasingly I do think there's a lot of opportunity I think we're like 9 I I think we're close to a tipping point is basically it I think like there are a lot of things you can't do with lessening serum that you can do with other crms. Um, but we're not like. That it's not like we have to spend the next ten years building it I think a year or 2 of concerted effort and we could get to a point where we're way more competitive with pipe drive and copper and products like that and that would put us in a much better position to go after the strategic thing but again, but. Maybe 2 years from now we say the same thing and then we like I don't want to be 60 and be like all I've ever done in my entire career is build a simple crm.
57:11.57
Rick
Is there a percentage of like investment that you could just be like hey like we're always going to invest this much in R and D and like ah you know it may never turn into anything but like it's it's an experimentation play and the minute we hit something we'll.
57:28.78
tylerking
Yeah.
57:29.53
Rick
We'll invest more in into it when it's real like kind of taking the the bull's-eye approach to um that that we've talked about for marketing but take applying it dar and d.
57:37.53
tylerking
Yeah I Think that's a interesting approach. We've we've talked about that I was saying about this with brack and the other day. Um, yeah, So the the way I might approach doing what you just said if you think about the revolutionary thing. A lot of what needs to be done is also stuff our current customers would want like we need way better Tasks. We already have tasks. It's already like it's It's not weird for a serum to include task management. Let's make that better. We need like the ability to send emails from in the serum which we don't have right now the thought is like maybe we just. Start eating around the edges by doing the stuff where customers won't even realize we're going in this other direction. Um, it's all stuff they want. Yeah so that's that's definite ah is that kind of what you had in mind.
58:21.59
Rick
Maybe I guess um, it doesn't have to be related to the crm but like you're just like like you have 8 8 20 time and 20% like of the time is is people thinking like working on and thinking about things that are.
58:27.53
tylerking
Got you I.
58:36.21
tylerking
Well so yeah, the the hard thing is I think it's going to be very difficult to validate the big I I don't love the word revolutionary because it gives us big sense of importance that I'm not sure it has but like let's say the strategic vision versus the the the iterative stuff.
58:36.85
Rick
Revolutionary ideas versus ecrobel improvements.
58:51.30
Rick
Me.
58:55.42
tylerking
I Think we need like a lot of strategic vision work to happen before we will see any results from it I know what the box is I know what I want the box to be um, but the problem is I don't think it's a useful product I don't think it's like.
59:00.33
Rick
You don't have enough clarity on what like the boxes you want people to play in. Yeah.
59:11.10
tylerking
You know the graphic of product Market fit where it's like first build a skateboard then build a scooter then build a car. Um I don't think the skateboard is actually useful in this case or if it is like the crm is the skateboard. Um I kind of feel like at some point you just have to build a fucking car. You know.
59:14.53
Rick
New 4
59:25.47
Rick
I always go back to appointment scheduling. So that's a good example of this like could you not spend 20% of your time right now building that as a stimulone product and also integrate it into the like what? what's yeah.
59:27.98
tylerking
Yeah.
59:38.30
tylerking
Yeah, yeah I think that fits into what I was saying of like building things that seem like a natural fit with a serum. But yeah, but yes, but that's not that's when someone chooses pipe drive over us. That's not why so a little bit. Maybe the.
59:44.26
Rick
Yeah, yeah.
59:55.64
tylerking
If there's 3 categories of things. There's why do people choose pipe drive instead of us ah stuff that is a natural extension of a crm but also leads us to the strategic vision and stuff that's just pure strategy that like our current customers are not asking for it all and maybe we're saying is don't do the third category because the second category. Kills 2 birds with 1 stone.
01:00:17.50
Rick
What are the things and the third category that wouldn't contribute to the crm. Um that you could rattle off right now.
01:00:23.16
tylerking
Um, yeah, so basically if you recall sparse the product I wanted to build at once point like we want to build that into it internal team messaging is 1 thing here. We actually do get our customers. Do ask us for that but like at a much lower rate than other stuff. Um, we basically want like a slack type competitor and a kind of. I don't say notion like notions way more powerful but like a Dropbox paper type note taking wiki internal thing. So again, the idea being like if you have a sales and customer service team using this What do you have to build to get the developers and the like all the other people at the company added. Um. So those are just 2 examples of that.
01:01:00.13
Rick
So it sounds like the 2 big things are more sales and marketing users more customer facing users is incremental and then revolutionary for lack of better word for using my framework is expanding to more people in the company.
01:01:07.74
tylerking
Yeah, that's a I think that's a great way to put it and I'm this conversation is worth it just for that clarity that now I can say are we buildingild sales customer facing features or are we building? Yeah yeah, yeah, that's it.
01:01:16.75
Rick
You get it.
01:01:26.88
Rick
Interesting. That's clear that provides clarity to me. Um, it's yeah so I don't know it feels like you should be placing some bets on like expanding expanded use cases. Um, that's interesting I Very yeah I don't have any.
01:01:27.14
tylerking
Ah, yeah.
01:01:42.86
tylerking
Yeah.
01:01:44.60
Rick
Immediate ideas but it does seem like number 2 seems like the right play right now where it's like let's expand the functionality it does both? um.
01:01:47.56
tylerking
Does birth so here's the thing number 2 is not going to do though. So let me give me five more minutes I want to pick your brain I want you as a customer not I'm not actually going to pressure you to switch or anything but like when you are evaluating crms. You definitely were not going to use lessening serum. Why not.
01:02:07.80
Rick
Integrations were the primary primary reason being able to pass data back and forth and automate things.
01:02:13.90
tylerking
Um, like just as zapier or like specific first party integrations that that pipe drive built.
01:02:18.49
Rick
Front integration. Ah zapier integration. Um a bit like future like things that I was thinking through like data enrichment. Um, and um, like outreach tool type integration.
01:02:32.28
tylerking
So like the front integration doesn't go through zapier. Okay, do you know who built it front or pipe drive. Okay, it wasn't anything about reporting or automation within pipe drive or any features they have.
01:02:36.44
Rick
Think Pipe drive.
01:02:49.61
Rick
Didn't get that far but like I for like I like I mostly limit it like narrow down to 3 options and I think it was copper pipe drive and there was a third I don't remember what the third was um and pipe drive like I started with copper switched to pipe drive because copper's ah.
01:03:00.69
tylerking
Ah.
01:03:06.33
Rick
Reliability and like what they said they could do and what they were doing We We're not the same I don't think it's called is it called Copper still or just how they yeah yeah, um, but like reporting will become more important but I sort of like I just sort of assumed reporting was there. Um.
01:03:12.46
tylerking
Yeah I think Copper there was called something else and they rebranded a copper I think um.
01:03:23.26
tylerking
Um, interesting okay integration 100% for you.
01:03:25.15
Rick
And never really consider that being a problem. Yeah, it's like automation ability and you know making it easy like scaling because remember my core thesis was I need I Want to take an insurance agent and I want to make them into a ironman like a superhero insurance Agent So Productivity per rep was like.
01:03:45.67
tylerking
Right? Okay, cool. That's helpful because yeah I'm I'm thinking I think what the the disconnect we've got is we've got 25000 users all about 10000 accounts customers we are if you look on g two we are more loved than any other crm on the market.
01:03:47.32
Rick
But my main driver.
01:04:05.36
tylerking
And also we are much smaller than all the other serums and it's like what what gives right? What are we missing and I think what it is is if we can solve your problems. You love our product but we can't solve enough. People's problems and so that seems like just kind of expanding the Island a little bit um seems like a opportunity.
01:04:22.38
Rick
Now pipedrae has email inboxes and that sort stuff I don't use any of that I 100% use front for email and I want to just be able to like when I'm emailing someone in front be able to see that oh like this person's in our.
01:04:28.90
tylerking
Yeah.
01:04:37.72
Rick
Serum or not in our serum and add people and I'd add people.
01:04:40.18
tylerking
Gotcha Okay, cool. That's helpful. Thank you I will not ah delay this any further but I bet this will be a topic again in the future. Nope I'm all good.
01:04:46.60
Rick
Cool anything else you want chat about today. All right? If you'd like to review past topics and show notes visit startup to last dot com see you next week
01:04:54.26
tylerking
See ya.