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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.
00:01.14
Rick
What's up this week, Tyler?
00:02.86
tylerking
What up, Rick? Um, yeah, things, things are calm for me. How are you doing?
00:08.27
Rick
Well, I was actually not gonna talk about this potentially, but I can actually feel light at the end of the tunnel ah with our house and the relief is real.
00:18.83
tylerking
Like they've, they've fixed stuff and it started like, what what, what causes you to say there's light at the end of the tunnel?
00:18.80
Rick
i
00:24.90
Rick
ah Probably the single biggest issue has been the roof. And we finally got their commitment to replace all the whole thing. Um, which they, you haven't seen it, but there's basically, they had to replace all of the, do you know how vents work on and a roof?
00:32.74
tylerking
Hmm.
00:40.19
Rick
Like there's intake and ah there's exhaust.
00:40.48
tylerking
Yeah, I think you explain this once so that there's like different different colors of tiles on the roof.
00:43.29
Rick
Yeah. Well, yeah, there's different colors of tile on the roof. And that's because they put the wrong, uh, exhaust vents on the roof, which looked terrible.
00:52.74
tylerking
Mm hmm.
00:52.94
Rick
And then they tried to just like patch the areas where they replaced the roof. And now they have different colored shingles in the house. So they're probably they just going to replace the whole thing, which huge relief because I, we weren't sure if they were going to do that.
01:04.11
Rick
We're going to have to fight them, you know, and if I get good.
01:05.59
tylerking
Yeah, I don't get ah all these companies that that it have shot equality. Doesn't it cost more at the end of the day? I mean, maybe they just expect most people to live with it and not complain.
01:14.89
Rick
That's what this kind of keeps saying. He's like, Oh, I've spent so much money on this house. I'm like, yeah, we watched you like. literally paint before prime. We watched you, literally the order of operations made no sense.
01:29.91
Rick
You redid work on every piece of the property because you had the wrong people at the wrong time.
01:35.29
tylerking
She is.
01:35.51
Rick
And we told you, we were like, hey, these people are here.
01:35.98
tylerking
Yeah, like.
01:39.43
Rick
They should do it after this other thing happens, otherwise they're gonna have to come back and do it. And we will make them come back and do it. It's just like, gosh.
01:47.23
tylerking
Yeah.
01:47.47
Rick
But that's the biggest thing. ah I don't know, like there's, there's other things, but they're small ish, uh, relatively. Um, and, and we can, I feel like if we can resolve this, we can resolve everything.
01:58.12
tylerking
Yeah. Well. I'm in a similar boat. We, we got our countertops in on our remodel yesterday. So the house is, uh, still, we're still a month away from it being finished, but, uh, the, the big transformation has happened now.
02:10.92
Rick
You gotta send me some pictures or post them on X.
02:14.34
tylerking
Yeah. I'm, I'm waiting and waiting until it, like, there's no like doors on the cabinets and stuff. It's not quite the, uh, HGTV reveal just yet exposed.
02:19.70
Rick
Yeah.
02:23.30
Rick
Are you going to do a before and after ex post where ex post tweet?
02:28.65
tylerking
And then at the bottom, I'll be like, uh, by the way, max suck. And that's how it's going to go viral.
02:32.55
Rick
Yeah.
02:34.51
tylerking
I found out how to get engagement.
02:36.32
Rick
I feel like there's a lot of people who do like renovation. I don't want to call it porn, but like it's basically, uh, you know, clickbait.
02:42.56
tylerking
Yeah. Oh, for sure. My, one of my guilty plate when, when Shelley and I ever are in a hotel hotels, I'll have cable, which we don't have at home. And you get HGTV. We just.
02:55.45
tylerking
Anytime we're traveling, we're watching HGTV nonstop. That's absolute trash, but it it appeals to some weird part of my brain.
03:03.47
Rick
I did not know that about you LinkedIn told me
03:07.31
tylerking
Um, so, uh, on to updates here. We less annoying serum. Just hit a big milestone. We are officially 15 years old now. Um, I know on the podcast, yeah, LinkedIn on the podcast, I've been saying 15 years for a while. Cause like I'm rounding, but we're, we're officially past it. Um,
03:25.19
tylerking
I don't have anything else. I feel like we should be, I should be like planning a celebration or something. I didn't, but whatever still cool.
03:32.26
Rick
Yeah, it popped up on LinkedIn ah celebrating 15 years, Tyler King at less annoying CRM. And I was like, Oh man, that guy's old.
03:39.92
tylerking
Yep. And you know what? You're the same age as me.
03:42.66
Rick
I forgot. I didn't think about that.
03:46.02
tylerking
Yeah. Sorry to break it to you.
03:47.87
Rick
Congrats on that milestone.
03:49.62
tylerking
Thank you. Thank you.
03:50.13
Rick
Here's to another 15.
03:51.91
tylerking
Another 15. Um, I'm actually giving a present just unrelated to that coincidentally, giving a presentation to the company today. And one of the big themes is like to do something for 15 years, you have to like it. And so like one of the the themes is going to be like anything that isn't good for morale is not sustainable. So like we need to figure out ways to do everything in a way that's good for morale. So that's been on my mind as well recently. Um, anyway.
04:19.29
tylerking
I wanted to mention one other thing. ah do you don't You don't listen to podcasts anymore, do you? Basically no.
04:26.19
Rick
Occasionally, uh, when I think about being productive on my commute, yeah I do, but mostly just like reset myself on commutes now.
04:33.64
tylerking
Okay.
04:37.58
tylerking
Yeah, um I asked so Brian Castle as a ah he runs the boots there. He's one of the hosts of the bootstrapped web podcast ah launched ripple dot FM, which is a I'm assuming you haven't heard of it yet, but it's like a kind of social network for podcasts. I don't know if that's how he would describe it, but um be Like some of our listeners are on there and have like indicated they listen to start up to last and there's like a little Comment section so people can comment and like ask questions and bring up topics and stuff and I think that's neat So I figured I'd just give it a shout out Rick will probably ignore it as a non-podcast or not like totally offline person But I will be on riffle.fm if anyone wants to chat
05:20.56
Rick
Well, this is kind of solving a problem for me. Like I've always wanted to make it easy to um get to know ah people who listen regularly and and have, cause I actually learned a lot from part, part of the benefit of doing this is you expose yourself, you know, and you don't necessarily know who's listening, but then randomly someone says, I have an idea or I have a question to make you think more.
05:33.80
tylerking
Yeah.
05:43.40
Rick
I challenge what you said. Um, and that's some of the most valuable. And then there's relationships that come from the podcast. Um, For example, a local friend who I'm now in a mastermind group with ah Chase, um like he's someone who I deep in my relationship to the podcast.
05:59.83
Rick
So I would, I, I get the idea of like having the you know managing a community of podcasts. Um, ah and so if we could do that, I, that I would totally sign up.
06:05.10
tylerking
Yeah.
06:08.46
tylerking
Yeah,
06:08.50
Rick
Is that what it's doing or is it, am I misinterpreting what, what the,
06:08.95
tylerking
get yeah no, it's it's it's brand new. So like I wouldn't be surprised if it kind of pivots in various ways. But like if you go sign up for it, it like it asks you you know what podcast do you listen to and you add them.
06:19.73
Rick
what
06:21.12
tylerking
And you can go to, like there's kind of a profile page for each podcast, um including ours. And so you can go there and see. So we we get um Transistor, which is our podcast host,
06:32.51
tylerking
ah thinks we have about 200 subscribers and they do that by like how many regular, like we got more than 200 downloads per episode, but like 200 is kind of the number that seem like they're happening automatically without a person manually listening to it. um There are like 15 people that like kind of follow us or whatever on on Ripple.
06:53.38
tylerking
And it's, yeah, it's absolutely wild. We knew there's 200 people, but they're all just like faceless strangers. And then you go on Ripple and it's like, oh, that's like a picture of them and a name. And I didn't know who that person was.
07:04.38
tylerking
It's just like, it really makes it feel a lot more real, you know?
07:07.33
Rick
But why hasn't this been done before? It seems like such a no brainer.
07:09.29
tylerking
I know.
07:10.58
Rick
Um, and it's a real, it's a real opportunity, you know, not just from a relationship and community perspective, but also from a, like, I'm thinking about it from a like a health perspective, like, oh crap, like this is an advertising opportunity.
07:22.05
Rick
Um, this is like, one of the challenges I think with podcasts is it's just such, so it's, it's, I mean, it's targeted to a degree if you can get to a regional podcast, but what what he could potentially do is, you know, provide marketing to a subset of, uh, podcast listeners.
07:22.37
tylerking
Yeah.
07:36.43
tylerking
Yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunity. Another one that ah I kind of occurred to me was like, ah Podcast hosting is like absolutely commodified. We use Transistor, and I like Transistor, and I'm not trying to like criticize it in any way. But it is like, if you could instead pay the $20 a month, and actually, like you get like when we when I hit Publish, it like makes the new episode on Ripple. And like each episode has its own little comment thread. and you could imagine like This is the first time like I've seen a potential like differentiating feature that would make
08:11.17
tylerking
Having your podcast one place versus another actually matter. um Yeah, the downside.
08:15.85
Rick
ah great Agreed.
08:16.75
tylerking
The downside is it's probably and I've talked about this with Brian. It's probably a terrible bootstrap business. Like this is the type of thing it's going to be hard to make much money, at least on.
08:24.86
Rick
Marketplace.
08:25.64
tylerking
Yeah, it's a marketplace. It's you need a lot of scale. um But I think it's he said this on his podcast. He's just like, this is cool. I want to build it. So maybe it doesn't need to make money.
08:35.80
tylerking
I think it's very cool, though.
08:37.36
Rick
Yeah. I found us.
08:38.22
tylerking
um And then if I can.
08:38.44
Rick
That's cool. 19. We have 19 fans, but, but you're, you're one of them.
08:41.19
tylerking
Oh, 19, we're growing, although one of those is me now.
08:43.33
Rick
So we have to do, we have to, you know, minus one.
08:43.76
tylerking
Yeah. We're at 18. um And then like that also, this is kind of a separate topic for me, but kind of related. like It had me reflecting on social media and like in general just, it used to be good and now it's bad, basically. um When I was clicking, and Ripple doesn't have a ton of activity. like It's brand new and it's kind of in this bootstrapper space right now. But I was clicking around and I was like, this makes me feel the way Twitter used to. like It's just a small community of people who are talking about
09:15.45
tylerking
whatever we're, you know, we happen to be interested in this set of like tech and business stuff, but there's a different version of that for sports and a different version of that for politics. But it just, it kind of made me miss what is lost like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, social media was so much more fun than it is now. Um, and I have more to say about that, but it's a bummer thoughts.
09:37.77
Rick
Well, I mean, it's a natural, I mean, I, yes, I, I never kind of got social media at the time that I think that platforms were small enough to, to appreciate like you did.
09:48.84
Rick
Um, but I, I kind of got the vibe. I could get what you're saying now that I've used X and have yeah felt the prox the closeness to sub communities, um, through, through X or Twitter, um,
10:02.06
tylerking
Mm hmm.
10:02.88
Rick
But, uh, indie hacker is another example of this. I feel like where you may be earning, you were on indie hacker in the early days and it was a little bit different than maybe it is today, uh, for, uh, you know, it's kind of become more of a mod, like there's lots of people on there.
10:16.49
Rick
It's not as, it's not as niche.
10:17.83
tylerking
Yeah.
10:18.01
Rick
Um, I
10:19.93
tylerking
Yeah. there's There's a term for it's like eternal September, I think it's called. And um is this concept you've heard of?
10:28.77
Rick
haven't, I'm looking it up right now.
10:29.09
tylerking
ah I think there's like a message board for some college, ah early, early internet, like, like, maybe even pre-world wide web, where there's a good online community at some university. And then every September, new students would come in. And they didn't know the etiquette and stuff. And so they would kind of like make it suck. But eventually, they would learn it. But like when a platform gets too big, I think the term is eternal September. You're just always in this world where there are so many people who don't know the etiquette and aren't really like a part of the tribe. but that like You just can't have that same sense of community that you can have with a smaller group.
11:02.21
tylerking
um
11:02.29
Rick
That makes total sense.
11:03.64
tylerking
So I also want to call out ah Aaron Francis wrote a post called An Argument for Logging Off. I'm guessing most of our listeners have already seen this because I think it spread pretty quickly.
11:13.74
tylerking
But this is one of my favorite things I've read in a long time. And it's basically, if if I can just summarize, I assume you didn't see this either.
11:20.76
Rick
No, I didn't.
11:21.54
tylerking
OK, so I'm not wasting your time here. The argument is basically, there's a graphic with two circles. And the inner circle is what you can influence. And the outer circle is what influences you, what you spend your time thinking about and caring about. And it was basically saying, the way to be unhappy is for the outer circle to be a lot bigger than the inner circle, for you to care about a lot of stuff that you can't actually impact, especially because the world's like, all of these social networks and stuff are trying to get us outraged and all that because that's how we get engagement. And it was basically just saying,
11:53.22
tylerking
don't care about stuff that you can't influence, um which isn't that novel of a thought, but you know in the context of like, You don't need to read that news story. like it it you know It doesn't matter to you. And I especially liked one point I want to point out. like it it said So when I first started reading it, I was like, this is a very selfish, privileged idea, this idea that like you just can you don't have to care. um I don't have to care. You don't either, Rick. But like some it matters to us like some of these topics matter to some people. And I feel like I have an obligation to care. But the article addresses this beautifully, which is like, well, then go change your life so that you can influence it.
12:28.07
tylerking
If you care about you know a war happening in some other country, if you care about what's going on in a different state's politics, like fundraise, go protest, go do something.
12:36.49
Rick
Get educated.
12:36.77
tylerking
But if you're not going to yeah if you're not going to do something, stop caring about it, basically.
12:37.80
Rick
Yeah.
12:41.50
tylerking
And I liked that point a lot.
12:43.19
Rick
Yeah, to me, like the the the other version of this is like, it's about, I mean, if you boil this down, it's about being intentional about what you consume.
12:50.62
tylerking
Yeah, for sure.
12:50.68
Rick
um And ah yeah, I totally agree. I don't think, I think I'm more intentional than others about this, but I fall i think it's very easy to fall into habits where you're just like,
13:02.13
Rick
I mean, there's so many ah infinite scrolling concepts on the internet, particularly and on mobile devices that can just like trap you in this, you know, getting stuck in a loop of, you know, things you can't, we're consuming things you can't influence, unintentional consumption.
13:06.11
tylerking
Yeah.
13:18.29
Rick
um And i yeah, I totally agree.
13:18.46
tylerking
Yeah.
13:20.45
Rick
That's a great concept. It's a good reminder. um I definitely need to tighten up my consumption.
13:26.83
tylerking
I think you're good. You are less tempted just like you don't want this stuff the way I do and other people do. I don't like your brain is less addicted to this stuff. I think that's the impression I get.
13:37.84
Rick
i
13:37.99
tylerking
But we all have a little.
13:39.53
Rick
but yeah i mean i i Right now, I am probably as undisciplined about it as I've ever been. um I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn.
13:46.70
tylerking
Okay.
13:48.50
Rick
and ah even I've vlogged into Instagram lately more than I've ever logged in before. so like i'm I'm definitely in a negative, what I would call cycle um like addiction.
13:56.99
tylerking
Yeah.
13:57.46
Rick
like content addiction cycle, um but i i ah it's easy it's it's fairly easy for me to, I mean, what tools do you use to to control this for yourself?
13:59.69
tylerking
yeah
14:07.12
Rick
Do you do you like log out or do anything like that?
14:10.18
tylerking
Yeah, i so I had the the way I got rid of Facebook is like years ago is I first just I unfollowed everybody or I muted everybody and then I uninstalled the app from my phone and I moved my I set up a separate Chrome profile that was logged into Facebook and I blocked Facebook on my I just made it harder and harder to use it until eventually I was like, I don't miss it at all.
14:29.72
Rick
Yep.
14:29.85
tylerking
um My goal isn't exactly to quit Twitter, but but as a result of Aaron's post, I went in and I unfollowed about 10 people. Just 10 people. i follow i I think I started with 160 and now I'm at 150 that I follow or something. And I only look at my 4U feed. the The algorithmic feed sucks now. I want to talk about that in a second. but i so I only follow the following feed, not the 4U feed. um These 10 people A, they were they were people who tweet about things that are like not my primary interest. So like one is a journalist a political journalist who I do think is good. I think he's smart. I like what he has to say. But I'm i'm not trying to get politics on Twitter. um But what I didn't appreciate, I knew like I was unfalling them because they aren't talking about the bootstrapper tech business stuff I'm interested in.
15:15.93
tylerking
What I didn't appreciate is how much these 10 people are really only like three of these 10 people were tweeting. Um, I used to spend hours and hours scrolling just on my follower feed, i not every day, but I could spend multiple hours per day. Now I can get through the whole thing in about 15 minutes, like for a whole 24 hours worth, because like three people were tweeting like literally a hundred times a day. And I just didn't realize that.
15:40.98
Rick
Yikes.
15:42.34
tylerking
which has been great. I'm using Twitter a lot less now because I'm like, I literally have read all the content there.
15:47.32
Rick
yeah you're just you're you're You're decreasing noise.
15:47.58
tylerking
I mean. Yeah, now I could go on the for you feed. The way I would like it to work is you go on the for you feed and you're like, this isn't just people I'm following. This is stuff like the topics I'm interested in.
16:00.56
tylerking
But I feel like for the last year or so, it's been just random click baity, like pop culture stuff. it's It's just stuff that has nothing to do with the people I'm following. So I don't use for you at all anymore.
16:12.52
tylerking
But that's what I would like to have.
16:14.31
Rick
Mm-hmm.
16:15.15
tylerking
So anyway, but I'd ramble about that for a little bit.
16:18.72
Rick
ah Great topic, great reminder. I'm gonna take some action on it.
16:22.84
tylerking
Nice. What's going on with you?
16:25.61
Rick
I just got back last week from, oh, I guess it wasn't last week. Was it last week? Yeah, last week from the Windfall Offsite in San Diego. we um A root bar CEO does a great job of enforcing everyone to get together in person twice a year. Um, the way he does it is, uh, in case anyone's interested in mimicking this, uh, remote, uh, you know, uh, hybrid work environment or remote work environment is that, um, we, we basically in, in February do our, uh, divisional on sites like revenue kickoff on the go to market side. And then like we do like a,
17:01.61
Rick
an R and&D bootcamp type thing. um Usually it's a hackathon and theme, you know, and that's to kick off the year. And then middle of the year, we do a, to kick off half two, we do a company, whole company offsite. um And it's super, super fun, um super intense. And I just like, I'm always impressed with Arup's architecture of, ah of the,
17:27.63
Rick
of the agenda. He's so intentional about who's sitting with who, who's, um, you know, uh, what, what, who's speaking when, what what sessions people are attending. And it was by far the best offsite we've ever had.
17:40.21
Rick
Um, and I just like, he he didn't speak at all, like, except to open and close. It was like the first time I'm doing that, which was really impressive, but he architected the whole thing. And it was, everyone was like, this is amazing. This is the best offsite ever.
17:51.38
Rick
And they have no idea, um, that it's like all him just sort of puppeteering.
17:51.61
tylerking
okay
17:54.82
tylerking
Yeah, it's like planning a wedding, but like on steroids.
17:57.94
Rick
Yes, exactly.
17:58.48
tylerking
um Is this on a weekday or weekend?
18:01.62
Rick
Monday through Wednesday is what we did.
18:03.68
tylerking
How does, how does this work? Like, does the company, like, how does support work? How does like, don't people have to be doing things during that time?
18:12.54
Rick
ah we We actually put all put out auto office replies. um there are There are like urgent customer deliverables that need to be addressed and and like sort of you know communications, but generally that that happens at a batched in a batch format ah during the day at a break, not dirt but everyone's very present.
18:30.04
tylerking
Hmm.
18:33.42
tylerking
So you just don't have like support tickets coming in all day the way less knowing serum does.
18:35.89
Rick
It's not that kind of business, um yeah.
18:37.88
tylerking
Yeah.
18:39.78
Rick
I mean, I think even if we, like, you know, if you, if you did, like you could say, listen, we're doing our company offsite for three days.
18:39.96
tylerking
That's cool. Cause.
18:45.56
Rick
Support is going to be 24 hour SLA for the next ah three days. ah This is important for us to be able to ah continue to deliver an awesome product to you.
18:53.16
tylerking
Yeah.
18:55.91
tylerking
We do that on holidays. Doing that for 24 hours wouldn't be doable either, because then you've got like 200 emails to answer all at once. it It would have to be like, we'll get back to you in a week.
19:06.66
Rick
Mm-hmm.
19:07.57
tylerking
Anyway, I say that. We actually are we're doing our our own retreat for the first time ever in a few weeks.
19:12.18
Rick
We're doing a weekend.
19:12.78
tylerking
But we're doing friday we're we're doing Friday through Sunday, and we're all working the first half of the day on Friday, just like doing support and stuff. We're shutting support down for a half day.
19:24.66
tylerking
um But it's it's not like what you're describing. This is not like a let's attend sessions. This is like let's rent a pontoon boat and go out on a lake.
19:32.81
Rick
Yeah.
19:33.62
tylerking
where there's There's not any work going on aside from like maintaining support and stuff.
19:37.39
Rick
Oh yeah, like this is like back to back presentations and information sharing.
19:40.39
tylerking
Yeah.
19:41.03
Rick
And there's some social aspects at night in the morning.
19:41.31
tylerking
Yeah.
19:43.67
Rick
And then like we had a, uh, some social, uh, physical activity stuff, uh, on the last day, um, or the second to last day. So it was, it was fun. Um, highly recommended, but I, I always, um, it's, you know, I, I'm en very energized about the business that windfall as a result of this, but I also am exhausted.
20:00.27
tylerking
yeah
20:01.30
Rick
Um, it put it know puts me behind on life. so So that's what I'm kind of like dealing with is just like, okay, I've got to,
20:04.71
tylerking
right
20:07.49
Rick
I had this big event, and I had to present some sessions, which you know and ah and it's a kickoff of a new of quarter, closing an old quarter, half you know reviews.
20:18.11
Rick
So I'm a little discombobulated at the moment. um but ah But I can see, like again, you know I hopefully light at the end of the tunnel um next week.
20:20.74
tylerking
Yeah. Cool.
20:25.98
tylerking
cool I like it.
20:27.38
Rick
And then, leg up, July was a great month for growth. um yeah you know I don't want to...
20:31.86
tylerking
Yeah, we talked about this a little last episode, but, um, yeah, like best off season month ever.
20:34.55
Rick
Yeah. well ah yeah Yeah, by far. i mean
20:41.22
tylerking
Yeah.
20:41.22
Rick
and if i mean if we ah one one One topic that I've had at the bottom of our podcast agenda that I'm just going to delete now is like weathering the slow months. um And I was always worried that we'd have to weather the slow months at like a pelt. And this month, like this July told me, prove that like like we don't have to. um There are ways to grow the business if we're intentional and thoughtful about it, um meaningfully. And ah that's a very exciting thing.
21:08.69
tylerking
Yeah, it's still worth saying, I mean, there were six months of basically feeling like the reason we, like the, the, the topic last episode was we did this sprint.
21:19.62
tylerking
You, did you, you and JD did this sprint because it felt like things weren't working and then it turned out things were working, but it, but it all kind of hit in July. I mean, it took six months of spinning your wheels for two clients to land, which is great and exciting.
21:32.38
Rick
Agreed, but I'm a general believer of like where you can do it once or twice. You can do it more than like you can multiply that. And so, and these are very,
21:32.87
tylerking
And also it's not like everything is solved at this point, right?
21:37.92
Rick
ah agreed um but but i'm a general believer of like where you can do it once or twice you could do it more more than what like you can multiply that and so
21:46.45
tylerking
yeah
21:48.54
Rick
um and and these are very the the situation Anytime you're, you're doing sales um and you have a couple of like what isolated wins, like I think it's generally best to look at buying triggers.
22:01.11
Rick
Like what, like we didn't make these people, like we didn't put them in a corner and say, you have to become our clients right now. There was something like some outside force that was driving them.
22:12.39
Rick
Um, and in both situations, like it's a very, like predictable, um, and repeatable and common.
22:12.58
tylerking
Yeah. hmm.
22:19.98
Rick
like, event that these companies were experiencing, that that we just like, it was like, duh, we need to be more intentional about identifying companies that are in these situations, whether they're renewal datas and, you know, outside of January, you know, it's not a calendar year renewal.
22:33.22
Rick
Like, theyre if they're renewing July 1st, guess when they want to talk?
22:34.06
tylerking
Yeah.
22:36.39
Rick
They want to talk in March and April. um They're renewing in November. They want to talk, you know, three months before that. um And so that's one, you know, duh moment. um Another is, ah you know, company fundraising.
22:48.10
Rick
ah
22:48.22
tylerking
Yeah.
22:49.00
Rick
you know, monitoring crunch base and ah fundraising announcements for anyone who's raised money. Like that's a clear, like the minute they raise money, reach out and say, we want to be you. Ideally, we've already developed a relationship before they've raised money.
23:01.50
tylerking
Yeah, I want to, because this came up in the last partner meeting, I want to share a specific on that first one, the, uh, if they haven't, uh, a renewal at a weird time, like just a very concrete way that this got applied.
23:01.58
Rick
um
23:06.19
Rick
and
23:11.75
tylerking
I saw you and JD talking about it. and I just want to share it with the audience is like, um, previously JD was doing cold outreach to people and he could get on the phone. Like he would call and people would pick up the phone and they'd answer a few questions, but no one was really interested in buying or or making any decisions.
23:26.63
tylerking
That's my impression of kind of where things did. um But one of the big insights here being, if he can figure out when their renewal date is and just put that in a database, you almost don't want to sell to them at that point. It's like you're not in it. You're like, oh, yeah okay. I know exactly when to reach out in the future. So the exact same motion of doing this cold outreach and talking to people on the phone and getting them to answer a few questions. But now there's a much more clear path between how they answer this one question. And then we say, okay, thank you for your time. Goodbye. And then three months later we come back and we say, now it's time to actually sell.
23:58.70
Rick
Yeah, I just remember the concept, the the sales framework of Bant, B-A-N-T.
24:04.03
tylerking
It sounds like BAMFAM, which I know, but no, I don't know Bant.
24:06.01
Rick
Bant is budget, authority, need, timeline. um And so and when you're, we're selling a small business, so it's very, like what we've proven so far is we can get to authority.
24:09.24
tylerking
Okay.
24:14.85
Rick
And the the concept of Bant is that you need all three in order to have a really qualified opportunity and like a chance at winning a deal. um Otherwise it's not real and you should really try to like say that there's a predictable win rate.
24:24.15
tylerking
Yeah.
24:25.47
Rick
um So, but,
24:26.36
tylerking
Sorry. Budget. ah Same again.
24:28.01
Rick
authority, which is like, can the person make a decision?
24:29.05
tylerking
Authority.
24:32.02
Rick
um Need is like pain and like do they have like ah push something something pushing them towards you?
24:32.09
tylerking
Yeah.
24:37.07
Rick
um And then timing is like is the is it is now the right time.
24:37.26
tylerking
Okay. Hmm.
24:40.78
Rick
um And so budget is not an issue for us because we have a product that, we have a free product, we have um you know the most expensive product, but we have every product on the shelf ah in terms of pricing.
24:48.60
tylerking
Mm
24:51.32
Rick
um Authority is not an issue for us.
24:52.28
tylerking
-hmm.
24:53.17
Rick
We can get to authority very easily because we serve small businesses. um need is a challenge and that is all highly related to either an event outside the company like ah they're trying to fundraise or they hire someone who's ah complaining or someone's threatening to leave over benefits like it's some force um and then timing is is all about you know you know, is there something that happened recently or is there, like if you already have health insurance, is the, is the renewal date imminent?
25:23.50
Rick
Um, and if it's not, then like, it's like but not now, like finding out when.
25:23.98
tylerking
Yeah.
25:27.66
tylerking
I mean, health insurance is probably in one of the most privileged positions of any market from a timing standpoint. Like, if someone buys a CRM, they might keep using it forever. There's not like, oh, and a year later, they're naturally going to reconsider it. With health insurance, they literally have to kind of renew every single year. So there's always this timing event.
25:48.72
Rick
oh i totally agree and um ah What I'm, what I'm also realizing is that just like we are not using this concept enough at like up to drive like intention.
25:59.79
Rick
Um, we could definitely, uh, be more intentional about like, okay, what opportunity, like what what opportunities do we have like authority and like, that's, fuck that's our highest, like outside of, you know, qualified opportunities, we have all three, where do we already have authority relationships?
26:11.96
tylerking
Yeah.
26:13.42
Rick
Do we know when timing will matter? And if, if we don't, like that's the first call, like go get that data. Um, uh, interesting.
26:19.76
tylerking
Yeah.
26:21.59
Rick
um But I'm super excited.
26:21.82
tylerking
It is a big unlock. I am at maybe with like a B2B SAS. This wouldn't work for us because we don't really do sales, but like for a more enterprise E-B2B SAS, generally whatever product they're using, they have a contract with.
26:33.73
tylerking
So you could be like, when does your Salesforce contract end? We're going to reach out to you six months before that. So there might be an equivalent with, with SAS.
26:40.20
Rick
What I've seen with SAS are two important dates are contract ah renewal date ah plus auto renew term. So you've got to know like if there's a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day auto renew term ah and then whether it's a multi-year contract.
26:51.12
tylerking
Right.
26:53.24
Rick
Um, and then, uh, but you can always do buyouts. Um, and that's, so that's something, I don't know if you've considered at $10, uh, $15 a month.
26:58.61
tylerking
ah Yeah, I don't think it works for us, but yeah.
26:59.69
Rick
It's hard. Yeah. Um, the, the, the second thing is, um, what was the, what's the second thing? Uh, I lost it, but there's a, there's another oh fiscal year. Um, if you know the company's fiscal year, generally there's budget available and they can make out of site, like they can double up on a tool, uh, at the beginning of a fiscal year.
27:09.68
tylerking
Hmm.
27:19.97
Rick
Cause they're ah planning their budget around it.
27:22.16
tylerking
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, um I've thought about buyouts as a strategy before. um I think it's a good one. I think SavvyCal did this with Calendly for a while. I think the key is it's got to be similar price ranges. The problem with us is we're cheaper than our competitor, so we'd be but paying 10 times. well that That's an exaggeration. Sometimes it's literally 10 times, but maybe two times What, like, if they're switching from in insightly to us, and insightly is 30 bucks a month.
27:49.42
tylerking
We're 15. It makes the math a lot harder on that, but I do think that's a cool idea for, uh, when, when the, the pricing is more similar.
27:53.59
Rick
Yeah. Yep.
27:57.75
tylerking
Um, cool. Uh, I, we, so I said at the beginning of this, like things are calming down for me. The main reason why is the coding fellowship just ended. So last weekend or last, last Thursday, um, they gave a pre every summer. So, you know, we teach, we had five people kind of give, give them coding lessons and help them build a project. And then they give a presentation.
28:19.75
tylerking
And this is the first time since ah the ah pandemic that we like invited outsiders. we we In the past, we we always try to kind of make it into like an event and give the fellows some public speaking experience. And it was just such a great time. um they you know They presented on what they built. Super impressive. We had a really great fellow class this year. But they're also just like absolutely smothering us with compliments the whole time, um which you know got to check your ego every once in a while. but Occasionally, it's good to ah just bathe in compliments.
28:52.36
tylerking
and That's kind of what it was last week. So ah kind of riding high from that.
28:56.82
Rick
um Is this something that you're going to continue to do? or is this do Sometimes I feel like you reflect on, like is this still something we want to do um after after this is over?
28:59.42
tylerking
Mm hmm.
29:03.87
tylerking
Yeah. I think this is definitely, it's one where like by the time it ends, so less like it's, you know, a roughly three month program by the the last month of it, I'm kind of like, all right, I'm ready for this to end. I love it. It's great. It's just a whole lot of work and a huge distraction, but there's there's no question. We're pretty committed to it, but yeah, I did i did want to talk a bit about this of like.
29:23.00
tylerking
It's it's a so it probably costs us about ten thousand dollars per fellow because we pay them money plus we pay them about seventy five hundred over the court. It's twenty five hundred a month. um But then also, you know, there's equipment for them and there's like they eat food at the company lunch day and, you know, there's other expenses associated with them. So let's say we spent fifty thousand dollars on this and money and tons and tons of time, like I think probably the equivalent of a full time person across the year or maybe a little less than that, but not way less.
29:52.82
tylerking
Um, and it only affects five people a year. So like, I think there's a, the, the tech, the tech mentality is everything's all about scale and it's, you know, you gotta reach millions or billions of people. This is, uh, for me, a really good reminder of like how much more personal it feels to have a really high impact on a smaller number of people. Um.
30:16.51
tylerking
I don't think you can necessarily run a business that way, but in terms of thinking about fulfillment and purpose and stuff like that, I think I find it more rewarding to see these five people who are all much more likely to go into tech and much more likely to succeed in tech and who just had a great summer. ah The amount of money and time we spend is like kind of outrageous, but it just feels so good and it's really fulfilling and and we're definitely going to keep doing it.
30:41.67
Rick
I love it. Yeah. I got to experience that a little bit when I did the internships with like a pelt during the pandemic, um, the pandemic because it blew up all internships. Like there was so much, uh, young, incredible talent, just sitting on the sidelines for summer internships and basically got four or five free Duke, Yale, et cetera, interns, uh, that summer.
30:56.36
tylerking
Mhm.
31:01.85
Rick
It was the most ah exciting thing ever. And I, you know, i'm im I'm sure it was not like the best investment of my time for the business at the moment, but I had so much fun and those are relationships I still maintain.
31:09.89
tylerking
Yeah.
31:12.06
Rick
Um, and they were very grateful for the, for the learning opportunities that we presented, even though we didn't even pay them.
31:17.19
tylerking
Right. and it's yeah And it's never going to pay back to you. like There's not a dot, dot, dot. And that's how we're going to become a much bigger company. But there is like a different type of compounding with it, where it's like, if, let's say, out of these five people, one of them wouldn't would have dropped out of tech. And like we actually changed their trajectory to like get into tech to be more successful, whatever. And if we do, like that one person can then take that and pay it forward. And then we can do that every single year.
31:46.42
tylerking
by the end By the time this is all done, like one person if it let's say it takes one full-time person's worth of time per summer to do this, you're like having such this wide-reaching impact.
31:57.76
tylerking
If you imagine like the the downstream, like how does this compound in terms of how those people can then help other people with the resources of their success?
32:05.09
Rick
Totally.
32:05.78
tylerking
so I like it. I say this every time I talk about the fellowship, no one's ever going to do it. But if anyone wants to do something like this, talk to me. I got tons of tips and I could even help recruiting potentially because we turn away a lot of great people because we don't have enough spots.
32:20.28
Rick
Does anyone ever reach out to you about that?
32:21.82
tylerking
No, no, no one's ever going to, it's an absolutely stupid thing to do.
32:26.71
Rick
Um, I heard an internet windfall just paid it's paid.
32:27.55
tylerking
Oh, cool. Yeah, good.
32:31.46
Rick
Um, and, uh, yeah.
32:31.76
tylerking
You better be paying.
32:33.42
Rick
Uh, And it's ah the, the concept is, um, we have our, uh, well, I guess like, I probably won't go to that detail because a little bit secret sauce, but, um, it's, ah it's a, it's a interesting idea on what we're doing and if it works, it could be really, you know, game changing for our ability to scale, um, growth.
32:46.26
tylerking
Yeah.
32:50.93
tylerking
So you're this person's like direct advice, like boss.
32:53.34
Rick
No, no, but I'm, I'm, I'm architecting the program, um, but reporting to our, our, uh, sales development manager.
33:00.11
tylerking
Hmm. I love, recruiting like, aside from them actually being there, I love the recruiting process. You just talk to a bunch of people and it's, it's kind of like constant dope. I mean, like, well, that person was good. That person was good.
33:08.82
Rick
the Do you use a tool called handshake?
33:12.69
tylerking
um that is sort of A lot of colleges use that as their like career website, so we we use it through the college.
33:18.15
Rick
Yep.
33:19.08
tylerking
We we don't have our own like personal relationship with Handshake, if that makes sense.
33:21.90
Rick
Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah. That's, that's where we, I mean, we discovered that and the amount of quality applicants that we got from just like pushing one job post to handshake and then selecting the colleges you wanted to promote incredible tool.
33:32.23
tylerking
Yeah. Yeah. Um, for sure. We're, we're starting to recruit for a new CRM coach right now as well, which is one thing to recruit interns and coding fellows, but, um, full timers, I know you, I know like at windfall, you hire like a absolute fuck ton of people, but for us, this is the first time we've hired in over, I think in about two and a half years. Um, it's so.
33:56.73
tylerking
scary and fun, but being like, this, you know, this might be a person I work with for the next 20 years potentially. Like let's go find a new, like close relationship.
34:06.79
Rick
Yeah, that's awesome. and And you get the, you meet, I mean, the, the, the added benefit is the interview process. You meet people that you could hire in the future too. Like it's, it might not be now, but like you develop interviewing is a great way to develop relationships.
34:15.57
tylerking
Yeah.
34:19.35
Rick
Even if you never hire anyone.
34:21.16
tylerking
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Now, every time we need to hire someone, we've already got a a bunch of contacts for referrals, but also like, Oh, this person applied three years ago. We just didn't have a position at the time.
34:31.44
tylerking
Maybe, you know, let's see if they're still around. So yeah, we kind of get a bigger and bigger base to start with each time.
34:35.99
Rick
Yep.
34:36.21
tylerking
So, um, all right, back to you.
34:41.61
Rick
Uh, uh, one, one action. I have our partner meeting, uh, like a pelt this week was, um, JD using the play. Hey sir, I might be in town around X, um, want to meet up while I'm there. Um, when he doesn't actually have the flight booked, but he's planning on fight booking the flight. So it's not a lie. Um, and so, uh, anyway, he's doing it a little bit more aggressively. He actually booked, um, you know, this was one of the experience we're going to run out of the partnership, but he's going to,
35:07.84
Rick
work now that we're getting closer to open renewal and we've got some traction with growth. um He's going to plan a visit in September to Utah um and set up a bunch of client and prospect meetings while he's here. um And ah ah you know I don't know if you like have any ah thing you want to talk about here necessarily related to you know so telling someone, you know maybe you're trying to you know meet with an investor or a key account and they're in New York City and you live in you know, ah California and you just say, Hey, I'm going to be in New York city in a few weeks.
35:40.01
Rick
Would you like to meet up? And then you booked the flight after they confirm. Um, it's an interesting play in general.
35:42.98
tylerking
Yeah.
35:45.28
tylerking
I love it. we' We've definitely done this before. we It doesn't make sense for us to do this with customers, because no customer pays us enough to justify flying out to them. But we've done this with like, try um for example, we really wanted this. I forget which one. There's all these different like publications that have like lists of top 10 CRMs, and like getting on that list is pretty valuable. And so yeah, we would do this with like, we'd look up what author wrote that list, because it already exists.
36:13.44
tylerking
Do this to them. Hey, we're going to be in your city these dates. Can we meet? And then, yeah, have if they say yes, then we book it and fly out um in person. so I know i'm I'm very much a ah digital online person, but meeting people in person is a whole different ball game.
36:30.89
Rick
Yeah. and And this, this concept plays on so many different, um, uh, psychological tendencies, where it's like, if you're like local, it's, but it's actually harder to meet with some people because they're like, Oh, you're always there.
36:41.13
tylerking
Hmm.
36:42.59
Rick
Like we can meet anytime there's no FOMO.
36:43.06
tylerking
Yeah. Where's the urgency? Yeah.
36:46.60
Rick
Uh, you know, if you, yeah.
36:47.11
tylerking
No, that's good. That's a good point.
36:48.81
Rick
Yeah. So you see, I'm thinking about how to apply this locally. Like I'm going to be in, you know, you know, your zip code or you're on your street that you live ah you know this day. Should we, should I come by and say hello?
37:03.00
tylerking
I wonder, so I agree there's probably a psychological like FOMO, like there's urgency created. I wonder if there's also an element of like flattery that it's like, Oh, you're only going to be here for two days and you want to meet with me.
37:14.24
tylerking
Like I'm one of the people you're targeting. I wonder if you could fake this a bit by being like.
37:15.64
Rick
Totally.
37:19.44
tylerking
So people who don't know Salt Lake City geography, look it up on a map. But what if JD is like, I'm going to be in Provo, but I really want to meet with you. I'll drive up to Salt Lake ah or you know you know make it more like I'm going to do this this over the top kind of above and beyond thing, and would maybe flattering them a little.
37:37.09
Rick
Yeah. Yeah, we should try. That's good. Anyway, I'm looking forward to his trip. um ah you know Part of the benefit is like, ah This is a benefit of of profit first.
37:50.35
Rick
i I've always wanted JD to just like want to stay with me. And I feel like he is now massively incentivized to stay with me because if he spends money on hotel, it comes out of like his profit share.
37:57.51
tylerking
yeah the Yeah.
38:01.35
Rick
ah And so, uh, I really liked this arrangement because now I get to have a friend at the house for a few days, uh, where he might get it. I've gotten a hotel room in the past.
38:12.01
tylerking
Yeah, it's easy to spend someone else's money.
38:12.26
Rick
but
38:16.29
tylerking
um Yeah, that's cool. All right, I got to go on about 10. I can give a but talk to sales update. It's been a while since we talked about this.
38:26.36
tylerking
As a reminder, this is like putting buttons all over the website, trying to get people to book a call, um kind of talk to sales is the call to action. And where where we left things was it's going pretty well in that like people are booking calls. We're talking to them and they're paying. We have no idea what they have paid anyway. Not a good way to measure that, nor do I really care.
38:43.75
tylerking
um Everything we've tried to increase the volume of these bookings has has fallen flat, basically. um So like the last one I think I talked about on the podcast that I was really excited about. there's also So there's three calls to action right now on our website. There's like start a free trial. there is The button says see how it works. But what it really is is like do a live demo. like Use the product without actually signing up. And then the third one's talk to sales. People might be saying three calls to action and are bad. I don't know. We A-B tested this. This is fine.
39:13.42
tylerking
ah The thing we did is if someone clicks see how it works, then we would show them at three options and be like, how do you want to see how it works? Do you want to do the live demo? Do you want to just like watch our videos and read our help articles? Or do you want to like talk to somebody? That just absolutely bombed. um Conversion rates dropped. The number of people doing demos dropped. The number of people signing up dropped. ah Didn't work at all. We've tried tweaking language. So ah book a demo, verse talk to sales is there an experiment we ran.
39:43.87
tylerking
Inconclusive talk to sales brings in higher quality of leads. Book a demo brings in a higher volume. Um, I think you could debate which of these is better. But anyway, where we are kind of landing here is we already have this whole CRM coaching team set up. That's like great at talking to customers. Um, they are much more book a demo.
40:04.85
tylerking
ready than talk to sales ready. Not that it doesn't make that big of a difference, but like what they're used to doing is called a demo, you know? So anyway, we're changing all the buttons to book a demo.
40:12.83
Rick
Yeah. But i if you, if you say you're talking to sales, like that sets expectations.
40:13.87
tylerking
Yeah, good.
40:16.23
Rick
Whereas like, if it's like requested them, it's like, Hey, I'm just here to give you a demo.
40:16.41
tylerking
Exactly.
40:19.60
Rick
I I'm not a sales guy.
40:19.91
tylerking
Right. Right. And that's much more in our DNA anyway, as like, we don't even have a sales team or anything.
40:21.32
Rick
Like, yeah.
40:26.14
tylerking
So, uh, we're changing the buttons to book a demo, which again, should increase volume, decrease quality, but I think net out about the same. And we're just like having those calls go to the normal CRM coach flow.
40:36.42
tylerking
So we have way more availability to take these calls because it's, it's a team effort now. So that's where things stand.
40:41.05
Rick
That's cool.
40:43.53
Rick
Good job.
40:43.79
tylerking
But yeah, I think it's probably like done, like there's not a lot of additional work to do on that.
40:44.19
Rick
ah Keep going.
40:49.10
Rick
Are you doing anything of the G2 still or any third party sites that are driving traffic or is it still just sort of monetizing the existing sources?
40:57.00
tylerking
Yeah, G2 is the main one. And then there's other like Kaptara and kind of directory sites. we We care a lot about those. Primarily, that means driving reviews to them. um like The more reviews you have, the the more likely you are to stand out on those sites, I think. ah So we we push a lot of our current customers. When they have a good moment with us, we're like, hey, can you go review us? Otherwise, I don't know that there's a lot to do. I don't think those sites drive traffic so much as they provide credibility when someone's already looking for you.
41:28.73
tylerking
um That's the impression I get. like Sometimes people are on G2, like, I need a CRM. Which one am I going to use? But I think more often, they've already shortlisted us. And then they're like, I want to do a little research on less knowing CRM, and G2 is a place they land. um That's my impression of the more common buying journey.
41:44.95
Rick
Makes sense, makes sense.
41:47.27
tylerking
um Yeah, I i wish there i want like a growth channel where there's something to do actively. like We kind of have more time than we do opportunity right now. I wish we could go on G2 and be like, if we are run in this hamster wheel, leads will pop out or something. But I'm not aware of anything like that.
42:05.21
tylerking
but
42:07.21
Rick
Well, um, what else is on your mind? I need to get like five more minutes.
42:10.90
tylerking
um Yeah, I think that's, I could keep talking, but I think those are the main updates I want to say. Do you have do you have time to squeeze in either of these topics you've got here?
42:18.77
Rick
Yeah, like I just want to share product dev priorities. I think, um, similar to sales, we spot our wheels a lot, uh, on product development at leg up health. Um, like just trying to figure out like, Oh, what should we work on? Um,
42:32.20
Rick
When probably in reality, we probably we should have just been focused on preparing for renewal season, um making the product better for JD to increase his capacity because we knew that that was going to be the bottleneck.
42:44.36
tylerking
yeah
42:44.32
Rick
um So anyway, we're shifting you know to that focus where we're We're going to start making sure that JD's effort ah to deliver an awesome renewal experience for our existing customers is as um minimal as possible. ah ah yeah doing you know Basically, we want to be do what what he did last year, but more in a more automated fashion. and um in more organized fashion because we have yeah twice as many clients as last year.
43:11.91
tylerking
Yeah.
43:12.76
Rick
And so ah anyway, i just wanted to share that. And I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but I was thinking about it this week and thinking, oh yeah, we should have probably just already done this.
43:20.85
tylerking
Yeah. And I can maybe talk about it more from the technical side, since I'm the one who's going to be coding this stuff up, which which is basically like. We kind of have a hodgepodge, we being less like leg up health here. We have a hodgepodge of tools. There's like pipe drive as a CRM. JD has like a spreadsheet that we're trying to get moved into pipe drive, but they're kind of living in parallel. But then we have like the software leg up health where everyone who's a ah user of leg up health has an account. And that's where we like link them to what their health insurance policy is and things like that. And these three were kind of living separately. So
43:53.40
tylerking
renewal previously, as I understand it, was JD would basically have to manually email all these people and say, hey, your policy needs to renew. Well, the policy information is in ah the Laravel app that I built. But the you know the outreach information is in the CRM. And so he's kind of like manually managing all this. And I think the the big decision we made was I'm effectively building. ah So we use Laravel Nova, which is this like admin tool that kind of goes well with Laravel.
44:23.00
tylerking
we're going to turn that into the CRM for managing existing client relationships. So pipe drive or maybe one day HubSpot will still be the, how are we going to do outbound prospecting, nurturing, that type of stuff. But once someone's a client, we need to have that deep integration with what is their policy. So for example, we want a button that JD can push that's like,
44:44.57
tylerking
Hey, here's your old policy. Here's what it will automatically convert to with your new policy if you don't take any action. That's a very hard email to send automatically from pipe drive. But it's one that we can send from from our Laravel app. So I'm kind of building that scaffolding so he can use it like a CRM more.
44:59.73
Rick
Totally. Yep. Um, so that's, uh, probably like something we probably should have been working on this whole time, but it's, it becomes urgent at the right time.
45:07.06
tylerking
Yeah.
45:09.20
Rick
And I'm glad we're not waiting until October to talk about this. We're talking about in August and there's plenty of time to prep for November. November 1st is the big is D day.
45:17.69
tylerking
Yeah, you're going to have the ah the new policies ready for me by then?
45:21.92
Rick
Uh, well, the, the,
45:23.64
tylerking
none of this None of this will work if we don't have next year's policies in there or plans.
45:26.36
Rick
I will make sure that that happens. I will not be the, the, the, the weak link here.
45:28.19
tylerking
OK.
45:30.83
Rick
I promise. um
45:32.14
tylerking
Yeah, I've been trying to get my, I have to get my dev environment set up on my new Mac and Macs are way better for this, but I don't know, like I'm new to it. So I spent all night last night just trying to get my, like the Laravel have to run locally and i'm I'm like halfway there.
45:46.43
tylerking
I think it's a pain in the ass.
45:47.15
Rick
Oh my gosh. I didn't even think about that. Um, the last thing here is that, um, I did get my Tesla invite for the Cybertruck, um, to purchase it. Um, yes.
45:56.13
tylerking
Do not do this, Rick.
45:57.37
Rick
And so, uh, if you, if you haven't, you know, if you don't recall, um, I am thinking about buying a Tesla Cybertruck, wrapping it with leg up health branding with a QR code, um, and yeah having it be a local branding push, um, uh, for the business.
46:12.69
Rick
Um, And I want a cyber truck and then JD would have a car when he comes to visit, to take to client meetings and that sort of thing. I wouldn't have to rent a car, lots of savings of money here. um And then, uh, yes.
46:22.67
tylerking
Oh yeah, this is such a good use of money.
46:24.38
Rick
so So, um, you know, they, they, Tesla advertises like this is 70, 80 K might, you know, before the tax rebates.
46:24.63
tylerking
Sure.
46:31.48
Rick
So like net, you know, 60 to 70 K after 10 K tax rebate, um, for but investing in electric, uh, But then they like the the thing that they invited me to has a $20,000 addition surcharge ah to get it the founder's edition.
46:46.73
Rick
And I'm like, this sucks. like so i didn't i was like I just archived it, but I'm waiting to get this like the the invite for the $70,000 version.
46:51.54
tylerking
Okay, nice.
46:54.33
Rick
and
46:54.63
tylerking
I don't think you're going to. They just announced this week that they're killing the $70,000 version. I think the cheapest version now is a hundred.
46:59.77
Rick
but What? What?
47:03.49
tylerking
I'm in the cyber stuck subreddit, which is a subreddit devoted to hating on that ridiculous monstrosity of a car. And, uh, so I'm, I'm pretty up to date on all the hating cyber truck news.
47:10.21
Rick
What? What?
47:16.85
Rick
That's really sad.
47:17.25
tylerking
I could be wrong, but that that's what the headlines said. Anyway, they, they, they removed the the lowest pricing tier, I think.
47:23.55
Rick
But I, I, I reserved one of those. So they can't, hopefully they i have it.
47:27.28
tylerking
Elon Musk has never gone back on his word.
47:31.52
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Like this is big news.
47:34.10
tylerking
So I think it's 100K minimum now.
47:34.53
Rick
Oh well. bu Bummer.
47:38.61
Rick
Bummer.
47:39.86
tylerking
Rick, this would not be have been a good use of money even at 70K. This is crazy.
47:44.31
Rick
All you need is one client a month that comes from it and it pays for itself.
47:49.66
tylerking
but You could get an Aztec and put your branding on it and get that one client a month.
47:56.67
Rick
Why would I want to Aztec?
47:59.10
tylerking
Right. You wanted the cybertruck because you want a cybertruck, not because it's a good marketing strategy.
48:01.69
Rick
Uh, maybe we do a Ram TRX now or a Ford, you know, Raptor supercharge, something like that.
48:10.40
tylerking
If I put a less annoying CRM logo on my new kitchen counter, can I call that a business expense?
48:15.70
Rick
There's no local marketing benefit to you in that. like ah Yes, there is.
48:18.90
tylerking
There's no local marketing to buying a cyber truck, Rick. This is crazy. This is crazy.
48:24.34
Rick
Okay. All right. We disagree and I will prove you wrong one day.
48:26.79
tylerking
All right. Elon Musk will prove you wrong. I guarantee it.
48:31.77
Rick
Oh, if you'd like to review past topics as you know, it's visit start up to last.com.
48:31.98
tylerking
All right.
48:34.97
Rick
See you next week.
48:36.12
tylerking
See ya.