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This week we talk about Twitter melting down, tech layoffs, and other generally unpleasant things that mostly haven’t effected us so far
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.
00:00.16
Rick
Let's do this I'll ask you how it's going. Are you sick you sound nasally. Okay, it's probably because Shelley's in the room it is it I'm here I'm hearing your Shelly voice.
00:01.63
tylerking
No do I sound sick I bet it's just the different Mike or maybe I sound different do I sound different. No I I think yeah yeah, this is my Shelley. What.
00:18.25
Rick
Are you already recording.
00:18.97
tylerking
You rookie hey Rick yes I am recording I'll cut this out.
00:25.70
Rick
Ah, ah, um, all right? Sorry what did? what? Ah what's up this week Tyler ah 38 seconds take 4
00:31.30
tylerking
Ah, sorry say that again Sheley was talking when you said we're we're starting shut you.
00:42.12
Rick
What's up this week Tyler
00:44.10
tylerking
I'm just have in the week of my life. Ah, you know like my Twitter bio. The first thing it says is I'm a professional hater I am not someone that I don't thrive in positivity I love seeing other people. Fail.
00:53.74
Rick
Yeah, yeah.
00:57.92
tylerking
And god there's just so much of that going around this week I'm having a great time Twitter ftx I don't know if you're following any of this but I love it FFtx um the one of the I guess the second biggest bitcoin exchange.
01:08.97
Rick
Sdx.
01:16.46
tylerking
Just like completely evaporated like air two days ago so good bit bitcoin hating going on and good Twitter hating going on really having a good.
01:16.91
Rick
Oh.
01:23.21
Rick
So so you're you're happy to see people fail in industries that never should have been started.
01:28.90
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, I'm not like rooting for good people to fail. But these are bad people right.
01:36.73
Rick
So wait. So talk to me about ah the Twitter thing I have been and I've had my head in the sand. What what happened there like it seems like good things are happening am I wrong about that.
01:45.98
tylerking
Ah I'm I'm maybe like as much as I am a hater like I think some of the things that are happening if they were executed correctly, you could get behind like so Elon bought it There's all this. Controversy over like paying $8 for verification stuff is that what you mean by good stuff in you.
02:00.24
Rick
Yeah I think that's a good thing. Maybe not for $8 I think more very like the the way that Twitter was like not letting people get verified accounts was really.
02:11.24
tylerking
Absolutely and like Twitter blue I think it makes sense for Twitter have a subscription so offering and Twitter blue the previous one was so worthless like I wanted to pay but I like the idea behind this but the execution is so bad so they. They launch. It. The only thing it does is it gives you the blue badge. They don't actually verify you. They don't like check who you are so 2 consequences of this one. They then launched a different badge that says official which just means what the old verified one does so now the new verified 1 means absolutely nothing and 2 now anyone can pay $8 to like ah, there's all these like huge brands or like a good version someone signed up as like the official George or the verified George W Bush and like said some like oh I love going to war and like unjust wars or whatever like you can't tell that it's not the real George Bush saying that so it's just created this huge cluster fuck. Ah, that's a lot of fun to watch and.
03:08.89
Rick
Oh my gosh are people are the the power Twitter users are I'm not a power Twitter Twitter user I'd put you in the category of power Twitter user b tear but like what's the sentiment. Is it.
03:19.60
tylerking
Yeah I'm like um I'm like B Tear I think.
03:26.17
Rick
Positive negative or neutral. Okay, no.
03:29.70
tylerking
I mean I think pretty much entirely negative but I'm probably in a little bit of a bubble I'm sure like there are a lot of elon stands out there that are really happy about it. But um, everyone I see is is pretty negative again like some are like like Twitter was a terribly run company changing things from how it was being run. Makes perfect sense but just like you can't come in and lay off 50% of a company without putting any thought into it. So if you saw they laid off 50% then they called a bunch of people and were like hey can you actually come back like we didn't mean it ah several of their head executives just quit last night because writing on the wall like this is not like official but it certainly seems like they think that Twitter is breaking lots of laws now and they're like if I stay I'm going to be like personally jeopardizing myself legally um, there's just so much stuff going on and it's all a disaster It's great.
04:24.57
Rick
Um, do you think what? What do you project will happen like is are people will this work itself out and become less of a cluster or do you think like Twitter is dead and going away.
04:32.70
tylerking
A week ago I would have said like I think you could give an argument that this will be really good for Twitter you could give an argument that'll be really bad and the reality is normally somewhere in between so I would have said like probably nothing will change but they're making so many blunders right now and losing so much talent like it's hard to imagine how this works out in the end for Twitter which. As much joy as I'm getting out of it. It is sad like I there's not really an alternative um a lot of people are going to mastodon. But for anyone who hasn't tried it yet like it's it's not going to replace Twitter um, it's like this open source decentralized.
05:02.10
Rick
What's Macedon.
05:06.42
tylerking
Twitter Alternative I started I signed up for like three years ago or something. Um, it's just like way too complicated and I kind of think from an economic standpoint these things have to be centralized or I don't want to say have to be but like it would have to be something a whole different model. For decentralization to work and this is just Twitter but decentralized I don't see it working.
05:27.70
Rick
Twitter is super valuable man for real time information like I don't go where else. Do you go to get like a Google like search for realtime information from peer from peers like.
05:40.22
tylerking
Yeah there's no ah like no and I love that no one's even talking about Facebook potentially being an alternative ah like newer ones like people talk about Tiktok being Tiktok's not even social media like no one talks to their friends on Tiktok or I shouldn't say nobody maybe gen z's doing that shit but like. Mostly it's just Youtube but with shorter videos. Um, yeah, there's really no I don't know it'll be really interesting to see what happens here because it's possible Twitter just like goes down and they fired all the engineers who know how to bring it back up and like what then you know.
06:14.65
Rick
How many um how many people work at Twitter do you know and how many work there work like have been laid off.
06:16.90
tylerking
Yeah I think it was 7000 prior to the layoffs and they laid off I don't think there's any official numbers but something like 50% is what people are saying and then I saw a people who seem to know what they're talking about on Twitter were kind of saying like generally with any layoff. You expect about another 50% of whoever got laid off and another 50% quit in many cases. Um I don't know if that number should be taken too literally. But you've got to imagine a lot of other people are leaving voluntarily so Twitter could end up with a quarter of what it started with.
06:51.52
Rick
Wow, That's crazy.
06:55.24
tylerking
Yeah, anyway, we'll see we don't need to belabor this any longer. But I'm I got the popcorn out what's going on with you. Yeah, it is. Ah yeah.
07:00.21
Rick
Yeah, this is um this is right up your alley. Um I mean I don't even I don't even know what's happening I'm just heads down lots of stuff going on with my day job and then it's openroment time for Legupel. So I'm trying to be supportive of Jdjd is carrying the banner. So I am. Purely emotional support right now and then I'm in the evenings if I have the energy trying to work through learning Google advertising and social media advertising and retargeting and I'm just setting money on fire I'm pretty sure.
07:30.76
tylerking
Yeah, okay, so for anyone who hasn't listened the last couple episodes as of November first you're an open enrollment. This is like basically the only time during the year that people buy health insurance which is when when you can get new customers more or less so you're ten days in like How's it going.
07:51.70
Rick
I've spent $3000 and I have no idea what it got me but I'm just kidding like we so I I experiment with a bunch of so I guess like high level open enrollment is going well um I think we'll. Will probably I feel pretty confident. We'll cross 100 clients which would be really good at least on current projections. Um I think it'll pick up towards going into thanksgiving and then die down and then pick up again in december um, that's kind of my my prediction. Um, we're averaging about a client. Ah we ah. Ah, bit a day now. Renewals are going well so you know high level high level good where we're fighting traction is not where we thought we were our consumer outreach is not producing results which we thought that would be something because we had success with consumer outreach out of open enrollment period. So we thought when we we did. Cold outreach to consumers that that would because open enrollment be really successful either. That's not holding or people are just not It's like too early for them and we just haven't gotten the response. So um I would say like overall like we are executing at a high like at a high quality level like.
08:53.84
tylerking
Yeah.
09:05.70
Rick
Our execution is good. We have decent strategy. Um, we just it's 10 days in and we're we're we're learning new stuff every day. Um, the good.
09:13.15
tylerking
Well can I ask So you said Consumer outreach isn't working but something's working what is working.
09:19.76
Rick
Um, employer outreach is working so ah, people who own businesses who either don't offer health insurance or are considering canceling their group health insurance or in the middle of a renewal or like this is a unique message. The only messages I get from people are trying to sell me group health insurance like. You help me think through this and we've gotten um over a hundred ah Lee employee leads from basically Census like employer sharing us their employees information to help them and that's pretty good. Um.
09:51.32
tylerking
That's Awesome. Can I ask are you doing anything to like enable the let me draw parallel to myself. Um, like we've been talking about my integration partnerships and how when someone builds in a partnership with us. We want to Like. Do everything we can to help them achieve their goals like what are you doing if if an employer is like here's a list of 50 people. You're allowed to reach out to are you doing other things like prime the pump to say Well why don't you Why don't we kind of Co-market This basically.
10:17.66
Rick
Yeah I mean j d and I have our meetings on Thursday our weekly meeting and this is what what we talked about is like how do you if you just reach out to a employee as an insurance agent. It's like no different than a consumer agent consumer outreach like we have to figure out how to go market and get introduced and.
10:30.60
tylerking
Yeah.
10:35.34
Rick
Um I don't know what the conversion rate will be on a hundred but like we'll see like it's probably greater than 20% like be my guess huge now.
10:40.83
tylerking
Yeah, well I mean if if it is that's and you're only ten days in and you've got a hundred leads so far like yeah, you got that that that would be very encouraging.
10:49.53
Rick
Yeah, so employer outreach is working and then the the problem though is like I wish we had an employer benefits offering if we could just say like hey so you know sign up for this and you know we'll take care of the rest like it would really help us because they could.
10:58.49
tylerking
The first.
11:07.46
Rick
Sign up ad employees employees are good invites like even if we give it away for free like it would just be something tangible that facilitates.
11:13.91
tylerking
Yeah I know back in the day you like I don't know if you still believe this but you were like if we just have a Pdf called like was it a plan document that we can give to an employee. It does absolutely nothing but it's like quote unquote like its benefits. You know.
11:32.83
Rick
Yup, and and just like even if it's like just giving them a mechanism to to introduce us to their employees like that is the that is the like that is like the base product here and we don't have that.
11:33.52
tylerking
Um.
11:46.80
tylerking
Yeah, ah.
11:47.32
Rick
And so it's happening via a spreadsheet share and then it's like manual email introductions like it's not going to happen. So how do you? How do you do that.
11:53.59
tylerking
I mean like it. It seems to me like the most basic version of this and we're doing this right now and again I'm drawing analogies to different things but like next week Michael our head of customer service is like announcing some tweaks to some policies for the customer service team i'm. As we call it cats on the roofing it in the company newsletter this week to just be like hey. Ah, Michael's going to announce some changes next week so that when they get the changes. They're not like slapped across the face with it like can the employer just email everyone and say hey I like this is Rick. Yeah, expects to hear from him or or j d.
12:33.00
Rick
Absolutely And and yeah, we should absolutely have have them do that? Um, yes, it's just not like it's not the same as like of interfaced custom. Yeah, it's It's just.
12:46.60
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
12:49.72
Rick
You got you got it. So it's very manual for Jd and ah and it doesn't we haven't quite figured out how to how to sell and enable it. But anyways, that's going well employer outreach. Ah Google ads I'm setting money on fire I have some learnings there I want to share today I'll make sure I do that.
13:06.23
tylerking
Yeah, you yeah okay.
13:08.21
Rick
And then partner outreach is going decently. Well um, you know so that we're like people who work in the space like we're going out and saying getting responses and I've had a couple calls as a result of that. So it's it's good.
13:18.51
tylerking
Cool, um you and dive into that it sounds like the Adwords thing is the main thing on your mind you you so you let $3000 on fire say more.
13:25.30
Rick
Yeah, like yeah, um, so first I couldn't light money on fire because Google wouldn't let me like the night before open enrollment I was like okay I got to get ad set up and so I was like diving into this and they're like oh you want to advertise for health insurance. Well you need a certification for that. You need to. Prove to us that you're licensed in order to do that. So I'm like great. How do I do that? Well they send me to this thirdparty website that has an application that isn't a docusign document and it's like the weirdest experience i' of my life and I had to pay like $70 and sign up for subscription service to get.
13:42.70
tylerking
Um, and.
14:00.44
Rick
Verified by this third party. They told me when I got submitted the application. It would take up to fourteen days and so I'm like panicking and then I got that they delivered in a couple days and then I had to go to Google and resubmit that certification to Google and then.
14:04.45
tylerking
And.
14:16.10
Rick
They told me that might take up to fourteen days and so it was like twenty eight days of like anxiety and ended up getting done in five days so I was sorry to this December October thirtieth yeah
14:17.68
tylerking
S. What? Okay so you started this like November first ish okay well well I'm glad it didn't take the twenty eight days
14:33.22
Rick
Yeah, so then like four or five days ago I launched ads. Um and I did a very broad like Utah target location but very broad search criteria and man our phone is ringing off the hook which is like.
14:51.80
Rick
Great in a way but they're all just like people who don't speak English or like it's people looking for a government medicaid services or like they think we're the insurance company and they're on a employer group plan. It's like completely unqualified traffic. So that's what I mean by setting money on fire is ah like I.
14:56.71
tylerking
Earth.
15:04.31
tylerking
Yeah.
15:08.59
Rick
Produced a lot of like demand for assistance because yeah, but but j d like it took JD away from like our phone rang off the hook for five days yeah
15:17.41
tylerking
Wow, That's it that reminds me of a time we used to have live chat on our website and like we have api documentation like every company and we would get people going to that page clicking on live chat and being like hi I'm a web developer that was hired to build an api not to work with ours just to build their own api and they're like I don't know how. Can you tell me.
15:37.94
Rick
Yeah, it's like and you like have a customer service policy so you're like trying to be nice to them and it's like what are we doing? ah.
15:42.45
tylerking
Yeah, well. Okay, so you said you did kind of broad like you didn't narrow it very much is that the next step like or are you just done with this.
15:53.70
Rick
No so today. Um I sort of let it play for a few days to like see what happened went through all the search terms I started adding negative key terms to see if that would help but then it wasn't doing anything. It was still like they somehow Google would find another crappy tick key term for us to bid on.
16:06.94
tylerking
Ah.
16:08.55
Rick
So then I just moved everything to phrase match that's and it's very targeted like if I did I started with two 2 campaigns a performance max campaign for those of you who don't know what performance max is like basically it's this a I driven advertising.
16:12.24
tylerking
Are you doing performance Macs or like ah.
16:24.12
tylerking
Take a black box.
16:27.21
Rick
Yeah, black box. You don't know what the hell is going on but like Google basically will take your assets and messaging and and you do get to target certain people based on criteria but like it takes across all of its platforms Youtube google mail search display and you don't have to think about it. But you can't you know you have any idea what's happening so I did I did half half a budget on that and half the budget on search and basically now I'm just search with and I moved from broad match like if you're not familiar with advertising like you can tell Google to pick a.
16:49.83
tylerking
Ah.
16:54.69
tylerking
Yeah.
17:03.61
Rick
To to advertise for a key a keyword or a search term and you have like 3 options you can go like exactly like only show ads to people who exactly search this or you can do like on the other spectrum like do things that like broadly represent this intent um and then in the middle you've got like.
17:17.84
tylerking
But her.
17:22.33
Rick
You know, phrase match like it has these words have to appear in the search and I'm now phrase match and I feel I feel like I'm not setting money on fire anymore.
17:30.49
tylerking
Yeah, okay, that's we we've had the same experience with performance max where it's exactly what you just what you said at the beginning like if you think about all the traffic on the internet. Some of it is like qualified traffic with buying intent and that's what everyone wants and then there's just all this other stuff. That's not that. And performance max is basically saying we're going to use Ai to like you don't have to optimize anything. We're just going to do whatever and of course what the ai ends up doing is finding these incredibly cheap clicks that are worthless. So yeah, like it was sending us I mean we got tons and tons of free trial signups and. Nobody like literally 0 people paid. You know we spent thousands of dollars and and 0 people had any real intent so we had the exact same experience. You did.
18:17.39
Rick
Yep, so now I'm looking at like what we've paid for today and I'm like okay I don't like throw up every time I look at a key term. You wouldn't believe how many variations of medicaid spellings. There are like it's like there's like at least 20 I've I've seen. And I I just like stopped I was like I can't do this anymore. I'm not yeah yeah, yeah, and it was just like okay this is dumb I'm I'm going to phrase match. Yeah, that was when I was at broad match and so then I just went to phrase match and was like okay.
18:34.30
tylerking
So you do It are you? You were trying to play whack amole with like negative Keywords like like none of these should turn up So what? Okay, okay yeah to.
18:50.67
Rick
I'll I'll still do to have to do negative Keywords here but like it'll be much like I'm not going to have medicaid in any of my phrases So those will go away.
18:56.70
tylerking
Yeah, the other the other challenge we ran into with with this was I I should say everything I'm saying everything I ever say about marketing is me just regurgitating what eunice tells me because like I'm not the one actually doing any of it. But um, it's it's also really hard to get. Ah. Like you don't want if someone searches for less knowing Crm I don't want to pay $5 a click to advertise to them. Um, yeah, we actually do advertise on our own keywords but you should be paying much much much lower for your branded keywords but if you do like if you let google run wild with like search intent and stuff. They're going to end up just selling you a bunch of traffic that was already googling your website and that's another reason not to do those broad keywords anyway, cool. So so okay, learning very very quick learning.
19:40.47
Rick
Yep, it.
19:43.75
Rick
Yeah, so so I think positive like negative like I mean facetious like I I've definitely wasted some money but like I learned we've learned like our pace of learning right now at Leg of health is as rapid as it's ever been and like we're building some conviction around. What we're going to do for the rest of open enrollment and we're only 10 days in so I'm pretty happy with with like I said our execution and I think it's only going to improve as we go and I think the other big update I have is we we we updated our website. Yeah.
20:03.63
tylerking
Yeah.
20:10.20
tylerking
Yeah. Sorry before we dive into that one thing I did want to ask like is a lesson from the whole like potential twenty Eight day delay plus not having edwards figured out like should you have started this october fifteenth or October first
20:31.71
Rick
Um, I mean yeah and hindsight.
20:34.26
tylerking
I'm not saying this to like blame you but just like for the listener hearing this like what I'm hearing is don't launch on the day that you actually want to launch launch a month before that you know.
20:44.16
Rick
Yeah, ah, yes, but but I think that there's exceptions to that whereas like was I working on the highest priority thing in October yes, like would this have I got to this as soon as I could um and ah ran into all sorts of roadblocks that I didn't expect. Um.
20:54.47
tylerking
Yeah, okay.
21:01.86
Rick
And you know that wasn't great. So I yeah I should have done it sooner. Um, but I don't like no no, no, no, no, you're right? but it's good point like yeah if you're especially in a regulated industry I think like if listen if we weren't in regulated industry would have been an unissue.
21:06.60
tylerking
Yeah, but I wasn't trying to point fingers. Just yeah, hear you.
21:19.23
Rick
If you're in a regulated industry like you have to like just add buffer to everything you want to do because there's all this stuff that you never think about that ends up smacking in the face.
21:27.14
tylerking
It reminds me of all the people who um I'm sure you've met people like this who are like oh yeah, I'm an aspiring entrepreneur I want to start a business one day but like everything's not right I don't have the perfect idea yet or this or that and I'm just always like well when you have that perfect idea you're sure to fail because it's going to be your first time trying.
21:42.71
Rick
And.
21:44.69
tylerking
Um, like try and like assume your first attempt's going to be a failure and don't waste that don't have that failure happen when it counts.
21:52.21
Rick
Yep, that's fair. Yeah I mean I think like if I go a very important thing for me before I wanted to test any advertising was getting our messaging and website right? and so getting that out was priority number one. It just took longer than um.
22:03.95
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
22:06.63
Rick
I would have liked but I'm very very happy with our website now. Ah that was a another big thing that we launched and people like we are very clear about what we do now I can explain it. It gets reinforced throughout our website. Our website's converting people and so that's that's great.
22:20.27
tylerking
Nice yeah, looks good. Um, did you have ah sorry, kind of cut you off when you're going to the website earlier. Do you have any like deep dive top like discussion on that.
22:24.80
Rick
Thanks.
22:34.13
Rick
Um, just that like messaging is hard and you know you know like I know we have it right now I have so really high confidence we have it right? and that feels It's a huge relief and it's it's Unlocked. A lot of Um. Unblocked a lot of work. Um, and so now it's just like I feel like we're in just preaching mode versus like like testing mode. So um, and and so it's good. Yeah yeah.
23:00.25
tylerking
Yeah, that's cool. Can I tell a little anecdote about messaging being hard. So um, we've all seen these like Twitter threads where someone's like I'm going to like break down how some successful business how they do it um. For the first time ever. This was a few months ago someone did this on the lessing cm homepage it was like here's like an amazing way to position yourself and do all this and it was like a really flattering thread that acted like we're just like experts on everything but we were literally. The day that this got tweeted eunice was about to push the button to completely change all our messaging and she was like I'm just going to ruin this guy all this work. This guy put in to talk about how great our messaging is and I'm going to ruin it by because it wasn't actually working. Ah so like I only say that to say. Ah.
23:41.78
Rick
Yeah.
23:47.85
tylerking
If someone's out there like trying to learn best practices Even there's just a huge amount of misinformation out there. Um, but ah like you just have to do it and see what works.
23:54.81
Rick
The the best. Yeah, do it? Best way The the best framework that we found for this was do you remember that book um was obviously awesome. Yes that I re we we worked for that through that framework and that was really helpful.
24:01.44
tylerking
Obviously awesome.
24:10.45
Rick
Where where we were the big the big epiphany we had was getting really focused on what makes us unique as an agent not trying to like 2 things like not trying to be an agent who does everything ah and also not trying not to be an agent like those are the 2 things we've been trying to do is like.
24:17.11
tylerking
Brother.
24:30.90
Rick
Hey we want to be an agent and just say all the things that we do um or like we're trying to position ourselves as a concierge and not say we're an agent like now we're an agent but we are unique in 4 ways and those four ways are really important. Um, and ah.
24:40.79
tylerking
A.
24:46.11
Rick
Now we know what those 4 things are and we're just going to preach preach preach.
24:49.82
tylerking
Cool. Well, That's awesome I'm um I said this before but I my if if I were like betting ah I bet the end of open enrollment is going to be like an order of magnitude more activity than right now because even internally at lessening serum. We can't get our employees to elect. There's no,, There's no decisions to make it's like push this button and we are like hounding people like the day before it's due like and it's not like a mass email. We're like hey person sitting next to me whose name I know push the button. Um, so.
25:09.11
Rick
25:22.10
tylerking
Yeah, it's it's encouraging that so much good stuff's happening this early in open enrollment.
25:26.55
Rick
Yeah, thank you? I'm ah, it's definitely listen I I have a lot of conviction already about what we need to do next year and I think that um, it's going the ah anything that happens is ah is icing at this point I feel really good about. I don't know I've never people keep ah for 10 years I'd never felt like we were ready for open enrollment like this time of year. Um, and I just I'm really proud of ah our preparation and how we're executing I just we're going to leave it all out in the field and I like I feel really good about it. So thanks for thanks for listening to me and being interested in this i.
25:46.97
tylerking
Yeah.
25:53.70
tylerking
Yeah.
26:00.70
tylerking
Yeah.
26:03.57
Rick
I I need to I have 1 more thing can I talk about 1 more thing that is of interest to you and I I it's related to the website and then let's go to your topics because I know this ah I'm less interesting than you. Um, the the okay open graph.
26:14.48
tylerking
Take it away. Yeah.
26:22.63
Rick
How have I gone 10 years without understanding that knowing what I know about Seo I just now like figured out what opengraph was did you I never ever thought about it like even when I saw in whatflow I was like what the what is that I'm to say fuck fuck what the fuck is what.
26:30.71
tylerking
Um, like you've never done any open graph stuff at all prior to this.
26:39.94
tylerking
Rick's trying to get the listeners engaged you with profanity. Ah.
26:42.72
Rick
And so yeah, like I I every time we share our website on social media leg up HealthJd's fat image of his face is like like the social sharing thing. And and so I'm like why is this Happening. He's like texting me like why is this happening I Want to share a site on social media so went through and like apparently some way I've configured webflow is like grabbing that image because it was the last image I uploaded to and it you you do it because I I ended up cop.
27:09.56
tylerking
So so yeah, do you want to like for people who don't know what open graph is like want to give the tldr.
27:19.66
Rick
I I remember you ah remember you telling me about this at some point and mean not understanding so I wouldn't found that and anyway good.
27:23.72
tylerking
Okay, yeah, so I mean maybe maybe there's more to it that you want to share but like basically if you post a link to a website in any number of places like on Facebook or Twitter or slack. It doesn't just share the link. It shares like a little snippet to to preview the website. Um, where does that snippet come from how does it get the text. How does it get the image. The text is easy. Normally it's just going to take like the title like it's the same as basic seo if you're doing your text-based seo fine. That's not a problem but the image you can either tell it when someone embeds this on Facebook. Use this image or you can not tell it that in which case it's just going to pick an image and it seems like he's picking j d's fat fucking face did I get that right? but.
28:11.32
Rick
And he is Didy's jany is a beautiful human being I want to be very clear and he's very fit. We have fit but but like he it's just like it's just kind of blood it distorts his image. You know like it distorts his face like because it's not the right size and um, it's not it true. It's not like what what.
28:14.81
tylerking
Just a big image of his head.
28:25.49
tylerking
Yeah, and what and final thing I'll add to this what webflow says So I wish webflow What what I wanted last time I set up a web website was like just use this image. No matter what page it is like I wanted because I was setting up lessenowingbusiness dot Com which is like my blog.
28:27.15
Rick
It's not representative of our brand.
28:42.97
tylerking
Like just here's a generic graphic use this for every page and webflow is like no so what you're supposed to do is every page should have its own custom graphic that like when you see so like a blog post like the image has the title of the blog post in it or some other relevant graphic which really. Causes people to be more likely to click through from Twitter or Facebook or wherever so you did that? Basically oh.
29:04.44
Rick
Yup I haven't done it because I don't know how to design things. So I've hit a wall so I've hit a wall in 2 areas I've hit a wall in design but it's affecting this open graph issue and our ability to share on social media with just organically ah and then it's also hitting like display ads for retargeting. And so I've got to my my next sort of like project now that I've got the Google advertising situation under control is I got to learn how to design things and I have no idea where to start maybe that's another topic we can talk about another time. But yeah.
29:32.50
tylerking
Can I actually think I have so I'm like ah a better designer than most people and like definitely not as good as like if you hired a professional designer. So I because of that I I find a lot of tricks that get you you know 90 95% of the way there. My trick for open graph images so take go on like ah unplash or is that unsplash unbounce. Whatever now on splash like some good high quality free royalty free photo thing pick a cool like generic image. So like a mountain or whatever put that as the background. Then take a draw a rectangle over it that covers the whole canvas and just like make it 80% opacity so you can kind of see the image poking through the the color and then make the color just a gradient from like green to blue or whatever like bright vibrant colors right? there you've got. An interesting visual that means absolutely nothing but looks decent and then just put the the title of the page as text in bold white text above it that'll get you like 90% of the way there if you just do that.
30:37.98
Rick
Thank you so much. What tool would you use to do this in.
30:41.28
tylerking
I Would do it in figma I Think the average person should probably do it in Canva just because I use figma all the time I'm very comfortable with it. But like figma is a lot more powerful than Canva. So like if if you don't want to otherwise.
30:45.30
Rick
Why why? figma over camba.
30:57.41
tylerking
If you don't otherwise have use for learning how to use this tool Canva is going to have a shorter learning curve.
31:03.80
Rick
Okay, thank you I think you just saved me hours of work. So I will ah I am going to fix this problem and JD's gonna be very happy about it.
31:14.40
tylerking
Cool, Yeah, um, go like here I tell you what this this will benefit me tweet a link to your favorite blog post on less of and less annoing business and you'll see my open graph image and then you can copy that. Okay.
31:26.28
Rick
I've already gone to the page source of your blogs and looked at what you done and you you actually it's ironic because I we have a Utah focus and your background image and your opograph images is the utah famous arch picture yeah art from arches park.
31:40.54
tylerking
Yep, sure is okay say you did your research. Yeah I mean did does that one look decent enough to you.
31:43.36
Rick
yeah yeah I mean it was I mean it's perfect. It's it's like it's exactly what you said? it's like good enough. Um, and it's better than nothing or JD's distorted face.
31:58.83
tylerking
Yeah, um, all right? Well I guess it's my turn to talk Ben huh.
32:03.90
Rick
Thank you for indulging me in like the majority of the episode I Ah I'm I I'm pumped about the business right now. So thank you.
32:09.69
tylerking
Yeah, no, that's cool I I expect at least until the end of open enrollment. These episodes are mostly about you. Um I also don't I mean I have like there sometimes I always have stuff to say I always have like you know it's a 19 person company. Something's happened in the last two weeks but
32:14.40
Rick
Ah, thanks.
32:25.74
tylerking
Sometimes it's more interesting than others I don't think I have a ton of really ah, really juicy stuff. Um, yeah I'll start here I every six months give a presentation to the company if you've been a longtime listener. You've heard me say this like 6 different times. But ah the the cadences meet with the leadership team make some decisions. Whatever. Then the leadership team presents to the company and then I do six months I do a 1 on one with each person at the company where we talk about whatever they want but like reactions of the presentation and stuff like that. So I'm ah 2 thirds of the way through those one on ones right now gave the presentation. All that stuff.
33:04.87
tylerking
Um, yeah, yeah, so I I never know how much I've been I try to talk about the economic uncertainty like in our newsletter and I mentioned it in the presentation. But I also think I got to be careful because like.
33:05.60
Rick
What's what's learnings like is it is it different the economic uncertainty causing any Strife like what's what's the topic.
33:23.49
tylerking
It's hard to talk about it and not make it sound like I'm saying layoffs are coming um because like my point is like layoffs aren't coming. We're Bootstrapped. We're profitable. You don't need to worry about it. Let's but let's see what we can learn from all these other companies that are having a lot of problems but like ah if you talk about if you say the word layoff as a boss. Employees. Don't let hear any of the words on the other sides of that that word. Um, so I think I might be shooting myself in in the foot even mentioning it. But yeah I did mention it. Um I didn't really have much to say about it I was like you know we're just going to wait like none of this has impacted us yet. But if it does we we might like. Stop getting catered lunch once once a week you know Yeah yeah, I do think like so the most obvious thing in a layoff is or not layoff. Ah guys stop saying that word. Ah recession is like.
34:05.10
Rick
We'll deal with it when it impacts us. We'll talk about it and we'll we'll deal with it.
34:17.11
tylerking
Just cut costs but there is I think other stuff to consider like should it change product priorities should we? you know you could do stuff to retain current customers like I I haven't gone deep into that. Maybe I should? Um, yeah so one one thing I talked about was the financial. Update. Partially recession stuff partially just like we're already in a growth slump anyway, the big theme I said there was like six months ago the whole point of the presentation was like we're in a growth slump. We need to get out of it here's the plan in this one I was kind of like we haven't gotten out of it yet. But we're actually in a better position than we were six months ago we haven't gotten our growth back on track but we have six months of stability Six months ago it was like are we actually dropping still it wasn't clear. Um, now it's like we're not dropping. We're stable. We're growing. We're just growing slowly. Ah and we have more money in the bank because we've slightly overperformed what my forecasts were and stuff like that. So. Was like we still need to fix this problem but we we actually have a little more runway to fix it than we did six months ago so was 1 theme. Um I announcedunce a couple new policies I never know if people care about this but I'll just say it like ah because you know when you're running a business in the in the early early Days you're like there are no policies. Just let's make it work like you and Jd certainly I don't think are like trying to write wiki articles about whether or not to do support on Thanksgiving. You've got bigger things to work on there. Ah, but that's where we are now is like for a long time. We're like I don't know we don't get many support.
35:45.74
tylerking
Requests on Thanksgiving and no one wants to work. So maybe if someone just checks it a couple times throughout the day we're fine. We officially decided Thanksgiving Christmas New Year's we're not going to do support anymore and we're shutting down phone support. We're just not so taking voicemails from December Twenty Third to January second that's like 1 policy change. We made.
36:04.21
Rick
It's a big that's a pretty big decision. Um I think that's interesting, interesting to dive into Wow like that's a big decision especially for for seasonal businesses that may be using your um product on those days like heavily.
36:19.50
tylerking
I Sorry I should say people can still book calls with us. We are not monitoring inbound phone calls because the the reason for this being like booked calls are very predictable. We can say here's how many slots there are once they're gone. They're gone. We know how many people are working. We can allocate the right number of slots.
36:20.77
Rick
Ah.
36:23.91
Rick
Okay, got it.
36:36.99
tylerking
With inbound phone calls. It's like someone has to be sitting waiting for the phone to ring all day but the reality is during that time a year like almost no one calls So it's a huge waste of a person's time. Yeah.
36:42.27
Rick
Um, got it got it got I got it So so it sounds like you'll have like emergency on call support. Still got it. Okay, then that is not as big of a deal as I thought it was.
36:54.44
tylerking
Um, yeah, but it it's just one of those things where if you like eventually you have to write down a policy for all these little things and.
37:03.48
Rick
Otherwise you have to make the decisions like and it gets so complex that it hurts your brain and you're not able to function on what matters because this doesn't matter fundamentally this doesn't matter from like a decision making standpoint anymore. Um.
37:09.34
tylerking
Yeah.
37:14.85
tylerking
Right? And I'm actually I'm going to tie this into something I'm going to say in a minute but like it also creates potentially like inequity between employees where like is there pressure to occasionally work Christmas day because we kind of say like in theory we will respond prior to this. We said like yeah if someone. Emails us on Christmas not many people do. But if they do. We're kind of doing support and then a new we hire a newerm coach and they're like well does that mean like 1 out of every 5 christmases I should be working I don't really know if you don't define it. Some employees step up and do it and some don't and it's kind of unfair to the people who do um, another little minor policy thing this year. So we coming back from the pandemic were more remote than we were before but still not fully remote. But 1 thing we did was 2 remote periods three week periods so three weeks in the winter three weeks in the summer where like we kind of went remote first shut the office down. Ah basically everyone loved it in the winter like I kind of talked to everybody like how was it. Everyone loved the winter one and everyone was like we don't need the summer one so we're getting rid of the summer one next year um there's probably no interesting takeaways there I'm just brain dumping here.
38:31.30
Rick
Um, let's see um what? what? um like man like did you like upset anyone like does anyone is there an anything com emotion in this like six month update or is it more like just like hey everything's good like.
38:46.33
tylerking
Yeah, ah, this was the least inspired six month presentation I've ever got like I was a week before when I had all this time blocked off of my calendar like start preparing the presentation I was like I don't even know what to talk about um the stuff like there's always this kind of somewhat emotionless like here are some policy updates. Then I normally do a deep dive on some topic the topic this time was how we do project management which certainly is not particularly emotional. Ah but I think it is more interesting at least than the other stuff. Maybe it won't make for interesting radio here but like it was like. The way we decide what projects to work on the way we prioritize stuff I actually talked about this on the podcast that what we've always done is each developer works on a separate project. So like if we have 2 developers working kind of on 2 different features or whatever we have 3 developers working on 3 different features. The biggest part of this change in my mind is we're going to say no, let's. Let's define what the most important thing is and everyone for whom it makes sense to work on that will be working on it and maybe there's like a second or third based on skill set or like too many cooks in the kitchen but we're not going to be working on 6 different projects anymore. We're going to be working on 2 um, that's probably the biggest change that came out of it and yeah. And been talking to people in one on ones and I think people are excited for that.
40:02.36
Rick
that's that's cool um I listen I think you have some really exciting things happening right now. Did you guys get into like integrations and like specific growth strategies that are that are starting to get some traction or is that more like a kind of part of like. The the day-to-day already and it didn't make sense to bring it up in the six month
40:18.26
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, good question so to 2 answers that one the the format of the presentation is we have a leadership team which is kind of like the leader of each part of the business. So customer service dev de I work and growth and so the growth units our growth person gave a presentation before I talked. Like it's an hour and a half presentation. The first forty five minutes to an hour is the the other leaders talking. She talked about here's what we're doing for growth so it was covered but not by me. Um, but additionally yeah, like I do send a newsletter out every week where I the reason this this presentation was so boring I think is because like.
40:44.28
Rick
Oh that's cool.
40:57.26
tylerking
It doesn't make sense to hold important information so that I can like blow. Everyone's mind in this presentation. So I just tell people stuff as it comes up and as a result I don't really have a ton of news that people don't already know to share in this.
41:11.49
Rick
That's interesting.
41:13.80
tylerking
Yeah, like if if this if I were Steve Jobs I'd be like I'm going to keep everyone in the dark so that this presentation will be really snazzy and like I think that's a really stupid way to do things.
41:22.25
Rick
Well I mean the good the leadership all the leadership books say that you know you want to be 90% reinforcement 10% new information not like 90% new information when you're speaking like ah you know 10% reinforcement so it sounds like you're doing it right.
41:29.45
tylerking
The.
41:36.91
tylerking
That's for yeah, but I that's actually a great reminder. Um I Probably I I know the reinforcement thing a little but I probably like I was when I said I was like not sure what to talk about I wasn't thinking Oh I can just talk about stuff I've already talked about I was like it's got to be new, but it's gonna be like ah. Pretty minor new thing because I've already said all the major new things reinforcements a good word to keep in my head for next time I do that.
42:00.13
Rick
Yeah, it's it's what happens as the company grows and becomes more stable and yeah, it's like you want people to focus on the same stuff over and over again. Would you have any updates on your integration work.
42:11.38
tylerking
Yeah, um, yeah, yeah.
42:16.28
Rick
I'm super interested in that in ah and that project I think it's super cool for if you have if you haven't heard ah Tyler's basically building a growth model through integrations. It's really interesting and and value add to their customers.
42:24.19
tylerking
Yeah, and I mean we'll so we'll see if it's a growth model because like the basic the the pitch is right? We have a lot of users relative to our number of integrations. So if you build an integration with us. We'll send it to your users. The people building integrations primarily are smaller companies that don't have many customers send to us. So it's kind of like. Make our product better is the first win and then maybe this leads to customers question Mark um I don't know. But yeah, update so I think last time I talked I said basically that reform the form building tool and zip message had both launched their integrations one very cool and kind of weird things. Is Peter the founder of reform has a podcast called out of beta which I listen to and I think he listens to this. Maybe so we're kind of talking to each other through parasocial relationships on podcasts. Um.
43:18.60
Rick
Ah, it's not a paras such for relationship anymore. Yeah.
43:18.66
tylerking
Well well, it's like 2 it's a bidirectional parasocial relationship sort of anyway. Ah, but so what was very very cool is um, the last both of the last 2 episodes on out of beta he talked about this integration and 2 episodes ago. He was like oh yeah, like it. It went really well or it's going really well and it was very almost like an out of bodydy experience hearing all the things I told you that I want it to be like I want them to be like oh we got ah a bunch of new signups from it and like like this marketing support and like the communication worked well and like I just want to be a good partner and like he was he just said all of those things. On the podcast and it was it was awesome to hear and kind of surreal. Um, now it still needs to be like it'll be months before I think anyone can say this definitely worked or didn't but ah, that was cool.
44:06.67
Rick
That's awesome. Is there any insight into like did he share publicly any insight into signups or numbers or conversions from listening.
44:15.10
tylerking
He didn't say numbers. But I think he said like knowing what he knows about how many customers we have he thinks ah I could be getting this wrong I think he said he thinks point five percent of all of our users signed up or maybe all of our customers which is like I'm.
44:28.33
Rick
Um, ah a lot.
44:31.22
tylerking
I'm pretty happy with that. That's cool. Um I don't think that would I don't think like everyone who builds an integration with us should expect that because a web form tool was one of our most requested tools and we didn't have anything prior to this. Ah. Whereas zip message I would guess got significantly fewer because like our customers were're not knocking down our door like hey can we have an integration with an asynchronous video messaging tool. Um, but yeah, it's it sounds like like over over 100 people probably if I'm inferring correctly from that I don't know. Ah, yeah, that's neat and our customers are happy right? They're like we've wanted integrations like this for a long time. Um, yeah, exactly. Um, we've got another. We've got like 2 more that have like kind of soft launch like you could go use them right now but we haven't announced them yet. So.
45:13.28
Rick
It's awesome. Win Win win.
45:23.97
tylerking
Ah, the next 2 newsletters we have we already have new integrations to announce in each of them. Unis launched like a public integrations directory on our marketing site so you can go there and like you've seen this on a million other kind of bigger saas tools websites where you can filter like I want to see the web form builders. Even though there's only 1 Um. Yeah, we're we're kind of marching ahead on that we we also just got a landing page up for pitching the partner. The integration partner thing where it's like here's what we'll do for you. So my hope is like we're still months away from me really really stepping on the gas here because we don't have our new Api fully launched. But once we do. We've got all the pieces in place to like I'm going to go on Twitter assuming it still exists I'm going to just I'm going to talk more about it on the podcast and be like here is the the landing page if you're interested. It's going to sell you on the idea of building an integration.
46:14.36
Rick
That's awesome is great.
46:17.78
tylerking
Thanks I Yeah I'm obviously this idea came up independently of you but I do think you're like being a cheerleader for it has kind of pushed both me and eunice to um to push a little harder. So so thank you for that.
46:30.18
Rick
Yeah, this stuff. Yeah, this stuff has so much. Um, word of mouth. Ah good good like I don't know what the right word is but like good Mojo like I Just think this has so much like potential and you don't know where it's going to come from but like man I just.
46:38.70
tylerking
Yeah.
46:46.59
tylerking
You you know what else feels just what what we'll see does it actually get us customers because again, it's mostly us sending customers the other direction but the thing that feels so cool about it to me I keep I've said a million times on this podcast I've never really found like a good marketing channel and what I really mean by that.
46:47.51
Rick
It's cool.
46:53.51
Rick
Nip.
47:05.65
tylerking
We've had marketing channels that bring us users but we've never found one where it's like if we put in 10 hours of work. We get out some output and so if it's working we could do more of it and get more output. This is the first time it's like. Oh yeah, like we are repeating this partnership with multiple people over and over and like I'm pretty sure we can keep doing this more I've almost borderline never felt this in the whole history of the company like having an actual repeatable model.
47:35.73
Rick
That's cool. Um I'm looking at your integration page. It looks great on lessannoying serum dot Com What are you using for the search Functionality Jetbooze I Knew it is that pretty easy to implement like did you have to.
47:37.98
tylerking
Thanks.
47:45.81
tylerking
Jet boost. Yep.
47:50.65
Rick
Be involved in that or did you just take care of it hundred percent
47:53.64
tylerking
I I I was the one who knew about it so she built it with like some other approach I don't know how and I was like looks great. Use jet boost. That was my involvement. Um, yeah.
48:02.20
Rick
Very cool. M.
48:07.30
tylerking
The the no code ecosystem at work. Um, what else do I have here? Yeah so I know we we already kind of talked about recession stuff but like we we talked about in the context of did I talk about in this presentation and does it affect less knowing serum I'm curious.
48:25.32
tylerking
Not that this is the first time we've talked about it but like a lot's been happening stripe in particular just laid off 14 % of their employees. Um, a lot of the other layoffs you see like meta laid off people. But it's like well yeah meta is a garbage company like like. They're they're doing layoffs because the business is suffer like they're a bad. Yeah right? And Twitter is another one where it's like the layoffs there have very little to do with macroeconomic circumstances but like stripe is the darling of silicon valley it seems like they're still growing. Everything is going. Well.
48:45.60
Rick
Um, yeah, that's different stripe and Meta are not the same thing.
49:01.80
tylerking
I have my own thoughts on this but like does the fact that they did layoffs mean anything to you.
49:03.71
Rick
Um, yeah.
49:08.70
tylerking
What does it mean to you? Yeah could okay.
49:11.41
Rick
Ah, it means something. Yeah I mean it's a signal like it's ah I think um, this is good. It just says like hey this is big like this is a big shift in the macroeconomic environment. Um. Everyone will be affected like even stripe.
49:28.67
tylerking
Yeah, well, that's the question like there is no recession outside of tech right now right? like it's only tech companies doing layoffs. Every other industry is booming as far as I can tell.
49:41.99
Rick
I don't know about that I get the I mean I haven't really looked into this so I've had my head down but like the signals I look at are like I look at the market like s and p 500 is sort of my go to like okay, what's happening there and then I like look at interest rates and I look at home sales. Um, and then I start talking to people and like the other like big signal that I have access to through windfall is I run our town acquisition or I'm the executive cat runs are are talk but I help manage it from an executive level and like agencies like are huge like leader. So. When you're doing recruiting at ah, any size firm but like you you kind of 2 levers to pull. Um, you can try to hire people yoursels by posting ads on ah like job boards or getting referrals or hiring a recruiter to work for you like on on salary. To reach out to people. Um or you can contract with third -party firms to do so recruiting for you on ah, you know either a retained or contingent basis where you pay them a percentage of the person's salary if you hire them agencies are dropping their fees like 50 they are letting people go.
50:51.89
tylerking
Oh.
50:56.79
Rick
And that is a huge signal that hiring is slowing across the board now a lot of the agencies that we work with are like indexed into tech. Um, so there could be. It could be part of like it could be part of that but it it doesn't feel limited to tech to me. Um.
51:00.32
tylerking
But. Yeah, okay, that's what I was gonna say.
51:14.90
Rick
I Don't have any good data points to back that up but like it doesn't feel like it.
51:15.14
tylerking
Like unemployment is still like effectively zero outside of the tech industry. Anyway, I I definitely buy the argument that like this is the very early stages of it affecting other industries and it will but like. And maybe this moment I'm wrong, but a month ago I think this would have been right that like there's a recession in tech and not elsewhere and you could I mean so yeah, well I think we're already technically and ah the most common one is two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth.
51:41.18
Rick
I What is the definition of a recession I never remember but like ah yeah.
51:51.50
tylerking
I believe and I think we're already there. Um, but colloquially people just mean like a shit storm right.
51:51.42
Rick
Okay I I Yeah I think a shit store like I think we're in for ah, a really difficult like time for the next couple years. That's very different.
52:01.92
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, so like the doom and gloom story of stripe doing layoffs because they said in that announcement like we just hit our new record of transactions like we've been growing the but the doom and gloom version is stripe has more access than almost any company on earth to like. Real data about how the economy is doing not just their credit card that like the transactions they're processing but they know people's churn rates. They know like expansion revenue they they have all these like metrics. Um, and you could say well they see something brewing that other. Economic indicators haven't caught on to yet or the optimistic take is like everyone else is doing layoffs. This is a great opportunity to get rid of your 14 % worst employees like it could be either side I don't know.
52:48.72
Rick
Yeah I mean I I don't think yeah I I think this is going to get bad man like I I Just I can't tell I'm not like an economist like I'm not like going to be able to articulate why so that. Makes total sense but I just all the signals. The signals that I see are not positive.
53:14.41
tylerking
To some extent if everyone agrees it's going to be bad then it will be bad. It seems like increasingly everyone agrees on that. Um, although yeah, so then there's back to the like how does this affect not necessarily our company specifically but like.
53:15.89
Rick
A.
53:29.16
tylerking
People listening to this and all that I do think so Mark Benioff the founder of Salesforce has said his biggest regret professionally or his biggest mistake or whatever is that he like reduced investment during the 2008 like great recession that he kind of slowed things down and he was like. The best companies in the world. Their biggest periods of growth are right after a recession. It's probably not the case that a recession is good for the company in the short term like probably things do get worse. You drop things are hard but like the the period right? as things start bouncing back seems like a really critical point in time and so I have started kind of thinking like What do you do with that like one way to look at is don't do anything like just just stick to the plan and while everyone else around you crumbles if you can make it through that's great. Another part of me is like start cutting now. So that we have more money to invest like you can't buy the dip if you don't sell before the dip right? Ah so anyway. I'm not this is all just idle daydreaming I'm I'm not like actually doing anything but those are thoughts going through my head.
54:33.72
Rick
I mean hindsight with everything is so much easier than foresight like I wish I had bought property in park city in 2008 in 38012 like I wish I had done a lot of things differently in the past. Um.
54:42.61
tylerking
Yeah, ah.
54:49.39
Rick
I Unfortunately like there's no crystal ball I don't know what's going to happen all I can do it like that's part of the reason like I like ah default alive start last companies is um, you can survive uncertainty you know in in a way that like you know a lot more. Um.
54:52.54
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
55:09.90
Rick
You know, ah you have a lot more chances of success or survival through uncertainty than a company that's living on the edge.
55:17.86
tylerking
Yeah let me try to string together a few different things and maybe pull an insight out of it or maybe this will be a bunch of hot air. Um Ben Orenstein the founder of tuple on his podcast art of product like he has okay. What happened is they started tuple to replace a different product screen hero that but was a pair programming remote pair programming app people like screen hero slack acquired it and then um they started tuple to kind of replace what was lost with screen hero and then after tuple had started slack. Shut down screen hero and that was I mean tuple probably would have been a big success anyway. But that was like a really nice moment like of tons of customers went from screen hero to tuple and if you listen the podcast at that time this was two years ago or something Ben is like yeah this was incredibly lucky but you have to be there. You have to have the thing already there to capture the luck when it happens. Um, so what? I just said that like right after a recession is when all the opportunity is I don't think that means start a company right? after a session. Think that means start a company right now and have it not have it still exist. Um, sorry I'm going to continue torturing this storyline here but back to the out of beta podcast with Peter from reform if you go listen to their most recent episode. He's basic like reform is not default alive yet.
56:49.82
tylerking
It's still pretty small. It's a good product but it's a competitive space and he's basic like we're just trying to figure out like yeah growth but also like how do we make our lifestyles more sustain. Maybe it's getting a side job or whatever How do we make it so the company can just continue existing and I think that's egg egg. Absolutely the right attitude to have right now for all kinds of bootstrapped companies is just I want to still exist when the upswing comes it doesn't even like be a cockroach. Basically yeah, but but like I.
57:18.88
Rick
I Want to survive.
57:23.54
tylerking
I think a lot of times when people talk about surviving they mean it differently. They mean it like I want to I want to grow through it or I like I don't know they don't mean I'm going to like go into stasis and just be I'm going to have this reservoir to collect luck. When the opportunity arises two years from now.
57:42.45
Rick
I like I like the um surface area like you can't lucky things don't have good luck doesn't happen. You don't like have the potential for it. Um, and so you're basically saying preserve luck ah the opera just preserve a service area for luck.
57:50.66
tylerking
Yeah.
57:59.22
Rick
As the priority and like you know that may mean thinking about your business differently. It may mean thinking about your time differently. Um, it's not like 1 thing you really helped me with in last podcast was I was feeling like oh god like either open enrollment is going to be successful or it's not and legup health's future is dependent on. Open enrollment being successful like it was 0 and one it's like no no, no, there are infinite like scenarios between shutting the business down and it failing and it being done and it's succeeding ah perfectly as I imagine it and you know that's what I think what you're getting at is like.
58:21.24
tylerking
This is.
58:33.48
tylerking
Um, yeah.
58:36.64
Rick
You can so you can survive this and and be in like delay your dreams um and into a better time if you're thoughtful about it.
58:43.90
tylerking
Yeah, well and that you yeah 100% agree and you can't get lucky your business can't get lucky if you don't have a business. We're going to have a big luck supernova potentially 2 years from now and maybe the right way to react is right now is to say.
58:49.39
Rick
Correct.
59:01.78
tylerking
I Have to have like if you don't have a business right now and this is this is a terrible time and a great time to start one I think anyway maybe that was me trying too much to be a a thought leader and get the ah get the engagement um all right? You got anything else before we call it here.
59:12.55
Rick
We're great. You're a great thought leader Tyler nope um, not at all I'm definitely got to go at some point in the next day or 2 build open graph images on figma or canva. So um.
59:25.19
tylerking
Do it.
59:27.84
Rick
You know I'll have to ah I'll be tweeting about it if you are interested. Ah so if you'd like to view past topics and show notes visit start last dot com see you next week
59:30.50
tylerking
All right sounds good.
59:36.44
tylerking
See you.