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In this episode, we talk about how we’re thinking about reallocating marketing and sales resources here at Less Annoying CRM.
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.
00:02.56
Rick
What's up this week Tyler
00:03.80
tylerking
Ah, not much I've well I'm not having as good of a time as you I think Rick is doing his first on air drinking of alcohol we've ever had before having a beer you I've never no no no no I don't think we have no, you can.
00:11.79
Rick
That is not true. We definite. We've had a beer before on one. Well then now I'm going to put it away I'm not gonna do that. Not going to. It seems bad it. It wouldn't take much.
00:20.92
tylerking
Break the seal man. We'll see if you become a better podcaster. Ah.
00:28.23
tylerking
Ah, ah, but yeah, we are. We are end of the day here. So Rick's having a ah little happy hour. Um, cool anyway, yeah, some Utah you what? what is it? No a low alcohol. Yeah, um.
00:35.76
Rick
You type beer. We don't have to worry about it is what I'm saying low alcoholic percentage.
00:46.42
tylerking
I think our our episode last week or or two weeks ago resonated with people. Did you did anyone reach out to you about that the episode.
00:56.17
Rick
Um, no actually but I saw all the people who reached out to you.
00:58.76
tylerking
Yeah, a bunch did um I think talking about how hard marketing is I think a lot of people are experiencing that um a bunch of people reach out with some with thoughts and ideas and stuff and some just being like yeah it's shitty huh.
01:15.64
tylerking
So I don't know a lot of people are struggling with marketing right now I think.
01:19.46
Rick
Yeah, it's like I mean if it were easy. Everyone would do it.
01:23.91
tylerking
Yeah, um, despite that less knowing serum just had 1 of our best growth months ever? Um, yeah, unfortunately that that's the problem I wish I could be like we solved all our growth problems and it's all gone.
01:30.26
Rick
Why tell it what happened.
01:37.99
tylerking
But what really happened is our largest customer added 150 new users. Um, so yes, that's very awesome. It's great. For revenue, it's not in any way repeatable. It's not like oh we cracked the code. Let's just have that account at 150 users every month from now on.
01:43.52
Rick
That's awesome.
01:55.45
tylerking
Um, it it was a okay month even aside from that it was it was would have been one. Ah, one of our better months of the year but that really put it over the top.
02:03.51
Rick
That's awesome. You're going to get addicted to large accounts and it's going to happen 10 years from now you're going to be like I really like these thousand person companies we serve.
02:05.60
tylerking
I get it man.
02:12.25
tylerking
Yeah, um I get I don't I don't think we're going to I feel very confident that we're disciplined enough to not like lose focus on our so you know small business being our main focus but you know you hear the term expansion revenue all the time meaning like your current customers ad. In our case, they'd have to add users but 1 way or another like their the revenue you make from them increases and we effectively have none with the exception of this one time event like on average in a given month I think like 200 users get added to existing accounts and 200 users get removed and we basically just break even. And yeah I can see why you can have a pretty mediocre month but with like a little expansion revenue. It turns into a good month I can see why people really like that.
02:53.11
Rick
Man this was you have to have a business that grows a product that grows with the business at people keeping same benefits. We were we we had that we would we would sign up a 5 person startup and then they grow to 100 employees like Cameo Cameo was a customer.
03:09.83
tylerking
Um, really oh that's cool. Yeah, um, although that's I don't think that's like necessarily a problem.
03:11.31
Rick
That's a huge customer right? like but they hit 100 employees and they're like oh we need group health insurance and they piece out. No no, no, not not a problem. It's just like you know, but like if our business could like.
03:26.91
tylerking
Um, could keep growing with them.
03:28.19
Rick
Keep I keep growing with that client like it's just man marketing. You don't have to do it speaking of marketing. You don't have to do it. You just grow with your customers.
03:32.74
tylerking
Right? right? Yeah, something. There's different types of expansion revenue I I really like the like tuple is a company I mean everything about tuple I'm jealous of but they're a company where they have tons of expansion revenue you can hear about it on the art of product podcast. But they do video calls basically between 2 to 4 people as I understand it so like with lessening serum as the company grows the the way people use the product radically changes. So it's like you can't really serve both audience as well. I'm really jealous of products that not only have expansion revenue. But it's still like small subsets of people using it or like a solo player using it on their own. You know? Yeah amazing.
04:15.20
Rick
The complexity of the product doesn't increase the more people who use it like that is awesome. Yeah,, that's actually interesting like is I think about business models like looking for a business model that. Has the potential to grow with an organization but doesn't get harder to deliver.
04:34.47
tylerking
Yeah, well yeah, because this um this one we have like our biggest account is 5 times the size of our next biggest probably ah while so they added 150 users this month and then shortly after it they were like so it's taking 30 seconds to load this page and we're like. Excuse me they had added thousands of pipeline items like a lead basically to 1 contact and we were like why are you doing that and they're like we have 300 customer service reps a lot of data is going to get entered and it was like It's still a little weird. It was all on 1 contact but we had to scramble this week to fix it for him and yeah, that's that's the part of a big customer I don't like it's the but it's the base price. Yeah, um, but you know a lot of a lot of bigger accounts.
05:18.17
Rick
And are they paying you more than to your base price or are they paying your base price.
05:27.91
tylerking
Expect like a discount The normal model is like okay we have our cheap plan and then we have like our middle plan and then the enterprise plan and you sell the enterprise plan. But then you discount it heavily probably down to about what the middle plan is so a lot of times when you talk to bigger customers. They're like well we expect a discount and it's like. Well pretend we charged you fifty bucks a month and discounted it down.
05:49.63
Rick
That's not how Salesforce charges they like the more you want like the bigger you are you pay more. They do, um, interesting.
05:51.84
tylerking
Well, but then they discount you pay you. You go up to a higher tier but then you negotiate with the sales right? I'm I'm pretty sure Salesforce discounts pretty heavily. That's just how and price sales works Anyway, what's going on with you.
06:07.35
Rick
Um, well I just shout out to J D he's doing an awesome job. Um I Just really enjoy my time with him and I he he J D's my partner for those for anyone who's not familiar with him and he he's running leg up health day to day and he's just doing an awesome job like.
06:23.73
tylerking
Call.
06:26.45
Rick
He's he's keeping a clear head. He's doing the right things he's keeping he's got a good cadence of updating me sends me a weekly update every week um we started this? Um so every week I get a weekly update um, which is great. Ah, but every. Other week now we've he started creating a forecast for where we're gonna where he thinks we're gonna end the year and so it's super interesting to see his bottoms up build of like I think we're going to end up with this many clients by the end of the year and right now he's I don't remember um I think we.
06:55.62
tylerking
Um, was that was that his idea or did you ask for that report.
07:02.31
Rick
Ah, the way he's doing it was his is his idea I did ask him like a question like how many do you think clients. Do you think we're going to have by the end of the year. It's like are we on track or you know what's going on. Um, and so it sort of evolved into this ah biweekly forecasting effort. But.
07:09.60
tylerking
Um.
07:21.86
Rick
It's really cool. We're like forecasting 100 and something hundred and sixty something clients right now. Um, which is pretty cool. It's real.
07:26.97
tylerking
Yeah, that's us and so you're forecasting that does that mean like you're on track for that or just like but like it's hard for you because it's not like you grow evenly throughout the year you have open enrollment period which is.
07:33.90
Rick
Yeah, it's like what we believe we'll end with this year based on all the information we have.
07:45.73
tylerking
November and December when most of your growth will come then it's got to be hard to forecast. What's going to happen then.
07:54.38
Rick
Oh a thousand percent and so it's a lot of it's you know? ah you know a guess like that's what forecasting is right? and um, but he's updating it I think what's what is good is it's it's getting updated every week and so.
08:00.40
tylerking
Um, yeah.
08:09.43
Rick
Is he's getting more confident about certain assumptions based on conversations. He's having or numbers going up. You know he can validate that if he's getting less confident. He can you know adjust the the assumption down for that and so it's it's you know we're going to learn a lot this fourth quarter um had lunch with ah this is ah ah some. I digress for a second but like the the I had lunch with a former member of my old Ceo group this guy um ran a company sold it for a lot of money. Um, he was like the one he was like the 1 person our Ceo group that actually like succeeded at what they were trying to do like yeah, there's always one one out of 5 um.
08:42.41
tylerking
Um, there's always 1
08:47.92
Rick
And I shouldn't say we didn't all succeed but like he had the largest outcome of everyone. Um and he um, he he was asking me like you know is money holding you back. You should you? you know? do we do? you need to take investors right now like is that because I was oscillating between do I do I bring more people on and try to get more done or you know do we just execute what we have.
08:59.50
tylerking
Um.
09:07.93
Rick
And 1 of the questions he asked me was um is money holding you back and I I don't think it is and so what with that sort of mentality I'm going oh in that case, we don't need to add any more people we just need to execute and this Fourth Quarter is a learning opportunity. And so we're gonna do the best we can but we got I keep oscillating back and forth between more resource get focused but like it's it's it's my my current plan right now is like let's let's let's execute as best the best we can with the resources we have let's do is like let's be as thoughtful and and and.
09:29.70
tylerking
Um, yeah.
09:43.67
Rick
Unthoughtful at the same time like about how we spend our time and we're going to learn whether we were good at forecasting. We're going to learn you know how many clients what we have what works to get clients during open enrollment. What doesn't um, but this is gonna be our first real like big bang like seasonal.
09:59.31
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, cool and the nice thing is there's always the next year like you don't have to make the business all in this open enrollment. You just have to move the ball forward meaningfully so that next year you can do even better.
10:02.23
Rick
Marketing Bush.
10:15.44
Rick
Um, yep, we have to learn and we also we do want to grow like ah if we didn't break a hundred clients by the end of this year that would be pretty demoralizing I think unless we had six fifty seven fifty eight something like that. Um.
10:22.59
tylerking
Um, yeah, what do you? What do you at right now.
10:32.24
tylerking
And are you growing like in a nonopen enrollment month. You kind of consistently growing or like every once in a while a couple of month okay this we'll have some fascinating podcasts. Ah come November I guess.
10:37.35
Rick
Couple of month near a couple of month yeah
10:49.10
Rick
That's what we were taught I wanted to share So one of the things that we we recently invested in was the Chamber strategy. It's paying off some learning so far as Chamber members are actually pretty great for us because they're both consumer and employer leads because they're business members. Um, so.
11:01.63
tylerking
Yeah.
11:06.91
Rick
That was unexpected. The other thing that's happening is that a lot of other service providers who are trying to target our same customer are members and they're not competitors necessarily There are some like competitors but most of the people who are members of the chamber are trying to serve the. Our our target customers in a different way and so they're potential partners and so lots of referral partnership conversations are happening out of this and then ah Jd's already created ah gut and commitments for about half of them to let us do a. Virtual lunch and learnar during open enrollment about how to buy health insurance through the chamber the chamber would market a session. Ah so like basically a a legup health sponsored session.
11:42.00
tylerking
With the companies that like like with the employers who are the chamber would like okay got you.
11:57.30
tylerking
Um, yeah, cool. Yeah, that's awesome.
11:58.32
Rick
On how to think about health insurance as a small business owner which is pretty great and so ah, all in all, we got about 7 I think we joined 8 I'm going to get these numbers rough roughly and if anyone wants to check these I can confirm them but like roughly I think we spent. We're spending around 3 to $4000 total to join anywhere between I think it's 8 to 10 chambers. We're getting 7000 contacts with email addresses business name. It's the business owner. Um phone number. We're getting affinity. Um, so one of the like if you think about like.
12:34.80
Rick
Persuasion in general like there's like some guy wrote a book that said they're like so like 7 key influential factors I don't know I can't remember all 7 but 1 of them is affinity like shared affinity for something um, being part being part of the same group and so now we have. We're part of the same group with 7000 people who we have their contact information for.
12:50.55
tylerking
Yeah, this is like why like the classic old business guy is at a country club or whatever so you can be like oh we're the same country club like you should talk to me. Yeah.
12:54.36
Rick
Ah, strong.
13:02.30
Rick
Yep, we drink the same wine. We. We eat the same buffet exactly? Um, so so so so um anyway it feels good. The the other thing that has happened is that you remember when we had this conversation like should we go 1 or should we go all I'm very happy. We did all because one of them is like outperforming all of them and it's one chamber and they're like we love you. We get this request all the time we've tried to have a referral partner in the past for this but they always under deliver.
13:22.34
tylerking
So.
13:36.71
Rick
We also need benefits can we be a customer of yours. It's just like they're they're just awesome and we would never have picked this one if we had picked 1
13:39.34
tylerking
Yeah, so now that you know I get that you wouldn't have picked them now that you know yeah I don't know if any listeners are thinking about doing Chamber of Commerce stuff like could you go back and see these characteristics or would you have had to join them all to figure it out. It's just like your point person there happens to be a good.
13:55.99
Rick
No, we would have had no idea it. It's the it's the predo effect like 90108020 rule where you don't know you know you need to sign up 10 ah partners. But you don't know which 1 or 2 are going to generate eighty ninety percent of the referral business.
13:59.20
tylerking
Person to talk to or something like that.
14:12.22
tylerking
Yeah, right? Well great I'm glad it's working out I was going to ask your question. Your first point about like every everyone is both a consumer and an employer lead have you like? do you do you have the mindset of.
14:13.68
Rick
And that's what's happening in this case I didn't know which one but if I could I would have joined 1 Um, yeah, and good.
14:31.50
tylerking
Your individual product is like freemium lead Gen for your employer product like is that kind of how you're going into it. Okay.
14:39.30
Rick
We actually have the ah opposite our individual our employer product is freemium for our individual.
14:43.49
tylerking
That makes sense I get but I guess I mean like you have a pretty killer free trial where you're like hey employer you're not sure if this is worth giving to your employees you use it yourself put us to the test and if you like it tell your employees about it.
15:00.60
Rick
The thousand percent yes or ah, yes, that's that's how we got her to that's how we have our 2 employer customers is the the owners of the company signed up. They're like this is great. Can you please do this for my employees.
15:01.15
tylerking
Has that happened. More.
15:14.13
Rick
Yeah, they pay us twenty bucks per employee per month to do it for every one of their employees.
15:14.52
tylerking
Twenty bucks per employee per month man I'm jealous.
15:21.46
Rick
You can pay us $20 per month if you'd like and we'll take care of all your employees. Oh I thought you're jealous of the awesome service. We're providing oh I see yeah.
15:23.21
tylerking
No no, that's not I'm I'm jealous of the other way I want I want you to pay me $20 I just actually switched to Shelley my wife's insurance. So even though lessening serum has group insurance I'm now on like a big company's insurance. Then it it is better. Yeah.
15:43.43
Rick
It's better. Spousal coverage is better. Usually usually.
15:47.14
tylerking
Yeah, well she she works at a university so like universities are so funny. They they pay like shit in many ways they treat everybody like shit but you get summers off, you have amazing benefits. She has like her own private office. That's like 4 times the size of my office at work. Shows all these weird perks and then you know doesn't get paid nearly as much as she should. But I'll take the insurance. Yeah.
16:10.47
Rick
Ah, that's but that's kind of how it works right? like it's not I think I think nonprofits are very similar where if you work for a large nonprofit you get paid nothing but like hey you get gray Health insurances. Ah, but yeah, the Chamber Chamber service is paying off and then we're starting to get.
16:17.71
tylerking
Yeah, anyway, sorry didn't mean to distract from your update.
16:29.15
Rick
Some clarity on what our local marketing blitz should look like 1 one thing we don't know is JD's been doing tons of outreach the appetite to talk about health insurance in July is pretty well but the appetite talk about health insurance in October and November we have no idea what it is because we've never an outreach.
16:38.32
tylerking
Yeah.
16:48.80
Rick
Like he's been doing in October November and so look we we sort of started talking today. What 1 thing so this is a windfall anecdote. 1 thing I'm learning at windfall is like ah 1 one one project I'm working on is a how to build our our prospecting you know out for for our? um. It's called sales development in the saas world. But basically people who are full-time prospectors looking through accounts. Um that are potential customers making sure you get all the information about them in the crm. Ah, adding contact information for the people you want to reach out and basically prepping the account for outreach. And and sometimes also doing that outreach.
17:27.80
tylerking
So let me dive into that real quick just make sure my terminology is right? So you hear the term sdr all the time that's sales development rep that's the person who talks to who at least gathers the lead and maybe talks the lead. But then there's someone else who's like the closer is that right? okay.
17:44.74
Rick
Correct and you can have different spectrums of like where the Sdr's job begins and ends and when the closer usually account executive um or sale inside sales.
17:52.34
tylerking
What what's the closer actually called account executive. Okay.
18:00.53
Rick
Representative it depends on the organization but sales rep and sales development person Sales development person is generally prospecting Plus outreach Plus maybe booking an appointment and then the ah sales rep is you know doing the appointment doing the pitch and getting the contract signed.
18:19.16
tylerking
Gotcha.
18:20.50
Rick
Um, in in a consumer business and a small and a very small business Usually that's 1 person doing both um, but 1 of the things I'm learning is I think more about sales development strategies and you know my day job is um, really good sales development organizations from what I've studied. They. They basically have a sales development a specialized sales development role that is breaking their week into two very important activities 1 is prospecting accounts and preparing them for outreach the next week and the other is doing the outreach on the prospecting that you did last week and it's very important to do both so that you're always like preparing for outreach and then doing outreach because that's what leads to qualified prospects coming in to the sales org and what I realized was if you think about our seasonal business. We basically had the month of September to do a ton of prospecting like.
19:07.36
tylerking
Yeah.
19:15.80
tylerking
The.
19:19.16
Rick
Pairing for outreach and then october to do all the outreach and so one of the things that j d and I were talking about is if if we did nothing. Maybe we should stop doing outreach for now. Maybe we should start doing outreach outside of open enrollment and we spend like nine months out of the year prospecting like getting our crm like.
19:24.33
tylerking
Right? Just get the lead.
19:37.51
Rick
To the point of where it's like super precise and then we just like press this button on October first and outreach goes out for three months
19:42.39
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, it's like a farmer doesn't spend most of their time harvesting that that just comes at the very end.
19:53.23
Rick
Yep, and our business due to the seasonality is very different than most businesses that have like this sales development function which is more of like a week to week cadence
20:00.68
tylerking
Now counterpoint to that We know that a lot of sales cycles require multiple multiple touches. It might be good for a person to have ignored you a few times before the one that matters.
20:15.36
Rick
That's fair, It's yeah, maybe it's called priming the pump right.
20:17.10
tylerking
Yeah, and if I were to guess what I'd say is because people might get annoyed if you're like calling and emailing I'd be like retargeting type or I guess just targeting in the first place because you can just upload that list of Facebook and say show them ads. They'll see your name everywhere and then when you call they'll be like I feel like I've heard of leg up health before all right.
20:38.96
Rick
Exactly. So yeah, you're making me think like if we had if I could go back and redo the last so this is a learning that we're having if I could go back and redo the last six months I probably wouldn't have Jd spend if he's spending fifty fifty outreach prospecting I'd probably haven't spend 10 % outreach 1 touch not multiple and then 90% prospecting. Um, and then yeah, it's basically like that one outreach is hey do you have any now if not, we're gonna hit you. We'll check back in open enrollment.
20:58.47
tylerking
Um, ah.
21:07.51
tylerking
Yeah, because if you're only getting 2 new clients a month on average now you're probably also doing this like multiple touches for later but in terms of you're putting in way more work than it's worth in the moment. Yeah.
21:24.66
Rick
So that's what it feels like anyway this interesting learnings. Um, but ah yeah, don't I don't have much ah else to update on there. It's just I'm I'm going back and forth between should we invest in more than you know more people.
21:39.25
tylerking
Um, yeah.
21:41.23
Rick
Like should we hire a prospector or so j d and I just get as much get more focused and do as much as we can within what we know that works for the rest of the year and then reboot after we learn so I don't know the answer I think I do know the answer but I don't want to admit it and that is we just need to say focused and. So getting distracted by all the ideas we have.
22:00.95
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, prove it out before you hire someone to to do it I think that makes sense. Um, yeah, so we're we're rethinking our onboarding flow and I'm going to do my best to describe this but this might be like.
22:05.68
Rick
Yep, What about you talk? what's going on what's going on in your world.
22:14.46
tylerking
The world's worst radio because it's a very visual thing and I'm going to try to describe it. But um, customer onboarding. Um so we've got you know we're we're kind of like ah my next update's going to be like we're also rethinking just Mark like we're doing a big marketing focus in general this year and so I've got updates on that. But.
22:17.36
Rick
Customer onboarding or employee onboarding.
22:33.96
tylerking
Part of that. It's it's it's kind of like blending between what does the marketing team do and by team I mean 1 person and what is the product team do which is an actual team of people onboarding is one of the main places these two connect right? because it's product is like you write the code for what's the signup form and then what's the first screen they see and all that. But. The customer is not using it yet. It's not about making the product good. It's about communicating perceived value because a crm is not something you can experience value from right away I'm really jealous of products like ah like zip message is a good one where you sign up for it. You send a message immediately. You experienced the thing it does with the cm. It's like you don't really experience value until you've made a sale that you wouldn't have made without the crm. Um, and that takes a long time so instead. The game is try to communicate the perceived value as quickly as possible because you can't really make them.
23:20.17
Rick
Are.
23:30.40
tylerking
Experience value until later. So we're working on that um a few just a few notes on what we're trying in case, this is interesting to anybody so right now it's like we have a sign up form. It's like 6 fields or something some some we have to have like what's your email address and password. I guess in theory you could push password off for later. Some are kind of optional like what industry are you in because we use that to customize their account. We ab tested it putting it on the signup form does not reduce conversions so it's fine. Once you sign up you you open up the app and you're in this. But we call the beginner's guide which is just a series of videos you can click through to get to the like you're in the crms you you can navigate around and go use the crm. But by default you're in this video guide and then the videos kind of tell you what to do and then you go use the app that's kind of the flow right now. Um, what were. Planning on moving to is breaking the sign up process into a few steps which I'm nervous about because like that means more clicking and it takes more time.
24:34.36
Rick
So that you're contemplating I just want to fly up highrell. So ah first again, there's incremental improvements like which which is something you could ab b test like should I add an industry question and then there's wholesale like there's no, there's like we don't really know if this is better like on a.
24:34.38
tylerking
Yeah.
24:43.67
tylerking
Yeah, right? wholesale. Ah.
24:51.62
Rick
On a micro basis. It either is going to work or it's not going to work. Okay.
24:54.72
tylerking
Yeah, we can still a b test it but the the way I think like I think this is true of most a b testing scenarios the way I visualize in my head is like imagine you're like um, a hiker hiking up a mountain. Every a b test you're you're you're saying I'm going to look to my left does that go uphill? Basically and you want to go uphill as far as you can um, but then a different strategy is like I don't know that the peak I'm going towards here is the highest peak in this mountain range and so sometimes you just got to pick the hiker up and put them somewhere totally different. And start hiking from there to try and find a higher peak. Um, so we can still a b test you can compare the height of the 2 relative points but you're going towards a different peak I think sorry if that's a little overrut. Yes, they are big I feel great. Everyone I've showed it to marketing is not this simple but everyone I'm shown it to.
25:34.78
Rick
Sure Yep so these are big. These are big changes.
25:45.98
tylerking
Internally and externally has just been like whoa that is like a thousand times like more appealing. Yeah, so first of all, it's just redesigned and like Tory our designer like we've never really had a good designer before and she's especially good at marketing stuff like she has a marketing background not a design background or not like a product background.
25:51.71
Rick
Um, so what? what is the new way.
26:05.17
tylerking
So when I set her loose on this type of thing. She's like oh hell yeah like let's go and she made it look beautiful. Um, but it's not live. No it'll it'll probably be a month or two before it's live. But so the the biggest aside from it looking nice.
26:14.80
Rick
Um I Want to see this now like is are there is this live anywhere or oh man.
26:23.22
tylerking
We we're breaking the sign up process into 4 steps instead of one I already know the objection it takes longer yada yada but the point is like each step There's this little form that's like not not little but like there's this feel that's like what industry and that's a single step but then on the side of the page I'll use this as the example. So when you load the page. It's going to have like a generic not like a screenshot but kind of a low fidelity version of 1 of our pipeline reports that like you know you know what? I mean we're like the text it's not real text. It's just like blocks that look like text kind of but it'll it'll convey. This is a report and as soon as you pick an industry. The whole report is going to like transform to be like the name of the report will change all the statuses will change to fit whatever industry you're in so we're trying to market in each step. All the things we're doing to make the crm perfect for them. Basically. And then in the next one they'll select how many users do you have and we're still figuring that one out but like you know something to convey the value of like we're going to be perfect for the size of users. You know you want to be so we're kind of breaking into steps and really selling each step that way. What are your thoughts on that.
27:31.31
Rick
I I mean it seems like a good idea like I mean you? yeah I mean I don't it doesn't sound like a bad idea.
27:37.36
tylerking
Yeah, then the numbers will will prove it or not. But yeah, um, okay, yeah, So we're going to try that and then the other big thing we're doing is once you get in the app like I think that you so we target low tech people tend to be older. People like the type of person you know like you buy a new or a refrigerator and like it comes with that flimsy piece of paper like booklet with it like and I assume you would never read that I would never read that but like someone reads that instruction manual. Historically our customers have been the people who would read that instruction manual. Increasingly ah people get more tech Savvy Our customers are getting more tech savvy the flow right now puts them right in this guide this onboarding thing and I think most people nowadays the way they buy software is they're like I want to click around and I want to come back to this later maybe or not come back at All. And so we're just putting them right into the software with much better like Blank slate experience so they can click around and then we've kind of got this thing. That's like it's like an intercom widget almost but it's going to slide up and be like hey when you're ready here's here's the here's some help and then they'll minimize it and come back to it later. Ah, so it's it's more kind of come to this when you want it instead of this is how you onboard.
28:55.50
Rick
Love it and so is that was are you using a third party tool for that widget that pops up.
29:00.71
tylerking
We're not I don't think the widget itself is going to be very complicated like it's not interactive or anything like that. But no, we're not so yeah, yeah, well and yeah, there's there's a lot more. It's actually going to be a pretty big tech. Not the widget itself that there's like.
29:07.53
Rick
Cool. That's a product right there that you could offer your customers.
29:16.65
tylerking
This whole thing that slides out we're building the help site into our app stuff like that.
29:21.29
Rick
I Think like I think um, she asked me what I thought like I don't really doesn't really matter what I think the question is will this be successful or not and I guess the ultimate question is how are you going to know if this is going to be successful Once you roll it out.
29:34.59
tylerking
Yeah, well, the good thing is you know I'm more anti-ab b testing than a lot of people. Um, this is one where it's like you can a b test this easily. It's like we're just looking at conversion rates. Um, there's probably earlier indicators like. The the number I've mentioned this before the number I really want to make higher is do people come back a second time after signing up that's kind of an early indicator of a conversion. Um, but yeah, the first sign up form. The question is do they fill it out to sign up so visitor to trial conversion rate. And then once they get past that step. It's trial to paid conversion rate I think it'll be very easy to know if this works or not yeah so yeah, exactly at the end of the day we have to increase our traffic like it's just not high enough to like.
30:12.66
Rick
Cool, Great So you want to increase you want to increase the number of signups for the traffic that you're getting effectively like cool.
30:25.44
tylerking
You can only squeeze so much growth out but at the same time if we could have a 10% increase in child paid conversion like that that buys us a lot of time to figure out the traffic problem.
30:38.90
Rick
Yeah, this is a ah yeah, this is definitely a increase your runway investment.
30:41.53
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, definitely So I've got more marketing stuff. Do you have any other updates or anything you and talk about or should I just keep going.
30:47.98
Rick
I mean no I mean yeah you heard him for me I I want to sp like I mean the only other thing I would say that's somewhat go on your marketing stuff because most of the stuff I want to talk about is like I just want to spend more time on Legopel than I can't so yeah.
30:58.37
tylerking
Okay, yeah, yeah, um, all right? So I've got a big one and then a small and the big one like I said kind of growth stuff. So we've done this consulting engagement with demand maven. Again I still plan on doing a deeper dive into the results. Although I'm not sure I'll ever actually get around to it here. But um, one of my takeaways from this they're they're the marketing consulting firm that's kind of like putting the other growth plan for us. 1 of my takeaways from it and 1 of the reasons I was a little bit hopeless about marketing last episode. Is. They're like a it's extremely competitive and b here's what we recommend you doing and most of the stuff they recommended. We've already tried and failed that so a part of me is like all right like I'm not as bad at marketing as I thought like I'm I'm more put together like I would recommend this engagement.
31:44.82
Rick
Ah.
31:51.38
tylerking
To someone who's like I don't know what I'm doing I need a guide I Thought that's what I was and now I'm like actually I think we knew what we were doing a little better than I gave myself credit for which is a bummer. Ah I think it was a good bet to place like we're placing multiple bets.
32:02.39
Rick
So do you feel like you wasted money.
32:10.70
tylerking
And I think what was really valuable about it. So there's kind of 2 phases to the demand Maven thing one is they do the jobs to be done interviews for customers. This is a type of thing. Anyone could do it for themselves. We could have done it for ourselves but like it takes a lot of work and I do think there's like skill involved. They did a great job of that and. Insights they pulled out like I mean we'll see how impactful they are but they seem really good to me so like let me give you 2 examples that really stood out number one I said earlier the perceived value thing rather than actually receiving value. Um, the main thing that our customers the the main like aha moment for them. Is when they see our customization. Um, and here's how ridiculous like if you if you've used other herera's it's so complicated like salesforce or hubspot or something. It's so complicated to customize them multiple customers of ours told demand Maven we have more customization options than salesforce does.
33:06.18
tylerking
Which is obviously completely wrong. But as best we can figure out Salesforce is so hard to understand what you can do that the customers investigated and thought you couldn't do it and with ours they go in and it's literally like you on a field make the field Boom move On. And so that's the main moment where they're like ah that's what less annoying crm is that's why it's for me and that's why I'm not using Salesforce That's great like a lot of our onboarding is is pushing people towards like go customized. Go see the value right away that was one good insight. Um, another good one.
33:42.10
tylerking
I've always thought not I thought it is true. We have 2 kind of types of customers who sign up people who are have never used a crm and they're switching like our competition is like non-consumption. It's like excel or post-it notes and then there's people who are like in salesforce or hubspot and it's too complicated and they're trying to simplify. And I've always thought like our pitch to the 2 of them needs to be very different if you're using excel the pitch is you get more power you close more leads if you're using salesforce the pitch is you close the same number of leads. But it's easier or like you can actually use it. It's it's a some simplicity pitch but demand mayven found is every person who finds us. Even if it's their first crm. It's not the first serum they evaluated like we are not at the the top of any Google Search you never find us first. So by the time they get to us. They've already been convinced of the the value and they've already seen how complicated other products are so demand maybe was like. Just simplify your messaging. It is a simplicity pitch for everybody like you don't need to worry about whether they've used a serum before or not which is really great from a messaging standpoint. Yeah, so there were I think the jobs to be done part of it I'm I'm very happy with the other part. It's not that anything.
34:47.34
Rick
That's awesome. Yeah, that's really great.
34:55.51
tylerking
Was done poorly or whatever just like again, a lot of a lot of it's just like there's that a huge amount of opportunity in this market and like obviously demand Ma can't know everything we've tried in the past but like a lot of the things they suggested. It's like I'm not saying it couldn't work but I'm saying we can't do it like we have tried and failed.
35:11.81
Rick
what what 1 thing that is coming to mind for me is that this this exercise do you feel it feels like you have more conviction around what you should shouldn't do and what you should do going forward and that is worth a lot of money.
35:24.98
tylerking
Yeah Noel assuming we get it eventually It's worth a lot of money time will tell. But so the pivot I'm about to describe is largely. We hired demand Maven again I describe it as a bet I was hoping they'd be like. What about this channel this is like wide open You're perfect for it. There is nothing like that so that you know we were thinking there was a little bit of despair like well what do we do? then like we have to do something and I mentioned in the last episode this the difference between being plateaued at zero and mrr versus. Three hundred Thousand Um Mrr which is roughly where we are if you recall that. What I said is a 300000 mrr even we're not plateaued. But even if we were you just need to get a 5 % increase in your growth rate. And you're you're there at 0% Mr You could get a 10000% increase in growth rate you're still zero. So I I don't know if I'm being like overly optimistic or naive here. But the the plan right now is to go back to all the things that have worked even though none of them have worked great. And just try to squeeze a little bit more juice out of them. So like we don't have a lot of Seo but we have some all the Seo that's ever worked has been bottom of funnel crm focused keywords every time we try top of funnel. It has been a huge failure so we're just like okay screw that let's not do that. Let's do the stuff that's worked. Let's do.
36:50.52
tylerking
Optimizing our directory listings. The few ppc channels that are working. Let's see if we can put a little more money into those or whatever I can talk myself into thinking like yeah, why wouldn't we be able to squeeze another five or ten percent out of that. So.
37:05.99
Rick
Makes it Yes I love it what else? What? what else like what else more so you have more conviction about doing the thing doubling down on the things that are working. They're not working like to double the business but they're working to grow the business. Um, what? what else.
37:07.99
tylerking
Yeah.
37:13.90
tylerking
Yeah, right? So I think that pairs with product led growth which is we've we've already talked so I won't rehash all of this but like I always thought I I always acted as though product like growth is. Just make the product better and we've recently been focusing on what what actual features will drive traffic to the site like that. We've never taken that approach and I I think that we might get better results that way. It seems reasonable. Um, and the final thing is so we've got Alex who's like we brought him on to be biz dev. And by that I mean our customers are too small to sell 1 at a time you can't even even ah, a relatively large like a 5 to 10 user account which is above average for us. There's not enough ltv to to make it worth it to cold call them or whatever to do what Jd's doing for you. Um, and I should comment. Rltv on a 10 user account is higher than what Jd is selling but it's a much much harder sale implementing a crm for a 10 person company is not like an individual person buying health insurance. So he kind of the initial attempt at that you know eight years ago worked a little like everyone in a while an opportunity comes along like that this giant account that just added 150 users that was him um, but like mostly he hasn't like there aren't enough leads for him to go after it just didn't really work properly. Um, so he ended up taking on a lot of other random responsibilities because we didn't have a marketing person at the time.
38:44.58
tylerking
He ended up doing a lot of marketing marketing is not really his skill set ah like talking to people in forming relationships. So we're trying to like get all his marketing stuff on a eunice' plate and that and she's going to be the one saying what has worked a little bit I'm going to go optimize it and then we're trying to figure out how do we get Alex just on the phone with people where. It's close enough to the money and like building a relationship matters so that's very vague I haven't said how we're going to do that but like reactions.
39:15.19
Rick
I mean what you're saying is let's let's ah, let's figure how we can unlock Alex's superpower that we've like basically um, you basically have frozen with all these other responsibilities for the last couple years
39:22.34
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, now I know you obviously don't know my business as well as I do but like generically how would it like how how might you? how might I do that.
39:32.70
Rick
Yeah, it's It's a no brainer. How should you do it? Yes, how should you do It is that the question figure out who can take his responsibilities Asap and yeah, did just let him let it let him let him go figure it out. Let him just be himself.
39:35.65
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, well, that's easy getting getting that off his plates handled but like what do we? What do we put him on.
39:49.60
tylerking
Ah I don't like that approach. He's great once. Ah once a lead is talking to us generating the leads that's marketing's job. Um.
39:51.52
Rick
Okay, let it like what I mean is like.
40:01.89
Rick
Whoa biz dev to me is like when I say when I hear Biz Dev is um, its relationships and so anyone who had like so okay so that's what you're asking. So who who um, so I would just let him loose on whoever the.
40:06.23
tylerking
Yeah, but with who. Yeah, I'm sorry.
40:19.75
Rick
1 ne-to many relationships are with people who know a lot of the people that you're trying to get in front of on earlier other activities and I don't know like I think we we could rattle them off but like there's associations. There's um, other service providers. There's integration partners. There's you know there's there's a long long list of these people. Um.
40:25.00
tylerking
Um.
40:39.75
Rick
And it's just you know I don't know I don't know your business like you do like you said, but like it's It's a one. It's go go develop partnerships.
40:40.16
tylerking
Um, right.
40:48.70
tylerking
Cool. Yeah, so that's one category he he's already been the one who's handled that but like the goal is to get him more time for that. Ah, the the set of partners. We have an affiliate program that like all our marketing stuff. Nothing's been a huge success but like if you look at it like 10% of our revenue comes from affiliates or something. Um.
40:55.11
Rick
Um, yeah.
41:05.64
tylerking
There's media companies. So like we just got rated ah number 1 cm by us news and world report for the third year in a row and like not, they're not rating us that because they like Alex but having someone talking to them doesn't hurt. You know, ah, there's stuff like that. There's yeah, like you said associations and Nlm Networks franchise organizations stuff like that. So. That's okay, what you just said is a big part of what we're thinking the other thing we're thinking is we got that 150 users added on this account and I'm looking at that like. That was nice. Can you go talk to our other hundred biggest clients. Um, yeah, yeah, and and lowering churn like the the 2 things that factor into I hate this term but net churn as they say um.
41:47.87
Rick
Drive expansion.
41:58.67
tylerking
Doing that high touch relationship building with our like I don't think a 1 user account is a it's not worth it to talk to them but b there's no expansion opportunity exactly yup. So and we're even using that term so customer success and then like these partnerships.
42:07.55
Rick
Um, you're starting a customer success team.
42:11.87
Rick
Is is Alex the right guy for that.
42:15.72
tylerking
What do you think the right person for that is.
42:22.16
Rick
I think it varies by business. But it's someone who is pretty well you know it's going to be someone who's it's relationship first. So someone who's able to build the relationship but then. But then tie that relationship into pretty substantial conversations ah around business impact. Um you know and and how how less annoing serum is currently like nowhere near the business like it's basically like helping the person see that the impact that let's annoying serum could be having versus what it's having today.
42:43.41
tylerking
Um.
42:58.39
Rick
Is small and there's kind of 2 components to that one is more usage of the existing product or different usage of the existing product and then new products that you're contemplating. Um that haven't been rolled out yet and sort of validating those things.
43:08.40
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, classically a customer success team would be like upselling and crossselling Our only upsell Lever right now is more users but reducing Churn is still also very valuable.
43:24.96
Rick
Yes, but there's there's this other bucket though you want product like growth but you really don't have anyone who's who's really going into your growing accounts and saying what is the thing that you guys are solving with excel spreadsheets. What is the thing that you're solving with a suboptimal tool.
43:41.13
tylerking
Um.
43:44.47
Rick
And he could be a like a terrific source for product like growth ideas that um you you aren't getting right now.
43:47.89
tylerking
Yeah, so you said is you asked is he the right person and I think you know, ah probably you could break anything customer success customer service marketing down into a bunch of different subskill sets and you could find a specialist for each one. The thing he I think is fantastic at is. Creating a champion within a company for us and I feel like that's a pretty good foothold for customer success where it's like this this person who works there like he just went to ah one of these people's wedding in England Just some random you know like people just love them when they when they get to know him and I feel like.
44:19.25
Rick
Um, yeah.
44:24.56
tylerking
Getting a champion at every one of these companies would be a pretty good start here.
44:29.10
Rick
And I yeah so like relate like he's going to kill the relationship thing. Yeah I mean I I see I like that I did not I did not expect you to say that um it's It's so obvious that like it's it's one. It's so obvious that's like why aren't we Why aren't you already doing this.
44:40.91
tylerking
Yeah, and we have we have in the past but we always did it. The problem is we always we our our Dna as a company is much more marketing not that we're good at marketing but like it's much more low touch scalable stuff like automated stuff as supposed to like. Let's call someone on the phone and see what happens you know.
45:00.99
Rick
There's a difference between driving great customer service and then investing in building a relationship and like you guys I wouldn't say are you're not like you have thousands and thousands of customers. But and they have a relationship with your with your software and your product but they don't have a relationship with your people.
45:03.73
tylerking
Yeah.
45:18.41
Rick
That accurate. Yeah.
45:18.44
tylerking
Um, mostly I mean there are some very very like heavy users of customer service that they know every customer service person. It's reactive. That's right, they they established the relationship. So yeah, we've got thirty one hundred ish
45:26.63
Rick
Ah, not because of what you're trying to accomplish because of what then? yeah.
45:34.82
tylerking
Users per support rep. So yeah, obviously it's not like a company where it's like oh I've got my 50 accounts and that's all I talk to.
45:35.90
Rick
E.
45:43.55
Rick
Dude these are amazing. Um, these are the more most substantial like very like no brainer exciting redeployments of resources I've heard in ah like years of podcasting with you. So like this.
45:58.41
tylerking
Cool I like that.
46:02.12
Rick
Is probably the the the customer success thing I don't know what else to call it is I think a really really good idea. Um, it's a it's not even an idea. It's just go. Let's go do it like? yeah yeah, it's yeah, it's so obvious and it'll just feed it'll feed your practical Gri I I just.
46:10.11
tylerking
Yeah, let's go to every other company does it. It's not like we invented this idea. Um.
46:18.68
Rick
I Have really high so I feel really good about that. Let's do it.
46:21.83
tylerking
Cool. Well thank you I appreciate that I'll I'll obviously be given updates on this but so high level summary. Um, unice taking all the marketing stuff off Alex's plate and focusing on improving what works and and the term I'm using for this I think she is going to be a very. Process driven person like it's it's workflow. It's optimization. It's turning knobs alex is going to have a concierge focus. It's every every relationships different go out make people feel special and it's mostly split between the partnerships and the customer success. So cool.
46:52.86
Rick
It's great. He's all he's gonna be awesome at that.
46:54.45
tylerking
Yeah, well thanks for thanks for hearing me out there I'll I'll give updates as we go. Um and then I'll save this next one for next time It's not urgent. So let's move on to I know you got some ah some other stuff you want to talk about.
47:08.68
Rick
Yeah I I saw this tweet by Jason Limpkin Jason Limpkin is the founder of sasster I'm sure most people are aware of him if if they're on Twitter but um, he wrote ah a tweet or a Linkedin post I don't remember where it was but he said something to the tune of like if you're the founder Ceo of a. Ah, business with over a million in error are it's very likely that you probably already have the best job you'll ever have so like be happy about it and protect it like what's the takeaway and I it resonate with me. Um I've been at a I've been the Ceo of a business that is.
47:32.10
tylerking
Um, wow.
47:42.87
Rick
More than $1000000 that I want like if I were the founder Ceo of like I would never like have let that go I would have just like I wasn't the founder. But I wonder if that's I want to just validate that with you like do you have the can you imagine a better job.
47:46.85
tylerking
Um, yeah, the key is that you weren't the founder.
47:56.27
tylerking
No I mean I could the the thing I struggle with is like the serving yourself versus serving others and I think serving yourself is like a much more like lavish lifestyle like I could sell the business I could sell a business right now and never work again or I could. I could take the corner office which we have like a culture of me not getting the corner off you know stuff like that. But that would be a lot less fulfilling. So the only way in which I'd say like do you want the the most selfish shortsighted version of it or the most like I want this to be fulfilling but it requires sacrifice. But you get to choose. That's the amazing thing about being the founder Ceo is like if if it's not the best job I'll ever have. It's due to my own lack of creativity. Yeah, um, how do you think it was different by not being the founder.
48:47.30
Rick
It's it's it's it's the ultimate I think it's the well I just think it's what you're saying is you have freedom and there's nothing better than that and I think that's the fundamental point of this is like when you're the founder Ceo of 1000000 plus business.
48:49.25
tylerking
Um, yeah, right.
49:01.57
Rick
You have a lot of freedom assuming like there's an assumption there that you can control the business. Um, but but yeah.
49:02.88
tylerking
If you if you throw the word bootstrapped in there I 100% agree I I know a lot of people who have been I mean you you were this way at at your last position where it's like yeah you're technically the Ceo or a high ranking executive or whatever. But. If the invest if if you set expectations with investors. You can still have a lot of pressure on you and there's pressure on me too. It's not a low stress job even though it's a great job. But yeah, agreed everyone out there. It's worth it. Go do it.
49:35.80
Rick
Yep, a related little rant here and it's not really a rant because I want to be very clear like so I've been so like I don't really know a job other than being like a leader slash Ceo. I've taken this job at windfall where I'm the head of my tallest head of business operations and I have like a lot of responsibilities I Love the job I'm taking really well care of there like it's a great Job. Nothing better to say one thing I'm learning though is not having authority. Is extremely hard in certain situations and I've never experienced it before and it it makes me um, very careful to ask people to do things.
50:24.40
tylerking
Um, yeah.
50:25.87
Rick
That are hard where they don't and like I if I can't give them the authority to make decisions I don't feel comfortable asking them to take on the project and so I'm much more thoughtful about breaking things down into a task that they can have the authority for. And I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But I think it's a good thing but for for me as a leader like I I have now felt the pain of what it's like to be asked to do something but then walk into a situation like yeah I don't really like.
50:45.82
tylerking
Um, a good thing for you or for them or for the company.
50:59.38
Rick
If I make this in order to get this done. There's this dependency here that this other person owns and has authority for I can't get this done by the deadline I got it done I've got to go convince this other person. So other person I have time for me. There's all these dependencies on that person's time and it's like Wow someone just set me up for failure. Um.
51:17.85
tylerking
Um, well.
51:18.63
Rick
Now I have ah the ability to work through this and like go straight to the Ceo and be like hey like can you help me like make good this soriety nothing I'm working on is not a priority but like for people who are working on something that's a priority for them but not for someone else. Oh my god what like the? What's the worst thing ever like when you've said on Monday. Hey company. This is my priority for the week and then by Thursday like Wednesday you're realizing oh shit I don't have the ability to get this done just because I can't make a decision.
51:41.19
tylerking
I'm blocked. Yeah I mean I think this is an interesting lens on like everyone knows small businesses in some way move faster or whatever vague term you want to let's say but I think this is a huge part of it is that a small company. The whole company can sit in a room and someone can say I want to do this and the Ceo can say everyone do what needs to be done to make that happen and there's no there's no like it's not that the people aren't political. It's that the the organization does not have room for politics.
52:04.19
Rick
He.
52:14.58
Rick
Exactly Yeah and ah maybe that's exactly so I'm I'm much more like sensitive now as as I scale leg up health to like how do I make sure that we don't create jobs that depend on other people's authority for certain things and like.
52:27.50
tylerking
Um, yeah.
52:29.46
Rick
How do you design an org to minimize this and like it's a whole like world. But it's like super painful and like um I think I have asked people to do things without giving them an authority in the past and I'm going to stop doing that.
52:38.39
tylerking
Again, that's cool and yeah, every time a company like a new Ceo takes over at Netflix or wherever and they're like we're doing a reorg and everyone everyone rolllls their eyes but like it does matter right? There's a reason all the Mba is like to do reorgs all the time.
52:49.98
Rick
He does.
52:56.40
Rick
Well, you're doing a rehorg right now I don't know why you're a bit all highmighty about it I.
52:57.53
tylerking
Ah, yeah, a little baby one. No I'm I'm saying that like ah a friend of mine often says this he uses the word bureaucracy and and he always has say like stop and say like ah I don't mean that in a bad way. Bureaucracy is necessary at a big company like it's not it can be bad but it's not.
53:11.17
Rick
Ah.
53:14.51
Rick
Um, yeah, reorgs are necessary like um, you are reorganizing how you're purching business development and customer success.
53:15.36
tylerking
It's necessary.
53:23.40
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, that you're you're right? Um, okay I just have a couple rants and shout outs about 2 terms that. Came across my my path both of these are ones I'd heard before but I was kind of reminded of them one I've mentioned um on the podcast before hollow abstraction. Um, probably I mentioned it recently enough that any regular listener knows what I means but mean but I just heard a good example of it. Do do you remember us talking about this term before.
53:50.39
Rick
Yeah, and the I remember it in the context of nfds.
53:54.64
tylerking
Yeah, um, and I think like that's when I often hear but it it comes up all the time like we you and me all obviously think highly of ourselves to be ah doing this podcast right? Like we want people to hear us and we want them to think we're smart and we've even especially in the early days of the podcast. We would just desperately try to like pull abstract takeaways from every single thing that happened do you remember that? Um, and I think a lot of yeah it was terrible I think a lot of thought leader type people end up saying a lot of stupid shit because they want to sound smart.
54:20.47
Rick
Um, yeah, yeah, forcing it every single time.
54:32.60
tylerking
And the the best way to sound smart is to say something abstract and good abstraction is smart like there's a reason it sounds smart. Um I hope I'm saying his name ah name correctly. Leon Shapira who I'll link to his tweet in the show notes he's a he he is talking in the context of. Ah, web 3 nft stuff. Um, but I think there's a good point anyway, he gave a really good explanation of what a hollow abstraction is which is that an abstraction is supposed to map to specifics a good one does. So for example. In our world. Actually you I'm glad you said earlier this podcast almost what I what I'm about to say a common thing we hear success isn't about money. It's about freedom I'm sure you've heard that 1000000 times you said almost that same thing earlier and we all hear that and not our heads and we're like yeah that sounds right? but that's pretty abstract like what the fuck does that mean, but this is a good abstraction. Because you can take this and project it on to well what does this mean? Well it means I can decide not I can decide to go home at 5 instead of working all night and I will be richer or less rich when I retire. That's like a very specific thing that this statement means that I would be happier making less money or whatever having the freedom to make that decision and then he gives the example that's not his example that's mine but his example is like what about another one. We've all heard a million times. Information should be free. Have you heard people say that before.
55:54.45
tylerking
Yeah, people say this all the time and when you hear you like fuck yeah information should be free I'm with it. No, you don't have that reaction like what does that mean, does it mean if I and I'm I'm just parroting his words here. Does it mean if I buy a book on Amazon I shouldn't have to pay for it or like Amazon shouldn't have to pay.
56:01.30
Rick
He.
56:12.53
tylerking
The intellectual property rights holder like what is information should be free meat and if you ask all these questions. Whoever said that would be like well no I didn't mean that I didn't mean that and it turns out they didn't mean anything at all like a hollow abstraction has no point. It just sounds smart.
56:25.41
Rick
So yeah, yep.
56:27.62
tylerking
And so anyway I think this really applies to bitcoin stuff but just generally I Love this concept I thought it was really explained Well I'm going to link to the tweet. It's like a ah video clip of him anyone who yeah go ahead.
56:36.83
Rick
How how often do you? do you think this is happening like do you I don't I don't spend a ton of time with people who talk like this so like okay.
56:43.48
tylerking
Always all the time. It's silicon valley is full of it all the the venture capitalists. Um all the ted talk people. Ah like people who get up on stage and um, you know like. Malcolm Gladwell and that type of person. There's just full of hollow abstractions I feel like you but but you don't you don't feel like you recognize this pattern as being common.
57:05.66
Rick
Okay, interesting.
57:14.51
Rick
Um, man I just I feel like I'm I'm so I'm I think I I I control what I intake and I'm looking for truth mostly when I'm reading or writing and and so.
57:20.94
tylerking
Yes.
57:30.68
Rick
And' maybe I have a filter that ah is really high on this stuff or maybe I'm blind to it and I'm just like full of it myself Simons and act.
57:33.12
tylerking
Um, who who's the author of leaders eat last um Simon Sinak I feel like he's full of this shit too. Both him and Malcolm Gladwell do have a lot of specifics that they map to but like ah so Simon Sinek if you read the title of all of his books you learn a lot and I think you get nothing out of reading what's between the covers.
57:56.63
Rick
So so did you I liked the infinite game I Thought there's a lot of interesting the bits there. Yeah, um, so but but like your your point's made like there's some things that that these guys say and it's like no no like that's too simplified like no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
57:58.93
tylerking
I haven't tried that one. Okay.
58:07.77
tylerking
Um, yeah, ah.
58:13.83
Rick
Like 1 thing that's like I see on Linkedin constantly is um, leadership leadership is about relationships not results I'm just like no like it's about both things can be about more than 1 thing. Um, and ah.
58:23.94
tylerking
Um, it's about results. Ah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, Twitter and Linkedin are just full of these things.
58:33.11
Rick
Yeah, it's like and I just you know you get all these people liking it I'm just like yeah like you don't want to work for someone who's going to like like be really nice to you but like bankrupt the company like it's not how it works. Yeah, but like yeah over simplifications is that.
58:44.85
tylerking
Yeah, right, Life's not that simple. Yeah um I think they're related but oversimplification still has some truth to it I think a hollow abstraction literally means nothing.
58:51.38
Rick
What you would call these or is it just like.
58:57.83
Rick
Um, a.
59:00.70
tylerking
Like you can't drill down.
59:01.18
Rick
Ah, where do they come from I don't like where do these like where do people come up with these is it just like making shit up in their head or is it like they think they're over simplifying something but they just made an error. In fact.
59:08.55
tylerking
Um, yeah, well in the in the bitcoin space because that's where I see it mostly these days. There's a ton of like people try to solve problems abstractly without like. Bitcoin's not actual or or crypto is not actually the solution. The the problem they've identified as real but then they like try to like come up with this weird twisted logic for how bitcoin's the solution so they'll be like money should be uncensorable and they'll just leave it at that and then it's like okay.
59:36.81
Rick
Um, me.
59:37.58
tylerking
Go on and there's never a next sentence. It's just like that's it You know I don't know Anyway, let me move on to my second one just because we're running Oh I've seen well or money shouldn't be censorable I've I've seen that that more or less that concept I don't know.
59:46.79
Rick
Did you just make up the word unsitserable or did you actually see a tweet with that.
59:56.97
tylerking
The word was used ah the other one is zucking um akhay one of our listeners who we've both interacted with quite a bit he wrote in after last week's or last episode to kind of chat about that a little bit and 1 thing he referenced is a term I'd heard but I completely forgotten about zucking.
59:57.98
Rick
Ah, all right? What is what is zecking.
01:00:16.21
tylerking
Z u c k I n g and this is the art of that Mark Zuckerberg has perfected so it's named after Mark Zuckerberg of basically cloning a competitors product like building the key features into yours and just like destroying the competitor. Um, so he's done this like over and over to snapchat. For example, you know building stories into everything ah that there's a bunch of examples. A I think it's a funny term. But here's why I brought it up or unless you have any reactions immediately now what I brought up the the conversation we're having.
01:00:43.59
Rick
Now go ahead I'm gonna hear what what your interest is.
01:00:50.67
tylerking
Where zucking came up was about competition. Um, and that you know that's kind of what I was talking about last episode competition is a thing back in the day you could you didn't have to worry about it. There is so much opportunity in Sas you could just build what you're going to build. Don't worry about the competitors I don't think that's true anymore, but zucking is a specific type of competition. Like every bootstraper has this nightmare if someone's going to raise $100000000 and build the same thing I do but they're going to move faster. They're going to build like it's just going to be better. How can I compete. That's not what zucking is zucking is always worse. Um, it is competing with the worst product with existing distribution. In my opinion. So for example, slack got zucked by Microsoft Teams it's not a yeah and so did Zoom right? So it's it's a it's like because you when you think about this competition like all right build faster build more.
01:01:33.72
Rick
So Zoom.
01:01:44.19
tylerking
And I think that like this particular threat is not addressed. It doesn't matter how good your product is.
01:01:49.93
Rick
The the example here would be if paychecks really wanted to be ah ah like paychecks the payroll company wanted to be an awesome like an average goodly good health insurance service that could be pretty competitively like threatening to leg up health.
01:02:00.54
tylerking
Um, yeah, why do we use Google drive instead of Dropbox at lessening serum. It's because we already pay for Google drive anyway, off no way what not not as file storage i.
01:02:09.46
Rick
Google drive is better than dropbox. Let's yeah, yes yes I would challenge that one. No one would meet the definition of zucking but but your point is made I love I love google drive.
01:02:17.99
tylerking
Just as a file storage I'll get out of here all right? Well anyway, but the the point Holds So like what do you?? How do you avoid zucking I don't think we want to belabor this too much. But I do think it's like you have to do something that the big competitor wouldn't do that to. Like there are basically monopolists in tech right now and I think there is no defense if they target you you just have to not be targeted and one of the ways to do that is to not not do something so meaty that it would be worth it to their bottom line to to do anything about it. Well run a front of business that that knows its place in the World. You can't bootstrap and be a $100000000000 company Those those 2 things don't go hand in hand not in one lifetime.
01:02:56.38
Rick
Yeah, ah run a crappy business. But yeah.
01:03:09.70
Rick
Ah, it's fair, not in 1 lifetime.
01:03:12.48
tylerking
Maybe maybe next time. But anyway that's all I got yeah anything else on your mind before you call it all right.
01:03:18.50
Rick
No, um if you'd like to review ah past topics and show notes visit star to last dot com see you next week
01:03:22.95
tylerking
Let's see it.