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Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:00.64
Rick
What's going on Tyler.
00:02.45
tylerking
Hey Rick what's up. Um, we've got a little bit of a milestone today I don't know if you pay attention to our episode numbers. But we are this is episode 150 we've been doing this for a while.
00:04.31
Rick
Oh really.
00:11.99
Rick
Um, oh yes, we have.
00:16.42
tylerking
Other people who have been doing it the same amount of time but actually do it every week or at like 400 it's been like quite a while since we started but we had a hiatus and we do it every other week. Ah, but no, yeah, we're one one 50
00:27.93
Rick
Um, what are numbers like I haven't looked at I haven't actually logged into we use transistor.
00:32.84
tylerking
Yeah, it's ah basically so transistor estimates like a number of subscribers which is I believe the the average over the last 3 episodes. How many people downloaded it in the first like two days or something like that. Basically we have 204 subscribers according to them and that has been consistent for if basically if you look over all of our episodes I'm looking at the report right now. There's this very slow up into the right and then a big surge which I believe is when Courtland added us to the indie hackers podcast network. I think I say big surge we're still only at 200 but and then it's basically been plateaued at around 200 ever since then. So I think we we've got our listeners. They listen. We're not adding any new listeners. Ah, thanks for sticking with us. Everybody.
01:08.45
Rick
Ah.
01:15.21
Rick
Yep.
01:22.39
Rick
Um, ah yep yep yep! yep well um we launched a new website leg up Pelt that's been on my to do list for 2 years um and ah I talked to our we have ah a marketing coach.
01:26.75
tylerking
What's going on with you.
01:37.88
Rick
Garrett and he um I was like we we pay him monthly for like a certain amount of hours per week to coach us and then also do some execution work. Um, and I was I basically was like hey you know like it's not that useful for you to work in December or January. So if you want to pull those hours forward and do something more meaningful like. A website or outline in a website. Ah if you can outline it I can like and and sort of wire frameme it I can design it and implement it. Um and he did that and so I took me like maybe four or five hours and I built the new website using his wiref frames and.
02:14.49
tylerking
Yeah, that's awesome. So so did he just take it and run with it or did you already have a lot of like conversations leading up to that so that he could come up with this new website on his own.
02:14.79
Rick
Launched it and it was like a huge win.
02:25.39
Rick
Well, the thing is we we basically have spent so much time together over the last six months and we the first 3 or four months was all strategy work like who are you? What do you want to be let's build some messaging so he already knew like I had the message. He basically just took the messaging framework that we built. And applied it and he had enough context on the decision making behind the framework that he made changes were necessary and then he hired a copywriter as a subcontractor to like polish the the copy um, and then when he handed to me I made very few edits so it all was very good.
02:43.37
tylerking
Ah.
02:56.40
tylerking
Um, yeah, looks good so that the H one is feel confident you and your people have the right health insurance um much more of an employer focus I Assume that was deliberate.
03:11.40
Rick
Yes, um I think one of the one of the hard things about marketing. Um, and in general like picking who you're for your your ideal customer profile is that you have to alienate people. Um in order to be mean, be very meaningful for an individual you have to alienate. Other people and um, we chose the small business owner as our ideal which means you can't really talk to a small business owner the same way you talk to like a general Utah consumer. Um, and so that's what we chose to do.
03:43.26
tylerking
Yeah, um I like it I mean this is why every big company if you go to Salesforce or slack or you know any of those I Guess those are both Salesforce now. Um you go to their homepage and it's like a bunch of nonsense that doesn't say anything about what they do and it's because they have to appeal to everybody and there's no way to and like the advantage of startup has is. Being able to say yeah we're not for that type of person my my default as like the design and marketer and copywriter side of me. What I always want to do is like the top of a homepage being like who are you and like click on one of these and then you'll go to the homepage for that person. The fact that like no successful company does that makes me think that doesn't work.
04:23.32
Rick
Um, yep, exactly? Ah so um, yeah, we still have like we did. We do go out of our way to like put an ah ah individuals like so um, if you go to the the page like in the navigation you'll see individuals and businesses and so we still love it. A portion of our website dedicated individuals. Um and Ctas around that. Ah, but you know if you come to our homepage. You know you know you're going to see ah a business pitch more so than a consumer pitch. Um which which is you know by Design. Um.
04:57.29
Rick
But we don't think this will impact us too much because we we think that the way that consumers are finding us were through referral anyway and they're still going to like you know, come here and click individuals and go through the process. Um the other the other place people find us is through Seo and that generally means they hit a.
05:03.25
tylerking
Money.
05:16.20
Rick
A guide or a blog post and then we can direct them from that blog post with the appropriate cta to the right sexual website. Um so I feel pretty good about it. Um, the big win. We had already was one change we made was we pretty much the call to action we had was start start a quote ah or ah.
05:22.44
tylerking
Um, the.
05:34.66
Rick
Ah, create an account that was our previous call to action. We shifted it to book a call and sign up for a free account. We we had our first call book. Ah on Monday and it turned into an enrollment a few days later it was a business owner with 4 employees looking for their own individual health insurance.
05:46.12
tylerking
Um, Wow ah from a consumer like an individual nice.
05:51.81
Rick
And so now it's it's kind of like ideal right? like you got this business owner. He just moved from Texas to um to Utah has 4 employees in Utah wasn't interested in talking about the business options yet. But like we get we we get him add it to the account revisit it the next time he has a held the church question for his employees. We expand to legup benefits.
06:02.80
tylerking
Um, and.
06:07.85
tylerking
Okay, so sorry you said okay book a call is the main Cta and then the secondary one is sign up free. What did you say they were before and get a quote took them to some like insurance marketplace thing and then sign up. Yeah.
06:15.85
Rick
Ah, get a quote and and create an account.
06:20.55
Rick
For consumers.
06:24.99
tylerking
Yeah, that makes a lot I mean my impression of how Jd's like even the consumer clients. There's very little actual self-service right? Like pretty much everyone's talking to Jd the the whole the thing that leg up health offers is service. So the idea that it could even be self-serve I think that's from a time when. There is this like no code app that had questionable value but the hope was like if we say it enough that it does have value but the reality is the software on its own doesn't really have much value is that fair to say.
06:54.42
Rick
Um, no the point the we're we're effectively a service provider reselling and reservicing another company's product which is an insurance policy. It's not software's insurance. Um.
07:08.51
tylerking
Um, well okay, but I mean the sign up free. That's get the software. That's not get insurance right.
07:14.40
Rick
Yeah, um, exactly let's get the service we want. We want set up free you to be get the service. Ah and we want that to be a software enabled but right now like it's very much just software with like oh funneling J D to a call but there's a lot of opportunity to.
07:24.74
tylerking
Um, yeah.
07:31.52
Rick
Make our software more ah engaging um through like an onboarding flow and and like custom workflow like depending taking more information about someone's situation and making recommendations long term.
07:42.90
tylerking
Yeah, this has been a thing on my mind because you know I I'm the 1 building that software now and I when I started writing code for like up health I was kind of thinking like this is going to be half service half software people will sign up will have like. Like my life at less knowing Crm all of our lives is we keep adding features and adding features and going back and polishing old features and adding more features and I kind of just assumed. That's what this would be and increasingly I'm like the features probably don't matter but making the technology an onroad into the service and like. How can we automate things so j d can get the same level of service while spending less time and can can we go on a weird tangent here. Can we storm something related like leg up health right now. Um I've I've mentioned this to you in slack before I have not heard your reaction to it. So I have no idea what you think about this should I be turning.
08:21.67
Rick
Um, yeah, yes.
08:38.90
tylerking
Software into almost a totally bespoke CRM for j d to so that like it's not just what tools does pipe drive offer. It's like this is yeah, you're you're making that face when I think ah.
08:51.78
Rick
I don't I don't know the answer today. Probably not today. It's probably like not the right use of resources I would say like if it's super close to the the product. What what? the software is actually enabling then yes, it should be in the software. But if it's in this sort of like ah.
09:04.48
tylerking
Um, ah.
09:09.86
Rick
Stepping stone away realm where it probably probably belongs in our Crm which is pipe drive but at some point like when we have more than one person. It's going to make sense to like start going like okay like let's take the next step into like displacing a third party cerrm.
09:23.70
tylerking
Yeah, the the long term future is one or the other I think because we've done this at last knowing serum for for a long time where it's like we use our own crm. But then we like our serum's not really meant for us So We have this like other layer of custom thing we built on top of it. But then we also use front and then we use ah bento for sending out. Um, emails.
09:44.17
Rick
Yeah, so I think like where I would draw a line is for customers and users. Um I would put that in ah our software for marketing and leads. Um and and deals.
09:56.28
tylerking
Gotcha.
10:00.77
Rick
Um I would keep that in in pipe drive. Um, or our serum. Um, but yeah, like that's kind of where I would draw the line today and feel pretty comfortable that would get us a long way.
10:03.60
tylerking
Um, the.
10:08.70
tylerking
That makes total sense to me just to say out loud. The the thing you lose there is the handoff between crm and like I guess do you have a vision for long term like like right now Jd's doing it all. He's doing sales. He's doing a lot of the marketing. It's 1 person doing everything I but I think his core job is more like he's he's creating a model for what service looks like what does sales and marketing potentially look like are you imagining? Oh. There's like a team of salespeople that hand people off.
10:42.21
Rick
Yeah, so this is um I I think like our our next 3 people probably look different than what this looks like at the next phase of scale. So I think there's probably like. Yeah yeah, the ideal scenario is.
10:49.87
tylerking
Yeah, we're in phase one. There's phase 2 and then phase 3 is kind of the ultimate.
10:58.00
Rick
Ah, like the ideal scenario for any business is being able to hire a person and give them a quota and have them hit that quota and grow your business like that's the ideal scenario. So ideally what we could do is we could hire a person and say um.
11:06.80
tylerking
Um, yeah.
11:13.46
Rick
You we're we're going to pay you ah a salary and a commission and we'll pay a hundred percent of your commission for a year but in that first year it's your job to make it so that you're a hundred percent commission um in year two and I'll uncap, whatever you are or. Yeah, 100% paid for by profit sharing or like your book of business. Um, and and so like and then you just like pull the rug out you know in terms of like the guarantees and they've got a book of business that they're managing that's the ideal they're all you you you kill? Yeah, um, there are so there but but when you're trying to build a service business.
11:33.89
tylerking
Um, or the.
11:40.40
tylerking
You eat where you kill? yeah.
11:49.77
Rick
Um, and you're trying to scale service. There's all sorts of traps that that could fall into and so for that reason, um like I shy a lot away from like trying to repeat like the Jd like 1 like 1 person sort of like does it all.
11:52.11
tylerking
Right.
12:06.89
Rick
So Then you end up with a specialized you know so some form of specialization where either you have a kind of like ah an account manager like coachperson who takes a lead. Um, once it reaches a certain stage and you have a separate team focused on generating those leads. Um. Yeah, and there's downsides of that or you split it and they continue to service the client through the lifecycle and they always have a book or or you split it where it's like there's a kind of ah ah, ah, ah, a hunter and a farmer and. You know a handoff there but there's all sorts of downsides with that as well.
12:42.95
tylerking
Well so like get lessenowing serm What we I don't know how much we decided this versus this is just what happened due to my inexperience but like we skipped to the sales part. It's like yes, there's marketing. We're we're more self-service than leg of Health is but it's Like. We Do whatever we can to get people to our website. They self-serve sign up if they want like a quote unquote sales interaction. They're just talking to customer Service. We just say and you know they it's not like they're not trying to sell but they're not Oncom Commissionsioned. There's no quota nothing like that. But like that's another approach is just say we're We're just going to push leads to. Support directly. Basically.
13:18.40
Rick
Yeah, and and they I think where where where you get challenged. There is your ability to ah grow right? like because you end up getting yeah ah but yeah, yeah, yeah, like if you don't have someone who is focused and and incentivized around like.
13:29.14
tylerking
Um, oh is that why we can't grow. Yeah.
13:38.16
Rick
Acquiring customers. Um, it does limit your levers The E could pull for growth and so like there there's a there's a choice there and I I don't know the right answer? Um, but yeah, like but like the more you incentivize growth the the yeah the potential of that it impacts customer services is ah is higher.
13:47.17
tylerking
Um, yeah.
13:53.99
tylerking
The other yeah final thought and then we can I'll stop digging into this topic that won't matter for several years probably leg up health is interesting because there's open enrollment which is about what a month and a half heavy heavy heavy service load. And then it's like what's everyone doing the rest of the time you could argue those people do sales and then during open enrollment. They do service.
14:20.10
Rick
Yes, um, and then you get into like okay um, ah how do you? How do you do sales outside of open enrollment. It's really not sales.
14:28.34
tylerking
Well, but I but we but I think that's been cracked right.
14:33.83
Rick
That's true they out like it's employee enrollments. It's grabbing employers building the pipeline. It's getting aor that what you're talking about.
14:40.90
tylerking
Yeah, so for for people listening who ah I know we talk about insurance all the time and it's so complicated I feel like I have to keep repeating the basics. You can really only buy insurance one time per year, but the new thing that has been working I think you're going to talk about this later in this episode a little bit so sorry to spoil a little bit of it but like.
14:44.81
Rick
Is.
14:58.60
tylerking
You can take an employer that doesn't offer health insurance and say hey all your employees presumably are going out and buying their own health insurance already just like make us your recommended agent. Nothing has to change that sale can happen anytime the year the employer can say yes I'm endorsing you as the agent anytime a year and
15:12.76
Rick
Yep.
15:17.20
tylerking
The employees who already have insurance can then make us the agent of record on their current plan. They just can't buy a new plan so there is like sales can happen anytime of the year
15:24.77
Rick
Correct and they could have a life event right? like they could hire some new person who's recently moved or is losing Health insurance. Um, and that would be a life event for us to enroll them outside So there's a lot of value there and a lot of opportunity. Um, so yeah, like that's good point.
15:34.31
tylerking
Um, ah.
15:41.66
Rick
So yeah, it's got. It's probably a customer service person who's willing like who's willing a person who's willing to like be very reactive and service oriented during our busy season and then outside of that. Um you know, spend 80% of their time kind of prospecting.
15:56.92
tylerking
Yeah, the thing I like about that is if you've ever dealt with a salesperson at I don't know about insurance but like at software companies they're they're worthless. You ask them any question. There's like I'm going to have to get back to you on that like you know, anything about the product you're selling.
16:08.38
Rick
Um, yeah, yeah, um, yeah I haven't really thought about like leveraging the seasonality as an advantage in terms of like how we staff sales and customer service. But what you're basically saying is. Just like make open enrollment about service and make outside of open enrollment about awareness and pipeline like future Demand generation. Um, and yeah, maybe you'll get some sales outside of open enrollment. But worst case, you'll just like you'll you'll take you'll fully utilize the staff that you have for service and then worst case.
16:29.50
tylerking
Her.
16:42.67
tylerking
Um, yeah.
16:45.98
Rick
You're overstaffed during open enrollment. There's some buffer there in terms of finances to to allow for that and then you know you have a plan that you're executing to to try to generate some more demand.
16:55.16
tylerking
Yeah, it'll be yeah, will be interesting to see what happens I realize this is super premature. So I'll stop. Ah.
16:59.75
Rick
No, it's actually useful because um, we have to decide what we're going to do next year we're going to have most likely if we continue like I'll talk about this inflection point real quick like we we are seeing an inflection point we are ah we we sort of just like created a cheat code for Jd to basically. Offer the software component of our employer product at free. Ah and then upsell the concierge. Um and he's done that for now. So he's unlocked the free version for like 7 or 8 accounts and then he has upsold the concierge now a couple times. Um.
17:30.92
tylerking
So so let's let's define all this so from my perspective what happened here he he's got his like pipe drive lead pipeline and he's like here's all these employers in here and he was basically saying they're all interested none of them want to pay twenty bucks per user per month or what it like the whole point is they don't have insurance. They don't want to spend any money so when you say.
17:34.40
Rick
Yes.
17:39.95
Rick
Um.
17:50.13
tylerking
We made it free. They can enroll all their employees in our software and then Jd will help them find insurance the employer if if they reach out the employer pays nothing we get commissions on the insurance that we sell to the employees and then you said you're upselling concierge what? what do you mean by that.
17:56.60
Rick
If they reach out.
18:07.75
Rick
Yeah, so um, just like having us on call for someone who needs marketplace quotes is not that useful as a benefit to the employees. Um, it's a lead generation service for us. Basically um so we still figure out how to position the the the employer hr concierge thing. But effectively ah for twenty bucks a month per employee we have 2 customers or 3 customers now paying us for this where they will ah basically pay us a couple hundred bucks a month for five hundred six seven eight you know 10 employees to be on call for any ah health insurance related question. They could possibly come up. And so like if someone needs help enrolling in medicaid or they have a question about um, their Medicare plan or something that we're not the agent on or they have a spouse coverage. We're there to help them navigate that and we take the call even if we're not the agent.
18:54.97
tylerking
I Like that a lot or I have no idea if that'll work but a thing that I we joke around about a lot at lessening serum is selling or offering for free depending on what we're talking about service for other crms. The joke being like their support is so bad. We're going to support their product better than they do. And then.dotdot Obviously it's a terrible business move. But we've we've often. Dr. It. You're kind of doing that you're saying your spouse has a group plan and it's the agent is so bad. Your employer is going to pay us to provide support for their group plan I think that's amazingly Trollish I Love it.
19:30.61
Rick
Yeah, yeah, and then we meet the spouse and then we get introduced to their employer and then there's a lead there too for a group group customer. So there's all sorts of legs on this but the inflection point potential here is that we just unlock the cheat code Jd has started using that cheat code. It's leading to lots of leads and then also.
19:36.60
tylerking
No yeah, true.
19:50.80
Rick
Immediate revenue from a subscription standpoint like just overnight like hundreds of leads. Ah for consumer ah enrollments and so um, it's likely you know that there's 2 things I want to talk about here one is I want to talk about like.
20:05.36
Rick
Is this what an inflection point feels like I guess you don't really know until it happens and then it like plays out a little bit but it feels like we may have just broken our like we're going to have to figure how to staff this like next year kind of thing which which talks leads us into a conversation of like okay well, how do we staff this thing. How do we stay like we're going to.
20:07.57
tylerking
Um, first.
20:16.26
tylerking
Um, yeah.
20:23.20
Rick
We're going to um, enter the year February first with some like base like level of recurring revenue based on our existing customer base. It's going to be somewhere between $10000 and $20000 I'm pretty confident. Um, how do we want to invest that.
20:33.75
tylerking
Um, yeah I I love this be like probably my main complaint about my experience at leg up health thus far is because I started in February or March or something like that I you know only. half day a week or something. It's not like I'm doing much but there's it been very little daydreaming which is correct I'm not blaming you or j like you have very limited time to put into it and j d knows exactly what he needs to go do. There's been no reason to daydream up until this point but that's like the part the startup fund that's been missing.
20:54.70
Rick
Or.
21:09.58
tylerking
And I love what I'm hearing from you is like well who knows if it'll be valuable to daydream about this. So let's go do it and fewer it takes us.
21:17.30
Rick
Exactly exactly. So um I might you know I actually do think that the the conversation around like who do we hire? What do we ask them to do what? What expectations do we shut when we hire them. Um, you know like that's a. That's gonna be a very real question. We have to answer in february.
21:33.70
tylerking
Yeah, so when does the do you think the actions have to happen in February or do you think the discussion starts then.
21:40.12
Rick
So what? what your point. What I just took away from our previous conversation about who to hire if we believe that the person pays for themselves outside of open enrollment meaning they generate the demand that that makes them a positive return on investment. Out save openroment that needs to be hired them immediately.
21:57.83
tylerking
Yeah, that's if we have enough leads to hand them because like that the what? Well if if they can generate leads Yes, but there is um, you could interpret the same narrative as J D like there's less to do outside of open enrollment than there is.
22:01.36
Rick
No, that's if we if we want them to go generate leads. Yes.
22:17.38
tylerking
During it j d can do the growth stuff outside of it and then the first time we're going to be have a capacity problem is next open enrollment potentially but you're you're right? if if we can hire someone and they just immediately make money that that seems like a stretch to me.
22:32.30
Rick
Well, but that's the point like you don't if you don't try it. You don't know it and so like and so what what I got excited about from our previous conversation like 10 minutes ago was like oh well maybe we do hire someone quickly and we say you know you know, well well basically like.
22:36.10
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:50.49
Rick
Prepare for open enrollment but like right now we need you to like go generate demand here's how you're going to do it and also you're going to service our customer learn learn how to service all of our customers. So Jd can generate more demand that seems pretty interesting.
23:00.48
tylerking
Yeah, a tough thing here is they all have to be like ah certified or whatever I don't know what the term it licensed. Yeah um, like they have to be an insurance agent. Even even if there was just a sales roll.
23:08.30
Rick
Licensed.
23:15.71
tylerking
I don't I don't know what the legality around this is but like I assume a lot of pure sales conversations are still going to be like well I've got these group Health insurance plans talk me through it. My understanding is you're not allowed to offer any guidance at all If you're not licensed is that right.
23:32.13
Rick
Nope, You can like we we could hire like us someone to set a meeting for Jd but the minute you start talking about plans or answering any sort of questions it gets um you get into territory of of violating the rules. So.
23:41.62
tylerking
Um, ah.
23:44.31
tylerking
Yeah, so like right off the bat. This is already. You can't follow a normal Sas sales team model because they have to be licensed insurance agents.
23:56.94
Rick
What's interesting though is like you could hire someone and say like you could design a ah 60 day onboarding plan where it's like in your first sixty days you're going to learn how to ah you know, prospect our icp ah use all of our tools set meetings for Jd shadow jd. And you're going to get licensed so that you can start doing what Jd's doing all in the first sixty days and you're going to learn a ton like that's something you can get someone on the phones like and now it's it's um, it's more intimidating that it is hard.
24:19.32
tylerking
Is that that's doable like it's not that much work to get licensed. Okay, because yeah, I'm I have in my head. What makes a really good like service person having hired a number of really good service people but like would they be good at taking the test you know like and maybe the answer is yes, maybe it's like. Like up should be hiring the exact same type of person. But I Wonder if there's a different set of skills that like you need even just to pass the test but then also to be an insurance agent.
24:54.37
Rick
Yeah, and then like there's a couple things that are really important for us. Um like attention to detail is super important, especially during our phase because Jay's doing a lot of meticulous things transferring data back and forth between the various systems that he works in and getting that wrong could be really bad for us.
25:09.20
tylerking
Um.
25:11.40
Rick
Um, there's you know, um you know you can't like misquote someone like oh you um I'm sorry I put you put the wrong pharmacy and I put the wrong pharmacy in your quote like that changes like it's It's like super important to like be on on like attention details super important which I think is is part of being a good customer service person. Um.
25:19.37
tylerking
Right.
25:30.74
Rick
But yeah, you have to be able to talk to people. You don't know very well which is also another thing.
25:31.26
tylerking
Right? So 1 1 thing what you were just saying and we were just saying is basically hire another Jd train them up. Give them all that give him support but like the the idea they become aj d. And then the other approach you've talked about before is like what are the things only Jd can do or what are the things that are hard to reproduce and like you can find ah an admin assistant that can copy fields around with they are detail oriented but they aren't a licensed insurance agent. Um. You could find someone who can set up phone calls and all that and and have more of a specialist approach and then say Jd is spending 100% of his time right now but he could do 5 times as much of the high value stuff or whatever. Do you have an intuition as to which one of those is um, more appealing to you.
26:16.28
Rick
Yep.
26:21.91
Rick
Ah I lean towards like the ideal scenario which is like um, we're ultimately next year going to be limited by our capacity to enroll ah ah actually do the heart the work that J only J D can do with a license. Um.
26:37.87
tylerking
Um, the hunt.
26:38.33
Rick
In next open enrompment period so trying to figure out how to solve that bottleneck is more important than like marginally improving Jd's like throughput.
26:46.17
tylerking
Okay, so let me put that in my words just to make sure I'm understanding it like there's there may be benefit to making Jd more efficient the other months out of the year but the bottleneck is just during open enrollment so anything that doesn't help that part of the process which is. Work that can only be done by an insurance agent doesn't truly help the total throughput.
27:07.72
Rick
I think so I think fundamentally like if we look at this business now that we've gotten assuming this is assuming we end up where we where we want to be in February like the the next challenge is how do we replicate J what jd. The hard work Jd is doing. It's not how do we make Jd more efficient and so like why like sure we could optimize that a further but like is that really what we're all here to do.
27:24.16
tylerking
Um, yeah, when.
27:32.86
tylerking
Yeah I don't I don't have nearly as much of a sense as you do of like what are the things JD is doing and what are the things that are hard but.
27:39.39
Rick
I Don't think we can outsource a licensed age at work which is like like the stuff that I think we need to figure out how to do without J d.
27:51.32
tylerking
Yeah, if if we were a venture backed company I think the the move would be offer our software platform to any agent. Let them go do their offer offer them tools to make them a better agent basically start a software powered agency. I'm guessing that doesn't have any appeal to you But what like what's your reaction to hearing that.
28:12.94
Rick
Yeah I mean I don't want to have a if you try to hire agents there. They think different man they think about like they're salespeople they're like oh how much you going to pay me per policy I I enroll and like who's pay which carrier is paying the most this year. It's like no no, no, no, no, that's not how.
28:21.70
tylerking
Um, yeah.
28:31.48
tylerking
Um, the fish.
28:31.73
Rick
We don't do commissions. Ah, there are no commissions.
28:35.52
tylerking
Right? There are no commissions on the policy but there might be like you used the word quota earlier a sales rep might get paid based on something adjacent to but but they wouldn't get paid like a percentage of the insurance Premium I Know that's.
28:42.74
Rick
And roll a client correct correct. No not not has anything to do with compliance everything do with incentive alignment.
28:53.98
tylerking
Or I think that's partially for compliance reasons. But yeah, it doesn't so they're not incentivized to sell a more expensive plan is that That's the yeah.
29:04.20
Rick
Correct or an insurance like it's it's rare that ah individual Health Health insurance in the realm that we play in is is paid as a percentage these days. It's usually per employee per month or per enrolled member per month. Um.
29:15.99
tylerking
Um, hello.
29:21.58
Rick
But like insurance companies get around that by offering bonuses and so for example, Aetna is a new insurance company entering Utah this year and to try to spice up for agents like enroll me, they're paying like a two hundred dollars hundred dollars bonus per ah policy enrolled.
29:38.43
tylerking
Gotcha yeah.
29:38.96
Rick
And so like oh well, that incentivizes the agent to pitch Aetna um, well, that's not we. We would never let our our agents be directly incentivized by that.
29:49.63
tylerking
Okay, that leg up health The company still gets that bonus but it doesn't go to the agents. Yeah cool. Ah well lots of stuff we we could continue talking about. We probably have done enough there. But.
29:55.65
Rick
Yep.
30:02.19
Rick
No yeah, yeah, so that's what I'm ready to talk about probably in February. Um.
30:07.82
tylerking
Yeah, how is ah open enrollment going I mean I know you said you feel like you've hit an inflection point but like are just the normal renewing old people and like all the normal stuff you'd expect going according to plan.
30:24.14
Rick
Yeah I think so um I think ah yeah, it's going well like it's too early to tell we're nine days in but it feels way busier than last year anecdotally
30:33.88
tylerking
Um, yeah, okay, great all right more to come. Um, maybe I'll move over to some less annoying stuff right now. Ah I don't have a ton of like like I said last time I I'm gonna have a lot of boring updates. It just feels so calm right now.
30:43.25
Rick
Let's do it.
30:50.76
tylerking
Um, like I've had a couple meetings recently with people where we're like especially with like so Michael manages the serum coaches Robert manages the devs um a couple times and I've had a meeting with one of them and we you know, go in the conference room or whatever and and be like. All right? What's what's on your mind and you'd be like not ah you know nothing. Everything's good and what what about you anything you want to talk about no all right meeting over and that just doesn't happen during times of chaos. There's there's normal There's almost always. Not like a major fire to put out like we're not like a high drama company but there's always oh this little things breaking or because so and so leave like they they announced they're quitting or whatever. Ah I just realized as of the end of this year of knock on wood. We can make it without anyone leaving we will have gone 2 years without anyone leaving the company. Yeah.
31:44.82
Rick
That's wild.
31:46.42
tylerking
Um, now it took us six months to replace one of the people so our most senior person and has been here for a year and a half but the person before them left about two years earlier or two years before now it is so different just having a team of experienced people like.
32:03.43
tylerking
No one really needs mentorship. All the basic company operating stuff works as planned someone goes on vacation and everyone else is just like we know how it works like Michael is about to take a sabbatical He's going to be gone for whatever six weeks eight weeks in this customer service team. There's a lot of like prep work. He has to do. But. Customer service team is just going to run fine without them. It's wild.
32:22.78
Rick
You're basically saying that like when you don't hire anyone new. No one has to learn how to work with you all and it's so annoying to have to teach I mean I'm just so it's true when you're like operating and everyone kind of speaks the same language.
32:26.32
tylerking
Um, yeah.
32:35.78
Rick
They get it. They know what the prior they know they know how this thing works like the unspoken unwritten way of of doing things you move So fast. Note.
32:44.33
tylerking
Yeah, it. Yes, let me give a specific example of this. So um, 3 people in the office have basically are on all time pager duty like if the site goes down my phone roberts phone and Michael's phone blow up if we're sitting in the office with a group of people and someone hears the noise. No one says a word. Everyone just looks at their computer and is like I know what I I'm going to go into slack I'm going to do this like there's just into action immediately if the site goes down as opposed to everyone being like oh no, what's that noise. Oh the sights down. What can I do to help you know? Um, yeah, it's it's ah it's great. It's a lot of fun i. Also just for I think this is obvious but like until you feel it. Maybe you don't realize it the amount of work it takes to recruit somebody is immense and then you hire them and the amount of work it takes forget them being productive the amount of productivity it takes away from the rest of your team to train them to mentor them. It takes us six months to train a serum coach. Um, that's a lot of time and then they're not as effective until probably a year year and a half or in the dev team like I do think serum coaches hit a ceiling where it's like you're probably still getting better in subtle ways. But you're already so much better than any other companies doing customer service. But on the dev team like a person 3 years in is a lot better than someone two years in especially because we're hiring almost entirely entry level people so they're like they're not just getting experienced at our company. They're getting experienced period just everything is getting more and more and more efficient and so I'm kind of crossing my fingers. No one quits.
34:18.89
tylerking
Anytime soon.
34:19.23
Rick
Yeah, yeah, well, that's a I mean when you have you ultimately probably have to hire someone right? Ah, if things go the way you want them to or like the inevitable happens. So enjoy it.
34:26.49
tylerking
Yeah, and we have we have a little bit of that because we have 3 3 people kind of becoming devs one was a sierram coach 2 or dev ops I've talked about this already. Um, so like we are training 3 devs right now sort of but it's yeah as a ratio of the total company ever. it's it's great so I agree enjoy it well no but I mean hiring people so exciting to my point isn't having one experienced person is better than having one experienced and 1 inexperienced is that having 2 experienced people is better than one. Um, and also it's I will say the downside is.
34:45.64
Rick
You're making me like not want to hire anyone now.
34:57.90
Rick
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
35:04.74
tylerking
So boring. It's a little boring I'm not bored I always find things to get excited about. But you can tell the team is kind of like so we're just this is what it is Huh We're just this maybe forever. Yeah, um, anyway, related to that. Ah.
35:16.32
Rick
And this is us. Ah.
35:23.68
tylerking
I'm coding again and I I know I've said that like there's our hundred fiftieth episode how many times have I said this like 7 or 8 ah, but but there's like there's not much Ceo work for me to do right now. Um, again, not a lot of interviewing. Not not a lot of mentorship. Not a lot of fires to put out. So i.
35:30.50
Rick
I'm coding you good.
35:43.10
tylerking
Find myself just like yeah I've got like a day or 2 of Ceo work next week but I don't have five days of it. So ah so I'm coding. Yeah I'm having a great time. It's amazing. Coding is so much more fun than being a Ceo.
35:50.69
Rick
There we go.
35:57.97
Rick
Um, is there anything that you're working on that you're excited about.
36:01.53
tylerking
Um, I actually got started on the next kind of main priority which is like bulk actions I've talked about before it's just kind of a new feature. We're building one give me your thoughts on this one thing I'm debating so our tech stack we started in. Very normal ph p server rendered html just like how website how everything worked prior to twenty ten point ah nowadays you have an spa a single page app which is like there's some javascript it could be written in angular react or whatever. But it's all javascript 1 big Javascript app. Which point you kind of have a separation of concerns. There's a frontend code base which is all Javascript and a backend code basee which is whatever language you want ph p in our case, um I led the charge into react and there was a time when I knew it but I didn't keep coding for long enough to retain that skill set. So I would say I'm a conceptually I get react I have no idea like the exact syntax or what like I would have to relearn it basically I'm still very very familiar with how the whole backend works what I'm trying to decide is should I just be like. I know how the backend works I'm just going to find backend projects and stay in my lane or should I be like I think maybe this calm is going to last for long enough that it's worth me actually becoming a full stack developer. Where's that you know that's.
37:14.14
Rick
Well I know where I stand on this go learn something new Man Life's too short.
37:25.53
tylerking
Sounds obvious I wasn't thinking about what would be more fun.
37:29.95
Rick
Minimize regret here. What? what? like if you never had this time again in your life. What would you rather? do.
37:32.58
tylerking
Yeah, the problem is I don't like react I do in the same the right technology to choose it's you need it to build the type of app we we want to build but it's not fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right? Okay, ah I'm gonna put some more thought to that. But I I.
37:41.20
Rick
Ah.
37:42.50
Rick
Um, you always be able to work in the back end.
37:52.40
tylerking
I Thought that might turn into a whole thing and it didn't your your you've got clarity there it. It is also wild though. Like now when I write code a different developer reviews it and they're like hey asshole like we don't do it this way anymore you caused a lot of problems for us by doing that.
38:05.37
Rick
Um, that's terrible. What did will anyone um will people be honest with you or will they like let you deploy stuff and then see if it squeaks.
38:13.10
tylerking
I I I'm getting some pushback so they'll at least be a little honest with me I do think probably if I what I'm not sure about I think a healthy dynamic is pushback to the pushback I think sometimes like code reviewers leave a note and it's like no actually I thought about it and this is I did that intentionally I think if I do that. Probably like some people would be hesitant to then push back to my pushback to their pushback. Um, that's just me guessing I have no idea but like it is I I try to be as much a man of the people as I can. It is probably true. It's difficult for a Ceo to.
38:41.84
Rick
That's awesome. Ah.
38:51.40
tylerking
To get in a genuine debate like about a technical topic or whatever with someone.
38:56.34
Rick
Oh absolutely now Now here's what I had one more thought about this going back to the original topic. Um I think Memize or regret is one way to think about this another way for you to think about it is what is closer to the dollar like what's going to help you contribute more meaningfully to growth. Um.
39:05.70
tylerking
Yeah, and I think that's a short term for his long term thing because the learning process provides 0 value in the short term but long term then I can work on whatever the the sacrifice being like I can ship stuff immediately if I stay focused on what I already know. But. Long and actually right now what we need is what I know but you could imagine a scenario where I'm working on like the sixth most important thing because the top 5 are all outside my wheelhouse and I guess back to the theme of the last few episodes for me.
39:32.59
Rick
39:42.39
tylerking
We're raising prices on legacy users. We're buying ourselves runway Every single thing we do should be long-term thinking right now that the conclusion you would reach as well. You think.
39:53.77
Rick
Yeah, this is not like this particular this is not an urgent like this is not driven by Urgency Therefore ah you should. There's no reason to to be shortsighted.
40:04.23
tylerking
Yeah, okay I like that I think I'm I'm really hoping that this is the new normal. Um, you know we're not hiring interns this summer that'll save a lot of my time. Ah, again, you know someone would have to leave or whatever. But I think it's possible I'll just be able to spend a couple days coding long term here.
40:21.56
Rick
Be awesome.
40:21.73
tylerking
Maybe we'll see we'll see I Know that's also good for you because like leg up health benefits from me being better at coding. Yeah, the reality is everything like up health needs is in my wheelhouse already.
40:27.87
Rick
I Tried not to I tried to put aside my biases for my how ally responded to this topic.
40:39.35
tylerking
The the stuff I would be learning would not help you guys at all. Unfortunately um, sure I if we did that at less knowing I would not be the 1 to lead that charge. You think leg up health needs a mobile app.
40:42.16
Rick
What about like a mobile app.
40:56.70
Rick
Not now. But I think there is utility in ah, having your digital insurance cards across multiple insurance companies at your fingertips in 1 app.
40:59.94
tylerking
Um I do not think it would be hard to build a leg up Health mobile app like with less annoing Crm. It's There's just so much to the app and the software in so many edge case and all that leg up Health is like upload a file here's the file. The end. Um I don't think it would be that hard.
41:20.47
Rick
I mean fundamentally like the the the the the the Mvp would be you know carry your carry insurance cards around digital insurance cards around from all of your insurance companies ah whereas like. You have apps with these insurance companies. But you have to have a separate app for each 1.
41:35.65
tylerking
Um, is there a way to get that card like they offer an Api or something to download the image.
41:39.84
Rick
We we have everything we need for the card on the policy already. It's really just the member id.
41:46.45
tylerking
Oh we we? Okay I guess my dumb like ah like the the brain of someone who's not in the insurance industry is like there's something magic about the card. The card just has to have the info.
41:53.20
Rick
See it just has to have like there's like anywhere from like 1 to 5 things on an insurance card which are effectively just numbers or or codes I should say.
42:04.91
tylerking
Okay, still got to make it look like a card that's yeah, um, cool. The only other update I had this is just there's really not much to talk about here. But yeah.
42:08.40
Rick
Yeah I mean design wise you can make it look prettier than what we have right now. But no.
42:18.22
tylerking
In the past we've talked anytime like new lingo gets invented at the company. It always kind of tickles my fancy a little um I've mentioned this on the podcast before so as a reminder the siam coaching team had extra time and we're trying to figure out how to use it. And I made the analogy of that jar. There's like a jar and if you fill it if you if you have like rocks pebbles and sand to fill it with if you do sand first and then pebbles and then rocks all the stuff doesn't fit. But if you do rocks first and then fill it in with pebbles and then fill it in with sand it all fits because the sand fills in the. Gaps left by the rocks right? That's the analogy this is like really sunken in to company terminology. So we now have the term sand project. Um, so anyone can which just means a project like I don't have time set aside for it. It's if I have free time I'll get to it and if I don't I won't. And now you can just call it sand project and everyone knows what you mean and it's I just love these little shorthand. Yeah yeah, what are you talking I have heard people complain about going to work at like big companies and they're like everything is a buzzword here but they're kind of fun aren't they.
43:15.61
Rick
And the next time you hire someone. They're going to be like so.
43:26.18
Rick
Ah, yeah, exactly. Ah yeah I mean it's It's always cool to watch culture evolve. Ah do do you? Um oh is I had a question related to this. Do you do you invent? Do you intention like do you.
43:32.23
tylerking
Yeah.
43:42.78
Rick
Try to create these terms or did you just let them come about Naturally yeah.
43:45.82
tylerking
Ah, this one I would say was pretty natural like I made the analogy intentionally and then I did call them rock projects and Sand projects in the newsletter that I sent out to everybody I was not anticipating people continuing to call them sand projects so that was a happy accident. We have though been trying to ah. You you in the past have commented on like that. Maybe we pay attention to culture in a way that's good and but like I don't think I'm consciously doing it. So Let me say this. We have been trying to name stuff not like sand projects not like a concept but like naming projects. Um, we've never done this in the past I know it's a little cringy and like.
44:18.84
Rick
Um.
44:23.68
tylerking
Companies do this in a really wells. Yeah, so ah I'll give you 2 examples. Um our developer reno built this tool that ingests data from our database into Elasticsearch which is like our search engine tool.
44:24.79
Rick
What's the what's an example.
44:39.56
tylerking
Um, there's an existing one out there but we didn't like it so we built our own but it's shitty and he's like what can we call this to acknowledge. It's not very good but it works for our needs and so we called it Reno's shitty and then some acronym I forget but it spells it sounds like wrestler so we call it wrestler so that's a version of it. We have a tool we built called wrestler maybe the better 1 Wrestler Rena's shitty something I forget what the last part it means the ah the other one that I like more though we we started naming some things after company pets. So ah, one of our serum coaches Emma built a tool that like generates.
45:02.80
Rick
Wrestler.
45:17.66
tylerking
Templates for customers based on like a chat gp prompt. So any cr um coach that's talking to a customer can like get a full account customization generated by chat Gpt if it's like a weird industry. They've never heard of before that's called the mabel because Mabel is Emma's cat that type of thing is. But I'm talking about here little corny I like it though. It's I people people have found joy. We were just little people like pet really the the lesson here is people like animals.
45:39.57
Rick
That's hilarious corny. Yeah, the Mabel.
45:51.38
Rick
We always had we the the way Comfort Tris are another one they get these names. Do you have cover. Do you have cover chimneys.
45:55.73
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we we just do we paint 1 wall in each conference room is painted different colors who have the blue room and the green room. And yeah, yeah, go for it.
46:04.18
Rick
Oh that's so creative. Ah, um, all right? So I have one last topic we can sneak in here. Um, it is ah about this ex social media platform formerly known as Twitter um. And I just find it like less valuable than I used to and I can't figure out why but like every time I log in I feel like I get like more notifications that are of less value and then I I never log in at the top of my feed I log in at like some random part of the feed I have to scroll up to get to like the most recent stuff. It's really strange and I can't tell if it's intentional. Um, or if it's just like the product getting worse over time and I'm starting to feel it.
46:40.61
tylerking
Um, sister.
46:42.75
tylerking
Yeah I mean I think it's probably both I definitely feel that as well are using the algorithmic feed or the chronological.
46:52.42
Rick
Um I don't know I always tried to use the chron chronological previously. But who knows if they've changed that on me.
46:59.41
tylerking
Um, yeah, definitely not that I realize the point of this is not you asking me for advice on how to use Twitter but if you use following instead of for you I think the experience is pretty similar to how it always was. It's not as good, but.
47:11.94
Rick
Um.
47:14.24
tylerking
For you is where it got way worse in my opinion I don't know if you but so like you you talked about Well what I'm okay notifications I'm not experiencing that problem. You're they're sending you a bunch of stupid notifications. You don't want have you tried unsubscribing from those.
47:17.87
Rick
I Don't know what that means.
47:30.14
Rick
I'm looking at it right now. No I don't think I can unsubscribe from them.
47:33.75
tylerking
Ah, because I don't get those for the most part every once in a while I do but I mostly just get real notifications.
47:38.73
Rick
Yeah I get like ah like this person posted and and because of that I get notified that they posted. It's like I don't care I don't see this less I can say see this less often. That's not very like I feel like that's like.
47:46.42
tylerking
There's not 3 little dots and you can be like don't show me this. Yeah I don't know I know it's not definitive. So for me the thing that's gotten so much worse is if you look in some so two things the algorithmic feed.
47:55.58
Rick
Ah, yeah, yeah.
48:02.47
tylerking
Full of engagement bait. It's just thread boys. It used to be I'd go there and it would show me the things I missed from the people I follow as well as some other relevant things and now it's just like some like stupid topic I don't care about at all. That's just going viral. That's problem number 1 for me problem number 2 is if you do click into a thread.
48:07.97
Rick
Yes.
48:22.46
tylerking
All of the people who pay show up in the comments above the people who don't and so the comments are worthless like it's a bunch of Bots and trolls in the comments and then you have to scroll Scroll Scroll scroll to get to the non-verified people and then that's where the good comments are yeah I just.
48:38.11
Rick
That's terrible I didn't even realize that I have just I've just like noticed that I I I get more like I used to go to Twitter. Ah anytime I had a real time question I wanted to answer to when I couldn't find Google like Google didn't answer the question. Um, or Google wasn't up to date enough.
48:41.57
tylerking
Still.
48:55.54
tylerking
Ah.
48:55.55
Rick
Um, and now I just I'm getting frustrated by the results of that search. It used to be very fulfilling like oh this is exactly what I was looking for and now it's like oh this is just garbage. Yeah, there's nowhere else to go.
49:01.60
tylerking
Um, yeah, and still I don't know where else to go like yeah I Yeah I don't know what the it really feels like there's just. All social media is like sunsetting almost like not that it won't be there. Not even that we won't use it but just it's like a tax on our mental health and nothing Else. There's just none of the fun. There's none of the joy anymore I feel like.
49:31.85
Rick
We were just getting old.
49:34.97
tylerking
Except I think young people are even less on these things than we are they like Tiktok thing is Tiktok's not really social media. Tiktok's just short Youtube videos like I don't think people are.
49:39.70
Rick
Um, my niece and nephew are on snapchat and Tiktok all day long like just snap.
49:50.50
Rick
Yeah, that's Tv snapchat they are snapchat they are yeah we don't even know use do snapchat I mean that's something I feel like you and I just don't even understand.
49:53.97
tylerking
Have a network of friends and their messaging and they're posting updates snapchat. yes yes I use ticktok I love tiktock now I don't the funny thing is like ten years ago it was like. Just keeps getting. It's all it's young people. But every other social media young people became old people right? like Twitter was 20 somethings and then there's 20 somethings became 30 and forty somethings and we're still the main Twitter audience snapchat seems to cycle through and it's always young people. And I suspect it's because young people have much more reason to want things to auto delete than adults to but that's just a guess I don't know.
50:36.61
Rick
Ah, probably ah oh man, Well um, anything else you want talk about.
50:45.51
tylerking
No I think I'm good. We have a a long list of stuff I feel bad because like months ago some listeners sent in questions and I was like yeah we'll get to those at some point and we never did and now I would almost feel like I would be insulting them if I brought up one of these questions that someone asked like six months ago um
51:01.38
Rick
Yeah.
51:04.82
tylerking
So no I'm just going to declare bankruptcy on that if you if you study a question I Really appreciate it. It's on my list I feel guilty about it. Thank you for sending it in feel free to send it in again.
51:12.20
Rick
Yeah, well if you'd like if you'd like to send more questions in or check past topics. You could visit start tolast.com for Tyler's contact information. Um, we'll see you next time.
51:19.60
tylerking
See yeah.