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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.
00:00.00
rick
Hello tyler.
00:01.58
tylerking
Um, was going on ah work work. We're calling this a short podcast episode because the moment. Ah it ends I'm sprinting to the airport to fly out to your home state.
00:13.41
rick
Yes, we need to figure out how to get together I am ah I saw your note about I Maybe the River Horse which is a very it it Well I don't know if if I think the best is opinion but it's certainly certainly. It's certainly one of the fanciest.
00:18.62
tylerking
Um, is river horse on Maine still the best restaurant park city.
00:24.30
tylerking
Sure but is it thought of that way. Okay I don't necessarily care about fancy but like good yeah Bo Bougie cocktails and good food which doesn't always mean fancy but normally does is what I'm like into. Yeah.
00:32.14
rick
And good.
00:37.76
rick
And good. So good service like it's like got excellent service I I haven't been up to honestly I might be talking out of my butt because I haven't been to Park City a long time since if I had kids so there's probably been a lot of turnover on Main street and there's probably some really cool restaurants that we haven't ever.
00:53.70
tylerking
Yeah I did a little Google and it's also nice. So for people who don't know park city like it's a ski town ah ski season basically just ended meaning the prices like basically I expect the whole city to be empty basically like but we got a. Very nice airbnb on main street overlooking like the the town lift like it's it's the type of location that would cost thousands of dollars a night normally and it was nowhere close to that. So looking forward to an empty park city when we go. Um, yeah I've also got a big update.
01:26.74
rick
Go watch one is that a good thing.
01:28.44
tylerking
On one of my quarter my yearly goals housing construction has begun. There are yes there are people making noise in my basement right now as we speak I'm very excited I thought that it was going to start more than a year ago and it started last week so big delay but now now that they're moving. They seem to be moving.
01:52.29
rick
That's good I hope stay on top of it because I mean the I opened my office door yesterday and the hinge fell off um and and I can't get anyone to come fix it.
02:01.32
tylerking
Oh My God I'm I know we need to stay. This is not to say we don't need to stay on top of it I Do think we've gotten very good signs that like the contractor is someone who maybe charges a little more and And. Estimates a longer timeline. But so far the the quality seems to be pretty good. Yeah, but the number I've never done anything like this before the number of tiny little decisions that have to be made is overwhelming like I didn't realize we have to like buy a sink so that the countertop guy.
02:19.30
rick
If you got good good quality people then it'll take care of itself. That's awesome I'm bad I'm happy for you.
02:37.38
tylerking
Can cut the hole to be the right size but before we buy the sink. There's a microwave in the cabinets that get built in and they can't build the cabinets without knowing how wide the microwave is and just like the chain of dependencies makes my job doing project management at lessoing serum seem quite tame.
02:52.92
rick
Ah, yeah I know what you mean? um I think this is why a lot of these these these builders have sort of prefab ah constrained options is so that there's those choice. The the dependency is already sort of thought through and so you can pick from things that work within.
03:01.69
tylerking
Um, yeah.
03:10.62
rick
Ah, certain like size. Um, but you're purely custom on this one I think.
03:12.21
tylerking
Yeah, we right? and just I mean I don't know Well yeah, we went to like the cabinet guy warehouse thing and he was like so we've got these kind of prefab things that like you can go with those. They're cheaper, but they're like it's It's the exact it's you know here's the Width here's the dimensions. And even though it's not what we actually want because like the dimensions are completely wrong after like sitting in an hour and a half long meeting with this guy talking about which shade of white we want. We were like can we just go with the prefa but we we didn't end up doing that but it was something.
03:47.57
rick
Yeah, exactly the decisions get made for you I'm I'm bad about this ah from the housing stuff because if if a contractor comes in and asks the question I'm just like I don't know goes Health disable and I'm I'm sure that's not being a very good husband.
03:56.82
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
04:04.10
rick
But I've just opted out and um I.
04:05.34
tylerking
But she you told me she like likes. She's very picky about what happens right? which I imagine that type of control must be nice for her.
04:14.90
rick
Yeah I think she likes it. Ah but but it's it's problematic because the quality of work is so poor that it's It's like double. It's not going. Well so yeah I'm glad you got started I Hope it goes way better than it went for us.
04:18.58
tylerking
Um, yeah, yeah, that sucks. Yeah knock onwood um, cool. Ah I had my you know every six months give a presentation of a company did that this so last week meaning I just got done with 16 one on ones or something like that.
04:41.30
rick
And yeah I always like hearing about ah 2 questions like I'd love to hear what what you're going to talk about the presentation but the most interesting thing about these one on ones to me is I'm always interested if you learned something you didn't know like what did you did you walk in with an assumption that was wrong or validated or.
04:55.25
tylerking
Um, yeah, um.
05:00.60
rick
Like I'm any any like ahas.
05:03.81
tylerking
Well, yeah, so let's start with what the presentation was about um the theme this year like my my first slide was this is going to be a boring presentation. Um, and what I meant by that is like if nothing changes. There's not much to say um, but that's kind of a good like there's 2 reasons things can change right? 1 is. Oh we're growing so fast. We finished all our goals from last year like time to come up with a new plan and realistically it's been a long time since that's been the type of change. Um more common for us anyway is the change is like well we tried a bunch of shit. It didn't work the way we wanted. So now we need to come up with a new plan. And this is the first time I can remember where this presentation was like the plan we had before still seems like the right plan not that we're done with it. Not that it's crushing it or anything but like I don't think that six months ago I was being an idiot which is kind of a good feeling.
05:54.28
rick
That that is like super self-deprecating by the way for a Ceo to say to all of their.
06:02.24
tylerking
Ah I didn't use the word idiot in the present. But I mean I I don't know I think and I think it's good for like the top of the company to acknowledge mistakes all the time so that ah people lower do or maybe that's just my personality and that's an excuse I don't know um, but yeah, like it's cool like. So six months ago we had the presentation and the the the main thing there was should we raise prices on legacy users from 10 to $15 we decided to do that. We announced that last September um, it hasn't gone into effect yet. It goes into effect in July but like still feeling very good about that decision kind of a no brainer really? um and then otherwise we've kind of. Like so I kind of reiterated the thing a common thing we talk about is like you can't just say something to the team and like expect everyone to remember it. Um, that's actually to skip ahead in the one on ones one of the main things I learned is that I there's I learned things that I have not been repeating enough like people have said things like. XYZWhy do why do? I don't think we do this thing right? and then I'm like we have a whole wiki document about this. We talked we we talked about but then I'm like well the last time I mentioned this was three years ago um so anyway, nothing specific worth going into but just a lot of like I didn't repeat stuff enough.
07:10.23
rick
E.
07:13.55
tylerking
Back to what this presentation was is me just trying to repeat stuff. Everyone already knows but the main thing is and like if you listen the podcast you've heard this play out over the last couple years. Our growth kind of tanked at one point it did we weren't shrinking but are close to plateaued and then I kind of said we need to do something. And I was thinking like our growth engine isn't working. We need to come up with new marketing channels yada yada yada um, and then the shift that happened maybe like four months or so ago was realizing our growth engines actually still pretty good like. We add something like 500 new paying users a month it's just that our churn we lose 460 a month and it's not because our churn is top high. Our churn is low. Um, so it's not a Churn problem. It's just like our growth is still five hundred a month is still pretty good. It's just it needs. Needs to be like 12 % higher that's I did the math if we were 12 % higher we'd be growing at a rate where our revenue like our profit would be increasing every year well along with giving employees raises and all the expense ah like our expenses increase every year. Ah.
08:22.70
rick
Because because you've got ah you know as your company customer base grows. You've got to offset the larger churn Even if turn stays the same as a percentage.
08:27.59
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, even if churn is a percentage is low. Yeah, the more customers you have the more absolute number. So it's like basically we need to net a hundred users a month. So if if we're losing 64 we need to add 5 60 right now we're adding 500 obviously that's averages but like when you think of it like we're only adding 40 users a month we need to go to a hundred users a month that's 150% increase that sounds really like we need to do big things. But if you think of it like we're adding 500 users a month we need to go to 5 60 which is the actual math. That's a much more achievable thing and the and the strategy for that shouldn't be let's go do totally new shit. It's like let's get our current engine working a little bit better. So.
09:07.97
rick
Yeah, and and I think what you've discovered by trying to get the engine just a little bit better is that there's the opportunities to make it a lot better in certain places.
09:15.11
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, absolutely I mean we've been talking about talk to sales but basically in the presentation I kind of showed a very simplified funnel I don't actually think the funnel metaphor works because the buying journey is so long and complicated and different for everyone for us, but just walking through like what brings people to the site are we doing anything on that. When I'm in Utah the thing we're building is forms which is kind of like a viral loop play will it work I don't know but like that's can we get an extra thousand people a month in our site from that possibly That's all we need.
09:43.68
rick
Ah I want to make sure we talk about that keep going on this presentation I'd love to talk about what you're spending time in Park City on but just I'll I'll I'll write it down.
09:46.75
tylerking
Yeah, okay, yeah,, let's do that? Um, okay and I think I think I can wrap this up pretty quick here but basically going through it. So like there's that we hired conversion Factory to help people who hit the site stay Engaged. We're doing talk to sales so that if they're interested. Ah, you know. Hopefully slightly more people are converting to free Trials. We're building the features that the the free trial users want but but it's all very simple. It's all just like back to basics of we're building a crm like we know exactly what features our customers want. Let's just let's just go build them so that's kind of the main focus of the presentation.
10:18.30
rick
I Love it. Cool. Yeah.
10:22.34
tylerking
Yeah, feels great and also just to note like the the Dev team is ah working in a way it never has before and it in the past I would have told you it was work like the Dev team is shipping stuff and the product's getting better and now that I can feel what that's actually like I was wrong thinking that in the past.
10:40.10
rick
That's awesome. Can can you talk a little bit about Pc like you mentioned forms um being a priority that's exciting. Are you saying that you're going to build forms into your crm product and then use forms on your marketing site for your own. Ah efforts.
10:40.94
tylerking
Yeah.
10:52.10
tylerking
So We're building. Um, if you go back far Enough. We've talked about forms in various various versions of forms like should it be a standalone product should be a freemium thing should it. We're going to just build it into Lessw serum. So every lessing serum Customer is going to get. A web form tool kind of like a type form I mean I don't like type form specifically the Ui but like that type of functionality. Um, and the like will it offer anything other forms tools don't know but that well yes in the sense that it'll be really easy to create it and the data will just immediately go into your crm. There's no like hook it up to zapier and pass data through because our customers can't use zapier. They don't know how? um so the play is just like if if you have a lead capture form If You have a contact form for support tickets anything like that make it with our tool. Send it to your customers to fill out or you know link to it from your website or whatever and that goes directly into the serum. So That's basically the product we're building.
11:50.43
rick
How are you going to use that for your own ah marketing.
11:52.88
tylerking
Well, the hope is every time someone fills out a form powered by less annoying serum. We're not going to. It's not that we're using the forms probably not. Ours are like very custom where it's like when you submit this form we like.
12:00.65
rick
Ah, you're not going to use it on you. You're not going to use it for your forms on your website.
12:09.60
tylerking
Call front's Api and put a ticket in there and like ah we have enough we have very ah custom forms right now. But for our customers who are much lower tech. They they don't they they're using like I surveyed them about a year ago about this most of them just use Google forms right now. Um.
12:24.32
rick
I See okay cool. Thank you.
12:27.80
tylerking
So this is just kind of an alternative to that. But the hope is you know? So we've got 10000 accounts with about 26000 users. How many for so how many forms will be viewed per month meaning like they like 1 of their customers and and I'll call it a. Ah. I'm trying to get my terminology right? The person who fills out the form is a I'm that's not the word we were going to use I'm blanking on I mean it's like a so it's a ah it starts with an r I'm I'm sorry it's not worth me trying to figure this out. No, it's not that either great great language. We're going with here anyway, that person.
12:48.35
rick
Submitter visitor.
12:56.54
rick
Requester.
12:59.99
rick
Yeah, yeah.
13:03.23
tylerking
How many times do they see a form which will say powered by lessening s hereum and then the real I think marketing opportunity for us is when they submit the form you've done this with like docusign type stuff. Forms Proposals invoices like after you submit it. That confirmation page like might it'll have a little custom message from our customer. But that's basically a page saying like hey do you want your own forms. Um, so that's that like the question is how many people are going to submit a form that's hosted by lessing here I'm in a given month say and we have no idea but that'll be a big. If. It's a lot that'll be good for us.
13:36.24
rick
Basically, you're going to say all you people out there that are using Google forms start using this It's going to be a little bit better and a little bit bit baked more baked into your existing serum workflow and in exchange for doing so. We're going to market. We're going to basically market to people and ah and play like Google's marketing to people cool I like it.
13:54.42
tylerking
Yeah, exactly? Um, so we're going to Utah for ten days mean Robert and the plan is to have the first version of forms done at the end of that so putting a lot of pressure on ourselves. But I think we can do it.
14:04.78
rick
I Love it. Um I have ah um I have another question is this. The only thing that you're going to work on the whole time is it like this. This is the project I Love the focus man like so I think I think oftentimes with offsites. It's so easy to load up an agenda that's like.
14:12.44
tylerking
Yeah, that is the project.
14:23.68
rick
You know so ambitious that you don't get anything done. Um you you cover so many things and like it's just like what just happened and you leave with more to do than what you started with and so I love the focus.
14:30.49
tylerking
Yeah I mean I think most offsites are almost if if a normal workday is like a combination of individual contributor like working on you know, whatever your main project is mixed in with meetings and planning and that type of stuff I think a normal offsite. Goes in the exact opposite direction of this and normal. 1 ne's like we don't have enough time to Zoom out and think big and all that and there's value in that too. But this is the exact opposite this is day to day life has too much distraction. What if we could just code for 18 hours a day for 10 straight days. Um, so like we canceled all our meat. We're not, we're not taking any meetings. Ah, the whole time. We basically told the whole Dev team and and the rest the company like you know if there's an emergency like we'll be working so we're available but like basically it's like we're completely out of contact for this 10 days looking forward to it. Ah what's going on with you.
15:22.89
rick
That's cool. Um, yeah, not a lot a lot I should say I'm um, I'm definitely. This is a busy week. We had our partner meeting on Monday for leg up. Um. I've had some late nights working um lot of like extracurricular commitments. So it's it's been crazy tomorrow or sorry tonight we have our second um mastermind meeting. Um I think I mentioned last time that I joined a mastermind group here in Utah it's led by um, Chase Murdoch who is ah. Ah, listener the podcast. Um and who is kind of has a holding company called dakkata group here in in Utah that owns various local businesses. Um, but anyway ah I am ah each week there. 2 people are considered spotlight people and I'm one I'm one of those people this month um and so I need to bring a topic and a challenge for people to help me work through and I I expressed that like my number 1 business problem right now or or sort of challenge I should say is how do I accelerate growth on leg of health um revenue growth. Um, and you know customer growth. Ah you know and that sort of thing and so I was curious like.
16:16.11
tylerking
Um.
16:33.42
rick
And that's that's a topic I'm going to take um but I was curious like do you have any advice on how to frame that if this is a 10 minute kind of thing. What's the best way to frame the problem so that it's actually I get useful ah sort of questions. Ah.
16:35.71
tylerking
Um, yeah.
16:41.81
tylerking
Um, yeah.
16:48.18
tylerking
Um, yeah.
16:49.78
rick
Or is this like something I've thought through so much that like actually it's not going to be useful for me to bring this topic.
16:53.61
tylerking
Yeah that's a good question I mean especially the last part that's very still like I I kind of hate going to sorry hate is too strong of a word but I always get uncomfortable this happened to me last week I tweeted something out that I I was not looking for advice and then a bunch of well-meaning people. I was just like complaining about something basically and a bunch of well-meaning people tried to give me solutions and I was like I already know what the solution is like thank you for trying but but then you're like on the hook to take them seriously, you know? and so yeah, that's a situation you want to avoid is like they don't have the context to actually help but they're your friends and you you have to like.
17:25.15
rick
Yep.
17:32.75
tylerking
Nod your head and be like oh yeah, that's real smart but you're like in your headers. There's a thousand reasons you don't get what's going on here. So yeah, can you make it more narrow. Can you be like a specific thing that's happening is JD is getting caught up in this part of it or something like that where they don't need all the context.
17:48.89
rick
So you think like the the way to combat the need for context is to get ah narrower in scope of conversation like make the challenge. Very yeah yeah, yeah I think like there's a big difference to saying like my biggest challenge is.
17:53.36
tylerking
Maybe I'm I'm just spit on here I don't know the answer to this but that's a thought what? What do you think about that.
18:05.90
rick
Revenue is not growing fast enough at leg up health um versus like hey we're like our biggest priority right now leg up health is to grow from you know, ah you know ten k a month to twenty k a month ah over the next twelve months the lever that we're pulling and we know's the right lever to pull is increasing the number of ut talk you know. Icp customers. We have our Icp is x y z you know it's the small business in Utah ah I am looking for help thinking through how we can go faster in terms of acquiring our Icp customer through outbound and. Ah, marketing efforts that I'm not thinking of to generate leads for jd.
18:42.77
tylerking
Yeah, so if if what you want is random marketing ideas most of which won't work. But maybe there's a gem in there I Think that's a good way to phrase it if what you want is like more specific than here's a channel to consider I I would go even more specific than what you just did I think.
19:00.93
rick
Like go even like hey we're building an outbound cadence. Ah, you know you know what it does it like any advice. Ah yeah.
19:01.16
tylerking
Um.
19:07.11
tylerking
Like here's the Script J D is using right now. Let's workshop I know workshopping is not what you're trying to do here I Just it's so easy for the the group of people to like get off course and be giving valid suggestions that just don't apply to your situation I feel like um.
19:23.83
rick
Um, yeah.
19:25.30
tylerking
This is I'm sorry I know I I kind of like get themes in my head and then I kind of harp on them. But 1 thing I've mentioned to you in slack the other day was like the idea of a bottleneck and I really like the metaphor of if you've got like a lean manufacturing ah like like a manufacturing plant.
19:28.13
rick
Yeah.
19:41.61
tylerking
And there's all these different stations. This is I'm stealing this straight out of the phoenix project. There's all these different stations and there's like materials coming in one side of the factory and they go to 1 station and they sand it down and they go to another station like whatever the steps are one of those stations is where work is piling up. All the other stations works flowing through them and then it piles up at one station and then once it comes out the other side it it flows free and there's basically always 1 bottleneck. So like that's what you have to address.
20:04.76
rick
So I Think that's helpful and and I and I know this stuff and I tell myself this all the time but then you get stuck in the wrong system like the wrong like there. There's different levels of looking at a system like you can be in it and you're looking at like a subsystem or you're like at the bird's eye and I think what you're talking about was look at the bird's eye if I'm looking at the bird's eye. And I'm going. Oh ah, the actual issue is we have this free product that is a no-brainer for lots of small businesses to buy and we can't figure out how to get people to to like understand it and sign up for it like that's the problem like um and so that's probably what I need to.
20:34.20
tylerking
Um, yeah I like that one? Yeah yeah.
20:40.42
rick
Focus on it's like that you don't need to know context on like what our goals are for the company or what our what our strategy is like listen we have this free product just all, you need to do is understand what the free offering is and help me think through like why I can't get people to sign up for it. Well thank you I Love it when I love it when we get a problem solved like that because it's like.
20:50.87
tylerking
Um, yeah I think that's a great one? Yeah yeah.
20:59.77
rick
I was going to think through this on my own all day you know like ah now and now I'm prepared.
20:59.80
tylerking
Ah, yeah, yeah, um, great. Um I want to run something by you that I've been thinking about and see if you've got any experience with this? Um, so generally speaking I'm pretty opposed to like hiring consultants kind of for exactly the reason you just. We. We just talked about which is they don't have context like I could there are programmers out there that are great programmers. But if they came in and look at our codebase it would take them a month to really wrap their head around how things work partially because we have a lot of custom shit that maybe we shouldn't but that's a separate issue. Um. So like if I'm hiring them for a two month project half of it's wasted with them trying to learn the project with with them trying to learn the codebase or like marketing. We've hired marketing consultants before and they like they come up with an idea and I'm like that's a fine idea that completely sounds nothing like our voice There are a million promises. We've made or or commitments we made to customers that you don't know about that. You just violated I just don't like I think if you want something done? Well mostly you need to do it in-house. That's my general take having said that we just had an interesting experience that went well we're upgrading from mysql 5.7 to mysql 8 as is the rest of the world. Um, because mysql 7 even's getting killed soon. My mysql 5.7 sorry um so we hired perkona which is like the main Mysql consulting company to just come in and like look over our shoulder while we do stuff so that basically we were just like can you.
22:27.57
tylerking
Tell us that you don't think the servers going to crash when we do this upgrade. It was a one week project like very small they they're not really doing most of the much of the work at all, but happened is like the first meeting they came in and they were like ah well can you install this like tool that we recommend to do all like it basically collects a bunch of stats and. Profile stuff and we'd never heard of this before and so we installed it and then they like ran a report and we looked at it. We were like holy shit this is like all the information we wanted. It took them like 30 seconds to just be like this is the tool to use for this. So now I'm wondering I still feel like. Consultants are a bad fit for a lot of projects. But I'm trying to look around for is there something where an expert could come in and spend like literally 30 minutes and just like tell us the thing we didn't even know we needed to know about um and use that as a way to level up our team because right now as a small non-venture backed company. Our team kind of hits a ceiling where it's like nobody at the company knows how to do this thing. You know.
23:27.44
rick
So I think this is what coach the term coaching is meant to apply to But what it happened was like people who shouldn't be mentoring started building businesses called I'm a coach and it's made the term but like I actually have this at windfall right now where we've hired a ah.
23:36.35
tylerking
Um, yeah, no.
23:44.12
rick
A former Ceo who is helping me think through revops projects and in 30 minutes ah so you know we kind of meet. Ah we have specific projects. He's helping me on but he's helping me cut through and and like shorten the time it would take me to complete a project by like 80% like I going like 5 times as fast on a project. Um, and it's like that. What's that worth like that's worth a lot of money. Um, so you have to have the right like sort of person for personality standpoint like they you don't want them actually like you. You don't want them trying to do the work you want them focused on helping you do the work better. So it's a very different relationship. Um.
24:04.42
tylerking
Um, yeah.
24:21.00
tylerking
Um, yeah.
24:23.25
rick
And then you have to have the right projects. Ah you know? ah and I also think that the person that's being coached hased have the right mentality to use that person the right way because I originally when we signed this person up was trying to use them to execute and it and it was like not going well and I just pivoted to like help me think there is problem and I'm going. We're to just cowork together for a little bit and I'm like.
24:39.87
tylerking
Um, yeah.
24:42.58
rick
It's kind of like what I do a j d on Thursday where I'm just accelerating work. Um, and it works really really well and so I highly recommend it? Ah, but again like I think it takes effort to get get used this the right way.
24:52.90
tylerking
Yeah, okay, so let me talk through a couple points. You just said so okay coaches 1 of my concerns with coach you you acknowledged a lot of coaches shouldn't be in in the business of being a coach but I kind of think even the right person if they're a coach for too long like things change and if they're not actively doing the work. If they haven't actively done the work recently I question if they know the right the best practices and stuff. Um, what's yeah, what What's your reaction about.
25:22.42
rick
Yes, so so so um I think that? Ah, um, so so I there there are different types of coaches like there are technical coaches I think that's what you're talking about in this particular state where they need to be up on the best and like they need to be probably hands on Keyboard somewhere else. Um, and that's a different type of like.
25:38.53
tylerking
Um, yeah.
25:40.39
rick
Coach. There's also experience base coaches who have seen so much that like they like ah here's an example. Um 1 challenge that I'm facing ah is how do we communicate internal roadmapping ah for you know, like when you're building a product. There's like. Product for the customers. But then there's also the tooling internally to support the customer facing people and supporting customers using the actual product and so there's a roadmap and there's like inputs to that roadmap and there's r and d resources going towards this internal roadmap I didn't know this terminology existed.
26:07.81
tylerking
Um, the.
26:17.58
rick
But I brought the problem was like hey like we have this problem where we have these internal tools that don't get developed appropriately. It's like oh yeah, yeah, that's a common problem like that's what you usually There's ah the way you saw this is with the internal roadmap like what's an internal roadmap and like a huge unlock now I've got this language to take internally and line people around. Um.
26:31.25
tylerking
Um, the first.
26:34.26
tylerking
Um, yeah.
26:36.96
rick
And it's just like by bringing like kind of a problem I'm facing that is ah urgent and meaningful to someone who has seen the problem multiple times.
26:45.69
tylerking
Okay, so yeah I buy that I maybe like the term halflife or something like that applies I think even with that type of thing there is a half-life. It's just longer. Um like let's say you started coaching right now I think you'd be a great coach. You've seen a lot of stuff you've had a lot of different roles. Right now you could give people amazing advice and 5 years from now that advice would still probably mostly apply but like 30 years from now people would be like you're not even involving the hologram simulator in your advice and you'd be like what's a hologram simulator or whatever you know I'm making up a dumb sci-fi term.
27:15.24
rick
Agreed this guy. Yeah, like there's a difference between like an 80 year old retiree who hasn't like been ah ah, an operator for 30 years and someone who's like I'm so an operator but like I have I'm also doing this on the side and I would much rather go with the latter than the the former.
27:27.38
tylerking
Yeah, okay, yeah, and technical projects probably have a much shorter half life than company strategy operations type stuff. Um, and that like I probably should have started with this one of the problems with podcasting is you? Ah. Don't have time to think about what you're saying. But I think the big opportunity here in my mind is it's similar to what you described for yourself, but it's a little different It's we've got a team of developers now and this could this could apply to marketing this could apply to customer service. But I think the dev team is the main place where if you. 1 of the great things about working at Google or at stripe or a place like that is there's always someone better than you or or like at least more experience than you if you're like I want to get really good at you know, optimizing database performance. You can be like oh well, the person who invented. Mysql happens to work here or you know like at these really big prestigious tech companies. You've got tons of that here. Not only do we not have that but like we're in St Louis there's no one in the whole city I shouldn't say no one. There's like random gems but it's hard to find any kind of like real technical experts to go to so I think the main the main output I want from this. Is to simulate what it would be like to have more senior software engineers to kind of like ah like level up the team now and this is actually less about me wanting them to be better because I I think they're good like.
28:52.68
tylerking
We've got a pretty simple cred app is the reality. But I think it's more about like long term career happiness is you don't want people feel stagnant. You know.
28:59.91
rick
Yeah, and um, well, there's 2 2 kind of there's a there's a double edge sword here I just want to call out sometimes when you do so try to do something like this for someone's benefit. It actually has the opposite effect because they get scared that you're trying to replace them so I would just say that like when when coaches are pushed on.
29:13.99
tylerking
Um.
29:17.90
rick
People who don't want to be coached. It can be received as I'm not good enough. You're going that you're hiring my replacement I'm scared um and so positioning this is is important. Um.
29:19.68
tylerking
Um, yeah.
29:26.50
tylerking
I hear I think that's a good warning in general I I think our like if there's 1 thing I'll say with confidence. It's that our culture. No one's worried about that happening I don't think um or any yeah specific people have come to me like I I crave mentorship give it to me and I'm like well I don't know how to do the thing you want.
29:35.48
rick
Good.
29:43.39
rick
Yeah.
29:44.69
tylerking
To do either anyway, they so the other part of what you said is like there are some projects this is good for and others. It's not I think the reason mysql works so well is like Mysql is a very well-defined technology. There's a whole ecosystem of consultants. There's like yeah I'm sure some companies have special cases but it's like there's a way to do it right. I don't think that's because we started our software our code bases fifteen years ago before a lot of modern day. Best practices existed I don't think a lot of those best practices apply exact. It's not that they don't apply but it's like we have such a weird hodgepodge of legacy code and newer code that. I don't think someone can come in and be like this is exactly how you should structure your project or whatever. So I'm trying to figure out and you're not going to be able to answer this for me but figure out like what things are there experts out there that can actually come in and help us first which things do we just have to figure out for ourselves.
30:32.81
rick
Yeah, and then the the other thing I was thinking about like I think business owners do this for themselves all the time they call them advisory councils that kind of thing I just I wonder if anyone's ever said I'm going to create an employee advisory council not for me as the Ceo but for my employees and I need someone who is.
30:45.21
tylerking
Are you.
30:50.92
rick
Available to mentor and this area and this area and this area you'll get you know X dollars or this benefit for for being available for X hours a month. Um, sometimes we're not going to use it but the minute we have a problem like um, you're basically serving my employees when they need a mentorship.
31:06.47
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting and I actually know like back when I lived in San Francisco I mean you can't go out to a bar without meeting a world class engineer there like I don't know many in St Louis aside from the people I work with but um. I I certainly have connections to people who could like would probably be like yeah I'll hop on a call with somebody or whatever. Um, okay.
31:26.40
rick
Yeah, um, and then you then they get to put their face on your website. You get to tout them as their advisors. Your company is impressive as a result and maybe they get they turn into future hires when you need them.
31:34.34
tylerking
That's interesting. Yeah, um, okay, and then to to tie this off like for now the approach I'm taking is anything. That's like this is a like this is an open source project or like a piece of technology that has there are consultants that specialize in it so mysqls one. Elasticsearch is another. That's like a common tool to do search. Basically we use Elasticsearch and it's not great. Um, that's another one where I feel like we can hire a consultant to come in and help us and help level us up. Um that type of thing is obvious I'm going to keep an eye out for are there other like. Categories of technical work. Another one we've talked about is testing which isn't quite the same but in that ballpark.
32:16.34
rick
Why are you limiting this this this problem solving to technical work like couldn't your customer service team use some coaching marketing your your ah Bd such sales like why is this just a like Why are you eliminating this type of thinking.
32:29.89
tylerking
Well primarily because well 2 things 1 the technical teams asking for it. Um, and two we do run into technical problems where we're like like we tried to implement elasticsearch on our own and like it works. It's in production. But. There's all kinds of little like it's not quite as fast as we want. The results aren't quite as good as we want, they're like they're very clear. We're hitting up against this limit. Um I definitely think on the marketing side. We could do that and we're getting a little bit of that you know we hired conversion factory we heard them more to do the work. They're not coaches. There. They're executing which is what we wanted but like eunice is learning from them which is great. Um I'm going to say something arrogant here I don't think many companies have much to tell us about customer service. Um, that there's coaching can still be valuable even like.
33:12.85
rick
I I Generally agree.
33:20.77
tylerking
if if you if you take the analogy of like a sports coach. Some sports coaches are like like I played water polo some I played with like I'm an olympic water polo player I was like fifteen years ago I was on the olympic team I'm amazing at water polo let me just like play against you and you'll pick stuff up. That's one type of coaching. But I think a perfectly that like I had a swim coach who is like he never got in the pool ever. You look at him physically, you're like you don't strike me as someone who has a swimmer's body I don't know if he's any good at swimming at all, but he was a fantastic coach because he'd like yell at you and push you not you not like in a toxic way but he'd like push you hard. I think the customer service team could potentially use coaching like that like there's always just accountability hey, what are your goals. What are you trying to get better at that type of thing but I don't think there's a type of coaching where someone's going to come in and be like I've done customer service at a level you haven't yet. Um I don't think that exists.
34:12.84
rick
Um I agree so cool. That's that's an interesting topic like I I would be interested in how you ah how you do this I think I want one trap I've fallen into just to tie this with a bow like I oftentimes will hire consultants with the wrong expectations.
34:20.10
tylerking
You can.
34:30.25
rick
I Want them to be executors like conversion factory but they want to be coaches and so um, but they like and and and historically I have been ah sort of I've tried to force the coaches into consultants or into executors. Um, and I and just dismissed the coaching and I'm much more open to coaching these days.
34:32.39
tylerking
Um, yeah.
34:49.85
rick
Um, and like 30 minutes a month and the value that it could bring versus like trying to get someone for 20 hours a month to do work.
34:54.72
tylerking
I think a big question though. Is do you have the resources to do so like we hired demand maven a year and a half ago or whatever and I think they they like put together a marketing strategy for us and the thing is like we didn't have resources to do much so it was like. In your case, you're like I'm going to work every day doing this stuff. Can you help me out I think that the worst form of kind of coaches rather than doers is you you bring them in for a a new project. But they're not the ones doing it and then they like put a plan together for you and no one executes on it that that's like the pitfall I would try to avoid in that situation but cool I got to go in like 5 minutes you we got time for your last topic here.
35:33.71
rick
Yeah, makes sense sure. Um, So so one thing I'm running up against is ah um, my orate windfall is growing and so one one thing that I'm noticing is like I'm really thoughtful about employee reviews and I'm not going to get into like our employee you know. How we do employee reviews but most companies do employee reviews. Um, and it's an exercise whether they do it monthly or a quarterly semi-anually or annually and um, when I do it in a play review I take it really seriously like I like if I'm going to do it I'm not just going to put a bunch of crap on a piece of paper and go through the motion I'm going to go. And the way I typically approach it is I'll go hey um, give me your selfass assessment I'll receive the self-ass assessmentment and then simultaneously while they're doing this self-ass assessmentment I'll go and talk to everyone that works with them has any interaction I'll say give me feedback on this person like where are they doing well were they not doing well and I'll get all these inputs about them and then I'll like they.
36:22.82
tylerking
Um.
36:29.73
rick
See how I'll compare that to how you know I've perceived them. Um and then their own self-assessment and I'll construct a very thoughtful you know sort of review on here's what you're doing Well um, here's ah where I think there are some opportunities for you to improve and there may be 20 things I can improve on but I'll pick The. 2 or 3 that are like most pertinent for them to be successful in their current role. Um, and the next role that they want to be in and then I'll say you know I'll validate what they want to work on and like kind of like guide them to like better goals setting. Um and what I'm finding is like I do that naturally but like when.
36:51.10
tylerking
Um, the head.
37:04.41
rick
I Hire someone to be a manager and this is historical to they don't do that. They just like do their own like Siloed assessment of someone and don't put a lot of energy into it and just move on and I don't know what to do about it I don't know whether I'm crazy for doing it the way I'm doing it or so my question. To you is like what's your opinion on what makes a good employee review process or like actual review.
37:28.22
tylerking
Yeah, having never worked in a company big enough to um, have multiple levels of management I'm probably I'm going to answer your question but also keep in mind I don't have a lot of like direct experience with this but we've been trying to put together our own kind of employer review thing I think we take a similar approach to what you said although a thing we haven't done yet is the like talk to other people. We should I think that's a good idea. It always feels a little unprofessional to me like hey like dish on your colleague. You know? um, but you can do that correctly. I'm not saying that shouldn't be done I don't know I think what like hearing what you just Said. No Brainer What you're doing sounds better than what you're saying other people do is it worth it and I think probably yes, but like that's that's the only question if it's worth it in these managers below you work for you make them do it I think.
38:14.44
rick
Bob that's what I'm doing but I but sometimes when I recognize the gap on this stuff I go I have this like am I crazy in like it's my am I being unreasonable with my expectations here.
38:22.54
tylerking
Now I the world the world defaults to being completely unthoughtful about anything that is in any way connected to human empathy and by the world I mean the business world and like. But but my question I Maybe what I would challenge you with though is are you creating an incentive structure. Not necessarily money incentive but like is that type of work being valued such that they think I would rather do that instead of what other thing I could do at that same time.
38:58.78
rick
I Don't know the answer to that. Um, but I think I I think I I think this is an issue of unclear expectations and guidelines on how to do a review. Um, as a manager and I think that I need to address that and then once that's clear if it's not happening.
39:08.11
tylerking
Um, yeah.
39:15.75
rick
Then there's another issue like maybe it's incentives or um or training.
39:17.72
tylerking
Yeah I think most people either have not been managed. Maybe like they were an I see at your company and they got promoted to manager in which case it is absolutely your not just your responsibility but like it's a great opportunity for you to teach them that so either they've never been taught it before. Or they've been taught it probably somewhere else even if it's within the same company maybe under a manager that doesn't do it as rigorously as you do but like maybe it's at some. It's at Amazon or whatever and it's like well that's just ah, a machine that churns through people and it's a whole different different environment. So.
39:52.14
tylerking
Just to say it doesn't surprise me that people don't come into it with the approach you're describing and that yeah it sounds absolutely like something worth getting them on board with yeah I don't know if that helped it all. But.
40:00.35
rick
Cool. Thank you I'm gonna do but i'mnna I'm gonna I'm going to do? Yeah no it wass good. It's like more of a this is probably more of a rant than a discussion topic. Um, um, what? what.
40:08.58
tylerking
Yeah I like it though I'd love to get a deep dive on that sometime and like more specifically what you do I think that'd be really interesting.
40:15.61
rick
Yeah, well if you like to review past topics and show notes visit start to last dot com. We'll see you next time and I'll see you this weekend.
40:23.77
tylerking
Um, all right see ya.