Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:02.79
Rick
What's up this week, Tyler?
00:05.13
tylerking
Not much, but a lot. I don't, I always say not much. Uh, yeah, staying busy. Um, man, fall falls a good thing. I'm loving it. I'm in a good mood.
00:16.19
Rick
it it's fall What is fall temperatures for where you are?
00:20.54
tylerking
There's still the occasional hot, like 90 degree day, but probably our last 90 degree days behind us. But like most days are now are just kind of like highs in the low eighties or high seventies and lows in the sixties.
00:30.36
Rick
Yeah, that's what we were doing.
00:31.78
tylerking
It's pretty nice.
00:32.54
Rick
But what about fall makes you ah lift up?
00:36.95
tylerking
I, uh, well, yeah, I've been, uh, working outside is something I really enjoy. And as much as I still hate Mac, my new Mac for many reasons. Um, one of the things the ecosystem is so incredible. Uh, the fact that I can use my iPad as an external monitor makes working outside. I'll just go outside and have like two monitors and feel, you know, not fully as productive as I would be on my four monitor set up at my desk. But, uh.
01:05.98
tylerking
I don't feel nearly as limited, so I'm just going outside and vibing pretty much all day. It's good times. How are you doing?
01:12.98
Rick
Oh, good. Good. I'm, uh, JD was here for the last, I don't know, uh, three days and got here Sunday night, left last yesterday afternoon. And it was really, uh, it was really productive to have him here.
01:25.47
Rick
And, um, you know, I, I, uh, I think he had a good time too. and I think he got some good business done. So, um, you know, it's, it's been one of those, uh, kind of busy weeks.
01:33.10
tylerking
Yeah.
01:37.66
Rick
I'm, I'm, I'm emotionally exhausted, uh, just from like all the work that we did, but. ah it's um It was a really good trip.
01:44.33
tylerking
So this was, ah you know, we talked previously about he was going to do the email people and be like, Hey, I'm in town and see if like that kind of can create, these are people that maybe wouldn't take a phone call because they're too busy or whatever.
01:55.76
tylerking
Did did that work to kind of get people engaged?
01:56.96
Rick
it Yeah, did. I think he got um like so six to eight meetings. on the calendar. Um, he, I think he got at least two, at least one new client group insurance client just from getting an AOR and then has two or three in the hopper now that are legit opportunities.
02:09.58
tylerking
Hmm.
02:15.72
tylerking
wow
02:15.71
Rick
And just to put that in context, I will do our goal update in a little bit, but, um, our, in order to hit our annual goal, we need basically, there's lots of different paths there, but, but 10, 10 more group customers or 10 more employer customers, I should say gets us there.
02:19.89
tylerking
Wow.
02:31.88
tylerking
From where we are through the end of the year.
02:33.86
Rick
through January 15th.
02:35.43
tylerking
Yeah.
02:36.12
Rick
And so if if we do that, then, ah so so anyway, he got two of those, yeah you know, he got one of those 10 secured and then he has two or three other opportunities that are legit opportunities ah that he's working towards that 10.
02:36.27
tylerking
Okay.
02:42.00
tylerking
Wow. Yeah.
02:48.84
Rick
And so it's like, what are you coming up next?
02:51.88
tylerking
Yeah. Well, is this like there were a small handful of leads that have kind of been in the hopper for a long time and he just needed to go there and activate them? or Or is this like if he came to Utah every month, there'd be a new six to eight meetings to have every month?
03:07.76
Rick
I believe it's bought both, um, uh, is the answer, uh, but you until he does it again and doesn't use the warmest leads, like you don't really know.
03:14.62
tylerking
Mm-hmm.
03:15.60
Rick
Um, particularly around this time of year where I think people are just willing to talk about health insurance more and more as November approaches, there's this window, right? And I, we haven't quite figured out what it is for employers, but for consumers, it's, you know, November 1st, that's when it starts.
03:25.84
tylerking
Yeah.
03:31.30
Rick
Um, for employers, it it seems to be starting now, uh, where they were like, they're starting to worry about it.
03:36.01
tylerking
Yeah, they want to be ready to go November 1st, so they have to make decisions now.
03:40.21
Rick
Yep. The other key takeaway that I had from his visit outside of that kind of in-person stuff working, um, is just like, it's super, I think sometimes I forget we were started in COVID, um, and it's been part time for me for a long time.
03:40.90
tylerking
Yeah.
03:53.07
Rick
We've always been remote how, uh, energizing and motivating it is to co-work. Um, uh, and so that was really fun. Uh, it got me, I, I got a bunch of stuff done, which once we get through goals, I'll talk about, but like tons and tons of ah marketing stuff done and like,
04:02.66
tylerking
Yeah.
04:09.48
Rick
like but like very limited amount of time just because he was here and we were like, you know, jiving.
04:15.33
tylerking
Also, it's just fun. like like It's productive, but all of the intellectual, rational reasoning in my head is like, every company should be fully remote. And then you spend a day working with someone and you're like, nevermind.
04:28.62
Rick
ah Exactly. Yeah. I think, I think I like the ah hybrid, not hybrid, ah but like, the The best I've seen is like three days in, two days out, that kind of thing.
04:39.88
Rick
Um, that seems to get the best of both worlds. Um, but, but I, you know, at the same time, I totally get five days a week, um, being a requirement if you're growing really fast and trying to you step on the gas.
04:49.90
tylerking
Yeah, it seems crazy for Amazon to do that, but for a startup that, yeah, where things change every day, a i I totally get that.
04:53.54
Rick
Hmm.
04:58.57
Rick
Um, But yeah, uh, I'll, I'll talk more about like some of the stuff I've set up marketing wise, like pretty much for the next 30 days until and open enrollment, I'm going to be wearing a marketing hat, trying to drive as much opportunity, like get those seven additional opportunities that we need to find.
04:59.29
tylerking
Cool.
05:13.50
Rick
Um, uh, you know, and, and, uh, so i'm I'm running lots of experiments.
05:14.50
tylerking
Yeah.
05:18.42
tylerking
Can we talk about how much I enjoyed what happened yesterday with the CRM setup you're doing?
05:24.14
Rick
ah Yeah. That's that thing.
05:26.25
tylerking
Cause yeah, so obviously I make a CRM. That's kind of what I spend most of my time obsessing over and we pay attention to all kinds of details. And to me, it's like focusing on the ownership of an account is absolutely critical.
05:41.13
tylerking
Like. You know, you've got a 20 user account who's actually in control. If there's a co-founder dispute, whatever, we have all these policies.
05:45.09
Rick
yeah
05:48.01
tylerking
We're super, super, super careful about it. And probably the number one threat to our businesses HubSpot, because while they don't care about our customers, they have a free tier that is appealing to our customers. So what happens yesterday, Rick?
06:01.44
Rick
um i So I guess the context here is that 30 days ago I set up a HubSpot account and invited Tyler and JD just so that they knew I was doing it um it. It was on a trial and I guess the trial expired.
06:12.85
Rick
I tried to log in today or yeah or yesterday and it wouldn't let me access anything because it basically decided that Tyler for some reason was the ah person who should own the account um even though he didn't set it up um and I invited, yeah.
06:26.87
tylerking
I don't even think I'd ever logged in before. I i don't know why it gave it to me.
06:31.65
Rick
Yeah. So I had to like, I couldn't get in touch with anyone. I was trying to do something. Um, and so I slacked Tyler's like, can you log in and see if you have access? Cause I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have just like, like made you the owner by accident.
06:44.03
tylerking
yeah
06:44.45
Rick
Um, yeah, I could tell you were, you were like getting that like annoyed, like this is an annoying experience, uh, uh, feeling.
06:44.70
tylerking
and I'm like, well, how much are you going to pay me for all this data?
06:53.92
Rick
And so anyway, uh, yeah, but that that was terrible.
06:55.53
tylerking
Yeah, no, but it made me, it made me so happy. I shared the whole thing in Slack with my team just to be like, cause you know, sometimes as much as we care and as much as we do have our shit figured out, there's always chaos at any business.
07:06.65
Rick
Yeah, I'm
07:07.02
tylerking
And just to be like hub spot, probably like the second biggest CRM company in the world. Like has this absolutely core thing completely fucked and and it's fine for them.
07:17.91
tylerking
It's fine for them. Just as a reminder, like we're doing pretty good actually.
07:23.84
Rick
glad that worked out because it was super annoying to me because I before I reached out to you, I mean, I fumbled around for, you know, not not an insignificant amount of time trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
07:32.87
tylerking
Yeah, it made no sense, but it's
07:34.64
Rick
And I still, and I emailed a HubSpot and heard, I've heard nothing back.
07:39.00
tylerking
incredible. I mean, the flip side. So I love hearing how bad they are at stuff. The flip side is and they're still absolutely crushing us. So I guess maybe the lesson here is none of it matters.
07:45.03
Rick
Yep.
07:49.04
tylerking
And the I don't know. It does like features and marketing, I guess it's all that matters or something.
07:54.53
Rick
Well, they have a really good product for like the core use cases, but like service and price, like I think their pricing is a little bit, um aggressive, uh, once you start actually using it a lot.
08:05.07
Rick
Um, uh, so they, they, yeah, go ahead.
08:05.52
tylerking
Yeah. So when I, when I say none of it matters, I mean, yes, yes, the, the quality of the product matters, the distribution matters, but like all of these other things you can worry about around the edges, they seem to be just fine ignoring what to me feels like pretty important stuff around the edges.
08:21.74
Rick
Like customer service.
08:23.34
tylerking
Yeah.
08:23.97
Rick
Yeah.
08:24.78
tylerking
And like the fact that the person who signed up for the account owns the account, like, yeah,
08:24.99
Rick
Yeah.
08:28.74
Rick
yeah exactly well we fixed that Well, thank goodness they didn't like block us from fixing that. That would have been terrible.
08:34.40
tylerking
yeah. yeah
08:35.05
Rick
um um Yeah, do you want to talk to me about recruiting?
08:39.36
tylerking
Well, yeah, I mean, would yeah what do you want to spend this episode on? we can So sorry we to the listener we skipped last time I was sick.
08:48.18
tylerking
The time before that said we were going to go over kind of our 2024 goals.
08:49.88
Rick
Goals.
08:51.36
tylerking
Do you want to start there and see if we have time for updates later or vice versa?
08:55.21
Rick
Let's do goals. Let's get it done and force ourselves to reflect.
08:56.40
tylerking
OK.
08:57.93
Rick
um And I think it'll...
08:58.38
tylerking
Cool. We're almost in Q4 now, so we're getting close to the end.
09:00.90
Rick
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know for my professional goals, the majority of it happens in Q4.
09:06.21
tylerking
Yeah, that's a good point.
09:06.23
Rick
So ah um so so um I think I'll be pretty quick. So um i'll so I'll do professional first. um my my I had four professional goals. The first three are pretty interrelated.
09:17.62
Rick
ah um The first one was applying the Profit First Framework, which is a book that this guy wrote around how to ah manage manage ah a small business in a way that ah no matter how large you are, kind of sets it up for reinvestment and profitable um operations.
09:33.60
Rick
And I, and then, the you know, as part of that, I wanted to pay partner distributions to you, me and JD, even if they're super small. um And so that has been done, they have not actually hit like, send on the partner distributions, but I have everything I need.
09:47.60
Rick
It's just a question of like, just I'm trying to, once it gets to the end of the month, like this, I'm like, Oh, just wait till next month, and we can make that make the number bigger.
09:52.55
tylerking
Mm hmm.
09:53.59
Rick
And and so um every partner will get like, a few hundred dollars. Well, I guess JD will get a few hundred dollars. I'll get a few hundred dollars and you'll get like a hundred dollars in the first part of distribution.
10:04.06
Rick
So it's not meaning it's not huge, but like check on this goal.
10:04.85
tylerking
Woo.
10:08.11
Rick
um And then the other two goals are related to leg up helps revenue and then also JD's compensation. So I had a get leg up help to 200 K and annualized recurring revenue um and then, um, get getting, uh, JD to his target compensation, which, uh, getting to 200 K and revenue should allow us to do.
10:26.57
Rick
So, um, assuming we are hit our 200 K goal, we will be at a good place on both of these goals. Um, and the, uh, We are about 150K right now, which is about 50% of the way there.
10:38.55
Rick
um We started at at at a hundred. And so, um you know I had mentioned earlier, we've we need about 10 more employers to to get there. and We've got three or four legitimate, like probably slam dunk opportunities.
10:49.99
Rick
And so you need to go find ah you know five or six more really, really good deals um so to hit the number. And I have little doubt that that will happen just on word of mouth alone, but I don't want to leave it to chance.
10:57.58
tylerking
Yeah,
11:03.25
tylerking
yeah it's not a sure thing by any means, but if if if we went from 100 to 150, if we added 50K in ARR during the first nine months or 10 months of the year, the the open enrollment period to do the same amount, just the same growth we had earlier in the year.
11:19.78
tylerking
That feels like that. Just if you kind of have a very vague high-level concept of how the business works, you'd expect at least that amount of growth to be pretty much automatic.
11:28.85
Rick
Yep. Yep. Um, and so, you know, part of, well, there's a lot to talk about in terms of like, how do we, you know, while we only have one team member that's full time, like, and customer facing, I'm like, how do we, you know, make sure that he has the capacity to, uh, you know, acquire while serving? Um, but, uh, you know, that's, that's what we're talking about offline. So.
11:49.36
Rick
um And then the the the final goal I had is prioritized getting better at windfall in terms of um doing leverage over optimization. And I and i gotta to say, like I don't think I'm doing a good job on this.
11:59.59
Rick
I i think I'm working, and i'm not and i I think I'm heading the right direction. I'm thinking about the right things, but like my progress here is just, like it's not meaningful. like I think I'm thinking a lot about this and I'm trying to do things, but nothing's done that gives me,
12:14.02
tylerking
Can you remind us what like what that means, but especially like what would it look like for you to have succeeded at this?
12:18.80
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. So, so leverage of our optimization is a core value at windfall. And what it means is oftentimes they're like a good example is listening CRM. I would say less length here um historically has been very much in the optimization approach to growth. Meaning you've got to set amount of traffic. How can you get more out of that traffic? How can you get more out of your customer base? Um,
12:42.79
Rick
Versus like maybe the leverage is in increasing traffic massively to the website and leaving conversion conversions the same. And so like depending on the, lin like the level of, of what you're looking at, like you can, something might be out leverage or optimization, but for me, like if I look at it as my time, like I'm i'm going, what am I spending time on? Am I spending on time on things that, uh, uh, are optimizing something that's already working?
13:08.92
Rick
Um, am I like going through cycles or am I spending time on providing leverage to the organization? Um, and so, uh, right now I'm spending like a lot of time, like optimizing, tweaking things. And I need to get that, uh, to a, either I need to not like get to a place mentally where it's like, I don't need to do that because it's not valued at at the company.
13:28.01
Rick
Um, or two, like that's, that's a, that's, that's usually where I need to hire someone or delegate, um, or automate, um, that, that, that effort.
13:28.13
tylerking
Yeah.
13:36.39
Rick
And so what it looks like, you know, is, you know, if, if if I'm doing something daily, um, and it's a repetitive task, a recurring task, like how can I either delegate or automate that, uh, with a, you know, workflow and.
13:49.86
Rick
So that's, that's one piece. And then the other is just like mentally, like when I start my day, what am I prioritizing with my time? Am I prioritizing these, these things that no one's going to give me credit for, or am I taking care of the big items first that that are the things that are going to give me the the most bang for my time?
14:06.33
Rick
And I think what I have a habit of doing historically in my work is I'll clear the little things first.
14:11.65
tylerking
Yeah.
14:11.82
Rick
Um, and then wait for the big things to happen. And then the big things take longer than I expect. And then I'm you know working you know ah twice as long and probably longer than I would have if I had prioritizers first because my brain's dead.
14:24.46
tylerking
Yeah. I've been struggling with the same thing and I think it's normally cause like the big thing, no one expects it done by the end of the day, but the little thing. Maybe potentially they do. So it's like there there's less importance, but more urgency on the little stuff most of the time.
14:38.44
Rick
Yep. That's a great. Yes. Um, that's a, that framework that Eisenhower matrix where it's like and important and urgent, urgent, but not important.
14:45.88
tylerking
Mm-hmm.
14:46.66
Rick
And then non-urgent and important. It's that Q2 stuff like quadrant two that are quadrant through, I guess I made it quadrant three, but it's usually quadrant two, uh, non-urgent, but important that like, like that's the stuff you actually should, that's the leverage.
14:57.43
tylerking
That gets left behind, yeah.
14:59.20
Rick
That's the high leverage stuff. Um,
15:01.53
tylerking
Yeah, for sure. OK, so the you've said leverage over optimization a bunch, and I think I only half understood it prior now. What I'm hearing from that is basically like work on the big, big things that can lead to huge step changes in the business.
15:15.86
tylerking
The business is not in a point where it's looking for a 5% or 10% improvement on something. It's looking for a 50% or a 100% improvement. And if what you're spending your time on can't lead to that big of an improvement, it's the wrong thing to focus on.
15:26.84
tylerking
Is that fair to say?
15:27.58
Rick
Yeah. And I would say, and I would say that yes. And then, you know, in, ah in, there in, in, you know, a lot of people would say, well, you got to do both. Um, and so in these situations where you got to do both, like just reordering the tasks, like don't get sucked into the day to day stuff at the expense of like using your, your, your prime working, uh, energy on, on leverage.
15:43.66
tylerking
Mm hmm.
15:50.28
tylerking
Yeah, that's so hard.
15:51.58
Rick
Yeah.
15:52.96
tylerking
Very cool.
15:52.93
Rick
So I'm doing a terrible job here.
15:53.38
tylerking
So.
15:54.12
Rick
Uh, so I, I, but I've, you know, I think, um, I have things in the works right now that are, they're heading their direction and I'm starting to get into a better group.
16:03.01
tylerking
Yeah, cool.
16:03.71
Rick
What are your, everything's looking good.
16:03.79
tylerking
But I mean, overall, looking at your ah your professional goals, you know, at least three out of four seem to be on track and Yeah. In terms of like, I've held stuff, it seems like everything's looking good.
16:17.05
Rick
Yeah. I mean, it's still like, yeah it's this big, you know, seasonality thing.
16:17.82
tylerking
Yeah.
16:21.88
Rick
I don't know. Like i mean open open enrollment will tell all.
16:22.50
tylerking
Yeah. Yeah. We'll see.
16:25.59
Rick
So what about you?
16:26.27
tylerking
Yeah. Uh, yeah. So my professional goals. So the first one was don't worry about growth unless something unexpected happens. And the the inspiration behind this is like, we have a plan. Uh, we have a strong hypothesis that may end up being wrong, but it needs a long time to work. And the hypothesis primarily that our growth issues are, uh, that the, the.
16:49.81
tylerking
When you overlay our DNA as a company with what we need done, like the, the, the best way for us to improve growth is get our product to a point where we're not like losing out on our ideal customer because we're missing features, which actually happens quite a bit. I know Twitter would have you believe otherwise, but some customers do look at features when buying. Um, and we've kind of got this growth loop thing with forms and basically just like give those things the time we did a price increase this year. We have enough money. Even if our growth is bad, our cashflow is good.
17:20.44
tylerking
just don't need to think about, like don't don't think about short-term growth stuff. So I think I've actually done a good job of that. Like the last three months we've actually lost users net. I think it's just price increase. I thought the price increase would all hit at once. it It seems to be dragging out a little bit more, but I think I'm doing a good job of just being zen about it. I would rather the line go up than the line go down, but, um, I kind of still have faith in the plan and we have not ah gotten too distracted. So I'm going to get myself a check on that one.
17:48.19
Rick
Good job. That's a hard thing.
17:50.83
tylerking
Thank you. I mean, it it helps that I don't want to work on growth stuff either. So um this is a little self-indulgent. But ah focus on customer delight. um If you ask a typical customer whether LA Serum improved in 2024, their answer should be hell yeah.
18:06.62
tylerking
um I think I did this, I think we did this, but we did tweak the approach a bit. If you go back and listen to what I was saying at the beginning of the year, I was kind of saying we want to ship a bunch of little quality of life improvements with the logic being anything we ship does not impact, like not every customer cares about the same features. So ah you can't just ship one big thing because if only 20% of people use it, the other 80% won't perceive any improvement. So we need to do like a bunch of little things.
18:36.08
tylerking
Uh, we did do a good number. We did more little things than we've ever done in a prior year, I think. But as we're kind of getting deeper into this, we are realizing the big things like the email logging and the forms thing that we're kind of beta testing right now seem to have so much more customer impact than like a million little things.
18:54.36
tylerking
This is still the goal. I think we're still doing a good job executing on the goal, but the exact tactics are shifting a little bit. Does that make sense?
19:02.13
Rick
Yeah. what what um I have questions about what you just said, but it's probably not related to goal.
19:06.58
tylerking
Yeah, I'll go for it.
19:07.54
Rick
Like I'm very, yeah, I'm very interested in like, what is telling you that these seem like, what is leading to you believing that these seem to have bigger impact?
19:16.76
tylerking
Yeah. So let me start with a non-answer, which is I think we were so bad at building the right thing over the last decade that our team didn't necessarily have faith that we could build the big, the big important things.
19:32.39
tylerking
And so I think some of the feedback I had been getting was filtered through this lens of, we believe we can do this little two week project that'll make this look like, oh, we've got a groups feature. Wouldn't it be nice if if someone has a lot of groups, they can type to filter it down to a smaller list and find it instead of having to scroll through the list. Like that type of feature we can build. But if it's like, we want to build email syncing or a mobile app or whatever, those just felt too big to to succeed at.
19:58.94
tylerking
So all the feedback I was getting was about that. Um, and then, sorry, your question was like, what what changed basically? Like, why do we think the big ones are?
20:05.75
Rick
Well, like, but yeah, but like why do you believe that the the big ones that you're working on right now are going to be better than like a million small things?
20:12.73
tylerking
Yeah, basically. So like the two big ones we've been doing are automatic email. log Email logging is what I call it. Think of it as an email integration, sinking type of thing. And then this form tool now that we've got, even though they're not both fully launched, anytime a customer asks about one of them, we can say yes. Like we just have to turn the beta on for them. And I think our serum coaches have experienced this and been like, holy shit, like.
20:34.60
tylerking
the We thought these were just for new customers coming in who are evaluating us, but they're like, being able to to offer this to current customers has been, it has felt so much different from being like, like the the the example I gave a second ago being able to filter groups to find it faster.
20:51.69
tylerking
It doesn't change anything about the value that CRM is providing. like Maybe it saves you a minute per day of finding a group, but it doesn't like unlock value. I think now that people on this on the customer service team have seen what it means to actually be able to say yes to someone who previously we would have turned away and say, no, we can't do that, it's just like a night and day difference.
21:11.78
tylerking
And as soon as you feel it, you're like, oh, we should be doing more of that. And those aren't those little tiny things around the edges. Does that answer your question, or am I just OK?
21:19.15
Rick
Yep. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So you have gut kind of signals that like this is bigger than what you thought and then employees are getting excited about it. And and then also like it's not even out yet.
21:32.54
Rick
So anyway, it's a, so this is great. Um, do you have like, well, nevermind.
21:35.72
tylerking
Yeah.
21:40.27
Rick
I want to know what the next two are.
21:42.12
tylerking
Yeah. So I, we we've been talking about this. Um, I think, so I think forms is going to continue cause like we kind of have a V one done, but there's some still quite a bit of low hanging fruit to pick in terms of when I'm doing calls with people, I'm not really learning more on each call. Cause I think I already know what they need, but there's there's the same set of like two or three more things we need.
22:05.23
tylerking
So I think, let's let's say you break a big feature into six months and you know it's a handful of people working for six months. I think we've put something like six months into forms. I think we're going to put another six months in, even though V1's ready to go. Side by side with, I think email's getting pretty close to being done.
22:23.51
tylerking
um I think we're probably going to move on to Kanban, which I've talked about before with you, a Kanban view of our pipeline report. um That's just something people really expect. And then I think right now, this is just based on a few discussions. This is not locked in. I think probably appointment scheduling and a mobile app are the next two after that, probably.
22:46.40
Rick
Nice modernizing.
22:47.82
tylerking
So yeah, I kind of asked the question, right? Yeah. Like, what if we had all the features that people expect when they sign up for CRM? Wouldn't that be a thing?
22:55.94
Rick
Yeah, exactly. That's awesome.
22:58.71
tylerking
Yeah, I think we're shipping enough. we're We're very behind on a lot of this stuff, but we're shipping enough. If we can do two or three or four of these features, let's, let's call it two features like this per year. I think we're like three years away from having total parody where it's like, our reporting's good enough. We have automation. We have the a mobile app. We have Kanban like.
23:18.26
tylerking
Let's call it three years away. I don't think the industry is going to advance so much in the next three years that like, then we'll be behind that. Like our competition will be way different than it is now.
23:28.92
tylerking
I'm hoping.
23:29.21
Rick
the ah The only area that I would be worried about if I were you is just AI applications. um ah But, you know, i it'll be a lot easier for you to reverse engineer that once it's been figured out than to like experiment with it.
23:34.77
tylerking
Yeah, for sure.
23:44.77
tylerking
Yeah, I think it's still unclear like what um everyone's like, surely AI plus CRM is a thing, but I don't think anyone's even really figured out what that means yet.
23:50.40
Rick
Yeah. Yep. I agree.
23:55.31
tylerking
um So yeah, ah customer delight. I think we're doing well. I think at the end of the year, customers are going to be like, wow, a lot of stuff ships this year. Um, number three was maintain stability related to team culture, et cetera. I think we maintain stability related to culture, but three people have left the company this year. So I wouldn't say stability related team where we're hiring a new CRM coach right now. Uh, so I don't think there's like a prop. I think I i did everything I could here. I don't think, um, none of it to me is like, Oh, there was a big problem. There was like.
24:27.76
tylerking
ah something toxic or wrong about the company or whatever. like One person's leaving to go become an occupational therapist. One person's going leaving to become a funeral director.
24:38.12
tylerking
like they're not They're not leaving because they don't want to be here. They're leaving because they have passions outside of ah the tech industry.
24:46.56
Rick
I would love to hear about the funeral passion.
24:48.49
tylerking
The funerals. this This person has been, you know, you I've slowly seen that they've been here for quite a while, many years. I've slowly seen this weird budding interest in, I guess it's called the death industry.
25:01.04
tylerking
Um, it's a unique thing to be interested in, but I think it's kind of, I like, I like working with people with strange interests related to you or.
25:08.18
Rick
yeah ah There's a ah ah Lindquist mortuary here in Utah. and so And it's apparently it's huge, like huge family business. That's great. I don't know.
25:19.26
Rick
I've never met the guy, but, uh, it's, uh, I, when I, when I go to like the dry cleaners or anywhere I'm giving my last name, people were like, Oh, Lincoln's mortuary.
25:27.47
tylerking
oh
25:29.00
Rick
So I'm like, Nope, but my wish, I wish, uh, maybe I, maybe I'll get a family discount when it comes to that.
25:31.08
tylerking
Nope.
25:33.80
tylerking
Yep.
25:36.53
tylerking
Yeah. You just nudge your way in. If it's big enough for the family, they won't know you're not one of them.
25:38.35
Rick
yeah yeah
25:42.35
tylerking
Um, okay. And then my final, so for maintaining stability, I don't know, I'll give me like, uh, I'll give, uh, C minus, like, I don't think I've totally failed. Again, I think I've done what I could. I think the input's been fine. I think the output is not what I was, what I meant when when I came up with this goal.
25:55.89
Rick
yeah
25:56.72
tylerking
Um, and then my final one was protect coding time. And it says should be an average of at least, uh, one or more days, full days of coding per week for me.
26:05.06
Rick
For you?
26:06.45
tylerking
Yes.
26:06.83
Rick
Yeah.
26:07.19
tylerking
Um, for me to be able to code. ah Absolute failure if you take this at at face value. for For the first part of the year, I coded quite a bit. I went to Utah for 10 days and coded up, worked on the forms thing. So I actually did a lot of coding in the first part of the year. I haven't recently. I will say it's not as much of a fail as it might sound because what I really mean by protect coding time is protect IC, like individual contributor time.
26:32.28
tylerking
I've been doing a lot more project management, which sounds like stupid bureaucracy, but I actually think I'm good at it and I think it's pretty high leverage and I enjoy it. The dev team is so much more productive now than it was a year or two ago that there's a lot more, and it's bigger. It's like seven people now, which is as big as it's been. ah There's just a lot more work to make sure all of them have the work they need to do. and I'm not talking about managing them, I'm talking about like We have like, we need to make sure we just, we have one designer and seven developers. Like I need to make sure the designer is designing the right stuff. I need to review all those designs. I need to pick what the next thing we're going to work on is break it into small pieces, figure out how can three people work on this one project without stepping on each other's toes. There's a lot of work around that stuff that I've, I've actually really been enjoying and I'm kind of doing that instead of the coding.
27:22.74
Rick
product management, and design.
27:25.08
tylerking
Yeah, so I'm going to give myself an F on that, but I'm not too upset about the shift. Yeah. ah
27:34.65
Rick
seems like you're doing well
27:37.07
tylerking
I hope so. I mean, yeah, I think so. The the big question mark is this catch is, does getting our feature set caught up to like the cheap tier of pipe drive, the cheap tier of HubSpot, we're not trying to compete with their enterprise features.
27:50.79
tylerking
Does that matter? If it matters, we're doing fantastic. Like I think we're, I, I'm, this is the first year I can remember in the entire history of the company where I'm like, what we wanted to do in January. Product-wise we're actually doing it like on time we're executing. Well, I feel good about it. Still big question mark whether or not that will actually matter.
28:15.33
Rick
yeahp you can't i mean goals are only as good as they are right like they're the goals aren't going to get better
28:18.37
tylerking
Yeah.
28:19.82
Rick
but youre it seems like you're executing gets
28:20.44
tylerking
It's the, do you focus on? Yeah. Do you focus on input or output is like the age old question, right?
28:25.45
Rick
know um but cool ah personal what about personal
28:30.22
tylerking
Yeah, so I had to two kind of simple ones. One is just maintain my exercise routine, get at least 9,000 steps a day, go rucking at least twice a week, do at least 200 pushups a week, and stay 140 pounds or less on average each week. um Pretty much 100% with the exception. So I've been sick for a few weeks, and I didn't work out those weeks. ah And when I travel, i you know I'm not bringing my rucksack with me when I travel. But otherwise, I'm there.
28:58.71
tylerking
I do have a major hurdle right now, which is I've been experiencing wrist pain, um, probably related to typing and stuff.
29:03.03
Rick
e
29:05.69
tylerking
I'm, I'm seeing a physical therapist next week. Uh, I am a little nervous that the pushups are part of it. Um, cause you know, your, your hands are in a pretty stressed position when you're doing pushups.
29:18.31
tylerking
So I have stopped doing pushups for the last two weeks while I wait to see what the PT says, but I'm a little nervous. They're going to tell me to stop doing that in which case you have to find something else.
29:27.92
Rick
pullups
29:29.87
tylerking
I need a pull-up bar and I cannot figure out how to get one installed in my house. None of the doorways support you know the the typical doorway pull-up bar. They don't fit in any of our doors.
29:40.89
Rick
have you looked at i just bought one online because mine broke um after like five six years um there's some that pressure the inside of the door versus like
29:50.58
tylerking
Yeah, I probably needed to do that.
29:51.21
Rick
um
29:52.80
tylerking
I hate those because I like, I don't, I probably, I like the ones that stick out.
29:52.91
Rick
yeah
29:56.67
tylerking
Like, you know, there's kind of different modes of pull ups with the bigger bars.
29:57.05
Rick
yeah
29:59.55
tylerking
Um, I don't like actual pull ups. I like, I don't know what they're called when your hands are.
30:02.56
Rick
yeah yeah you like the bicep pull-ups um
30:04.66
tylerking
Yeah. Um, I should just get over that and do normal pull ups though.
30:08.70
Rick
yeah that's the downsides you don't get the the sticky out of things but the only downside of that is that if you've got we order doorframes it can it can push out the doorframes because it's basically just you you like are pressuring it out
30:23.46
tylerking
oh
30:25.28
Rick
um so
30:26.14
tylerking
Yeah, that makes sense.
30:26.45
Rick
check you know definitely check your door frames before you like do it because it it would it definitely is not it's it's pretty rough ondoors
30:33.60
tylerking
Well, we're finishing our basement right now. And my plan is to move my office into the basement. so the the So my assumption this whole time was like, they're doing construction on it. We can ask them to install a real pull-up bar somewhere. But now it's like getting pretty close to done. And I'm looking around. I'm like, I'm actually not sure where it could go. So I need to figure that out.
30:49.51
tylerking
Uh, and that brings me to my second goal, which is finish the house remodel. It's not finished, but it definitely, it's very close. It will definitely be finished by the end of the year. So obviously I'm not the one doing the work there, but I'll give a check on that one.
31:01.20
Rick
you excited about it
31:03.21
tylerking
Yeah, it's it's great. like The key thing that will actually impact my day-to-day life the most is we kind of open to the kitchen and dining room up, um which makes the house feel completely different.
31:14.37
tylerking
And that's done, usable, the countertops are replaced, new new some appliances. like The kitchen is basically done, um which is the only part I really care about day-to-day.
31:24.17
Rick
when are you going to do the the the twitter home remodel ah viral
31:30.10
tylerking
The.
31:30.14
Rick
post like this is like classic like this works like you should do before and after
31:33.79
tylerking
Yeah, I'm not sure I have enough before pictures.
31:34.96
Rick
you should do in progress updates
31:36.54
tylerking
I should, I should. Um, I want to wait for, we need, we have to buy a lot of furniture is like, if you look at it right now, it it looks like a very unfinished house. Um, I'll do, you're you're right. I'll, I'll do a little, uh, karma farming there.
31:50.84
tylerking
How about you personal stuff?
31:52.52
Rick
ah well it's ah so had four goals here one was rebuild daily exercise and writing habit have a lot of false starts here um i would say directionally like i'm i'm heading the right direction but like i'm in a rut right now where it's like um just it's not happening um and this is date by daily exercise and writing routine basically means ten thousand steps ah most like ten at least ten pullups um you know ah twenty pushups thirty squats but hopefully more per day um and then
32:22.62
tylerking
per day.
32:23.62
Rick
ah you know some some sort of regular like cardio um so i start playing basketball again the thing that i've run into though is i have a ah ah bum ankle um and so i've i've gone and seen seen an northhopeaic surgeon about ah having that worked on and i'm actually starting pt next week too as part of like
32:40.18
tylerking
You have to try other stuff, basically.
32:41.49
Rick
have to do that in order to get insurance to like say they'll cover yeah yeah exactly so
32:47.24
tylerking
Yeah.
32:48.53
Rick
um i'm i'm like working i'm i'm actively like this has been ah an issue for since oliver was born three and half years ago so um' finally prioritizing that so i look at this as like it's fine but and then and then writing like i'm i'm writing but not like to the level i want ah just have time so i'm okay with it but i feel like it's
33:04.39
tylerking
Do you think you're going to renew that writing goal next year?
33:07.62
Rick
yeah
33:08.63
tylerking
Okay.
33:09.65
Rick
yeah
33:09.94
tylerking
I just, I feel like our whole podcast history you've wanted to write more, there have been periods where you have, but like, you're just, that is, you're not giving that up.
33:19.91
Rick
not going to get it up i ah it's ah the difference the difference in my day when i write for thirty minutes is significant and it's like i just need to get disciplined about it again um and i and and i think i i think by the end of this year this goal will be ah feel really good about it and just like the the gwyn here is like exiting this year with like ah the daily habit back
33:42.16
tylerking
Yeah.
33:43.12
Rick
um
33:43.30
tylerking
Cool.
33:44.09
Rick
and be more present with family when i'm with them ah go off and on here too ah i can do better for sure but ah um you know it's it's one of those things that i now that i'm saying it out loud i can do better here at the beginning of the year i was doing a good job of just like when i get home put my phone in a and a drawer or like in my room and not having it around me and and i am right now um overly attached to my devices so
34:08.04
tylerking
Yeah.
34:08.23
Rick
i need to i need to get back in the and the habit of like i get home i put my phone away i focus on the family like
34:14.38
tylerking
They were just talking about this product on my first million. That's I think it's called the brick or something that are you familiar with that?
34:19.94
Rick
ye
34:20.84
tylerking
Okay. For people who aren't just like, I think a lot of people don't want to leave their phone in a drawer because like there, what if it ring? Like there, there might be actual important stuff, but like what you don't want is to be addicted to Twitter during that time.
34:34.00
tylerking
So it just kind of turns your phone into a dumb phone, not a smartphone. Oh, you've got the watch.
34:37.00
Rick
yep and got my watch so like if people ah if people call like i've got certain people that can get through and it'll come to my phone um and then i've got you know ah there's most people who would want to call me ah six o'clock i don't want to talk to um you know like like so like
34:54.81
tylerking
Yeah, fair.
34:55.00
Rick
ah but
34:55.37
tylerking
I guess it's more if you go out than if you're at home where where it's like, I need to be able to call an Uber potentially or whatever, but I don't.
34:55.58
Rick
but miss well
34:58.19
Rick
yeah
35:02.44
tylerking
Yeah.
35:02.73
Rick
yes yeahp um
35:04.22
tylerking
Cool.
35:04.94
Rick
and then ah let's see so anyway that's that's gonna be i need to that this is actually good for me i'mnna write down that i'm to focus on this more um regular dates was sable we had we've kind of tried it this a couple times and it has not worked which is so sad to say out loud but um i'm just like i'm not pushing on this goal right now i want i want there to be it to be less hard to go on dates and i don't see that happening anytime soon so i'm not going to like i'm just gonna focus on the things i can control cause this takes two ah
35:34.07
tylerking
Yeah.
35:34.41
Rick
and it's hard right now to get to dates um so i i'm kind of deep i've derioritizeded that but i'll probably resurrect that again um you know at some point and then four vacations with at least one next one scheduled all times look forward to i've had three i do not have a fourth scheduled right now which is ah which is a problem but i've got two like that we're planning one is um ah me and stable are go to leave the kids and go to cabo um
35:58.53
tylerking
Wow. Nice.
35:58.80
Rick
and so that'll be that'll be fun and then the other is i'm going to go back to north carolina to visit my family the most likely for thanksgiving but those will be two vacations
36:07.69
tylerking
Cool. All right. Sounds good. So we'll, uh, I mean, we'll probably have an end of year recap episode in four-ish months. Um, I it's good that we went through this recently because maybe when we do that recap episode, we can kind of blaze through what happened in 2024 since we've done this now. Um, and really focus on the following year. Maybe our listeners are, uh, this is the third time we've talked about this this year. I wonder if this is boring people to death. If it is go on ripple and let us know.
36:35.66
Rick
ah ripple um i find it useful um for me so
36:40.78
tylerking
Yeah.
36:41.38
Rick
ah
36:41.89
tylerking
Yeah. We, we have few enough listeners that no offense listeners. We love you all, but, uh, we got to do this for us, I think.
36:47.40
Rick
he um cool ah see yeah ah i was telling someone the other day someone's like what where're oh yeah my buddy from high school call who was an entrepreneur in in charlotte north carolina and i i haven't really like kept up with him last year he he had a kid i had a kid and it was just too hard um but he ah he was like what's to the status leg of health and i was telling him the the monthly revenue number which is now almost thirteen thousand a month it's like oh that's like super good um and so i feel like now when i tell people what like uphel
37:20.13
Rick
ah does in terms of revenue they're like oh that's a real business versus like
37:22.60
tylerking
That's a business, yeah.
37:23.37
Rick
oh what are you doing
37:26.94
tylerking
Yeah, that's cool. I don't, I don't know when it crossed that threshold, but it definitely does. When you hear 13,000 a month, and it does sound that way. Yeah.
37:34.10
Rick
yeah so it was this year i think so
37:36.96
tylerking
Mm hmm.
37:37.04
Rick
ah we were in you know the five digits
37:39.60
tylerking
Mm hmm.
37:40.01
Rick
ah cool um i just want to tell you a little bit about what i did yesterday related to marketing and just have you like say that you think it's creepy and that um ah you probably disagree with the approach but hey i want to hear what you have to say so
37:54.16
tylerking
Okay.
37:54.22
Rick
there are three things i did yesterday first as i set up ah r b two b which is i don't know exactly what r b two b stands for but it's a guy from retention dot com and he basically has this thing this snippet that you put on your website and it attempts to identify people anonymous website visitors that don't submit a forum and then it triggers a slack alert or a crm population of that person's data um have no idea how it works ah so i can answer questions about that um but based just i'm running an experiment so i've set up a channel in our slack instance
38:27.86
Rick
that will anytime someone comes to the site that this tool can identify it sends an alert in and so far i think it' sent like ten or fifteen alerts and none of them are in utah which is ah odd because all of our content is geared around utah so people are coming to our site from all over the country i have no idea why um and ah and so this is it's interesting to kind of see anecdotally like what is happening and then i can go investigate like the trend um but i'm hoping that that will lead to particularly when we start amping up website traffic in utah particularly around ads and email marketing against
39:00.74
Rick
the people we want to target as we drive people to the website that channel will start to go off and like help a jd identify people that he should be prioritizing from an outreach perspective
39:09.41
tylerking
Yeah, it's absolute.
39:10.17
Rick
um
39:10.94
tylerking
I think we need to. I know you explained what it is, but in I'm in the Slack channel. It is absolutely fucking crazy. It's just like every time someone hits the website, it's like the person's name, their job title, what company they work at, information about the company, their LinkedIn profile.
39:28.69
tylerking
Now, maybe it's wrong about all of these people, but like assuming it's not wrong. This is the creepiest thing I've ever experienced. When people talk about like internet privacy and stuff, I normally kind of roll my eyes. I'm like, the data's all being aggregated and they're not actually tracking you personally. Like these are people who have not opted into sharing their information with us at all. And somehow we know who they are. What the fuck's going on here?
39:56.48
Rick
ah yeah that's a good point i haven't thought about like that um
40:00.97
tylerking
It's creepy. I'm not saying you should like, it seems effective.
40:01.56
Rick
yeah de
40:03.73
tylerking
Like hate the.
40:04.84
Rick
i haven't we haven't i mean it's effective at telling us people that supposedly are coming to the website but like i don't know like is this like is this like against our core value like is this something i should be concerned about
40:15.75
tylerking
I don't think we would do this at less knowing CRM, but I don't think it doesn't strike me as something that would be against the values of leg up health.
40:24.83
Rick
are you saying that you're better than me is that you're saying
40:25.04
tylerking
Like I'm saying that there are, uh, do you want to be, do you want to win or do you want to be principled?
40:28.40
Rick
ah just teasing coaches
40:32.37
tylerking
And I think this is probably effective.
40:35.55
Rick
yeah well what's an experiment we'll see how it goes um id be interested in other people's thoughts here ah it's definitely something online like if you're on linkedin you can't and you're in sales ask you can't escape the the the the promoters of this tool um from an outbound ah sales perspective so we have to see um and and i think like right now like just and with the website traffic in its current form it's not that useful over the last what twelve hours that we've had this thing up um but but um my um my core hypothesis here is that
41:05.89
Rick
the other two things i did did and the and the the thing i'm gonna do next is going to make this useful which is i set up ads um targeting youtube small business owners on facebook meta sorry facebook instagram linkedin ah twitter and and in reddit um and i'm going after people in utah that are small business owners that are interested in like either had a life event or um or ah ah you know interested in health insurance content for some reason um particularly on reddit and um we're we're doing a display ad
41:38.30
Rick
um and so we'll see what happens with it i don't know but like that should lead to some sort of traffic and then we're going to also be um setting up email marketing where we go after lists of thousands of view times that we've had contact with and say we ah are here for you during open enrollment here's an ebook blah blah blah here's an offer here's a webinar and that should lead people to the site and then um you know it's a little bit less useful because we already know who those people are but knowing that they're on the site could be useful
42:07.02
tylerking
Yeah. I mean, I love to see the, like, um, you kind of going into marketing mode. I guess this is the result of JD being in town is you just kind of it freed up some time for you to get serious.
42:17.68
tylerking
but This is the type of thing where like, when I dream of you being, ah you know, being able to devote a lot of time to like up health, like this is your bread and butter, right? It's kind of putting, putting engines together that.
42:25.66
Rick
e
42:29.55
tylerking
can just like scale up a business in a way that let leg up health has been growing, but it's been a very manual kind of drip after drip after drip. And this is how it turns into a waterfall.
42:38.69
Rick
yep exactly and then i wanted to shout out a tool have you heard of blaz ai
42:44.02
tylerking
No, I don't think so.
42:45.00
Rick
okay so i've used chat gpt enough um and i'm always looking i'm at the point now where i'm like all i every day i'm looking for some new like ai application or like use case um and so anyway i eventually will publish all the stuff i have on my website because i'm taking it like i'm building out a my own playbook um but ah i searched i was like okay i know that i could go to chat cheby tea and use chat tbt to build out a social media calendar
43:15.59
Rick
and like basically do this for me but then i've got to actually go post stuff and so then i started exploring like ai agents like okay maybe i do the calendar and then i give someone access to all these sites and then they post it and then i was like googling and i was like there's gotta to be a tool for this like someone's got to have like taking this cause you can and anyway blaze is that tool they've basically let you come in and then they like like analyze your website for your brand voice they analyze your social media presence for your like brand ah sort of design preferences um and then
43:46.88
Rick
you they you basically give them a website page or you give them prompts and they generate social media posts for you and then they publish them for you so
43:55.93
tylerking
Mm.
43:56.52
Rick
i basically published in fifteen minutes thirty days worth of social media posts across all our social media accounts with the click of a button
44:04.35
tylerking
Wow. So, okay. I like that. i'm I'm very skeptical about AI being involved in content because like, if it's good enough to write a blog post, for example, there's no reason for anyone to go to your website, to read the blog posts.
44:16.26
tylerking
They could just get the content directly from chat GPT eventually. Like there may be this middle period where people are using old techniques to get content generated by AI, but the future of that path is bad.
44:27.62
tylerking
But what you're saying is you're still writing the content. This is still high quality human generated. not Not the social media content. you' He's shaking his head, but I'm saying the blog posts are still human written, but the social posts aren't.
44:35.44
Rick
i yes
44:39.39
tylerking
So it's still pulling from something original that's not AI generated.
44:42.53
Rick
correct correct the thing of this is like
44:43.39
tylerking
Okay.
44:44.90
Rick
this is very promotional social media post this isn't like let me share a blog article it's like it's more like hey like book a call um and it's just it's so it's noise it's it's it's noise that that people i think are open to at this time of year
44:51.98
tylerking
Yeah.
44:57.92
Rick
um related to leg up health and so it may not be worth it but like posting is better than not posting on these things because it shows we're active um and
45:06.63
tylerking
Yeah.
45:07.08
Rick
the effort to require to do it it was low now if i wanted to do
45:09.83
tylerking
Showing your jargon.
45:10.78
Rick
if im so good ahead
45:12.01
tylerking
Well, I was going to say showing your active to me is like the whole point of like, uh, Facebook has starched out all of the virality of social media. If you don't pay the idea, unless you have really, really engaging content, that's like people actually care a post about health insurance or CRM isn't going to go viral.
45:29.26
tylerking
So to me, like having good social media posts is all about someone's already evaluating you. They go to your brand page and they're like, are these people still in business is basically the question you're answering.
45:38.84
Rick
yep exactly yeahp exactly and so like that's phase one of what i'm solving here but phase two is also like i don't have time to do like ah the the ability to just do this once a month and schedule out thirty days worth like in fifteen minutes even if it's not like like it's it's definitely differentiated content because it's based on are positioning which it was really impressive actually how it took like are positioning and made it better honestly like i liked their copy better than the copy that we i would have written
46:09.00
tylerking
this
46:09.11
Rick
for for what what we're doing um but in terms of like this is not what this is not doing is blog post writing not doing it is doing a little bit of design work lifting like canva would almost um like a kind of a lightweight canva um but but for so for me in terms of going from zero to one it's super useful but it's not like if you're if you already got like a team working on this that are they're doing this they're probably going to do a better job
46:31.63
tylerking
Yeah, but I really like the idea. like i we have a content team, I'm doing air quotes. Cause like, uh, it's not anyone's full time job, but we have a handful of CRM coaches and and our marketing person who kind of all chip in on content stuff. But it's so much more appealing to me, this model of you create content and then.
46:50.37
tylerking
the AI repurposes it for you, which which is a huge time saver. And you're right. It might, it might come up with better copy than you, but it still has to be based on your ideas.
46:58.76
Rick
here
46:59.16
tylerking
Otherwise eventually, again, there may be this middle period where AI generated content works, but there's just no way that's the future of marketing. Um, so yeah, I might have to send this over and and see if, cause we have a lot of help articles and blog posts that we write, but it's always a chore getting that on social media.
47:05.98
Rick
yep
47:17.02
Rick
i i would highly recommend playing around with that it's it's early but like i they are doing what i think is like the first wave of like ai tools which is taking jettbt and then like making it easier to apply that functionality to a specific use case around workflows and that they've done a great job of that it's like super easy to use
47:32.03
tylerking
Yeah.
47:35.83
Rick
um and ah like i'm a fan i'm like i might kind to be logging in there once a month
47:41.08
tylerking
Yeah. Can I share two other AI tools that we've been looking at recently? So, um, one is, yeah and I think what you just said is exactly right is like, AI is not going to come in and ah like replace, or in some cases it will, but mostly replace people's job, et cetera.
47:54.45
tylerking
But there are specific places you can fit it in where it's really useful. So we're looking at, uh, ducky dot.ai shout out to Chad. He's one of our listeners who, uh, mentioned this on ripple, uh, for us, for lessening serum to look at.
48:07.89
tylerking
Um, Cause I mentioned in the last episode, we want, we don't want AI. We don't want our customers interacting with like an AI chat bot for support. But what we do want is like, we have all these help articles. We have all these conversations in front. It would be great if AI could draft.
48:20.95
tylerking
a front, like ah an email draft to respond to emails, and then we can edit it from there. Now it's ah very early. We're on a wait list. I haven't actually used it yet, but the the marketing makes it seem like exactly what I was talking about.
48:33.24
tylerking
It can ingest your Wiki from Notion, yeah all all the places that we have knowledge. It can ingest it and then draft emails.
48:39.08
Rick
that's great i love the positioning they have yeah
48:41.25
tylerking
Yeah. So we'll see how well it works.
48:41.88
Rick
this is highly relevant to like ah
48:44.58
tylerking
Yes, I could see it being great for leg up as well. Um, and I'm, uh, I'm going to grab lunch with ah their founder. Uh, he he'll be in St. Louis in a bit. So, uh, looking forward to learning more about that one. And then one we've actually started using is, um, it's called ellipsis. I don't know what the ellipsis.ai. I don't know what the domain is, but, uh, this is a artificial intelligence code review tool, which again, this is one of those, I don't think like developers are going to get replaced by AI, but Our, our model is someone writes code. Two people have to review it and approve it before it can go live. And the, those reviews are extremely time consuming and like bugs, of course, still get through. It's not like it's perfect. Um, the idea that the AI could do one of the reviews and. only have one human reviewer or, you know, maybe eventually the AI is good enough that it can do the whole review and and just like identify like, Hey, you've got a query and a loop here. This doesn't look good. pull Pull that out and figure out a more efficient way to do it or something like that. Um, so far, I would say it has been useful.
49:49.23
tylerking
as an initial pass through, but definitely not even close to as good as a human reviewer. But it's one of these things where you kind of have to like give it all of these settings of you have to give it like what, you know, how, how, what kind of code style do we write? And you need to tweak a lot of settings. So I'm moderately optimistic that it will get to the point where, uh, it, it saves us like hours of time per week, um, which would easily justify the cost if it could do that.
50:15.69
Rick
this is repl it
50:18.03
tylerking
No, it's Ellipsis.
50:19.36
Rick
what was it called
50:21.62
tylerking
ah
50:21.64
Rick
ellipes okay have you played with repit replet
50:26.65
tylerking
ah In a pre-AI world, I did. that's That's like the online code editor or whatever.
50:31.58
Rick
yeah they they're heavily positioned for ai now what how do you spell lisis
50:36.53
tylerking
ah E-L-L-I-P-S-I-S dot.dev, it looks like.
50:42.81
Rick
cool
50:43.56
tylerking
So again, like um my i maybe I'm i'm like in the middle of AI. There are some people who are like, AI is going to replace everything. And there are other people who are like, look, I found this one use case it's bad at. AI sucks and is worthless. I'm in the middle where I'm like, it's very good at a lot of things. But it's unreliable enough that you don't want it to like, I don't want to have AI do something with no human in the loop at all, um aside from very low stakes things. The idea of introducing it in is this little like while we were already reviewing code, it's just going to like make that process more efficient or, you know, there's still a human writing the email, but we can give the human a draft. Like just kind of giving the humans a boost strikes me as where with, with where AI is currently. I think that's, that's where the opportunity is.
51:27.94
Rick
agreed yeah hundred percent agree um um that's all i got
51:37.07
tylerking
Cool. Um, we got what five minutes here. Uh, Yeah, I might, you know, I, I kind of mentioned that a product and project management have kind of been a full-time job. I'll, I'll just archive that topic. So maybe I'll just mention real quickly. So we are hiring a CRM coach right now. You do like a lot of hiring at windfall, I think. And you're probably each, each hire is like, not that it's not important, but like you can't obsess over each one, but this is the first person we've hired in like three years or something. Um.
52:06.83
tylerking
not quite that long, two and a half years. Uh, so it's, it's very all consuming and seems super high stakes. And, uh, anyway, this week we're interviewing people and every person you meet, you're like, this person's awesome. I want to work with them. And then there are too many applicants and you got to narrow it down to one person. And I don't know. I don't have anything to say about it. Just that's kind of consuming my, uh, my work hours right now.
52:31.08
Rick
when we're recruiting like it's so it's like the heart is like the most emotional thing or emotionals are the wrong worried but like it's the thing that i feel like i have the the least amount like like i guess dayto-day control over but i obsess over it um
52:46.55
tylerking
Yeah.
52:46.64
Rick
absolutely obsess over it um and so and then i you know i'm constantly like did i make the right to decision when we get to the offer stage like s like until that person is ninety days in like i'm so i'm constantly questioning whether i made the right decision it's like super um super ah hard thing to do
53:03.18
tylerking
Yeah. Well, the consequences for getting it wrong are just massive. And the the consequence of getting it right are massive. like yeah This could be a person I work with for the next 20 years.
53:14.76
tylerking
Like they could, they could be a big part of my life. Uh, so it's, it's, it's kind of got like a deciding where to apply to college type of field to it almost.
53:17.76
Rick
yep
53:25.74
tylerking
Um, so. I hope we're doing it right. we We have tried a, we're, we're introducing a new interview question this time, which is I'm running. So it's like an hour long thing that we're doing a group brain.
53:36.31
tylerking
So one of the things we do with employees is group brainstorming. We're like, I sit in a room with three other people and I bring whatever decisions I'm trying to make. And we just brainstorm it. We're trying to simulate that with new hires, uh, to see how they would carry themselves in that meeting.
53:49.22
tylerking
And results are out, but it's interesting trying new things.
53:51.45
Rick
what what but who who are you targeting with this hi is it a recent college grad is it someone with experience
53:59.04
tylerking
ah We don't care about experience, but I would say most of the people who have made it to the final round are like not recent college grads. It's mostly people who have experience working in some sort of field where they deal with people, but where they're like,
54:17.10
tylerking
Most jobs like this are not careers, you know? Like you could be a barista at a coffee shop. You could ah be a teacher. Teaching obviously can be a career, but for many, many people, they burn out of it. um It's not a specific industry or anything, but i I think that the people who are doing very well in the interview process are people who have some experience talking to people, but they're like, this isn't my forever home. And then they view the CRM coaching job at Lessening Serum is like, oh, that's actually a career. And so that's what they're going for.
54:45.79
Rick
makes sense
54:48.55
tylerking
Yeah. So, uh, hopefully we'll have an offer out in the next couple of weeks, but thank you.
54:52.30
Rick
good luck
54:54.24
tylerking
Um, should we call it?
54:55.79
Rick
yeah if you like to review past topics in show notes visit startup to last dot com see you next time
55:01.39
tylerking
See you.