Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
00:01.52
Rick
What's up this week Tyler I know I I we were so so busy and out of touch that I don't even this actually is a live update I don't know how you're doing. How are you.
00:03.19
tylerking
Um, not much. It's been a little while.
00:13.74
tylerking
Yeah, I'm good. Yeah because like normally we're maybe in slack talking or whatever. Yeah, no, ah I'm good. Just went to a friend's wedding summers ending the fellows are gone. Ah so life's calming down for me.
00:21.13
Rick
Um, who where where'd you go to a wedding who got married but who nice.
00:28.42
tylerking
It was here in St Louis I love a local wedding. Ah Michael who you know? yeah it was a good time. It's nice when people get married in their mid 30 s because they ah the weddings are a little nicer than those 20 somethings getting married.
00:45.55
Rick
Ah, and usually ah like smaller too more intimate.
00:49.24
tylerking
Yeah I wouldn't say that this one was bigger but I I like ah I like a nice big wedding if I know people anyway.
00:55.69
Rick
I'm still waiting for you to reschedule your wedding that got ruined by the pandemic.
01:00.55
tylerking
Yeah, we're definitely not doing that 1 of our main takeaways from this because I'm very very close with the people who got married is we're just like thank god our wedding got canceled. Ah.
01:10.98
Rick
But but you had it like I feel like you did a ah pretty nontraditional approach and it would have been fine.
01:14.15
tylerking
Yeah, one of the things because you know they have. There's a lot of details. You have to figure out right before it and we were not worrying about any of those details. So I'm kind of like would we have shown up and just the whole thing would have been a huge disaster because we were like realizing how little we did to plan anyway.
01:29.90
Rick
Hosting people stressful and ah when you when you put as much pressure on a hosting event event that you're hosting as a wedding like it just is a disaster way didn't happen. It's all downside exactly.
01:40.46
tylerking
Yeah, ah I agree it's all downside that the the the normal case is that it goes how it's planned and there's no better case than that.
01:49.94
Rick
So my wedding just real quick I um I I only invited my ah parents and siblings and it was like 5 people like so however, many that is like 6 or 7 people on my side and then all sayable had a bunch of people. But.
01:55.80
tylerking
Um, yeah.
02:04.91
tylerking
Yeah, that's nice. But I I view a wedding as a big party and I want to no offense to my family but I want a party with my friends sorry dad and Mom I know you listen you would have you would have been invited to that's that's not not for me.
02:05.54
Rick
It was so easy for me.
02:11.71
Rick
Oh yeah, we actually had a dry wedding. You wouldn't have liked it. There's no alcohol. Yeah, what's up What what's up with you.
02:24.43
tylerking
All right? All right? Let's let's dive in here. Ah um, yeah, so I've got a handful of things to talk about. But I think they all relate to the same central theme which is just over the years. We've kind of hired people and people have settled into their roles and stuff. And it's been a long time since I've just kind of gone through and said we have 19 people. What can those people do to contribute to our top priorities rather than thinking oh we hired this person to do x they do x like like we're not going to lay someone off. Because we don't need their role anymore. But that doesn't mean their role shouldn't evolve over time. So anyway, all my updates are kind of in that vein.
03:05.44
Rick
That's an interesting topic because I feel like sometimes you hire someone for a role the job changes but but you don't yeah it changes naturally like incrementally but you never actually. Like feel safe like going and asking that person to do something that's drastically different than their job description unless you force yourself to.. It's like an art. It's an artificial constraint though, especially in a small business.
03:25.11
tylerking
Um, yeah, it's just like inertia take you know you so you ask people ask all the time. Why do big companies move so much slower than small companies and it's so many different things and it's. Bureaucracy and it's you have to support legacy code and all this stuff but 1 of the things is just people get used to doing what they're doing and you have to kind of shuffle things up a bit. So maybe I can give I've got a few examples of this I think the most obvious one that I feel like a complete idiot for not doing sooner. So. Are the technical side of our business. We have 6 software engineers one of whom's sort of in training. So she's not let's let's call it 5 for the time being that can actually ship stuff. Um, and then we have two devops engineers and for people who don't know that term by what I mean by devops is like. They write code to support the infrastructure and dev tools at lessening serum so they're they're not contributing to our main code base. But they're technical um and my brother. The other cofounder is one of those 2 people and then there was just a time where it was like well if he wants to go hike The Grand Canyon we can't have him gone for two weeks or whatever we need another devops person to back him up so we hired another devops person so we have 2 I think most people would say 2 out of 19 people. That's a over that's more devops people than we need. Um at the time it made sense because the site went down all the time.
04:52.20
tylerking
Site doesn't go down all the time anymore. We have a bunch of tools we have like much more reliability. We also have some full stack. There are some some of the software engineers know more about devops now so they could step in but and yet we were just like well we have 2 devops people. Let's find devops projects for them.
05:06.20
Rick
Yeah, and then that takes resources away from everyone else and mind share and brain power.
05:10.65
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, and they're coders like they know how to code So This is such a no brainer that we just recently said well let's not limit them to devops projects like there's still their skill set still going to be very backend heavy and you know it's still going to overlap with devops. But. They're both starting to creep into kind of backend software engineering world and ah, we'll see how it goes but I just feel like an idiot for not having done this sooner.
05:37.42
Rick
Ah, no I I I feel like the minute you you're so scared to do it and it never feels like it's that impactful and there' it seems like there's a ton of downside. But then when you do it. Everybody's like working together better. You're getting more done. Youre you're less everyone's less distracted you are like it takes pressure off you as a Ceo to have to connect people.
05:48.18
tylerking
A.
05:56.24
tylerking
Yeah, and I don't want to get ahead of myself here because we're still kind of experimenting with this but 1 possible outcome here is that those 2 move into the software engineering team and rather than thinking we have 6 a team of 6 and a team of 2 We might just say we have a team of 8 now we only need one manager and all of our like previously. There was one.
05:57.49
Rick
It's so good.
06:14.49
tylerking
Kanban board for the devs and 1 kanban board for devops and it was just two separate processes running in parallel I think there's a decent amount of bureaucracy like bureaucracy we can reduce if we combine this together. Um.
06:26.83
Rick
I Love it for the question that this begs though is like how to I mean the the worry with this is that people won't be receptive to it and they're like no I want to triple down on devops work. Um, are you having that running into need of that resistance.
06:37.85
tylerking
Yeah, well one of them's the co-founder So That's not a problem and then I haven't actually had a conversation with the other person but he hasn't It's ah I mean they're going to explore it. Ah but no I.. It's the the work is similar enough. So There's actually ah but I don't know if there's more to talk about that that segues into another example of this happening where I think your questions a little more of an issue should I move on or yeah.
07:04.80
Rick
Yes, just keep going through the exam I'm more interested in the um in the the theme and the I'm I'm experiencing this in my day job. So I'm and ah, it's It's a very interesting topic to me so keep going through the examples.
07:13.56
tylerking
Um, so the other but ah, one of the other ones is serum coaching where it's not that so serum coaching meaning customer service. Um, but like.
07:20.99
Rick
Is customer service. Yep.
07:27.23
tylerking
We kind of intentionally do customer service in an inefficient way because I think that's how if you want really really great customer service. You have to give them time to like actually talk to customers and learn about them versus like this is just knock out the support tickets as fast as you can. Um, we also have. Like we give employees the ability to go on sabbatical. We have unlimited sick leave. We have 30 personal days per year that people can take off There's just people gone from time time so that like any team of multiple people we have I think 8 crm coaches. But I think the team can run at six I'd say 7 is like. Comfortable 6 is like it feels like they're a little stretched but we have 8 to to make up for the times when not everyone's around right? That's that's how you always have to staff any team. So the question there. It's not It's not so much like with devops. It was I think they were working on the wrong projects with serum coaches. It's just what do we do with their extra time That's not. When all 8 people are around and they have extra time what has been happening is they all have 20% projects where they get to pick other things to work on and so they just filled in the additional time with more 20% time we want to be more deliberate here where we're like now the company's deciding. Who's going to work on what with this extra surplus time and we're going to put it towards the most impactful stuff which is different from 20% time. Well yeah, so that brings up I what you were saying earlier were like what if people don't go along with it.
08:45.47
Rick
That makes sense What So what are you doing to solve for that.
08:55.70
tylerking
That's a harder question here because we're basically saying hey you know how we hired you to do customer service now you're writing blog posts or whatever. So what we did in this case is we just asked for volunteers because some people really want to mix up what they're working on and some people don't so rather than saying okay, we're going to evenly divide this extra time amongst the 8 people. Probably 1 or 2 people will get all of the extra time and but those are the people who opted into it. Um, so we've got we're still figuring out what the marketing projects will be but I think 1 person will probably do seo blogging stuff. 1 person will probably do sort of sales I mean the leads are inbound but.
09:19.40
Rick
Interesting.
09:34.71
tylerking
Talking to people a little earlier in the buying process than our normal customer service people do um because I'd rather have one person get really good at one of these skills than have 8 people kind of mediocre at it like I wanted I wanted this I wanted.
09:36.82
Rick
What Why are you making this opt in.
09:52.79
tylerking
I don't want to spread it out evenly I want one specialist and as opposed to 8 generalists.
09:55.24
Rick
Okay, and what so what? What? what are they going to the the the people who don't help out with content. What are they going to do with their spare time.
10:05.30
tylerking
Um, they don't get spare time. It's customer service for them.
10:07.34
Rick
Oh got it So you'll just reallocate what more more workload to them.
10:13.35
tylerking
Yeah, so and I actually have a little analogy for this that I used to communicate it to the team and I know you always like when we have these little shorthand that ah I share So now our new Shorthand is sand projects versus rock projects. Do you know that analogy of like if you have sand pebbles and rocks. Yeah.
10:18.28
Rick
Yeah.
10:27.28
Rick
Yeah, you put the sand in first yeah, just kidding. Yeah.
10:31.30
tylerking
I think you missed the point of that analogy like now there's some really cringy Youtube videos of this because it's it's I think the original message was like for a life fulfillment like philosophy thing.
10:42.42
Rick
Yeah, you got to build your anchors around your rocks and you know make sure you don't forget to do those before because you've put the sand in and you do all these little things too. Ah too soon. You don't leave room for your big things.
10:49.33
tylerking
Yeah, right? So I think the way we were doing it before is we had a couple rocks but mostly we were just like whatever extra time there is poor sandin to fill up the container and now we're saying we're going to fill the container with as many rocks as we can. There will still be some sand like you can't perfectly schedule a customer service where it's all like there will still be oh, it's just a slow day. Hey you you can tune out and go do something else. So what we're saying is every crm coach needs some sand projects. But we are all of the schedulable surplus time that we have will go towards rock projects and those are only going to be done by probably 1 or 2 people. Um, again, it's like yeah of course we should have been pointing. It's.
11:33.55
Rick
Ah, very cool.
11:40.30
tylerking
It's like you hire people and you think of course they're just going to be working on the highest impact thing all the time but I guess this is what management is is like if you don't really stay on top of that that that stops happening.
11:49.59
Rick
Well, it's easier to hire someone with a simplified job. They don't have the context of the whole company but is probably more like an evolution of of like the onboarding process over years ah versus like a job description but like you hire so you try to simplify something to be able to hire someone who can do a certain amount of skills. But inevitably like that's not ideal. It's like suboptimal. Um, it's optimal for getting someone onboarded but not optimal for like maximizing execution which is actually something I want to talk a lot about today because it's um.
12:10.89
tylerking
Um, yeah.
12:20.80
Rick
It's something I'm learning at leg up Health and but basically what what you're talking about is the same thing I'm learning which is forget like the perfect like just job description and like having this perfect clarity of like what everybody's supposed to do let's just go get work done and that's better.
12:34.23
tylerking
Yeah I mean this is what founders always do and you forget that at the moment you hire your first employee you forget that attitude with them because that's not how the corporate world works. Well do you want to move.
12:45.48
Rick
Yeah, that's exactly right? Yeah, you know do you have any other examples of that.
12:52.52
tylerking
Well, the other one I have is just me. Um I started coding for the first time in quite a while. Ah I literally sat down at my desk one day because you know the the fellows in interns are leaving and I wrapped up a couple other projects and I like didn't know what to work on. Um. So I did this whole like soul searcharching of okay growth is our top priority I should probably go do a growth thing and so I looked at ah seo I just kind of like took a look around at some our reports and this and that the thing is like I don't know. I'm not going to have a huge amount of time for this I'll have some time but not like a full time growth person I'm still most bullish on our product led growth stuff. Um, and so I was like I guess the the best way I can contribute to growth is probably to take some stuff off the plates of our. Other software engineers so that they can go finish that project. Um, so yeah I'm doing it yeah yeah I I know there's a lot of inc that's been spilled about what's the role of a Ceo.
13:48.89
Rick
So you're so you're basically trying to block and tackle for them so that they can spend more time on the the media the on their rocks.
14:03.18
tylerking
And you know some people say it's 3 things. It's hiring. It's making sure there's money in the bank and I forget what the other third one everyone always says yeah something and and like okay sure fine all that but I kind of think it's really change management. It's like the company if it stays exactly how it is.
14:08.47
Rick
Setting the vision.
14:21.24
tylerking
There's not a lot of Ceo work to do like the vision's not changing. You're not hiring people like all of that stuff is the company changing into a different size company lessening serum has not had anyone quit in over a year and a half we have not added headcount in that time either. So like the team is totally static. We have the vision. We just need to go execute on it. So like I just don't think there's much Ceo work for me to be doing until the next you know things always come up so something will come up. But right now I'm just like acting like I'm the Ceo is not the best use of my time I think I need to act like I'm an entry level programmer right now. It's funny.
14:55.90
Rick
That's awesome. Ah, you're but youre but you're really asking everyone to do that stop acting like what you've been and and recreate recreate your job based on what's best for the business today.
14:59.87
tylerking
Yeah. Yeah, I'm actually preparing a presentation for the company that some one of the employees asked for like a financial overview just like where's all our money going and this and that and I think the narrative I'm going to spin in it is like here's what happens if we stay at our current growth rate here's what happens if it gets a little better here's what happens if it gets a lot better. And it will paint this vision that it's better for everybody. It's better for our customers. It's better for employees if it if our growth gets a lot better and just kind of call to action to everybody like let's fucking go like it's time to it's time to do this? yeah.
15:34.87
Rick
That's great. That's awesome and it's so much fun to work in that environment. Um, so so we're doing a similar thing at windfall where it's like I can't really talk much about about the specifics but you know one 1 theme that we've had we all read a book called amp it up about a year ago and that was the theme of our last offsite this week tomorrow morning I'm flying out to our off-site company offsite this year which is in napa which will be really really fun. But no I don't think so um, but I hope not because that like really surprised me and made me uncomfortable. Ah so um, but but.
15:58.79
tylerking
You're going to win another award.
16:10.53
Rick
but but last year like that was the theme amped up and amp it up is a book. Um that I've been meaning to bring up on the podcast for a while but it's a guy named Frank Sluman who wrote it he is the Ceo of snowflake but he's he's had like $3000000000 outcomes ah company outcomes like so he's it's not a fluke like he know he has a playbook.
16:27.39
tylerking
Um, yeah.
16:29.63
Rick
Um, but he is his main like he talks about how you need to increase focus increase urgency and increase intensity and he separates all those 3 things out but like 1 of the things he talks a lot about in the book is eliminating silos and I just it just occurred to me while you're talking that. Like he's usually talking at at a much larger scale than us like he's coming at a billion dollar company level. Um, but like the minute you hire someone to do a specific set of things and you put that on a piece of paper and you say that's your job. You've created a silo like and if you don't actively manage that like you have to or create ways for that to like.
17:02.54
tylerking
That.
17:08.74
Rick
Evolve Naturally it it it it just like compounds into a further silo the more and more people you that you add and ah into one one thing that I'm working on right now at windfall is just how how do we make sure that those Silos ah that have have ah we have allowed to create you know start.
17:12.77
tylerking
Um, yeah.
17:27.75
Rick
Coming down and then trying to prevent that from happening again so hard because you you can't um at least in this in the in the speed at the space speed that that um that that we're moving. It's like there's not 1 person who can manage all this like you have you like it sounds like you have the ability to sort of like go around and like.
17:46.10
tylerking
Um, yeah I can steer the whole ship from where I am yeah.
17:47.64
Rick
Yeah,, that's cool and that's that's that's Awesome. So I'm trying to figure out like how do I systematically engineer um like like and this is like not just me like the the executive team is trying to figure out. How do we engineer this and make it so it's ah it's the priority and that's a big Thing. He talks about in the book is like you have to figure out how to get people to go direct. Like when when a customer service wants something don't have them go to like he talks about like how he hates customer success but like don't have him go to customer success have them go straight to the engineer and talk to the engineer about building the the product and how do you facilitate that? um.
18:23.10
tylerking
Ah, but that's I mean that's so that's a land um a minefield though because then engineering doesn't know what to work on if there's not some kind of ah triage system for them.
18:33.63
Rick
Yes, so there're all sorts of it's ah it's ah it's a simplified example. But yes, it's hard. Um, and ah anyway I'm having a similar learning but but 1 of the things he says is in the book and and it's really clicking for me lately is that the the most beautiful strategy in the world.
18:38.41
tylerking
Um, yeah, yeah.
18:51.32
Rick
Doesn't you know gets gets destroyed by better execution and and I'm I'm I'm kind of like imagining like let's say if strategy is the direction that you're heading and sort of like how you're thinking about where you're going and you're heading in the complete wrong direction. But you're executing really? well.
18:52.72
tylerking
Yeah.
19:06.95
Rick
The probability of success is probably higher than if you're heading in the right direction but executing poorly because you can turn the ship around like you can go around and turn it and you you maintain that execution and and like pass the other ship. Um, and so that's just starting to click for me and I'm starting to really wait my day and my leadership towards just like. Getting momentum and sustaining momentum and worrying less about whether it's the right momentum right now and then you know figuring out how to steer it after it's going.
19:36.49
tylerking
I Mean this seems like a continuation of ah, a couple episodes ago and we said you can't optimize nothing which is just like it's I like your analogy that if the ship's moving. You can steer up the problem with the analogy is in that world.
19:40.31
Rick
Yes.
19:50.37
tylerking
If You're moving fast in the wrong Direction. You're getting further and further from where you need to be because I think in in the the real version of this. You're learning more and more and more and you're not actually getting further from your goal like there. There's an a nice metaphor here, but it's not like perfectly accurate. Um, it's better to learn from mistakes and then turn around because you're not actually further from where you started.
20:06.90
Rick
Um.
20:11.42
Rick
Totally agreed. Um, and yeah, so so that's happening we have a lot of room intimate legup right now. Um, you can see it in the slack channel. it's um Jd's really rolling ah it's it's all coming out of maybe forty five days ago us having a partner meeting and saying hey let's. But stop doing what we're doing and do something you know let's just go talk to customers and um, he's getting the probably the biggest like little little hack has been um, getting to this place where it's like ah I'm going to ask people not necessarily for a referral but a person who is like.
20:31.66
tylerking
Um, but.
20:47.98
Rick
Ah, good lead for us just ask for their name and and so that's creating this lead list for Jd that you can just cycle through every day without having to do a ton of ah system engineering for like our data entry. Um, and so anyway, it's happening where we we did 20 meetings and in July with Icp customers.
20:51.50
tylerking
Ah, yeah.
21:06.60
Rick
Um, and we're looking to do 30 and in August in August um, so it just feels really really good.
21:12.61
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Um, at what point do you start to say. Okay, let's like when these meetings started with potential customers. They started as being like customer research like we're not even really trying to sell you on anything. We're just trying to get information and make sure that the offer is correct and all that.
21:24.28
Rick
Um.
21:30.12
tylerking
Um, it has already moved somewhat towards let's start trying to close deals but like there haven't been a lot of deals closing relative to the number of meetings at what point does that start to become the focus.
21:40.12
Rick
Yeah, probably q four so. There's like I think the first step so there's sort of like how do you get the meeting. What's the offer to get the meeting. We're we're shifting that from hey can we do an interview to hey can we do an an audit or can we um, educate you or. You know can we can we ah pitch you um and ah and and so that's's ah, that's happening right now. Um in terms of focusing on trying to like win the business. Um I I am actually very comfortable in the time between now and like October. Offering free sort of like free so consulting free services to learn because we're a lot of these companies that were pitching fall into um, 2 different categories and and um, a lot of them have group health insurance already and we don't really know the best way to serve those and so we're you know, rather than like.
22:26.14
tylerking
Oh.
22:30.78
Rick
Just being a little bit patient and saying hey like let us give you free. Let let us be your agent without being your agent and then we're we're learning through that way. So we have a couple of those where those will turn into revenue if we just like are patient for a couple months um but I think you know you built this software platform for our benefit stipend program and I think. jd demoed that last week for the first time and it was pretty well received and we got some good feedback. Yeah, so so depending on the type of customer it is like there's kind of 3 forks like oh this is a consumer this is a business owner who's just a consumer we we are winning that business right now. Um did I lose you for a second.
22:55.29
tylerking
Um, very early.
23:08.61
tylerking
Um, Nope I just.
23:10.20
Rick
Okay I said I was disconnected for a second but I'll keep going. Um, so so if it's if there's 3 sort of forks 1 is consumer. We're good. We're winning that business and then it's like oh you have employees. Well, it's like 1 of 2 outcomes. Oh you have a stipend program. We're going right into? Ah, you don't offer group health insurance. Oh we're going right into the demo of the stipend program. If they have group health insurance. We're sort of doing this a benefit analysis and then slow playing an aor ask which ah is probably a little bit not mom mentality if I'm being honest.
23:38.17
tylerking
And just to remind people on terminology here So Aor is agent of record. So Basically if someone has a insurance plan somebody is getting a commission on it. It might be the insurance company keeping the commission. But when you say you want to Aor you mean. They list you as the agent and so leg up Health starts getting the commission instead of whoever else.
23:59.40
Rick
Yeah, 2 things happen and basically we're able to act on their behalf with the insurance company and health care I gov and we and we start receiving this the commission to service them. So what one of our values.
24:08.60
tylerking
Yeah, you said this isn't momba meant mentality meaning like not as aggressive why not like like connect the dots for me.
24:16.98
Rick
Yeah, so one of our values is momma mentality. We adopted it earlier this year because we were frankly scared to ask people for their business. Um, and we had we felt like we had earned the right to to ask for. People's business, especially on the consumer market since then we've gotten into the employer business and um, it's not necessarily Mama mentality to say. Ah, you know do this free consulting but in a way it is is like we're so confident that um, we're going to you know, win your business with in the next two months that we're willing to give free sort of services away in the short term. So um, yeah I think it's probably the right approach for a month or two more. But at some point. We're to go. Okay, we know enough, we've earned the confidence to just ask for the business right away.
24:58.43
tylerking
Yeah, so let me I don't exactly have strong feelings here I'm fine slow playing it because ah well, it'll be clear in a second. Why why? that aligns with my interests if my interest is to not work much but ah so I built this software for you. And 1 of the big questions is will anyone buy it right? and until that question is answered I don't think it makes sense for me to do much else on it. Um an argument could be made. Go try and sell it at least for the type of person who might buy this software platform try and sell it more aggressively because until then.
25:32.35
Rick
So let me be clear Jd is now selling that what you built aggressively that so that is happening. We're being aggressive with the consumer offering. It's this group employee health insurance offering that we're what that we're slow playing a little bit because we don't know it.
25:33.80
tylerking
I Don't know what to work on.
25:47.37
tylerking
Gotcha.
25:52.16
Rick
Integrate. There's some payroll issues some um human resource information system issues that we've we've got we need to learn before we're we're too aggressive on. But yeah, we we want to pitch the the demo right away and we're gonna yeah, go ahead.
25:54.66
tylerking
Um, and her.
26:02.11
tylerking
Um, ok, let me sorry that that makes sense. Um, there's 3 icps so to speak here or or customers that we're going after. So I think I already know the answer is but another thing like a voice in my head of someone who might challenge this. They might say like get 1 of them working. Why are we going after 3.
26:24.27
Rick
Which's one icp there The you know.
26:25.62
tylerking
Okay, but it's even still even still I think like if we're like well there's 1 icp but we have multiple crm type products to sell them I think you'd be like just do one of those.
26:36.45
Rick
Yeah, and and that's because you're thinking of it in terms of a software product like ah something you can touch when when our product is service and but effectively like what we want to be able what our the value proposition that we are building is for our icp we are the one we we can take care of you all we know. Like you're a small business owner with with 2 to 19 employees. We are for you. We can. We can do consumer we can do stipend program or we can do group health insurance and we can do all 3 and we've got all 3 in the works. We just don't have the um ah the volume on on ah 2 and 3.
27:12.25
tylerking
Um, yeah.
27:13.74
Rick
And we but we've just we. We're what forty five days into this. We've got momentum on meetings so top of funnel is is starting to to get filled up that's moving down the funnel and then j d's if we he sustains this for another month or two August and September will be at roughly 80 meetings entering open enrollment. We get you know a 10 % close rate on on those. That's 8 deals and then that's not even counting the natural sort of of you know 10 x bump we we we receive in q four just due to seasonality.
27:48.36
tylerking
I'm just yeah I'm just trying to think of how like if I am listening to this podcast and trying to apply it to my business I'm not sure what you just said like I think the conclusion's right I'm not sure the reason is right? if that makes sense.
28:00.70
Rick
The reason for what.
28:04.16
tylerking
That if it's service. You should try to offer all the different services.
28:08.39
Rick
Um, I'm not saying that it's service or is it because it services we should do that I was just saying that like like a crm having 3 different crms is very tangible. Um and like very distinct architectures and like it's like a very like.
28:18.26
tylerking
Um, yeah.
28:22.72
Rick
Tangible thing in service like it's it's actually 1 motion like we have a call and it's the the only thing that changes is the content content of that call. Um, we have ah an email that we write we we have ah ah you know it's all the same thing. It's all health insurance. Um the the the motion is slightly different with the exception like of.
28:28.26
tylerking
Are.
28:40.56
Rick
You know, maybe there's a couple of other tools that we use but the tool isn't the product. It's it's Jd fundamentally that was my only point and but the larger point is that like whatever, whatever solution you're trying to build like build a solution in this case, the solution is icp um, you know you know has to go to 3 different people to get their problem solved.
28:43.29
tylerking
Um, yeah.
28:52.42
tylerking
Um, just.
28:59.40
Rick
Ah, you know, either people keep for h or a um, you know Ah, ah, an individual broker who stinks for consumer um or ah ah a group broker who's who who stinks. Ah for group health insurance and we want to say hey like no no just work with us and we'll take care of you either. You know, no matter. No matter what path you want to go on. Ah I can't I yes, like mass mass clowns. Yeah, so so um I I had a I have several Icp Cds growing up. Yes.
29:16.34
tylerking
Were ever a fan of the insane clown posse Rick we say we keep saying icp and I keep thinking of these rap metal clowns. Yeah.
29:33.17
tylerking
Really nice. Ah that'slar there's I couldn't name them off I had friends who liked Ic P I never was really known I Just I think it's funny. How.
29:34.40
Rick
I'm not I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I can I'm already hearing lyrics in my head right now. Do you know? do you know any songs.
29:51.28
tylerking
Boring and corporate where now we use all these Mvp which used to mean Lebron James and now it means a software product. Anyway.
29:55.20
Rick
yeah yeah I see I mean Icp I just ah, it's a it's a very, it's like a a word. It's a very meaningful word to me.
30:06.29
tylerking
Yeah, all right? Sorry that's neither here nor there. Ah what else? what's going on so to do what I mean to coach sales but to work with JD I assume
30:11.36
Rick
Ah, we hired a sales coach.
30:18.91
Rick
Yeah, just we want to? um, basically to give him someone to bounce ideas off of to take what you know the the foundation of what we've built and make it more repeatable better. It's It's basically someone with some with more experience than J D and I who hopefully will.
30:35.50
tylerking
Cool. Yeah, it has been interesting being a fly on the wall in some of the leg up health meetings and so for anyone listening Rick has a history as a cutco knives sales person is that right? and.
30:35.21
Rick
Make it go faster.
30:45.39
Rick
Yeah.
30:50.42
tylerking
So maybe you're not in sales right now but you have been a successful salesperson in the past and just say like JD has the attitude of us like for me I'm like I don't want to I don't want to talk to people you know I'm just like I would never and JD's like I'll talk to him I'll ask him whatever you want I just don't know what to say and.
30:59.90
Rick
Um.
31:06.71
tylerking
It was funny seeing you sharing some of that wisdom with him but I totally get why having a coach doing that in a more kind of official capacity makes sense.
31:14.77
Rick
Totally I'm not like there are some people who are so good at this stuff and I think we got a good. It was a guy I went to school with in college and he's a he's a sales coach now. So yeah, yeah, it's like um, it's like ah.
31:24.45
tylerking
Um, what's what's the arrangement like how many hours how long like is there ah an end date.
31:33.39
Rick
I think 5 a fiveweek program. Um, and it's mostly I think just like calls. Um I don't think there's a lot of ah ah, ah, sort of execution work that we're we're getting with it. It's more therapy. Um, and ah, um, and just helping to think through through this um, it'll be interesting to see. Like the the downside of this is like there's a potential that it could distract um and and so I'm part of what I'm finding my role is that leg up health as like whatever you want to call me is just keep trying to identify where the distractions are that are keeping us from hitting what matters in the short term and just figuring out how to squash them.
32:06.56
tylerking
Um, um, yeah, cool. Um, any how are you gonna like decide if the sales coach was worth that. Not that you need I mean it's happening but like ah.
32:08.46
Rick
Um, and then trying really hard not to create create those myself.
32:22.40
Rick
So what I did in this case. Um i'm'm not sure if I can share the details around the arrangement because he's doing us a favor so I'm not going to go into like the the dollars and cents. But what I basically did was I said I was getting in the middle of like trying to make this happen and then I realized like. This is fundamentally for Jd and so I just gave him a budget and said j d you have this much money to spend on coaching you know as long as it's sales related ah through September thirtieth like here's the budget and then like as soon as I did that it got it was done in a week like he he interviewed a bunch of people and um and so he's basically going to I mean j d will be the.
32:48.97
tylerking
I crime.
32:56.35
Rick
Decider. Ah yep, if I mean if JD's happy and we're we're slowing down on execution then you know I would challenge him. But if he's happy and execution is is maintained like we're both happy. Yeah.
32:56.41
tylerking
Um, as long as she's happy. It's doing its job.
33:08.76
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, what are you complaining about then? okay that makes sense. Um, cool ah does that segue in anything or should I give another a mine.
33:17.70
Rick
Not really I mean I Just want to I Just want to harp on so like my biggest learning and the this year to date and I hope I Never forget it is whenever you find yourself like trying to think about how to get stuff done like and you're just like. Doing that for more than like it's turning into days and weeks of doing that like stop and just go do stuff something I Just you know and and figuring out how to get your whole team executing um is just like it just seems like that's just such a such a competitive advantage.
33:40.44
tylerking
Um, yeah.
33:49.76
tylerking
Yeah I mean tons of parallels between that and and what I'm talking about on my end too. I wasn't necessarily. Our problem wasn't getting stuck in the strategic stuff but it was yeah it was just like doing anything other than the most important thing. And planning for you is not the most important thing and doing more devops work for us is not the most important thing. Um I am about to completely contradict myself here. We have decided to put the entire dev team on not the most important thing. But.
34:11.79
Rick
Exactly. So yeah, tell me tell me what else is going on in your world.
34:23.94
Rick
Ah, are you questioning that now that we've talked to oda.
34:26.58
tylerking
No no. Ah I'm committed. No I so I didn't plan that Segway. But I'm I'm glad it worked out that way. Ah so here's a situation a while back I mentioned this on the podcast our normal way of ah, kind of like allocating dev resources is to say. Each person works on their own projects. They're totally separate. Um, which I think makes certain amount of sense. You don't have any coordination that way. Um, which reduces some of the overhead but you know when you have 2 devs that's fine. You have two top priorities. You're working on both them at the same time when you have 6 it's like whatever is number 6 get stop doing that. And start working on the most important thing so a while back maybe a few months ago we decided we're going to put everyone on the top priority that we can sometimes that's not practical. It's like someone has a different skill set that doesn't fit that project or whatever so in practice for the last few months there's been 2 projects going on with everybody working on 1 or the other. And now we're planning what's coming next and I found myself looking at it and being like there are 5 projects. We're about to work on in parallel and and we like we all looked at it and decided to do it and we're like yes, that's the right approach and then I was looking at like wait this completely violates this whole work on that like put everyone on the most important thing. So i. Tried to investigate what why that happened and there are a couple like oneoff reasons like we have to switch to paddle which is a 1 personson project but we have a deadline for it. There's a little bit of that. But the the biggest thing is there is a project ah that I'll call bulk actions that is basically the ability to select a bunch of contacts in the crm and do.
36:04.30
tylerking
Stuff in mass to them. We already have a few bulk actions but customers want a lot more like take everyone in this status and move them to a different status or whatever. Ah that has been the cr um coach's number 1 request for like 2 years now and like it keeps being next on the list and I keep being like. Ah, but something came up. We're not going to do it right now and the Sr coaches are just like this is so much more important than anything else to our current customers. None of them are arguing it helps with sales or growth. But it's super important. So what happened is I was like okay that's up next we're going to put one person on that. But I'm not like excited about that because it's not going to help with growth and growth is our top priority. So we're also going to put people on other things and that's what led to this like fragmented doing a bunch of things in parallel thing does that context make sense any questions about how we got where we are. So basically we had a group brainstorming discussion on this and what came out of it was either.
36:51.92
Rick
Yep.
37:00.52
tylerking
Do bulk actions or don't um and there's a strong argument for don't our top priorities growth Bulk actions is not a growth project. Don't do it The counter balance that though is I do think like honoring commitments is worthwhile and I've been putting this off for too Long. So. I've decided to say you know what my mistake was I should have never made the commitment and I have learned a lesson and will not make that commitment to a project like that in the near Future. But. We're just going to put every dev on bulk actions and get it done as quickly as we possibly can and then I'm setting expectations with the team. It's growth and nothing but growth from here on out.
37:38.55
Rick
How how how many like calendar weeks is is it that you expect this to take.
37:46.77
tylerking
Yeah, ah if it was one Dev I think it would be four to six months probably put them all on it maybe a month or so then there's a little overhead putting more people on it so call it a month and a half.
37:58.67
Rick
And this is all they're working on for a month and a half you're basically pausing your growth like just to make sure I'm clear you're pausing your growth initiative to get this done and people are happy about this.
38:02.76
tylerking
They'll they'll be doing bug fixes and some other little things like that. But.
38:09.74
tylerking
Yes. Um, um, yeah, ah the sear I coaches certainly are ah ah yeah I don't know I.
38:23.71
Rick
Okay.
38:27.36
tylerking
I don't have strong convey like at the end of the day we're going to have the same set of projects done six months from now that that was on the original roadmap. It's just like doing 1 thing at a time rather than doing them in parallel now again I fully I acknowledge if I were not a hypocrite I should access project and not do it at all our growth we want to. We want to be focused on growth. But it's not like.
38:36.23
Rick
Um, yeah.
38:47.12
tylerking
Life or death. Um, if it were I would not be making this decision Anyway I know it's like a quote unquote mistake we're doing it anyway see on the other side.
39:01.99
Rick
Somehow you've decided this is not a mistake and that's why you're doing it. So like I'm just trying to like it feels like it's more. Maybe maybe there's some value in this for for team Morale for customer word of mouth and like so this is it's like it's not that simple but like.
39:05.44
tylerking
Um, yeah.
39:11.53
tylerking
Right? right? right. This goes back to a point I made I think last episode or the one before where thinking of things as I have my top priority that's like too Simplistic. It's like I care 40% about this and 20% about that and the thing with the biggest slice of the pie is growth.
39:18.19
Rick
Yeah, it just.
39:33.69
tylerking
But I think all the other things add up to make this bigger. Maybe that's the way to explain it I like that you tried to get me to say that in a less idiotic way. Um, yeah, it's to and it will be a huge feature I mean when we launch this our customers are going to love it. Ah so it's.
39:36.27
Rick
Fair enough.
39:51.24
Rick
That that all pay for itself.
39:53.49
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, except that's a slippery slope where it's what I want is to just all, we have to do is make the product really fucking good for our current customers and the growth follows. That's what I want I think that might be possible. With certain products and that's why we want to launch a forms thing which I've been talking about is because it has enough virality built into it that if you make people love it. They will use it and if people use it. It will grow crm just doesn't work that Way. There's no viral loop at All. There's really long time to value. Complex setup costs I I Just think there's more of a there's a hypothesis. We'll see maybe I'm wrong about forms. But there's more of a disconnect between customers being happy and us getting new customers. That's my hypothesis.
40:41.95
Rick
I hope it works out. It's expensive. It's an expensive investment. Um, what 1 thing that I wrote down while you were talking earlier and this sort of it kind of came back to it and it's something I want to mimic it leg up health and he said if you want.
40:42.31
tylerking
Yeah, we'll see it is.
40:57.69
Rick
Ah, really good customer service you you can't optimize for ah like the lowest cost of service. You have to optimize for something else. Um, and I was just curious like how do you What do you How do you measure what you're optimizing for so the way I wrote it down was if I want to optimize for word of Mouth. For example. Probably have to set a constraint of like the the amount of money we can spend as a percentage of revenue on service but like you know after that it's like build this in a way that maximizes retention and word of Mouth. Um.
41:29.57
tylerking
Um, yeah.
41:32.61
Rick
You know is that the right way to think about it or do you have any other tidbits or is that do you set a constraint on how much to spend on coaching or does it just sort of naturally happen.
41:39.90
tylerking
I Think what happened is we probably overinvested in it early on and then now our constraint is we're not growing the cost because we're not, We're not going to fire anyone over this.. There is an interesting question if someone left would we replace them and I actually don't know the answer. So no, we don't have a constraint but I think that's a good approach to take like just we. The business has to work with customer service not taking more than X percent of revenue like that seems like a reasonable starting point. My gut reaction to what you said though is I Just think using the word optimize in conjunction with customer service is going to lead to trouble. Um like I I think. And if you have some north Star metric that you're trying to make as high as you can. You're almost certainly going to make other compromises that make something worse like it's just it's all about balance I think and optimization is the antithesis to balance I have a more specific thought but like what do you think about that.
42:36.14
Rick
I Think that's right I it nothing is that simple, but there's a big difference between like rewarding people for like staying within budget while ah maximizing the customer experience to like generate revenue.
42:43.48
tylerking
Um, yeah.
42:50.96
Rick
Um, versus like whether that's through you know you know word of mouth referrals or retention or upsells. Um crosssells. Whatever um, that's a big different difference between like the the thing I was imagining where it was like you did 100 tickets in 2 hours um ah in. You know with a first resolution rate of 80%. Great job.
43:12.52
tylerking
Yeah, so here's our approach to this and I this is a lot of what we do I'm like trying to make up a justification after the fact because we're talking about it this one we've actually thought deliberately about and I have strong conviction on this for lessnoing serum. We hire people who are intrinsically motivated to help people. And there are a lot of people like that out there think of any nurse any teacher or just like nice people. You know, um, we hire people who are intrinsically motivated and then it's just a game of not crushing that motivation. You can crush that motivation by making them resent their job like if they just don't like their boss. They're not going to. They're going to lose that motivation or by creating some metric they're trying to hit if you're like you get a bonus if you hit some metric that motivation goes out the window at that point and they're just trying to play the game. So our goal is hire those people and put constraints in place like you say like hey don't spend an hour on one import like that's too long here's how here's how far above and beyond you can kind of go before we say like cut it out but beyond that we just let them do their thing and then I'd say there's a second motivator which is they also want the business to succeed I don't think it needs to be a direct like hit this metric and we give you this bonus. But if they think. I know that like like my employees have seen in the past we had a good year and we added health insurance. They're just like I know if I do my part and the company moves in the right direction. It'll pay back to me and so if I just help people out but also have reason about like balancing business needs with customer needs I don't know it's worked out pretty well for us.
44:45.29
Rick
No, it makes that makes a lot of sense I like it a lot.
44:49.51
tylerking
Yeah I you're going to be in a different situation scaling like up health though because it's even more I mean like you just said earlier in this episode The service is the thing and the profitability of the business could two x or you know point 5 x based on. Very minor little things that you could tweak here and there.
45:09.27
Rick
Yeah, this is it like getting this right from a business modeling perspective is a difference between between scaling up and having to like like having like failure to launches a couple times before getting it right? like it's ah it's a big deal. So yeah, it's really interesting.
45:20.15
tylerking
Um, yeah.
45:25.29
tylerking
I can't wait until you're actually and I mean a lot of stuff has to go right first but that is that's going to make for some really fascinating podcast episodes once that time comes um, all right? Well I know you if you've got other topics going to cover we can. But I also know you're ah.
45:34.36
Rick
Um, totally.
45:41.11
tylerking
You have to move on to something else. Should we call it.
45:43.27
Rick
I've got 1 thing that I'll just tease for next time. Um, and that is let's take 2 minutes maybe I'm starting to think about the the marketing machine on top of so so I should preface this with now that j d's executing and it's sort of like balls like momentum is building.
45:49.30
tylerking
Um.
45:58.47
Rick
It's leading to like natural weekly incremental improvements to our offers our marketing offers our sales offers our product offerings. It's incremental though and so I'm I'm trying to figure out where I might be able to spend like an hour on a weekend or 2 trying to like like create another source of leverage that is like. Massive impact and I think that's in this like starting to construct the the spamming I don't call it spam I don't want to spam people. Um, you know that that thing that like makes it easy for j d to do more and then also like it like creates a halflife of like ah of a contact that.
46:27.77
tylerking
Um.
46:36.74
Rick
Um, you know we continue to get you know to nurture. Um, and so that's that's starting to like I'm starting to think about it at night when I go to bed and wake up thinking about it and dream about it and think about in the shower which every time that happens to me. It's like I know it's going to happen in the next like four weeks probably
46:49.38
tylerking
Um, yeah, hell yeah.
46:53.34
Rick
But one day like I'm just going to like get hit by ah that feeling and I'm not going to sleep and I'm just going to just knock it out. Um so I just wanted to share that. Do you ever get those feelings.
47:00.79
tylerking
That's awesome. Yeah absolutely I I actually got it with this coding thing like I made the intellectual decision to start coding and then it was on a Friday and I just worked until 2 2 a m I was just like. Now is the time I have the motivation right now I'm going to drop everything and roll with it because I that this may mode this motivation might not come back. You know.
47:19.64
Rick
Yeah, exactly. So so so I think like maybe by the next podcast episode I will have an update on this but no commitments I'm not ready to commit yet. But I'm going like it's just like it's it's occupying space in my mind.
47:30.50
tylerking
Um, yeah I like to hear you're thinking about like yeah what I like I want to I Want to see you build in the marketing like being an individual contributor doing marketing on leg up health that would excite the hell out of me.
47:42.77
Rick
Yeah, yeah, um, the other thing that's like happening in my life right now is I feel like we're at a six week point with Avery our new daughter and that's like I feel like a turning point I don't know it just seems like it's I just maybe it's just been six weeks of a new routine that.
47:58.40
tylerking
Um, like things get easier.
48:02.78
Rick
Um, just accepting as my new life. Um versus like wishing for the old the old way. Ah, but I don't know I feel like I have more energy now and also more time but I know I have less time but I feel like I have more time all of a sudden I don't know what that is about but anything else on your mind.
48:20.53
tylerking
Ah, you know I could blabber on but I know you got places to be so let's call it.
48:24.42
Rick
Ah, um, if you'd like to review past topics in show notes visit startup to lastt.com see you next week
48:28.30
tylerking
See ya.