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Josh Ho, the founder of Referral Rock, joins me to talk about all things SaaS and how to think about adding referrals into a software business.
Welcome to Startups with Niall Maher.
This show is to going give you tips, strategies and advice to grow your business and hopefully entertain you along the way.
Niall will introduce experts and resources that he is always learning from.
It’s all about sharing that experience with YOU.
Niall has worked in nearly every corner of technology businesses; Lead Developer, Software Architect, Product Manager, CTO and now happily a Founder.
You’ll also get to hear live calls with special guests (such as founders, authors and experts).
Thanks for listening and let’s grow together.
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Niall: Like most of you on building my own business. And since I'm getting ready to go to market with my own product I've been researching, what makes people want to recommend a product? I've been looking at forms from growth hacking to referral marketing programs. And even some commission-based sales. Referrals are natural to humans since we like to gossip and chat on, it's literally at our nature. That's why it really drew in my attention. And it's my focus this week.
[00:00:56] Niall: Referral marketing is a great way to get more customers without really spending a lot of money on advertising. And it works by getting current customers to refer their friends and family members or whoever else. To your business.
[00:01:08] Niall: There are a few reasons why referral marketing is so important for a SaaS business.
[00:01:12] Niall: It's great to generate word of mouth publicity.
[00:01:15] Niall: Referrals are more likely to become paying customers done those who are referred by traditional advertising methods. You know, if you see. Some Google ads on the side of a column, or somebody tells you about a product on the street. Which is going to be a little bit more interesting.
[00:01:31] Niall: In my hunt for referral programs and information on Twitter, I came across a really cool profile called J logic. And that is Mr. Josh Ho.
[00:01:41] Niall: He is the founder of a B2B saaS platform called referral rock. Referral rock is aimed at giving your best fans and on-brand sharing experience. So you can see why it's something that drew my attention in any way.
[00:01:55] Niall: And lucky enough, I'm getting to chat to Josh in this episode and learn from him. So this episode won't all be about referrals. So because Josh is a fountain of knowledge in the SaaS space. He has had a SaaS business before referral rock and even runs his own podcast called searching for SaaS.
[00:02:13] Niall: Now let's jump into the conversation on here about his journey and tips along the way.
[00:02:17]
[00:02:19] Niall: Probably the best place to start is you explaining referral rock to people. So maybe they get a sense of what you're doing and what you're building.
[00:02:26] Josh: Sure. Referral rock is a referral marketing Saas. So software's a service. We sell to B2B and B2C businesses. We're a B2B ourselves. Yeah, that's pretty much the biggest thing. And most people, if I have to explain what referral marketing is, it's all those, referral friend types of programs.
[00:02:46] Josh: You can't unsee. Once you understand what they're doing. So Dropbox, give a hundred megabytes, get a hundred megabytes for your Dropbox, things like that. So once, once someone kind of gets that it clicks in it's pretty easy to understand the type of software where.
[00:03:01] Niall: You are doing that mostly for brick and mortar shops, or is it other software companies that you're doing it for or somewhere in the middle
[00:03:09] Josh: It's somewhere in the middle, I guess it started with brick and mortar. That was our first sort of like impetus or just a thesis in the beginning, just because when I was looking around for software ideas after I burned out of my first startup, which we could talk about later, if
[00:03:23] Niall: please? Absolutely.
[00:03:25] Josh: I noticed there was a gap in the market where, brick and mortar types of businesses. The first one I came across was like a car dealership. yoga studios, things like that. I'm like, Hey, there's all these great, e-commerce refer a friend type programs and who's doing them for car dealerships, all these other ones that, the world runs on referrals, whether it's pure word of mouth organic or whether it's like incentivized with a deal or different types of things. But, there's so much connective tissue in all of that. And I was realizing this was a largely underserved market, so
[00:03:57] Niall: I think the incentive things, people often feel like guilty or something like that, but it's the same as like sharing a YouTube video or something. There has to be an incentive for you to share this with somebody, whether it's like really cool or you think your friend will get something out of it or.
[00:04:12] Niall: There's just something to give. I said this to you before the call as well, but I stumble across you because I was researching adding virality to my own product. And how could I get people talking about the product and not just assume and do what a lot of businesses do and say, Hey, share this post or Hey, share my product without , any value given back.
[00:04:31] Niall: And I think that's where proper referral programs start to add ginormous wage. Like you hit on Dropbox is one of the most infamous cases of give you some storage. If you refer a friend and that's what built them to where they are.
[00:04:45] Josh: It is interesting cause that's the headline, right? It's like one of the ones that says this referral program and it is a big piece of it. But if you really dig into Dropbox and you've touched on one of the main points that everyone brings up with referral programs is the virality aspect.
[00:05:00] Josh: But like the true vitality happened because Dropbox became a multiplayer game. And so it's really the network effects that happened once they got people in. And if, even if you think. This is why it worked. So I could give you something, you get some extra space, I get some extra space. So it's really I am serving myself, but I'm also gifting to you.
[00:05:23] Josh: Like I gave you a reason that it looked like I gave you a gift. And then once you were in the platform itself, that sharing and the fact that we could share files, it grew from a network effect standpoint, right? So like The ecosystem or my Dropbox got stronger because now, Hey, I can easily share files with you or share different things.
[00:05:43] Josh: This was a sparks to the engine, so to speak. And then once they have this bigger flywheel going, that's where the vitality part kicks in. Um, it's an interesting mechanic thinking of like how that can add to it. I guess the tough thing is for a lot of businesses is they want to come in and say, oh, I'm just going to add a referral program.
[00:06:01] Josh: And that's going to spark virality. It's a spark. It will get some things in, but really it's, it's basically to grease the wheels for whatever else is already going on. And the best ones have that strong alignment. So you look at the beginning of the Dropbox example, giving space.
[00:06:16] Josh: That, that made a lot. And then you look at another famous one is PayPal. Like PayPal did this super early on. It was like, give $10, get $10. So it was like, okay, but they were a monetary platform. So everything that, that aligned with their brand aligned with their values.
[00:06:31] Josh: And I think people get tied up in I'm going to be Dropbox. Okay. I can't give space, but I'm going to give them money. And it's okay? Is giving money off brand for you? A lot of that still has to resonate with your customers and like kind of complete the whole cycle otherwise, it's not really going to be as effective as you dream it up to be.
[00:06:50] Niall: And that's a really interesting way of putting it because when they, when people just teach growth hacking and things like that, they always say you can't just copy paste things. It has to be built around your business. And it's interesting to you when you're just saying that the referrals on how you give to referrals has to be natural to how you do it.
[00:07:07] Niall: It's a lot of human psychology that I think people aren't really thinking about. They just think, Hey, I got some free shit now that was nice.
[00:07:14] Josh: right, when it hits when it aligns, but you don't even know. It's just like Jedi mind trick over you type of thing.
[00:07:20] Niall: Yeah. And that's the best kind where you don't feel bad. There's no question. When you hit that share button am I giving away something of myself? Am I belittling myself by doing these things? Because I know personally say that on my YouTube channel and things like that, I won't take sponsors of things because I'm just afraid that it's going to make me look like I'm cheapening my brand or something by slinging links and things.
[00:07:44] Niall: But I have done it with other businesses. Who haven't asked me anything at all, because I just really like what they're doing. And I think that's, what's key with this is getting it, what fits, but then how would a company go along to get that fit? Or is there experiments you put in place to recommend to people if they're starting a referral program for the first time?
[00:08:04] Josh: Sure. So yeah, if we're changing gears out of the allure of the vitality aspect and getting into, like, where does the rubber meet the road, really for a referral program where it can add value for most types of businesses, right? Like aside from these sort of I would say more of like unicorn, not even for the money, but.
[00:08:24] Josh: Obscure side cases that are, that also bring up the greatest stories. But for the everyday type of business it starts with, I, I think I mentioned this before, like whatever you already have that is working and going on. So when we can tell when a, uh, a regular business would have success with a referral program often happens because they already have some word of mouth.
[00:08:46] Josh: Right. Regardless of being incentivized or not, like you mentioned, Hey, I just want to share this product or tell people about it because it's cool. Like, Hey, this microphone, this camera, this, whatever, like I'm amazed by these new set of headphones I got. And I'm just telling people, cause I, I thought it was awesome.
[00:09:00] Josh: Right. So if you already have word of mouth going and it's organic word of mouth, and then the other piece of that is if you have a large enough base, those are the organic things or that already have. Now, once you look at those and you say, okay, where is there a type of program?
[00:09:17] Josh: I can design that where incentives can make a difference. And incentives don't have to be monetary. So it can be something, like I said, aligns well with your brand, actually there's funny and incentive that um, so my wife runs a, like a yoga business, like a local, and then now post endemic or pre in pandemic, she's started to do online and some other things.
[00:09:40] Josh: But one of the interesting things that happened a couple of weeks ago is she was like, okay, great. You know, about all this marketing crap. She didn't say that, but she's like, you know, about like, how can I want to get some more reviews and how can I do that? Like, should I offer a free class?
[00:09:53] Josh: I was like, well, I was like, what's on brand. Okay, yoga, you do a lot of giving. You do a lot of giving back to the community in our local area, all these other things. You want to get people to give you reviews. Giving them money or giving them a free class almost makes it feel dirty.
[00:10:09] Josh: What is the right thing and what we ended up coming up with was she's essentially make a donation on that person's behalf. If they give me a review, it doesn't have to be a positive review or whatever.
[00:10:19] Josh: And she sent it out to her list and instantly it was like that alignment with yoga and fitness and giving back. And again, we're in a more affluent community. So giving a free class, wasn't a big deal. It wasn't going to move the needle for them, but they, but something like, Hey, I'm doing this.
[00:10:35] Josh: It's for this yoga business and my wife's yoga business, and it's good for her and it's good for them. And she's giving back. It just hit on all those types of things that really well, now that wasn't a referral program, but she could do something similar in that one that, that hits on all those things.
[00:10:50] Josh: If that makes.
[00:10:51] Niall: Yeah, you hit the heart of the problem I was having is how do I, how do you do this without feeling dirty? And how do you feel like you're not cheapening your brand by doing these things? It's amazing the amount of thought, that has to go to these things. I think we'd all love if we could just hit a switch and it would just work and cause that would be lovely, but it's just not that easy.
[00:11:09] Niall: Yeah.
[00:11:10] Josh: No, it's not. And then the other thing is the large amount of surface area. I think that matters. So like an e-commerce business, when you fit something into a box like that, like how, they're, how they're structured, obviously, something like giving a coupon or giving your friend 10% off and you get 10% off.
[00:11:26] Josh: Those are easy wins. So there are a classic examples that will work in those scenarios. and most businesses, I feel like can find something. It does, again, it doesn't have to be monetary and even some of the basics of just showing appreciation. And that's what our programs often do is like, If you're going to share, and you're going to share with a friend, a code or something like that, they might not buy and that's okay.
[00:11:50] Josh: But it's kind of nice for you to understand like, oh, they clicked on it. And actually I generated some brand views or if some brand visits for this company and that still feels good. And maybe you're getting recognized for that. And maybe it's like, you're getting recognized with a t-shirt or a, or a shout out on a podcast or something like that.
[00:12:06] Josh: So those are all other I guess, incentives or mechanisms that make you feel good, make you feel recognized that you took the time, make your own kind of your own social currency to do sharing and some stuff like that. There's all these other, like you said, psychology, this is all psychology.
[00:12:22] Josh: This is all marketing. This is all sales, but the best ones are the ones that like are just in such good alignment that that show the appreciation for people that took the time to do it. Even if they never generated a sale, all these types of things. Are the things we're trying to do holistically as a platform, but obviously the big ones that do well are these very standardized ones and coming up with other creative ideas to get people to not think it's all monetary like swag or shout outs or different things that really help spur that word of mouth and like brand loyalty, so to speak.
[00:12:55] Niall: And then you'd probably have a really good insight in this since it's your whole product, so you find there is those people who are just constantly jumping back to the platform, jumping onto referral rock and just saying, Hmm, I wonder how good my referrals have done today.
[00:13:08] Niall: Like it is there that little gamification that's making some people just take it more seriously than not.
[00:13:14] Josh: Yeah, definitely. And that, and that stuff, we're trying to lean into more and reading more into our own data. So at the stage of the business we're at is, if we provided a pretty solid platform that can hit on all these things, give a business, the amount of creativity they can do, the setting up reward structures and different things.
[00:13:32] Josh: But the one thing that we are trying to lean more into is identifying that there are a smaller set, like it's one of those 80 20 types of rule things where 20% of the people are generating 80% of the value in a referral program. So how can a company recognize them? How can a company even develop someone that might've started sharing once or twice, but all of a sudden they get a notification that says, oh, so-and-so click your link or something, you know, 10 other people clicked it from your social media thing.
[00:14:01] Josh: And now it's like, Ooh, that's interesting. It's actually working. Shouting into the wind and dropping links for no good reason. Like I'm actually generating some good things and that company is recognizing it. So how did we take that guy and make sure that guy or gal and say okay, you're appreciated.
[00:14:16] Josh: Let's move you up into another tier. And let's like, how do you, we want to capitalize on it and it not in a bad way, but we want to make good use of the fact that you really do enjoy this. And it became a prosperous type of relationship. So how can we identify them and how can we identify them early?
[00:14:33] Josh: And then how can we develop them into what I like to call like super connectors or super shares or super fans, that type of thing. That's definitely an area we're trying to dig into more with data, but at this stage it's a little, it's a little early. We seeing that we can see the patterns, but it's like, how can you identify them in a consistent manner?
[00:14:52] Niall: I think this kind of leads back into a great thing. The product manager and me really wants to know. this journey started, because you said you started with a bricks and mortar, and now you're looking more into kind of getting people to come back or use the site again. So you're getting those gamification hooks into it.
[00:15:09] Niall: So what was that journey like? Where did you start? Was it always a referral program to start? Because I know a lot of people pivot early on, what was the story for referral rock?
[00:15:17] Josh: I would say the story for referral rock before referral rocks slightly. So I did have a previous startup business back in the early, I would say like web 2.0 days. So this is, mid two thousands and that kind of timeframe. But speeding through that, not to go into the super details of that one, but I got, I took away a couple of key lessons out of that, which was, selling to consumers at that time, was really hard.
[00:15:42] Josh: This was even pre a lot of smartphone types of things, and then selling a solution that was trying to fit for everyone. You hear the, these common things was even harder. So we built a notes platform. We were out there with an online notes platform before Evernote, before notion all of these other things that are more of household name. But we were in the mix early on. Like we got featured on life hacker. We did all these things and it was great. But at that time, no one wanted to pay for that stuff. No one wanted to pay for, $10 a month for a notes platform today. That's I think that game has changed, but when we were doing it early on, it was like, okay.
[00:16:20] Josh: The biggest hard pivot for myself was I want to do stuff for businesses because businesses can see immediate value. They can tie I'm spending X to I'm getting Y type of value where it's much harder for a consumer to quantify or think in those numbers. Cause that was like one big lesson.
[00:16:37] Josh: The other one was I learned about distribution at that point in time. So we got some early hits with SEO and got, we were like in the top five for, online notes. But once we figured that out, we had a perpetual feed of customer. Despite that probably being something that led to us holding on way too long to this product in that time era, because we ended up closing it up around 2015.
[00:17:01] Josh: So about 10 years, we held on to this now as any developer or whatever, it, there was times we were working on it. There was definitely times we were full-time on it. And then it faded out and it was one of these sort of zombie things. I manage the database, I kept everything running, but the reality was it brought in, I don't know, maybe at its peak, $500 a month.
[00:17:23] Josh: And it was a challenging $500 with churn and all kinds of things. So that was like everything that codified for me, which really set up referral rock, which was, I wanted to focus on B2B. I still liked SAS and I wanted to, I knew that building a distribution channel would be a powerful ally to have.
[00:17:41] Josh: So I'd get multiple reps. Like you get multiple shots on goal. If basically things keep coming, the balls keep coming to you. I can hone my skill. I can hone my kick. If we're talking about sports and soccer or football, I get more reps at this to play this game.
[00:17:55] Josh: And that's how I ended up developing a skill and sharpening that
[00:17:59] Niall: Did you interview any customers early on or did you just see the need from your own pain of trying to develop and try to create more word of mouth, an act of users that you decided? No, that you know what, this is definitely the right way to.
[00:18:10] Josh: That it came from just, I think when I was trying to allude to it earlier, and I probably didn't complete enough of the story, but it was from like, I was literally sitting in a car dealership after my other startup kind of was done. And I'm sitting there trying to think of okay, what do I want to do next?
[00:18:26] Josh: And at that point in time, I was probably had two or three other project ideas at the time. And when I was at the car dealership and I saw word of mouth and a referral actually happened live, I was sitting there with coffee, waiting for a repair and someone walked in and they essentially said, oh, Hey my friend Jane sent me, to, to buy a new Honda.
[00:18:44] Josh: And they said to talk to you and the person had this look on their face. Like who's Jane, they're just like, you had this dead look in their eyes, like a panicking. I don't know who you're talking about. And suddenly it clicked. And I don't know if it actually clicked, but it clicked enough that they went into sales mode and they're like, oh yeah.
[00:19:01] Josh: So-and-so like, great. Yeah. Let's, let's show you this, Accord. Let's do that. Right. So, and I'm sitting there and watching it all from the sidelines and I'm like, what really happened there? Is there like a referral fee? Is there like, uh, how does, how does that all work? So that's where it started me thinking.
[00:19:16] Josh: And that's why. Looking up in anything I found out there was just pure e-commerce referral programs. So as I leaned into that, I, then I started doing some customer interviews and discovery. I basically looked at my own list of contacts, anyone I had that was running a small business. So whether it was like a yoga instructor or my accountant, my mortgage broker, like anyone essentially, I knew.
[00:19:39] Josh: And at that time, I didn't know, like the vast difference between a small, small business and like, okay, what is really a small business or what is a medium business, all these types of things. so I interviewed a lot of people. And what was funny is out of that interview process, I ended up not really getting that much of a good vibe from any of them.
[00:19:59] Josh: So I can't actually say I did it, you know, Hey, I did these 50 customer interviews and, and, and all of a sudden I, you know, found enough of a trend and decided to build the product. Like, I can't say that that was actually what happened. But what did happen was I did get enough of a, of a level of confidence that there was still probably something there.
[00:20:18] Josh: So I did build a fairly rudimentary MVP and, just started doing the basic promotion things at that time, putting it on beta list. This was again, pre product hunt, so they had all these different listing sites and I started doing some Twitter things with it and whatnot, and eventually got enough people that once I was like, all right, I've got a couple of people using it.
[00:20:40] Josh: I've got people using a very rudimentary version and just started building from there and leaning into talking with the customers that were using it that I did acquire from outside. And a lot of that just found follow the bouncing ball, but stayed pretty true to that initial impetus.
[00:20:57] Josh: Also has core pieces that we built into our platform. So one of the key ones out of that is that we handled a service type of sale versus just a transactional sale. So e-commerce is a very transactional, you click, you buy you're done, but a service-based sale is more of like, oh, it had a call.
[00:21:15] Josh: This person's a lead. Now it takes them two weeks to come back and actually close a deal, like a car dealership, that type of thing. Um, or someone got on an email list and eventually they did a bunch of different activities before they're actually considered a customer. So that was stuff we built in early on.
[00:21:32] Josh: That was very differentiated versus e-commerce, I'm just hooking up to a checkout kind of a type of transaction.
[00:21:40] Niall: It's so interesting because you held on. You obviously had a lot in a very long time where your notes up and it's, it's amazing. Cause I have a note app open to the side here too, to make sure I have some stuff here. So I'm sure you're still like maybe if I held on longer, but we all know that's not how it works either.
[00:21:56] Niall: Unfortunately. And I'm guessing with how successful referral rock has been. You probably were wondering why you didn't let go sooner.
[00:22:03] Niall: I'm sure. A little bit,
[00:22:04] Josh: Not too much. That was honestly I, the other one I burned out. So I did learn some other lessons in terms of like what type of business person I wanted to be, the energy levels you have and how that matters. So like the first one actually did get a little bit of funding. And so it did put us on a wheel.
[00:22:22] Josh: It did put us on a clock to make revenue or to become like a zombie sort of startup. And in that phase, when we realized. This was also when the recession hit and it's like, we went from like, oh, Hey look, we're getting all this popular stuff. And let's, let's raise more money to like everyone stopped taking calls.
[00:22:40] Josh: And it was like, this is just the worst timing for us. But honestly, in that period, I learned a lot about like myself and about do I want to do a funded startup or do I want to do do I want to kind of build it my own way? And for me, it was very much like a, I want to control my own destiny control is a big thing, but then I can take it at my own pace and, and know that I don't have to be on the gas all the time.
[00:23:04] Josh: So that was the biggest thing. And so when I think actually referral rock was already picking up before I officially shut down Uber note and Uber note was just sitting there not doing anything. Like I said, it was like for a few years, my brain was cooked. I was actually. Other software consulting gigs while this thing was running, just paying the server bills essentially.
[00:23:26] Josh: And not until I got the energy of oh, this is what like product market fit feels like, did I kind of shut the other one down? So I can't say it was actually had anything to do with like opportunity costs lost or anything like that, but it was more of like, okay, I learned a lot and now I'm actually officially closing that door before.
[00:23:47] Josh: Really. It helped me save my mental space to be like, okay, now I know what good is now. I know what the energy really feels like and was able to go all in with referral rock
[00:23:58] Niall: That's amazing. It was very valuable then if you know what keeps you happy? You seem like a very happy and healthy person. So I'm guessing that's the way you run your business and run your life. So I'm guessing that's an extreme difference than how you had previously. If you've decided no, not taking money, I'm not going to work at anyone.
[00:24:15] Niall: Else's pace. I'm going to do it my way.
[00:24:16] Josh: Yep. Yeah. And like allowing the market to mature, because again, maybe if I didn't take money or we did it take it in a different route. I don't know. I can't say because honestly it would have been waiting a long time for the, you see the rise of notion and all these things in the past few years. Look, when I started, it was like 2005.
[00:24:34] Josh: Could I have waited that long and kept honing? It is like, I don't think so. So there's no, no real regrets, but yeah, I think that, that match, that's you know, people talk about founder, market fit. I wouldn't even say founder market fit. It's like just, you end up developing, hopefully these philosophies and these like tax in these way, you approach where you approach business and everyone has different constraints.
[00:24:57] Josh: I think I recognized a lot of mine early enough, but. Bold enough to push on them. Cause I can also push through some temporary pain. I'm like, well, this doesn't have to be forever. I might not like this, but let me just see if, if, uh, leaning into this gets me anywhere. so I think that's been, that's been very helpful to sort of what is crafted my approach to business today.
[00:25:19] Niall: And you've done something that most people who get that punch in the gut don't do afterwards as well. You've a team of people as well. You're not. Sitting by yourself, hacking away. Bootstrapping, you're running a big business now. I guess this is where we say, I call it big was I'm from Ireland.
[00:25:35] Niall: Companies are relatively big. If they have 20 staff, how many people are with you now?
[00:25:42] Josh: We're at 16 right now. So we've been as high as 20. We did have a little bit of a refactoring and some other things we're realizing over the past years, one times we were pushing ourselves a little too hard. And over the past year, we've okay, let's, reconcentrate, let's, let's rebuild certain skill sets doing some things it's sort of an ebb and flow with it.
[00:26:02] Josh: You know, we're profitable, we built up a little bit of cash for us to be able to afford, to experiment and do different things. Um, I'm no longer worrying too much about like the day to day stuff, but it did all come from me just hacking away individually. I do have a lot of really good people that have joined me, a couple of years into the journey, but the early parts were me coding it, doing sales calls, doing a little bit of everything that a lot of people do. But I think the biggest difference for me was definitely leaning into were not, not romanticizing the idea that I could build all this myself and just run it with you know, myself and to support people, which I don't take anything away that's, again, lifestyle choices, how people, so I never shied away or was really too worried about building a team. I knew like the whole, Hey, if I was going to build a team, I can go farther than, and I can, I have an opportunity here at my hands to, to, play in this bigger market, so to speak. But I can do it at my own pace. I can build slowly and I can, uh, I can look at a competition from a certain angle and know where I have advantages and disadvantages, but I can strategically place ourselves to continue to build it how I want to build it.
[00:27:14] Josh: So
[00:27:15]
[00:27:34] Niall: And then you can also afford now to go and fly around and play handball wherever you're like in the world. I'm sure as well.
[00:27:41] Josh: not exactly. I mean, there's, there's yeah. Th there is, uh, an element of somethings that, and that's probably in this other phase that I've been in more recently, which is just building more responsibility within the team. And that's been the hardest part, right? Like this whole, I kind of joke. And I think I've mentioned this on Twitter as well.
[00:28:00] Josh: You know, coding, coding is great because you get to build things, but everything is predictable, right? You know, when you write that line of code, that it's, for the most part, aside from getting into browsers, it's, it's going to operate in a very predictable manner. Building team and building people is you just have emotions, you'd have variability, you have all kinds of things.
[00:28:20] Josh: And even knowing how someone's going to act on a given day may be different. So you've, you basically have so much more variance in how something is going to be on a day to day basis. So you have to operate with a lot more like you're still setting constraints, but you're still, there's still a lot more variability that could happen.
[00:28:36] Josh: So building it with like unstable pieces, so to speak there's a lot more challenging than saying, you know, this is a code. This code is a block that I'm building stack upon stack with people. All those things are like, they have some wiggle room, so.
[00:28:49] Niall: So for people that are listening, Josh, you can see that I'm smiling away here and that's because you've kind of hit off. What I'm doing with my own product is trying to de-risk hiring. So I absolutely agree. It's a, it's a nightmarish chore to try and figure out if you have reliable people or how they'll adapt to the changing tides,
[00:29:08] Niall: we look at a technical scape if you're a coder you'll know that nearly every three years, it's just kinda like try out everything. Let's start again. There's a new framework and you have to do it this way. You really do have to find adoptable people and people that you can trust. And especially, I'm sure the difficulty is you've built this from the ground up, but now you have to give the keys to somebody else and say, please be careful with my car.
[00:29:31] Josh: that's definitely a challenge, but that's where seeing some of it happen. Seeing people run with it and giving them. What I would say, not just cause everyone says like in any startup there's always opportunity. Right? So it's like, how can I, how can we make sure that people not only just, okay, here, just take this and run, but they have, they have space to grow into those things.
[00:29:51] Josh: And, but when you see it take charge and you see, there's a lot of people on my team that have come and what is super interesting is they also bring their whole sets of experiences. So many people have been additive that things I've never thought of, right? Like doing OKR or doing a certain, retrospectives and different things that I never really got into.
[00:30:13] Josh: But once certain team members came in and they came in with basically playbooks of their own, right. And then they can run a certain area of your business. And it's just like mind boggling in terms of a life-changing thing that you did now, it takes a little while for you to let go of those Legos sometimes.
[00:30:29] Josh: Sometimes they have to pull them out of your hands. Sometimes you have to, sometimes you're tossing them and hoping they catch. And it's different for everyone in different roles. There's definitely some huge roles that have taken over and that have, if I can mark the biggest life changes for me with the business have all been people-based.
[00:30:47] Josh: It was like getting a tech lead. It was finding a product manager. It was finding a guy that could take over sales and customer success for me in the early days. Once I already prove it out, like once I already proved this was a sellable thing. Those were all like monumental mental health and personal lifestyle changes for me.
[00:31:07] Niall: I love you brought it up. You're nearly reading my mind here because I was going to ask you what board, the most strategic hires you've had. Is there somebody you hired first. What were the key hires and development, because I, you don't usually start with a product manager or without an engineer, for instance.
[00:31:24] Niall: So what did that look like for you and that strategic kind of hiring process? Or how did it
[00:31:30] Josh: It was all pretty organic. Because I kind of did everything at the beginning, it was like what can I hire for that has been built and proven out. So I, all of my early, all of these, most of these hires were not coming into sort of be the experimental person, like, Hey, figure X out. Because I like to float all up in all of these areas, it was like, so the very first one.
[00:31:55] Josh: Of these critical hires was someone that could take sales from me. So I did, I tried to do early sales and it was effective for me. You get a little bit of founder superpower when you do some sales. But when I did the first person that came in was like, Hey, I can, he said, I can do everything you can do, but code.
[00:32:10] Josh: I was like, okay, I like that. Let's see if you can actually do it. So all of a sudden I'm sending him all the demo requests and he's picking them up, you know? And he's been the person that has been with me the longest and is practically a co-founder. These are all people that joined me a few years in like once there was enough revenue to support it.
[00:32:31] Josh: What can I shave off that is repeatable? And at least I know enough about that. I can manage it and know what good is. Right. So like, Hiring for roles. I had no idea what it was. But the, some of the ones like the technical ones are harder to let go. So like that next round after him, the two big hires were the tech lead and then ahead of customer success, which aided him.
[00:32:56] Josh: So he was no longer doing sales and support and customer success and allowed him to concentrate on just sales. So as those bricks sort of built out, it was more of what can be sort of outsourced and can be like sectioned off. Really based off of like, where are my strongest advantages and where are the ones that are taking up the most time, that can be more repeatable by someone else.
[00:33:19] Josh: If that makes sense.
[00:33:20] Niall: Yeah, absolutely. Because I was even playing around with the idea of using a referral sales. Like I've seen, there's a UK company here besides me that does a commission-based sales staff on things. So I've been playing around with that. So it makes a lot of sense. It's a good strategy, especially when you, the thing that was stopping you from scaling was just financial
[00:33:40] Josh: right, right. So once I found that nugget of how I could make repeatable sales, then you essentially can continue to add fuel to that fire if you made it, you know, it's a nail and scale approach. So I nailed it. And then now how can I have someone else help me, essentially scale it out. I know I mentioned the product manager before, so that was the last one that have happened.
[00:34:00] Josh: So that's only happened in the past year. But the disadvantage of that, sort of happened where, because I was off running all of the other key pieces that made the business of business. The product did stagnate for a few years in between. So from my very first version I was super rapid in the early iterations, like changing the UI, we had a like a, a basic theme and you just keep appending onto it.
[00:34:22] Josh: And all of a sudden you end up with UI debt or tech debt and all of these other things, or, Hey, I added five features this year that were just to get certain customers on board and now no one ever uses them again. But bringing the product manager in about a year or so ago was about the right time.
[00:34:40] Josh: It was enough for me to that there was enough work that I could let some of that go and let him own certain parts in the area. But there's still stuff I'll be involved in like product strategy other things. But it couldn't have happened earlier. Like that person would have been.
[00:34:55] Niall: Yep.
[00:34:55] Josh: We would have been jocking for the same resources would have been butting heads a lot. So there, there definitely is a time. And I think it's probably going to be largely dependent on the skill sets of the certain entrepreneurs, it's like, how can I build these pieces around me? Where am I, where do I still have a super power that I can do things five times faster?
[00:35:14] Josh: You know, hold onto those for longer. Hopefully at a certain point you move that metric. Actually in the early days it was like, okay, what can I do two times faster? I'll still do those. And over time it is moved into okay, can, yeah, this might take longer. It might take two times as much as I would, or, but I should, it's more empowering to let the team do it, to give them ownership.
[00:35:36] Josh: And honestly, like I have other things that are now bigger problems that only I can take head-on myself.
[00:35:43] Niall: And it makes sense because a lot of people, especially when you're a founder of a business, you are the brain of everything. And it's very hard to get a product monitor to come in and start saying, Hey, I think you're doing it wrong. I think you should do it this way. And it takes a lot of time and trust, mainly trust to say, this is the person who's making the right decisions for my business.
[00:36:03] Niall: And I guess if you have a good enough product manager, they'll bring the data as well to give you the confidence to go. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:36:08] Josh: Yeah, and there's a lot. And like there's a lot of risks to bringing people in. Right? You have risk at that point. You have the team because you now are worrying out. Okay. If I bring in a not good fit product manager and he's directing the team and taking over like there's trust, that has to be built not only with you, but also with the rest of the team members.
[00:36:26] Josh: Cause you, you start to bring in two product managers and they fail. And the tech lead starts looking at you and being like, dude, like you're having us chasing our tail and you keep bringing in different people. This isn't great. Like this doesn't feel good over here. I don't feel heard about my stuff, so it just becomes tenuous and trying to really take a lot more time and in finding the right people and honestly, all those, like I got extremely lucky with all those ones that I mentioned that got brought onto the team over years.
[00:36:56] Josh: And it was w it was one of those ones where within like a month, you're oh, wow, like this I'm so excited about this person. They're just, they fit the culture. They meshed right in. There was no friction and they're sitting there taking the ball and running, so to speak.
[00:37:12] Niall: And you're building. So you're building a really nice community of people around you that you would like to be, and it's a place you want to live, which is really nice.
[00:37:18] Niall: I'm trying to think of myself what success looks like for our customers. I am going to play with like, okay. Or some things like that as well. Do you have a customer success person that helps people wonder are doing this to start or how does that part of the business, look for you, because you said you, you don't want to just
[00:37:34] Niall: have anyone just come along and not be happy at you. You want to make sure that the people that come are satisfied with what they're getting, because it's for the right reasons.
[00:37:42] Josh: So that ones, again, it started very organically. You can, all of this stuff is essentially, if you, if you can. If you can trace any of the steps I make is like, I'm basically following the bouncing ball most of the time. Right? So, and there's some times I'm trying to set the direction, but I'm just letting it sort of go and within certain constraints.
[00:38:02] Josh: So like I said, when I, when I started early with the sales process, when you start to talk into customers and even from a developer standpoint, that is first, you don't want to talk to customers, but then once you hear them and you hear the needs that they're trying to solve, and it became obvious to us early on in both the sales process that a lot of people essentially like didn't know how to run a referral program.
[00:38:26] Josh: So it was like, oh, this isn't. Click here, set this up. It's a totally hands off type of thing. Uh, businesses might need help. Okay. Yeah. You know, putting a line of JavaScript is not easy for everyone. Right? All of these live things, it's like, okay. So we ended up doing things like having a landing page builder and stuff like that.
[00:38:44] Josh: But the real part was like, we knew people needed more help. But the other thing we quickly discovered in any of the other sales processes where it's not only that they needed more help, but they were also actually have held these referral programs and getting referrals to a much higher value than we ever thought.
[00:39:04] Josh: So there was early conversations that led me to go, okay, charging $50. Like they were like, that's too cheap. If I, if a car dealership wins two referrals and they just sold, $40,000 worth of a car, like $50 a month. That was that. It almost seems an insult to delivering that type of value. What was interesting is like I said, they were willing to pay more, but they also needed more help.
[00:39:30] Josh: So those aligned very well, right? Like if you have someone that is not willing to pay more, but needs a lot of help, like that's a recipe for disaster, for a business. Right. But if they were willing to pay more, what we ended up doing is we knew that people needed help, whether they thought they did or not, people would come in with a preconceived notion of a referral program.
[00:39:51] Josh: And it would be a bad idea, right. It'd be like, Hey, I want to give $500 for this. And then when a person comes back again, then $200. And it's like, they had these schemes built out. We're like, whoa, that's way too complex. And that's never going to work because your end users are just going to be like, if I can't understand it and it takes you 10 minutes to explain it, how are they going to understand it in like a two line 10, second email.
[00:40:13] Josh: So more people just needed more of this help, whether it was strategic, whether it was like set up where all these types of things. Long story short. I know your question was probably 10 minutes ago, but it, we needed, we realized we needed onboarding and we needed customer success. We needed people to bridge the gap from, Hey, I'm interested in this.
[00:40:34] Josh: I think the software can help me to actually getting it up and running. And that was, if anything, one of our early hacks, I would say, I won't even say hack, but our early business model changes that really changed our trajectory as well as we started requiring onboarding and charging for it. So, Early on, it was like a required $400 fee.
[00:40:55] Josh: So even if you're signing up for a month to month thing, we're going to spend the time and give you a personalized onboarding to make sure that you. Your program up and running, which was in our own self interest and yours. It was very well aligned. You want to get your program running. We want you to get an effective one, but we know we're going to need to help you, but you're paying for it.
[00:41:15] Josh: So it allowed them they paid for it. So we basically created this, onboarding team early on. And that's what led to, just, just continuously talking to customers continuously, like understanding their needs and also helping give ideas for like, oh, if we build this type of feature, like this can help this subset of customers.
[00:41:34] Josh: That's where we ended up things like, oh, people can't install Java script, or the way they're collecting leads is a different way actually. And it's even challenging for them to work with a web developer, let's have a landing page builder right. In our product. So they can just drag and drop and create one out of a template versus having to jump through all those other hurdles.
[00:41:53] Josh: Yeah, that's sort of how customer success was born here. And right now we have a team of, I think there's. Three people that do this, uh, customer success and it's sort of a blended with our support and chat support type of thing.
[00:42:07] Niall: You're nudging me over the edge as well to do something similar because this is the selfish me asking the question because I. I'm afraid that people will abuse the product that I'm building. Because the, especially the very first version a, is an assessment to help people find is this a culture match for your business?
[00:42:28] Niall: Really? It takes three or three to five minutes to do it, whatever else, but I'm afraid people will start using that like a filter. And that's not what it's for it's to help you get close to them, answers or quick custom questions to ask people based on neuro diversity and all of these different things.
[00:42:45] Niall: So that the tool isn't like things that are on the market. But because we give a score or face, I feel like people just say, oh, that score means let's just not talk to these people. Cause they didn't get over 50%. So I I'm trying to, I'm balancing that right now. Like how do I stop people from just using this?
[00:43:01] Niall: Like as a filter for high jobs, because this is something that I want used on product development teams to get the. People that are aligned to the same goals on how you can coach them and mentor them based on the reports we give you. So that's me rambling, but I think the customer success could be very useful in that kind of area
[00:43:21] Niall: you get to talk to people and hear what they're saying, see how they're using it, getting that customer feedback without having to set up a customer
[00:43:27] Josh: And now we're trying to move that more into a more scalable approach. So right now it's been very much, man on man, like putting a person on it individually and it's been great for us. And honestly, it was a, it was also a positioning thing. Like if you look at. Again, back to that e-commerce model.
[00:43:43] Josh: Like you were either left to your own devices with support chat to try to get one of these up and running or reading 50 blog articles. Right? Like even we just talked previously about how to set incentives and things like that. And we're trying to move into, you know, can we start to do more webinars, even if it's like an office hour thing where our CSMs are now going to, do a weekly call and it's going to have a certain topic.
[00:44:08] Josh: So instead of necessarily trying to do one-on-one with everyone, how can we do it? Even from maybe it's a prospect and I could see this being something that could be potentially applied to your type of base. It's Hey, we have this running thing. And essentially I can teach you like how to use this properly.
[00:44:25] Josh: And maybe I'm doing it at scale with videos or a live webinar where I'm giving a presentation and then I'm taking questions. So we're trying to do that more versus, and getting more into where. No, we have enough leads coming in. We have enough we've we've seen the show before. We know the areas that people need help on and where we can lean in, what are the common myths and misconceptions?
[00:44:47] Josh: How do we debunk those? How do we get them in the right mindset to get success? And I think you could take that and do similar types of things. And that's where you do need a person to help like a conversation. If you just throw blog articles and 10 videos, like, are they really going to watch them? But when you dribble them in, you do cohort, you do live stuff, you do different things.
[00:45:08] Josh: You know, you start to meet them where they are and how they want to learn. And, and hopefully, that that leads to, the right people using your software as well.
[00:45:17] Niall: I love that. That's such a good golden nugget for me and where I am in my journey, because I've been just testing my hypothesis for a year and now I'm ready. Pretty much ready to go to market. Now we're finishing up a few things. But that was the one thing I was afraid about when I was going in.
[00:45:32] Niall: I was like, there's, there's not enough handrails or guides to just put it out and hold people come. But with B2B, I guess that's a nice thing. It's less
[00:45:38] Josh: Yeah. And you
[00:45:39] Josh: can give them the attention and it can be, even if it's like a breakeven ROI for you, you spend a lot of time and effort trying to do all the marketing and get some attention and people there. It's if you're not trying to meet those people in a certain way and trying to jump too quickly and letting the system scale it and backing up, like you're probably leaving something on the table, that you could be, have learnings. You've had just other ways that you might adjust the product so you can eventually know, add more scale to it as well.
[00:46:09] Niall: And you obviously spent a lot of time thinking about SaaS and the strategies and everything else. We'd run into podcasts, searching for Saas, which you're a partner, Nate. So I'm just wondering, what are your biggest nuggets of gold that have culminated a lot or is there something in the last year of those conversations that something that just made. Change how you are
[00:46:28] Josh: I wouldn't say it changed anything. I think what it did reinforce for me was like, I still like to learn, right? So in a, in the later I would say in the mid years of like referral rocket was, you're doing so many things and you, you kind of forget what the like funny, interesting things, like just getting to tinker and getting to wander and getting to discover new things.
[00:46:49] Josh: And so, podcasting. Became one of those things for me. And I think what it reinforced for me was understanding why I did it. And the biggest reason honestly, was Nate is earlier in his Saas journey and we were always talking and we're like, Hey, why don't we just like start recording this stuff?
[00:47:06] Josh: Cause we both listened to podcasts a ton. We're both big fans of podcasts and just consuming tons of knowledge, hearing stories and just grabbing our own nuggets out of, conversations like this. So we're like, Hey, why don't we just press record like tinker with this a bit. Um, and just at the, at the end of it, we may just get better at speaking, we might learn more about the podcasting space.
[00:47:30] Josh: So it was like, there was no actual, like, I would say the intention was not any audience growth or financial benefit, but it was so for me, it was like, I got to remind myself to do those types of things. And it became a forcing function, right. Where you have, we started at weekly and by. The end of the, I would say halfway through we, we changed it to every other week, which had a much better cadence for us.
[00:47:53] Josh: We got actually stressed out about it and that's where it's like, it's no longer fun anymore. So reminding myself of those and reminding myself of like why, and I'm doing certain things and understanding how I can keep those rails on like overall I have a happier lifestyle because of that. Can I fit these things in?
[00:48:11] Josh: Can I challenge myself? It might be stressed, but then can I reconnect that into, why did I get into that? Am I still learning those things? And maybe at some point those stop and that's okay, too. So that's probably the biggest takeaway I got out of that, but it is a ride along show. We joked early on Josh splaining.
[00:48:28] Josh: So you can tell, I like to talk a little bit about things. We joked about that early on and sometimes we've covered various topics like hiring and different things. There's definitely areas in there. Probably even deeper stories and some of the stuff we talked about us, but I wanted to find a way to share that in a way that was a relatively low lift.
[00:48:44] Josh: And I think just someone like you asking me questions, sometimes Nate does that too. And it's just like, Hey Josh, wondering about X and let's just talk about this. And other times it's just workshopping his Saas, which also I find it a lot of fun. He's like, Hey, what would you do in this situation? Or what do you think of this?
[00:48:59] Josh: Give me an outsider perspective. Tell me where this is leading. Or sometimes it's like, oh, I didn't even think about that. I have no idea. Let's bring on a guest and let's find someone else that maybe knows more information about this than I do,
[00:49:10] Niall: Yeah, similar to myself then it's, I liked to learning from people, get people that know something in much more depth than myself and have a conversation. So it's great. It's searching for SAS, so that can be found. I'm guessing pretty much
[00:49:22] Niall: everywhere if people searching.
[00:49:25] Josh: Yup. Yup.
[00:49:26] Niall: Excellent. I'm going to do it for you because I know you just like to deliver the value and not give to hard sell to anyone.
[00:49:31] Niall: So I won't put you in that position. So everyone go
[00:49:34] Niall: to searching for Saas it's the best thing ever. That's that's it. That's the disclaimer you have to live up
[00:49:38] Niall: to now. Josh.
[00:49:41] Josh: there you go. There you go.
[00:49:42] Niall: No, it's, it's great. I think there's a lot of overlap because people who are interested in this, the general conversation and just the things that come from it will also probably be sick of hearing my voice. So they will want to go over and see you off for that. I'll probably
[00:49:56] Niall: have no, funds by the end of this call because they'll all go over to searching for Saas.
[00:50:00] Josh: no. no. We'll, we'll feature you over there. After a couple months, maybe we'll have more of you telling your story over there. That could be fun
[00:50:07] Niall: Yeah, we'll see. we'll see. if you want to get into that dumpster fire as well.
[00:50:12] Josh: oh. Oh.
[00:50:13] Niall: Nah, it's all good. I'm really loving the journey as well. And I think it is. Getting the habit. I had a great habit of the start of COVID of making content and creating things and teaching things, but it wasn't in the things that were exciting me.
[00:50:29] Niall: So I was making coding tutorials and things like that. My love coding, but it's not what I get excited talking about it. I got more excited about talking about business and strategies and psychology and all of those other bits. And I think you're similar by the sounds of things where it's just, it's a fun thing to just rift off really.
[00:50:47] Josh: Yeah, definitely.
[00:50:48] Niall: Okay. Before I throw you off, I always like to ask a couple of questions. First one being, what is your favorite book?
[00:50:55] Josh: A fiction or non-fiction.
[00:50:58] Niall: Give me one of each. If you bring that up, if you're a fiction reader, I have to
[00:51:01] Niall: hear to fiction.
[00:51:01] Josh: I would say classically, I haven't been as much of a fiction reader since I was a kid, but I've been reading a lot more fiction with my kids. So I have two young kids and we've gone through all the Harry Potter books, which are awesome right now. We're reading all the Artemis fowl books. So no you're familiar, but he's like the characters based in, in, in Ireland.
[00:51:20] Josh: So there you go. So, uh, we've been having a lot of fun with those, those types of books from a fiction perspective. And then from a non-fiction perspective I do hunt and Peck around a little bit. The ones that I love the most lately are the ones that like April Dunford obviously awesome book.
[00:51:35] Josh: There's another one I really liked. That I tell every entrepreneur about it's called extreme revenue growth. It's a little older. But the authors, Victor Chang actually here, I have it literally right here, but this is, if you see it, this is, this is the book.
[00:51:51] Niall: Great. Yeah. For, for people listening, um, you just have to use the braille on the inside of
[00:51:56] Niall: your headphones to see the book.
[00:51:58] Josh: there you go. It's a horrible name. Honestly, the book is extreme revenue growth, so it may just like throw people off, but there's like some really core messages in there. And the, the reason I like this one in April's book is because it is, it is not like, you know, 50 pages of story of why. And it really it's a shorter book like that.
[00:52:19] Josh: You look at the binding of how thick these ones are and it's ones that I will just keep coming back to and rereading because I'll get something else out of it. Even though there's like maybe four or five main concepts, but even if I'm rereading them every three or six months, It just gels and processes, certain core business lessons and things that just keep getting ingrained further and further into my brain.
[00:52:43] Josh: So, so that those are my favorites right
[00:52:46] Niall: I love, obviously also I've read it twice in the last six months. I was pointing to say, it's behind me on my bookshelf, but it's not, it's actually in the sitting room on the table because I had to do it again this week. I'm a big fan of that as well, but extreme revenue growth.
[00:52:59] Niall: I'm going to have to check that as well. Because hopefully that's a problem I'll need to deal with very soon. And then last but not least. What is your favorite tool that you've been using in business or in life? Is
[00:53:10] Niall: there a piece
[00:53:10] Niall: of software that you couldn't really live.
[00:53:12] Josh: Right now they're our biggest one is Asana. So project management, task management. So just the way we run our remote team, it's very easy. It's one of those products we've had for a very long time. And there's certain features in there that are just, if you use it the right way, like they have this inbox notification feature.
[00:53:29] Josh: That's awesome. So anytime someone mentions you at mentions types of things, like essentially it allows me to see almost everything going on in the business in a good way, not in a, like a creepy Josh's like peeking into everything going on. But you could basically sign yourself up ready notification of certain tasks.
[00:53:49] Josh: So it's a great way to look at that. It's also, we've, doctrinated into our remote culture here and some of the really neat features they added lately. Can you tell, I like to recommend products, but they have this recording. You can record things as comments. It will record your video and it will transcribe it.
[00:54:07] Josh: So it's like the async nature of. We have a, we're talking about a dev task and I can go in there and bring up the UI and say, let's fix this and talk this through. You can watch it at two times speed. You can make a screen capture, you could see my mouse pointing out different things, and then you have the transcription as well.
[00:54:25] Josh: And you can click in the transcription and jump around to those different spots. So anyway it's, mind-blowingly effective for us as a remote team. And we also get everyone to use it in the same way. So then it basically becomes our, like operating our internal operating system because everyone's using it in the same way, which means less people are just like asking about different things in slack and creating a lot of chatter around like better is really meant for like when all else fails.
[00:54:54] Josh: How do you have communication? But if you're talking about a task or talking about a project, you're commenting in Asana, but not in people's face. So they, if everyone's using it correctly, They can get back when they need to when they're asked and, and it leaves a great, like async sort of lifestyle with it.
[00:55:10] Niall: Nice. I
[00:55:11] Niall: love,
[00:55:12] Josh: not paid, not paid for this ad.
[00:55:14] Niall: That's it not sponsored? it's interesting. Cause I've, I'm hooked on
[00:55:21] Niall: text editing or seeing video and texts. Cause I started using descript to edit this podcast. That sounds phenomenal to me. If I could bring that into the real world, that's exactly how I would do things because just being able to search a video by words is the most powerful thing
[00:55:36] Josh: Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. definitely.
[00:55:39] Niall: Love it. I think that's
[00:55:41] Niall: everything. I, I think I've got you enough, Josh planing from you for the moment. Uh, Hopefully I get more Josh planning into, in the future as well. But I do want you to shamelessly sell
[00:55:50] Niall: yourself as well before you go by telling people where they can find you.
[00:55:54] Josh: Yeah. I mean the best place
[00:55:55] Josh: now is, like you said, I think it's how you discovered me is on Twitter. So my handle is at J logic, J L O G I C. And I'm pretty active on there and actually trying to unpack more of these lessons and different things on there. So I'm trying to do a bit of that thread thing going on.
[00:56:14] Josh: So maybe once a week, there's like some really kind of packed in types of value that I'm trying to do. But also looking to connect with people like, engage and comment and I'm active on there, just talking with people in general. That's probably the best place for me. And it's where I'm dropping little things that I might find that are hopefully helpful to be picked up.
[00:56:34] Josh: So
[00:56:34] Niall: Yeah, and he absolutely does communicate with people because that's where the two of us connected. So, absolutely. It's great.
[00:56:41] Niall: It was a pleasure chatting with you, Josh, and I'm hoping that we will chat again soon.
[00:56:45] Josh: Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Thanks man.
[00:56:47]
[00:56:48] Niall: I think from that call, I'm definitely going to spend a little bit more time thinking about my customer success experience and how to onboard my customers in a better way. That's definitely one of the nicer parts of running a B2B SaaS business is the fact you can then be a little bit more personal and play around a little bit more hands-on when you're getting customers on board.
[00:57:07] Niall: Because they usually cost a bit more, I guess. And it's also probably going to be a lot more valuable to have more feedback from customers in the early stage to make sure I know where I'm spending my focus.
[00:57:19] Niall: The other thing was just really stepping back and thinking about what kind of referral program that I can offer up Myqu, who that is on brand and fun. And it just feels right for me and Myqu.
[00:57:32] Niall: I hope we get to chat with Josh again soon because he is a man all about delivering value. And I really enjoyed just talking to such an upbeat, excited guy.
[00:57:40] Niall: I'll put all the links to him, referral rock and anything else we mentioned in the show in the show notes below.
[00:57:45] Niall: If you haven't already come connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter, where I post more nonsense and I would love if you could send me a message and let me know if there are any topics you'd like me to cover or what you've thought of the few episodes we have done so far.
[00:57:59] Niall: If you enjoyed this episode, I have a little favorite ask. If you could leave the podcast a kind review, it would really help the show out. It appeases the algorithm gods and helps me reach new people. So I really appreciate it. And until next time, my beautiful friends. Keep learning and keep growing.