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Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:01.12
Rick
what's up this week taylor
00:02.76
Tyler King
Hey, Rick. ah Had better weeks in terms of ah following the news, but that's not what this podcast is about. So yeah, how are you doing?
00:12.77
Rick
ah um What's up this week, Taylor? I'm good. ah you know i I really did not have a huge... I was pretty middle middle ground in terms of who won. I don't have a say in Utah anyway.
00:24.46
Rick
like it's It's pretty much um red, red, red.
00:27.11
Tyler King
Yeah, I mean, same in missouri for sure
00:27.52
Rick
ah so um But like the thing that I was at least hoping for was a split House and Senate um just to keep some checks in place. And man, that's not going to happen.
00:39.31
Rick
It doesn't look like it. It looks like it's going to be Republican House, Republican Senate, and then Trump. And that means pretty significant and so uncertainty for leg up health in terms of what healthcare legislation could mean.
00:49.64
Tyler King
same in Missouri, for sure.
00:50.99
Rick
um I think we're still young and early enough where it like it's actually probably good for us any change that happens ah because we'll be nimble. But man, I thought i i know no details.
00:58.75
Tyler King
do you Do you know what like the Republican platform is on this right now
01:06.43
Rick
I need to start reading about it. But like there are a number of like variations of like what I think they could do that could impact negatively, like up health. One is um you know repeal Obamacare.
01:19.57
Rick
ah a lot of our yeah I would just say a lot of our value proposition is based in the premium tax credits that um are very much not a Republican idea
01:20.77
Tyler King
cause on this right now? Yeah, sorry,
01:30.22
Rick
ah
01:32.96
Rick
yeah
01:40.00
Tyler King
Basically, if you had any quote unquote pre-existing condition, you basically couldn't get it or it was outrageously expensive. Right. And then Obamacare kind of made it so like you could still argue whether group or individual is better, but go ahead. like everyone can get individual insurance for roughly the same price.
01:52.76
Tyler King
Plus there's premium tax credits to make it more affordable for low income people. Is that like a fair summary of things?
01:56.53
Rick
that that's the fair statement.
01:57.56
Tyler King
The
01:57.53
Rick
Yeah. And I, and I think like, I think it's going to be very hard. Like the plot. Yes. What the platform was. And I think like the the only platform that I've seen is repeal and replace. And that's what Tim.
02:08.28
Tyler King
repeal part
02:09.96
Rick
Yeah, exactly. um And so I don't know what's going to happen, but you know, I think, I think it's really hard to get rid of the guarantee. What's called, what you refer to as like medical underwriting or like rating based on people's health that was replaced with what's called guaranteed issue.
02:27.63
Rick
Meaning no matter your and medical history, you're guaranteed to issue a health insurance that has a huge impact on premium prices, making them health insurance more expensive because more sick people buy health insurance.
02:29.68
Tyler King
might be easy. What's the replace part?
02:38.58
Rick
And, and so the premium tax credits are the way to offset that like sort of costs by the government. I don't know how you like untangle this. like If you repeal it, like you good you basically just go back to the old way, which I don't think is what people will...
02:49.44
Tyler King
Mm-hmm
02:52.21
Tyler King
yeah
02:54.69
Rick
i don't think I'd be very surprised if we did that.
02:58.35
Tyler King
yeah it'll definitely Again, I'm not going to try to get too political here. It'll be very interesting to see if a lot of claims that were made, like I think i think both sides make a lot of claims.
03:09.35
Tyler King
Like for example, Yeah. I think Kamala Harris made a lot of, oh, Trump wants to do this. all'll I'll say the same thing. It'll never happen. Nothing's going to happen. nothing like and For the last, what, 12 years, nothing's gotten done legislatively.
03:23.77
Tyler King
I don't think either side was ready for like, oh shit, we actually have total control.
03:28.06
Rick
Yeah.
03:28.88
Tyler King
Are they going to do the things they said? And I mean, my guess is yes. But anyway, ah if you're betting on the health insurance industry, I assume you you, this is probably meaning group is better, individuals worse, correct?
03:35.07
Rick
but ah Group will be probably stable. um Individual will probably be less less predictable.
03:47.11
Rick
like I don't think there's a lot lot to do to change the group space but like the individual market is
03:47.73
Tyler King
But if, I don't mean that. I i just mean if if, so like, if you've spent a good chunk of your career trying to convince companies, you don't need to offer group.
03:51.90
Rick
yeah
03:59.82
Tyler King
You can just subsidize people's individual plans. that That just got less compelling. And so companies that maybe weren't offering group might be like well we there's no other choice here yeah
04:10.41
Rick
if in a hypothetical world where they repeal a obamaakcare yeah um that that being said, though, like, you know, under the last Trump administration, um HRAs were expanded pretty pretty substantially in terms of what they could do on a standalone basis.
04:23.50
Rick
So there there is like signal that like there could be a new world that I haven't thought of. But I just don't know what you do.
04:31.22
Tyler King
yeah
04:31.85
Rick
And so, but the point is like the last time we had a lot of legislative action, it was a blue, it was it was Democratic controlled House Senate and and presidential ah put a cabinet.
04:42.42
Rick
and And now we're going to see the same thing on the Republican side. Shit's going to happen. And we I don't know what it's goingnna what's going to go down, but a lot of change is coming.
04:49.26
Tyler King
Yeah.
04:51.70
Tyler King
Yeah, it's a bigger majority than the Democrats had last time, right?
04:53.95
Rick
Yes.
04:54.14
Tyler King
Like Obamacare was very difficult to get through and they made a lot of compromises. It seems like they're not going to have to make any compromises this time. They're just going to be like, whatever the fuck Trump wants is happening.
05:03.54
Rick
Yeah. ah Sorry, man.
05:07.72
Tyler King
All right.
05:10.12
Tyler King
Well.
05:10.15
Rick
So it's uncertain for leg up, but like, I think the group business that we have is going to be pretty stable. But like, you know, and maybe there'll be opportunity in here. I think, I think ah companies like my last company, people keep using benefits, um I think they have a lot to gain from this.
05:25.57
Tyler King
Yeah. um Okay. So, but in terms of running like upheld, I assume it's just like to put a somewhat positive spin on it. Anytime there's change, small agile businesses or whoever gets in early, the the risk is that there's like, it's unclear what the right bet is.
05:44.13
Tyler King
So for example, I would say betting on crypto was a mistake and betting on AI, unknown, but it might be the right move. But if you bet on every new thing, you probably bet on some some mistakes. You go down some the wrong rabbit hole.
05:55.53
Tyler King
But if you bet on the right thing and you're early, there's huge opportunity there.
05:59.61
Rick
Totally. Yes. And yeah, just follow the, follow the, you know, the, the work and if something gets passed, you know, good deep dive deep.
06:00.67
Tyler King
So you're just going to keep an eye out for what you think the right thing is, basically. and Yeah.
06:10.96
Rick
And I've got enough, you know, I think, I think where people, I think, I think it's much easier to make the right bet when you have historical domain expertise um and you can have confidence in like the, the pattern recognition where if you're new to a domain it's like i don't know what this means
06:19.22
Tyler King
Yeah.
06:25.39
Tyler King
I also think, yeah, one of your strengths in the healthcare care industry this whole time has been someone will put out like a letter with lots of weird technical language. And I read it and I'm like, I don't know what, by someone I mean like a politician.
06:37.45
Tyler King
And I read it and it's nonsense to me and you read it and you're like, oh, I can see what this is going to mean in the future. um Just understanding what all of the bullshit jargon means.
06:46.50
Rick
a domain, it's like, I don't know what this means.
06:47.00
Tyler King
I don't think there are a ton of people who have the level of experience with that that you do.
06:47.01
Rick
Translates to now. Now agreed. And it's particularly in the health in this space in this like neat niche space. Yeah, I agree.
06:59.14
Tyler King
Cool. So we didn't talk ah two weeks ago, um so it's been a month. I thought maybe I'd give an update on how form stuff is going for us.
07:08.89
Rick
that'd be great.
07:09.91
Tyler King
Yeah, so ah let me start with just like rambling. I don't know if this will end up interesting or not, but there's like, okay, I think everyone's probably familiar with the innovator's dilemma, and I'm going to sort of bastardize the concept.
07:21.19
Tyler King
But the idea that the bigger of a company you are, you can only pay attention to big opportunities, ah like growth opportunities or whatever.
07:31.45
Tyler King
like Apple isn't going to be interested in a 10,000 MRR business that they could add on, whereas an individual person might be very interested in that. Less annoying serum, obviously we're not Apple, but we're big enough at this point that like marketing or growth in general feels really different from it how it did in the early days because we just can't get excited about a channel that might bring us one or two free trial signups a month.
07:49.58
Rick
so
07:52.01
Tyler King
Whereas in the early days, you'd be like, yeah, great. We'll take whatever we can get.
07:54.23
Rick
like we're doing it like up
07:55.70
Tyler King
Yeah, yeah, exactly. um with I think this form builder project, which as a reminder to everybody, ah the the hypothesis is the more our customers create forms and send them out to their leads to fill out, each one of those is an impression for us.
08:09.24
Rick
Like we're doing it leg up.
08:10.01
Tyler King
So the more of those submissions we get, it it will maybe potentially generate growth for us. But it's a brand new product for us or kind of brand new feature in our main product. We are just trying to grind out every single user using it, get as much activation as we can.
08:25.02
Tyler King
And it feels a lot more like the the early days of a startup because we're looking at very small numbers and we've just kind of convinced ourselves like it's okay that the numbers are very small.
08:29.72
Rick
Thank
08:35.27
Tyler King
It could turn into something very big. And so this has been a nice little hack to get around the innovators dilemma, I think. um So over the last month, I think like things have been going pretty well.
08:46.81
Tyler King
The numbers are all still pretty small, but our goal is to get 1,500 submissions per month by April 1st.
08:49.86
Rick
you.
08:53.75
Tyler King
Let me rephrase that as 350 submissions per week, because all the other metrics I'm going to share will be by week. um But yeah, like like a month ago, let me see this.
09:05.79
Tyler King
We were getting something like 25 submissions a month.
09:08.86
Rick
so
09:11.81
Tyler King
um That's actually less than a month ago. 25 submissions a week. We're at 88 right now. um We had like three active users by which I'm defining like a user of our software who's getting four or more submissions a week.
09:27.00
Tyler King
We had three a month ago. We've got nine right now.
09:29.52
Rick
so
09:29.72
Tyler King
So like they're all still very small numbers, but we're seeing these numbers. Like it feels like growth even even though it's so small and it's kind of fun to be working on this.
09:37.62
Rick
us The first usage of a tool is like incredibly like ah ener energyizing energizing. like And as long as it's heading in the right direction, you don't care how low the volume is like you're going to learn from that usage and it's going to hopefully compound
09:44.30
Tyler King
Yeah.
09:51.45
Tyler King
Yeah, it's really different from other growth. like Normally with a growth project, you'd be like, it's about a marketing site and a channel to get people to see it and all that. where This is different in that it's like we have 10,000 customers, 26,000 users.
10:04.30
Tyler King
We have the people. It's just getting them to use it. But it's still in closed beta. You might say, oh, you have 26,000 people and nine are using it. That's pretty pathetic. It's in closed beta. We haven't sent hardly, we we've sent only maybe 100 or 200 invite emails out.
10:17.83
Tyler King
But the big change we made is what you and I talked about, I think on the last episode or maybe two ago, was ah now if you go into the app and then you go into settings, there's like a little form builder thing. It's kind of hard to, it's not something a lot of people are going to stumble upon, but especially new users who are, ah you know, when you sign up for a new SaaS product, you kind of poke around and click everywhere.
10:29.44
Rick
Mm-hmm.
10:38.08
Tyler King
You go to form builder and then it says, do you want to opt into the beta test? We're getting like, I don't know, five, maybe maybe not that, three to five opt-ins a day just from this. um And then we enable it and email people.
10:48.95
Rick
Wow.
10:51.25
Tyler King
And and then the questions are like, are you do you already have a form or not is one of the big things. And if they do, we give them a little more handholding. We say, we'll copy your form into our system for you so you don't have to do it.
11:01.76
Tyler King
So that's the type of thing we're doing right now.
11:03.29
Rick
I like that. I like it a lot. um Question on the metrics. um You mentioned there were nine submissions.
11:09.32
Tyler King
Nine active users, 88 submissions in the last week.
11:10.65
Rick
Active users? 88 submissions. Okay.
11:13.29
Tyler King
Yeah.
11:14.07
Rick
And so do you do you have an i idea? Are all 88 from like active means they at least one submission
11:21.69
Tyler King
Active means four or more. So the let me explain the reasoning behind this.
11:24.27
Rick
okay
11:26.24
Tyler King
when a new There's a third metric, which I haven't shared, which is how many users received a submission. That number is 23 in the last week. So 23 people got a submission, nine got four or more. The reason I'm filtering out those low volumes is those two metrics.
11:38.84
Rick
tess
11:39.62
Tyler King
One is saying who's actually using it. And the other is saying how many people are trying it for the first time. because almost everyone submits a test submission when they're trying it.
11:47.88
Rick
submission? Okay. Tess? Hmm.
11:48.46
Tyler King
But I'm kind of thinking if you're getting four or more per week, that's like it's actually built into your workflow probably.
11:55.20
Rick
That makes sense. Cool. I love that you're looking at all the zingles. It'd be cool to like report on this like every
11:59.29
Tyler King
Thank you. and Every podcast, yeah.
12:02.05
Rick
podcast
12:03.73
Tyler King
um i'll I'll try to do that.
12:03.76
Rick
yeah
12:04.85
Tyler King
I mean, I'm just... So the way my brain works is... And I actually think this is something that works well with an entrepreneur, like makes makes me more effective as an entrepreneur. One of the big challenges with entrepreneurship is like the emotional roller coaster of it all.
12:18.12
Tyler King
When the line go up, I check the stats all the time. When line goes down, I'm just like, I'm not checking it for the next month. In a sense, that's bad.
12:26.76
Rick
podcast. Yeah. I'm like, in the opposite
12:28.39
Tyler King
Yeah, I know. Most people are the opposite, I think. In a sense, it's bad because like when the line's going down, that's when you need to be doing something to change it. But it's good for my mental health, at least, that I don't like doom and gloom. I just avoid.
12:40.21
Tyler King
ah So that's one way I keep my morale up.
12:43.32
Rick
I'm the opposite. Oh, great. but So um are you just going um or is there an action item
12:51.39
Tyler King
I think we just need to keep ramping it up. So so to put this in perspective, to hit that goal, we need to... inre I'm going to say this. Let me know if the the language I'm using doesn't make sense. We need to add about 13 submissions per week every week.
13:06.90
Tyler King
Meaning if we get 88 this week, we need like 99, no, 101 next week, and then 114 the week after that.
13:09.72
Rick
to let this roll for a little bit or is there an action item?
13:15.93
Rick
How does that sort of cascade into active users added and then, you know, the number of, um what do you call it ah people who have tried it
13:27.00
Tyler King
Yeah. So good question. I think the numbers are small enough. I don't exactly want to say we know like, well, hang on. Let me pull up a number real quick, which is how many people have ever created a form? 97 have.
13:39.50
Tyler King
So 97 people have ever created a form, meaning like we basically we turned this feature on for them. Of those, there are nine active. So let's say something like 10% of people who opt into this beta end up really building it into their workflow.
13:49.78
Rick
you call it, people who have tried it?
13:52.74
Tyler King
I don't know if that number will hold out. um And then again, from nine active users, we got 88 total submissions. I mean, some of those submissions came from the the inactive users, but most of them came from active.
14:06.50
Tyler King
ah Here's what I'm, one of the big things I'm not sure about yet is like, is this going to build?
14:09.88
Rick
Thank
14:13.00
Tyler King
So like the kind of optimistic case here is one user starts using a form, they get 10 submissions a month, 20 submissions a month, but then they're like, oh, I've got another form I can use for something else, or ah my website gets more traffic.
14:25.99
Tyler King
So um are we going to continue getting the same 88 submissions out of the same nine active users, or are we just going to get automatic growth, kind of like it expansion from our existing active users?
14:29.70
Rick
you.
14:37.50
Tyler King
That's a thing i I don't know yet.
14:39.78
Rick
This is exciting.
14:41.55
Tyler King
Yeah, I'm i'm having a lot of fun just playing around with the numbers.
14:42.98
Rick
I mean, this is this is innovative. got new features. like This is a new product.
14:49.23
Tyler King
Yeah, and ah people seem to like it and the calls have been really positive. So it's I still think there's a very high likelihood that there's only...
15:00.86
Tyler King
like I've asked you this question before, but like how many submissions per month do we probably need for it to matter from a growth standpoint for LessingWing CRM? um' I'm going to ask you that again.
15:11.22
Tyler King
I'm sure you don't remember whatever you said last time. I don't either. What would your guess be?
15:14.50
Rick
I don't, I have no idea.
15:16.13
Tyler King
But like, yeah. or Okay. howuch Well, whatever. I made up a number doing some very rough math, 25,000 submissions per month by the end of 2025.
15:21.46
Rick
What's your number
15:25.33
Rick
yeah
15:26.40
Tyler King
That's the goal. um And that is a total guess, of course, but it's based on like, okay, for every one person who submits it, and for every submission, there's more people who saw the form, but I think the main powered by impression happens after you submit it.
15:39.30
Tyler King
And then it's like, for every person who submits it, what, 0.1% of them might click through. um And it's not even going to be a direct conversion. It's not like they submit the form and then they go sign up for a CRM immediately after.
15:49.68
Rick
number? Okay.
15:50.61
Tyler King
It's just like, there's a lot of guesswork of, well, they saw our name. But doing some like very rough funnel calculations, I think 25,000 submissions per month could be like, we're getting tens of new customers new users per month at the bottom of the funnel.
16:04.73
Tyler King
That's just a total guess. 25,000 is not a sure thing by any means.
16:09.88
Rick
so
16:10.80
Tyler King
um So this is a lot of fun. It's definitely a good feature. People really like it. I think it's very possible we get up to 1,000 or 5,000 submissions a month, and then it kind of levels off.
16:20.90
Tyler King
And it's like, well, this is a good feature, but it's not there's there's no way at 5,000 submissions a month, this is going to be like a meaningful growth lever for us, I don't think.
16:29.80
Rick
Thank you. Yeah. And then you go, well, is this a feature? Is this a, do I need to do it in order to get used to, do you need to increase the capabilities of the forum or is this a, just a, not a good opportunity?
16:40.67
Rick
And that's a,
16:41.24
Tyler King
Yeah, we we we are, we that is a question we're actively trying to answer.
16:42.29
Rick
until you get there
16:45.74
Tyler King
And um right now, it doesn't look like the problem is the capabilities of the form. It looks like a combination of like there's the cold start problem. like People just are bad at building things into their workflow, and that it just requires work on the user standpoint, mixed with we sell to really small businesses.
17:00.39
Tyler King
So one of my big hypothees hypotheses here has been someone's going to come around and get 500 submissions a month or a thousand submissions a month.
17:09.06
Rick
you won't know that until you get there.
17:10.72
Tyler King
Like, I don't know, a newsletter or something with like a really high volume, low value customer base is going to get a ton of these. And hopefully we'll have multiple of these whales, but we sell to really small businesses and it's possible we just don't have that person in our customer base.
17:25.64
Rick
i we We need to run a test. Every time you say but we sell to really small businesses, I go, how many Utah customers do you have? do don' you think you should do like a special offer like ah free benefits assessment or
17:38.33
Tyler King
Free benefits assessment.
17:42.06
Tyler King
I have i don't know how to... ah i'm I'm worried. the Conflict of interest just flashing in my head right now.
17:48.90
Rick
yeah um but yeah no it's very small businesses ah our are come with their own challenges but but you know, if you, if you can serve them, you you don't have a lot of competition
18:01.91
Tyler King
Yeah. Yeah. yeah like we had We had one customer who got fifty they signed, they started using forms. They got 50 submissions the first day. And I was like, this is it. This is the whale. They're going to get 50 submissions a day from now on.
18:12.99
Tyler King
And then it turns out they just like did a one-time email blast or something.
18:16.31
Rick
email
18:17.62
Tyler King
And then it stopped after that. So anyway, I'm still waiting for that, the white whale, you know, I don't know. I haven't read Moby Dick. Is that the right... I didn't use that right, probably.
18:24.42
Rick
a lot of competition. Email. I've never made it. I mean, I've tried a couple of times.
18:26.06
Tyler King
So
18:26.64
Rick
It's very difficult. I'm
18:30.52
Tyler King
yeah, I'll keep you posted on this, but...
18:33.08
Rick
kind of related to your form update. I know it's premature to have these types of conversations that leg up, but one thing we talked about in our partner meeting this week was form 5,500 data and, you know, figuring out how to use that for our purposes as well as like, what's that?
18:48.78
Tyler King
you want to?
18:50.64
Rick
Yeah.
18:50.74
Tyler King
Sorry. Yeah, absolutely. You want to share what it took me a bit to understand what this is.
18:54.14
Rick
Yeah. So like, basically like there's a lot of in, in regulated industries, this isn't just health insurance, but like regulated industries, generally there's a lot of reporting requirements by businesses and consumers to the federal government.
19:06.92
Rick
One example of this is nonprofits. In order to be a nonprofit in the US, you have to report a Form 990 to the government, which basically includes all of your revenue every year, who your key people are at the company, the sources of your revenue.
19:19.12
Rick
It's a lot of detail. And what type of nonprofit you are, your website, email addresses, phone numbers. Anyway, that's publicly available information that gets reported out in these very large spreadsheets or what they call PUF files, public use files.
19:29.88
Tyler King
Thank
19:34.78
Rick
And so these files are free on the federal government. There's all sorts of different data sources from Form 990s to Form 5500s, which is a health insurance slash retirement benefits reporting form, which is pretty useful.
19:50.36
Rick
Basically, we can go and download this PUF file that will give us all the Form 5500 filings for all US companies. Who's required to file this?
20:01.24
Rick
Well, any company with 100 or more employees that offers any type of benefit plan or any company of any size that offers a retirement benefit plan. And so, and it has very similar information that I want to describe to the form 990.
20:12.00
Rick
So if we can figure out how to like ingest this data, organize it, and then like use it for prospecting one, we're going to have an asset for ourselves.
20:22.92
Rick
But I also think there's a productization opportunity for insurance agents who are less sophisticated than us, where we could actually do a little mini Amazon where we're building a product for ourselves, but then also putting it on the shelf for our competition.
20:29.74
Tyler King
Thank you.
20:36.00
Rick
I'm getting greedy.
20:37.54
Tyler King
And you're working on this, right?
20:38.80
Rick
What's that?
20:40.01
Tyler King
And you're working on this
20:40.18
Rick
I'm working on this. Yeah. So I'm working on this. And my biggest challenge right now is I don't know how to manage large data sets. Like I understand the data and the architecture of the data.
20:52.32
Rick
I don't know how to manage it in like a tool like Tableau or Google. Is it BigQuery or BigQuery or whatever it's called?
21:00.68
Tyler King
working on this. I think big big query, Yeah.
21:00.72
Rick
BigQuery. So anyway, if you're an expert on that and have good resources, I'd appreciate you pointing me the right direction. Yeah.
21:08.35
Tyler King
Go on ripple dot.fm and let Rick know.
21:12.26
Rick
Teach me, teach me the ways of, of large dataset management.
21:15.57
Tyler King
But yeah, so so they give you this big puff file.
21:15.90
Rick
It's
21:18.22
Tyler King
You said it's called, but is it a spreadsheet? Like I'm not familiar with that file format. like What is the actual format?
21:22.10
Rick
a, it's a series of spreadsheets. Um, and so generally like they, they max out whatever they can get in one spreadsheet and then they, they, they reference another spreadsheet. And so there are these joining IDs across, it could be 20 plus spreadsheets, um, that you have to join in the dataset.
21:38.72
Rick
But if you try to open this in a computer or a Google sheet, like it crashes your computer. I
21:44.95
Tyler King
How many companies do you think are exploring or are like accessing this puff, these puff files for various reasons? Like, is this super common?
21:50.74
Rick
think a lot of data companies. Yeah.
21:52.18
Tyler King
Okay.
21:52.38
Rick
I think a lot of data companies, like this is like a, this is one input to their source, to their, to their, you know, data sources, like publicly available information.
21:59.43
Tyler King
Yeah.
21:59.92
Rick
It might not be like the source, but it's a, it's
22:05.32
Tyler King
So those data companies are kind of like middlemen. i was There's probably not a market for this, but i as you were talking, it occurred to me, like you could imagine making a tool. This actually feels like a good one-time software purchase versus like a SaaS of just like put your the Puff file in here.
22:22.27
Tyler King
We're going to extract all the data, join all the rows together because like there's too much to fit in one file and then just make like a SQLite database and give you a very lightweight way to explore it on your computer.
22:29.72
Rick
a way to validate. It's
22:31.12
Tyler King
Like you'd pay ah few hundred bucks for that right now i assume
22:35.20
Rick
yeah yeah and that's exactly what i'm imagining is like how do you
22:36.14
Tyler King
um
22:38.30
Rick
like if you're I think there's a lot of data companies out there who are taking this data, joining it with other data sets and like selling a better data product, um, for a large fee. But I don't think anyone's out there, at least that I'm aware of, that's taking these data sets and making it easy for a low sophisticated ah person to explore the data and put the data to use.
22:56.81
Tyler King
yeah
22:58.16
Rick
Anyway, that's the idea.
22:58.45
Tyler King
i don't know if there's big enough of a market there, but that that would be... like i'm I'm listening to this. I'm like tempted to to go build that, but...
23:03.06
Rick
Yeah, let's go do it together. Come on.
23:05.57
Tyler King
You going to market it for me?
23:06.92
Rick
yeah Yes. Yes.
23:08.06
Tyler King
Okay. I'll...
23:08.86
Rick
yes
23:11.24
Tyler King
Sounds good. ah But yeah, cool. So for now, you're playing around with various kind of Tableau-like products, trying to get this data in there and and play around with it. But yeah, it does it does just seem like a goldmine of ah probably...
23:23.47
Tyler King
Not that it's untapped. that Like you said, there's lots of data companies reselling the information, but are there companies out there that are just like, I'm sure the answer is yes, but are there enough companies out there just being like, here are some great opportunities based on this data?
23:40.20
Rick
I think there's a lot out there. I don't think, I don't think anyone's, I don't think the average, and I think it's a very small business concept, again, where there's the long tail.
23:47.22
Tyler King
Yeah.
23:47.54
Rick
I think the the low sophisticated data buyer is not buying data because they're not data buyers. And so how do you how do you help them ah how do you help them with this?
23:52.51
Tyler King
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Cool. ah You want to talk about open enrollment or anything
24:01.47
Rick
Well, yeah, it's open enrollment. It's kind of a big deal. um it's been It's been sort of squashed by the election. Every time there's an election, like open enrollment becomes sort of second fiddle, but like it's open enrollment. JD's having a ah really killer start.
24:13.42
Rick
um You did a great job. One thing we did was ah Tyler helped build an automation to help JD be like kind of ah an Iron Man agent where a lot of the stuff he was doing manually last year, it's being tracked in our software.
24:26.66
Rick
And the cool thing here is that you know part of what what we're doing is we're not a software as a service, excuse me, company.
24:29.70
Tyler King
or anything?
24:37.90
Rick
It's all about making JD more efficient with software. And I thought you did a really good job of taking what he did last year and basically making it so he's clicking buttons versus drafting emails um ah and and and and and and tracking things via spreadsheets.
24:49.30
Tyler King
Thank you.
24:52.57
Rick
And and instead of doing that, he's doing it in in our software
24:55.95
Tyler King
Yeah, i I bet this is a somewhat... So there's like productized service. This is a productized service, but it's like a specific type, which is the human in the loop.
25:06.40
Tyler King
I forget what company it was. A while back, we talked about that like security company. That's like a ring competitor. Do you remember them?
25:11.74
Rick
yeah it's called sentinel ah security
25:13.49
Tyler King
Sentinel. Yeah. Where the idea is like, it's a ring camera, but there's a human sitting somewhere looking at like 40 screens at once. So it's kind of like you have a security, you have a fraction of a security guard.
25:24.28
Tyler King
That's, I still think a pretty good comparison to what like of health is, which is like, you're just buying an insurance policy and a lot of the steps are automated, but you have JD sitting there looking at 40 screens at once metaphorically.
25:29.36
Rick
called Sentinel Security.
25:36.56
Tyler King
For that type of business, I feel like it can be a tech business, but the tech is JD or the security guard is the customer of the tech. The end customer, the person paying you money, isn't necessarily interacting with the tech directly.
25:49.86
Rick
Thank you.
25:51.08
Tyler King
um And in that world, like what I'm finding I'm building for JD is basically just a really, really, really specialized CRM.
25:58.30
Rick
yes
25:59.56
Tyler King
Like you could go out and use Pipedrive or Salesforce or whatever, but like he there's two emails he sends. He sends one once a month, one once a year. And so i built each one has like its own special interface that's like, he customizes them a little, right?
26:09.16
Rick
Yes.
26:11.94
Tyler King
It's like, okay, send it to these 80 people, send the boilerplate, but for these 20 people, maybe don't send it at all. Or I want to send it to this entire company at once. And then I want to send it to the other company the next day.
26:22.49
Tyler King
You could do that with like MailChimp, but it would be a lot of clicking around, a lot of potential errors ah happening.
26:29.90
Rick
Thank you.
26:30.82
Tyler King
So just kind of like, I think there's a lot of opportunity in building like specialized CRM workflow type stuff for the backend worker at this type of business.
26:39.86
Rick
I agree. Yep. it's And it's great. You've done a great job of it. And um and i i so so anyway, JD's having a great open enrollment um so far.
26:44.04
Tyler King
Thank you
26:48.39
Rick
And ah but you know it's kind of this is kind of his time. And we you know it's I've got a few things I need to do to to support him. But um for the most part, it's just like kind of letting him ah work his butt off for 60 days.
27:00.37
Tyler King
yeah
27:00.33
Rick
And then we reach it we kind of check in on the 15th of January and ah we'll have grown some amount. We don't know how much yet, but it's our it's it's time to, you know, usually we grow the most over the next 60 days compared with the entire previous year.
27:13.04
Rick
um The difference this year is we grew a lot this year, so it'll be weird. It'll be interesting to see, what the seasonal inflection point ah but be like good that's great.
27:18.88
Tyler King
Yeah. And I'm not counting any chickens before they're hatched, but the the yearly goal is very much within striking distance, right? So like, this is such a new, field less annoying serums never hit a goal ever.
27:29.15
Tyler King
um the The idea that you set a goal at the beginning of the year, and it it wasn't conservative. I would say it was like appropriately ah achievable, but not like too ambitious, but it was still like, it's a good goal.
27:41.46
Tyler King
If at the beginning of the year, someone had been like, yeah, you'll hit it be like awesome yeah fantastic and like it seems if you're betting over under you're probably saying how much can we exceed it by not are we going to hit it yeah
27:46.42
Rick
Let's celebrate now.
27:52.87
Rick
Yes. Agreed. Yeah. And ah and just just for context, if we hit this goal, like it's it's a it's basically us exiting phase one of the business and entering phase two of the business, where phase one was JD, you know, kind of making personal sacrifice for the business to run.
28:09.74
Rick
And then this phase two of the business is him, you know, sort of reaching his target ah comp and this being default sort of, you know, good job. um And, you know, trying to figure out how we can expand the business from there.
28:22.22
Rick
um and so it's a big a big mile so if we hit that
28:22.78
Tyler King
Yeah. It's such a huge milestone that I think a lot of people, including myself back in the day, just kind of blow past where once you, you could call this default alive, I guess, but in a sense we're default alive right now and that like JD is getting paid something, he can literally survive, but the business isn't default alive in the sense that, like you said, he's making sacrifices.
28:43.24
Tyler King
Like if you told JD, Hey, 20 years from now, it'll still be the same deal it is now in terms of your income. He wouldn't last 20 years.
28:49.74
Rick
And so it's a big milestone if we hit that. no he would say this yeah that's not what he's that's not he's working for
28:51.50
Tyler King
Yeah. And if he leaves, then the business is, I don't want to say it's dead, but like it's dead without you doing something drastic. That like inflection point of, okay, default alive and by that definition of it, it's like you can do anything you want after that as a business.
29:07.32
Tyler King
You can say, let's hire people.
29:07.38
Rick
No, he would say this. Yeah,
29:09.76
Tyler King
Let's raise money. Let's just sit on this. It's a lifestyle business now or whatever. These are all options. And I feel like I never even thought about that when we hit that point of what do
29:28.80
Rick
uh, in the partner meeting, I was like, oh, that I took a second. I was like, oh, wow, that that's going to feel really good for JD. I know, I don't know what it's going to feel like. Cause I haven't felt it before. Um, but I, I can imagine like once he's like, oh, wow, I'm making my, what I want to make.
29:42.30
Rick
And this is my, I I'm controlling this thing. I think he's, it's going to be a very, I can't imagine what it's going to do.
29:45.24
Tyler King
we actually want the business to be now that we're here? Yeah. Yeah.
29:48.46
Rick
I think it's going to feel really good for him. I can tell he doesn't know what it's going to feel like either, but you're like, it's going to feel good.
29:51.40
Tyler King
I
29:54.08
Rick
You were like, it touched me. It's going to feel good.
29:56.40
Tyler King
remember the first day, this is a slightly different thing. And I feel bad saying this because like, I quit working for you on this day. But like the first day I woke up after I quit as your employee, not that I didn't like working for you or whatever.
30:10.94
Tyler King
I mean, obviously, I started working with you again. But I remember waking up that morning and being like, I might never have a boss ever again for the rest of my life. Hell yeah.
30:21.70
Tyler King
I remember vividly that I was in my studio apartment in San Francisco and I woke up that morning and I was just like, life has changed. No,
30:30.86
Rick
yep um the hit then you're like a hostage situation um i think you need some ah contracting work and then i'm your the contract you are going ah okay Yeah.
30:38.16
Tyler King
no, no. Sorry. Sorry. I mean, after I quit the contracting. contracting. Yeah. Yeah. So So for for people people who who don't, don't, I've I've said said this this before, before, but but I I was was a a full full-time,-time, I I was was your your colleague, colleague, I I would would say. say. We I don't like, we were were kind kind of of more more or or less less peers.
30:49.16
Tyler King
peers. You You weren't weren't the the CEO of the company yet at that time. I quit.
30:51.24
Rick
that's right that's right
30:52.30
Tyler King
Then I kept working on as kind of a contractor for about two and a half years, I think, after that. But then when I stopped that entirely because Less Annoying Serum could, I was still, I wasn't like where we're talking about.
31:03.60
Tyler King
I was still at the making sacrifices point, but I was like, I can survive. I can pay my bills.
31:08.18
Rick
The contract you were. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah.
31:09.14
Tyler King
That's when I never had another job after that. All right. I might swing us back to talking about forms a little bit.
31:20.08
Tyler King
I'm not sure if this will be an interesting thing to say or not, but one thing I've noticed with how how we're we're working on forms, I already mentioned how like with the marketing side, it feels different because we're doing a lot more like early stage type, grinding it out, talking to every customer, squeezing out every little bit of engagement we can.
31:29.24
Rick
That's awesome.
31:34.40
Tyler King
But as part of that, it's also kind of affected the product side. Okay. People talk about like a very common trope in our world is talk to customers, right?
31:45.64
Tyler King
That's how you get feedback validation, figure out if your product's working, et cetera.
31:49.84
Rick
Thank
31:50.64
Tyler King
And I normally, I don't want to say I dismiss this. I think it's very true. You need to talk to customers. But like a lot of people mean talk to customers, like do UX research, like have your product team talk to the customer.
32:02.54
Tyler King
And I've oftentimes just kind of rolled my eyes and been like, our customer service team has dozens of calls with customers a day.
32:09.64
Rick
you.
32:10.90
Tyler King
We have very good lines of communication from customer service to the product team. That's what our version of talk to customer has been. And when we build features, we know what the feature needs to be.
32:21.56
Tyler King
And there'd be no point in interviewing a customer. I haven't made my point yet, but do you get what I've said so far?
32:27.66
Rick
Yes.
32:28.58
Tyler King
With Forms, it has felt different in that I'm making a lot of decisions as the main product leader, and then we get it into the world.
32:28.64
Rick
yep
32:42.20
Tyler King
It's getting beat up a lot more by customers. Not in a bad way. They like it and stuff, but it's much more common that I have a realization either while I'm talking to a customer or someone else talks to them and passes it on to me.
32:49.18
Rick
Yep.
32:55.74
Tyler King
It feels more like actual UX research versus customer service that gives us the insights we need. And one of the things I'm realizing is it's because all the features we've been working on prior to this for the last several years have been so low ambition.
33:09.64
Rick
so
33:15.72
Tyler King
It's like we already have, let's say, a calendar. And someone's like, hey, it would be really cool if I could do, Z.
33:26.00
Tyler King
And then we build it. And it's like, well, okay, yeah, it does X, Y, Z now, but it's still the same fucking feature.
33:29.78
Rick
Thank
33:33.02
Tyler King
It was, you know, before that it's like a small improvement. And I'm realizing with small improvements, I don't think you need to talk to customers like that with forms. It's like, this is a whole big thing. It's just, it's just different.
33:44.44
Tyler King
I don't, we don't understand how customers are going to interact with it because there's not that existing pattern of them using it.
33:49.78
Rick
you.
33:50.00
Tyler King
And the point I'm getting to here is, I think this might be a good heuristic for me going forward of like, if I can, it's not that I've been making bad decisions because I haven't been talking to customers.
34:02.04
Tyler King
I've been making, we've been making good product improvements.
34:03.71
Rick
Safe. safe decisions
34:04.82
Tyler King
Safe, safe is the word. If I don't need to talk to customers, I think I should take that as a sign that we're not being aggressive enough with what we're doing to the product.
34:13.16
Rick
safe decisions.
34:13.90
Tyler King
That's all I have to say there.
34:16.38
Rick
I think that's a very interesting concept. I think it'd be played in a lot of yeah like, um I'm not thinking about it for leg up. um and yeah, like safety, like how safe do you feel? Like what, there's lots of, uh, different types of investments that you make in terms of like, uh, executing some idea. Um, money is one way to, you know, is, is one type of investment, but time and particularly like re learning
34:47.56
Tyler King
Mm-hmm.
34:48.11
Rick
ah is like another one. And I think what you're saying is basically, if if I don't have to learn in order to build a product, ah it's probably not that like impactful um and or ah ah ah risky.
35:04.65
Rick
or or There's probably not a yeah a ton of upside in the in the ah
35:07.71
Tyler King
Yeah.
35:08.67
Rick
and the opportunity
35:09.87
Tyler King
Yeah. And and like to tie this, to i think I think that's the general version that anyone listening can probably take away. And like to to apply it to me specifically, like Forms is un is opening up a whole new way to use Less Annoying Serum.
35:22.54
Tyler King
It's solving new problems that it wasn't solving before. Almost everything we've worked on prior to this has been making it a little easier to do something you could already do.
35:29.24
Rick
a ton of upside in the opportunity. Mm-hmm.
35:31.20
Tyler King
And I think that's why I've been needing to talk to people is because I'm like, no one's ever done this before in Less Annoying Serum. I have no prior art to look at here, ah which is a great sign that we're making the CRM truly more valuable rather than just...
35:47.26
Tyler King
like We could make it the easiest, the the best user experience possible.
35:49.84
Rick
Thank you.
35:50.54
Tyler King
If it's not actually solving a user's problem, it doesn't matter.
35:53.52
Rick
Makes, makes a ton of sense. Um, do you have any other, I'm just curious, like if you apply this to other areas of the business, are there other things that you've considered doing that, that kind of, you could say you could use this, hero your stick stick to, to organize to, to, to organize ideas?
36:04.78
Rick
ideas? Just
36:05.58
Rick
Just
36:06.05
Tyler King
you mean like other features we might build or like not on the product team at all?
36:09.40
Rick
product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product, product like I would just say product ideas that require more learning than, you know, like cup holders, I guess is the other analogy.
36:12.01
Tyler King
Yeah.
36:20.05
Tyler King
Yeah. Let me think out loud here. My first thing I say won't be an answer to that question, but we've been thinking, so yeah, use the term cup holder, which is again, like making our current customers. If you have a minivan, every extra cup holder makes you like it more, but you're probably not buying the minivan just because of the cup holders um versus CarPlay, which is like, you might, I wouldn't buy a car that doesn't have CarPlay.
36:39.62
Tyler King
ah That's like a feature that's a requirement to buy it. And so we're trying to add more CarPlay features. um We have five on the list after forms and automatic email logging, which are both wrapping up.
36:49.22
Rick
Mm-hmm.
36:50.00
Tyler King
Kanban boards, a mobile app, um the ability to send emails directly from the CRM, better reporting and automations. Those are the five that are currently on our list.
37:00.38
Tyler King
I hadn't necessarily used this here. I overlaid this concept we're talking about on top of those five. Automations and reporting, 100%, we're going to have to talk to people.
37:09.36
Rick
Thank you.
37:11.68
Tyler King
Reporting especially, customers ask us for reporting all the time, but they never say what they mean. So it's like, we're going to have to figure, like there's, I think a million different ideas people have of what reporting means.
37:22.68
Tyler King
We we have some reports to be clear, but like we need more. um And I think automations too is like, well, what do you want to automate and how?
37:28.62
Rick
Mm-hmm.
37:28.77
Tyler King
And you know how might that might that work? I would say a mobile app, we probably don't need to talk to anyone. It's like, we have a mobile web app. We just need to make it native. um Kanban boards, I think are so established.
37:41.33
Tyler King
We would need to talk to people, except I think every other CRM out there has solved this already, so we can just use them.
37:46.67
Rick
Yeah, that the combine seems like low risk
37:49.49
Tyler King
Yeah. I think with Kanban, the big question there is a basic Kanban board's easy. It's like you've got columns, each status in a pipeline's a column, you drag people between them, that's easy. the The one slight thing is you want to see some sort of aggregate number at the top.
38:04.74
Tyler King
Like what's the value of this pipeline or something. um Figuring out how to let the user choose what that thing is and what like what do you actually want to see aggregated and stuff like that.
38:09.18
Rick
seems like low risk.
38:14.75
Tyler King
That's one thing I'll need to get an answer to, but otherwise I think it's pretty safe. ah Yeah.
38:19.25
Rick
interesting
38:20.40
Tyler King
So anyway, but yeah, that's a good point. As soon as I had that insight, I'm a bit embarrassed that my first reaction wasn't, but's let's look at our roadmap and see if we're actually applying and polish anything up.
38:28.36
Rick
Interesting.
38:30.56
Rick
No, I love that. My favorite episodes that we do are the ones where we come up with like a generalization, like heuristic that we then can apply pretty quickly and get insight from. um Those are my favorite episodes. So I ah um i love it when those these things come out
39:00.80
Tyler King
So I do think like, I'm not saying everything a startup works on should always be one of these totally new novel things where you don't know what you're doing. But I think we were way too far in the other direction and we have some catching up to do before we can reach a good equilibrium.
39:09.70
Rick
love it when these things come up.
39:15.32
Rick
When you are looking for um you know big wins, big swings, this is a great heuristic. When you're looking for small swing small swings, this is the anti-heuristic.
39:21.74
Tyler King
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
39:25.68
Rick
It could be useful in both ways. so Yeah, and like like and and and when you're focused on incremental progress, that's what you should do.
39:27.51
Tyler King
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Because yeah, the flip side to this is if if you're doing this, it's it's very risky. If you don't even need to talk to a customer to know what to do to make the product better, that's probably like, that's a safe base hit.
39:43.52
Tyler King
Yeah.
39:44.17
Rick
That's not what you're focused on right now.
39:46.15
Tyler King
Correct. Yeah. um I did do the six-month presentation, ah which I and do every six months. And um it was good.
39:52.96
Rick
go?
39:54.22
Tyler King
i My two main themes, one was AI, which I don't think we need, just getting people on board with like, it's coming. We need we need to adopt it. ah And then the second one being like this back to basics thing of like, it's so tempting when a customer says, hey, I want this thing.
40:09.98
Tyler King
And it's it's a small little thing. It wouldn't take long to build. It's so tempting to just say yes. um But what we're doing is there's these five things I just named. Don't even think about anything else until these five things are done.
40:21.58
Tyler King
We're going to say no to everything. And I think it was pretty well, I'm only halfway through the one-on-ones um with everybody to get their reaction to it. But ah I would say this is more than, so I always do this.
40:29.84
Rick
Thank
40:32.98
Tyler King
I do a six month presentation and then I meet with everyone one-on-one. The feedback on this has, sometimes people come in and it's like, everyone's very constructive and all that, but sometimes it's like problems or here's a thing we could do better.
40:46.20
Tyler King
Or it's kind of an emotionally difficult conversation for me, even though it's constructive.
40:49.84
Rick
you.
40:50.48
Tyler King
It's like, that's the type of feedback that takes a toll on you. This round has people have been coming in and been like, fuck yeah, let's go do it.
40:57.18
Rick
That's awesome.
40:57.38
Tyler King
um So yeah, it's, it's felt pretty good.
40:58.88
Rick
CEO Tyler, I got five things.
41:00.55
Tyler King
Yeah.
41:01.36
Rick
This is what we're going to focus on.
41:01.84
Tyler King
Well,
41:02.92
Rick
One, two, three, four five any questions
41:05.47
Tyler King
you know what the difference is? Cause I, I that before. Every time I go in with a plan and everyone is like, that sounds like a good plan. But the difference is in the past, the plan was always like, here's where we're going to get one day.
41:19.47
Tyler King
Even if I'm like, this is what we're going to do this year. Everyone interpreted it as ah we'll work on it this year. We'll see what we get done. But because we've actually gotten, we've we've shipped so much this year in a way that we never have before.
41:32.69
Tyler King
Now everyone's seeing that and they're like, oh, we can actually do this plan. That's the difference.
41:37.76
Rick
yeah you're hitting on something here where it's like there's this like perfect place where goals sit where if it's too big like people just see it as directional. If it's too small, it's not, doesn't have any motivational aspect.
41:49.55
Tyler King
Yeah.
41:49.71
Rick
It's just like a metric. And it it sounds like you're finding that like, right, like sweet spot where it's motivational but it's but it's not like it's directionual and motivational
42:00.60
Tyler King
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And it's it's partially that I'm finding the sweet spot, but the the bigger change is we weren't executing on anything before. So I could say whatever I wanted in this meeting and it didn't really land.
42:10.53
Rick
yeah great
42:12.88
Tyler King
Yep. Maybe some connections to what I was saying about politics earlier.
42:19.37
Rick
yeah um quick marketing update for me like i we we split october we decided to basically spend all of our profit on marketing stuff ahead of open enrollment.
42:30.82
Rick
We threw a bunch of stuff up against the wall. I can attribute none of it to leads except one thing that j was JD's idea, which is lead purchasing. So we but we bought some you know group health insurance leads where people have like gone to third-party websites and requested.
42:45.49
Rick
ah quote Um, and these are exclusive leads. So we're calling them and we're not like competing against other brokers calling them.
42:49.44
Tyler King
Thank
42:51.22
Rick
So it's not feeling like spam for them. It's a good experience. And so you know, very small sample size so far. I think we've gotten like somewhere between five and 10 leads, but like everyone has been a conversation. Um, everyone has led to an opportunity.
43:03.87
Rick
Um, we have not won a deal yet, but we expect to win one imminently. And I think ah it's something that we can continue to invest in year round.
43:09.72
Tyler King
you.
43:13.40
Rick
So all that experimentation led to at least one channel that we can at least repeat. And then we need to keep running the experiments.
43:19.66
Tyler King
all you need
43:20.75
Rick
Yep. ah we'll we'll we'll kind of What we what I hope we can do is sort of milk this one as, as far as it goes, and then we'll run some more experimentation when we need to.
43:28.54
Tyler King
All you need. Yeah. need yeah but so you're you're not an experiment but i mean partially you're not experimenting because it's open enrollment and there's plenty of other stuff to do but like when january hits you're not thinking all right let's start trying new marketing experiments it's like let's see how far we can get with the one that's working
43:42.01
Rick
the yeah Yeah. I like the lead, the lead purchasing thing to keep like as a constant. um We were looking for something to spend $500 a month on. like that is so That's something we should do.
43:52.12
Rick
um We're going to have more money to spend on marketing next year.
43:52.76
Tyler King
yeah
43:55.18
Rick
Where do we spend it? I'm more more interested in and spending it on this tooling, like the 4500 data, something that can fuel the the the prospecting that led to our growth this past year. That more on an outbound level.
44:06.50
Rick
And what that will well enable is potentially like us having the ability.
44:09.70
Tyler King
get with the one that's working.
44:10.29
Rick
to hire someone and have them be pretty instantly a value add because we could put them on the outbound channel agreed yeah sales so outbound sales is the core of our growth strategy And that is much more what I would call repeatable and predictable at this stage than marketing is for us.
44:14.55
Tyler King
Yeah.
44:17.15
Tyler King
One of the like small, like I don't know if this is correct or not, but you know, I've been griping about how hard marketing is for years now. And you, you just said, a a lot of marketing stuff didn't work that you tried.
44:28.25
Tyler King
But B, like, growth is working at LegUp Health in a way that it's not ah less annoying. It seems to, if maybe this is an oversimplification, but it seems that sales is working and marketing is at least not the main driver of growth, right?
44:42.39
Tyler King
Yeah.
44:47.42
Tyler King
Yeah.
44:54.35
Tyler King
And even the inbound stuff looks more like sales than marketing. It's more like a person's coming in and talking to JD.
44:57.03
Rick
It's word of mouth. Referrals.
45:00.26
Tyler King
It's not, they read a blog post and then clicked a button and signed up through a website or something, which is consistent with how I feel like the world is right now.
45:04.54
Rick
Yeah. yeah
45:08.39
Tyler King
It's like marketing is such a zero sum game. ah It's so hard to differentiate yourself. It's so hard to beat the the players with all that money. But sales, it's a one on one conversation. All you got to do is be better than the worst sales rep at some other insurance agency.
45:21.89
Tyler King
Right.
45:23.05
Rick
correct yeah.
45:24.16
Tyler King
So but that that's great. Yeah. I was sitting in that meeting hearing JD's update about buying leads and it was like you said, super small sample size. It could definitely fall, fall apart, but I was listening to that like, Oh my God, I want that for, for less annoying CRM.
45:40.34
Rick
those leads to sell us. like They're doing PPC. And so I don't know how the economics work, but assuming that we can reverse it at some point, like we can prove this channel and then reverse engineer the PPC, we should be able to displace them.
45:48.59
Tyler King
That's a great point.
45:52.78
Tyler King
That's a phenomenal, because I bought leads before, but it's never been exclusive. It's like the way they make money is they do the PPC, they get the lead, and then they sell it to 10 different companies. In that model, we can't step in, do the same PPC campaign and beat them because we're not selling it to other CRMs.
46:07.15
Tyler King
In your case, you're buying exclusive leads. So yeah, why shouldn't you be able to take the ah channel over? That's fucking interesting. I like that.
46:13.29
Rick
Yeah. Yep.
46:14.62
Tyler King
Hmm.
46:16.48
Rick
Yep.
46:16.63
Tyler King
Cool.
46:17.38
Rick
Anything else you want to chat about? All right.
46:18.97
Tyler King
nope i think i'm good
46:20.67
Rick
If you'd like to review past topics and show notes, visit startuptolest.com. see you next time
46:25.24
Tyler King
so yeah