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This episode, we talk about whether or not it makes sense to build home-made tools to help with marketing
Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:02.24
Rick
Um, what's up this week Tyler
00:07.20
Rick
Going to see your bro.
00:17.13
tylerking
Not a massive meal but I ate a small meal very very quickly right before this because I won't have time to eat after so I'm like ah I might go to food come a midpod here. Um I had this like really interesting topic to talk about that has actually concluded itself. But I'm going to like.
00:22.99
Rick
Cool.
00:34.23
tylerking
Leave you in suspense for a second and tell the first half of the story. So ah, Nps Net Promoter Score is for people who don't know you survey customers and ask them would you recommend this to a friend and they give you a score 0 through 10 and then that gives you average all together and get a score. Our Nps has been dropping lately. Um, which basically is an indicator that customers are less happy with the product right? So that's been kind of on our mind recently of like diving in and trying to figure out what's going on. How do you think you approach that.
00:52.46
Rick
Here.
00:59.10
Rick
Me.
01:10.81
Rick
Do I usually? um so when I I don't have a current mps survey that goes out right now. So this is this is all historical but when when I when I was running people keep and we but did regular Mps Surveys um.
01:19.17
tylerking
The.
01:26.61
Rick
I Appreciated like kind of a rolling ninety day look at it and whether it was changing but I was more interested in the commentary and digging into like because you you asked the question right? like and then there's like this box of like why? Um so I would I would probably dive into the whys and try to understand.
01:38.60
tylerking
Yeah.
01:45.35
Rick
If if there if there's a significant um you know, ah new thing happening relative relative to the last ninety days is that what you did or did you do something different.
01:54.00
tylerking
Well okay, so the the way I consume it I every single day get an email with all of the Nps scores from the day before and I read every single one of them every comment. Um, nobody who's unhappy leaves a comment.
02:08.71
tylerking
Unfortunately or not like literally nobody but in a year I might read hundreds like a lot like 200 comments or something like that and 2 of them are like people who gave a ah you know low score. So yeah I think that's a good start I wasn't getting much from that.
02:28.90
tylerking
The next step we did was well unless you have other ideas.
02:32.14
Rick
Well, how are you looking at this are you looking at it like what's really useful is having like ah a last ninety day and like a last 30 day and then you can kind of see how the last thirty day compares to the last 90 which gives you a trajectory ah and.
02:42.86
tylerking
Yeah, so we do we do last three months last twelve months. But yeah, same idea and yeah, it has been going down like the trajectory now there's a lot of noise. So like it's actually been going down since sometime in 2021 and I noticed this but it's like you know sometimes you have a quarter where.
02:47.74
Rick
Cool.
03:01.74
tylerking
Maybe like three years ago a bunch of people signed up from a specific source and they get surveyed during that court I didn't want to overreact to it. Yeah I don't it's not. It's not a privacy thing but so the actual score has dropped by I don't have him handy I should have pulled this up but like.
03:07.21
Rick
How how significant is it like can you share numbers or do you want to like keep that private.
03:21.72
tylerking
Ah, it's on pace because we do a twelve month average for like what our actual score is. We're not a full year through the problem. But I think it's on pace to get cut in half basically which is significant. Um, yeah, and specifically one star reviews. Ah like.
03:30.20
Rick
Oh yeah, that that would make me like my stomach hurt.
03:40.58
tylerking
As opposed to we. We actually do 1 through 5 stars instead of 0 3 We do a slightly modified version of it. But so the next thing we're going to do bracken my co-founder who is very good with data was going to dive in and figure out like. What what? you know? What is this having common is it like multi-user accounts. Is it single user is it specific industry like what are the patterns we could find um, kind of looked like it was the owners of multi-user accounts that were primarily driving this Ah although a lot of noise involved. Anyway, we're we're diving through all that. Now I'm going to ruin the story because the ultimate answer was um, he bracken noticed while digging through the data that a lot of our 1 star reviews were getting submitted like literally within 5 seconds of us sending the email.
04:29.37
tylerking
So basically we are pretty sure what's happening here is they're like anti-spaam anti-malware things in email clients that will just click the first link but they're not clicking all the links. Um and most of these I think get automatically filtered out by our email provider but some new. Email client must be doing this that isn't getting filtered out properly and it's been increasing in volume over the last year and so basically if you filter out clicks that happened immediately. Our Nps has actually been going up this whole time.
05:03.13
Rick
So do you do you believe? that's not just like a rage click. Um, it's it's too fast.
05:08.86
tylerking
It's too. It's fast enough that I would be surprised if the email has even been delivered to the person's inbox yet it it could be a rage click but it it would be surprising to me.
05:11.95
Rick
He. Could you test it and like put a man man What a mess that's silly.
05:22.89
tylerking
Yeah, we we were really I was like shit like something is wrong here and then maybe maybe nothing's wrong. But yeah, so the plan is ah apparently most of these tools don't run Javascript. So what we. The next step is to I want to do this for all our emails not just mps emails but basically put an intermediate step in where they they click a link nothing immediately gets registered it loads a webpage and then that causes an Ajax request to actually record the score and so if if it's a bot. There's nothing stopping them from executing javascript but probably that will filter them out. That's that's the next step here I think.
05:59.95
Rick
I Don't know the technical details of that. But it's like if it works awesome.
06:06.71
tylerking
Yeah, um, it's it's crazy to me though that like I posted this on Twitter and like a bunch of people like oh yeah, yeah, you can't trust any clicks and emails like there's all these clicks that ah you but you just have to ignore. But there's no like. You'd think there would be a generalizable solution as opposed to every single company trying to figure out a way to filter out all the bot clicks.
06:27.74
Rick
Yeah, it's really interesting too because like for my newsletter I do like to look at my engagement for after I send a broadcast and like how many unsubscribes I'm getting and that kind of thing. Um and ah the click I was like it's always interesting to see Clicks and then there's always like. Some percentage of the people who click everything and it's like no, you didn't you didn't click everything in the newsletter. Um, and I think those and it happens immediately after sending. It.
06:48.43
tylerking
Um, yeah, we right? So yeah, probably the same idea we had This is very rare but every once in a while a customer will come to us and be like all my tasks are just disappearing and we're like and and we.
07:05.88
tylerking
Kind of never really figured it out. But now after we noticed this we went back and we're like we we send them an email with their agenda every day we think it was just automatically clicking all their tasks like the little checkbox on all their tasks and submitting it. So yeah, there's all kinds of like potential. I Guess I'm surprised like you'd think you and I would know that this is a thing because like so much harm could be done by this ah and now that I know about it I think I know how to prevent it. But like I've never seen anyone talk about this before.
07:32.40
Rick
Yeah I I would never have thought to worry about this but now I'm going to think about this next time I do an nps sir and be like how many of these are fake bot clicks.
07:44.25
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, um, now the final point on this I'm actually a little disappointed that it's not real because this started get the nps started getting worse at the same time that our growth started kind of plateauing and we were like you know it's. Growth marketing is so Nebulous. It's not my strength but if it's like if people are legitimately less happy I've got like a very concrete thing I can go out and fix and so brack and I were both like hoping this. Yeah exactly and now we're like shit. Well, it's not that so I don't know.
08:07.12
Rick
Um, opportunity that sucks.
08:16.27
tylerking
Anyway, that's my little ah misadventure for the week. What have you been up to.
08:20.12
Rick
Ah I have been doing daily morning meetings with Jd for the past couple weeks. Um, and it has been really awesome one I think we we don't work together that closely. But we have open enrollment coming up. Um, and we decided like hey what's.
08:24.16
tylerking
Man.
08:37.71
Rick
Let's just like spend an hour in the mornings together and see what we get done without related to our plan and we've been really honing in on like how do we? What's our core messaging because what we've learned this year is we have a ton of customers. We're identifying. We're able to identify people who buy their own health insurance. But we have this discomfort with asking them to become our customers. It's like we don't good like so let's just say like we roleplay Tyler like hey do you buy your own health insurance. You're like yeah, buy my own health insurance would you get through the marketplace. Yeah, do you like? do you have an agent. No and then we're like this is awesome. Well, what do we say to you now like if we're just like like get tongue tied like.
09:03.64
tylerking
Um, yeah.
09:11.30
tylerking
Right.
09:15.21
Rick
We ask you to become our like can we be your agent and then you're like well oh sure. But then you never take action like why should you take action to make us your agent exactly and so um, we've we've done some exercises and I think we've gotten really good. Um.
09:20.73
tylerking
Right? You haven't offered them anything really.
09:31.65
Rick
Like basically our website's all wrong is what I've learned which I built it two and a half years ago based on hypotheses and like but we got really clear on on like what we are and um, which is really critical because we want to spend a good bit of energy.
09:34.69
tylerking
Um, yeah.
09:45.35
Rick
Going outbound with prospecting and q in November and then also spending money on digital marketing which I'll talk a little about later in the podcast. Um, so ah, that has been really fun just working like we love working together. It's like working. Yeah I get the same feeling working with him without work working with you I just we get a ton done feels good.
09:57.65
tylerking
Um, to all.
10:04.49
Rick
Um, yeah.
10:05.99
tylerking
Well and I mean you're running a startup that you you weren't working on at all and I realize you're still not working on it as much as you want to but like it makes sense to me that having some even if it's a minor involvement every day. Ah. You could feel pretty distant from what's actually going on at your own company. Otherwise.
10:21.91
Rick
Yeah, and so we we were hesitant to do it both of us and then we just did it and we did it for a week and was like that was really awesome. 1 of the best weeks we've had in a while so we were like okay, let's just put it on the calendar every every we have. We have it like 3 or 4 days a week. Um, and we just like left it on and indefinitely and so we're just going to keep doing it until it's not useful anymore. Um, but it's like I get I got a bed fast now. It's fun. Um, but but ah 1 of the key things that that we've taken away is um is.
10:41.45
tylerking
Yeah.
10:48.41
tylerking
That's cool.
10:55.24
Rick
This idea of like managed health insurance or automatic like automated health insurance management. That's like a core like unique attribute relative to like a normal agent. Um, and so we're latching onto that and it's it's giving us the words.
11:09.34
tylerking
So you said you've been like doing I think you maybe said you were doing exercises or whatever like how are you coming up with what what message will resonate.
11:19.76
Rick
Yeah, so we have ah a ton of um of learnings that we have have had from conversations so like talking about situations calls emails that we've sent over the last couple years our current website pages um email exchanges.
11:38.46
Rick
You know like everything um and then you know we I I originally used the framework from a book called obviously awesome. Um, by I think your name's April Dunford I probably got that wrong but I hope that got that right? Um I took notes on my book years ago post them on website and but I but but when i.
11:40.76
tylerking
Um, yeah.
11:48.95
tylerking
Yeah, no, that's right.
11:57.41
Rick
Did the positioning. Originally it was like highly hypothetical based on customer research it wasn't based on trying to prospect and trying to market and trying to grow the business. Um, so the output of the same exercise was was was different. Um.
12:12.12
tylerking
Yeah, so you went through that exercise again, but okay, have you can have you considered doing like formal like ah jobs to be done type interviews or do you feel like you get what you need just through normal day to day interactions.
12:15.18
Rick
Ah, but an abbreviated version of it.
12:26.32
Rick
We've done those in the past. But I think we we have we have what we need to to do this? Um, although I think we are going to have to validate this um work that we're doing with customer conversations. Um, and that'll that'll be our open enrollment.
12:37.24
tylerking
Um.
12:42.88
Rick
Ah, open enrollment will tell us whether we got this right or wrong. So that's been really fun. Um, and then ah I in the evenings have been working on so ah, setting up Google analytics and ad tools so that we can spend a ton of money. Ah.
12:43.83
tylerking
You know, yeah, cool sounds good.
13:01.70
Rick
Not a ton but you know like actually like run some experiments with like marketing because we're not doing marketing and we haven't done any marketing so I'm actually really excited about this I did not have any idea how complicated Google Analytics was how much javascript you need to understand in order to really. Like yeah understand like take get the most out of it. Um, a Google analytics not edwards. Yeah, but like to really like set up Google Analytic right with tag manager and get it firing right? You really have to understand how the frontend.
13:22.92
tylerking
Tell me about that because we do adwords and I don't think we're doing any javascript stuff. Oh sorry Google and oh sorry, sorry.
13:38.97
Rick
Like the browser works and how the page gets loaded and the the elements on the page and so I think what I didn't appreciate until now is how much I could have learned about frontend web development by becoming a sophisticated digital marketer. You probably did this already.
13:52.51
tylerking
Yeah, well no I I mean that resonates like every time because we've had 2 different people kind of transition from customer service into marketing and I was kind of like they're going to have to learn a lot of marketing and like that came more naturally because I feel like. Marketing skill I mean marketing is broad but like a lot of it's more intuitive and human for both of them. There was a lot of learning html and javascript and stuff like that. Even though that there was no expectation of them being coders.
14:25.98
Rick
Totally So um, I'm looking forward to setting up conversion events I'm I'm just now at the point where I've got ad roll like a pixel tracking a site by the way. Ad role have you looked at that in a while they've got a really cool feature I don't know if they had it back in the day but they have a feature where you put a pixel and for those you don't know who what ad role is like adroll is a retargeting service. So Basically you can um.
14:37.25
tylerking
I used didn't like 2010 or something. It's been a long time.
14:55.80
Rick
Basically a sign like I guess it's a cookie to people who come to your site ad roll will help you basically identify that person's digital like presence across all advertising platforms. So you can follow them around and like get them to come back to your site and you can customize like let's just say a thousand people come to your site in a day. Based on like geography what site they hit which ones do you want to like triple down ah double down on triple down on in terms of ad spend which is pretty important to us because like we're getting traffic from all over the world. We really only care about spending money to target Utah people. Um and then within that like people who are are signaling that.
15:33.96
tylerking
Earth.
15:34.43
Rick
They're shopping or you know have a have a agent but but so that's cool, but they have this like feature that they they've added I don't know if they had this back when you were messing with them where they will monitor um, form completions for an email address address submission and associate that email address with the digital identity.
15:48.21
tylerking
Now.
15:54.37
Rick
Which is pretty cool because then we can look at the email addresses and associate that email address with a constituent in our database and know whether they like and qualify them and then spend more money marketing to that person based on whether or not they have health insurance which is pretty cool.
15:56.80
tylerking
E.
16:09.70
tylerking
Yeah, but they they do it even if the forms never submitted. Ok ok when you first said that I was imagining like as you're typing it starts saving and so even if you only like fill out 3 fields. They're like.
16:13.55
Rick
They do a form has to be submitted on the what on your website in order for them to tie an email address to them but like The. Oh I don't know I don't I think it's a form submission but that would be but that's pretty cool, right.
16:30.54
tylerking
Um, yeah, that is that is cool retargeting is great. One of the big problems retargeting always has though is like someone signs up the the normal tools like I think both Facebook and Google they have they' in retargeting platforms. But I guess Admirll must like sit on top of them somehow. But. The problem we've run into is like someone will sign up and there's no good way to be like this person converted. Don't retarget them anymore or if you do retarget them with something else. Yeah.
16:53.57
Rick
So that's why I'm excited about the email address thing because then you can say hey people who have this are part of this list. Don't don't exclude because they're customers.
17:04.39
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, that's and there there probably is a way around what I just said like we just couldn't figure it out. Um, but yeah, that's cool.
17:09.80
Rick
Um, yeah, but man it's it's um I didn't realize how technically complex ah setting up proper tracking and tooling related to digital marketing was and I am like so. Way more sophisticated than I was two weeks ago but I am like still a very much a nub and I'm going to learn a ton over the next thirty days
17:26.99
tylerking
Yeah.
17:33.72
tylerking
That's cool. This is something that yeah like when you like listen to marketing advice. A lot of it's just like oh just throw the Javascript Snip like oh just use Chart mogul for this just use bare metrics for that. Just use and um, what you're experiencing to me is like level One. It's already more complicated than people say. Level 2 is when there's all these tools like Mix panel and stuff that take data from like you have to push data to them like from your database and stuff like that in in my experience. It's easier to build that stuff from scratch than it is to get your data into their system in a way that's actually reliable.
18:07.40
Rick
Um, yeah, go ahead.
18:11.90
tylerking
Actually that's related to a topic I have on the list today. Um yeah I will. Ah basically so I'm I'm going out to Boston I'm working tomorrow with with my brother who again bracken the did data guy. Ah, we're trying to the data guy. Ah.
18:21.91
Rick
The guy.
18:27.80
tylerking
So like 1 of he normally does devops not data stuff but like because we're trying to focus on growth. We're like yeah what if we had a data scientist until we figure out growth enough that we don't feel like we need one anymore and 1 thing we're talking about is like do you build or do you buy and I just am so dissatisfied with so many of these marketing tools out there.
18:28.70
Rick
Yeah.
18:46.92
tylerking
Um, where it's not their fault but it's just like everyone needs something slightly different and it's like they give you these reports and it's not quite what I want and the data they have isn't quite right and like they can track. Ah, you know someone clicking an ad to come into my site to sign up for free trial but they can't track it all the way to converting to a paying customer or. There's always just something missing and it's not like that hard to build this stuff. It's hard to build a general purpose one that would work for anyone but 1 of the discussions we're having is like should we treat this as a potential competitive advantage that we could make a like. Totally custom to our exact needs marketing stack to help with these marketing efforts but a part a big part of me 90% of me is like this would be a huge waste of time and and ten percent of me like this would actually be a pretty enduring competitive advantage.
19:37.20
Rick
Well I can tell you that my journey with Addd Rollll was holy crap. This is super simple like adroll made it simpleer than anything else I came across and there was nothing else. There's nothing else that is anywhere close to as this simple and it's like it gets so complex.
19:46.40
tylerking
Earth.
19:56.31
Rick
Like the acronyms just get crazy once you move on to the next tier. So I do believe that there is a huge hole for marketing automation is the right word but like the digital marketing aspects like the digital marketing landscape I think like email marketing is pretty saturated um like the like the the.
19:56.63
tylerking
Her.
20:12.79
tylerking
Yeah.
20:16.56
Rick
Forms and and and that kind of stuff but the the top of funnel stuff where you're getting into cookie tracking and that stuff if you could make that stuff out of the box is is pretty interesting.
20:24.33
tylerking
The the thing I'm wondering though is like is it even possible to make it simple because like a everybody needs something different and b in order to do it. Well you need access to lots of data from lots of different. You can't do anything all that useful just with website analytics or. Just with stripe subscription data or whatever right now there's this ecosystem of all these different tools that sort of integrate with each other but not really and if you can't connect everything together like an a b test you run on your homepage that doesn't connect all the way to whether someone converts from a free trial thirty days later it's not a good a b test. You know so like ah.
21:00.85
Rick
Yeah, that's fair, Yeah yeah, but I wouldn't try to solve that problem I Guess um, you're you're like trying to solve close like the clothes like making closed loop reporting out of the box and easy. Um I think just yeah for yourself.
21:13.63
tylerking
Not for other people to be clear. Yeah, the the the hypothesis is that um this can't be done super well with existing tools. Or with no tool could be built to make this easy for people and no one else seems willing to build it themselves. So if we built it ourselves we might have access to a level of visibility into this data that other people don't have.
21:35.61
Rick
Isn't this like the the like job to be done behind like mix panel or bare metrics or like some of these um analytics companies.
21:42.91
tylerking
But it's yeah, but none of them do it. They they do a part of it. But my problem is a the amount of effort it takes to get the data in there. Huge B What they give us isn't quite what we want.
21:53.77
Rick
O.
22:00.30
tylerking
Because it's serving a mass audience and see it none of them fully connect from the very start to the very end in a way like like makes panels great. They don't last time I checked really have a great concept for multi-user Sas accounts like for being like okay there are 50 people. They're all related to 1 account and 1 billing.
22:12.92
Rick
And.
22:20.90
tylerking
Thing they all have different events 1 might add tasks and 1 might use their calendar and 1 might import contacts and how do you associate those all with the usage of the user but link them back to the actual account. It's just like impossible to have a general purpose tool. Yeah, so that's that's my experience.
22:30.24
Rick
But it's significant configuration. Yeah, so do you do you think that's solvable.
22:39.80
tylerking
It is solvable for just us like building so exactly what we need. So what? what we're doing tomorrow in Boston is we're going to like design our perfect marketing tool and then we're going to confirm what I'm about to say but I think what we'll find is it's it's a big project probably too big. We probably won't actually do it. But it doing it for any 1 company's needs is solvable building a tool a third party tool. That's just supposed to make this simple and work for everybody I think is not solvable.
23:09.65
Rick
You know I think ah the company that's coming to mind that reminds me of this approach is Xanno have I talked to you about xna before it's a no code back back in tool z or know x a and o but I I think it's actually pretty impressive. Basically it's a.
23:13.69
tylerking
No I've never heard of them.
23:24.80
Rick
Cri app for managing backend code that makes sense so you basically can set up a backend api they manage everything for you and you do it all through a user interface um including setting up users everything? um and it's actually pretty cool. Um, you can do like Cron Jobs everything. Um.
23:32.20
tylerking
Who.
23:43.17
Rick
But the the way it started was they built it for themselves and because they wanted to like let less technical people help manage the the product and then they exposed that product to you know, non-technical people and there is a similar thing there but it's still super technical like.
23:44.87
tylerking
Call.
23:59.11
tylerking
Um, right.
24:02.38
Rick
There's so much logic involved and ah and training and so um, there there that would be interesting, but even if you just saw like it seems like worthy of the exercise just if you solve your own problem.
24:12.12
tylerking
Right? Well yeah, so to be clear I have 0 interest in building. This is a product for other people. That's not even on the table will not do it. No interest. But what you just said is is an an interesting point because brack and I were talking through like like how how could we? Why doesn't this exist. What are we missing. 1 of the things is what most marketing what most companies need in all of their marketing tools is for marketers to be able to use them so like this is why you use webflow instead of handcoding your own site is like you don't want to have to go through the dev team to make it change to your homepage. Bracken pointed out which I think is very like a light bulb and off on my head when he said this a superpower we have that other companies don't is that we feel very confident. We're going to stay around our current size pretty much forever. Um, like it would be nice if a marketer could set up new campaigns or do whatever in this tool. But it's not really essential for that. We're never going to have a huge marketing department that has to be able to operate fully autonomously and he was like if if you just treat that as the thing that we can do that nobody else can do that opens up a lot of possibilities and yeah to connect to your Zana thing because it's.
25:17.30
Rick
Yeah.
25:24.24
tylerking
It's going to be a much more technical tool to use than any of these other ones. So so you're not as opposed to this as I thought you would be it sounds like.
25:26.52
Rick
Exactly yep.
25:35.30
Rick
Well, but I'm having flashbacks to is how useful do you remember some of the stuff we built back in insane benefits where well well only because um, getting improvements became like at the cost of improving the product like.
25:38.41
tylerking
Yeah, and you always were like no let's buy stop building. Yeah.
25:51.32
Rick
When you when you build something internally and it gets good enough then you get people using it and then all of a sudden you want to like advance it well now like you know your Cto or your product guys sitting down with the end going would you like to make your customer product better. Would you like to make your you know your employee's product better and it ah becomes a you anyway.
25:56.52
tylerking
Right.
26:03.27
tylerking
Yeah.
26:09.58
Rick
Um, go ahead.
26:13.75
tylerking
1 interesting sorry I'm an interesting point on that like bracken the work he does is valuable but it's devops. It's kind of like as long as the servers are running who cares, kind of um it it would be taking his time much more than it would be taking one of our software engineers time against the product.
26:24.91
Rick
Yeah, but like I come back to you don't have that problem. You don't have like you you should be putting all of your dev resources into figuring out marketing right? like you know, like obtain benefits. We didn't have a product that worked half the time.
26:30.26
tylerking
Man.
26:35.73
tylerking
Okay, that's fair. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
26:44.20
Rick
Wasn't built. We had put we had a better c our m product than we had a better benefits product at 1 point as a benefits.
26:50.51
tylerking
Yeah, the history for people who don't know is like I built a crm for our resellers to use to sell our real product and that seemed like a more promising product. That then I quit to start less Knowingerra based on like the basic idea I mean it's It's a different product obviously. But yeah, that was the validation that less knowing Seaum had a market. Yeah, okay, well, that's interesting I thought you would I thought you would hate this idea. Um, interesting that you don't.
27:23.40
Rick
The more time you put your your most ah your smartest and and like people on marketing the better like do it. This is why I loved the Alex um, like a couple couple weeks ago. We talked about Alex.
27:33.82
tylerking
Yep yep Pe Hip That's fair Also like we yeah.
27:40.87
Rick
Focusing on customer success a little bit more I got that got me really excited because it was geared towards growth.
27:45.23
tylerking
Yeah, cool. Okay, well we're going to do this brainstorming session tomorrow like what could we build? There's no way we build the whole thing because it would be too big.
27:54.62
Rick
You're going to come back and say we should build a ah calendarendly, that's what you're going to say appointment appointment scheduling.
28:00.20
tylerking
But the thing is again. It's not Ah, there's not that opportunity cost here because the people who would be building this marketing stack aren't the people who could build calendarly but um, yeah, well I'll keep you I'll keep you post knowledge. You know what happens there.
28:06.96
Rick
Okay, interesting.
28:14.85
Rick
Um, um, related to the xno comment I made and to the de debt development like I'm I'm I'm getting um I have this thing where I go through cycles of okay legup health I'm focused on that but I always like to have this next thing that I'm worried about too. And my next thing I'm worried about right now is leg up benefits because I know that Jd's going to execute leg up health he's it's going to happen this fourth quarter I'm like past the point of it not happening. It's going to happen but I'm realizing like I want to build leg up benefits so badly. It's been long enough where it's like it's time to build it and like yeah.
28:49.84
tylerking
Um, can you summarize what these are again for.
28:52.76
Rick
So Legup Health is a health insurance service for consumers and it's like core to anything that we would want to do in the benefit space but people don't buy their own health insurance. You come to legup health you get served legup benefits is an employer tool to offer a new kind of benefits and the idea is you set. Just like salary. Um you set a fixed amount per year. It could be based on a percentage of salary but it it it translates to a fixed annual allotment that gets a crude monthly like an allowance as long as you stay with the company and then you um, can use that money. However, you want to now historically when we've built these. These solutions in the past we've said oh you can use that for healthcare I want to build something that says you can use it for whatever you want including taking it out for taxfree money so but are taxable money. So basically what what? I what I want to allow is. Every single person at the company to get this benefit dollar amount and be able to make that money work for them. However, they want if you know I've got spousal health insurance I take it out as cash and I pay for groceries. Um, if I want to put money in an hsa tax-f free I can redirect it into an hsa account. If I want to put it in a individual retirement account I can put it there if I want to put it in a five twenty Nine college savings account I can do that? Um I put the money where I want to right? And if it's if I yeah and if I could but if I can make but what? what um leg up does is when we can make it tax-f free. We do so.
30:13.86
tylerking
Um, sounds a lot like salary. But what's the difference.
30:23.94
Rick
When when it goes to an hsa. It's taxf free when it goes to an ira it's tax free when it goes to ah if it's there's a by od bring your own device program. It's taxf free if it's going towards um health insurance. It's taxfree. Um, so ah. Basically we want to build the platform that makes that simple and then you know at the end of the year we we connect to the payroll company and we say hey this person got $20000 in benefits but only 5000 of it is taxable. So add $5000 to their w two and it's a wash right um.
30:59.20
tylerking
What.
31:01.45
Rick
And so ah, that's this experience. Um, but then like you know when you do that for an employee which I think is a much better solution. Um, then you need you have this need on the consumer side where you need to be able to serve them like the health insurances at the core like if the year're you're going to say go by your own health insurance. You need to have a service.
31:19.70
tylerking
To get the health insurance.
31:20.18
Rick
To be able to say no, we'll take care of you and that's leg up health right? So if you think about like build leg up health then build leg up benefits. Um, then build more consumer services like legup health to monetize the other avenues like 30 year vision um but at the core of. Of. This product is ach payments and I realized like that I've been shirking leg up benefits and like because I'm scared of ach I've been scared of ach for 5 years since I had this idea of of personalized benefits and I've never invested the time into understanding it.
31:53.48
tylerking
Um, have you now. So what's what's the tldr.
31:57.50
Rick
Yes, and I feel so much better. The tldr is since um, like two or three years ago which is like 2 years after I last looked at this and got scared. There has been a significant like explosion of.
32:09.36
tylerking
This.
32:16.66
Rick
Of developer tools to enable access through apps to Ac ah moving facilitating ach payments everything from bank verifications through something like plaid to ah actually facilitating money without touching it um through like a duwala api and.
32:22.25
tylerking
Are the.
32:35.41
Rick
Now like it's not the the risk and the technical overhead associated. It looks like with facilitating the core of this product is now significantly lower than what it was five years ago when I last looked at it.
32:46.58
tylerking
But let me just clarify 2 things for so one you're talking about the reason you need. Well first let me say for people who are not based in the us AcH is basically like a wire transfer. It's how US.
32:57.64
Rick
This is.
33:03.58
tylerking
You transfer money from one person to another without spending massive amounts on fees. Basically.
33:08.10
Rick
Yeah, and there's ah, there's an international. There is an international play with AcH now but like there's a different clearinghouse for the internet for internet international payments but it's called it's the automated clearinghouse. It's ah it's ah it's effectively a daily multi multiple multiple times per day batching system.
33:13.65
tylerking
Right.
33:23.82
Rick
That banks have come together from like since the 1970 s to like move money around.
33:27.18
tylerking
Yeah, and the the reason other countries don't use this is because they have immediate transfers that are way way better and cheaper and America is like super backwards on this.
33:34.46
Rick
Yes, but so so that led me down another rabbit hole which is the federal government is actually planning to release. What's a new payment system called Fed now have you heard about this so I'm just like holy crap like this is like.
33:45.98
tylerking
Um I I saw like a headline but I don't know anything about it.
33:51.79
Rick
This is railroad that is coming to me for this product at the right time and um, anyway, it's just it got me really excited.
33:59.46
tylerking
Um, um so that by the way like I don't know like is that definitely happening or if so when but like let's say it does that to me is. Anyone who's like how I want to start something but I don't know what or whatever when you see a big shift like that I think a pretty decent approach is to be like someone's going to make a whole lot of money off this and there's not much competition yet because it's brand new I'm just going to figure out a way to be a part of that.
34:21.94
Rick
Yes, yes, yes, so anyway I learned a ton about ach payments I'm not going to go into any more details than we talked about today but it's leading to another question which is my next fear. So every time like you you get clear on a fear you go tackle it. You're like okay, got that now what now I'm like okay.
34:36.59
tylerking
No, she says.
34:40.10
Rick
Do I try to figure out how to build this myself or do I Just do I go hire. Ah, a software development firm or do I to find a partner to go build this. This is way more technical than anything else I've I've have tried to build it will require lots of hours but is this something I should just roll at my sleeves.
34:51.69
tylerking
What? Yeah what.
34:57.92
Rick
And try to get to an Mvp late nights weekends legup benefits while j ds won't roll with leg up health or is this something that I like is outside of the technical scope for me to even try to do and I need to just go hire a firm.
34:58.29
tylerking
This this meaning leg up benefits.
35:11.40
tylerking
Let me ask your question on that like back in the Zane benefits days we you and I have so much context that we could not possibly catch our listeners up on but a lot of this is reminiscent of things we used to work on Zane benefits was a software product that seemed fully automated and like sometimes things were.
35:18.22
Rick
Yes.
35:29.77
tylerking
And a lot of the times a customer would like submit a form and then on our end like a human would call someone up and or whatever take an action like oh I remember building that a CH system it was a nightmare I mean Ben but did most of it. But I I worked on it a little we ah, ah.
35:34.15
Rick
We had a we had a not a daily notcha file that we would. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be so out of compliance in today world like that was like we were actually the originator I believe in that situation weren't we.
35:48.12
tylerking
Oh really.
35:52.36
tylerking
Yeah, we like created text files that we had to Ftp into some server somewhere and then like money moved as a result of that. Yeah so part of my question here is like could you build like a no code form.
35:52.61
Rick
Like we had built our own AcAch
35:59.26
Rick
Yeah, but Debbie had to do something daily for that to happen I remember I've seen I remember the workflow sorry I interrupted you.
36:11.37
tylerking
And then like put a lot of human labor behind the form to actually make stuff happen to prove this out without like fully automating everything.
36:21.52
tylerking
Because it sounds like a lot of this is you just need to know what they spent their money on so that you can categorize it correctly.
36:30.88
Rick
I Um, don't believe this is a very fun product for the consumer if we can't move money. So.
36:38.42
tylerking
But let's say you can move money but you do it like a person types something into Wells Fargo
36:42.20
Rick
But so that's yes, yes if I can do if I can do that moving money. Yes I would would love to do that. But I don't know if I can. Yeah yeah, yes, no, it doesn't need be automated. We could. We could definitely do it behind the scenes like with a daily like.
36:49.95
tylerking
So sorry set aside the moving money part. Let's say that solved the rest of it does it need a lot of okay.
37:01.35
Rick
You know you know what? what is it? Human turk is that what it's called like a mechanical turk. Yeah, like sure.
37:03.20
tylerking
I'm yeah the mechanical turk. Yeah I'm quite confident that if you can get a spreadsheet of transactions you need to make you can find a way if once a day someone has to do a thing that's.
37:18.97
Rick
I don't want to know what people's I don't want to store any bank accounts and I don't want to touch the money. Those are the 2 constraints so they've got so I've got to leverage an api of some kind but you think I could figure this out.
37:20.12
tylerking
That's got to be doable.
37:24.73
tylerking
Yeah, yeah. That strikes me as something that's solvable without like massive engineering resources as long as you don't mind. Let's say it's an hour a day of someone's time pushing buttons.
37:43.50
Rick
Ah, that the the ability to de-risk this um before investing into significant software engineering resources would be totally worth an hour a day three hundred and sixty five days a year
37:52.62
tylerking
Yeah, that's I could be totally wrong, but given like as someone who built or was a part of building an ach system. Even if you had to build that part yourself I mean I Guess in that case you would have to store their account number like you're not storing anything too sensitive. But. I There must be a service out there that does this for you.
38:12.29
Rick
I Think it's I think it's plaid and duwaa together where you verify the bank account through plaid and then import the information through plaid and then like create a customer in duwaa and duwaa stores all that information for you.
38:25.92
tylerking
Yeah I mean I'm I'm wondering if you could even just have it go through their payroll system like why do you even need to initiate this.
38:32.89
Rick
Um I don't want it to go through the payroll system because I want it to be Ah, there's there's all sorts of configuration requirements on the payroll that get. Ah.
38:46.99
Rick
Around taxes that I want to ah I want to avoid having to educate someone on I want like it to be like an expenseify experience. You literally sign up at employees they start using it and then you log in you make reimbursements and employees are delighted.
39:01.20
tylerking
But the employees with expense if I get their reimbursement through gusto or whatever right? a CH well yeah I mean gusto pays me through a a c h.
39:05.51
Rick
Now they get ach.
39:13.40
Rick
Ah, the the expense the expenseify workflow I'm talking about is a direct AcH from expenseify not through payroll.
39:23.65
Rick
But then then you're getting then you're building a payroll integration that gets even more complicated for me versus and I don't want to build I do not want to build the download. The the payroll report. Add it to payroll process. Ah I've been there done that? Yeah, that's not that's.
39:26.28
tylerking
Um, yeah.
39:32.53
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, that's what same benefits you do? Okay well anyway if a CH is the only thing that's scaring you off I guess my point is like it's a it's a mess or it was a mess fifteen years ago I'm sure it's better now and it seems doable.
39:43.47
Rick
So yeah I guess like the the the the Mvp here would be hey like figure out how to do this for like we we offer this benefit to j d right now at Leg adventures like build it for leg adventures with.
39:54.52
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, now having said that I would say like get through open enrollment before you start worrying about like okay.
40:03.48
Rick
Oh gosh of course yes, this is this this is more just like you know and sometimes you just want to work on something fun and exciting like this is what's fun exciting to me right now. Um, it's not, but but there is a question there of like should I should I build this should I Mvp this should I just go spend a ton of money on a firm.
40:08.41
tylerking
Yeah, yeah.
40:21.67
Rick
Like bubble muff.
40:21.68
tylerking
Yeah I think a cool approach would be to say the first step is pay Jd the current benefit you're offering by pressing a button somewhere. That's like ah ah, a tool with an api and then like make it so the button is pressed in webflow and it triggers something is that like. Just gradually grow expand the island out from that initial ach transfer until eventually the whole thing's automated.
40:45.10
Rick
Yeahplace exppeify. So right now he's submitttting all this stuff through exppeify um don't record the reimbursement and expenseify that's step. 1 record it in my own system right.
40:53.60
tylerking
Yeah, or well what I would do because I would I would tackle the thing you're most nervous about which is ach I assume you can turn off AcH stuff inpeify have him recorded there.
41:02.58
Rick
Yeah I would yeah I would basically just do a manual record record record record not actually the reimbursement go into my new system and just phrase one is just like make it so I can reimburse Jd whatever was owe to him and expenseify through my my platform. Yeah dad brilliant.
41:15.84
tylerking
Yeah, that's where I would start personally. But.
41:21.11
Rick
These are the little breakthroughs. Thank you Thank you? Thank you? Thank you I would respond I was spun on this with conversations with lots of other people before I I landed. Thank you.
41:28.66
tylerking
Um, you just got to talk to people who have built almost this exact same thing with you before.
41:34.72
Rick
I would like yeah we should have leveraged that more ah in hindsight? um, but we didn't all right.
41:39.21
tylerking
Yeah, for sure. Um, all right last last episode I mentioned we decided not to do interns. Um, oopsie yes, we are doing interns. Ah there's probably not much to talk about here. But I mentioned we had an offer out to 1 of our coding fellows from last summer. And I was like she's not going to take it so we're not going to do interns but then she accepted ah and I think it would be kind of cruel to her to like have her be the only intern. It would be a pretty lonely summer so we're going to go find 1 more and we're going to have interns after all.
42:10.90
Rick
I can't wait to have this conversation again next year to see if like see what happens.
42:11.73
tylerking
So yup, yup so much for that plan. But the the thing that I really do like about it though. The the reason I was sure she wouldn't accept I gave her the offer and I basically said like I knew she doesn't want to work at a big tech company. But I said like you can get a job at like or an internship at Google or wherever like on paper you're a rockstar. Go do go do that. Even if you don't want to work at Google having that on your resume is going to be great for you like so literally I handed her the offer and said you should not accept this. Um and I thought she would do that and then I haven't like talked her in detail yet. Ah, but i.
42:39.10
Rick
Bye.
42:44.19
Rick
Um, what was her reasoning for accepting.
42:50.74
tylerking
I feel very good. She must have really enjoyed last summer for her to not even she did this before the career fair even like she did not apply for other stuff. She just accepted so it surprises me I'm thrilled like she's great and it speaks highly of the experience she had which makes me feel really good. But. A little unexpected. Yeah, no yeah, I'll take the congrats anyway, just figured I'd give an update there. Um, one other update ah that I don't think needs to take too long here. We talked 1 or 2 episodes ago about like what should.
43:11.80
Rick
Congratulations or sorry I don't know which one to say both.
43:26.24
tylerking
Ah, business be willing to spend to acquire a customer. Um I don't think we really did do you re-listen to our episodes I don't know if you.
43:29.30
Rick
Um.
43:33.66
Rick
I Used to um I've been so busy lately I haven't had for a couple What what are you? What? what.
43:35.67
tylerking
Yeah I went back and re-listened to it and I was just like it was an interesting conversation I don't think we really got any kind of satisfying system or framework or answer at all. But after talking to it was helpful for me I was basically one of the things you said was just like yeah do it like spend whatever you need to spend. I do think your your argument was like spend it to experiment to see what works and then try to make it more efficient. That's not the situation I'm in like these are channels. We've been doing for years. We already know what we we know we can't increase our volume with our current spend but we decided previously. We're. Willing to pay about 1 year about $180 to acquire a user and we're just going to switch that to $400 which is a significant increase and just see like does that change like adwords doesn't work at one eighty does it work at 400 maybe you know so we'll see.
44:30.13
Rick
I love it? Well um, can you report back on that I'd be interested like 2 two sides of that one does it unlock ah some level of like traffic that that you weren't like even touching before and then the second would be does it change your thinking at all.
44:45.96
tylerking
Right.
44:47.55
Rick
Um, in terms of the like like the ah but the at- bats you're taking those the very interesting like psychology there. It's a 4 x three x ah 3 to 4 x increase. Wow.
44:59.91
tylerking
Yeah, not not for. But yeah, it's it's a little more than doubling and yeah, it's that now there was it was one one eighty one eighty before um, but yeah, there's this horrible dynamic where if you double the price per click.
45:02.50
Rick
You said a hundred dollars before and now you're 400 right oh one eighty sorry one eighty. Okay.
45:16.59
tylerking
And to double your budget. You're going to get the same number of clicks and just pay twice as much for it So you have to both double the price per click and then quadruple your budget or something like that if you actually want to see an increase in volume. So it's a it's a nasty curve. Ah that we're trying to take on here. But yeah I'll definitely report back.
45:32.40
Rick
How long are you going to let this run before you go I can't like as long as you can take it and not throw up.
45:39.95
tylerking
Um, yeah, so we're starting with captara ppc is the first channel we're doing this with because it's like we have years of success with it. But at a low volume because to get more volume. You have to spend way more. So I think I think the plan is basically to spend like. We've been spending one or two thousand dollars a month and I told eunice your goal is to spend $10000 a month on captera alone. Um, and we'll just see what happens and then after that we'll probably move on and do it with adwords. So we'll see to be continued.
46:09.60
Rick
Um, that's awesome I Love this update I I may may make me makes me nervous for you but like burn the money.
46:16.68
tylerking
The thing is if if we lose 20 or 30000 on this. It's really not a I can't believe how like privilege aim to say this but we make three hundred thousand a month we spend very little on marketing I think this is a reasonable risk to take.
46:30.20
Rick
I love it 1 quick. Update for me related to like kind of being a little bit privileged is when you're privileged you let your recurring subscriptions build up both for business and personal and I like I like I heard like on a radio I was driving like someone said like. You should do this purge and so I went through and just did it I cut like the amount of money I cut from personal and business is exceeds like lots of money like I can't I'm embarrassed to say how much money.
46:48.49
tylerking
Like like.
46:57.61
tylerking
What? like really so like what are some services that people might be paying for that. They didn't think about.
47:06.24
Rick
It's not even that you you know it's not even that you're not thinking about them. You're using them. You're thinking about them. But when you think when you really add up the cost and you compare it to alternatives of like nonubscription goods. You're like oh the a convenience fee here is so significant so meal delivery was one ah Doorda is another.
47:12.54
tylerking
Have you.
47:24.16
Rick
But I don't I don't consider that a subscription so I wouldn't put that one there but like subscription meal delivery um like reading subscriptions I had subscribed from like probably 3 or $400 worth of annual like subscriptions to reading.
47:24.90
tylerking
That's not a subscription. But yeah.
47:42.82
tylerking
Um, like New York Times audible um
47:42.88
Rick
Materials. Yeah um trends that vc like was 1 um, like but they add up. Um, and ah, you know maybe I'll subscribe again if I want it. So my I went through Netflix unsubscribed hulu it's like there's no reason to keep a subscription up like. You can go resubscribe like the minute you need it again and guess what? I.
48:01.61
tylerking
Yeah I definitely I definitely did this with Disney's I watch a lot of streaming services but like Disney plus I'm like you put out one good show a year maybe if that I'll just go subscribe for month and watch it and cancel it. Yeah.
48:07.44
Rick
Um, yeah.
48:16.76
Rick
Yeah, um, so anyway, ah lots of money saved on this and i. Highly recommend it. Um, and then I was like well now that I've saved all this money. It's like I I've been holding off on like upgrading a subscription with front because like. I mean we use that tool like crazy at leg of Health and we're not using it to its fullest extent because we're trying to save money on like the savings that we just had more than pay for the front upgrade and we're not going to do it but because it's just still not necessary but just like it's weird how much free money is sitting around in subscriptions.
48:39.98
tylerking
Um, yeah.
48:46.38
tylerking
Yeah, and at the same time I was just going through the exercise. What would I pay for notion because I like over the last couple weeks I completely redid our project management flow and like I actually I I learned so much about notion I I think pretty good with it now and I'm I'd pay.
48:52.52
Rick
E.
49:06.60
tylerking
Ah, hundred bucks a month per user I think at the whole company which is yeah yeah, a lot of people use it as a serum and I actually think it but back in the day people would be like I use Trello as my serum.
49:09.40
Rick
It's this powerful. It's It's as a powerful of a productivity tool that I've ever used I mean you could be a crm for your for your business if you wanted it to.
49:24.77
tylerking
You'd be stupid to use a no-code tool other than notion I think like either get a real serum or use notion. Um all right I got to go in 7 minutes here um let's move to some some rants and shoutouts even though I have a couple more real topics because ah these keep getting pushed back. 1 thing I want to say I got the new airpods.
49:25.63
Rick
Are.
49:44.39
tylerking
Ah, Airpod pros that just came out way better. Well yeah, first do you have him have you followed yo you got him already.
49:44.52
Rick
Way better right? I don't know the news but I I always lose my airpod pros so I have to order new ones. So I got the new ones. Oh no I don't have those.
49:54.35
tylerking
The ones that came out like a week ago or whatever I think that their air Prod Pro Air Pod Air pods pro to I think is the general like while so like the sound quality is a little better. They've got much better battery life pretty similar ear fit.
50:02.77
Rick
Oh they way better I Want these? do they stay in your ears. Okay shoot.
50:13.44
tylerking
Ah, in my experience. They have a smaller ear plug thing anyway, the thing that I wanted to shout out though that I'm really excited by because there's a million of these bluetooth headphones these days. Um I think that what Apple's doing with airpods are is the most exciting thing in big tech right now like I'm pretty disillusioned by big tech and like. Self-driving car thing isn't happening anytime soon like Elon's not going to colonize Mars I'm mostly pretty down on all that shit. But I think airpods are going to be the first real version of augmented reality in a big way and a lot of the improvements they did this year point to that that. It's not about like when you're listening to music or when you're listening to podcasts being better. It's like if you're if you have them in and you're not even listening anything and an ambulance drives by a it will make transparency mode will make it sound like it's coming from the direction. It's coming from much more accurately than it used to. And b it will lower the volume of the ambulance so you still hear everything around you but in an augmented way and it's basic like everyone's going to be wearing hearing aids all the time but like really smart cool hearing aids.
51:11.13
Rick
A.
51:17.57
Rick
This is getting into the transhumanism conversation have you studied much about that I need this is what I yeah so if you apply I think like the idea is like what's the which is it Moore's law that set like was applied chips.
51:23.36
tylerking
Um, no I I mostly stay away from that.
51:32.20
tylerking
Um, yeah.
51:35.19
Rick
Apply it to biology at some point like human life gets once you figure out how to double human Lifespan you never die like um and so that's that's the central I think thesis behind Transhumanism Ah, if I was like independently wealthy and could do anything with my time I would read about Transhumanism because.
51:41.62
tylerking
Oh interesting. Yeah.
51:54.97
Rick
Like life only gets better if you can do like crazy crazy cool stuff.
52:00.58
tylerking
Ah, interesting. Anyway, yeah like airpods cool you got anything for 4 minutes yeah let's hear.
52:06.51
Rick
I saw an interesting tweet from Jason Limpkin that made me think of you. Um I'll read it the ultimate test for every s and b sas vender insert less annoying cm is if you are okay, losing your largest customers as they scale like I felt this.
52:24.18
tylerking
Yeah.
52:24.39
Rick
Same benefits all the time like are you okay like when someone graduates you, it's you know a big chunk of revenue like you literally watch these people go from $10 to $20 per month to $100 to a thousand dollars to $10000 and then like peace. Um, and like you you don't work for us anymore.
52:42.63
tylerking
Um, yeah.
52:43.83
Rick
And can you stomach that like what's your stomach for losing your largest customer over and over and over again and I thought that was pretty interesting.
52:50.35
tylerking
I definitely think it's interesting, but let me disagree a little bit. He's so there's this like venture capital bubble bullshit going on where they think every small quote unquote small business is actually a startup that's like doubling every year and they're going to outgrow you. There are a huge number of small businesses out there. That add like 5 % per year and they will never outgrow you the reason like yeah, we we definitely have had people outgrow us, but it's not a huge problem for us because our average account is two and a half users and when someone leaves us, it's like. Ah, thousand dollars in ar we just lost and who cares you know.
53:29.94
Rick
Yeah, so you clearly can stomach it I I was challenged with this at people keep I had to constantly remind myself that was okay, but like you know.
53:39.16
tylerking
You had much bigger customer I like you are not primarily a big account for you was not 10 people it was hundreds right.
53:47.91
Rick
Hundreds Yeah, that someone would get to a couple hundred and they'd be like oh um, thank you? Ah, but we need to go to group Health insurance I.
53:53.69
tylerking
Yeah I mean that's that's especially an area where like group health and like running a bigger business with a group health insurance is kind of like recruiting suicide right now. Yeah that that is tough I hear you.
54:04.73
Rick
Nothing you could do nothing. You could do? Um I've got another tweet. Um that is I could that I liked and that was um Tyler Triis is that he say his last name. Um, he put out a tweet about how to think about. Ah.
54:17.10
tylerking
Um, and think so I don't know.
54:21.00
Rick
It wasn't really bootstrapping but like if you look at the space like between selffunding and venture capital. How do you get? Um, what are the different like phases of capital and it really helped me like just remember that we're like we're squarely in the first phase at leg up health and the thinking is different. Um. How you think about investing money what the purpose of investing money is and I was applying it primarily to my own like capital like what is the goal of my capital It's not to get capital back. It's to get to the next phase. Um and and and he broke it into 4 phases I don't remember the exact name of the four phases. But I think the other thing that I was.
54:48.41
tylerking
A.
54:57.95
Rick
Not really thinking about. So 1 thing I am thinking a lot about is okay, we gotta have a how do I retain Jd for another year, right? How do I retain Jd for another ten years because that's critical for the success of leg up health and um it got me thinking like It's not just you can't just stay focused on phase one and phase 2 like getting to the next phase you have to think about the phase 4 which is monetization and monetization when you have a business can happen a number a number different ways but you can't ask people to delay salary you know defer you know. Invest capital if you don't have a payday for them in 10 years and I have not thought enough about that and like make it a part of our conversations on like the different avenues for that and I really appreciated the tweet because it made me go. Okay, it's my responsibility to my wife for how much money we're putting in.
55:35.78
tylerking
Yeah.
55:52.86
Rick
To myself and to anyone I asked to come work at Legupel to think about the the monetization phase of the business and keep that alive as part of the the day-to-day so that people stay motivated and are willing to sacrifice and grind through the. Phase ones and phase twos when they're not getting paid market rates.
56:11.53
tylerking
Well, it's also it's especially important for ah like a you know a calm bootstrap type business that maybe isn't trying to become a billion dollar company because um, like right now when less knowing serum hires someone we just pay them market rate or above and they're not making any sacrifices. But if someone's making a sacrifice and then you say well though the eventual outcome is you'll get paid market rate that doesn't make any sense so you kind of have the longer you ask people to sacrifice the more obligated you are to go big with it.
56:38.70
Rick
Thousand percent and so that that clicked for me because of his tweet and I really appreciated it so shout it to you have a good ah flight. We'll see you next week everyone
56:40.46
tylerking
Yeah, cool. Well I got to go. Thank you see? yeah.