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This week we talk about the recent boom in AI, and whether or not founders like us can take advantage of this new wave of innovation.
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.
00:00.52
Rick
What's up this week Tyler what is up this week tyler I
00:17.46
tylerking
A bunch of big things are about to all get done at the same time and it's not actually a sign of stuff moving faster I don't think it's just like coincidentally things lined up but like I'm I'm really feeling excited about the product and things that are shipping right now. Um so one the the biggest one for sure is zapier.
00:28.66
Rick
What kind of things are shipping.
00:35.76
tylerking
I've mentioned this before in the podcast like how embarrassing it is that we're 13 years in and don't have zapier integration yet but ah over the last week or two we kind of started inviting beta users to it. It's going. Well we're probably going to be ready for kind of a general. Release of zapier before the end of the year yeah that'll be a big that I mean that's that's like aren't you a little shocked that we have any customers. Yeah, um.
00:53.70
Rick
Very cool.
01:01.44
Rick
I mean I couldn't even consider you guys because that.
01:07.20
tylerking
There's other reasons you wouldn't consider us but like there are probably people out there that need zapier but don't need all the other stuff you need and um I know better than to think any 1 feature is going to like oh you know now we're going to our our conversion rates going to go up or something like it never works out that well. But. Of any feature we've ever launched I think this has as good of a shot of moving the needle as as anything pretty much. Um, it also has you know Zapier does a lot of co work marketing with you like you get listed in their integrations Marketplace they have like an email newsletter. Well I don't know I suspect. We'll be able to get mentioned in that. Um. So yeah, there's a lot of marketing opportunities with this too that I'm excited about ah mostly it seems to be going. Well you know everybody wants like so there have been a handful of bugs which we got fixed. That's not a big deal that and then there's like.
01:45.69
Rick
That's awesome. Do you have any initial feedback from users.
01:58.87
tylerking
There's this weird thing with zapier. It's kind of like building an api and that there is kind of a quote unquote interface but it's not a graphical interface. It's like how the fields are set up and you view you view zapier quite a bit right? Um, like when you set up a zap. There's all kinds of decisions we can make so let let me give you a specific example. And less knowing serum as with pretty much every serum you can have an arbitrary number of email addresses for a contact. Let's say so I could say here's a work email address here's a personal email address. How do you represent that in zapier. Do you say there's 1 work email address and 1 personal email address and these are standalone fields. Or do you say email address 1 2 3 and you can only have 3 of them. Um, zapier technically has a way to have an arbitrary number but apparently just doesn't work and they literally emailed us and we're like don't you like we were using it and apparently they were just like don't use that that doesn't work. Well enough. So there's like these kind of design questions that. As a non heavy like nobody at this company a lessening serum uses zapier heavily. We don't really have good intuition on how to make those decisions actually wanted to pick your brain a little bit on that like do you know what? I'm talking about like as a user of zapier. Can you kind of do get the decisions I'm talking about.
03:09.84
Rick
Yeah, it's it's ah it's It's ah you got to think of it within the context of a simple Ui but Data doesn't work that way always because there's multiple orders um like of of data and.
03:28.10
Rick
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting I haven't I don't know that I've come across that before with a C like a crm use case integration being an issue. Um, but.
03:37.87
tylerking
It's just worked and you've never really put any thought into how the fields were laid out or anything like that like another version of this is in every serum you can create custom fields right? It's not like there's a fixed set of fields. So how do you map stuff in zapier to a field that isn't.
03:42.44
Rick
Yeah I don't think so um.
03:48.13
Rick
Yeah.
03:55.81
tylerking
Like it's different for every account you know? Um, so I I was what I know you're super busy I was like okay.
03:57.53
Rick
Yep, yeah, it's Interesting. What Workflow does this well with Zapier. Um, so that would be a good example. Well I don't know that actually it does not do this Well I use so with webflow the way I use zapier with webflow. Is actually not through a zapier sort of out of-the-box integration I Use zapier to call their Api. So I I think like what ends up happening is that people who really need to do sophisticated things they go. Okay, well I can do this stuff out of the box with zapier. But.
04:18.49
tylerking
Um, yeah, okay.
04:33.45
Rick
I Want to do something more complicated why I need to like actually just call the api itself.
04:37.54
tylerking
Um, interesting. Um you use zapier with ah pipe drive correct is pipe drive your serum. Okay, um, and it just seemed fine to you. So if we just like looked at how pipe drive did it and copy it.
04:53.35
Rick
It works for me.
04:53.48
tylerking
You feel like that That's fine. Yeah, okay, good and to be clear Functionally it all works already. It's just a question of like how do you label the fields and I don't even to be honest, like I haven't been deep in this project because I do all the like a lot of the design work at less swing serum but this isn't.
05:09.45
Rick
Live.
05:10.29
tylerking
That type of design. So I'm I'm not really like I don't even know what the decisions that need to make made are but I'll just suggest they go set it up in pipe drive and copy that. Um, yeah, okay, that's ah that that works um the other so there's 2 other kind of big things getting launched right now. Um, one is.
05:17.74
Rick
Yeah, copy copy your competitors. That's the way to go.
05:30.28
tylerking
Search speed this is this has been a project in the works for over a year. Um, which is making basically our search if if you go into the crm and like search for let's say a contact by their name or something it has been just doing a very basic database lookup. Which works fine on accounts without much data. But we now have a 500 user account with like many hundreds of thousands of contacts and it just took a long time so we built a more optimized search for them. That's been done for a long time. The problem is it came with a ton of drawbacks like the actual search results were worse. And so as we started rolling it out to our other users. They all complained. Um, so we're about to roll it out to all of our users where we think we will get massive speed improvements which most of our users don't care about because it's it's fast enough for normal users ah without having worse search results. So.
06:20.29
Rick
Nice.
06:22.67
tylerking
Ah, yeah, our customers won't care about it. But it'll just it'll free up a developer that's been working on it for like way longer than I meant for this to last um and then the final one. The new Api is almost ready to launch. Um yes, a public api. So I've been talking a lot on this podcast about the.
06:27.86
Rick
He.
06:34.24
Rick
And that is a public api Very cool.
06:43.10
tylerking
Api like partnering with integration partners and stuff this. The new Api is a part of that right? we want to make the api as appealing as possible to our partners where it's like our old 1 you just couldn't do very many things and it wasn't designed well and stuff like that this new one you can do pretty much everything you want. We'll have webhooks soon we'll have oauths just features. We didn't have before which is one of many steps towards building this kind of platform for other people to build on top of.
07:09.18
Rick
What I recently discovered this. Um, this service that does um handwritten notes but like robotic. Um, yeah, and that seems like a really cool integration where first airm where if you want to just sense I Want to note you click a button. Um.
07:16.15
tylerking
Yeah I've seen those.
07:26.20
Rick
And have that pop into the service like that.
07:26.76
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, we've we've toyed with this before that like email marketing. Obviously a lot of serums do this but physical like you could even what you're saying a middle ground is that but without like you're talking about a machine with an actual ballpoint pen writing a note you could also just print it out and mail it which is like.
07:41.40
Rick
Are the.
07:46.31
tylerking
And intermediate step. Um, yeah, there are still a lot of small businesses that do Snail mail. Do you think we should build that or do you mean we should reach out to that company. Yeah.
07:55.90
Rick
I was just thinking like that would be an interesting like integration to have um I would want to use that for example for leg up.
08:01.36
tylerking
Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah now that I'm thinking about that I I hate integrations because like back and forth syncing is really hard but I guess you don't have to back and forth sink like they don't have to have your contact list. You just push to them here's a hundred addresses with letter. Yeah, interesting I'll to think about that more.
08:17.11
Rick
Or here's one.
08:20.50
tylerking
Or here's one. Yeah, That's true I'll bring that up. Um, cool. Thank you Anyway. So those 3 things zapier search speed and Api 2 are all pretty close to done and yeah, just feels like the products it it feels. Stagnant for a long time when you're working on these big projects and then all at once it just kind of feels like this rush of stuff and it's a good feeling right? I've mentioned before that the the thing we're going to start doing that in the past each developer had their own big project and they worked independently now we're putting.
08:41.61
Rick
So what's next.
08:56.53
tylerking
We're grouping multiple people on 1 or 2 projects instead of having 5 different things going on 1 is this redesign. We're working on. We already have we currently have three developers on it. There's still a lot to do but it's moving so much faster and I'm really excited about that and then the other the other next thing for the backend developers is going to be the rest of this Api platform. So Api the second the new Api is a big part of it but like we need to give people a way to like register their app with us and pull all that data into our app directory and like have a system for proving apps. So we don't list spam on our directory stuff like that. Yeah.
09:32.41
Rick
That's awesome.
09:35.77
tylerking
I'm just super excited. These are both great growth products which we we haven't really done many much growth stuff like product led development in the past. So I'm I'm pretty stoked. Yeah.
09:42.24
Rick
Yeah, this is the stuff I've been waiting for so I'm and are you seeing anything from like last episode you were talking a little bit about how you rolled out your first wave of integrations have you seen any bumps in in traffic or.
09:55.99
tylerking
Um, ah.
10:00.70
Rick
Conversions.
10:01.48
tylerking
Not from not where we can see like those integrations are sending people to us. Um I think customers seem happy like that. Every newsletter we send a newsletter out every other week to mostly current customers. It's not like a marketing list so much as a. Engagement with our current people list and we've done 5 in a row I think where we've announced a new integration and customers are like damn like all right I can tell stuff's happening over there even though we haven't built any of them so that's good. But I don't I don't maybe today's not the day. But.
10:31.93
Rick
Yeah.
10:37.24
tylerking
I'll talk about growth stuff soon like the the tldr is like growth kind of like I could tell an optimistic story about it right now? Um, but I can't trace trace it back to these integrations now. Um, yeah, what's going on with you.
10:46.27
Rick
Got it? Okay, cool. Well um, we're we're getting like a harder number of forecasts. So we we've added many clients. Um think we're having around 60 high 6070 s at this point. Um, ah. We're forecasting 80 clients. Um conservatively to begin the year with um which is about twice where we were last year at the time. Um, so you know I'd be really happy with 100? Um, ah eighty is kind of like good.
11:18.49
tylerking
Are.
11:19.55
Rick
But like it's good like it's growth right? Um, but it's man it's like so slow. Um, ah and so hard. Um, so that's like the positive is that like I think we have a ah good thing like and um, it's adding clients and it could We haven't had this like huge like oh crap pop yet.
11:38.98
tylerking
Um, yeah, yes it December Fifteenth is is like when open enrollment ends.
11:39.37
Rick
So there's still potential in the last two weeks here or in the next two weeks that there's a pop January Fifteenth is when it ends but December Fifteenth is when you have to is the deadline for January first coverage um so there's kind of it's kind of the soft deadline. Um, but.
11:53.82
tylerking
Um, okay.
11:58.28
Rick
You know I think ah it'll be interesting to see where we end up. But um I think positives are we were. We're executing really well right now? Um, and I think that ah you know positive is we can take a lot of what we're doing and just continue to do it and I think we'll add more clients every month next year
12:19.50
Rick
Um, and good lot of momentum lot of good stuff. Um man but like it's just one of those things where it's like is it really going to take 10 years to get to you know? ah to you know 4 3 years to get to 400 clients
12:27.18
tylerking
Right? And so yeah, I'm going to I'm going to ask a question that you don't know the answer to but you can like give a gut reaction like I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably find themselves in the situation in the early stages so saying two x growth is great. But if you're 2 xing a small number. It's different and a big question is does this mean. Okay, you went from 40 to eighty this year let's say does that mean you go to 120 the following year and then 160 and then 200 or like where you're adding 40 per year or does it mean you're doubling every year and
12:48.41
Rick
E.
13:06.69
tylerking
Very quickly that turns into a really interesting business.
13:09.49
Rick
Yeah, and I don't know right? and I think my my gut with this business tells me that ah the first ever I think I've said this the whole time. The first 100 are going to be the hardest because this is going to be a very.. It's a consumer word of mouth Like. Um, business and I think like that every client gets easier. Um, after this but you know that's a huge assumption I don't.
13:27.92
tylerking
Well are are you seeing a lot of word of mouth because I know you were doing a lot of cold outreach and stuff like that like of the 40 clients you'll have added this year where did they come from. Okay, so that's a great sign like.
13:39.55
Rick
Most of most less word of mouth organic. Yeah yeah.
13:47.90
tylerking
There's no reason to think word. Um word of mouth is one of the only channels that scales with the size of your customer base. Okay.
13:52.36
Rick
Yeah, the ah um, yeah, and so I guess um I'll just jump in into the next thing like so ah, we've optimized the adwords um ah campaigns ah to focus on exact match and they're performing much better so feeling much. Feeling good about the spin there drop the spin down to $50 a day and highly targeted Utah focus keywords so that's something we can continue in the year don't have great tracking around whether that's what which leads that's creating of the signups. Um, primarily. Because a lot of these people um are clicking into getting a quote versus um, creating counts so we don't associate them with a particular person. Um you.
14:40.28
tylerking
How does they get a quote work like I assume this is some third party server if you're using.
14:45.41
Rick
Yeah, it goes to our our third party platform which isn't on Google doesn't have an integration for g a 4 they have u a but not j four so I don't really want to mess around with you a because it's going away. So anyway, there's just like a little bit of of black box tracking there but like I feel good about the money we're spending there. Um.
14:53.86
tylerking
Um, my.
15:04.40
Rick
And the traffic that we're driving now based on what I'm seeing um and then you know so I'm starting to like I'm kind of at the point now where I'm like okay like you know I'm starting to starting to like I'm starting to think about toy 23 yeah Yeah
15:16.15
tylerking
So so sorry before we jump into 2023 can I ask it because you're you're talking about Adwords and tracking it and stuff like that. Do you have a sense of what the buying journey is because we've talked before about in the context of lessening here. Um.
15:22.62
Rick
And.
15:30.69
tylerking
We've always thought about it like you pay for an ad someone clicks the ad some percentage of them sign up for a free trial some percentage of them don't pay and you can calculate your roi but the reality is like maybe they saw your ad didn't click it and then sign up later or maybe they clicked it didn't sign up but six months later they come back. Do you have a sense of are buying journeys really long or is this like.
15:40.50
Rick
Yes.
15:50.43
tylerking
I'm at the aisle about to check out at the you know the grocery store and I'm going to buy a hershey's bar.
15:56.42
Rick
Yeah I don't know is the answer yet. Um, we know that like the the advertising that we're doing is 100% ah very bottom of funnel like people searching for utah individual health insurance quotes. Um.
16:04.57
tylerking
Um, yeah, right.
16:11.39
Rick
So It's it's indicative of them. It being a need um now. Ah what we're what we're finding is that a lot of people will come like so full around with a quote and then leave um and then leave their email address and so we'll follow up with them that way. Um, but it's not like a ah it's usually not like a search and buy in the same journey. Um, it's its it doesn't appear to be at least and if they do call or you know get in touch with us. Usually there's a um, there's kind of like a if if.
16:33.60
tylerking
Um, okay.
16:50.15
Rick
Oh I want to I have questions now and I don't want to I don't want to pick a plan today like I have questions and then it's like oh I I picked my plan and then there's other thing of like actually buying it. Um, and so it's kind of like sometimes it happens in all in 1 fell swoop but very rarely.
16:56.13
tylerking
Um.
17:05.82
tylerking
Okay, so ah, you, you don't have the tracking anyway, but it kind of maybe doesn't matter because it's like how many there's this like leap of Faith Any Marketer has to do that's like someone saw my website and that will turn into. Ah, fraction of a customer one day. Um, you can't track that anyway. So Who cares that this other service doesn't have the analytics.
17:28.26
Rick
Ah, yeah, like the way I'm going to measure success like digitally like from a marketing standpoint is like Utah traffic like if I get I know if I get Utah people to come to the website and like look around like that's good. Um, and then I want to spend money like I want to spend money.
17:34.33
tylerking
This is.
17:46.26
Rick
Getting more Utah people to the site which we've done and I need to I can run I'll I'll take as the next step to like run the numbers on that. But that's happening and then I want to remarket to those people. Um, and so like that's that's flat going now. Um, and that's all accomplished in the last three days so like that's that's um, all new.
17:57.23
tylerking
Um, yeah.
18:01.30
tylerking
Um, nice.
18:06.50
Rick
Um, our ah our outreach is going well um, ah so like I wanted to talk about what's working like so when I started thinking about 2023 it's like okay, what what's working well um, what's really working is employer outreach like employers respond to what we're doing and they're very interested but we don't have anything to sell them.
18:10.31
tylerking
Um, yeah.
18:24.90
Rick
Um, other than like hey can we? Oh no, we don't have a product. We have a vision but like they're like oh I love that vision like well calkaia today like well we can help your employees enroll on individual engineers. They're like I like oh um.
18:24.92
tylerking
Um.
18:33.88
tylerking
So what? What do they want if if let's say you didn't have anything and you're like hey employer Guess what we offer that would make you happy like what do they want.
18:43.67
Rick
Yeah, there's there's 2 things there's 2 things 1 is um I think like some sort of platform that like they can just add employees to and say like I'm offering something that is that it just like says hey this is a concierge service like it basically just puts some wrapping around what we're offering that.
18:54.67
tylerking
Um, yeah.
19:01.28
Rick
Isn't an excel spreadsheet um and would let us like automatically email people and then the second thing is like the paid version of that which is I want to contribute money. Um, so it's the same. It's it's back to benefit. You know they don't care about that. They just.
19:08.40
tylerking
Um, yeah, contributing money is through an Hra. They don't care about the tax benefits.
19:19.74
Rick
They they don't care about the they do care about tax benefits. But but I would say like they just they want to be able to give people a ah ah benefit amount. Um and not have to worry about compliance. Um, and so making that happen for them.
19:28.78
tylerking
Um, but then.
19:32.28
tylerking
But I guess what I'm saying from your point of view like what's involved in you offering that.
19:38.57
Rick
I mean figuring out taxability and all that kind of stuff for on a case-by-case basis for the employer and the employee but like I would say like there's ah, there's 2 versions of this one is like ah ah a free a freemium version. 1 ne's a a benefits version but I would just build a benefits version honestly because. That's what that's what would make money. Um, but but I guess like we we know what what's working is that we we are able to get employers to respond to us. We are able to generate lee employee leads out of that. But we're we're not, we're not It's it's like ah it's we don't have like we don't have what most of the employers want which is like. Vision of leg of benefits like um yeah I don't know. Um, there's 4 things that like I that are working that we want to do in 2024 and the question is like. Do we do them all like and like distribute budget across all these things. Do we.
20:16.54
tylerking
Yeah, so you think that's the 2023 focus
20:35.33
Rick
Try to do less. Um, that's question. So one is seo like there's tons of keywords that we're like like top 40 in that are highly targeted that if we just like invested in content. We would bump up the rankings and we get more leads second is digital ads like doing more there to get Utah visitors. And then doing um what I would call like programmatic like for someone once we identify someone? Oh this is a person that's a lead who has their own individual policy spinning more to get them converted to an a an agent like sitting on ah a handwritten note is an example um via direct mail like.
21:03.27
tylerking
Are.
21:12.17
Rick
Oh we saw you came to the website we saw that you have ah individual policy. You know we have this bonus program that if you connect your policy that will give you twenty five bucks signed Jd you know, um that that's kind of thing and then partner networking ah so doing more of that that that works and then. Ah, the employer platform is the big is the big like sort of thing that we don't have that would be like ah the first 3 things are working and we just need to do more of them. Ah, the fourth. The employer platform is like zero ah zero to 1 thing.
21:34.90
tylerking
Um, yeah.
21:43.94
Rick
So that's fun thinking about because I can't really affect what JD is doing right now with the time I have so i'm.
21:44.52
tylerking
Um, would would J D like he's kind of the go to market person right now he's he's talking to customers. He's he's doing I mean he's doing most of the work in general. But like if if you're saying we're going to do this employer thing that sounds like more product work.
22:02.35
Rick
Yeah, so it would be ah, have've talked to some develop. It would be it. It would be um I think where I don't know but like it would fall on me to be the product manager. Um, at least initially.
22:02.53
tylerking
Then anything is that in his wheelhouse or would you do that or would you need to find someone else to do that.
22:18.12
tylerking
Um, has.
22:19.75
Rick
And ah until ah, hopefully the person that we would bring on to to build would be able to serve like as they got educated as that eventually. Um.
22:27.20
tylerking
Okay, the reason I ask is it sounds like that doesn't really come at the expense of the other three. Um.
22:33.73
Rick
It does because I'm also the marketer um and j j d's like the seller slash outreacher. So um, with networking with partners. He can absolutely do he can contribute to content but it's not necessarily the best use of his time. Um. So like seo digital ads and employer platform are kind of competitive from a resource standpoint both from a budget like you know do we spend but we could you know if you think about like building ah a platform $50000 ish for an Mvp. Let's just call it I mean we could spend that on ads right? and so like ah and then.
22:50.21
tylerking
Um, got you? okay.
23:03.33
tylerking
Um, yeah, that's fair.
23:07.90
Rick
Ah, Seo you know, hiring content writers. It's another budget allocation. Um, but my my guess is that we probably need to do all 3 We probably need to do all 4 and just figure out how to do it is my is my bet and then the question is more around like how do we.
23:19.77
tylerking
Um, yeah.
23:28.30
Rick
How do we distribute the the the resources and the responsibilities in a way that um, you know we can actually make it happen. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard. Um, but yeah like I would say guys think things growing and it's it.
23:37.17
tylerking
Um, priorities man sucks. It's hard.
23:46.10
tylerking
Um, yeah, well that's cool regrets.
23:47.54
Rick
And it and it definitely feels like um Momentum's building like it just it just it's it's going.
23:53.22
tylerking
Yeah, it's it My take hearing this is like I'm sure you like I always fall for this where I paint like the rosiest picture may head and then like you know that never actually happens and it sounds like there was a story that open enrollment could have gone better than it did. But Also what find what I find encouraging is that the way you're getting customers is word of mouth if it was like we did all this outreach. We only got customers from outreach and this is as good as it gets I'd kind of be like well you've hit a ceiling already. But if it's like well maybe the outreach didn't do what you wanted. But.
24:12.47
Rick
E.
24:19.50
Rick
Um, now.
24:27.60
tylerking
Your customers are happy. You're getting word of mouth that that suggests like a long term very viable business. It's just like slower than you want? Yeah um, all right I guess back to me. Um.
24:36.99
Rick
Yep, that's it that does a good summary.
24:45.30
tylerking
I've I kind of go through that I have this realization over and over but product slash project management I know they're not the same thing but in this case, they're related a I I love doing that work that's work I really like doing and b it's important and let me explain what I mean like. I always I think a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs you start out having to do stuff and not having to manage or be like in that kind of role and there's this feeling of like worthlessness as you do management as you move more into management because it's like does you know. Is this really the most impact I could have or whatever and I especially feel that way when it's like I moved a bunch of cards around in a notion document for like 2 straight days is this really the best use of my time but I've actually a I did a lot of that this week and. I I love the work I just like my brain enjoys thinking about dependencies and like what's going to happen next and all that but b I'm starting to get feedback from some of the developers because this is a relatively new thing I don't know if you remember like a month ago I said we redid this project management system I built this whole thing in notion. That's fancy and cool. And I've gotten some feedback from some of the devs that's like they're like oh yeah I know exactly what to work on next we're breaking things into little chunks. Ah the deployment flower. They're just like they feel more productive and so when I spent multiple days moving notion cards around today. I.
26:08.60
Rick
He.
26:18.80
tylerking
Or this earlier this week I really think it like moved the Dev Team Towards finishing features faster and it feels good.
26:26.24
Rick
Totally I Yeah I know exactly what you mean? um, you know it's It's actually a good point I think ah you know at windfall That's a lot of my role and I think I could do a better job of breaking breaking things down taking something and breaking it down into like smaller pieces that.
26:41.57
tylerking
Um, yeah.
26:42.75
Rick
People can do is so powerful like it's but and and teeing it up and it takes a lot of energy and effort to do that.
26:48.31
tylerking
Yeah, like maybe that's the thing that was missing from my little ranches now. Yeah, it's you'd like to think oh well we have all the designs for this project. We know who's working on it. What more is there to do and it's like there are there hours and hours and hours of stuff left to do if if you choose to do it. I think some people don't need it like like we've got 5 kind of 6 developers on the team and at least 1 or 2 prefer to do this work themselves. They want to be like give me the specs I'll figure out how to approach it. But then the rest tends to be more like I I want to check stuff off a list give me the list. Um, and I think knowing. Who you're working with and like how much help they want is is a big part of this. Do you do have you said you do this a lot in your role at windfall like.
27:34.67
Rick
I Should I think I should do a more I think sometimes like sometimes like you so you face this card that I'm saying card but like this project um that like the time to break it down like to break it down. Is is hard and then it's like oh I could just go do everything right now and so I I oftentimes face the situation where it's like super complex I'm just going to go do this and it's like days of work but like it could have been hours of breaking it down and letting someone else do the days of work. Um, and I ah.
27:56.80
tylerking
Um, yeah.
28:07.74
Rick
I don't I never I struggle with like when to just go do it versus when to take the time to break it down like and um in in my current role because there's a lot of urgency um around getting stuff done.
28:13.85
tylerking
Um.
28:19.32
tylerking
That's interesting. So that's a little different for me because me going and doing it is not really an option I mean it kind of is but like so like the the project I was mostly working on planning is this new Api that we're putting out. It's not that I was like I could go code. It. It's like I could say to the developer. Hey figure out what functions we need I don't I don't really have a good sense of what's built and then build them and let me know when it's ready and we'll launch it and instead I went and said I talked to various people and I looked a little in the code I'm like here are all the functions we have here are the functions we built, but we're not 100 % sure they're ready to launch here are the ones we don't have. And I put together like we need exactly this done and then we can start beta testing it and then we need exactly this done and we can roll it out so it's actually me doing more work in the form of like I could have handed this off to the developer. But I think the benefit of me doing it is now the developer has a really. Clear list of like do this do this do this and so when I when I gave it to him in our meeting about this like later that day he had checked 3 things off the list as opposed to like waiting around an uncertainty trying to figure out what he needed to work on. So anyway.
29:26.18
Rick
Um, yeah now.
29:31.50
tylerking
Just keep relearning this lesson I'm saying it out loud because I bet a lot of our listeners are like me in this? Yeah um yeah God I Love notion I tried linear have you have you heard of linear.
29:36.66
Rick
It's it's it's important work man moving cards around in notions important stuff life changing.
29:47.58
tylerking
It's like the the new hotness everyone's like oh there, it's kind of what superhuman was for email but it's for like project management. Um I was not impressed I don't know everyone loves it though. Ah next up. Ok sorry I'm I'm like rambling a lot today. But I'm going to do some more of it. Um, our serum coaching team had a bit of a what I'm calling a culture refresh and I just thought I'd share this experience and I don't know if you all have like ideas or anything but at the very least I'll just share what happened so basically in the early days of listening serum. We got a lot of emails and contact forms like email based support. Um, mostly because if you were in our app and you clicked the help button it just popped up a contact form as opposed to like a help site or knowledge base or something and so we just got I mean at our peak. We average 60 contact forms per day. Um, since then we made it when you click help we show you like a search like search our help docs and it's still really easy to contact us. But that's not like the main call to action and we're down to 20 per day which a is awesome. That's not the point of this story but that's awesome. Ah, the point of the story is this year so we start having some.
30:54.95
Rick
That's great. Yeah.
31:02.23
tylerking
Cracks in the serum coaching team culture that we're trying to diagnose and what I think we figured out it came down to is the serum coaches who started before this change lived in a world where most of what they needed to do was just churn through emails all day. There were a lot to get through. Ah, many of them were very easy because like now all the easy ones we don't get anymore. We only get hard ones now which is kind of an interesting dynamic but like they're mostly easy but it was just about like you know, open an email type a response hit send. It was like really a grind. The serum coaches who have started more recently are used to harder emails and fewer of them and the team's bigger. So like they can get getting through It is not a problem but as a result they kind of like the older serum the more senior serum coaches were used to sprinting and the more junior serum coaches were used to jogging I'll say and. In an environment where some people are sprinting and some people are jogging. The sprinters are doing a disproportionate amount of the work and this create. It's not that one is right and 1 is wrong. It's that there was this misalignment between the two worlds. So first of all I just thought it like.
32:01.60
Rick
A.
32:09.58
Rick
Yep.
32:12.20
tylerking
It was interesting when we came to that because we were like there's a problem here. What's going on and I think that more or less explains it which I thought was interesting. Yes, so I think you just have to standardize or well what? what do you? What do you think I mean how would you approach this I have a conclusion to this but I'm curious how you would have done it.
32:18.27
Rick
Hety soft.
32:32.90
Rick
And you don't want to go to um, assigned accounts. You just you want it to be a ah like kind of round Robin type thing.
32:37.70
tylerking
Yeah, we debate on by assigned accounts. You mean like okay this account is assigned to this serum coach if they write in that serum Coach has to answer the problem with that is the customer is going to get a much slower response because like what if the what if serum coaches out of town. What if they're on a call. Um.
32:42.93
Rick
Up E me.
32:54.75
tylerking
Whereas there's a different sea arm coaches sitting around waiting to answer an email most of the time getting a speedy response is better for the customer.
33:02.23
Rick
Yep, like I buy that it also is better for the business model in a lot of ways. Um I mean I would probably you know? Ah I don't know I would probably you know just queue and and track ah assigned tickets and try to. You know, make sure that the the tickets are equitable. But then you end up in a situation where not all tickets are are equal and and then you um, you end up like getting circular conversations around that stuff. So yeah, how do you I don't know how you do that.
33:20.57
tylerking
Um, yeah.
33:32.95
tylerking
Yeah, so I think that's what you just said is a good approach. Another problem aside from that. Not all tickets are equal is like different people have different approaches like 1 of our serum coaches is kind of like especially known for really long in-depth emails.
33:46.57
Rick
You.
33:49.12
tylerking
Which take a long time to write. But for a certain type of question. That's what you want and other serum coaches are better like churning out the easy stuff and what I have learned in doing this kind of exploration recently. The serum coaching team during the sprinting days they sort of like naturally figured this out and they were like oh this is a good one for person a to handle. Is a good one for person b to handle. But if you looked at metrics it would look like person b was doing way better. Um, and I don't want like a super metrics driven approach to this so ah Michael the head of customer service used to be a baseball player like fairly competitively and in high school and college. He had no.
34:14.49
Rick
Um, yeah.
34:24.17
Rick
On base percentage. Did he come up with on base percentage. Okay.
34:28.28
tylerking
But ah, not that now he had a different apparently the way you're taught in baseball if you're playing in the outfield and like a pop flag goes up so you're like running to catch a ball. Ah you might be tempted to say I'm going to gauge when where the ball is going to land and how long it's going to take to land and I'm going to jog there so that I'm there when it lands and I'm going to catch it and apparently what you're taught is.
34:34.88
Rick
Are.
34:48.26
tylerking
You have to sprint to where you think the ball is going to be and then wait for it now. There's like a baseball reason for this which is like if you're wrong, you have time to adjust that. Forget the reason the point is like sprint and weight as opposed to jogging. Um, so this was Michael's analogy for the approach. We're going to take with everybody is just like. Everybody sprint all the time but we'll clear things out way faster than we were before and then there's plenty of time for not like literally resting but like a much calmer work environment. So we've just decided as a team we are going to have these 2 modes as opposed to just I Basically I think it's more equitable for everyone to be like let's get to inbox 0 as quickly as we can rather than everyone kind of using their own best judgment about where like how fast they have to run to get where the ball's gonna land. Yeah we I mean we can't I don't think the problem before was that.
35:38.51
Rick
Um, how do you measure sprinting versus running.
35:44.92
tylerking
Some some people were like abusing the system and not working hard enough I just think like expectations weren't set clearly we didn't tell them to sprint and so they weren't sprinting. Um, we've only been doing this for a couple weeks and it's ah, a weird couple weeks because of Thanksgiving but it seems like everyone's sprinting now and it's just like. We actually have a new problem which is Michael's like what do we do with all this free time we have now so figuring that out. Yeah yeah, and I you know I think I need to talk to I think like gotten feedback from everyone but cold calling.
36:10.74
Rick
Yeah, but that's great though, like that's a reward get him ah get him a list and tell him start cold calling small businesses that use pipe drive. Yeah.
36:22.68
tylerking
That's going to be great for Morale. Ah, um, yeah anyway I just I don't know what my lesson here is but ah I guess just like even when cult like I think the culture of this serm coaching team's great and has been great and it's been a strength of the company for a long time but just things need to get reset every once in a while and sometimes even this seems like. Hard as approach being like no if there is an email in that inbox sprint and I think it's actually going to make this a calmer work environment on average. So yeah, little anecdote for you. What's next on your list.
36:55.78
Rick
Why I just while you ah you'd asked me earlier I pulled up some analytics and I um I was fli flipping back and forth trying to find something while you're talking and I just noticed like 3 things happened on this call that validate the word of mouth thing for leg of health.
37:01.87
tylerking
Um, yeah.
37:13.49
Rick
1 I just got a introduction to a referral from a client to um, a ah a review. We just got another 5 star review on Google which brings us to 8 Um and then Jd just created another referral opportunity. Um, so like.
37:13.54
tylerking
Um, oh.
37:21.52
tylerking
Um, nice.
37:28.59
tylerking
Um, that's awesome.
37:31.54
Rick
Those are 3 like signals that are like very positive um to kind of support the word of mouth thing. So it's like it's happening. Um, yeah compound. So and I think if we can.
37:40.40
tylerking
Word of mouth is a slow way I mean that's that's why our growth has been so slow I think but it it compounding man compounding is good.
37:51.47
Rick
Throw in I just I want to build this employer thing I just know I've wanted to build it for 10 years and I just need to stop talking about it and build it I'm not going to be able to build it myself I need to hire someone and I just need to that's why I'm working my ass off and I just need to stop. Ah.
37:57.50
tylerking
Um, yeah.
38:03.50
tylerking
Um, yep.
38:10.97
Rick
Stop stop talking and and and we're doing there. Um, but hey I want to switch subjects with you I feel like we might have gotten like attacked by someone this weekend. So I'm like I had the flu and probably sound on the weather today a little bit but like I was laying in bed on Monday like curled up in a ball. And all of a sudden. My phone starts buzzing because every time ah ah someone signs up for a leg up health account like it sends a Sla notification and so it's like this is and like like tons of signups from like fake people.
38:41.45
tylerking
Um, yeah, and that and at first you're like awesome where this is great. Um.
38:47.27
Rick
Yeah, and it's like no no, no, this is bad is bad so it stopped Thank God Um, but like it kind of scared me in that like someone what could create a bot that like just creates fake signups and I have no idea how to have like.
39:01.67
tylerking
Um, ah we've we've dealt with this happens to us all the time.
39:04.82
Rick
Stop that? Yeah and I was just like it's maybe members stack did something to like combat it. Um, automatically for us because we use member stack. Um, but you know it was weird like it stopped and we haven't had any complaints about people not signing up. We just had another sign up like just now like.
39:23.10
tylerking
Okay, so it's not that your sign up form is blocked.
39:24.96
Rick
So that like that's a good thing would just happen. It's not that time was block. So um I don't know like what do you do when someone starts like fake signing up for your service. How do you with no code like in low. But how do you block this.
39:37.77
tylerking
Ah, yeah, with no code, especially what so I I mean I Guess let me start with why is it a problem that you're getting fake sign ups.
39:45.31
Rick
I It messes with my workflows more so than it does effect like there's zero very little cost. Zero cost is just like it misses up our reporting and it messes up our workflows and it's obnoxious.
39:58.45
tylerking
Yeah, um, and maybe if it's high enough volume. You also I assume send automated emails to these people. It has oh you don't okay, so we do one concern I have is you know like low volume. It doesn't matter. But if like if we got a million in one day that could mess up our like.
40:04.25
Rick
Be.
40:15.36
tylerking
Like like they're signing up with email addresses that belong to somebody else and that person might get an email from us and market as spam. Um, yeah, so first of all, we have a way to flag any sign up as like we call it is demo. That's not a good term for it. But if we check is demo remove them from all reports.
40:18.60
Rick
Yeah.
40:34.91
tylerking
I Would recommend.
40:34.97
Rick
Ah, so you basically have a ah ah manual override that someone can hit basically make sure you don't do anything with them. But you still have them in the system.
40:41.00
tylerking
Um, yeah, because deleting data is scary I wouldn't recommend deleting stuff from a database but I mean it depends if you again if you get a million like yeah, probably delete them. But um, it's nice to yeah but it's I like being able to ignore.
40:54.63
Rick
We're archiving them.
40:59.50
tylerking
Still, it's annoying. Do you have to go in manually and do that and all that I so what's member member tech has some sort of like do do you know if there's like a Google captcha on the signup form or anything like that. so so okay first of all Google has a new version of Captcha that.
41:00.30
Rick
E.
41:09.57
Rick
Um, there's probably something we could put a captcha on there. But I you know hate that like.
41:17.81
tylerking
Doesn't for the vast majority of cases. Nothing shows up at all that you don't have to check a box or anything what we do is so you probably don't know the answers but are these all coming from the same IP address yeah
41:20.73
Rick
Yeah.
41:31.26
Rick
I I I I can't tell because I don't have that access that data through the member stack because it's a zapier member. It's a member stack to zapier sort of push. Um, that's a member back to to zapier to slack notification. So I'm not getting I p.
41:48.79
tylerking
But could you go into member stack and see it so what we do is if ah if we get more than one sign up in a week from ah the same ip address then we show like the hardcore Google captcha. Um, so it's like if some this does.
41:49.16
Rick
Through that. Maybe.
42:02.40
Rick
To that I p yeah so you make it dynamic based on the Ip address. Yeah.
42:05.48
tylerking
To that Ip Yeah, which like again, how do you do that with no code. Maybe you can't um you could is this embedded in your like member stack embedded and webflow is it a standalone member stack page. Okay, ah.
42:20.17
Rick
It's embedded into webflow custom form.
42:24.20
tylerking
I ask has cloudflare does have a number of tools that can help with this but you can't have cloudflare and flow of front of webflow I don't think 2 of them I forget which one doesn't like it but 1 of them doesn't like it. Um, but you could you could solve this with cloudflare I think.
42:28.50
Rick
No shoot.
42:42.27
tylerking
I Don't know does member stack. Let you say like what we see is they're all from the same domain most of the time like I just got hit with these what what dumb I or like I was just getting a but oh oh well, that's okay, you can't really block that though because like legit people might use that we got a ton from.
42:47.34
Rick
Yeah, the domain that was how I know was the same guy same domain Mailinator mailinator.
42:58.66
Rick
Okay.
43:02.40
tylerking
goofamm.com and write dot edu like hundreds of these in the last week from but so now I I just go in and like may I'm manually removing them all because it just stopped. But if if if it hadn't just stopped I would code I would write code to be like block all signups from these domains.
43:17.25
Rick
The.
43:19.97
tylerking
Anyway, none of this is helpful because you're on Noco this a really interesting question.
43:24.27
Rick
I'm sure member Stack Apps a captcha that I could probably implement but it's one up. It's not one to it's one to many. It's not like oh if you know someone's do abusing then throw it.
43:31.88
tylerking
Um, yeah, maybe look into that though there I think there's a version of a captcha that won't show up for almost anyone. It might not block the signups. You're getting. But if you know it it wouldn't. Wouldn't hurt the experience of the legit users. It's like Cap Recaptcha version 3 or something like that I think anyway, sorry yeah, it's this is the type of thing though when you're starting a business. You never think oh someone's going to sign up for hundreds of accounts.
43:49.69
Rick
Okay, I'll look into that.
44:07.16
tylerking
Why Why are they doing it? Um, yeah.
44:07.88
Rick
Yeah, yeah, it's just like super annoying. Um, and then I guess the only update I have and then we can talk about Ai stuff is I have not written a newsletter in November and it like.
44:20.70
Rick
It doesn't feel good like that's a really important exercise that I do a weekly and I'm go to do it I'm going to get back to it this week. So um, every time I take a break from it I regret taking a break from it. So I'm going to do better? Yeah, um.
44:29.53
tylerking
Um, yeah, do better Rick yeah so I'm sure everyone has seen you know all these different Ai advances and specifically I'm talking about.
44:38.92
Rick
You want to talk about Ai stuff.
44:49.26
tylerking
Generating text and images based on prompts like when you you know, two years ago if you said ai people be like oh it's a computer solving. Whatever arbitrary problem and now like what what I mean is you give it a prompt like a picture of a woman in a straw hat renaissance style. And it makes a picture of it right? or a blog post about x y z and it makes the blog post That's what I'm talking about like you've seen all these advances right? Like there's a very openended question. But what do you think.
45:13.12
Rick
E.
45:20.72
Rick
I Don't know yet. Um listen I I feel like I don't know I haven't seen any written content that's like at the quality level. Um that I would say is is very useful. Ah, to me. Um, have you on the okay so you have seen that.
45:40.23
tylerking
Yes, what well what I've seen is um I think you can mostly tell it's not written by a person. But so we like the the model that I find really interesting. Is you want to write a blog post it writes the first draft for you and then you go and edit it and instead of it taking 2 hours it takes 10 minutes and ah so we I was shocked I didn't do it. unice unice did this experiment she used openai or whatever or no copy dot ai um and it was like how to you know 6 tips for improving your sales was like the prompt or something.
46:00.40
Rick
Um, but how good is that content like in.
46:13.65
tylerking
And it wrote a whole blog post and like a lot of the like they all a they all made sense. They all seemed like good tips and B like we didn't know something like I learned something from this post.
46:16.64
Rick
Yeah.
46:24.12
Rick
Ah, um, yeah, it's interesting. Well okay, ah that I hadn't seen that before um, the images so the images I was Goingnna I was gonna say is different. The images are amazing. Um.
46:31.34
tylerking
Um, when these the the images are incredible.
46:40.61
Rick
But yeah, like so yeah, it's cool I don't know what like what do you use it for to make money like how do you make money with this stuff. Yeah, what does it? enable? okay.
46:42.89
tylerking
Yeah, so so yeah there's there's 3 conversations I want to have here one is this the next big thing is this is it is the hype real to so let's talk about that in a second let me just outline this to ah. How couldn't can Sas companies start using this if at all and then three should we be terrified of this those are the things on my mind. So let's start. Okay, what does it enable the the image stuff. There's some there's some I'm not saying it's like revolutionary life changing yet but let me give some examples. Ah. You write a blog post you want artwork for it. You don't want to use a stock photo. You can just like make whatever artwork you want and use it in your blog post. It's not like going to revolutionize the world but that's nice, um, video game characters instead of ah well video games in general like I think Ai could potentially generate worlds. Ah. That a would make this developing these games a lot easier and b you know how in the zelda you hit the end of the map and you're just like yeah like that'd be pretty cool. There's already I think ah, what's that game. There's a game in outer space where your spaceship that already works that way but like it could be that on steroids. These are kind of.
47:42.50
Rick
It never ends. Yeah.
47:53.81
Rick
Yep.
47:56.31
tylerking
Toy applications right now, but let me compare this to crypto where for 13 years every like this is the next big thing but I can't help myself.
48:02.57
Rick
Yeah, you can You can You can't help it? Yeah, ah.
48:08.60
tylerking
But but 1 of everybody's been hyping up crypto like it's the next big thing and the whole time we've been saying give me 1 fucking application and you can't but this is actually much earlier than crypto and there are some applications like some real ones and they're fucking cool. They're really neat even if they're not super useful yet. Actual neat stuff is happening so part of me is like if if you're going to get caught up in a hype cycle I'm like way more bullish on Ai.
48:28.90
Rick
Okay.
48:35.31
Rick
But what do you get caught up like what do you go like I'm going to go ask the same question I ask which is like how do you make money like why? like yeah, okay so is are people going to pay to have images automatically created for them or is that going to be free like Google is for free like.
48:40.62
tylerking
Um, right.
48:52.43
tylerking
Yeah, so there have been a few of these already I don't know if you've seen these like um Peter levels made one that like you take a picture of a room in your house and it will like put furniture in it in different styles and be like here's what postmodern might look like or whatever and he made like about tens of thousands of dollars selling this? um. And there's one that'll generate a fake aot like you. But as if you were painted to be your avatar have you seen these types of things again. They're toys right now but like people have made money. Yeah.
49:16.52
Rick
Um, yeah, what I'm saying is like what skill do you like invest in um, to be in a position to make money later is it? um. How to speak to the Ai machine to have it create things is it understanding the underlying like math. Um or is it like what what layer are you like is it is it understanding application. Um.
49:36.18
tylerking
Um, yeah.
49:46.15
tylerking
Yeah, 2 thoughts on that a lot of people were saying it's I think prompt generation is the terminology for like giving it the command a lot of people were like that's what the work's going to be and basically in like two months that's already become obsolete basically or like I don't that doesn't seem like a defensible skill to me.
49:59.22
Rick
Now.
50:05.30
tylerking
And like at a certain point. The ai is going to generate the prompt for the ai um I've heard a lot of concern about the fact that a small number of companies like these are all just Apis. You can call so like I said Peter Levels built this. He didn't build the ai he called an ai passed it the right prompt and some images and it and the model and it passed back. Result and then immediately got cloned by 50 other people and there's no moat at all like you can't build a business around these little toy ideas because you don't actually control the algorithm at all right now. So absolutely fair I have no this is what I wanted to brainstorm with you I bet 10 years from now. I would put good money that there are going to be some big businesses made possible because of this I don't know what they will be if we just wait. It'll happen but like.
50:55.33
Rick
Yeah.
50:57.98
tylerking
If someone wanted to get in on this wave. Yeah, what do they do right now I Mean do you have any ideas.
51:05.25
Rick
I mean I think there's there's something interesting um in emotional support ah therapy type stuff and I think there's probably already people playing in this but but um, ah I I think someone told me that and somewhere in Asia or in Eastern Europe or somewhere.
51:12.13
tylerking
Um, news.
51:23.94
Rick
Ah, people like have fake pets like technology pets. Um, and so I think there's something interesting there. Um, ah, ah, ah teaching is I think like you're you mentioning that you um learned.
51:24.33
tylerking
Um, yeah, yeah.
51:34.58
tylerking
So let me.
51:42.55
Rick
Something from your your 6 tips for sales. Um, that that's interesting like the the teaching component.
51:47.26
tylerking
Um, yeah, so the problem both of these have I think is like still that you can call this api. But if if you're not running the core I don't even know how the technology works like the core engine or whatever like how do you monetize? well. And yeah, how do you prevent.
52:01.27
Rick
Um, what do you? How do you monetize.
52:05.30
tylerking
Ah ton of competition also and like the third question I asked at the beginning here was like should we be terrified of this interesting thought on the teaching thing right now. Everyone's like oh you can use these Ai like dolly or whatever to make text or wait dolly g p t three whatever the text one is.
52:07.94
Rick
Should be scared. Yeah.
52:22.96
tylerking
To make like blog posts like I said we did and then I saw a take that I thought was really interesting and so everyone's like this is going to be be great for seo and content marketing and then someone was like no one if if this actually gets that good. No one's going to Google anything anymore. Why would you Google something when you could have something create the article for you on the spot. You don't need Google to point you at the article just generate the article and read it. Um.
52:44.27
Rick
Yeah, that that's that's exactly right like when. Um if you think about like what is the most useful education tool available to us right now. Well that is Google that is the internet um, and it's you know, relative to like.
52:56.10
tylerking
Um, the.
53:01.00
Rick
Being able to prompt something to tell you exactly what you need to know like that's way less efficient. Yeah.
53:07.79
tylerking
It's it's possible content marketing just gets completely destroyed by this.
53:11.32
Rick
What what does a like what is the input for like the Ai in this case like how do you understand the mechanics is it using is it leveraging the internet is it trained on the internet. So.
53:18.55
tylerking
I mean at a very high level I do like it's It's trained off of yeah yeah, so all of these models are going to are all these algorithms. Whatever the term is are trained on some sort of data. So like a github copilot which helps you write code scans all of the code in github.
53:35.92
Rick
Um, but.
53:38.30
tylerking
And uses that to suggest what your code should look like um these image generation ones I think take in a lot of artwork like deviant art places like that and train based on that and yeah, I'm pretty sure the written ones are just like ingesting books ah blog posts I think they're. Training on any number of things. Um, so that's a potential scary thing like a lot of jobs are going to get destroyed I bet Now that part of me is like is you know every generation's worried about the next round of disruption. Um, people were worried about automobiles people were worried about.
53:55.86
Rick
Very interesting.
54:14.74
tylerking
Cars people were worried about the internet because like it. It's destructive to a lot of old industries this I I believe the hype I think this will be destructive will normally what happens is it also creates a ton of new opportunity. The people who get in on that opportunity are the ones who benefit from it and other people get left behind I Really I Really don't want to get left behind here. You know.
54:32.49
Rick
What platform is this going to exist on is it is the internet the platform for this so is it is it through our browsers that we're going is that.
54:41.41
tylerking
Um, well yeah, so right now the way it works is people build apps that call this api. The the thing I've seen that I believe makes sense is we said earlier like what moat can you build it has to be more than just give me a prompt and I'll return some content to you.
54:44.68
Rick
Yeah, yeah.
54:58.90
tylerking
There's nothing defensible about that. How can you build that into another product or so you said the animal friends thing if you built a robot and just the language part of it was Ai. You'd have a moat because it's like well building a robot is hard to is.
55:10.98
Rick
And.
55:14.99
tylerking
So sorry I'm I'm talking too much here, but let me ask this? Let's let's talk for a second I put some thoughts together I'm going to do this in an internal group brainstorming session at work. What can a b two b Sas company consider doing with Ai stuff.
55:31.64
Rick
I mean blog post is the you know the blog and image example that you gave do you have others like I mean well you have chat response ah product.
55:33.38
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, well I'm thinking more like product. How can we sell Ai to people I don't think I have good ideas I have some ideas. Um, yeah, so.
55:44.40
Rick
Yeah, did you have did you bring some ideas. Let's hear him.
55:51.52
tylerking
1 is like could you and I should I haven't looked into the technical side of this I don't have a good sense of what is and isn't possible but like could you use this to like chat bots were a big thing back in the day but the thing is the thing powering the chat bots was weak. Could you get let people perform. Powerful bulk actions in a saas tool based on language inputs that isn't possible with the ui. So basically you map the ai to fundamental like Sql commands basically and then someone could say find all of the leads I haven't talked to in the last month if they're in Georgia. Send them this email if they're in ah but if they're in Atlanta don't send them that email send this other email or you know could could you make ah powerful actions like that accessible to people who only can describe it with language.
56:37.11
Rick
Sorry I'm gonna cough.
56:41.98
tylerking
Um I don't actually like that idea Personally yeah.
56:44.37
Rick
Um, pardon me. Yeah I mean I can't think of anything.
56:50.96
tylerking
Ah, 1 thing we were toying with so on the topic of I shouldn't say we were toying with I was trying I was toying with I said like you need to build like like this is too easy to become a commodity. Um, if you're like there are services out there. That are saying ah are you? Okay, by the way that's a lot of coughing um their service like 1 of these Ai tools actually multiple them are like we'll generate a logo for a business so it ingests all these logos I guess.
57:11.82
Rick
Um, I'm working on it. Sorry.
57:23.37
tylerking
And then you say I want you know I wanted it to be fun green and here's my company name. It will like generate logos for you. That's going to be commoditized immediately. But I am wondering like well we have a lot of small business customers using us what if we were like with less knowing crm we'll help you you know, get your whole brand set up. Beyond just the Ai part of this where like the the moat is we are a crm for you but like we could just offer like add on services where the service by itself could be available from a third party for free or very cheap but like I don't know bundling it all together. Somehow.
57:59.24
Rick
Yeah I like the the theme of like having this enable a service. Ah you know a larger service. Um that you're that you're providing and you could do it more efficiently and cut your costs more so that it being like.
58:01.50
tylerking
Um, yeah.
58:11.76
tylerking
Um, right? Yeah, there's been this movement I think we talked about this in 1 episode like the classic move is you start as pure service and then you go to product I service and then full on product. There's been a movement the other direction.
58:13.85
Rick
The core offering itself.
58:26.89
tylerking
So um, Riley from hostify is an example of this where it started with the saas product and then added serve of a services layer on as like a kind of high margin add on thingng this could just make those services a lot more cost effective. Um for sure.
58:42.61
tylerking
I could have sworn I had more ideas written down here and I don't.
58:46.68
Rick
I'm sure like someone's thought more about this I haven't really spent much time thinking about it I'm like oh that looks cool. It's interesting. Um, maybe I should spend time on that but I probably won't.
58:50.80
tylerking
Um, yeah.
58:57.62
tylerking
I guess I'll just say that like okay I'm going to give a clickbait title to this podcast episode. How Sas companies can use Ai and we don't have any answers at all. But I guess I'm going to say this? um I probably seem like a huge curmudgeon based on how I reacted to.
59:05.89
Rick
Um.
59:13.97
tylerking
Crypto and other change generally I'm a hater when stuff comes up I'm like no screw that that seems stupid and it might seem like I don't like change if if I had to bet on a good thing to like like we asked a question a year or two ago if you are. Yeah, if you're talking to a young person who wants to get in on a new frontier. What would you get in on I bet this is it I bet this is the next one and I think that there will be a lot of big winners I don't as our discussion just showed neither of us know what that means what that looks like at all. Um. But I think it'd be you'd be stupid not to keep an eye on it at least.
59:50.11
Rick
Oh I agreed I'm looking at ah Beta dot openai. They've got some good examples on their website. Um that they're worth looking at Mar of the sarcastic chat bot.
59:54.90
tylerking
Um, yeah, well yeah, yeah, they just today put out a new better chat bot thing apparently so well it sounds like your voice is about to go so should we should we call it here. Yeah.
01:00:04.61
Rick
Wow.
01:00:12.13
Rick
Let's call it sorry about that.
01:00:13.83
tylerking
Um, well hope you feel better next week ah if you would like to review past shows and I don't I don't know the Rick always I tried to cover it for you all right? talk to you later.
01:00:18.26
Rick
Show notes visit start to last dot com see you next week. Yeah.