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Two founders talk about how to build software businesses that are meant to last. Each episode includes a deep dive into a different topic related to starting, growing, and sustaining a healthy business.
00:00.00
tylerking
Hey Rick what's up this week yeah
00:03.89
Rick
Yeah, Tyler you got more energy than me this week that's for sure I'm back from parental leave. Um, and if anyone's listening and considering a second kid. Ah it is way harder than 2 or 2 is way harder than one I should say.
00:09.70
tylerking
That.
00:18.23
Rick
And do not let them fool you I feel like there's this prank where when you're considering your second kid all the kid all the parents that have two plus kids are like oh yeah, it's way easier than just one like it's like not 1 plus one it's like 1 plus point two you know and it's actually 1 plus one equals 3 It's 3 It's.
00:33.27
tylerking
Ah.
00:36.40
Rick
3 x harder.
00:37.51
tylerking
Wow. Okay, well ah nonetheless Congrats that is some sobering news for those of us who haven't been through it though.
00:48.22
Rick
Um, but it's great. It's great. You should do it totally. It's the best.
00:50.69
tylerking
I Feel like all my friends who have kids like I when they tell me anything about their lives I'm like that sounds miserable. Why would anyone do that and then they're like but you should do it. Absolutely you should do it and I'm like okay there's something to it but none of you can describe what it is all right.
01:03.73
Rick
Um, yeah, yeah, it's um I mean Oliver's funny I think he's gone from like super excited about the baby to Oliver's my son. Ah super excited to like wanted to hug the baby to like. Baby is the worst you know baby is stealing attention from me and can we take it back. You know and um baby is it to Oliver he wants to hold it which is not a good idea. Yeah.
01:27.59
tylerking
Um, yeah, hold it? Yeah okay, well ah and and how long of a ah parental leave did you take three weeks
01:37.89
Rick
Three weeks and then I've got another week coming up when my parents come in August and then another week for when we move homes which will be September October so I got two more weeks left but they're spaced out.
01:53.83
tylerking
Got you but it's still like counted as parental leave cool all right? Well you want to dive in here.
02:00.25
Rick
Yep. Well yeah, so I mean the nice thing about parental leave is that I mean we have a nanny so during the week. It was basically me and sable tag teaming the baby so I was like oh I can do this like I even had time to like write. Ah I had time to read. Had time to exercise. But now that I'm back at work I'm realizing that was just the temporary thing. Um, the weekends are the hardest but I buy I buy I I rediscovered my perfect day. My perfect day if I can do like an hour of writing and an hour of exercise it pretty much doesn't matter what happens the rest of the day I sleep. Well.
02:37.91
tylerking
Yeah I Wonder if you were going through you know second kid all that but like with the flexibility of let's say an early stage Bootstrapper. You don't have a ton of money but you have flexibility over your time I mean do you think you'd prioritize. An hour of writing and an hour of exercise at the expense of working on leg up health with the hopes that it would make the other time you do spend on legup Health more effective.
03:03.96
Rick
Um, oh yeah, for sure. Why do why? Do you ask that? That's interesting question.
03:07.87
tylerking
Well I I think a lot of ah people start companies for different reasons and I think a lot of people do talk about freedom and stuff but people who haven't experienced it. Don't get like what it means to be able to. Do whatever you want with your day and like I used to have that I don't anymore I mean I I could like I have the the power at lessening serum to be like you know I could do whatever I want but I feel like there's when you have a bunch of employees not that I have a bunch but when yeah we have a team of people to work with and they need to keep certain hours because like.
03:22.42
Rick
Um.
03:37.94
tylerking
Support has to happen and all that type of stuff. It feels kind of negligent for the Ceo to be like ah piece out I'm I'm living my own life here. So I don't have that anymore. But I used to and it was amazing.
03:46.25
Rick
Yeah I think like if you think about it 2 hours a day out of 24 hours if you invest it like that's all I'm saying here is like if I can find those 2 hours for myself like I may I need to sleep obviously but I'm I'm pretty happy person.
03:54.27
tylerking
Yeah.
04:02.50
tylerking
Yeah, but I guess like when you have a day job those 2 hours can't come from when your boss is paying you so those 2 hours normally come from your personal time. You don't have personal time right now. So it's it can really only come from your work time and when you're running your own business. You can decide I'm going to work less and. The company will suffer in a sense but maybe net it actually works out.
04:21.86
Rick
I See your point now. Yeah and and in my situation. It's I'm gonna sleep less which is a vicious cycle.
04:28.78
tylerking
Gotcha okay yes, um, well good luck I guess you're you're a pro at this. This isn't your first time sleeping plus I guess.
04:37.27
Rick
Well I'll become saltier and saltier week by week I'm sure and then I'll get sick and then I'll reevaluate my life and then all it like who knows what I'll have it from there. What's your perfect day like.
04:43.50
tylerking
Um, yeah, we'll we'll see you.
04:50.58
tylerking
All right I hope not my perfect day is ah in the past who is different now I have enough of schedule like I wake up at 7 walk my dog I got to do that um feed feed and walk my dog and then like work on kind of mindless like like important but not ah. Not deep work like take care emails basically by say eleven p m or 11 a m nothing in my inbox. No one's expecting anything from me the rest of the day's open take a nap wake up at two p m I'm talking about a serious nap here. Ah while I'm in bed. Order Wendy's from door dash get out of bed when the Wendy's arrives eat drink the biggest doctor pepper you've ever seen. It's the size of my head. Ah and I'm caffeinated and feeling good from the Wendy's and then I work until midnight. That's my perfect day.
05:31.52
Rick
But.
05:43.68
tylerking
Is that more specific than you expected.
05:46.17
Rick
Ah know it's just ah yeah I thought like what happened to Jack in the box I thought is it is wendy's.
05:51.41
tylerking
Jack in the box that they have deteriorated in quality so much it used to my whole identity used to be about Jack in the box and now it's Wendy's white castle tacoels a whole hodgepodge of fast food now.
05:57.99
Rick
Yeah I got you? Well I'm I'm now a freddiess fan I don't know if I told you that know I Just tell you admit you you called me out for not having actually tried it.
06:06.77
tylerking
Oh yes, Freddy's amazing I know that are we going to pivot into a restaurant a fast food podcast here.
06:16.44
tylerking
Because you live right next to one.
06:17.50
Rick
And I literally went to Freddy's yeah I can walk to Freddy's um and I have walked to Freddy's lately so it's really really good. Um, yeah, so okay, so we have different like ideal days but the point like the point is like doesn't take much like that's not much like you could do that.
06:21.63
tylerking
So good. So good.
06:35.27
tylerking
Yeah I do that? Ah normally like once a week I don't I Monday and Tuesday are remote and I I I have a nine a m to 5 p m event on my calendar both Monday and Tuesday that says don't book anything here unless you can't find another time like it's it's ok if you book something but try not to. Um, so normally I do have the flexibility about once a week to you know nap whenever I want work late and I don't feel like anyone's expecting anything from me.
07:03.21
Rick
That makes sense. Well um, yeah, my life is I'm trying to figure out how to like I've I've rediscovered my perfect day over the last three weeks I haven't had a perfect day in the last two days since I've gone back to work. So it's ah but it was nice. Well it lasted. Um.
07:13.36
tylerking
Enough.
07:20.70
Rick
What's going on in your world.
07:21.85
tylerking
Yeah I've got just a bunch of different little updates here. Um, one thing is so it's been a month since we last talked because you're out with with the baby. Um I said at that time that like things were feeling a little stressful especially in the Dev team at lasts here I'm just perfect storm of.
07:28.86
Rick
Like.
07:39.70
tylerking
2 like what 1 developer's on sabbatical one developer was basically fully out to help with the coding fellowship. Our summer program um and plus we just launched a big redesign which there's just a lot of little tiny bugs that come with something like that. So. There's like more bugs than normal fewer people than normal. Um, it was just feeling kind of stressful. So when I was going to greece I'd kind of been like monitoring it and hoping it would have ended before greece and it didn't an interesting thing that I noticed is like I shouldn't say that I noticed people just told me this people feel guilty. Working on bug fixes because they're not getting their main project done and no matter what I say they're kind of like like I'm like you think I'm going to get mad at you because you're fixing bugs like I want you to fix the bugs. That's the highest priority thing but they still have this sense of like dread. That's that's why they don't like having lots of bugs. It's not that they don't like working on bugs. It's that they're not getting work on their main project done. Um, so right I should say I went to Greece for ten days that's something I did during this time right before I left. We basically said ok two week period um no like work on whatever you want. Basically you can work on your project if you I mean fix your bugs you you have to work on bugs. But once bugs are done ah you can work on paying down technical debt. You can just pick a stupid feature that you want that? No one's asking for whatever work on whatever you want for two weeks
09:12.25
tylerking
The idea being not that anything that people would work on good stuff. But the idea being like it's a way of just saying I don't expect any progress on your project. So if you spend all your time on bugs. Hopefully it takes the pressure off. Um I think it worked pretty well that the reality is that.
09:22.00
Rick
What was the result.
09:27.92
tylerking
Most people still had they were on Bug fix Duty full time. Basically because again we had a lot of bugs and not many people. But I think it successfully made people not feel bad that they weren't making progress which was the point. Um, so I'm not saying it's like I'm not sure I'll ever do that again or whatever. But I think that relieving that pressure in that moment was good and. Like a thing that people I think employees tend to be a little more anxious. They have more anxiety than so founders most of the time like to be a founder you kind of have to be like ish. It'll be Fine. You know like stuff's always on fire. It'll be fine founders have to be that Way. Employees have a harder time doing that. Um.
10:00.84
Rick
Um.
10:07.23
tylerking
I Knew a few weeks from now these bugs will be gone. It'll get back to normal. Don't worry about it but it is like if you tell someone that to someone in the moment like that They don't want to hear it you know, yeah and now things are fine. So I think this relievs the pressure.
10:14.38
Rick
No course not was there any like how did they speak choose. Was there any trend in how they chose to spend the time was it basically the same way they would have been it otherwise just reduced mental fatigue or is it is it.
10:30.55
tylerking
Yeah, so the way I actually I didn't actually say work on I said work on when you want but we have like an internal lingo which is ah we have one Friday a month we do tech debt friday which means you can work on technical debt meaning ah something that a customer wouldn't notice you know refactor some code or. Write some unit tests. Whatever so what we said is it's two weeks of tech debt friday but everyone understands that means I can work on whatever I want um so a lot of people worked on tech debt. They were like you know there's this thing that I fixed a bug last week I know it wasn't fixed. Well I'm going to go back and fix it better that type of thing.
11:03.99
Rick
Makes sense interesting. you're you're always you're always more thoughtful than most I feel like around people's mental health like I I run Rev ops at windfall and Rev apps is very similar to.
11:08.88
tylerking
Um, so yeah.
11:21.83
Rick
Engineering in a lot of ways. Um, and that we're very reactive to our inbound requests things break systems break you have to firefight? Um and when you have like projects that you want to get done that you've committed to and then inbound requests ah or bugs derail those things it's.. It's incredibly anxiety Inducing. So I can ah empathize with that feeling. Um and it makes you less productive for sure you worry about stuff. Um, that's that's Cool. You're You're always really good about that man, you've always had been.
11:44.83
tylerking
A letter.
11:50.34
tylerking
I appreciate that I it helps a lot that like the team. The team basically told me they're like do something and so the coming up with what to do not that it's that creative a solution was me and a couple other people but Like. It's really good to have psychological safety So that people tell you when you need to do it because I'm not sure I would have like just looking at people's body language like just looking at the Bug list I was looking at I was like yeah, there's a lot of bugs but a bad sign would be if you don't finish all your bugs like like they're coming in faster than you're finishing them and that wasn't the case people were finishing them but it was like. Roughly steady state if I'd just been looking the Bug list I would been like we're on top of it. It's fine but people didn't feel that way and they told me which was good. Um, So yeah, that's one of my many updates. Ah, how about you.
12:29.87
Rick
And.
12:40.71
Rick
Well um I think we were on sort of a high high ride before I went on paternity leave um and then I kind of came I came back. We had our I had our first leg up meeting this morning with JD and um, our marketing coach and.
12:56.30
Rick
Couple things have happened 1 We haven't had any we haven't really had any meetings since for the last three weeks pitch meetings with employers. Um, our current goal is to try to scale up to 20 pitch meetings a month. Um and not only like are we not hitting 20 we're not having any um and so that was sort of like a woo. What's happening. Um and and so you know I think ah you know and and then just to put it in context in may we had 16 so we we weren't far off from our 20 and then we we went to June and we had 3 and then July was zero and it was. It's it and we had a lot going on. You know in the month of June and you know that that wasn't related to reaching out to customers. But it it took a while to kind of get to like hey this is a problem were we're not talking about it. Um, you know you got to like say it once and then you know everyone's like yeah yeah, and then they talk about something that's like like.
13:47.16
tylerking
Ah.
13:54.17
Rick
Completely the opposite thing and it's like no no like this is a problem. It's like so it took like 3 or 4 like conversations to get to like guys like we can't talk about anything else until we talk about this.
13:57.00
tylerking
Um, yeah.
14:03.77
tylerking
I Feel like sometimes you're just hoping it. You know it'll maybe it'll correct itself or something like you don't want to overreact and and do so make a change when you just had like yet a little lull for no reason. But yes, this was more than a little lull.
14:17.42
Rick
Um, yeah, and we talked about it I think we talked about it in our partner meeting um a couple weeks ago and so I've kind of let it ride I read it ride for twenty one days and like today I just had to be like guys like we we got to do something different like this isn't working. Um, so ah, we're.
14:30.35
tylerking
Are.
14:36.20
Rick
We're shifting to less process less you know, ah less frameworky stuff and more to just like let's get on the phones. Um, we'll see how that goes ah between now and next Thursday and then I asked the I asked the I asked all of us to just say like let's reflect on how to make this meeting more outward-facing I think it's.
14:44.46
tylerking
Love it.
14:55.70
Rick
Think we've made a lot of progress internally talking to each other about who we want to be who we want to target even doing research and that's led to some good things but we're we're stuck um and I just think we need to reset. So do you ever get into these situations.
15:09.39
tylerking
I Think ah I mean definitely get in situations where like stuff's not working and you have to reset I don't think I have this if anything I'm biased on the other side where I'm more likely to be like let's just get started and we'll figure the details out later I Think. If I'm hearing you write the issue is like you're you've been figuring out details for a long long long time and it's like no one's doing anything that actually gets a customer in the door.
15:35.16
Rick
Yeah, like what like yeah the way I sort of left left with the the visual that I had from for like describing What what we were what we've been doing is like a hamster wheel. Um like there's a lot of action but like not a lot of progress. Um.
15:45.10
tylerking
Yeah.
15:52.33
Rick
But like that you know, but but we've also migrated apps. We've also you know, signed up a few clients like ah a lot's been happening but it's just um, the goal that we're we're working towards is not being progressed against so um.
15:55.58
tylerking
Yeah, a lot's been happening. Yeah.
16:05.17
tylerking
1 of this reminds me of I saw a tweet from someone that made a lot of sense to me which is like there's a huge gap between a startup that um like has no traction at all and a startup that has a little traction but has plateaued. And the difference is if you have a little traction. You know what problems to work on and what problems to solve and if you have no traction. You're just guessing and it does kind of feel like that might be so some like 1 of the reasons to go out and be talking to more people and get these meetings scheduled is like. If you're spinning on the hamster wheel. Are you even spinning about the right things I wonder.
16:38.89
Rick
Exactly It's exactly right? Um, yeah, it's a a vacuum conversation right? It's very it feels very circular The so yeah, like it's just but anyway like my like I can just want to talk to you like what when in General. What do you do when your team is feeling stuck. Um and they're like maybe they're focused on the wrong things. Do you? What? what are your do you have any like tactical advice for me like.
16:57.84
tylerking
Um.
17:03.64
tylerking
I mean I assume in this scenario you don't know what the answer like it. Obviously if you're just like I know what they should be working on.
17:12.50
Rick
I think that we should just go like I think we should be just focused on activity and just in like outbound activity. Um, and I and and that's not and until that's happening and it's not working like there's nothing to talk about. So um, so.
17:14.70
tylerking
Um, yeah.
17:24.99
tylerking
Right? So when you say like do I have any tricks like do you mean tricks for communicating it. Um.
17:29.89
Rick
Like went knowing when to like step in um, how long do you wait like there's I mean there's a chance that if I had waited another week like Jd would have gotten there on his own and you felt more ownership over the change and shift.
17:43.29
tylerking
I think there's value in ah if there's value in stepping in even if it would have fixed itself in my opinion because everyone who's working with you isn't just it's not just about getting the work done. It's about setting the tone for the future and if a thing should have happened in one week and it happened in four weeks by stepping in at three and a half weeks and being like this this is un acceptpt not not like scolding anyone necessarily but being like this isn't this isn't how we should be aiming to do stuff I think it's a it sets the tone for the next time this happens. So I I would say probably I would air on. I think it's good. You stepped in rather than saying maybe this will sort itself out in a week
18:24.11
Rick
Yeah, and then like ah do you generally agree with the solution here like hey guys like let's just let's let's let's let's remove all sort of restriction and and just like start like let's just go talk to people.
18:31.80
tylerking
Um.
18:38.68
tylerking
Yeah, an analogy in my like from my experience that I've talked about on the podcast is like a year year and a half ago when we were getting started on this growth thing. One of the things we did is like we're just like spin up spin up some Adwords campaigns spin up being campaigns. Try Linkedin Tricora like well, what should the text be I don't care spin up in a you know, spin up a campaign um because you can yeah you can refine something. But if if nothing's happy. So anyway, yeah I ah now do does j d have what he needs if you say.
18:59.11
Rick
Put something there and then we can test it. Yeah.
19:14.57
tylerking
Go start talking to people does he have what he needs to do that I don't know.
19:18.13
Rick
And that's that's a great question so where what I've been. You know what I was looking for going into the meeting is like where should I be spending my time and ah, you know I think I came in thinking that like one of the things to do is just update the website with the new messaging. You know that's an easy thing.
19:32.94
tylerking
Um, okay.
19:34.00
Rick
Um, but but I'm I'm kind of leaving with I think it's it's it's actually doing a little bit of what Jd's doing on a smaller scale to identify the tools that he needs to be able to do it. Um, and some of those tools are email templates some of those tools are website pages some of those tools are ah. Other things but like those are that's where I go and then we can collaborate you know on on that stuff. But I think he does the the answer is yes he does have the tools and he knows how to do this like as evidenced by the fact that we grew over 100 % last year Um, and you know it's it's like you know in the meetings that we've had you know in the last two months two or three months um
20:04.82
tylerking
Um, yeah.
20:09.92
tylerking
But yeah, okay, let me let me share something I So again, this is a shitty thing to do on a podcast because like I you and I have had conversations other other people I heard so let me try and ah give an update. We had a partner meeting which is you me and J d.
20:10.97
Rick
Just you just.
20:25.46
tylerking
I'm mostly sitting there listening to the conversation about sales and marketing because that's your department the 2 of you but 1 thing that came up is j d's like when I talk to an employer and try and offer them this product that isn't finished yet. They're not interested yet. Ah because I'm currently building the product and.
20:27.66
Rick
See.
20:43.23
tylerking
It doesn't exist and we're not even sure when it does exist how compelling it's going to be um and then you responded with I've already sold this to 2 people when it was just a spreadsheet so let's do more of that which I think makes a lot of sense and I my perception of what how Jd responded to that is like lot of motivation like oh shit. Yeah, you did like you did do this. Means I can do it. Um now I realize you're extremely busy I wonder if the thing you should be doing is going out and selling number 3 like client number 3 you've done it twice prove. It wasn't a fluke prove. It wasn't because you already were friends with them or whatever. Um.
21:13.70
Rick
What's number 3 ah.
21:21.99
tylerking
Ah, like ah but I don't know I'm just throwing that out as an idea.
21:25.11
Rick
I would go there. Ah if we were having conversations and pitching it. We're not having any conversations. Yeah, so like I think like I want to get I think the biggest problem to solve is we got to get this like daily grind started again of just booking meetings.
21:30.26
tylerking
Um, we're not even getting the conversations. That's fair.
21:40.12
tylerking
Um, yeah.
21:41.40
Rick
And then we have meetings to like talk about versus hypothetic but hypothetical situations. Um I think that's right and then it's like but then it's like well you know how can I help J D do that? Well, it's try to book meetings with him and then you know share my learnings with him and and systematize it I think that's the right thing.
21:43.55
tylerking
Um, okay, hundred percent agree with that.
21:55.70
tylerking
Um, and.
22:00.00
Rick
Um, I know one thing like I would want to do if I were sending out an email which I'm gonna do tomorrow morning instead of writing for an hour instead of exercising for an hour I will spend an hour writing cold emails to leg up health prospects tomorrow. Um, but but when I when I write my first I'm gonna want to link to the website and the website doesn't say what it doesn't reinforce with the websites.
22:05.35
tylerking
Um, this is.
22:19.30
Rick
But I'm going to say my email does that matter I don't know but like it's something. Yeah, so it but it doesn't for the outreach to happen. But for the effectiveness of the outreach. Maybe it does I don't know.
22:19.73
tylerking
Now No I'm going to say no.
22:27.78
tylerking
Yeah, but this is like in the early days of listening serum. We were paying $1000 per user from adwords. It was it was it didn't work like the messaging wasn't right all that. But there's a big difference between I'm getting one user a month for a thousand dollars when I need to.
22:34.58
Rick
It doesn't matter. Yeah.
22:46.85
tylerking
You know I need to cut that by 80% that cost. There's a big difference between that and I'm doing nothing. You can't optimize nothing. So.
22:52.18
Rick
That that's yes, so gosh you just that is the headline. You can't optimize nothing I'm writing that down you just said beautiful. That is what we're doing. We're optimizing nothing.
22:57.95
tylerking
Um, is for for. Yeah I and and it again I want to like I don't want to act like oh I'm so smart I already know this I have I've done this a million times which is why I'm saying this? yeah.
23:09.93
Rick
A million times but like you like yeah so I guess we've caught it. It just feels like this very so cyclical thing that we we find ourselves in um I've seen it in every business that I've been involved in ah and it's just like that.
23:21.62
tylerking
This is the value of experience. So this is why having you and and me in a business can be helpful is like yeah like let's you know instead of waiting three months to see it. You saw it after three weeks or whatever. Um, and you you might beat yourself up over why did it even take that long but you saw it. And you know you know the playbook which is get something so that you can start optimizing a real thing really inspiring language.
23:44.73
Rick
Get get something. It's when you're optimizing when you're optimizing for nothing stop read recognize what is happening and start getting something.
23:58.97
tylerking
Um, if no one's hitting your website who cares? what the message is.
24:02.46
Rick
That's why I know? Ah, um, well ah the crazy thing is we grow every month like like it's ah it's not. It's not like this thing's just like totally broken, but it's like man. It just feels like we're just like some very basic.
24:10.11
tylerking
Um, yeah.
24:20.75
Rick
Ah, things in place away. Ah from just accelerated growth and the other thing I thought a lot about I'm sorry I'm I'm talking a lot here. But 1 thing I I really enjoyed about parental leave is I had time to think and I haven't had time to think in a while and ah.
24:35.98
tylerking
Um, and.
24:38.59
Rick
That's one thing I think I like about writing and exercise it every day is like it forces that reflexive nature but we're not in a situation where it's like we want to create a curve right? leg up Health We just want to make it go like this so we just want to accelerate the growth rate and it's like.
24:51.48
tylerking
Yeah, now, although you the growth rate is coming from individual consumer health insurance clients and the goal is to get group like like employer clients right? Yeah, but that's not that hasn't grown in two months right
25:03.57
Rick
Um, we we've gone from 0 to 5 already this year
25:09.70
Rick
Um, I think we added one last two months ago yeah we added one in June.
25:14.60
tylerking
Okay, yeah, okay, but the the month over month growth that has happened in the last couple months has been anyway. Okay, maybe um.
25:19.20
Rick
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying I'm just i'm'm so I guess what I'm saying is like we have this like thing that's working we have employer clients. We have consumer clients we if we did nothing else. We would get another employer client in a couple of months some way somehow and q when q 4 hits will get several.
25:32.11
tylerking
Yeah, just got to do more of it.
25:38.42
Rick
Um, but it's not enough to get to our goal So we just need to make it go like this just a little bit like and it's not like anything dramatic.
25:41.23
tylerking
Yeah, you see this, you see this on indie hackers all the time if you like there's a bunch of people who are like kind of entrepreneurs trying to get started and they'll they'll say hey here's my plan to get customers or whatever and some like know it all smart ass will comment like. Well, you know just to pay your own bills. You need to be getting 10 times that many customers. So your plan won't work and it's like well no you start with the the one tenth what you need plan and then you know you double that and then you double that um people who shoot for the where you need to be from the very beginning that. I think that's unrealistic. So anyway, yeah, we're on the same page here I think.
26:21.35
Rick
Yup, so good I think you've made me feel better about what what? the next steps are um I just ah I do think it's worth. There's some confident I think there's momentum from having consistent messaging that I could just like iterate on while I'm doing emails.
26:35.56
tylerking
Um, yeah.
26:37.35
Rick
Um, but I'm not going to go through a full redesign I do have a question for you related to this before and then I'll be done with I think Leg up health related um topics and that is um, yeah I was confused like you you did the so I guess one thing we should celebrate I want to shout out to you tyler built a new app for legup. And we had a hiccup free migration. We are now off of no code and onto real code. Ah I am not no longer the the maintenance developer. whatever tyler is and this is amazing.
26:58.15
tylerking
Um, yeah.
27:09.90
tylerking
Um, thank you? Yeah I've I'm not sure I've ever had a launch go that smoothly before. Um yeah, because we launched on Monday I went to greece on Wednesday and I was like am I going to be spending my entire time in Greece like fixing bugs and stuff and so far so far. No.
27:25.58
tylerking
It helps that ah, it's a god I love what I love about leg of health is it's not a super tech heavy business like what percentage of your customers. Do you think of even logged in in the last two weeks like probably just a handful of them. Oh yeah I probably have analytics on that I could go look.
27:39.76
Rick
Ah, you tell me does it know us do something about that. Um, yeah I mean exactly I We haven't heard any any concerns if anything like the first monthly. Update: went. Better because ah, the logging like there were some things that got fixed as a result of the transition like the logging to pipe drive. Um, but yeah, like I just I'm super happy. But anyway I Ah I saw that we we're kind of using a different blue ah gray tone for the application. And I was just wondering what your opinion was on whether we should mimic that on the marketing website as we make updates to it or does it even matter.
28:13.69
tylerking
Yeah I think like eventually one day but that that feels like step 10 of optimizing and like I agree might the the point I'm trying to get across about the website isn't that the website doesn't matter at all. It's that everything moves forward a step at a time together. And it kind of feels like the website's going to be on step 10 where other parts of it are on step one still I don't think the colors are like a big deal yet. That's my thought I might not be right I don't know.
28:40.25
Rick
Thank you, you know you know? well I mean it's sometimes like you know when you have I know I'm probably suffering part of the reason I like working with you Tyler is that we think differently? Um, but I like I do that these are my where my gut my gut is saying what you're saying.
28:57.61
tylerking
And.
28:59.54
Rick
But I don't have like high conviction on it I'm like how high should I be on this but like talking to you about it is giving me high conviction to just go like hey until we're spending 5 hours plus a day combined doing outreach trying to book meetings. We're not going to worry about this other stuff and then once we're doing that and we're like. Hey we need to do this like we think this will improve the book to meeting rate where and we're actually optimizing something like that's when I will start worried about this. Thank you. We can move on I am feel much better.
29:25.11
tylerking
Um, flash.
29:30.21
tylerking
Great! Love it. Um, so it's July I thought I might give like a just update on how listening serum's been doing the first half of this year from a growth standpoint especially because anyone who's been a longtime listener knows like we kind of starting last year recognized we were in a slump and are trying to get out of it. Ah. As a reminder put things in perspective. First of all I think of growth in terms of Net New A R R annual recurring revenue per month I know that's weird to people I have my reasons we don't need to get into it. Um, prior to the slump I think like. We're averaging maybe 35 to 40 like let's call it 40000 a r per month and that's a net so growth. Minus churn came out to 40000 new ar per month. Um, and we at that time we kind of thought of 30000 as like not good, but we're not going to panic as long as we're above 30 um.
30:11.41
Rick
Are.
30:21.68
tylerking
We then slumped down to at one point we're averaging like 9 or something like that. So there's ever been a point where we weren't growing. We're always adding you know at least in the ballpark of 10000 error per month as a trilling twelve month average but obviously well below the 30 um the first six months of this year we added 174000 a r which comes out to about Twenty Nine Thousand a month almost thirty and so if we think of thirty thirty is the number that I have is like if we're above it I'm not going to like I'm not blown away by 30 but if we can keep that up consistently. We're okay, if we're below 30 things need to change. We need to keep like There's still a slump as far as I'm concerned. So ah, that's kind of good. We are almost at that point a couple things that are less great is number one I never know I never know. Emotionally how to respond to this February was a $64000 error growth month.
31:16.40
Rick
A person I mean that's a person that's an entry level person.
31:17.49
tylerking
If you take February out. We weren't anywhere close to 30000? Sorry yeah, um, and so when you when I say we were at one seventy four for the whole six month period you know a third of that is one month and I never know how to how to. Think about this because like well who cares money's money who cares if it's lumpy and we got more one month than ah, the other. But the reason it doesn't feel good is it feels like more of a fluke but I can't say what the fluke was I don't know why February is a good month. It's not like we had 1 huge client join or something. It's just it was good I don't know what to say have you ever. Try like tried to ah, give yourself therapy basically like like how do you process that.
32:01.68
Rick
Well I mean I I mean I I kind of just went through the same exercise with you ah on the meetings like I mean we had may was 16 meetings and then we had June three meetings in July we're training to 0 and ah you know that that's um.
32:07.60
tylerking
No.
32:20.60
Rick
It's kind of the same thing like I don't know how excited I should have been about the made thing like is it repeatable but now now this is all highly experimental. These are real dollars. We're talking about here.
32:21.33
tylerking
Yeah, the the difference I think is now three months doesn't make that much of a trend. But if you want to the trend goes like really good. Not so good terrible like it's headed downward.
32:37.66
Rick
Are.
32:39.68
tylerking
But mine. It's like the Baseline's okay and then it spikes up and then comes back down to Okay, there's not like a downward trend here. Really.
32:45.90
Rick
Yeah, so the the way I yeah I mean I would I'd I'd probably look at that positively. Um I mean I but the more comparable thing is my newsletter like it's like constantly growing with all like so like yesterday I had like 10 signups in one day.
32:57.56
tylerking
Um, very.
33:02.50
tylerking
Yeah for for no reason as far as you know? yeah.
33:03.75
Rick
Um, and that's I have no idea why? yeah ah I mean it probably is explained by analytics somewhere but I don't have who has time to look at Google it I loved your tweet by the way of Google Analytics like I finally just got to take it down to snippet because it's not I don't even look at it that made me laugh so hard.
33:17.87
tylerking
Um, I actually want to talk about that in a second. But yeah, um.
33:22.54
Rick
Um, but yeah I would probably look at it as positive but like there's always this yearning for like being able to repeat it. Um, and ah, you know I think like I'd want I'd be like hopeful that it was going to happen again.
33:27.45
tylerking
Um, yeah, the yeah, the fear I have is that yeah that it that'll never appear like so I think if if if I were trying to calm myself down I would say yeah, that's what growth looks like it's not when to to say you want to average thirty k a month. Doesn't mean every month is thirty k there's ups and downs and whatever. It's really an average and if you had this one really good month. You'll have another one next half and and the half after that and half that. Um, but yeah, then the other voice in my head is like well but maybe not.
33:58.11
Rick
Well I guess where I would want to like I'd want to confirm that like so what I would I guess that when I'd start to look at his rolling numbers like what's the rolling. You know what? a rolling ninety days or is it 1 rolling like rolling 21 s and see like rolling twelve months so
34:08.67
tylerking
Um, yeah, we we look at rolling twelve month normally and a rolling twelve month is it's going out. It's not going up fast but it's going up.
34:18.91
Rick
That's good. It's a good trend I wrote have you looked at it compared to like a one twenty or one eighty you might want to like compare a different time 3 frames to see if okay.
34:25.83
tylerking
The problem is we're kind of seasonal so like summer is always going to be worse than like ah late winter early springs always the best and then summers worst as people go on vacation and then it gets a little better in the fall and then it's terrible during the holidays. So if you're looking at it. If you're comparing. Yeah basically because of that we tend to compare twelve month periods
34:41.90
Rick
Yeah, it kind of stinks though because you don't know what you have to wait to do you did how how quick is that that that feedback loops.
34:50.19
tylerking
Um I think I might I might have something like what you're talking about which is this is different but we have a chart that shows the number free free the number of free trial users at any given time is kind of a forward looking indicator for how much growth we're going to have and we have like that mapped out like. The same twelve month periods with a bunch of lines over the same twelve months like going back several years so we can see where were we last year in the year before and the year before at this time and you can see the whole curve so you can be like okay last year we start out stronger but we dropped more or whatever that does give me some kind of sense of like. Are we good compared to three months ago are we good compared to twelve months ago
35:31.60
Rick
That's good. Yeah, like is it is is that headed are they both heading the right direction. Um, cool. Yeah, that's that's interesting. Um I yeah I mean I tend to think this is these are good problems like to have Tyler. Ah yeah, like you.
35:36.10
tylerking
Um, yeah, right.
35:44.32
tylerking
Oh for sure, but 1 ah hundred percent and I actually I feel very confident that we've got a lot more I think we had a pretty big unlock that I've talked about already of just like we need to get back to basics and and we we are but it takes a while to like get the engine moving. So there's still a lot of stuff we haven't even.
35:46.30
Rick
You're optimizing something.
36:01.41
tylerking
Like we're ramping up this week or next week so I think I'm optimistic about the next six months being good, but the other pessimistic side of this if you say I want to average thirty k a month for twelve months like I just said holidays are terrible. Um November and December are always terrible. So to say well we did it the first half of the year great we're on track. No not at all the first half of the year needs to be 40 k or 50 k so that the shittiness of the holidays is canceled out so we're definitely not where we need to be but I do think the trajectories looking like we're we're on our way there.
36:31.78
Rick
Yeah man I Wish there was no seasonality like seasonality makes you like worry and it's like yeah, that's good like I'm just and leg a pal has so much seasonality like this causes so much worry.
36:39.46
tylerking
Yeah, there is less than we've had in the past actually um, you remember back in the day I was in the business of ah.
36:51.80
Rick
Um.
36:54.73
tylerking
Fantasy football I mean not not actual business I never made money off it. But my brother and I had fancy corpball apps and yeah, the amount of pressure on like you know late July when everyone's doing their their drafts and then like you you have all your leagues you're going to have all season and yeah I hated that.
36:55.75
Rick
Um, oh yeah, cbblitz.com
37:07.39
Rick
I mean think about retailers like they care like they're the opposite of you that all they care about is the holidays and you know one bad Christmas or thinks Black Friday kills kills their business.
37:14.64
tylerking
Um, yeah.
37:19.17
tylerking
Yeah, ah Sas is such a good. It's good. Um all right next up? yeah yeah I do I do so we're okay so I think everyone at this point knows this. But in case you don't Google Analytics pretty much every website uses it slash used it to track.
37:22.41
Rick
You really do want to talk about analytics. Don't you I didn't realize you had this on here.
37:36.92
tylerking
Ah, when when someone hits your website Google has a little javascript there that records that they hit it and then they give you reports about it. That's Google analytics. Um, they recently forced everyone to update to a new version of Google Analytics a I don't want to be forced to update but b I tried the new one and hated it. Um there's also concerns that the Eu has basically said Google Analytics is illegal there which is complicated I'm not even tried by it. But so there's other tools now one of which is fathom. Are you familiar with them fathom analytics. So.
38:08.94
Rick
I am familiar with fathom. Yep.
38:13.83
tylerking
We decided to rather than upgrade to the new version of Google we are stripping it out and switching to fathom. Um, we've done that on the marketing site so that it's it's done um, one of the the thing I tweeted about that you were referencing is in the past we've always had Google analytics on our marketing site and our app. Um, so we're tracking all these hits and unice. Our marketer was like hey can we stop tracking this in the app because like when I look at reports. It's just absolutely dominated by app traffic like the vast vast vast majority of traffic is like people loading their calendar or adding a contact or whatever and she's like I don't care about any of that I want to see like which blog posts are performing. But a blog post performing means it gets like a hundred hits a month. The dashboard of the crm gets like 5000000 or something. Yeah, exactly? Um, yeah, yes, and no a it's kind of complicated to and beat fathom.
38:57.53
Rick
It's say so it's on like she has to go to like page 20 to get to the the data she wants but can't she set can you set different views to filter out that stuff.
39:11.13
tylerking
Fathom is way way way more basic than than Google maybe you can do that I'm not sure but she and the other thing is she was just like have you. She's like I've never looked at any of this have you ever looked at any of this. The only time I ever look at the n app analytics literally the only time I can remember ever doing it is when we're like hey.
39:17.31
Rick
I.
39:29.22
tylerking
Can we kill Internet Explorer Eleven support. Let's go see how many people have internet explorer eleven like that type of thing. Um, that's the only time I can remember ever using Inapp Analytics of any kind so we're still made. We're still finalizing the decision but we're probably pulling it out I think we're we're just going to track marketing pages.
39:42.90
Rick
Well I'm interested in how you how you like fathom is it free or is there is it cost money.
39:48.42
tylerking
No, it's paid. It's quite affordable I think it's $19 a month is the cheapest plan and that covers like I think a 100000 page views which is a lot for a marketing site. It's I think we have something like five six million page views ah per month. But.
39:53.90
Rick
Um, yeah.
40:06.58
tylerking
Almost all that's in the app. So if we want to track it in the app I think it's more like one hundred and thirty dollars if we don't want to track it in the app. The Cheapest plan is good enough for us. You know a thousand bucks a year is not I'm not going to like make the decision because of that but it does cost more to track in app stuff.
40:15.35
Rick
Um.
40:22.48
Rick
Yeah, interesting I'm looking at it looks like I lost I didn't I did not respond to any of the Google Analytics request to convert my personal website over so I just like lost like tracking completely. So.
40:37.13
tylerking
Now have you checked the old one still works. They told they told everyone they were going to cut it off July first and I was kind of like bullshit. You're not going to and they didn't I was just logging into Google and using it today. It still works fine I bet they will at some point but um.
40:39.70
Rick
It does.
40:47.53
Rick
Oh really. Oh yeah, they they just scared me but interesting. Okay, yeah, cool guess how many people have hit my site my personal website in the last ninety days
40:54.70
tylerking
Yeah anyway, ah so yeah, I'd in the last ninety days I'm going to guess 25000 damn are you.
41:07.62
Rick
Um, 20000 it's not bad like I think half of them are from like non-e english speaking countries. So I'm not sure what value they're getting. Yeah.
41:11.90
tylerking
Are you an influencer.
41:18.70
tylerking
So I mean that's still a lot that it's so funny to me how you are like nonexistent on social media and yet you still have like an audience. So.
41:26.70
Rick
Yeah I tried I tried I Just don't I don't get it I don't get social media I think you have to be like it can't just be posting you have to like interact with other people and I just.
41:35.17
tylerking
Oh yeah, you you have to enjoy using it versus using you. You can't like use it to reach your personal goals. You know.
41:44.21
Rick
Yeah, yeah, like and I maybe I'm following the wrong people but I don't want to respond to anyone that tweets that I follow So maybe except for you I you're the only person I follow that I actually want to interact with now.
41:56.22
tylerking
Go follow all the people I follow. It's a good it's a good group um yeah anyway, okay I don't have much to say about fathom just like given an update that we we did it. We'll see how it goes okay, this one I think is going to You're going to like this so we are toying with. Applying a little bit of incentive to people to upgrade their pricing with less serum context on this when we started in 2009 the price was $10 per user per month. It was that way until 2020 in Mid Twenty Twenty we we kept all anyone who has already signed up kept the $10 price. We have not raised a price on anybody.
42:29.13
Rick
Um, yeah.
42:32.59
tylerking
But new users who signed up after a certain date in 2020 pay 15 So our price right now is $15 per user per month. Um, we've continued supporting the $10 users they get all the new features all that um so and does that set the stage well enough you think okay.
42:50.51
Rick
I'm waiting for it.
42:51.92
tylerking
Yeah, so I'm obviously so okay if we were to just say hey all $10 users you're paying 15 now. Ah, ah, assuming people would churn. Some people would churn and like factoring that in I think we would add a million dollars in air are overnight. Ah.
43:10.97
tylerking
Want to be very clear to any customers listening not happening. We're not going to do it I've had everyone in my life tell me to do it and I'm not going to accept the people I work with but like you know you just have to say out loud like damn there's some. There's some money to be found there right now gradually over time the $10 users churn we had new $15 users overtime our. Our arpu is going up but very slowly we're at $12 average revenue per user right now. Ah whereas it should be 15 if everyone run it so we've been toying with though we're thinking about building a feature that meaningfully increases our infrastructure costs not meaningfully as unlike $5 a month but like.
43:50.47
tylerking
Basically right now if you want to log an email in lessing serum. You have to forward it to a logging address which is how a lot of serres work but a lot of serarms also have the ability to s sinknc it down automatically through the Api we're thinking we're planning on adding that ability to sync it down but that means like way way way more emails are going to be flooding in and emails are pretty big from a data standpoint There's there's stuff going on. So we've been toying with the idea of if you're on the $10 plan. You can keep using the old email logging just like you have nothing will change. You'll keep getting all new features. But this one feature if you want it, you need to be paying $15.
44:21.59
Rick
Is there like I mean do you have an an estimate of like how many people you think once this becomes available what percentage of the users won't want it or even understand what it is.
44:32.35
tylerking
If it were free to use I think 75% would use it probably? um, it's just kind of a given like of course you need your emails to log in the crm and this is a much easier way to do it as opposed to trying to forward it or bcc it. Um.
44:45.42
Rick
You recently do automated. It's basically you dot marketed is automated email logging.
44:49.39
tylerking
Yeah, right it it working the exact same way, you just don't have to do anything So why not use it. Some people would love it I mean for some people this would save them like hours a week of work. Um, for some people it would just be nice to have.
45:01.87
Rick
Yeah, this is and I like it because it's like you could you could give this to one of your team members and say hey like see how many people you can convert. Um, and you're not breaking your code of like no no price increases ever. Um.
45:15.41
tylerking
Yeah,, that's the thing I want to be sensitive to and there's a slippery slope here where it's like every feature we add is like this and and then people like okay technically you didn't raise my price but like come On. Um I don't want it to be like that I want them to really feel like we've honored the original deal even though we have no obligation to do so. Ah, this feels like it's not getting too close to that Line. So I I think I'm comfortable with it. Yeah I Figured you'd say that. But.
45:37.77
Rick
Yeah I would this seems like a nobrainer I would yeah I mean it's It's ah but I do think you? yeah it won't just happen. You have to market it. You're you're going to have to tell people about it. You're going to have to have a flow in the crm to so to advertise it and tell.
45:53.77
tylerking
Yeah, I'm definitely going to do that but that there's just going to be 1 push. It's gonna be like hey we launched this thing here's an explanation of why we're doing this and the money and stuff that'll be the only push I think because I I don't want people to feel like we're annoying them.
45:55.56
Rick
Drive Awareness and then support the conversion.
46:10.37
tylerking
But yeah, when you're in the app If you're like I want to go to the email logging page. Of course it's going to be like set up automated email logging. Oh you can't.
46:15.19
Rick
Do you guys ever? do um, sort of 1 to-min webinars ah not not that that are like designed for customers to help them get more out of less annoing 0 m.
46:26.69
tylerking
We did these a lot in the past. Um we haven't in a while. It's probably been three or four years since we've done this we yeah, that's a good point.
46:33.97
Rick
This would be something that would be like you know hey you know? yeah this would be like 1 of 10 things to do to save yourself hours. Ah per week.
46:40.90
tylerking
You know now that you say this like what sounds like an obvious idea to me is like every feature release should be this right? Every time you release a feature. You should be like hey if you want to really get get a good understanding of exactly how it works. We're going to do a webinar on it. Why are we not doing that.
46:54.88
Rick
Yeah, and and you should yeah you should revisit like you you know revisit some best practices and where the new features fit into those best practices around themes like part of your value proposition to a small business owner is you teach them how to use so like software by 1 making it more accessible and 2 um, having an excellent customer service. This seems like a no brainer.
47:16.84
tylerking
Yeah I agree I mean we do a lot of these one on 1 but like yeah, why not I don't understand why anyone attends a webinar webinars are stupid but people do and you know give the people what they want. So yeah I like that idea all ah what we'll make that happen. Ah.
47:31.30
Rick
Yeah, you would never attend a webinar Would you? you'd watch a recording of a webinar though and you can record these um and send it to people.
47:34.54
tylerking
Ah I would but so it's so weird to me. We used to went back when we did webinars we did different kinds we do like deep dives on certain topics and stuff but we have like a lot of about half the webinars. We did. We're just basic like how to use lessening serum and people would attend to them. We have. Pre-recorded videos that go over it that are like edited scripted. You're going to get a much much better demo. We spend like every 5 minutes of video. We spend about 8 hours producing for the beginner's guide. It's really good. And then someone wants to instead of watching that they go sit on a webinar and watch someone like ad lib for an hour. It's just way worse I don't understand why anyone wants that but I digress um, cool what what I like about whatever yeah enough about webinars let me move on unless you got anything else. There.
48:25.67
Rick
I was just like I just I'm I'm kind of getting into brainstorm mode which has nothing to do with what you were talking about but I was like it's like I'm just I'm just thinking. Um, ah um I was looking at your website and it made me start like I'm like I Really like your website.
48:28.80
tylerking
Here. No go for it.
48:42.80
tylerking
Um, thank you? but.
48:43.40
Rick
Really clean. Um I just every time I look at it I get impressed. Um, and then I was thinking I was thinking about like a health. Um, so this is completely mind mind warp. But um I was thinking about how we have 1 thing that's really nice about your business is that you're focusing on one like user you're like you're a user.
49:01.39
tylerking
Um, no.
49:02.30
Rick
Sign up and create an account. Um, one challenge we have at leg up is there's this consumer value proposition and then this employer value proposition. Um, and how do we talk like how do we talk to those people and we've kind of just you know, decided to talk to the employer. Ah. When you first get there but I'm I'm just starting to wonder if that's a mistake I always feel this way I I look but I don't I Yeah yeah, ah.
49:24.59
tylerking
I I was a little surprised to be honest when I found out that that's the plan only I Only say that because you have an existing business getting consumers that has some amount of inbound lead Flow. You have no business getting employers yet. It seems like. Weird for the marketing site to target the people you don't have hitting it yet. But I get. There's a chicken or the egg thing where well more employers will never hit the website if if it's not targeting them So I'm not trying to I I don't have strong conviction here but I was surprised when I heard that that was the move.
49:58.79
Rick
My my here's my general question. You obviously like have a user that you target. But then there's a decision maker. Um, how do you mess? Do you do you ever like switch your messaging to the is it or was it just like invite people to your team.
50:06.13
tylerking
Um, yeah.
50:10.67
tylerking
The beauty of less knowing Crm is the people we target the the person evaluating it is normally the decision maker. That's not always true. 100% of the time but most of the time it's like the business owner or they have delegated this to someone else and like yet.
50:18.67
Rick
You know.
50:28.82
tylerking
Someone's going to decide what to recommend to the business owner. Um, but it's not like true Enterprise sales where it's like you have to understand their whole org chart and all that you know.
50:37.21
Rick
Yeah, yeah, and like I guess the vision for leg up health is ah there'd be 1 sign up flow for a consumer or an employer they would it like it doesn't matter which one and they would answer the question whether they're in a whether they have. Team members through the process I don't know I'm asking you right now. Are there 2 different signup forms.
50:57.51
tylerking
Is that right? Ah there. It's the same code, but there's like a url parameter that says which it is but the questions are different like you. We need a company name if it's an employer. Um, but it feels to me like.
51:08.68
Rick
Um.
51:14.28
tylerking
People are going to be getting there from 2 different places. There's not going to be 1 button on the marketing site that's like sign up and then you so you and then you tell us are you a consumer and employer like you'll already either be on the employer site or the consumer side I would think.
51:27.32
Rick
Well, that's where I'm getting like a little concerned now is like if you think about website navigation. You've got your header right? That's consistent across. But I guess you could say.
51:39.60
tylerking
There are a lot of what this reminds me of is like um like multiighted marketplaces where there's a lot of sites like this where they're like for employers is one of the navigation items or something like that. The alternative is you make that like.
51:49.90
Rick
Yeah.
51:54.88
tylerking
You know every big company's website ends up saying nothing like the headline is redefining health care or whatever and it's for nobody I don't like that approach obviously but that's what a lot of companies. Do.
52:06.95
Rick
Yeah, you could also just be like I have a sign up Mod Modal Pop up that says like sign up for ah for Marketplace support or sign up for um, ah a benefits program.
52:18.53
tylerking
Like presumably by the person by the time someone's clicking sign up. They're not going to click it until they've read something speaking to them telling them to do it I wouldn't think um, probably.
52:24.60
Rick
Yeah, but again, this doesn't matter just do some outreach. That's what we need to go do how every day.
52:35.68
tylerking
But there are inbound consumer leads individual consumers coming in right? So like I would say don't break that right? Yeah night night yeah but yeah, um, so like I I don't have strong conviction about the right thing to do is.
52:41.44
Rick
Yeah, like we had 1 sign up today. You saw that come through didn't you I don't know if you saw that one. Yeah I mean it's a real lead. Yeah.
52:54.25
tylerking
And I think not doing anything yet makes total sense but like breaking the flow. That's currently working seems pretty risky to me anyway, yeah ah just got a few a few minutes here. 1 thing I'm a little I'm embarrassed to say this to you. Ah.
53:01.94
Rick
Yep, cool. Thanks for my mind warp support. What's next.
53:13.88
tylerking
Been talking for a long time about event invites being a thing that we're going to build soon right? then talking about it and talking about check? Yeah, ah the reason so we have a calendar when you add context to the calendar. It does not send them an email telling them So there's no invite.
53:16.78
Rick
No no, you've been talking about it and then talking about it and then talking about it and then not talking about it.
53:27.28
Rick
I.
53:32.94
tylerking
Want to add that and the reason is honestly customers they want it but they don't want it badly. It's not near the top of the list of what customers want but it creates kind of this like viral. You know our customers sending emails out to their customers I won't bore you with all the details but we originally the idea was like the person the end person who gets the email invite. Would have like a yes, no maybe like ah Rsvp in the email. They'd click it. It would open lessening serum kind of like an evite type invite. The reason is we thought it would be impossible. We we looked at the technical aspects of implementing an ics invite which is where the widget is in the email and you can rsvp without opening a new page and we thought it was impossible. So we're like well. It's bad for the user that like that's a better experience to get the widget in the email but we can't make it happen so that makes it more viral. They end up on our website. That's good for us. Turns out, we figured out a way you can make the ics thing work now. It's not it loses the whole viral appeal. They're not all of it but a lot of it.
54:28.60
Rick
Yep.
54:30.44
tylerking
So now I'm like well shit. That's the whole reason we were going to build it So now maybe we're not going to you So the way it works. You get the email with the ics file and then that puts like a little widget at the top that lets it tells you the details of the event all that you can you have no control over that.
54:35.96
Rick
You can't put any sort of marketing embedded in there.
54:49.82
tylerking
You scroll down everything below. It is just a normal email so you can put whatever you want? Absolutely but when someone Rvp they're not opening up lessonening serum anymore. So it's it's not on there. There's still a little bit like the emails coming from lessenowing calendar.com there's still a little bit in there. But the thing where people like.
54:50.64
Rick
So you could put like a butter you can put a photo logo.
55:08.63
tylerking
See our website and it says lessnoing crm on it and it's it's high effort. That's the other thing so we're toying with a much lower effort viral idea. But I'm using viral in correctly, obviously like none of these are going to like go exponential but you know what I mean. Um.
55:11.72
Rick
Um, how much effort is this ah man.
55:28.40
tylerking
We're toying with a much easier one as as our first dipping our toes in the water because this is ah it's a lot of work to place this bet on event invites and it just got a lot less interesting.
55:41.33
Rick
Yeah I It's kind of I feel like you should just do it though like you I feel like this is one of those things that you're scared to waste time on but it's going to come up again. Um, how.
55:52.83
tylerking
It's not something our customers really ask for that much though like it's not going to come up as a product improvement. We need. It's just the viral right? It's like feature number 50 on the list. You know.
55:59.62
Rick
No one's begging for this is what you're saying. Ah, what's the other viral one.
56:07.80
tylerking
There's a few are batting around but ah, based on a conversation I had with people today. Um, the one that got that had the most support from this meeting was web forms so you know if you want to you could do any kind of forms with it. But like the idea is someone fills it out and then. That automatically creates a lead in your crm or whatever that type of thing. Yeah, so I think it's that that's the thing if we didn't have a good second choice I'd be like let's still do event invites but webforms is quite a bit easier to build and not as many people use it. That's the downside with event invites. Everyone's already using the calendar. They don't have to change their behavior at all. They create an event. We'll just say hey do you want to send this email and it'll get sent so like on day one. It would immediately have tens of thousands of people using it with web forms. We do have to be like okay you all have to start using it. We have to like market a lot more and even after we do it. It's probably like five percent of people would use. It.
56:59.81
Rick
Like what I like about web forms is it. It leads into chat um like website chat. Ah which is an interesting idea for you guys like if you look at help scout front. Um intercom ah like there's a lot of tool.
57:09.90
tylerking
Um.
57:18.79
Rick
Like customer database tools that have turned into like chat widgets and it's a great Way. You could have it as a add-on Feature. That's um, you know, ah an extra fee to have no branding um and then. That would be interesting because I think a lot of companies. Want a lightweight chat ah chat on their website even though no one uses it because it makes them feel good and I'm and I'm wondering if there you could probably do some really easy customer research here by just looking at at your customer' websites and seeing who's using forms who's Using. But.
57:48.28
tylerking
You're about to shake your head I think probably the majority of our customers don't have websites. Yeah, yeah about that customers. Yeah.
57:52.60
Rick
Yeah, sure, but like how many do and and like because you have what 10000 customers so so is that users or customers. How many companies does that represent. You know 10000 um that's I mean that seems like a.
58:03.87
tylerking
Ten ten thousand ish
58:09.24
Rick
He's got to be like what if you had a thousand customers in there that that would potentially use forms and and ah ah, and and ah I what chat and widget I mean that'd be really interesting.
58:21.38
tylerking
Yeah I think chat is probably like more steps away than you're thinking because like a there's absolutely 0 demand for it. But um, or at least that that people tell us about and I think the reason is we don't have an inbox. We don't have the ability to send email I think chat like. You mentioned help scout and front those were already kind of inbox help desk tools that added chat I don't know that like if your hubspot is website chat. The first thing you build when you don't even have email sending or something but I hear what you're saying it does open up that for even further in future webforms also will.
58:43.20
Rick
Um, in.
58:49.63
Rick
Now.
58:57.53
tylerking
Connect to appointment scheduling if we build that one day because if you want to book a meeting. You normally have to fill out some forms before you do that.
59:02.22
Rick
Yeah, forms are as it but compared with the event thing like forms are a better way to go. There's way more legs there.
59:07.61
tylerking
Yeah, okay, yeah, just less usage. That's the only That's the main downside but I'm I'm buying into it I'm going to run it by more people with the company. But I think I'm pretty close to being sold on that. So all right we are We are at time here you got anything else in your mind or should we call it.
59:20.49
Rick
Cool I got we should call it. Um, appreciate the time. Yeah, kind of go leaveve the nanny if you'd like to review past talks since your notes visit star to last dot com see you next two weeks from now Tyler yeah, two weeks bye
59:26.43
tylerking
You got things to do.
59:33.50
tylerking
Two weeks see ya.