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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
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All right, we're super happy to be joined
by our longtime client, Ian Landsman,
CEO and founder of HelpSpot.
And we're going to be talking to him
for a while today about the growth of
HelpSpot. It is a help desk software
that started way before a lot of the other
help desk softwares.
And I'm not going to steal Ian's thunder,
nor do I really know the history.
But Ian, thanks.
Was it in the 90s?
I remember it being so like super early.
Okay. Early 2000s.
2005. It came out, kind
of started it in 2004.
Yeah. So let's start there, Ian, and
then we'll move into kind of transitioning
your story all the way
to working with us.
But super cool kind of founding and
I believe family kept the business in the
family story while you and your wife
have a family and are raising kids.
And interesting stuff about navigating
HelpSpot through the introduction of a lot
of huge, extremely well-funded VC backed
startups that are direct competitors while
you stayed bootstrapped this whole time.
So I'm super excited to get in.
Let's start at the founding story.
I don't think I've ever asked you this.
How did it start?
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I'll go all the way back to
the very, the impetus, which was...
To the 90s. Benji wants
you to go back to the 90s.
Just after the 90s, it's probably
like 2001 or something like that.
I was the assistant director of
academic technology and eLearning,
which is a long title,
a college in my town here.
And this college has this basically a
big deal with IBM. So everything has to be
IBM. Like especially back then, there
was like, you can't even have a Mac on
campus, like IBM only, whatever.
So everything has to also be on a mainframe,
like has to be on IBM mainframe.
So yeah, I knew we were
going back to the 90s.
Right. We're going back to the 70s.
So anyway, so the school, their help
desk was a mainframe terminal application.
And so like you couldn't copy
paste, you couldn't send an email.
Like you literally couldn't do anything,
but you had like three lines where you
could like write the issue up and that's
all you had and like some check boxes or
whatever. And I was like, this is fricking
insane that I have to use this thing.
And like, oh, by 2001 to like, we have
like the modern-ish internet, right?
Where like things are in browsers and
there's email and there's copy paste and
whatever.
So wait, so you're working at the like
office that's managing the mainframe.
So you're getting support
requests or whatever?
I'm working actually in this e-learning
office and I just had to use the help desk
tool, but as I'm using it, it's infuriating
because it's a terminal window and it
can't do anything that
you could do in a browser.
And so I was like, well, you know,
if this big organization, I mean,
this is a pretty good size college,
thousands and thousands of employees,
like this is their solution.
I'm like, there has to be all these other
organizations out there that are using
these insane solutions.
And like, maybe we could do something
browser-based that's more modern.
It's not like client server
and stuff like that.
So that was kind of the impetus.
I started chipping away at it.
It took me like a year or so to
build it, maybe a little bit less.
Did you already develop software
at this point or did you?
Yeah. So that's an interesting part.
Like I had been doing some software
development at a previous job.
I was in like a startup sort of thing,
but I didn't know any programming when I
started there. So I learned
the program there.
But I still wasn't an expert
and some things were like new,
like JavaScript was like kind of a newish
thing in terms of using it for like the
interactivity we all think about
today and stuff like that.
So I'm literally coding
HelpSpot at one point.
Like I have the JavaScript
Bible open on my lap,
which was like a big book this thick and
because that's how you learn stuff in the
early 2000s. And like, I'm like coding
HelpSpot, learning JavaScript as I do it.
So it actually does factor into some of
the stuff we'll probably talk about later.
So at one point it's like, okay,
am I going to really do this?
I quit my job.
My wife kept her good job.
She had some kind of bankrolled us.
That was like our VC was my wife basically
like, you know, just continuing to work.
I quit.
Did the university you worked at become
a client of the software at this point or
you just quit?
No, they never became a client.
Nope. Nope.
Because it was, yeah.
What made you take the
leap at this point then?
Because it was just like, I wasn't
that good a programmer yet.
And it was like, if we're going to,
and you know, you have to remember too,
back then there was no tools, like there
was no frameworks, there was nothing.
So every single thing we did
had to be done from scratch.
Like I was literally coding.
I don't even know, like a half a million
lines of code or something like that to
like, just to build the first version.
Yeah.
I mean, right now, today, I could build
what was the first version in like three
weeks, because like 90% of
it is just out of the box.
I already have it. Whereas I had
to build all that stuff back then.
You couldn't put one line of some Ruby
on Rails code that builds the app for you
all the time.
And it all just works magically.
Email integration and authentication
and everything's just like there instantly.
Yeah, right, no, we had
none of that, right?
So I'd like either like basically invent
or reinvent or scour the internet for how
to do stuff that I didn't know how to do.
So yeah. Side note that I just think
would be funny for the listeners,
Benji and I one time
got scammed out of $3,
000 with some Upwork international developers
because we were trying to create some
web app. It was a job board. Yeah, a
job board, that's what it was, a job board.
And these guys were like,
yeah, we can do it.
And I was like, okay, we're not developers
so we don't know heads from tails,
right? And the person would start, we
hired them and I had it at 15 hours and she
kept she, the profile was she, I
don't think it was a she in the end.
Right. Emailing or Upwork messaging
saying, can you just give me max hours?
Can I just work full time?
I was like, sure, it'll go faster, right?
And like months later I was like,
and then Upwork takes screenshots.
It would be screenshots and we're not
programmers but I've dabbled a little bit.
Screenshots of just weird code-like things
but it didn't actually look like real
code. And I was like, that's
weird, maybe I just don't know.
And like, I think a month went by, we
spent three grand and we were like, okay,
what do you have so far?
And it was like the ability to like
create a user account and that's it or
something like that.
It was so difficult too,
it was like, it was unusable.
Yeah, it was unusable. And then I think
like a month later or something like that,
I found some open source job board that
was like out of the box and I was like,
why did we spend so much time doing this?
Turns out there are WordPress themes for
like 60 bucks that are just like WordPress
job board, like fully designed.
Yeah, now there's everything, right?
It's just out there.
The only benefit of that is
that I eventually found this,
it was in like Laravel PHP framework.
I found a guy that is just amazing and
now actually has moved on to a full-time
job, Chris Landon, but
we still work with him.
And he was like, at that time,
like a kid out of high school,
college in Southern California
and he looked at it and he was like,
this is completely useless.
And he was like, who
did you hire to do this?
And I was like, wait, what happened?
Yeah, it's like if we were to use it,
we need to rebuild it from the ground up.
And he was like, I could
give you, in Laravel,
there's a single line that sets up
the ability to create user accounts,
like sets up a mini app in a single
line, like five seconds, Devesh.
And I was like, oh my
God, we got scammed.
Oh man, I so wish I had Laravel
because we're actually,
two anecdotes on my end
to that story is one,
we actually run a very successful job
board around Laravel and then the other thing
is that we're big, huge in Laravel, I
run the online conference and all this stuff.
So to have had Laravel back then, I mean,
I could like cry right now just thinking
about the pain I went through and everything
Laravel gives you now just out of the
box, it's just like, oh my God.
I'm like, oh my God.
All right, so Help Spot
is written in Laravel.
Well, partially it's been put onto Laravel,
but there's still a lot of legacy stuff
from like 17 years ago.
We're actually just in the early process
of totally rebuilding Help Spot,
literally kind of from the ground up.
Oh cool.
Early days on that, that'll be like fully
take advantage of every little piece of
Laravel that there is.
What a coincidence that that's
where we got scammed out of $3,000.
Okay, I was gonna say, I
don't wanna hijack the story.
I wanna go all the way back to your
wife, your wife funding Help Spot.
Yeah, so she kept her job and like, we
hadn't set up our whole life around this
idea. So it was a little tight obviously,
because it's like, whatever we had,
I sold my car.
So I just were like kind of stuck home
all day because we were in the suburbs.
That was kind of like the other, the sort
of startup money, the actual like money,
money was just like selling the car.
So cut that expense, made some
money on that, put that in the bank.
And yeah, and that was kind
of like the beginning there.
And that was like, so 2005 is before SaaS
really, like I think Basecamp comes out.
Maybe that came out like 2004,
but it was like super wild and new.
It was way before Zendesk and Help Scout
and all the big kind of modern SaaS.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
So 2004, 2005, the idea of software being
this online web app where you pay monthly
instead of going to Best Buy or Fry's
Electronics and getting the box and paying a
one-time price, that was still new then.
Yeah, still new. Especially at this
scale, like it was new that the idea that
everything had become affordable enough
that a couple people or one person could
start a software business.
And it was still so new and I was so
kind of green to it that this is where it
relates back a little bit to me like learning
to code while I did this essentially
was like, HelpSoft wasn't SaaS really
until about six or seven years ago.
Like you had to download it and
install it on your own web server.
So it was still running the browser
but you had to have an IT department,
you had to install it.
And then it was a web application but
it wasn't centralized where we would run it
for you.
So- And it was a one-time cost.
It was one-time cost,
yep, like own license.
And then there was essentially recurring
revenue in that like every year you paid
for support but it was optional.
Like the software still worked
if you stopped paying for support.
Whereas like now we saw on subscription.
So, if you stopped paying,
it stops running at all.
But back then, yeah, it would still run.
And it's kind of crazy because we still
have customers today who like stopped
paying for support in 2014 but then they
just show up like literally yesterday and
they're like, okay, I'm
ready to like upgrade.
And so we have to like bring them through
that whole process of like getting on a
modern plan and renewing
their support and whatever.
It's kind of crazy.
We deal with a lot of stuff that like
your modern SaaS apps don't deal with that
have only ever charged monthly
and only take credit cards.
That's a very different world from
what I live in where we have invoices and
purchase orders and we still, people who
have own licenses we didn't force them to
move to subscription.
So we still have people paying annual
support that's not a subscription.
Yeah, we don't sell
those licenses anymore.
So you can't buy a new
installation that way.
Anybody buying today new is on a subscription
but we left all the other people as
legacy accounts.
Yeah, it's wild.
So we're at 2005.
Yeah.
And is it still just barely making
any money, your wife supporting it?
Yeah, well, so when we, wife was supporting
it until like October 2005 when we
released. And then we had
just built up a tiny list.
I mean, it's sort of insane now.
I mean, there was literally like maybe
50 people on this list to email when we
launched and we got some
sales from that right away.
I was gonna ask the same thing.
So mostly that was from, I was like
a big participant in like a business of
software forums.
I don't know if you've
ever heard of those.
They were like Joel Spolsky had this
forum for bootstrappers basically.
And so it kind of was like people on
there or people on there took it to their
companies and put in the word that might
wanna get on this new thing and ditch
their old crusty thing or
if they're just using email.
And so that was like the impetus.
We also had like, I don't know if
this was from the very beginning though.
We had a little SEO play.
I don't know if it was literally before
we launched but it was very early called
opensourcehelpdesklist.com which
I believe is still out there,
which is just a listing of all
open source help desk lists.
And then like with the ad or open source
help desk apps with like our ad at the
top, like, you know, helps pop up a lot.
You know, not dissimilar
from a like top of 10.
That was the time to do SEO. That
was the time to do SEO back then.
You just put stuff the keyword like
400 of them as much as possible.
Yeah. I didn't do too much of the straight
keyword stuffing although like the open
source help desk list obviously
inherently has, you know,
helped desk has a lot
of the elements in there.
But no, that was like the golden
era of SEO. I mean, we were,
cause I was very SEO focused
from the beginning.
Cause I was like, I have no money.
Like I can't even back then Google ads
were too much and I didn't really have
anything else. Like I didn't cold calling
wasn't something I was gonna even
consider or anything like that.
So like literally I had Google
and SEO as my play for marketing.
And so like, you know, so I was learned
up a little bit on SEO already,
got a little farther along on that,
optimize the website, you know, decently.
And we were like on the
first page for a long time,
for years with like no real
work other than, you know,
optimize the website and has a few
good inbound links from, you know,
people I knew who are bootstrapping
also and stuff like that.
But, and this is the first
page for help desk software.
Yeah.
For help desk software.
Yeah.
And, and, and was that it?
Like that was the keyword
strategy was one keyword.
One keyword.
I mean, we had some like, there
was probably a few others,
but it was essentially
one keyword realistically.
And, and what was that bringing in?
Could you just tell that when you
were on there, you were like, Oh,
people just keep coming.
Oh yeah. I mean, we, we still have
never had more sales than back then,
but it was sort of a,
it was different time.
Like we were charging way less.
I mean, our revenues are much higher now.
Like, you know, it was less
money we were charging,
but also it was like
this golden era of like,
everybody was moving off client server
or people who were just using email were
like, we need their software
to do this now.
Why don't we have the software to do it?
So you had this big surge of like literally
every company in the world being like,
we need help desk software.
And so, you know, we kind of like
had a big up tick with all that.
And then, you know, sometimes
you just catch that, right?
It's like, I can't repeat that.
We're like, yeah, the internet comes
to bloom and everybody wants help desk
software. Right. So that's
not really realistic.
So quantity, while like just
in terms of like new users,
those were like the peak year, it's
just because there was a lot of new users,
but yeah.
And then like 2008, 2009, you start to
get like Zendesk and those guys come in who
are like funded, who are a pure SaaS.
Oh, at that time you were still
selling the one-time licenses.
Yeah. We didn't switch to us offering
our own SaaS until like 2015 probably.
Now we ended up doing like the stop
gap cause obviously it's like, okay,
well like Zendesk and these other ones
are coming out and like obviously people are
moving towards like, yeah, I just want
to sign up and I don't want to have to like
go to IT for things and all that stuff.
So we ended up partnering with like a
hosting company that I knew the owner of,
and they were basically like SaaSifying
help spot on our behalf.
So like, if you want hosting, you
would go to them, they would do it all.
You didn't have to go to IT, but it
wasn't seamless like a modern SaaS at all.
It was just like, it was still
like a multi-step process.
If you had to go, you were paying them
a separate amount of money from what you
were paying us.
So it was like a separate relationship,
but at least you didn't have to have IT
involved.
Beyond the business model changing, how
did things change for your business during
that time period? So 2009, let's say
2015, as all these new players enter the
market.
Yeah, so like that was kind of, so we
had that like the earlier run where like
everybody's moving to help desk software
and there was just less competition and
all that stuff.
And then you had like
tons of competition.
Like then the 2008, nine, 10 is like
everybody, all the tools are there.
Everybody can start a help desk app or
obviously all the other types of apps that
we all have now, like
instantly basically.
So yeah, so that definitely
came down off those highs.
And then like after that, I would say
like around 2012, something like that, 2013,
it kind of just leveled out and we've
been like mostly level like since that point.
And there's like, I think
a lot of different reasons.
I mean, part of it is just like way,
like literally a thousand times
more competition probably, right,
like not exaggerating.
And then even things like, you know,
like that's, we had our three children,
they're getting bigger in that phase,
but they're still like, you know,
some of them are babies
and some of them are six.
And so it was like, obviously like, I'm
not doing all the hours and losing some
focus on the business just in terms
of the hyper-focus I had before that.
So, and I was like, but
we were making enough money.
So I didn't really have the desire
to like really push extra hard there.
We did hire employees in there
and things like that too.
So it wasn't just like
me, running the day.
Yeah, I was gonna ask what the size
of the team was around this time.
And what year we're at now, but.
Like in 2008 or nine, we
had our first employee,
which is like a customer service person,
just to take off that kind of day to day,
get caught up in a help desk issue
for four hours with somebody.
And obviously then your
day is kind of shot.
So hired that person first, then we
hired some developers, but the team size,
now the team size is five people.
So we've been small the whole time.
It was a little smaller back then.
Most of the time was like,
three to four, but.
At any point in the story,
does your wife quit her job?
Oh yeah, yeah, she quit pretty early.
Like once we started selling, we were
making enough money that she didn't have to
work. So we had our first child,
she left her job, like at that point.
And actually she was trying to
work from home and keep her job,
but it was like kind of before
work from home, obviously.
And they were like, even though they had,
they kind of had the tools for it in this
company, it was a big four, big five then
accounting firm, but they were like, nah,
you can't like permanently
work from home.
And we lived like an hour
and a half away and whatever.
So anyway, so she, yeah,
she left her job there.
She did work in the business
for a couple of years.
Mostly like at the very beginning,
she was like all kinds of stuff.
Like she would help with support and
testing and documentation, things like that.
And then later on, she was like the business
operations person with like books and
payroll.
all that stuff. And then yeah, I think
after our third kid, we were like,
all right, just it's just too chaotic.
So she just went to mostly
take care of that crew.
And then we had like, we have like a bookkeeper
who's a contractor and things like
that. We have some people
like that around.
This whole time, like, it sounds like
at some point when it was doing well,
and she could quit her job and
you guys were making good money.
I know that when you first hired us,
Grow and Convert, you said something like,
you know, I never have really
invested in marketing until now.
Walk me through just kind of the like
lifestyle or philosophical decision there.
Like a lot of, because it's not, I don't
know if I'm just reading a bunch of like
startup bro stuff and listening to
podcasts and running in those circles.
But with that mindset,
that's very not normal.
It's very like, and I'm also in like
San Francisco Bay Area, it's like,
if you get any product market fit, like
pour as much gasoline onto that fire as
possible is like the idea.
And I think Benji and I
have also run into that.
I'm thinking of a particular conference
where some people were like, well,
what's your exit strategy?
And we're like, what exit strategy?
Just run the business.
We like the business.
Right.
And so, yeah, walk me through
like your thinking there.
Did that ever cross the line early?
Yeah, no, I mean, I think
that it's sort of,
it's very fascinating to me when I think
about this because I do feel like there is
this element of like the mindset and
sort of philosophy you have when you start a
business, like gets really ingrained
in the culture of the business.
And I just think it's very hard to
stuff that apart later in terms of like,
or change that later because it's like,
all I ever wanted for this business was to
make enough money to like kind
of have, do the things I want to do.
Like send the kids to college,
go on vacations, have a nice car,
buy a house big enough for the family.
Like I was not at all, because you have
to remember too, I'm starting this in 2004,
post.com, there is literally no money.
Like people say there's no
money today for these startups.
No, no, no, there was no money back then.
Zero, nothing.
Nobody was going to give you one penny.
They don't care how much traction you
have, how great your idea was, no money.
You know that because you tried?
Yeah, I mean, it was
just in the whole air.
Like it was like, there was, I didn't,
I never even bothered trying to raise,
I mean, I knew lots of people starting
up companies and none of them were raising
money. It was less like,
this is not even a thing.
Like, I mean, can you find
somebody who raised money?
I'm sure you absolutely can.
Right. But it's like, this was
not a thing that was being done.
Like there was not VCs
on every street corner.
There was not piles of
money being here now.
Everybody had just got burned three years
ago into oblivion and they were like,
yeah, we're done with that for now.
Right.
So, yeah, so I was, that was kind
of my whole philosophy was like,
so once we kind of reached
that level of like, okay,
we can hire a few people so I don't
have to do all the work and we have enough
money, then that was
kind of where I stopped.
I was like, okay, cool.
What was day to day life like then?
Like when you, I don't know if
we're talking about like 2009, 2010,
you have like a team and has traction.
Was it, were you living this kind of
like, people use this again as an insult.
I said this in the last podcast,
but lifestyle entrepreneur life,
like you're like living where it's like
you're working a couple hours and then
you're hanging out or is that?
Yeah, I've never had that.
I mean, it's a lifestyle
business in terms of like,
I'll take big vacations
once in a while or like,
I could work from home obviously before,
like obviously everybody works from home
now, but I was working from home, you
know, forever before that was a thing really.
So that was all good stuff.
But I never really had the like, oh,
I work for two hours a week and the whole
thing kind of runs itself.
Like, yeah, no, I mean those
early days I was working insane,
ridiculous amount of hours.
No, I don't do that now.
And then with the team and everything.
So now I'm more reasonable
hours, but I'm not still be,
I'll be up at like 10 to midnight and
I'll do like a coding session still or
whatever. Like I'm still working
a pretty solid amount of hours,
not insane or anything, not, you
know, eight hours a week, but yeah,
I'm not working.
So the key thing is just not growing just
for the sake of more money at this point.
Yeah. I kind of hit that level
and I was like, I'm good.
And then like, you know, I think I didn't
have a lot of experience with that.
I didn't have a lot of experience as a,
even like being a developer or things like
that too. So it was like, it was
never so much money where it was like,
I have so much money that I could
build out a huge team to double down.
So it was like, you know, it was
that it's like an in between spot.
Was it you not wanting to just manage
people and keeping the company small?
Oh, that's definitely part of it.
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I was a manager before,
um, I started this business, but
It's not like my, I actually think
I'm decent at it, but at the same time,
it's not like, I like
the small team is good.
Like I like that amount of management.
Do I want to manage 50 people?
Like I do not want to manage 50 people.
Do I like coding?
Like I enjoy coding.
So if I'm just like the CEO manager of
like 50 people, like now I can't do that.
And that's the reason I got into it too.
Right.
So, you know, I mean, I think that
when I saw Zendesk come up, I was like,
and they like had copied a bunch of our
stuff, like straight copied, like screens,
words, everything.
And I was like, ah, you know,
I had a few pangs in there.
I was like, oh, maybe we should
have gone a different route.
Maybe we should have been
more aggressive, but you know,
it's sort of interesting too.
Like obviously the founder of Zendesk,
who I know a little bit, I mean,
he's extraordinarily wealthy.
So he's, he did, he
did well, but you know,
they've literally never been profitable.
Like even to today,
they're not profitable.
And we've never not been profitable.
We've been profitable since our first
month in business and been profitable every
month for 17 years.
That kind of stuff blows my mind.
And Zendesk has never been profitable.
So it's like, you know, I don't know,
like obviously- Is Zendesk public now?
I don't know what's going on.
Are they public? Are they public now?
Oh yeah, they're public. Well, no, they
were public and they just got bought by
private equity for some billions
of dollars type of thing.
So I don't know that. They straight
copied screens in the app?
Yeah, they had some like straight
copied screens from HubSpot early on.
You're fine saying this?
I think I said it before.
It's kind of funny.
He sent me, one of our,
one of our kids was born.
He sent me like the Zendesk onesie.
It's like got the little Buddha.
They had this totally like culturally
inappropriate logo that they've gotten rid
of, which was like this Buddha who's
making this funny face and all this stuff.
Yeah, 04, that's allowed.
I do remember that.
That was like 04 probably.
Yeah, it was.
That was when I, yeah.
So- I think I used it at that point.
Yeah, you know, but I mean, I
can't, it's like hard to complain.
Cause like, do I see a path where,
you know, the other thing is like,
I didn't know much about running servers.
That's the other part.
Like, so do I like bring on
a co-founder to like run this?
Like I knew enough to get around, but
like, if the thing to me is if I had gone
that way in the beginning, the
question is you could say like, oh,
HelpSpot would have been Zendesk.
But I think it's just as
likely, if not more likely,
HelpSpot just wouldn't exist because
I would have screwed up the servers.
I didn't have money to pay
a bunch of server people.
And all, again, all this stuff
we know about how to run a SaaS,
there's no AWS. There's
no anything, right?
There's no like RDS database set up.
There's no queues.
There's no nothing, right?
So like, you know, it's not just like
I can wing it on those public clouds for a
while and overpay for them until
I figure out how to run it.
No, there was like, I would
have to buy servers and run them.
So like, you know, I think it's very
likely that I just screw that up at some
point. And then there is no business.
So, you know, I think overall
I can't really complain.
We've done everything
we've ever wanted to do.
So it's, you know, it's really fine.
I'm not, I don't feel too bad
about that we're not Zendesk.
You know, we can't really complain.
Well, it also says something
about the business too,
that it's profitable versus
not profitable too.
So it's like, if you've been around this
long and you're not able to be profitable,
like why?
Right, yeah.
Because you just get stuck
in that flywheel, right?
Like you have to have
more users every month.
And so like, that's why Zendesk
pays 120 bucks to click on Google.
And they're not profitable
doing that, right?
But like, as long as you keep feeding
more money in the background with, you know,
venture capital and whatever else, like,
and you can just buy your way up the
ladder there.
So I don't know.
I do remember you saying that
at the beginning of our engagement.
We were like, yeah, and we'll also
test the content on Google Ads.
And you were like, no, you won't.
And we were like, I'm just
laughing at you to test us.
And you were like, dude, like
it's cost like a million dollars.
Yeah, you were so right there.
Not realizing how competitive
your category is.
It's insane.
Yeah. I was like, I know
how much we're paying you.
And not that you guys are the cheapest
around, but we would have to pay you a lot
more for you guys to be competitive
and trying to buy these Google Ads and get
literally any traction at all.
Yeah, no, it's like one
of the most competitive.
It's like, it's really insane.
Like, yeah.
The other business philosophy question
is then, why did you contemplate selling it?
Because that's then the other thing that
is like the typical pattern that people go
to, oh, I got product market
fit, growing revenues is good.
We can live our life off of it.
Other people want to buy a business
that's generating that kind of profit.
And so people want that payday, sell
the business, get a bunch of cash.
Yeah.
Does that discussion ever happen?
I've definitely thought
about it, of course.
I don't know, like earlier
on, it just felt too early.
Like I'm like, I'm too young.
Like, I don't know, I'm
gonna sell this thing.
I'm not gonna get, it's not big enough
to where like, I would feel like, oh,
this amount of money I'm gonna get, it's
like, I never have to work again money.
So it's just like, okay, I'm gonna buy
a decade and then I'm gonna have to do
something. Like I'm gonna have to hope
I come up with a product as good as this one
in the next decade, or I'm gonna have
to go work for somebody else or like.
So I was like, I don't know, I don't
feel like that's really worth it.
Yeah, I mean, once or twice people
approached us and, you know,
with semi serious offers, but it just
never really, never really worked out.
And so, yeah, I mean, we
could definitely sell it.
I mean, and that's part of the thinking
around, even when we hired you guys,
this was like, you know, it's like the
phase of the business and I don't, you know,
plan on selling anytime soon, but same
time where I've been okay with like,
you know, just going up 5%
every year for the last decade.
Like it's like, okay, maybe I have
a little more time, a little more energy,
kids are bigger, team's in a good spot.
Like, let's try to kick it up.
Let's actually pay for some marketing.
Let's see if we can just actually
try to create a little bit of growth.
And then, yeah, you know, 10 years from
now, if we can build that up a little bit,
like, yeah, then maybe we could sell it
enough for, you know, I don't have to work,
you know, after that and type of thing.
So, that's kind of back in my
mind, but yeah, no, I don't know.
I never really tried to sell
it or anything like that.
Obviously, I've thought about
it here and there, but yeah.
So then, yeah, getting into the marketing,
which is what obviously we love to talk
about, before we get into us and
your decision to hire us and even,
I don't think I've ever asked
you how you found out about us.
Until that point, it was still just
being an incumbent, word of mouth, right?
I assume you, by that point, have
lost, and we're fast forwarding to like,
I don't know when you, when we started
working together, but like, 20,
20 months ago, maybe,
something like that.
Yeah, 20, 22.
But like at some point, you lost
your 2005 help desk software.
Monopoly, yeah, right.
Number one, like, listing as SEO changed.
Was there any marketing done?
I mean, not really.
So like, we've done a few times,
you know, we still had some, you know,
a few spots where the
SEO is okay, not amazing.
Definitely, we have a reasonable sized
customer base for our size company,
and help desk software is the kind of
thing where people do bring it with them.
So, you know, because you do are exposing
it to all these people who are like,
you have the managers who are,
or the VPs or whatever, who buy,
but then you have all the agents, and
you know, an agent will go somewhere else,
and they'll be like, hey, at my
last job, I used help spot, you know,
we should use that here.
And so we'll get, get, you know, yeah,
so it's like brand and word of mouth is,
yeah, it's a word of mouth, pretty heavy.
And then I also think a key thing is
that you serve a pretty specific customer
base, and use, and the use cases are
a lot smaller than what most people would
consider just help desk software.
Like you're not, you don't have chat
bots, you don't have like social media,
app tie and stuff like that.
Maybe speak to that a little
bit, because I think that helps.
Yeah, so it's still, yeah, we have a
pretty focused on just email and a help desk
portal, like we don't get into social
media, or voice or things like that.
And part of that is like, there are some
elements where like not being a pure SaaS,
even the way we do it now isn't
quite the same as a pure SaaS,
which makes some of those
things just harder to do.
But also, we do have our little
niche here, which is that like,
we're really focused on email.
And we still have on premise.
So if you want to run on premise, like
none of the SaaS apps have on premise.
So this is a, you know, it's sort
of interesting, because it's like,
everything went SaaS.
And so then everybody was like, it must
be SaaS, it must be SaaS, it must be SaaS.
And then it's kind of like,
I was like, oh, you know,
that was like a rough period of like,
oh, man, like, is everything gonna go SaaS?
And that's where we like, we built
our own SaaS, because like, well,
we can't be totally left
behind on the SaaS train.
So we did that.
But now it's kind of come
back where like, you know,
you have all this other stuff
going on with security and things.
And so people are like, well, if we really
need to have super tight control of our
security, like, we kind of have to sometimes
run in house for certain types of
businesses, like, especially a lot
like financial sector, healthcare.
Those are the kind of industries
that still have IT shops in house,
that have a lot of things that they
just don't trust public clouds with,
whether it's like health information
or things like that.
And so they want, you know, on premise.
And that's something like Zendesk can't
give them or Freshdesk can't give them and
things like that.
So we've had this little resurgence in
that end of the world where we have that
niche going.
So yeah, so and we do and the world's
kind of expanded into other areas where like
HR departments use help desk software
and maintenance departments use help desk
software.
And so there's the, it's gotten
even broader from like,
it started just like every company needs
help desk software in their like customer
service. But now it's like every company
has helped us off or in their customer
service, and in their HR. And, you know,
if you're a college in your admissions
department, and in your maintenance department,
because like everybody just has all
this email to deal with. So, and yeah,
those, those are also nice for us,
because like the maintenance department
doesn't care about social media
integration, right?
Like they're just the maintenance
department and they get emails.
And so that worked for us in that regard.
Nice. So then, moving to SEO and all the
decision to hire us where you heard about
us, I'm sure I asked you this in our
first sales call, but I don't remember.
You had, you said you already knew a
little bit about SEO. And so I'm curious
first, just like why
look for external help?
Maybe you're just too busy at
that time or, or did you try to?
Well, and just to wrap up, the other
part is like we did have hired ostensibly,
consultants that are ostensibly
like you guys, but they weren't.
And they're just writing articles, because
it's like we have articles and we put
them up and they're often about help desk
agents or about how to handle a help desk
scenario.
And none of those ever worked, which
is what, so then when I found you guys,
which I want to say it was probably
from Twitter, but to be honest,
I don't remember exactly.
I feel like maybe somebody retweeted
something Benji posted is what I'm thinking,
but.
Devesh wasn't active on
social media back then.
Yeah. He's only become active recently.
I was maintaining the mainframes.
They had you in the basement of time.
So yeah. So yeah.
And your guys approach really stood
out to me is that was the main thing.
It was like, Oh, like, yes,
be focused on conversions.
That's a good idea.
Like, that makes sense.
Instead of just like ranking
for random stuff,
let's rank for things that
people actually are, you know,
have purchasing intent on.
And then your style of, you know,
going about that was interesting.
And one that I think I hadn't
seen as much of anyway.
But define our style.
How do you word it?
So to me, your style is that you,
you know, the article, I mean,
the articles are basically like what
I would think of as like more of like a page
on the marketing site and
not really a blog post.
Right.
So it's like, cause it's very focused
on like our features and you're selling our
features. And yes, you have like everything
else to flush it out into like a blog
post, but it's really kind of like
you're landing on our website and you're
learning about email management
software and how help spot does that.
And then, you know, there's the other
parts in there to flush it out, but you know,
you're making the case
for help spot explicitly.
Whereas like, obviously I'm sure you
guys have seen this a million times,
like most of the content writing
you see for SEO is like, yeah,
like help spot is like linked when we
talk about help spot in the one sentence,
but like, it's not, it's not
like a push towards like, no,
you're on the website
for help spot and helps.
What does the thing you're looking for?
And here's how it does it.
And wouldn't that be great for
you and like actually selling.
So to me that was, you know, the, okay.
So that's the core, our core, you know,
positioning and differentiation that you're
thanks to that is like everyone else is
writing what you just described.
We call top of the funnel, right?
So they can't do a help spot sales pitch
because they're trying to write something
on, I don't know, like how to treat
customers well or something like that.
Whereas we're writing to rank
for a help desk type software.
So when you say that, go ahead.
I'm just curious what made
you want to do it again?
So if you've already tried it before
and you said you hired people and it didn't
work, then, then why
give it another shot?
Cause I feel like a lot
of people try one channel.
Yeah. Kind of give up on it, just
thinking it's not going to work.
So where did you have like any small
wins or something that gave you confidence
that it could work if you
found the right strategy?
Yeah.
So I mean, I think, I mean,
I'm still a big SEO. I mean,
I don't think there's ever been anything
invented that's as powerful as someone at
that Google search box
saying what they want.
Like there's just nothing
better than that.
Like that's the ultimate sales tool.
So then it's just a matter of like, okay.
And then we, and we still do get some
business from SEO even before I hired you
guys. It's like, yes, we weren't ranked
as high, but even though we might be 23rd,
like people are still finding us there
cause they're going through and obviously
Google made it much harder with
like 23rd is now like the 4,
000 link after all the boxes and inserts
and maps and everything else that's there
now.
But which I think is also even a factor,
like even when we were higher ranked,
like that high, when back in the
day, like if you were number three,
like you were literally like the
fifth, the fifth link on the page,
like now number three, you're still like
below the fold, you know, but whatever.
So yeah.
So like I still believe in
SEO and that was the main part.
And then it was just like, how do
we, you know, I even, like I said,
I know a fair amount about SEO
and so I know what I wanted, but A,
I never really seen anybody do it and B.
I know I can't do it.
Like I'm not a good writer.
I don't have the patience to write it
and I'm busy doing everything else because we
have hundreds of customers and
everything going on every day.
So I'm just not gonna sit down
and write like a 1500 word article.
It's just never gonna happen.
So it's kind of like those things.
So that's where when I saw
you guys, I was like, oh yes,
this is what I'm looking for.
So it wasn't even like, I was starting
to think about doing more with it.
And then it's like, I saw, I found
you guys and I was like, oh yeah,
that's what I want. Like, yeah.
And then once we started working together,
my memory of this is that you had
incredible patience.
So I'm gonna talk about the results for
a little bit, but they took time and Benji,
you have, as I always say,
a much better memory than mine,
which is the size of a small mouse.
Now we have some pretty cool rankings.
I don't know, Ian, if you're cool with
me reading off some of the awards that we're
ranking high for.
So like we have you, this is as
a four days ago update from, anyway,
the self-hosted help desk number one
spot, GDPR help desk number one spot.
We also have like, like even if we're
not at help desk software anymore, like 2005,
we still have top three spots or like
first page for help desk software for Linux
number two. And there was another one,
help desk software for small business number
four. Down two spots for number two.
You know, like email, email
help desk software, top five.
And so like those are pretty cool, but
was it the blog on a sub domain thing?
It was, wasn't it?
That it took months.
I remember you had a ton of patience
where you were like, yeah,
I'm not really worried about it.
Like this will turn out.
I will tell you for me, I was, I feel
like I was always conscious about your
account just being like, oh, why
is, why are things not working?
Because I think what you said earlier
about how competitive your category is,
I just didn't even really think about
it when going into the space and thinking
about how much money is
getting thrown at SEO,
how much money is getting thrown at
paid, going after all these keywords.
And I did think that we had
some advantage because again,
we're going after some of these more specific
keywords that maybe some of the other
players aren't focused on as much.
But even then it was still
really, really challenging.
It was definitely an uphill battle, but.
But I'm curious if you could
walk through your mindset of like,
what were you looking for?
And what Benji says is funny.
So we, at that time we were big enough
to where both of us stopped going to every
client call. We would split.
So we, and one of our strategy,
you know, whoever,
whatever strategies working
on it would be on the call.
So I was with you.
So Benji would be like, when
we talked, he'd be like,
Ian's gonna quit like tomorrow.
Like what is happening with Helpspot?
And I was like, no, trust me.
He's like super happy.
I'm like, oh, I'm kidding.
You're like, he's off the call in like
five minutes and he's just like, yeah, cool.
I know, I know, and I
couldn't ever believe it.
I was like, oh, things
are just not moving.
What is going on here?
Yeah, the speed of the
calls was also hilarious.
I'm like, I would be, I think I had
this call that butted up to it and I would
always come on like, and
I'd be like, I'm sorry, Meg.
I'm like super late.
I'm like, it was like 11.
08 or something like my time in Pacific.
And she's like, we're already off.
I was like, it says waiting for host.
And we were already off the call.
Like what did you even talk about?
So what were you looking for that
you were okay and satisfied with it?
Because we try to teach our clients a
lot about this patience with SEO. You get the
kind of results that I just read off.
Like people want that for their niche.
They want that for that SaaS company,
but it takes time and you had enough patience
to where even we were uncomfortable.
What were you looking for and okay with?
Yeah, I think it's a few
different things there.
So one is just as a bootstrap founder,
like I am so used to everything taking an
incredibly insane long time.
Like everything we do, I hope it's going
to be fast, but it always is like way,
way longer than I want it to be.
I'm very comfortable with that now.
I know it's going to take
a long time, whatever we do.
So I'm already in that mindset
with literally everything.
I'm like, okay, this is going
to take a year because like.
you can tell me it's gonna take a month,
but I know it's gonna take a year,
because to actually do it, it's
just gonna take a long time.
And we're a small team, which this doesn't
impact you guys obviously directly,
but still we're a small team and we're
not like, so even with everything we do,
it's not just that I don't work
80 hours, nobody works 80 hours,
and people have lots of
time off and all this stuff.
So it just takes a long time.
Sometimes people work
three days in a week.
So obviously things are gonna
take longer that way and stuff.
So just my mindset is that.
And then I have worked a
lot with SEO over the years.
I'm not like the ultimate guru, but
on the technical side, I'm pretty good.
And then just in general, I know the
generalities of the industry and then I know
help desk software.
So I just know that there's
literally hundreds of millions,
if not billions of dollars
being poured in here.
And a large chunk of that
is going towards SEO efforts.
And even though maybe they're not using
the strategies you guys are using entirely
and that so we have some advantages there,
it's just gonna take a long time because
you're just not gonna show up one day.
Everybody's tried everything.
So you're not gonna show up one day with
some magic bullet that nobody in the help
desk software has ever done.
That's just not gonna happen.
So it's gonna be the like, yeah, get
the good content and then do all the other
stuff you have to do around
that to make it all work,
which is why just leveraging
little advantages.
I think one of the things we did, part
of the slowness at that beginning was me
too, because we redid our whole website
to be SEO optimized because I wanted this
to be an advantage we could have also,
which is that like if you go to Zendesk and
you put it in what like web.
dev there, the like lighthouse Google
thing to check its SEO performance,
it's like 20s everywhere because like
there's literally hundreds of marketing,
JavaScript inserts and all kinds of stuff
that seven committees have decided that
must be on the homepage
and everything else.
And so like, okay, so I was like, I
wanna be like over 90 and everything and a
hundred if we can. So, you know, now
the help slot website is like, you know,
97 or whatever and everything
in all four categories.
And we made all these sacrifices to
do that, but it's like, well, whatever,
like this is something where we can be
better in a way they could literally never
be better.
Like they will never be able to get that
Zendesk website to 97 optimized because
they're just inserting too much
shit in it to ever, you know,
it's got 20 megabytes of junk
that loads in and whatever else.
So, you know, I knew that would take
time for Google to recognize that and blah,
blah, blah. So yeah, you know, so I guess
it was just like expecting it to take a
long time to begin with.
And then, you know, knowing that
some of it's on my end and you know,
and then just writing the content is
gonna take months for it to build up and.
And then the results, I remember
at one point you said something like,
like we were reporting on the number
of leads or demo requests we had there.
And it was still early on.
It was like a single digit number,
like say five or something.
And you said something like, no, like
you, you guys need to check how you're doing
the attribution because I think you're
under counting your own leads because I know
I'm getting more demos.
Right.
They have to be coming from this.
Yeah.
What was behind that? Like, did you,
you just felt an uptick on the sales side?
Yeah, the thing that really led me to
it was that we had done some, you know,
one of our competitors had decided
to not offer on-premise anymore.
So I brought that to
you guys and said, hey,
let's do some articles about them and
on-premise because they're abandoning all
these customers and all those customers
are gonna be looking for an alternative.
And so then we were getting very specific,
like responses when we talked to people
about that, that they're, you know,
well, it's SpiceWorks is the name of the
company.
And they'd be, so we'd be talking
to them and they'd be like, hey,
like SpiceWorks ditched us, you know,
we're looking for an alternative.
So the only SpiceWorks content on
our website is what you guys wrote.
So like this very like
tied together here.
And- Which is ranking number
three right now for SpiceWorks.
Right, there we go.
So like, so yeah, so I was like, well,
I know that like I'm talking to, I mean,
I'm talking to like three or four
people a month about just SpiceWorks.
So like, there has to be more going on.
And you know, there's also a weird
thing about our industry where I know,
I think the whole time you guys have
probably been getting under counted,
even after we tweaked some things, like
what we tweaked there was to count the
contact form submissions.
So those counted for you also.
And because in B2B, especially
in art, I don't know about all B2B,
but definitely in help desk software
like theirs, it's just not,
they come in on the article
and they sign up for the trial.
Like that's just never how it goes.
It's very rare that happens.
So.
you know, it's like, okay, I come in,
I wander around, I send the link to my boss,
the boss goes and looks,
like they set up a demo,
like it's 28 steps before
they've even done a trial.
So like how do you do attribution through
all that, it's like basically impossible.
So, you know, I always expected that
to be somewhat on a curve there too,
where like, you're just not gonna be
able to attribute a lot of these things,
because it's just too hard.
Yeah, I'm actually looking at, we're
recording this on February 17th,
and I'm looking at February
from the 1st to the 13th,
and I'm looking at the conversions
we got from our blog posts for you guys,
and there is one, two, three, four,
five different blog posts that,
if you look at what you're talking
about, same session conversions,
it would show zero.
Luckily, in Google Model Comparison
Tool, as we've written about,
we look at like multi-touch first interaction,
so if they had closed the browser,
come back later, within
three months, it's fine.
But what you're talking about is also
something we've written about a long time
ago, many years ago, that's
buried in one of our posts,
and most people probably haven't
seen it or heard us talk about it,
but it's worth a mention, which is
that even the multi-touch attribution,
what we call first click, it's really,
there should be an asterisk that says,
first click, same browser,
has never cleared cookies.
Like that's what we're talking about.
So if it, yeah.
Well, I was just gonna say, there's all
kinds of other things too, like, I mean,
you have like, especially in our space
where it's sometimes more technical people,
you have people with ad blockers, sometimes
they block cookies, like, you know,
yeah, a lot of brave browsers use it,
so there's all million things in there.
That's why, to me, I was always
looking more for, you know,
I was wanting to take the time
to see how it went over time,
because one of the advantages
is we aren't doing anything else,
so we're doing you guys, and that's it.
So like, I can see- So you see overall
demo growth, you're like, well,
what could it be? Exactly, like,
it's you guys, it's going up.
And so like 2022 was up, and 2023 started
up, and the end of 2021 was up, so like,
it's like, okay, well, like,
and I just told you, like,
it's been level for like 10
years, essentially, or like,
just the slightest uptick every year.
So like, I figure that's you guys, right?
Like even without all the analytics
and everything else, it's like, hey, like,
I know I'm not on podcasts every day,
or I'm not, you know, there wasn't,
we didn't get mentioned someone TechCrunch
or something, like, it's like, yeah,
it's just every month there's a few
more, you know, sales, and that's great.
Yeah, that, we've said the same
thing for us, is like- Yeah,
it's nice when there's one channel.
Content marketing, yeah, it's like,
we don't worry about attribution.
We're like, we got a bunch of leads, the
content must be working, how do you know?
Because that's the only thing we do.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, the B2B, the big thing on B2B is
like the different computers and coworkers.
You just can't track them.
Yeah, right.
Like if, you know, rank and file
employee A reads it, tells their boss,
and then boss signs up for a demo,
you're not getting credit for it.
Yeah, or they- Like, it's
a home page, direct.
Right, or they email in and
we set up a demo with them,
and then we build the trial
for them, or whatever.
There's like 10 other ways that they could
get set up with a trial that would just
be, you would never be able to attribute
it back to like a specific post.
And, you know, oftentimes, again,
like, even if we ask them,
it's like the person I'm talking
to is not the person who found it.
Or the, you know, because
there's very, very often,
it's like we're in there with
five other people, so, you know,
five other companies.
So what happens is, you know,
a flunky gets sent off,
find the best five help desk software
that looks like they might work for us.
They come back with the five,
then the committee looks at them,
then they set up demos.
Like, so, you know, this way disconnected
from that person who found it to begin
with and stuff.
So, yeah, very hard to- Yeah, I think
the other benefit of our bottom of the funnel
strategy is because of these attribution
issues, you can just look at the keywords
and use common sense.
Like if we're like, you
know, if you're thinking,
is this investment and
this project worth it?
And we're like, well, we're ranking
number one for self-hosted help desk,
GDPR help desk, number two
for help desk for Linux.
You're just like, well, what the hell
do you think people are googling that are
gonna do?
They're looking for help desk software.
Like that's gonna do it versus if you
do content marketing as top of the funnel,
that's a big question.
Well, if we wrote this piece on best
ways to like keep your customers happy,
you're like, I don't know, like
did that cell help desk demo?
Right. Like who knows?
It doesn't, I assure you it does not.
I was just gonna transition and say,
what is in the line for help spot?
What's next?
What are you guys looking
to do in 2023 and beyond?
Kind of are, well, I mean, we
have a couple of things going on.
I don't know if you just mean
marketing or the whole thing,
but like the whole thing, anything
you're comfortable revealing, yeah.
Yeah, like I already
talked about, I mean,
we're kind of going through a technological
rebuild here as like to make the
platform, just to make
it easier to work on.
Cause there is like, you know, old code
in there that now is quite old and things
like that.
And even though it's reliable
and tested and everything,
it looks like that's still like, we
want to be able to do more stuff faster.
So probably not social media, but things
like open AI integration's going to come
up heavy here and things like, you know,
whether it's SMS or different areas where
we could do more and it could be easier
to integrate with other things, especially.
Also taking all the stuff
we've learned and, you know,
decisions we've made in the
past that now that we know more,
we would do differently.
So changing features to be more, what
I think is going to be a lot better for
customers, but marketing wise.
AI really makes sense for you guys.
I didn't think about that because the
responses are so repetitive that you could
train an AI to know what to respond to
really, and it could auto complete for you.
That's actually really.
Yeah, I mean, the main things
are really like, I mean,
someday I don't think it's quite to the
point where it's going to be able to fully
reply, like with full accuracy.
Cause the thing is like, the thing
is like if you reply really well to 90%,
but the other 10% are a dumpster
fire, that's like, that's terrible.
Like you can't be having 10% of your
customer service be like a totally wrong
answer, right? So like there is like
a, so I think we're a little ways from that,
although obviously that's, people are
going to be pushing for that and want that.
That's okay.
But the step back from that
is still quite interesting,
which is things like the agent maybe
just writes one sentence with the solution
just roughly and let AI write the other
40 words of flowery language about hello
customer. You know,
this is what we found.
This is how you can fix it.
Please let us know if you don't, you know,
like all that kind of stuff or generate
a knowledge base article from a request
automatically that, you know, somebody,
a human is still going to
probably quick review it,
but you didn't have to like literally
write all that stuff or just cleaning up
language in different areas
and something to be auto routing.
Like, oh, I know this type of, this
person's asking a question that's for this
department or this one's
for that department.
And so we can have a routing
and stuff like that.
So I think it's going to be, help
desk is going to be one where like,
there's a lot of use
cases pretty quickly.
Like some of the intercom
already released AI features.
I'm sure everybody else
is working on them.
You know, we won't be right there at
the release with everybody else cause we're
little, but we will get there eventually.
I am patient and we will
get there eventually.
But yeah, but AI and help desk
is going to be pretty huge, I think.
So stuff like that for sure.
This has been fascinating and
we appreciate you taking the time.
I think this is really
educational for anyone,
especially people bootstrapping
a company.
And then hopefully some people like you
and like us who are not thinking the moment
we have product market fit, how do I
rocket ship this as big as possible and sort
of, you know, grow and keep
a business that's profitable.
Is there a great story?
Yeah, I think with how the
markets kind of, you know,
things are a little bit weird right now.
It's like a time where like people
can just think a little more like that.
It's like, hey, if you made
a million dollars a year,
would you be better than
you are at your current job?
Like probably for most people, right?
So like maybe you don't have to
be worth a hundred million dollars,
like maybe you can make 800,000 or 1.
2 and like that's going to change your
life and you can just dial in a lot of
things differently if you're not always
thinking about like, I must raise money,
I must then, which obviously
said, if you want to raise money,
you have to become big.
Like that's the whole thing.
Like you can't not become big because
the whole economic model is around you
becoming big or failing.
Like that's the idea.
So yeah, so I think that people should
think about that a little bit more.
It's kind of went out of fashion
with so much easy money out there,
but I think it's coming back
a little bit in certain areas.
Yeah, I mean, it's never been easier
to build software in some ways,
some ways it's hard, but still
the tools are out there,
it's cheap to host it and all that stuff.
So you don't need a
lot of money to start.
Yeah. I really love
working with you guys.
I appreciate it, having me on here.
Yeah, I definitely recommend
you guys to anyone out there.
Happy to be a recommender,
a reference as needed.
Sounds good. Now you promised that.
Thank you. Now we'll send you both.
I know, no problem at all.
All right, thanks to you.
See you. Thanks.