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.
00:00.73
Rick
What's up this week, Tyler?
00:02.15
tylerking
Hey, happy birthday America.
00:05.64
Rick
Happy birthday. Starved to last.
00:07.73
tylerking
Happy birthday startup to last. Yeah. So we use transistor as our podcast host. Um, and they just sent me an email that said it's been five years since we started startup to last. So go us. We did have, yeah, we did stop for a while in there.
00:18.80
Rick
That's a pretty awesome accomplishment.
00:22.52
tylerking
I don't remember how, what was like a year that we weren't doing it or something.
00:27.26
Rick
Yeah, when I had my first kid and, and had, and joined Windfall, um, we basically said, this is too much.
00:34.79
tylerking
Yeah, this is, I think this is episode 165.
00:34.89
Rick
And then I missed you.
00:38.52
tylerking
So spread out over five years, but, um, yeah, that's like a good chunk of I'm almost 40.
00:41.26
Rick
That's pretty crazy.
00:45.84
tylerking
Are you 40 yet?
00:47.98
Rick
No.
00:48.92
tylerking
No. So we're both almost 40. So that's like a little more than an eighth of our lives. We've been doing this podcast.
00:57.09
Rick
When you put that, put it that way. That's pretty crazy.
00:59.23
tylerking
Yeah. Is that good or bad? I don't know. But
01:01.81
Rick
I have a question for you about the podcast. Do you, did do you miss the weekly format or do you like the biweekly every other week approach?
01:10.41
tylerking
I think there's pros and cons to each and I'm not sure which I prefer. The nice thing about the weekly podcast is it's much more routine. With biweekly, like I forget it's happening and then it it comes up um and it's like, oh, what am I going to talk about? Whatever. Whereas with weekly, it's just more part of your your routine, but also there's less to talk about every week. So I could go either way. What what do you think?
01:30.15
Rick
Well, the the thing I miss about the weekly cadence is that I remember what we talked about the last week and it just like funnels into the, it's like a continue more of a continuous conversation than a disjointed one, which is exactly what you said.
01:40.75
tylerking
Yeah.
01:42.41
Rick
So, but I, but I, but I also appreciate like, ah okay.
01:43.66
tylerking
and Well, I think that's different from what I said. Yeah, I like that. Cause the podcasts I don't like are ones that are just like, well, here's an update from this week. What's your update for this week? I shouldn't say the ones I don't like, I listened to those. So there's still like four out of five stars for me, but the five out of five are, um, yeah, like an ongoing conversation. The reason I don't like interview style podcasts is because you bring the the guest on and you're starting from scratch with them. So the whole point of this type of podcast is that you go deeper and deeper and deeper each week. And yeah, I agree. It's harder to do that when you forget what you talked about last week.
02:18.40
tylerking
or last episode, no, just a normal workday for me.
02:18.38
Rick
Yeah, exactly. Well, cool. what's what's ah What's on your mind? Are you doing anything fun for the fourth?
02:27.77
tylerking
I didn't do anything, but it seems like you did.
02:31.95
Rick
Well, no, I just, uh, yeah, I guess I did. I mean, we drove to, we packed up the kids yesterday morning and drove two and a half, three hours to bear Lake. Um, we got here. It was chaos, family chaos. It was great. Good, the good kind.
02:44.21
tylerking
Just like normal chaos, like lots of kids and.
02:44.71
Rick
Um, yeah. Yeah. Normal normal family chaos. Uh, and then I went to bed, woke up and I'm working to, I'm working a full day today. Um, and, uh, but then we'll be here for the weekend.
02:53.54
tylerking
Yeah.
02:56.79
tylerking
Yeah. One of the things that people, and the this often confuses people about listening to CRM is we just don't have any holidays, which sounds bad. Basically we just take all the holidays and make them vacation days. So it's like you get 30 vacation days, which by American standards is a whole lot. But if you want to take 4th of July off, that's a vacation day. And I think that's just strictly better. It's like you get to control what days you care about. But when people hear it, they're like, your boss doesn't give you July 4th off. What an asshole. And it's like, well, you chose not to take July 4th off.
03:26.64
Rick
it It's like one of those clips that shows like the end of a fight um but without showing the instigation.
03:30.57
tylerking
and
03:32.83
Rick
ah
03:33.02
tylerking
Yeah. So employees like it a lot, but when they tell their family and friends, those people are like, wow, you the place you work sucks.
03:34.46
Rick
ah but but
03:40.65
Rick
Totally offended. Yeah, no, it's it's it's the same concept of like what what what where the the general philosophy behind like ah benefits of like give people ah money and let them choose how to spend it. Give people vacation time and choose how to spend it. Don't dictate how they have to spend their vacation time.
03:55.37
tylerking
Yeah. Yeah. It's especially, you can even paint it as kind of an inclusivity thing where it's like, not everybody cares about Christmas. Like only Christians care about Christmas. Why would you force someone to use a vacation day on a religious holiday? They don't care about, you know, but yeah.
04:08.95
Rick
In a lot of businesses, ah if if ah a substantial portion of the ah employee population is not going to work, it it doesn't make sense for other people to work because they can't be effective at their jobs. That is not true for necessarily knowing CRM, particularly.
04:23.58
tylerking
I think it's partially true, but I actually view that it's sort of a nice break working. Like I normally work the week between Christmas and New Year's and I kind of like just nothing's going on. It's not like I'm not working. I am getting stuff done, but it's a different vibe, which I kind of like.
04:39.51
Rick
That's what I was looking forward to to today. Honestly, um i I had to tell Tyler before we started recording that we yeah woke up to a little bit of unexpected meetings, which is good. They're good meetings. Don't get me wrong, but I thought it was going to be more of a no meeting, you know, catch up vibe day.
04:55.01
tylerking
Yeah.
04:55.91
Rick
But no, no, it's going to be a, it's going to be a a busy day.
04:59.22
tylerking
Yep. Um, all right. I got some big news, Rick. Big news. I just bought a Mac, a Mac book air. I'm switching from windows.
05:08.90
Rick
Why? Why?
05:11.28
tylerking
I'm, uh, I've, I've been a lifelong windows user. I still think macOS sucks. It always has. And it still does, but windows has gotten worse and worse and worse for me. There are so many bugs is basically becoming unusable. So I'm switching.
05:26.72
Rick
Wow.
05:27.84
tylerking
yeah this is shocking all my
05:29.50
Rick
Um, I can't wait to hear about this. I mean, I've tried to switch to Mac two or three times over the last couple of decades. And every time I'm just like, this is a mistake. I. I can't do it. The biggest problem for me is just like the some of the short keyboard shortcuts. Are you going to be able to work around that?
05:44.04
tylerking
Well, I think you can. you can over So one of the things that so everyone I know uses a Mac, basically, and some of them aren't necessarily a part of the religious war, but some of them are. And the ones who are Mac apologists would say, oh, you just like the the command key. So in Windows control is the main modifier and Mac command is the modifier and key should be at the bottom left of the keyboard. It's so much easier to hit ergonomically. All my Mac apologists friends are like, yeah, you just map it so that that's the command key. So I'm just going to do stuff like that. And also I'm like, well, window management sucks. And they're like, well, install this utility. And it then it works like windows windows management does. And I'm like, well, the doc kind of sucks. And they're like, well, install this utility. And then the docs a little bit better. So I'm expecting to have to do heavy modifications, but I have friends to tell me what to do.
06:30.22
Rick
Okay. Well, this will be good. So, um, when, when you figure it out, I'll maybe follow why why an air versus a pro or other book.
06:39.42
tylerking
um I just don't think I need the power of a pro. um i I think there's, as far as I can tell, there's only two reasons to go with a pro. One is it's a little more powerful and the other is it's got more ports. Everything I do is through a docking station with a single USB-C cable, so I don't care about ports. um and then For the power, like, I don't know, like the, I'm switching from a, you know, windows machine to something with an M3 chip, like it's going to get, I think the performance will be way better than my, what I'm used to. And, um, I do some like medium tier computing stuff at like, I run Figma, which is sort of intense and like a Docker dev environment, which is sort of, but none of this is like, it's not like I'm doing video editing or something like that.
07:22.96
Rick
If you're running like a Zoom ah live meeting plus like a lot of tabs with Salesforce and like um doing some like data data management stuff, is that is that intensive?
07:35.74
tylerking
I wouldn't think, I mean, okay. I think that software bloats to use up whatever resources are available. So it's kind of like computers run slow no matter what, but I, I don't know. I think a normal like mid tier Mac book air should be able to do that. No problem. That would that would be my expectation.
07:53.78
Rick
i I'm having issues with with my ah ability to to like use internet-based apps um with like when when I get a lot of stuff going on.
08:00.28
tylerking
Hmm.
08:03.42
Rick
um And I don't know, does that like ah would you attribute that to a particular feature of a ah a computer or is that just normal?
08:11.07
tylerking
It's hard to say. I mean, it might be that you're running out of memory. It might be that there's some process running in the, like one thing I've run into one of the things that makes my windows machine tough is anytime I run Docker, which is what's used for like the dev environments that I have. I don't know what it is, but something Docker itself is not using up a lot of CPU, but or memory is from what I can tell, but like the computer just grinds to a halt ah for other reasons. i So I don't, I don't know the answer to that. um But do you know how much memory you have? I think that's oftentimes the main problem is that people don't have enough memory, but I don't know.
08:40.02
Rick
I have no idea. yeah Well, I should know this, but I don't.
08:44.28
tylerking
um ah Yeah.
08:49.71
tylerking
Yeah. I think everyone, basically everyone I talk to is like, yeah, my computer is slower than it should be. I think that's just what life is now.
08:57.04
Rick
No, I don't like that life.
08:57.33
tylerking
Our processors get faster and faster. Yeah.
08:59.15
Rick
No.
09:00.07
tylerking
I don't either, but also I'm partially to blame. Like I build software and. Uh, like less annoying CRM is, I don't think it's a resource hog by any means, but we're not spending a lot of time making it as minimal as it could possibly be. Like, have you ever read interviews with like old video game creators from back in the like PS one and earlier days?
09:19.96
Rick
No.
09:21.20
tylerking
They're like, Oh, well, you know, we had to fit this game on this disc. And that means like, here's all the weird optimizations we did because like we we literally just, there wasn't enough space on the disc to fit the game. We wrote, um, people don't build software like that anymore, right? It's, it's a, it's a world of abundance where it's like the internet is infinitely fast. You have as much memory as I need. You have as much hard drive space as I need. Like I'm building software, not really thinking about that stuff.
09:46.53
Rick
Yeah, you don't think about it anymore. Is RAM memory, random access memory?
09:50.53
tylerking
Yes. Yeah,
09:52.59
Rick
um three I have 32 gigabytes. Is that a lot?
09:56.63
tylerking
that should be plenty. That's more than you can possibly get in a Mac book air. So, uh, that, that shouldn't be the problem hopefully, but I don't know.
10:00.99
Rick
Yeah.
10:04.22
Rick
Yeah, that must not be the issue.
10:06.16
tylerking
I don't know.
10:06.47
Rick
Well, some IT guy you are, Tyler,
10:10.18
tylerking
I'm very apprehensive, but I'm going to make it work. I'm committed to it.
10:15.89
Rick
I want to hear about it.
10:16.46
tylerking
Uh, yeah, I'll, I'll give updates. i I would imagine I have an iPhone.
10:18.74
Rick
You have an iPhone, right?
10:21.09
tylerking
Yeah. That's another part of it is like, I would love to be able to text from my computer. I fucking hate Apple for not letting me text from other devices, but, uh, I think probably 98% of the listeners of this podcast are Mac users. And they're probably just like, what are these guys talking about? They're still using windows.
10:42.11
Rick
ah um What else is going on?
10:43.33
tylerking
Um, yeah we've Yeah, there's a lot of, I think maybe I touched on this last time. This is this is what we're talking about. I can't even remember what I talked about last time. ah I think I touched on this, but there's a lot of kind of administrative work around shipping stuff going on right now, because two of our really big features, the form builder and ah like email integration, are both kind of going into beta right now. and just a lot of like Google is making me update our privacy policy. Literally, it needs to say, we protect your data using encryption. like That's what they want me to add, um or else they won't approve the OAuth integration. and um and I think there's going to be 50 steps like this. I think it's going to be a multi-month saga of them coming back and being like, change this, change that.
11:28.14
tylerking
ah Emailing people, making videos, cause like none of our training resources are ready yet. So it's like, I'm making videos to explain to people how these features work. Um, it's all good stuff. Cause like, this is, you know, these are, these are the two biggest features we shipped. I mean, like literally maybe in a decade and they're both going out at the same time. Uh, but just a whole lot of kind of bullshit work right now.
11:52.66
Rick
um
11:53.35
tylerking
I, yeah, you know all about bullshit work though, I guess that's your specialty.
11:56.82
Rick
Yep. You got to do it. Yep. You got to do it.
11:59.07
tylerking
I sometimes I want to put on my, I want your ability to just power through things, but I don't have that naturally.
12:07.32
Rick
um Well, what what's like, what is the work that is actually like going to, once you get over these necessities, like what's on the other end of it?
12:16.36
tylerking
Yeah. Um, so one question is like, do we do a lengthy, like the tempting thing to do is to just slow roll it. Cause the faster you do it, the more work it is. And but by the faster you do it, what I mean is like, we could have this out for every single person, except maybe Google users. Cause again, we have to wait for them to approve us and that's going to be a whole thing, but we could have these otherwise have these out to all our users a week from now, if we were like super urgent, we're just going to do it, move fast and break things. Um, the easiest approach is just to be like, we're just going to beta test and if people ask about it, we'll let them use it in a few months. We'll launch it. Um, I probably need to find some balance between those two things.
12:55.14
tylerking
Uh, yeah, anyway, I don't even know if that's really what you're getting at, but then after that, the whole team is going on forms on the form builder. So it's like good enough. It's probably like V one minimum viable product ready, but I think we're pretty much committing to through the end of the year. We're just going to make forms like as good as we can to see if it's actually competitive with other form builder products. Like I want to give it the oxygen it needs to potentially succeed basically.
13:26.56
Rick
Why don't you make things more a little bit more urgent?
13:30.58
tylerking
Well, I think there's a lot of wasted effort in doing that, especially like, you know, a bunch of customers would run into a bunch of bugs. We'd have to completely take our, our customer service team off of what they're doing to like prepare all the help documentation and stuff like that. Like there is a cost to doing that. And I don't think it really matters if we ship it next week versus a month from now. I, it does. I don't know. It's, I think, I think somewhere in the middle ground is like the type of urgency I naturally have. You seem to think, think otherwise.
13:58.32
Rick
Well, no, not all the time. I think that a never ending urgency is the death of ah sanity.
14:04.74
tylerking
Hmm. Yeah.
14:06.33
Rick
um But I do think you there are there are lots of benefits to pushing through a project to get to the other project and get it done. um And so to the extent that like if you really can get this done in a week and then you can turn your full attention to forums, like that would be pretty cool.
14:22.91
tylerking
I agree with that. This is not taking up the time of our developers right now. They've they've already moved on. um This is like me and like Eunice on the marketing side and the CRM coaches on the kind of help to documentation side.
14:28.54
Rick
Okay.
14:36.28
tylerking
um But no, yeah, I i probably should. Sorry. i'm I'm probably describing this wrong. When I say it to the team, I'm like, You know, it's not 80 20. It's 95 five. The last 5% is the hardest part. We got to push this past the finish line. I'm talking that way. But then in my head, I'm also like, we should push harder than we normally do, but I'm not going to like, like, here's an example. We don't have, we don't have the ability to let Gmail users use email integration yet. So we'd have to launch it to all our customers would be like, but if you use Gmail, you can't yet. It would just like complicate things versus like waiting to be able to actually launch it to everybody, you know? So.
15:13.15
tylerking
Uh, anyway, I, this is my full time thing right now. I'm full time on trying to get this stuff out. You're smirking over there.
15:18.97
Rick
You got it.
15:19.76
tylerking
I think, um,
15:20.23
Rick
yeah I just say it's funny. Uh, what's after forms is forms the rest of the year.
15:26.05
tylerking
um I think forms. So what we're probably going to do is like, the team has something like seven developers, but some are kind of more junior. And so depending on how you count it as, uh, maybe five or six kind of. worth of experienced people, um, probably most of them will be on forms. The other thing I think that we're going to add pretty soon. Yet another feature you're going to be shocked. We don't have is a Kanban view of our pipelines. Um, right now our pipelines are just like a top down list of items. More and more people expect a Kanban view. So it's a, it's not like a huge, huge project, but it's, it's medium sized. So we're probably going to do that alongside forms.
16:07.53
Rick
on on smaller high velocity deals like Kanban view is really useful.
16:12.31
tylerking
Yeah. Yeah.
16:13.11
Rick
We use a leg up.
16:13.33
tylerking
It's there are a lot of situations where it's not useful. Like, yes, some people are changing the status of pipeline items all the time. There are some people who are like changing the fields of pipeline items much more often. I think our UI right now is much better for that second type.
16:29.04
Rick
Mm hmm.
16:29.51
tylerking
what We'll still keep the old type and then, then you'll be able to switch back and forth. But yeah, I agree. I get why people want it. Um, it also, yeah. Yeah, i'm I'm excited about that one. i think that's That and email are probably the two main reasons when people cancel during their free trial, which to me is probably the strongest signal. like They tried us. They didn't just lose interest. They actually took the time to cancel and they gave us a reason. ah Kanban and no email integration are the two main ones we see there.
16:58.30
Rick
Makes sense. ah ah Mind warp, but I know that one one of the ah development roadmap items that you've had in the past and in the future, I think, is ah sketch i was building a less annoying scheduling link.
17:12.97
tylerking
Yeah.
17:12.88
Rick
um did you did did i Did I see news that Google is building a a native scheduling app into Google Calendar?
17:21.30
tylerking
This is Google so hilariously bad at everything. They did this like two years ago and no one knew about it. And then they, they keep canceling it and relaunching it from what I can tell. Like I saw a bunch of news that it got, that they announced end of life of their scheduling tool. And then what they were actually doing was just changing the name of it or something. So they actually already have it. You can already do this through Google and nobody knows that.
17:40.80
Rick
Oh my gosh. Yeah. So they just, they like, if you go to Google calendar, if you're on Google and you go to create, like ah you're going to create an event or a task at the top left, there's an appointment in that schedule that you can, it says new and and and blue.
17:53.03
tylerking
Yeah, but it's not even new.
17:53.83
Rick
um But anyway, and you don't even care. Like I'm just interested in your take on this.
17:58.41
tylerking
Yeah.
17:58.74
Rick
Like, like, is this the killer of scheduling ah apps like Calendly?
18:01.97
tylerking
It's so funny. Yeah, like back in the day, like, you know, we, so we launched in 2010 ish. Uh, and back in the day, the question that every startup founder got was what if Google launched like launches a competitor? Um, the assumption being that they would just kill like everyone, would of course, always use Google. And so I would like lay awake at night, like, well, they have Google contacts. They're trying to move into Google workspace, like business stuff. It would be perfectly natural for them to put out a simple CRM. And I thought that was our biggest threat and how much things have shifted since.
18:32.69
tylerking
10, 15 years ago, if Google put out a CRM right now, I'd be like, yeah, good fucking luck, Google. No one's going to use that, or at least no one that's serious is going to use that. So that's how I feel about the scheduler too. Calendly, Savvy Cal, there are a million of these that are really good, and and it's a competitive space, but Google's the last one I'm worried about.
18:50.72
Rick
Cool. Yeah. I was thinking about it too, that like if if ah you have a ah native scheduling link, like that only works. Like if you're a business that only works so far because you're going to need people who, I guess you'd all be on Google in that case. So it would work, but you're going to want and integrations. You're going to want, like there's so many things you're going to want to be able to do from scheduling workflows that is a lot ah to build there. That isn't just a simple, you know, book a time on my calendar.
19:15.96
tylerking
Yeah, and it's possible we won't build any of that stuff either, but what we'll do that Google won't is A, we will ah not shut it down six months from now. That's a key feature. And B, ah we will make it available we will make it clear that it exists. like Google just has too much stuff. and I mean, I kind of understand how why they... like You're that big of a company, you have to have a million different products, but like I'm confident we could make People who don't even know the Google thing exists, but if they use lesson knowing serum, they'll, they'll know about ours. And I think that's all like, it's a commodity.
19:47.39
tylerking
Every like front has a scheduling tool. Demo desk has a scheduling tool. You know, every SaaS app has a scheduling tool now. It's just like, which one are you going to choose? And it's going to be based on convenience mostly. I think, yeah, I think you're more sophisticated.
19:58.50
Rick
Yeah.
20:01.53
tylerking
You, you, you want all those integrations and stuff. I don't think my my customers probably do.
20:03.74
Rick
Well, I don't, yeah, I just want it to be something that's um for like in like in my windfall role as VP of RevOps, like I'm thinking about onboarding mostly and how long it takes to get someone to understand the tooling. um And so it being embedded in the CRM is like a huge add-on or a tool that they're going to use anyway versus having another tool.
20:25.43
tylerking
Mm-hmm.
20:26.23
Rick
um That's something that that I consider.
20:28.74
tylerking
Yeah, we've had a bunch of, uh, both Google and Outlook calendar users who use our calendar instead, which we we do have a good calendar tool, but it lacks some key features. Like we don't have invites, for example, and we've, it's not super common. but Well, I know you're living in invite world.
20:41.16
Rick
Just a little key feature there.
20:45.16
tylerking
A lot of people invites are annoying as shit anyway.
20:45.85
Rick
Oh, so you'll just like ah hope everyone remembers the time.
20:47.68
tylerking
So, uh, yeah, for many people, that's a key feature. Sorry, sorry. It sends an email saying you got added to it. ah Actually, only internally.
20:55.90
Rick
Okay.
20:57.01
tylerking
No, no. So like our workflow, Rick, is we just email with the customer like, yeah, we'll talk to you at 7 a.m. tomorrow or whatever.
21:02.22
Rick
And yeah it's on them to remember that.
21:04.87
tylerking
if Yeah, if it's a booked call, we try to book stuff through Calendly and then they send the invite. But yeah, ah mostly it's fine.
21:08.43
Rick
Yeah. Okay.
21:11.62
tylerking
Anyway, I understand there are many, many people who rely on invites, but there are a lot of people who don't. um but So that's my point, though. It's crazy that people use us. We've had people tell us, I don't need a CRM. I don't use you as a CRM. I just use your calendar. And when you dig into why, the answer is when you add a user, they just automatically show up on the sidebar so you can see their calendar. You don't have to like invite them. Like you don't have to, other users don't have to go and like, I want to add so-and-so's calendar to my calendar view. That's it.
21:41.69
Rick
I know.
21:41.94
tylerking
That's the whole feature.
21:43.25
Rick
yeah
21:45.00
tylerking
But like little things like that can make a huge difference in actually people actually adopting a tool.
21:49.68
Rick
That's cool.
21:50.23
tylerking
um Anyway, I'm talking like I've heard that from three people ever. This is not a major use case, but the fact that it's ever happened is wild to me.
21:55.13
Rick
i Well, I could tell you that that's a huge, there's nothing more annoying than being on my mobile phone and wanting to look if someone's available at a certain time and not having added their calendar.
22:02.13
tylerking
Mm hmm.
22:06.01
tylerking
Yeah.
22:06.60
Rick
Oh, so annoying.
22:06.75
tylerking
Right. And yeah, and with less knowing serum, you just open it up and check it out. Um, so you asked about the appointment schedule though, if I can go down a little rabbit hole there. So this is, this is like very forward thinking daydreaming and like, I'm in bear.
22:14.15
Rick
Yeah, go for it.
22:19.56
tylerking
I hate doing this on a podcast because if anyone bothers to a year from now, come back and listen, everything I'm about to say is going to end up being wrong. But, uh. If forms work, so that there are a lot of reason we want to build the do do the form builder. um One is customers want it, two is it'll make the product better and so on, but ah it has the viral loop thing, right? You send the format to somebody, they fill it out and they see lessening serum. That's like why it's such an appealing feature to me. If it works, and I don't know how, I have some ideas of how we'll define working, but let's gloss over that. Let's just say if three, six months from now we're like, oh wow, that we can see that it's actually impacting growth a little.
22:55.47
tylerking
Um, one thing we're thinking is just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper into forms. And the other thing we're thinking is, well, let's just do more. Let's just clone it. Let's do appointment scheduling. Let's do invoicing. Let's do document signing, et cetera. Um, how would you think through that?
23:11.81
Rick
Well, I mean, so one thing I'm thinking a lot about right now is luck. um And it's not because like, I'm like intentionally forcing myself to think that I'm just reading about, I really like this. I think his name's Morgan Housle. I like his views on finance and, and life. And he talks a lot about luck. And one of his points is you can't create luck, like that's because if you had control over it, it's not luck. Um, but, but I think like one thing people do say is that, uh, you, you want to increase your service area for like opportunity.
23:36.62
tylerking
Yeah.
23:43.91
Rick
And sometimes they say luck, but I don't want to say that because, uh, that's, I don't agree with that anymore. Cause this guy's convinced me that that's not luck. Uh, but what you can, what you can do is like, if you increase your service area for opportunities for people to use your product, which is like. not necessarily going deeper, but wider. um You're going to find potentially something, you have a higher likelihood, I think, of finding something that ah is a growth lover ah from a product perspective. um And i so i I would think through it like, hey, I really i would want ah ah more products less deep so that I could see if people jump onto it and then react to customer requests more so than going deep on my own intuition.
24:27.93
tylerking
Well, I'm not saying it would be out of my own intuition. It would be based on customer requests. but So I wouldn't have asked the question if I didn't see both sides, but I'm going to take the other side because you've already taken that one.
24:35.28
Rick
mm
24:36.47
tylerking
so um like If you build three or four of these and they're all kind of mediocre, does that get more usage? does like like It's it's kind of the the the difference between having a lot of features that are all only okay versus kind of a narrower subset of features that are great. like Which one inspires people to use it and to share it and to adopt it more? um and You don't know the answer to that, but like what's your intuition?
25:00.38
Rick
hmm. I think you have to do that. I think you you throw noodles on the wall until something sticks. And if you think if you're saying that forums or whatever the one is that you have the and this the the customer-informed intuition that going deeper with would work, then you go deeper. But absent that um or absent like significantly strong conviction, um like go wide and just keep keep throwing noodles against the wall until you you do have that.
25:28.50
tylerking
So I think the problem with the going wide thing though, if forms doesn't work, we will have lost our appetite. Like what I will take away from that is this is too much effort to like for a bet that it's already failed once. So forms isn't working. I think I'm going to be like, that's the last of these kind of viral group loop type things we're trying.
25:44.58
Rick
And I would, I would challenge you and say, I think you need 10 at bats here but to find one. I, maybe you're, you're expecting too much of a, of a, of a, you know, you're, you're expecting too high of a hit rate.
25:56.76
tylerking
But okay. It's not. what Well, I think, okay, ah vague in vague terms, I think what you're saying makes sense. But, oh, you've got a little visitor behind you.
26:05.51
Rick
Ooh.
26:08.28
tylerking
ah ten app So first of all, there aren't 10 of these. There are four, I think, like products that people use that have this viral thing that like connect to a CRM in a natural way. um i guess So there's two ways in which forms could fail. One is people don't use the form tool, right? The other is people use them, but we we see no evidence that it impacts growth at all. if we If it's the second, I don't know why it would be any different if it's scheduling or something.
26:38.22
tylerking
If people don't use forms, that's a different story, I guess you could say, well, maybe they'll actually use event scheduling.
26:43.52
Rick
Yeah. And I just, I go back to the skateboard analogy versus like the, you know, I think yours is a van. Um, but like, uh, do you, do you, do you want to build the van right now or do you want to build the skateboard and move on and get a bunch of skateboards so that people can use them?
26:58.05
tylerking
Right. Yeah.
26:58.17
Rick
And then, yeah.
26:59.04
tylerking
Perfect. Do you, do you want four skateboards or do you want one van?
26:59.99
Rick
Yeah.
27:01.80
tylerking
Yeah, that's, that is the decision here.
27:02.12
Rick
yeah
27:04.40
Rick
Yeah.
27:04.76
tylerking
Um, if, if we fail at the skateboard, we're not building anymore.
27:05.32
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
27:08.16
tylerking
We're not attempting any more skateboards, I think.
27:09.25
Rick
yeah Yeah. So I think I want, I would want four skateboards here if I were you. And I would, I would make that the mission first.
27:13.08
tylerking
Interesting.
27:14.34
Rick
And then it's like, okay, we've got, we've, we've, we've maximized our potential for finding one that will work. If this fails, we did it. We did everything we could. Versus like, if you go build one van and then say, no, we're not going to do the other three because this one didn't work. It's like, it seems, it seems wrong.
27:28.43
tylerking
No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying build the whole van out while it's not working. I'm saying the skateboard works. Does the scooter work even better? And then the motorcycle work even better. And then the van work even better. I'm not saying go build the van while having no traction at all.
27:40.36
Rick
Oh, OK.
27:41.79
tylerking
If if there's no traction, we stop and we don't do any of this ever again.
27:42.02
Rick
OK.
27:44.83
tylerking
That's the, that's it.
27:45.04
Rick
Yeah, well, that's what I don't like. I feel like if you don't build a four skateboards, how do you know that the the you how will you know that the one skateboard? I mean, if one of these four things work, that's worth doing all four, right?
27:57.93
tylerking
Well, yes, in unless one van gets more users than four skateboards. like because okay let's let's Let's draw a parallel here. on the On Twitter, there's all these other people who are debating. It's a different debate, but it's similar, which is all these indie hackers that are like, do you do a portfolio of small bets or do you focus on one thing? and Listen, at the end of the day, it's like the whole point of starting a business is to do whatever the hell you want. So if you're happier with a portfolio of small bets, do it. But most people I know and respect, and and this is how I feel, would say going from zero to one is very hard.
28:29.06
tylerking
Going from one to two is much easier, but has an outsized impact. like If you start a business and it's working, you'd be crazy to be like, all right, we're going to stop that business and go start another one.
28:38.09
Rick
Agreed.
28:38.36
tylerking
How do you react to that?
28:39.45
Rick
No, no, that's a very good point. Um, so I, uh, that's a very, very good point. I do think that like, when you are in the business formation stage, there's a lot of like micro testing that happens, um, on the zero to one basis that people, you don't initially see as a multitude of bets while you're in it. But if you were to really like pull back the layers, like it actually, you were doing a multitude of bets to find the one. um I think that's true of a lot of people. it was like they they what They probably have tried a bunch of things and they the one that they're on ah that's gone deep is not the first um and it's not the last probably.
29:14.33
tylerking
Yeah, right.
29:15.73
Rick
um but but so i't i but yeah To answer your question more directly, like if you have a skateboard that's like people are asking for a scooter about, like definitely build the scooter. um you know but if you but But I wouldn't like try to force the scooter in your situation.
29:29.95
tylerking
Yeah.
29:30.55
Rick
I would i would move to i would try to build more skateboards before I before i build the scooter unless someone's throwing money at me.
29:38.25
tylerking
Okay. Yeah. And another thing, the way in which I think this is different from the portfolio of small bats question. Uh, I'm going to try to make like a metaphor that's going to be terrible here, but like we, the thing is we already have a van. That's, that's like one of the things that's not true in the other discussion. And we're not really building a skateboard. We're building like. a sidecar to the van, not that that's a thing, but you know it's like we're building an add-on to the van. and so The question is, are we building forms so that we can get people to switch off of SurveyMonkey or whatever Qualtrics and switch to us, or are we building forms to grow the CRM product? and If we're growing the CRM product, there's an argument to be made that
30:21.63
tylerking
It just doesn't matter how good the form product is. and it doesn't like we don't have to When we build the event schedule, we're not competing with Calendly. We're just trying to make it good enough that people will use it as a way to promote the CRM. That that is a different wrinkle that doesn't exist with the but general indie hacker conversation.
30:38.08
Rick
Yep, sure.
30:39.74
tylerking
okay um Obviously, we don't need to make any decisions on this right now, but when you when you start a new thing, like forms is like a totally new venture for us, basically. It's impossible not to just daydream about Oh, what is, what if this works? Why does this go super, super well? Um, so that's where I am.
30:53.87
Rick
Total waste of time.
30:56.25
tylerking
Okay. I'm going to push back on that. I think it's, it's very valuable for your, uh, momentum for, for enthusiasm. If you're just like in the slog, which is where I am right now, this is what I'm doing right now is not fun with forms. It's built. I have to go out and do three weeks of work to get people to use it. And it's not fun. You've got to give yourself, you got to indulge a little in daydreaming about what if it works.
31:21.06
Rick
That's fair. Ideally you do that upfront.
31:22.61
tylerking
Do you do that with leg up health?
31:24.20
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. To the point of like wasting time. Like at this, it's at the end of the day, like the, the, the utility in it is pretty low. Uh, I probably should just put my head down and work. Like I've got the vision. I know what, what, what it means to succeed. Uh, like I need, I need to just execute.
31:40.51
tylerking
Yeah, we already said you're better at putting your head down and working than I am.
31:43.14
Rick
yeah
31:45.46
Rick
I don't, I don't think I do a good job of it.
31:45.94
tylerking
um
31:47.18
Rick
I'm just, I'm just saying, uh, it's, uh, anyway.
31:51.63
tylerking
Yeah. Um, cool. I know you got to head out in about 10 minutes. Um, what's, what's on your mind?
31:55.73
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I've been, um, uh, thinking a lot. So we had our partner meeting, it was it Monday this week?
32:04.21
tylerking
Yep.
32:04.41
Rick
and leg up Yeah, so you and me and JD met um for our monthly meeting, and ah we spent a lot of time talking, and I don't have any major things to report from that meeting, but but one thing I've thought a lot about ah is um we we we identified, I think over the last couple months, ah ah and like ah by trying to grow harder, that there's a big difference between um a a prospect who is in a buying motion for health insurance or has pain associated with health insurance,
32:05.69
tylerking
ye
32:32.96
Rick
ah and someone who we've we identify is an ideal customer profile, but isn't necessarily in this moment of need. um An example would be, if you just moved to Utah today, you probably need to change your health insurance today because your health insurance is for wherever you used to live and there's a state regulated it's state regulated and it will go away if you don't change it to your Utah health insurance. um That's a life event. ah versus someone who's been in Utah for 10 years, bought their health insurance policy 10 years ago, and they don't need any help right now.
33:07.62
Rick
ah It's like, how do you convince that person set to make us their agent even though we have value value for them? um so so what it's got what what What I've been thinking a lot about is, there's kind of two directions we can go here.
33:15.23
tylerking
Mm hmm.
33:23.11
Rick
One is we just ignore and nurture the people that don't have need, once we identify them, we don't try to convince them. We don't expend the energy to try to convince them to but make us there ah their their agent. um Instead, we just go try to find more people in need. And then when those people do have need, we try to remain top of mind to them in a thoughtful way. um The other direction is getting better at storytelling um and figuring out how we can create, I mean, fear of not
33:55.60
Rick
fear of missing out, but fear of not making us the agent is what I'm more specifically saying. um Because that's I think that's the only way we would able be able to convince them, is like they'd have to be missing out on something in order, like we have to create the need and the urgency.
33:59.96
tylerking
Right.
34:09.14
Rick
um and And I don't know how I feel about that. ah i ah it can It makes me a little uncomfortable. I think that i think really good salespeople. um like If I think about the door-to-door knockers um that that that like grow these massive sales organizations, I do think that there is a little bit of um of fomo creation a significant amount of FOMO creation.
34:22.71
tylerking
hu
34:32.23
Rick
um like I think about like Mormon missionaries, like you are going to go to hell if you do not convert.
34:35.35
tylerking
yeah Yeah, that's the implication.
34:37.97
Rick
to i mean that That's not their pitch, but like fundamentally it is. um Yeah. Uh, yeah. And so, uh, you know, do does, does that work for like a health in some way? Um, and so, uh, yeah, that's my topic.
34:49.36
tylerking
but
34:51.74
tylerking
The Mormon, the Mormon comparison is interesting because I would, I would guess, I mean, I've never done that. I would guess the only people they they resonate with are people who are having something like, like a metaphorical life event. Someone who's like, I'm addicted to drugs or I just got divorced. Or like, I bet that it only works on people who are going through something.
35:11.71
Rick
That's fair.
35:13.42
tylerking
um
35:13.30
Rick
That is fair.
35:14.06
tylerking
what Which is different from a Cutco knife. So if you if you look at, religion's different, but if you look at like any door-to-door sales thing, it's like, it's almost all impulse purchases. It's stuff with very low stakes. It's stuff where it's not like, well, to buy your Tupperware, I have to switch from my current Tupperware. You can just buy the Tupperware and have both. um I think there are some things that can be sold that way, but I don't think everything can be sold that way. and
35:33.64
Rick
So the question is, can health, and like, I'm not, we're not selling health insurance in this case. I want to make it very clear. They already have health insurance. So we're not going and saying buy more health insurance. This is the nuance that, and it's very confusing to people because they don't understand what we're selling. We are selling a like basically better service on their existing plan for no added cost.
35:53.51
tylerking
Yeah, but yeah, there's
35:56.99
Rick
But this is again, I'm not doing a good job of articulating why that matters because it's not. So this is why I get into storytelling and it's like, there's probably a story that says, you know, Hey, like if you don't make us the agent, you're going to regret it. It makes that super compelling.
36:10.54
tylerking
Yeah, it's it's the the you're going to go to hell equivalent.
36:13.99
Rick
Yeah.
36:15.10
tylerking
Here's a story about something something going horribly wrong for someone and they didn't know where to turn and they ended up with a $50,000 bill, but if they had a trusted advisor, they could have gone to the right hospital or whatever.
36:22.91
Rick
And just so you know, we, we helped them through this, but, but as a result of them not making us the agent earlier, we had to, that we it took us a week to get, become their agent before we could help them. And so you don't, what you don't want to do is be in a situation where you need us and and you're a week away from us being able to help because we haven't already, met we aren't already, already your agent. That's the general gist of like what we could do.
36:41.19
tylerking
Yeah.
36:42.89
Rick
The other side is like, that's like kind of like the fear bit base, but we could also create like some incentives like, you know, we'll put 50 bucks in your HSA if you make this your agent, you know, that kind of stuff. um But I think that's not very sharp and actually doesn't work.
36:56.31
tylerking
Yeah. So here's my instinct here. We've run into the exact same problem at Lessening CRM. I think anyone who's ever tried to do sales with a product that's hard like that's not Tupperware, it's you run into this. With CRM, it's much harder, I think, because if if they're not if they don't have a problem right now, if they're not shopping for CRM, you just have no idea when they will again. And it might be decades. with health insurance, even if they've had the same plan for 10 years, it's not, it's not technically true, right? They have to renew every single year. There is a moment every year where everybody has to do something. I wonder if that's, that changes things for you where it's just like, that's the time, like get them on the list, but why, why expend effort until then?
37:40.22
Rick
ah Yeah, and that because I feel like we're still leaving something on the table that is like silly. um This is not like ACRM or KAKO NIAS in that they already have, this requires so little effort on their part.
37:45.60
tylerking
Mm-hmm.
37:52.58
Rick
And this is the thing that I want to work with you on this month. um If we could make it like create an account, like you sign the thing and then we take care of it from there, it literally takes 60 seconds. you'll get 50 bucks in your HSA, will become your agent, and we and you will not have missed out on us ah when you have this health insurance nightmare, inevitably, at some point in your life. um Like, then I i i know that's the...
38:13.85
tylerking
Yeah. It just sounds like a scam. You want me to sign a legal document? What?
38:23.54
Rick
Uh, that, that is fundamentally the the, the, the, the hump, right? It's, um, the first hump is should I take the time to, to invest in this, which is, we can, we can pretty quickly say, listen, this is 60 seconds of your time. But the really big hump is the hump of like, do I trust this person? Do I trust like a pelt? Um, and that, that is a much more like a harder, uh, hill to climb.
38:40.28
tylerking
Yeah.
38:45.95
tylerking
Yeah. I will say, I hate to say this cause this works against me, uh, as like the value I might bring to the business, but making them set up an account is the worst part of that process. Right. Like why not just send them the, the E sign and leave it at that.
39:04.09
Rick
And then, and then we create the account for them.
39:06.83
tylerking
Yeah, yeah, I guess so. We want them to have an account mostly just so they get an email every month being like, Hey, your health insurance policy.
39:11.41
Rick
Yeah, that's part of the value proposition.
39:13.04
tylerking
Yeah.
39:13.07
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. It's like the peace of mind. Like, just so you know, like, uh, here's another health insurance nightmare. Uh, if your, your, uh, your, your insurance company messes up your billing, they, uh, you don't get the information that it's out.
39:23.52
tylerking
Yeah.
39:26.99
Rick
You don't make your payment. They cancel your policy. You go to the doctor, you don't have coverage.
39:31.57
tylerking
Yeah. So i'm generally speaking, i I used to be all about optimizing optimizing stuff, like a la Facebook data science, where it's like, oh, what color should the sign up button be? And like let's change the exact text of every label of every field and get a 0.001% conversion rate improvement. I'm way down on that for like less knowing CRM right now, because the reality is ah there's buying a CRM is so hard. It's such a big process. What the label on the button says is not going to be the deciding factor. I actually think though, this is one of the rare situations where every little point of friction matters tremendously. So I think part of the question is like, how like if they don't need to sign up, don't have them sign up. Like like getting it down to as few clicks as possible, I think.
40:13.27
Rick
Well, I'd love to talk to you about this more offline because and then maybe report back on the podcast because I think this is something I want to focus on a little bit. It's kind of like your your mentality where it's like, if i want to I want to beat the heck out of this so that we can stop building this try to trying to build a skateboard. like At the end of the day, like there's there's like you said, there's like basically another version of this, which is like, we just say, hey, we'd love to be your agent today.
40:27.14
tylerking
Yeah.
40:33.47
Rick
If you're uncomfortable with that, we don't think it's a good idea for you but to wait, but but like it's okay. Reach out to us when you do have an event um go or or go ahead and create a free account. Don't make us your agent. Use our service. That way, you know when you do have an event, we're top of mind. We're here for you and you can call us.
40:50.22
tylerking
I think that's actually maybe the best way to pitch it because that doesn't sound like a scam. Basically being like, listen, there's going to be a point where you have a question about your health insurance. Uh, when that comes up, if you remember who we are, you can reach out or you can do it right now. And then, and then, you know, like that's the only, just figuring out why is it a little better to do it now, which I don't think is going to be a super hard thing to explain, but that to me lends credibility that it's just like, you know, we're not trying to pressure you into anything.
41:05.95
Rick
You'll be on our search.
41:18.27
tylerking
This is going to happen. And when it happens, we'll be here.
41:20.96
Rick
Yep, that's probably the right approach, honestly. i bet That feels on brand too.
41:25.02
tylerking
Mm-hmm.
41:25.09
Rick
um Well, um, the other other like little thing I wanted to say, uh, before we jump off is I am using chat GPT more. Um, and, uh, so if you log into our shared jet chat GPT account, which I don't know if it's allowed, but we use a shared jet GPT account.
41:34.49
tylerking
Nice.
41:41.16
tylerking
I actually, so I set up my own. I have my own now.
41:42.67
Rick
Oh, you you're not using, you're not using that one anymore. Well, uh, it's, uh, well, if you log in there and see some of the prompts, uh, you will, uh, laugh.
41:48.28
tylerking
I felt bad. and what What kind of prompts you doing?
41:54.51
Rick
ah Bedtime stories for three for three-year-old Oliver.
41:56.66
tylerking
Oh, I did. I did see a bunch of bedtime stories in there before I got my own account.
42:01.70
Rick
he's he's very He's very into ah stories about ah ah the sals salads ah and sandwiches that go for walks in the gardens. um And and so i've got so I've had some really creative chat GPT moments. um And you can also have it create an image for you for the cover of the book.
42:21.21
tylerking
it is It seems incredible for just like, yeah, keeping kids occupied.
42:25.38
Rick
But i'll I'll leave this one on here because I'd like to talk to you about how I can use it more and share some of the things I'm doing. But I'm i'm definitely using it daily now. And I was not using it daily until recently.
42:34.82
tylerking
Awesome. Yeah. That'll be fun to talk about, but I know you got to run.
42:36.92
Rick
All right.
42:38.00
tylerking
You want to call it.
42:38.79
Rick
Yep. um If you'd like to review show notes or past episodes, you have this to start to last dot.com. See you next week.
42:46.39
tylerking
Nailed it. See ya.
42:47.09
Rick
Yeah.