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.
00:00.89
Rick
What's up this week, Tyler?
00:03.54
Tyler King
much rick how are you doing
00:06.83
Rick
Good. It's been a while. It feels like it's we haven't talked on the podcast and weeks or months.
00:11.75
Tyler King
yeah i think it's been five weeks because we uh we don't we normally do every two weeks i pushed the last recording back by a week because of big snow tiny comp and then you were sick so we canceled that one so yeah i think it's been five weeks maybe
00:13.62
Rick
Yeah.
00:26.48
Rick
Oh, that's right. I got hit by a truck and I wo i woke up in the middle of the at night and I was like, tyler I got to let Tyler know I can't do the podcast.
00:33.21
Tyler King
Yeah.
00:33.52
Rick
Because I think I texted you like 3 a.m.
00:36.75
Tyler King
Just like flu symptoms or something.
00:38.28
Rick
Flu. Yeah, it was like, it was just like i kind of a quick flu.
00:42.65
Tyler King
Yeah. I also had the flu while we were out. Five weeks is plenty of time for both of us to get sick and recovered.
00:47.46
Rick
And recovered.
00:49.58
Tyler King
I i do still have a little cough going on, so I might have to mute myself periodically. But um yeah, what's what's new in the last five weeks?
00:58.49
Rick
Well, probably the biggest news in my life is we already had two kids, a three year old and 18 month old. Well, I guess he's almost four. So four and like two. ah And we just officially took guardianship of our niece Reese, who is 15 years old um and are also helping her brother um and kind of wrap up college. ah He's a junior in college. So um this is fun.
01:24.82
Tyler King
Yeah, that seems like quite an adventure. um
01:26.93
Rick
yeah
01:28.25
Tyler King
Any, he like, I don't know, thoughts, observations, anything about it?
01:33.10
Rick
um i was I was reading a tweet this morning and they were like, this guy was like ranking the difficulty of life change from like one, zero kids to one kid, you know, one kid to two kid, three kid to four kid, four kid to five kid, et cetera.
01:48.28
Rick
And he was saying that zero to one is the hardest. And then I think he said like one to two is the second hardest. And then it's like, uh, it gets easier after that, the more kids you add.
01:59.73
Rick
So like, and, and so like going from two to three, super hard, but like going from three to four is like not very impactful. So I don't know.
02:07.17
Tyler King
Yeah.
02:08.05
Rick
I don't, not, it's, it's hard. I'll just put it that way.
02:11.19
Tyler King
it's
02:11.19
Rick
Like.
02:11.64
Tyler King
It certainly makes sense and from the standpoint of just like, there's a step change. Like zero to one is a infinite increase. One to two is doubling. Two to three is a 50% increase. is Is that it? Or is it, I've also heard people be like, oh, the older kids can take care of the younger kids and stuff like that.
02:28.10
Rick
Maybe. um It hasn't worked out quite so far for us.
02:32.04
Tyler King
the 15 year old's not coming in and babysitting every weekend.
02:34.00
Rick
ah yeah we or we have an out we It's probably not the appropriate to ask. you know It's a little bit different.
02:39.56
Tyler King
Yeah.
02:40.02
Rick
um But but ah yeah, it's good. and um things Routines are settling in. We're a few months in to the to the change. and um Yeah, but big life change. um And I feel like we're...
02:52.90
Rick
like now that we're settling the family, the household, um I can kind of get back to normal routines with work and, and, and personal stuff.
03:01.53
Tyler King
Yeah.
03:03.21
Rick
So um it's good.
03:05.53
Tyler King
Cool. Sounds good. and Well, yeah.
03:09.04
Rick
What about you?
03:10.30
Tyler King
ah the I mean, the big update over the last five weeks was ah ah that I went to BigSnow TinyConf. um Had a great time there. I was supposed to go to two of them.
03:18.13
Rick
did you ski the pal?
03:20.08
Tyler King
ah It was at, you know, it's East Coast. It's in Vermont. Pretty good conditions by by East Coast standards. Like, I think even a ah West Coast person or a Rocky Mountain person would say, okay, conditions.
03:26.23
Rick
Nice.
03:35.01
Tyler King
It was a powder day by East Coast standards. I think you would have said okay.
03:37.48
Rick
I had a day.
03:38.21
Tyler King
But yeah, I had a great time.
03:41.46
Rick
I had a day at snow basin. you ever skied snow basin?
03:44.17
Tyler King
i don't think so, no.
03:45.32
Rick
Um, I went there on Monday, ah and it was like a day. Do you remember that day we had at parks? That one time where it was like two feet of snow and we were just like falling down the mountain.
03:55.62
Tyler King
Yeah, you can't even ski it with that much snow.
03:57.21
Rick
Yeah, it was so but it was so fun.
03:57.75
Tyler King
Yeah.
03:59.50
Rick
ah
03:59.62
Tyler King
Yeah.
04:00.26
Rick
And it was like one of those days. so um
04:02.42
Tyler King
That's especially rough because you're a skier. I'm a snowboarder. Sucks to be a snowboarder with two feet of snow. That's too much.
04:10.35
Rick
but Anyway, sorry. Tell us about ah Big Snow Tiny Comp.
04:13.64
Tyler King
um Yeah. Well, first of all, a bit of a bummer. I was supposed to go to, there's, there's an East one and a West one. The West one's in Colorado. I'd never gotten invited to the West one before I did this year. i said, yes.
04:25.84
Tyler King
While I was at the East one, our dog was, Our dog's kind of been on his last leg for a while. um He didn't die. That's not how the story ends. He's alive. But basically his legs stopped working.
04:37.37
Rick
Show low.
04:38.97
Tyler King
Jolo, our dog Jolo, his legs stopped working, his back legs.
04:39.65
Rick
Jolo.
04:43.46
Tyler King
He's he's like a basset hound. So he's got one of those long spines. It's very common for them to have like neurological like hind leg problems. But then they gave a medicine to help with that. And this medicine, sorry if this is TMI, gives him like explosive diarrhea for basically the entire time I'm gone.
04:59.63
Tyler King
So Shelly's pregnant, you know, seven months or whatever, pregnant by herself, can't bend over trying to take care of this dog that's shitting everywhere, calls in all the reinforcements, calls in my mom, calls in our friends to get through the week.
05:12.12
Tyler King
But because of that, I canceled the other big, so I pulled out of the other big snow, ah
05:16.67
Rick
Oh, bummer.
05:17.62
Tyler King
to take care of Jolo and then, well, yeah, except then by the time I got back from the first big snow, i don't want to say he was fine.
05:18.42
Rick
But that was a great call.
05:24.43
Tyler King
He's still in a diaper, but like most of the problems are gone. I haven't really dealt with any, uh, major issues. So anyway, um,
05:32.22
Rick
I feel like when a dog hits diaper stage, it might be time, Tyler.
05:36.66
Tyler King
Yeah, listen, we were fully expecting the vet to tell us that. We went to two different vets and they were both like, he's like extremely healthy. He just can't control his bladder that well.
05:47.97
Tyler King
um And they're like, we'll give him steroids and that will help. So he actually has gotten quite a bit better.
05:52.51
Rick
Hey, that's good, though. This is good practice for what to expect in three months.
05:56.21
Tyler King
Honestly, I yeah, we'll see. But I think I am immune to the the grossness of bodily ah excretions at this point. I know i'm I'm going to be tested on that, but...
06:06.84
Rick
and yeah but Well, what did you what did you cover at Big Snow Tiny Conf?
06:11.90
Tyler King
Yeah. So as a reminder for anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's, you know, I think 11 people were there this year. It's a very small, it's more of a meetup than a conference, but you go skiing during the day and then at night everyone gets an hour. ah So it's three nights and then, so 11 people spread spread out across three nights. Everyone gets an hour to kind of give a talk, but it's not like a, here's how you can reduce churn for your SaaS business type talk. It's very like personal and like, here's what I'm working on. It's more of like a update on, on what's been going on.
06:40.48
Tyler King
Um, Some of the people are more on the personal update side. Some of the people are more on the business update side. I mostly just shared my plan for like, like you know, if if anyone who listens this podcast knows all of this, but like the plan is work on forms to try and get the viral loop and try and like close the feature gap between us and our competitors.
07:02.98
Tyler King
But like, ah so the normal culture of Big Snow is Lots of pushback, disagreement, challenges in in a healthy, good way, I think. But like the past two years when I've gone, I've gotten a lot of pushback to what I've said. This time I was very surprised. Everyone was like, yeah, that sounds like the right plan.
07:21.28
Tyler King
Let us know how it goes.
07:22.51
Rick
Nice job.
07:23.71
Tyler King
Yeah. Well, that doesn't mean they're right necessarily, but it felt so i kind of
07:26.82
Rick
yeah
07:29.84
Tyler King
you know i'm I'm not a very ah confrontational person, so before i I'm i'm like building myself up, I'm like, all right, I'm going to go. I'm going to have to you know fight the wolves here when I give this talk. And everyone kind of agreed with the plan, so i it was a little bit of a letdown almost.
07:44.26
Rick
No, it can't be a letdown. This is just me. This is just meaning that you've got the right, you're focused on the right things like and you just got to execute this year and see what happens.
07:50.51
Tyler King
Yeah.
07:53.15
Rick
um You know, yeah you know either you'll learn at the very at the very least.
07:53.73
Tyler King
Hopefully.
07:57.18
Tyler King
Yeah. One of the things that, one of the reasons I expected pushback is like one of the most common refrains in the indie hacker bootstrapper circles is like, you can't product your way out of a growth problem. Like it's, it's so many of the people in this space are builders, they're they're coders, they want to spend time building features, and then they neglect the other parts of the business.
08:19.62
Tyler King
And so all the advice is focus on marketing. And by marketing, we mean not products, right? And my proposal here is like, actually product is the the way out of this, which I, that's why I expected pushback is like, that's normally something people disagree with, but I guess people agreed with it in this case. so So
08:39.94
Rick
I'm glad because I i think this is like a year of execution at Less No Serum versus like kind of iterating and, um you know you know, try try experimentation.
08:51.18
Rick
i think like you got to put your head down on this stuff.
08:51.60
Tyler King
yeah. I fully, if I could go back 10 years in time, I mean, there's a lot of advice I'd give myself, but one of them is just like, you don't need to spend nearly as much time thinking about the business, thinking about concepts and high level stuff.
08:53.46
Rick
I love it.
09:04.35
Tyler King
You just need to keep doing, just keep building stuff. So, um, my other observation from Big Snow.
09:07.60
Rick
Mm-hmm.
09:10.48
Tyler King
So this is my third year going. It's, it's like two and a half days or something. It's like three nights, but, uh, and then two full days. um, I like really feel like I know the other guys there, despite, you know, doing the math. It's like, I've spent 10 days with them in total, you know, not like a huge amount of time.
09:30.09
Tyler King
And in some ways i I just feel, I feel very close to the other people there. um Especially the ones who have been there all three years I have. And it it just kind of got me thinking about, there's a, I think there's, so the other experience I've had like this is hackathons.
09:46.58
Tyler King
um My, like the dev team at Lesson Wing Serum has gone to two hackathons. not Not recently, not since the pandemic, but um it's like, you know, you go for a full weekend, you pull all-nighters, you're working really hard.
10:01.57
Tyler King
Those have been some of the best bonding experiences I've ever had as a company. And I'm just kind of kind of starting to think, maybe this is obvious to everyone else, but like 10 days worth of one hour, like one hour per week with somebody totaling up to 10 full days of hanging out with them is different from 10 straight days of hanging out with them.
10:21.88
Tyler King
Like there's something immersive about this that can't be replaced by just like a meeting every once in a while.
10:26.49
Rick
Yeah. And I don't even think it needs to be 10 days. Like it's, it's like, there's a couple of, I think like if you broke this down to first principles, like one, one thing is like focus, like you're, you're together in the moment and like sharing an experience together.
10:39.84
Rick
Like that's one condition, which can, can be made.
10:40.49
Tyler King
Yeah.
10:42.24
Rick
you I mean, you could go do something fun. Like it could be fishing on the, on a lake, but it's an, it's a, it's a sufficient amount of time ah together where you have to break down this, like these artificial sort of barriers. ah Well, not artificial, they're real barriers, like but like invisible barriers.
10:57.33
Tyler King
Yeah.
10:58.51
Rick
um And ah yeah, like I totally i totally agree with the with your observation here. And i do think that it's easy to think that, oh, I'll go to lunch with like a few people this this month and try to network and just have these like surface level transactional um meetings that that that, yes, there's conversation and there's breaking of bread, but like it doesn't get to the level of,
11:22.17
Rick
breaking down to the to the core of someone um that like what you what you just did does. um
11:27.60
Tyler King
Yeah.
11:27.69
Rick
But I think there's lots of ways to manufacture a similar condition. I don't think people do it enough. I certainly don't. I wish I did more of this intentionally. I'm super envious of what you've what you're what you did here. I'm sorry you didn't get to go to the second one.
11:41.49
Tyler King
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, that that was a bummer. But yeah, yeah I think you're right. it yeah the hackathon, is especially because it is hard. Because it's like... I don't know. i'm sure yeah I'm sure you know people who have been in the military.
11:54.91
Tyler King
They seem closer with the people they go through that with than I am with anyone, right? there There is something about going through a hard experience together, I think, that a hackathon provides. I mean, not not to compare a hackathon to going to war, obviously, but
12:08.90
Rick
Yeah.
12:09.23
Tyler King
um
12:09.98
Rick
Or hazing in a fraternity or what what you and I experienced at Zane Benefits for a year.
12:11.66
Tyler King
yeah, ah sports teams.
12:14.84
Rick
like there there There are these like experiences that are... when you when you face when you try to solve When you face adversity with someone, or ah that that is like definitely something that accelerates, I think.
12:26.77
Rick
you have to You have to come together or...
12:27.01
Tyler King
Yeah.
12:29.52
Rick
um or or Yeah, just you you don't... You either go go deeper or you go away from each other.
12:35.54
Tyler King
Right, right. So I think I knew that part. what i didn't The thing is, like Big Snow Tiny Comp isn't that at all. like it's totally We have a private chef. We're going skiing. It's not like a difficult way to spend time, but still just the immersive... like like I think skiing is especially good for this. You're sitting on the chairlift with... it's When it's a group of 10 people, it's like, okay, you can... like Someone's always got something to say. When you're on a lift with two other people...
12:59.64
Tyler King
for 15 minutes, it's like, you have, you know, there's the silence. You have to get comfortable with the silence. You have to talk. You have to you know, not every, versus like, there are people I work with who I've worked with for years LessonWing CRM, but all of our interactions are, we have a meeting about a thing and we're going to come in and we're going to talk and, you know, we we'll joke around or whatever, but like, there's a point.
13:19.80
Tyler King
And when we're done talking about the thing, we'll leave the meeting. i There are some people I've worked with for years that I haven't really gotten to that, like, silence on a chairlift level of comfort, you know?
13:33.80
Rick
Yeah, it's funny that comfort through like extended periods of silence is probably like the test for whether or not you've you've crossed a certain you know point with someone.
13:46.54
Rick
um And it's both ways, right?
13:46.88
Tyler King
Yeah, for sure.
13:48.79
Rick
ah um
13:49.11
Tyler King
Yeah.
13:50.22
Rick
yeah i
13:50.75
Tyler King
Okay.
13:52.13
Rick
i want like So do you think you should do more of this? do you think like big snow tidy comp is the outlet for you? like Do you feel like you're doing enough of this?
14:03.68
Tyler King
Yeah, that's a good question.
14:03.85
Rick
This being like intentional deep relationship development.
14:04.76
Tyler King
It's a good question. i I think I'm pretty introverted. And i also have, I have like a small but very strong social group in St. Louis.
14:17.56
Tyler King
I'm bad at staying in touch with people. Like, if not for this podcast, you and I would not talk very often, unfortunately, which is one reason why I'm so glad we do it.
14:23.32
Rick
Mm-hmm.
14:25.55
Tyler King
I'm bad at keeping in touch with people who are remote. I have great friends in Boston, great friends in San Francisco that I don't really talk to that often. I'm good at staying in touch with people in St. Louis for the most part, or either that or maybe my friends in St. Louis are good at staying in touch with me. But sorry, I'm rambling here.
14:40.13
Tyler King
My point being, I don't know that I need a lot more like human connection in my life, but... I like that Big Snow feels like the business side. When I lived in San Francisco, I could just talk about tech.
14:52.45
Tyler King
I could just walk up to a random stranger in a bar and be like, hey, what are your thoughts on MySQL versus Postgres? And they'd talk about it. And I've never actually done that, to be clear, but I could, I think.
15:00.92
Rick
yeah
15:01.85
Tyler King
ah um In St. Louis, nobody, even the people I work with, don't want to talk about work all the time, aside from a couple of people. I like being able to be in that group where it's like, my nerdy passion is business and entrepreneurship, and I can do it there.
15:16.81
Tyler King
Long way of getting to your your question of do I want more of it. I think twice a year would probably be good. Once a year is okay. I don't think... I'm not trying to do this once a month for sure.
15:27.50
Tyler King
Yeah.
15:27.87
Rick
Yeah.
15:31.37
Rick
I'd like to get to once a year, like that would be my, my
15:34.29
Tyler King
Yeah.
15:34.65
Rick
like ideal level. Like I'm, I'm, I have a huge gap here ah for the last few years.
15:39.70
Tyler King
Do you have either people like you could do it yourself and like invite people or do you know of something like this? Like, ah do you have an easy on ramp to something like this? If your life probably doesn't allow for it right now, but maybe it hopefully will soon.
15:52.07
Rick
Well, had that men's group. like I guess, let me back up. I did this last year with the men's group that I joined. I did exit that ah in December. i have fulfilled the year commitment and decided not to re-up for this upcoming year.
16:03.85
Rick
um So I guess I'm now realizing i what I just said isn't true. haven't found um something that is the right amount of time investment versus like what I'm looking for, like the trade-off.
16:16.55
Rick
That was too frequent and too hard on me to to to to participate in. um
16:21.54
Tyler King
Yeah.
16:22.53
Rick
So I guess I haven't found it yet.
16:23.09
Tyler King
Well, and that was that was once a month, like one night. once some I wonder if...
16:27.07
Rick
Yeah. Three or four hours, once a night, once, once, one night a a month, but like, you know, late at night, it was hard.
16:28.07
Tyler King
through
16:33.24
Tyler King
Yeah.
16:33.42
Rick
It was a lot. It was a bit, was a big commitment and heavy.
16:33.90
Tyler King
i wonder if a few days I wonder if a few days consolidated like like a big snow type thing would be easier or harder to pull off.
16:38.66
Rick
Yeah. Yeah. If I could, if I could trade, I mean, I really enjoyed getting to know everyone. So I don't want to like say that it wasn't worth my time, but like, if I could, if I could take all those hours and time that I spent over the course of 12 months and consolidate that into one continuous thing, I would much prefer that even if like, even with the same people, like that would be much better for me.
16:59.26
Tyler King
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. There's also a lot of updates once a year, um once a month. I think it's more it's easier to go into it and just be like, yeah I don't know, still doing the same thing as last time.
17:10.54
Rick
Exactly. Um, well,
17:12.41
Tyler King
um Cool. ah What have you been up to ah ah work-wise?
17:19.03
Rick
Well, I've got kind of um three updates on like the the the work the work areas of my life. So like windfall, is ah our fiscal year starts February 1st.
17:30.84
Rick
ah This is my day job. So it's very much in the throes of planning. We've got our KO next week. And so we're gonna um I'll be in San Francisco.
17:40.36
Tyler King
RKO.
17:41.42
Rick
Revenue kickoff. It's our annual go-to-market On site or off site.
17:47.67
Tyler King
Okay.
17:49.18
Rick
And so I've got to, you know, we're going to have everyone fly into San Francisco on the sales marketing customer service teams. And there's lots of presentations and team building and ah training and rah-rah.
18:03.95
Rick
And so that's, that you know we that we you know, I'm not the most rah-rah person, as you know.
18:04.33
Tyler King
Okay.
18:07.55
Rick
um
18:08.04
Tyler King
go
18:08.45
Rick
So I have to like, I have to like mentally prepare for this and just, and be like, make sure I'm smiling and all these things that I'm not good at. ah
18:15.72
Tyler King
Can I stop you real quick?
18:15.73
Rick
So yeah. yeah
18:17.90
Tyler King
I've just got a little side story about that. ah I have been in like the groomsmen in a handful of weddings. And I guess I just have like resting bitch face or whatever. There's all these pictures of me at different weddings walking down the aisle, like with my arm wrapped around a bridesmaid. And my face is just blank.
18:36.56
Tyler King
And every time Shelly sees when she's like, why weren't you smiling? And I was like, nothing was happening. It didn't occur to me to smile.
18:43.31
Rick
but yeah
18:43.74
Tyler King
Anyway.
18:44.67
Rick
Yeah. And like, you know, these things for me, like require lots of mental preparation and intensity. And so like the last thing I'm doing is smiling.
18:50.21
Tyler King
and
18:51.96
Rick
you You're going to see like whatever it is, but Rick intense face, which is not like, like, like rah, rah.
18:59.03
Tyler King
Yeah.
18:59.82
Rick
it's like So ah anyway, that there's there's a lot of going on related to planning right now to get the year kicked off. um And I'm pretty involved in that. So you know two two more weeks of this and then things will so you know get and move into execution mode.
19:12.95
Rick
um And then ah you know I wanted to provide an update on leg up health goals. I think last episode or a recent episode, we I sort of set the target for ah fiscal year 2020.
19:26.36
Rick
for for this year as 30, getting to 30K monthly recurring revenue, which is 2X kind of where we finished the year. um And I was i kind of put that as this as a straw man. i wasn't saying that it was final.
19:40.71
Rick
Brought it to you, brought it to JD. And I really liked where we ended up, um which is we we we downgraded, we lowered the bar. ah we we we are We took the goal down from 30K to 20K. And I just, the amount of relief I feel um And like the the business, like working on LegUp Health is so much more fun for me as a result of this change. I can't explain it.
20:01.95
Rick
um But basically what we did was, JD and I got together. We said, yeah, we're going to do 30K. And then Tyler was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa why Why? um And effectively, he he took our model and and made some adjustments. And and realize we realized that...
20:20.87
Rick
if we do twenty if we set the goal as 20K, we can basically maintain the status quo, which is retain existing customers and add 10 new clients, consumer clients a month and one new employer customer month, which is what we've been doing for the last year. And we basically hit all of our like,
20:39.64
Rick
ultimate goals, which is growing the business, building profitability, default to live, JD's target comp, long-term potential for me to work on the business, ah product opportunities. Anyway, it's ah it was one of those things where it's like, i never i've I've never experienced the euphoria from lowering the target.
21:00.16
Rick
And I think you have, and I felt it, and I'm feeling it every day.
21:01.78
Tyler King
Yeah.
21:04.23
Rick
So anyway, that's it.
21:05.15
Tyler King
Yeah. It's interesting. you're You're a bit of an enigma to me, Rick, because all of your stated goals are in line with the bootstrapper community in general.
21:15.72
Tyler King
I think you like bootstrapping. you When the word calm comes up, you seem to resonate with it. But but All of your professional experience has been adventure-backed companies and then in a very not calm environment.
21:29.89
Tyler King
And so, which I think is also good. Like one of the reasons I was a hell yes to join LegUp Health is because you bring an intensity and an energy that bootstrappers don't. But like, yeah, I don't think you know what calm feels like.
21:43.58
Rick
ah but But here's the thing, though. like I'm getting a taste of it with this. And what I'm realizing is, yeah, like I can feel JD's calm, too. I can feel your calm.
21:52.93
Tyler King
Yeah.
21:53.80
Rick
And as a result, like there's room for like all sorts of innovation. And so I actually think we're going to end up well beyond 30K as a result of this, but like, I don't feel the pressure to, I can't explain it, Tyler.
22:03.64
Tyler King
Yeah.
22:06.75
Tyler King
Yeah.
22:07.60
Rick
I just, I, I have like a little bit of like, I have massive excitement around, ah lowering the bar, which I've never said out loud in my entire life.
22:16.66
Tyler King
I love it. ah A funny thing. So ah for the listener, Rick and I have a notion document that we, there's two Kanban boards side by or two ah list views side by side, one with his updates, one with mine. So throughout the week, we add our updates.
22:31.62
Tyler King
And at the, like when we started this podcast, we were like, oh, like we're going to turn this into a brand or, we you know, we didn't know what it was going to be yet. Right. So we were kind of trying to figure that out. And one of the things we were going to do is like, we're going to come up with startup to last core principles, like a list of principles that we endorse.
22:48.96
Tyler King
And it's still at the top of this notion board. There is one thing on it. Only one thing. It says buffer, leave room for things to go wrong. That is the only value we ever came up with. And it seems very fitting with what you're saying here is like you have buffer now.
23:01.83
Rick
yeah I've never had it before. ah feels good. so
23:06.14
Tyler King
Yes.
23:06.86
Rick
and and I could tell JD, like, can he feel the difference with JD?
23:10.28
Tyler King
I don't talk to him as often as you do, ah but I haven't talked to him since we made this decision.
23:15.31
Rick
Okay.
23:15.48
Tyler King
But I'm...
23:15.55
Rick
Well, the behavior that you're, I think, seeing in our Slack instance in terms of like ideation, um like you know, thoughtful ah prompts and responses to your questions related to product development.
23:22.20
Tyler King
Yeah.
23:28.90
Rick
Like, I think that's all ah symptomatic of not worrying about a ridiculous, how we're going to hit a ridiculous goal in three months.
23:33.74
Tyler King
Yeah.
23:36.94
Tyler King
It is very funny to me that for for the last year, for basically all of 2024, so i always have this kind of background in security with my role in LegUp Health. And for the listener, as a reminder, I'm very, very part-time. Like Less Annoying CRM is my my full-time business.
23:52.51
Tyler King
I took a sabbatical from Less Annoying CRM to build the initial product for LegUp Health, but now i'm I'm just like very, very part-time. And I'm always wondering, and but the deal is I get 10% of whatever you get, Rick.
24:03.67
Tyler King
Now, right now you're very part-time also. So I feel like that's fair. I'm, I have a bit of imposter syndrome of like, if the business does really well, am I going to like, feel like I earned to the money in the future. And for all of 2024, ah In our partner meetings, you and JD were talking about go-to-market stuff. And I was sitting here like, I guess there's just nothing for me to do here. Like the the product's not the problem.
24:24.45
Tyler King
The moment we lower expectations, there are like tons of product ideas, like things for me to do.
24:29.47
Rick
Yeah.
24:31.25
Tyler King
I don't know if that's a coincidence or or if that's actually that JD needed the space to think about it.
24:35.77
Rick
I think it's there's like lots of factors, but I think it's both. like i don't I think the timing is right is one. And like we we needed to get to this point for, I think, to have the conviction and then also the foundation to to get this stuff going.
24:50.64
Rick
but But also, I think JD is just like in a really good spot um you know in terms of set up for success this this year in a place that I don't think...
24:58.69
Tyler King
Yeah.
25:00.05
Rick
I think he would, I think if he were on the part of this conversation, I think he would, he would effectively like agree, like basically say this, I've never felt this before. I've never felt an attainable goal before.
25:07.10
Tyler King
yeah
25:08.79
Rick
He's been, you know, right in our, in the same companies as me. So, uh,
25:12.55
Tyler King
Yeah. and And things are going okay. Like the the flip side of this, or I don't expect this to happen with, j this is not gonna be a problem with JD, but like with some people, if you give yourself too much buffer, then it's like, all right, I'm just not going to work as hard or I'm not going to be as focused. I'm going to work on little side things that aren't the core thing I need to be spending time on.
25:31.21
Tyler King
No concerns there.
25:31.18
Rick
the No, like I talked to JD just about every day and the the intensity he has is higher than ever.
25:39.25
Tyler King
Yeah.
25:39.58
Rick
It's it's such good energy right now. um Well, yeah, let's just I'll keep an update on here.
25:42.04
Tyler King
That's awesome.
25:43.58
Rick
But like, maybe maybe I'll regret this, but I i i don't think I will.
25:48.19
Tyler King
Yeah. cool
25:49.63
Rick
um So that's LegUp Health, high-level goal, and more details to come in future episodes on what we're working on. um And then the the other thing that's happened is I just like started picking up my pen again. And I guess it's not my pen, but like I started making space in the mornings to just write a little bit.
26:06.56
Rick
And it naturally turns into my newsletter, which I write for myself very clearly. It's not for other people, but you're welcome to read it. And... andnna Yeah, I'm like, I've gotten two newsletters out. I'll get another one out this week and two to three hours a week of writing. And I like makes me, it clears my head.
26:21.74
Rick
It feels good. And anyway, I, so I'm kind of getting back on track. It feels good.
26:28.60
Tyler King
Great. I love it. Yeah. I it was, uh, it brought a smile to my face when I got your, your first little newsletter back in my inbox.
26:35.56
Rick
Good.
26:36.72
Tyler King
Um, by the way, my dad loves your writing. Uh, he has, he's mentioned that to me multiple times.
26:40.11
Rick
Oh, oh, thank you.
26:43.01
Tyler King
I think you have a very, you have a very direct writing style of like, uh, just getting right to like, when I write a blog post, I'm like, I need a paragraph introing or whatever. And you're just like, I'm in it.
26:54.42
Rick
yeah Yeah.
26:54.86
Tyler King
Yeah.
26:55.50
Rick
Like I, I try to reduce as few, reduce it to as few words as possible. Um, which is less, I think like fun to read, um, and ah it's less entertaining, but it's, I can be, you know, more, packed, it could pack a punch.
27:00.99
Tyler King
Yeah, yeah.
27:10.94
Tyler King
Yeah.
27:11.58
Rick
Thank you though. That's nice to hear.
27:12.56
Tyler King
Cool. So you but you think the writing habit should be sustainable or?
27:17.53
Rick
It makes me happy. It's kind of like working out. It makes my brain work better ah day in and day out. um I'd like it to be a 30-minute a day habit um minimum. It's not going to be that.
27:32.18
Rick
But if i can get if I can get a couple hours a week, I'd be really happy.
27:32.32
Tyler King
Yeah.
27:35.97
Tyler King
Cool. All right. What's going on with me? ah One thing... Well, one thing I'll mention, this isn't something going on with me. um So we use Transistor to host this podcast.
27:46.66
Tyler King
um
27:47.12
Rick
Mm-hmm.
27:48.24
Tyler King
Transistor.fm. They added a... Well, first of all, I did make us a Blue Sky profile. They added the ability auto-post on Blue Sky. So I did set that up.
27:56.62
Rick
Nice.
27:56.81
Tyler King
They had a feature... I'm interested in your thoughts on this. They have a feature that... If someone replies, so we we publish a podcast episode, someone replies to it, ah or sorry, we publish a podcast episode, it gets posted to our Blue Sky account.
28:13.59
Tyler King
If someone replies to that, that can show up as a comment on the transistor website. So it's as if there's like comments for podcasts. I think this one of the big things that's been missing from podcasts. And we talked about ripple.fm in the past, which I think is cool. But also I know it's not like it's it's a side project that ah is not probably going to get the, the push to like reach critical mass.
28:37.21
Tyler King
But not being able to leave comments on podcasts, not having any kind of back and forth discussion with the audience is the the main weakness of the medium, I think. um The flip side to this, though, is if someone leaves a comment on our Blue Sky account, neither of us is ever going to know about it.
28:51.75
Tyler King
So I disabled the feature. Anyway, I just thought I'd mention this to you. Get your thoughts on it.
28:57.08
Rick
The feature being like replying to tweet or what do they call it on posts through blue sky.
28:59.64
Tyler King
Replying to leave a comment.
29:02.86
Tyler King
On Blue Sky. Yeah. Yeah.
29:04.68
Rick
ah Okay. On, on startup to last post on blue sky.
29:05.58
Tyler King
So what we're still auto posting to Blue Sky, but if someone then replies to that auto post, it won't like, this is not the official way to leave a comment.
29:08.46
Rick
Okay.
29:13.79
Tyler King
There there is no way to leave a comment, basically, ah because I thought it would, having people leave comments that we don't know about and don't reply to seems worse than not having a way to leave a comment.
29:25.79
Rick
Agreed.
29:26.80
Tyler King
Okay.
29:27.02
Rick
What's it, what's like, is this just sort of like an FYI or is there like, do you have, do you have an alternative?
29:30.09
Tyler King
Yeah, I don't know. i i Mostly I'm just letting the listeners know, ah follow us on Blue Sky.
29:31.31
Rick
Like, Would it be helpful to set up?
29:34.97
Tyler King
It is a completely zombie account that we don't pay attention to.
29:41.64
Rick
Like, I think we have a startup at something email address, like start the last email address. Like we could set the group up to get notified if someone replies to a, ah I don't know what call them tweets.
29:50.77
Tyler King
i don't think there's an easy way to do that.
29:52.17
Rick
What do they call them?
29:53.21
Tyler King
They call them well they call them posts, but the community calls them skeets.
29:57.25
Rick
Skeets. Nice.
29:59.89
Tyler King
which I think maybe maybe that's over. The early community called them skeets.
30:02.50
Rick
Okay.
30:04.87
Tyler King
um Yeah, i don't I don't think there's a good way to get an email notification. And I like i like Blue Sky. One of my complaints about them is their notifications, they don't let you control them at all.
30:14.95
Rick
Hmm.
30:15.06
Tyler King
And you get followed by a bunch of like spam bots, basically. um same Same thing with Twitter. But with Twitter, you can turn those notifications off. With Blue Sky, you can't. ah So I turn off all my notifications for Blue Sky because it's impossible to stop the fire hose of spammers pinging me all the time.
30:31.91
Tyler King
Anyway, we don't need to discuss this anymore, but I just thought I'd let you know.
30:32.19
Rick
Well, okay. Oh, I'm glad that we're spamming Blue Sky. That's the best news I've ever had.
30:38.28
Tyler King
We are spamming Blue Sky. I also...
30:40.83
Rick
We're participating.
30:42.25
Tyler King
I turned off our auto posting on Twitter. Fuck Twitter.
30:46.38
Rick
You did?
30:47.48
Tyler King
I'm done with Twitter. Rick, if you know how to log in and fix it, you can do it.
30:53.34
Rick
Oh, boy. All right. Well, did you really turn it off?
30:59.22
Tyler King
Yeah.
31:02.46
Tyler King
I don't even know if they were working anymore because didn't the Twitter API start blocking that stuff? Anyway, I don't know.
31:06.25
Rick
Oh, boy.
31:07.25
Tyler King
i close my i closed my personal account with Twitter too.
31:07.42
Rick
oh
31:09.73
Tyler King
I can't i can't support Twitter.
31:12.09
Rick
and Okay.
31:13.74
Tyler King
Sorry, I should have talked with you about that, but I was like, Rick's not even going to notice.
31:14.04
Rick
Yeah,
31:17.48
Tyler King
And then I told you on the podcast, so I guess I blew my cover.
31:19.20
Rick
yeah I never would have known.
31:22.92
Tyler King
um
31:23.20
Rick
ah
31:24.22
Tyler King
if you If you care, I can turn it back on. ah Okay, form update. This has been my recurring segment here. We've got the public form builder tracking how many submissions we're getting.
31:36.79
Tyler King
If we last talked five weeks ago, I'm forgetting exactly where we... Basically, the story is... Excuse me. The story is ah we had a big surge over the last five weeks and then it dropped down a bit.
31:48.45
Tyler King
So where we are right now is above, meaningfully above where we were last time we talked, but it still feels a little bad because, you know, you just want line to go up. You don't want line to go. You don't want two steps forward, one step back, which is kind of what's happened over the last five weeks.
32:03.80
Tyler King
um One of the things we've started having to deal with is, ah One of these weeks was really, really good for submissions. And then we looked at, it's like one user got 150 submissions in a day, which is for context, we got 478 submissions all of last week.
32:22.13
Tyler King
um That person was using it for internal data entry into their CRM. which i is a great use case by the way. So if if that doesn't make sense to anyone, like what I mean by that, let's say you have a flow where it's like someone calls me up and I wanna collect this information about them and add them to the lead pipeline.
32:32.08
Rick
Thank you.
32:41.37
Tyler King
But it might be like some of the information's about the contact, some of the information's about the company, some of the information is like a custom field on the lead pipeline. So the flow in the CRM is like, okay, add a contact, type that information in, hit save, go to the linked company, edit the company, add the info for the company, hit save, go add a lead to the contact. Like it's not great.
33:01.19
Tyler King
You can instead make a form, a custom form for yourself. That's just like, here are all the fields we need. These go to the contact. These go to the company. These go to the lead. Much, much better. Very good use case, I think.
33:11.98
Tyler King
But it doesn't help with the viral growth at all. Right. I'd,
33:15.15
Rick
Yep. Did you anticipate this use case?
33:16.46
Tyler King
i
33:17.22
Rick
i was just curious.
33:17.94
Tyler King
yeah
33:17.98
Rick
Like, yeah, you did.
33:18.46
Tyler King
Yes, I did anticipate it.
33:19.50
Rick
Okay.
33:20.69
Tyler King
And, you know, I always knew like some percentage of our submissions would not be like, there's ah there's ah a million reasons a submission might not be a useful thing. like viral loop. Like one of these is one of, one of our customers is a school using this to survey their elementary school students.
33:37.83
Tyler King
And it's like, I don't think an elementary school student is going to be a customer of lessening serum. So that's also not, I knew that like there'd be some amount of these submissions that wouldn't be useful, but in this case, it was like 30% of all the submissions we got that week or something.
33:52.83
Tyler King
um So anyway, that's just something I really want to encourage our users to use this use case. And I'm also trying to figure out like we need to, looking at the number of submissions is not going to be a useful metric to look at if a huge percentage of them are these internal tools.
34:07.85
Tyler King
um
34:07.94
Rick
Yeah. Can you, can you add a tagging to the forum for use case, like to get better reporting here, like where they're helping you?
34:08.44
Tyler King
So.
34:14.34
Rick
Like, could you say like, could you have, um could you have the user?
34:17.06
Tyler King
Like ask the customer to say, Hmm.
34:18.42
Rick
Yeah. Like, is this a market internal form marketing form? Like just add a little bit of a workflow there to try to um segment these.
34:26.30
Tyler King
That's interesting. I mean, one way to do that would be ah a feature we don't have that... if If a stranger, if a listener of this podcast were to look at our product, the thing they would comment on that we're missing is we don't have templates.
34:41.14
Tyler King
ah like You'd think you'd go to this form builder and it's like, here's a lead intake form. Here's of this, here's that. That sounds obvious on the surface. We started thinking through that and it it we decided it wouldn't actually be useful because like everyone's forms are different and everyone's custom fields are different. So we can't really like have...
34:58.90
Tyler King
you you can't make a You can make a template that's like, it's got a name and an email address, but then it's like, well, this this business has this weird field that no one else has. Like that can't be a part of the template and that's what they need filled out. So anyway, we decided not to do templates. i What you're describing, maybe maybe it's worth doing templates, not because it provides value to the user, but because it gives us that tagging information.
35:18.46
Rick
Yeah.
35:19.45
Tyler King
That'd be interesting. The thought I've... So a different way of doing this is just like, don't count multiple submissions from the same IP address multiple times.
35:30.37
Tyler King
Um, so like another, another use case that's pretty common. Take the, uh, take a tablet to a conference. Like I've got a booth at a conference. I want a tablet and i want people to be able to sign up for some giveaway or whatever at the end of the, you know, all all the booths at the conference have some sort of lead intake thing.
35:46.44
Tyler King
Right. Uh, That has the potential for mild virality, I guess. Like the person filling it out could see our name, but they're not going to like click the link, the powered by link and be like, oh, i I'm going to use this vendor booth tablet at a conference to go browse, to learn about lessening serum. That's not going to happen. Right.
36:06.65
Tyler King
So and all anyway, I think almost all the good viral use cases involve different IP addresses for all the submissions. Right.
36:15.50
Rick
like could buy that.
36:15.67
Tyler King
Which then brings me to a question of like, how much is it worth building a bunch of reporting here? On the one hand, I'm like, this is our main marketing push right now.
36:28.40
Tyler King
It's something that if it works, like there's tremendous opportunity for optimization, A-B testing the powered by link, A-B b testing the landing page they land on later, figuring out what industries have the best conversion rates, on and on and on.
36:41.34
Tyler King
a part of me is very tempted to build really good reporting here. Another part of me is like, we built the feature, we're marketing it. Let's go spend our resources built like, you know, building Kanban or mobile and not like spending um three months building out really great reporting might end up being a waste of time.
36:58.61
Tyler King
Do you have thoughts here?
37:00.03
Rick
Yes. um i I mean, I think you need to be able to measure the success of the of the initiative. And it sounds like your current metric is not doing its job. So like it it does seem like you need to invest in maybe like a report that says you you know you know unique IP addresses who submitted a form or you know like there might be just like one additional metric you need based on learning here.
37:22.55
Rick
And then you know you you might if you learn that that's not working, iterate again.
37:23.06
Tyler King
Yeah. Yeah.
37:26.53
Rick
But like doing more than what you need here seems... unnecessary, like not the right, like there's probably leverage in one more metric and then a huge drop off in terms of the, the, the utility right now of additional reporting.
37:35.20
Tyler King
yeah
37:40.62
Rick
Um, so like what I go to right away is like, can you report quickly on like, you know, unique, you know, forms for unique IP form submissions.
37:52.94
Tyler King
Yeah, and ah the answer is either yes, we can already do that, or no, but with a small amount of effort, we can. Yeah.
38:01.00
Rick
Then do that and move on until you need more reporting to like, like the the higher level comment here is like, if reporting, I'm really bad about like, I I'm always thinking about like,
38:12.74
Rick
let's build report like Let's make sure we can report on this when we need to. And it's so wasteful in the short term.
38:16.15
Tyler King
Yeah.
38:18.13
Rick
um Part of this is my job at Windfall. like I'm the old guy who has to think about this, so I have a bias towards it. like If you don't need the data now, like probably not a good use of time. like Every ounce of energy should be go towards making that one metric that matters go up.
38:34.14
Tyler King
Yeah. Okay. So ah couple of thoughts on that. So one, I was just looking at our database as you were ah talking and we are not collecting, we have the person's IP address on it, but it's not like links to the submission.
38:47.07
Tyler King
So I think we need to log slightly different, slightly more data with the submission in order to get the report we're talking about here, which made me think like there's a difference between logging data and building the report.
38:49.39
Rick
Thank
38:59.60
Tyler King
um logging data If you don't log the data, you can't go back in time and and log it later. But you can log it, and then but not build a report for it until you need the data. What's your thought there? like Should we only be logging the data we need to report on right now? Or should we proactively be like, okay, well, i yeah, IP address could be useful, but it might also... like like One thing we don't track right now is if someone clicks on the Powered by link...
39:24.87
Tyler King
We have like Fathom Analytics set up, which honestly kind of sucks. Like it doesn't really, it's like, I can see how many people clicked that link. That's all I can see basically. What I want to know is like, well, which forms are people getting links from? Like are people clicking links from and connecting that if they click the link, are they then signing up? And like, what's the conversion rate of a person viewing a form to a person submitting a form to a person clicking the link?
39:48.93
Tyler King
We're not tracking the viewing the form at all right now. And we're not tracking the clicking the link right now, we're only tracking the submission. Do you think it's worth logging the data so that at least we could build that report if we needed it in the future or just hold off?
40:03.67
Rick
If the effort to log the data could be like, so like, like log more data could be like snuck in. Yes. But like, would I stop doing something else to prioritize this right now? No.
40:13.07
Tyler King
Yeah.
40:13.89
Rick
So to me, like you need a better metric.
40:14.48
Tyler King
I'm,
40:15.89
Rick
I think that's clear to like your current metric is masking, like whether or not you're actually accomplishing your viral goal. And so like, to me, like you need to solve for that. Do you need to log other stuff right now?
40:26.65
Tyler King
Yeah. Okay. so
40:27.98
Rick
Like, no, you don't.
40:28.99
Tyler King
Well, all okay. I think what you just said is good though. Like, are we accomplishing our viral goal? We've been using number of submit. So I've said this before in the past, but just as a reminder, um the thought was if we can't get enough submissions, we definitely won't have a viral loop.
40:45.64
Tyler King
Like there's a lot of, there's there's a whole funnel and I don't know all the numbers in it. Like, again, like conversion rate from viewing a form to filling it out, to clicking the link, to signing up for a free trial, to paying and Nobody's going to go through that funnel cleanly. you know There'll be a more complicated buying journey, but something like that.
41:03.77
Tyler King
the if If the denominator is not big enough, if the number of people filling out a form is not big enough, it doesn't matter what any of those other conversion rates are because- I know like it's not going to be 50% of people who fill out a form then become a customer of ours, right?
41:18.22
Tyler King
um So the thought was, let's only focus on submissions right now. But that's necessary, but it's not sufficient. The thought was, if there are enough submissions, we haven't yet answered, is this going to achieve our viral goal?
41:30.66
Tyler King
Once we have enough submissions, then we can start saying, are people clicking on the Powered by link? are the you know Are we seeing, et cetera, et cetera. So what you just said made me think that... While yes, our most immediate thing is not, is all we need is number of submissions from unique IP addresses, but that doesn't actually answer the real question we need to ask. We're going to need those other questions answered.
41:54.06
Tyler King
Unless the submission thing fails. That's the thing. If we if we never get enough submissions, then it's like, okay, well, there's no point in worrying about the rest of it.
42:01.30
Rick
Correct. And i think like, so then it just becomes a question of like effort. Like if it's, if this is, this is this like an hour's worth of work or is this like, what's the opportunity cost of logging stuff you don't need right now?
42:13.49
Rick
um so and And, and you know, I think that's a very, like that probably requires more discovery, but um you you can probably estimate that.
42:13.62
Tyler King
Yeah.
42:21.00
Tyler King
Yeah.
42:23.65
Tyler King
I think that it's more than an hour, but I think the... I spent some time last week designing the whole, like, alt like what does our perfect report look like? Understanding we might not build it all right now. This is my general approach to things, like, design without any regard for constraints and then apply constraints to it later.
42:40.45
Rick
Yep. Yep.
42:40.99
Tyler King
Looking at it, I think the building of the reports is, like, 90% of the work and the logging of the data is 10. And that might mean logging the data is... a few days or something like that.
42:52.99
Tyler King
ah Having this conversation, I'm thinking that's probably worth it. Also, because I can run manual queries in the database to get, I can make like half-assed reports in the meantime. Yeah.
43:04.17
Rick
You'll sleep better knowing the data is there if you want it.
43:04.42
Tyler King
Yeah. yeah Okay. So probably do log it, maybe make a very basic, one challenge here, I can run queries in the database. Eunice, our marketer, cannot.
43:16.73
Tyler King
um So right now I'm passing her data, but it's it's like, I do it once a week. it's There's a lag. So like, for example, she had a question the other day of, Every time I send out an email pushing forms to people, I would love to know, are we actually getting more users using forms as a result? Like, is this working basically, or should I stop doing this?
43:36.62
Tyler King
Which is a very reasonable question. um Giving her some self-serve access to some of these would be useful so that she's not like asking me to run the queries and then send her the data. but but But yeah, it's a balance of, I don't want to Sorry, if I can just go down a rabbit hole here.
43:52.49
Tyler King
I don't know if how well you remember this, but like one of the biggest mistakes I ever made with the company was the fourth person I hired. Well, sorry, the second part there's me and Bracken, the two co-founders.
44:05.88
Tyler King
Then we hired Michael. the The next person after Michael was a data scientist. um Or maybe maybe maybe the person after that, whatever. This was like an absolutely moronic decision on my part.
44:19.33
Tyler King
A four person company and one of them is a data scientist. ah
44:25.80
Tyler King
I had been like fully brainwashed by the kind of Facebook way of doing things, which is like everything is data driven. You know, you can optimize your way to success basically. And like, if you have a billion users, know,
44:39.78
Tyler King
You can optimize almost any aspect of it and it'll be worth the cost of the labor that went into optimizing it. Business is our size. And I mean, Let's Make Cairn was way smaller back then than it is now.
44:50.25
Tyler King
But even where we are now, you can't just like endlessly tweak little knobs and be like, oh, that we got a 0.001% improvement there.
44:57.31
Rick
you
44:57.97
Tyler King
Well, that's worth nothing to us. It's worth millions of dollars to Facebook. um And while this data scientist worked here, he worked here for about two years. He built all these reports. He had this whole separate server that was like ingesting data from different places. and he he had a math PhD. He was doing all kinds of fancy stuff.
45:15.29
Tyler King
He had all these reports. And I would look at the reports to be clear. Like, it's not like no one was looking. Every day I'd pull them up and be like, oh, we're getting more referrals. Cool. Or whatever. He left. I was kind of in a panic, like nobody knows how this infrastructure works. And like a typical math PhD, his math was good. His code was bad.
45:35.43
Tyler King
We were all looking at like, I have no clue what's going on with any of this code. So we just shut the whole thing down and we lost all these. We had spent two years building all this stuff out and we just turned the whole thing off. I spent one weekend building my own reporting, just a very simple thing.
45:50.04
Tyler King
It didn't matter at all. Zero downside to this. We lost nothing. And what I was realizing is we had all these reports, but no, we were doing nothing with the information. Like I saw, oh, ah referrals are up.
46:03.38
Tyler King
Okay. Am I doing, am I going to change my behavior in some way? Well, if not, but you know, if a tree falls in the forest or whatever, like if you're not doing anything with the information, why have it? So that was one of my big learnings back in the day.
46:14.63
Tyler King
I'm definitely having flashbacks to that right now of like, okay, we definitely don't need to build all this reporting right now.
46:18.70
Rick
yeah Yeah, don't. and ah But i do like like the there's a better metric than what you're tracking right now to tell you whether you're you're moving the needle or not towards your objective this year. And like I think that's a no-brainer.
46:33.18
Tyler King
Yeah. Okay. um Thank you. that was helpful. I hate giving someone a project and then being like, actually, nevermind, we're not doing that. So I'm going to have to go do that though.
46:42.59
Rick
yeah That's the worst. Like sometimes you just let it happen and you're just like, oh, thank you for that.
46:44.48
Tyler King
Yeah.
46:47.28
Rick
Like, yeah, you don't say that like this was a waste of time, but like it's just so
46:50.53
Tyler King
Yep. Obviously that's worse, but it feels better in the moment.
46:54.17
Rick
just. Yeah. um
46:55.57
Tyler King
Yeah.
46:56.81
Rick
Cool. Well, do you want to call it or do you have a quick anything quick?
47:01.10
Tyler King
ah Yeah, i've I've got a meeting right... Do I have a quick thing? um No, I think... ah Yeah, let's call it.
47:10.33
Rick
Well, if you'd like to review past topics and show notes, visit startup2last.com. See you next time.
47:15.83
Tyler King
Bye.