Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to the Rogue Startups podcast, where two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: And now here's Dave and Craig.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: All right, welcome to another episode of Rogue startups. This is number 02:08. And how are you doing this fine day, Craig?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: I am, at this point, virus free, which I think is the thing on everyone's mind these days.
Woo hoo. Other than having my kids home for two weeks straight when we pretty much can't leave the house between coronavirus and shitty winter weather, I'm at the breaking point. Other than that.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I hear you on that one.
God, I'm so done with winter. But, yeah, I mean, now we've got the coronavirus, and that's gonna definitely cause some havoc here. There's no doubt about it. At this point. It's not a question of if, but a question of when. And that's a lot of what we're gonna talk about today is how coronavirus is affecting everyone's businesses and what things people are doing in response to it, and I to things to protect their businesses and opportunities that have arisen. You know, I mean, every. Every single downturn or every crazy thing that happens, there's always opportunities that come out of that, and people are already looking at that here, unsurprisingly. So we'll talk a little bit about that today.
How are things with castos?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Things are. Things are good, man. Overall, I.
Yeah, I can't complain. I can't complain. We're having a good couple of months here at the beginning of the year, figuring a few things out. I guess the one thing I wanted to really mention for folks to check out and kind of like a tactic that I can share that we're doing right now is we're doing a giveaway, like a sweepstakes with a couple of partners. So we've done it on podcast motor. We've done it before kind of by ourselves, where we would run a giveaway, and we gave away, like a $200 microphone or something like that. This time, we're partnering with three other companies in the podcasting space. So squadcast, which is a tool to help you record really high quality audio just in the browser.
Headliner, which makes the audiogram. So, like, these little videos that we put on social media, and podcast insights, which is really kind of like the industry leading blog for podcasting, we kind of partnered with all three of them, and then both Kastos and podcast mode are giving away stuff into this. It's like $3,000 worth of stuff that we're giving away. Yeah, it's cool. The goal from a business and marketing perspective is email address collection, and we're hoping to collect several thousand email addresses with this between us and the three companies that we're partnering with.
And so far, it's going really well. It was cool. Denise really ran the whole thing. It was kind of my idea, and she's done a lot of this before and her time with previous companies, and she just did the whole thing. It was really great. I just had the idea. We talked through some of the strategy and approach, and then she did the whole thing, reached out to the partners, set the terms, built the page, all this kind of stuff.
So really cool. It'll be interesting to see what we can do with those leads, know, after the fact. So we're going to let this run for about two weeks. So even when this goes out, it'll still be live. Folks want to check it out. Casdos.com giveaway is. Is where it is. You can drop your email in for a chance to win. Yeah. Like a year's worth of subscription to all of our top plans and a couple of months of our podcast motor service. So pretty cool. I'll be interested to see how it goes.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exciting to see.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
But, yeah, that's. That's kind of what's going on with us on the podcast motor side.
Things are going well. Our sales guy is chugging along. It's really great. We're landing a couple of big clients every month, which is cool. And it's not, it's not breaking the business from a fulfillment perspective. So, yeah, can't complain too much. There he was in. He was in Southeast Asia for, like, three months and just came back last weekend.
So, so far, he's still virus free as well. But I, you know, from talking to him, it was, it was really crazy sounding to be kind of on the ground there in, you know, places like Thailand and stuff in the last few weeks.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I can only imagine. So years ago, when SARS was actually going on, my wife was on a pilgrimage over to Tibetan, and SArS had just hit. They had already, like, basically they were in the air when they started announcing the whole SARS thing. So they just, you know, they just said, fuck it, we're going in and doing it. And they. They went and it was fine. And she didn't come back with SARS or anything like that. But the part that was crazy was just how places that were normally packed and crowded and insane were basically ghost towns, you know, I think they went through the. I want to say it was the Hong Kong airport. It might have been the Bangkok airport. I don't remember exactly. Anyway, one of those airports. And, you know, the. The few people that were in there all had masks on and everybody was, like, keeping their distance from everybody else. And it was definitely, you know, an edge of intensity in the air and. Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't. She said she would not repeat. And I don't blame her.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah, I mean, I saw pictures from in front of the domo. So the big cathedral in Milan, literally empty, like, on the weekend, this past weekend, which, I mean, that's like the place to be where all the big shopping is and stuff. In Milan.
Yeah. I mean, they're talking about the economic impact of it directly. And this is the thing is, there's like, the direct. And then, like, the second and third layer effects of all this, the direct effect in Italy on tourism is like, in, you know, five or $6 billion this year that they're talking about. Yeah, it's insane. It's insane.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So things are going pretty well with recapture.
I've got the paid acquisition going strong now, and I've pretty much got that all dialed in.
There's one annoying thing about this whole paid acquisition with Shopify ads that shopify is aware of, but unfortunately, it means manual effort on my part. So there's a couple of things. One, you have no way to really know attribution right now.
You can pay for these ads. You can see people that convert, but you don't know who's the ones that are converting? Are they the ones that actually stay for trials? Are they the ones that leave earliest? I can't tell right now. I have zero insight into that. I mean, all I can really do is say, all right, trials are up, overall conversions are up. So I'm doing paid acquisition. Therefore some of that must be paid. I mean, that's it. That's all I get. So that's really frustrating. They say they're working on that, though. And the other thing is, I don't know when my ad gets outbid, so I have to go in, like, every two days or so and go do a quick search on all my terms and see where my fucking ad shows up.
And if it's not there, then I have to up my bid, and then I have to check it again and repeat for the 30 some odd keywords that I'm in there right now for.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: So this is like, yeah, it's a serious drag. And again, you know, Shopify knows about this, but this is how you have to manage it right now, and you don't really get a choice. So, yeah, that's kind of frustrating. But, you know, it's nice to have customers, and it's nice to have more customers than you had the previous month.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Is the, like, if you just look at, like, the turn it on versus turn it off, like, split test kind of thing, is, is your revenue up more than you're spending on ads in a given month? Or, like, what's your payback directly looking like?
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Well, so, see, this is. It's too early. So remember that I started all of my paid acquisition back in end of November, right? And then I ran it for a month, and then I shut it off for a month. And, you know, my lifetime value is pretty substantial. It's. It's four figures. And so my. My payout on ads right now is probably running about.
I'm figuring it's somewhere in the 400 to 800 a month range. So I'm still well below, you know, if I get one new customer every month, it pays for the ads over the lifetime of that customer, according to my LTV statistics. But do I, you know, I don't know how quickly these new ones churn out. Are they ones that only stay for 60 days and then they leave? Are they ones that upgrade to higher tiers and make me more money? Are they the high LTV customers? Are they the low LTV customers? Don't have the right data right now to tell me that. Because I can't figure out attribution. If I can figure out attribution, I can answer those questions for you much better. But right now, it's like shrugging my shoulders. Don't fucking know.
Really unhappy about that. But, you know, if I were to give you a gut feeling, which is a terrible measure of any business, right. It feels like I'm doing better with it on.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: So, like, are, like, try. You said trials and conversion rates are up since you, like. Cause I know you. You turn it back on and then we. You upped your spend on it a little bit, like a few weeks ago, right? Like, is. Is all that up still since you did that?
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it affects my conversion rates so much. Like, I don't convert more by bringing in paid customers, but I don't think I'm doing worse either. Like, from what the numbers I see, I don't see that I'm converting less people than I was before. It's pretty close. It's pretty close.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: So at least I know that as long as I get more customers in with the same conversion rate, I can get more paid customers and therefore increase my MRR. So that's where I'm getting my gut feel. I think this is okay, but if I had attribution, I could tell you that much better.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Nice.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: My fear is that it's all the ones that find me on organic search, and they're still the ones converting, and the paid are the ones that are leaving early. Or they're like, oh, this isn't what I wanted, and they just bail. And I'd love to know that, like, on a per keyword basis, like, I bet some of my keywords convert better than other keywords, knowing what I'm going for. So, you know, I don't want to waste money on the wrong keywords, but I don't. Again, I don't have that information to know. Okay. Not only do they convert, but they converted on this keyword.
That level of information would tell me what I need to know.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we. I've beat this horse several times on the show, and we get hate mail telling me I'm an idiot from people like Ruben Gomez, that I just need to figure this stuff out. But, I mean, even with us and adwords and amplitude and things like that, it's. It's not super clear.
So I understand shopify. It's a little more opaque, but I take the approach a lot of times, just like, okay, now that it's on and I'm spending $500 or $1,000 a month, my MRR growth is at least 500 or $1,000 more. Good. I'll keep it on, you know, and then just assume, like, if that's the only thing you changed, that's kind of your control. Um, and it's. It's not super clear like that sometimes, but if you can get close to an answer there, then that's, like, the beginning of. Of some truth, maybe.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's better than no answer at the moment, so.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: It's always imperfect data. I know Ruben would totally disagree with us on that one, but he's a.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Lot smarter than I am, that's for sure.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: He's a lot smarter than both of us combined.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Think. Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: So, tamu coronavirus, are you. I know that. I saw in the news that they're, like, touting Coloradians. Colorado. People from Colorado.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Coloradoans. Coloradans.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Right. Are you guys ready for next winter?
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Already fuck, you know, it's funny. So for those that didn't see this article, there was an article that basically said, all right, here are the main areas that have been affected so far. There are cases in Texas and California and Washington. And then they showed, like, you know, rates of sale of certain items, things like hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes and paper towels and toilet paper and bottled water and stuff like that. And then they put Colorado in there. And Colorado was, like, prepping up there with California and Washington, where there's, like, actual outbreaks happening. But Colorado is, like, freaking out. It's kind of funny. You know, I have to say, when I was at Costco this last Sunday, we actually did do a little bit of light prepping on our own here. And part of that is the fact that, you know, my wife is immunocompromised. So there is a serious aspect to this for our family because if we do get it, I mean, it could land her in the hospital and it could go very serious, very fast. So, I mean, we're treating it with a. A bit of a grave attitude there, but, I mean, there are plenty of people out there that are not immunocompromised. And when I was at Costco, I mean, the place was a fucking zoo. We showed up at 09:00 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. when it first opened. And there were, like, people running with their carts to the back of the store where they have all the bottled water and the toilet paper and everything. And then they were, like, loading it up and running to the front. And then, you know, my wife and I go to Costco every week, so we, you know, we almost always have a full basket because that's where we do our grocery shopping. That's just, you know, we get everything there, and it's mostly filled with produce and other consumable stuff. We have a family of five, so it's not hard to, you know, use all that stuff from Costco in a week. And, you know, we're going through and we're filling up our cart and we've added a few extra things in there. It was time to get more toilet paper, so we got that. And, you know, we didn't get any bottled water or crazy stuff like that, but it was funny. There were other people that, like, had a cart full of liquor. I'm like, hell yeah. That's the kind of prepping I can get behind. Yeah. Go to their house during the prep, but it's funny. Yeah. I mean, everybody was, like, picking up on different things. Like, I saw one that was stocked with orange juice, and there was one family that had three carts. They had the father in the front with, like, toilet paper and paper towels and other big stuff in that cart. And then the next one filled with bottled water, and then the last one was the kid pushing along their regular groceries. And I'm like, okay, that's a little intense. But, yeah, all right. So, yeah, I mean, Colorado is going a little crazy right now.
But with that said, the coronavirus is absolutely doing some disruption right now across the board for a lot of different things here in e commerce. I know that, for example, there are tons and tons of merchants that are doing drop shipping.
And if you're dropshipping something, you're pulling from some manufacturer in China and then trying to market it on your store and then having them shipped direct to the customer. Well, those factories, if they're anywhere near Wuhan or just anywhere in China at all at this point, all of them have been disrupted in particular. But the ones in Wuhan are just shut the fuck down. You're not getting anything out of that place for a while.
You know, anybody who's a drop shipper, totally screwed right now and anybody who isn't a dropshipper, where you have, like, products that you're manufacturing and having sent over via inventory, there are massive pipeline delays going on anywhere from three to six weeks at a minimum, and, you know, two to four months at a maximum. So, you know, that's a. When you're trying to sell stuff, waiting two to four months for more inventory is pretty lethal to your business if you don't have a good buffer of inventory and or bank account to handle that, which is kind of crazy. So, you know, there are a lot of people in e commerce that are definitely flipping out. Two major ecommerce conferences have been canceled at this point. Magento, imagine and Shopify unite. One of them is in Toronto. One of them is in Vegas.
So. And, you know, there's other. I heard shop talk, which is another big e commerce conference got rescheduled to the fall.
So, I mean, there's some pretty serious disruption in my space right now going on because of this. And it doesn't have to be something that directly happens to your community or your area, because we're a global economy at this point. These things can have ripple effects back into you. Forget the stock market. Forget all of the crazy news that's going on and the announcements politically, all of those things will directly impact everybody here in the next few months?
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
It's, you know, I don't know that we have been affected directly. I'm not seeing, like, a big change in new trial starts or churn or anything like that. You know, in the last few weeks, our team is all remote, so they're all just staying home, which is really great.
I think I probably. For our team, I live in the most affected area. We have about 50 cases in the department that I live in, and a department is like, the size of a small or medium sized state in the US.
So 50 is not like a ton, I don't guess. But we definitely kind of had a few hot spots. You know, there's, like, a dozen people in this one village and there's ten people in this other village, and that's just kind of, like, the scary thing from a personal perspective.
But, I mean, we're all still able to work. I joked a little bit at the beginning that, like, we basically have stayed home for the two weeks that the kids have been on vacation, but it's been kind of nice in that respect that, like, kids don't have school. You don't have to worry about that or consider, like, do we keep them home or not? Because they've been off school, but I've been able to get my work done.
We did put our team retreat to wordcamp Europe on hold because we think that they're going to cancel it, probably, but it's just not worth the risk of our team traveling and getting sick or getting, you know, catching the virus and not getting sick and then taking it home and giving it to your kids. And, like, that's the. From a personal perspective, that's the thing that really scares me the most is, like, you read all these articles. Like, I was reading one from, you know, medical director of Johns Hopkins today or something, and there was basically saying, like, if you're sick but not really sick, just stay home.
And I'm like, that. That's okay. Like, I get it. Right, but, like, it. It basically means that all the statistics that we're talking about are totally off because the only people that are getting tested are the really sick people. So, like, the death rates and the affected rates in an area are only when somebody is really sick. So there's, like, the mildly sick people or the totally asymptomatic people that are still carriers and could be contagious that are out there doing a bunch of stuff because people are telling them not to go to the hospital.
And of course, like, you know, whatever the medical director of Johns Hopkins is smarter than me. But I do think there's something to be said for, like, just everybody stay home for two weeks. You know, if everybody could stay home for two weeks, then it would be over basically. Or if you're sick, go to the hospital, but don't do this like in between thing. You know, I think that's the scary thing is like the asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic carriers that are spreading it and they don't even know and it's not their fault. But, but that's the really, that's the danger. It's obvious. If you're sick and you got a fever and a cough, then you know that you shouldn't be around other people. But it's, it's that, that slight middle ground. I think that's super scary talking about like, the community transfer. You know?
[00:20:13] Speaker A: It is, it is. But, you know, I think there's a dimension of this that a lot of us that have the privilege of being able to do that don't really realize. And that is if you're, you know, we are incredibly lucky because we can, you know, decide to stay home and work or we already work from home to start with. And if you're sick, you probably have, if you're, if you have a good job, you probably have some kind of paid time off, whether that's sick leave or vacation or general pto, you've got, you've got an option there, right? But if you're working a lower wage job and they don't have sick time or you just flat out need the money, like, they'll say, okay, you can take the sick time, but we're not going to pay you. And you've got rent due at the end of the month and you're in an economic squeeze because most Americans, the vast majority of people in the United States, don't have dollar 400 in their savings accounts and live paycheck to paycheck. So if they get sick and have to take two weeks off because of the coronavirus, that's a major fucking impact to their lives. And so what are they going to do? They have to prioritize. Well, I got to pay my bills, so I got to go to work and I'm sick.
And that, you know, that exacerbates the spread, unfortunately. But it's also a hard, nasty economic reality that they are faced with that you and I aren't necessarily saddled with in the same way. So, you know, that that is definitely a problem that we, you know, we should acknowledge here that this, this is going to contribute to that because, a, we don't have good health care in a place like the United States. So if you want to go get tested, it's like three fucking thousand dollars without insurance. And with insurance, it's probably still going to be like 1600 or something like that because insurance sucks.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Wow, really?
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I would have thought the United States is, I think that there are cases where it can be free if you have clear symptoms and, you know, there's like, you're a really advanced case and you go to the Er and they're like, holy fuck. Yeah, you have the coronavirus. We're going to test you to be sure.
But if you're just walking in with, like, mild flu like symptoms, they're like, yeah, that's going to be $3,000. So, yeah, that's, that's part of the problem. Right?
[00:22:31] Speaker B: This disincentive is amazing. So France passed a thing, like, early last week that the government would support companies paying people to be on sick leave.
So it takes this whole question of, like, I'm sick, but I need to work, blah, blah, blah. Like, right now, if you're sick, you stay home. And even if the company would normally pay for you to stay home, they will now for the government, subsidize the companies.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Well, makes a lot of fucking sense.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: We couldn't get Bernie Sanders to the democratic nomination here. So that level of socialism is just outright unacceptable here in the United States. Sorry.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Oh, man. I, so I'll have my political tangent for the episode. I looked at the, so I wanted to bet on the presidential election. I looked at the odds, and Trump is six to seven in the UK.
And the next closest one is, well, this is about a week ago, is Bernie Sanders two to one, and Biden was five to one or something like that. Six to seven. That's a, that's a pretty sure thing.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm not liking those odds at all. But, you know, with Biden getting the nomination, I think we're just gonna have a repeat of 2016 at this point.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Okay. Anyway, political stuff aside, so let's talk a little bit about, like, other business impacts. So, I mean, as far as recapture goes, I haven't seen an uptick in trials. But, you know, if, if this continues for the foreseeable future, which I don't see that it's not going to, it could encourage a number of people that are looking to open their own store and work from home to do that. So, I mean, it could conceivably see an uptick in that. I'd love to see what Shopify's revenue numbers look like at the end of the next two quarters, because I suspect we might have an uptick where you would normally not have an uptick. And by the end of the year, if those stores continue to sell, then we'll probably see even better. So if you're a shopify stockholder, I think it's looking good.
Tax, title and license are extra. Your mileage may vary. All the usual caveats there. I don't give stock advice. I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a doctor. I don't even play one on tv, whatever.
But, yeah, I think ecommerce wise, it might be a good opportunity to start a business right now, because if everybody's starting to do the work from home thing, you would be in good company. Especially people don't want to go out and shop anymore. And Amazon, Costco are all seeing huge amounts of online sales as a result of these proceedings right now with the coronavirus.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
The two trends or aspects that I see are the three, I guess one is tools that enable you to work from home, because a shit ton of companies are going to try this new, like, work from home experiment without any planning or anything. So tools like Zoom or Slack or even like elearning tools, because, like, the thing that a lot of us forget is like, these big companies have to have really robust, like, single sign on systems to house all their information. And it's not a Google Doc for these big companies. So, like, these big, huge tools that allow you to store your information and let people access it in a secure way, I would think those kinds of things where you can decentralize the information in a secure way still will see really big gains with this because I hope that it's the beginning of a big work from home wave that we can continue after the coronavirus is over in a couple of months.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: And I hope it doesn't turn into a backlash too, because, I mean, working from home is not like, it's not a slam dunk for everybody. And, you know, it works really well. If you're disciplined and able to work independently and you're a really good communicator, I think you can be very successful working from home. But if you are lacking in those qualities, I think it's going to be a huge struggle.
And, you know, if there's enough people that are like that, then I think that this is going to kind of come back to bite everybody in the ass. And some companies would be like, oh, well, we tried that during the coronavirus. It didn't fucking work. So, yeah, we're killing the whole thing now. And I'm like, okay, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. So.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Totally. Because the companies are not prepared and it's not the company they, you know, fucking, these companies need months to get ready for this stuff and they have two weeks, right? So I, and I don't, I don't fault any of them, but it's just hard. I mean, it's hard managing a remote workforce. I can't imagine going from zero to hundreds of remote workers. I mean, it's hard. We're a team of five and it's really hard. You know, like, I can't imagine the stuff you would have to think about. But so that's one I think is like, what will enable people to be able to work from home? Because that's definitely going to happen.
That's like, on the positive side, on the negative side, I think are, in our space at least, are these tools that enable local businesses or, like brick and mortar businesses.
And I think those are the, you're talking about, like drop shipping and e commerce. I think that's potentially, like, an area that, like, could get disrupted just because, like, supply chains and people are sick. They can't drive trucks and things like that.
But, like, real estate, I can imagine real estate just getting hammered, you know, like a last thing on anybody's mind right now is going to buy a house, you know, and so realtors and real estate and all this kind of stuff, I'm sure there will be opportunities that come out of it. But I think overall, those kind of markets where, like, technology interfaces with local stuff, brick and mortar will take a big hit because, I mean, fucking people are just not going out to do stuff, you know? And, like, if that's the driver of your business, all the technology in the world is not going to help unless you can totally convert the transaction over to be online, which I think for a lot of these people is hard.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Right, right. But on the flip side, I think that there are some pretty significant opportunities here. So we, Craig and I, are in a slack group, and we were talking with other fellow single founders and bootstrappers, and it seems like there are certain spaces and businesses that are poised for things to really take off. So one of the examples that came up was a telehealth company. So you can imagine that this telehealth company is now currently licking their chops because of the coronavirus and the implications of being able to start having in home visits with doctors. So right now, if, you know, they were working, if I was working at that company, I'd be ramping up my marketing efforts like nobody's business. And sales would probably go through the roof from here to the end of the year. If you could really push this out there to set up a bunch of doctors where you could actually have these remote telehealth sessions in a standardized way that gives the doctors that kind of revenue stream and still allows people to receive the healthcare that they really need. And if it's super serious, then they could come into an actual clinic. But with something like that, I mean, they, they are salivating at the end, you know, chomping at the bit. And I can totally see why that makes a lot of sense.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: And there are other ones right now that are probably doing the same thing. So I can imagine that the travel insurance industry is probably like, you know, flipping their hats in the air in total celebration because now they can easily sell their product. I don't know if you've never gone and bought airline tickets and got to the end where they're like, hey, buy travel insurance for $39 extra. Most of the time I'm like, meh, whatever, I'll skip it. But right now people are like, oh fuck, I could get the coronavirus. So, you know, I'm going to buy this right now. And so that probably is sending their revenue through the roof as well.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Although they probably have a lot of payouts too, but that's a whole other thing.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it could very well. Yes, yes. And that may turn around and bite them in the ass as well. Who knows?
[00:30:41] Speaker B: You mentioned like Amazon and Costco, like home delivery. That's the one that I know is, is like a big deal is grocery delivery and things that again, kind of let people be at home more I think is the last one that I probably wanted to mention is, you know, things like starting an e commerce store as a side gig or starting a podcast as a side gig and hopefully turning into a business or just ordering your groceries and having them delivered instead of going to the store and being around, you know, 100 other people.
I think it's kind of like the work from home thing is like shop from home or do business from home.
You know, I think it is probably just a nudge and like an injection towards, towards that way of life that I can see sticking because, I mean, these companies that do this well, it's a great value proposition. You know, you go online, I want this, this and this. Please deliver it tomorrow. Okay, that's great. Like, saves you going to the store and wasting gas and environmental stuff. Like, it's all, it's all good, basically. And I think it's just a nudge to introduce some of us to these other ways of kind of living and consuming.
Hey, Craig here, just a bit of an addendum to the episode, was looking at a pretty interesting article about a memo that Sequoia Capital, a big venture capital firm that has backed people like Google and GitHub and YouTube and Zoom, has put out to all of their founders and CEO's talking about coronavirus being the, you know, quote, Black Swan of 2020 and things that they've seen from similar kind of experiences and situations in the past where things like this, like the, like the economic recession from 2008, how it affects businesses and what us as founders and what their founders should be thinking about in times like this. So we'll link to this as well in the show notes for the episode, but it's really a good read. Not to scare you, but just to have us all think about things that we can and should be doing to prepare our companies and ourselves, really to kind of future proof against the potential effects and the secondary and tertiary effects that something like coronavirus could have on our business, even if we don't think we'll be directly influenced. So the folks at Sequoia have a lot of experience with all sorts of businesses and business environments, and I think they're a pretty savvy group to follow when it comes to stuff like this. You know, whether you're a venture capital track company or not, they are just good business people. So I think this is pretty interesting read and kind of food for thought for us. Also. We'll link to this in the show notes as well.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: And so on another note here, a question that I think all of us should be asking at this point, if you have a small business, is what are the things that you could prepare for or have a game plan on, you know, sort of your own business prepping, as it were, how could you mentally go to Costco and stock up on toilet paper here to make sure that you're ready for the coronavirus for your business? So another discussion that was being had inside of the, the slack group that we're in here talks about, you know, if you have a business and you think that you might have some jittery, nervous customers, maybe now is a great time to like fire up an email marketing campaign and talk about how essential your service is to them to keep a business alive and growing. And even more of a necessity during a pandemic, for example, to make sure that, you know, they're recovering all the customers that they could. So, like for recapture, I could do this to say, hey, just to remind you, recapture is doing all it can to make sure that we maximize your business and continue your growth. And we will totally be here for this pandemic because, you know, we're a fully remote company and we have all of this infrastructure, yada, yada, yada. You don't need to worry about us during this thing. We've got your back. And that sort of a message just reinforces, hey, they care about us. And maybe I don't want to be thinking about canceling. And speaking of canceling, maybe if they do cancel, be prepared. Should you have like a discount program, say, hey, you know, I understand you want to cancel, but maybe I can give you a few months, a discount percentage off something like that. So you have a customer retention strategy for jittery customers so you're not losing them completely. You know, I've got mixed thoughts on that one, but I mean, it's an idea, right?
And other things like, do you have all of your services trimmed down to the bare necessities at this point? Do you know that you could survive as lean as possible if you did start losing customers? And if you don't, do you know what things you should cut or could cut and still be able to provide the services that you do now? Right?
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah.
Yeah. That's interesting. I haven't thought about implementing those into my business. I think we're relatively, like directly unaffected. I think we talked about, like, those second and third degree effects of things. And I think, you know, someone's podcast could be a second or third degree effect, but kind of like someone running an e commerce store. They work from home or they have an office they can get to easily.
Your customers ability to work and my customers ability to make podcasts and keep them going shouldn't directly be affected.
Like some of these more like brick and mortar things where if you aren't going to the store, then your business is going to suffer. I think the more virtual, I guess your business and your interaction with your customers is, for now at least, the more immune you are to like the direct effects. Yep.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Yep.
So this week, our message to everybody out there, stay safe, stay sane, wash your hands. Wash your fucking hands, please. And, you know, don't panic.
We're gonna get through this, you know, it's okay, and it's gonna be a little freaky for a while. Deep breath.
See if there's an opportunity out there for your business. Be prepared for your business. And we'll, we'll all be around here for this? I think so, yeah.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: So we'd love to hear. You know, folks have kind of seen interesting things with their business or have ways that you're, like Dave said, either preparing or kind of dealing with effects that you're seeing on your business. We'd love to hear about it. Shoot us a message podcastartups.com or leave a comment in the post for this episode. And as always, if you're enjoying the show, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. We'll see you next week.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already, head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show. For show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey, head over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
