Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're two start up, founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig.
Speaker 1 00:20 All right, welcome to another episode of rogue startups. This is number two Oh eight and how are you doing this fine day, Craig?
Speaker 2 00:29 I am a at this point, virus free, which I think is the thing on everyone's mind these days. Um,
Speaker 1 00:35 yeah,
Speaker 2 00:36 other than having my kids home for two weeks straight, uh, when we pretty much can't leave the house between Corona virus and shitty winter weather. Um, I'm, I'm at the breaking point and other than that,
Speaker 1 00:50 yeah, I hear ya on that one. Um, God, I'm so done with winter, but yeah, I mean now we've got the Corona virus and that's gonna definitely cause some havoc here. Uh, 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, that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today is how Corona virus is affecting everyone's businesses and what things people are doing in response to it and to do 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, uh, how are things with Castillo's?
Speaker 2 01:40 Things are, uh, things are good man overall. I, um, yeah, I can't complain. I can't complain. We're having a good couple of months here at the beginning of the year, uh, figuring a few things out. Um, I guess the one thing I wanted to, to really mention for folks to check out and kind of like a tactic that, that I can share, um, that we're doing right now is we're doing a, 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 uh, 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 squad cast, which is a tool to help you record really high quality audio just in the browser, um, headliner, which makes the audio graphs 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.
Speaker 2 02:38 Um, we kind of partnered with all three of them and then both cast us in podcast mode or giving away stuff into this. It's like $3,000 worth of stuff that we're giving away. Yeah, that's cool. So mean, the goal from a, like a business and marketing, um, perspective is like email address collection. Uh, and we're hoping to collect several thousand email addresses, uh, with us between, you know, us and the three companies that we're partnering with. Um, and so far it's going really well. Uh, it was cool. Denise really ran the whole thing. It was kind of my idea. And she's done a lot of this before, uh, and her her time, like 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, and kind of approach and then she did the whole thing, reached out to the partners at the set, the terms built the page, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 03:26 So a really cool, and it'll be interesting to see what we can do with those leads. Uh, you know, after the fact. So we're going to let this run for about two weeks. Um, so even when this goes out, it'll still be live. Folks want to check it out. Uh, <inaudible> dot com slash giveaway is, is where it is. Um, 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.
Speaker 1 03:56 Yeah. That's exciting to see.
Speaker 2 03:57 Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that's, that's kind of what's going on with us on the podcast motor side. Um, things are going well. Our sales guy is chugging along. It's really great where 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, um, yeah, I can't complain too much there. He was in, he was in Southeast Asia for like three months, uh, and just came back last weekend. Um, so, so far he's still virus free as well. But I, I, you know, from talking to him it was, it was really crazy sounding, um, to be kind of on the ground there. Uh, and you know, places like Thailand and stuff in the last few weeks.
Speaker 1 04:43 Yeah. I can only imagine. So years ago when SARS was actually going on, my wife was on a pilgrimage over to Tibet and Sarz 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've 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, uh, intensity in the air and yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't, she said she would not repeat and I don't blame her.
Speaker 2 05:42 No, no. Yeah. I mean, I saw pictures from in front of the Domo, so the big cathedral in Milan, uh, literally empty like on the weekend, this past weekend. Uh, which I mean, that's like the place to be where all the big shopping is and stuff in Milan. Um, 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, of all this. The, the direct effect in Italy on tourism is like in, you know, five or $6 billion this year that I'm talking about. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 1 06:15 It's insane. Yeah. So, um, things are going pretty well with recapture. We're, you know, 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, you can pay for these ads. You can see people that you know convert. You can, 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.
Speaker 1 07:07 Therefore some of that must be paid. I mean that's, that's it. That's all I get. So that's really frustrating. They say they're working on that though. Um, 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. So this is like, that'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.
Speaker 2 07:55 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, in a given month or like what's your payback directly looking like?
Speaker 1 08:09 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 four 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 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 that the low LTB customers don't have the right data right now to tell me that cause I can't figure out attribution. If I can figure out attribution I can answer those questions for you much better. Yeah. But right now it's like shrugging my shoulders don't fucking know. I'm really unhappy about that. But you know it. 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 so
Speaker 2 09:37 like are like try, you said trials and conversion rates are up since you like, cause I know you were, 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?
Speaker 1 09:52 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. Cool. So at least I know that, you know, 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, you know, 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. Hmm. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. My fear is, 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 love to do 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 did they convert, but they converted on this keyword. That level of information would tell me what I need to know. So, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 11:01 Well, I mean, we, I've, I've beat this horse several times on the show and get hate mail telling me I'm an idiot from people like Ruben Ruben Gamez that I just need to figure this stuff out. But I mean, even with us in ad words and amplitude and things like that, it's, it's not super clear. Um, so I, yeah, I understand Shopify is a little more opaque, but I, I take the approach a lot of times just like, okay, now that it's on, I'm spending $500 or $1,000 a month by MRR growth is at least 500 or a thousand dollars more good. I'll keep it on, you know, and then just assume like, if that's the only thing you changed, that's kinda 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.
Speaker 1 11:48 Yeah. Well it's better than no answer at the moment. So yeah. Yeah. It's always data. I know Ruben would totally disagree with us on that one, but, uh, he's a lot smarter than I am, that's for sure. He's a lot smarter than both of us combined, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, do you have a coronavirus are you, uh, I know that I saw on the news that they're like touting uh, color rod DNS, Colorado would people from Colorado, Colorado, Colorado orders, right. Are you guys, uh, ready for next winter 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 a hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes and paper towels and toilet paper and bottled water and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 12:47 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 kinda funny. And I, you know, I have to say when I was at Costco this last Sunday, um, we actually did do a little bit of light prepping on our own here. Uh, and part of that is the fact that, uh, you know, my wife is immunocompromised. So there, there is a serious aspect to this for our family. Cause 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, uh, a bit of a grave attitude there. But I mean, I, you know, 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.
Speaker 1 13:34 We showed up at 9:00 AM or 10:00 AM 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 run into 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 tying to get more toilet paper.
Speaker 1 14:14 So we got that and you know, we didn't get any bottled water, crazy stuff like that. But it was funny that there were other people that like had a cart full of liquor. I'm like, 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 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 the 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.
Speaker 1 14:54 Um, you know, but with that said, you know, the Corona virus is absolutely doing some disruption right now, uh, across the board for a lot of different things here in e-commerce. I know that for example, you know, there are tons and tons of merchants that are doing drop shipping and if you're drop shipping something, you know, 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 Wu haunt or just anywhere in China at all, at this point, all of them have been disrupted in particular. But the ones that you, woo Honda, just shut the fuck down. You're not going, you're not getting anything out of that place for awhile. Yeah. And you know anybody who's a drop shipper totally screwed right now. And anybody who isn't a drop shipper 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.
Speaker 1 16:02 So you know, that's a w 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 to major e-commerce conferences have been canceled at this point. Magento imagine. And Shopify unite when I was in Toronto, when I was 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, 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, you know, all of those things will directly impact everybody here in the next few months. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 17:08 Uh, 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. Um, our team is all remote, so they're all just staying home, which is really great. Um, I think I probably for our team, I live in the most effected area. We have about 50 cases in the department that I live in, in a department is like the size of a smaller medium sized state in the U S um, so 50 is not like a ton, I don't guess, but, um, we definitely kind of had a few hotspots, you know, but there's like a dozen in this one village and there's 10 people and this other village. And that's just kind of like the scary thing from a personal perspective. Um, but I mean we're all still able to work.
Speaker 2 17:58 I, I joked a little bit at the beginning that like we basically have stayed home for the two weeks of the kids had 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? Um, because they've been all school. Um, but I've been able to get my work done. Um, we did put our team retreat to WordCamp Europe on hold, um, because we think that they're going to cancel it probably. Um, 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.
Speaker 2 18:47 And there is basically saying like, if you're sick but not really sick, just stay home. Um, 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, um, tested are the really sick people. So like the death rates and the effected 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. Um, 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.
Speaker 2 19:40 You know, if everybody gets down for two weeks, then that 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. Cause it's obvious if you're sick and you got a fever and a cough, then you'd know that you shouldn't be around other people. But it's, it's that slight middle ground. I think that's super scary. Talking about like the community, uh, transfer, you know,
Speaker 1 20:13 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, we are incredibly lucky because we can, you know, decide to stay home and work or we already worked 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 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. Yeah. And you've got rent due at the end of the month and you're in a economic squeeze.
Speaker 1 20:59 Cause most Americans, you know, the vast majority of people in the United States don't have $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 Corona virus, that's a major fucking impact to their lives. And so what are they going to do? They have to prioritize, well, I gotta pay my bills so I gotta 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, um, 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.
Speaker 1 21:49 So if you want to go get tested, it's like three fucking thousand dollars. Um, without insurance and with insurance it's probably still going to be like 1600 or something like that. Cause insurgence sucks. Wow. Really? Yeah. Yeah. The, the United States is, um, 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 had the Corona virus, 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? Yeah.
Speaker 2 22:31 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. Um, so it takes this whole question of like, I'm sick, I, but I need to work, blah, blah, blah. Like right now if you're sick, you stay home. And that even if the company would normally pay for you to stay home, they will now for the government subsidizes the companies.
Speaker 1 22:57 Yeah. Yeah. Well that makes a lot of fucking sites. 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, man.
Speaker 2 23:10 I, uh, so I'll, I'll, I'll have my political tangent for the episode. I looked at the, uh, so I wanted to bet on the presidential election, I looked at the odds and Trump is a six to seven in the UK. Uh, 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.
Speaker 1 23:34 Yeah. I'm not liking those odds at all, but uh, you know, with Biden getting the nomination, I think we're just going to ever repeat it 2016 at this point. Exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Anyway, political stuff aside. So, um, 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 is. 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.
Speaker 1 24:30 So if you're a Shopify stockholder, I think it's looking good. Um, you know, tax title and license or extra, your mileage may vary. All the usual cabinets 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. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think e-commerce 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 you know, Amazon and Costco are all seen huge amounts of online sales as a result of these, these proceedings right now with the coronavirus, you know, um, yeah,
Speaker 2 25:17 yeah, yeah. The, the two kind of trends or, or aspects that I see are the three, I guess one is um, tools that enable you to work from home because a shit ton of companies are going to try this new, like we're from OMA experiment, uh, without any planning or anything. So, so tools like zoom or Slack or, or even like E learning 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, for these big companies. So, 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, the information in a secure way still we'll see really big gains with this because I hope that it's like the beginning of a big like work from home wave that we can continue after the coronavirus is over in a couple months.
Speaker 1 26:19 Yeah. 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 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, if there's enough people that are like that, then I think that this is going to kind of kind of come back to bite everybody in the ass. And some companies it'd be like, Oh, well we tried that during the coronavirus. It didn't fucking work. So we're killing the whole thing now. And I'm like, okay, don't throw the baby out with the bath water here. So, because the companies are not prepared and it's not a company,
Speaker 2 27:02 they, you know, fucking, these companies need months to get ready for this stuff and they have two weeks. Um, so I, I, and I don't, I don't fault any of them. Uh, 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. Uh, I mean it's hard. We are a team of five and it's really hard, you know, like I can't imagine the, the stuff you'd have to think about. But so, so that's one I think is like what, what will enable people to be able to work from home because that's definitely gonna happen. The, 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 are like brick and mortar businesses. Um, and I think those are the, you're talking about like drop shipping and e-commerce.
Speaker 2 27:49 I think that's potentially like a, an area that like could get disrupted just cause like supply chains. And if people are sick, they can't drive trucks and things like that. Um, but like real estate, I can imagine real estate just getting hammered, you know, like the 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, uh, I'm sure there'll 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 many people fucking people are just not going out to, 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, to, to be online. Which I think for a lot of these people is hard.
Speaker 1 28:40 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 tele-health company is now currently licking their chops because of the Corona virus 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 tele-health sessions in a standardized way that gives the doctors that kind of revenue and still allows people to receive the healthcare that they really need.
Speaker 1 29:45 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. Um, 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, eh, 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.
Speaker 2 30:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although they probably have a lot of payouts too. But that's, that's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 1 30:34 Yeah, it could very well, yes, yes. And that may turn around and bite them ass as well. Who knows?
Speaker 2 30:41 You mentioned the like Amazon and Costco, like home delivery. That's the one that I know is, is like a big deal is the grocery delivery. Uh, and, and things that again, kind of let people be at home more I think is the last one that, that I probably wanted to mention is, is you know, things like starting an eCommerce 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 you're being around, you know, a hundred other people. Um, I think it's kind of like the work from home thing is like shop from home or do business from home. Uh, I, you know, I think it is probably just a, a nudge and like an injection towards, towards that way of life that I can see sticking. Cause 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 go into the store and wasting gas and environmental stuff. Like it's all, it's all good basically. And I think it's just a, a nudge to introduce some of us to these other ways of, of kind of living and consuming. Um,
Speaker 2 31:53 Hey Craig, here just a, a bit of an addendum to the episode. Um, was looking at a pretty interesting article, uh, about, uh, a kind of a memo that Sequoia capital, a big venture capital firm that is backed people like Google and get hub and uh, YouTube and zoom has put out to all of their kind of founders and CEOs talking about, you know, coronavirus being the, you know, black Swan of 2020 and things that they've seen from similar kind of experiences and situations in the past where, uh, things like this, like the, like the economic, uh, recession from 2008, how it affects businesses and what us as founders and what their founders should be thinking about in times like this. Uh, so we'll link to this as well in the show notes for the episode. Uh, but it's, it's, 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, to kind of future proof against the potential effects and the, the secondary and tertiary effects that something like coronavirus could have on our business even if we don't think will be directly influence.
Speaker 2 33:06 So you know, the folks at Sequoia have a lot of experience with all sorts of businesses and business environments and I think there are pretty a, a pretty savvy group to follow when it comes to stuff like this. You know, whether you're a, a venture capital track company or not, they are just good business people. So I think this is a pretty interesting read and kind of a food for thought for us all. So we'll link to this in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1 33:33 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, and stock up on toilet paper here to make sure that you're ready for a, the Corona virus for your business. So another discussion that was being had inside of the, um, 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.
Speaker 1 34:22 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 you know, that's sort of a message. Just reinforces, Hey, you know, they care about us and maybe you know, 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 and say, Hey, you know, I understand you want to cancel but maybe I can give you a few months at 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 that'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?
Speaker 2 35:38 Right? Yup. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I haven't thought about implementing those into, into my business. I think we're relatively like directly unaffected. I think we talked about like the second and third degree effects of, of things and I think, you know, someone's podcast could be a second or third degree effect. Um, but you know, kind of like, you know, someone running an eCommerce store, they, they work from home or they have an office they can get to easily, um, your customer's ability to work. And my customer's ability to make podcasts and keep them going shouldn't directly be affected. Um, like some of these more like brick and mortar things where if you've learned going to the store, then your, your business is going to suffer. Um, I think the, the more virtual, I guess your business and your interaction with your customers is the, for now at least the more immune you are to, to like the direct effects. Yup. Yup. Yeah.
Speaker 1 36:37 So this week our message to everybody out there, stay safe, stay sane, wash your hands, wash your fucking hands please. And you know, um, don't panic. We're, we're going to get through this, you know, it's okay. And it's going to 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
Speaker 2 37:01 we'll, we'll, I'll be around here for this. I think so. Yeah. So we'd love to hear, you know, if 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 podcast or rogue startups.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.
Speaker 0 37:31 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 <inaudible>.
