Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're to start up, founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right, we'll come back to episode two
Speaker 1 00:21 11 of rogue startups. Dave, how were, how are we doing healthy, happy, sane, productive? Some days I feel fine. Some days I feel like somebody kicked me in the balls, you know? I mean, some days I feel both. I just, it's weird right now. Everything's weird. So weird. You know, I wake up in the morning and you know, for just like this brief, fleeting moment, I'm like, ah, okay. I woke up, the sun is shining. I hear the birds chirpy. My dogs need to go outside. Oh fuck the Corona virus. You know? It's like there's that time where I just don't remember it and then all of a sudden it hits and I'm like, Oh man, what's the market going to do today? Oh man, what the hell do I have to do with my freelance client? Oh man, what are my business is going to be?
Speaker 1 01:11 Is there any support that came overnight? Did anybody cancel? Like, just all of this shit going on all the time. And you know, I, I, you know, I don't know what you guys end up doing in the evenings, but here, you know, we kind of have a varied schedule and usually like Friday nights are pizza and movie nights. We make pizza as a family and then go downstairs and watch a movie or something together. And now that the kids are kind of back, we are on this, you know, schedule where we're trying to keep them into some normal sort of school routine. But the truth is they don't have to get up early anymore. So, you know, my, uh, my middle daughter gets up at like eight, which is like about an hour later than she normally does. My oldest gets up around nine 30. My youngest, she is the early bird in the family, so she gets up pretty early, but you know, they're kind of having this sleep in routine.
Speaker 1 02:05 They do their schoolwork. They have about two to three hours of work to do a day tops. And that's by design. And then, you know, we give them some chores and some other things, but in the evenings, you know, they're like, Hey, can we watch a movie or do this? And I'm like, can't you need to go outside or go get some exercise or something like that. So, you know, Tracy and I try to have the same kind of routine with us, like forcing just some exercise and some normalcy and some structure and some routine here. But there's always this point in the day, usually towards the end of the day where I'm like, I can't can't adult anymore. I'm done. I'm a, I'm broken man. I need just sit down and vegetate. And so, you know, we've been bingeing some stuff on Netflix recently. Pro-tip, if you've not seen it, designated survivor with Kiefer Sutherland is a real winner, my opinion. And it kind of like took West wing and 24 and jammed them together. So do you want to see what like a competent American president looks like? And you've forgotten in three and a half years. This is a great way to do that. But, uh, yeah, I mean I'm, I have to admit, I'm looking for some escapism there because there's just like this constant overwhelming crisis stuff either directly or indirectly related. And it's really hard to manage that mentally,
Speaker 2 03:27 you know, for 16 hours a day. Hmm. Yeah, I agree. I think that we are feeling very similarly, um, a a longterm stress effect. Uh, and our family and it's mostly my wife and I are kids. Our kids are really happy. They're just, you know, playing like you like couple of hours of school work in the morning, play a couple of hours, go work in the afternoon play. But I mean, we can't really go out and do stuff like we do normally. So, so we're inside and you know, in the yard playing around or whatever. And at the same time really stressed about schooling our kids, even though I really enjoy it. It's stressful in a stressful for my wife. And then you'd reading coronavirus news all the time and then just consuming a ton of news about coronavirus. And I dunno why I am just fixated on, I mean I have seven different news sources that I check all the time now.
Speaker 2 04:27 You know the markets and local news here in France and like the BBC news and the, you know, some what I think is decent news in the U S and, and it's just like we have, we have stress everywhere all the time. And, and it's weird because like we're never really tired, right? Cause we don't do anything but we don't sleep at night because we're not tired. And then like we don't sleep like four or five hours a night cause we were up reading, reading the news in the middle of the night on our phones. And I think that that results in us just being agitated in the mornings. And it's a really, as I'm saying this out loud, this is a really bad place to be. But I don't, I mean, we've tried to leave the phone downstairs and all this kind of stuff, but I mean, you know, when you don't do anything all day other than teach your kids and do some work and maybe play in the yard a little, like I don't, I don't need to sleep a lot.
Speaker 2 05:27 And so you're, you know, it's 11 o'clock at night and you're like, well, what the fuck am I going to do now? I've watched, I've watched my Netflix for the night. I don't want to watch another movie or something. Yeah, it's weird man. It's weird. And dude, I mean, the weird thing is, and we talked about this last week a little bit, is I hate to say, I think we have another month of this here. At least, you know, our kids are to go on, um, spring break on the 16th of April, which is two like three weeks from now. And I don't think that we'll go back to school before. So, you know, it's, if we get to that point, it's an automatic extra two weeks of the kids being home. If they lift the confinement, then we could go out and do stuff at least. But um, yeah, it's that weird kind of, uh, ambient tension I think is like the best way to describe it. Um, that's really weird.
Speaker 1 06:16 Yeah. I mean from here, from the perspective in Colorado we are on, they just put us on stay at home. There's what they're calling it, which is apparently different than shelter in place. But um,
Speaker 2 06:30 techs.
Speaker 1 06:31 Yeah. Well, I mean for all intents and purposes, you kind of are doing the same thing. Really. You're, you're basically allowed to stay in your house, go out only for essentials and thank God they put liquor and weed as essential lung there. Sure. They, yes, they are. I'm not joking. Marijuana and liquor stores are designated as quote essentials in Colorado, so they have been deemed businesses that can stay open. This is, this is real, this is what's happening here. So, you know, God bless the government of Colorado anyway. So yeah, you're, you're ordered to stay at home, which means you're allowed to go out for exercise. You still have to do social distance. You can't get within six feet of people. You're only supposed to leave your house for the essentials. So medical service, groceries, weed, you know, stuff like that. But uh, at that point, you know, there's like no gatherings, any nonessential businesses have been closed for a while now.
Speaker 1 07:30 So bars and restaurants are all take out at this point. Nail salons, hair salons, all of this stuff has shut down. And you know, we were kind of joking the other day, we have some neighbors that live in our neighborhood a few blocks away and we were like, maybe we should go take a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses and just like hang out and talk over the fence with them. So we stay six feet apart. But you know, we're at least being social. And now with the stay at home order, like the police could actually come by and say, Nope, you have to go home and you can do this. So it's like it gets, yeah, it, it, it's starting to great even on, you know, my wife who's mostly an introvert because the social contact options are very limited at this point. So it does create an ambient stress and it's even harder on the kids cause they like want to see their friends, they want to go out, they want to play.
Speaker 1 08:19 Yeah. And before they gave us a stay at home order, there was a friend of theirs that had a birthday and she came by to, you know, to drive by and see the driveway. But of course, you know, that lasted all of five minutes before the kids all started running around outside. And yeah, I mean it's hardest on them really because they, I mean my kids get it intellectually, but it still sucks. And even though you can explain to them and they say, yeah, I totally understand that, that doesn't make them any happier about it. My oldest daughter who's an introvert, she's like, yeah, this changes nothing in my routine. This is great. She doesn't have to be social. Like we can't force her to be social. It was the opposite problem with her. Like, go talk to your friends, do something, do this, do that. Yeah, I don't feel like it now she's like, yeah, I don't have to. It's cool.
Speaker 2 09:07 Yeah, it's, it's crazy man. I, you know, and from a, from a work perspective, I think there's, I think there's some of that like ambient stress, if that's the term we're using of, of just like it's always there, it's the news and the weirdness. Right. And the lack of control and options that for me seeps over into work, which really pisses me off, you know? Cause like in my like abstract mind, I say I, I'm home for a month and there's no possibility of doing anything else. I could be doing a ton of great stuff right now. But the reality is I have two kids at home that I'm sharing, you know, homeschooling responsibilities with, with my wife. And I just, I don't want to work that much. You know, it's weird. I don't, I don't know why, like in my head ideally, right. I'm like, Oh, I can do a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2 09:53 Like, maybe we do like a daily webinar or something like really kick ass and then I'm like, I just, I just am not there. Like I don't have the mental space for that right now. I'm disappointed in myself for that. That, that like this may be is an opportunity and land like, you know, you see in like the rhodium group and, and the tiny seed Slack people are talking about like, you know, maybe this is the time to do this thing that you've all been wanting to do and we have all these pet projects that like maybe I should be doing right now. And I so far at least, you know, a week and a half in, I'm, I'm not and I'm disappointed in myself and even admitting that is really shitty. But like, I dunno, there's not a good, there's not a good simple way around that. Like I'm just not at the place where I can put that kind of emotional energy into something right now.
Speaker 2 10:47 Like, uh, you know, like starting a webinar series or whatever it is, like some big huge marketing initiative. One like nobody cares right now. I think, you know, like everyone else should feel about the same, right? I think there's a, there's a very small subset of people that are kind of divorced from the situation enough to say like, okay, I'm home but I don't have kids or I have kids and I can take my time or whatever it is that like they, maybe some people are really like, you know, learning to code or open an eCommerce store or starting a podcast and they're all in maybe. But I think a lot of people are, are just dealing with being home and the stresses and the weirdness of that and trying to work a lot of people remotely for the first time ever. And all this shit that I can imagine that goes along with a company of hundreds or thousands of people all going remote at once, which is, I can't even imagine the disaster that is homeschooling their kids for the first time ever.
Speaker 2 11:45 And, and we've never done it. And that, that's a hard, that's a hard thing to learn. Taking a kid, you know, two thirds of the way through the year and, and homeschooling them. And having teachers that aren't used to helping homeschool kids, that you know, that they're used to being in class and they're giving, they're giving our kids class work like, like they're at school and, and we're not teachers. I don't know man. I'm rambling a little bit but, but I think the, I think the point is I feel like I feel a better pressure, you know, I feel better pressure of like, this is the time to do a bunch of stuff and transforms and things, the business and I'm not, and that bums me out.
Speaker 1 12:24 Yeah. I, okay. So I, I'm glad that you said that because I feel precisely the same way. I feel like there are so many fires and crises in just my own Headspace doesn't give me enough focus right now to be able to sit down and do that. That I have felt the same guilt. I have felt the same. You know, I've, I've seen the hustlers on Twitter that are all talking about this is the time, like let's double down now is the time to like sit down and crank through it. You know, they talk about what was built in the last recession, you can do this. And I'm like, that sounds amazing. If I could actually focus right now, but that anxiety and the crisis and worrying about my family and you know, having to deal with basic stuff that's going on around the house that no longer can be dealt with except by me.
Speaker 1 13:16 It's like, okay, well I don't have Headspace for that right now. Like I'm trying desperately to write a talk for a virtual online conference and I made some pretty good progress on it last weekend and normally I probably would have been able to crank out two thirds of it and then have it ready to record before Sunday. But I struggle just to write the actual, the notes that would lead to the slides, let alone the slides themselves, let alone record and practice the talk. So it was just a lack of focus. It wasn't even like I had other things to do that day. I just couldn't buckle down and get it done. I had a really difficult time doing that, so I totally feel exactly where you're at. I feel like I've got this laundry list of things that I want to get done that I want to push the business forward with.
Speaker 1 14:08 But you know, there's two things getting in the way of that. One of them is nobody fucking cares right now. I mean, if you try to push a marketing operation of any kind right now, it feels really tone deaf. Like I can see this on Twitter, people who have their content marketing kind of on an OPA autopilot. They're churning stuff out and sticking it out there and I'm like, I don't even care about that article right now. Just scroll past it and I can just tell by the way it looks. And then they're the ones that are like, you know, content marketing in the time of the Corona virus. I'm like, yeah, I don't know that I would even want to read that right now. Like, okay, so it's relevant, but at the same time, you know, don't give me marketing messages right now. I just, I don't, I don't have the Headspace for that.
Speaker 1 14:52 I don't have the interest in that. I don't, I just don't want to go there right now and I can't imagine that you and I are alone in that sentiment at all. I mean, I know that there's people out there and the other thing that's kind of irritating the crap out of me, and I've been guilty of this too, is all the coven 19 emails that are coming out, right know, just want to assure you that our operations are going to be fine in the time of covert 19 I got one from a company that I bought something from three and a half years ago. Never bought anything from him since. And I'm like, well thanks for letting me know I'm still on your email list. Unsubscribe. You know, and I, you know, I had a podcast with Kurt Elster of the unofficial Shopify podcast and we were talking about like how to survive recessions.
Speaker 1 15:36 And so if you're interested you should definitely check that out cause Kurt and I had a great discussion about that. But one of the things that you know, I talked about in there was like a tone deafness in your marketing campaigns right now. And you know, there's definitely a lot of that and I think you have to be like, you got to just shut off everything that you're doing. Normally. You got to be human and empathetic and just say, Hey, I'm here to help, not going to try to push any services. I'm not going to do a price increase. God forbid that. Like, I can't imagine somebody who had a plat price increase planned for this month. They just got screwed out of that completely. Or if you tried it, good luck on that one. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, all of that kind of stuff just got put on pause and put on pause for how long.
Speaker 1 16:19 I don't really know. Like it's a longterm pause, you said a month. I think it's a month before we get some kind of different version of what we have now, but I still don't think it's fixed in a month. I think in a month it changes from where it is, but it's still different than where we want it to be. You know? I mean, I heard the original estimates from the CDC and uh, uh, Fowchee that we're talking about. We're not going to see this kind of die down until July. I mean it's March, that's months away from now. So just mentally trying to wrap your head around what does that look like for my business? Can I continue to survive without my usual marketing campaigns? And you know, what, what messaging do I put out there and how do I, you know, continue to do promotions. And then you hear other things like Facebook ads are cheapest fucking hell right now. You know, I've seen Facebook gurus on Twitter that are like saying now's the time to buy Facebook ads. And I'm like, that might make a hell of a lot of sense. But as anybody actually paying attention to those Facebook ads are, are you getting returns? Are you getting clicks? Maybe you are, maybe you are. But yeah, it's just
Speaker 2 17:30 you need like a futures or put options or something on Facebook ads, right? Like I will buy Facebook ads in November at this price plus 10%
Speaker 1 17:40 yeah. I don't think that's going to happen. And you know, that's not happening on the Shopify app store. But you know, I still have my spend going on the Shopify ads. Right. I'm still getting people signing up for recapture. So all of that's good. And you know, I'm not seeing a direct slow down yet, but I am seeing unprecedented churn this month. So, but I also saw big growth twos and they kind of ended up offsetting each other. So it's like a weird month. Yes. I don't know what the fuck is going on. Yeah. We're seeing
Speaker 2 18:12 we'll probably have our best month ever this month. I have cast us, which is really weird. I mean, we're not doing anything different. I think, you know, people are home and they were bored off their ass and they want to start a podcast. That's, that's, you know, great and strange. Um, I'm glad we're offering something that serves people in this time, but it's, it's strange to think about, and I think that a lot of them are, are not businesses. A lot of them are communities and schools and churches and local organizations and things like that, that, that this is their version of in person connection, communication. Um, I, I don't know that for fact, but, but that's what I, the samplings I get of the customers I know and see that that's kind of where they're coming for us at least. But, um, yeah, it's, um, as far as the timing man, I mean we talked about this for, we started recording I think is like in France.
Speaker 2 19:06 I think that like the trajectory or the curve is about the same. Like it's not getting worse like it is in Spain. Um, but it's not getting better. Like it is in South Korea. And so, yeah, I think we have another month, um, for us, like our kids will go on spring break, April 16th, um, which is two throw almost three weeks from now. And I think we'll be confined until then, which is a long time. And then there's two weeks of vacation on top of that. Um, some wheat. Yeah. So we're the 1st of May, the 4th of May, when the kids would probably go back to school. Um, so like five weeks. Um, and it's just a long time. And before I, okay, so the, I am not a a an economics or finance person, but I just don't get, and maybe $2 trillion in the U S for stimulus is going to do it, but I just don't get how you can put what Dave, 50% of the economy on hold and for months really like for two months to just say, okay, all small local businesses basically are shut down. And, and think that you can understand the ripple effect of that through all the supporting roles and businesses and industries and all that kind of stuff. Like I just don't get, I just don't get how anybody thinks it's okay. And that like, you know, the, the government passing the stimulus bill is, is gonna fix the problem. I just don't get it. I don't know.
Speaker 1 20:40 Yeah, I mean that, so, you know, here's wild speculation on my part. So we, you know, we basically are grinding on local, state and federal economies to a halt for a, an extended period of time that we have never ever done
Speaker 1 20:55 in our history as an economy. And then we have no idea what that's gonna mean. You know, do these businesses get their rents put on hold and then after they put their rents on hold, are they going to be on the hook to pay them back? Are they going to be, you know, our business is going to be forgiven. Are they going to be given a time to pay that back? On top of that, is there traffic going to recover fast enough for them to actually make money to turn around and pay the next month's rent and the staff and what's going to be the layoffs that happen? Is everything going to come roaring back? All of a sudden where a bunch of businesses go out of business because they didn't have the money to survive two months without any revenue coming in and they had a ton of expenses but then turned around and then all these people are like, where's my fucking coffee?
Speaker 1 21:42 Like, you know, where's my hair? I want my hair done again. I want my nails done again. I want to buy a pair of shoes. And these people are, you know, all of a sudden there's this unfulfilled demand and a bunch of businesses that were there to fill the demand and then went out of business. What happens with that? Like that just seems crazy. You know, I could envision a dozen different ways that that goes. So one is, you know, your demand skyrockets and your supply craters, so prices go through the roof. The other one is the demand created or the demand skyrockets, the supply craters, but then the supply bounces back because the demand is so strong and there's a whole new wave of people that build stores and set up businesses and you know, then we have this new entrepreneurial economy. I have no idea. Yeah. And then there's another one where the demand goes up and there's no supply there and then therefore the people are like, well, I guess I didn't need it before. I don't need it now. So then demand craters, right? Yeah. Yeah. And what's the new normal there? Is that going to be cyclical? Is that going to be short term or longterm or, I don't know. I really don't know.
Speaker 2 22:51 Yeah, I th I mean at the end, the thing that that scares me for, for folks who are, I'll say indirectly affected, you know, like they didn't do anything wrong, but just because people can't work or local businesses are shut down there. These secondary and tertiary supporting businesses that are affected. And I think that, I mean, I haven't seen the bill, right. But I would suspect that that's something that Congress has not taken into effect is like these people get unemployment benefits of course. But like they're already out of a job. Right? Like all those people, you know, wedding photographers out of a job, they can't, they can't keep the lights on in their little consultancy for months at a time. And I don't believe that they are supported by the, of course I could be wrong, I would love to be wrong. But um, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's a trip. It's, it's the weirdest,
Speaker 1 23:46 the experiment we've ever run in our economy. And I hope we never have to do it again. And the other, so here's the other weird thing, right? So I've read a lot about the 1918 Spanish flu and there was the first wave and then it was second wave that really did the major part of the damage, not the first wave. And so are we going to have, you know, a similar kind of thing with Corona virus where the first wave goes through, people are like, Oh, well, you know, we had a lot of cases but it wasn't really that bad and we still don't have a vaccine. And then the second wave comes this fall, my wife keeps talking about this, you know, what happens then? Do we turn around and repeat everything that we're doing now because that's all we know. And that's all we have as a tool in our toolbox and we're still not that close to a vaccine. And you know, there's all kinds of crazy rumors floating around right now about, Oh, this works on it and this works on it. And you know, there are just tons of contradictory information out there about should you take this, should you take this, don't take this, but do take this. It's, yeah, I mean, it is just unbelievable as to the level of cognitive processing. This requires to have this plane through your head and plane through your newsfeed and plane in your conversations all the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 25:10 yeah. I mean, as Dave, as we're talking, I'm getting like pinged on Slack, uh, all of this is in the bill and this is in the de I, it's just like a, it's never ending. I, I try to have a bit of a media diet and, and I read in the morning just to catch up on what happened, you know, in the evening in the U S and then I'd try to read, you know, about this time like after dinner, but well before bed in the U S or you know, in the evening my time to see kind of what the middle of the day is in the U S cause otherwise you just die. I, I literally am going crazy trying not to, but it's, it's easy to just get caught up in it. It's, it's such a massive impact on our lives. Um, you know, Dave, the thing, the thing I think about a lot with my business and it's the one area I've been able to focus really well and, and it's not terribly productive yet, but I'm thinking about it a lot, which I hope sets me up for some kind of success later is what will this look like on the other side?
Speaker 2 26:11 You know, like, what will podcasting look like next year? What will e-commerce look like next year? What will you know, FinTech look like next year? Not that I'm in all those businesses, but, but it's all, you know, we're all kind of related and I am thinking a lot about like, you know, we talked last week about like the world will never be the same. The world won't be exactly the same but it, but it won't be so, so different probably. And so what does that mean? You know, like what, you know, say, say a podcast motor, right? Like will done for you service resonate with a lot of people in six months or will they need something else? You know, and it could be a lot more or a lot less. I don't know. But I'm thinking about that a lot. I think on cast, those are our offering and our value is a pretty low level, you know, like it's pretty basic at its core.
Speaker 2 27:04 And so I think that's not going to change a lot, but maybe some of the things around that will change, you know, like things people need or things they don't need anymore. Um, and so I'm thinking a lot about that and I don't have any answers and I don't think any of us can have answers, but maybe if, if folks out there are feeling like us that we don't have the mental energy to, to really do a lot. And maybe you're, like you were talking about like the tone deafness of marketing campaigns probably means that you shouldn't be doing a bunch of stuff right now in terms of marketing because people don't care, but mentally get yourself oriented to where you're ready to do what is needed and what is right when this blows over. Yeah. I don't have the answers, but, but that's kind of where I'm putting my mental energy these days.
Speaker 1 27:54 Yeah. Yeah. I hear you on that one. So would love to hear from all of you out there that are stuck in your homes, out in the world, what are your thoughts? What do you think is gonna happen in the next three, six, nine to 12 months? Do you think that there's some opportunities that are out there or some entire industries or niches that are going to create or explode? Would love to hear your thoughts. Send us an email podcast@roguestartups.com. Unsurprisingly, we're probably going to answer it pretty quickly cause we're sitting in front of our email all the time. And if you think that this has been valuable, uh, please share this with a friend and let them know, uh, what you think. Until next week,
Speaker 0 28:43 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>.
