Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast, where two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. Hello and welcome
Speaker 1 00:00:21 The rogue startups podcast. I'm your host Craig Hewitt. In this episode, I'm joined by Christopher Gimmer co founder of snapper. Snapper is a Photoshop alternative that is web based for folks who want to easily and quickly create great looking images for their marketing efforts and podcasts and blog posts and website Chris and his cofounder have grown snap out to well over a hundred thousand dollars MRR here in just a few years in this episode, Chris and I talk a lot about kind of what that journey has looked like and some of the things that have been working really well for them, uh, talking about when your competitors either are acquired or receive major funding rounds as has happened to both of us here in the last couple of weeks and kind of what that does mentally to you, as well as what the longterm journey for a self funded or indie funded startup founder looks like as is the case for both of us.
Speaker 1 00:01:11 I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Christopher Gimmer from snapper. So Chris, it's been, I hate to say several years since you've been on the show, but you guys have been up to some really cool stuff at Snappa. Can you give folks like a bit of an idea of like, kind of where you guys are in like team's eyes or, or kind of age of the company or anything like that? Sure. So we launched a snap officially at the end of 2015. Recently we just crossed a hundred K in MRR and in terms of team size, if you can include my cofounder and I were a team of seven full time, and then we work with, um, just like a couple freelancers, uh, mainly for, you know, writing with blog content, um, and a couple graphic designers. Um, but, uh, yeah, that, that's kind of what the team looks like today.
Speaker 1 00:02:04 Cool, cool. And I'm always fascinated by this, so seven people, what is the breakdown there and like, in terms of like dev and support and other stuff? Yeah. So my co founders a, uh, a technical guy, so, uh, it's basically him, uh, myself, uh, I handle more of the kind of marketing operations, uh, growth kind of stuff. Uh, and then we have two developers, one graphic designer, the full time marketer and someone that handles social media and customer support. So it's kind of 50 50 like development and, uh, I would call it more, uh, you know, marketing operation stuff. Yeah. Cool, cool. Yeah, we're hiring somebody right now. Um, the, the title we have is director of podcast or success. So I think it is kind of this hybrid, like marketing, onboarding success. They probably will do some customer support, but I, when we were looking to hire, I was thinking like, well, do we need another developer or do we need, cause we have two full time developers, a support person and a marketing person and myself that I kind of do a little bit of product and a little bit of marketing.
Speaker 1 00:03:09 And I was like, it's not possible that we can have three developers. That would be too much. I think our developers listen to this show. So they would be very unhappy to hear that. Cause I'm sure they'd love to have someone else to play with, but it always is a trip to talk to folks in the like five to 20 teams size range to hear what that mix looks like. There's certainly no right answer, but I always think it's funny to hear like what the mix looks like. Cause it's, it's always dev heavy, but just how dev heavy does, I guess is the question.
Speaker 2 00:03:38 Yeah, for sure. I think it, obviously some of that depends on product, but I mean, you can definitely never have too many developers. Um, so it's, it's more a question of like constraints and you know, how badly do you need that, that next feature? Um, so it's a, yeah, it's always a difficult decision of, you know, do we go more developer heavy versus more, uh, marketing heavy and um, yeah, it really, it really is just a balancing act. I think.
Speaker 1 00:04:05 Yeah, we, you and I were chatting actually just like last week, just regular kind of on the phone or on zoom or whatever. Um, and like the theme of what something we talked about that I've been thinking a lot about since then, that I would like to just kind of like hear your thoughts on it. Maybe dive into laborious is like, we all have this idea of, and maybe cause we've heard Rob talk about like his SAS metrics, rules of thumb a lot is like, if your churn is below 6%, you're doing okay. And if your growth is 5% or more, and you're over 20,000 MRR, whatever, like all these kind of like metrics that we all should be shooting for. And then I think a lot of us have like this sore thumb that sticks out and we're like, God, if I could just get that one better, like everything would be wonderful and sunshine and roses and unicorns and rainbows and stuff. But then I think like what you and I were getting at in our chat was that might just not be our business. Right. It might just not be that like cast dos or Snappa is the business that can have expansion revenue or a churn less than 5% or an ARPU of a hundred dollars or whatever. Right. I mean, is that kinda like where you guys have settled is like, yeah, we're an outlier in this respect.
Speaker 2 00:05:23 Yeah. I mean, this used to stress me out a lot more in the early days. Um, you know, obviously we have, uh, nowhere near, you know, net negative churn, which is a, the Holy grail of, of SAS is a lot of people talk about. And I was, yeah, in that conversation, I remember telling you, uh, at one of the micro comps, uh, there was a speaker who put up a slide and was like, you know, if your, if your business is doing 10% churn, like your business is on fire. And I was like, Holy shit, like, or we do something wrong here. And, uh, yeah, I mean I spent kind of years like, okay, how do we get this, uh, churn number down? And how can we get closer to, you know, uh, you know, 5% or even less than 5%. Um, and eventually you kind of realize like the type of product and the market and is gonna, you know, at some level dictate what your churn is and whether or not there's expansion revenue and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 00:06:20 And so once we kind of accepted that, we were just like our aid, our game here is acquisition. You know, we we've been really successful at growing our user base, uh, month over month, um, purely through content marketing and SEO. And, you know, I I've listened to a lot of, you know, interviews and founders where they have really low churn, let's call it two, 3%, which, you know, I would have killed for that. But then they're also struggling to add new customers and, and, you know, get, get kind of their acquisition going. So, you know, the way I kind of think about it these days is like, you know, if churn is 10%, well, as long as you're crushing the acquisition at the end of the day, it, it, it kind of balances out now. Um, the caveat being, um, with 10% churn, we're never going to, you know, IPO or become a billion dollar business.
Speaker 2 00:07:12 And obviously that's okay because we're bootstrap, but you know, if we're talking about, can we get to, you know, let's call it two to 5 million ARR, a hundred percent we can. I mean, we're like as of today, we're at 1.4 million ARR. So it's, it's kinda one of those things where, you know, I've, I've kind of just accepted that we are going to be, um, probably forever in that five to 10%, you know, churn area. Um, and, um, you know, we're, we're working on kind of adding, you know, a team plan and, and kind of getting a more of those, um, it's called SMBs and those customers do stick around longer. The turns a lot lower. The lifetime value is a lot higher. So hopefully as we, you know, as, as we go on, we can start to get more and more of those kind of higher tier customers. But yeah, like I said, I've just kind of accepted it and this is kind of the market we're in. And let's just double down on the acquisition side and not stressed too much about the churn and just kind of accept that it is what is
Speaker 1 00:08:11 Yes. Yeah, yeah. For sure. No, I love it. And I think, you know, for us, the number is, uh, ARPU, right? I mean, and I think it's, yeah, it's just the market and the type of customers too, to a large extent, um, is that some customers will pay a hundred dollars a month for their podcast hosting, but the vast majority, this is an expense. This is not, uh, an asset. This is not a money making thing for them. And so charging, or even if you had the features to, to charge a hundred dollars a month. Uh, so few people would see the value in that for us, I think. Um, and, and that's evolving a little bit, but I think for a long time, we were on this bandwagon of like, this number is bad, very abstractly. And like, we have to get this number better and it doesn't matter what, you know, kind of Frankenstein the product is or whatever this number has to be good.
Speaker 1 00:09:00 Um, and yeah, at this point we're kind of saying, yeah, we're delivering really great value for what a lot of our customers need at $19 a month. And that's great. And so now we just need a lot more customers. And so now we're, we're in the, we're trying to get to the bucket year end where, uh, it's just an acquisition type thing. Um, and that's, that's kind of cool. Like, yeah, it gives me some peace to say like, okay, maybe this number is not exactly ideal in a perfect world, but for us it's pretty good because a lot of our other numbers are really, really good. Um, and so like if this one isn't quite perfect, it's OK. Cause the rest of the stuff is good and we can overcome it not being perfect with, you know, more acquisition of more customers. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:40 Yeah. I think like as a, as a very big generalization here, um, if we're talking like bootstrap businesses at the end of the day, the key is how much are you growing MRR? And, um, yeah, I totally get it that like higher churn is going to, you know, make it harder and harder. But what we've seen is that the L you know, we, we, we've kind of built this flywheel if you will. So we haven't like, our acquisition has almost gotten easier as we've gotten bigger, as opposed to harder. And therefore we haven't seen that, you know, true plateauing yet, uh, because of the churn, because we've just, you know, continued to find a way to increase that acquisition. So maybe that will come to an end one day and I'll be sitting here being like, yeah, I should have worried more about churn, but, um, you know, I think we're okay for now.
Speaker 1 00:10:26 That's cool. That's cool. Uh, without giving away, like too much of the secret sauce, like you mentioned, uh, like content and SEO, is there anything like, particularly, um, surprising about that channel that has worked well for you guys that like, maybe you didn't expect?
Speaker 2 00:10:42 Yeah. Um, it's really funny. I remember two, three years ago I was having a conversation with Liam who's the founder of, uh, time doctor and stop.com. And he, um, he was also really good at SEO and they grew, um, they grew, they grew a pretty big business, uh, off the content as well. And I remember saying to him like, you know, I think, you know, we're kind of running out of keywords and I think at some point we're, we're gonna, you know, run out of, uh, you know, SEO and, and, and, um, you know, acquisition is going to be tough. And, uh, I remember he said to me like, yeah, I thought that five, 10 years ago as well, but we still have a huge backlog that we, you know, can't possibly get to. And, uh, and sure enough, the same thing happened to us.
Speaker 2 00:11:31 Um, and, uh, you know, now kind of four or five years into it, uh, our backlog of, of keyword ideas just keeps getting bigger and bigger, but in, in terms of what was surprising or work well, and th this is kind of the advice that I give a lot, a lot of people with brand new websites is what I've seen is that people think like, okay, I'm going to do content marketing. I'm going to, you know, write one blog post a week, and hopefully in a year or two, I'll get all this sweet, you know, SEO, traffic and life will be good. And I find that typically a really bad strategy, uh, what worked really well for us is, and we actually kind of started doing this and then realized like that it wasn't working. So I think a much better strategy is to, um, do the keyword research and really figure out what are the two or three articles that, you know, have the highest likelihood of a, that that you'll be able to rank for.
Speaker 2 00:12:27 And B that will actually drive sign ups for your product. Um, so typically you want to find keywords that have, um, a high enough search volume depending on what your lifetime value is. So obviously if you have a really high lifetime value product, you don't need as high of search volume, whereas for a product like ours, um, you know, we're going to need some decent search volume, and then you would also look at the keyword difficulty. So obviously, you know, the more people are gunning for that keyword that the harder it's going to be. But now what I would do is I would write just a truly amazing piece of content that is 10 times better than the current search results. And then spend a lot of time promoting that content either through manual outreach, which admittedly is a bit tougher these days. Cause it's getting pretty saturated, uh, or through guest posting where you're, um, you know, writing articles on other blogs and linking back to your own article and just really focus on ranking those two to three articles before you publish another piece of content.
Speaker 2 00:13:26 Um, and that's essentially what we did in the early days is we found that, um, there was a lot of search volume for like Twitter header size. And so we focused almost an entire month just on like perfecting that article, promoting it, getting it to rank. And then once, once we were successful in doing that, uh, we just kind of doubled down on that strategy and moved on to the next thing. So we wrote another article for like, you know, Facebook cover size and whatnot. So yeah, in terms of what worked well, I would kind of sum that up on, rather than writing a ton of content and doing the, the spray and pray approach. I would really focus on writing much, a much smaller number of posts, but putting just way more effort into them, both in terms of the writing itself and the actual content promotion, and then only start to scale up the frequency of the content once, you know, you've really nailed that down and you have more link authority and backlinks pointing to your site because that will make it a lot easier to rank new pieces of content. So I think that that ended up working pretty well for us.
Speaker 1 00:14:33 Yeah. This is one of the biggest surprises for me when Denise came onto our team, she's our head marketer is I was thinking, okay, we're just going to write a ton of content. And we had a writer kind of freelancing for us already as like between the two of you. We could do like two or three blog posts every week. And she, we, you know, she went the H refs course and she came to me and she's like, look, we don't need to write any more content. We have 170 blog posts on the site. Like maybe we'll start writing some more in a while, but for now we're going to clean all this up. We're going to organize it. We're going to get our internal linking. We're going to get more links from outside resources and like our domain authority and our like kind of domain ranking has gone through the roof since she started doing that. And so, yeah, I mean, I never would have thought that, but I'm glad she kind of set me straight cause yeah, I mean, we publish between the two of them. Plus I write a little bit, maybe we publish two episodes a month and one of them is like a product release. So it's not even like, you know, SEO related acquisition stuff, just like we want to tell our customers about stuff. Um, so that's cool too.
Speaker 2 00:15:36 Yeah. It sounds like she knows what she's doing.
Speaker 1 00:15:38 She does. She does. Yeah. I'm very fortunate that she's, uh, she's got us on the right path. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:15:43 One of the biggest case studies that kind of, uh, opened my eyes was, um, uh, Tim, Tim from H refs. Um, and he had kind of taken over that blog and it was a similar thing where they were writing like two or three posts a week and just cranking out content after content. Um, and then when he, when he came in there, he basically deleted, like, I forget what the number was, but he deleted like a shit ton of pages from the site. Um, and really followed that like less is more strategy. Um, and you know, he, again, I forget exactly what the results were, but he posted kind of before and after screenshots and I mean, the results speak for themselves. Um, you know, I also follow like Brian Dean from Backlinko and, you know, same kind of strategy, less is more. And so, you know, the more you see, um, this working for people, um, the, the more you kind of start to buy into it and, and yeah, it definitely definitely worked for her.
Speaker 1 00:16:37 Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah, we hear, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, you know, content is dead and SEO is dead and it doesn't matter anymore. And we, I mean, actually the first few months she came on board, we were heavy on the paid acquisition bandwagon and try to make that work and try to make it work. And we found a few ways to make it work, but it's not the like 10 X growth engine that we were hoping it would be. And so we still do, we do a decent amount of paid acquisition, but it's not our longterm focus anymore. Um, so it's interesting to like have really tried. And we tried very hard, um, on, on that side, but we've, we've seen much better results for less money. Um, and you know, they'll, they'll pay for themselves or, you know, continue to return for the business forever, almost, uh, with content, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 00:17:26 Um, one thing that happened in the few days since we chatted last week was, uh, one of your competitors announced that they raised two boatloads of money. Um, and you know, I, I don't know what they're going to do with that much money. Um, but, but we had a kind of similar, um, not a, not a customer, not a competitor raise money, but got acquired actually. So simple cast, one of our competitors got acquired by Sirius XM, um, announced last week. And so these two things kind of made me say, and I, I messaged you. And I just said like, like, what is, how does this make me feel? And how does this make you feel Chris? Like, like when your competitor goes and raises $60 million or whatever, or like our competitor gets acquired by a publicly traded company, like, I'm just like, it's almost another world that they're living in, but it's not really right. Like you could go do that and we could theoretically get acquired and all this kind of weird stuff, I guess it's just seems weird to me sometimes to see that from somebody that's really not so different than us.
Speaker 2 00:18:35 Yeah. It's, um, it's, it's hard to like succinctly communicate how I feel when I, when I see that kind of stuff. Um, but some general thoughts are like, you know, at the end of the day, we we've kind of chosen our path and, and that has been kind of the, the self funded bootstrap path. So it's obviously extremely unrealistic to, uh, or I guess it's not helpful to compare yourselves to, uh, competitors who are on that kind of, you know, VC IPO track. So, you know, for us, what that means is, you know, if you look at our competitors, they're trying to cater to, you know, everyone and, and, and, you know, every business type. So, you know, they, they, you might be able to create like restaurant menus and, you know, wedding invitations and business cards and all that kind of stuff. Whereas for us with a team of seven, you know, each like additional template or use case that we add to the product, it makes it harder and harder to support with a small team.
Speaker 2 00:19:38 So, you know, what we've done is said, okay, look, we're going to serve this vertical or this niche extremely well. And if we do that, you know, we can serve that market. Um, we can be very profitable. We can make a really good business out of this, and we don't have to raise boatloads of money and, uh, you know, swing for the fences, so to speak. So, you know, over the years, I've kind of like come to peace with that where it's like, you know, we're never going to have a billion dollar valuation. And if we do, then we're going to have to, uh, raise all that money. And so now that we're kind of four or five years into it, you know, the thought of raising a bunch of money and adding so much risks to the table, um, when we've built up, you know, all of this equity into the business, I would have a really hard time doing that and less at a bare minimum, we were able to take some chips off the table.
Speaker 2 00:20:33 And then the other thing that comes with that is like, you know, do I really want to do that for the next five to 10 years of my life? Am I, you know, passionate enough about this particular, you know, I wouldn't call it niche, but this particular, um, uh, you know, problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, am I passionate about this enough where, you know, now I'm signing up for the grueling, you know, 10 to 12 hour workdays and, and the stress of managing a, you know, 50 plus person team. So it's a, it's not a simple thing. I'm curious to kind of hear how you kind of think about it.
Speaker 1 00:21:11 Yeah. I mean, the, I reached out to, uh, another friend of mine that works in like, uh, mergers and acquisitions for a really big company that we all know after I read this announcement and, and my message to him was can we talk next week? Because I feel like I'm just not thinking about the right things to, to make myself ready for this. And I think it applies to either raising a bunch of money, which I don't think we're going to do, but we might, I don't know, like I would never put it out of the realm of possibility or having Sirius XM come to us, you know, like, like what, what am I not thinking about is, is really the thing that gets me the most is like, what are we not doing? Where are we not like positioning ourselves correctly? Like, what does our brand not say?
Speaker 1 00:22:00 And I know that's a really squishy thing, but I think there's a part of that too, to either of these more grand paths, you know, like to raise a bunch of money, which, which I, you know, I think a lot of people in the bootstrap space to say, like, that's not a, not a measure of success, but there's a lot to be said for somebody giving you $60 million, um, that like that's validation of some sort, whether that's like your personal metric of value. I don't know. I think that it probably shouldn't be the only one, but, but it certainly would be like, make you feel good or, or, you know, somebody to come and say like, Hey, we've wanted to get into this space. And we think, you know, teaming up with you with you would be, you know, the best way for us to do that.
Speaker 1 00:22:39 I think that's the thing that I think about the most is like, we are on this path and I think we're on about similar you, which is not the VC path, not the 12 hour work days, pretty lifestyle businessy. And I don't think that's a negative term. It's not for me at least, but, but then like, I don't want to rule out the upside potential or like the, the eventuality may be of these bigger things happening. And so that's, that's the thing that makes me think is like, could this ever happen to me? And if not, I think I'm missing something, you know, or leaving something on the table or are not considering something that I should be. And, and what is that, that's really what it made me think is like, shit, like that could be me, you know? And like, it hadn't happened yet either way and why not? And like, what am I missing? And I don't know the answer to that, but that's what makes me think.
Speaker 2 00:23:31 Yeah. I mean, I have similar thoughts, like obviously, I mean, we we've had, um, VC interest and, you know, every time my cofounder and I talk about it, it it's always the same thing. It's like, well, you know, we, we, we take this money and obviously that increases the likelihood of having one of these like huge exits, but it also increases the likelihood that this, you know, crashes and burns and we go to zero, um, and don't get nearly as much out of it as we could. Um, and then again, on the flip side, if okay, we stay on this path, the likelihood of, you know, let's say becoming a multimillionaire is, is, is, is fairly high or very high, but to get to that, like, let's call it F you money is probably going to be a lot a lower, and then it becomes this whole thing of like, well, what's more important.
Speaker 2 00:24:24 Is it like it is, is the absolute money, the most important is, you know, the notch on your belt that like, you know, I sold our business for a hundred million dollars. Is that the most important thing? Is it, you know, like another thing I think about is, you know, I really love the team that we have right now. Um, everyone is, uh, pretty calm and relaxed, but also very hardworking. And I think we have a good rhythm, uh, within the company, I would say, meanwhile, I have, you know, a couple of friends that are on the VC track and they just seem a bit more stressed. Let's call it a, not as calm, especially in a time like this, when I'm, you know, a lot of, uh, budgets are being cut and, and cancellations are maybe higher than normal, depending on the industry. So, um, yeah, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, it's not an easy subject. Let's, let's put it that way.
Speaker 1 00:25:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do agree. I think that, that the pressure and the expectations of, of, you know, going the VC route are, are enough to shy most people away from it. I think, especially if you can do it another way, you know, if you can be bootstrapped or we took a little bit of money, but we're not on the VC path, I don't feel like, uh, and yeah, I mean, we are, you know, we have people that take days off and I'm cool with it. I don't stress about them now working. And that's, that's a big deal. I think you guys are a remote company, right? Yeah, that's correct. Yep. And I would love to hear, um, kind of like where, where you've found your team members. Cause I think that, like everybody says, Oh, just post on, we work remotely and that's cool, but I would love to hear like how the like, hiring and acquisition process has gone for you with your team.
Speaker 2 00:26:16 Yeah. It's, it's, it's been a bit of a mix. So our first developer, um, we actually just posted a job on indeed. Um, is that a thing in, in the United States? Okay. Yeah. So it's one of the most popular job boards in Canada. I wasn't sure, uh, outside of Canada. Um, and fortunately we, you know, we found a rock star and he's still, uh, he's still with us today and, you know, definitely super, super happy to have him, uh, on the marketing side. It was because, you know, I knew that we kind of need a marketer. Um, but, uh, I can't remember what our MRR was at that time, but, um, it wasn't that high. So my thinking was like, okay, I'll hire, you know, a younger person maybe like, um, and, and kind of that, that shows the initiatives and has some of the skillsets, but I can kind of, you know, groom him or her and, uh, you know, build them up, so to speak.
Speaker 2 00:27:10 So what I ended up doing was a, um, I used the LinkedIn recruiter and essentially just filtered, um, people in, in Canada that had recently graduated from like a marketing or business program. And the reality was I didn't really care that they actually had the, the marketing program, but it was just a better way to filter, let's call it. Uh, and then you can even filter on keywords, like, you know, SEO and social media and that kind of stuff. Um, and so I ended up finding a few profiles that were really interesting. Um, and one of them, uh, so Nick, who is still again, still with us today, um, he had, uh, this really cool side project and he had grown like an Instagram account and plus he had some experience working with the marketing industry. So I literally just messaged him and, and, uh, and he was from Ottawa as well, which is where I'm from.
Speaker 2 00:28:00 And, and so I kind of pitched them with like, Hey, you know, it came across your profile real, like what you're doing. Um, here's kind of what we're building and the pitch was kind of like, I'll teach you everything. I know. And, uh, you know, if, if, you know, hopefully we can, we can all grow and this will be a really good experience for you. Um, and, and fortunately that worked out, I mean, he, um, he he's really crushing it. Um, he's pretty much taken over the blog and all the content and SEO stuff, so that that's really been handed off to him. And then, um, our most recent hire, um, actually a buddy of mine, he, he had gotten quite impacted, uh, because of COVID-19 and, uh, he had, you know, a really good, uh, graphic designer that he unfortunately had to lay off just because, you know, they, they had to make some budget cuts.
Speaker 2 00:28:50 So I reached out to her and was like, Hey, do you want to do some contract work for us? And, um, and so she, she started, you know, doing some stuff for us on the side, like on a part time basis and just, she was just killing it. And, uh, so we, we offered her a, a full time position and, you know, that was just kind of a lucky thing where, um, the, the time was right where we really needed to hire a full time graphic designer. And, um, so yeah, it's kind of been all over the place for us to be honest, a mix of, you know, just posting jobs, um, uh, kind of, um, you know, referrals and kind of reaching out to networks and, and, uh, some more proactive of, of literally just, you know, reaching out to people directly.
Speaker 1 00:29:33 Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. We, um, I guess we've had a little bit of everything too loud. I'm trying to think, like chronologically. So our lead developer that built a lot of the first version or the whole first version was a referral from the guy that we bought that I bought the WordPress plugin from. So he's a good friend. That was great. Cause that's like a shoe in the next one, uh, Danilo hired on Upwork, which is amazing. Like I never thought that would work, but he's really great. And that's, I mean, we started out like on a project basis and then contract for a little bit and then part time. And now full time, Eileen, that does support was a customer of ours, which is the one thing that I wish we could do this all the time is like hierarch customers, because like, they're wonderful.
Speaker 1 00:30:19 Like they know the product, they know the message, they know the value and I guess, yeah. And like Denise, our marketing lead, um, didn't, you know, she did not come from our network. It all came from, I think we work remotely and then we're hiring another role now for our like pod customer success role. And we're in the last parts of that. And everybody that's in the last parts of that interview process is somebody that I know or was referred to us, which is weird. Cause I didn't do a whole lot of like outbound, uh, work for this, but it's just, yeah, it's a trip how, like you think you got it. Right. And then, and we're talking about, you know, a dozen people between us. Like it's all different, it's all different roles folks come from. That's weird.
Speaker 2 00:31:03 Yeah. I think like at the end of the day, the more, um, sources, uh, the better, right. So if, um, you know, if we were hiring someone tomorrow, I wouldn't say like, okay, I'm only going to post this job, or I'm only going to ask for referrals. I mean, even you might as well do everything. And then, uh, you know, the, the best result is, is the one that, uh, that gets hired. So that's kind of how, how I think about it, but definitely, um, it, it is always nice to have referrals and, and a network that you can tap into and say, you know, here's, here's what we're looking for. If you know, anyone, please forward them along because, you know, evidently culture is, I feel like, especially in a small team, culture's like super important. So, you know, skill set is obviously one half of it, but, uh, it's really important to us that anyone we bring into the team is gonna, you know, work well with the others and, and kind of, uh, you know, uh, fit fit in well with what the
Speaker 1 00:32:00 Hmm. Hmm. Um, one thing I wanted to, to kind of circle back on is, uh, you know, hiring a marketer as a, as a marketing person yourself. And like, I'm kind of in the same boat. I'm not a developer as hell, so I better be a marketer. Um, how was that like role for you to kind of, once you move to pass the point of, uh, bringing Nick on and kind of teaching him the ropes and getting them up to speed to where he's contributing to, where he's taken that off your plate. And then for me, at least, and this is why I'm asking there was a day, a couple months ago where I sat back and thought, well, what do I do now? Like, Denise is better at this than I am. Uh, we have somebody doing customer support. I kind of run product, but with two developers, there's only so much you can do there. I'm like, did you have this point where you're just like, uh, what do I do now?
Speaker 2 00:32:53 Uh, it wasn't so much of a, what do I do now for me? It was, it was, um, it was more of a happy moment where, you know, like I said, uh, you know, Nick definitely had some experience, but, you know, he, he never, like, this was his kind of first full time marketing job out of school. And so, you know, the, the first couple months was really just like, here's, here's how I do things. Um, you know, here's how, you know, w what's been working and, you know, for the time being, just keep doing that. And then we'll, we'll kind of like, you know, add on from there. And then, you know, over time I started taking more and more of a backseat. And then, yeah, it was kinda like one day where I was just, he would, he's like, Oh, like check out this post.
Speaker 2 00:33:33 And, you know, Oh, like, you know, I, I tweak this and now, you know, we're ranking like number one for this keyword. And it was just kind of like every week it was like, Holy crap. He's really just taking things by the horn and really producing some fantastic results without me actually, you know, guiding him or, or, or telling him, and, and, uh, you know, as a, as a business owner, I mean, that's, uh, it's, it's a, it's quite a freeing and a great moment. So in terms of like, what do I do I think today, um, I'm, I may be less like full time marketer and, and trying to take on more of that. Uh, you know, I hate to use the word, but more of like that true CEO role, um, where it's, you know, what's next for the company, um, you know, a bit more HR stuff and thinking about, you know, team building and culture, and on the marketing side, it's more about like, uh, I'm thinking a lot more about, you know, channels and, and different growth leavers that maybe we haven't really pulled yet, as opposed to like getting in the nitty gritty of the content or the SEO, uh, because I know that Nick can do that, and it's just not really valuable for me to spend my day doing a bunch of like keyword research.
Speaker 2 00:34:50 Whereas for me, it might be like, Hey, you know, I noticed that our, our top two affiliates, um, have really been, you know, generating some good sales, you know, what would it look like if, if we had, you know, 10, 10 of those and how can we get more of those and, you know, maybe, you know, what what's, how can we tweak our current program and what are, what are some things that we can do there? And then also, you know, on the product side, I mean, there's just kind of like a million different directions and, you know, features and, and kind of stuff that we can tackle. So I would say, you know, as of right now, I'm, I'm focusing more, more and more on higher level stuff and, you know, to, to use a cliche, like working on the business as opposed to in business. Um, so, uh, and again, which is a good thing because, um, you know, the only way to like really scale the business is if you have, you know, really solid people that are executing the work and, and you're kind of, you know, more like guiding the ship as a, as opposed to, uh, you know, getting in the weeds.
Speaker 1 00:35:56 Mm Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that it's, it was a difficult kind of transition for me. And I guess, like, if I'm honest, I, I tried to go the other way too much and said, like, you know, I, you know, I can't do this or I can't do that anymore. Cause it's not my responsibility. And I've gotten actually more back in the weeds to like work with different parts of our team. Like everybody on the team, a little more, um, instead of being like, this is your deal to say like, Hey, let's do this together now. Um, because we're only five people, like we're a small company still, I can't just beat the, the boat captain and like, have that be my full time job, but I thought that's where I was. And that, that was not the case. And so I'm actually much busier with, I guess you could say kind of kinda like you were getting at like higher leverage things that only I can do aspects of each of like the business units, you know, of marketing, of support and success of product design and onboarding.
Speaker 1 00:36:58 Yeah. And that's, that's kind of where I've settled is like, I like having my hand in all of the parts of the business, like actively, but, but in a, in a different way and hopefully in a way that like, maybe not only I can do, but I'm the best or it's the best use of my time. Maybe I'm not, not the best at, but it's the best use of my time, but it was, it was a really interesting, like emotional adjustment for me. And yeah, I struggled quite a bit with it, like, yeah, sit down some days and just flip through my tabs and Chrome for an hour and be like, what the fuck am I doing here? Like, I have a lot more purpose now, which is cool, but yeah, it was a weird adjustment.
Speaker 2 00:37:37 Yeah. Like right now we're, uh, well, I mean, one thought that comes to mind is, you know, I F I feel like the more that you're really in the day to day and just kind of like relentlessly executing as, as Rob likes to say, it's, uh, it's harder to just take a step back and just think for an hour or two a day and really strategize it. You almost feel like you're wasting your time. Um, whereas, you know, when you do have that team that is really just, you know, executing day in and day out and, and really, you know, pushing things along, it's almost like you feel less guilty about, you know, blocking off an hour or two to just purely think high level and, and strategy. So that's, that's kind of one thing that comes to mind and, and yeah, like you is, um, uh, you know, like right now we're, we're actually going through a big, uh, website redesign.
Speaker 2 00:38:27 And so, you know, I've been spending a lot of time just thinking about, you know, how to, uh, like obviously I'm not doing the designing and that's what kind of the graphic designers doing. Uh, but it's more of like, you know, how, how should we be positioning our brand? Like, you know, and even just this whole website redesign, like, it just kind of dawned on me one day where it's like, man, we've been using the same layout for four years now. Uh, it, it looks really outdated. The logo was slapped together when we kind of first started the site. And we, we all kind of had an epiphany, especially this year where it's like, you know, our, our, um, our, I guess our, our brand and the look and the feel of the site, like just does not match where we are right now. And we really need to kind of level that out.
Speaker 2 00:39:13 So that that's kinda more of the stuff that I'm, I guess, thinking about more and spending more time on. Whereas the first couple of years of snapper, it was just like, how do we get more customers? How do we get more customers? How do we grow MRR? And it was kind of like a one track mind, whereas now it's like, you know, how, how, how can we build a great culture? Like, how is the team feeling? Um, how can we improve our brand? Um, you know, or, you know, are there things in the product that are, you know, causing issues, like, you know, do we need to tweak this and that? And so, um, yeah, it's, it's definitely thinking more about all areas of the business, as opposed to that one track, mind of more customers, more MRR. Yeah. But it is an adjustment. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:39:57 It's a trip, isn't it? For sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Cool, man, this is a lot of fun. Thanks for, uh, catching up Chris, uh, for folks who want to kind of check out more about snap, snap.com, is that right? That's correct. Awesome. And for yourself on Twitter's the best place. Yeah, Twitter's probably the best place. My handle is C Gimmer. Um, I also have a personal website at <inaudible> dot com, but just not a lot of time to write content. So there's only about like four posts on there, but, uh, yeah, just follow me on Twitter. That's probably the best way. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Craig. It was great to catch up.
Speaker 0 00:40:31 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, then over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
