Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're to startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right. Welcome to another episode of road start
Speaker 1 00:00:22 That's two 35. Mr. Craig, how are you this week?
Speaker 2 00:00:27 I'm good, man. I'm good. Uh, I think we should apologize for, for kind of, uh, the, the radio silence and last couple of weeks, uh, it's just been, I think we both been really busy running the businesses and kind of taking care of family and COVID and Thanksgiving and all this kind of stuff. I think I, I definitely called out once. It was just like, I just can't, I can't do it today. Like this there's just too much going on, so, but we're back now,
Speaker 1 00:00:53 At least for now. Yes. Uh, I've managed to survive yet. Another black Friday cyber Monday combination here. And, uh, recapture wants again, performed admirably. Our infrastructure was beautiful and it scaled nicely and our customers made a lot of money and I answered a shit ton of support. Nice of some people that were panicking and some people that were stressed and some people that installed in the middle of black Friday. And I'm like, where the fuck were you? Three weeks ago? Like seriously. Oh my God. Every year it happens. It happens every year. And I just, I'm just amazed. I'm truly amazed. Like it's, it's not like black Friday is a secret and it's not like, like, what the fuck are you doing for three weeks beforehand that you can't find and install something ahead of time? Like I get it. Okay. You had a bad provider and it's a last minute thing and you got to switch over, but these people that are, are installing it are not in that boat. I can just tell, you know, they, they aren't porting over. They don't know really what they're doing. They're just doing it the last minute. And I'm like, okay, all right, well, I can help you. Yes, I can help you. But it just, it kind of does amaze me, you know, it does.
Speaker 2 00:02:10 Yup. Yup. Yeah. We, so we, I guess an update, we talked about kind of structuring a black Friday deal and our black Friday deal went out on whatever Friday. And, uh, it was like mildly successful. We had a handful of conversions, which, you know, just for one email is nice and these were all definitely people who had not started trials and kind of just were in our nurture sequence or world. And so I felt pretty good about converting a handful or more of them to kind of our middle tier plan. So that's, that's like a pretty solid, you know, 30 minutes of work to write that email. So I feel, I feel overall pretty good about it. No, blow back about like, Oh, why is this only the middle plane? And why is it on the annual? Yeah, I think, I think it kind of clicked, checked a lot of the boxes of like things that it should do for the customers and things that it should do for us. So I was pretty happy overall.
Speaker 1 00:03:04 Nice, nice. So speaking of black Friday deals, there's no point in running one for recapture. So I will never run a black Friday deal on recapture because the people I'm trying to target are all busy with their own black Friday stuff. So, but I did get an opportunity this time to see a black Friday deal, get run for business directory plugin. Oh, and now, and I've never run one before in the past. Uh, I, you know, I felt like I'm given a 60% discount year round. Why do I want to give more on a black Friday? Like this doesn't make any sense? Well, my successors felt differently. Um, and I got to see their, uh, their campaign and their campaign was very interesting because it, it actually was a combination of things. So first of all, they generated a lot of interest by starting out like, um, three or four days before black Friday and announcing that they were doing a Mac book air giveaway.
Speaker 1 00:04:07 Now, if you think about the cost of an average campaign, if you're doing something at scale paid acquisition of any kind spending a thousand bucks, isn't hard at all. So the cost of a MacBook air is about a thousand bucks. You know, you can get a lower end Mac book air, which is still a very nice machine. And you could acquire that announced a giveaway. If you have a big enough list, which business directory certainly did and use that as the hook to get people, to sign up, to share, to tweet to whatever that's what they were trying to do. So I don't know what the results of that are obviously, but it was very clever that they did that. And you know, now that I've watched them do this, I'm like, Oh, now I know what I'm going to be doing in the future here, because how many times have you seen the Mac book air or the Mac book of any kind giveaway?
Speaker 1 00:05:01 I've seen it a handful of times. So it's not an oversaturated tactic. It's not overwhelmingly expensive in my opinion, compared to other paid acquisition, if you're doing that at scale. So this is like, this is a brilliant tactic to use. And I would say that, you know, if everybody started doing this, every business started giving away a Mac book air, it would stop being special, but I don't see that happening in the near future. So if you're looking for something to do that, right, there is a pretty solid tactic. If you want to spend a thousand dollars on a paid campaign, MacBook air, I think is a solid way to do that. I, I respectfully disagree. Oh
Speaker 2 00:05:39 Yeah, it's mine. It's my turn to disagree. It's my turn to disagree. Uh, so, so I think that like, okay, it's, it's different. It's interesting. And it's, and this is where I think it gets bad. It's something that you might sign up for that you wouldn't otherwise be interested in kind of getting into somebody's world. Right. And I think is where it's great at drumming up bunch of interests and building a big list, but it has a very low kind of specificity and alignment between like the people and the types of people that are signing up for this list and the expected kind of conversion down the road, right. Because for a MacBook air, you're basically getting anyone that likes computers to sign up, right. Not people that are interested in building a website with a business directory on it. And so I think that what, and this might be like really aligned with SIADH and what they're going for is just getting a shit ton of people on their list. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think that they would see the conversion rate of a lot of those people be a lot less than it would be if there was something more specifically aligned to that product or people that are interested in that product, much more specifically, you know, cause they're going to be getting it just a bunch of Joe schmoes that have no interest in ever buying their product, but just want to win a computer. Um,
Speaker 1 00:07:00 Yeah. Okay. So I should qualify this. There was a very specific asks. So they were using, what was it? Raffle press, I think, to do the giveaway and what they were trying to do. It looked like they had recently created a business directory, Twitter account and looked like they were trying to build followers and get shares and likes on a Facebook page. Okay. So I don't think that they were specifically trying to build customers per se, but they were trying to generate like followers in an account. So, you know, nobody wants to follow an empty account. Right. So I can see the value in what they're trying to do if they're trying to build up an account to get that sort of bootstrapped right thing. But I will a hundred percent agree with you the value if you're trying to actually generate actual sales with the Mac book air, and unless you're specifically targeting freelancers or developers that would have a high interest in both of those things, your product and the Mac book air, it could be shit leads. Now with that said, I think business directory still has a fairly decent overlap into the freelancer category and that the people that wanted that, that were in the WordPress space might still be okay, leads, but you know, I didn't see the result of this, but you're absolutely right. I will totally agree with you on that. I think they might've had a slightly different goal in mind with that one with the new business directory, Twitter. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:08:30 And especially, I mean, if they're going to cross promote those leads to all of their other products and things like for their forms product or opt-in monster, uh, you know, I think could be kind of something that's more for everybody. So maybe that's part of it too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:46 But, but that, wasn't all that there's more for just 1999. You too can have a Ginsu knife set. Somebody wants told me that I should probably be like a radio announcer because of my voice. And I was like, really? So here we are on podcasting. Now I've gotten my one chance to do my radio announcer voice there. So that's it. Nobody will ever hear that again. So that was the first part. And then on black Friday, they still had a sale. But what was interesting was they said, this is 60% off, but guess what? It's always 60% off.
Speaker 1 00:09:26 So they were basically promoting the same thing that they do 365 days a year. At least that's what it looked like to me. Maybe they were, yeah, it was a little weird. In addition to now this is where their cross promotion came in. They actually were promoting their other products. Cause opt-in monster had a three month free thing that they were adding to the deal. And then there was another something else that some other product I'd never heard of that they were adding to the deal. So it was a, it was kind of a triple bundle there that they were doing as their black Friday promotion. And then on, you know, Mo they went through cyber Monday and then they, you know, had multiple emails about that. But then on giving Tuesday, which is today, when we're recording this podcast, December 1st, they added another bonus.
Speaker 1 00:10:12 In fact, as they were going through the emails on the previous days, they said that they were going to donate a certain percent to charity. And then they use that as a hook to email them again on giving Tuesday to say, Hey, we're upping our give now. And we're doing this much of a promotion and we're donating this much of our sales and we're doing a matching program based on these levels. So won't you help us, you know, for a very worthy charity, the, the cleft palate surgery, charity operation smile. And so they, you know, were using that as a way to promote. And I thought that was like a great three pronged approach to a black Friday cyber Monday campaign. Like it, wasn't just one thing you're beating that drum over and over. They did it early, they did different things. They tried, you know, they were trying to get multiple things, increase sales, increased, uh, followers and leads and then close it out with, uh, you know, uh, relevant giving Tuesday promotion there. So I thought the whole thing was very nice and it was in a, it was an interesting case study to see how somebody else would have taken the same product that I had and actually go and do those things.
Speaker 2 00:11:27 Yeah. I can imagine. That's interesting to watch, uh, yeah. Even just, yeah, someone, a different set of priorities and tactics that somebody uses, whether they're better or worse. I think it's interesting to just see everything else is the same, right? Just like a different perspective on kind of marketing and growth and running the business with the same product that you've known for so long. That's, that's really interesting. That's cool. I'd love to hear. I don't know if you kind of can get the, or any kind of like semblance of, of how the campaign does, but it'd be cool to hear how they did, if you can get that from them.
Speaker 1 00:12:02 Yeah. I'm sure it would. I, I don't think they're barely going to share that sort of stuff, but, uh, yeah. You know, I hope they were wildly successful with the campaign. It looked like it was well run. They did a really good job. They've done a whole rebranding thing on business directory. You know how WordPress has a variety of various cute characters that they use to try to promote various products. Did you know that? So, okay. All right. Hey guess what did you know in WordPress that they use cute little characters to promote various products? I didn't know. Wow. So, okay. Yeah. So this has been like a common thing. So there was like this WordPress mascot, they called him wahoo and it looks like a flat, a morphous Teddy bear. That's kind of humping, you know, the WordPress logo. I've seen this. Yeah. I've seen this.
Speaker 1 00:12:53 Yes. Okay. So that's WAMU, right? So then everybody started like riffing on WAMU. So then gravity forms did like a version of that where there's a wall poo, that's in a space suit, humping the moon, and then other people just built non humping characters. So like, um, easy digital downloads has this weird blobby character that sort of looks like a, a fat Gumby with a, you know, a fat blue Gumby with tiny little limbs. And everybody just comes up with their own different little characters at this point. Well, they did one for business directory. It was like this little penguin with these big fat glasses on it. So I was like, all right, you know, you're consistent with the WordPress FOS in there. And, uh, the community, the community vibes, which I thought was kind of cool. That's certainly something I never did or never thought of. Yeah. So yeah, they've obviously put a lot of work into it since the sale and, and uh, you know, I hope it's going very well for them.
Speaker 2 00:13:47 That's cool. That's cool. Nice, nice.
Speaker 1 00:13:50 And now you've learned something about characters that hump various planets I've seen,
Speaker 2 00:13:55 I've seen the, the one that you mentioned, uh, WordCamp Europe last year, I think. And it's like, yeah, it's, it's a whole, it's a whole ecosystem of, of all of that stuff. It's, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 Uh, yeah. Very interesting, indeed. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:14:11 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, speaking about like WordPress and giving Tuesday where we're kind of looking at like at an organizational level, like how we kind of give back to programs, open source projects, WordPress, just being one of them that like we use and kind of want to support and stuff. So I don't have any answers about it right now, but kind of feel like, you know, we are really privileged to be in the position we're in and want to kind of have some guidelines, eight to say and structure around like what we contribute back to both like time and our, our time and our, you know, financial resources just to kind of make it fair for everybody. Um, yeah. So I I'll, I'll like, I think we'll be blogging about it a little bit once we kind of finalized the process and kind of like what it looks like, but, um, it will be definitely kind of like some of like, what are people hours contribution looks like and like our financial resources, um, did I mentioned, I don't know if I mentioned on here, we, we joined the Stripe, uh, kind of 1% climate change campaign.
Speaker 1 00:15:14 Oh no. And I don't think you said a couple of months
Speaker 2 00:15:16 Ago. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Um, ed fray, a goal that's spent on the podcast and kinda know him from MicroComp Europe, uh, kind of turned us on to it. We're joined during the beta programs. Yeah. So we're giving 1% of all of our revenue to stripes, climate change program, which is cool. It's like typical Stripe fashion. They just make it literally like a click of the box and the Stripe dashboard to give them 1% of your money. But it's really cool. They're doing some cool things. It's not like carbon offsets, but it's like actual campaigns to reduce carbon emissions. So yeah, feel really good about that. But then like it's all the stuff on top of that that we want to try to support, you know, like, okay, this library is free and we use the hell out of it. Like we should, you know, try to give something back to all these things that we use that are entirely free and people put a ton of time and effort into, so trying to figure out the best and most fair way to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:16:13 Things are, um, it seems like not much is going on with your capture. Like if you're a recapture customer right now, it doesn't look like a lot's happening from that standpoint because we're kind of in feature, locked down for the holidays and so on and so forth. But so from my, my retreat back in October, I had a handful of goals that I'm trying to get through by the end of December at this point. So they included, engaging a marketing person, having a prioritized marketing plan in place, getting four pieces of content out by the end of the year, fix some website tracking, do an upgrade on my CMS and then get a campaign prepped for Q1. So those are six rocks that I'm trying to achieve from the EOS traction book, which is a lot. And the weird thing is I'm probably on track for five of them.
Speaker 1 00:17:06 Ma I might get all six, but I'll definitely get five. It looks like the CMS upgrades, probably the one that's at risk, but still that's pretty decent, you know, five out of six rocks. It means I sorta got over ambitious on the rocks, but the ones that I did it, you know, are actually pretty good. And I, you know, I'm pretty happy about that because it's given me a lot of focus this past several weeks trying to get things in place, but it really took a lot more effort to get that marketing person because that marketing person turned out to be two people. It wasn't just one,
Speaker 2 00:17:40 Both kind of part-time contractors or what. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:43 Yeah. Well, it's like, so I've hired an agency to do a PPC acquisition and they're experts in Facebook and exactly, that's why I picked them. But then I also hired a guy to do content marketing and while he's really good at content and the organic stuff, like he can do the PPC, but it wasn't like his area of expertise. And so I really wanted somebody who was like, bang on, amazing seen with both. And I, couldn't just one person that did that. So I ended up hiring two, I got the agency and I got the other guy. And from what I'm seeing so far, you know, I feel like both have been really excellent choices and they're driving me towards some really good stuff here. So we've had a couple of calls, I've talked about some strategies. We're going to kind of follow a playbook that I picked up from Jordan gall and a campaign that he ran with cart hook back in 2017.
Speaker 1 00:18:41 And we're developing the content that goes behind that. And, you know, the, the ad guys are totally on board with, uh, the multi series step and the remarketing. And they're going to handle all of that aspect of it there, with the creatives and the, um, uh, the campaigns and the monitoring and all of that sort of stuff. And then my content guy, he's like got four pieces of content in the hopper that he's already started working on. He's done a bunch of keyword research for me. Yeah. So, I mean, this is looking like if this all pops and, you know, obviously content marketing, this is not a, a foreign D four weeks and done kind of thing here. This is an ongoing investment. So I've made the commitment to invest in this for three to six months, somewhere in there. Uh, at least three probably longer as my guests, because I don't, I'd be surprised if I see a ton of organic change in three months possible, you know, but six months investment, and then we'll see kind of where it's at.
Speaker 1 00:19:41 But I feel like there's a, an opportunity here with us having done the SMS marketing feature that we did in the summer. I hadn't really launched it. I didn't really promote it. We kinda got it done like right before black Friday, like middle of October, it was kind of already in beta. And I even got one customer that was ready to try it out, but that's when I realized, I'm like, if I shove it out the door now, you know, I'm not going to get a lot of traction on it because it's late. I didn't have time to promote it. And I can use this as a hook in January to talk about that, because I've noticed that in general merchants are just sort of like, I dunno what the hell to do with this. Like I keep hearing about it, but interesting. What do I, what, you know, how am I going to make this work?
Speaker 1 00:20:27 Is this spammy, you know, w what does the content look like and how do I make it the most effective without pissing my customers off and so on and so forth. I mean, people are still sketchy about email, which just still just kind of blows my mind. You know, I was having a conversation with another person on, uh, Intercom the other day, they were asking some questions and I said, well, you know, you need to collect more email addresses. And here's two strategies that we have in recapture to do that. One was, they were both pop-up based. And he was like, Oh, well, you know, pop-ups really annoyed. My customers, they're all French. And I'm like French.
Speaker 2 00:21:02 Well, you
Speaker 1 00:21:02 Know, I wanted to make some comments in there, but, you know, I basically was a little more charitable and this is absolutely true. And, you know, everybody, every merchant I've talked to seems to have this feeling of, Oh, well, my customers are all annoyed with popups all the time everywhere. And I'm like, are you really sure about that? Because I have a lot of data that says otherwise, you know,
Speaker 2 00:21:25 And like, they, they can be annoyed with it, but like, if the positive for the business outweighs that, then, then you should do it still. Right? Like, I think that's,
Speaker 1 00:21:34 Yes. The thing is that I think, I think a lot of people have the personal feelings about it. I'm annoyed by it. Therefore my customers are annoyed by it, or if your customers are annoyed by it, but they still buy from you. It can't be that
Speaker 2 00:21:47 Annoying. Right? Like,
Speaker 1 00:21:49 Okay, if they, if they're buying from you, even though you quote annoyed them, then you still have product market fit and you should be happy about that. Like just go for it. And, you know, there's ways to make it less annoying. But you know, the people that try it are kind of ham-fisted about it. And they're like, Oh, it just annoys my customers. I'm like, you could have done it better, but okay. Yeah, sure. Whatever you tell yourself that
Speaker 2 00:22:14 To do with that, like alignment we were talking about before, right? Like they might just be offering a shitty kind of incentive for visitors to opt into. And so they say, Oh, nobody ever does it. And they just get upset. Yeah. You're just not doing it. Well, probably
Speaker 1 00:22:27 Right. If you, if you don't, if you don't understand your audience and you can't provide them value and you can't speak in a language that they're going to respond to, you're damn right. Your offers are going to suck. I mean, that's just the nature of marketing. You have to understand those things before you can do anything to promote something. So anyway, you know, I was having this conversation with him and he was still hesitant about the whole email thing and was saying, well, how, how can I make my recovery better? I'm like, here's something to make your recovery better. I'm like, I don't know if I want to do that. I'm like, okay, you can not take my advice. That's all right. I have a lot of data that says it works, but you do, you. That's cool. You know, but with that in mind, like that same mentality exists, 10 fold or a hundred fold with SMS right now, because it's still the new kid on the block.
Speaker 1 00:23:17 And so that's what we're going to promote in Q1. And that's what all this content is about. And, you know, I feel like there's a really good opportunity here. I couldn't just do this any old time, like in a year from now or two years from now, I don't think this is going to be as effective as a tactic, but right now I think it's good. Yeah. So that's what we're working on. And I'm excited to see the content of this because the content guy, it turns out he's worked for my competitors. Like he's written content for them and he's made suggestions for them and they ignored his suggestions and I'm like, okay, well, that's interesting. All, I won't make that mistake. You know, like you made suggestions about how to improve the SEO ranking for these keywords and the competitors didn't do it. It's like, all right, I'll take the rank.
Speaker 1 00:24:10 That's fine. I haven't, I have no problem with that. Your mistakes are my gain and that's fine. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting, but that means he knows the space really well. And it means he's, he has experienced in the content and he knows this. He knows the customers. He knows the problems. He, you know, has a lot of statistics and, you know, it's just, I feel like it's a good alignment here. And he, he wasn't even like the first guy that I contacted with this. Cause I got a recommendation. And then that guy was too busy. He recommended this other guy. And now that has, you know, it looks like it's going to pay dividends. I don't want to say it has paid dividends because no dividends have been paid yet. No cash, no checks have been cash,
Speaker 2 00:24:51 Especially with the content stuff. It's such a long game.
Speaker 1 00:24:53 No, no. They're the ones cashing all my checks right now. So, but I, I have a good feeling about this and I'm glad I'm investing in this direction. So that's all happy news right now.
Speaker 2 00:25:04 That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. I mean, from a, from a content perspective, we like, we've been really active there for a while now and, and are looking, uh, kind of what, what we're doing differently and new in the new year. But yeah. I mean, content has been something we've done a lot of looking at doing just some like different forms of content in different formats and, and stuff like that. And yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that it's really important to, to like keep it kind of spiced up, you know, both like for yourself and just so you can stick with it and for you'd like your visitors to keep showing them something new. Uh, cause they think it's easy to saturate. Like we've written all of like the SEO blog posts we can right now, time to go do something else. You know?
Speaker 2 00:25:50 Like I think that a point you, you kind of saturate that approach, you know, like they say, every marketing approach has like a shelf life. Um, I think it's an important and like maybe this time of year to kind of evaluate where you are in that spectrum, you know? Um, yeah. I mean, you know, from, from our perspective of like marketing, um, yeah, I mean the, the content stuff and, and like, I think the other thing is, is like Matt is doing a lot of really great work around like community. And I think that's like a really, it's kind of like, it's like content marketing, but even more so in that, like it's easy to get excited about, hard to measure. And I think even harder to do really well harder to do really well to where it has like a positive business impact, you know, like you see some of these really vibrant, like Facebook and Slack channels for companies or products.
Speaker 2 00:26:47 And you're like, that is what I want. That is like the ultimate, like place to go get feedback from customers and get new marketing ideas and have a dialogue with people kind of in our world and whole of that. And it is so freaking hard to do really well. And I mean, Matt is like really, really, really good at it and much better than I am. And he's really kind of like focusing a lot on that these days to try to build up like just the quality of people that we interact with on a regular basis there. Yeah. It's just, I, it's just hard and it's like, I know that if we do it well, it will be great for us, you know, but is just like a slog to, to, to like, yeah. To have a positive business impact. So it's, it's interesting, but it's definitely like a priority for us, like into the new year. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:27:37 That's something that I was never able to really cultivate properly with AWS GCP and business directory. It feels so nebulous. And, you know, unless you're the person that's already kind of involved in a community, like finding your way into that community and then standing out in the community, being a contributor in the community, it, you know, just like with a business, I think there's an element of luck and timing that goes with being a member of a community in order to have an impact. And, you know, the good news is Matt Modaris has that luck in that timing to be in the WordPress community. So now you get to share in that luck, in that timing because Matt commands a lot of reputation and respect. And so that now has rubbed off on Casos and, you know, that's going to add a lot to your, your business, but as well, the podcasting community in general, because WordPress podcasting is a big deal. Right?
Speaker 2 00:28:36 Yup, yup, absolutely. So, so we've been doing some hiring lately, so we hired a second support, uh, rep, uh, so she's starting next week. Uh, so just a couple of days after this episode goes out, I guess. Uh, so that's really cool. Um, and found her kind of through our network. So talking about community, I guess it's, I guess it's kind of paying off. Uh, so Kim is going to be starting with us yet December 7th, which is super cool and have a job posting out right now for a WordPress developer. So WordPress folks, if you're interested in joining the team to work on seriously assembled podcasting, most of the time, uh, let us know. And David Centrelink, we've tweaked our kind of like developer hiring process. Um, we were talking kind of off air about how hard it is to find really good developers that are diamonds in the rough, as you said.
Speaker 2 00:29:22 And I think it is really hard and we've gotten many more applicants for this role that have like diamond in the rough potential. Uh, I think, and like for our previous developer hire the guy we hired Alec is, is like a very obvious, like a player. US-based paying them a lot, all this kind of stuff. Like it's just like, it's not a diamond and Ralph, he's a very solid senior PHP. Laravel developer with a lot of experience and we're paying him accordingly. And that was all really kind of clear, understood upfront with this. We're having a lot of applicants from Vietnam and Nigeria and like places that these could be really, really, really great developers and additions to our teams and bring really different perspectives, which is super awesome. And may be like that person that is a super value and a super contributor to the team that like you wouldn't have expected.
Speaker 2 00:30:27 Maybe like if you're saying they're coming from the quote normal places, you know, so one of the things that we're doing differently this time is we're sending everyone a test project basically right up front after they apply, I send them an email basically saying, Hey, why do you, why are you looking for a new job? And they send back hopefully a couple of paragraphs about kind of what they've been doing lately and why they're looking for a new job. And then we send them a test project immediately. And I'm not sure if I like it yet, because the problem with this, as in, you were mentioning Jordan earlier, Jordan talked about this on, on their podcast. A while back is now the Jonathan from our team is gonna, you know, review the test project, have a call with the applicant. And then basically he's going to pick who he wants us to hire.
Speaker 2 00:31:15 And I'll have kind of like a last check culture fit interview with them and what I'm, I'm not worried about it, cause it hasn't happened yet. But what if he says, Hey, I want to hire, you know, Bob and I go interview Bob and Bob sucks, you know? And then I got to go to John and then say, what were you thinking? Like, I just, I don't think that'll happen cause he has really good sense for this kind of stuff. But, but that's, you know, as opposed to before I did the culture interview and then we sent the, uh, the test project and then he reviewed it and then he had the final interview with them. So stay tuned, I guess. But that's the, that's the new twist in our developer hiring process?
Speaker 1 00:31:57 Well, I'd say that if that ends up in the situation that you just described where, you know, Jonathan says yes, and you say no, then I think that's just a conversation between you and Jonathan to say, all right, well, in addition to these things, you kind of have to look for this, but you know, I totally see, like I've tried to do it the other way around where I did the culture fit and it seemed like they were okay. And you know, we weren't as strong on the technical screening at the time or we did something and we thought it was strong, but it wasn't, it didn't really evaluate how good they were in certain areas. You know, it still comes down to trial in my opinion, most of the time, because you just don't really know, like people put on a really good facade for interviews.
Speaker 1 00:32:50 That's just, that's just the way it is. And you know, you and I did did it too. When we were interviewing you, you always put your best foot forward. You always try to come up with the right answers to the questions and you try to look your best and you try to sound your best. And, but until you actually sit down and are starting to work with them, you don't really get a feel for, you know, what's their communication style and you know, you can get hints of it. And that's one thing I do like about hiring remotely is you get a real good sense early on. I think of some of the things of their communication style, but I've noticed that again, they're putting their best foot forward early on. And so you ant you ask a question, they answer it right away. But sometimes if they're not as diligent, you know, when their excitement fades about the job, then their communication style really comes out. That's something that shows in a trial usually. I mean, even trials. Aren't perfect, but yeah,
Speaker 2 00:33:45 Yeah, yeah. And I think that like, there's, there's like the, yeah, there's two things to that. I think one is like the test project, which we're trying to simulate what actually working with them, you know, pull requests and commit messages and all this kind of plus the code. But then I think there's definitely a place for, and we don't do it, but I would like to look at doing it sometime is an actual yeah. Trial period. Okay. We're gonna hire you for a month. And if it works out, we'll go full-time and long-term and all that. And if not, then, you know, we walk away and everybody's friends. Like I just don't know for that, how many people would be down for that. Um, and how many people would say, fuck you home in a go like, because developers are in high demand these days. And I think developers can be pretty picky. Um, I dunno how often you can pull that off as a hire, as a hiring person, you know,
Speaker 1 00:34:37 It's, it's tougher. There's no question about it. And I would say that the project demanding the project upfront of everyone probably puts you at risk because if I was a developer and somebody said, all right, I want you to do an unpaid project. We've had no further contact at this point. Other than you submitting your application, I might be ready to tell you to pound sand upfront. So, you know, that is definitely a risk and one that you'd have to factor in, at least if you did the culture thing, then you could do the test as sort of the last piece of it and say, this is what we're looking for. You know, when I've done that in the past, I always make sure that I try to respect the developer's time and say, you know, look, I, I'm not asking you for paid unpaid work.
Speaker 1 00:35:24 I would never take unpaid work. I just don't think it's fair. And I don't think it's fair either. So, you know, I've done a time where I gave out the same project to like four people and I paid them a certain hourly rate for up to a certain amount. So it's not like they just got an infinite thing and they took all their time. I said, this thing is bounded by this number of hours, I'll pay you up to this much, but that's it. Yeah. Um, so, you know, it's a paid project, do this thing and then evaluate the results. You know, if they are really serious about the job, they're excited about your company. You know, I think there is something to be said for enthusiasm to work for you because somebody who is, let's say a premadonna, if they are a pre-Madonna and they are coming to you, they're looking for what you're going to do for them, not the other way around.
Speaker 1 00:36:15 I mean, it should be a mutually beneficial relationship, right. And it's not about, okay, well, this rockstar can come in and be this amazing person for you, but what, you know, what are you doing for them? Are they getting an opportunity to learn, to grow? Are they working with stuff that they've, that's going to stretch them a little bit and make them want to stay? Because it's interesting. Remember that, you know, I always go back to Dan Pink's book about what are the three things that motivate people, autonomy, mastery, and purpose, right. And purpose is it's underestimated in my, in my book. And I, you know, autonomy and mastery are big with developers being able to work on your own and being able to get good at something, but having a reason to do it. Like you're building a community, you're building a bigger product. You're um, you're building something that makes sense, like with e-commerce the purpose is to make stores wildly successful. That's my why. So if I can, if I can do that, it makes me happy. And you know, obviously it makes my stores happy because I see that they're making more money and they want to stay with our product. That that's our why. And so you've got to find out what's the, developer's why. And I think if you do that, you can find a fit for both of you.
Speaker 2 00:37:26 Yeah. No, I think that that's a really good point. And I do think that part of, part of the test project and like we're paying, if people ask to get paid is yeah, how much do they want to work with us? You know, like if they're not willing to put in two or three hours of work to, to join the team, that's a bad sign. I think, you know, like I'm not asking them to develop a feature that we're going to put into production, right? This is just a kind of throwaway project. We just want to see how they work. And if they're not willing to do that, that's, that's like if someone asks me to do that for like a marketing role, I would a hundred percent like write an email sequence or design a landing page. I would a hundred percent do that.
Speaker 2 00:38:05 You know, if I wanted to work somewhere bad enough. And so I think it's back on us to say, like, we have to sell the idea of cast us in what we're doing and remote work and cool environment and small team and all that kind of stuff. Um, so that's, I guess that's something I've been working on in terms of like the job posting and how we position the opportunity. Cause I saw an interesting post from a bred to Nard, uh, on Twitter that was like you, it used to be working remotely was like such a cool deal. That it was like a competitive advantage. Now everyone is remote. And so it's not. And so he was saying, he's seen a decrease in number of applicants for their roles. Um, because you know, working remotely is a me too thing now, which is interesting. So yeah, we have to be competitive advantages, man. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that wraps us up for this week. Uh, again, sorry for the radio silence for the last couple of weeks, but hope everybody enjoyed the episode, any comments or questions, shoot us a message podcast at rogue start-ups dot com. And as always, if you enjoyed the episode, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 0 00:39:12 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, that over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
