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 episode two 37 of rogue startups, Craig
Speaker 1 00:00:25 Closing out 20, 20 this week. How are you?
Speaker 2 00:00:28 Yeah, man, it's a, I think it's a year. A lot of us will be happy to see in the rear view mirror, but, uh, you know, I think we're going to try to talk about some of the good parts of it. I think there's a lot of good parts, uh, if we're all like really honest with ourselves. So yeah. Looking forward to kind of reflecting back on the year in this episode,
Speaker 1 00:00:47 You didn't answer how I'm doing. I can't rip on that.
Speaker 2 00:00:52 Uh, yeah, I'm good. I, uh, yeah, ending the year with a flurry of activity and a lot of planning and a lot of change and some hiring going on. So yeah, it's not the typical like, Oh, we'll just kind of wind down here until the last week or so of the year. Uh it's like we're going to run and like hit the wall in the middle of next week, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's going good, man. How about you?
Speaker 1 00:01:19 I am doing pretty well. Uh, things are going good on this end. The, you know, the, the Rodenburg house is kind of at a, a fever pitch this week here. This is the last week of school. And as a result, like, I feel like I'm moving from one big thing to the next constantly. So there's like, you know, the freelance client and I'm doing stuff for recapture and I'm working on this new thing for business. And then I'm like helping my daughters study and do their essays and do holiday stuff. And you know, my wife got a new iPhone, so I'm like having to fix stuff and you know, I have to block out it time for that. Cause there's always a half an hour or something. So it's feeling, it's feeling a little hectic right now. I think next week should mellow out a little bit, but right now it's still, it doesn't feel like the year is winding down and I get to sit around by the, the, the fireplace with chestnuts roasting on the open fire.
Speaker 2 00:02:20 Yeah. Dave, are you an eggnog fan? We've not talked about this in five years.
Speaker 1 00:02:25 You know, I have a love, hate relationship with eggnog. I personally love the flavor of eggnog, but I have to tell you my eggnog story. So there was a year when my wife and I were just first dating and this was before let's just say she had a lot more say in my nutritional input and I bought a shit ton of eggnog that year. And I don't know. I think I just was like, Oh, I love eggnog. I'm going to buy it all the damn time. So I bought, you know, a whole milk eggnog and I was, you know, having a glass or two every day plus I was putting it in my coffee and I didn't even like, I don't even like it with booze in it. I just like it plain when it has booze in it, it tastes a little weird to me at that point.
Speaker 1 00:03:20 And I'm not as interested in it. I just love, you know, it's like a thing from being a kid. I remember going to holiday parties at my family's house. And that was the thing that we generally got served as kids was eggnog. So, you know, for me, it's like this holiday, it's a, it's a pleasant holiday memory. Well, fast forward, about a month after Christmas, I went to the doctor and they measured my cholesterol and it had spiked from like one 70, which was really good to two 20 and all I had really done well, it's probably not the only thing I was really doing. I don't think I was getting a lot of exercise at the time, but I was drinking a shit ton eggnog for the entire month of December. And so after that I was like, Oh fuck, I can't drink eggnog ever again.
Speaker 1 00:04:08 So like, I now have this very guilty relationship with eggnog. Cause all I can do every time I take a sip of that is I think back to that month when my cholesterol jumped 50 points just from drinking egg, not all the time, but I do miss eggnog this time of the year I've even tried the other stuff. Like there was, you know, soy milk, alternative eggnog, and I'm like, that is just not eggnog. It sounds gross. They try out, you know, I'll give them bonus points for trying hard, but that shit is not acknowledged. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 00:04:38 That's funny. That's funny. Yeah. I like it. I mean, whatever for the two weeks of the year that I'm in the mood, I enjoy a little bit, but I always just get like the one little court or whatever it is and drink that and that's it. But it's definitely like this time of year also over here, we have like a Von showed or glue wine, the Germans call it, um, like hot spiced wine. And it's a very sad time because all of the Christmas markets are canceled this year. So all of the Vaughn showed are glue wine, uh, is not happening. So it's a very, uh, th the, the festival atmosphere that usually accompanies this time of year here, especially is missing, which is very sad, but that's okay.
Speaker 1 00:05:15 You can't like buy that stuff in the supermarkets and, you know, bring it home.
Speaker 2 00:05:19 Yeah. But that's not the point. The point is like you go to the Christmas market or you have it, like after you go skiing or whatever, like just having it at the house when it's warm and stuff is like that's
Speaker 1 00:05:30 Part experience. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:32 Yup. Yup. Well, yeah, man. So let's, let's chat through, let's chat through 2020. It was a motherfucker of a year and a lot of mice, wasn't it?
Speaker 1 00:05:42 You know, I think that's instead of this unexpected or, you know, whatever people have been saying, it's just this, I think that's what people should start opening up. Their emails with 2020 was a motherfucker of a year. Yeah. Yeah. It's been, it's been weird. It's been rough. Um, I, you know, our family and myself in particular have been very fortunate that, you know, we didn't lose our employment and source of income and we didn't get sick and you know, we didn't lose anybody close to us. And so, you know, whatever I am about to bitch about, I would just like to say it is small in comparison to what I know many other people have gone through personally during this pandemic here. And, you know, my, my heart truly goes out to those that have been hit the hardest in this pandemic. And I feel very fortunate and blessed that we did not get it as bad as others. And, you know, to that end, we've tried to do other things. Like we held a food drive in our community in August to try to help those that were less fortunate. And we'll be continuing to do that stuff into 2021 and, and so on and so forth. But yeah, 2020 has been a fucker of a year. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 00:06:58 Yup. Yup. Yeah. I mean, I think in this episode, especially in, but just in general, I think we're going to try to focus on the good things that happened. Cause there's everybody talks about, about the bad stuff enough. And I think it's mentally affected us in ways that we probably don't even understand and might not understand for a long time. Um, so trying to stay positive, trying to look at the, at the silver lining or the bright side of things with kind of what we saw, what we learned, what worked for our businesses and our kind of work-life balance and stuff like that. And hopefully folks can take away some things that, that we've kind of seen that maybe work.
Speaker 1 00:07:30 Yeah. So I would say the first thing about 2020 that actually was good was that it finally got me and my wife into a mode where we could find the time to exercise together and that has improved my mental and physical health considerably. You know, we've always talked about just trying to, you know, make sure that you exercise regularly. And I honestly struggle with it. Exercise is not something that comes naturally to me. It's not something that I like intrinsically enjoy. There are activities that I enjoy that also happened to be athletic, but it's hard to do those in the context of exercise. And I always sort of look at exercise exercises like this thing. I have to check off my list and it makes it, you know, kind of more of an enemy as opposed to something that you can get into. So, you know, this year, my wife and I get up first thing in the morning, I splashed some water on my face, get dressed and we go for a walk and it's like a two mile something odd walk and you know, it's great.
Speaker 1 00:08:35 You know, I come back, I'm refreshed, I'm mentally alert. I noticed that my days are more focused and that I have a better, more positive outlook since we've started doing this. And it, you know, it took more than half the year to get there because we were doing some other things. And I realized along the way that, you know, this just wasn't sustainable when all of the, the heaviness of the pandemic was coming down and the mental health was just weighing upon everybody, me in particular, I was like, we have to do something different. And that's what we came up with. And that has been a major net positive for me and anybody who is a regular exercise person is probably like, does Dave, I mean, why are you so late to the party? I'm always late to the party. It's okay. But you know, this was just something that net positive for me in 2020 that I'm going to carry infinitely into 2021.
Speaker 1 00:09:30 Because at this point I, you know, I'm totally sold on the benefit four months into this regular daily exercise. I think we're missing like one day a week at most. And it's usually Sundays cause I like to sleep in and you know, we've got it. You know, it's either Saturday or Sunday, one of the two, but the rest of the days of the week, we're doing this. And it's like, you know, 45 minutes to an hour of, of exercise. So it's fantastic. And it doesn't, it doesn't feel like a chore. So that has been a major net improvement in my life here in 2020.
Speaker 2 00:10:04 That's awesome. Yeah, we've done a lot more exercise and cooking at home, taking care of ourselves, especially after our first confinement. First one was just a mess. We, we do, we didn't do as good as we should have, but after that we learned kind of our lessons and got into a pretty good health routine and definitely am taking care of myself better now. And I agree it, it makes me work better. I'm a nicer person, a better parent and a better husband. Uh, so yeah, all around it's good stuff. And I would say like my first one, uh, along like a related note is yeah, I'm able to take like dedicated family time much more easily. And, and it be truly dedicated now as opposed to before I would kind of drift in out of work time and family time and work time, family time and is always kind of half of both.
Speaker 2 00:10:48 And I think that, you know, us just being together all the time has taught me that like I have to draw the line, I have to go and do work and then I have to stop doing work and do family time. And I hope that that carries over as, you know, we're able to travel more and the kids have activities and all this kind of stuff where everybody is doing more stuff, uh, that I'm able to, to keep that. Because I think that that mental space, that it allows us really healthy for the long-term because like, I want to be able to keep doing this for a long time. And I think having that, that healthy approach to work and family and the balance between the two is the one thing that could kind of break this, you know, like if I'm not happy doing this because my family is not happy, then like this would stop and that would be bummer.
Speaker 1 00:11:34 Right? Well sort of along those same lines, the one thing that I think 2020 really taught me was valuing relationships in general family in particular. Right. Because you know, I, I have come to
Speaker 2 00:11:51 That. It's true. It's true.
Speaker 1 00:11:54 You're stuck with your family. So you either, you either love him or you don't love him. If you don't love him, you're having a miserable time. And so maybe you learn to, you know, get annoyed less by the quirky things and enjoy all the fun times more. I mean, I think we really bonded more as a family because we had no choice. Like we've got to do all these activities. It's not like there's any other things to occupy our time. So it's family or nothing right now. So it made me appreciate just, you know, how fortunate we were to be confined as a family of five, as opposed to somebody who, you know, was confined by themselves right now, that's really rough. And the other part of that was, you know, it's great that you and I have a family to be around and, you know, loving kids, loving significant other.
Speaker 1 00:12:44 But the thing that I felt that was really absent from this year, and I'm sure many people are feeling, this is the ability to go and have those kinds of business relationships. So, you know, we're coming up on what would be big snow 20, 21. And it has been canceled across the board Eastern West w we just can't do it like you, you know, peop there, like, for example, Brad, <inaudible> one of the founders of the East. He can't even get out of Canada to come to the United States to come and do the damn thing. So, but that's just one of the, uh, many problems that are actually happening with that. So there is this feeling of loss and, you know, this is a connection that we all value as big snow folks. This is like, one of the highlights of the year is getting together, having this time, bonding with your friends, talking about your business, exchanging ideas.
Speaker 1 00:13:41 And, you know, we've talked about the idea of doing this virtually. And I think everybody sort of agrees that is a, that is a lesser substitute at best for the real thing. Like now, you know, in 2021, when things lighten up and the vaccine is widely distributed and, and you know, all of this stuff gets to, you know, it's like the ice breaks up, you're stuck in this big iceberg, right. And the ice flow is breaking up and you can finally sail away. You know, I see that big snow later, 20, 21 or 2022, whatever that is, is going to be that much sweeter because we didn't get to have it this year. So my appreciation for those relationships, that event, those, you know, those friendships has gotten so much higher in 2021 or 2020 than I had ever considered them before. And they were still hugely valuable to me before. It's just, I think I've added a whole new level of value to them. And same thing with, you know, going to MicroComp. I really felt the loss of that this year. You know, that was, that was rough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I don't, I don't have anything to add there other than I agree,
Speaker 2 00:14:52 Like the connections across the board, you know, friends, family work stuff, uh, is all just, we haven't had any of it hardly, um, in like eight months now for us eight or nine months. Um, yeah, I mean, like moving to some of the work stuff, I think that some things that have worked well for us on, from like just kind of a general approach, trying to like put it a way that hopefully everyone can, can kind of relate to is, is like our approach to how we think about product and new features. Like we've done a lot of work about how we organize shaping a new product. And we use kind of a lot of the shape up stuff from base camp about how we think about kind of crafting a product idea and refining it and stuff like that over time. And they think that like, we're a lot better at shipping features now, which is really cool.
Speaker 2 00:15:45 Cause like, you know, our customers are happier, we're getting more customers. Um, but man, it's been a long road to, to get to where we are. And I think it's just like a craft that is never done or never like a hundred percent optimized. But, but as something that like I never thought about as I was getting into this as like, how do we work from a product perspective? So from like idea to design, to development, to testing, to roll out, um, has been like a big, a big iteration. So like, I, I feel like we've won big time there just cause we do it better than we did before I have a long way to go. But, but like, I'm really happy with where we are there now. So that's like, I count that as one. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:24 Very nice. Yes. I would. I would agree with you a hundred percent on that one. Uh, for me the business side of things, I would say, you know, 2020 forced me to look at the business in a very different light for a couple of key events. So one was e-commerce suddenly exploded, which nobody really saw coming specifically. I mean, in hindsight, we can look back and go, Oh duh, of course e-commerce was going to explode. But you know, in February nobody was like, man, you know, I can't wait for this virus to ramp up. Cause my business is just going to go through the fucking roof. It's like, no, nobody was saying that at that point. And you know, just as many businesses got kicked in the balls as they did, uh, go through the roof. So, you know, with that said, you know, when, when that happened to recapture and it caught me off guard, it took me a while to kind of figure out what was going on.
Speaker 1 00:17:16 Then it was like, all right, well it's time to ride this wave because I don't know how long this wave is going to be here. So, you know, it made me very aware of that and made sure that I was trying to take advantage of it as long as I could. And you know, then suddenly it stopped working, right? Because I was doing the paid acquisition thing was Shopify customers and everybody else suddenly figured out, Hey, maybe I should be doing paid acquisition to CAC. Went through the roof. That meant that, you know, for the same budget that I was getting just slowly got less effective over time. And I didn't have infinite budget to throw at it still down. So, you know, it made me more aware of how fragile paid acquisition can be, how expensive it can get, how quickly and when you don't own your channel, which is basically the case when you have paid acquisition, how, uh, how difficult it is to try to keep a stream of customers in. So, you know, that made me develop the whole strategy of, you know, rethinking my approach to content marketing, which I had poo-pooed a long time ago as something that was too expensive, couldn't really do it. It's been oversaturated, it's been overdone. And you know, now I've managed to convince myself that that is just complete and utter bullshit.
Speaker 2 00:18:31 So I think that, uh, yeah, I mean, I think that content marketing is definitely more challenging than ever there's more competition. Um, but it doesn't mean it doesn't work, I think. And I think that a lot of people try it and maybe kind of half asset, or just try it for a little bit of time and say like, Oh, I tried it and it didn't work. That's kind of what we did with paid acquisition. We tried it, it didn't work. And so now I think that it doesn't work. Um, but as it gets, I think that's not an a or B kind of binary decision. I think it's like a degree to which you Excel at things or stick with it to figure it out. Um, and I think it was Scott like a general thing. I don't think that's to one channel or another, I think you could probably make almost any
Speaker 1 00:19:14 Well, you certainly, you could. But I think the thing about content marketing is that, you know, we, we keep saying, okay, it's getting harder. So why is it getting harder? It's getting harder because you have a lot of people saying the same thing over and over again. And if you're the first one to say that it's going to be really effective. And then of course, everybody looks at that and says, Hey, I should copy that. Well, the problem is that you are now following in the footsteps of somebody else. So you've got to do it differently. You got to do it better. And that's the hard part of the content marketing. The bar goes higher and higher every article that goes out there. So you start with, you know, being the first one to publish the content. Then the first one to publish the long form of the content, then the first one to publish the video accompanying or the infographic that goes to the content.
Speaker 1 00:20:01 And then, you know, once you've gotten all of those things out there, that thing is saturated. So the thing that we are avoiding at this point is repeating that pattern. And that's the thing I think that frustrated me about content marketing when I did it with business directory is that I was just doing exactly that. And it wasn't effective because all I'm doing is just repeating what somebody else has done. So what we're doing now is not that we are actually breaking ground and trying to find a different approach using content that is less saturated using content that is newer to merchants that they're less familiar with so that we can be the ones that are trumpeting that for new, new trends in e-commerce. And that's where the that's where the content marketing is going to succeed. My opinion time will tell, you know, I don't have any data on this yet.
Speaker 1 00:20:52 We're just working our butts off trying to make it happen. But that is my theory at this point, based on a more serious study and discussions with others that are more experienced with content marketing than I. So I think that that if anything, 2020 has taught me to re-examine my assumptions about things and determine, you know, do I really have the right data? Am I thinking about this in the right way? Or am I just stuck in an old mindset that's causing me to sort of retread old ground or stay in a place where I'm just not going to be successful. So,
Speaker 2 00:21:27 Yeah, and I think too, to kind of play off that, like one of the things that I think the personal situation that a lot of us find ourselves in this year with like a lot of time for introspection is, is like, I've thought about work a lot. And, and I think that that has allowed me to kind of ask myself and ask, you know, friends and advisors and mentors kind of better questions about work, you know, um, and, and like how we work and what's going on and where we're going. And I think that it's, it's kind of related to, to the personal side of things. It's, uh, you know, we only have this mental space because our lives have been forced to slow down so much that we take the time to think about this stuff. Whereas we, you know, we kind of wouldn't have taken that time or forced ourselves to take that time before. And so, like, I think it's been a positive in that respect is like, we just can't travel. Can't go to MicroComp, can't do all this stuff that we did before. And so we just have more time to sit here and think, and while that's really uncomfortable and hard for me, a lot of times, uh, I think it's also been positive that like I've kind of gotten in a better mental space about how I kind of am strategic in the business. So that unintended benefit maybe. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:22:42 Yeah. I think that's another thing I would agree that 2020 has taught me is, you know, being comfortable with discomfort because you are now placed in a lot of uncomfortable situations. Like we've had lots and lots of family conversations about how the kids are working in school. What's the situ you know, I have three almost teenager. I have one definite teenager, one on the cusp of being a teenager and one pretty much thinks she's already a teenager. So, uh, you know, with three teenage girls in the house, there are a lot of conversations about, you know, we've had a lot of uncomfortable conversations around race politics, gender, sexuality, you know, and that's the pandemic itself. And, you know, you're just constantly in this state of discomfort, nobody, nobody ever tells you as a father that you're just going to be constantly having uncomfortable conversations. And you have to be either willing to say, I don't know, I don't understand this and dig into it with them and be okay with that.
Speaker 1 00:23:53 Or you're just going to have to shut the conversation down. And the latter does not make for well-adjusted kids, but this isn't just about parenting. It's about, you know, everything in business, you know, we had that blowup of growth and recapture, and then there was the whole period of, well now the paid acquisition isn't working as well. So it's like your business is constantly making you uncomfortable. And are you going to freak out about that or are you going to adjust, are you going to find something else, you know, and how do you deal with all of that discomfort? Are you finding healthy outlets for it? You know, are you doing something like exercising that reduces your stress and getting enough sleep and spending enough time with your significant other and all of these things like the whole sphere of discomfort has been magnified at, at the past 12 months, such that if you're not good at managing that discomfort and being comfortable in the discomfort, your probably suffering greatly right now. And, you know, that's made me painfully aware of all of the times I'm having to be uncomfortable and then trying to find ways to self care, to make sure that I'm getting enough time to do all the things that I need to do for myself, and then still be available for all of these other pieces of my life, whether it's business or personal, uh, or, you know, parenting or whatever.
Speaker 2 00:25:21 Yeah. And it definitely does like crossover into every part of your life. Uh, I agree, like being an ma being comfortable with being uncomfortable is a, is a good way to put it. I think that will be uncomfortable for awhile. So I think we better, we better get good with it. I don't, uh, you know, like as we're recording this, they gave the first vaccine in the U S yesterday. And so I think there's a lot of folks with hope that like, things will return normal soon, but I think realistically it would be another year before things are super normal. So like, yeah. Better, better get, get good with, you know, where things are at this point. I think definitely. Yeah. I think that, you know, it kind of goes back to what we said at the beginning that like, I think we're both very lucky that our businesses have done at least.
Speaker 2 00:26:01 Okay. And this time, you know, we have friends that have suffered quite a bit. We have some friends that have done really, really great. And I think that some of that's luck, some of it's being in the right or wrong industry, but the I'd count myself, very lucky that, you know, the business and money is not something that I've had to worry about in addition to everything else this year. So I think that's one of the things that I'm most grateful for. And it's not anything that I've done. It's just that we got lucky, I think,
Speaker 1 00:26:30 And, you know, a friend of mine always says better to be lucky than good. And I still think that brings true even today, especially today. Really?
Speaker 2 00:26:40 Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Well, Dave, I think this is our shortest episode ever, but, uh, apropos of, of the topic and, and what we're talking about, you know, with the good parts of 2020, it's a, it's a short chapter, but, uh, you know, looking forward to the new year, I think a lot of stuff will change and things will get back to normal, looking forward to getting together with our friends and, and person, hopefully at some point this coming year. And, uh, yeah, just got a lot of kind of renewed hope, I guess, at this point. So, you know, best holiday wishes to everybody this'll be going out right around Christmas. So best holiday wishes to everybody and, uh, yeah. Happy, happy, new year's everybody. And we'll see you in 2020.
Speaker 0 00:27:20 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.
