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 38 of rogue startups, Craig, happy new year,
Speaker 1 00:00:26 Happy new year. Dave sounds like from chatting a little bit off air. You had a good holidays kind of holiday light. I guess that many of us are going through this year with, with the virus and the change in seeing family and all that kind of stuff. But sounds like you had a good one too. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:00:40 Yeah, we did. And, uh, yeah, everything's just different about it this year, but it was good to get some time off, you know, it was good to have some time to reflect. I didn't, uh, spend any time and do like a mini retreat. I've got to put some time here in January to kind of do my quarterly rock setting here for EOS, but, you know, I was generally pretty pleased with how the end of the year went and having a little bit of downtime with the family and just gearing up here for 2021.
Speaker 1 00:01:14 Nice, nice. Yeah. I mean, you know, just the way that the holidays fell with Christmas Eve and Christmas day, new year's Eve, new year's day being Thursday and Friday. Um, they were very quiet weeks. I ended up working a little bit every day just cause I kind of wanted to, but nothing, you know, nothing taxing or anything and actually kind of, we're recording this on the fifth, like Tuesday after everyone came back, like I really didn't want to come back to work yesterday. I was like, man, this kind of being lazy is okay. So it means, I guess I needed it and maybe it didn't even get quite as much as I needed, but yeah, I mean I'm, I'm definitely recharged to looking at the new year with, uh, kind of a new perspective after some quiet time. So it was good. Yeah. We had, we had a ton of snow, which was really cool. We, it snowed a lot on Christmas day, so we didn't wake up to like a white Christmas, but it snowed a lot that day, which was really cool. So yeah, it was, it was neat to just be here and had kind of a quiet time. Yeah, very nice.
Speaker 2 00:02:11 Nice. Yeah. I was not complaining about the four day weekends and you know, I usually know that for my freelance client, a lot of people try to take off this time of the year, but I've discovered that not only is that like one of the best times to work for them, it's also the quietest that has the lowest amount of support and everybody knocks off early. So they're like light days on top of all of that. So it was great. It was fantastic. It was like, it almost felt like I got, you know, a week and a half staycation out of it. Even though I too was doing a little bit of something every day. I did have one guy. I got to tell you the story. I did have one guy that I think it was Christmas day or maybe it was new year's day.
Speaker 2 00:02:51 I don't remember. Maybe it was new year's day, our new year's Eve, it was new year's Eve. This guy sent me something at 10:00 PM on new year's Eve mountain time. So it's like, and then he sends me two more things. This is after I sent out like a happy new year email to everybody in recapture. That's my holiday thing. I, you know, since new year's is a nice universal holiday, I send that out to wish everybody a new, uh, a nice new year's and this guy replied to the email and then six hours later, seven hours later, he replied again and then 45 minutes after that, he's like, why aren't you replying to my email? And it's like five in the morning on new year's day for God's sakes. And I'm like a little bit hung over. Cause I had some wine that night and I wake up in the morning at like eight and I look at my phone and I'm like, dude, you have no chill. I mean, seriously, it's new year's Eve. Do you not realize that people don't work on new year's Eve?
Speaker 1 00:03:50 That's crazy.
Speaker 2 00:03:51 That was, that was crazy. But you know, otherwise it was
Speaker 1 00:03:54 Good. Good. Yeah. We had a, we had a quiet time, you know, from like a product perspective. We've been kind of pencils down since the 18th and just really getting back into things now, but won't be deploying anything new for another week or so I don't think so. It's been a nice kind of down cycle from a, you know, shape up perspective. So we're kind of letting the developers kind of do do their thing, work on their side projects or not side project projects within the app and the plugin to, to really, you know, give them time to kind of mentally unwind a little bit and then, you know, really hit the ground running next week probably with some, some new features and start rolling stuff out again. So it's cool to have that end of the year for, for everybody to get that downtime.
Speaker 1 00:04:34 I think it's super important. I tell you, I am, I am definitely like inclined to just push hard all the time, you know, and, and I know when it's wearing me out and the hard thing is, I think you don't know when it's wearing other people out, cause you, as much as you try to like read your, your team members and, and kind of get feedback and get a sense of how they're doing, it's especially in a remote environment, it's, it's hard to know when like you need to just let people have time. So I've been more and more cautious of that for conscious of that, I guess lately to say like, yep, end of the year, let's just coast, you know, let's take care of customers, but no big marketing initiatives, no new product features, anything like that. And just let everyone enjoy, enjoy the time and recharge, you know, whether they really needed or not. I dunno, but it's nice to be able to offer that to everybody, myself included, I guess. Nice,
Speaker 2 00:05:26 Nice. Yep. Totally agree. Totally agree.
Speaker 1 00:05:28 So, um, yeah, beginning of the year, you know, I know like our last episode is a little bit of like kind of what happened last year. And so like looking, looking into this year, Dave, after you've had like some downtime to, to kind of like reflect a little bit, maybe anything that like is really jumping out at you as like this year is going to be all about this or this year is going to be the time when we finally do that. Anything brew in there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:55 I mean, I've kind of hinted, least one of these, but I basically have made 20, 21 the year of two things for me. One of them is going to be, you know, the whole content marketing push behind recapture. And we've already started that in Q4 and I got the guy and we working on some articles here and that's launching in, um, it's going to launch later this month, if all goes well, but you know, that's just the start of what this whole thing is about. It's about SEO and, you know, having a regularly updated blog and trying to grow that organic traffic that recapture really lacks right now. So that's, that's a major focus and a major push throughout the year here, which means that I'm going to be, instead of building features, I'll be focusing on that just in terms of my budget. So unless there's a feature that I need to add, that's a critical thing.
Speaker 2 00:06:50 That's probably most of what's going to happen this year. I mean, I have a couple of things in mind, product wise for recapture, but that's where my focus needs to be because that's where I think I'm going to get the growth out of recapture. And that's definitely going to require a fair amount of time, energy, money, and focus. So that's number one, number two. And I don't think I've really talked about this publicly on air before, but I feel like at this point it's probably something I can start to discuss and that is I'm actually going to do some, uh, real estate investing. And you and I have talked about this a little bit off air, but basically the proceeds that I got from the plugin, I'm using that. And I'm looking to buy into a self storage facility and I've been spending a pretty significant time of Q4 trying to research what it means to be in the self storage niche and why investing in this is more resilient, I'll say, than investing in other things, because, you know, if you're looking around at real estate right now, single family homes are hard to get ahold of commercial.
Speaker 2 00:08:04 Real estate is getting kicked in the balls like repeatedly. And you know, there's definitely a lot of niches of real estate that are sucking, you know, multifamily, real estate, apartment buildings, things like that. They're really struggling right now because people can't pay their rents, but something like self storage looks like a good place to build some wealth look for, uh, you know, a cashflow generating asset. And, and I've gotten very serious about this. I started back in September, but 2021 is my year of purchasing the first facility, maybe more than one. We'll see. But, um, the goal is to get one before the end of the year.
Speaker 1 00:08:45 That's cool. That's cool. I guess I have a lot of questions about that. Maybe that's like a whole episode is like, uh, offline investments in offline business. Maybe that's a whole thing. Yes. And, and
Speaker 2 00:08:56 I, you know, I think that would be a great topic to discuss at length because, you know, as, as digital entrepreneurs, we do all of this stuff in the online world. And what is amazing and interesting is that there are so many offline businesses that if you took the same concepts and knowledge and background, that we are applying and in some cases in a very highly competitive environment and you apply those to an offline business, you have like a massive competitive advantage because most offline businesses suck at this stuff. Like just example SEO and content marketing, or having a mobile friendly website or having a mobile first design where like there's an app that can run your service or store or give customers access to it when you're not there. You know, these are all things that turn out to be huge advantages in self storage. And so few facilities actually do this. So, you know, that's, that's the sort of stuff that I'm looking at doing here and applying that knowledge and moving it forward. But yes, I agree. That's probably like a whole episode.
Speaker 1 00:10:01 Yeah, yeah. Uh, regarding the content marketing. Uh, so I know that like kind of finding a writer was a big thing. It sounds like you've got that nailed down. Like, as you're able to talk about your approach to kind of, what's talk about how it fits in with like your customer journey, all that kind of stuff. Like, is there anything that you have kind of learned there that you can share? That's like not giving away the secret sauce, but it's kind of generally applicable.
Speaker 2 00:10:26 Not yet. It's a little early, we're still trying to hammer out the content. Yeah. I mean, I think probably like at the end of this month, I'll have a better handle on that because we will, we will have launched it at that point and I'll have some data to go with it because the content in the absence of data that talks about how it was received, you know, it does, it just doesn't mean anything right now. So yeah, it's probably a bit early to talk about that.
Speaker 1 00:10:51 Cool, cool. Yeah. I just asked because we are, um, content has been a big thing that we've been kind of leaning on through most of last year, certainly the last half of last year and kind of here in the new year, kind of doing an audit of like what's working and what's not, and why, you know, and, and so like really asking a lot of tough questions about like, is this marketing thing or that marketing thing that we're doing effective, you know, is, is this a place to put more resources or is this a waste of time? You know? So yeah, we're, we're asking ourselves a lot of these kinds of questions. We have a decent amount of data, but a lot of it is still gut feel. And I mean, attribution is something we've talked about a lot, but, but I think that it's all just kind of fuzzy. So yeah. I mean, it's, it'll be interesting to talk through kind of what you see once you start kind of getting some of that data and then we can kind of compare notes on like, you know, this type of content was effective, this wasn't this type of content, plus this acquisition, this, you know, promotion was, was, yeah, we did. Well, we didn't
Speaker 2 00:11:54 Hold on, hold on. Let me flip this around and ask you, what are you seeing right now, then that our observations about your content that you're struggling with? Cause that might be stuff that I want to, you know, think about or look at while we're doing ours to see, okay, you know, in a month when we talk about this again, what are my relationships to those things in the business? And you know, then I can say, Oh, well you said that you were having this. This is what we found. That sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 00:12:22 <inaudible>. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that one of the traps that a lot of folks fall into and we definitely fall into this trap is kind of creating content just to create content and feeling good about getting more traffic to your site because that's like the ultimate kind of vanity metric, right? Like more traffic to your site is all great. But how many of those people are signing up for a trial and then how many of those people are converting? And so something that we think about a lot is like, are we writing, you know, kind of like top of funnel, middle of funnel or bottom of funnel content, and how does that fit in with other stuff and gaps that we might have from a content perspective on this, on the site or like in our blog. And then like the biggest one really has been like a combination, right?
Speaker 1 00:13:13 Like two things. Really one is like, when somebody is on the page, what are we doing to kind of allow them to take the next step? Right? So like opt into this email course or a call to action for a trial. And like what, like what makes sense on that blog post? Like, should it be the same call to action across the whole site? Or should it be like specific things embedded in each blog post that's unique and then like what kind of customer persona of ours? Cause we talked to a couple of different types of customers. What different kind of customer persona are we writing content for? And so like when we think about writing content now it's like, is it top minimal, middle or bottom of the funnel? Is it for like, you know, persona a, B or C and then what do we want the call to action to be?
Speaker 1 00:14:00 And the next step for them to take in their customer journey. So like kind of asking ourselves a lot of questions around like the job of each piece of content that we're writing, whereas before it was just like, fuck, let's go get a bunch of traffic. And like we increased our traffic to the blog, you know, to, to the marketing site a lot in the last like 18 months and trials have gone up. But I think at this point, like we certainly haven't written about everything we need to write about, but we're a lot closer to where a lot of our content efforts around like optimizing the content to rank well and optimizing conversions and like smart conversions, you know, like, so we want the right people to convert so that they have a better chance of, you know, becoming a paying customer later. So that's kind of that's, that's the, like the, so that's the, so what kinda, you know, right. Are you able to get
Speaker 2 00:14:52 Any kind of attribution to say these Mar these people that went to this article were more likely to sign up for a trial and more likely to go to a paid customer? Are you able to track that at this point? Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:15:07 Yeah, yeah. Yep. So we track that, right? Just like in Google analytics we have, um, custom events set up and so we're able to see like people that started a trial or became a paying customer came from this post or that post. Um, and the thing that we're going to be doing here soon is we are in the process of evaluating ChartMogul as opposed to ProfitWell to get some more granular data on kind of customer events, by plan and MRR or not MRR like ARPU and things like that. Um, so we're going to be piping in some like data from the app into ChartMogul to then be able to like parse. And I think like I talked to Ruben Gamez about this in an episode, we did, I don't know, six months ago. And we're finally getting around to it is like sending kind of cohort identifying information to ChartMogul. So then we can then run this like, okay, let's, you know, parse out people that came from this blog post and what's their lifetime value. So like pretty advanced stuff that I'm sure will be way over my head, but could they be helpful? Right,
Speaker 2 00:16:10 Right. Yeah. Well, it would be very interesting to hear if there is like, you know, being able to break it down to say, all right, this kind of blog post, which fits under this kind of content, whether it's tofu, MOFU, BOFU, and you know, what kind of persona you were aiming that at and what that results in and seeing if you looked at that across, you know, a dozen different blog posts trying to cover all of those sorts of scenarios there, which the combinate torics on that are pretty, um, pretty high. I don't know what it is. Cause I sucked at competent torics when I was in math. That was like the one that, you know, I was really good at all math, but that one, I just couldn't wrap my head around it and I still, to this day I struggle with it. But anyway, you know, once you get that, it'd be interesting to find out like, Oh, you know, middle of the funnel content with, you know, persona C is the most likely to convert. So then you have to figure out, all right, how can I aim more content at that persona to get more people like that in my funnel? Yeah. It's kind of like clue for your SAS, right. It was professor plum and the conservatory with the candle stick. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:18 Right, right. And we have like almost 200 blog posts. So plus another a hundred podcast episodes. So like, yeah. I mean having a system around it and really being deliberate about how we go about it is a big deal. And then it's like, who, who actually does, who actually does the work? Because it's just like, it's a lot of, a lot of work to identify and label these all appropriately and stuff, but it's a big, it's a big effort, but I feel like it's cool because like we have this base of content now. And so now it's more like optimizing a lot of it. So yeah, just like you, like our kind of our growth efforts aren't necessarily in creating content, just like yours is not in like creating new features and stuff, but in marketing and ours is kind of like taking some of the marketing assets we have and optimizing them to, to kind of serve a better business purpose, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So, so now that we've
Speaker 2 00:18:13 Talked about me, uh, I want to hear about like what you're gonna focus on in 2021. Cause you know, it's not that content thing that you were just discussing there. I'm sure that's a side show, but you know, what are your, what are your big things for 2020?
Speaker 1 00:18:27 Yeah. Yeah. So I think the big, the really big thing is, you know, our focus on private podcasting. So, you know, as opposed to this show, which we want everyone in the world to listen to, right pocket private podcasting for people with membership sites or courses or large corporations that want to have a podcast for like their HR group or their sales team or something like that. We're seeing just a lot of interest and a lot of excitement around this. And we are one of the few people that do it, which is really cool too. And we do it differently and a little better, I think, than a lot of people. And so really focusing, and I don't want to say pivoting, cause it's not, it's not that cause like we definitely already do this, but like shifting our priority and our focus to this being like a big thing we do across the board, you know? So like product and messaging, like, you know, positioning and then like not branding, but like on on-site positioning and like what we're all about contents, uh, and kind of driving the movement is all stuff that we're basically everybody's working on. Yeah. So that's, that's like a really big thing. Cause it, it is kind of shifting what we're all kind of focused on to, to be one thing that's really specific, which is cool and exciting. A little nerve wracking, but yeah, mostly cool. Cool, cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:52 It should be very exciting. And I look forward to talking about that on various episodes here in the not too distant future.
Speaker 1 00:19:59 Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 2 00:20:01 Speaking of things to talk about, you had recently tweeted out something about your struggles with EOS and your first level 10 meetings. So I thought that might be, might be a good discussion topic today, since I'm about to do my quarterly rocks for recapture. I think we could talk a little bit about, uh, the traction system here in EOS and uh, what we're doing here in the next couple of months and what your experience was at the level 10 meeting, which sounds like it was a, shall we say less than ideal?
Speaker 1 00:20:35 Yeah. I mean, so, um,
Speaker 2 00:20:38 Give a little background on what a level 10 meeting is supposed to be for those that aren't in the know.
Speaker 1 00:20:43 Yeah, for sure. So, so I think anybody that hasn't listened to our previous episode and we'll link up in the show notes, uh, where we kind of talk about EOS and Dave, you really getting into it. We had one previously with D uh, with Kevin McArdle from sheriffs, with capital. Um, so like we have some content on this. So EOS, the entrepreneur's operating system is kind of a operating system, a kind of a manual of how to run your business from the traction book by Gino Wickman and the, the premise of the level 10 meeting is, and this is very much in my words, I'm sure that this is not what the book says, but, uh, it is a place for you to check in with your team. Uh, every week we door is Monday at 9:00 AM Eastern to kind of check in as to kind of the, the health and the progress.
Speaker 1 00:21:33 So the company and we do this via a scorecard. Uh, and so in our notion we have a scorecard that has says, I don't know, six or eight, you know, funnel metrics, right. And actually Dan Martell does a really good job of distilling a lot of this down on his YouTube channel. It's basically talks just about EOS, but, um, it talks about a lot of this in his YouTube channel. And so it's things like, you know, website, visitors and trial to paid ratio and churn and all this kind of stuff. And so we track that. We just track it every month and report it to the team. And now we're doing it every week as part of our level 10 meeting. So, so kind of check in from a, like a health perspective on the scorecard and then everybody, uh, reports how the are doing with respect to their quarterly rocks, right.
Speaker 1 00:22:20 And rocks are I say quarterly goals, right? They're a handful of things for the company or for each division that you want to get done this quarter and the next 90 days. And so as for us, at least through the process of going through, you know, how are we doing towards our rocks, things come up and they call them issues. You know, this is one place. Like I just don't like the term issues. I feel like it's negative, but, but it is an issue because it's something that you need to talk about. And he goes through the, what is it, the I D S process, uh, identify, discuss, and solve. And so an issue in our first meeting, we had three issues that we really need to talk about that work. One of us going through the list and for us, we have about 15 rocks that every, you know, the whole company and all the divisions need to hit matter that we had about three reveals said, I don't feel like I'm on track to hit this because there's a problem.
Speaker 1 00:23:16 That's an issue. And then we say, okay, we'll talk, talk about that in a minute. They would prioritize those and kind of order of importance. And I just kind of make that decision that like, Hey, this is obviously, you know, the sore thumb, right. The thing that we need the fix now, or at least talk about how we can fix it. And, um, and so we spend, we spend about 25 minutes talking about these couple of issues and got some really good kind of action items and had people kind of assigned to be responsible for those action items. And the goal there is like in this to-do list, that is the kind of result of discussing and solving your issues as you have this to-do list that people are assigned to and responsible for before the next meeting. So that hopefully like this thing is resolved or at least it's like in process, you know?
Speaker 1 00:24:07 And I think for us, like some of this is like product stuff, right? Like we need a better widget to be able to meet this quarterly growth goal. Like it's not gonna happen in the next seven days. So like, for me, it's like, okay, this is not a problem or an issue anymore because we've identified it. And, and like, it's not solved, but it's in process at least. So, yeah. And then I guess I missed the very first, I'm sorry. I know this is long. I missed the very first part, which is, you know, he calls it good news. So everyone goes around the table and talks about like a good or a bad thing that happened personally or professionally for them in the last week. And then at the end, and this, the first time we did this, we grade the meeting and it's called a level 10 meeting because everybody should give it a 10 and say like, this is the most productive kind of bad-ass time I've ever had at work. And we definitely weren't there. And I think that's to be expected. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:00 You shouldn't be if for your first one, the first one is never level 10, you know, you're lucky if you get it to level six or seven.
Speaker 1 00:25:07 Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we were, you know, seven or eight and I felt like, I felt like some of that was, you know, the question was raised, like what is a level 10 meeting look like? And I didn't have an answer for that, but, but yeah, that's, I mean, that's generally kind of like what a level 10 meeting is and how we did it at least. Does that sound about what you remember from the book?
Speaker 2 00:25:27 That sounds like a very, a reasonable summary of everything there. And th the one takeaway that I got from this is that a level 10 meeting is definitely something. It basically is there to keep people focused and make sure that everything is captured, but that nobody gets derailed and off track. Cause a lot of meetings. And you know, if you've been in the corporate world, I'm sure you've suffered through dozens of these, where somebody comes in, they say that they want to have a meeting on X in the middle of the meeting. Somebody raises why then suddenly the whole meeting turns into a tangent about why the meeting time runs to the end. And you never got to a decision on X. So that's, you know, that's a huge problem. And this is a lot of what makes I think corporations and companies in general, very, very inefficient because you can't stay focused on what the whole purpose of your original meeting was.
Speaker 2 00:26:25 So when you're dealing with the IDs framework and you're dealing with level 10 meetings, you raise the issues. But if the issue isn't core to the discussion that you're having at the time, you throw it on the issues list and you come back to what it is you're going to do, so you've captured it, you don't lose it. And then later you can talk about the issues, then have an IDs, you know, identify, discuss, and solve about that issue. And sometimes that discussion could be like, you know, this isn't really a problem right now, but it's going to be a problem in three months. So let's deal with it when we do our next quarterly rocks, you know? So it helps you prioritize. And all of this is about facilitating communication amongst teams. And I think once you get more than two or three people involved, that level of communication is really required to make sure that everybody's firing on all cylinders, even when you have hyper communicators that are like on the ball and very chatty and, you know, Slack friendly shit still falls through between the cracks. And I think the level 10 meeting is trying to address that issue in a very pointed
Speaker 1 00:27:29 Yeah, yeah, no, I couldn't say it better. I think that, yeah, we, we, um, fell victim a bit to kind of discussing the issue as it was identified. And I think that that's, it's my fault. Right. Cause it's my job to kind of run the meeting and keep it organized. And then they even have the concept with EOS of an implementer, right? It's this like referee independent third-party person, not, not part of your company, but there to help you run the system better. And I think that having somebody like that would be amazing, but, uh, we don't and we don't, you know, I don't think we're going to pay for that person anytime soon. But yeah, I think their job is definitely to, you know, call timeout when somebody gets off on a tangent and say, Hey, yep. That is not the time to discuss that. That's for this other part of the meeting or, or whatever. So right.
Speaker 2 00:28:18 If, if you read the book, uh, I'm trying to think, I don't have the book here. Oh yeah. Get a grip. The following book from traction, they basically have a fictional company and they dramatize what were basically real case studies and how somebody went through, did a consultation with a particular company and what those meetings look like. And that's exactly what ended up happening in that meeting. And they needed that facilitator to kind of train the staff and to train the CEO as to what that looked like before they were really comfortable about, you know, saying, Hey, this is off track. Let's throw this on the issues list and get back to the issue at hand, because it takes a certain level of discipline to do that. Like that's not an easy thing to do, especially cause it feels dictatorial, right. Especially if you're the guy in charge or the, the woman in charge, you're, you're basically trying to override and say, this is what we're doing here.
Speaker 2 00:29:15 Let's not get off track because then people feel like you're not addressing their issues. So I think that's having that facilitator would be extremely valuable to sort of pull the, the focus off of the personalities and onto the process, but being, you know, in your position where I'm sure those EOS facilitators are not cheap. So hiring one doesn't make any sense at this point. So I think you'd probably just have to, you know, have a discussion or maybe do some role-playing with some members of the team and say, this is what we're going to end up doing on the next run of this. So, I mean, it's, you know, it's a learning experience for everybody, right? So you just have to make that part of the expectations.
Speaker 1 00:30:03 Yeah. Yeah. And we, and we even like, as a kind of precursor to this, we had our regular Monday meeting in between Christmas and new year's and it basically was kind of just a dry run through this kind of level 10 meeting format, you know, because it didn't really have a lot to talk about half the development team was off, right. Or two thirds that development team was off and we weren't really doing any new marketing stuff. So it was a nice time to be able to say, like, in this part of the meeting, we're gonna talk about this. And in this part of the meeting, we're going to talk about this. And even with that, we got into the situation where yeah. People wanted to talk about stuff that, that was important to them. Very understandably. And I didn't want to cut that off to, to, because I was afraid they would feel unheard. Um, but, but I do think in my next one, I w and our next one, I will kind of more openly and directly kind of say, yep, I totally hear you. I got this on the list. Let's move on so we can make sure we identify all of the issues. And we absolutely we'll talk about this later. So yeah, it's, it's a whole thing, man. It's a whole thing, but I'm excited to be really come up solidly, moving down this path, you know?
Speaker 2 00:31:15 Yeah. And I think if you, it's going to take a few runs through this based on what I have seen here, that you're going to have to basically say, all right, we're putting this on the issues list, but then it's a, as long as you come back to the issues list and then specifically have a discussion to deal with the issues list, I think everybody will be like, Oh, he's taken that seriously. So going on the issues list is not being tossed in the trash can it's we got to stay focused and we'll get to it. But, you know, I think that's just a cultural thing to few runs through and people will start to understand that.
Speaker 1 00:31:52 Yep. Yeah. I think so. That's the, that's the goal at least. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:31:56 Yeah. Well, I'll be interested to hear what, uh, next rounds, uh, happen here and what their reaction is. Cause I mean, I'm not anywhere near needing a level 10 meeting. I have one guy, but you know, when I get to self storage, I can easily see that if I'm meeting with staff, that this would be exactly the kind of thing, because the level 10 meeting is about what are your rocks? What are your metrics? Are things on track or off track, and you want to keep that super focused and everybody looking at the same stuff. So if you know, I had a couple of facilities and I'm, you know, saying, all right, well, what is, what is your rental been this week? You know, how many new customers did you get in the door? How many people did you call and talk to, you know, et cetera, et cetera, whatever those metrics end up being. I can see that this is going to be deeply valuable to me down the road. So I will watch this with great interest.
Speaker 1 00:32:49 Yeah, yeah. And kind of to go along with that, I am reading for the second time, uh, radical candor book. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 00:32:58 That's on my list. I haven't got there yet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:33:00 And it is, I think the two go well together because one of the, for me, at least one of the things that, that I worry about and I'm really conscious of is, you know, this meeting format is super efficient, you know, like that, that might be a euphemism, right. It's like really direct. Right. Right. And people own things and they're responsible for things. And that's cool. Like this is a business. This is not like a country club. Um, but I don't want it to get to the point where people like are dreading coming to the meeting and are not excited about working here. And yeah, I don't want it to be dictatorial and I want it to be fun, but also like, you know, a kick ass place to work where we get a lot of stuff done to make an impact. And so, like, I think being a really clear communicator on both sides is super important as you get further along this, like, for me again, at least like, as I get further along this spectrum of like professionalism and like, uh, I don't know, an intensity, like, I dunno what the, I don't know what the word I'm looking for is here, like us working intently, but in a like fun and happy way, you know, like I think those two things are tough to pull off, but that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1 00:34:18 I want to, I want our team to be super efficient and get a lot of stuff done and know what the most important thing is and how we're doing. But I want that to be fun and people be excited to come to work here. And so I think balancing those two things is something that will require a lot of effort,
Speaker 2 00:34:32 Not to quote, uh, other stuff from traction here. But remember you've always got the right person, right. Seat thing going on. Right. So for those that aren't familiar, basically Gino Wickman has this evaluation. So you have to come up with core values. What are the things that you value the most in your business? And then you have to look at people and say, do they exist? You know, exemplify these values always sometimes or never. And if it's sometimes then it's something that you want to look at work at, you know? And if it's never, that person might not be the right fit for the organization. And if they are exemplary, simplifying the values, but they're struggling with the job, maybe they need a different job. Like they're not in the right role. So you have to use this to sort of evaluate people and make sure that you have the right person in the right seat. That's what they, uh, that's the term that, that Wickman uses. So it's possible that, you know, you have to set the tone for the culture. You have to set the agenda for these things, and then you have to see how people are reacting to it. And if they're not reacting to it, well, maybe it's not necessarily you, it could be right person right seat. So just keep that in.
Speaker 1 00:35:41 Yep. Yep. No, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. It's just, it's a, it's a different, um, yeah, different skillset, you know, I think we talked about like maker versus manager thing before is like, yeah, really kind of solidly moving into the manager role now where it's like, it's definitely my most important job at this point. It's not all I do. I do kind of actually produce some things, but like, this is my most important thing. So that's, it's cool. It's fun. I really like it. Um, but it, but it is me learning new things to, to be good at it too. So very cool. Very cool. Excited. Yeah. Yeah. Likewise. I mean, I think, you know, even talking about like how we go about setting quarterly rocks would be an interesting thing to talk about. Um, because yeah, it's another thing that like takes a lot of thought and intentionality, right? Like, so maybe we can swap notes on that, uh, and, and, uh, uh, upcoming up. So, cause I know you're going to be setting yours here soon.
Speaker 2 00:36:37 It would be a good time to do it. I'm looking at the, I have little sticky notes on my monitor here that sort of remind me all the time of what my rocks are. So that on any given day I can look at those and go, Oh, I haven't done that one or, Oh, I forgot.
Speaker 1 00:36:50 That's awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:36:52 Helpful. So most of them got done. There's a few that didn't done. I'm going to have to roll them over into Q1. But yeah. So I got to sit down and set those and you know, this is only the second time I've done it, but the last time was really good. And I think it really helped keep me focused in a short and long-term thing because the way that Wickman has you set the rocks is you talk about where you want to be in one, three and 10 years. And then you just sort of back solve to say, all right, if I want to get to this place in one year and this place in three years, what do I have to do in the next three months to make meaningful progress towards those goals? And that's all a rock is so yeah, I'm, I'm looking at mine trying to think. All right. I got to go back and look at my one-year thing and reset for the next quarter.
Speaker 1 00:37:37 Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome, man. We'll uh, happy new year, Dave and happy new year to everybody listening. I hope that, uh, everyone had a good new holidays and is ready to kind of rock and roll here in the new year. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:37:49 I echo that happy new year to everyone as well. And if you felt this valuable today, our one ask as always please share this episode with, uh, others that you think would benefit from it. And we'd really appreciate that until next week.
Speaker 0 00:38:05 Thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey, head over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
