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 road startups, episode two 41.
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Craig, how are you doing this fine week?
Speaker 2 00:00:27 Uh, I'm good, man. I'm good. I, uh, it's funny. I'm a little let down. We were supposed to get fiber installed here, uh, and like connected to the house today. And guys came and they started doing work. They're here for about an hour and they're like, Oh man, you have a problem. It's like broken at the street. So like from the junction box to the house is good. There's like literally five feet that somewhere in there, like the, the wire's broken or the fiber cable is broken or something. And they're like, they'll probably be like two months before somebody can come out. And the fucking head, I was like an hour away from getting to gig fiber stuff with my shitty DSL and 4g box that like cobbled together and make work. So I'm a little depressed today.
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Ah, dude. Oh, that hurts. At least you have the option of getting fiber. I mean, I am so jealous that you have fiber in your neighborhood on your street and five feet away. If I knew that mine was only two months away, I would start celebrating right now. Um, I just had two shitty options here and neither of them, you know, we, we finally upgraded to Comcast and I still hate them with a heat of a thousand burning suns. Um, but they're a higher bandwidth than a century link. And I can't, I can't argue with that. And they have been, uh, you know, uh, unreasonably stable to be honest. And it's better than sitting around with 10 megabits, you know, but I, I would, I would kill for fiber, you know, I just wish that they would put something like that in the neighborhood, but our stupid broadband laws prevent them from upgrading and prevents our providers from actually doing anything to keep up the infrastructure because they have a duopoly fuckers anti-competitive for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:02:17 Yeah. Yeah. How about you? How are things?
Speaker 1 00:02:20 Things are good here. I was looking at some skiing dates here in the not too distant future, so that will help me get through winter a bit more. And yeah, the one thing that I'm starting to feel a little bit now is that big snow would normally be on the horizon in about three weeks. And it's not going to happen this year, which is a major suck at Alec bummer. Um, but it is what it is. So, you know, we're going to do something kind of a, we'll call it a substitute for what we normally do, and we're going to give our annual updates and stuff. And we're going to have a bunch of zoom meetings to do that. So people can give some presentations. It's not going to be exactly the same though, but it's better than nothing. So I can't complain.
Speaker 2 00:03:08 What, uh, what kind of timeframe are you guys looking at for that?
Speaker 1 00:03:10 About the same time as big snow would normally run, you know, second week of February, but it's gonna take us like six weeks to go through it. Cause we're going to do like two things a week. Cause nobody's going to be able to like take two days off and sit through, you know, six zoom meetings a day. That's too much, you know, that doesn't, that doesn't make sense. So we're gonna, we're going to spread it out and try to do like two week. And if you can make both great, if you can't, Oh, well we'll record them, you can watch them and that sort of stuff. So, you know, that's, that's gonna be cool, but yeah, it'll be like for the next six weeks, we'll go through various updates and you know, people are trying to post annual updates in advance and then you talk about sort of what you're looking at in the future.
Speaker 1 00:03:51 And it should be good to, you know, at least get that little catch up there. I wish it was, you know, in our usual way with, you know, some catered dinners and skiing and hot tub time and beer and all the other stuff. But alas, that is not meant to be this year. Just more zoom. Yeah, just more so I wonder if there's going to be a zoom backlash when this is all over, like, you know, we get to out of COVID and then people are going to be like walking down the street and somebody says zoom, and then they get triggered and like, you know, have like PTSD and go postal. Right.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 It was funny. My wife sent me a meme the other day. It was a, when COVID is over, is the new, when I win the lottery. Right. That's like, it's just never going to happen. Like it's never going to be over. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:40 Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that depressing look. Nope. Yep. Yeah. Brighten up lifting here on a rogue start-ups today.
Speaker 2 00:04:49 That's right. That's right. So I think we have a, just kind of a few updates to, to chat through this week. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:04:57 Yeah. Uh, why don't you get started? What, uh, what's been happening.
Speaker 2 00:05:01 Yeah, I think the one kind of update ahead from our end. Well, one guy, one kind of quick one that announcement, I guess, is we're hiring a sales rep at Costos. So the person will be selling partially are, uh, kind of cast as productions slash podcast, motor editing and production services. We had a dedicated sales rep before and then COVID hit and he decided to go somewhere else. So I'm hiring to kind of replace that this person will also sell kind of our enterprise hosting solutions. And so really kind of excited about that. Just put the job posting live today and put it on kind of we work remotely and dynamite jobs. So, uh, if you are a sales professional, uh, and want to come work with us, we'd love to chat. So that's really cool. I'm excited about that. Having a sales person on the team, uh, you know, Matt has a lot of sales experience, but it's not as jobs. I think he doesn't wear that hat a lot with us, but having somebody who's dedicated to sales is a really interesting dynamic on the team, whereas everyone else is kind of marketing and self-service oriented. Um, and so that's a really good balance, I think. So that's cool. I'd be interested to see kind of what kind of candidates we get there. And then I had an update on kind of marketing prioritization from a couple of episodes ago when we talked about content marketing that I could give.
Speaker 3 00:06:21 So we talked about kind of like every, every
Speaker 2 00:06:24 Post, like having a job and talking to a specific kind of audience. And I guess just really, really briefly though, like walk through what I did to kind of identify that. Yeah. So like in, uh, in Google analytics, we have goals set up to, uh, one is like starting a new trial and one is becoming a paying customer and I'm able to filter out, um, like landing pages on the site by, uh, by goal metric. So like how many goals did this landing page or this entry point into the site achieve. So got that list, export that into a squiggle sheet. And then one thing that, that I did that I was, I was kinda proud of is like tried to focus on the ones that were already doing well and it evaluating like what kind of call to action we have on the page there and tweaked about a dozen of those pages and not focusing on, like, we definitely have some, some pages or posts on the site that get a lot of traffic, but don't convert a lot of new trials and kind of just left those, you know, I figured like if they're not converting already, there's a good reason for it.
Speaker 2 00:07:33 You know, like it's just not in the right point in the customer journey. And, and so like just getting all that into like a spreadsheet where I'm able to see like the page and the title and like what type of customer is oriented towards and then how it's performing already. There are definitely some like standouts there of like, Ooh, this is bottom of the funnel. Like somebody who wants to start a podcast today is researching this thing and they're converting well. And then just tweaked actual call to action and offer we have on the page. And it was really easy just with the right message. I was able to just go in and edit, like the units that we already have there and have seen like a 15% increase in new trial starts in the last, like two and a half weeks since we started that.
Speaker 2 00:08:13 So really just kind of evaluating, what's already working, taking the ones already working and trying to optimize them by saying like, what type of person, like, what persona is coming to this page? What are they looking for and what should the call to action and the information that we provide them be so that like they can take the next step. Yeah. So, so it was, you know, not an overly complicated or long process. And I feel like kind of, you know, bore some, some solid results here so far. And I think just kinda revisiting that every couple of months maybe to see like, okay, what's already working, what can we look at to optimize and kind of go from there. So that's, that's kind of my update on like, let's say jobs to be done for content. You know,
Speaker 3 00:08:51 I have a question for you. So those landing pages where you're a lot of traffic, but you're
Speaker 1 00:08:56 Not getting a lot of conversions. What, what's the long-term plan for those? Do you just leave them in place? Uh, you know, do you think that eventually you might try to redo them or take them off the site altogether? Or like what, what is it that you do with content that ends up like that? Because if the goal of originally writing that content was to get them to do something, then they're not doing anything, but they're reading the content. Like they're, you look at their, uh, time on page and that they're reasonably engaged or whatever, but then they don't do anything afterwards. Like what do you do with that?
Speaker 2 00:09:30 Yeah. So, so I think that all of these posts that I was talking about optimizing, or like even considering optimizing, I would consider like really bottom of the funnel. And so I think things that are not converting to a new trial are they were all really top of funnel. And so the thing to do there is to get people into like an email sequence so that we can stay in touch with them, work them through kind of the process. And when they're ready, we're there and we're front of mind, you know, top of mind. So I think that's like talking about like the job of each post or landing page. Most all of it is like blog content, but like the job of that bottom of the funnel stuff is to convert somebody to a trial. The, the job of a more top of funnel thing is like, you know, brand awareness and education, but to get people to opt into an email sequence or course, or whatever, I did not do that now, but, but just because we don't have like, eh, we don't have a great super top of funnel thing that can nurture people for months, you know, and that's really what you need for this kind of thing in our, in our kind of use case, just cause be able to be ready to like, you know, starting a podcast is hard if you haven't done it before and takes time.
Speaker 2 00:10:39 And so like we have to be ready to, to provide value and nurture people for kind of a long time.
Speaker 1 00:10:44 Okay. So it's an inappropriate CTA. It's not the fact that you, you don't want to make a CTA it's that you just, basically, you wrote it originally as bottom of the funnel content, and then it's really more of top of funnel content. And so you got to switch this CTA. Is that, that's what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2 00:11:00 Yeah. Yeah, I would, yeah, I would just say too, like, we didn't have this in mind when we wrote the content, you know, of like what, who is this for? What type of persona? Where are they in the funnel and what should the CTA be like all three of those have to be considered, I think. And so like going forward, we're thinking about all those with Dennis who does all our content now. Um, so that w all of that is more intentional with our new content.
Speaker 1 00:11:22 Okay. All right. That makes sense. That makes sense
Speaker 2 00:11:24 Now. Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's that update for me. Cool. Cool. How about you?
Speaker 1 00:11:32 So I just set my rocks the other day for Q1 and in doing so I went back and looked at all of my stuff, you know, the core values and the 10 year and three year, and the one-year goals for recapture and the self storage and stuff like that. And it's because now that I've already gone through one round of rocks, I can see that my,
Speaker 4 00:11:58 My one year goals,
Speaker 1 00:12:01 Or maybe it was my three-year goals. I forget one of my, I looked at one of my goals and I realized that the numbers were out of
Speaker 4 00:12:07 Whack. Like I
Speaker 1 00:12:09 Was, I was overshooting in one case, and it was undershooting in another case based on what I've already achieved in the last quarter. So it was like, huh, that's interesting. So, like we had talked about in the previous episode, like, you have to sort of consider this all living document. It's not like this one time through, and you're done, you just put your nose to the grindstone, you go achieve your 10 year goal. And it doesn't like that at all. And I'm already seeing that in three months time, my goals already needs some tweaking. And, you know, I've had to take that into account while setting the rocks for this quarter here. So, but I did think that that was kind of interesting that in such a short period of time, that I could be that wrong on things already, um, considering, you know, what kind of a time horizon, but, you know, I mean, a lot of those things, you don't really have that strong of an idea of what it is that you really want to do in those timeframes.
Speaker 1 00:13:02 And so you take a best guess and then you start working towards it, and then you find it either is under, over. I, you know, I mean, that's been my experience so far and talking to a couple of other people, it sounds like that's what their experience is as well. And even in the books, that's what Wickman called out, you know, cause they went through several different quarters of, you know, doing the level 10 meetings, et cetera, et cetera. And they were going and revamping the rocks and they were revamping the goals and then we're revamping the longer timeline stuff. So they would come back and say, Hey, you know, we, we thought we were going to hit this, but now this looks more reasonable. And in fact, we want to shoot higher than that because it looks like we're going to hit that too soon, you know, that kind of, uh, of a revision thing there.
Speaker 1 00:13:49 So cause they were drawing all of that story from previous experience and that seems to be what I'm experiencing as well. Uh, so that was good. And it was, it was nice to kind of get that written down. Um, it didn't take nearly as long as it did at the personal retreat because I had already been sort of thinking about it for a couple of weeks. And in fact, on one of my morning walks, my wife was asking, so have you thought about what your rocks are going to be? And so I just rattled some stuff off and no pressure, no pressure. Yeah. But I rattled some stuff off and you know, there it was. And when I sat down to write them out, I was like, yeah, that's it, those are the ones. So I kind of already had a pretty decent idea of what was going to come out.
Speaker 1 00:14:31 And so I've thrown those up on the page there literally and metaphorically perhaps. Um, and we'll see how that goes. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. I looked through my issues list. The one thing I didn't do is I didn't do an issues list and I probably should sit down and do that. But I was looking through my issues list of things that I had noted were that we needed to think about or make sure we didn't forget. And in three months time I noticed I could check off about three fifths of my issues list on both ninth sets because they were just stuff that had naturally worked itself out or they weren't relevant anymore. So I was like, Oh, great. Done, done, done, done. Yeah. Yep. That's going to be done. So that was nice, you know, but the fact that I could track them told me, you know, what had changed in this 90 day period. So that was, that was actually quite fascinating to, uh, to go through there. So yeah. Um, you haven't sent yours yet, have you?
Speaker 2 00:15:32 Yeah. Yeah. We set ours right at the first of the year, um, for the first quarter and uh, some of them have changed already and yeah, I like you I'm okay with that. You know, like I think that's, that's kind of, part of it is as you set these and then as you get through, I mean we're only three weeks into the year, but you know, things change, priorities change. And so I think your, your rock should change. Um, not too fast because they think that being too reactionary with that stuff is, is bad and means that you're, you don't have like conviction to follow through on, on what you said you were going to do. But yeah, it's also the first time we've set them on like a company and division level. Uh, so like I think a big part of it, like, you know, for you doing this for the first time for us doing this for the first time at this level is, um, is just like, you don't know, you know, you don't know what's right. You don't know if this is the right timeframe to think you can do this thing. And, um, and so I think, uh, you know, give us some grace with, with changing those as we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:16:33 Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, we'll have to check back in around, uh, the April timeframe and see how things are going. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:16:41 Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I feel you on like, on the kind of looking back at things you said, I set our three and 10 year goals, uh, for the first time, about a year and a half ago. And I looked at them the other day and I was like, Whoa, we're already like two, our number of like team members goal, you know, like halfway through that
Speaker 1 00:17:03 Three year. But like
Speaker 2 00:17:05 Our revenue goal was, you know, massive. And, you know, I think we're kind of like on track there, but it was just funny to look at yeah. Some of those things you, you get to faster or some of them don't apply anymore, so yeah. It's but it is. I mean, it's, I think the point is it's good to just stay to just stay accountable to yourself and put it down, like in writing somewhere so that you can say like, okay, this is what I said, I'm going to do, we did, or we didn't do it. And like, it doesn't really matter, right. If you don't do it, as long as you are aware that you didn't do it, um, is, is kind of how I feel.
Speaker 1 00:17:35 Yeah. It seems like awareness is the key. So my wife has been doing this thing because she's got auto-immune issues and she's very attuned to problems. You know, anything that's on inside of her body, she's got really loose joints. And so stuff goes out of whack all the time for her. So she's trying to, you know, make sure that she can stay healthy as long as possible. And as part of that, she's now taking this class called body thrive and they, you know, emphasize Kaizen improvements. So, you know, I mean, you wouldn't think that you would take a business concept and apply it into health, but they're like super big on this. Just 1% improvements all the time, everywhere. Like don't go for radical changes, go for little tiny things. Like just keep improving 1% all the time. If you do that, you're going to see big changes over the longterm, but you can't like make a radical change and say, all right, you know, I know I'm a hardcore carnivore and I have steaks three times a week, but by God, I'm going to be a vegan, you know, like that's just not going to work.
Speaker 1 00:18:39 Like you have to change that slowly. Otherwise that stuff just doesn't stick. You know, speaking to somebody who's tried to make those kinds of big changes before the big changes. Don't stick. It's the little ones that do when you slowly, you know, modify your habits over time. And so she's reading a lot of books about habits and you know, they're talking about stuff like Kaizen and other things like that. And I, you know, it's equally applicable to health as it is to business. And that's the small stuff that sticks really. And yeah, I mean, I think you can do some big things in times of crisis and, you know, you realize I have to do this. I don't have another choice. You know, your revenue drops 50%. You got to do something big to fix that, but it's risky. Right. And it's not necessarily something that's going to stick, but the little stuff I've noticed that I've done over the years has stuck.
Speaker 2 00:19:28 No, you know, so I, I totally agree with that. And I'm on board kind of philosophically with what you're talking about, but at the same time, like I am really ambitious, you know, like personally and professionally and like with the business and I want to do a ton of stuff and to see a bunch of change. And I, I struggle a lot with that and balancing, like me saying, like, I want a ton of shit to happen in our business. And then kind of seeing that like, ah, that's maybe just not possible or to do that would take, you know, resources or people or whatever that we don't have access to. And that's just hard, I think is like, in my head, I'm like going a thousand miles an hour, but the reality so far as I've seen it is that like, that's just not possible.
Speaker 2 00:20:18 And so like, I have been thinking a lot about how to bring those two closer together, you know, to say like, instead of growing at this rate, why can't it be three times that or five times that, you know, or instead of a team of, you know, nine, why can't we be 30? Yeah. I don't know if that's just like a, I don't mean for that to be too philosophical, but like the speed of implementation, uh, for a lot of these things is like, what, what really gets me. And I feel like sometimes we're just like stuck in the mud, you know? And like, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:20:50 I dunno, but I'm going to alright, so I'm gonna throw out something that might be a little controversial. I'm going to say that you can do both and that they're not mutually exclusive. And here's why, so the small stuff sticks, but I'm not suggesting that you stick only to small goals because the big goals give you things to push too. But the small stuff lets you develop habits that helps you like make it to a bigger goal. So let's say you set a big goal, like cast us is going to do 10 million a year. All right. And you're only at that goal five. Yeah. Okay. So let's say you're only at 500,000 a year or something like that, which I know is not your real revenue, but you know, if you pushed to 10 million a year and you only made it to two, is that a failure considering that you were at 500,000?
Speaker 1 00:21:44 You know, that's not a failure, you just pushed ahead a huge amount. You move the needle with your big audacious, hairy goal. Right. But you probably develop some things in the process that like helped move your business forward and set a new kind of series of habits inside of the business itself. Like there may have been a huge struggle for you to get from 500,000 to 2 million because you were lacking processes or you had hiring issues or whatever, and those kinds of things build on each other. So now that you made it to two, if you set another thing and say, all right, well now we're going to get to 10 and you made it to seven. That's still more than double, right? Like that's still a huge improvement. So I, you know, I, I'm going to say that they, they aren't like do one or do the other, and if you only do one or the other, that's the only right way to do it. I don't think that's true. I think by setting larger goals, you end up pushing yourself. But you know, making sure that I, you know, consistency counts for a lot is what I'm really kind of getting at. If you're going to do something, being consistent about it is going to make the longterm small improvements that are going to get you to those larger goals. They may not get you there at the speed that you like, but you have to be consistent in order to make the big goals.
Speaker 2 00:23:05 Yeah, I totally agree with that. Uh, I totally agree with that. And I think that one other part that I, I feel like, and I don't know that I've kind of proved it out yet, but, um, was listening to another podcast and they talked about thinking like a big company, you know, it's, it's almost like the think and grow rich thing, right? It's like, think like you're already doing $7 million a year or think like you are a team of 30 people and think at that scale and with the kind of efficiencies and the, the, the process that you would need to do those things and, and like, you'll get there faster. That's kind of something I'm thinking about is, is not like not being opposer, you know, and like faking it too much, but, but kind of, kind of, you know, because I think that working in acting and coming to work like you are this kind of big business will let you do the things that you need to do to become that big business and be successful and grow at the kind of rate that, that you want to certainly as opposed to the opposite, you know, I think we all have a lot of self limiting beliefs and think like, Oh, if we just, you know, what, if we raised a hundred thousand dollars, like that would really make a big difference.
Speaker 2 00:24:15 Well, that's maybe, but like what if you raise $2 billion, you know, like that'd make a huge difference and the work to do those two things, maybe not that be that different or, you know, what if you raised, you know, hired one person or implemented one process versus, you know, 30. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not, this is not revolutionary, but it's just something I'm thinking about. Yeah. Yeah. How, uh, how has the investing stuff going?
Speaker 1 00:24:36 So the self storage stuff is good. Um, I got a couple of people who sent me some, uh, comments about, uh, suggestions I should check out. And so, uh, thanks guys for, uh, pointing those resources out. I appreciate that. I am currently making a long list of places in Colorado to contact since I live here. Uh, you know, I'm not going to drive too far for the first one. And I have plans to hire a VA to basically go and do contacts of surrounding self storage, to kind of gauge demand. And, uh, because a lot of the information that I get is it's applicable to big markets. Like if I wanted to know what the hell is going on for pricing and demand in Denver, I can look that up online and this one tool. But when I go to smaller markets, uh, which is where I can afford right now, that totally breaks down because not even all the self storage facilities are on that map and not all of them have the pressing data.
Speaker 1 00:25:36 So you have to, you have to resort to like Google earth and, you know, spreadsheets and stuff like that. But once I can say, all right, I'm pinpointing here. I want you to look in a five mile radius, get a list of all these things here and go out and contact them. And then here's a script. I want you to run through the script as if you are employed by me. And you're basically gonna pretend to be calling about self storage. Right. And so I am, I'm setting that up so that I can have somebody else go do that, but I've got to, I've got to write that script and I've got to like call and test it out on a couple of self storage facilities just to see how it works and see if I need to tweak it a little bit. And then once I have that dialed in, I'm going to hire somebody and start to do it and point them in these certain areas. I got like five different areas I'm looking at. And so I'll have them go do the demand, check in those five areas. And then that'll tell me which ones I should start honing in on like the, of the facilities I've identified, which ones should I start contacting aggressively.
Speaker 2 00:26:37 So, and are these places that aren't for sale, but you just want to kind of make an offer out of the blue or are they kind of on some kind of listing platform already?
Speaker 1 00:26:46 This would all be off market deals. So I'm looking to contact and basically, you know, there's a, the way that the it's recommended to sort of contact people here is, you know, say that you're just getting into self storage and you want to contact them and, and, you know, find out how they got into the business and, you know, get to know them. Cause there's a lot of, apparently this is a big deal with self storage. You know, I can't imagine most website owners doing this. Like if I contacted Josh Pigford from bare metrics and I didn't know, Josh personally and said, Hey, I'd really like to get to know you about bare metrics and talk about all this, you know, we would totally just shut that call down and be like, I'm never talking to you, man. But I guess with self storage, people like, they're kind of proud about their businesses and it's just that doesn't have the same mentality as it does online.
Speaker 1 00:27:35 Uh, so, you know, they're more willing to talk about that. So you kind of develop a relationship and a rapport with them and you know, you say you're getting into self storage and you're looking to buy and you ask them if they're they know anybody who's looking to sell, knowing of course, that you would prefer to buy their facility. And then, you know, you sort of floated out there after you've had this conversation and say, all right, well, you know, if you're ever interested in selling, just let me know. Um, you know, and then they, you know, there's a good chance that they'll say no or that they're not ready, but you know, then you sort of just keep that relationship alive over a period of months and years. And eventually they'll, you know, when they are ready to sell, because you've developed that relationship with them. And because you're not usually a douche bag, then you, you know, are probably the first one to get a call.
Speaker 2 00:28:23 Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 1 00:28:25 I have to start working on that and I'm not giving any way in any grand secrets away. This is, this is all quite public knowledge in the self storage in the self storage world. But yeah, so, I mean, that's just a lot of sales work, you know, that's basically what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:41 Nice. Nice. How do you feel, uh, kind of like getting into this and learning more about the industry after kind of living in the software industry only for so long,
Speaker 1 00:28:52 It's kind of refreshing because there, so let me give you a sort of a overview of, of self storage and what the industry ownership looks like. So about 70% of the industry are mom and pop shops. So these are people that are like my age and older that bought self storage. Maybe they were younger and they got into it with a family early on, but they, you know, bought it and that's their, that's their business that they run. That's what they do for a living. And, you know, then there's like 10 to 20% is like the bigger real estate companies that real estate investment trusts the REITs. And that's your public storage yourself, self storage, like extra space. You haul all those kind of really massive operators. And so, you know, those are the ones that are building the a hundred thousand square foot facilities.
Speaker 1 00:29:47 And they're always in like tier one markets, you know, big cities, New York city, Chicago, Denver, Austin, Houston, Seattle, all those kinds of places. So there is definitely a, an aversion on that 70% that I started talking about about technology and updates. And so it's kind of the same thing about like buying an online business. That's kind of underloved you go and you find a website that has potential, like I did with business directory, it wasn't being run very well. The person was overwhelmed and you go in and then you apply the right level of technology and automation and you basically do a, what they call a value add play. So you just upgrade the facility, then you start increasing the pricing and do, um, rent increases and the value of the place goes up and then you can turn around and sell it for a higher price than you bought it for, and then take that money and move it to another storage facility.
Speaker 1 00:30:53 And so you basically can upgrade that path and build wealth that way. That's cool. Yeah. That's cool. So I'm interested to get that first facility and then start doing that. And it's kind of exciting because you know, coming from the tech world, I feel like that's a pretty huge advantage for me when it comes to, you know, any kind of technology, I'm just not averse to it at all. So if I needed to go and like do a security system upgrade, I'd be like, all right, I can learn that. That's not a problem. Okay. We need to add a new billing system in here that does the whole management of the business. Sure. No problem. I can do that. You know, at first, you know, my wife was like, well, why don't you write the software? And I'm like, I could do that. Yes, that's true developer. Yeah. But I was like, first of all, I don't understand the industry as an insider. And maybe like, after I've done this for a couple of years and I'll be like, I know what the S you know, what sucky about the solutions that are there and what I needed instead. And, you know, then I could write a better solution out of that, but I, that's not where I'm at right now. And I don't think that's what I want to do yet. So, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:32:04 Yeah. I think that, like, I've, I've heard a lot of people talk about, like, I'll find a market that, you know, has, is underserved and learn the problems and the pain points of the people there and stuff. I think that is so hard to do, you know, like, I think really, really, really grokking the problems that people have in a market you don't understand is super hard and really dangerous. So, yeah, I think you're very, very smart to just sit and wait. And after a couple of years, maybe you'll understand, and maybe there's a solution out there. That's perfectly fine. It's, you know, Zendesk already exists. Why go, sorry. Then that might a little, uh, close to home, but like, whatever zoom, zoom already exists. So I go create another one. Sorry. You can nail me that support. Um,
Speaker 1 00:32:50 No, but in all seriousness, it, you know, if I look at those entrepreneurs that are in niche markets, the ones who are successful, aren't the ones who are outsiders, generally speaking, you know, if you want to go and do a statistical sample, I'd be willing to bet that more than 50% are insiders in some way, they have a relative in the business, they were in the business, they're somehow connected to the business because they worked in it, um, or worked in an ancillary industry that was somehow connected to it, which gave them insider information about it. Yup. Anybody who's doing that, like the classic example that I can think of right off the top of my head is Harry and Ted for more aware. Right. Um, it was, uh, an I forget whose brother it was. I think it might've been Ted's brother, but anyway, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1 00:33:38 One of their brothers actually was in the countertop estimation business. And so they had a beeline to all of the real issues that he was facing there. And so the customer development becomes infinitely easier when you have that kind of a connection coming in from the outside of e-commerce for me to develop that took a lot longer, you know, I've been in this now for five years, five yeah. Five years now. And, you know, it's, it's taken a long time for me to feel like I know kind of what this is all about and what are the real concerns of merchants and what are the things that they love and which the things that are really important and the things that they say that are important, but they're not really important. Like, I feel like I've got that now, but I didn't have that when I started. And I thought it would be far easier than it was. So I think getting that insider knowledge becomes a huge advantage, and it's not a step that you can really skip and you can just sort of like show up onto a forum and be like, all right, I'm ready to solve some problems. Tell me about what all your problems are. Like, it just doesn't work like that.
Speaker 2 00:34:45 Yeah, no, for sure. And I think that even if you did get some of that, it would be like that first level information, you know, and then from there, it's like, you got to peel that onion back several, several layers to really get down to the, to the meat of it. Yeah. I agree that I think, I think that's why we see so many developers building developer tools and it's like marketing tech being so popular. It's like people understand it and people are close to it. And I think that's, that's, that's why all that stuff is so, so overcrowded, you know? Right, right. Nice. So kind of going back to the, like the rocks and stuff, like at this point, do you feel like you're pretty well set there to like charge forward and like implement stuff in this first quarter?
Speaker 1 00:35:25 So I don't know that I'm going to buy a facility in the first quarter. It's not on my list. I don't think I'm far enough along to do that. I do have a date in mind for the year that I need to have a facility and that date is September 30th. And that sounds really arbitrary. Uh, but it's not, it turns out that there is a thing going on right now with SBA loans that in certain distressed industries of which self storage is considered one of them for like the rental business. Okay. Uh, there is a, uh, a forgiveness program that exists right now that if you have a new SBA loan that is in place by September 30th of 2021, you get six months of your principal and interest payments forgiven on your spa, SBA loan up to $9,000. All right. On. So I'm like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 00:36:19 I'll take 54,000 of free money. That's no problem here. I'll absolutely, you know, if you want to build cashflow or you've got a big capital expense that you need to do right after you buy a facility, like that is the perfect way to, to deal with it. Right. So I have a fire under myself to make sure that that happens. Like it closes before September 30th, but you know, I have to, I, if I were to say, all right, I'm going to buy a facility in the first quarter. That's going to be bullshit. Cause I'm not, it takes like 60 days on the outset to make a deal happen once you like, and that's a deal that's going pretty fast. Like 90 is more typical, uh, based on what I've heard. Yeah. And talking with some experts in finance, like they said, we can do 60, but it depends mostly on you and being able to pull all this stuff together and I'm like, okay, first deal. Am I going to be that lucky and pull it all together in 60 days? No. No. Right. So it's probably going to be Q2 that I'm shooting for buying the facility with Q3 being the, the, the spillover, but it's got to happen in Q3. Otherwise I missed that window.
Speaker 2 00:37:23 Yeah. Yeah. Cool. That's nice. I mean, it sounds like you're getting that, you know, the rocks and the U S stuff down now, so that like, you can kind of go forward into the next quarter to identify the place and get the deal together. And all that is, this sounds like good timing,
Speaker 1 00:37:36 Right? Yeah. I mean, that's one of those things I had to back solve it, knowing that that was going to be out there, then I'm like, all right. If I need to close by September 30th, that means, I mean, to be, you know, an LOI sometime around June 30th, well, how do I get to June 30th with an LOI? Well, I probably need like the previous three months. So that's like March 30th is when I'm starting to do like serious prospecting and deal offers and stuff like that. Well, what do I need to do in order to, by March 30th, I need to have a lot of deals. I'm ready to start hitting on. Like, you know, I need to have some relationships built and some talking to people and do that. So that's why it got back solved into this quarter.
Speaker 2 00:38:14 Got it. Cool. Well, it's good to catch up on. Yeah. Kinda, you know, planning and looking forward to, it's got the middle part of the year already. I think it's a, I think it's good to put the, put the groundwork in here at the beginning of the year to see. And like you said, backs off, like where we want to go and get those pieces in place now. So, um, yeah, for folks out there who are kind of falling along and doing similar things with, with plan in the year, we'd love to hear kind of what you think of, of, you know, where Dave and I are in that process. Uh, any kind of questions or comments about it, shoot us a message podcast@roguestartups.com. And as always our ask is if you're enjoying the show, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well.
Speaker 0 00:38:51 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.
