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 back to rogue startups. Dave has gone this week. It's going good.
Speaker 1 00:00:25 Yeah, we are now cruising out of a January slump in recapture. This happens almost every year. Uh, I think there was only one year. I didn't see it. And that was one of my years. I wasn't growing all that much. Uh, so things were kind of stable, but yeah, like right after the holidays, there's this wave of downgrades where people are making less than their stores. And so I see a hit to my revenue, uh, naturally as well, since they're now no longer meeting the holiday sales, which is totally expected, but it sucks to see it. And then the other one is in other stores that just cancel or they were bad fits and they were like, yeah, I'm not going to do this. Or they were seasonal in their canceling because they're done. So it's just like, there's this wave of everybody bailing in January, uh, that, you know, sucks to see, but it looks like we've passed that. Cause now I'm starting to see a wave back up. And this is where we started seeing a wave backup last year, pre COVID. So yeah, that's good yourself.
Speaker 2 00:01:25 Yeah, man. Things, uh, things are good businesses, uh, businesses trucking right along, you know, we similarly saw a lot of people taking a look at their credit card statements and bank records and stuff, uh, in December and January. Um, just a lot of people trying to trim costs, I think around the end of the year. But this month, so far we're recording this in the middle of February has been really solid, both from like a growth and a churn perspective. So that's really cool to see. Yeah. And just, you know, trying to, trying to truck along, we're, we're looking for a new developer. So anyone out there that's a WordPress or LA Laravel developer will, will kind of help you level up to the other side of our, of our platform. Uh, if you don't have experience in both, but yeah. Looking for another developer to help us kind of push more features out and get things to customers more quickly. But I will tell you, man, like hiring and recruiting developers has gotten really hard. Like, I don't know if you've been looking for anybody recently or kind of followed what other folks in our worlds are doing, but it's gotten expensive and hard in the last year, I guess.
Speaker 1 00:02:27 Yeah. I mean, we've had some private discussions in the big snow group about hiring developers. And I know that the biggest thing that was mentioned is that remote has suddenly no longer become an advantage because everybody's offering it. And so what used to be like, Hey, look, we can offer you a hundred percent remote work and very few people can navigate, but he's like, yeah, we're working remote. Yeah. We're working remote too. Oh yeah. We got remote. Uh, we're doing remote over here. Like everybody does it now and all of a sudden like no big deal and that advantage evaporated, but yeah, on top of all that costs are going up. I mean, I've been seeing developer costs go up for years at this point and that's tough from a, you know, anytime you need to hire perspective, that's tough. Cause you just know your costs are going up and you're getting as much or less than what you paid for a year ago now. And it's only going to get more expensive over time because it's not like, you know, you don't give raises if the developer's good. Right. So yeah. That's brutal, man. Yeah. I haven't had the need to hire right now and I'm glad that I haven't, but you know, I was doing this about a year and three months ago I guess. And yeah. I mean, even then it was challenging and that was pre COVID when we still had the remote advantage. But now I can't imagine it must be a nightmare.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 The price pressure is, is like the biggest thing. I mean everyone's working remote, so that's just a given, but then like all the, you know, venture backed companies are hiring remote and they're just able to spend a lot more than we are. So I think it used to be this really nice kind of niche that we fit in where like we're bootstrapped or mostly bootstrapped. And we want to hire people in kind of, you know, economically advantageous places for us. And now like everybody's saying, I can hire anybody from anywhere. And, and those companies are, I think, still paying the same amount as they would pay in New York or San Francisco or something. And so the rates have just gone like through the roof. Like I know, uh, our friends at blue coating used to be like, yeah, you know, 40, 40 bucks an hour for a senior developer now it's like 60, you know, so like a 50% increase for like a senior rails developer in South America.
Speaker 2 00:04:39 And I mean, that's a big deal to, to have that kind of increase in cost. I mean, it just means you can, you have to hire slower, pay your existing people more because they know they can go find, you know, better work somewhere else. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of those kinds of economic pressures are, are interesting. And I think, I mean, I think this is just like one small thing that we see kinda on the ground with when it comes to like the longterm effects of COVID. And I think that, especially as it starts unwinding, which I think we're starting to see like the numbers go down with, with vaccinations coming in place. But like, I think we're going to start to see like that new normal sink in and be here for like the long run where, you know, all these companies have said, fuck, we figured out how to do it when we had to, we might as well keep doing it for the most part or hybrid or whatever. Just everything like work arrangements and where people are located and meetings, you know, I think like sales teams and like in-person meetings are going to be really different in the future, even when things are normal again. So yeah, it's just interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:05:42 A friend of mine, who's an exec at a really large mining company, worldwide mining company. They had leased a pretty significant amount of office space over here, pre COVID and their plan was to move into the, in late October. And you know, this was a year and a half ago when they had signed that lease or whatever. And you can imagine that things have changed a little bit since, uh, but what's interesting is that they basically said, all right, you know, we're a gold mining company and we're stuck with the price of gold, whatever it is at any given time. So the only thing they can ever really control is costs. Guess what? Their number one cost is. Number one and number two,
Speaker 2 00:06:24 Uh, number one cost has to be machinery. Uh, no, no, uh, office space, office space, no way
Speaker 1 00:06:31 Office space. Cause that's where they have the highest density of people. The individual sites there's there's costs associated with that, but they're largely like capital costs. You know, you buy dump trucks and, or milling machines, et cetera, et cetera. But then you write that off over a 30 year period. So that's a one-time cost with a slow deduction thing, office space. It's very different because it's a lease. So they have some capital costs going into that, but it's still a huge ongoing cost and it's one of their largest ongoing cost. The second one I think is people. Sure. And so, and maybe those two are flipped, but still, you know, the number one and number two costs are things that are within their control. So the people when they still need people, right. But do they need all that office space? That was the thing that they're looking at going.
Speaker 1 00:07:16 We have all this office space and they paid for some premium office space because you know, they're a nice company and they have, I don't know, four or 500 people that are working at this, uh, this office. So it's not small office space either. That's crazy. And you know, they basically looked at COVID, they looked at the space, they said, you know what, we signed this long lease, but we're going to give up half of our office space. And we're going to convert. What's left into basically a glorified. We work kind of meeting space where it's all co-working meeting spaces, that's it, nobody has permanent office space in here. Everybody works from home forevermore and they looked at that in their long-term costs. And they like, we actually would massively add to our bottom line by doing this. So, you know, any company that hasn't done that analysis already would surprise me. You know, there's probably a lot of companies, if you're a small startup, it might not make as much sense. But if you're a big company, this stuff makes a hell of a lot of sense. Except when your management, you know, is experiencing cranial, rectal inversion. And they're basically saying that we need people's butts and chairs to trust that they're actually working, which, you know, explains my freelance client
Speaker 2 00:08:24 A lot.
Speaker 1 00:08:26 No, they seriously have this mentality and this attitude. And I'm like, if you can't trust your people to do their job yeah.
Speaker 2 00:08:33 You got other, you got other issues, the right people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:37 So it's just weird. I don't know. But the whole remote advantage has really shifted and yeah, it sucks. Uh, the whole hiring thing, developers getting way more expensive like that, and it's a good time to be a developer. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Speaker 2 00:08:56 For sure. I'm curious, uh, how you kind of see like the e-commerce space from like a growth or outlook perspective now kind I know, like in peak COVID it was going crazy. Right. Cause nobody wanted to go anywhere. Like people are settled in at this point, but still mostly at home. Like how, how are things in e-commerce in general?
Speaker 1 00:09:17 So that's a great question. The answer is they're still amazing and they don't look like they're going South anytime soon. So as a quick recap, if you haven't heard the stat and you're not in the space over the past five years, pre COVID e-commerce was growing, you know, about 3% a year, you know, uh, in terms of gross volume, which was, it doesn't sound like much, but it actually was pretty big in terms of dollars. Now in a span of five months, e-commerce grew 15%. So it grew as much in five years as it did in five months. So it was a huge spike e-commerce has now, you know, jumped up quite a bit. And yet with that still said, there is still a huge Greenfield ahead of us in terms of e-commerce opportunities. Like it's not slowing down. It's not like, Oh, okay. We're a hundred percent saturated.
Speaker 1 00:10:21 Everybody's screwed now, if you didn't make it to the COVID party last year, you're too late. Yeah. Not, not by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, there are still things that are shifting and changing, you know, just like we see, you know, people were saying, Oh, well Netflix is, you know, between Netflix and Amazon, they've got the whole streaming service thing down, no Disney plus came in and took the biggest catalog away from Netflix and said, Nope, we're doing our own. And everybody else is still following. You've got paramount. Plus that's coming in. I don't see that the streaming Wars and the streaming opportunities are a whole lot different than what's at e-commerce everybody's trying to carve out their own little piece of it. And in this case, instead of taking it away from Netflix, like in the streaming Wars, they're trying to take it away from Amazon where Amazon is trying to keep this platform based control and hold everybody with their third-party logistics and their warehousing. And then, you know, they've got all these other predatory practices. They, they keep getting nailed for where somebody is selling a product. Amazon has all the analytics data on that product. They see that it's a really good selling product. And then they build their own under Amazon's choice. Exactly the same product
Speaker 2 00:11:31 From the same factory in China. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:11:34 Yeah. Yeah. Like if they don't contact the exact same factory, they know people at a factory that's different that can probably go spy at the other factory and find out what's going on. Then, you know, they, they have amazing connections and it's really just a matter of time before somebody comes in and kicks Amazon in the balls for their antitrust behavior. But with that said, e-commerce is, you know, it's still, I wouldn't say it's in its infancy anymore. It was in its infancy through most of the two thousands. But now, you know, we're probably in adolescence, it's still got a lot of room to grow. There's definitely been some maturity, little more attitude than there used to be, but you know, there's still plenty of opportunity ahead and we are definitely not in a mature industry yet. So, uh, you know, I still see tons of people signing up.
Speaker 1 00:12:23 I still see new stores opening up every day. I still see people that are coming up with bad ideas and trying to sell stuff that are me too products. But I also see people that are coming in with these great stores that are making five digits a month and I'm like, and they're DTC brands and they're just, they're killing it. I'm like good, good on you. Great. That's awesome. Yeah. So there are still tons of opportunity and tons of growth going on in e-commerce. So I absolutely do not regret getting into e-commerce, you know, from six years ago, five.
Speaker 2 00:12:54 Yeah. That's cool. I mean, it sounds like COVID yeah. Kind of like for us, I guess too, like COVID has kind of just kind of shifted more people into that world. I think we'd see the same thing. And it's been here so long, you know, that, that they're kind of settled, you know, into, into kind of what they're doing. They're creating podcasts instead of going to meetings, they're creating podcast as a personal brand instead of, you know, spending time on social media, just cause there's so much garbage there and bad news sounds like the same thing that like people's buying behaviors have shifted so much that like the shift e-commerce is supported by, by people's behavior changing like on the, on the consumer side. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:13:34 Yeah. I mean, podcasting has seen so many similar shifts because of the same thing. I, I would, I haven't been following the podcast growth rates, but I would be shocked if you didn't have some kind of leap in growth from last year as a result of COVID where people are suddenly like starting more podcasts than normal. Maybe not at the same level as e-commerce, but clearly there had to be something in there, right?
Speaker 2 00:13:56 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, there is definitely a jump in the number of new shows created last year, interestingly, depending on the kind of genre or category you look at, the listenership was down, um, because people weren't commuting, they weren't going to the gym Dino, uh, which is where a lot of people, uh, listen to podcasts. But yeah, the number of shows definitely up, but, but listenership and ad spend down again, depending on like what you look at, obviously things like comedy and news were a big, but then like a lot of, you know, hobbyist and personal improvement things, people are just fucking tired of, of trying to improve themselves. Uh, I think after, after the first month of saying like, Oh, I'm going to learn Spanish during COVID and they're like, fuck it. I'm just going to sit here and have a bourbon.
Speaker 1 00:14:44 Uh, no.
Speaker 2 00:14:45 Oh no personal experience with anything like that. But that's what I hear. No,
Speaker 1 00:14:49 No, none, none. Oh, that's hilarious. That's hilarious. Unsurprising. I mean, you know, e-commerce, there've been plenty of genres that, you know, gut totally nailed as a result of COVID, you know, anything that related to travel. So like, you know, you're running a luggage business, forget it. Sure. Yeah. But if you sold sweat pants, I mean, you were going through the roof. Right. So it just, it was very, uh, it was very uneven, the growth and the hits in both of our industries. For sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:15:20 Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, I think that, like I was talking to Matt about this the other day that like we're at the point of it being boring a little bit in like a good way, you know, that like we know we have to do, we just have to go out there and keep doing it and executing and shipping, you know, shipping features, shipping blog posts, shipping podcast episodes. But it's interesting that like the businesses mature to where like there's very few hair on fire things, you know, but, uh, you know, and so they, it's less stressful in some ways, but in some ways it's less exciting, you know? And I think that's, I don't know. It's interesting. What do you want to talk about
Speaker 1 00:15:58 That more? Because I think this is the sign. This, this is the difference between starting and growing a business and running a business. Right. If you're not okay with the, just the grinding operational part of it every day, then this is the part where you start to get bored and look for something new to move on. Right. I saw this with Josh Pigford and bare metrics. You know, it was clear that when he starting these other things like Cedar and sail and laser tweets and just experimenting with random stuff, I could, I could see his maker maker persona itching inside because running bare metrics, wasn't doing it for him. And then eventually we saw that he sold it. Right. So, you know, there's a cycle in there for, for those that are strongly on the maker side, versus those that are on the operational side.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 I put myself more on the operational side. I, you know, I got a little bit of a maker in me, but it's not as strong as a lot of people. And compared to a lot of those that are in our entrepreneurial circles, I am probably one of the least maker makers out there I can create, but it's not like it drives me the way that it drives other people. You know, I've watched Ruben since he started Bidsketch in 2011 and being a maker drives him because he's done, you know, Bidsketch and then he moved on to doc sketch, but he, he channels that in different ways. Like at first it was okay, well now I've got to build this product. All right. Now I built the product. Well, now I really have to market this product. I want to channel that into making content and understanding how to do the marketing, the way that I should.
Speaker 1 00:17:41 And then I have to learn how to track all this. So now he's channeling that into attribution and analytics. And I mean, you know, become a go-to expert on these fields because he dove so deep into that. And that's just his personality trying to chew through that information and make something from it, which in his case was success in his business. At least that's my interpretation of it. And I see other people like that. I've seen that with you and Casos like, you were driven to make cast dos and, you know, you got seriously simple podcasting to bolt onto that, to create a larger package that made more sense to drive more people through this funnel and get them into a broader product experience and stuff like that. And now you're at a, an operational perspective where all right, all of this building, all of this creating has reached a point where now we just need to run it effectively for a while. And maybe there's less of that making maybe a lot less of the making in some cases. And I think that gets to certain people, I think.
Speaker 2 00:18:45 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm definitely not sad about it. You know, I think that, um, well I think it's, I think it's two things. I think one is like, there's only so much kind of creative juice, you know, good glucose that you have in a day or a week or a month or a year. And for me, yeah. I mean, it's, it's all going to kind of team and process and running the business. And so there's not really much left for the maker thing. I am definitely not a, a maker. Uh, I like starting, I really liked the starting of the business, but I think at this point I see more value in my energy going to, you know, running and growing the business. And so maybe that's, that's how, like I realized that pretty solidly, like set myself in my kind of priorities there. And, and that's just kind of where I am now.
Speaker 2 00:19:36 I think the other thing is I have the, the luxury of doing that because we have wonderful people on the team that are able to, to create those things, you know, marketing and features and, and support and all that stuff. Um, so like, I don't have to, you know, I think if it was just me, I would, I would not have kind of given myself the chance to take a step back from, from that kind of stuff. But yeah. I mean, it's, it's an adjustment for sure. And kind of giving yourself the permission to, to take that step back from the, from the maker crowd to the, to the manager kind of role. But yeah, I think it's, yeah, when I say like boring, I don't mean boring. I just mean like we figured out what works, we know what we need to build, uh, you know, like we know how to serve customers and we just have to keep doing more and better at it all the time, you know? And like, it's kind of nice not having to figure it all out, but just to, to keep incrementally improving the things that work. So yeah, in a way it's like kind of nice that like my world is more refined, you know, from that perspective that there's kind of more certainty, but, but the, the lack of uncertainty has been, has been an interesting thing to, to kind of see over the last whatever year or so. It's kind of weird
Speaker 1 00:20:48 To hear you say that a lack of uncertainty has given you some disconcerting feeling.
Speaker 2 00:20:56 Yeah. You get that like adrenaline hit from like the Ali shit, we're going to release this thing. Is it gonna like wreck the app or we're going to try this marketing thing? Is it going to work? And like at this point, I mean, we don't have everything figured out. Right. But like, what we're doing is working and until it doesn't, I'm perfectly happy to just keep doing it and do as much of it as we can, you know? Yeah. Because I think that's the, that's the, that's the, the trap that, that like really creative folks run into is like, they're doing this thing and it's working and they're like, Oh, what if we go to this other thing? You know? And like, I definitely get that shiny object thing. And I am glad that I haven't with cast dose because I may have like responsibility to myself and the company and our investors to, to kind of keep at this and grow it as big as we can. And I'm glad I haven't like run, you know, run into, you know, shiny object syndrome where I go chase another things. Cause that's, that's pretty dangerous, I think. And pretty rarely works out great. You know? Well, it definitely comes with a lot of risks. No question. Yeah. Yeah. That was a huge tangent and totally unrelated to the other stuff we were talking about, but it's, it's pertinent. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:22:10 We can call this the tangents episode. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:22:12 Yep. Uh, how active are you on social media,
Speaker 1 00:22:19 Social media platform? I am semi-active on at this point. It's Twitter and it's the only one in my opinion, that hasn't devolved into self-absorbed garbage. I removed myself from Facebook. I don't know, a long time ago at this point. I think it was probably about this maybe earlier. I don't know. It may be somewhere between 12 and 18 months. I'm not exactly sure. The exact timeframe. I just basically said to myself, one day I want to be on Facebook anymore. It doesn't make me feel good to be on here and seeing things that other people are telling me about their, you know, their amazeballs lives. And I'm like, I don't, I don't know that I care anymore. And it was either, you know, it was either that, or it was people complaining about some random situation or, you know, it was like a nasty bunch of politics from like people I went to high school with people that I'm not even really connected to.
Speaker 1 00:23:13 In fact, Facebook was literally the last and only connection I had to these people. I didn't really relate to them. I didn't really keep in touch with them. If I were to go to a reunion, I can't imagine standing around talking to them, but for some reason I have them on Facebook. And so, you know, I got off that completely. It just, and my life got immensely better after that. Just not being part of that. So Twitter has been the only place where I've remained active. And I think it's because I've noticed that all of our entrepreneurial circle and those that are, uh, pretty active in real estate, now that I'm looking to be an investor there, that's where they all hang out. That's where they mostly do their stuff. You know, it's not Instagram, it's not Snapchat. It's not Facebook. It's not WhatsApp. It's not, you know, and I looked at this whole clubhouse thing and I'm like, Oh, Hey, conference calls. Awesome. Yeah. Get enough of those. Thanks. So, you know, I sat on like one call and I was like, Hm, I'll see myself using this maybe once every four to six months, but this is not where I'm going to be hanging out. So it's pretty much Twitter for me.
Speaker 2 00:24:19 Interesting. Yeah. You, yeah, I don't do a lot of it at all. Really. I am most active, I guess, on Twitter, but yeah. I mean, I, for the same reason you mentioned of like, I just feel bad a lot of times when I go on there, as I see either people complaining or posting like news that I don't want to consume, or I don't know, just any number of things, you know, all these people talking about the millions and billions of dollars they're making and stuff. It just makes me feel like, Oh my God, I'm such a Stephen pilot crap. Yeah. I, I, I just don't like it, you know, but then I feel at the same time, like I should have a social media presence because I'm feeling, for instance, when we're hiring, like, I definitely Google people and look at their Twitter and LinkedIn and stuff.
Speaker 2 00:25:07 And like, if they don't have one, that's fine, but they have one and they haven't posted in a year. I'm like, you know, all right. That's, you know, that's a shame, you know? And like, I, it, it, that's not nearly like the biggest thing that we look at at all, but, but like, it's just something that I think everybody does when they're hiring is they go look, you know, try to get as much information about people as you can. And that's just part of, of, you know, screening, interviewing process. And, and I feel bad sometimes that I don't participate and I certainly don't contribute. Like, I'll look at Twitter and I'll read, but I don't post very often. But yeah, I just, I, I think overall I have a, more of a negative experience with it than I do positive, you know? And, and I just feel bad about it sometimes, like guilty, I guess it just suits the lame that I even say that, you know,
Speaker 1 00:25:57 I don't know, it's super lame, you know, here's a, here's an admission and anybody who is ever gonna try to apply for a job that I ever posted. They're now going to learn a dirty little secret here. I never look at anybody's social media when I'm hiring them. And that could be to my detriment, but, you know, I feel like the sins of social media, you know, people do and say a lot of stupid things on social media that aren't necessarily things that would bleed over into their work life. I know that that can actually come and blow back in negative ways, but I haven't ever looked at somebody's social media and been like, Nope, not gonna hire you. I've never looked at their social media. It just never, it never occurred to me that that was a thing that I should be doing because of course that doesn't seem relevant for like, you know, I'm hiring for a developer or I'm hiring for Facebook ads or whatever. I don't, I don't really care what your Facebook posts are. I just care if you get results for your clients and, you know, maybe that's naive or dumb or whatever, but yeah, I haven't really ever tried to do that. Maybe I should.
Speaker 2 00:27:06 Yeah, I dunno. I mean, yeah, it's just a data point, you know, and, and not a very important one, but I just think about like, if I was applying for a job now, would I feel like I needed to have more of a, you know, kind of online resume in the form of some social media. I dunno, probably, you know, like that and a website and a place that build and go to look at, you know, kind of who you are and what you do. I don't know, anyways, another, another huge tangent, but yeah, I, and I don't think my personal brand is what is going to make the business successful or not. Um, and I'm very glad that's the case. You know, I don't want that pressure on me to always be tweeting stuff and, you know, flouting kinda how awesome we are and stuff. Cause they think that's just weird and it's just not me. So I'm glad that we're able to pull this off without it, I guess.
Speaker 1 00:27:52 Yeah, that's good. That's good. Um, you know, one thing that is kind of weird to me is that, you know, I have to keep my Facebook account around because it's how I do my advertising. Yeah. So I can't totally shut it down because they won't let you open up a business account. You have to attach it to a real person and then you can have a business attached to that, but you can't have just a business account and then leave that maybe that's changed since I did this, but you know, for a long time, that's the way Facebook was. You couldn't actually have just a business account that was separate from a personal account. Maybe it's different now, but you know, that was the only thing that really ever kept that thing around. And I kind of wish it was different. You know, it just doesn't feel like, you know, if I want to sell the business, how am I gonna pass that Facebook thing along? I know you can do it with setting somebody else's the admin and you removing yourself as the admin, but it down. And the whole thing just feels kind of weird.
Speaker 2 00:28:49 Yeah. I'm most active probably in Facebook groups, uh, of anything, um, just like private Slack channels, like the, the big snow group we're in. Yeah. I, those, those are places I, I kind of hang out just because it's a controlled environment. Right. And I know everybody there and I know that I can kind of speak my mind relatively openly and there's not going to be some, you know, hater, whatever. That's like piping off about something I say. And if they do, like I know and respect those people. And so like, I take what they say, you know, in stride. Whereas I think social media, the dangerous thing is like you say something and somebody criticizes you or somebody calls you out. And, and you're just like, Oh my God, this is, this is not for me. Maybe I don't have a thick enough skin, but that's, that's where I come up short, I guess.
Speaker 1 00:29:34 Well, that reminds me of, you know, Dunbar's number. And I think why the smaller are a little less like that. Uh, I, you know, I have better experience in small groups than I have. If I post something on Twitter, that's even mildly controversial. You can definitely easily get called out for that because there's a lot of people that have the shield of anonymity and then they're just happy to spout out whatever they feel like standing out. And I see people ripping other people all the time on that platform for tweets that they put out, it looks like, you know, Twitter doesn't allow for nuance discussion and you're just sort of not assuming the best, but anyway, in a smaller discussion in smaller groups, smaller discussions, I don't see that as much. And I think it's because the social capital is higher. You know, you've, you've got more of a relationship with those people than you do with just 10,000 randos on Twitter.
Speaker 1 00:30:28 And because you're there for that Facebook group under a common banner, whatever that is, maybe you all like to go hunt rocks on the weekends or your hiking enthusiasts, or, you know, Facebook ads or Pat podcasting, whatever, it doesn't matter. There's something that kind of binds you all together. And there's typically not more than a few hundred people in the group. And of that, there's usually a couple dozen that are active. Yeah. Know, there's people that will kind of come in and out of that, but you know, of the active group, you mostly get people that don't necessarily just want to bash on each other. They want to have genuine real discussions, learn exchange ideas, stuff like that. So I feel like those places tend to be a little less toxic, although, you know, it's not a guarantee I've been in small Facebook groups where degenerated into a Lord of the flies style discussion for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole thing had to be wholesale shut down a nuclear morbid.
Speaker 2 00:31:26 Yeah. Well man, I, this is kind of a ranging episode, but it's good to catch up and, uh, and kind of chat through some of these things. Uh, yeah. Folks have any kind of thoughts about hiring or kind of trends we're seeing with COVID uh, now that it's kind of settling in or anything else we've talked about, shoot us a message podcast, rogue startups.com. And as always, if you're enjoying the episode, share it with someone who you think would enjoy it too. And we'll see you then.
Speaker 0 00:31:49 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.
