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 blow. Welcome back to the rogue startups podcast. This is episode two 46, Dave, how are you doing?
Speaker 1 00:00:26 I am fantastic today. How about yourself?
Speaker 2 00:00:28 I am good. I am good. We are relatively just down the street, uh, relative to being across the ocean. I, uh,
Speaker 1 00:00:37 You're two times zones away instead of five. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:00:40 Yeah. It's pretty nice. It's pretty nice. Yeah. We're we got, uh, back to the States. We were in Florida for four weeks. Got here Saturday night and uh, yeah, just, just hanging out for a little bit.
Speaker 1 00:00:54 Well, welcome home my friend. Welcome home.
Speaker 2 00:00:57 Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it is, uh, it is nice to be here to say like, yeah, so, I mean, I think the, the story, the story is we, you know, France got put into their third confinement or lockdown. Uh, they announced it last Wednesday or Thursday. And we were like, like, literally cannot, cannot do this thing where you can't leave. It was within 10 kilometers of your house. Kids had a two week spring break coming up. They canceled school or put, put everybody in like remote school for this week, uh, ahead of the week of the two weeks of spring break. So we're like, whatever, we're not gonna miss any, literally not gonna miss anything for at least three of the four weeks that we decided to come for. And hadn't seen family and a year and a half. So we were like, let's, let's do it. So,
Speaker 1 00:01:43 And that's not all you got a bonus.
Speaker 2 00:01:46 I got a bonus, a shot in the arm on Sunday morning
Speaker 1 00:01:50 In the immortal words of Hamilton. You're not throwing away your shot. I mean, it's,
Speaker 2 00:01:56 This is the thing. This is, I mean, you know, we really like living in France. Right. But like we w we roll up to the, like the FEMA, like vaccination center on Easter morning at seven 30 in the morning. Cause we're fucking jet lag. And I've been up since four, we roll up at seven 30 in the morning. And Dave, there was like 200 people working there, you know, volunteers, national guard, traffic direction, nurses, nurses, assistants, scheduling, checking your ID, like of just amazing. Right? Like, and it just so would never, ever, ever, ever happened in France. Like, and that's why so many people are getting vaccinated here. Right?
Speaker 1 00:02:35 I mean, this, this is a real fucking head-scratcher for me. I have to say, you know, I've, I've never been one to say, yeah, you know, we've got the, the, the kind of infrastructure that we can just turn around and make this stuff all happen because it definitely was a struggle, like until we had the switch of administration, the roll out of the vaccine was kind of a disaster, but now January, I mean, it has been moving a pace at just blistering velocity. Yeah. And that's awesome. That is unbelievably awesome. Like I just, I love seeing all these things that pop up that say, Hey, I'm going to get my first dose of vaccine today. I'm like, yes, go get them, everybody go get them. And it's baffling to me that Europe doesn't seem to be on the same train. Like I've heard that the UK is struggling for distribution. Spain is struggling for distribution. You've told me about France, struggling for distribution. Like you've got all of this stuff going on, all these variants floating around the one that you have a tool in your toolbox that is the perfect tool for this. Why are you not pushing this out as fast as humanly possible?
Speaker 2 00:03:51 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just, I don't have the answer and I don't think, I don't think anybody knows why those countries mean. Certainly like they don't, it's not like they want COVID to be sticking around. I think it's just, they're literally not able to prioritize resources as fast as the United States is. Right. And in England, somewhere in between. Right. Cause like super capitalist country, maybe not quite as much as the U S you know, cause like they have a national health service and stuff like that, but I mean, you see them doing better than a lot of other countries. Maybe not quite as good as the U S in terms of vaccination rollout, but then like you look at Israel where like, they are able to allocate the resources. They are able to do it in a much more top-down manner, you know? And that's why, I mean, the vast majority of the country there is vaccinated and like COVID kind of doesn't exist there anymore. Um, right. It's like over 80%, right? Yeah. And so restaurants are open. Theaters are open. Yeah. So yeah, we went, we went to a Mexican restaurant, sat inside yesterday, cause it had been like 36 hours since I had gotten my shots. I was like, I'm pretty safe at this point. And fucking, you know, went inside to a restaurant for the first time in eight months. Yeah. Wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:05:04 I mean, weird, weird, uh, and you know, glad you were able to get it while you were here. I assume your wife is getting one as well or got one at the same time. Yep,
Speaker 2 00:05:16 Yup. Yeah. Yup. You've been, you've gotten your first shot.
Speaker 1 00:05:20 I've gotten my first. Um, my wife and I basically went on the same day, had two separate appointments. And so we're going back on the same day for the second round here pretty soon. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of weeks out. I'm super excited about that. We've got, you know, travel plans for the fall. There's going to be a, uh, a big snow, except it's not going to be a big snow. It's going to be more like a big summer, a big summer event that we're going to hold later in the year after everybody's had a chance to get vaccinated. So yeah. We're uh, w we're excited to return to some level of normalcy. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:55 Yeah. For sure. For, I hear, well, you both through, you know, friends and people like on the team that, that the second vaccine is, is quite the doozy. So I'm not looking forward to that. Like a lot of people are, are kind of, you know, feeling pretty bad after the second vaccine. So that'll be the week before we leave here. So not super looking forward to that, but the first it's been a breeze, like no problem at all. So yeah, that plus jet lag gotta feel awesome. Yeah. That'd be great. That'd be great. We'll sleep really good once we get, get back to France. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:06:25 I'm having a colonoscopy the day after my second shot, I asked them, I said, is this cool? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2 00:06:33 So I'm sure I'll be, you know, boiled. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:06:36 I'll be enjoying that experience. Yeah. Yep, yep. Good times. Good times.
Speaker 2 00:06:41 So, yeah, I mean, I think the other just in this is, I don't want to make the episode all about this, but it has been in very interesting. We're just recording this on Tuesday. Um, but to be working in the same time zone, as, you know, folks like Matt and Kim and Alec who are kind of our team leads for, you know, success, marketing, customer support and development, all of our, on the East coast, in the U S pretty interesting to be kind of on the same time zone. As, as everybody here it's been, you know, it's been nice. It's been like good perspective to, you know, see what they're seeing in terms of the cadence of things like meetings. And we have a daily stand-up in Slack and it goes off at nine o'clock in the morning. And, you know, like, that's, I dunno, I dunno if that feels right or not compared to when we have meetings and stuff. So it's been, it's been cool to see. And I find my work schedule being quite different than it is in France when I've, you know, the morning basically by myself to do stuff. And then the afternoons for calls and podcasting like this, you know, the morning now I'm in calls in the afternoon, I'm doing email and projects and stuff like that. So it's been, it's been a trip to see the difference. Um, yeah, jury's still out. Which one I liked more, but yeah,
Speaker 1 00:07:49 I have to say that the morning is better for anything that I've got like a tighter, more intense mental focus project. I'd rather do it in the morning than the afternoon, because after about three o'clock my fatigue just sort of sets in mental fatigue. I'm still there. I could still do stuff, but my focus isn't as strong as it was earlier. My motivation is definitely way lower. And if I can like switch out things that don't require huge amount of cognitive output on my part, that's good. So like, I, I try to push certain kinds of emails to the end of the day. So if there's like financial updates or I need to send a bunch of reminder emails or, you know, stuff that is a little more rote, I prefer to do that in the afternoon because I'm usually a little bit cooked and I'm like, all right, well, I still got to do something here, but, uh, let's get the stuff done that I don't have to think too hard about and try to do the other stuff in the morning when I'm a little freer.
Speaker 2 00:08:51 Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think, well, one I'm still jet lag, so I'm up at like five and I'm getting some of those really high, high glucose things done before my calls that start at nine. And I think I would try to still do the same because I think, you know, we, we owe it to our team members who are in Europe, you know, to have calls in the morning here. So they're not on calls that, you know, seven o'clock at night or whatever, but I, I might end up being one of those people that gets up at five 30 in the morning and does, you know, an hour of real good work before, before breakfast and stuff. So I dunno, we'll see, we'll be here for four weeks. So I'll, I'll figure it out. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:26 Yeah. So you're staying with family in Florida,
Speaker 2 00:09:28 Right? We are. Yep. Yep. We're visiting. Yeah. Everybody's here now, uh, visiting, you know, all sorts of different family, um, and kind of different parts of the state over the next three and a half weeks. So that'd be good. It's been a long time. Yeah. And
Speaker 1 00:09:41 I assume your parents got the vaccine while ago.
Speaker 2 00:09:44 Yep. Everybody, all, all kind of parents are, you know, bed dub had both, both doses of the vaccine already, so pretty feel pretty safe. You don't have to be around them. Like we traveled obviously, you know, fucking forever to get here and just came straight here and didn't have to quarantine or anything. So, and felt, felt pretty safe about it. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Great. That is great news. I love to hear that stuff. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So, uh, business, how, uh, I have some updates from my end on the, on the kind of content marketing perspective, but we'd love to hear how things are, how things are going from your end. Well,
Speaker 1 00:10:20 You and I had a conversation about the content marketing kind of offline, and, you know, you were like, let's, you should just be writing a bunch of articles and, and throwing them out there and doing them as cheap as possible and see what has traction and then work more on that. And I might be asleep
Speaker 2 00:10:40 Slight exaggeration of what I said, but yeah, I, I, I would, I would drift towards action even if it's not perfect. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:10:48 So, um, you know, I was talking with Ruben some more about that and what I should be doing in general. And he, you know, gave me some agency contacts to reach out to and said, you're probably not going to get as much quantity out of this, but you will definitely get a very high quality. And on top of that, you'll be, it'll be a completely hands-off process for you. Like they will do all the stuff, it'll be SEO optimized, they'll do the promotions and the link building and the whole kitten caboodle. So I'm like, Oh, okay. That's cool. And then, you know, we had the discussion about the merits of, of your approach and he's like, Ruben was decidedly against that. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:11:26 Yeah. Why, why is that? Well, he said, this is the shit,
Speaker 1 00:11:31 You know, throw some shit against the wall and see what sticks approach, as opposed to, you know, doing more focused keyword research on specific, intense, and then focusing on those. And maybe it was just my characterization of how it was being approached because when I talked to him about doing this hands-on because my probably is not quite big enough for an agency. I'm still in talks with the two agencies that I reached out to. And neither of them have said, yes, I'll work with you. And yes, we can do that. And here's what you get for that price. So that's still an in-flight, but, you know, he was saying, well, yeah, you can do this with more manual input on you. And, you know, you get somebody to do the research and they create a high quality document that says, these are the things, these are the topics that you should go after, based on this data and then get a content writer to specifically write about those particular topics and then get somebody to do link building and then get somebody, uh, also to do editing, because you never know about the quality of those articles and you want to Polish it to a certain level before pushing it out there.
Speaker 1 00:12:41 So he definitely had a, uh, a higher touch manual workflow, but it sounds like he's kind of going after that right now. So he said that, uh, he's gonna talk a little bit about that and try to figure out what that looks like in his current incantation of that incarnation of it. And let me know kind of what he would recommend if I decide that that approach is what I would want to do. It still sounds to me like it's what you were recommending just with some extra steps in there. So yeah. I don't know what the distinction is. Maybe you and Ruben and I should get together on a show and hash this all out.
Speaker 2 00:13:23 Yeah, I think we totally should. I think we totally should because, uh, you know, very, very happy for him are, are kind of long time content writer has taken the kind of a full-time in house marketing role. And so we are looking for a new writer. We are also looking for a full-time marketing person. So anyone who's listening, who's interested in either role, let us know. But I think that, you know, your full-time marketing person should not be your writer. Uh, I think having a dedicated writer is just kind of a good utilization of, of people's resources and skills, um, because a marketing person should do a lot more than that, but yeah, so we are going to be kind of really probably relooking at our strategy and our, our framework of, of how we go about executing content, you know, because this person is leaving whenever somebody, you know, leaves and a new person comes in, I think it's a good opportunity to look at your processes and, and how you approach things.
Speaker 2 00:14:16 Just because, I mean, if nothing else, like the person coming in will have a different set of experiences and skills and preferences about how they like to work. And it's a good opportunity for us to take a look at what we're doing, adapt that to make the best use of this person's skills. I mean, I think specific really specifically, like the person kind of sent me a message yesterday afternoon. Hey, but, well, I just want to let you know, I can write you, you know, with you for the next few weeks, blah blah. So, I mean really practically, like we put a job posting up on pro blogger.com job board, and we work remotely, uh, this morning that just pipes people, a Google form, uh, which is kind of how just that's our applicant tracking system. It's just a fucking Google form that goes into a spreadsheet and we're able to filter and everything people from there.
Speaker 2 00:15:01 We'll probably take some of the things that we were talking about last week, Dave, of, you know, we, we ask for writing samples upfront, which is kind of the, the substitute for like a coding project for a developer is like, Hey, show me, we are work. Right. I think for me, that's like, what we try to get out of a coding project is, Hey, you know, how do you work? And so that's an absolute must to see a writer. I've got to see what their work products look like. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we ask basically just to see their work, why and why they're interested in this role in particular and, and the, the words they put on paper, you know, they're the writing that they put there is, you know, those are basically the only two things that we'll screen against is what does their writing look like and how do they answer that question?
Speaker 2 00:15:44 And then, you know, it's nice. It's not like a W2 employee that you go all in on, but you know, these, these writers, I think, want to be contract freelance writers just where you pay them by the article and from our perspective, it's great because we can just say, okay, we need, you know, five blog posts to go out. And the next five weeks, I want to hire five writers and have them all write different blog posts. Half of them probably will work out and half of them don't, but then we're only spending a few hundred bucks on those ones that don't work out as a, a really quick and relatively inexpensive way to, to really kind of field test a person, you know, are they a good fit? Do they communicate, do they actually write, do they deliver what you ask them for? And I think the real challenge will be kind of like you're alluding to, I think with, with Rubin is like, we have to prepare this package to give to them, right.
Speaker 2 00:16:37 And like, this has to be okay, this is the keyword that we're going after. This is why we want to write the article. This is who it's for, where they are in the buying journey. These are the supplemental or secondary keywords that we want to target. These are the other resources on our site that we want to cross link to. This is how long it should be. These are the other articles that are out there that we think are good inspiration. You know, that is that document for just one article is, you know, a non-trivial amount of time for me to put together, right. That's at least an hour or two of work, depending on how deep you go in that research article per article. Yeah. So I mean, maybe what we will do and just thinking out loud about this, just cause I haven't had time to think about this too much, other than on this call.
Speaker 2 00:17:21 It's like maybe say we have two, two writers write each article, you know, for, for one article have at least two writers write the same article so that we can see the difference. And, and hopefully at least one of them will work out to where we have these five articles give test projects to, to a bunch of people and we're, we're covered. So that one of the two will give us an article that we can publish, hopefully it's because we really want to keep pushing out content. And then, and then from there, I think the hard part is like, you know, when you bring a new person in like all of the systems and stuff have to be like, you know, we document a pretty fair amount of it, but like you gotta, you gotta work through all of that stuff with a new person.
Speaker 2 00:18:03 And so just like, okay, this is, you know, this is how we organize the work and this is where it is a notion and these are the keywords and this is how you do WordPress. Hopefully somebody knows WordPress, but like all of that stuff just has to be reoriented to, to this new person. So I'm, uh, I'm not looking forward to it, not looking for it. I just didn't want to have to deal with this right now, but, but I'm excited about a new person coming in. You know, it'd be really cool to get somebody with a lot of podcasting experience. You know, Dennis that's been writing for us has a lot of writing experience and a lot of marketing experience, but he would tell you, you know, he's not a podcaster. So, um, yeah, I think that would be, that would be really cool. So we're just looking forward to, to, you know, that, you know, kind of getting over the hump and respect in that respect,
Speaker 1 00:18:49 I would think that that Venn diagram overlap for podcasters and writers is a little tighter than e-commerce and writers. Like it seems like there's a shit ton of SAS writers, e-commerce writers, e-commerce SAS writers, but the podcaster I'm guessing is a bit of a smaller circle on that Venn diagram overlap with writers.
Speaker 2 00:19:12 Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I mean, you know, I mean, we have done pretty good, right. With like Denise on the team before was not a podcaster. Dennis is not a podcaster and we've, you know, we've gotten to where we are with having people that are not podcasters and have been successful to some degree. But I think that our ability to kind of, you know, kick it up a notch, Emeril Lagasse with someone who has a podcast or, and can speak from like first-person experience is really significant, um, to, to kind of put up kinda maybe next level content, especially around like the creative process and selling ads and all this kind of stuff that somebody who's actually doing it. Maybe able to talk to that, that like somebody who's not just, just doesn't, you know, they don't have the domain expertise.
Speaker 2 00:19:57 Sure, sure. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's not the biggest thing on my plate right now, but that just came up yesterday. So it's definitely kind of front of mind. Yeah. You know what I mean? W something else that I am kind of just thinking about is, you know, like all, all of these like conversations around like people and stuff is like, that is just becoming so much a bigger part of maybe what I feel we need, you know, is like more good people in the right spots. Yeah. It's just a, it's a pretty big change that like, I've not been like the person executing a lot of frontline things for a while, but, and I'm not doing a good job explaining this. I'm still not the person doing frontline execution of things, but I'm, I'm just seeing more and more that like, we need really, really, really good people doing these things. And that is just like really the most important thing that I'm doing right now is trying to find those people that I don't know. I don't know how else to phrase that because that's a shitty way of doing it, but that's, that's just kinda where I am, I guess. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:21:02 I mean, hiring, hiring good people has always been hard, but I do see it getting harder. I mean, every, so I, you know, I don't, I'm not hiring anybody specifically right. This second, but you know, I'm probably going to be having a, uh, a writer position put out there on pro blogger, like you did here in the near future. But for my freelance client, we're trying to bring in some additional developers. And I see others that are saying things on Twitter. Like it's never been harder to hire good people today than all other days, or don't make sense. Yeah. It's, it's really fucking hard to hire good people today in this climate right now. And yeah. I mean, I, I hear you, man. Um, when you have the wrong people, that just sucks. Absolutely sucks. It's a drain on your time and you know, and the worst is if you get somebody who's mediocre who isn't totally terrible, but they're not totally great either. And you really kind of want totally great. And it takes a while for you to decide, are they just not great or are they just not terrible? You know?
Speaker 2 00:22:09 Yeah. And, and I want to be really clear cause like, I think, I don't know a lot of our team listens to this and like we're not in that position. Right. We have everyone we have on the team right now is absolutely perfect for, for their role. And like, I'm extremely happy with everybody on the team right now. It's the additions that we need to make, you know? So like, I feel very happy that like everybody on the team, I feel like as an, a player, everybody's happy in their role with what their responsibilities are, but it's like, we need to hire a writer. We need to hire a marketing person. We need our sales person. We need to probably bring like a full-time designer front, front end person in house, you know? And like, I really feel like we need like, honestly need all of those things today, you know? And we just hired four people. And so it's just like, I think I'm just feeling, I don't know, overwhelmed. This is not, maybe it's the right word, but it seems, it seems soft, but it just is like to think that, that the company needs that many people to like realize its potential, you know, is, I don't know. It's just, it's a new thing for me, I guess is, is the only way I can say it. Well, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:23:15 I mean, if you're going to put the effort into get an, a player, it really does require a level of effort to find them. Um, cause you've got to Wade through a ton of shit. Uh, yeah. I mean, I am, I am so thankful to have an, a player for a developer on recapture, you know, so if you're listening to this mic, you are a plus a plus plus you get a 5.0 grade average, you're like the AP of developers. Um, so yeah, mean it's, it's absolutely fantastic when you have a players and when you don't have a players, it's a real struggle. And you know, I had that on the plugin and it really dragged me into the, uh, deep, deep hole of despair because it was just good enough. And then at some point you're like, ah, I should've done this a long time ago. And then it's then you feel guilt about not having done it sooner. And it kind of paralyzes you, which only perpetuates the cycle, you know, it makes it even worse. Right. So, you know, I was glad to disavow myself of the plugins there and uh, and get rid of the folks that were not, not living up to the potential there. It was, it's hard to fire people. It's hard to hire people. Yeah. Thanks. But thanks for ruining my day, Craig, I think, I,
Speaker 2 00:24:36 I think a couple of things, one like fortunately that, you know, good companies are going to stand out more with this, right? Because like the, the, the, the people looking for jobs can say, I'm only going to go work for cool companies with cool cultures. And so like, it's a little bit up to us to sell our company and our culture and our team and how we work and stuff to, to these people, uh, who are looking for jobs, which is a cool opportunity to stand out because before it was kind of just like, you know, do you want a job? Yep. Here's what we can pay. Cool. Oh, it's remote. Awesome. You know, blah, blah, blah. But now it's like, you know, what space are you in? And, and kind of a lot of those softer things, which are hopefully like intangible things that we can do as small companies that big companies can't.
Speaker 2 00:25:17 Yeah. And then, you know, but then I see like, I mean, you see it in the news, right? Google calling everybody else back in house. Right. Like, I think that's a extreme, uh, side of it, but, but I do expect like through the fall that this shift to remote and, and everybody feeling like they can work from everywhere is going to unwind a little bit. And maybe even it will be an advantage again for us, because I mean, we, we talked to somebody for one of the roles we're hiring for, and they had had gone remote with a company they're with moved back home. Right. Decided they really liked living there. And their company had already said, okay, but in the fall, you're going to have to come back to, you know, the mothership. And they were like, no, I don't, I don't want to move back to that expensive city that is far away from people I know, and, and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 00:26:08 And so I think that there will be this other swath of people into the summer and fall that are saying, like, I really liked a distributed first team and being, you know, native remote, and I'm not moving back to San Francisco or New York or whatever. And that people like us that are hiring remote positions by then, or at that time might have some really, really, really strong candidates that value, you know, remote first companies that will stay remote when these other companies are bringing folks back in house, I'm hoping was maybe I'm talking myself off the ledge.
Speaker 1 00:26:44 Well, I hope so too, but I mean, I'm seeing the same kind of thing with my freelance client. They just called for voluntary returned to the office. But if you say that you're coming back, it's full time. There's no, no hybrid crap. You can't come in a couple of days a week. It's five or nothing. Yeah. But it's not, it's still, it's voluntary. Now. I suspect by summer it will not be voluntary. And they will just basically be shoving everybody back into the office. And I think that there's going to be a significant amount of grumbling in the it department because they are very, they're very happy to have no commute right now and still be able to fully do their jobs. Not everybody in the company was feeling that. And, you know, the, the top brass are very much still butts in chairs and the whole financial services industry.
Speaker 1 00:27:34 I saw an article from the CEO of Goldman and, you know, he's using a bunch of very flowery corporate speak to talk about, you know, how there were all these missed opportunities for collaboration and the dynamism that happens in the hallways. And I'm like, it's, this is all about butts in chairs for you. You want to see people to make sure that they're working. That's all it is. That's all it is. There's just a lack of trust. And I'm like, if you can't trust your employees to work, you hired the wrong people and you have a shitty culture. I'm sorry. I mean, I agree with that.
Speaker 2 00:28:08 And I kind of don't, I was just on a call with like a partner earlier today saying like, it, can you imagine the, the process and the culture shifts and all that of, you know, Amazon or Google going remote, you know, and like culture shift of all that. And like it is, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:28:28 The sun is already mostly remote. If you're in a development role, you know, I've got one of my neighbors, uh, works in one of the e-commerce arms for Amazon. And I had another friend of mine that was working in a, an AI department over there and they already worked remote. So you could work. Okay. You know, in an office, not in an office,
Speaker 2 00:28:48 Whatever financial services or anywhere that, that you know, was in the office before, maybe for good reason, just because that's the way the company was founded. And then they got to go remote. And I mean, I don't fault them for wanting people back in the office. I mean, if that's how it worked well for, you know, 20 or a hundred years or whatever, like is remote that much better, that you've changed the whole fabric of the company, you know, I don't, I don't think so. I mean, it works for us, but there are some days I would love to, you know, just have the 10 of us in an office, down the street that I could ride my bike to. And we could just fucking hang out and rap on stuff for eight hours and go home. And like, I think that would be really cool, like, cause it overcomes a lot of the challenges of time zones and the community. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:29:36 I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not poo-pooing that I'm, poo-pooing the, we've been a hundred percent remote now we have to go back to a hundred percent in-person I agree. And there is no flexibility. There is no, in-between, that's what I think is bullshit. I agree. I think there should be like, okay, let's say that we have to have two or three days in the office a week. And I think people would be like, okay, yeah, I could do that. And I can see that there would be a productivity boost because there are times you just simply don't want to leave your house and you've got a bunch of other stuff going on and you can schedule things around it, like give people some flexibility for God's sakes. And for those that are struggling with the, you know, get, make the option so that they could be in the office, if they're struggling great, let them be in the office. I don't have a problem with that, but saying, everybody has to go back to the office because that is the only and best way to handle this. That's what I'm rebelling against.
Speaker 2 00:30:32 Yup, yup. Yup. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:30:35 And unfortunately I think that's where that's where some firms are at. Certainly I'm hearing that strongly in the financial services sector. Like this is the only way it's ever worked. We have got to return to the quote working way, therefore fuck remote. And I'm like, Hmm. Okay. Boomer.
Speaker 2 00:30:54 Yup. Yup. Yeah. I think it's, uh, I think, you know, again, maybe it's an advantage for us. I mean, we're not in financial services, but like maybe it's an advantage for us as like, you know, more nimble small companies to say, like, we can be flexible to what our, you know, our, our team members want. I dunno. I dunno. Yeah. It is an interesting time. I mean, we've been fucking talking about COVID for so long and now that like, well, I didn't over right. But I mean, for me it's over fucking whatever. I don't care. I don't, I mean, I'm not Bulletproof, but I mean, I don't worry about it anymore. And that's just a really big mindset shift. And I think as, you know, millions and millions, more people get to that point, like we're going to go into this other like post COVID world, which I think will have a lot of effects that we hadn't planned on so far, at least, you know. Right,
Speaker 1 00:31:45 Right. It will be, it will be interesting to see. And you know, I know Brad Tanara has specifically said that he's struggling to find good people right now that are remote because everybody was suddenly offering remote. And I've seen a lot of job postings on LinkedIn where people are like remote until COVID, you know, remote until it's all over. It's like, that's coming soon here. So what are you going to do afterwards? And maybe that advantage retains and, you know, companies like cast dos or delicious brains or recapture are going to have that advantage again because the other companies are just a little too stuck in their ways and who knows. We'll see. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:32:26 Will be interesting to see. I mean, certainly between now and the end of the year, the next, you know, six, seven months will be really interesting to see what, you know, culture is like both in and out of work. I think for things like trips, you know, returning doing trips, vacation, and conferences and stuff like that will happen. And I think some people would just kind of aren't emotionally ready for it still in some respects. But I think all of us are ready at the same time. Yup. Yup. Yup. We shall see. Yep. We'll uh, David is, it is nice to be back in the U S of a, uh, and for everyone out there listening, go, go get your COVID shot. If you can. It was whatever it was easy. It's just great to feel like it's over. And yeah, I hope everyone enjoyed the episode. If you're enjoying it, please share the podcast with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. And as always, if you're enjoying it, give us the thumbs up five stars in iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 0 00:33:20 And we'll see you next week. 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.
