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.
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Welcome to episode 2 54 of Rogue Startups, Craig, how are you doing
Speaker 2 00:00:25 This week? I'm good, man. I almost forgot how we do this. It's been a couple of weeks that we took off in there and sorry to everyone for, for leaving you hanging, but yeah, it's summertime. And I think it's some of what we're going to talk about is just, you know, doing in life a little bit amongst all this craziness.
Speaker 1 00:00:43 I mean, sorry that we left everybody hanging, not sorry that I took the time off. It was very good. Uh, I just got back from a week's vacation with my family. We went camping all over Colorado and had a fantastic time. It was very, very much needed.
Speaker 2 00:00:59 That's awesome, man. That's awesome. I want to dig into the details of, of what you did and stuff, but share just from my end. Similarly had not like time entirely away, but last week or no, two weeks ago now, I guess my son was in a soccer camp for most of the week. And so I was taking off a pretty good amount of time to go kind of help out and spend time there. And then they were in another summer camp last week and I spent a fair amount of time shuttling the kids and doing that stuff. So really, really nice two weeks working about like three quarters time. Maybe almost no calls in the evenings and stuff like that, which yeah. Leaves me now like rear nego and batteries charged and everything. So I think it's however you slice it, you know, taking some time in the summer, especially to charge step away, get some perspective is super healthy.
Speaker 1 00:01:48 Absolutely. I would say it's mandatory and not just the summer. I think, you know, for me it feels like I need to do this a little more often to get that perspective to step away and come back and you know, every time I do this, I remember, oh yeah, that's really good for me. And then I ignore it for months on end and I'm like, this is not good. Yeah. So I guess I feel a little more attuned
Speaker 2 00:02:15 To it. You know,
Speaker 1 00:02:17 I ditched freelancing a couple months ago and yeah. I just feel like this was a major important shift that needed to
Speaker 2 00:02:25 Yeah, that's cool, man. Uh, so, so, so kind of spilled the beans. So you went camping, what you guys do give, give us all the good details.
Speaker 1 00:02:34 Yeah, sure. So the plan originally was to go camping at three different locations here in Colorado. For those that aren't familiar, uh, Colorado is filled with many, many camping opportunities
Speaker 2 00:02:47 There, desert there's
Speaker 1 00:02:49 Mountains, there's hiking and rafting and all that good stuff. And so, you know, to take advantage of that every summer is pretty much mandatory in this state. I think they want to kick you out if you, uh, but, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 2 00:03:03 It might be,
Speaker 1 00:03:05 So this was our long vacation for the summer. The kids actually start back to school here in three weeks ridiculously. Wow. So, and no, not even that two weeks, two weeks ridiculously. It's crazy. I know, I know your kids just got out too,
Speaker 2 00:03:18 So it's always like, oh, the kids are still in
Speaker 1 00:03:21 School. Oh, the kids just got out of school. Oh really? My kids are getting back into school. Yeah. They've been out of sync like that with Europe in the U S is a little funny. But anyway, so we, we did the trip. We went out to this reservoir on the Western
Speaker 2 00:03:35 Slope, the rifle gap.
Speaker 1 00:03:37 And we stayed there for a couple of days. And then we went down into the Cimarron, which everybody thinks are in New Mexico, but there's actually some Cimarron mountains in Colorado. They're very lesser known. It's a wonderful place. It's very
Speaker 2 00:03:51 Remote. They there for three
Speaker 1 00:03:53 Nights. And it was probably like the best campground we have ever been at in our lives. It was amazing. That's awesome. Yeah. And then we finished that up with some whitewater rafting in one
Speaker 2 00:04:06 Of Vista, which whitewater right there,
Speaker 1 00:04:10 Browns canyon, the Arkansas river. And my family had never gone whitewater rafting before myself included weirdly enough, my parents were not into whitewater rafting and you know, I never had an opportunity to do it with my friends when I was in my twenties. But anyway, we did it for the first time, had a fantastic time. So I mean just absolutely everything about the camp camping experience was awesome. We did paddle boarding, we did hiking. We just sat around and read in the
Speaker 2 00:04:38 Campsite wild life.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 Uh, you know, and the best part of all of this, uh, was the fact that I was unplugged completely unplugged, literally unreachable for six of the eight days that we were gone.
Speaker 2 00:04:53 Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Was the
Speaker 1 00:04:57 First day it was a little twitchy about it. I was kinda like, uh, I know everything's gonna be okay, but I kind of want to see what's going on. It had nothing. So, you know, Mike, our engineering
Speaker 2 00:05:11 Guru who
Speaker 1 00:05:13 Also listens to the podcast, hi, Mike was taking care of things while I was gone. He did a fantastic job. Absolutely nailed everything. Like he, you know, it was a pretty quiet week. Thankfully, a couple of minor issues came up, you know, the support
Speaker 2 00:05:28 Usual or lesser
Speaker 1 00:05:29 Pace and he handled all of it. But, you know, I just kinda want to see what's going on. Like it's, it's not about his ability to execute on anything, which is absolutely not in doubt. It's just, I have this need of wanting to know
Speaker 2 00:05:43 What the fact
Speaker 1 00:05:44 That I couldn't do it for six days made me chill the fuck out. Literally just had no choice. And that was great. It was really absolutely necessary after the first day
Speaker 2 00:05:58 That just kind of went away for driving
Speaker 1 00:06:01 In between, you know, I, I pulled up, uh, my phone really quick, but I literally had minutes to deal with this. And there was like one thing I had to send on to Mike that got emailed to me that he didn't see everything else was fine. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:14 So it was this entire
Speaker 1 00:06:16 Time and, you know, a huge Testament to our infrastructure and the way that we've set things up so that we're not constantly bombarded with support and all of these things. So yeah. I, you know, I feel like this was
Speaker 2 00:06:30 The compression
Speaker 1 00:06:33 I really needed after freelancing. The first two kind of helped me come down from that, but this is the one I felt like it purged my system. You know, now I feel like I'm fully in
Speaker 2 00:06:48 Business mode. Yeah. That's always just,
Speaker 1 00:06:52 Just starting to get into it before we got there. But now that I'm back, I feel totally into that. And also I've kind of noticed, you know, having done this for a couple of months now, I'm kind of falling into
Speaker 2 00:07:03 A site productivity where
Speaker 1 00:07:07 I'm doing stuff in the morning and you know, sometimes that's calls with customers sometimes that's, um, just discussions with partners over slack or email catching up on customer support
Speaker 2 00:07:20 And tasks, like
Speaker 1 00:07:21 Setting up cold email campaigns and stuff like that. But about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, I just noticed that my energy kinda goes may not like completely craters, but you know, I
Speaker 2 00:07:35 Really my best anymore.
Speaker 1 00:07:37 And so around that time, uh, one of two things has been happening either. I'll just switch all the business stuff off and I'll do like personal finance or catch up around on chores in the house or something like that. Or I'll just go read and I'm okay with it. Like, it just feels great to be able to have those options and say, yeah, you know, work's not working for me right now. Fuck it. I'm done.
Speaker 2 00:08:00 Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I have a similar kind of thing around that time. Maybe it's a, Hey like right after lunch is, is hard for me, but then there's a couple of like golden hours for us from like two here. So eight o'clock Eastern to like six where that's like our overlap with the U S team, especially folks on the east coast. Like I ha that's my only time all day that I have to be really going. Right. So we had generally like on days when we don't have a lot of calls or whatever, I agreed like, yeah. Two or three o'clock food coma, but only have a coffee right after lunch. I'm like a semester. So turn it off. Like I take the dog for a walk a lot around then and just reset and I come back and I can get another solid chunk of time in and then that's it. So that's, that's cool that you're able to see that and like acknowledge it. Right. And it's not like a point of stress for you. It doesn't sound like, yeah. A lot
Speaker 1 00:08:56 Of things, you know, I was doing some of this before, but my wife definitely shouldered more of a burden because she felt like, okay, from eight to five, Dave's working. So if something goes on during that time, I kind of need to handle it as much as possible. And
Speaker 2 00:09:12 We've
Speaker 1 00:09:13 Been doing now is more like, oh, can you pick up the kids at three o'clock yeah, sure. I can do that. Can you take our middle daughter over to ballet at four 30? Yeah, sure. I can do that. You know, things that I wasn't able to
Speaker 2 00:09:26 Do before, so now frees her
Speaker 1 00:09:28 Up and she's, you know, she has a tutoring schedule that is mostly afternoon heavy because that's when the kids are out of school. Right. So that's when she does her, her work for the reading intervention. And that's the only time that they're really available unless they're homeschooled. So it has definitely made it easier for her to do all of that. And you know, she's also when she was in a car accident earlier this year and is constantly having to deal with medical issues. So between the medical issues in the morning and the tutoring and the
Speaker 2 00:09:58 Good afternoon, I'm pretty full day.
Speaker 1 00:10:02 Yeah. Now I have the ability to take that off of her plate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, she's okay. We're still working through it. It's just, you know, she's got some loose joints and things don't snap back into place.
Speaker 2 00:10:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think it's one of the great pleasures of this life that we built for ourselves. Right. As being able to, to make work, fit around our lives, at least some of the time maybe. Right. Like I know there's definitely times where I just have to say to the, do this thing that you want to do cause I have to work, but there are definitely other times where I say, cool, yeah, two o'clock, I'm just going to bug out and then I'll get back on at six and work a couple hours. And that for me is totally cool and totally cool for the family. A lot of times, um, it makes it, it makes it really full long-term I think, to have that flexibility, even if it makes your life kind of weird, but you know, I don't know, like I've, I've accepted it, I guess. Right?
Speaker 1 00:10:57 Yeah. It is, it is odd, but like, you know, sometimes late in the evening,
Speaker 2 00:11:04 The side of the world, Australia,
Speaker 1 00:11:05 India, whatever pops up and has a question. And so I'll just jump on customer support at eight or nine o'clock at night to answer that. So that they've got that. But you know, having the flexibility to say, all right, I can do this right
Speaker 2 00:11:19 Now. Didn't work as much earlier.
Speaker 1 00:11:21 And I did some other things. I feel totally good about it before, when I had to do this after I had already worked nine or 10 hours at the freelance gig, plus whatever I had done at recapture, it felt more like a slog, but now it doesn't.
Speaker 2 00:11:36 Yep. Yep. I wanted to give an update from, from my end and wanted to, to, to hear how things are going from your end to about sales. All, I guess I'll give my update first. Uh, and then we can dig into how the stuff you have, like this window of time to try to capitalize on
Speaker 1 00:11:55 Some of that stuff. You show me yours, I'll show you mine.
Speaker 2 00:12:00 So I guess the good news for us and like I don't pat myself on the back that often. I hope I don't at least, but we, uh, offers to two account executives, sales reps, both of them were accepted in they're starting of the middle of August. So in like two, two and a half weeks, and I'm just really proud of us. Cause it took kind of like the whole team to, you know, recruit and screen and make the offer and really sell the candidates, which is like a really good sign. And so I'm just like super excited that like we got our first two choices, which is awesome. They're both young and hungry, experienced salespeople, really excited about that. And then like it puts at the same time, this immense burden on me and Sam and Matt to, you know, get stuff ready to feed these guys.
Speaker 2 00:12:52 So that's a lot of what we've been doing is, you know, off the sales focus stuff up until now has been like, let's get some sales people in here now that that's all done in these, these guys are just a couple weeks from starting. It's like, how do we fill up pipeline for them? And this has been kind of going on a lot, a lot before this, but it's a lot of now is around as around pipeline. But I guess like the update that's maybe not like the most exciting update is we've started both, uh, like cold email campaigns and some paid acquisition stuff, which is, which is cool. And it's cool. The team really putting a lot of this together. So like Matt and Sam, I'm putting a lot of the creative parts together. And those, those both kind of like starting to drive some pipeline for, for our sales reps that are coming in in a couple of weeks. So that's cool. It's been a long, old email. Uh, we're using a tool called Lem list to, to actually send the emails it's fantastic. And using Phantom Buster to kind of tag team on LinkedIn the same contacts. So yeah, I guess that's our, that's our kind of like sale, uh, at this point
Speaker 1 00:14:02 That is amazing. And the fact that you've got those candidates in there is excellent. And you know, I think it's interesting that, well, it's not that interesting that you got a
Speaker 2 00:14:14 Couple of folks here for remote
Speaker 1 00:14:17 Work, because I think that there is definitely a shift right now and folks are looking for remote work. So those of us that are offering pure remote only positions still had that advantage as people are trying to shift back to in-person. So, you know, congratulations on selling a couple of candidates on that. I'm sure that they were pretty excited to have a full remote position after the whole COVID thing, right?
Speaker 2 00:14:41 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. One of them had been remote before, but the other definitely had not been. And so yeah, I think part of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:14:49 Yeah. So that's awesome. And uh, good luck with that. I know that, uh, onboarding one person is always a challenge onboarding multiple people, but you've got a larger team than I do. So you know, it doesn't all fall to you. You can get some help, but yeah, it's
Speaker 2 00:15:02 Still it's um,
Speaker 1 00:15:05 An insignificant amount of work to make that happen at once. So congratulations on that. That's great. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:15:10 Yeah. So it'll be interesting to see how it goes. Yeah. How about you? How are, how are sales efforts going? So
Speaker 1 00:15:16 Sales efforts have actually been
Speaker 2 00:15:20 Here.
Speaker 1 00:15:21 Wheat two are using Lem list. Um, so good choice on that. I, uh, I don't remember who gave me the original recommendation on that. I don't think it was you because I just now realized you were also using the same tool. I was, I don't know who was that
Speaker 2 00:15:35 Original, I mean,
Speaker 1 00:15:37 Anyway, but it doesn't really matter. So Len list is really good for cold email. And so what we did is we took 250 contacts that I had dug up and scrubbed out and also,
Speaker 2 00:15:51 You know, contact
Speaker 1 00:15:53 Information, phone number, email, founder, names, titles, stuff like that. Once I had sort of gotten to that level of it, I then set up a couple of sequences that I could test a shorter one and a longer one.
Speaker 2 00:16:07 And then through it.
Speaker 1 00:16:09 So two things surprised me about this whole thing in general. So one, this is the first time of all the times I've ever done a cold email campaign where I actually had people respond positively, which kind of blew me away. And you know, I think it has it, you know, obviously I hear about people that have effective cold email campaigns. I have never been one of those people that had an effective cold email campaign. And, you know, I was getting response rates that people told me I should be getting if the campaign is effective and it was interesting long or short, I was getting responses both ways. So it didn't like my
Speaker 2 00:16:56 Hush. Okay. Which I
Speaker 1 00:16:58 Also found to be somewhat interesting. Although I did see some differences in the open rates, like one of them had a 60% open rate.
Speaker 2 00:17:07 Wow. That's incredibly high. Yes it is. And then the other ones to 47%
Speaker 1 00:17:14 Open rates all across the emails, which again is really high average for those that don't know an average open rate in an email campaign, if you're in the mid twenties, you're doing pretty well. 30
Speaker 2 00:17:26 Is considered so 40 is like off
Speaker 1 00:17:29 The charts outstanding. So I was really shocked to see open rates quite that high and have positive responses. So that has been very much a good sign. And so what I've here, we've got a larger list of candidates or of leads here. I'm going and having those enriched as well. Cause I wanted to test this first. I didn't want to go and blow all my money on the list only to find that it's all crap. So we've gone
Speaker 2 00:17:59 And now the test turned
Speaker 1 00:18:01 Out, okay, now I'm completing the enrichment on the list. And then we're going to start cold email processing the rest of the list. And so far, uh, you know, of the ones that replied, they've basically been becoming customers like, tell me how to sign up, tell me how we can migrate here. Well, that's, that's massive. Like it's not just reply with interest. Like they are ready to sign up by the time they get there. So what I'm going to do is based on those high, based on the fact, and it was high open rates through all the emails, it wasn't just one, like I didn't trick them. And then they were like, fuck you, Dave, we're done. It was, you know, wow, okay, I'll read what you have to say each time, but you know, not everybody
Speaker 2 00:18:47 Responds. I know exactly
Speaker 1 00:18:49 How it goes as a store owner. You know, email marketing is always in your top five things to do, but it's never number one. And you know, you're dealing with supply chain and order management and inventory and customer support
Speaker 2 00:19:02 And what all of those
Speaker 1 00:19:05 Things are going to keep distracting you. So what I'm going to do is I'm probably going to hire the guy that you recommended to me to do some contract cold sales, and I'm going to, I already have the numbers for all of this. He's going to reach out to the ones that, and I'm going to try to have him do cold calling because I tried cold calling and that just sucked. You have phone numbers for everyone. Then I got phone numbers, not for everyone, but I think the hit rate was about 80%. Wow. It's huge. Which is pretty good. I mean, this, this, uh, outreach that I did with some, um, is a Filipino company and they have a bunch of really good VAs and they really did a good job enriching this list to the point where it was useful. So this was the recommendation, uh, from, uh,
Speaker 2 00:19:50 Breck Palumbo for
Speaker 1 00:19:53 Other things. So, uh, yeah, it was very good. If anybody's interested in the company, I'd be happy to connect you with that. Just send an email podcast@roguestartups.com. But with that, I think I can close even more of them because it's clear that interest now I've generated awareness. So it's like I've already moved them from top of funnel to middle of funnel. And I think I can go straight to bottle by funnel at this point with cold calls.
Speaker 2 00:20:19 Yeah. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. I mean, I think you're just your open rate is massive percent at this point. So like very happy with that, you know, and, and like I think anything above that is fantastic. So you must have some awesome subject lines there. I like the idea of multiple touch points and I think that's kind of what we're trying to do with like email LinkedIn, LinkedIn email, you know, bounce back and forth between the two. Some people aren't big on kind of one channel or the other for you, you know, email, phone call. Like it's just a different way to, to get in front of someone. Yeah. I think it, when you, when thing does show someone like, Hey, we like, we really care about getting in touch with you because we think what we're doing is so valuable and that you would benefit from it that we want to get in touch with you in multiple places are multiple ways in, you know, whichever works best for you is how we can connect. So yeah, I think, I think that's a really good strategy, man. Um, I, I won't be surprised if you have really good success with, with phone calls.
Speaker 1 00:21:19 Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm very happy with this and I struggled to kind of figure out what the strategy would look like because just, I took the approach and the cold call, but they have no idea who I am. And so the cold call feels too intrusive at that point. It's too cold. Right? It's too cold. Yeah. It was ice cold and that was bad. That was very bad. So switching to the email to kind of gently warm it up, I think is making a bigger difference. And so, you know, if I can get somebody who knows what the hell they're doing in the code cold calling, and I can give the guy a very clear idea because I have videos at this point of what I was pitching in the previous
Speaker 2 00:21:59 Cold fluently, everything
Speaker 1 00:22:01 In that video pitch is still legit, but now I've got a better set of leads to pitch it to. And you know, the one thing I've learned over the past four or five years is that following
Speaker 2 00:22:14 Up again, and again,
Speaker 1 00:22:17 Is going to make a huge difference. Just out-sized difference. The fact that, you know, most people will stop after two, three at the most, but if you're like, if you're doing six, you're an outlier position on that curve. So we did three emails here. We'll do some phone calls at that point if they're not signing up, but they're not moving over. Okay. That's fine. Maybe what I'll do is I'll try a reminder campaign later
Speaker 2 00:22:46 With that same, send it again to
Speaker 1 00:22:49 Say, Hey, you know, Jilt shutting down pretty soon. Have you had a chance to make that switch yet? You know, that kind of stuff. So, you know, I definitely can reuse this list in creative ways to get the people over there. Cause I know that there's
Speaker 2 00:23:02 A huge
Speaker 1 00:23:04 When somebody wants to change providers of anything as it just has to do with, you know, the hassle factor, the fear factor, the, I don't have time for finding a new solution factor.
Speaker 2 00:23:18 The, if
Speaker 1 00:23:21 Something that's different factor, all of those things. But if you're forced to do that with an event like this, you know, it's a real opportunity. And since I've got a large window, I feel like there's some strong possibility
Speaker 2 00:23:34 Of success. I noticed. In fact,
Speaker 1 00:23:37 Speaking to that inertia point, I did some checks, uh, on the leads and I took a Delta between June 1st and July. First of all, the ones that still indicated
Speaker 2 00:23:50 That they had jilted
Speaker 1 00:23:53 Take a guess at what the difference was in terms of 50
Speaker 2 00:23:59 Go down, uh, 10. I know it's less than that. Wow. Really? That's amazing. Yeah. It was only five, 5%
Speaker 1 00:24:09 In a 30 day window had actually moved up. Well, yeah. So
Speaker 2 00:24:16 What kind of, what kind of timeline are we looking at? Like when is the service actually shutting down? So
Speaker 1 00:24:21 They're technically
Speaker 2 00:24:23 Going to be till April,
Speaker 1 00:24:25 But I've already talked to one of the customers that's on there. They've kind of internally shut down some things on the service. So it's not even fully functional now. Okay. So it's not what it even used to be.
Speaker 2 00:24:38 That's crazy. I don't
Speaker 1 00:24:40 Know that they they've announced that so much to the customers. Uh, it certainly, I didn't get the impression that they had. He just sort of noticed it and you know, I was like, wow, okay. That's not good, but Hey, that's their choice what I would do, but okay.
Speaker 2 00:24:59 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's unthinkable for us to take up a business with customers and, you know, presumably is growing and profitable and just shut it down. But you know, they were acquired by a bigger company and this was only a part of what they did. And so like, yeah, I, that, but yeah, that whole, that whole thing is, is bizarre. But yeah, I mean, you're, you're getting folks right at the right time. Right. They're having to make that move. So yeah, it seems like a really opportune time. I want to, I want to clarify something you said about like, and like being persistent with folks. I think that know we're sending a three email sequence to these cold leads. Uh, and then we will stop. We won't send six or eight or 10 or something like that. But if somebody signs up for like a demo or sends a form or whatever on our side, love with them forever. And I think that that's like, that's the difference is like, if somebody comes to you or, or if they reply to a cold email, like they're a lead now and leads get followed up with, until they unsubscribe or tell us they don't want to hear any more or become a customer. But, but I don't think sending for a long period of time is the appropriate. Um, I, I'm assuming that's what you meant though.
Speaker 1 00:26:07 I mean, there's definitely a point of diminishing returns and I get really annoyed when I get six emails from somebody who I didn't really want to hear. So I try to be cognizant of that right now. We've, we've only done the three and I've tried in the past to go more than three. And I saw the unsubscribe rate go up after three, like four or five and six went significantly higher and I got more. Fuck
Speaker 2 00:26:31 You, Dave. So yeah,
Speaker 1 00:26:33 It was absolutely not the way to do it, but that was, you know, that's what all of the articles out there tell you to do, just keep following up and you know, I, and I remember Steli, FTE's talk from MicroComp, you know, follow up until
Speaker 2 00:26:46 They tell you. Yes. And, uh, but I don't think that's in the context of cold email. I think that's, if someone expressed interest in your shit follow up until they tell you to fuck off or become a customer. Um,
Speaker 1 00:26:58 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it definitely comes with some caveats and there, there
Speaker 2 00:27:02 Are polite ways to play, not polite ways to follow up.
Speaker 1 00:27:06 Yep. And I know that, you know, I, I don't want to have the reputation of the slimy guy. That's like sending too many emails to everybody in the space because e-commerce is small. And I've noticed already that people that leave me, this might be back in 18 months because they're pissed off with their previous provider and they're going to come back again. It's happened before it will continue to happen. You know, people, people get, you know, that's, the grass is always greener syndrome, right. They'll go jump to a different service. They'll use
Speaker 2 00:27:35 It for a while. Grass isn't
Speaker 1 00:27:37 That much greener and they'll come back if they liked what they had better before, you know, and the only way they'll do that is if they're treated well. So if you are not doing your customer service, if you're sending too many emails, trying to get them to sign up,
Speaker 2 00:27:52 Whatever, like, you know,
Speaker 1 00:27:53 I have it set in my drip sequences. If they reply to me, I stop. So, but follow up until they, you know, don't say anything or until I've got a certain number of follow-ups on there for
Speaker 2 00:28:06 Warm leads, customers asking for feedback and stuff like that. Yep. Yep. Yep. Nice. Um, so Dave, are you going to one of the MicroComp local meetups in the fall, sadly. And,
Speaker 1 00:28:25 And it isn't out of desire. Uh, at this point it's actually a bit of a schedule conflict. So the closest one to me would be Austin. And that one is sometime in October. I don't remember the dates of all of them. I know the one in Portland is actually conflicting with our big snow that is happening in the fall. And one of the attendees
Speaker 2 00:28:55 Already post in our slack group and said, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:28:58 I can't go to this because it's conflicting. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm so not changing the dates. I've got everything locked in. There's no way that's going to happen. Sorry. Yeah. But yeah, no, I haven't, I hadn't planned on
Speaker 2 00:29:10 Going to anything could involve some
Speaker 1 00:29:13 Travel. Uh, I did. Oh, there is some news that I do have. So in, instead of that specifically, I got accepted as a speaker to go to recurring revenue retreat live, which is in Florida in November. Cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Some other notable speakers that are going to be there. Uh, Brian castle from zip messages there and Chris lemme, uh, VP of product at nexus and Cory Miller,
Speaker 2 00:29:43 Uh,
Speaker 1 00:29:45 Uh, they'll all be speakers there. So I, I'm very excited and honored to be among such awesome people. And I'm looking forward to the fact that, you know, it's Florida in November when
Speaker 2 00:29:58 It's still warm for sure.
Speaker 1 00:30:01 And we can actually, you know, go out and get a little bit of extra sunshine and I'm, and my wife is actually coming with me. So yeah. So we're going to make a little bit of a mini vacation of it and that's going to be cool. But between that, and
Speaker 2 00:30:14 We have another vacation Tober to take our kids.
Speaker 1 00:30:17 We're going to Santa Fe for a week, uh, on their fall break. And then, you know, I've got, um, big snow in September. So, you know, my, my dance, card's a little bit full here until the end of
Speaker 2 00:30:29 The year. Yeah. That's awesome, man. Yeah, we have a, so over here there would be MicroComp Europe, uh, in Croatia again. And, uh, not as of now and the other one is there's a Microsoft local and London and yeah. Don't plans to go to either right now. Not because I'm kind of scared or whatever of COVID, but the freaking travel restrictions are changing, literally changing every day around here. And so it's just like, like you can't get back and all this weird stuff. And like, then the, it, like if I go and quarantine and the kids can't go to school in some cases. And so like, I'm just playing it by ear and kind of waiting to see as we get closer, like what's the landscape look like, you know, a few weeks out. I think there should be a good perspective of like, oh, things are good or getting better or things are in the shitter. And you know, it's a good idea not to go. So I could go to either or both. Maybe even I think there are a couple. Yeah, definitely. Just from like a personal social perspective, ready to see some people again, you know, but just the logistics of international travel with every country over here having its own rules. And a lot of them are just fucking crazy. It's just a mark then than you have in the states with, you know, everyone relatively having the same rules. Yeah. I
Speaker 1 00:31:58 Mean, even having the same rules though, like flying to different states. So like flying to Florida right now is a little scary.
Speaker 2 00:32:05 Isn't it? Well, it's, it's scary
Speaker 1 00:32:10 For different reasons right now. Like the, the cases are exploding down there and the Delta variant is running wild and there's a few counties here even in Colorado where it's running wild and it has to do with vaccination rates. Right. So my wife sent me an article about that the other day. And we're like this kind of have to see here. I mean, being both vaccinated, I don't, I feel a little trepidation only because we still have an unvaccinated kid in the household remedied here, the middle of August, she'll finally be 12 will be eligible. And on her birthday, one of her birthday presents is we're going down to the local pediatric clinic and getting her poked. So yeah, that's happening immediately, but
Speaker 2 00:32:54 Yeah, I just don't know,
Speaker 1 00:32:57 Oh, with a hundred percent certainty at this point. And it definitely is questionable, especially just being in an airplane. Cause it's like we had to fly to west Palm beach to get down there and it's like seven hours. So an hour in the airport
Speaker 2 00:33:12 And uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that the spring, hopefully we'll have a little more clarity and certainty, but um, yeah, I definitely nice that it's an option right now, you know, that, that we all could. Um, and I think that, you know, event organizers are probably seeing lower, lower turnouts and stuff, but kudos to them for, for having, having the events still that's. That's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:33:39 I know it's a hard decision and I know that like, you know, MicroComp last year they
Speaker 2 00:33:43 Had the cancer clearly. Cause it's COVID
Speaker 1 00:33:45 And that's like three events, not just one. Yeah. So that was a big deal and that sucked, but uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:33:51 Yeah. Yep. Well, Dave is good to catch up again. Uh, listeners, thanks for bearing with us with those couple of weeks off, we will be back or updates and insights on how things are going with the businesses. As always, if you're enjoying the show, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it
Speaker 0 00:34:07 As well. 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.
