Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're to startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right. Welcome to episode 2 56, 2 to the eighth power, no less of rogue
Speaker 1 00:00:27 Startups. Welcome nerds who got that joke. Yeah. And welcome Craig Hewitt. How are you doing?
Speaker 2 00:00:36 Hey, Dave, thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 00:00:41 Yeah. You know, I thought I'd shake it up a little bit and, and have somebody with some competence on, for a change.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 I don't spend too much time on my personal website, but I was futsing around over the weekend and decided to put together a, um, well, we called it a press page and that sounds really like self-absorbed, but just wanted to list and link to the places that I've been on podcasts. And I've been on 35 different podcasts as guests. And I was like, that's a lot, but it's been like six years. So it's really not that much. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. That's
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Right. I mean, you are, I mean, podcasting is your life. You have to live, sleep, eat, breathe, bleed podcasting. Uh, I don't think any of my podcast stints would come anywhere close to that, but yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm sure it's in double digits at this point from all the different ones that I've been on. So yeah, that doesn't, it actually surprises me that it's that low.
Speaker 2 00:01:35 Oh, thanks Dave. I, I started feeling good about myself. Yeah. You work harder, Craig, not smarter. There you go. Um, yeah, it's just funny to take like the times you get to step, take a step back and look at that kind of stuff like you, and I've been doing this podcast for like six and a half years. Like that's a long time. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:01:57 Yes. Uh, when I, you know, it's funny, I tell my kids that I've been podcasting since 2015 and they're like, what? And then I, you know, I say, yeah, I'm on iTunes. And they're like, what? And you know, and I'm like, and I've been on other podcasts too. What,
Speaker 2 00:02:14 It's very
Speaker 1 00:02:14 Weird for them. Uh, and of course they don't want to listen to my podcast and I don't really blame them. Yeah. That's what I want to do. I want to hear my dad talk for 45 minutes. In addition to the times he's like giving me lectures at home, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:02:31 So, uh, so what's new man. Well,
Speaker 1 00:02:34 You know, it is the holidays. They are a common and if you're in e-commerce, you know, you've been hearing about it for a month already. It's funny. When I started this five years ago, I noticed that there was some emails that started up late, late August about this, but now it's like, it's going back to fucking July. I remember getting my first one in July and I was like, oh my God, this is too early. It's not really too early. Just feels early. Cause you know, it's totally inappropriate to be thinking about black Friday deals and what your campaign's going to be like and what, you know, what are the headwinds this year? Every year is a little bit different. So, you know, we're having a whole bunch of logistics and shipping headwinds that are going on this year that are worse actually than last year.
Speaker 1 00:03:28 So I've been writing a ton of content around that and I just prepared a, a six email series that I'm starting today for five weeks. And, uh, sending that out to the whole list of recapture folks to kind of prep them for black Friday, try to poke people to sign up for broadcasts and SMS. It basically is an excuse every year to, to promote recapture for five weeks is what it comes down to. But yeah, I mean, it's some good content. So, you know, every year I have to refresh it, I can't just, I tried recycling it one year and it didn't work very well. You know, most of the time you just have to come up with stuff that's new and relevant and timely and all that good stuff. So yeah, I was spending days on that last week and we just finished up our last camping trip of the season here. So school is officially in swing and as far as my kids are concerned, a summer is now dead and buried.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 That's crazy. Yeah. How, um, like how much you have a few years of this data right now, like how much of a lift in like website traffic or new trial signups and stuff, do you typically see in this like September timeframe links? That's the hotspot, right? Like September everything's locked for the big merchants by like October 1st, before black Friday. Right? Is that the, is that the timeframe? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:04:54 I mean, usually the I'll call them the smart merchants. It doesn't necessarily mean the big merchants cause I've actually had big merchants come sliding into my platform early October, which kind of surprised me. I wasn't expecting that really. Yeah. I would have thought that they would have had that nailed down a lot earlier, but you know, I think the bigger the merchant, sometimes the slower things can move and then they're finally like, oh God, we gotta do this. And you know, they're two weeks into October and they're like, do it now do it now. So yeah, stuff like that. It, you know, the, the signup traffic is kind of weird. So last year with COVID, it started taking off in March and it kinda, it went up, up, up, and then in August it died, which I attributed to, you know, usual summer slump, slowdown kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 00:05:48 And then it was kind of flattened September. Then it picked up October, November and December. That's what really shocked me was that people were still signing in December. I was like, you are the most optimistic person ever. If you think this is the time to sign up for abandoned carts, I love it. I mean, you know, props to you, but wow, wow. That that's, that's different. Yeah. Most of the time I see an uptick just through fall in general and then by November it kind of levels out and then mostly I just see expansion revenue in the platform from there. Okay. Yeah. But last year, yeah, it was just signups like pure signups. And I was like, what is going on here? I mean, it was the, it was the e-commerce boom. Right. So I mean, that's where it was
Speaker 2 00:06:34 Going. What I remember about last year was bizarre. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:06:37 Bizarre. And everybody was struggling to get on. And so there were people that were like, oh fuck it. I'm just going. So, and they did, um, you know, and then January, I usually see a pretty high churn at that point where seasonal stuff shuts down. People are, you know, they stayed, locked through the holidays and now they were looking to try something different. Uh, you know, that's when people start making a move, um, and then it starts growing again in February. So yeah, that's the pattern I typically see.
Speaker 2 00:07:08 Interesting. Interesting. Do, do you and do other like e-commerce tech folks expect to see more of a normal pattern this year? Or like, I mean, I know COVID is like kind of in stasis at this point, like do, do y'all expect things to be normal for that kind of seasonal, normal seasonal, like behavior.
Speaker 1 00:07:28 Yeah. There's, there's not going to be anything normal about this year based on everything that I've read based on all the merchants I've talked to like brick and mortar and otherwise, I mean, everybody's getting kicked in the groin from the supply chain one way or another. Okay. Either you go back
Speaker 2 00:07:46 To the boat that was stuck in the Suez canal or is there other stuff it's,
Speaker 1 00:07:50 I mean, it's not the evergreen specifically, but what I mean? So since you asked, I'll just give you the headwinds, right? So the headwinds that are sucking for e-commerce right now, basically amount to huge delayed shipping time. So there's like all the shipping containers are in the wrong fucking place right now, based on all of this stuff that happened during COVID. So containers ended up in places where nobody needs them. And then there's tons of demand in places where there are no containers. So the cost for containers has skyrocketed. There is a, a friend of ours who was telling me that his container costs used to be about three, $4,000 from China to bring stuff over. And then now in this year, it is closer to 16, 17,000.
Speaker 2 00:08:43 Wow. And I'm seeing the box
Speaker 1 00:08:45 Just for the box that doesn't include any other truck, transportation, logistics at all. It's just the fucking box on a boat for a long time. That's it? So, I mean, that's huge because they're having to pull the containers from other ports. So they're basically moving empty containers around, which is really expensive. Yeah. So that's problem. Number one, problem. Number two is then the transportation channels are clogged already. So that's just shipping in general. So shipping is taking longer. Shipping is harder to get, everybody wants their stuff shipped. There's tons of business that's going on in e-commerce. So things are already busy and then add to that holiday volume. So I forget what the article that I saw, um, it had something to do with ups, but they talk about the tipping point of shipping volume of when that like flips over. And the date was in like late October.
Speaker 1 00:09:43 Like it basically meant that starting in late October, you were going to already see shipping delays before black Friday even started for God's sakes. That's so crazy. I'm like, holy fuck. That's terrible. Yeah. So that's number two. That's not all so number as if that wasn't bad enough. So the third headwind and this isn't even the last one either, by the way. So there's like some other general headwinds about just labor shortages. You've seen this stuff. Uh, well actually, I don't know if you've seen this in Annecy, but if you're driving around here in Denver or in the United States in general, there are help wanted signs everywhere. People can't hire for shit right now. So there's, there's tons and tons of labor shortages over here. So that's not good, right? You you're a store. You want people to actually help sell your stuff. You've got nobody to help you do that. Then the real kicker here is that ad costs are going up anywhere. The ranges that I've seen are from 30 to 70% and that's on Google and Facebook, both. So because
Speaker 2 00:10:47 People aren't going to conferences and doing traditional in-person stuff or what, because
Speaker 1 00:10:53 The demand is going high, everybody's trying to use ads to grow. They don't, you know, that's, that's the big thing. Okay. So, I mean, you put all those things together and you know, your raw materials, it's hard to get raw materials too. I was talking with the guy that does my car and he was saying they have parts that have been on, on national back order for five months. Wow. Yeah. And this is like not during the holiday time of the year, just trying to repair somebody's car for some very basic stuff. Can you get it from the dealer? Can't get it from third party suppliers, national back order five months for some stuff. So add all the app and then put a ton of pressure. Oh, a chip shortage. That's the other one. I forgot the chip shortage. There is a huge chip shortage right now.
Speaker 1 00:11:47 So anything that's got a chip in it, which by the way is a lot more than you think it is. Add two to four months on delivery. That's crazy. Yeah. I tried to order an Amazon Kindle Oasis for my wife two to four months a delay. If I order it now, add all that up. That's after Christmas, baby, it's going to be a Valentine's gift at this point. Yes. So yeah. That's not what she wanted to hear and that's certainly not what I wanted to hear. And that's their most popular product. Like the Amazon Kindle can't even get this. Right. And that's the headwinds, the
Speaker 2 00:12:25 Logistics, you know, company essentially. Right, right. I mean just add
Speaker 1 00:12:30 All those things up and you've got the perfect storm for what is going to be a very hard holiday season this year. So, you know, if any merchants are listening to this, my heart goes out to you because I have compiled all this information and it just depresses the hell out of me because it's going to be a real challenge. But you know, here's the reality. Most merchants have already been dealing with this for months.
Speaker 2 00:12:55 This is not new. It's just, it's going
Speaker 1 00:12:58 To be the added pressure of now. We've got to give you some holiday gifts. Like how the hell do you cope? And, you know, I wrote a whole series of emails on ways to cope and resources to help and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's going to be a rough year dude
Speaker 2 00:13:14 Times. Good times. Yeah. That's my, no, I mean, it's, it's really good for you to be able to, to write those pieces from like a position of like authority, um, that like, I'm sure your customers and your prospects really appreciate all of that stuff. Like I think that's really great. We're, we're trying to write more of that stuff these days. And it's, it's hard to write that like original content about like the state of the union kind of stuff. So that's, that's cool. I, I can imagine those will go well, you know,
Speaker 1 00:13:46 I hope so. I hope so. They definitely seem to have some pretty decent open rates and the engagement on the content in the past has been pretty good. Um, yeah, it kind of varies, you know, it's kinda long to get five things for five weeks. Some people are like, Ugh, God, I'm done.
Speaker 2 00:14:04 Especially that kind of stuff, but yeah. But you
Speaker 1 00:14:06 Know, I, I, so I try to push the value forward as much as I can, but some of it's just, you got to drip it out. Like if I did this all in one email, people would like, ah, I love Dave that's enough.
Speaker 2 00:14:18 Right. So anyway, how are things in the podcasting world? Good man. Yeah. I mean, uh, just a lot of stuff going on. Like yeah, we were talking before we started recording, like, what am I doing that I seem so busy? I don't know like what it is, but I feel very busy, which is, which is cool. I mean, we just have a lot of stuff going on. We onboarded three new people this month. So like that, that takes a fair amount of time up our first front end developer, which is a super cool person to have on the team. She is, um, like just beautiful stuff left and right. And like the rest of the developers now basically are just backend developers and are struggling to keep up with kind of the output that she and her designer have, which is, which is cool, like a good problem to have that. Like she has stuff ready for them all the time, which is, which is really cool. Like I, I hope that it, it kind of increases our output, you know, having her in the mix to really write the front end code and have basically everything ready for them just to just, you know, to hook up the, the backend of the database and everything. So that's been a, it's been a cool thing to see and, and probably a bit of a shift in the way we work to roll out new features. So that's been really cool.
Speaker 1 00:15:30 Yeah. Super power to have that, that embedded on your team, because then they can be privy to all those conversations about, you know, what are the customer problems and what are the customer frustrations. And, and instead of just like you do it doing a one-time dump and then hoping they get it right. Like they get to hear it over and over. So yeah. That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:15:50 Yeah. I mean on our team that like those conversations happen at the design level, um, with Francoise, our designer, and then, you know, we talk about a problem and we kind of craft what the solution will look and feel like. And then he hands it off tomorrow, our, our front end developer to fully implement the HTML and Java script and everything. And that mean that whole topic is like, is the subject of much discussion right now, just like the product process, you know, is, is like what we call it is like a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot better than it used to be. But I still feel like, and we all feel like it has some room for improvement, just like, you know, who has input into what's going on at what stage in, you know, as something is being kind of conceived or developed. So like, that's just a, I think it's an ongoing discussion of like, how do we do this at what time? How do we document it? You know, how does that go through the process? How does customer service and now sales have been put into that, um, on like a, a sane, ongoing basis, you know, like I think that that's, that's like maybe our biggest thing we're, we're working towards improving right now. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And you also,
Speaker 1 00:17:06 You posted some stuff, uh, in our private, uh, chat about okay. Ours.
Speaker 2 00:17:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll talk about our cars in a second, but, but the other thing is we, we onboard our two new AEs are our sales reps, are they started in the middle of the month. Yeah. Both of them are bringing in new leads. One of them closed a deal already, which is awesome in the first two weeks. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's a trip to have two salespeople in a, in, in the organization now on top of, you know, me and Matt. So it's, it's cool to see they're both definitely stirring the chili, which is what they're, what they're brought in for. And I think they're really enjoying it. It's just a, it's a fair amount of like that knowledge transfer to get everything that's in, you know, Matt and I's head about the product and the industry and the problems that we think customers have into their heads. So they can handle the calls and overcome objections and close deals and stuff. But, you know, we're two weeks in it's going well, they're starting to take calls by themselves, probably in the middle of September. So, you know, if it's a month that we kind of double up on work, that's, that's cool to, to have them be working independently afterwards. So yeah, yeah. Was so far, so far. Yes. I was
Speaker 1 00:18:14 Going to ask how far along they were at this point and if they were on calls already,
Speaker 2 00:18:19 They're definitely on calls. I mean, they're uncalled on calls the first day with us. And I think that will we'll continue that I would suspect sometime in the next couple of weeks, they'll be ready to fly solo for like the first call. And then, um, and then it'll be kind of like, Hey, let me bring in our technical, you know, our solutions architect or whatever they're going to call Matt and I to, to, you know, hear more about the, the details of things and help close deals. But yeah, I mean, I think that the initial kind of discovery call, they should, they should be able to run here pretty soon. Cool, cool. Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, okay. Ours. So for, for folks that aren't, aren't using OKR is OKR is kind of are like rocks. Like we talk about from EOS, okay.
Speaker 2 00:19:09 Ours are objectives and key results. So just a way to set goals for either a company or a division or a person. And the O part of it, the objective is like, be an incredible selling machine, you know, and then the key results are 10 new inbound leads a week and closing 60% of sales qualified leads or whatever, whatever they are just trying to put some kind of stretch goals around like whatever, to, to whatever level you want, the company level or the division level, or the person level that are kind of qualitative and then giving some metrics to, to be able to measure how you're doing across a period of time, like a quarter. And then the, the, that the, so what of it, I think is that like, those should inform what you do like every day, you know, and how you make decisions about like, Hey, we want to, you know, the analogy is like, Hey, we want to drive from Denver to LA you know, that's the goal, right?
Speaker 2 00:20:06 That's the O part of the OKR and the, how we do it is like very much up in the air. Cause we don't have any freaking idea, you know? And so it gives that bit of flexibility for you to figure shit out as like the quarter goes along. So anyways, we're moving from, and I love that. Like the team listens to this podcast loop, this'll be the first place to hear it. We're moving from rocks to okay. Ours starting next quarter. And so just a lot of research on my end into how to do them well and how to set those goals and have the key results as like a quote, you know, smart kind of goals like we've talked about before, um, to where like we implement well to where it's a positive thing to where people are energized and motivated and feel like they have good positive direction as a result of this.
Speaker 2 00:20:55 And it's not like a, you know, fucking Craig says we have to do this thing and he's going to ask me about it every Monday. But like, it's like, oh cool. I know what is important for me. And I know where like my contribution is in this whole thing and I know what success looks like. And hopefully everybody feels really good about that. So just doing a lot of thinking and researching and talking to people about this and we'll roll them out in our team retreat, which is gonna be virtual, but, um, we'll be towards the end of September. So
Speaker 1 00:21:24 Cool. Now let me ask you a quick question. Why OKR is over rocks because I mean, okay. Ours are not something that are embedded into another system. So I'm curious to hear, because rocks are right. They're part of EOS in general and they fit into other things. And then you use them with the meetings and the goals and all of that other stuff like they build into a larger picture. Yeah. Why OKR is over that?
Speaker 2 00:21:54 Yeah. So we did rocks this quarter and it's very likely that I did them wrong or did them at a, at an incorrect level, you know, and the company we did them at kind of like a group or division level, like product has one support has one, sales has one and the way we're going to do okay, ours, and this is probably wrong, but the way we're going to do OKR is, is the company has an OKR and there are, the company has an objective and there are key results that will feed into that objective. And that is it. And then everyone else can kind of create their own okay. Ours on a personal or kind of group level. But like the only decision I make is from a company level, just for instance, say, we're going to grow revenue by 30% this quarter. And then we're going to have some metrics around things that I, and like, you know, people in the company agree are, if we do, if we achieve these metrics, that overall goal will happen.
Speaker 2 00:22:54 I don't like I haven't seen that, like rocks have that kind of second level of things, you know, like our rocks are very quantitative, you know, and the, the kind of structure below that, for me, at least the way we did it, doesn't doesn't really exist. I'll, I'll, I'll qualify that with, with also saying like, when you talk to people about, okay, ours and you like read the books and stuff, the rest of EOS is in there too. So it's like how you check in on, okay. Ours is, is not exactly the same, but like you have the meeting and you talk about your OKR, they do confidence level instead of, you know, like up, uh, actual like data point progress. Like, yeah, I'm a, I'm a five out of 10, or I'm an eight out of 10 that we're going to achieve our key result this month, you know, person that's in charge of marketing or whatever. And then if it's not track, then you talk about it in that's the, you know, identified, discover, or solve whatever it is. So like, it's really not so different. Um, I think it's just like where you place for us at least is where you place the, the goal, you know, and then kind of how that filters down to everyone else and, and a little bit like how you check in on it and how you brainstorm and problem solve the way to achieving those.
Speaker 1 00:24:16 That's fair. I mean, so how long had you done rocks? Uh, how many times? What, just one quote
Speaker 2 00:24:23 To know we did it the first quarter of this year and it sucked and we quit and then we're doing it this quarter and generally like the, the direction and the clarity around direction. It gives us has been solid. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:24:36 Yeah. I was just curious because, you know, I mean, one of the things I was reading in the book, and this was, this was in the followup book, get a grip where they did that fictional company, where they pretended that there's an EOS consultant that CO's goes in there and talks about it. They, they made it very clear that there were going to be bumps, especially when you weren't totally comfortable with the process, especially when not everybody was on board. Not everybody understood what they're supposed to do. You're not very good at, at all that stuff. Like they pretty much were like, you, you got to try this for like three quarters to get it worked out. And it gets easier each time. But like the first time is super rough and you'll find that you'll miss a lot. And then the second time is a little better, but you still missing some stuff the third time, if you're, you know, staying on track with it, then it kinda starts to hit.
Speaker 1 00:25:29 And you're only missing a little bit. And then by the one year mark, you're like, you're either totally sold or the whole thing fell apart. So yeah. I mean maybe, I mean, it sounds like OKR is an EOS, there's just repackaged versions of similar kinds of things in that regard. So yeah. I mean, I w I definitely wouldn't keep switching and things around, uh, you know, if you don't like OKR, is this time around, don't pick option number three beginning of January. Cause that's probably just going to be confusing. I think you have to stick with it awhile.
Speaker 2 00:26:01 Yeah. Yeah. I mean the other, the other kind of data point around this is, and I kind of think this is a bad reason to kind of think it's a really good reason everyone that I've talked to about this kind of concept, you know, of like setting goals and kind of directional leadership and stuff like that has used and loves okay. Ours and that's people within our company who, you know, like the, one of the sales guys came in and he's like, Hey, before we ran, okay, ours is amazing. Like, you know, I want to have some, some direction around this talking to CEOs of other really big companies that we all know, all of them run. Okay. Ours. So I was like, well, fuck, like, you know, why reinvent the wheel? Like everyone's doing it. Everyone understands it. So that's, that's what we're going to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:26:45 Right. Yeah. Well then definitely don't listen to me.
Speaker 2 00:26:49 No, it's like everything, right? Like we come up with something, formulate a strategy, throw it against the wall, see what happens, iterate from there. And I think that's what I mean, like in general, it's been a really positive experience. And I think that we're just going to iterating on it. It's not like this huge shifts cause you're right. Okay. Ours and rocks can be exactly the same thing. You can just call them, call them something different and it's how you orchestrate them within the business. So yeah. It's not like some huge shift in how we work. Totally,
Speaker 1 00:27:20 Totally splitting hairs on you at this point. Yeah. I mean, everything that you described about OKR, ours doesn't sound like it is incompatible in any way. So the fact that you already have, buy-in the fact that they already were asking to do these things is huge. Like, you don't have to educate them about it. You don't have to sell them on it. You don't have to like teach him about it. Right. Like everything is already kind of built in for you to get started. So that's, you know, props to you man, perhaps to the team. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:27:48 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. I mean, it's cool, man. I I'll tell you something that I've, I talked about with our team on the first day and like definitely seeing it now is like bringing in salespeople, especially two of them they're both really experienced and they both have worked for SAS companies before changes almost everything about how everyone works, you know, all in two weeks, like everyone is looking at like, oh, sales just closed this deal. And we have to go onboard this customer. And they're asking for this thing, product and, you know, support and success. Oh, we have to come up with a way to hand off, uh, like sales, you know, converted leads and, and that are now customers. And like, it's really cool. And then like, so, so they're kind of breaking everything in a positive way, but they also are super data-driven people because they're like, they're technical salespeople. And so they're like, what's the process for this? And what's the metric that you want to hit for that. And where are we tracking this conversion rate and HubSpot this and ChartMogul that? And they want an access to Google analytics. It's like, it's really, it's really crazy to see like people coming in having such a, such a positive impact in that way, you know? And like two of them coming in at the same time, both asking for like much the same thing has been, has been a trip. Yeah. I know that
Speaker 1 00:29:07 The term that just popped into my head was sales driven development. But then I realized that this had a terrible acronym. Cause SDD sounds a little too much like sexually transmitted disease. So yeah. I mean, yeah. So this is why nobody's ever talked about sales driven development, but you just stumbled upon it now. That's awesome. When you've got some experienced people that can actually drive that process. I can't wait to get big enough to where I can bring somebody who's got that kind of experience in.
Speaker 2 00:29:36 Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you're, you're going down the path working with working with Chris a little bit there, but yeah, it's, it's cool to see like salespeople really driving stuff in a very different way than like marketing driven growth. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:29:48 Yeah. Some, one of these days, Craig I'll grow up to be just like
Speaker 2 00:29:51 You, not for your sake. Oh, what a trip. Yes. Um, we, Hey Dave, we touched on this, uh, I dunno, a few episodes ago, but about traveling, uh, for conferences and wanting to see how, what the kind of state of the union there is for, for you and, and kind of what, what your plans are for like under, through, through the end of the year.
Speaker 1 00:30:17 Well, you know, I have to say it's still a bit wait and see, touch and go for us. And you know, my wife and I are both vaccinated and now they're talking about boosters and by the time that the F so I've got two things slated. This fall, one is a, uh, an in-person event that's hosted here in Colorado. So thankfully I don't have to fly for that one, but everybody else is flying in to join us. Everybody's vaccinated. So I'm not too worried about that one. We're going to spend a lot of time outside and it should be fine. But the one that I'm a little iffier about is a conference down in Florida in November. And not because of the hurricane, sadly, although that's probably a concern too, this one, you know, it's not a huge conference, but we have to fly and we got to take two planes to get there no matter what.
Speaker 1 00:31:13 And you know, my wife is sort of like, ah, I don't know, cause it's like the, the cases are out of control in Florida and that, you know, is not good. So it puts us at risk. And now that we've got our youngest vaccinated, that's good. But now, you know, when we went to the doctor, we had a COVID scare after the first week of school when, um, my middle daughter was exposed to somebody with COVID and she started showing symptoms. So we're like, oh shit, all right, we gotta take her to the doctor. So we tested her two tests, both negative, all good. But you know, when I was talking to the doctor, they're like breakthrough cases are happening and they're worse with Pfizer than they are with Madonna. And the Pfizer ones are only 43% effective against the Delta variant Moderna is about 86%.
Speaker 1 00:32:02 She said, and that's great. My wife and I have Madonna, but the kids have Pfizer. So it's like by going, we could be pulling Delta back into our house and then unknowingly, in fact, our kids. So we're kind of playing it by the year. Well, it's way more than annoying. Yeah. Um, very dangerous. I mean, it, it won't be, I shouldn't say that because they're vaccinated, it's going to be an unpleasant experience for them, but they won't go to the hospital. They won't be on an intubator, they won't die. Um, but you know, I still have my, my father who refuses to take the vaccine, we see them fairly often. So that puts them at a lot of risk. So all of that adds up to, I don't know, and I wish I had a crystal ball because I kind of feel like the shit's really gonna hit the fan here by October 1st. I feel like as the weather cools down and everybody heads inside, we're going to see cases spike, not just in the tropical areas, but uh, everywhere else. Um, again, because of the lower vaccination rates and maybe it won't be as bad this time and maybe I'm completely off on that one, but you know, everything that we've seen down in the south is not pointing in positive directions. So I'm kind of hoping for hoping for something better, but we'll see.
Speaker 2 00:33:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm kinda in the same boat. Well, you have, uh, MicroComp Europe in October here I am. I've not bought a ticket yet, but would love to go, you know, with love to see all of our friends just yesterday, the European union announced, like, I don't know, some kind of restriction on travel to the U S or from the U S that's like left up to each individual member state and all this, but it's just like all this garbage of like travel rules that change on a daily basis and stuff. So anyways, like I would love to go, I would go were vaccinated. We had Pfizer. I didn't know that about the breakthrough stuff that sucks, but, um, yeah. Yeah. I don't worry too much about me getting sick, you know? And like our kids are young enough to where, like, I don't think they would get super sick based on what I understand and like, whatever this is getting the whole thing, but like the short version is I would love to travel again. I would go to a conference if everyone is vaccinated. And I think it's just like travel restrictions, like being the, being the hoop to jump through at this point. So, and I hope for all the conference organizers sake that, that like all this stuff going to return to normal soon for everyone's sake. But, but especially them. Cause I know they've been, it's been a trying year for them. Oh my God.
Speaker 1 00:34:43 Yeah. Um, I do know that MicroComp in the U S has a vaccine requirement and good on them. And I certainly will be planning to attend an April whether it works out or not. You know, that is certainly my current plan. So hopefully you and I can meet up there as we plan to live. That's the goal. Yeah. Yeah. We shall see, we shall see. All right. Well, I think that wraps things up for this week as always our one ask is that if you are finding this valuable, please share it with someone you think would benefit as well. And if you have a couple of minutes, a review in iTunes is always welcome until next week.
Speaker 0 00:35:26 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, that over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
