Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 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.
Speaker 2 00:00:19 All right. Welcome to episode 2 64 of rogue startups. Today, I am joined by special guest chase, climber of electric. I agency chase.
Speaker 3 00:00:31 Welcome. I am so jealous that you have such like just care and you know that this episode's going to come out to the point where you tell it what number it is that is insane to me.
Speaker 2 00:00:43 Well, uh, that, that probably speaks to the fact that we're more of a just-in-time podcasting organization here. We're, uh, we're not scheduling things that far in advance. We're not that organized. We just are. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:00:58 Uh, yeah, I see on my end of things, I would never do that. I say, and I even tell guests, like this will come out eventually. So I guess, uh, hi, I'm chase. I'm also a podcast host, but, uh, yeah, I've always got like eight in the can because I, I I'm always terrified that something, I screwed something up during one of them.
Speaker 2 00:01:16 Yeah. That fear, you know, there's a, definitely a fear that there's something weird or wrong about the episodes. And I still have that even after we did it, but now I've just gotten to a point where I'm like, fuck it. I don't care anymore. You know, after 264 episodes, either people are listening or they're not listening and we're just, uh, we're doing our thing and we're putting our stuff out there and hopefully it's valuable for everybody. And that's why we bring on folks like you today to talk about your story and how you run your startup here. And, uh, you know, but if they, uh, aren't liking it, it is what it is. So
Speaker 3 00:01:49 No, yeah, let's do it. I'm excited. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 00:01:52 Yeah. Thank you for being on. So, uh, chase, tell everybody a little bit about yourself and, uh, your agency.
Speaker 3 00:02:00 Absolutely. So I'm chase climber. So I run, my day-to-day is running electric. I, we are Shopify consultancy. We help brands that are in kind of the scaling phase maximize that. So a lot of web dev, a lot of ads, a lot of strategy, really fun taking like $1 million brands and $10 million brands. That's our bread and butter also in the same kind of space. I'm the host of the honest e-commerce podcast. Um, and, uh, doing a lot of interviews with brand founders and kind of think a, how I built this for Shopify stores is basically the vibe I'm going for. And, uh, you know, I've been doing that for the last three years agency for the last five years and it's been a wild ride.
Speaker 2 00:02:39 Wow. That's amazing. So I read in your bio that you basically were struggling to make it in the music industry. So now I have this picture of you in this like grunge slash scar band. That's like out touring these skeezy clubs across the country there, and you've got your laptop with him. You're trying to do your agency work. And that eventually you're like, screw this. I can't do the touring anymore. So tell me a little bit about your music career that, that, that got you here.
Speaker 3 00:03:07 I mean, you're not far off from exactly what it was like. Uh, the, so I was in a band. I never say what band I was in on these things to make people Google. And, uh, so there's a little challenge for everybody out there. I, it was fun though. It was decent music. You like what we were doing. Um, so anyways, we were in this band doing this band thing for a long time and I loved it. And you know, this, the, the DIY ethos of punk rock is like, is truly, probably what gave me the courage to start my own business. You know, I had always kind of had an entrepreneurial mindset and whatnot, but like when you're broke and you need something to happen when you're in a band, like, no, one's going to do it for you. So you're going to have to figure it out.
Speaker 3 00:03:45 Right. So I did a lot of figuring things out for the band and I was always kind of keen on technology and, uh, realized that I could kind of like do these freelancing gigs while I was touring to make ends meet. So I never really had to like pick up a bartending job or whatever in between things and stretch my money out. I was always kinda like working on the road. Um, so it made things a lot easier. I love the band. A lot of the guys that are in the band are still some of my best friends. Uh, but basically we kind of hit a ceiling with what we could do. And a lot of the people in the band had better opportunities, myself included. Uh, so we kind of went on hiatus, as you say, technically never broke up, but, um, yeah, some of the other guys are in giant bands today as well. And others are like myself, like I'm running an agency now. And like our old drummer is a golf. Uh, so, you know, we had a lot of better things to do than play, you know, crappy smelly, 150 300 cap rooms.
Speaker 2 00:04:38 Well, it's certainly an interesting story. So, you know, as a fellow freelancer myself, I'm interested in kind of hearing, so you were doing this freelance work, but you know, what is it that precipitated that big leap? Because going from freelancer to founder of an agency is a huge jump. Like that is a, that's a major choice because I stuck as freelancer for a number of years. I was totally happy with being a freelancer. I worked for other agencies and like the headaches of running an agency and the pressure that comes with an agency and all the employees that you're working with, or the people that are working under you. Like that was a level of something I wasn't ready to take on, but you did. So I'd like to hear, like, how did that work out? Where did that come from?
Speaker 3 00:05:24 I mean, it wasn't overnight and it was definitely a journey and still like, I, it just, we just had our annual meeting last week and we made decisions during that meeting that I probably wouldn't have made five years ago as like what we're trying to do with this agency and with this business. And I think it all just comes out of you'll set goals and you'll achieve those goals. And then you, you know, I think entrepreneurs aren't happy being complacent. So they're like, I'm gonna set a bigger goal and I'm gonna do like, what's, what's the next step here. And I think this, the natural evolution of what I was doing freelancing kind of led me to this point. So I'll kind of go back in time a bit more to kind of where this kind of headed off. So while I was in the band, I met my business partner, Sean, but him and I designed our album art together for all of our albums.
Speaker 3 00:06:10 And that's how I met him. And then so fast forward a couple years after that Shawn left, uh, his previous position. So he was not a founder, but pretty dang close with, uh, online e-commerce clothing, brand startup here in Columbus, Ohio. Uh, they're on Shopify plus now. So he kind of rode that wave and he was really interested in the technology and using a lot of the design work. So when he left there, uh, it wasn't even like a conscious effort to like partner on things. It was just like me being, I had been freelancing forever. I was giving him advice. I was like, do these things, don't do those things. Oh, you made a big mistake. Like you want to walk that back, but just trying to help him get more familiar with the business world of freelancing, because I had been doing it for now seven years or something.
Speaker 3 00:06:51 And he was, he, you know, it was his first dive in. So once we started to really partner on, on some of those things, he kept coming to these opportunities, kept like landing in our lap, really. So I, at this point, the band's broken up and I'm pretty basically a professional freelancer. Now I got half a dozen clients kind of spanning all sorts of genres of crap that I was doing. But then when Sean left homage, uh, him and I started really, uh, kind of tag teaming, these Shopify projects just left and right. And, um, it got to the point where like, we had sat down and talked like, do we want to start a business together? And we were like, nah, let's just keep freelancing. And then like six months later, it was like, okay, we have to start a business together because like, these people are asking how to pay us and like tax implement input, like implications. Like there was this whole thing. So like, like most businesses, like in the agency space, it was just on accident. So
Speaker 2 00:07:44 You're kind of grew into it just based on the size of the clients that you dealt with and they sort of forced you into this, we'll call it the deeply professional sphere of agencies.
Speaker 3 00:07:53 Yeah. Well, I mean, like we still, at that point when it was basically just to like have a name to hang our hat on, so we could bill from one thing and deal with the kind of the taxation and like formalities and systems like later. And it, it honestly was like, we just like found this, this like, need that all these entrepreneurs, and it's still to this day, it's kind of the same meat. It's just like young brands need a trusted partner to help them grow. And like, we were just coming out of coming at it from a place of like, you know, knowing the strategy behind scaling an e-commerce brand and the technology behind it. And these founders, aren't technical people, they are creators, they're product people. They are passionate about their customers and building the best part of they can. They don't give a crap about the technology or marketing strategy.
Speaker 3 00:08:46 Uh, and they're looking for smart people to help them out there. Um, and so like what we kind of started with what the agency is, we were doing like Facebook ads for Shopify was like kind of what we were doing, uh, at the beginning. And we had like half a dozen clients within like three months. And we were like, well, this is wild. And then from there we started to kind of expand the service offerings and like test and try things that we'd like to do. And, you know, some of them worked out. Some of them didn't work out. So we were like, we don't wanna do that anymore. And also in that same time, we were kind of learning, you know, what types of clients we like to work with, what technologies we like to work with. So it was a lot of kind of trial and error there at the beginning, but it was kind of like, I wouldn't even say it was a real agency back then. It was like glorified, freelancing with a name attached to it.
Speaker 2 00:09:27 Yeah. That makes sense. But agencies kind of grow slowly, organically based on the number of clients they've gotten, you kind of fill those roles based on, you know, if you go from one to 10 clients overnight, then you hire according to that. So it sounds like you had some decent sized clients and you and your business partner were able to kind of keep the lid on everything for a long time.
Speaker 3 00:09:45 Yeah. And then it, uh, we, so it was honestly funny enough, like Shawn, uh, someone that he used to work with, uh, like no longer work there either. And he was like, just didn't really need a job, but we just had some extra work where it was like, all right, like, can you knock this stuff out for us? Uh, and so we like hired him and he never went away. So now he's our project manager. He's, you know, he's definitely a on the leadership team now and Andrew's been a fantastic thing. And once we shifted, there was a conversation. I remember having this conversation and it was like, uh, it was with a guy here in Columbus who had sold three agencies and he was, he asked me and he was like, Hey, Hey, how often, like how much time are you spending on, uh, sales versus client work?
Speaker 3 00:10:32 And I was like about 70, 30. And he was like, what? What's the 70%? I was like 70% client work. He was like, if you don't switch those things, you're going to go out of business. And that like really struck me. So, uh, I was like, okay, well I have to get all this client work on my plate. And Andrew was already working with us. And so I kind of trained him up on everything that we were doing. And he started to kind of like Haman Sean basically were where the division of power came and where the agency went changed from being like this freelancer thing kind of to like a business was when Sean and I realized that two people can't be responsible for one thing. And that my entire role was about the future of the business. And Sean's entire role was about making sure what was sold gets fulfilled. And once we started to do that, it became a real thing.
Speaker 2 00:11:21 Interesting, interesting. So it sounds like that was one of your initial struggles. What were some of the other struggles that you had in this transition from freelancer to full founder of agency, besides that role clarification?
Speaker 3 00:11:36 You know what, I don't think it's a problem. I think everyone has to do it. It was just kind of like trying all the things that you can do and figuring out what you like to do and what you don't like to do. You know, I, I don't think there's a way to avoid that and I think it's maybe lean into it and just be like, look for the first year or two as well. I kind of already, I'm going to pivot like majorly right now. It is like with startups, I think people always put this hat on startups where it's like a SAS thing only. And I think service businesses are also startups. You know what I mean? And I think that, uh, not that I think this is a proven fact. You can go out there and the inter webs and like, and look through Twitter and you'll find that the most successful SAS founders started a service business first.
Speaker 3 00:12:21 And then they like cut their teeth, learning the business side of stuff with an easy business model, which is service. You know, it's the easiest thing to sell in the world and learning all this stuff and trial and erroring through it. And just like basically getting your master's in business from building a business is like infinitely better than like going to school for it. And so like what we built with this like service business, like I could clone this out into any model and like, I just, me and Sean knows so much more now than we ever thought we would about running a business just from like sitting down and doing it. But anyways, I, you know, that was a giant tangent. Maybe you have some response to that before I go back into your original question.
Speaker 2 00:13:00 No, I a hundred percent agree with everything that you said. And in fact, my own experience of running, you know, my own freelancer software development business is definitely a form of a service business, right? You're serving a client and meeting their needs and that cut my teeth, made it ready for me to actually attempt a SAS. In fact, there were a couple of steps in between, cause I hadn't really done the product piece. So I had to add a product piece in there and understand product market fit and understand sales and understand marketing and some other pieces in there. But once you put all of those things together, plus the business experience you get from running a service business of any kind, it doesn't have to be online. Like if you did a janitorial service business, I promise you, you are running a full fledged business of equal if not greater value in some cases, because you're probably dealing with some shittier customers, then you and I are Jay's. But, um, but all of those things are way greater than just book knowledge or watching a bunch of YouTube videos. The experience is hugely valuable. I would a hundred percent agree with that.
Speaker 3 00:14:03 Yeah. And I even, um, saw everywhere. I saw this yesterday. I love Twitter, but I was on Twitter and someone who was just was like, the more that I consult with young founders, I basically tell them, work on building out your SAS, but have a high end option. That's like service, like a done for you service attached to your SAS. And then you get like way faster customer feedback and you can iterate. Plus you're getting like basically free funding to like run your, like fund your technology startup instead of taking like a loan or something.
Speaker 2 00:14:35 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the most amazing funding options you could get. I did that with our WordPress plugins, kind of the same thing we would offer a custom work I'd bid it out. It would always be a fixed bid. So I understood, like we went through this whole project management of trying to understand what their full requirements, where we go back and forth, make sure that we had the full scope of it. Then we bid it and then basically we'd incorporate that back into the project after getting them to pay for it. Like the plug-in would then benefit from that work and get moved forward. And we didn't have to like try to figure out how to pay for all that work in advance. It was very, very smart. And I know other SAS founders that do the exact same thing. So does that imply that you are working on products at electric guy and not just a full service business
Speaker 3 00:15:23 Circle back to that, I'll go, go to your, I've got a year to finish answering your first question, which was like what mistakes or like, uh, struggles. Was it at the beginning? Yes. I think, uh, where things really started to take off was, you know, we were always getting distracted by shiny objects, uh, especially myself. Definitely. I like building stuff. I don't really like completing things. Um, and that's, uh, that's just, that's how I am. That's how I'm wired. And so like understanding your faults as a founder is something you really need to know. So you can hire people that fill in where you suck. And so with that in mind, um, we read traction and implemented EOS
Speaker 2 00:16:05 Love, traction traction is a huge thumbs up for me.
Speaker 3 00:16:09 Yeah. So, uh, that was around the same time that we hired Andy. So you can see where all these things kind of like, they're like once there, once that point happened, it took off things were awesome. Uh, so just like one of the bigger things about traction is like setting short and long-term goals and basically having an issues list, long story short, like it, it allowed us to stop getting as distracted by shiny objects and ignoring them. And it's so funny how issues just kind of aren't actually issues a week later, it kind of just falls off and nobody cares anymore. And so kind of being able to really focus on what needs to get done, focus on client work, focus on the, you know, the actual next kind of task at hand, uh, allowed us to scale more efficiently. So that was a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 00:16:52 Some other things that we read were like from day one, obviously, number any service business out there, any honest, any business out there, number one way you're going to get new customers is referrals, right? That's just not arguable, but relying on that is like wishful thinking. And so from day one, we were always kind of marketing first, uh, and kind of figuring out what we wanted to do from marketing. And that was a tough cookie to crack, but we kind of settled on the podcast and we're still doing that. Um, and using it in various ways to kind of grow the business there. Um, that was kind of a difficult thing to figure out, but then like, uh, another thing, especially in the agency space. So you're going to have like, you're going to have referrals and that usually comes from like partnerships. So either, uh, at partners or channel partners or whatever, but you need to build some really awesome partnerships there to try to get referrals.
Speaker 3 00:17:35 Uh, and then you're gonna, you know, do your marketing piece. So kind of like content marketing, it increases the kind of like as a surface lock area, you know, the more you get your, your stuff out there, the more likely someone will see it and remember you and kind of reach out to you and they need, they have a need that you can possibly fulfill. Then the last piece of the puzzle, which we didn't figure out, honestly, until this last year, I was like literally figuring out an actual outreach strategy to try to land new business. So those things from like a sales and marketing perspective were some pretty big learning curves on the agency side of stuff. I'm sure I can think of 1 million more mistakes we've made though.
Speaker 2 00:18:10 Well, if you haven't made a million mistakes, do you really own a business? Right, exactly. Yeah, no, that's tough. So it sounds like, you know, in the journey that you've made here and all of the mistakes that you've made, you know, you've learned a ton, have you figured out if you had any unfair advantages, you know, along the way here, were there some things that you were just surprised by? Cause I know you mentioned luck, surface area, and that's definitely one of those advantages that takes a while for people to figure out, right? You got to put yourself out there in order for opportunities to find you, but, you know, were there any other things that you found that, you know, made chase climber more likely to succeed than the average person? Because there were just amazing things that you knew that, that later you discovered, not everybody else knew, like, like what, like what are the, what does that look like?
Speaker 3 00:19:01 Honestly, no, I don't think that, like, I don't think that anything was like special or lucky about us, but I will tell you that, like we've been working hard for the last five years. You know, I've got other friends in the industry that do have a little bit of a leg up and you know, maybe they are a viral personality on the internet or they had a book that, you know, really took them to the next level. Uh, but we never really had anything really like that. Um, but I would say if I had to answer and I needed to pick one thing, is we early on niche down into Shopify exclusively and stop servicing any other platforms or giving crap about them because of the partner ecosystem within Shopify and the relationships that we had with people at Shopify and in that ecosystem. And well, I guess this will kind of bleed into the product thing here in a minute when we talk about that. But like I would say that might've been an unfair advantage is like we've had someone at Shopify champion for our agency since day one. Like when we, like, when we launched electric, I, we were already Shopify partners because of stuff we had been doing previously. So that might've been an advantage, but like there's thousands of Shopify partners. It's not like we're the only one. Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 00:20:12 But if you get started early and you make that commitment early and you, you know, you've cultivated those relationships. So I think those, those might be some unfair advantages. That's not, everybody's good at cultivating relationships and doing the networking and, you know, even putting in hard work consistently, like that can be an unfair advantage too, because showing up every day for years, that is a skill. Like that's not an easy thing to do for a lot of folks. And it definitely makes a huge difference when you can do it. Right.
Speaker 3 00:20:42 Absolutely. And I mean, in five years ago, Shopify, wasn't a household name. No, that, that wasn't until like two years ago, I'd say
Speaker 2 00:20:50 Right. I just saw them advertising on my local radio stations over Christmas. They were like trying to get people to set up stores in the middle of December. And I was just flabbergasted that they're doing like this spray and pray kind of marketing at this point to make them a household name. Like my parents in their eighties and nineties are asking me, what's the Shopify thing, isn't that what you're working with? And I'm like, holy crap. How do they even, like, I know I had mentioned it to them before, but suddenly them coming back and asking me about it from hearing it definitely registers that they've become a household name.
Speaker 3 00:21:25 Absolutely. So again, kind of tying back to that luck thing, it was like, we didn't know that there was going to be this just skyrocketing of e-commerce in the near future when we kind of, you know, tied our cart to the Shopify horse and like really dove all in on e-commerce. It is a different environment today than it was five years ago. Uh, and so, yeah, I mean, we got a little bit lucky there.
Speaker 2 00:21:50 Very nice. Very nice. So looking back, would you say that there are things that you miss just being a simple freelancer now we'll get to the product thing in just a minute, but I want to kind of wrap up the freelance thing here before we dive into your product stuff.
Speaker 3 00:22:04 Is there anything I'm? No, I don't miss anything. It, well, everything is that was like, I didn't know, back then learning. It was fun. Uh, but now I just have other bigger problems to like learn and challenge and figure out, you know, I think that I had less stress back then because now I've got a team and their salaries and their families. Uh, that's definitely stressful, but no, it's like, I kind of always wanted to have a bigger agency and now we're kind of doing it. So it's definitely been fun. Very nice.
Speaker 2 00:22:34 Very nice. All right. So tell us a little bit more about this, like transition to product, cause this is, this is something that I kind of see as maybe not inevitable. That's probably overstating it a bit, but it's definitely a pretty common arc where you get agencies that acquire all of this knowledge about a particular vertical or industry. And then all of a sudden they realize there's an opportunity in there and that they see the same problem manifesting again and again. And then that usually is the Genesis of a product idea, which then turns them into some kind of a product company. I mean, this is how Shopify itself got started with Toby and the snowboards back in, you know, the early two thousands. Right?
Speaker 3 00:23:16 Exactly. So, uh, again, going back to traction and not getting distracted by shiny things during the pandemic, it turned the world on its head, turned us on our head and we got distracted by a whole bunch of stuff. Uh, we were looking at info products. We were looking at buying a brand. We were looking at starting a brand, you know, all sorts of weird things. And then, you know, we were like, that's not us. Like let's focus on being an agency. We're really good at that. We're going to keep doing that. And through that, we built some amazing custom themes and our process to build a custom theme is amazing, uh, really, really beautiful websites that are super, super fast. And so kind of like would that doubling down on being a service business actually opened the door for us to talk to Shopify about putting a theme in their theme store. And then it was like, well, you know, this is a lot closer to our vertical and what we're doing, then all these other ideas. So it's something that we're heavily exploring now. So, uh, we're, we're building out kind of the strategy and what that looks like internally. If we wanted to actually publish, uh, take kind of our framework and build it out into kind of a mass market theme.
Speaker 2 00:24:20 Very cool, very exciting. Uh, and Shopify has only recently kind of pried open the door on the themes here for a long time. That door was shut.
Speaker 3 00:24:29 Absolutely. And again, now this is where luck comes in is because we do have people championing us at, you know, at Shopify we have calls with the theme partnerships team. They told us exactly what we needed to do and what we should expect and, and gave us kind of the inside scoop on what's going on. So then we're like, yeah, this seems like a smarter.
Speaker 2 00:24:49 Yeah. Nice, nice. Yeah. That's super exciting. So do you have a date when you're going to end up in the store here or
Speaker 3 00:24:56 We are this, you know, I, Sean probably would yell at me if he knew, I told you about this. Like it's, it's very, very early days were like our, like we decided that we wanted to do it a week ago. Let me just say that.
Speaker 2 00:25:08 Okay. All right. Well, I won't push too hard then because I understand that these things, you know, it's like you see a little sprout in the ground and now you kind of have to protect it like the wind and the sun and you can't put too much rain on it or it's going to kill the sprout. It's a gentle thing. And it needs some time to kind of nurture and get stronger there. So I won't Badger you too much on that, but congratulations on having like that luck surface area, all that hard work culminates into an opportunity that you and Sean and everybody else at the agency now have the opportunity to take advantage of, which is really awesome. I'd love to hear that. We're going to try. Very nice. So kind of looking back again here, what would you say? Cause we have a number of freelancers and people that are aspiring entrepreneurs are probably already in a service business looking to kind of head toward a product at this point, or to build a larger agency or build a bigger business. If you were to sit down with all of those folks, what would you say to them that are looking to make the transition that you've made yourself today?
Speaker 3 00:26:11 Oh, I think people put like way too much emphasis on like doing something new or unique and like that's just bad advice. Just do the same thing better than your competition. And you're going to make a crap load of money.
Speaker 2 00:26:23 I like that. I like that. That's what, you know, recapture is predicated on too. So it's not like we're new in email marketing. Right. So we have to kind of do something that's a little bit different than everybody else, but it's the same kind of idea.
Speaker 3 00:26:36 Oh, absolutely. I mean, you're not going to maybe, maybe someone listening to this well, but like, you're not going to come up with the next Shopify or the next Facebook or, you know, one of these bills, like you don't need a billion dollar idea. You honestly like, and that's, and it kinda goes back to competition. Like people were like, well, there's someone already in that space. And I'm like, well, that just shows you there's a market. That's a good thing. Right?
Speaker 2 00:26:56 Yeah. You just got validation there, dude. Like
Speaker 3 00:27:00 Yeah. You know, you know, it's hard finding product market fit.
Speaker 2 00:27:03 Right, right. Or finding an audience that actually gives a crap about it. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, those things are definitely hard. Well, no, that's a, that's a good thing there. So I know this is something that I still struggle with as well. And I want to kind of wrap up the interview here because I think this is something that's pretty common, you know, amongst all entrepreneurs in general, but would you say that you still experience imposter syndrome and what does that look like?
Speaker 3 00:27:29 Ah, all the time. And that's like, again, I said, I love Twitter. I follow a lot of really smart people on Twitter. A lot of people that have like awesome agencies on Twitter and I see them like talking about their wins or the cool stuff that they're doing. And I just like, I'm like, man, I'm like, I suck, what am I doing? You know? And it, it gets to me all the time and I try to, I try not to compare myself to others and that's something that everybody should do, but like, you know, it still gets to you, you're still gonna have that lapse and be like, oh, I suck. But I find that, what does the complete opposite for me where I'm like, validating is like, I tried to like take time and talk to younger entrepreneurs or people that are few steps behind us in their business.
Speaker 3 00:28:05 That like, it makes me feel so great when like I can just give them all this information and help them like skip a few steps and you know, so that, like that makes a little bit more validating. So I guess, yes, you're never going to escape, uh, kind of that imposter syndrome. But like, what I've learned is if I'm feeling down about it, I like hit up some of my buddies that have like younger, smaller agencies and like, Hey man, what's new. And I just like start talking business with them and try to teach them something. And it makes me feel like I do know what I'm doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:28:32 I, I feel the pain on that one. You know, I was just, there were a couple of weeks in December where, you know, growth had kinda gotten flat and things were just sort of quiet, which unfortunately left me to my own thoughts. And then unfortunately also a lot of scrolling on Twitter, where I saw people like posting all their year end reviews and their huge wins and you know, how they're crushing it and stuff like that. And it just makes me feel like I suck and I'm not, and I'm not able to compare, but you should never compare where you're at with, you know, you can't compare your beginning to somebody else's middle. I think that's the same. Right.
Speaker 3 00:29:06 Yeah. And it's even goes to like, I, I give this advice to my clients when they're like, oh, my competitors are doing this and doing that. And like, you don't know their story. Like that's not, that's like a nonstarter who cares what they're doing.
Speaker 2 00:29:17 Right. And you only often see the winds. Like it's very rare for somebody to post the whole story out there to really hear the failures, the nuance, all the things that were tried. You just see them posting the wind. And you don't know that there were
Speaker 3 00:29:33 The, the board of directors that has the ear of all these like awesome clients. Like there's, there's a lot to it.
Speaker 2 00:29:40 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So for those out there that feel like imposter syndrome goes away. I think Jason and I can definitively say, Nope, it doesn't happen. So no enjoy the ride. Well, chase, if somebody wanted to
Speaker 3 00:29:55 Find out more about you to contact electric guy and get some awesome theme development, uh, or work with your Shopify team and get their store scaling through the roof, where would they go in contact you? Absolutely. So you'd head over to electric eye.io. Uh, if you're a brand on Shopify or if you're looking to migrate to Shopify, we're really good at that. And you're looking to, you know, for a trusted partner to kind of help you take you, you got product market fit, you're ma you're making sales and you want someone to kind of like put some gas on the fire and really take, make things take off. Uh, we're a good partner for that. And you can schedule a call and chat with one of us there. Or if you just want to listen to my rants on e-commerce more, you can head over to honesty, commerce.co subscribe to the podcast. And it's every week I'm usually talking to either a, like a Shopify brand founder and kind of their story or smart people like Dave here, uh, kind of subject matter experts and then getting some tips and tricks on how to do things.
Speaker 2 00:30:48 I can give you two thumbs up on the podcast. Uh, I, I don't listen to every episode out there, but the ones that I have listened to, you know, you bring on some great guests and, uh, you definitely have the, uh, the right folks on there to learn about Shopify and what's working and what's not. So that's very cool. Keep doing what you're doing, man. Absolutely. Thank you. Yup. And for everybody else out there, I hope you enjoy this week's episode. If you are enjoying what we have to say at rogue startups here as always our one ask is that you share, uh, either this episode or our podcast with somebody who can benefit from it until next week.
Speaker 1 00:31:27 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
