Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the Rogue Startups Podcast, where two 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 Hello. Welcome back to Rogue Startups. This is episode 2 73, is that right, Dave? Episode 2 73.
Speaker 3 00:00:27 Sounds pretty close to me if it isn't. Well, all right, then you're gonna be listening to the wrong number versus what shows up in your, uh, favorite podcast app or RSS feed. So yes, apologies on that. We're, uh, we're still experiencing our, uh, holiday, post holiday reengage the brain moment here.
Speaker 2 00:00:46 And you would think after like six years of this, we'd be able to figure out how to do this right. But I think that's what people have come to expect from this show. So <laugh> <laugh>, we'll kinda roll with it.
Speaker 3 00:00:56 Meeting expectations since 2016. Yeah, that's, that's my new,
Speaker 2 00:01:02 Oh,
Speaker 3 00:01:03 Gracious. My new thing here. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:01:05 Uh, I did see several, uh, several kind of comments in the Twitter sphere on our last episode, which is really cool. I think we were talking about ai, um, and the economy and how we both think there's some, some things that people aren't talking about there. And that was kind of like echoed in the Twitter sphere. So that was cool that, uh, that are indeed people listening and that they like and enjoy what we're, what we're throwing out here. So that was cool.
Speaker 3 00:01:28 Yeah, please keep that up if you, uh, if you have something to say about that, please tweet us, uh, on the Twitter sphere and, uh, we, we would be happy to engage, uh, further. So that's probably the most convenient place for either of us at this point.
Speaker 2 00:01:42 Yep, for sure. For sure. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, so I thought we would talk today as kind of an up updates part of an episode about like what we're looking forward to in this year, what our plans are. It's the beginning of the second week of January, so I think still kind of in the new year spirit. But yeah, I mean, I think probably like you, you were just talking about your rocks. We definitely have set our OKRs and, and even talked about like multi-year plans today in our team meetings. So I think it's a good time of year to, to talk about these bigger picture things and what they might mean to the business.
Speaker 3 00:02:18 Yeah. And you know, I don't know how you feel about each time you go through the O K R process, but I can tell you every time, so I've looked back through all of my stuff for eos and basically I've gone through the annual planning phase now three different times cuz I save all of the documentation every year and I look back at the previous year and I compare that to what actually happened, what I intended to happen, what I want to happen in the next year, and kind of look and see at that. And the one thing I'm noticing is that the more I'm doing this, the better I'm getting at the planning process itself and understanding like what is a good goal, what is, and it's not just like the smart goals, but like what are the goals that tie together with the rocks that are moving things forward in the business?
Speaker 3 00:03:12 Because when I first started out in this, I would have goals for the business and then I would have separate rocks and my rocks were sort of tied into the goals, but like maybe in some cases tangentially or it would be like, oh, I think about these goals and then as a totally separate thing, here's what I'm gonna work on for the next three months. And then, you know, after doing that for a couple of years, I'm like, Hmm, that didn't really move that goal very far forward. So why the hell did I do that? Like that kind of stuff. Have you noticed that with your OKRs?
Speaker 2 00:03:44 Uh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And I'm feeling extremely guilty as you're saying this <laugh>. Cause like
Speaker 3 00:03:49 <laugh>, it's not a guilt trip, man, I promise.
Speaker 2 00:03:52 You know, like, uh, so, so the way I think about it, uh, and this is just off the top of my head, but the way I think about it is like I have in my mind where I want us to go and, and like if I'm doing a good job, then the team should know that too, you know? And then I kind of leave it up to them to set the OKRs or the rocks for the quarter. Um, but it really then is kind of like on me to say like, okay, is the development OKRs or rocks or whatever contributing to like a step in the right direction for kind of where we want to get the product and stuff like that. And I guess like subconsciously that's always like the barometer I use to say like, yep, these are good OKRs, or that doesn't really, you know, kind of make sense.
Speaker 2 00:04:33 Like, we should probably think about something else. So it's very loose <laugh> on a good day, I guess is, is what I'm saying. But I guess, I guess it is the litmus test for me when we're talking about them to say like, if, if someone presents OKRs to me or I'm coming up with my own for like marketing, cause I, I'm kind of in charge of that right now. Like if I create, you know, an OKR set that is divergent from our overall company goals, then, then that's wrong. And typically that's like course corrected. Yeah. I guess that's how, that's how it goes in my head at least.
Speaker 3 00:05:05 Yeah. Yeah. I mean I, that process has gotten better for me over the years and this year I was the most cognizant of it and partly because, you know, I took the longest this year to do my annual planning than I ever have before and it was really spread out honestly over multiple weeks. And I would do it in like little chunks instead of like sitting down and forcing myself to do it in one sitting, which I've done before. And I did the original time and I, you know, the, the very first time I did the full retreat, I went off somewhere and I made the whole space and time and intention and the atmosphere and all of that and had a very structured day of specific times and the timers and some background music that was conducive and all of this stuff. And I felt at the end of the process, like there were times that I, I, I needed more time to sit off and think about it.
Speaker 3 00:06:02 Like I thought that was sort of what I wanted to do, but I wasn't totally sure. Hmm. And this year, and then, then last year I just basically went and did it in hasten a coffee shop and I think that was a mistake. And then this year I was like, I, I want to do it differently. I, and I started at the beginning of December cuz I knew I had a lot of extra time and I kind of walked into December with this, with this mindset of, you know, I, I, there's some tech debt that needs to be addressed and some other things, but I don't have like pressing marketing things to be working on right now. In fact, it's sort of a weird time to be doing marketing anyway for me. So instead I tried to engage the planning process deeply for that and a few other side tasks, and I felt like that was more valuable by just taking it in small little chunks like that. Do you tend to go for the Big Bang or do you try to break it up or spread it out or, you know, what works best for you?
Speaker 2 00:06:52 Yeah, I guess it's spread out because yeah, I, no, I don't have like a day or a couple of days where it's just quarterly planning. It's a couple of couple hour sessions and I've, I've gotten undisciplined about like, it's at my desk, which I know it kind of shouldn't be <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:07:09 Um, yeah, I did that too.
Speaker 2 00:07:11 Yeah. But, but also, like, I don't know, maybe I'm justifying it to myself, but like, it's not like we're taking like a 90 degree turn in the business, you know, a lot of it is like, we need to get like 10% better at this and 30% better at this. So like it's, we're not revolutionizing what we're doing at this point, you know?
Speaker 3 00:07:29 Right, right. Yeah, I I feel like I I was basically iterating on my previous efforts. Yeah. Um, you know,
Speaker 2 00:07:36 I I guess I'm saying I don't think that's totally wrong if, if they're generally in the right direction. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:07:41 Yeah. And, and I think if you've got a pretty strong idea of where you want to go in a long term trajectory, then you can sort of say, all right, medium term, that means I need to hit here short term. It means I need to be within this kind of area in order to make those two other goals, which is why you do the, the 10 year, the three year and the one year planning, and then you break it up into rocks to say, how do I get to that one year goal? Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. So it sounds like you're, you're kind of doing yours in a similar way. And I definitely did that plan at my desk thing this year, but part of it was, you know, it was super cold and snowy here in Colorado, and I was not in the mood to be going out, driving around trying to find a place.
Speaker 3 00:08:20 And then it also got late enough that I was like, I'm not renting a condo or something in the mountains at Christmas prices. That makes no sense. Yeah. Um, so, you know, there was, there was some of that that kind of worked into it, but when the kids were home doing their thing, you know, baking cookies or doing whatever, then, you know, I was here in the office and it was later in the afternoon, and I, I just carved out that space to say, all right, now I want to think about this piece of the thing. And I actually did an, one of the exercises I hadn't done in a while, and I know you've already done this for Casto, but I, I finally went and wrote down all the roles, what needed to be done in recapture, because I was sort of telling myself this lie all along, that I'm just doing sales and marketing, and Mike is handling the technical stuff and Julia's handling the qa, and that's it.
Speaker 3 00:09:10 Like that, you know, that's all that's really going on here. But when I wrote down all of the things that I really engaged in here and what things needed to be done for recapture and who owned those things, my name showed up in a disturbingly large number of boxes on that diagram. And I was like, ah, fuck, <laugh>. Yeah. Okay. All right. So yeah, this makes sense. And, and so, you know, it gave me a pause about, all right, is this the year that I also need to be thinking about hiring somebody else to do certain other things, to take those things off my plate so that I continue to expand and have things. So like, if you're doing this in EOS terms, you've gotta have the visionary, you've gotta have the integrator, and then under them you have all the leads of the various core areas. So for recapture that sales and marketing, well, if you wanna separate them, but I combine them at the moment, sales and marketing, engineering, finance, which, you know, I, I was like, oh, we don't do finance. Uh, well
Speaker 3 00:10:10 That's bullshit. Yeah, of course you do finance, Dave, you better, you have a goddamn p and l every month that you send out to your, you send all the stuff over to your bookkeeper and she sends you back all the p and l updates. So yeah, that is being handled, but that's still you sitting in the CFO seat right now, you know, and then there's admin stuff every time that we've had to hire. I'm like shuffling things around and, you know, adding them to all these various accounts and, and getting them to sign NDAs and contractual shit and all of this stuff. And I'm like, okay, that's my name in that box too. Like, you know, I, I'm sure you did that with Casto quite a while ago, but that was kind of eye-opening for me with recapture this year.
Speaker 2 00:10:50 Yeah, man. Totally. I mean, we, there's some things I don't do at all, which is great. Uh, like I don't, like, I'm not a developer, right? So like, I don't touch the product or the development stuff at all. Like, I have chats with those folks and they are amazing and like, take care of everything. And so like, that's totally off my hands. Same with like, support. Like, I don't get into help Scout ever really. And so that's great. But, you know, sales, I'm still like heavily involved in marketing is like almost all in my plate right now. Uh, certainly from like a strategy perspective. We're working with like contractors and Matt and stuff like that in our team. But like, it's still like a lot of the, the responsibility is on me and then like yeah. You know, admin stuff, finance, you know, vision and all the, all the kind of big picture stuff is, is on me.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 Yeah. And I think that like, that's the hard part of a business. Like either of ours is like, you're not big enough to hire anyone for all those roles, much less like really fucking amazing people <laugh>, you know? Right. Like, you can't afford a $200,000 a year marketing person, which is probably what you gotta pay, like a really good one in the us. And so you're left with like, oh, I'll, I'll like cobble together these few freelancers and this one consultant or whatever. Like we were talking about AdWords stuff, you know, like that, that's like several people's job in, in a big company. Whereas like, we're fortunate that maybe on one hand to say like, Hey, in the kind of, you know, modern economy, there's really specific freelancers that can solve one part of this problem for you. But then like, you know, it all, eventually the responsibility of the vision and the goal setting, all that stuff ends up back on your plate. And I think that's the, that's the challenge in these kind of like medium size SaaS business or any kind of business, but like medium size businesses is like you, at the end of the day, you're responsible for a lot, even if you're not implementing a lot of the, the end like product or result.
Speaker 3 00:12:46 Yeah. Yeah. And that <laugh> that is an ongoing challenge to try to, to balance that, to split your time and give yourself the bandwidth to do the things that are most important right now. So that's like this constant reprioritization task.
Speaker 2 00:13:06 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:13:06 Understanding, oh, okay, well this, this quarter is like the best time. Like right now for recapture, this is the time that all the shit is moving around in e-commerce. People are starting to reevaluate their tech stacks, the solutions. They look back at q4, they say, that didn't work. I don't like that provider. That vendor didn't do very well. This email was shit, whatever. And now is when they're looking right. So now is when we have to execute on our marketing as quickly as possible. So like, this is the, this is the time where marketing becomes my biggest focus, but not like, I'm not building a ton of product. I'm not gonna be making huge amount of changes on the way that things are running internally within recapture, because that isn't like the most important thing for me right now. So that's where the priorities kind of get dumped around there.
Speaker 2 00:13:56 Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yep. Yep. Uh, I'll just give two, two things on this in terms of prioritization. Um, one thing I did recently and like wrote a blog post about it, so if you wanna check it out, head over to the website to my website, I should say, uh, Craig hewitt.me is focus days. So essentially I have Tuesday and Friday zero calls, um, and I have a lot of fucking calls. And so all the calls are on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesday and Thursday. It's just me doing the shit I gotta do, like on an individual contributor level. That's been really helpful. It makes Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday really meeting heavy. Like I have four or five calls each day, which is a lot. But then Tuesday and Friday, like, I don't check email really. And I'm able to focus on the stuff to like move the ball forward on like sales and marketing stuff.
Speaker 2 00:14:48 The other thing is like, we just do less stuff than we used to. And I think this is really important is just like, just say no to everything. That's not that one thing. You know, like, Hey, should we fucking, you know, create this free tool? No. Like, if that's not the most important thing, then just a hundred percent no. Put it in a backlog somewhere and don't look at it again until the next quarter. Like, I don't do a great job of this, but as I do more of it, it, it's really powerful. Um, and that's, you know, PE firm, Hey, do you wanna have meeting? No. Uh, should we build this feature? No. Should we accommodate this certain type of way a customer wants to pay? No. And like, the more you can say no, just you'll have less to consider, because I think you're spot on that is like, it's not the hours in the day. It's like this mental capacity and overhead to do the important shit. And I never really got this. And I'm, I feel like I'm just beginning to understand this, that it's like, I don't work too many hours, but I don't have enough really good time to work. Uh, and I feel like that's just something I'm getting out of now.
Speaker 3 00:15:49 Yeah. Yeah. So to that end, I actually did something this year. I bought this like for Black Friday for myself. It is the productivity planner. So, uh, a friend of ours, Charles Pesky, recommended this. Uh, so, uh, Charles is the, uh, founder of Spark Shipping. Uh, so shout out to Charles, uh, love your product, but he recommended this productivity planner. And it's a paper one, like, it's a a, a physical book. It's nicely bound from intelligent change.com. And basically, you know, I I I'm specifically recommending this because it seemed like it would work for me, but, you know, I don't wanna say this is the only way to do this. There's a hundred ways out there. You could do this exact same thing. You could literally do this with your own paper and pen. You could also do it with other tools. You could do it with straight up Pomodoro technique and some good note taking and Evernote, I mean.
Speaker 3 00:16:45 But basically what it forces you to do is you do a week long planning. So usually on Sunday night, and I just started this literally this week, although I've been kind of prepping for it because I knew this was gonna be the first long week I had of work. I specifically didn't try to put it in the middle of the holidays when things were broken up and, you know, people were off, just didn't make any sense. So I specifically pushed it to January and said, this week is when it starts. But, so you do a planning of the week, and in that planning of the week, you basically have to say, what are the five most important tasks that you need to accomplish this week? And then after that, what are the secondary tasks of importance? And then after that, what are the additional tasks?
Speaker 3 00:17:29 Uh, and like, what is your overall intention for the week? And the goal here is that you should accomplish everything on the five most important tasks list. Maybe you'll get some of the secondary tasks done. And you know, if you're having a fantastically productive week, the additional task starts getting knocked out as well. But the way that you're supposed to supposed to think about this here is to prioritize it in such a way that if you only got the things done on the most important tasks list, you would be happy. That's the way that they tell you to think about it. Uh, and so, you know, if you've got five important tasks, guess what that means? You have one important task per day of the week. So you break that up. You know, for me today I had a lead gen meeting with this guy and an agency, and that was my most important task.
Speaker 3 00:18:15 It was one of my most important tasks. So today that was my most important task. Uh, and then I had some other secondary stuff for, um, you know, working on a target keyword for, uh, some SEO stuff, doing some email support, and then dealing with some health insurance ship. Uh, it turns out I'm gonna be able to get all of this stuff done here before the end of the day, but that's not necessarily the case. Like, your main task could take you hours and hours and hours, and you have to decide what is it that you're gonna do. And then if it does, if it's like a really super big task, then you're supposed to break it down even further it because you're, this is supposed to help you recognize that, you know, you can't just say, write an article because writing an article means a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 3 00:19:01 Well, there's some research that you have to do. You gotta find some keywords to go with that. Then you gotta do the outline of the article and maybe you have to get images for the article and all this other stuff. You have to break that stuff down to say, what is the most important thing I'm going to do today? If you have write the article as your goal for the week, then you break down those five things into one thing per day so that it doesn't end up at the end of the week. You're like, ah, I didn't get the fucking article done. Like <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:19:24 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:19:25 That kind of stuff. So this, you know, I'm very, not very far into this at all, but based on what Charles has said, and he's been following this for quite a while, and based on what I think my brain wraps around, I think this is gonna be pretty successful to help me accomplish those goals and to stay organized for exactly what you were just talking about.
Speaker 2 00:19:48 Yeah, no, I really like that. I mean, I, I like that better than what I do currently, which is, uh, sometimes I think about it, sometimes I actually write it down is write down like the three things I want to get done that day. And the difficulty with that is sometimes it makes you reactive cuz you're not sitting down on a Saturday afternoon or whatever planning the week ahead, you know, without your inbox and slack and stuff staring at you. And you can think more in terms of weeks, but then also, like sometimes like three things in a day is a lot <laugh>, you know, and sometimes yeah, like just one, like that one, because I think sometimes subconsciously I don't put a really big thing on there because I know that I, I need to get all three done. But in reality, like if you write a super landing page in a day, like that's huge, you know? Um, and so like, you gotta give yourself that grace to say like, Hey, I'm only getting this thing done to get, cause I got three calls and then I have these two hours to get this thing done. So I like that and I might steal that.
Speaker 3 00:20:45 Yeah, I mean, uh, it, it seems, so I've done the, the reactive thing before where I write down at the beginning of the day, or sometimes it's <laugh> middle of the day where I've written down, here are the things I want to get done today. But part of the mistake was I've usually done that after I've gone through my email. So now I've basically pulled my to-dos out of the emails in most cases. Yeah. Which is again, being reactive and I don't, I, I feel like that's not been really good. Now, the nice thing about December is that my email volume went down, uh, for a while anyway. Uh, I had more customer support early on in the month, which was a little surprising and that was good. But you know, when the email volume went down, it suddenly gave me that space to go, huh, all right, well I don't have a to-do list from support.
Speaker 3 00:21:32 What should I be doing now? Like, I had to start thinking about that more. And you know, that's what sort of led me into the, oh yeah, maybe this is the time to start doing that intelligent change thing and plan that more actively. And then I also kind of got into the, oh, you know, there's a lot of seo, low hanging keywords that are low hanging fruit that I could really pull some articles together and get some big bang for my buck just by doing some not terribly massive effort on my own here. I wouldn't have to hire anybody to do it. I could put the stuff together. In fact, I would probably have to supply them so much stuff to tell them what to write, that by that time I should have just written it myself. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff has helped me be better organized. And because I was already starting to think about that in December, that transition so far into January has been, well, we'll call it seamless here, nine days in, you know, check back with me here at the end of February, see if I still think it's seamless, but this thing is a quarter experiment here. I'm gonna run this for the whole quarter and see how it goes. So
Speaker 2 00:22:38 Yeah, I like it. I mean, I think if you stick with it, it'd be hugely successful. Um, even just the exercise of prioritizing what's important, even if you don't get more done, like, uh, overall I guess it'll be, it'll be huge.
Speaker 3 00:22:50 Yeah. And there's a lot of tracking stuff that goes with it. I'm, I'm giving myself some grace to say, I don't need to do a hundred percent of what they're asking me to do. Like, here's your mood tracker, how did the day go? Like, rate your day. Yeah, that's true. And other stuff. I'm like, uh, I, you know, I feel like I would get so much out of, if I just was able to prioritize and say, I got this done, or I didn't get this done, and here's how long it took. That's enough. Like, and maybe the other stuff I add if I'm really excited about it. But, you know, I know from my own experience, if I try to make something too complicated, too hard or too involved too soon, I'm not gonna do it. So I'm just not gonna do that.
Speaker 2 00:23:30 You know, something that this makes me think about is I think there's a lot of importance with like, consistency of these kinds of things, both in like how you work, but also in how you communicate with other people. Like internally, I'm just thinking about like, you know, vision and the one year goal and the three year, whatever it is, one year plan and three year goal and 10 year vision. Like what those are gonna change, you know? But like being, for me, like being consistent with just communicating those in general and then like how I communicate with those and then how I am true to that and like, follow through with like how I work and how I guide the rest of the team to work. You know, like I know this kind of whatever like out there, but like, if you do that every once in a while, then nobody takes you seriously <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:24:15 If you do it consistently, then they say, wow, this must be important because like the boss talks about it all the time. Uh, I better take this seriously too. And, and like I, I'm, I'm nudging myself with this, but like, I think a lot of us as founders think that this stuff just isn't important because we left corporate Americas cuz we didn't wanna talk about, you know, mission, vision and values and stuff. But like, if you do them right, they should like answer the question of like priority and importance for everyone all the time. You know, like if the, the question of like, how should we handle this should go back to like mission, vision and values and rocks and all that. Like, it should all just be like answered automatically if, if you communicate those, right?
Speaker 3 00:24:52 Yeah, I totally agree. In fact, I found myself in the last three to six months timeframe ish talking more about like what our values are and how something relates back to a core value. Um, and, you know, I was like, ah, you know, I, I think somewhere in September I was catching myself going, oh God, you've turned into one of those corporate drones. And then later I, I actually thought about it some more and I was like, no, because I I am setting the culture here. If I don't tell everybody what are what's important, then how are they gonna know they're gonna make something that's important that I may or may not agree with. Yep. But if I say this is important and I put it on the website and I put articles on our Slack, our corporate Slack about that, or I start talking about that during meetings or, you know, when I onboard somebody else, I say, all right, you have to watch this thing on our core values and that's required, and I need you to like, send me an E, like this is something I do, send me an email that says, which core value resonates with you the most.
Speaker 3 00:25:56 So I know that they've understood it and they've thought about it somewhat, right? Yep. Um, and you know, I used to think that was kind of bullshit, but I think it, it really does have some, some importance to be able to communicate what things need to happen and why. Because if you can point to a value and say, Hey, look, we're not putting that in because simplicity is one of our values. It makes it very clear, like, I'm not personally against your change, it's just, it's against our values, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think that simplifies it quite a bit.
Speaker 2 00:26:30 Yeah. And then, and then the, the big one though is like at some point you won't have to say, yes, we're gonna do that or not, because people will answer the question for themselves, you know? Right. Like, oh, of course we're not gonna do that because our values say the simplicity is one of our, you know, most important things and this overly simplifies for not a lot of upside or whatever. Yeah. Interesting. You know, so like really specifically Dave, are there things that you're looking at in like the first half of the year that you want to talk about?
Speaker 3 00:26:57 Yeah, I can talk about, um, some of the things that I've got on here. So, you know, I've alluded to this a little bit. You know, we, I did some research and I identified that there was a bunch of keywords that recaptured could really, like dead simply rank for that are not, they're not huge high volume. We're not talking about five, 10,000 a month or anything like that. But they are high intent bottom of the funnel keywords. And as soon as I started finding those, I was like, huh, I guess I really should be writing an article for that. And then after I went and identified 64, the keywords that are all, like if you're on the HF tool, then you know, the keyword difficulty numbers. Like these were all less than six. Oh sure. And I'm like, <laugh>, oh, I know. I was like, oh, Jesus.
Speaker 3 00:27:46 I mean, I'm just leaving, I'm leaving customers all over the floor by not doing anything about those. So I was like, all right, I have poo-pooed content marketing for too long, and I feel like I don't need to do content marketing for content marketing sake. I need to do content marketing to hit these keywords because I believe that these keywords have high buyer intent <laugh> and I'm dumb for not doing anything about them. So, you know, that's one of my goals here is to increase our organic traffic to over 500 views a month, which right now it's basically negligible to non-existent. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, there's some in there, but it's just not, it's not that interesting. And it really should be going to targeted pages. There's some that's on the main page, but for all intents and purposes, it's just not that useful. <laugh>. Yeah. So that, that's, that's probably my number one goal right there.
Speaker 3 00:28:41 I'm gonna do some other stuff about, we've got some technical ones. I need to hire a new tech lead, obviously still that's gotta be something that I need to get done this year, but I also added retain them. So I, I think that's changing my focus a little bit. Like how can I ask the right set of questions to make sure that this person really wants to be in this seat so it's right person, right seat in EOS parlance mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but at the same time, like I also want 'em to be a hell yes. From Derek Sievers, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if they're not both of those things, then I'm not gonna hire them, which means I, me, I may need to be really patient here. Uh, and I had to be pretty patient last time, but patients looks like it may be a continued virtue on that, but that's another goal is to hire and retain something. And I also wanna do some outreach events. Um, so this is part of my, uh, experimentation here. So some of those are webinars. I'm gonna try to host some local happy hours to bring some, you know, merchants and founders and other e-commerce developers just to get some community and get me outta the house. Um, yeah. Yeah. So those are, those are three things that I'm looking at right now. I've got some other ones, uh, that are less interesting than those, but yeah, how about you? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:29:57 Yeah. Just, just as a note, like I'd be really curious to hear how hiring is, uh, like these days I, we haven't hired since May. Um, it was for a developer, uh, for Jesse. Um, but it would be very interesting to hear how develop, uh, like hiring developers is for you these days. So we will definitely stay tuned for that
Speaker 3 00:30:15 <laugh>. Um, yeah, I got four words for you right now. Pain in the ass. Uh, it's, it's, it's hard.
Speaker 2 00:30:21 Less, less than it used to be, probably. I mean, you have to believe it's a little easier these days.
Speaker 3 00:30:26 Maybe. Uh, it could be the, the price range that I'm looking at. You know, I'm sure if you're looking on the higher end looking for fang style engineers, you probably have a lot more to pick from than you used to. Um, but yeah, I mean, down where I'm at, it's, it's harder for sure.
Speaker 2 00:30:42 Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, for me, uh, similar goals, right? Um, growing organic traffic and trial starts is the number one goal for, for me for sure. And really kind of like a little bit for everybody. Like a lot of stuff is pointing back to that brought on a new like SEO consultant that I really like, how can holistic, they think, um, which is cool. Um, we're being super targeted, which is something I picked up from Ruben. You know, I, I think about SEO from like a Sitewide perspective and Ruben thinks about it from like, what's the, like what's the page where we could really make a difference, you know? Um, and so like that's what we're doing. Like our entire like marketing strategy for the quarter is around one page on the site.
Speaker 3 00:31:24 Um, oh, nice. I like that. Very focused.
Speaker 2 00:31:26 Yeah. So, so that's cool. Yeah, it's really focused and, and it's like the eight, it's like the, uh, it's not the 80 20, it's the like outsized returns thing, you know, like mm-hmm. <affirmative>, this won't have like incremental returns, but it could have like multiplicative or whatever exponential kinda returns if we, if we do really good with this one page. So, so that's like, that's basically marketing pretty, pretty interested to see how that goes. There's gonna be a lot of effort that goes into it. And then there's, there's some product stuff that I'm not like, involved with on a day-to-day basis, but will be very cool. And we'll take a, a lot of product marketing, uh, when they're out. And so I'm kind of just like waiting for those to be ready, but we're kind of like at least a month, but when they're out, they will require a ton of my time to, to do like an honest job of marketing the, the, all the work we've done <laugh> to create these new products and features.
Speaker 2 00:32:19 Um, and so like that's kind of something I'm just simmering on and know that, you know, middle of the quarter or whatever, it will consume all of my time basically. So yeah, that's kind of like, that's the first quarter at least. And then, you know, hopefully just more of the same. Like, like we were talking before, like we're not doing like radical change in the business, but like growth had definitely slowed for a while and need to change things, but are trying to be really specific about what we do to change those and not just like, fucking, oh, let's try Pinterest and let's try Instagram ads and let's try all this stuff. It's like, oh yeah, let's just do better at what we do. Um, is is kind of the, the theme for the year, I guess.
Speaker 3 00:33:00 Yeah. Double down on what's working or, you know, incremental improvements. Iteration, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:33:05 Uhhuh <affirmative>, yeah. Yeah. So, which is good because like not reinventing the wheel like requires a lot less, you know, glucose, you know, brain energy than, than kind of starting from scratch. So like, just taking what we have and doing better at it is like, seems feasible and reasonable, so.
Speaker 3 00:33:21 Yeah. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. Yeah. That, that sounds like a recipe for some success in 2023, so
Speaker 2 00:33:30 I hope so for both of us. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:33:32 Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Well, you know, we did have growth and recapture last year, uh, and I wanna see that again this year. The only way I think I'm definitely gonna do that is to make sure that, uh, you know, I find new ways to bring in new leads. So whatever I can do to facilitate that, that's definitely been the highest things on my priority list for sure.
Speaker 2 00:33:54 Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> seems good. Seems good. Well, hope everyone listening enjoyed this episode. Uh, if you did enjoy it and want to share it with a friend, that would be awesome. That is Dave and I's one ask is to share the podcast with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. Uh, as always, hit us up on Twitter. Uh, Dave and I are always up for chatting about kind of thoughts on whatever life business, sass, the podcast, uh, whatever. But, but just love to, to hear from folks that listen to the pod. And as always, thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1 00:34:28 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.
