"Drop In" Jesse Schoberg of Drop-In Blog

[00:00:00] Speaker A: I always was like, this is us. This is going to be our company. Like, I'm only going to do, you know, everything, self serve, you know, indie bootstrap, blah, blah, blah, idea. You know, after plateau for about a year, you know, all of a sudden doing a demo doesn't sound so bad. No, that's right. [00:00:15] Speaker B: I mean, I mean, I can do. [00:00:16] Speaker A: Some calls, you know, that's fine. Oh, you want me to. You want to, you want to. You want a contract? You want to send a wire? Yeah, we got that, you know. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:25] Speaker A: Where before that it was like credit cards only I don't talk to anybody, you know. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. We change, we maturation process there. Welcome to the off site podcast. I am your host, Jordan G. This is where I team up with friends to catch up on our work and just as importantly, what's going on beyond the work. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Rosie, the AI powered phone answering service for small businesses. All right, here we go. Another episode of the off site podcast. Today I have my friend Jesse Shan. Jesse, what's happening? [00:00:59] Speaker A: Hey, man, thanks a lot for having me on. Excited to be here. [00:01:02] Speaker B: I'm looking forward to catching up. Every time we talk, you're in a different place in the world, but you've been working on the same business for a while. So I'm looking forward to catching up on that. And I want to know how it feels to get your $100 million signing bonus from Zuckerberg. Are you, are you turning it down or are you going to go for it? [00:01:18] Speaker A: I asked for 150. You know, it's like I have a lifestyle to support and these kind of things, so. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Fair enough. Fair enough. [00:01:26] Speaker A: Yeah. You understand taxes and all that? [00:01:29] Speaker B: Yes. I rarely remember my dreams, but a few days ago I had a dream about Mark Zuckerberg, which is very, very odd. The dream was I was walking out of my yacht and I ran into Mark Zuckerberg. So it's a good dream, like, you know, to begin with. [00:01:44] Speaker A: We're in a good spot. [00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. But. But the interesting twist about the dream was that it was not my yacht. And Mark was so impressed that I had given the impression that it was my yacht. And he was like, well played, well played. So I don't. That means. [00:01:57] Speaker A: So did you just let it ride or did you tell him? [00:02:00] Speaker B: I told him and he was like, wow. You know, he was super impressed that I had given the impression it was my yacht and he was fooled. And. And then I think where the dream went from there was like, let's get you a yacht. You know, I think that was like the, the gentleman dream. [00:02:13] Speaker A: What a gentleman. [00:02:13] Speaker B: Exactly right. And a scholar. So Jesse, talk to me. Where, where are you these days and what are you working on at the moment? [00:02:20] Speaker A: I'm in London briefly. I kind of am pretty nomadic. I spend a lot of the year in Bangkok usually and in Europe for the summer. So just did two months in Barcelona, doing two months here in London, doing a month in Budapest where I'm going to do some team meetup stuff and then I'll be heading back to Asia in the fall. So. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Cool. So you're like, you're like a VC summering in Europe? [00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I work though. I work. [00:02:44] Speaker B: Oh, I see. Well, that's, that's not, that's not as good. [00:02:48] Speaker A: Also I have profitable businesses. [00:02:51] Speaker B: Unacceptable. So you're, you have team in, in Budapest. [00:02:56] Speaker A: I have a team in Eastern Europe. So we have three co founders, including myself, that are global and then one's in Mexico City, one's in Madison, Wisconsin, actually nearby you and one is me floating around. So those are the founders, but then we have three in our marketing team that are Eastern Europe. So we were going to be doing a founders retreat, which we do pretty regularly with the three of us. And this is the first year that we'. [00:03:23] Speaker B: Had. [00:03:24] Speaker A: We didn't used to have any full time team members. We built our whole company with hourly freelancers, which is kind of my skill set. But we got to the point where we were hitting this kind of growth plateau and I was like, okay, we actually need somebody who's thinking about the company all the time and wants to actually move things forward on a marketing side because, you know, we're builders and we just like to make cool stuff. So we actually, in the last year we've hired three full time people from Bosnia and Serbia and they are great and I'm very happy with the state of the team right now. So anyways, we were starting to set do our normal team meet up with the, with the founders and then we're like, it was kind of working out. Is going to be in Europe because Laura was going to be in Europe and I was going to be here and then we were like, oh yeah, yeah, we should actually do a real team retreat with the new team now. [00:04:10] Speaker B: That you have full time. That's right. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Worked out very well, very excited about that. And Budapest just kind of worked out to be the best spot. So like, fortunately my wife actually organizes these team retreats like for a living. So she kind of did the research and found out where we should go, where people can get to with visas, where they have the right kind of space we need and you know, that's kind of what she does. So that was helpful resource. But anyways, so yeah, so that's, that's what's going on in Budapest and I'm excited. It's the first time we've had a non founder retreat. I mean most of my team I've never even met. A couple of people I've met like once randomly when I happen to be in their part of the world, wherever it is, this kind of stuff. So this will be really fun. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Cool. Yeah, we, we have done that before in Berlin because our team has always been split between us and Europe. The interesting thing about your setup is that usually you have an American based company with American founders who do the marketing and then they hire in Eastern Europe for the development. Yeah, that's true. And you have found a way to do the reverse. [00:05:17] Speaker A: And that's true, I guess. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Right. Maybe it's an unfair like stereotype around engineering versus marketing. But I think that's great that you found full time people at the level of competency that you need around marketing specifically and in, in Europe along with the culture and the, and the cost and all that that goes with it. [00:05:37] Speaker A: To be fair, I've been hiring devs out of Eastern Europe for two decades. So I'm very fluent in recruiting from the region. And so for me it was just kind of the default because I prefer the work ethic and the mindset and this kind of stuff. And now the region has evolved a lot and so, you know, now there is a lot of people that obviously are, I mean we're talking, this is front facing marketing. Like they're doing copy, they're doing email, they're doing blog posts. Like it's 100%, you know, better English than mine basically. You know, people that have actual educations and such, you know. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Right, right. So you've, you've basically gone through the stereotype because you have gone through the ignorance layer and you know, the actual real story going on there, which is full competence on all fronts. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Basically white collar America, you're done. Like watch out. Like it's all over. Like. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yes, it's not that it's over, it's that maybe the playing field is much more even than people realize. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Well, I think there's something interesting that happened during COVID when everyone realized that they could work remotely and then you know, there went this weird kind of back and Forth shift, where it was like, you know, everyone in San Francisco said, hey, you know what? I can actually work from where I'm from in Arkansas, so can I just work there during COVID And everyone said, yeah, yeah, of course, of course. [00:06:56] Speaker B: And keep the salary the same, please. [00:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then. But then after a little while, then the. The. The company in Silicon Valley said, hey, you know what? If you're going to live in Arkansas, we're going to pay Arkansas rate. And then the person said, no, no, no, no, no, I got to get San Francisco rates. You know, but then what happens is when that person in Arkansas pushes back and says, no, no, no, I want what I'm worth, then the company in San Francisco says, you know what? What's the difference if they're working in Arkansas or if they're working in Serbia? Why do I want to pay you $150,000 a year when you're not working as, you know, like this kind of like now, like you said, the open becomes even. And now there's a lot of places in the world that have a lower cost of living and honestly, hungrier people that are not spoiled and entitled and understand what it means to work for a living. And I think that we've lost that a lot in my country of birth there. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Yes, Yes. I am very happy that you and I have gone to a point in the first five minutes where we are not. We're not sugarcoating things and we're speaking very directly. I think both you and I are experience this very directly and so can be very honest about it without any bad feelings. I mean, my favorite thing when it comes to this dynamic is as a company paying a lot less, but the individual actually makes more. [00:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's the most perfect arbitrage on both sides. Right? [00:08:20] Speaker B: Yes. Everybody wins. Right. Which is like the ideal in a capitalistic kind of dynamic. Everybody. Everybody wins. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Yep. It will bring them up, and then it will bring the overpriced west down. But again, it's kind of like when the manufacturing revolution left. I feel like that's the moment that we're happening. You know, when all the manufacturing went to China and everyone in Detroit said, wait a minute here in there, like, well, you know what? These guys work harder and they do a better job and it's cheaper. Time to wake up. Right. [00:08:47] Speaker B: As long as the quality is there, then all of a sudden, the equation kind of breaks for keeping things here. And what you're talking about now is now the white. White collar equivalent of Manufacturing being distributed. Yes. We started hiring our support staff in Columbia and are having a very similar experience in that the quality and the competence and the performance is there. We pay a fraction of what we would pay in the US and the person at Columbia makes double what they were just making their previous job. [00:09:17] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:09:18] Speaker B: And everybody wins. And I can see that as a sustainable path to build up a big support team. Right. We're going for SMB. We, our goal is tens of thousands of users. We're going to end up with a big support staff. And to do that at American W2 wages simply doesn't make sense. It won't make sense. [00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the Latin America advantage, of course is that you've got the time zone, so you're not, you know, the traditional way to do this would be to use Philippines, which also works well for this support thing. And they have built a culture around working those night shifts. So that's nice because it's so prominent there. But the Latin America works nice because then these guys don't have to like be forced into this late night lifestyle. Basically. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yes. Which does add an element of guilt in the calculus around that. Yes, you feel good that, that they're making a great living. But I, I can't help but feel like, hey, this is. [00:10:09] Speaker A: Well, it depends on the region. Like in Eastern Europe actually it doesn't really work well unless you're dealing with developers who just, you know, have no life generally. But like, you know, in Eastern Europe like we have to be very like putting them in their time zone in a normal work life balance kind of thing, which I'm fine with. It doesn't. Not like these guys need to be at the desk in certain hours or something. Just as long as we have some overlap. But the Philippines is the only place. Maybe India too. But no one really uses India for support anymore. But the Philippines is the only place where it's like, okay, because there is a culture around that. So now like all of your friends have these things. There's 24 hour restaurants, there's people going to the bar at 7am because they just got off of their shift. And there's a whole culture around it. So that actually works there. But like, yeah, in most other places it doesn't. And then yeah, the Latin America thing, boom, everyone's already on the same time zone. You're good. English level is increasing. Their costs are higher in Latin America than they are in, in Philippines. But you know, it's, it's easier to find people in the way of that. You know, because of the time zone thing. So it's very nice. Yes. [00:11:10] Speaker B: And, and what we discovered pretty quickly is that live support chat is huge for us because we have a ton of people who are at the absolute bottom of the funnel. They're right at the point of making a decision to sign up and they question. And if they send it in and it gets responded to six hours later over email, the opportunity is gone. But if they get a response two minutes later, they get the information that they were looking for that made them hesitate or they needed to address before signing up, then they go in and then they have the support experience with us that builds the trust around. Okay, this company is going to be here for me if I have questions. Our customers are non technical and they're using an AI product. So there's this trepidation and fear around, am I going to be able to get this done? How complicated is this going to be? So that live chat support is just huge for us, hence the time zone focus. [00:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, honestly, we've had a very similar experience. We also have live chat coverage like 8 hours a day and 4 hours on the weekends. Funny enough, our support team, besides our cto who kind of oversees it and does the harder stuff, is two Pakistani guys that do work the late night shift. And they called out reach me and, and said, oh, interesting. Yeah. They said, yo, like, we've been doing support for products like yours came through like the Shopify ecosystem. And you know, we know css, we know this, this and this. And you know, I was like, no, no, we're good, we're good. And then the guy was like, let me, let me work for you for like a week. Just let me do answer some tickets. Let me show you. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Yeah, and so they sold. They sold you? Hell yeah. [00:12:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's been like. And they've been with us for like. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Two years right there. Yeah, cool. [00:12:51] Speaker A: And it's like, yeah, very cool. And it opened my eyes up to hiring Pakistan. We had a couple Pakistani developers in the last few years that were quite good as well. [00:13:00] Speaker B: So let's take two steps back. What's your business? How long have you been doing it? [00:13:05] Speaker A: So my business called Drop in Blog, it is a headless blogging platform or what that means is if you built your website in something else, like Shopify, Framer, teachable webflow, literally anything or like custom code, react, whatever, and you want to add a blog to it, you can use Drop and Blog to drop the blog inside your existing platform and keep consistent with your design and everything. So it uses your header and footer and your whole theme layout and seamlessly kind of flows into your look and feel, all while keeping the SEO and this kind of stuff. And then it saves you from running WordPress on a subdomain and having two systems and managing a WordPress theme and running your other thing and all of this kind of stuff. So that's the deal. We've been building the product. We're just coming on 10 years since we launched, and so it's been a journey. At first it was just like a side hustle and we had an agency and it was just a little thing. So to be fair, we didn't get, like serious about it until 2019. So four years in and then since then we've been all in and, like, very excited. And, you know, we are builders. So the product is like, very stable now and it's like, really exciting to work on. Cool. [00:14:18] Speaker B: And you, you pinged me yesterday asking me to take a look at the draft of your new homepage. [00:14:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:25] Speaker B: And that's what kind of restarted our conversation. You and I have these conversations that kind of like, you know, a few dms and then a few weeks or months go by and then a few questions and then a call. And so we kind of. I think maybe we came across each other first in the Shopify ecosystem around. Hey, you know, would a blog for Shopify stores kind of make sense? How's your experience in the apps? I think that's kind of where it started. [00:14:47] Speaker A: Tracks. I don't remember exactly, but same, same. [00:14:50] Speaker B: Maybe some podcasting, maybe some microcon, something Twittery. [00:14:54] Speaker A: I know that it was Twitter related, but I don't know what the initial interactions were. [00:14:58] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Most of my friends in real life here are not entrepreneurs. So I have this split life the way I'm sure a lot of people do. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:15:07] Speaker B: How are things going? You're all in on it now? [00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So quickly on the launch, we did actually launch the new site and the new branding. All of this kind of stuff going very well, extremely well received. I'm like super, super happy about it. You know, a lot of people say, like, this stuff is dumb or whatever, but I felt like we were at a point with the old design that it was. It was time. And we're kind of looking to position to move up the market a little bit. And we wanted to kind of our brand and our messaging and our site and everything to kind of reflect where we actually are versus where we were when we did that last version. Yeah. [00:15:41] Speaker B: It always feels like it's lagging. It's very frustrating. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So I feel very happy about it now. It was a lot of work. Way more work, of course, than I thought it was going to be the classic, like, oh, we had a little bit of extra money, so I thought, this is a problem that we can solve with money, you know? And so. Yeah, yeah. No. [00:16:00] Speaker B: Did you hire someone to do it? You guys do it all yourselves? [00:16:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So we hired first. We did, like, the branding. So we did the new logo and color and this kind of stuff, and that was, like, a nightmare. And then we got lucky at the last second and got the logo that we have, which I absolutely love, and a completely unrepeatable pattern. Like, I hired an agency that had done work for one of my friends. He did two logos for one of my friends in two businesses that were totally different. And he just knocked it out on the park on both of them. And I was like, this guy's great. I want to use him. Give me his contact. I loved your branding on both of these projects. And then, like, we, like, signed a contract with the guy and, like, he sent the first few versions and then I sent the second versions, and I was just like, bro, this is nothing like what I want. Like, it's just not doing what I want. So I ended up, like, cutting the contract. I said, like, hey, like, keep the first half. Like, we were going to do, like, a whole branding thing. And he was just at the logo part, and I was like, keep the first half. Like, can we just call it even at this point? I just don't. I'm not feeling it. And he was like, yeah, sure, whatever. [00:17:05] Speaker B: So for you, by the way, not. Not an easy thing. And I think a very, very important skill that comes with experience. [00:17:12] Speaker A: It's hard, man. It's hard. [00:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah. To just say, nope, sorry, that's it. It's actually not an easy thing, especially after you've paid. And there's. People let the social and emotional aspects of it affect the quality. It affects their decision making. Instead of being able to just say, I mean, I have a call later today with an agency that we paid pretty substantial amount of money to create a commercial force that I wanted to put on, like, connected tv. [00:17:41] Speaker A: Yep. [00:17:41] Speaker B: And my answer to them is, this ain't good enough. I'll pay you what I owe you. I'm not running this thing on tv. [00:17:47] Speaker A: So hard. Yeah, so hard. Yeah, it's. It's a tough one, man. And this, like, I thought I was doing it, right, because this is like vetted agency that did great work that I've already seen it just. And he just. They just weren't hitting it, you know, I don't know, what are you gonna do? Right? [00:18:02] Speaker B: So would you go to Claude Code and ask him to do it in two seconds? [00:18:06] Speaker A: So then. Then I said, oh, well, I guess. I guess I have to go back to my old tricks, which is brute forcing things with hourly workers. Actually went to Fiverr. I found like 12 designers that I liked what they were doing, and then I basically hired 12 people with whatever package that they offered. And then I just, like, brute forced it. And then so then they, like, you know, so I. That was like, I don't know, like fifteen hundred dollars or something. And just like every, you know, just give me everything you got. And then out of all of those that, like, you know, most of it was junk, but a few of them were pretty good. Then we found one that we really liked, and then we were. We were like, okay, well, I guess this is going to be it. We're going to go with it. But the story continues. [00:18:49] Speaker B: So. [00:18:50] Speaker A: So then it was clear that this person was just like a churnum and Burnham and got lucky, made a nice piece, and then that was it. And now I needed someone to kind of clean up the spacing and then work on the actual branding. So then I did what I normally do, which is work on upwork, and I found like a guy who was like a branding guy and then. And was like, good in Photoshop or, you know, indesign or whatever. And, you know, it's like, okay, so now I'm going to bring him this logo and say, okay, can you polish it up and then build out the rest of the assets and all this kind of stuff. And so I found this guy that I. [00:19:19] Speaker B: Like it pop. [00:19:20] Speaker A: Yeah, make it. And just like, make it, like, good and clean or whatever. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Okay, okay. [00:19:24] Speaker A: So, so I bring it to him and then I'm like, yeah, and I need all these other assets and, like, whatever, you know, and he says, yeah, yeah, yeah, cool, cool. And again, this is like a first hire, right? Like, never worked with this guy. And he says, yeah, yeah, cool. But I'll just take one stab at it. Version number one is what you see on. On our site right now. [00:19:41] Speaker B: All right, his. [00:19:44] Speaker A: Let's take a stab at it after all that. And it was just like, perfect. And then this is just in black and white. And then, like, we did some color stuff and I came up with this magenta That I really like. And then. Yeah, but anyways, it was just. And then like the rest of his stuff that he did like for the branding that went with it was like, okay, but didn't also knock, you know, whatever. So totally unrepeatable. Bad. Whatever. But we got the one and I love it. So it's. [00:20:11] Speaker B: It worked. Yeah. The site looks good. The site looks to me like the higher end standard these days that has this very clear set of containers. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yep. [00:20:21] Speaker B: That's what I like these days. It's easy to read. It's not trying to like blow your mind with motion and everything. It has enough motion to feel alive, but it isn't constantly moving on you. [00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I had to pull back a bunch of it from the cause. We hired another group to do the site and I loved their design. The. The framer dev that they rolled out with, it was not actually well done. I hired them because I like their design a lot. But I did a package with the design and the dev. The dev part of it, it was like really sloppy. They made a bad. A bunch of bad choices. So I actually ended up falling down the framer rabbit hole and became flight framer fluent in the last couple of months, which has been actually a joy. But yeah, a total waste of time. [00:21:07] Speaker B: I like Framer. Yeah, I feel you. We use Framer also and our fans, because what we love about it is we work with our designer Francois at Clearly Design. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Yep. [00:21:19] Speaker B: And when he's showing us things, he is designing in framer. And there is no, there's no gap between, well, here's what's in Figma and here is what's in Framer. It's just being designed in the browser and we just say, yes, that looks good, publish, and then it just gets published. And that, that lack of a gap is awesome. And then I can also feel free to just jump in and change headlines and do other stuff very easily. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a, an amazing, amazing system. As somebody who's like, my core competency is like front end CSS stuff and like, as far as dev is concerned. And so it's a dream because it has all the stuff, you know, it has, all the, all the things are in there. Like, and you know what you're looking for. If you know how flexbox work, it's like, it can really. It's a beautiful, beautiful system. My hats off to their devs. Like, I couldn't imagine a nightmare of building and maintaining the bugs in this thing. Like, oh my God. I just, I Can't. [00:22:14] Speaker B: What we really like in it is specifically using reusable elements. [00:22:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:21] Speaker B: That we can update once and know on every page of the site. When we update, let's say, the pricing grid that's on 30 different pages, we just update the pricing element and it updates everything. So that. Yeah, like, that makes. [00:22:35] Speaker A: Includes. Right. Like, yeah. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:37] Speaker A: Really nice. Yeah. [00:22:39] Speaker B: I've never really managed a big website. I just never needed to need a big site rally. Didn't need a big site. And Rosie and started off with homepage pricing, page, sign up page. That's it. And when we hired an SEO team to basically build out the site fully now it's, you know, it's a web of pages, and that stressed me out. And so Framer has definitely made that much, much easier. So Framer Tech, we geeked out. But what's the business value here? How do people get to the site? Like, what's your target audience? What's the point of a redesign and all that? [00:23:18] Speaker A: Our core channels currently have been SEO and then also like App Store marketplaces or whatever. Right. And so we do very well in both of those places. More on the SEO side, but also in the marketplaces, obviously, when you get the right positioning and this kind of stuff. So that's been really good. And so, I mean, honestly, the main goal here is that we're looking to experiment with some other channels, like cold outreach and stuff. We're experimenting with going up market a little bit. We're experimenting with enterprise stuff. And like, I just wanted the whole thing to feel like it matched where we are as a product and as a company and also where we're going and where we want to be heading. And so, you know, to. To zoom out a little bit on, like, where's the business and why are we doing this and all this kind of stuff. Like, about two years ago, we kind of like started hitting a plateau right around the seven figure. And before that we were just like, you know, 15% a month. We're geniuses. This thing's the best ever. We're gonna have a $50 million company in two years. You know, like, you know the story. [00:24:21] Speaker B: Yes. If this month happens for 48 months straight, we're golden. [00:24:25] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, like, like Rob says, you know, he's smarter than us and can say, oh, well, I can see based on your churn rate and about your traffic and your growth rate and whatever, that in exactly 14 months that you are going to plateau. [00:24:40] Speaker B: Reality will. [00:24:42] Speaker A: Yep. [00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:42] Speaker A: I didn't know any of this stuff. So. But anyway, so as we kind of started reaching that plateau, thankfully even in this major SaaS pullback like 2021, we did not have contraction. So I was very happy about that. But the growth went from 14% a month to 14% a year. And I had to wake up and start paying attention. [00:25:02] Speaker B: Right, right. Whatever got you to that mark? You'll have to do different things, new things. [00:25:08] Speaker A: Exactly. And so, you know, this was kind of like the building blocks for what's next, essentially, which is, you know, testing a bunch of other channels and experimenting with more upmarket things, which it turns out we're actually really positioned well for. And I think that was something that as the normal bootstrapper, I was always sort of afraid of upmarket, and no one wants to do sales calls and all of this kind of stuff. But I talked to another guy who knows a lot about enterprise and he basically was like, listen bro, your product is exactly what enterprise people actually need, not you trying to shoehorn your product up market. And when he kind of walked through that, he's like, imagine that these guys spend a hundred grand building their website in God knows what platform and then they get to the blog and then they have to pay another 100 grand to an agency to build out the blog in WordPress. Like you solve that and it's already ready. And I was like, oh yeah, It's a good point. [00:26:01] Speaker B: 5. If you want to solve it for 20k, you need a different process, you need a different brand, you need a different messaging. Right. It's those two things. You can't, you can't keep your site the same and the pricing the same and the grid the same and all that and also capture that opportunity. [00:26:18] Speaker A: And so that's what we're kind of setting ourselves up to play with essentially. And even like mid market, self serve, higher end and like that kind of stuff and kind of figuring out what are the things that we can sell the $500 a month plan for instead of the $100 a month plan and what things are really useful for those businesses, even if they're not enterprise. We're starting to kind of see what those are and figure that out. And so anyway, so that's kind of where we're at with the business, what we're trying to crack. And I feel like we're basically putting in the hard work, hired three marketers, I redid the website, all these things that like you don't have to do, right? But I'm in it for the win. And like I Want to go for it here. And so I don't want to start over. I want to, I want to. I see there's, there's no ceiling on this. I mean people need blogs, people like, there's no reason to exit out and start over again. [00:27:04] Speaker B: So as you're talking about this, I can't help but think about our experience. Our experience is accelerated, truncated, however you want to call it. We also had a similar experience where right around a million ARR hit a plateau and the dream of just skyrocketing at the same rate hit reality. And we understood that we are going to have to do some different things and different positioning and different pricing and different messaging, all that. So we're in the same boat where we are doing a lot of that work. Funny enough for us, the website, the front door ended up being the last priority. I called it Rosie 2.0. I just took a bunch of projects and I was like, we're going to go 2.0. We're going to go from what got us to this million arrow mark. What's going to get us to 5 million is a new set of things. And I kind of bunched those projects into like a Rosie 2.0 umbrella. And that just helped everyone kind of identify and say those are things we just got to knock out over the next two months. And the homepage ended up being last in priority for us. And I think it was because we drive a lot of traffic through advertising and the conversion rate of the homepage was quite good. So that was not the thing that was on fire that needed to get fixed right away. It was actually the funnel after someone clicked on the cta. So it was the signup flow, the training, the agent, setting up your Rosie agent to work for your business, putting your credit card in, choosing a plan, launching, getting through your trial. So it was really activation and conversion, much more so than the initial conversion from the ad and the homepage into an account. Now this homepage is updated. You said SEO is big and then you basically work the integrations game. You do an integration with a website platform, what do you do there? Do you form a relationship with the company and try to do co promotion or just get into the app store? What's your playbook? [00:29:08] Speaker A: I mean it varies a lot, right? So each relationship as you know, is different and you know, in the ideal ones it's where we just actually really solve the problem for them where they have a lot of people that need that. So one of our best partners, for example, is thinkific for some Reason their customer base really likes our product, really needs our product. They don't have a built in blog option and it's very, very effective. So we just, they create a support article with us and you know, we've done some co marketing stuff and we're also in their store, you know, their app store thing or whatever as well. And so we generally kind of pile on. So what we generally do is we kind of do it from the outside. Like we do, we SEO around, add a blog to platform name, whatever. We kind of create our own demand and then basically once things are going well, I mean obviously we'll also be in their app store if they have one or whatever. But then once things are going well, then we have like more legs to approach. You know, we say, hey look, we got these 20 customers that are really liking what we're doing, like maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that. And you know, some people are very formidable to that and some are not. And it depends. Right. So I tend to like, I don't want to be reliant on any of those partnerships. It was just basically why, like I don't want to get into a cart hook situation. So which is why, I mean all the things were very agnostic. Like, you know, I don't want to be reliant on any of them, but I want to be friendly with all of them kind of thing and you know, embrace the ones that are worth embracing. And I think the most surprising thing about playing this game is that some of the ones I thought would be the most crazy. Like you know, they have tons of customers or whatever, like have been the worst. And then these like little niche builders that are for some specific industry, like we just get tons of customers from because they actually care about SEO and this kind of stuff. So. And you just don't know until you build out the thing and you have the traffic for SEO and see what happens. It's quite the game. [00:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the integrations game and I am unhappy that it has not panned out for us yet. I thought for sure we would do integrations with CRMs and then those customers would, first the platforms would want to work with us and then the customers would find value in it. And what we have experienced so far is that all those CRMs want to launch their own AI voice solutions and offer to the customers as an upgrade. Understandable. And then we moved away from that and went and developed our advertising channel and that has worked well enough. But in the back of my mind I'm like, you know what the real unlock for the growth is similar to you, I think the smaller CRMs that want to compete with the big CRMs but don't have the resources to go out and launch their own AI voice solution. We can work with them. Maybe we can white label it for them. So it's theirs, but it's powered by us. But there's definitely something there. [00:31:59] Speaker A: And we do some of that with the white label with like medium success and it can be okay. Right. And you know, the other way that you can attack it, which again, mixed results but can be good, is like if your product is just way better, then it's like it's okay that they have a product like Shopify has a built in blog. It's just not very good. So then they can have it when they're selling their product that yes, we have this bullet point, but then once they actually get into content marketing, they switch to drop and blog. And that would be the same thing with yours. Even these guys that have some very basic built in, they wanted a bullet point side thing. [00:32:31] Speaker B: Yes. [00:32:32] Speaker A: Then they start using it and you can even approach them and say, hey, listen, I see you're using the thing. If you're serious now, come use the real level. [00:32:40] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Yeah, I think that's going to take some time for those platforms to realize that a lot of people are using their AI voice product, but a lot of people want more. And that I think is going to take about a year and then they'll. And then they'll be much more amenable to. Yes, let's bring you in as the next level option. We've checked the box, we're now competitive with everyone else. We can say that you get this included when you sign up for our product. And then the power users have more. I mean Shopify is like the king of that. Right. They have such a wide feature set, but a lot of those features are starting points and then people replace them with apps. [00:33:20] Speaker A: Yeah. It's always been surprising to me that like literally since I started this product, they haven't updated the blog that's built in. You know, it's like, that's a long time. They've done a lot of stuff. [00:33:30] Speaker B: Yes. And they have a lot of resources. But it's. Right, it's like, you know, if you think about your little company and how you make decisions, oftentimes things that seem obvious from the outside just don't make sense to do at all. [00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah, of course, of course, of course, yeah. [00:33:42] Speaker B: You know, keeping with the analogy between our experience and yours around this. I almost want to give you a warning in what we're experiencing right now. What we're experiencing right now is we made these improvements and advancements and some of them we think of as experiments, some of them we think of as big changes and so on. A lot of things have gotten better and some things have gotten worse and a lot of that is in the nature of trying to go a little further up market and offer more, but also maintain our entry point. So for us, it's very important to have a lower entry point and we have a really good product that's really, really competitive and it's at 49 bucks a month and a lot of the competitors are going higher. And I'm, you know, I, I, I respect the higher prices. I, I, I also think pricing is this huge lever. But I think it's really, really important for us to have a lower entry point because people are just coming around to the idea of using an AI to answer your phone. And so we want to gobble up. We think of ourselves as mailchimp. That's the analogy for us. Basically an entry point. Yes. Some people will graduate onto a more vertical, deeper, integrated industry solution, but we want to be the entry point and then we'll get on our treadmill and sprint to see the features we can provide to people so that as few as possible leave for other more verticalized solutions. [00:35:05] Speaker A: Okay. [00:35:05] Speaker B: Makes sense in that attempt of keeping that entry point low, but also positioning ourselves for the higher end. Right. What happened to us is we thought of ourselves as this mailchimp kind of analogy and then we start to get some big opportunities and we found that our solution is actually great for multi unit businesses. So if you have 200 units of a franchise. Right. We just signed a deal with a 200 unit oil change franchise. [00:35:32] Speaker A: Okay. [00:35:32] Speaker B: And our product works better for them than an enterprise product because we're really good at these individual locations. You just string 200 of them together instead of a big enterprise thing from the top that distributes and all the process that goes with it and all the engineering, they don't want that. So now you can't ignore 100k a year deal and then more of them coming into the pipeline. So in that attempt to do both, we broke some of the stuff on the lower end. And we are, A lot of the Rosie 2.0 projects are aimed at like now we need to have an onboarding that works for both and we need to have an entry point in a signup flow and we're almost chasing the performance we had three months ago on that segment and don't want to give it up. So we find ourselves a little bit caught in the middle and it's pretty hard to make decisions on what to do. [00:36:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it creates a tug of war when you're trying to decide who to cater to and all of this kind of stuff and figuring out how to segment those out also just even as leads. Right. Like as they're coming in, like, are you doing demos? Are you self serving all of that stuff? Stuff, right. [00:36:40] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:36:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, fair point. Which is something we're kind of experimenting with now. We just added the book a demo thing on our site. We've never had that before because we're totally self serve because we just want to kind of feel out who, you know, we were checking, like Apollo, like who's visiting our site kind of stuff. And it's like the up market is there, right. They're looking, they're interested and we need to figure out how to, how to say, hey, come on over for a drink, let's talk about this. [00:37:05] Speaker B: Right. Let's go through the sales process the way you expect. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Right. [00:37:09] Speaker B: So what do you do? You put a book a demo alongside signup and then what happens? A lot of the lower end books a demo. [00:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:16] Speaker B: And then you start doing demos with people that don't make sense to do demos with and that's that. Then that screws up your process. So then you go back into your pricing page and you say, how do we filter that properly? So then you have a book a demo, but then you have a form and, and then you start. So like this is what, what everyone kind of gets into. You have this ideal, yeah, this is what we should do. And then reality starts to hit and then you're, you find yourself kind of adjusting and moving. [00:37:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we decided to go with the, the move fast, break things with the. Let's just put the button up there direct to the calendar and like see what happens. Now the good thing is Jesse Hanley said he still does this. He's been doing it for a long time. And he said like, I just take those demos with the lower end guys because I learn a lot. And then a lot of times they're so sold on the product that they'll refer me some like higher end person and like this kind of stuff. [00:38:03] Speaker B: So, you know, he's not wrong, but he's willing to take a lot more pain than I am so that, you know, I don't like to compare myself to Jesse because he's just willing to do things that I'm not willing to do. And so what works for him does. It might also work for us, but I won't do it for five years the way, the way he has. That's like the, you know, and if you're willing to do that, there's your unfair advantage. [00:38:27] Speaker A: Well, we're gonna find out. We're gonna find out. [00:38:29] Speaker B: I love Jesse and his business because he is like this shining example of if you are willing to do things that almost no one else is willing to do, you, if you keep doing it, you will win. And I, I think he's winning and is going to win really well and, and deserve it. [00:38:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:47] Speaker B: Because of that. [00:38:47] Speaker A: And also, you know what? If you want to be very opinionated about your brand, you can be. Watch me. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Okay, cool. All right, so, so I'm, I'm, I'm looking forward to kind of getting updates from you on, on DM over time. [00:38:59] Speaker A: I'm saying Jesse is, is, is, is happy to do that and proves that it, they can function. [00:39:05] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, that's right. Cool. So I'll tell you where I'm at today. I had a board meeting yesterday. Those end up, I guess stressful is the right word, not stressful in the negative sense. It's like a high stakes day. [00:39:18] Speaker A: And this is kind of new for you in the grand scheme of life and businesses. So, yes, it's gotta be weird having, you know, daddy to talk to. [00:39:28] Speaker B: It adds a new element to the business. I think before experiencing it, I viewed it as this negative of like, oh, now I gotta go report, you know, to someone. I have really not had that experience at all. It has been very positive. And part of that is I don't, I don't go crazy for the board meeting. Some people I know, I used to be on the board of a company and the CEO was extremely polished and the board decks were 40 slides and graphs and tables and rows and analysis. And I was like, whoa. I, I, I mean, look, the business was further along. It was closer to like the 10 million a year type of a thing. So. Okay, it was more buttoned up. And I do have some sense of like inferiority complex or my decks don't look like that. My, my board meetings don't work that way. But I've just kind of found my own version of, I do spend some time on it and extremely valuable and then I don't go overboard. So one of the, one of the best things it does is it forces us to Kind of call a timeout and talk about things that are easy to not talk about and think about because you're just running on the day to day. The other thing I really like about it is that it forces me to look at our financial projections and look at what we estimated would happen since the last board meeting. [00:40:49] Speaker A: Yeah. You actually have to do the work that you're supposed to do. [00:40:52] Speaker B: Yes. And you know, when you're on your own, you kind of don't have to. I really, yeah, I really enjoy running a business by gut. I think that's the right way to run early stage businesses. But this adds just a layer of professionalism and like, well, you said this. So now we're going to look at it three months later and then that puts you in a position to say, well, the things I say now, I'm not just going to make up out of thin air. I'm going to find this middle ground between being realistic but ambitious, but not overly ambitious so that I can't reach. So it does kind of force us to do that. [00:41:25] Speaker A: So what happened on this board meeting? [00:41:27] Speaker B: So I wrote this tweet a few months ago. I said, board meetings are a lot more fun when the business is going really well. And that was the case three months ago. We were just crushing, you know, and that is, that is so fun to have a board meeting in that context. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah. You're just like, hey, guys. Yep, I'm here now. [00:41:46] Speaker B: Are we great? Everything is going great. Great. Yes. So that's kind of, you know, the ideal version. Three months later, yesterday's board meeting was not the same. It's not that things are, are going poorly. It's that they're not going as well as they were three months ago. And you gotta ask yourself, why, what changed? And then you're forced into this, like, well, let's see, the experiments that we've run and maybe, maybe some of them didn't go well. And we call them experiments and you know, an experiment, you know, part, part of that in this context is you can go back on that. Right. So this week we're, we're going back on a bunch of experiments. We're, we're basically admitting defeat on like, you know, that made a lot of sense and it didn't work out as planned. And these repercussions, similar to what we talked about, like, oh, you added a demo button. Cool. A month from today, you might realize I actually don't want that demo button there. It needs to exist somewhere else. [00:42:39] Speaker A: Right. [00:42:40] Speaker B: So there's a lot of those things that are now coming out of that board meeting, that over the next few days. [00:42:44] Speaker A: But this is good. It creates constraints. Right now you had to check in at three months instead of letting these things drag out for six months or a year, and that it creates some accountability, but nothing too crazy because it's only quarterly. [00:42:56] Speaker B: That's right. And I'm happy for that. I think we're better off for it. So when I look at your situation, you're making a bunch of changes. Do you have. What's the dynamic in your company, your co founders? How do you look back and see if things worked or didn't work? How hesitant are you to go back on the things that you. That you changed? Right. 90 days from today, your business is down 20%. Do you have the dynamic inside of your company to say, you know what we're doing, we're going to roll all this back, we're going to go back to the original homepage. How do you think about things like that and those experiences? [00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I definitely run by the gut in from the top level, but fortunately, my team members and one of my other co founders are more on the numbery side than me as far as, like, they want to get in the weeds on the spreadsheets and this kind of stuff. Right. So it creates a good balance, actually, that helps. Like, you know, my shoot from the hip style can kind of reel that in a little bit, you know, and they say, hey, you know, actually, this is shit. You know, and then I. Then I can. [00:44:07] Speaker B: And then. [00:44:08] Speaker A: Then I can be like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right. And. And so I think in general, it's a pretty good balance, but we definitely, you know, have a. A fairly organic way that we run the company. But I wouldn't be afraid to make those changes. Like, I do tend to, like, make sweeping changes here and there when it matters. Like, I try to be as dynamic as possible that we, you know, can actually, you know, make these kind of things. If we had to completely scrap the rebrand, I would be very, very pained. Like, we would have to have a pretty big deal, right, to eat this, you know? [00:44:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, I. I hear you. I hear you. The biggest one for us was obviously pivoting into a completely different product. That was the most extreme version of, oh, this didn't work. Oh, everything I just did for two years, it just didn't work. We're just. We're just gonna. We're just gonna stop. But I'm. I'M happy we did that. All right, so now looking out over the next like week or so, what, what, what are you doing with yourself? You gonna take a little break? You, you push really hard now, now that it's live? [00:45:04] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of. I am doing a little like weekend, but. But I'm going to be stuck in clarity, I think will be what I'll be doing. I don't know if you guys use clarity. It's like Hotjar, kind of the screen recording thing. [00:45:16] Speaker B: Yes, we use hotjar. It's very useful. And so your practice or instinct or whatever is you make these changes and then you go watch what people really do. [00:45:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do it every time we roll out a new feature too and watch them use the feature and so more from like a UI standpoint, like I want to see, like, are they getting stuck somewhere? Did they feel lost? Did they click on the wrong thing, you know, whatever. But then you get real feel for how they're doing as well. And then of course I'm going to be watching like the real stats and the signups and this kind of stuff as well as we're rolling out like, you know, social push, like, oh, we did the big rebrand and blah, blah, blah. So we're kind of lining up all that stuff. So. And then we've got kind of the 1.1 list for this front end site, a few things that didn't make it to the initial launch that we'll kind of start working on that. But the, I mean we did like a proper sprint on this that we don't usually go this hard on. And like, you know, the last like two or three weeks we kind of like went hard to finally get all these details up and things done and it was actually really fun. Cause we don't usually do that. And then we got the whole team like rallying and excited and everyone's kind of pushing a little harder and working on things together and it was really fun. So I think I'm gonna bring that in a little bit more. We run pretty casual, so I think throwing in a sprint on something, it wouldn't have to be this big. It could be just even smaller things just to get the team to rally around the flag kind of thing was really fun for everyone, myself included. I was loving it. I mean I did like a few all nighters, like in it, like trying to like make it happen. It was like just awesome, like just feeling that energy, you know. [00:46:49] Speaker B: Yes. Just really good, like branding the set of projects. Rosie 2.0 made a big difference. I think it's easy for the owner to ignore that for two reasons. One, it's not your general instinctual working style. [00:47:05] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:06] Speaker B: And two, you kind of feel a little guilty. At least I'm speaking for myself now. You feel a little guilty kind of imposing this thing. I know the engineers are used to it because there's sprints and releases and it's kind of much more like by the book. But for the rest of the team, yeah, we run pretty casual like you. I'm not like this thing needs to get done by this time and that sort of thing, but people really enjoy it. [00:47:27] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:27] Speaker B: It's kind of like a natural deadline of sorts that doesn't need to be stressful. It's more like a, like a positive reinforcement that everyone's working on something together and then, then it's fun. [00:47:38] Speaker A: But yeah, this was just like, it was just taking too long and I was just like talking to one of the marketing guys and he was like, I think we could probably get this out by the first. And I was like, you know what, that's a good idea. Let's actually like announce it in the, in the main chat and like put it up there. Let's do this, you know. And we actually ended up launching yesterday a little bit ahead of schedule. We pushed it a little bit because my CTO is going to be gone for a couple days and I wanted to make sure that we didn't have any. The big stuff, you know, I wanted to get the big thing out when he was, he was at the desk, you know. So pretty, pretty cool though. But was a lot of fun, actually. I loved it. [00:48:12] Speaker B: It's good, it's good. I think it's a good lesson for us, oddly enough, when we put the target for a million ARR, we set the target like four months prior and we hit it like three days before our date. [00:48:24] Speaker A: Whoa. [00:48:25] Speaker B: Yep. And it was like a calculation of, okay, over the last few weeks we've averaged this much growth. Therefore extrapolate that out with a little bit more than it's this day. [00:48:35] Speaker A: Did you add a book, a demo button the last week to just make sure you got there? [00:48:40] Speaker B: No. The whole thing for Rosie, that has forced me into basically being a different founder is the self serve nature because I have not run a self serve software product in years. So Cardhook was this really weird situation where we had overwhelming demand and so we were putting up hurdles to get people into the product, which is an unusual thing. Right. We had self serve and it was so Messy that we imposed a demo and then that demo was a qualification demo and 50% of the people said you should go to our cheaper competitor, you not write for us. Which is just like a, you know, backwards kind of thing. And the rally was enterprise, so it was all demo. People didn't even see their account until after they signed a contract and paid, which is also just completely foreign to me. And then this is self serving. It's kind of forced me into like, well, I gotta pay attention to the analytics and you're spending a bunch of money on ads so you gotta keep an eye on the numbers. It's kind of turned me. I have enjoyed it, if I'm being completely honest. I've really enjoyed it. The self serve, don't talk to anyone. Almost like this like puppet master version of running an online business that I see everyone else. [00:49:49] Speaker A: It's a dream. [00:49:51] Speaker B: It is much closer to the dream than like, well, I got four demos today and I, you know, I gotta of beyond my game. I really like sitting back and making decisions, looking at numbers and kind of getting a feel for things better. [00:50:03] Speaker A: And it's funny because I always was like, this is us, this is going to be our company. Like I'm only going to do, you know, everything self served, you know, indie bootstrap, blah, blah, blah. You know, after a plateau for about a year, you know, all of a sudden doing a demo doesn't sound so bad. [00:50:18] Speaker B: No, that's right, that's right. I'm in, I'm in. [00:50:20] Speaker A: I can do some calls, you know, that's fine. Oh, you want me to, you want to, you want to a po. You want a contract, you want to send a wire? Yeah, we, we got that, you know. Yeah. Where before that it was like credit cards only. I don't talk to anybody, you know. [00:50:33] Speaker B: Yeah, fair enough. We change, we change maturation process there. I like being in the AI space now and it feels like there's an enormous amount to learn on Twitter around what people are doing with AI, what they're thinking, where the funding is going. You can kind of get a feel for what the market is saying, where the skepticism is, where the energy is, where the greed is. And I feel like I learn a lot from that by being on Twitter in the AI space. How does it feel being on the outside of that? Is it just annoying? It's just constant noise? [00:51:11] Speaker A: Well, you know, this is what's actually been interesting as we've been experimenting with like AI related things that can be added onto our product, you know, because we're basically like what you were talking about. We're the guy who has the platform that we can add these little sprinkles in versus the guy who's running an AI, whatever, you know. So, for example, we added a feature called Blog Voice AI a few months back, which is basically like, you know, listen to the blog post kind of thing, right? And a few years ago that was just, you know, not really attainable or it sounded terrible. Right now there's tons of technology for that. We can offer it in like 25 languages, in like 400 voices to our customers. So they can, you know, oh, you've got a, you've got a Polish blog and you want a female voice. Like, we have that built in for all of our customers. Like, so we're loving that, like the idea that there's now there's all this power at our fingertips that we can provide to our customers. And then they love it, right? Because now they just got this magical thing that someone else probably made a startup and they want to charge $50 or $500 a month just for that feature, and now we just give it to them, you know, and it's so cool. And then the other thing that we've been doing that we didn't get to, which is kind of part of my, where we're going to go up market, how are we going to get there, whatever is I've been experimenting on the evil LinkedIn and, you know, how to market there. And we just did a little test and we had done this thing where we've been doing a lot of experimenting about how SEO is basically how you get mentioned in AI, like, version of SEO, essentially. And so, but it's funny because no one really cares about SEO right now, but everyone cares about getting mentioned in ChatGPT, right? And so, yeah, it's a bit too. [00:53:00] Speaker B: Focused on that side of things. But they're directly related to each other. [00:53:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So we were like, how related are they? How does this work? Et cetera. And, you know, fortunately we have 2,000 customers that we can test this stuff on. Right. So we did a bunch of experimenting. We found a couple of, like, super easy wins. Like, these are some things that you can do. And then we sent out, we had like a contest of our customers. We just said like, hey, you know, here's a, here's a list that you can download. Go try and put these things in. And whoever puts them in and gets mentions, like, we're going to send you like a tote bag or something. And then like, A bunch of our customers did it and within a week they were getting mentions and we were like, like, holy crap. Like, this is actually, this is. This is really interesting. And it's like, about finding out, like, what is the SEO that makes this quite interesting or makes them rank, like, which specific things, et cetera. So I did a test on LinkedIn and I said, like, oh, you know, comment, AI checklist to get this list that we experimented with our customers and they all got mentioned and looked at these screenshots of our customers getting mentioned and all this stuff, and it like, blew up and I have like, no LinkedIn following. And so. So it's funny that, like, if I would have put that same list and been like, here's some SEO tips, like, it would have just been dead in the water. And it's like, essentially it's SEO tips, but they are tested ones that are very important for AI mentions. And there's also this kind of cool thing happening where you can get mentioned even if you don't have like a huge doctor because you like worded things right, or you have your page structured right, or this kind of stuff. So it's kind of like the new, like, new era of that. Yeah. And so this is the thing. So I kind of realized I have to turn into this, like, how to get mentioned by AI, like SEO influencers. So, you know, that's like, we're actually like, kind of starting to position our company that way. You might see on our homepage, we have a new block about a new thing that we rolled out called Mention Boost, which is essentially kind of like an SEO analyzer, but it's for AI mentions. And we rolled that out along with the new site updates. And then it's kind of like, no, no, no. Not only do you have are we going to help you with SEO, but we're also going to help you get your mentions in by, you know, following these cool tricks and using this thing that we have built in and all this kind of stuff. And so we've found that this is a way for us to leverage where we're. Where the era is going and position ourselves as very current and update and a safe one to hook your cart to. You know, very, very interesting. [00:55:23] Speaker B: I see here you have Mention Boost unlock traffic from. From AI channels. And, and that's just what people want to hear about right now. You know, that's what I want to hear about. You know, when I talk to our SEO team, that's a lot of our conversation is, you know, we see it in our database, we're getting people directly from ChatGPT and others. And now on a weekly basis, when we get a report from the SEO company, they show us, these are the mentions. This is an incognito browser. When I ask this question, you get mentioned. Here's where the link goes. [00:55:52] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's a very interesting moment. So, like, yeah, at first a lot of people were coming to us, like, like, isn't blogging dead? Like, everyone's just going to, like, ask ChatGPT. It's like, guess what? Where do you think ChatGPT is going to get the information you have to feed the AI? And we're going to teach you how to do that. So, like, it's a very interesting way for us to have current, unique content to talk about, et cetera. So it's exciting. [00:56:17] Speaker B: I like that, you know, from someone who doesn't think as deeply about your business as you do. When you mentioned that, what it made me realize was, yes, I guess some people who are running blog platforms are pretty worried because a lot of people are looking at blogs and saying, I don't really know if I should keep investing in that because it's not driving traffic. I mean, we're in the same boat. We invested a lot over the last few months and have built out our site with a bunch of articles and content and so on, and now we're looking toward link building more heavily because we see that without the link building, that also leads to the AI mentions. All the content investment that we made kind of doesn't, doesn't work, so you can't ignore the one. So it's cool to hear. Being in a position where your business feels like it might be threatened by AI, you are leaning into it a different way to make sure that you stay relevant. And the best way to stay relevant on that front is to actually teach people, here's why you want to do it, here's how we help you do it. Yeah, very, very cool. [00:57:21] Speaker A: And it finally, I think, gives us something to shout in the mountaintops about that people actually want to hear. You know, I feel like we've never really had that and I've never really been able to find it. And, and now that we're looking at, like, yeah, going hard on LinkedIn or whatever, like, we need something hooky that we can yell about for two years and this is it, like, end of story. Like, like everyone wants to know about this and, you know, so we, we fortunately also have the customer base that we can test things and keep relevant and whatever and, you know, this kind of thing. And so like, yeah, it's. I mean, we've been just like now like we never really had it before, but we added the newsletter sign up to the footer of our website because now we actually have a newsletter where we're talking about this stuff and people care, you know, and it's pretty cool. And so I feel like it's a. It's a neat opportunity and, you know, just one of the ways that I feel like where AI is showing up for us, kind of where that question started. But we're jacked about it because not only that, is that we can, you know, basically create a much more powerful product for the average person using our thing. That's awesome, right? [00:58:23] Speaker B: So, yeah, like the. [00:58:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:58:25] Speaker B: The features make your product better, but I think it's key that you have found it's not newsjacking. Right? It's not just, here's a story that came out, let's talk about it so we get mentioned alongside of it. It's a little bigger than that. It's like trend jacking. It's like identifying, okay, this is where things are going, what people care about, what people are going to listen to, what they're going to comment on on social platforms. And you've injected yourself into that conversation in. In the right way way, Jesse. I think that's a great way to end things off. I feel like you and I can rap about this stuff for. For hours. Thank you very much for coming on. Good luck with the redesign and the relaunch and the demos and all that. Jesse, thank you very much for coming on, man. [00:59:03] Speaker A: Great riffing with you. Been a lot of fun and yeah, looking forward to the adventures to hear from your side and see where mine goes. And we'll catch up with you soon, man. [00:59:13] Speaker B: Cheers. Thanks for listening, everybody.