31 Quick Wins for Growing a Million Dollar Startup

Summary

The speaker shares a wealth of practical tips for business growth, marketing, product development, and operational efficiency. From automating demo requests to monitoring sending IPs and domains, the advice covers a range of topics aimed at improving business processes and customer engagement. The talk also emphasizes the importance of tracking knowledge base searches, enabling SPF and DKIM for email deliverability, and implementing rate limits for APIs. The speaker's personal productivity hacks and the significance of fostering team culture through traditions add a unique perspective to the discussion.

Takeaways

• 📈 Implement automated demo qualification to route requests efficiently and save time on unqualified leads.
• 🔍 Monitor sending IPs and domains to avoid email blacklisting and maintain good deliverability rates.
• 📅 Encourage annual upgrades at the right time by tracking churn and identifying the optimal moment for pitch.
• 📝 Help B2B writers by using services like Help a B2B Writer to increase the chances of getting valuable links.
• 🌐 Consider Google Analytics alternatives like Fathom or Heap.io to future-proof your data tracking.
• 📅 Keep a marketing change log to track and understand the impact of marketing changes on your metrics.
• 🚀 Redirect domain.com/meeting to your scheduling link for streamlined calendar invites.
• 📊 Segment churn by price point to understand the lifetime value and behavior of different customer tiers.
• 📌 Consider dropping your lowest plan if it has high churn and doesn't contribute positively to your business.
• 💬 Ask for testimonials or reviews after a successful support ticket to leverage positive customer experiences.
• 🔒 Enable S3 versioning on AWS to protect against accidental data loss at a minimal cost.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the talk?

The main theme of the talk is about providing practical tips and strategies for business growth, marketing, productivity, and internal operations.

How many categories of tips are discussed in the talk?

There are four categories of tips discussed: growth or marketing, product, productivity, and operations internal.

What is the significance of the speaker's family photos during the talk?

The family photos serve to emphasize the importance of personal relationships and family in the context of entrepreneurship, aligning with the speaker's values and motivations.

What is the first growth tip discussed in the talk?

The first growth tip is to automatically qualify and route demo requests based on the potential customer's qualification criteria, such as subscriber count or payment capacity.

Why is it important to monitor sending IPs and domains in email marketing?

Monitoring sending IPs and domains is crucial to avoid being blacklisted, which can significantly reduce email deliverability and open rates, negatively impacting marketing efforts.

What is the recommended approach for encouraging annual upgrades in a SaaS business?

The recommended approach is to track churn and pitch annual upgrades when the churn rate starts to flatten out, typically around the 60-90 day window, as this is when customers are less likely to cancel.

How does the speaker suggest using a Google Analytics alternative?

The speaker suggests considering a Google Analytics alternative due to potential future legal issues, especially related to GDPR compliance, and recommends setting up a backup platform to maintain tracking history.

What is the purpose of maintaining a marketing change log?

A marketing change log helps track all marketing activities, changes, and their impacts, allowing the team to understand the reasons behind changes in metrics and make informed decisions.

Why is it beneficial to segment churn by price point?

Segmenting churn by price point provides insights into the lifetime value (LTV) of different customer segments, helping the business understand which customers are most valuable and where to allocate resources effectively.

What is the speaker's advice on dropping the lowest pricing plan?

The speaker advises considering dropping the lowest pricing plan if it has a high churn rate and if there's little to no upgrading happening from that plan. However, this decision should be made with the understanding of the plan's role in the market and customer acquisition.

Outlines

00:00

📈 Growth and Marketing Strategies

The speaker discusses categorizing business aspects into growth, productivity, and operations. They share their experience with qualifying and routing demo requests automatically to manage inbound inquiries effectively. The speaker emphasizes the importance of tracking sending IPs and domains to avoid email blacklists, which can negatively impact deliverability and open rates. They also suggest monitoring the right time to encourage annual upgrades based on churn tracking and share tips on helping B2B writers and finding alternatives to Google Analytics.

05:01

🔍 Monitoring and Upgrading

The speaker highlights the importance of using tools like MX Toolbox to monitor sending IPs and domains to prevent being blacklisted. They discuss the impact of blacklisting on email deliverability and open rates. The speaker also shares a strategy for encouraging annual upgrades by tracking churn rates and identifying the optimal time to pitch upgrades to customers. They mention the benefits of using services like Help a B2B Writer for content marketing and link building.

10:03

🔧 Alternatives and Redirects

The speaker talks about considering alternatives to Google Analytics due to potential GDPR compliance issues. They mention platforms like Fathom and Heap.io as viable options. The speaker also shares a tip on redirecting domain.com/meeting to a scheduling link, which can streamline the process for booking meetings. They emphasize the importance of keeping a marketing change log to track marketing activities and their impacts on the business.

15:05

📊 Churn Analysis and Alerts

The speaker delves into the importance of understanding churn rates and segmenting them by price points to identify the best customers. They discuss the impact of churn on lifetime value (LTV) and suggest considering dropping the lowest plan if it has a high churn rate and doesn't lead to upgrades. The speaker also talks about using Google Alerts and other tools like F5 Bot and Lobsters to monitor mentions of their brand and products across the web.

20:05

📝 Productivity and Support

The speaker shares personal productivity hacks, including using text expanders for common phrases and managing email labels for lower priority tasks. They discuss the benefits of upgrading to the Audible annual plan for avid listeners. The speaker also talks about using asynchronous voice communication for meetings and the importance of watching online videos at higher speeds to save time. They mention using tools like Loom, Voxer, and the Video Speed Controller plugin for Chrome.

25:06

🤝 Team Culture and Traditions

The speaker emphasizes the importance of team culture and traditions in building a strong company. They share personal experiences from their time at Drip and Tiny Seed, highlighting how traditions like trolling each other and celebrating launches with Fire Cider shots have created a sense of belonging and camaraderie among the team. The speaker suggests that these traditions can have deep meaning and contribute to the overall culture of the company.

Keywords

💡Growth

In the context of the video, growth refers to the strategies and tactics used to increase a business's market presence, customer base, and revenue. It is one of the main categories discussed, with the speaker providing various tips and tricks to enhance business growth, such as automating demo requests and monitoring sending IPs for email deliverability.

💡Marketing

Marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. The video emphasizes the importance of marketing in business growth, with the speaker sharing insights on how to improve marketing efforts, such as tracking knowledge-based searches and using tools like Google Alerts for competitive monitoring.

💡Productivity

Productivity in the video script is associated with the efficiency and effectiveness of work processes. The speaker discusses various tools and practices that can boost productivity, such as using text expanders for repetitive tasks and implementing email processing hacks to manage lower priority tasks.

💡Operations

Operations refer to the ongoing activities involved in running a business, such as managing resources, overseeing production, and ensuring the smooth functioning of internal processes. The speaker provides tips on optimizing operations, including the use of team password management and reviewing credit card transactions regularly.

💡Internal

Internal in this context pertains to the internal workings of a company, including its culture, team dynamics, and internal communication. The speaker highlights the importance of fostering a strong internal environment, as seen in the discussion about company traditions and the use of Slack for integrating various support channels.

💡Demo Requests

Demo requests are inquiries from potential customers wanting to see a demonstration of a product or service. The video script discusses the importance of automating the qualification and routing of these requests to ensure that only qualified leads receive demos, thus improving sales efficiency.

💡Email Deliverability

Email deliverability is the measure of how many emails sent by a sender are actually delivered to the recipient's inbox. The speaker emphasizes the need to monitor sending IPs and domains to avoid being blacklisted, which can significantly reduce open rates and customer engagement.

💡Knowledge Base Searches

Knowledge base searches refer to the queries made by users looking for information within a company's online knowledge base or support documentation. The video script suggests tracking these searches, especially those that return no results, to identify gaps in the knowledge base and improve user support.

💡API Rate Limiting

API rate limiting is a technique used to control the number of requests that can be sent to an API within a certain timeframe. The speaker recommends implementing rate limits to prevent accidental DDoS attacks and ensure the stability of the API, protecting the business from potential service disruptions.

💡Company Traditions

Company traditions are practices or events that are regularly repeated and hold cultural significance within an organization. The video script discusses the importance of establishing and maintaining traditions to foster a sense of belonging and team spirit, as exemplified by the use of 'fire cider' shots to celebrate product launches.

Highlights

The speaker shares 31 actionable tips to improve business operations, marketing, productivity, and internal processes.

For growth and marketing, the speaker suggests automating the qualification and routing of demo requests to save time and resources.

Monitoring sending IPs and domains is crucial to avoid email blacklisting, which can significantly impact deliverability and open rates.

Encouraging annual upgrades at the right time can lead to better customer retention and revenue stability.

The speaker recommends using tools like MX Toolbox to monitor the health of your sending IPs and domains.

Help a B2B writer service can be an effective alternative to Harrow for content marketing and link building.

Considering a Google Analytics alternative, such as Fathom, can provide redundancy and potentially avoid GDPR compliance issues.

Redirecting a generic domain (e.g., yourdomain.com/meeting) to a scheduling link can streamline the process for booking meetings.

Maintaining a marketing change log can help track the impact of marketing changes and identify issues more effectively.

Google Alerts can be enhanced with tools like F5 bot for faster notifications about mentions in popular forums like Reddit and Hacker News.

Segmenting churn by price point can provide insights into customer lifetime value and inform pricing strategies.

The speaker suggests considering dropping the lowest plan if it has high churn and low upgrade rates, as it may not be contributing positively to the business.

After providing excellent support, ask for testimonials or reviews to leverage positive customer experiences.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and improving the customer experience, especially in the context of churn and support interactions.

Using tools like Clarity for heat mapping and session recording can provide valuable insights into user behavior without violating GDPR or CCPA.

Enabling S3 versioning on AWS can serve as a low-cost insurance policy against accidental data loss.

Tracking knowledge base searches with no results can help identify gaps in content and improve the user experience.

Enabling SPF and DKIM for email can improve deliverability and reduce the chances of emails being marked as spam.

Rate limiting APIs can prevent accidental DDOS attacks and ensure the stability of your services.

Asking customers why they are canceling can provide valuable feedback for improving the product or service.

The speaker shares personal productivity hacks, such as using text expanders and managing email labels for lower priority tasks.

Upgrading to an Audible annual plan can save money, which can be reinvested into the business.

Using asynchronous voice communication tools like Voxer can reduce the need for meetings and long emails, improving efficiency.

Watching online videos at increased speed can save time and improve productivity, especially for content consumption.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of team culture and traditions, such as celebrating launches with a non-alcoholic 'fire cider' shot.

Transcripts

I broke them up into

categories as I'm apt to do so we're

going to start with growth kind of

growth or marketing uh we have seven in

product five in productivity

um which are kind of the fun ones and

then eight in operations internal

opposite of business what's funny I've

never done a talk like this and I was

joking with Xander this is my listicle

talk right because it's like 31 things

to change your business I had an idea

for this

um a couple years ago probably five or

six years ago I sketched some things out

and I came up with like 15 or 20 like

things you could throw out and I was

going to do it almost as like an

attendee talk at some at microconf

before I get started as I always do I

enjoy I'm really glad that I am not the

first speaker to bring on some pictures

of my why of my family because every

time a microcomp

I do it and these are the peeps right

this is Finn and Fisher many of you have

seen since this guy would carry in into

a microcomp like you know on a BabyBjorn

or whatever the dog is the new addition

but I appreciated

um you know the from dawn earlier today

because this is always

I like to level set this like if you've

heard me on startups for the rest of us

I refer to Freedom purpose and

relationships and the relationship part

this is where it starts for me right and

this is why I've done entrepreneurship

this is why I've done what I've done so

I just want to remind folks to be

thinking about that for yourself and not

sacrifice it

okay so let's dive in so growth

and I was going to say how many are in

here but I don't remember 11 15. anyways

we'll get in it so the first one

is to qualify and Route demos

automatically qualifying route demo

requests automatically so here's a home

page and this is a Tiny Seed company

that does re-commerce and they added the

book a demo buttons right as a lot of us

do the moment you add book a demo you

start getting a bunch of demo requests

hopefully the moment you get a bunch of

demo requests you find out a bunch of

those demo requests are people that

really aren't qualified and the people

that maybe are only going to pay you 20

a month or 30 a month so we ran into

this at drip specifically

we were we had so much inbound which is

a good problem to have but it's still a

problem when you're getting seven demos

booked per day and you're the only

person doing it so what we did was uh

put a little snippet of JavaScript and

this is the form they have today I'll be

honest ours was much simpler I think

ours was first name and email and

subscriber count basically we have a

value metric right it's more subscribers

more money so you got to figure out what

is your single maybe two qualifying

questions if it seats how many seats are

you going to use if it's contacts how

many contacts do you have if it's

subscribers how many do you have

um and that's what you're really trying

to do and there's a competitor of ours

that has done a similar thing this is

not an uncommon thing to do okay but the

the cool part and the thing that we had

never seen done when we implemented this

is that

then we decided so our base plan was 50

bucks a month and in the early days we

wanted to demo everybody because we were

learning it was customer development by

the time you hit 10 20 30k

only we're demoing to 99 a month and up

right so with a quick snippet of

JavaScript we were able to say

are they qualified our current

definition of qualified is they'll pay

us at least 49 or 99 a month but we can

just change that with line of JavaScript

at any time if they're qualified we

would say great we'd send them straight

to R then it was calendly and now it's a

Savvy Cal link but we send them straight

to our booking link right

and if they were not qualified we sent

them straight to a video demo of me they

still got a demo and it started with hey

everyone balling I'm the founder of drip

co-founder of drip sorry Derek I'm the

co-founder drip and um this is my quick

you know as a quick demo I'm gonna walk

through some features it was like 10 or

12 minutes so they still got a demo I

didn't like oh you free trial like they

didn't think that they got you know

short shrifted so to speak

um and then over time you know you hit

50k a month and it's like well we're

only going to talk to 199 a month and up

and then we hit and then we hired a new

sales person it's like well we have a

bunch of bandwidths so we'd back it off

to 99 right and then it was like before

long it was three four five hundred

dollars a month in order to to do a demo

so this is a nice thing to implement

definitely can do it in under an hour

and uh I hope that one's helpful

number two monitor your sending IPS and

domains

I ran an ESP and so many things go wrong

with email sending

um so many that I vowed to never start a

startup that ever sent email ever again

and I joked that my password resets

would from here on beat Via SMS because

I so hated email but the the trouble is

blacklists happen for reasons that may

or may not be your fault but the problem

is is even if you use third party let's

say you're using mail gun mandrel

postmark send grid any of these you know

API layers that you can send emails some

of those we found didn't monitor their

own IPS so we would be sending through

them we had dedicated IPS and it would

ping this is MX toolbox is a tool we

used MX toolbox would ping us and say

you're on Blacklist and we'd go ask this

provider and they would say yeah it's

not your fault it was someone else and

it's like but why didn't you fix this

like we notified them so

um it's pretty easy for your IPS whether

you're sending to yourself or through a

third party API to get on a blacklist

and once they do your deliverability

goes to shed and your open rates go in

the tank so MX toolbox is a tool we use

there may be a better one now but I

swear it was 10 20 bucks it was almost

not a non-existent cost

the other thing is you have IP addresses

which you can usually if you have a send

grid account or whatever you can just go

see which IPS are being sent through

but you also have a domain sending

domain microgrump.com tinyc.com that you

should also be tracking on an ongoing

basis I think because frankly given how

many emails we all send and how critical

this is if you're not getting you know

the equivalent of a Google alert when

you're when you're a blacklisted it's a

problem and it's really this is 100

doable in like 20 or 30 minutes the

hardest part is going to be which

domains are we using to send uh I'm

sorry not which domains which IPS are we

using to set that's gonna be the hardest

part otherwise setting it up is not a

big deal

third tip encourage annual upgrades at

the right time so a lot of us we like

annual plans as as Founders some some do

some don't but annual plans give us a

lot of cash up front gives us a quick

payback on ad spend and many of us this

is casto's pricing page just as an

example so many of us at sign up say you

can choose self-select pay monthly you

pay annual and you get a discount uh

usually it's like 10 months for the

price at 12. no no it's the other way 12

months for the price of 10. and

that's cool and some certain percentage

will self-select and depending on your

audience 10 20 percent

and then either people never pitch again

or they pitch it at the wrong time and

what we found was the best time and I've

seen a few other uh companies do this as

well the best time

involves churn and tracking churn so I'm

going to show you this image when I

Googled um because I don't really have

like access easy access to a churn graph

anyway any anymore so I Google like uh

churn graph churn image every single one

is like this and at the bottom if you

can't see it it says Revenue turn 10 and

it's just a it's just a smooth graph

that's like 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

right well that's not how churn goes if

you've ever run an app I mean it's much

much more this is a real turn graph

usually

you lose a lot early on 30 60 90 that's

the usual range

um the Sasa SAS apps I've run have had

tremendous had the highest turn between

um 0 and 60 or 0 in 90 days and then it

flattens out right and that's

essentially what this does although this

one goes almost out six months before it

hits the four the four percent Mark

which still feels a little high to me

but anyways you can see that if you're

pitching let's say you're in the app

you've converted to paid this is month

one and you

um send them an email an automated email

that says hey you should uh upgrade to

annual well you're still churning out

eight percent of people in month one ish

and then six percent and then five

percent like

everybody's not onboarded yet right are

people mentally committed yet so really

what we saw and again our graph was

different

um last three SAS apps I had they all

were in the 60 90 day window so what we

would find is when did the churn when

did churn really start flattening out

and in fact if you

actually like

like uh all the time so find where it

starts to plateau in this case it would

be about six months I'd say

um and this is when I would be pitching

annual because you know people turn out

at such a tremendously low uh percentage

at this point

and this is like the email text I said

um that we would put it in an automated

email that went out again for us it was

60 days so then it was about within a

month of that point so it was 60 to 90

days at some point they would get an

email and it was this it's like hey

first name I want to let you know about

a way to get two months free if you

upgrade you'll get blah blah blah it

only takes a click you can find out more

and upgrade here warmly Rob founder it

was something like that

um and you can feel free to swipe this

and edit it you know but it's just a

very simple I always find stuff as the

founder and um we had good you know much

better uptake on this than trying to

pitch it at any other any other time

all right number four help yourself by

helping a B2B writer if you're doing any

type of content marketing or link

building you may have used Harrow which

is help a reporter out

that's an interesting service and it

takes a lot of work

um to monitor you get a ton of you get

two or three emails a day each email has

a list of like reporters or press or

even just like bloggers content

marketers who are looking to to get an

answer to a question like hey I'm doing

a Roundup of the best marketing

approaches and you know b2c to B to C

SAS today and you respond and maybe get

a link Harrow is cool and it's very big

and it takes a lot of work

I have

submitted personally probably over the

course of several years and I used to

pay a little agency called bite size PR

to do it for me too

I've probably submitted 50 pitches to

Harrow and I think I've gotten

three or four like links so it you know

there's it's just a high signal to noise

uh type of thing or high noise to signal

I think for them there's a new service

that has just come out in the last year

and it's called help a B2B writer and so

it's a much more of a bunch of folks

Like Us in Microsoft and in fact I

noticed that the domains come through

I'm like there was like a Shopify

article like a month ago there was um

there's some other kind of

again B2B SAS startups that have come

out so I signed up for this just to be

curious I'm not even really looking for

links or anything but I get what you and

you say you know there's SAS there's

marketing um the categories there is

e-commerce there's a few others and you

can tell it's someone kind of in our

sphere more and it's lower traffic

um but I've submitted three and I think

I got two links already and so you know

maybe this gets bigger as big as Harrow

someday and it and then it doesn't work

anymore but for now it's a pretty cool

service

um I get two emails a day and they

usually have one or two pitches and

they're usually good have been a good

fit for me so this is just an example

looking for SAS business stuff for

buyers to share their experience

and purchasing software for their

company they should talk to April she

has a great analogy for that you should

send the toilet analogy to them

alternative.co so anyways yeah that's

just a fun again it's a fun little tip

that subscribing to that takes you less

than 60 Minutes I guarantee it

all right number five is to consider a

Google analytics alternative

so

I when I look ahead three five years I

don't know if Google analytics is still

going to be legal in Europe and who the

heck knows what what else is coming

Google is still gdpr compliant

technically until it's but not by the

Austrian government so they're like nope

Google analytics constitutes a violation

of gdpr and it is possible that more

European authorities will soon follow so

this is an article from I don't know

it's the past few months

tell me if I'm hedging my bets

I'm signing up for a backup platform and

I'm installing tracking code now so I

have history and two platforms

it's less than 60 minutes

the platform there's a couple platforms

I actually asked in tinyseed slack to

find out what it what is everybody using

today for not using Google analytics but

I remember 10 years ago it was clicky

get clicky.com they were the only

alternative but they're a little you

know they're a little longer in the

tooth I would say than than maybe you

want to use but fathom many of you know

the founders of fathom they have a fun

podcast and they're in the bootstrapper

um you know kind of microcomp related

crowd so fathom's a good one and

certainly reasonably priced they also

have uptime monitoring built in which is

another tip that I have later and then

he heap.io is is the other one people

said there's there's several when you

Google for it but these are the kind of

two I think that personally I'd probably

use fathom but I would I would at least

compare the two and again am I saying

uninstall Google analytics today and run

away not not particularly but I do think

having

um redundancy in a lot of these areas I

think can be helpful

tip number six and this is this one is

just so clever and so

simple to do it's to yourdomain.com

meeting

redirect that to your scheduling link

use calendly savvical I got this from a

founder

uh Andy cabasso of postaga you can see

it at the bottom and I needed a slide

with visuals so I went and I

HD access is the top one I was like

breaking out my htaccess Linux stuff

second one is um was that Squarespace

and the third one's WP engine that's how

you do it but if if you have Linux the

top one is how you would redirect your

that would be your meeting link to my

meeting URL you want to do that I'll

suddenly have a bunch of calendar

invites I'll be like hey I can do a demo

of stuff

um that's not my real meeting URL either

that would be dumb so oh and it's a it's

a 302 by the way not a 301 because it is

not permanent right you want to be we

want it to check back you want browsers

to check back so

simple

two slides but that was when I was like

I need to do this that's kind of cool

number seven is to keep a marketing

change log and this is something I don't

remember if we heard about this or if we

came up with this idea honestly but we

all know what a change log is in uh you

know for your code where you can see the

commits and the labels and the branches

and the stuff you've done over the past

X months you can go back through it yeah

we changed this oh this broke well why

did it break well because we have a

change log

so we were

having trials one month and suddenly we

didn't have any more trials and we said

what broke and we said we don't know we

don't have a marketing change law so we

implemented one and it's a Google sheet

and this I literally I went into my

Google Docs account and I searched for

marketing changelog that is the real

marketing changelog from trip before we

got acquired it it ends in April you can

see like real names in here anna right

many of you know her as customer success

and all it is is it's a date it's what

we did and then we categorized stuff in

case we want to look for it and this is

all manual didn't pull from anything but

more than once we referred back and we

were like why did why did this number

change because oh and I just I noticed

this right before look at uh number

three

it's 11 10 November 10th of 2015 added

subscriber count drop down to request a

demo that was we literally got Ah that's

cool maybe this is all ties together so

anyways marketing changelog I recommend

it I mean honestly I think everyone

should do this getting one started is

certainly less than an hour maintaining

it maybe a little more discipline right

you need some type of process and to let

a team know when you do stuff split

tests this would be if I added a removed

credit card this would be if I made

major changes to any type of marketing

campaign rolled out a new one pulled one

back because attribution is hard these

days we know that and this is a way to

at least have some dates and have some

uh you know some info

number eight simple one most people know

Google Alerts you want your probably

your name you want your company name

your product name probably some

competitors that you're monitoring

monitoring Google Alerts are delayed 12

hours 24 hours even if you

they're not instant because it's

crawling the web and stuff

but I still have all that and F5 bot

which is this free tool that is super

fast crawler of Reddit and Hacker News

and this thing called lobsters which

I've never even heard of but red and

Hacker News is what I use it for and so

now I'm getting

um you know I have startups for the rest

of us Minecraft Tiny Seed I have my book

titles I have my name just in case

something gets mentioned in a Hacker

News thread I can pop in and be like hey

thanks for the mention yeah actually and

I can clarify or I can say I'm working

on an updated version of that book for

the 10th year in a row

um but F5 bot is free and I don't know

I've been using it for eight months this

is look at this amazing email they sent

me it's not some great ux but I mean I

can't even read that but you know

there's a blue line that says Reddit

comment I click on that on my phone it

gets me into Reddit and I'm like oh cool

someone just what did they mention here

startups for the rest of us yeah and so

I was like hey thanks you oh it's this

specific episode right they just

mentioned a

the podcast itself and I went and

Googled the episode and brought it into

the thread so it was like just being

helpful on the internet

so that's a cool little tool

number nine is a fun little exercise if

you've never done it we often look at

churn and I you should never look at one

Churn number my churn is seven percent

that don't tell me that okay and number

one it should be Revenue churn customer

churn is secondary but number two date

based because you're churned before 60

90 days is high and then it goes down

low so tell me about those and then the

next fun adventure is to segment your

churn by a price point and you can pick

tier you can do it by tiers

or you could just make an arbitrary call

and be like well all the chairs below 50

we think churn higher so let's let's

just do that so there's this tweet I

sent that unfortunately accidentally

deleted

um since then for more than a decade

I've been saying lower paying customers

churn faster here's another data point

it's from a Tiny Seed Company it's

anonymized but it's used with permission

so segment a which we're about to see

the numbers on segment a is the the less

expensive right 29 bucks a month and

under

segment b 99 a month and up so all right

enormous difference in churn and net

churn and LTV so this is it segment a

who pays less than 29 turned at 11

segment B it pays 99 and up turns it

minus four percent so net negative churn

which is a 15 turn swing which is you

know catastrophic or or the opposite of

catastrophic if if you're on the the

plus side of that

um you know when trying to grow a

company with 11 net churn versus minus

four percent if that was your whole

business is just night and day it can

mean the difference of having a quarter

million dollars versus a million in

error or more

the reason I'm saying to do this is to

you maybe you can do it with a SQL query

maybe you do it you export from stripe

and you literally do it in a Google

sheet just once just to see what it's

like statically it's not going to change

dramatically it's not going to be 100

higher 50 lower next month you have an

idea of it do it every few months it

just gives you insights into who your

best customers are I mean the lifetime

value difference think of this like even

if it wasn't 99 and up if it was 29 and

99 points and then you do the churn the

lifetime values on those things are like

well you can spend so much more money so

it gives you insight into things like

that your lower plans probably aren't

that helpful here's the caveat I'm going

to say because then my next point is to

consider dropping your lowest plan just

because your churn is high on your

lowest plan does not mean you should

drop your lowest plan because sometimes

your lowest plan you're capturing the

market they don't go to competitors when

you know at the lower price points and

especially if they feed an auto upgrade

into your 99 plans but if there's not a

lot of upgrading happening that's when

you think do I just have two products I

have an expensive product that's 99

bucks with great churn and I have a kind

of a product that everyone turns out of

and it's 29 and no one's upgrading

that's to me the signal to think

maybe I should just hide this plan and

see what happens so it's not a direct

absolute yes you should do it but it is

something that is fun to know and good

to know as you allocate resources to

different types of customers we actually

pumped in when we used help Scout we had

a custom bar on the side a custom widget

and we would pull in what plan people

were on how long like what they paid us

to date how many support requests all

this stuff such that we could I don't

remember doing this but if we could have

like had a priority support tier where

basically if you pay us more we respond

quicker but I don't remember necessarily

doing that

so as I said number 10 is drop your

lowest plan can think about dropping

your lowest plan with the caveat that I

said earlier

um of course we know that the first

order effect dropping your lowest plan

is it should it should increase your

average revenue per user

um and then I have these fancy graphs of

these three companies that I uh advise

that like all they did was increase

their prices and you know the graphs

went up and these are legit like actual

graphs

so

the hard part

the hard part about increasing prices is

there's a lot of hard parts and I did a

50-minute talk on this at microgrump

Europe that Talk's going to be out soon

whenever we get it uh launched and all I

talk about is like how to Think Through

pricing changes how whether to you know

grandfather or not

um and then how to communicate it if

you're going to do it how much to raise

value metrics all this stuff so it's a

whole talk unto itself

and in that talk I have this you know

this tip and I say if you if you're just

scared to do all that

for a week just hide your lowest pricing

plan and see what happens just play with

it

do do your sign ups just go away or do

half your sign ups from 999 plan go away

but the other half go to 49.99 because

suddenly that's a very different

business that you're running right so

it's just this is the easiest simplest

when I you can't raise prices in under

an hour there's too many things you

could hide this on your pricing page in

less than an hour and see You'd then

need to monitor it over the course of a

week or two though

all right that was number 10. number 11

is to make and ask after a successful

support ticket but yeah so uh you can

ask for a testimonial or you can ask for

like a review in captera if you guys are

a G2 crowd or one of these things and

the idea is if someone great support you

know you've done it you respond and

someone's like oh my gosh I can't

believe you implemented that feature so

fast oh my gosh that was an amazing

experience that you just made my day

you're the best and usually we're like

hey thanks archive because I'm in a big

hurry and support so instead of that

could we steal this email that I wrote

for this presentation that says hey

that's great to hear because I'm acting

like they just complimented us right

that's great to hear we work hard to

provide amazing support your email is a

great testimonial for that ooh did

anyone catch what I did there

which has me thinking would you mind if

we took a sentence or two from your

email and used it as a testimonial on

our website we love showing potential

users blah blah blah no pressure If not

that's like the me not being a sales guy

right the no pressure thing you can uh

edit to your own accord thanks Rob

because in customer support this Rob

guys a lot of a lot of roles he's the

founder and customers were anyways steal

that text if you want to

um Auto you know put it in the uh what

are they called Snippets right when

you're responding to support boom it's

just a keyword thing and see what

happens implementing that in your help

desk software will be less than an hour

and then send it out five times next

week and just just see what happens

okay so everyone if you've seen me speak

before you know that I have in two

intermissions in most of my talks

and that's because I talk fast and I get

tired of hearing myself talk versus this

much and so does everyone else so this

is the first one they tend to be the

short little you know kind of hopefully

fun videos

um this is one of my I'm not on Tick

Tock but someone posted this and this is

perhaps my favorite Tick Tock I've ever

seen and it involves Portland Oregon

and Minneapolis and how they are so

hipster and similar but not the same so

here we go do we have volume on my on my

slides awesome

hello

are you a liberal hipster who likes to

collect

tape cassettes or some but you're

not so far gone that Portland is a good

fit for you come join us in softcore

Portland also known as Minneapolis here

in diet Portland we like vinyl records

and ethically sourced coffee

but we're not necessarily full-blown

Communists here in Portland light we

believe in gay rights but we also

believe that heterosexual relationships

are okay too so I like that because we

Portland and Minneapolis are in this

like hipster fight of that we have this

battle every year of like who has the

most bike Lanes right most miles of bike

lane and it's funny everybody from

Portland who sees this just cracks up so

um

all right

group two is product

a couple of these are some suggestions

from from Founders

um which I was doing I asked for

Founders because it's like yo I haven't

installed like I haven't done a lot of

product stuff in six years so my stuff's

a little bit out of date so a few of

these I hope are helpful

um the first one which just caught me

totally out of the blue because I'd

never even heard of this

install microphone microconf Microsoft

Clarity I didn't even know what it was

so I Googled it and it's basically heat

mapping and it is

um like uh screen recording

but here's the thing and I saw the

homepage and I'm like sweet so it's a

SAS product what is what is the hack

here gdpr and CCPA ready no sampling

built on open source and then this is

from Pierre de wolf of scraping B many

of you may have seen him on Twitter

so I clicked on pricing to say like well

if it's just recommending a paid tool I

don't is that make this something I want

to do and it says Clarity it's free

forever enjoy all the features of

clarity zero costs will never run into

traffic limits or be forced to upgrade

to a paid version gdpr CCPA ready no

sampling built on open source so I I

haven't personally tried this but Pierre

swears by it and I feel like it would be

something I would be trying in less than

60 minutes

tomorrow

all right this was another tip that just

had never occurred to me it's to if

you're on AWS enable S3 versioning

and what versioning does is all your S3

buckets you start having

versions so if you go in and delete

something you can get it back if you go

in and modify something you can get the

version back we know what versioning is

right

the cost is from what I've heard

absolutely minimal

um Benedict daika of user list gave me

this tip and I said how much cost has it

increased and he said I don't know I

think our total S3 bill is five dollars

per month or maybe euros and I was like

yeah it doesn't matter if a Euro five

dollars so

I like this idea and I have heard now

now that I brought it up I started

talking to a few Founders and I had two

who told me like oh yeah no I deleted a

user like something we store an S3 and I

deleted it and we had the version and I

got it back and I was like that is cheap

insurance man so I would I haven't done

this but I'm gonna have to assume you

could enable this in like 10 minutes

or since it's AWS console like 30

minutes by the time you find it

all right

Council all right number 14

to say 75 of you are already doing so

this is also Benedict and there's a

couple Cool Tools that do this a

Speedway which is uh it's actually a

Tiny Seed Company he doesn't just do

like hit an API endpoint or hit an HTTP

protocol he actually has full-on

protocol Bots and browser Bots that can

see a screen and look for stuff and it's

just a very complicated uh not

complicated for you but a a healthy

implementation of what it does so it can

go deeper than just pinging an end point

and telling you if it's a 200 response

so speedway.app is one and then as I

mentioned before fathom has uptime

fairly simple uptime monitoring built

into that thanks Derek I had asked him

who he used for uptime and he said uh

Speedway or fathom's pretty good

number 15 so we're going we're halfway

there

track your knowledge based searches

track the ones where there are no

results returned

and log them somewhere so if someone

were to come to your knowledge base and

type in shrimp tacos and they get zero

results we used to well it was super

hacky because we had access to the

source code it was WordPress and I went

in with my PHP skills and I hacked thing

that like emailed this address and then

we just had them in a label

and then once a week one of our customer

success people would go through that

label and a bunch of it was junk junk

spam shrimp tacos and then he'd come

upon several that were like oh they're

actually searching for something they

need to find and either we don't have an

article for it or we do have an article

but they're not finding it so he would

take that phrase and add it as like a

tag or you can just add it as a sentence

at the bottom or whatever and then that

would start appearing for the search so

it's just a way to help your users find

stuff if they're gonna let's be honest

most users or a lot of users don't go to

your KB and so if they're gonna do it

like let's at least give them give them

a hand I wouldn't recommend the email

approach it was super hacky but if you

can log it somewhere

um that's what I would be doing and then

reviewing it weekly monthly whatever

number 16 is the one you really didn't

want to hear nobody wants to do this and

it's just another email sending one but

it's enabling SPF and dkim

it's a lot simpler than it sounds I'm

hoping at least half of you maybe three

quarters already have this but if you go

to dmarc analyzer which is this free

thing I found on Google I entered my

domain what is that why would I use

rawballing.com and it basically all my

stuff sat except for I have like some

capital letters in my SPF record so this

will tell you things aren't there the

hardest part of this

is you have to think okay I'm sending

through send grid and then my ESP and

then maybe we're sending some well if we

send them through the app they should be

centered so now you need to go to send

grid on your ESP and you need to find

their spfd chem because you have to pull

some settings from them so that's the

hardest part is just finding it once you

find it you're updating two I believe

it's two DNS records and I had to do

this for a new domain Sherry setup and

it took me

once I had the info it took me like five

minutes but it took me like 20 minutes

to find it so this is one of those it's

like do we want our emails to be

delivered or not if you don't care don't

do this but it's definitely the email

ecosystem is kind of abusive on these

things

number 17 is to rate limit your apis

thanks again to uh Pierre of scraping B

for this one when he sent it I said well

of course we had rate limiting issues

and we implemented it pretty quick I

said you can't do this in an hour right

that's the whole point is that the

constraint of this talk because I had

about 100 things on a list but a bunch

of them are going to take you longer

than an hour and he said aha contraire

mon frere

um he's French that was a really bad

accident he said sorry Pierre I

apologize

um but he's like

all the Frameworks dude if you're using

anything flask has flask limiter Django

has Django rate limit rails has Ruby

limiter laravel has rate limiter and the

best part is he literally just type that

out Boop top and like he knew these by

heart in the slack so

um that's it right limit your apis if

you have any type of API someone's gonna

DDOS you by accident is what happens

um now I will call out zapier and

segment who I still don't know that they

honor rate limits and used to DDOS us

about once a month by accident because

someone would enable it and it would

just poof and like Crush our servers but

frankly especially custom Integrations

they will they should and will honor

this

all right

number 18 we're getting there ask why

people are canceling

we took out our in-app ask why people

are canceling because people just typed

ASDF in our text box

and submitted so what we did

that I found slightly better results

your mileage may vary easy enough to

test right I think you could test this

in under an hour I'll put it that way

you hide your Bot the the text box and

you put this into an automated email

that goes out is we had an email that

went out I think it was like 12 10

minutes 12 minutes after someone

canceled Rob's back to being a Founder

here hey I noticed you canceled your

product name account as we continue to

improve it'll be super helpful if you

could hit reply let me know why you

decided even if it's just a few words

thanks I'm the founder that was the

appeal and we didn't get 100 replies for

sure but the replies we did get might be

one sentence I decided this I moved to

MailChimp because XYZ

um you know your ux isn't what I want

but it we at least got some helpful

feedback there

moving on to the next one this one is

probably the least

it is it's the least SAS specific it's

more like these are some of my own

personal productivity hacks or things

I'll just throw out I think there's like

five of them but we should go through

them quick number 19 is to use my text

expander so I have three text expanders

that I use

daily and

they are my address my add my ad for my

address mycal which is my Savvy cow link

and my zoom which is my private Zoom

room link

and I put those I use the Apple

ecosystem I'm sure Android has the same

thing but like in apple it's like you go

to settings you go to keyboard and you

just type these things and you copy man

and then you're done and now on any

Apple device because I have two iPads

and a computer and I have my phone it's

all the same and all the time I'm typing

an email on my phone and I'm like Ugh

okay hey yeah let's just connect uh use

this link my Cal and it's like poof and

it expands and it's like magic right I

know some people who are amazing with

this and have like 50 expanders I'm not

smart enough to remember that many so I

really rely on these three and then

you'll see my no pitch which is no

thanks we don't take guest pitches on

our podcast please remove me from your

list that's what that one is but the my

ad my cow and my zoom uh I've come to uh

to really like and enjoy

number 20 is an email processing hack I

have which is have an email label for

lower priority tasks so anything that

comes in that isn't someone on my team

is not waiting on me or I know that I

can wait a week two weeks I mean there's

all kinds of stuff right where it's like

I'm not gonna file that thing with the

IRS in two and a half weeks

um I need to respond to this thing but

it's it's next month or whatever but I

know I don't want to lose it I label it

in Google and Gmail and I have it called

underscore this week because underscore

moves it to the top you can pick

whatever label you want but I go

underscore this week boom it's out of my

inbox and I get to inbox zero that way

and then once a week from 9 to 10 a.m on

one particular day and I'm not going to

say the day because if all the emails

you get from me are on that day then you

know that I'm this week in your email

but from 9 to 10 a.m I sit down and I go

through all of the this weeks and I have

there's one in the business account one

in my personal account and I've never

had a week where I haven't gotten

through all of them there's usually not

that many I will actually emails like

Jason Cohen wrote a cool article last

week and it's like I don't have time to

read this like 3000 words so I threw it

into this week and there was a there was

a YouTube video I wanted to watch

um some Rand fishkin stuff he said like

there are certain things that I want to

consume as well now don't go crazy with

it I do filter because you can throw in

three hours worth of content into this

you don't do that right you throw in

things that need to be responded to or

that you really want to uh to consume

and think about

and then I don't worry about that stuff

at all until I get there

all right number 21 is to upgrade to the

audible annual plan if you're an audible

listener I think we have

close to 680 books in our audible

account between the family and so we buy

a lot of books and frankly the monthly

plan your books are

11.50 a piece and on the annual plan

they're like nine dollars and something

and that will save you money that you

can use to grow your startup you're

welcome

so that was that was maybe the lamest

tip in the whole thing I promise I you

know if you don't use Audible it was

just a whiff but

um number 22 is to consider asynchronous

voice so there are a lot of meetings

that should not be meetings but they

also shouldn't be slack threads and

having

a three minute or a five minute voice

text in essence

can be super helpful

and there are ways to do this we I used

to use a loom or a screencast to just

record my screen of some emptiness and

then send it to someone the beauty of

loom is or an equivalent is you can say

1.7 x this person because 2x right even

I talk fast you can still 2x me and and

hear it and it's so even if I do like an

eight minute review of something you can

do a quick there's this other tool that

I've used and still use actually my team

hates it but you know it's it's my

favorite it's called Voxer and it's

um it's fine it's free and it's only a

tiny bit buggy but you can do it from

your phone or your desktop browser but

basically I can ping up uh like here's a

great example of a great use case for

this is when we're doing interviews

um for some new roles that we're hiring

for I am a second interview a lot right

Xander's a first interview for an event

producer and then I do the second

interview so I interviewed someone and I

have a bunch of thoughts for Xander

he's in the middle of stuff we shouldn't

I don't think we should schedule a

meeting

it's just me saying here's some Nuance

of how I think here's the pros and cons

of this person here's you know uh yellow

flags and some things I think you know

she did really well so Boop I touch the

button it's push to talk on Boxer notify

Xander and it sends an audio and then

anytime later right he gets a

notification like a text but he can pull

it up it can just be like Oh I'm 3xing

Rob on this because this guy talks

forever Bing and then he can listen to

my thoughts and he can respond via voice

most people on my team respond via slack

which is fine too but it's it has

changed it has reduced the number of

meetings and long ass emails I have to

send because if I'm going to send an

email to Xander summarizing all the

things I think about this candidate it's

five minutes of audio you know how many

words is that that I'd be typing out

it's way more efficient for me to to

talk it

and the last one I think in this

category this may be my favorite of the

whole thing people may laugh I cannot

watch online video at 1X anymore I can't

watch almost any video so every browser

I'm in I have a plug-in uh and I this is

the Chrome one it's called video speed

controller it has

two more than two million users and 3

100 4.8 star reviews it's incredible

every video in your browser on Chrome uh

will have now you can see the little um

controls and you can do like I believe

it's like shift d to make it faster

shift s or you can use your mouse

maybe it's command D you know how when

you remember yeah I remember as the

thing but I don't remember what the the

the actual keys are and so you'll see

that like best one of the best

bootstrapping talks of all time by Jason

Cohen here I have this control up there

and so I I rewatch this talk like every

year or two but I watch it at about 2X

and it just lets me zip through

uh ZIP through I will never when I get

on my kids computers I'm like no guys

you have to install this because I can't

sit here I can't even I know YouTube now

YouTube has speed control which is cool

and Netflix does too I think it's only

up to 1.5 x

um but most of the other platforms don't

so this has saved me hundreds of hours

of time since I started using it

okay

intermission two

this is from Fast Company

and it's something about reading between

the lines in meetings

[Music]

allow me to play devil's advocate here

but allow me to be a dick for a second

but with no consequences let's pull back

on that for a second I fell asleep while

you were talking and I have no idea

what's happening huh I've got a stupid

question it's actually like a really

smart question but I was wondering if I

say stupid beforehand does that make me

like kind of modest is that like sort of

charming thing to do right let's pick

that up in the next meeting I need a few

days to figure out what the hell you're

talking about

but will this scale one of the managing

directors once used that phrase in a

meeting so now I use it all the time

sorry this is just

at you

um do you know a four-letter word for

long-winded there's an outside chance

you might be right you're wrong

you're definitely wrong I think what

you're trying to say is so what I'm

gonna do is take that idea and then make

it sound like it was mine

let's try to make this viral okay I just

heard about this site called reddit.com

can we get on there I think we should

make this a cross-platform opportunity I

watch Shark Tank let's take this offline

yeah can we pick this up again

um let me just maybe 15 minutes after uh

never again

all right so thanks Fast Company all

right we're getting there so this is the

last section this is on internal

operations

um number 24 of 31 is to use team

password management

hopefully you're doing this already but

um we didn't uh frankly I had never

really seen the Ambassador management

until we got acquired in 2016 and I was

like oh I totally get this so LastPass

has LastPass teams one password has one

password teams

from day one when we like formed Tiny

Seed I said everything's going into a

business uh team's password management

account and what it does is if people

like let's say you settle on LastPass

teams any of your employees who has a

LastPass personal account can link it so

that in their browser they can see both

but the company can't see their personal

stuff and then when they leave you just

unlink it so you retain your passwords

you can there's also a shared folder we

can just dump a bunch of passwords in

and everybody can access it in their

browser so it's a relatively simple tip

if you're already doing it you know this

is a no-brainer if you're not doing it

it's it's you gotta like it we just you

can't have the password sitting around

in text files and whoever else you have

them this is a super simple one that I

saw at leadpages when we got acquired

use an email Alias for for every SAS

account you sign up for and it was like

there was like Accounts at leadpages.net

or whatever and that's usually what it

is if you haven't done that already it

is not impossible but it is a challenge

to go back and change them all so if you

haven't done that already I'd make a you

make this a group right where it's like

my co-founders plus maybe an Ops person

or whoever you have on your team like

it's two or three people get that email

so if there needs to be a password reset

and you're on vacation which is what

used to happen because all bunch of crap

is set up under Rob get drip.com and I'd

be in Mexico and like on the beach it's

like you have the login dude and we

can't do it this keeps that from

happening from you being a single point

of failure

um it's a relatively simple hack

this one is super fascinating because

I've never heard anyone say this and

it's a suggestion from a Founder use

privacy.com

for spending management

so this is Rahul from nestify and

basically privacy.com you can generate

these credit card numbers and so you

generate a credit card a virtual payment

card is what they call it and you can

say

it's a one-time purchase and only up to

twenty dollars and then you enter that

in a in a store you can say it's a

recurring purchase Max 20 reject

anything generate another one and

um you give it put it in Netflix or you

put it in GitHub maybe it's a better

example and it locks itself to GitHub

and if anyone else got that number no

one else can charge it but GitHub so

it's just it's an abstraction layer of

your actual credit card number I don't

know I mean my personal number is stolen

at least every 18 months I have to redo

all my subscriptions I'm thinking about

doing this for me personally but um

Rahul was swearing by it as something

for the business so I think it's kind of

an interesting one hard to go back and

do but it's again it's one of those

things moving forward is this something

that we think about also it helps you

if you want to put a you can pause you

can unpause you can put limits so that

such that you don't have to track

everything and it can just get rejected

when you don't want that to be charged

anymore

27 is to keep a manual updates list what

I mean by this is there are certain

things on your websites that you just

can't code so an example of this is that

number right there 590.

I can't write code to populate that

number because it's not the number of

posts we have in the startups for the

rest of us site it's hard coded in the

WordPress so I can't just do a count on

the column or whatever because there's a

bunch we exclude and it's not in the

column why we exclude you know that kind

of thing so it's literally we're it's

just a number and it's embedded in there

and it's a tiny seat about page it says

we've backed more than 60 fast growing

SAS companies across four continents

that's just the number and guess what in

a month we'll be at like 84. so are we

going to remember to come back and edit

this no and so it's going to sit there

for 60 for like eight months and then

someone's going to mention it to us

because we never read our own websites

right so what I did like two months ago

was I created another uh Google sheet

and I say I called it things that need

periodic updating and I have a recurring

quarterly calendar reminder all it says

is check things that need updating and I

come in here and I zip through them I

click click click and you can see it's

just a location and uh and a what that I

that should be updated and I actually

just updated start off the rest of us I

think it was at like 560 or something

and I was like yes systems working

28 similar to this is at a quarterly

calendar reminder or maybe a monthly one

to review credit card transactions if

you don't go through your business

transactions at least once a quarter

put an hour on that calendar you can do

it you can do a quarter in less than an

hour and if you don't put on the

calendar you just don't do it or at

least I don't

29 is to push live chat and email

support into slack I had not actually

I've got I bet several of you are doing

this but this is a suggested by Andy

cabasso of postaga and um I thought it

was a pretty cool one he was talking

about like chat Leo you can do live chat

on your website directly in slack

intercom integrates directly in Slack

help Scout has a slack integration even

stripe events he's pumping in like

refunds and trials churn like all kinds

of stuff and I asked him why he does

this and he said because now like stripe

I'm sorry slack is our Hub of our

business

um and I don't want to be switching in

and out of a bunch of apps and I'm

already talking to my co-workers in

slack so why not have it ping up and you

know do a DM ish thing to me if I'm on

call for support that now I just chat

and chatting with a customer they're

just an anonymous you know user

so that's a fun one last two 30 is to

send a monthly advisor email and this

was one I recommend to people anyways

but uh this is one that specifically I

remember Mark Tobias in that original

Talk of his 50 of open cage data that

was in the talk and I just gave you a

sample format again it'll be in a PDF

this is what we give to Tiny Seed

companies

what this does and I there are several

totally bootstrap Founders in this room

who do this already and I'm on some of

their lists um and I get around 100 ish

of these a month both from Tiny Seed and

not Tiny Seed I read everyone I don't

respond to all of them but I read

everyone what this gives you is a lot of

our bootstrapping we don't have the

rigor necessarily you don't want to you

don't want the rigor of a VC back

company you don't want a board you don't

want but seriously to sit down for 20

minutes a month and to write something

that talks about wins

over the last month losses plans

problems

and has just the metrics for the last

two months and you pick some people at

microconf pick people in your Mastermind

pick you know an advisor ask me if I

want to get it just send it and if you

get into that discipline you'll often

find that problems section at the bottom

will uh generate an intro right or it'll

generate some feedback of like oh I

already know how to fix that so you

should think about it so I think it's an

interesting one

the last one is

one that I thought about including I

almost had 30 and uh I really wanted to

include this one because I think this

gets beyond the Tactical nature of a lot

of these and it digs into like team

culture and Company culture and it's

something that I have done I would say

naturally and I'm not sure why but I've

seen a lot of people not do this and so

we have we had some traditions at drip

and we now have Traditions we've just

kind of accidentally done at Tiny Seed

that are actually

they make us feel like we're

they make us know that we belong because

we get we understand these and they have

a lot they start to have a lot of

meaning over time so our tradition back

in the drip days was to troll each other

there's way early pre-acquisition I

think it was like four of us on the team

Derek's England missing so in this one

we are trolling Derek because he's at

home and we're eating drinking wine and

hanging out at bitwise in Fresno

this one we're also trolling Derek with

cupcakes

and it just starts spontaneously

happening and then this one Derek's now

in the picture my kids are there and

Derek's wife and Zach and we're trolling

Ian and Anna who were in the other one

right so this just became a thing and I

just stumbled upon these and then this

is Derek and Ian now I think trolling

Anna uh because we're eating sushi and

she's not so this became kind of a fun

thing that we would do and there's

there's a lot of these photos and then

what I realized is I was like wow what

do we have for for tiny scene I realized

that when we did a headshot this is our

about page that Anar was gone he had to

fly out to see his family and so we

pulled him up pick up on my iPad and we

just kind of pointed to Anar and said ah

isn't it funny he's missing and then a

couple months later we're in California

and Xander's not there and so now it's

Tracy in our and I'm mocking sander so

that that's our I think going to be our

our

tradition but I will say the one that I

think that I still Derek and I still

text about and I honestly get a little

choked up about it because it is has

such deep meaning for me is there's this

stuff called fire cider and it's

um habanero infused

apple cider vinegar Wellness tonic

firesider.com or you can buy it on

Amazon we got in a little snap monthly

snack subscription and some of the

snacks weren't great but there's this

little Fireside thing and I was like I

don't know let's all try it out so we

all took a little sip and we're like oh

my God this is awful it's not alcoholic

but it just it lights you up and so we

were joking a little bit and and the

fire starter just sat there for like a

month and then I said all right Folks at

some point you realize this is launch

juice and anytime we launch a big

feature we're all doing a shot and

instantly everyone's like hell yes this

is a challenge so I bought the firesider

shot glasses and uh on the firesider

shot glass they make it's like there's

different levels and it's like repel

vampires

um you know clean out your innards and

blah blah blah so we'd line it up and

we'd hit ship it boom and we'd all take

a shot it was great and so by the time I

was leaving drip when we had because

that was when we had two Engineers by

the time I was leaving drift no joke I

was buying it by the gallon

and on your first day as an engineer on

the product it was the product and

engineering team we would say hey here

you are here's a shirt here's a sticker

and here's your shot glass and people

are like what is this what is happening

we always had to say is not alcoholic

like it's not but it became a thing that

I believe still happens today because

when I left my my successor said where

do I get the fire starter because I want

you know I want to keep this going

because it became such a cool thing so

anyways that is all for me today

[Music]