Podcasts about chargify

Winstone Jordaan, MD of GridCars, joins John Maytham in studio to discuss the future of EV charging and long-distance electric road trips in South Africa. As a pioneer in the industry for nearly two decades, Jordaan shares insights on the growth of EV infrastructure, the role of operators like Chargify and Rubicon, and what’s next for sustainable travel. He’s in town for the African Energy Indaba, where he will deliver the opening address at the EV Forum on March 6 at the CTICCSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dan Bladen, CEO and co-founder of Kadence, and Dave Cairns, Future of Work Strategist at Kadence, each discuss aspects of the evolving dynamics of modern workplaces and spaces. Dan shares insights from Kadence's journey developing workplace technology and breaking down and rebuilding work to facilitate workflow and rhythm for distributed workers. Dave highlights the benefits of data-driven understanding of people flow and space utilization as well as intentional gatherings. They recognize flexible hybrid models' acceptance and leaders' increasingly purposeful coordination.       TAKEAWAYS   Dan Bladen Interview   [01:22] Dan explains his background in theology, music, and technology.   [02:57] Growing up with engineers, hardware, and gaming encouraged Dan to build computers.   [05:04] Traveling around the world in 2012, connectivity and charging are basic needs.   [05:40] Dan co-founds Chargify to make wireless charging a game changer as WiFi did for connectivity.   [06:41] Dan notices offices were already half-empty as people start ‘agile working' in the 2010s.   [07:25] The business of checking an employee into a hot desk while also charging their laptop.   [08:06] Strong growth stops with the pandemic, then a Fortune 50 company asks to use Chargify's software to enable safe office-based work.   [09:36] The checking-in capability leads to a business pivot to workplace coordination software.   [11:02] Dan isn't enthralled, but the market is large and 90% of companies are going hybrid.   [12:20] Dan sees the potential of hybrid work to benefit from more work-life balance.   [12:44] Finding rhythm with your family and your team and having a contract with your employer.   [13:35] In the past, people had to act predictably as spaces were static.   [14:36] Kadence philosophy breaks down the ‘work stack'—starting with the ‘why' of work—vision and values   [15:13] Moving from performative inputs to quantitative outputs.   [16:10] Work defined by time not place—so what is the work ‘operating system'?   [18:08] Kadence starts as desk-booking software and becomes a hybrid work management platform.   [20:05] The hybrid shift is influenced by market conditions and economic pressures.   [21:00] Data shows the best-performing companies are hybrid.   [21:40] Servant leadership is rising and thinking about culture and the next generation.   [22:51] Over 50% of hybrid companies now organize regular in-person events.   [23:16] Time to trust is accelerated during face-to-face times of togetherness.   [23:29] Leaders must be intentional about when and where they gather their teams.   Dave Cairns Interview   [24:32] Dave discusses how deep friendships build up live and asynchronously.   [25:33] The mismatch between real estate supply and demand that Dave notices in 2019.   [26:10] Pandemic shifts remind Dan of his poker-playing time when he was working remotely.   [27:37] Merging two experiences, learning more about the nature of work, beyond office space.   [28:07] Learning from many sources for the first time that office spaces pre-COVID were half empty.   [29:30] Dave's content resonates with people struggling with their working lives and rigid policies.   [30:36] Many workers feel forced into office attendance without a clear reason.   [32:23] Canada has a quieter acceptance of hybrid work compared to the U.S.   [33:19] New York seems to have the most polarized views on remote and in-office policies.   [36:17] The mismatch between work policies/mandates and actual employee behaviors.   [37:26] Employees often coordinate informally and inefficiently, giving organizations no insights.   [38:27] Most firms still lack clear data on how their offices are actually being used.   [40:30] Some leaders demand full office occupancy despite low attendance rates.   [41:06] Gathering granular data to understand people flow and office space utilization.   [42:06] High lease costs, renewals or financial pressure are key factors to drive real change.   [43:19] Proactive companies learn workflow and people coordination before downsizing space.   [46:04] Leaders are balancing executive mandates with employee flexibility to achieve results.   [49:31] Companies recognize hybrid's importance but lack the knowledge to execute well.   [51:56] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Have an intentional gathering strategy. Accept that teams can make some of their own decisions. Figure out how your office spaces, your workspaces, if you have any, are being used.       RESOURCES   Dan Bladen on LinkedIn Dave Cairns on LinkedIn Kadence's website       QUOTES   “Now there's this opportunity for people to be more unpredictable and spaces to be flexible.” – Dan Bladen.   “So the only way to measure if that work was getting done was by measuring and observing the quality of the outputs.” – Dan Bladen.   “We started rebuilding it [work]. And really it boils down to people, places and the projects that they're working on.” – Dan Bladen.   “Work doesn't happen in a place anymore. It actually happens in the working week. And where you choose to place yourself is part of your toolkit and your coordination layer.” – Dan Bladen.   “Work is going to be reimagined a bit like an OS.” – Dan Bladen.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, and angel investor known for his remarkable track record of success. He bootstrapped Grasshopper to over $30M+ in ARR, eventually selling it to Citrix for $175M. He also founded Chargify, achieving profitability and gaining investment from Mark Cuban, ultimately acquired by Battery Ventures. Additionally, he founded Vanilla, raising an impressive $42M from Venrock and Insight Partners. David's journey is a testament to his unyielding dedication and innovation in entrepreneurship. Connect with David Hauser:Website: https://www.davidhauser.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhauser/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dhauser/ TurnKey Podcast Productions Important Links:Guest to Gold Video Series: www.TurnkeyPodcast.com/gold The Ultimate Podcast Launch Formula- www.TurnkeyPodcast.com/UPLFplusFREE workshop on how to "Be A Great Guest."Free E-Book 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting at www.Turnkeypodcast.com/gift Ready to earn 6-figures with your podcast? See if you've got what it takes at TurnkeyPodcast.com/quizSales Training for Podcasters: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-training-for-podcasters/id1540644376Nice Guys on Business: http://www.niceguysonbusiness.com/subscribe/The Turnkey Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/turnkey-podcast/id1485077152 Partner Links -- We use these apps and get amazing results and huge time savings too!Design tool: Canva Pro: Create Stunning Design in Minutes!Check out Headliner to create social media posts with video easily- make.headliner.appSimplecast is the easiest way to set up your podcast hosting- Simplecast.comZoom is the easiest way to schedule meetings and record your podcast interviews. Zoom.usAcuity is the easiest way to schedule your podcast interviews, meetings, and life.Acuityscheduling.com

David Hauser is an American entrepreneur, speaker, and angel investor, best known for co-founding the Grasshopper Group, a virtual telephone service that was acquired by Citrix Systems for $170 million in 2015. He is also a founding member of the National Entrepreneurs' Day and has co-founded several tech companies, including Grasshopper, Chargify, Spreadable, PopSurvey, and Deck Foundry. In this episode, David Hauser and Larry Hagner discuss the concept of work-life balance and challenge its validity. They argue that balance is elusive and can prevent us from fully engaging in both work and personal life. Instead, they advocate for integration, finding ways to include family and personal responsibilities into our professional pursuits. They also explore the history of the term "work-life balance" and its connection to the increase of women in the workforce. David Hauser then argues that constantly striving for balance can be detrimental, as it consumes valuable time and energy. Instead of constantly thinking about how to allocate time between different areas of life, he suggests integrating family and personal commitments into daily activities. The origins of the term "work-life balance" are also briefly discussed, with David Hauser suggesting that it emerged in the 70s or 80s when more women entered the workforce. The term was created to address the challenge of balancing work responsibilities with the role of being a mother.  However, the concept of balance itself is questioned, as it implies a trade-off between work and personal life, which may not be the most effective approach. By integrating work and family life, parents can demonstrate the importance of dedication, perseverance, and delayed gratification to their children. www.thedadedge.com/458 www.davidhauser.com www.linkedin.com/in/davidhauser www.instagram.com/dhauser www.twitter.com/dh www.facebook.com/dh.dhauser  

Today I'm making friends with David Hauser who has a track record of founding multiple successful companies, building exceptional teams, and investing in innovative ideas.** What I Discuss with David:– Constantly running into each other at LifeTime Gym in Vegas– Why David always knew he was going to be an entrepreneur– How David's parents instilled work ethic in him– Coding websites in the early '00s– How David raised $20m as a 17 year old– Why college can't create entrepreneurs– Building and exiting several successful companies** (Psst... Before I tell you more about the guest, do you like this show? Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — even one sentence helps!

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, and angel investor known for his remarkable track record of success. He bootstrapped Grasshopper to over $30M+ in ARR, eventually selling it to Citrix for $175M. He also founded Chargify, achieving profitability and gaining investment from Mark Cuban, ultimately acquired by Battery Ventures. Additionally, he founded Vanilla, raising $42M from Venrock and Insight Partners. David's journey is a testament to his unyielding dedication and innovation in entrepreneurship. In this episode, we delve into his inner challenges and how he conquered them, persistently utilizing them as a source of motivation, the rationale behind driving a 14-year-old car and never opting for a first-class ticket despite being a millionaire, his upbringing and the freedom granted by his parents, and his core values and how they steer his personal and professional life. For more go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.scottmlynch.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Embrace greatness through these empowering offerings: Discover your true potential with the support of a passionate ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Unlock actionable insights on how to master your mindset and optimize your happiness through my weekly ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Embrace the boundless power of your mind. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ alongside 154 motivated students in my academy and unlock your true potential. Maximize your potential and experience life-changing growth by either enrolling in my ⁠⁠Private Coaching program⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠Group Coaching program⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ now to access an exclusive collection of 24 ad-free bonus episodes per year, featuring Q&A-based content. Access my downloadable and printable ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠exercises⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to equip yourself with the essential tools for success. Follow me on social for more inspiration: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Want to be featured in a future episode? Leave a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠review here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (even one sentence helps)! Music by: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Blaize Trulson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Legacy Divisions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Past guests on The Motivated Mind include Chris Voss, Captain Sandy, Dr. Chris Palmer, Joey Thurman, Jason Harris, Koshin Paley Ellison, Rudy Mawer, Molly Fletcher, Kristen Butler, Hasard Lee, Natasha Graziano, ⁠David Hauser⁠ and Alan Stein, Jr.

Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) will roll out 127 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country in a R40-million investment. As demand for EVs continues to grow, "ensuring robust infrastructure" for these vehicles is essential, says the local arm of the German car maker. MBSA is collaborating with Chargify, a Level 2 empowered company. The roll-out will include AC and fast-charging DC charging stations along the country's main routes and between metropolitan areas, as well as at airports, shopping malls, restaurant hubs, private hospitals, strategic expansion sites, residential estates and small towns throughout South Africa. "The partnership with Chargify not only gives us the opportunity to grow…the local EV charging network, but also reaffirms MBSA's ambition to expand its enterprise and supplier development (ESD) portfolio," says MBSA human resources and corporate affairs executive director Abey Kgotle. "Our ESD programme is aimed at making a real and lasting impact towards the transformation of the country through the creation of sustainable and meaningful jobs." This investment is also aimed at providing current customers with a reliable charging network, and instilling confidence in those considering the switch to EV ownership. MBSA's initial investment in the EQ charging network amounts to R15-million, with an additional R25-million earmarked for the second phase of the rollout. Phase 1 involves the installation of 67 Mercedes-Benz EQ branded charging stations across South Africa by the first quarter of next year. Phase 2 will add 60 additional charging stations, bringing the total to 127 EQ-branded charging stations. Locations already featuring the charging infrastructure include BT Ngebs Mall and Mayfair Hotel in Mthatha; Woodhill Estate and Country Club; Da Vinci Hotel in Sandton; Champagne Castle in the Drakensberg; Highwaymans in Pilgrims Rest; the Courtyard Sandton, and the Silvermist Wine Estate. Other locations currently in the installation phase include the Plettenberg Hotel; Wilderness Hotel; Swartberg Hotel, in Prince Albert; and Karoo Junction Mall in Beaufort West. While EQ customers can charge at any charge point in the country, they will benefit from a 10% discount when charging via the Chargify network. "Mercedes-Benz South Africa is accelerating the pace of eMobility transformation within the automotive industry," says MBSA co-CEO and Mercedes-Benz Cars executive director Mark Raine. "Next to offering the most extensive and diverse all-EV portfolio in the market, we want to provide not only our customers, but all EV drivers the luxury and peace of mind of a comprehensive charging network."

Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) will roll out 127 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country in a R40-million investment. As demand for EVs continues to grow, "ensuring robust infrastructure" for these vehicles is essential, says the local arm of the German car maker. MBSA is collaborating with Chargify, a Level 2 empowered company. The roll-out will include AC and fast-charging DC charging stations along the country's main routes and between metropolitan areas, as well as at airports, shopping malls, restaurant hubs, private hospitals, strategic expansion sites, residential estates and small towns throughout South Africa. "The partnership with Chargify not only gives us the opportunity to grow…the local EV charging network, but also reaffirms MBSA's ambition to expand its enterprise and supplier development (ESD) portfolio," says MBSA human resources and corporate affairs executive director Abey Kgotle. "Our ESD programme is aimed at making a real and lasting impact towards the transformation of the country through the creation of sustainable and meaningful jobs." This investment is also aimed at providing current customers with a reliable charging network, and instilling confidence in those considering the switch to EV ownership. MBSA's initial investment in the EQ charging network amounts to R15-million, with an additional R25-million earmarked for the second phase of the rollout. Phase 1 involves the installation of 67 Mercedes-Benz EQ branded charging stations across South Africa by the first quarter of next year. Phase 2 will add 60 additional charging stations, bringing the total to 127 EQ-branded charging stations. Locations already featuring the charging infrastructure include BT Ngebs Mall and Mayfair Hotel in Mthatha; Woodhill Estate and Country Club; Da Vinci Hotel in Sandton; Champagne Castle in the Drakensberg; Highwaymans in Pilgrims Rest; the Courtyard Sandton, and the Silvermist Wine Estate. Other locations currently in the installation phase include the Plettenberg Hotel; Wilderness Hotel; Swartberg Hotel, in Prince Albert; and Karoo Junction Mall in Beaufort West. While EQ customers can charge at any charge point in the country, they will benefit from a 10% discount when charging via the Chargify network. "Mercedes-Benz South Africa is accelerating the pace of eMobility transformation within the automotive industry," says MBSA co-CEO and Mercedes-Benz Cars executive director Mark Raine. "Next to offering the most extensive and diverse all-EV portfolio in the market, we want to provide not only our customers, but all EV drivers the luxury and peace of mind of a comprehensive charging network."

Casie Gillette is the Sr. Director of Online Marketing at Komarketing, a B2B Online Marketing firm based in downtown Boston. Before Komarketing, Casie developed and implemented SEO strategies for Grasshopper.com, Chargify.com, and many more websites. In this episode, Casie shares how she became an SEO and online marketing leader. Get a few tips, too. Technical audit, anyone? Sign up for the Data-Driven Marketer Newsletter Come hang out in the Data Basement on Slack More NetWise: Twitter | Linkedin | Web I Blog+Newsletter | TikTok --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/datadriven/message

Our guest today is Dan Bladen, the founder of Kadence, an online software helping manage hybrid workspaces.When I first met Dan in Number 10, he was running his wireless charging business - Chargify - until the pandemic decimated everything he had built.In the years since, Dan has become a thought leader in the future of work, with his silicon valley startup, Kadence, backed by Intel and Hewlett Packard to name a few. In this episode, we talk about how Dan pivoted from a hardware business to software, why the current form of hybrid working is doomed to fail and how his faith makes him comfortable with taking risks.And of course, make sure you listen to the end to hear which book changed his life.Also make sure you subscribe to The Shift- you can find it here on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts.You can sign up to Jimmy's Notebook here.Once again thank you to our series partner Octopus Group, a collection of 8 entrepreneurially minded businesses that look to back the people, ideas, and industries that will change the world.In this episode we talk about:How the pandemic decimated his first startup- and how he shifted from a Hardware business to Software.How his background as a musician and love of Peloton resulted in the name Kadence.The importance of Rhythm in building our working lives.Why did it take a whole pandemic for us to take the future of work seriously?Building for the connected age.What does the future of work look like to Dan- will we ever get an answer or will we always keep changing our desires?The framework of hybrid working - and why the current form of hybrid working is doomed to fail.Why do US and UK workers have such different views of the office?What is Silicon Valley's attitude to the office in particular?Kadence's all-star lineup of investors - and did they follow him through the pivot? How his faith makes him very comfortable with taking risks.The attitude to religion in the US vs UK startup cultures.An inspiring piece of content -  Andy Crouch - The Life We're Looking For

Summary:This week on How to Win: Randy Wootton, CEO of Maxio, a platform offering subscription and revenue management solutions to SaaS companies. Founded in 2022, Maxio is the product of a merger between SaaSOptics and Chargify, brought together by private equity investment firm Battery Ventures. In this episode, we discuss the challenges of transitioning to a non-founder CEO, how assessing your business honestly is essential, and the idea of competing against non-consumption. I share my thoughts on the benefits of hiring a 'professional CEO' and how developing a core focus builds resilience. Key Points: Randy talks about the merger that formed Maxio (01:11) Randy breaks down the art of choosing companies for a merger (04:01) I weigh in on the uniqueness of every merger with a quote from Seismic's Doug Winter (06:48) Randy talks about the experience of being a 'professional CEO' (08:06) I explore the differences between a founder and professional CEO (09:14) Randy maps out Maxio's strategy (10:28) I lay out some of the key aspects of a successful strategy with a quote from Roger Martin (13:28) Randy describes how he shares his strategic vision with his leaders and teams (14:40) I break down the V2MOM with a quote from Salesforce's Marc Benioff (16:44) How is Maxio going to win? (18:14) A quote from Clayton Christensen about his theory of non-consumption (19:36) Randy reflects on the importance of understanding client growth stages (21:44) I discuss how having a core focus is linked to resilience (24:28) What are the strategic trade-offs that Maxio is making? (25:31) Wrap up (28:24) Mentioned:Randy Wootton LinkedInMaxio WebsiteMaxio LinkedInBattery Ventures WebsitePlaying to your strengths and strengthening your brand identity with Seismic's Doug WinterRoger Martin's Playing to Win: How Strategy Really WorksMarc Benioff's V2MOMClayton Christensen's Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer ChoiceMy Links:TwitterLinkedInWebsiteWynterSpeeroCXL

In this episode, Jane and James discuss achieving a frictionless customer experience and what gets in the way of achieving this, the important of hypnotic language in digital marketing and the importance of staying ahead of the curve in the ever changing industry of content marketing.  James Scherer is the VP of Growth of Codeless, a content marketing agency working with unicorns like monday.com to drive growth through content at a huge scale. As an Entrepreneur-featured copywriter, James led inbound marketing teams in Vancouver, Canada before going remote as Director of Editorial, and now VP of Growth, with Codeless, where he focuses on internal brand growth as well as managing client strategy. Through his work with Codeless, he's helped companies such as monday.com, AdEspresso, Kinsta, Chargify, Freshworks, PandaDoc, HotJar, and dozens more SERP-topping SaaS & affiliate brands to dominate their page one positions through content and backlink profiles. Now, James wants to share his experience with others on how to approach content marketing strategy in 2022 and beyond. Do you produce content for your business? If not, what is stopping you? ABOUT THE HOST: Jane Bayler is a serial entrepreneur, investor, speaker, event host and business scale up expert. She had a 20 year history in global media and advertising, before becoming a serial entrepreneur herself, with multiple businesses in real estate, marketing and education. Having grown and sold a £6M brand identity business to US communications group Interpublic, today she is most passionate about and committed to serving other entrepreneurs – helping them grow their businesses and achieve their best lives.  Enquire about working 1:1 with Jane, book a call here: https://bit.ly/2Z07DML Join Jane's free Masterclass to discover her Triple C HyperGrowth system - to scale up your business and attract your ideal clients, here: https://idealclientsuccess.com/masterclass

In this episode of the B2B Leadership podcast, best-selling author and leadership coach Nils Vinje speaks with Chad Estes, VP Customer Success at SaaSOptics & Chargify. Podcast highlights: 0:20 - Chad's background - Chad explains his role at SaaSOptics. 2:22 - Chad's first leadership position - He was in B2B SaaS before it was called SaaS. 5:02 - Shifting to a new department - How did Chad pivot from product management to services? 6:30 - Chad's second hire - It ended up teaching him a very important lesson. 10:02 - New, improved framework - Chad shares how previous failures helped shape new ideas. 13:54 - Lessons learned in a VP role - New leadership being brought in played a role in these lessons. 19:00 - New, unexpected leadership - What did Chad learn from his previous situation, suddenly dealing with his new leadership role? 24:52 - Navigating two merging companies - What key leadership traits are important for dealing with two different companies that come together? 28:40 - Chad's advice to himself - What advice would Chad give his younger self? Connect with Chad Estes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadestes75/ Learn more about SaaSOptics at https://saasoptics.com/ Learn more about your own leadership style at: https://www.30dayleadership.com/ This episode is brought to you by the B2B Leaders Academy The cost of not consistently developing your leadership skills is enormous. At the B2B Leaders Academy you can gain access to monthly leadership training and live coaching. Being a great leader isn't hard, you just need a guide and the right set of tools. Head on over to b2bleadersacademy.com and become the leader you have always wanted to be.

When it comes to organic content strategies, Brad Smith really knows his stuff. As the founder of Codeless, he's helped well known SaaS companies like Monday.com, Chargify, and WordStream create high quality, high performing organic content at scale. And as the CEO of Wordable, Brad and his team are making it easier for content creators and managers to transform content drafts into published articles. In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Brad breaks down the process his team uses to create content, and digs into all the nerdy details that are important to nail as part of a truly world class organic content strategy.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur, founder of Repeat Capital, a massive firm that buys SaaS and ecommerce companies. He has bootstrapped the company Grasshopper to $30 M in annual recurring revenue and sold it to Citrix for $175 M. He also built another company, Chargify, which he sold not once, but twice. David has made over 100 angel investments, and most recently purchased the incredible brand, Perfect Keto, housed under Airbag Ventures. Bullet points (00:49) Intro (03:03) The start as an entrepreneur (05:26) Buying the first computer and the early projects (07:27) Making 100 K during high school (10:17) The next project: Choosing between going to college and building startups (12:00) Going to college and learning to mature in a safe environment (16:10) Why you shouldn't be friends with your cofounder going in (19:13) How to find the right cofounder for you (20:51) Why you should tell everyone your ideas (22:18) Aligning core values and having complementary skills (24:43) Selling Chargify twice (31:16) Making over 100 angel investments: SaaS, ecommerce and others (33:58) Switching industries: Making an impact with physical products (36:10) Combining SaaS and physical products (40:44) How to choose what to invest in (43:09) The biggest opportunities for ecommerce brand owners today (46:40) The problem with Amazon (52:29) Rapid fire question round (52:56) If you ever had to start again, how would you make your money? (53:19) What is the most common or biggest mistake that leaders make? (53:47) Who is a great leader (alive or dead) and why? (54:27) What is one of your proudest moments? (55:12) What is one interesting fact about you that not many people would know? (55:52) What daily routines do you have (morning or evening) that have helped make you successful? (56:31) The newsletter (56:57) What book (or books) changed your mindset or life? (58:38) What is the most exciting question you spend your time thinking about? (01:01:36) What unusual or underrated food or drink should more people try out? (01:03:38) What makes you happiest? (01:06:00) Any asks or requests for the audience?

In episode 82, host Eric Dickmann interviews Brad Smith. Brad is a content marketer and CEO of a SaaS company called Wordable. He runs two successful agencies in the content production and digital PR industry. As a Business Insider featured copywriter, Smith is on a mission to slay awful content one blog at a time. His content has been highlighted by The New York Times, Business Insider, The Next Web, MarTech Today, Marketing Land, Moz, Shopify, Unbounce, HubSpot, Search Engine Journal, Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, BounceX, and hundreds more.Through his agency work, Brad Smith has helped companies such as Monday.com, AdEspresso, Kinsta, Chargify, Freshworks, PandaDoc, HotJar, and dozens more of SERP-topping SaaS & affiliate brands, dominate their page one positions through content and backlink profiles. Now, Brad wants to share his experience with others on how he ranked on top SaaS sites around the world.For show notes and a  list of resources mentioned in this episode, please visit:https://fiveechelon.com/how-to-build-effective-b2b-content-marketing-strategy-s6e1/A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire. The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at: https://fiveechelon.com

In today's episode of Tales from the PROS, I talk with Mike Welsh, who is a veteran leader in sales and revenue growth and has been named CEO of Uptime.com, a leader in website monitoring software He brings more than two decades of sales and revenue leadership experience to Uptime.com, driving growth for numerous public and private software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, such as Chargify, Rackspace Cloud, and Inspired eLearning.  In this episode, we talk about Mike's journey to entrepreneurship, his experience of building and growing a SaaS business, overcoming the challenges of running a SaaS company, the future of websites, and how to be a strong leader.   Don't Miss: 1. Mike's advice to handling the role of CEO the right way - 06:30 2. What are the challenges that SaaS companies encounter - 25:13 3. How to execute your website's performance check the right way - 36:41   Listen and Subscribe on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tales-from-the-pros/id1371067192   Topics We Discuss: 1. Mike's inspiring story of how he got to where he is today 2. What it takes to be a CEO of a growing and thriving company 3. What it takes for a company to be an industry SaaS leader like Uptime 4. The biggest hurdles/problems that SaaS companies have and how to overcome them 5. Mike talks about some of the major problems that website's face today and how to overcome them 6. The future of website monitoring and performance 7. Thoughts and advice on how to be a strong business leader 8. Mike defines his story in "one-word"   Follow Mike Welsh Website: https://uptime.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miwelsh/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/UptimeDotCom   Follow Me and Subscribe: https://linktr.ee/mgeorgiou22

Today on the show we have Paul Lynch, CEO at Chargify. In this episode with Paul, as a venture partner at Scaleworks we talked about their focus on investing in companies and operating them to drive growth, how they decide which companies to invest in and the enormous impact churn and retention has on making their investment  decisions.  We also discussed how Chargify sets targets and the metrics they need to focus on, why a data analyst should be one of your first hires, or not, and lastly... is there such a thing as acceptable churn.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

Having sold Grasshopper, the virtual phone service, for $175 million in 2015, David Hauser assessed his priorities. Grasshopper was his third launch and exit, following ReturnPath (email services) and Chargify (subscription management). "I decided to optimize for happiness, not for return on capital or profit," he said.

The biggest SaaS companies are no longer building products to sell over the phone, but driving sales through the product itself. So, how are companies transitioning from a traditional “sales-led” to modern “product-led” motion? & What does this rise in user self-education and expectation mean for the future of b2b sales? In this discussion, SaaS experts Ingrid Bonde Åkerlind (Investment Professional, Oxx VC) is in conversation with Mike Weir (Chief Revenue Officer, G2), Paul Lynch (CEO, Chargify) and Jan Arendtsz (CEO & Founder, Celigo), to explore the latest trends in customer acquisition strategy, and help you find a model that's best for your business.

ABOUT SANTI:Santi Bibiloni is a Silicon Valley-based technology entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO at COR, an AI Management Software that serves Worldwide top Agencies and Consultants. Prior to COR he founded Balloon Group, one of Argentina's fastest-growing digital agencies, among other businesses. Today he also mentors on Sales & Fundraising in 500 Startups. ABOUT COR:COR is the Next-Generation Solution for Creative and Professional Teams that Intelligently Suggests How to Manage your Projects, Teams, and Finances, all in one tool. ABOUT BAREMETRICS: Baremetrics is the all-in-one metrics, forecasting, analytics, insights and engagement tool for teams using Stripe, Braintree, Chargify, Recurly and more.  ABOUT FOUNDER CHATS:Founder Chats is a podcast about starting and growing tech companies, as told candidly by the founders behind them.

Back in his days working for telecom companies, Chargify's Paul Lynch understood the pain of billing. Now he heads up a company that manages subscriptions and billing for some of the world's most exciting B2B SaaS businesses. In this episode of Commerce Connect, Paul shares the moment he believes the world changed for billing, and how companies can take a very complicated function and turn it to a competitive advantage.Books mentioned by Paul in this podcast:Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate MarketsNever Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on ItPitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading and Winning the Deal

Founder Chats is back! In this episode, we talk with Brian Parks, Founder and Managing Partner of Bigfoot Capital. Hear his story of transitioning from working at a local bank to running a tech company, his tips on managing your capital stack, and a whole lot more.Curious about you what heard? Check out the below links to learn more. Bigfoot Capital Growth oriented loans for B2B SaaS companies with $1.5M+ ARR. Baremetrics Metrics, forecasting, analytics, insights and engagement tools for teams using Stripe, Braintree, Chargify, Recurly and more. Founder Chats  A podcast about starting and growing tech companies, as told candidly by the founders behind them.  

Paul Lynch, CEO of Chargify, is this week's guest on the SaaS Revolution Show to discuss sustainable growth in SaaS using data and pricing. Want to join a private community of ambitious SaaS founders? Apply now to become a Founder Member and scale faster together: https://cutt.ly/8bBKmv2

Laith is the Chief Strategy Officer at Chargify, a billing and revenue management platform for fast-growing SaaS businesses, and now the General Manager of Keen.io an event Streaming API for developers to enable a data-rich user experience to every product on earth, where he led the acquisition process. Laith has over twenty years of enterprise software and e-commerce experience with a focus on product management and global software development. He began his technology career in the late 90s with engineering and product roles at AOL, CareerBuilder and Network Solutions. During this interview we cover: 00:00 Contentfy, Your On-Demand Content Team (Sponsor) 02:12 - Laith's Background, Past Positions & Ventures 04:17 -  Strategic Acquisition of Keen.io 11:15 - Future Acquisition Plans for Chargify in 2021 13:37 - Event-Data Driven Metrics  16:27 -  Focusing on Pricing to Optimize Churn 24:45 - Pricing Trends 27:47 - Plan to Double Down on in 2021 29:58 - Soft Trial Vs Purchase Intent  32:21 - Advice Laith Would Tell his 25 Year old Self 33:52 - Instrumental Resources for Laith 36:27 - Biggest Challenges Laith is Facing Right Now 39:04 - What does Success mean to Laith Today 40:26 - Get in Touch with Laith Mentions: https://www.chargify.com/ (Chargify) https://aws.amazon.com/ (AWS) Books: https://www.jimcollins.com/books.html (Good to Great) https://www.jimcollins.com/books.html ( Build to Last) https://www.playbigger.com/book (Play Bigger) People: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulglynch/ (Paul Lynch) https://www.wobi.com/online-events/wobi-on-management/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=wobi-google-cpc-sem-wom--es-&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgtWDBhDZARIsADEKwgMAfIwyufEsuZ-Njxk2-EEt9HS_zVTZ8gz4FB0yKF2fKKrgdPP7DSMaAmOeEALw_wcB (Jim Collins) Get In Touch With Laith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laithdahiyat/ (Laith's Linkedin) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook)  https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn)  https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram)  https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast) 

On today’s show, we have David Hauser, former founder of Grasshopper — a virtual telephone service — which sold for $165 million in cash and $8M in stock to Citrix. David is a metric master and shares with us some of the marketing and operational strategies that enabled them to grow from zero to $30 million in 12 years. He breaks down how to leverage key metrics like client acquisition costs (CAC) and the lifetime value of a customer (LTV) to exponentially scale a business. We talk about goals, failures and opportunities met along the way as David became a serial entrepreneur and how his ability to keep his learning high and wide-lens helped him stay strong in new markets as an angel investor. What You Will Learn In Today's Podcast Interview Why David says running a good business is the most valuable — and value-building — thing you can do The missing piece of advice when it’s time to sell your business How to attract business just by acting with integrity and following through on what you say you’ll do The value of doing each job yourself before you hire for the role Why Grasshopper used paid marketing, how much they put into doing it and how they evaluated the outcome The power of routine How David achieved 30% of his business from referrals The way David funded Grasshopper’s growth, the company he took from zero to 30 million, and sold after 12 years Why you should see business profits as growth capital rather than income What blended client acquisition costs (or CAC) are and how to evaluate their efficiency The difference between marginal and total CPA How much can (and should) you spend to catch up on churn Our success metrics and how they fail us while still being what we have to strive for, plus what you can do about that Are You Growing The Value of Your Business Take The 2-Minute Assessment To Get Your Intentional Growth Score™ And 1-Page Vision Board. Are your company's current initiatives intentionally designed to increase the value of the business? Do you know what you want from your business long term and why? Do you know what your company is worth? Do you know the differences between Management, Family Transitions, PE Firms, ESOPs and Strategic Buyers? Does the business have a written strategic plan on how to achieve the desired normalized EBITDA and valuation? About the Guest: David Hauser is an American entrepreneur, speaker and angel investor. He is best known for co-founding the Grasshopper Group, a virtual telephone service acquired by Citrix Systems for $170 million in 2015. Hauser is a founding member of National Entrepreneurs' Day and has co-founded a number of tech companies, including Grasshopper, Chargify, Spreadable PopSurvey, Deck Foundry and others. Quotes: 05:05 - “The reason it worked is we were solving our own problem.” – David Hauser 05:33 - “Before we hired anyone for anything, one or both of us did that job.” – David Hauser 08:10 - “The most value in selling a business just comes from operating a good business.” – David Hauser 09:50 - “How do I strip out the income I have to have to live and think about the rest as growth capital.” – David Hauser 11:10 - “I didn&rs

On today’s show, we have David Hauser, former founder of Grasshopper — a virtual telephone service — which sold for $165 million in cash and $8M in stock to Citrix. David is a metric master and shares with us some of the marketing and operational strategies that enabled them to grow from zero to $30 million in 12 years. He breaks down how to leverage key metrics like client acquisition costs (CAC) and the lifetime value of a customer (LTV) to exponentially scale a business. We talk about goals, failures and opportunities met along the way as David became a serial entrepreneur and how his ability to keep his learning high and wide-lens helped him stay strong in new markets as an angel investor. What You Will Learn In Today's Podcast Interview Why David says running a good business is the most valuable — and value-building — thing you can do The missing piece of advice when it’s time to sell your business How to attract business just by acting with integrity and following through on what you say you’ll do The value of doing each job yourself before you hire for the role Why Grasshopper used paid marketing, how much they put into doing it and how they evaluated the outcome The power of routine How David achieved 30% of his business from referrals The way David funded Grasshopper’s growth, the company he took from zero to 30 million, and sold after 12 years Why you should see business profits as growth capital rather than income What blended client acquisition costs (or CAC) are and how to evaluate their efficiency The difference between marginal and total CPA How much can (and should) you spend to catch up on churn Our success metrics and how they fail us while still being what we have to strive for, plus what you can do about that Are You Growing The Value of Your Business Take The 2-Minute Assessment To Get Your Intentional Growth Score™ And 1-Page Vision Board. Are your company's current initiatives intentionally designed to increase the value of the business? Do you know what you want from your business long term and why? Do you know what your company is worth? Do you know the differences between Management, Family Transitions, PE Firms, ESOPs and Strategic Buyers? Does the business have a written strategic plan on how to achieve the desired normalized EBITDA and valuation? About the Guest: David Hauser is an American entrepreneur, speaker and angel investor. He is best known for co-founding the Grasshopper Group, a virtual telephone service acquired by Citrix Systems for $170 million in 2015. Hauser is a founding member of National Entrepreneurs' Day and has co-founded a number of tech companies, including Grasshopper, Chargify, Spreadable PopSurvey, Deck Foundry and others. Quotes: 05:05 - “The reason it worked is we were solving our own problem.” – David Hauser 05:33 - “Before we hired anyone for anything, one or both of us did that job.” – David Hauser 08:10 - “The most value in selling a business just comes from operating a good business.” – David Hauser 09:50 - “How do I strip out the income I have to have to live and think about the rest as growth capital.” – David Hauser 11:10 - “I didn&rs

David Hauser is a Serial Entrepreneur, Investor, Author & the Founder of the virtual phone company - Grasshopper, which he bootstrapped and successfully sold in 2015 for $176M. He has been an entrepreneur from an early age, and the first company he co-founded at 17 was Return Path which raised $120 million and was acquired later on. David has been an investor and advisor for many companies, and has also co-founded a number of startups including Chargify, Spreadable, and PopSurvey. In this episode we discuss: - Steps to take to become a successful entrepreneur - Advice for young founders - How to find your "calling" & what problems to solve - Debt vs. Equity and when to take Each - How to Evaluate Risk & Make better Decisions - What to Focus on When Starting a Business - Where to Invest in 2021 - The Future of Work post-pandemic David Hauser - Bootstrapping & Scaling Companies to Success: 1:59 - Secret to Life Balance 2:17 - On Setting Priorities 2:45 - Managing Multiple Companies 4:07 - Where to Invest in 2021 5:08 - Growing on Social Media 6:01 - What it Takes to be a Successful Entrepreneur 6:56 - How to Figure Out Your "Calling" 8:01 - How to Know When to Walk Away from a Project 9:06 - Narrowing Down the Problems to Care About 10:20 - When Should You Monetize Your Business 11:46 - Debt vs. Equity and When to Get Each 13:01 - What Separates Good Entrepreneurs from the Great Ones 14:30 - Cash Flow Management Strategy 15:32 - What Should Entrepreneurs Focus Early On 17:55 - Dealing with the Pandemic 19:14 - Future of Work from Home 21:50 - Secret Sauce for a Successful Marketplace Platform 24:56 - Would You Rather Game 29:44 - How To Decide Which Opportunities to Pay Attention to 31:00 - Advice to a Younger Self 32:44 - Tips on Evaluating Risk 33:42 -The Best Way to Create Wealth & Multiply it 35:49 - Problems Entrepreneurs Can Focus On 38:17 - Finding an Investor 40:28 - Every Successful Person Should Have the Following 43:40 - What David is Learning & Working On Right Now 44:59 - A Millennial Is 45:13 - A Millennial Should Be 45:23 - A Millennial Is Not 45:37 - Connect with David

David Hauser ~ Founder of GrassHopper.com ~ Current Series ~ 100 Interviews with 100 Major Influencers   On the mic today we are joined by an individual who sold the company he and his partner built for $170 Million. David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded multiple companies over the years, making his largest exit from Grasshopper.com. David and his partner are 100% focused on building companies that focus on rapid growth, and delayed gratification for themselves. This is how they took Grasshopper to $1 Million in year one, scaling it to $30 Million annual revenue then selling it after 12 years for the amount mentioned earlier for $170 Million.    David not only co-founded Grasshopper he also started Chargify that was invested into by Mark Cuban himself half a million dollars over a short three email exchange. David founded ReturnPath, SuperFat, invested in Intercom, Unbounce, Broove, The Hustle and 50+ more companies.  He is also a founding member of National Entrepreneurs' Day, and has been featured in Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30!    02:27  Who is David Hauser?      11:11  Starting a Company His Second Year in College      14:23  Making $1 Million While Still in College      23:47  A Growth Business vs. A Lifestyle Business      28:25  Making the Decision to Sell for $170 Million      37:09  Remote Teams vs. Teams in an Office      39:47  Letting Go of Team Members that Get You to $5 Million But Can't Get    You to $10 Million      43:44  Why Happiness & Freedom Don't Come With Massive Amounts of Money      51:58  Valuing Experience Over Things      54:02  Importance of Catching People Doing Good Things      56:58  How You Do One Things is How You Do Everything      58:20  Work Hard Be Nice 01:05:36  Life Changing Books  01:10:45  Where to Find David    Contact Info: https://www.davidhauser.com/   Website: https://www.thebusinessmethod.com/david-hauser Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-business-method-podcast/id1069958541?mt=2 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGVidXNpbmVzc21ldGhvZC5wb2RiZWFuLmNvbS9mZWVkLnhtbA%3D%3D Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2q8Q9t78sCL6kNkWlnV1Po  

Ronan talks to Mark Hughes the EMEA manager of Chargify. Mark talks about the opening of their new HQ, why they've expanded their footprint to Europe, why they chose to do so in Dublin, who they're looking to hire, how they see the tech landscape in Ireland changing and the future for SaaS companies in particular.

Ronan talks to Mark Hughes the EMEA manager of Chargify. Mark talks about the opening of their new HQ, why they’ve expanded their footprint to Europe, why they chose to do so in Dublin, who they’re looking to hire, how they see the tech landscape in Ireland changing and the future for SaaS companies in particular. Irish Tech News · Mark Hughes from Chargify on why the future office will be like SaaS, pay to play More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here. FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience! Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds. Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you! If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking

Episode 3 features Chargify's CRO Scott White, who is a methodical thinker and relies heavily on good customer outcomes as his metric for progress. Listen in as we tell story of the rise of RevOps.

134. Grasshopper | David Hauser is the Co-founder of Grasshopper & SuperFat. Grasshopper is a company that serves and empowers entrepreneurs via its powerful tools like Grasshopper and Chargify. Grasshopper Group was listed by Inc. Magazine among the 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America...This Episode is Sponsored By:Brandcrowd is an amazing online tool that can help you make an amazing logo design online. Brandcrowd takes your business name and industry and generates thousands of logos in seconds. One of the best things about Brandcrowd is that it is FREE. To find out more about Brandcrowd, go check out: millionaire-interviews.com/brandcrowd.Pantheon is the leading web ops provider, powering more than 285 thousand websites and trusted by small businesses, startups, and some of the most well-known brands. To learn more about how Pantheon can help you and your business, go to millionaire-interviews.com/pantheon.Gusto is making Payroll, Benefits, and HR easier for small businesses. In fact, 9 out of 10 customers say Gusto is easier to use than other payroll solutions. Gusto also saves you time – 72% of customers spend less than 5 minutes to run payroll. Get Three Months FREE by using this link: millionaire-interviews.com/gusto. Want to Support the Show? We'd love for you to join our Patreon Group! What's in it for you? Well you'll instantly get a scheduled call from Austin, where he'll help you with your current or future business... Sign-Up Now at millionaire-interviews.com/patreon.

Patrick joins Michael Klett of Chargify and Dave Rogenmoser of Proof to discuss marketing’s relationship with revenue and finding the right balance between personalization and authenticity.

While “RevOps” has rapidly risen to prominence in the SaaS community, it's still a foreign concept for many CROs, founders, and operators in the revenue operations world. In RevOps and Hops, ProfitWell's Patrick Campbell and Chargify's Michael Klett demystify and deconstruct RevOps with insight from industry leaders who are pioneering the field. Join them on the RevOps mission as we float down the San Antonio River consuming craft beers and conducting exclusive interviews to lay the foundation for RevOps success.

I'm speaking with Luca Micheli, CEO and founder of Customerly.io. Customerly helps companies create better relationships with their customers with effective communication. He launched Customerly about 4 years ago, they have over 17,000 customers around the world.This is a fascinating story, Luca is competing in a very hot market, where it was once pretty much a monopoly with Intercom as the main provider in the space. The communication marketing space has now opened up which is evident through Customerly's success.Luca is from Italy and currently lives in Ireland. Customerly is fully bootstrapped, which is amazing. We're digging into a lot of great topics in this episode, that a lot of you will definitely find useful. We break down exactly what Luca did to gain such a large user base in a short time, with lifetime deal offers and other marketing techniques. We talk about what they're doing today to drive up their user base, as well as some of their mistakes and learnings along the way.Whether you're a bootstrapped founder or not, this is an episode you're sure to get a ton of value from. Enough of the intro, here's my chat with Luca. Enjoy!Thank you to my friends at Chargify for sponsoring this episode. If you want to manage your SaaS revenue better, make sure you check out Chargify. I was able to get my listeners the first month of Chargify completely free, plus free premium onboarding. They have to know that I sent you, so make sure you sign up here and tell them Founder Views sent you. I promise, you won't regret it!Another big thank you to my friends at Customer.io. If you want to step up your communication with your clients and prospects, of if you want to improve the level of engagement and value you provide, I highly recommend Customer.io. Go to customer.io/founderviews to sign up. You won't regret it!

David Hauser has built a number of successful companies in the startup space, both organically and inorganically. He is the founder of Grasshopper, which was acquired by Citrix after he bootstrapped the company to $30M+. David founded Chargify and made it profitable, securing a Mark Cuban investment. He founded ReturnPath and is a founding member of National Entrepreneurs’ Day (http://entrepreneursday.org). David is an angel investor in Intercom, Unbounce, Munchery, Groove and more. He is a public speaker at FOWA, Big Omaha, LessConf, SuperConf, Entrepreneurs Organization, and has received major media coverage by CNN, Fox, Inc. Magazine, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Inc. 30 Under 30. — As leaders and business owners, we prioritize other people’s needs. It is part of what makes us great leaders in the first place. You signed up for long days and late nights when you entered this world, but you can only operate at full capacity when you put your oxygen mask on first. Sometimes, to help others, you have to help yourself. David Hauser explores that notion and more in his new book, Unstoppable. We preach the importance of health and wellness, but we don’t always practice it ourselves. David Hauser struggled to prioritize self-care in the hustle-hard culture of modern entrepreneurship—a position that many of us are in right now. You have to recognize that there is no ‘right’ time to start practicing self-care and stop putting it off. When you achieve balance and become the best version of yourself, your business will reflect that. Health and wellness is a great place to start. In this episode of the Absolute Advantage podcast, David Hauser joins us to share his journey of personal development. He discusses the key principles in his book, “Unstoppable,” such as the optimization mindset, the myths surrounding diet and exercise, and the top things you should be paying attention to on your own journey. Click here to listen to the episode, and make sure to visit www.absoluteadvantagepodcast.com for more content that inspires, encourages and helps you grow and make an impact QUICKLY both professionally and personally. Ways to contact David Hauser: Website: https://www.unstoppablebook.com/ Twitter: @dh

I was super excited about this episode, I’m speaking with Renat Zubairov, the co-founder and CEO of elastic.io, a B2B SaaS that helps enterprises connect and process different applications.They were founded in 2013, and have been seeing triple digit revenue growth year after year, which is extremely difficult for a company this size. They’re currently doing well over $2M in annual recurring revenue. elastic.io was acquired in 2017 by mVISE, a publicly traded company in Germany. They acquired a majority stake of Elastic, but they still operate independently.This was such an informative chat, Renat is a very high-level CEO. We deep-dive into a lot of marketing, including some of the advantages and disadvantages of inbound vs outbound sales, how elastic.io is benefiting from content marketing, and what marketing channels are currently working the best for the company. Renat tells us why churn is the most important metric in SaaS, and how elastic.io maintains negative churn, which is something all SaaS folks should strive towards.If you’re in the B2B space, or just want to level-up your way of thinking about business, this is the episode for you!PS. Thank you to my friends at Chargify for sponsoring this episode. If you want to manage your SaaS revenue better, make sure you check out Chargify. I was able to get my listeners the first month of Chargify completely free, plus free premium onboarding. This deal is only good if you sign up before the end of 2019. And they have to know that I sent you. Make sure you sign up here and tell them Founder Views sent you. I promise, you won't regret it!

In this episode, i’m speaking with Devid Henzel, the CEO of TaskDrive. TaskDrive helps companies improve their outbound sales efforts by providing qualified leads to your sales team through personal outreach, among other services. David actually acquired TaskDrive about a year and a half ago, and has been scaling up the company ever since. He also has other portfolio companies he runs, aside from TaskDrive.We’re talking about many different topics in this episode, including the benefits of outsourcing your workforce, he gives some really good advice on how you can get influencers to help gain traction if you’re just starting out in business, of course we’re talking about outbound sales, and specific outbound sales strategies that work.David shares some of his and his team’s favourite tools to stay organized and productive. He also drops quite a few gems including some great questions to ask your next hire, and some amazing book recommendations that really helped positively impact his businesses.I had a great time chatting with David, definitely one of the top class CEO's I've spoken to. This is an episode you're guaranteed to get a lot of value from. Hope you enjoy!BONUS: Register for David's FREE talk on finding your company's north star!PS. Thank you to my friends at Chargify for sponsoring this episode. If you want to manage your SaaS revenue better, make sure you check out Chargify. I was able to get my listeners the first month of Chargify completely free, plus free premium onboarding. This deal is only good if you sign up before the end of 2019. And they have to know that I sent you. Make sure you sign up here and tell them Founder Views sent you. I promise, you won't regret it!

My guest is David Hauser. David's a serial entrepreneur and the author of “Unstoppable: 4 Steps to Transform Your Life.” He's perhaps best known for co-founding and managing notable tech startups like Grasshopper and Chargify. (BTW… Grasshopper sold to Citrix for $170M in 2015) David is known as a true optimizer. In the last few years, he's taken his approach to business (constant and intentional trial and error) and applied it to his health. Listen To The Podcast:   RESOURCES: David's book:www.unstoppablebook.com Today, David has shifted his optimization focus to health & fitness, sharing his journey of personal transformation in “Unstoppable.” In the book, David documents the radical shifts he made in diet and exercise, as well as what he learned from taking nearly every test imaginable (blood tests, stool tests, sleep tests, DNA tests, etc.). David and the book have been featured in the New York Times, FastCompany, Business Insider, Forbes and CNN… just to name a few. He's now on a mission to bust long-standing myths around fad dieting, trendy workouts, and quick fixes, specifically calling out the health sacrifices that entrepreneurs are likely to make while pursuing lofty business goals. “Unstoppable” is a testament to the power of micro-adjustments in driving huge, lasting changes for a healthier, more successful life. In fact, Sumo.com's founder, Noah Kagen said: [Tweet ""That he doesn't know anyone who has spent more time, money or effort on health optimization than David Hauser. Now we're going to be able to learn from his findings.""]   Today we're going to talk about some of the most important lessons he's learned along the way, as well as dig into specific lifestyle changes we can ALL make to achieve optimal health. Quick Episode Summary: 0:02 What to expect today 3:18 Welcome, David to the show! 3:40 Why David became passionate about health 6:36 How to get a better night sleep 9:12 Preparing for a good night sleep 12:34 The best thing to do to lose weight 15:34 Eating whole foods 17:56 How the body is designed to consume things 18:45 The blood test we should take every year 22:53 Wisdom of the week 23:23 Mitch's biggest takeaways Listen to Mitch Mattews Top Podcast here

I’m speaking with Xenia Muntean, the CEO and co-founder of Planable.io. Planable helps brands and agencies better manage their social media content.Xenia has been running Planable for about 3 years and has seen incredible growth in such a short time. They made their mark at the famous TechStars accelerator in London. They recently closed a seed round to help ramp up their growth, which we talk about in the episode.Xenia was recently named in Forbes 30 under 30 for 2019, which is incredible. We’re also getting into a lot of other topics including, how Planable got their first handful of customers and some specific strategies they used, Xenia’s opening up some of her marketing playbooks and sharing what they’re doing currently to drive new business, she’s also sharing the customer count that Planable currently crossed, which is huge.This conversation is jam packed, we really dived in pretty deep. I had such an amazing time chatting with Xenia, this is one you’re definitely going to enjoy!PS. Thank you to my friends at Chargify for sponsoring this episode. If you want to manage your SaaS revenue better, make sure you check out Chargify. I was able to get my listeners the first month of Chargify completely free, plus free premium onboarding. This deal is only good if you sign up before the end of 2019. And they have to know that I sent you. Make sure you sign up here and tell them Founder Views sent you. I promise, you won't regret it!

Derrick spent his birthday at the north shore of Lake Superior to disconnect and getaway. Yet, he found some time to brainstorm and problem solve for StaticKit. Ben’s back from Martha’s Vineyard, only to experience less positive updates for Tuple. For the first time, Tuple is shockingly “in the red” financially. So, he feels guilty about going away. Today’s Topics Include: Slow Growth: Substantially fewer Tuple trial signups than previous time periods Marketing and Sales Strategy: From being the new tool on the block to steady state where Ben has to earn new Tuple customers Bullseye Framework: Derrick re-read his go-to startup guide to select StaticKit’s repeatable traction channels Tuple’s Q4 objectives and key results (OKRs): Fill top of funnel to increase new email subscribers and trials to continue to grow Ben’s future plans to gather marketing and sales information/intelligence by advertising and appearing on dev-related podcasts Design Matters: Impacts people’s perception of product and builds trust Links and resources: Art of Product on Twitter (https://twitter.com/artofproductpod) Derrick Reimer (http://www.derrickreimer.com) Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer) Ben Orenstein (http://www.benorenstein.com/) Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter (https://twitter.com/r00k?lang=en) Tuple (https://tuple.app/) Tuple’s Pair Programming Guide (https://tuple.app/pair-programming-guide) StaticKit (https://www.statickit.com/) Using Tailwind CSS with Next.js (https://statickit.com/guides/next-js-tailwind)  Level (https://level.app/) Slack (https://slack.com/) Zoom (https://zoom.us/) Upcase by Thoughtbot (https://thoughtbot.com/upcase) Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609)  Ruby on Rails (https://rubyonrails.org) HubSpot (https://www.hubspot.com) Rob Walling (https://robwalling.com/) Drip (https://www.drip.com/) Adam Wathan (https://adamwathan.me/) Full Stack Radio (http://www.fullstackradio.com/) Syntax.fm (https://syntax.fm) Steve Schoger (https://www.steveschoger.com/) Elixir (https://elixir-lang.org) Recurly (https://recurly.com) Chargify (https://www.chargify.com)

Greetings, SuperFriends! Today we are joined by David Hauser. David is a former tech entrepreneur, and you've probably heard of some of his companies, ranging from Grasshopper to Chargify - but this is not why we had him on the show today. David is on the show this week because he had a health breakdown, which completely changed the way he looked at health. In fact, he has a new book coming out very soon on how he has applied the methodology of A/B testing that he learned in the world of software companies to find the perfect health regimen for himself. Now he wants to teach the rest of the world how to do the same. I'll let you hear all about this by David directly. Enjoy! -Jonathan Levi  

David Hauser is the Co-founder of Grasshopper & SuperFat. Grasshopper is a company that serves and empowers entrepreneurs via its powerful tools like Grasshopper and Chargify. Grasshopper Group was listed by Inc. Magazine among the 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America... This Episode is Sponsored By: Brandcrowd is an amazing online tool that can help you make an amazing logo design online. Brandcrowd takes your business name and industry and generates thousands of logos in seconds. One of the best things about Brandcrowd is that it is FREE. To find out more about Brandcrowd, go check out: millionaire-interviews.com/brandcrowd. Pantheon is the leading web ops provider, powering more than 285 thousand websites and trusted by small businesses, startups, and some of the most well-known brands. To learn more about how Pantheon can help you and your business, go to millionaire-interviews.com/pantheon. Gusto is making Payroll, Benefits, and HR easier for small businesses. In fact, 9 out of 10 customers say Gusto is easier to use than other payroll solutions. Gusto also saves you time – 72% of customers spend less than 5 minutes to run payroll. Get Three Months FREE by using this link: millionaire-interviews.com/gusto.  Want to Support the Show? We'd love for you to join our Patreon Group! What's in it for you? Well you'll instantly get a scheduled call from Austin, where he'll help you with your current or future business... Sign-Up Now at millionaire-interviews.com/patreon.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur. He is best known for being the co-founder and CEO of Grasshopper, a virtual telephone service that was acquired by Citrix for $176 million that he bootstrapped without outside investors. The first company he co-founded at 17 was Return Path which raised $120 million and was acquired by Validity for an undisclosed amount. David has also co-founded a number of other startups including Chargify, Spreadable, PopSurvey, or Deck Foundry.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur. He is best known for being the co-founder and CEO of Grasshopper, a virtual telephone service that was acquired by Citrix for $176 million that he bootstrapped without outside investors. The first company he co-founded at 17 was Return Path which raised $120 million and was acquired by Validity for an undisclosed amount. David has also co-founded a number of other startups including Chargify, Spreadable, PopSurvey, or Deck Foundry.

If you are an entrepreneur you understand how important the hustle and grind can be to growing a successful business. But for many of us, working without recovery time takes a toll on our health and wellness. What is rarely considered is how much more prosperous we would be if we tackled each day’s work with our mind clear and our bodies fully rested. Today’s guest, David Hauser, was so busy creating the extremely successful Grasshopper and Chargify he routinely sacrificed his health to gain wealth. During this podcast, he shares his journey and the not-so-radical steps he embraced to transform his life including incorporating yoga, meditation, and fasting into his daily practice. He also shares a preview of what we can expect from his book, Unstoppable: 4 Steps to Transform Your Life which will be released in September.   Complete Keto: A Guide for Transforming Your Body and Your Mind for Life,  visit CompleteKeto.fit2fat2fit.com to get your copy now. Get the CK30 video series as a bonus when ordering with this link.   If you like the podcast subscribe & review it on iTunes | Stitcher.   Key Takeaways:   [9:50] David shares how his non-stop entrepreneurial journey led him down an unhealthy path.   [13:18] David describes the turning point that made him change his focus toward a healthier lifestyle.   [15:48] Yoga proved to be the only training David could do to quiet his unusually busy mind.   [18:20] Meditation offers the best return on investment for entrepreneurs.   [24:13] It’s important to get proper sleep isn’t just something your mother made up!   [28:42] How David views cold exposure and fasting.   [33:57] How David built his own medical dream team.   Sponsors: Redmond Real Salt — An ancient seabed in Utah is the source for this natural, undiluted real salt with all the essential trace minerals left intact. Keto is better with Real Salt.   Let’s Get Checked — At home hormone tests, no doctor appointment needed. The test kit comes with easy to follow instructions and a prepaid return envelope for fast online results. Use the link above or codeword ‘Drew’ to get 15% off any test.       Dry Farm Wines — You can have alcohol on the ketogenic diet. Use this link for a bottle of wine for $.01 with any order   Complete Wellness Supplements — Shop Drew’s hand-formulated, pre-workout greens, Keto Meal with grass-fed collagen and BHB’s for mental clarity and a brain boost.   Mentioned in This Episode: David Hauser Website Unstoppable Book Website Superfat Website Fit2Fat2Fit Take the Fit2Fat2Fit Podcast Listener Survey Fit2Fat2Fit on Facebook Fit2Fat2Fit Book Complete Keto Book Drew on Social Media: @fit2fat2fit Email Drew: Drew@fit2fat2fit.com

Extensive show notes with links to items mentioned in the show available at https://top1.fm/68  Liz Tolin is the top strategic account executive at Chargify, a globally recognized leader in the Recurring Billing and Subscription Management space that empowers its clients to launch products quickly and effectively. Liz’s career history has been varied- but in the most interesting and beneficial way. She’s been referred to as a “fire-and-forget weapon of choice,” and a “bulldog.” Simply put, Liz gets the job done no matter the circumstances. She is passionate about people and helping them solve their business problems.  

David Hauser is an entrepreneur, speaker and angel investor. He is best known for co-founding Grasshopper, a virtual phone service for entrepreneurs, acquired by the Citrix Systems in 2015 for $170 million. He also founded Chargify who had investors such as Marc Cuban and was acquired by Scaleworks in 2016. In this episode David talks about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur, what he does to learn and develop new skills, and how to tackle new industries. *Questions for the solo podcast email info@whatgotyouthere.com* Subscribe to the Newsletter- https://bit.ly/2RH3eaD   http://whatgotyouthere.com/ NEW SPONSOR TEN THOUSAND- www.tenthousand.cc/wgyt 20% off with discount code "WGYT"  GlobeKick 10% off with discount code “WGYT” https://globekick.com/ 15% off Four Sigmatic with discount code "WGYT" http://foursigmatic.com/wgyt   https://davidhauser.com/ https://twitter.com/dh https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhauser/   https://twitter.com/SeanDeLaney23 https://www.instagram.com/whatgotyoutherepodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/whatgotyouthere/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-delaney-00909190/   Intro/Outro music by Justin Great- http://justingreat.com/ Audio Engineer- Brian Lapres 

Read the full show transcript below as Aaron and Darren talk about SaaStr annual and billing system rebuilds.Helpful links from the episode: SaaStr Annual conference 5 Questions CEO's Struggle With and How To Answer Them - Dave Kellogg presentation at SaaStr A Step-By-Step Guide To Revenue Growth (PDF) - Mark Roberge at SaaStr Billing systems mentioned:  Recurly, Chargify, Chargebee FULL SHOW NOTES00:09 Aaron Weiche: We're bringing you episode 3 - SaaStr Annual Recap and Rebuilds.00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]00:42 AW: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. Darren, both of us have... We've been on the road and doing some travel, are you back and settled into the daily desk, in the daily grind? 00:54 Darren Shaw: I am still trying to catch up on email. Oh man, it's tough to take a week off of email, just piles up. And then every time I look at it, it's this weird thing where when I've got like 300 emails that are real messages, it almost becomes a lottery, where it's like, I go through my inbox and just something stands out to me, and I just jump on it and reply right there. But then there's other stuff that's also important and it's just like, "No, you never get replied to, sorry." It's just this weird thing when you're away for a week. But yes, I'm back, it was a good trip. Local U was amazing. Probably the best Local U ever. It was awesome, you missed it.01:32 AW: Yeah, well fitting that it was the best ever when a first advance that I've never not been a part of, so that's too bad. I was trolling you guys from just up the road in San Jose, but I definitely missed out. Mostly, I just miss out seeing all the great people that are part of kind of that Local U family and community.01:53 DS: I definitely missed hanging out with you.01:55 AW: Yep, there's nothing like beers in real life over talking on podcasts and emails and all of the other ways we end up communicating.02:03 DS: Sure, yeah, this podcast is a good second best, though.02:06 AW: It totally is, it's given us a lot more regiment in our interactions, which is a great thing.02:12 DS: And now we have a schedule of chatting so that's good.02:16 AW: So, I've been refreshing my Twitter feed every like 10 seconds waiting for you or Whitespark to announce that your review tool, or your new tool that we've been talking about has launched. But did I miss the tweet, or where are we at? 02:32 DS: Yeah, no, you're probably a little over-zealous with your refreshing there. We're not quite ready to launch. It's amazing, honestly, it's been day after day, where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm waking up in the morning and we're gonna launch this thing, there's just that one last little thing to do." And so we start looking at that one last little thing, and then we find five other things. It's like, "Oh well, it doesn't work if you try a business in this particular way, or if you search in this way," or it's like, "Oh, it's this weird bug on the PDF export." Just all these little tiny things that keep cropping up, and it feels so close, day after day after day. We could have launched it, but then you get a bunch of people emailing saying, "Oh hey, it didn't work. Or my business... It didn't return the right results." So we keep finding things, and I figure it's a free tool, so there's not like anything pressing to launch it, so we might as well just hold it until it's really polished, to make sure that we found all the bugs.03:29 AW: Yeah. Do you start to lose your mind at all with that stuff? Where it's... You feel like it's Groundhog Day, and it's always just a couple more things, just a couple more things a couple more things, 'cause I don't deal with that very well if that ever happens to our team.03:44 DS: Yeah, it doesn't really feel... It doesn't make me lose my mind, but it does feel like Groundhog Day, it's just like, "Oh, man, every day there's something else." Which is quite irritating. I don't really... I just kinda like, "Oh, it's not today." I look at it in the morning for about an hour, or I run a few tests, we try for a few things. I write up the next, the list of tweaks to make, and then I move on with my day. It's no big deal. But it is annoying, a little annoying.04:13 AW: You have better patience than I do 'cause I really start... I just start focusing... Like I don't wanna wake up another day and be testing this again, or see the same bugs, or new bugs, or anything else. I get to a point where we have this, "Enough is enough," talk and we map out an hour by hour plan on how this is going to change. And most of it's the result of my frustration because I end up feeling like, "Well, we can't get to the next thing, that we need to get to, without getting this out there or whatever." And I get what you're saying that putting out a free tool is probably a lot more excitement over it than a necessity. Like a big feature is...04:54 DS: Yeah, so I think that's exactly it. There's two things. One it's this free tool, it's almost... It was a side product that gave our new part-time developer employee. He's a computer science student at the U of A. And so, one, he's a busy student, so he's not available to work eight hours a day on this. So I just put in the to-dos and he gets them done when he can. And two, a free tool, it's not that stressful, it's not a big deal. And we don't have any clients relying on this, waiting for it, it's just gonna be another marketing vehicle for us when we launch it.05:29 AW: Yeah, I would still have trouble with my own excitement, keeping that at bay, 'cause I'd wanna share it with the world.05:35 DS: No, I do wanna share, like I showed it to people at Local U, and they're like, "It's so awesome." And I'm like, "I know, I really wanna launch it." I'm excited about how it's gonna be received. I think everyone is gonna quite like it. And so I think it's gonna be great from that perspective.05:48 AW: Well, good, I'm continuing to keep my anticipation level high.05:53 DS: Great, thank you. I know. It won't let you down, you just gotta pretend I didn't say anything. Pretend I just announced it to you today that we're building this new tool. [chuckle] So you had no prior thing, so you can keep that anticipation high.06:07 AW: I can fake being surprised really well, so I'm in on that.06:11 DS: Okay, perfect. I wanna hear about SaaStr. You went to this awesome conference, all about building SaaS apps and all the things that go into that... So I'm just curious to hear, what are some of the takeaways, how was the conference? 06:26 AW: Yeah, the conference was awesome, it was my best SaaStr Annual experience I've had. This was the third one that I've gone to. All three have been at different venues. This one actually moved, the first two were in San Francisco, this one was in San Jose. And for me, this was the best venue... Each time the venue had its own little quirks on how much room there was to get around, or room sizes, and how many rooms. And it really felt like... Cause I think this is the 5th or 6th year of SaaStr Annual total, but it really felt like they had nailed a number of those past problems, and alleviated those in the space they were in and everything else. One, that was a really nice relief that we had that taken care of that time. And then it just started off, the very first talk I went to was a topic of five questions that CEOs struggle with. That one was just a fabulous talk that really gave a lot of insight to what things that I definitely deal with on a daily basis. So it was great to see someone else's view of that.07:38 DS: Yeah, what are these five questions CEOs struggle with? 07:42 AW: Yeah, and the interesting thing with it is so many of the speakers of this... This conference is definitely built around a lot of VC-funded companies, so we're a little bit of an outlier there as a bootstrap company. But you come in with it through the frame of mind that there's a lot I can learn by just kind of switching from, "Hey, we have a whole bunch of money and can hire who we need to, and it's just about putting the process in place and scaling and everything else." And so you adapt to reading between the lines on some of the talks that were there, which makes it a lot... A lot easier. Yeah, but the, that very first talk there was really one piece of it that I really liked as the speaker got into, and that more or less had to do with the frame of mind and what you focus on, or what you speak about, and how you look at it.08:39 AW: And the cool thing was the way that he put it was looking at how you align things where you speak about your business like you're vision-driven, you create a culture that's customer-driven, and then you build strategy and goals like you're competitor-driven. But yeah, make sure you don't obsess too much about who your competitors are. And that to me was a really great framework for a CEO to approach your business where you have to keep that vision at the center of what you're working towards, and decisions you make, and how you progress. But then also having a culture, and this is something, you know I liked it probably because it is how I view us at GatherUp is one of our main core values is that it's customer first. And we think of it a couple of ways down is one, we've built our tool to help businesses interact so they can put the customer first. And it's the same with our team, where we bend over backwards to provide as much service as we can for that customer.09:48 DS: And I can speak to that as a customer, really, because you guys are always really helpful when we need something. And you're responsive, and that's the way we try to be at Whitespark as well. And I've heard about some competitors that are not as easy to work with, and so I think it's super key. We see people leaving competitors and coming to us because of that. When the customer service isn't good over there, then they start looking around.10:18 AW: Yeah, we're starting to see that in our sales cycle, where we're seeing people who have chosen another review or reputation management platform, and they've gone through their one or their two-year contract with them, and they're going back into the market, and they're talking to some of the other ones that's there. And when you read between the lines on when you're asking them what they liked, and what they didn't like, and things like that, you really see a lot of being shared there has to do with how they interacted with that company. And it's really important piece, as I point out all the time, in being a bootstrapped company, we are just never ever going to out-feature someone. We're not gonna win the feature war because we don't have 50 or 100 developers that are there. But where we can win is by being able to out-service them by caring more, more consistent, and things like that. So it's really, I think it's extra important in a bootstrapped environment.11:22 DS: That makes a lot of sense. At SaaStr, you mentioned that it's kind of driven and geared towards VC-funded companies. In our... I'm just curious, how much of a minority are we bootstrapped SaaS companies versus VC-funded companies? 11:40 AW: I don't even know if I would have a sense in the overall space. But definitely at this conference, there's over 10,000 attendees. I felt like one out of every 10 that I talked to, was bootstrapped. And again, it's attracting people, there's VCs there you can go pitch VCs there, there's a lot of things like that. But it definitely seems like, in the overall scheme, lower and much less given the climate of what's there right now. And I'm just amazed at the amount of money constantly being thrown around in that space. It's mind-blowing to me, and a little bit different from the way I'm wired, that's for sure.12:18 DS: Yeah, it's very different from the way I'm wired. I'm curious, would you... Let's say someone said, "Hey, here's $5 million, you can use it to hire some more developers, and accelerate your development, and improve all your marketing, your sales whatever." Would you take it, would you want it? 12:35 AW: Yeah, right now I wouldn't want it. I would just... Obviously, it comes with some type of attachment, right? If it's a free $5 million, yes, please. [chuckle] But between equity and being driven by a board, things like that, that's where it starts to get a lot trickier.12:56 DS: Same, yeah. I would never take it. I would not take one, five or $10 million to do it because the main thing for me is being able to set the vision for the company and develop what I wanna develop without anyone else having any input on that. I feel like I have a good vision, and I don't wanna have to justify it to a board or anything like that.13:20 AW: Yep, no, totally, totally agree with you. And one of the other things I liked about the initial talk on the five things for CEOS, a lot of it had to do with hiring and finding the right people too. And one of his comments was about make sure that you're bringing people on that give energy instead of take energy. And that was one that just really hit in a very simplified way, and really made me think about... Cause we've just hired someone new again this week, and these are all like adding positions to our team. We continue to grow and add positions, and it's not replacing something that was already there.14:00 AW: As we're adding these new folks to the table, those are very important things. And we recently did have a... We had a failed sales hire that lasted all of about 90 days, and some of the things that he touched upon in the hiring process that they look at, and what's important, and one other talk that I'll give you a little download on really kind of solidified when you're ranking and looking at what's important in your position. I really thought that I needed someone who was a good closer, and just had a lot of just sales moxie to them. And I think what I found out is just the way we're built, and already in the culture of our company, we really need someone who's knowledgeable in our space and in our product, because all of us are, and me, especially, I'm an education-based sales person is the way I refer to it. I wanna teach you everything, and if I teach you well enough, you will see how we solve the problem.15:00 DS: But you're also adding value and integrity through that approach, I find. When someone talks to a vendor that is mostly just all about, they discuss the features and whatever, and then they talk to someone like you who's educating them on what's best for them, it's like they can tell that you have their interest in mind. You're trying to help them find the best solution. And that, I think, is an excellent sales approach.15:24 AW: Yeah, and it definitely it made me think about... Alright, so when we go back to the table, 'cause we're gonna need to hire some more salespeople. I need to keep that in mind. I saw what happened when I placed more value somewhere else. And so this next time through, I definitely need to place more value on someone who's passionate about our industry, knowledgeable, experienced. That doesn't mean knowing everything, but they're much further down the line of our last hire we really had to teach a lot, and just the uptake didn't happen, so they weren't really empowered by it, and it didn't lead them to then have confidence to be having those conversations at the level you need to have them to bring on the right type of customers.16:07 DS: One thing you said that I thought was interesting was hiring people that give energy, rather than take energy, and I was wondering how can you assess that in the interview stage when you are just trying to find employees, how can you determine that, at that point? 16:23 AW: Yeah, and I don't have a good answer for you on that. I would think you probably need to devise some scenarios where you're trying to understand how they approach things like problem solving, and pick through that to figure out what they are. Or to some extent, too, is realizing that if you have somebody that's taking energy on your team, that's something you need to do something about, or remove from the team. And I think that was probably more along the lines of what they're saying of, "Be aware when you have that going on. It's already hard enough. Don't continue with someone making it that much harder."17:03 DS: Yeah, it's like that classic saying in HR, "Hire slow and fire fast." Once you get a feel for it, if it's not working out, then you cut your losses.17:12 AW: Yep, absolutely. And I would say after our recent failure on one of our hires, I totally feel that way. The good news when I look... Last year, I think we hired seven people total, and there was one that didn't work out. So if I can hit on six out of seven again this year, I will be extremely happy with it. I'll take that winning percentage all day long.17:34 DS: Yeah, yeah, for sure. The hiring has been pretty good for us too. We've generally not had too many duds in the history of the company. So, yeah, it's been pretty good. It's hard to fire, too. I hate that. It's the worst thing. That's why hiring slow is so important to really take your time and make sure you have the right person. There's nothing worse than having to let someone go.17:53 AW: Absolutely. So the next talk that I really loved was kicking off the second day and it was a presentation called The Step-by-Step Guide to Revenue Growth. And this was from Mark Roberge who was the Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, and now he's a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. And it was hands down probably one of the best presentations I've ever taken in. And, yeah, it was all focused on sales, marketing, churn, and a little bit of hiring as well. And he just laid out in such a concise way how to look at, how to accelerate growth, and where to focus on, and really understanding just a lot of self-awareness on what your product fit is, and what your go-to-market fit is, and then how do you grow and build a mote around what you're doing once you're ready to scale.18:53 AW: So it was one of those where I was like, "Man, I didn't know at first if his slides we're gonna be available." So I was literally... And as well as the rest of the crowd taking photos of every slide. It was just really well laid out and told you exactly what you needed to be looking at with it.19:10 DS: Are these the actual slides he presented with? 19:12 AW: That we're taking photo or that I gave you in the link for our show? Yes.19:16 DS: They are so packed with text content. Were you not struggling to follow him and read the slides? 19:23 AW: No. Great presenter and just went through 'em. And, yeah, as you can see from the slides, they're not like this visual like, "Oh they're so beautiful," right? 19:33 DS: Right.19:33 AW: Just really content-driven and it really embodied everything that he was talking about. And one of the first points that he really hit upon was really understanding what product market fit is and finding out what is that metric that helps you understand that a customer is successful with you. How do you define that leading indicator that they're successful? And then what you wanna do in your company is make sure how can you optimize, how fast you're delivering on that leading indicator. So how do you take it from happening at month six or nine or 10? And making sure a majority are hitting it in month one because if you don't, more of those are gonna drop out. They're not gonna meet their level of value in the product. And it was just a really clear way and a little bit different. There's so much all the time in the SaaS world on product market fit and how do you know you have it and the gut feeling of it and what the numbers tell you and churn numbers. But churn is this trailing thing where... How he laid it out puts it into something where you can start looking at it like month one. Do I have 70% of my customers achieving this leading metric that we know leads to success right away in month one? Yeah.20:55 DS: And these slides... I don't know if you can share these with podcast listeners but these slides are packed with info. This is, it's the whole presentation, completely consumable in the slides.21:06 AW: Yeah, yeah, that's a great part about it is that... And that's why it was such a bonus when he's like, "I'll tweet out the link for these slides." I was like, "Thank you 'cause I am saving these straight to my desktop and reviewing them constantly." So it was just a really great walkthrough on how to analyze those things and what to look at. Another area of it that I really liked was understanding how to market and sell to the right fit for you. In his slides, it's like slide 25, he's able to show, "All right, you have different channels to reach customers inbound, outbound and partners. And then you might have different categories of SMB, mid-market and enterprise." And he lays out a grid so you're able to analyze and say, "Okay. Who are we reaching and what's our best channel that we are reaching them?" And instead of always trying to make one work, find the one that really is your go-to and that's where you really really want to invest. And just maybe you experiment or even ignore the other segments but I could definitely look at this with our team and there's a few things...22:17 AW: We do inbound very, very well. 99% of our business comes from inbound marketing of writing blog posts, social, speaking at conferences, all those kind of things. But we really badly... There's parts of us that, "Oh, we'd love to have a great partner channel. We'd like to figure it out in this way," or "We'd like to do more outbound." And so some of it was just realizing. Like find out what does work for you, and then just completely max that out because you know it works.22:46 DS: Yeah, it makes sense. I always think about outbound sales and I'm like, "Oh, should I be doing that like everyone else seems to be doing that?" And I get these emails and I'm like, "Oh, that's a pretty decent email." And I can see all these companies doing it and I think, "Man, maybe we should get into that." But honestly, we have a hard enough time managing the leads that are coming in right now anyways, that's why I should probably hire a sales person because we don't respond fast enough where I'm just like, "Yeah, I could set up a call with you, like, in two weeks." It's like, "Those leads are going cold by the time I ever talk to them," and so I just need to hire a sales person, I think, 'cause we have enough inbound coming in that I don't need to worry about outbound.23:25 AW: Yep. Now and we're kind of the same way. I definitely have some areas where there's a lot of interest with, like, our agency partners and resellers, but for our mid-market, for businesses that are 50 locations on up, like, we do need to do more outbound to start those conversations and to at least be on their radar as much as anything because that's... Our competitors are doing that. And so to expect when there's, you know, 10 different products all reaching out and cold emails and ad conferences on expo floors, and calling them and connecting with them and we're not doing that, like, we are gonna miss the boat on a bunch unless they decide, "Well, the only way I'm picking a vendor is by who I'm gonna search for and what of their content I like to read." So, yep, to some extent, we have to because everyone else is in that arena.24:23 DS: Sure, and are you experimenting with that? 24:25 AW: Yeah, we definitely are. I mean, I do some of it myself. I see businesses and I know really fit our mold well and I'm able to do, kind of, a quick glance at what they have available online, and are they displaying reviews on location pages and things like that, and make a good determination that it's somebody that I wanna go after. So I definitely do that. The sales person that we hired and then didn't work out, that was their role, and they really didn't even get to doing the outbound part because they just couldn't get enough knowledge and confidence in the product, so...25:00 DS: Yeah. I often think, like, your customer support people, if someone on that customer support team that really knows the product, that has been supporting the product for a while also has the sales acumen, then they would be a good person to put into a dedicated sales role.25:18 AW: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. What I've found with our current customer success team is those guys love to help and they don't love to talk money. So I don't have anyone that's a fit for that right now, because the minute it comes to bringing up even the smallest dollar amount, they're uncomfortable, it's just not in who they are. So I don't have any of those candidates right now, but yeah, it'd be great to be able to bring some people from that role into more of a biz-dev role, more of a sales role with having that great underlying base of nothing but product and customer knowledge.25:56 DS: Yeah, totally. Yep.25:57 AW: Outside of the talks, the other stuff is just networking. I mean, there's just so many great network opportunities because every time you sit down in something and introduce yourself or you're standing in line to go into a session, it's someone else who is a VP of sales or a founder or CEO, or runs marketing for a SaaS company you've either heard of or it's somebody you never even knew existed. So you have all these great mini conversations in between sessions, and at the happy hours, and at the events at night, where it's just one big group of your people. And so, I mean, imagine Local U of the 100 that are there, and then you multiply that into 10,000 and the conversations and the exposure and the insight you get into other people's companies and what they do is just unbelievably fantastic.26:51 DS: Sounds so great. Next year, next year I wanna go with you.26:53 AW: Totally.26:54 DS: Hopefully it doesn't conflict with the Local U Event.26:57 AW: Yeah, no, totally. You would love it. It was fun for I brought another member of our team and it was his first SaaS type... He used to work for me at agencies that I was part of before and so this was his first immersion deep into the SaaS world, and he was just like, he was blown away by it. And it was also great because some of the things he heard in some of the talks, he realized we're already using that framework or thinking about it that way, or doing those things. So there was a lot of... And I had some of these things too where you're in your own bubble so much an in your own head. It was so great to get outside affirmation like, "Okay, I am thinking about this right." Brand is really important and that's why we re-branded and it put so much into that. And here's somebody really talking about how big of a differentiator that is.27:46 DS: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Your new brand makes a lot more sense, I really like it. It's more all-encompassing. So, yeah. We talked about that last time.27:54 AW: Yeah. But yeah, so good from all those different pieces and then one other thing where I wanted to transition and touch on this a little bit is, I was also there seeking out a new vendor for our billing system because our billing system we built it ourselves, an in-house built, we have a lot of little wrinkles and just unique things about the way we bill on a per location and how many get added in a month and our re-sellers can sell and add or remove and at the time we built it there just wasn't a billing solution that fit all of the different combinations and possibilities that we have and so it's gotten us by and it's gotten us through but now we have a lot of other needs, we have four different plans, we have all these pricing levels, we wanna do promo codes and discounts, there's a lot of other things we wanna look into and so we're basically at the point of we either need to completely rebuild it and do its version 2.0, new life and have it be so much more robust or find a provider.29:00 AW: And the common thing that I keep looking at, it's like it's already all of our work to build and run one product and to me that billing system just ends up looking like a second product. And do we even want to try to maintain that and pay as a much attention to that as we have to pay to our main product of helping with customer feedback and online reviews? 29:23 DS: Yeah, we're in a very similar situation because we have an account system that we built in 2010, and it's been meeting our needs but it is like it's this terrible system to work with and whenever we have anything to add it's a real pain and so, yeah we've been working on updating it. We actually, we have another problem is that we use three different payment providers, we've got a pay flow accounts, we have a bean stream account, we have legacy clients on these old payment processing accounts and so we have multiple payment providers all hooked up into this account system and we have promo codes, we have all this stuff but it's just all hacked together in such a terrible way so we've re-conceptualize our account and about six months ago we started working on a rebuild and I'm gonna have two of my team members dedicated to building this thing right now, so we're building our brand new accounts. But the thing about the account system is that it's also the underpinning of our whole new platform.30:24 DS: Right now, we have all of our applications as separate things you can sign up for but we're building a single platform that everything will be tied into that you'll just sign up for white spark rather than these people that come to our website and they're like, "Well, what should we sign up for? You've got this, you got that, what do I want? I kind of want a demo of your platform." And we're like, "Euu, we don't really have a platform to show you." So we're trying to build a platform and the accounts becomes the basis of that. But then I think about what you said earlier as you were looking at some of those Chargify and Recurly and maybe it would be smarter for us to just use one of those but they get really expensive. So it's either pay once now and then we have our own system that we can manage and have complete flexibility over or pay forever, you're gonna lock into one of these systems and just always pay for it.31:13 AW: Yeah, but I see some of that as like a cost of success. It's no different back in the day when hosting could be something a little bit more expensive and you'd have to lay out to someone you're building a website for in the early 2000s, like if you do this much traffic, you might need a shared server and if you did this much traffic you might need dedicated and where they look at it like, "Oh wow, If I needed a dedicated server for $1000 a month, that would be terrible and be like, "No, there will be a reason you needed that dedicated server because you had so many visitors and so much traffic to your website", you actually want that happen, right. So.31:51 DS: Yeah, it's really interesting. I still think we'd have to build all the payment pages and all that. It almost feels like it's just the billing system and so our account system that we're building we still need it anyways and I don't know if we're gonna get that much benefit out of using something like Chargify or Recurly.32:08 AW: Yeah, yeah, well I'd be happy to give you a little in a test account with one and I have calls coming up with a couple of the others, 'cause I'm definitely gonna put them through their paces and vet them but I've already been impressed when what ours is in... That's not to say our system won't still have to do some billing-related things but there's so much more that that can handle where we just need to inform them, here's the account, here's the locations and plans and whatever else. Now, it assembles the bill, does the billing, contacts the processor and then there's a lot of reporting mechanisms that can come out of that too that can be a lot more helpful.32:48 DS: That is one thing we tried to build reporting dashboards out of our current account system, it's just we never quite get what I want I have this... I still cannot calculate churn which is crazy. I don't even know how to calculate my MRR and ARR and all that stuff. I just don't have those numbers which is quite pathetic really.[laughter]33:11 AW: We have those incorporated into our home-built tool and everything else and we've also done some good things like predictive billing. I can see where we're likely to land already for February here in the middle of the month, based on what's there. That yeah, some things could change a little bit but also able to see a pretty clear path to where we will likely end up with it.33:36 DS: Right.33:37 AW: Every time I would need a new report or I need that addition, it's pulling one of my team off of something that's a feature in our product that will allow us to get a new customer, a new whatever else to bring them over to build that on this other side, right? And that's where I've just kind of arrived at for our growth and where we're at, and we're passed a couple million dollars of... We're in the multiple millions of ARR. So, it's definitely at the point for me where it's like I see it as an investment and a cost of doing good business as opposed to taking money from us where it's just not worth the value, and I think that can vary for everybody at what point that time is.34:14 DS: Yeah, I think I'll look into it a little bit and reassess. We're not too deep into it. I still think a lot of what we're building will still be needed, so there might be an opportunity for us to offset and accelerate the development. 'Cause the ideal thing is I'll get these guys off of accounts and working on the software, right, so that's my goal, I wanna get there, get them there, as soon as possible. So if I could do something like Chargify then I think it's worth looking into.34:40 AW: Yeah, and I'm happy to pass along my notes. Like I said, after I've talked to all of them. Happy to share. It was nice. That was really nice about the conference to have that. And to have five different ones all on the same sales floor and to be able to go spend 20 minutes with each one and explain a little bit about our system, get some early answers and just anything that was gonna be a no-go or needs to be dug into... And then set up a next step in a call was definitely helpful, where that would have been harder to do one by one over the web to some extent.35:15 DS: Yeah, definitely, yeah.35:16 AW: Well, cool, man. What's your next couple of weeks? What's on your radar that's big in your world, or that you're looking after until we talk again, in a few weeks...35:26 DS: Well, we're gonna maybe launch a new free tool if we're gonna...35:30 AW: [laughter] Well, what if we just for the entire life of this podcast, you're always launching this free tool.35:37 DS: That would be awesome. [chuckle] one day we finally launch it. It becomes like the most ultimate free tool. Does everything you can ever imagine.35:45 AW: That's the cliff hanger, people are gonna download every episode just to find out when is the episode that the free tool launches? So this might be a little hard on the business, but it might be really great for our podcast.36:00 DS: [chuckle] Exactly So there's that. I'm also a little stressed because I'm speaking at Brighton SEO in April, and so I have my presentation there, so I'm doing a case study for that presentation. But I also have to do a good seven hours of training, and in that training, I gotta make all the slide decks for all the different aspects of local search so... I'm gonna be very busy with mostly that over the next six weeks or so.36:29 AW: Woo, Yeah.36:29 DS: But I'm going to Local Search Association in California at the end of February, and then I got a little ski trip to Jasper with the family, so. I got some nice stuff coming up too.36:38 AW: Nice, yeah, no, that sounds daunting to put... Any time you have to put together... I think the biggest thing I've ever done is like a three-hour session. And that was very daunting where it slides and I put together a workbook and a lot of interaction and things like that and that that was a lot of work... I was like, "I don't know if I ever wanna do that again."37:00 DS: Yeah, it is gonna be a lot and I'm just kinda, I haven't fully started on it yet, so it's not as scary yet until I actually write that outline and realize, "Oh damn, this is way bigger than I imagined." I'm always overly optimistic about things until I start on them and Then I realize, "Wow." But yeah, if I think about my slides, I usually do about, for 20 minute talk, I'll have about 90 slides, so for seven hours, I'm gona have a lot of slides to make.37:27 AW: [chuckle] Your slide totals are going to be, you're gonna approach like four digits. That's impressive.37:33 DS: I think so. Yeah I'll have like 1700 slides.37:36 AW: Nice Well, I'm gonna be interested to see... We just added another team member this week, a product manager. So I'm gonna be excited, just... Any time in a young company, when you're onboarding and especially in a remote company, there's so much we learn and we get better at our onboarding and our training process, and this is the first time where we've hired another product manager so to see what that first hire goes like there and the training there, it's definitely gonna be interesting to me. We just signed off this morning actually on some co-working space, so we have five, six people around the Minneapolis area now, and they were kind of seeking somewhere where they could get some face time and interaction and so we pulled the trigger on that. So it'll be fun to see how that adds and hopefully gives people around here more options. And then for me it's just tough too then kinda balancing out for those where we only have one in a place or two in a city. How do we afford them some of the same opportunities or try to bring them in from time to time so that they can see more of the team face-to-face is gonna be some interesting challenges.38:47 DS: Yeah, I was thinking about that with co-working spaces as well because I would do it maybe in Edmonton but then I have employees in four other cities. Right? And so do I sign up for co-working spaces in all those cities. It gets a little tough and it's hard to be fair to every... All employees, right? 39:03 AW: Yap, yeah, well, maybe that would be a great topic for us to talk about next time is just some of the things that are challenges in remote work and those types of pieces and for everything from finding the right people who thrive in remote work to training them in to getting collaboration and communication. There's definitely a lot of different finer points to it.39:25 DS: Yeah, definitely. All right, well I'll definitely put that on the agenda for our future podcast.39:30 AW: Sounds good. Well, thanks my man. Another good episode in the books and I hope you have a great couple of weeks until we sit down and talk together again.39:41 DS: Yeah, thanks Aaron. Always a pleasure. Talk to you next time.39:44 AW: All right. Thanks everybody for listening to episode three of the SaaS venture podcast. We'll see you again in a couple of weeks.39:53 DS: See ya.[outro music]

David Hauser’s life changed forever the moment he taught himself how to code. Like so many other nascent entrepreneurs, the power of computer programming set him on a lifelong path as a tinkerer, always fine-tuning and building in an effort to shape his and others’ futures. In much the same way Hauser learned how to code, his entire entrepreneurial journey has been one of unrelenting trial and error, involving a mix of success, failure, and personal and professional evolution. With the creation of tech companies like Grasshopper and Chargify, Hauser used his talents and curiosity to shape his own destiny, and make a splash in the startup world. Now, in his latest endeavor, he’s directed that very sense of experimentation to the field of health and fitness, with an upcoming book documenting his extensive adventures in improving his own physical well-being. But it all started with a few lines of code that enabled him to pursue a nontraditional professional life. “I always worked for myself since before high school,” Hauser says. “I never had a traditional job.” In the late 1990s, the internet was gaining unstoppable momentum, and as websites started to become viable means of doing business, the demand for web designers and ad creators increased dramatically. This shift granted new opportunities to clever teens on the cutting edge of new technology who wanted to make a few bucks (and sometimes much, much more) from the comfort of their childhood bedrooms. Hauser, who has no formal tech training, was one of these teens, swiftly making his way into the world of banner ad management and creating his own company WebAds360. “From there, I started grabbing onto different things, learning different technologies, working with other people,” he says. “But it all started with web design.” Before graduating college, he founded a second company, called ReturnPath, to help businesses that used permission-based email lists to keep their addresses up to date as subscribers graduated college or changed jobs. Being a teenage entrepreneur in the late 1990s and early 2000s presented some major limitations, however. For one, what phone number were prospective clients supposed to call? Cell phones of the time were still extremely basic and lacking features like putting a caller on hold or setting up a conference call. Meanwhile, home landlines might be answered by baffled family members. Neither option exactly screamed professionalism. It wasn’t just a problem for young people working at home, either, as lots of scrappy new entrepreneurs were lacking dedicated business phones. So when the born and raised New Yorker headed off to Babson College in Massachusetts, and met Siamak Taghaddos, another entrepreneur with a similar problem, they put their heads together to pursue a solution. Leaping Toward Success “It started with a really simple idea,” Hauser says. All they wanted was a way for tiny companies, startups, and solopreneurs to have the phone presence of a large, established company. And when neither he nor Taghaddos could find an existing solution to their problem, they did what so many successful entrepreneurs end up doing. They built their own solution. Because they were only out to solve a problem for their existing businesses, Hauser admits they didn’t spend a lot of time on research or planning. “It wasn’t well-researched necessarily, beyond the fact that we knew we had a problem, and we thought that we could solve it,” Hauser says. During the process of creating the solution to their own problem, they realized that they were really onto something. That maybe this was going to be much bigger than a new tool for their own tool belts. And because he and Taghaddos had their fingers in a lot of pies, and the money flowing in from their existing projects was enough to fund their new endeavor, they never needed to request outside funding. In 2003, the pair officially launched Grasshopper, a service that enabled small businesses to present themselves like big businesses using just a cell phone, complete with extensions, customizable greetings, and simultaneous call handling. Before long, Hauser shut down all of his other businesses, including WebAds360, and decided to focus entirely on the management and growth of Grasshopper. And business boomed. Small businesses and startups flocked to the service, delighted that it enabled them to operate with the professionalism of a well-established corporation. The company continued to grow for the next six years, when Hauser decided it was time to relinquish his role of CTO. “I was always relatively technical,” he says. “But I am definitely not a top programmer, and as we really started to build out the company, it was clear that we needed to have better leadership from a technical perspective, and I could apply my talents better elsewhere.” So, Hauser moved through another phase in his evolution as an entrepreneur and broadened his scope. “Rather than being just focused on the technology side, I spent a lot more time in company culture, HR, hiring, process, goals and how we implemented those,” he says. “I shifted my focus.” And as he stepped back, looking at Grasshopper from all angles, he saw possibility everywhere. Trial and Error Even though Grasshopper was a big success, Hauser’s head was bursting with new ideas and new problems to be solved. In 2009, he developed Chargify for streamlined recurring billing. Then in 2010, he created PackageFox, a way to secure guaranteed refunds from late or lost packages shipped through FedEx or UPS. And in 2011, he launched PopSurvey, a graphical survey creator. These are just a few of the self-funded side businesses born out of Grasshopper, and Hauser says there are many more that aren’t resume-worthy or that never saw the light of day. “Those are probably just the ones that became something,” he says. “There are tons of others that failed and never really got very far, or failed horribly bad and we lost a lot of money.” PopSurvey eventually fizzled out, overcome by competitors. PackageFox was an opportunity for Hauser to learn more about automation, but he eventually sold it off to someone in the space who could make better use of it. Hauser kept Chargify longer than either of the other two, but recently sold it, as well. And while Hauser learned much during this time of exploration and creation, he admits that it created a lot of tension within his team at Grasshopper. “We thought maybe we couldn’t keep growing Grasshopper, and we started all these things, and wasted a tremendous amount of time and money, but more importantly distracted ourselves—and even worse, probably, distracted the team—from the thing that was growing well. We could have just doubled down,” he says. “The success would have been much better than if we had wasted all that time, but that was the blind spot we had, and luckily we realized it.” Hauser says that internal blind spots are some of the most difficult challenges that founders face. While an entrepreneur is wrapped up in the excitement of a new creation, he says it can be nearly impossible to determine impartially whether or not that is the best possible use of time. “We’re overly invested in something, and we have that blind spot to maybe this isn’t the right thing to be working on right now,” he says. But whether by choice or by force, the decision to take the left fork instead of the right is eventually made. “I think sometimes it happens naturally. That progression just happens and you kind of see it,” he says. The problem is that sometimes it takes too long, and we over-invest in something that’s not productive, taking time away from something that has a much brighter future. And while he is thankful that the ultimate effect this period of distraction had on Grasshopper was minimal, he would have done things differently given the opportunity. “Looking back on it, it was not the best choice,” he says. “We should have focused on Grasshopper and grown Grasshopper.” But despite any amount of distraction, Grasshopper grew and grew until the company was raking in $30 million in annual revenue. Before long, the success of Grasshopper drew the attention of hungry eyes, and the acquisition calls started pouring in. Sales and Farewells “When we started the company, we had no exit plan,” Hauser says. “Our goal was to build a company we loved being at and loved doing what we were doing. That was it.” So when the first of the interested buyers knocked, Hauser turned them away empty-handed. But as Grasshopper was a privately funded company, without the limitations placed on it by investors and capital, interested buyers were not to be discouraged. Eventually, Citrix, a multinational software company, made them an offer that they couldn’t ignore. Citrix said that Grasshopper could retain their brand name, keep the team together and continue growing the company. Over the course of a year, Citrix worked with Hauser and Taghaddos until they recognized that this proposal was a great fit for everyone involved. So they decided to sign on the dotted line. As soon as the sale was finalized in 2015, both Hauser and Taghaddos bid their greatest success farewell, something Hauser describes as being “very emotionally difficult” but “best for both the company and Citrix.” He trusted the management team to keep steering the ship in the right direction, and with Citrix’s new ideas for growth and strategy, he knew the business was in good hands. Neither he nor his partner were interested in sticking around for “two more positions for highly paid executives with titles that are kind of meaningless in a big public company.” While he knew he had made the right decision, Hauser was rocked by the impact of his choice. “All of a sudden, your email address changes, your phone number, your identity,” he says. “For 12 years, I was the guy involved in Grasshopper, and I ran Grasshopper. That’s who I identified with and people identified me with, and that just changed overnight.” For a year after stepping away from Grasshopper, he continued with Chargify, but in July 2016, he sold that business, too. With a clean slate, Hauser stepped into his next phase of evolution. He explains that the core purpose of Grasshopper was to empower entrepreneurs to succeed. Now, he’s just hopped into a larger field. “After a year, I came back to and found my core purpose,” he says, “and that’s empowering others.” The Pursuit of Health It’s been two years since Hauser’s life changed with the sale of his two most successful brands, and he spent the latter half of that time on an exciting new project: himself. “I really wanted to change my life, and that included changing my exercise and diet, and I went from doing extreme endurance sports to practicing yoga six days a week,” he says. “Like massive change.” In pursuit of this change, he also took just about every test imaginable—blood tests, stool tests, sleep tests, DNA tests and more. All in the pursuit of a healthier life. And now he is ready to share what he has learned. Thirty pounds lighter, Hauser is releasing a book in 2019 called Evolve: Optimize Your Life, Body and Mind. In it, he busts myths around fad dieting, trendy workouts, and quick fixes, sharing instead the methodology he used to transform his own life. He also tackles many of the health sacrifices entrepreneurs make while chasing lofty goals. And despite all the changes he tried in his own life, he isn’t necessarily an advocate of massive life shifts or hours spent in the gym. He believes that often the little choices can make the most impact. “It’s always easier to work an extra hour past midnight because no one is bothering you, right?” he says. “It’s easy to pick up the phone and call for pizza, because you know you get that instant boost and gratification and can continue working for an extra hour. But I think, at the end of the day, what I care about is output and productivity, and I don’t think there is very much value in that extra hour of work when it is low productivity and low value, and it is just work for work’s sake.” Through his book, Hauser hopes to open the eyes of founders and non-founders alike to the power they have over their own lives and the small adjustments they can make that will bring huge impact. “The idea with the book is allowing people to understand that their life is a self-experiment and doing little things like maybe just buying a new pillow for your bed…could have massive gains,” he says. “Each thing in your life is an experiment, because you’re different from everyone else.” Once again, just as he did as a teenager learning to code, Hauser is relying on the power of trial and error—how the slightest adjustment, addition, or subtraction can make a big difference. He is, yet again, learning to crack the code, and yet again, hopes it can change lives. David Hauser’s Tips For Living A Healthier Life Since founding, building and selling Grasshopper, David Hauser has invested much of his time in pursuit of a healthier life. In 2019, he is releasing a book on the subject, “Evolve: Optimize Your Life, Body and Mind,” and these are just a few of the tips held inside for entrepreneurs pursuing a healthier lifestyle. For more information on the upcoming book, and a free chapter on the impacts of coffee, visit www.evolvebook.com.      Establish a Routine “I am a huge believer in routine,” Hauser says. “If you talk to the most successful people in the world, most of them will tell you routine is very important.” He is such a strong believer in routine that, even when he doesn’t plan to work out, he still goes to the gym because it’s on his schedule. By developing a routine that allows for more movement, more stability, and more sleep, he thinks entrepreneurs can improve their lives—as well as their businesses—in enormous ways.      Sleep More “As founders, understanding our sleep patterns—improving our sleep patterns—I think has tremendous effects and gains on our productivity the next day, the next week, the next year that we don’t realize,” Hauser says. By making more time for sleep, and being unwilling to compromise that time for a little extra work at the end of the day, he believes that entrepreneurs will actually be far more productive. Entering into each new day refreshed improves mood, interaction, and problem solving—all areas that are vital for success.      Experiment “Life is a self-experiment and doing little things like maybe just buying a new pillow for your bed…could have massive gains,” Hauser says. “Each thing in your life is an experiment, because you’re different from everyone else.” Even the smallest changes can make a massive impact, and what works for others may not necessarily be the best choice for you. By trying new ways to solving old, persistent problems, he believes people can make great impacts on their health, and what is more entrepreneurial than that? Key Takeaways The first company he started (in high school!) The Grasshopper origin story Entrepreneurial blind spots and distractions Why Hauser stepped down as CTO at Grasshopper Chargify, PopSurvey, PackageFox, and the other companies he’s started The story behind Citrix acquiring Grasshopper What Hauser did after stepping away from Grasshopper, and the emotional side of selling the company Pooling customer service for different products you’re building Marketing strategies they used to grow Chargify faster Hauser’s new book and new projects How to keep yourself healthy while working hard

Today's guest on the show has a similar story to your friendly neighbourhood podcast host, and i guess many of the entrepreneurs that have appeared on the show over the years. So focused on building success, and wealth, he was on the track to becoming in Steve Jobs wise words" The richest man in the cemetery" He used to work 100 hour weeks as an entrepreneur bootstrapping Grasshopper to $30 million in annual revenue, and then Chargify to an investment from Mark Cuban As a serial entrepreneur, he has done what founders dream of. Despite not having nearly enough money, he made a success of his business. In fact he made an amazing success, although in life the ying and yang can't be ignored. There is a balance between life and business which so many people ignore until much too late. As he says "After being overweight,tired and generally unwell as an entrepreneur, I embarked on journey of self-discovery and self optimization that led me to The Human Optimization Framework. He decide to finally start caring about his heath and realised that even committing to the conventional "health diet and lifestyle" (avoiding fried foods, eating a low-fat /whole-foods diet, going to the gym etc) did not work. He sold his company, changed direction and now seems happier than ever. So was the conventional advice correct, but just not correct for him? And where do we all go wrong in business. Putting the money first, or simply working too hard to get it? Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. David Hauser. Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weighty topics with David such as: Why it is so rare that anyone who hears their body screaming for us to stop actually pays attention to it. David reveals his process of fasting for 16 to 18 hours of day and the reasons why he feels he gets more energy. How everybody has a business in them by trying to solve their own problems first and foremost. and lastly.......... David share how everyday of normality could well be stripping away our health and benefits without any knowledge that things are getting bad.

We always talk about Content Marketing on the podcast and how it's typically going to be the best ROI for any bootstrapped business in terms of getting qualified leads. However, Content Marketing takes time, and to do it correctly takes even more time. And time is not something that a Tech Smart Boss has a lot of. So unless you just love to write, you generally have to have someone else write your content. Unless you've reached the stage where you can hire a content team, that typically means outsourcing it. But outsourcing anything has a lot of pitfalls, and outsourcing something as important as your content, has even more than normal. But if done properly, you can successfully navigate all the pitfalls and build a very successful content marketing strategy. In this episode, I discuss what some of those pitfalls are and how to avoid them. Plus I discuss a few options that I am currently using in my business. https://www.techsmartboss.com/115 Special Offer: Get 50% off your first 3 months of any Beamer plan. Are user engagement and client retention important to you? If so you should check out Beamer - a notification center and changelog plugin that lets you send announcements to users and site visitors for important news, latest products, updates, special offers and more. Used by top companies like Drift, Chargify and Vidyard and +5000 other sites to help get over 10x more user engagement. Our friends at Beamer are offering Tech Smart Boss subscribers a great deal for 50% off for your first 3 months. Just go to https://www.getbeamer.com/?ref=techsmart , sign up and enter this code: smart50

David Hauser, angel investor, serial entrepreneur, and founder of Grasshopper and Chargify, joins our show in this special episode of the Elite Man Podcast! In today’s episode David talks about how he created two multi-million dollar businesses and what he learned along the way about work-life balance and health. He covers his best tips for optimizing your health and being far more productive throughout the day. David talks about constantly testing and biohacking his diet, sleep, exercise, meditation practices, and productivity habits throughout the day on his way to becoming healthier and wealthier. If you’re wondering how to become healthier and more productive in your own life, check this episode out now! *Download this episode now and subscribe to our channel to get more of these amazing interviews! In our episode we go over: What David’s learned over the years about balancing work and life and why he now has a health-first approach How he built two multi-million dollar businesses in Grasshopper and Chargify and what he learned about the process of building a company up to that size The constant A/B testing that David continually did on the business and the profound lesson he learned from this testing and how he could apply it to other areas of life What led David into writing his upcoming new book Evolve Why David’s tried just about every diet known to man Why he struggled with his health for years and what he finally started doing to take hold of his health The fact that it’s so easy to A/B test things nowadays with the technology advances we have Why David ultimately settled on a low carb diet and why he believes it’s been a game-changer for his overall health The fact that no one diet is good for everybody and how to scientifically go about finding a diet that works best for you How I stopped being such a psychopathic night owl and became a more normal human being over the last few months What David did to optimize his sleep Why moving your phone away from you when you sleep can be one of the best things you do for your health Optimizing your room for sleep The importance of moving every day Why counting your steps isn’t all that important or relevant to your health but why moving definitely is The importance of meditation and why David recommends you do it The different perspective you can get on life through meditating Why I set my phone aside during the day, multiple times throughout the day Why David deleted social media from his phone and what he’s noticed from doing this Not allowing social media to dictate your happiness How David’s become healthier but also more productive throughout his work days Finding your own work-life balance Check out David on: Website:  Evolvebook.com Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dh Sponsors: *Have you tried our newest Elite Life Nutrition supplements yet? Yup, that’s right, we’ve got two new products! Milk Thistle and NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine), the two best supplements in the world for your liver! Both of these babies are incredibly nourishing for your liver and can help with the natural detoxification of so many toxins from the air, water, and food that you eat. We’re constantly bombarded with toxins, and unfortunately it only seems to be getting worse. This means your liver is working harder and harder without getting any support! And that’s why I’m so happy to bring this milk thistle and NAC to you guys! I’ve been taking both of these supplements every day for the last few years and I absolutely love them! Especially after a night out of drinking one too many. And yeah there’s been a fair share of those nights over the years… but don’t tell anyone! Anyways, to help support your liver, your natural detoxification, and your immune system get yourself one or BOTH of these fantastic supplements today. Go to EliteLifeNutrition.com/products to visit our full products page or go to EliteLifeNutrition.com/nac or EliteLifeNutriton.com/milk for the NAC and Milk Thistle products respectively. EliteLifeNutrition.com/products * Have you joined the Elite Man Newsletter yet? If not, get on it now! Go to EliteManMagazine.com/newsletter and sign up to get special Elite Man content not seen nor heard anywhere else. Get all of our bonus podcast information, sneak peaks into upcoming shows, behind-the-scenes content, special offers, and exclusive Elite Man updates you won’t find anywhere else. I’m telling you if you’re not on our newsletter yet you’re missing out. Go to EliteManMagazine.com/newsletter and become a true member of the Elite Man Community. I look forward to speaking soon. EliteManMagazine.com/newsletter.

David Hauser is an entrepreneur and a speaker based in Las Vegas. He is the founder of Grasshopper, Chargify, and Angel Investor. Grasshopper is a virtual phone system company which was sold to Citrix for almost $175M. His passion in the business industry has led him to build more startups. This successful exit has led him to realize what he really cares about – and that is to inspire others. On this episode, David shares his journey after selling the company that he built and managed for over 12 years. He reveals the emotional struggle he went through after his big exit and what he did with his money after that. David gives his perspective on what financial freedom means. He also shares his investment strategies including the investment platforms he ventured in. This conversation gives you several tips and advice on how to manage and grow your wealth.   Where we are: Johnny – San Francisco, California Sam – Tampa, Florida David – Las Vegas   Links: David's New Book - Evolvebook.com Davidhauser.com   Discussed: Adviceperiod.com (David’s advisor) The best investment advice you'll never get Transparentinvesting.com Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO A New Kind of Investment Outlook A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing (Eleventh Edition) How Many Mutual Funds Routinely Rout the Market? Zero How Has The 4% Rule Held Up Since The Tech Bubble And The 2008 Financial Crisis? Do Not Dollar-Cost-Average for More than Twelve Months   Time Stamps: 08:48 – The creation of Grasshopper.com 10:33 – His passion in becoming an entrepreneur 11:04 – Where and when did they build the company? 12:35 – The Company’s growth after the exit 13:25 – What came after the big exit? 16:44 – Diversifying his wealth and assets 20:40 – His strategy for managing his assets 23:31 – The value of investment advisors 26:50 – What is financial freedom for him? 29:05 – His engagements after the exit 30:58 – His new book 31:49 – The secret behind his productivity 33:46 – Life optimization 37:20 – His advice to help increase productivity   If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also if you haven’t already, please take a minute to leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here! Copyright 2017. All rights reserved. Read our disclaimer here.    

One of the most common questions I get is regarding how Web4Realty came to be a remote company. Something that’s so normal from my perspective, is very uncommon from the average person’s viewpoint, which will certainly change over time, as more companies realize the benefits of going remote. About three years ago, I began to read a lot of content about remote companies like Chargify, Buffer and Zapier. To this day, I’m very thankful that more and more companies are opening up and becoming transparent. I think that transparency has such a positive ROI in the overall business and startup ecosystem. That’s one of the main reasons I started opening up and sharing my experiences. So, as I started reading and learning from other successful remote companies, we started applying some of their ideas into our business. We started implementing a lot of similar tools and apps that they were using, which made our operations more and more efficient. Slowly but surely, we were setting ourselves up to being a remote company, without even knowing it. Music by sifer2424

In this episode, Dave interviews David Hauser, a life-long serial entrepreneur. He founded and grew a company called Grasshopper to $30M in sales together with other businesses. David started his serial entrepreneurship way back in highschool when he founded Return Path, an email performance management system. Listen as David walks us through his experiences building and selling his profitable businesses and the core, underlying values that helped them grow. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:33 – Introducing David Hauser 01:28 – David founded and grew Grasshopper to $30M in sales 01:31 – A big part of that $30M in sales was brilliant marketing 02:01 – After 6 years, David sold Grasshopper for a large sum of money 02:30 – He founded Chargify and secured Mark Cuban as an investor 02:35 – He also founded Return Path which was VC funded 02:49 – Other companies he founded were: PopSurvey, Deck Foundry, Temper, io, Package Fox, and National Entrepreneurs Day 03:52 – How David founded the National Entrepreneurs Day: 04:46 – David and his partner Seemac, questioned why there wasn’t any Entrepreneurs Day in the US 05:04 – They looked into what they could do and had Pres. Obama assign temporary days for 4 straight years 05:19 – They lobbied to get their cause to congress and the senate—but, it didn’t go through 05:46 – Grasshopper’s core purpose was to make entrepreneurs succeed so pushing the National Entrepreneurs Day was one way to do this 06:11 – It is also personal for both David and Seemac 06:26 – Dave mentions the video, Entrepreneurs Can Change the World 06:46 – The video went viral with 1.3M views 07:59 – David’s thought process: just do it! 09:15 – When David started Grasshopper, they charged $10/month for users to access their system online 09:40 – Dave shares about David Cummings who sold Pardot for a hundred million 10:01 – He has a blog that talks discusses medicine vs. vitamins 10:11 – Dave relates David Cummings’ blog to Grasshopper 10:56 – Grasshopper repackaged phone services and sold it to the right group of people 11:30 – Grasshopper’s marketing is all in-bound 12:15 – When Grasshopper started, they were buying traffic to get people to their website 12:50 – They were good at getting keywords 13:07 – They did a lot of paid advertising 14:34 – David discusses channel marketing 15:10 – Before Grasshopper, the name was Got V Mail 15:23 – When they decided to rebrand to Grasshopper, they came up with different ideas 15:50 – They thought of getting real grasshoppers and dipping them in chocolate 16:16 – Ideas were internally exchanged 16:25 – They decided to mail chocolate covered grasshoppers to people 17:04 – They used FedEx to send 5000 envelopes 17:52 – They got a phone call from the police or FBI saying they can’t just mail envelopes to different senators 18:13 – They explained and the envelopes were released 18:42 – They created a conversation about Grasshopper 19:03 – Everyone was directed to the video Dave mentioned 19:17 – The total cost of this marketing tactic was between $110-115K 19:23 – The case study is available at Grasshopper’s resource section 20:36 – How they built the 5000 names in their list 22:05 – They used an outsourced platform for discrete tasks 22:43 – They did pretty well and they only spent about $1000 for all the addresses 25:08 – Whether you are born an entrepreneur or not, there are areas you can learn 25:25 – You can train someone to become a business owner, but you cannot create an entrepreneur 26:06 – Return Path is an email performance management tool which David founded in highschool 26:46 – His friend came along with the concept and David made the prototype 27:03 – He was under 18, so his parents were required to sign allowing David to enter into this contract 27:42 – He was deeply involved in the process 28:35 – When David left for college, it was a small business—today, they’re doing probably about $100M/year 29:27 – Culture has been really important 30:01 – David put time into discussing real core values and purposes 30:24 – He challenged everyone who walked into the office to ask any employee what their core values and purposes are 30:52 – Core values were integrated into everything 31:52 – Even though David was the founder of Chargify, it was still different than Grasshopper 32:47 – “Culture is extremely important” 33:06 – The best case for a SaaS business is doubled by Grasshopper 33:55 – Culture is a combination of environment, the people, the values, and the process 36:07 – Dave and David mentions Start with Why by Simon Sinek 37:10 – David realized that his goal is to build and scale a business 37:54 – Connect with David Hauser at com or in Twitter 40:24 – David is happy to help others 40:49 – Dave closes the podcast 3 Key Points: Think like you did when you were a kid – believe in the impossible. If you believe in something, do whatever it takes to promote that vision. Culture is the combination of environment, people, the values, and the process. Resources Mentioned: Entrepreneur's Organization – The EO Network Entrepreneurs Can Change the World – Grasshopper’s viral video Start with Why by Simon Sinek – Book mentioned by Dave in relation to culture

Angular Remote Conf   02:01 - Roy Sivan Introduction Twitter GitHub Blog The WP Crowd Podcast 02:23 - Ryan Sullivan Introduction Twitter WP Site Care LoopConf 02:40 - WordPress and Angular 05:00 - Authentication and Security OAuth A Brief Introduction to WordPress Nonces Hire Otto 07:38 - Data and Plugging Angular Into APIs AppPresser 12:54 - The REST API and Plugins; Custom Plugins Help Scout Asana Harvest Chargify 21:23 - Displaying Data in WordPress Using Angular Stripe Keen IO 25:01 - Tutorials AngularJS and WordPress: Building a Single-Page Application with Roy Sivan JavaScript for WordPress Angular-Wordpress-Theme AngularJS-Boilerplate Josh Pollock angular-wp-front-end WordPress.tv   Picks Mailgun (Lukas) Geoff Goodman updated the embedded view on Plunker (Lukas) Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden (Chuck) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling (Chuck) Postmatic (Roy) Caldera Forms (Roy) Calypso (Ryan) AppPresser (Ryan) LoopConf (Ryan)

Angular Remote Conf   02:01 - Roy Sivan Introduction Twitter GitHub Blog The WP Crowd Podcast 02:23 - Ryan Sullivan Introduction Twitter WP Site Care LoopConf 02:40 - WordPress and Angular 05:00 - Authentication and Security OAuth A Brief Introduction to WordPress Nonces Hire Otto 07:38 - Data and Plugging Angular Into APIs AppPresser 12:54 - The REST API and Plugins; Custom Plugins Help Scout Asana Harvest Chargify 21:23 - Displaying Data in WordPress Using Angular Stripe Keen IO 25:01 - Tutorials AngularJS and WordPress: Building a Single-Page Application with Roy Sivan JavaScript for WordPress Angular-Wordpress-Theme AngularJS-Boilerplate Josh Pollock angular-wp-front-end WordPress.tv   Picks Mailgun (Lukas) Geoff Goodman updated the embedded view on Plunker (Lukas) Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden (Chuck) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling (Chuck) Postmatic (Roy) Caldera Forms (Roy) Calypso (Ryan) AppPresser (Ryan) LoopConf (Ryan)

Angular Remote Conf   02:01 - Roy Sivan Introduction Twitter GitHub Blog The WP Crowd Podcast 02:23 - Ryan Sullivan Introduction Twitter WP Site Care LoopConf 02:40 - WordPress and Angular 05:00 - Authentication and Security OAuth A Brief Introduction to WordPress Nonces Hire Otto 07:38 - Data and Plugging Angular Into APIs AppPresser 12:54 - The REST API and Plugins; Custom Plugins Help Scout Asana Harvest Chargify 21:23 - Displaying Data in WordPress Using Angular Stripe Keen IO 25:01 - Tutorials AngularJS and WordPress: Building a Single-Page Application with Roy Sivan JavaScript for WordPress Angular-Wordpress-Theme AngularJS-Boilerplate Josh Pollock angular-wp-front-end WordPress.tv   Picks Mailgun (Lukas) Geoff Goodman updated the embedded view on Plunker (Lukas) Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden (Chuck) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling (Chuck) Postmatic (Roy) Caldera Forms (Roy) Calypso (Ryan) AppPresser (Ryan) LoopConf (Ryan)

# Episode 225 Summary: In Episode #225 Nick interviews Larry Love, famed chess hustler from Washington Square Park. Listen as Nick and Larry discuss the impact chess has had on their lives, why it is truly the greatest game in the world for your mind, and why life is about you and you alone. Time-stamped Show Notes - 21:30 – Nick kicks off the interview - 22:03 – Larry shares his background playing chess - 22:30 – Losing repeatedly in chess to learn how to become dominant - 23:03 – Larry never read a book about chess, he just took his lumps - 25:20 – Nick plays 3-5 hours with Larry per week - 26:28 – Looking ahead in moves - 26:40 – Larry likes to look 3 to 4 moves ahead - 27:05 – Games are typically 5 minutes long—it's speed chess - 28:50 – Larry gets bored playing anything other than speed chess - 29:18 – Larry is the first person to ever back Nick in a game of Chess - 30:10 – Speed chess isn't about the money, it's about the rush - 30:30 – Get into chess because it wakes your brain up and keeps you sharp - 31:07 – The best practices for learning how to play chess?—jump in the pool, get on the bike…you'll struggle, but you'll learn - 32:27 – Larry has a daughter who's an honor student and applying to Stanford - 32:49 – _Top 3 Tips to be More Effective_: - - Learn how to play chess because chess IS life - Do what you gotta do for yourself—don't do it for anyone else - Be humble Key Points: 1. Start playing chess, it will keep your mind sharp and on-point. 2. Always look 3 to 4 moves ahead in life, and you'll find yourself on top. 3. Live your life for yourself and no one else. Resources Mentioned: - [Your Voice and Disease](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-sound-of-your-voice-may-diagnose-disease/?utm_source=nextdraft) – Researchers believe the sound of someone's voice can help diagnose disease - [Stand Up Screen](https://www.standupscreen.com/?ref=producthunt#/) – A whiteboard that will generate automatic updates in Trello - [Finalem](http://finalem.com/must-read?ref=producthunt) – Must Read—build a daily digest of what you message in Slack - [Emma](http://www.emmaai.com/?ref=producthunt) – An autonomous AI that promises the world, but it's unclear what it does - [ChartMogul](https://chartmogul.com/) – Analytics for Stripe, Chargify, etc. - Go to iTunes and leave a review for the Less Doing Podcast, and you'll receive 1 free hour of service from Less Doing Virtual Assistants - [workshop.lessdoing.com](http://www.workshop.lessdoing.com) Sponsored By: [FreshBooks](https://www.freshbooks.com/) – FreshBooks helps you simplify your accounting. Generate invoices automatically, follow up clients, and cut your accounting time to just a few minutes. Get a 30 day free trial by using the code LESSDOING at [www.freshbooks.com/lessdoing](https://www.freshbooks.com/lessdoing) Text DOLESS to 33733 to sign up for the Less Doing Newsletter Credits - Original Music provided by [Felix Bird](http://2014.felixbird.com/) - Audio Production by [Chris Mottram](https://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-mottram/96/b12/708) Show Notes provided by [Mallard Creatives](http://www.mallardcreatives.com/Testimonials) ------- [Get the FREE Optimize, Automate, Outsource Blueprint here.](https://go.lessdoing.com/blueprint?utm_campaign=blueprint-ari&utm_medium=link&utm_source=podcast) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lessdoing/message

Today we’re launching the biggest update in Baremetrics history: we’re expanding our platform to support Braintree and Recurly, in addition to the Stripe support we’ve always had (with more data sources on the way!). A chapter I didn’t plan on writing One of the most interesting parts of being an entrepreneur is the constant evolution. So much of my role is just putting things in motion. It’s sort of like pushing a snowball down a hill. Maybe it gets huge. Maybe it crumbles before it gets to the bottom. Maybe it makes it to the bottom then hits a tree and explodes. The fun part of that is you just don’t know how things will play out. And I think that’s exhilarating. What we’re launching today is a chapter in our book that I legitimately never planned on when I had the idea for Baremetrics nearly three years ago. The scope of my thinking was just, “I need this thing for my business that uses Stripe, so I’ll just stick to that.” It was going to be a side project to two other SaaS businesses I had at the time. What I didn’t anticipate was the nerve this would strike with founders. Every founder wants easily accessible insights into their business, and Baremetrics is equipped to do that. I also didn’t anticipate how much I’d thoroughly love helping other founders. I’ve had thousands of conversations with founders over the years about every facet of business, and if I’m being honest…helping other founders is just plain fun. And really that extends deeper in to our team as a whole…it’s not just me, it’s all of us. The intersection of those two things puts Baremetrics in a really great spot to serve the needs of a lot more businesses. There’s no reason we can’t help all online businesses. And today marks our first step towards bringing that to fruition. Using the mission to steer the ship Our mission is to equip businesses with the tools they need to grow. By providing tools, insights and education with minimal effort on the business's part, the barrier to making actionable business decisions is lowered dramatically. Everything we do is driven by this mission. Everything we do needs to positively answer the question, "Does this help businesses grow?" And that mission shouldn’t be limited by data source or business model. That’s really the impetus for our expansion. Today, we’re launching support for Braintree and Recurly. In the coming weeks and months we’ll also be adding support for PayPal and Chargify, as well as our own API for sending us your data directly. I’m seriously giddy about getting to meet and help out so many news (to us) businesses. Sign up for a free trial today. And if you have any questions, whether it’s about Baremetrics, business in general or just want to talk about life, please reach out!

Summary: In Episode #218 Ari and Nick share a load of fascinating links, useful tools, and the latest wins and hacks from Less Doing. Time-stamped Show Notes - 23:30 - Ari and Nick have created a hack that automatically generates trello cards when a client records an audio message on his phone - 24:50 - Created a hack to take information automatically from Stripe to Chargify - 26:05 - The flat rate for VA services is now $129 for 5 hours - 27:33 - Ari and Nick have started playing with [GrowSumo](https://growsumo.com/) to manage affiliate partnerships - 28:00 - Creating a hack to link [Zapier](https://zapier.com/) to [Toggl](https://toggl.com/) Resources Mentioned: - [Lydia](http://www.lydia-app.com/chat?ref=producthunt) - Pay people in Slack - [Bintel](https://bintel.chat/?ref=producthunt) - Pull business intelligence information into Slack chats - [Treat Fear With a Pill](https://newrepublic.com/article/133008/cure-fear?utm_source=nextdraft) - Propanolol is being prescribed to manage anxiety and phobias - [A Bitter Pill](https://t.co/FH0dyGLuVE) - A fecal microbiota pill for people with chronic gut problems - [Hubbr](http://hubbr.io) - Add a chat channel to a Trello board - [Sherbit](https://www.sherbit.io/?ref=producthunt) - Pull in data from 50 sources to give you actionable information - [The DUTCH Method](http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/05/08/dutch-hormone-test.aspx) - An hormone test that you can do at home - [Pomoslack](http://www.pomoslack.com/?ref=producthunt) - Run a Pomodoro timer in Slack - [Baubax](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-best-travel-jacket-with-15-features-baubax#/) - A travel jacket with a built-in inflatable neck pillow and eye mask - [Two Hour Marathon](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sports/two-hour-marathon-yannis-pitsiladis.html?utm_source=nextdraft&_r=0&referer=https://t.co/notg0R4liJ) - Using sports science to break the two-hour marathon barrier - [The Next AI Is No AI](http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/07/the-next-ai-is-no-ai/?ncid=rss) - AI is becoming more and more integrated Sponsored By: [Freshbooks](https://www.freshbooks.com/) Text DOLESS to 33733 to sign up for the Less Doing Newsletter Credits - Original Music provided by [Felix Bird](http://2014.felixbird.com/) - Audio Production by [Chris Mottram](https://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-mottram/96/b12/708) - Show Notes provided by [Mallard Creatives](http://www.mallardcreatives.com/Testimonials) ------- [Get the FREE Optimize, Automate, Outsource Blueprint here.](https://go.lessdoing.com/blueprint?utm_campaign=blueprint-ari&utm_medium=link&utm_source=podcast) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lessdoing/message

In part two of our two-part interview with Lance Walley, CEO of Chargify, we talk about his early days with the company. He talks about what the payment space was like in 2009 and how things have changed over the past few years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part one of our two-part interview with Lance Walley, CEO of Chargify and former CEO of Engine Yard, we talk about the early days of Engine Yard, pioneering the RoR movement, and lessons learned about hiring friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Download this episode, in which we talk about Andrey finally leaving the house, street cred, Quintu, the work that goes into a typical SaaS app, implementing push in Uberdeck, OS X 10.8 update woes, git and distributed source code control,   supporting developers vs. supporting end users, downloadable vs. SaaS, playing with SaaS marketing at an early stage of the product, being organized with marketing, tracking the marketing flow, onboarding, pricing based on volume, seasonal stores, celebrities in NYC, the new Panic office, and a day of doing nothing at work.   Arq, Crashplan – backup software. VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion – VM software. HipChat – private group chat. Rachel Andrew – Founder of Perch. Chargify,  Stripe – Recurding billing and payments services. HubSpot – inbound marketing software. KISSmetrics, Mixpanel – analytics and metrics tools. Trak.io – Ian’s preferred metric app (for now). Optimizely – A/B testing tool. Seasonal stores The Living Room NYC Panic office – founder’s room.   Discuss this episode with other bootstrappers in the forums.  

Adam Stacoviak and Andrew Thorp talk with Drew Blas of Chargify about API wrappers, Ruby, open source, and more.

Adam Stacoviak and Andrew Thorp talk with Drew Blas of Chargify about API wrappers, Ruby, open source, and more.

In this episode, Ben Orenstein is joined by Michael Klett, Co-founder and tech lead of Chargify. Ben and Michael discuss the evolution of Chargify and bumps along the way, underwear subscriptions, Michael’s transition from hardware to software, negativity in the Rails community, slow tests, and much more. Chargify Manpacks Bryan Helmcamp’s blog on 7 ways to refactor Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs @tenderlove’s keynote at railsconf Follow @thoughtbot, @r00k, and @moklett on twitter.

Lance Walley, the founder of numerous startups including EngineYard and Chargify joins me to talk about business and technology.

➡️ Like The Podcast? Leave A Rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/successstory➡️ Join 321,000 people who read my free weekly newsletter: https://newsletter.scottdclary.com➡️ About The GuestDavid Hauser is an accomplished entrepreneur and angel investor, recognized for co-founding Grasshopper, a virtual phone system for small businesses. Under his leadership, Grasshopper expanded to support over 150,000 entrepreneurs before being acquired by Citrix for $170 million. He also founded Chargify, a billing software company, and is respected for his skills in scaling businesses, building effective teams, and cultivating a positive company culture.In addition to his business pursuits, David is a strong advocate for wellness. He wrote Unstoppable, a book that shares his personal journey to enhancing health and performance through diet, exercise, and mindset. David's commitment to health and productivity encourages entrepreneurs to achieve success while maintaining their well-being.➡️ Show Linkshttps://www.instagram.com/dhauser/         https://x.com/dh/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidhauser/      ➡️ Podcast SponsorsHubspot - https://hubspot.com/  The Product Boss Podcast - https://www.theproductboss.com/podcast NetSuite — https://netsuite.com/scottclary/ Indeed - https://indeed.com/claryDemostack - https://www.demostack.com Miro - https://miro.com/successpodPolicygenius - https://www.policygenius.comLinkedIn Jobs - https://linkedin.com/excellence➡️ Talking Points00:00 - Intro01:59 - Power of Diet, Yoga & Meditation04:00 - Why Mindfulness Matters09:20 - Building Companies with Mindfulness11:16 - Lessons in Scaling & Exiting14:23 - Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome19:05 - David's Early Start in Entrepreneurship22:24 - Raising Capital as a Young Founder23:51 - Grasshopper's Fast Growth29:26 - Core Values for Startups34:15 - The Game-Changer: Business Coaches36:03 - Mentor vs. Business Coach40:11 - Sponsor: The Product Boss Podcast40:52 - Exiting Grasshopper49:24 - From Operator to Investor52:18 - Lessons from Bad Investments53:44 - David's Health Routine57:58 - Sponsor: LinkedIn Jobs59:10 - Diet & Wellness Tips1:03:52 - Handling Panic in Public1:07:47 - Founders' Mistakes at the $1M Mark1:09:35 - What David Looks for in Investments1:12:59 - David's Parting Wisdom1:19:07 - Advice to Younger Self1:20:05 - Defining SuccessAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy