Podcasts about leadferno

Summary In this classic episode of EGGS: The Podcast, co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, Aaron Weiche, shares his entrepreneurial journey, discussing his transition from agency life to the SaaS industry. He emphasizes the importance of text messaging as a tool for customer engagement and conversion, highlighting its effectiveness in modern business communication. Aaron also reflects on the challenges of career pivots, the acquisition of his previous company GatherUp, and the vision behind Leadferno. The conversation delves into the significance of customer communication and how businesses can leverage text messaging to enhance their operations and customer relationships. Takeaways Aaron Weiche is the co-founder and CEO of Leadferno. He transitioned from agency life to SaaS, emphasizing the importance of text messaging. Text messaging has a 98% open rate, making it a powerful tool for conversion. Businesses can handle multiple text conversations simultaneously, improving efficiency. Customer communication is crucial for building trust and relationships. Leadferno integrates with CRMs to streamline business operations. The acquisition of GatherUp provided valuable insights for building Leadferno. Text messaging allows for personalized interactions with customers. A two-week free trial is available for businesses to test Leadferno. Understanding customer needs is key to successful marketing strategies. Chapters 00:00 The Entrepreneurial Journey of Aaron Wyke 12:52 Transitioning from Agency Life to SaaS 20:02 Navigating the Acquisition Process 27:08 Leveraging Text Messaging for Business Success 34:22 The Power of Inbound Communication 39:44 Enhancing Customer Experience through Texting 44:43 Lead Capture and Nurturing Strategies 49:42 Driving Traffic and Engagement 54:41 The Importance of Customer Connection 01:01:20 Navigating Marketing and Communication Strategies Credits: Hosted by Michael Smith and Ryan Roghaar Produced by Ryan Roghaar Theme music: "Perfect Day" by OPM  The Carton: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://medium.com/the-carton-by-eggs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feature with Zack Chmeis of Straight Method up now!  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://medium.com/the-carton-by-eggs/zack-chmeis-35dae817ac28⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   The Eggs Podcast Spotify playlist: bit.ly/eggstunes The Plugs: The Show: eggscast.com @eggshow on twitter and instagram On iTunes: itun.es/i6dX3pCOn Stitcher: bit.ly/eggs_on_stitcher Also available on Google Play Music! Mike "DJ Ontic": Shows and info: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠djontic.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @djontic on twitter Ryan Roghaar: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://rogha.ar⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Today, we chat with Aaron Weiche co-founder of LeadFerno and CEO at GatherUp. Aaron shares his take on the current SMB market, how he grew LeadFerno, GatherUp and his strategy for the future. You can find Aaron at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronweiche/

In this episode we're diving deep into a topic that can make or break your business: how you handle leads after they fill out your contact forms. My guest, Aaron Weiche, CEO of LeadFerno, has done some eye-opening research on this very subject. Spoiler: Most of us are doing it wrong. Aaron's here to share his insights on boosting response rates and conversions with a few simple tweaks. If you think your leads are slipping through the cracks, stick around. This episode might just change the way you think about follow-ups forever. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/552 Grab your discounted ticket to the Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference in Portland, Maine, 10/9 and 10/10/2024! https://www.theagentsofchange.com/conference >>

Send us a Text Message.Leadferno: a better tools to capture website leads - Leadferno is a conversion platform designed to transform website visitors into leads through seamless communication tools. Unlike traditional chatbots, Leadferno leverages SMS to facilitate human conversations, which studies show is the preferred communication channel for most people. It's floating CTAs (Call-to-Actions) on websites encourage visitors to start conversations via text messaging. This approach helps businesses engage more effectively with potential customers by providing a more responsive and preferred communication method.Leadferno offers various tools, including an embeddable contact form that initiates SMS conversations, request call-back options, and links to other lead forms and scheduling tools. It attempts to make businesses easier to work with by enhancing their ability to convert website visitors into valuable leads through better communication options. Google nuking GBP & Business Messaging costs small developers: Google's recent decision to axe its business messaging tools—Google Business Profile Chat and Business Messenger— hits particularly hard for niche players like Leadferno, a company that had heavily invested in integrating these tools. The discontinuation forces smaller firms to reconsider future integrations with Google, given the considerable time and financial resources wasted—six months and approximately $100K, in Leadferno's case.While it looks like Google will potentially integrate with WhatsApp or SMS, which could partially mitigate the blow for some businesses. However, for many, the sudden shift means lost opportunities and the need to reallocate development efforts. The most affected were businesses with significant Google Business Profile visibility and multi-location operations, which benefited from centralized messaging and automated replies. These features allowed for quicker customer interactions, a critical factor in Google's ranking algorithms.Google's decision, like so many similar ones it has made in the past, leaves smaller, innovative companies grappling with the fallout, forcing them to navigate the challenging landscape of constantly shifting tech ecosystems.Leadferno Research: Small Business Contact Form Failures - Leadferno documented the startling inefficiencies of small businesses in responding to online contact forms, a crucial channel for new customer acquisition. The research, encompassing 225 businesses across home services, professional services, and medical sectors, highlights a significant gap between customer inquiries and business responses.Leadferno's Aaron Weiche and his team "mystery shopped" these businesses, submitting highly detailed and strong buying inquiries via their contact forms. The findings are staggering: almost 5% of forms were broken, failing to deliver customer messages entirely. More shockingly, only 15.6% of forms sent an auto-reply, a basic feature that acknowledges receipt and sets customer expectations.The average response time to these contact form submissions was a lethargic 17 hours and 49 minutes, with professional services responding slightly faster than average, and healthcare lagging behind at over 19 hours. Yet, the most alarming statistic was that 42% of these forms received no response at all.While small businesses consistently rank new customer acquisition as their top challenge, they are neglecting warm, ready-to-buy leads that land directly in their inboxes. This neglect is even more baffling given the simplicity of the solution: prompt and efficient responses to online inquiriesSubscribe to our 3x per week newsletter at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us a Text Message.GBP Chat is Dead, Long Live WhatsApp:  Google nuked both Google Business Profile Chat AND Google Business Messaging last week in a typical show of disregard for the product and the businesses supporting it. This decision comes amid concerns over increasing spam within the GBP chat service, which initially launched in 2017 with high hopes. Despite a significant initial investment, Google's inconsistent product strategy led to its downfall.Interestingly, Google is now introducing WhatsApp and SMS messaging integration to GBP profiles, suggesting an attempt to fill the void left by the discontinued services. This move highlights Google's long-standing struggle with a coherent messaging strategy, characterized by the launch and subsequent abandonment of numerous messaging apps over the years.The discussion underscores the broader issue of Google's top-down management style, which often leaves innovative projects without sustained support. Smaller SAAS businesses that invested heavily in integrating with Google's messaging API, like Switchbird and Leadferno, faced significant difficulties in adopting the Business Messaging API and expended considerable resources in doing so. Google's structural inefficiencies hinder its ability to dominate key markets but also damage the greater ecosystem that attempts to integrate with their products. Scorpion Survey Highlights Growing Frustrations with Google Search:  In a recent survey by marketing firm Scorpion, consumers have voiced increasing frustrations with Google search results. The survey revealed that users are spending more time sifting through results than five years ago. Top complaints include the need to refine queries repeatedly, excessive scrolling, and visiting multiple websites to find desired information. This aligns with ongoing industry discussions about the declining quality of Google's search experience. 3 Local Takeaways from the Google API Leak: A recently leaked GitHub repository revealed extensive insights into Google's algorithm, highlighting 14,000 attributes and numerous modules that influence search results. This leak, analyzed by Rand Fishkin and Mike King, suggests that Google tracks a wide array of data points from websites, Google Maps features, and YouTube videos to entities.The significance of 'nav boost' and the 'CRaPS' click-through algorithm, which impact page rankings based on user interactions. Additionally, Google tracks location relevance at a page level, encouraging businesses to create localized content silos for better search performance.The leak underscores the importance of linking high-traffic pages to target pages and creating localized versions of national content to improve site architecture. It also suggests that local mentions in reputable publications can boost a business's online presence.Listen in for actionable insights for businesses aiming to optimize their local SEO efforts.A Tribute to John Heaston. R.I.P. to a great human being:John Heaston, the founder, publisher, and visionary leader of The Reader and El Perico, died on May 31, 2024. He was a prince among humans and an early advocate for inclusive watchdog journalism and ethical digital marketing.  John, you will be missed. Segment Reference Articles:Remembering John Heaston: A Champion of Inclusive Journalism and Community MediaThe Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What Subscribe to our 3x per week newsletter at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

In this episode, Claire chats to Leadferno's Aaron Weiche about how adopting a conversion-focused mindset can benefit agencies and their clients alike.Listen to learn:Why businesses often struggle to identify conversion eventsThe importance of making a business easy to work withWhy agencies should prioritize reporting on leads and conversionsThe role testing plays in optimizing conversion funnelsWhat to look out for in Google Business Profile's conversion pointsHow authentic media and social proof can skyrocket conversionsAaron's five quick tips for improving conversionsResourcesFollowing Aaron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronweiche/Follow Aaron on X: https://twitter.com/AaronWeicheCheck out the Leadferno blog: https://leadferno.com/blogThe Leadferno podcast, Conversion Cast: https://leadferno.com/conversioncast

Andy Humphrey: Hey, what's up, my friends? Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm your host, Andy Humphrey. Today, I'm going to share with you—how do I describe this? Andy Humphrey: A question that came into Sprinkler Supply Store for me that turns out to be, I think, some really relevant content to discuss with you guys. And I think probably most of you could relate to this question that the homeowner has. And, I wanted to tie this together in a couple of ways. Number 1, we're having a lot of success, and we have had a lot of success with software on our e-commerce site called LeadFerno. L-E-A-D F-E-R-N-O, LeadFerno, and LeadFerno is a texting tool that acts like web chat. Andy Humphrey: And so what happens is there's a little pop-up, which obviously can be annoying at times, that, on the website, to reach us, to reach customer service, but instead of chatting there, it redirects through the phone so you can use your phone and the text message feature or messenger to communicate with us. And personally, I wish more sites used this because I would say half the time when I'm on some other website using the chat feature, you know, I'm waiting for someone, let's say, for the chat to get back to me. So I have another tab open, and I don't have my volume up. And then I get distracted, and then 30 minutes go by. Andy Humphrey: And I think, oh, shoot. I had a live chat going. I forgot about it. I go back to the tab. And then the chat has ended because I didn't respond, and it just seems like web chat is good if the other person is right there and they're chatting with you quickly. But that's not always the case. Andy Humphrey: Sometimes the chat agents have to go and look something up or tell you to hold, and sometimes you have to leave your desk. You just can't sit there on chat. And so what we have found is that by using the phone as the texting tool, which it's very good at, then people can text wherever they are. You know what? If you gotta get up and get in your car and drive somewhere else, we can still text with you because you have your text device in your pocket instead of having to sit at your computer. Andy Humphrey: It's been a great way for people to send us pictures. "Hey, I need a replacement diaphragm for this valve. I don't know what valve this is. Okay, great. Send us a picture." And so LeadFerno has been an amazing tool for communicating with our customers because it doesn't require them to be locked to their computer screen. They can text through their phone. They can also save the number and text us any time. Andy Humphrey: And if you'd like to try this, go to sprinklersupplystore.com. It'll pop right up, send us a message, and that will come into our text service, which you can either manage through a web browser, or you can put the app right on your phone. Then you can text back and forth with your customer. And I think that there are probably some parallels that if you have, you could be a solo entrepreneur in the irrigation industry, and maybe that would work. But there might be some parallels for capturing leads through the website and getting back to people quickly, via LeadFerno. So check it out and, you know, give it a try. Andy Humphrey: This is not sponsored by LeadFerno. I just thought I would share because the topic for today, which is the question that this homeowner from Houston had—the inquiry came in through LeadFerno. So that's how we actually captured this. And I just thought that it would be a pretty fun way for me, specifically not to have to dream up new content to share with you. So this is a real customer inquiry that I'm going to read to you right now. Andy Humphrey: Actually, what I'm going to do is have an AI voice read this out loud so that it doesn't sound like me, and then we can talk about the response. So I'm going to roll the intro here, and then we'll get right into this question coming in from Roger in Houston. If you're old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of high-olive systems, this show is for you. Roger: Hey, Andy. This is Roger from Houston. Thanks for maintaining such a helpful website for homeowners with sprinkler systems. For 26 years, we've enjoyed excellent water pressure due to our location downhill from the city's water supply. Unfortunately, this year, the pressure decreased unexpectedly, before being restored to around 80 PSI. Roger: This was sufficient to operate our sprinkler systems effectively. However, the city had to reduce the water flow to 60 PSI at the request of a few residents who are experiencing excessive pressure. This adjustment has rendered our sprinkler system, as well as my neighbors', nearly useless. This situation was confirmed by two independent sprinkler experts. Roger: From what I understand, the city is considering the installation of irrigation booster pumps to address the issue. If excessive water pressure continues to be a problem, residents might be able to adjust their pressure-reducing valves, PRVs, to suit their needs, allowing the city to maintain an 80 PSI flow through the main pipes. Also, Andy, you mentioned you're available via text, email, and phone calls. I'd appreciate a chance to discuss this more at your convenience if you're still offering consultations. Our property has 7 irrigation zones, though currently, we're only using 4. Roger: As I mentioned, for over 2 decades, we've had reliable water pressure ranging from 80 to 100 PSI. Thanks to our favorable location. My home and sprinkler system each have their own PRV set to 80 PSI. Furthermore, I received a voicemail from a city supervisor who, like others, seems unaware of the underlying issues with our water system. Despite longstanding high water pressure, recent adjustments have significantly lowered it to 60 PSI, which is insufficient for our needs. Our systems are becoming ineffective due to these changes, not due to any alterations in the city's water pressure policy. Roger: But because of how the valves are being managed. Additionally, I spoke with Ashley at Waterworks, expressing my concerns that Ken, a supervisor, might not be fully aware of the situation here. Unlike two other colleagues who have been with the city for 35 years, after enjoying stable water pressure for so long, it's frustrating to face these sudden changes. I appreciate any thoughts you might have. Andy Humphrey: Okay. So if that wasn't clear, I would just say hit the back button, you know, go back, hit 30 seconds, backtrack, go back and play it again. But essentially, Roger appreciated our website. He'd watched a bunch of YouTube videos I'd made, I think he had watched one, specifically on pressure. And so he's encountering a situation in his neighborhood, and he's been, as you said, in his neighborhood for 26 years. Andy Humphrey: He's always had awesome pressure. And apparently, the city lowered the pressure, and he can't get a clear answer. But this brings up a really interesting point about pressure because it's not always the same. Andy, I'm not sure—you could correct me if I'm wrong—if this might be the case in your area of the country. I don't think cities guarantee a minimum pressure rating either. Andy Humphrey: So I don't think you can get something from the city that says, "We guarantee 65 PSI to your house." I don't think that exists. And, you know, the system's twenty-six years old. If it used to run great at a higher pressure, my first thought is that it was likely designed for that higher pressure, which is another great conversation piece because I think it would be very important to document the specification of your design. In other words, remind the homeowner that you, or the commercial client, that you are designing the system to operate at 60 PSI downstream of the backflow at 15 gallons a minute. For example, put that in your contract if that is what you're designing the system for so that if the performance of the system becomes questionable at some point in the future, and it turns out that it is because of pressure, and to diagnose this, you've tested the pressure, and it's 45. Downstream of the backflow, then you can reference your original signed contract. It states you designed the irrigation system at 65 PSI, downstream of the backflow preventer, and it is now not at 65. Andy Humphrey: So this is not this is not caused by you. It may still be, you know, air quotes here, "Your problem," but it doesn't mean that your system is now not performing; it means the pressure is not the same as it was when you designed the system. So I think that, you know, as we start to talk a little bit more about pressure, it's important to document some of these things and then see a real-world example here coming from Houston where the city pressure is not what it was. Andy Humphrey: Apparently, it was because a couple of homeowners complained that their pressure was too high, so they lowered it for everyone, which, again, I haven't—I have no way to prove this or not. I would think it would be easier for those couple of homes just to put in a PRV. Instead of lowering it for everyone and then requiring those who need more pressure to put in a booster pump. But again, it could be. If you recall a couple of episodes ago, when I was talking with Paul Bassett, he mentioned that sometimes aging infrastructure, in cities or cities with aging infrastructure may decide to lower the pressure a bit to try to preserve the integrity of their utilities. Andy Humphrey: And if this house is twenty-six years old, obviously, it's not new. It could have been new 26 years ago, but we don't know this. It may be aging infrastructure. So perhaps, again, don't know this to be true. Perhaps the city has elected to lower the operating pressure of their mains to preserve the integrity of their piping structure. Andy Humphrey: And that's why this is occurring. So another thought would be, and maybe you guys do this that just comes to mind, that let's say, for instance, the operating pressure that you have estimated to be downstream of the backflow preventer is 55. Might it be a good idea to design the system at 45 PSI so that you're leaving some room for it to go down? Or if the pressure downstream of the backflow is 70, maybe design the system with 50 PSI. That way, there's room for the pressure to drop over time versus designing the system for the exact amount of pressure that is available and or the exact amount of flow, maybe it would make sense to leave a little bit of room. Andy Humphrey: Again, you could document this pressure. So if it was 70 and you said you designed the system at 50, then you've left some room for the city to drop the pressure over time or other instances where the pressure may not be what it was when you designed the system. So that was the other piece that caught my mind for new installs. Maybe it would be a worthy idea to be conservative with your designs and not design to the maximum of the pipe size and or the pressure, but allow some room for it to drop. And there's probably a bunch of you guys listening to this. Andy Humphrey: Yeah. That's what we do. Okay, Andy. We got that. We do that anyway. Andy Humphrey: So congrats if that is you. And if not, maybe just something to consider. And yeah. So just, you know, my thoughts here on pressure, and I like this because this is a real-world example. I didn't make this up. Andy Humphrey: All I did was run it through some AI so that it could read it aloud and not be in my voice, but be in the voice of Roger from Houston. And I would love to know how you approach situations like this and how well, if at all, you document pressure on your irrigation systems. Was talking with Denny, customer service manager here this morning when we were reviewing this inquiry that came in. And I thought, man, maybe it would be a good idea when you're doing spring startups to, you know, put a pressure gauge on the system, document the static pressure on the site, commercial or residential, while you're doing your spring startup, make a note of it, so that if anything were to start occurring later on in the season, you know what your pressure was at the time you started up the system and you can use it as a reference point. So again, I don't know how many of you are doing it. Andy Humphrey: If you are, fantastic. If not, give it some consideration. That, it may be a good idea not only to record the static pressure at the time of installation but also the time of spring startup and perhaps the time if you take over maintenance on a system. If you've just taken over maintenance and it's a ten-year-old irrigation system, you know, you might decide to check the vitals and document the vitals, maybe write them down and take a picture. I'd probably say take a picture of that pressure gauge, on the backflow or on the hose bib. Andy Humphrey: So you've got more clear documentation should something arise. Yeah, I guess those are my thoughts, guys. If you have anything else you would like to add, feel free to send me a text message. As always, love chatting with you guys, and I don't think I shouted out to you before, Isaac, but appreciate you reaching out recently. Good luck down there in Florida. Andy Humphrey: And if anybody wants to say hello, my cell phone number is area code 208-908-3229, that does not go into LeadFerno. That actually comes into me directly. So if you text that number, you get me. And I always love hearing from you guys. And if there's anything you wanna add about pressure, how you use it, how you document it, what you do if a system that you either installed or maintained has a pressure problem. Andy Humphrey: What do you do first? What do you do second? How do you describe the situation to the client? So, again, thank you for listening. Please share this podcast with a friend or colleague or landscaper or landscape architect, irrigation designer. That would mean a lot to me, and hope you guys have a great weekend. Andy Humphrey: Thanks so much, and we'll see you next week on another episode.

Part 2 or 2, what I got RIGHT the 2nd time around in SaaS starting Leadferno. The decisions you make when starting a company can have lasting, even forever impacts on the path of the company, so getting as many right as you can matters. Let's look at the main decisions I feel I got right in starting Leadferno.Prior: Part 1 on what I got wrong.

Leadferno is my 2nd time around the block in SaaS. While I wasn't a founder the 1st time, I came on as a partner to lead sales and marketing a year in. I ultimately became CEO and then led GatherUp to an 8 figure acquisition 6 years later.  So I think that qualifies as a first trip combined with cofounding and leading multiple digital agencies for over 15 years. I saw the early decisions, made some of them, and had ones I wish I could “re do”. This episode, part one of two, is a look at core decisions I made solo, or with my cofounder, that we didn't get right for Leadferno. My experience makes me feel like I should have gotten more of these right. They are all costly in different ways. Some will still work themselves out or have had additional moves made to lessen their impact, while others led to additional bad decisions. That's just how it works.This wasn't my first rodeo, but I still got bucked a few different ways. Hopefully sharing these might help you lower your list of "wrongs" … first time, second time, or whatever time founding your SaaS company you're on.

Are you using text message marketing for your business? It's a communication channel that traditionally has been kept to personal chatting between friends and family. But, there's a whole world of possibilities when you think about text messaging from a business sense. In this Quick Hit, we welcomed on Aaron Weiche, the Co-Founder and CEO of Leadferno, who's helping to create delightful conversations at speed for businesses using messaging to close more leads faster. Catch the full episode here.

Welcome to today's episode of our podcast, where we delve into the art of mastering lead generation and conversion, specifically for law firms. In this episode, Casey is joined by Aaron Weiche, the brain behind LeadFerno, a tool revolutionizing how businesses connect with their clients.Aaron Weiche is the co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, a conversion platform for businesses to close more leads faster with text messaging. He is an entrepreneur, founding and leading multiple software companies and digital marketing agencies over the past 25 years.Prior to Leadferno, he was CEO of GatherUp, growing it to serving over 25,000 businesses and appearing in the INC 5000 and an acquisition in 2019. Aaron speaks internationally on digital marketing, customer experience, conversion, and messaging.

I take a look back at 2023 for Leadferno and share some of our numbers. We doubled our MRR over 2023, but I still feel we left a lot on the table. I also cover getting to meet with my co-founder Joel Headley in person last week to plan our 2024 and how much he matters to our business. Lastly we are giving the Leadferno website a big refresh for the first time since launching.

Another solo episode with Aaron. I talk about the features we've recently built for Leadferno. It's been 3 years since we broke code (over 2 years to market) and it I'm feeling like we have our true Version 1 - but my definition might be very different than yours or most. I discuss why I love "swiss army knife features" and our new report focused on quality and timing. Plus a marketing and sales update from last episode.Have feedback or ideas?  Email aaron@leadferno.com 

A bit of a change, it's a solo episode with just Aaron. I update a recent growth plateau for Leadferno. Churn is up some, leads and new accounts are down, and that combination makes for very little growth over the last 3 months. I share what I'm doing in marketing and sales to try to turn the tide and get back to better MRR growth in the coming months.If you have any feedback or suggestions on this solo format, please let me know:  aaron@leadferno.com Thanks for listening!

Today, my guest is Aaron Weiche.  Aaron is the co founder and CEO of LeadFerno. A text messaging platform for businesses to close more leads faster. Aaron is an entrepreneur, founding and leading multiple companies and digital marketing agencies over the past 20 years. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Aaron about lead generation marketing via text message.

Are you easy to work with?  Or does your client have to make all of the effort?  Do you proactively communicate or does the client have to always ask what is going on? Let's face it, when you hire a professional you don't want it to be more work for you? Communication is one of the biggest reason consumers don't think you are easy to work with and why you may be getting bad reviews.  There is a very thin line between a happy client and one who is angry.  Most often the difference is nothing more than a missed e-mail or unreturned phone call. Aaron Weiche of Leadferno joins me today to discuss Five Ways to Improve Customer Communication! It is so easy and common sense.  Don't forget to like us and share us!Gary* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your area. 

In this episode, Andy has a discussion with Aaron Weiche, the CEO of Leadferno.com. FREE Demo Here >>>> www.sprinklersupplystore.com/leadferno Aaron: What we found is text is so much easier for both the consumer and the business for a number of reasons. So that's really where things start, is you're on a website and you see that you can just ask a question, you know, gather more information, find out if they can help you by starting a text conversation. And now you have that conversation in the app. You likely use the most on your phone and the way you communicate with a majority of your contacts in your. INTRO: If you are an irrigation professional, old or new who designs, installs or maintains high-end residential, commercial or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. Conversation: Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerd Show. I'm delighted to have our guest today, Aaron Waki, the c e O of Lead. Ferno Lead Ferno helps businesses to convert website traffic into leads with a web-to-text widget for two-way s m s messaging, Facebook messaging, and Google business messages all in one shared inbox. Their goal is to help you close more leads faster. Aaron is an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience, funding and leading multiple software companies in digital marketing agencies. Prior to lead Ferno, he was the c e O of gather up scaling it to serve over 25,000 businesses. In appearing in the Inc 5,000 list, Aaron led gather up to its acquisition in 2019. He speaks internationally on digital marketing, customer experience, conversions, and messaging. Before I officially welcome Aaron to the show, I want you to know that this chat with Aaron is not sponsored. Endorsed. It's not a sales pitch. It is like literally me just expressing my own curiosity to learn more about SMS technology, how it can help service contractors, as well as an opportunity to get inside the mind of a technology ceo. So with that, Aaron, welcome to the Sprinkler Nerd Show. Andy, thanks so much for having me. And maybe by the time this is all over, you'll say, I endorse this, I promote this. It's wonderful. Right? That that's my goal today. Win you over . Perfect. Okay. I like the spin on that. Excellent. . So I think where I'd like to start, because. it's not as if you and I have known each other for years and years and years. I'd like to start at the beginning and have you give us a little bit of a background on both lead Ferno and s m s messaging as a, as a technology. Yeah. Uh, let's see. To summarize my longer form history, I am just a curious, creative person and luckily in the world, this whole internet thing came along, uh, and across my peripheral in the late nineties. And, uh, Building websites became something that I was very interested in. And if it wasn't for that, I don't know, maybe I'd be in, uh, woodworking or construction or something else where I could create and build. But instead, pixels and code, uh, became my way to build things. Um, so started a few different digital marketing agencies, building websites and SEO campaigns, and then social media. And then got specifically into software, just seeing how much software can help businesses automate things, grow, simplify, be more efficient. And that really intrigued me. And Lead Ferno itself was kind of a culmination of this history in all of these things. Um, one, I, when I was building all kinds of websites, I really sought a solution to. Transferring you from being a lurker on the website to a lead to that business as easy as possible. Um, we spend so much time, effort, money, all these things driving people to this website we have, but it's really not doing its job unless it turns them into someone that we know and can answer questions for and get into our sales process. Uh, so that was one big part of it. Then my previous company gather up was focused on customer feedback and online. And I just saw in mass from millions of pieces of customer feedback and reviews how important communication was for people in having a great or a poor experience. Uh, and then lastly, it was just kind of seeing as a, I've been in this for so long, just seeing the wave of how people were moving. From texting, being only a personal channel to being a do everything channel because it is easy. It's how we like to communicate, it's where all our personal communication is shifted towards. So this natural migration of, well, I want my interactions with businesses to be easier and convenient and have more control as well. So the culmination of all those things led to, uh, lead Ferno with the, you know, the simple precipice of. , are you easy to work with? And how do you be an easy business to work with? And that's what we've tried to build our solution around. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm excited because I actually, on my personal cell phone voicemail message, I don't know exact, can't remember exactly what I say, but I say something like, for a faster response, please text me your number or your message to this same cell phone number. And I would say that probably half the people.  that I don't know right, that are calling me the first time will text me. And it's just much easier to do that. And then I also just don't really all the time listen to messages on my phone because we're, we're communicating in a text world. So, um, yeah, I'm excited to learn about text messaging and how it can help service contractors. So let me ask you this. Does the, where does this start? What does a user do? How do they roll it? You know, deploy it. Yeah. So our primary focus is conversion, right? The, that same thing I talked about, turning a lurker into a lead. So in, in being that it, it's kind of funny, a lot of people would describe our solution as a bus business text messaging app, and they wouldn't be wrong. But primarily we're a conversion app, and what we found is, Text messaging is one of the easiest way to convert by starting these conversations because it's the lowest barrier to entry. So the tool we put forth for a business is. Buttons on their website that basically advertise that, Hey, if you have a question, you can text us. It's just that simple. So for most of us, we're used to seeing these types of icons or buttons regarding live chat located in the bottom, bottom right corner of a website. But what we found is text is so much easier for both the consumer and the business for a number of reasons. So that's really where things start, is you're on a website and you see that you can just ask a question. Um, you know, gather more information, find out if they can help you by starting a text conversation. And now you have that conversation in the app you likely use the most on your phone and the way you communicate with a majority of your contacts in your life. Yeah, so that's, that's where our main focus, um, Is on there. And that's how the majority of conversations get started. We're inbound, we're not s m s marketing. We're not a blast tool that's sending out hundreds of messages to people and hoping just a, a few want to take us up on our offer deal sale. So very, very different, uh, one to many versus a one-to-one, which is what we are. Yeah, it's so true what you said about the live chat. I'm just thinking through my own lens. I don't typically use live chat anymore because what happens is the experience you either get, you know, a bot that just points you to a support page when you really wanted a a person, or you get into a queue and you're like, I don't, I don't really want to sit here in front of my computer waiting for the chat to come. It would be much better. Like you said, if it just came on my phone so I could shut my computer down, walk away, knowing that I'll just get the response on my phone through the app that I use every day. It's so interesting when. You talk to business owners and they want a real-time solution, right? They understand the need to move customers faster into a communication cycle and touch base with them. And because live chat has been around longer, and we're also subject to it in our personal lives as consumers all the time. . That's where a lot of business owners gravitate to. Like, oh, here's a easy solution, or we should offer this chat, or whatever else. What they fail to forget is how they probably feel about every chat situation and experience that they have, which you just described. Some of them, you open it in a browser and they say, Hey, you're in queue. You're gonna, you know, Be this long, and so you jump to another tab and start doing things. 20 minutes later you remembered, you started a chat, you go back, the chat agent came. Yeah, they came, they left. You didn't actually get any help. The chat bots, which you know,  people are just so promised and we think, oh, great work being done for me. That sounds fantastic. What, what ends up happening is, you know, it is just kind of glorified website navigation and it's just pointing you to content that exists somewhere that you may or may not have found on your own or are having trouble finding, and maybe it does answer. Um, but at the end of the day, most people are using these kind of tools because what they really want is help from a human. . So when you compare that to web, to text, um, you get a number of different things that happen. One, it's completely portable. So if I start a conversation with a business as a consumer, I can now go to a meeting. I can go to lunch, I can pick my kids up. I am not held hostage to that tab. I'm gonna get a push notification from my texting app when they respond to me. So, , I have complete mobility. Number two, I'm not figuring out how to learn a different piece of software or where their send button is or everything else. I'm communicating again through the app that I know the best, uh, that I'm talking to my friends, family, coworkers, and hobbies and interests with, um, in a text messaging, uh, app that's there. And for the business. One of the big things that I found really interesting, we actually did a survey on. What consumers have for expected reply times and with live. That literally gonna be my next question is what is, yeah. What does the business have to do in order to meet the expectation of the customer? Yeah, so with live chat, it's steep. Over 50% of our survey of 2000 consumers said within minutes is the expectation of a reply. So now you just have seconds right to reply and meet that customer's expectation with texting a business. over 50% set a same day reply. That was the number one time range. So you're granting your staff, which as a small business, no one's like, oh, we got so many people sitting around. What are we gonna have them do? Oh, let's all have them answer live chats. Like that's, that's not happening. So now you've just granted yourself so much more time. Uh, for that user to be pleased or even delighted because then if you do get back to 'em within minutes cuz the timing worked out for you, um, then that's, that's even better for them and they're delighted with how prompt you are with your communication. And then lastly, as a business, and, and I've experienced myself in using live chat tools for, uh, agency and software companies that I've ran. Live chat becomes something that you maybe train one or two people on your team on how to use, right? There's a little bit of intimidation with it. You're turning yourself live to be available. You have to remember to shut it off. If you go to lunch, go away from your desk, go to a meeting. Anything else like that? But with texting, everyone that you employ already knows how to use it. So you can deploy this across so many more people and your availability just expands massively with it, and you're not training them on how to use it and what functions work. Like our app works just like a regular text app on your phone, except for you have these awesome business features that help with. auto replies in a library of saved messages you can use over again, and you can transfer full conversations to to other people. So both the consumer win and the business win, and that's a great thing when you get that win-win. Yeah, totally. So, uh, outside of the first kind of acquisition, uh, experience through texting, are there other ways that the business will continue to use the service with their customers, you know, on a, on an ongoing basis? Yeah, there's so many utility type features once you get into it and the beauty, the customer starts the conversation. They're giving you permission that they want texting as a channel. Um, so it's great because you definitely wanna be aware, uh, of those things and the consumers.  in control of that. But as you move along in the process, not only can it help you in pre-sales and answer prospect questions, but we all understand from other things like dentist appointments and medical appointments, things like that, you can send reminders on when you're gonna be there for service. you can reach out at different timing intervals if they're due for an inspection or should have something looked at or something news coming on the market. Or the timing just means, Hey, we should, you know, take a look at the system a as a whole. Anything else like that, you can ask for reviews after you've completed the service. Can you write us a Google review or write us a review on Facebook? Things like that. So there's all kinds of process, um, and places where texts can be just a great utility. When you think about it, there's so many things in business that if you were calling your customer about every little thing, right? Say in, in the irrigation industry, you're doing an install and it might be 2, 3, 4 days for that project. Calling that customer maybe once or twice on each of those days might feel a bit much to them, uh, a little bit information overload. They're not free to take your call, but if you're simply sending them a text each day like, Hey, great, here's what we got done today. Here's a couple photos of what took place in the project, and we'll be back tomorrow at 8:00 AM like. . Now the customer feels like, wow, these guys are great at customer service. I understood everything that happened when I got home from the office at 6:00 PM and they were already gone. Um, and you're building rapport and trust with them. So it's such a great connection tool because at the end of the day, it still is a personal channel even though you're using it in a business capacity. Yeah, and it's sort of. Displays to the customer that that's a modern business. This is a modern business using modern technology to make things more efficient for both parties. As it relates to that utility use of text messaging, messaging, is that something that you recommend they use Inside Lead Ferno, or does Lead Ferno integrate with other software suites? How? How does somebody.  what to use Lead Ferno four and what to use something else for, or how to put two different pieces of software together. Yeah, so all the things I just touched on, we do and offer. Um, I think some of the things you'd want to consider in probably the high level one, and it's how most people understand, like text marketing, we're focused on one-to-one conversations. As I mentioned before, we're not a one to many. We're not, you know, similar to like a, an email newsletter. We're not doing text blast and there's a few reasons for that. Um,  one. I've really found that in this being this personal channel and you having this one-to-one access to that customer, the last thing you wanna do is burn that by sending out a monthly or a seasonal sales deal or a service offer or things like that. Like if you have this one-to-one connection, don't go burn it because you're greedy to like, , try to drum up some business. And at the end of the day, when you're sending messages that are only focused on your business, like, help us sell more, buy from us, , you know, refer us to someone else, those kind of things. Like the customer's not excited to get that and they don't feel great about your brand. So for most businesses, That text blast. S m s marketing really doesn't work. There's ones that, it definitely does, especially in the e-commerce space, uh, that can definitely be a, a good idea and be very helpful. But for home service businesses, I definitely wouldn't recommend it. So I'd say look for a solution that focuses on one-to-one contact has things like auto replies, right? When a new lead comes in, we automatically send an instant text message welcoming that lead. Setting an expectation on, uh, reply so they know when they're gonna hear from you. We're asking them to add you to contact. So now you're a known contact for texting and calling and even referring you by sending that contact file to the neighbor or coworker down the line in the future. Scheduled messages. So if you're in front of the computer that night, you can set up all of your, uh, text messages you need to send out the next day. That might be service reminders or following up, or letting 'em know when their project's gonna start, or asking them if they had a chance to look at the bid. So you can do all that in the half hour, hour you have at your desk that night before you get back out and you're on site all day long and you don't have time to send those messages. Um, so those are the kind of things you definitely, you know, wanna be looking for in a platform. , how can I have things that help make my work more efficient and capitalize so when I do have time, I can crank out a lot of work and then the system will do things for me. Mm-hmm. . And then I, I think the bi, the biggest thing that most small businesses should look at. Regarding, you know, connecting to other pieces of software, um, is do they have a Zapier app? Most people are usually familiar with Zapier, which is another software tool, and its goal is to connect two pieces of software. So it's an easy way to do it. , um, well, I shouldn't say easy. That term is definitely subjective, but you, you can do it. So you don't need a developer involved. Or you can find someone that understands Zapier. And this allows you to do things like when a new lead is created in Lead Ferno, it automatically creates them as a lead in QuickBooks or a lead in my c r m. Um, so you're making those softwares talk to each other no matter where your customer comes in from. you still should have one piece of software that's your, you know, ultimate record of customers and, and engagement. Um, or you automatically move people into MailChimp for your email marketing. Mm-hmm. . So I, I would say, look at that. That's usually the best case cuz software that has, um, easy tools like Zapier that have an app and Zapier, so you connect them. Those are also ones that have APIs that if you need to do something more custom and and bring in a developer to do it, they're gonna be able to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Let's say that a homeowner. Saves the contractor's, you know, text message number in their phone from the initial engagement and they, six months later, can they send a text message that says, Hey, I have a broken sprinkler on my driveway. Can you send someone over? Absolutely. Yep. It's two-way text messaging. So once, once that number's there and the, the, the conversation is started, at any point in time, the customer can reach back out to them and then the business owner can reach back out to that customer at any point in time too. And, and that's again, why to me, it's so important to use this as a one-to-one channel because you can. A year, two years, five years down the road, reach out to that customer just to see how they're doing. Is everything working fine for them? Is there anything they, you know, would be interested in in talking about or anything else like that? And using that as one-to-one marketing opportunities and service opportunities instead of. you know, just that mass blast. I, I hope a couple reply to, to make me see me out of it. Ask the question like, how was your, if it's November, how was your water bill this past season? Were you happy with it? Or was it too high? How could we help you? You know? Yep. Potentially lower your water bill or something. Yep, absolutely. Or, or just doing things like, I mean, there's just so many things when you're in the, on the service side, right. Uh, if you're smart and you take pictures of the day in install and all those kind of things, and then say, you know, uh, a year later you're in that same neighborhood and you drive by their place and you take a photo of it and you reach back and you're like, Hey, we're doing another system not far from you guys. Here's what your place looked like a year ago. Here's what it looks like now. That's really awesome. It was fun to work on your project. Let us know if you have any needs, right? Like. , that would take you 60 seconds to do. But it would stick so hard with that customer, like, wow, this service company just thought of me. I've never had that before. Yes. And those are the kinds of differentiators that you need, right? And especially when someone's gonna ask for a referral or whatever else, and now you just so stick out in their mind. And as you pointed out, You're a save contact in their phone. So when somebody asks me and I say like, yeah, I'll, I'll just send you over their contact information from who I bought from, or, you know, who services me. That's just such an easy exchange, uh, for people nowadays. Yeah. So for the business, let's, for the contractor, I wanna make sure that they know, if you're listening to this, that.  that it's not as if your Messenger app on your phone is going to be full of 2000, you know, texts coming in. Can you tell us about what it looks like from the business user when they're on their phone? You know, cuz a lot of business, a lot of contractors are, you know, either 1, 2, 3, they're very small companies. A lot of times the guy re servicing the system is also the guy selling the system is also the guy answering the phone, et cetera. . Yep. So there's a couple of different benefits to using a business texting app. Um, so one, you should definitely seek out one that is both mobile and desktop. Um, I, I love using our desktop version cuz now I have a full keyboard to write out text messages and to send them and things like that. But also I'm on the go a lot and being able to like, Customers or respond to leads and whatever else when I'm on the go is, is important. And when you have that, when you have like a, an app like Lead Ferno on your phone, I'm getting a notification on my phone that there's a new lead in Lead Ferno, so I understand specifically what it is. I'm not just seeing, oh, I have 16 text messages piled up and some are personal, some are business and I might miss one or not, which know which one to go through. Like I specifically know this is business related because now. I'm treeing off my business and my personal text messages. If you have more than one person and you're having them help now instead of your customer's information sitting on their own personal phone, especially if they're in a sales or service role and they go to work for someone else, like you don't want all of your customer data leaking out. So now you have it a app where you can.  shut off. Having that employee have access to the app, and if you hire someone new, you can turn them on and add that. So you're centralizing and securing all of that, uh, customer information. Probably making your, I have a lot of people that are like, man, my life is so much easier now that texting goes through this app instead of my personal one, and I can three people over to it and I have saved messages to send and auto replies and, and things like that. Making my, my life a lot easier with it. So. , those are the things that I would just consider. And you know, somewhat to, to your question too is our system isn't gonna make leads come out of thin air, right? You need some web traffic to do it. So if you're not ranking well in Google local searches with your Google business profile, um, you know it, we're not gonna do as much help for you on the new lead. Where we will help you. If you're not asking for reviews or texting your customers after, um, a project and asking them to leave you a review, that's where we'll help you, and those more reviews will definitely improve your ranking. So you still can use us while traffic to your website is light. But if you're doing marketing, if you're doing some SEO and digital marketing and you're driving people to your website through social media and all these channels, you wanna be squeezed in every ounce of. Out of those, visiting your website and using a tool like this is, that's what it's designed to do, is starting as many conversations as possible from your web traffic. Yeah. Yeah. So before I ask you a couple questions, um, that aren't, that are related to the tech and how it works, can you talk to us about what the, like investment for somebody is, what it costs, what they could expect, those sorts of. Yeah. So, um, I, I would say you're gonna be anywhere from like $75 on up a month, uh, in a solution. Like our entry level starts at $150 a month. Mm-hmm. , um, there's no setup fee. Uh, I would always try to find someone, make sure they're doing month to month so that you can start, um, and stop it if it's not a, a great fit for you instead of an annual contract. Yeah. We do offer a discount if you pay annually, and typically what we see is. Invest in a piece of software where you can pay monthly three to six months in. You might know like, yep, my business runs way smoother and I can get a 10 or a 12 or a 15% discount paying annually. Now I have the trust and confidence, so now I'm willing to commit, uh, to a longer time on that. And then just make sure you understand how easy it is to set up. Right. Most of our customers are up and running in 10 to 15 minutes max. Um, so it's something you just don't wanna feel like you have to invest a ton of work, uh, to get up and running for you. So, , that investment should be under a few hundred dollars a month, uh, for most businesses or, or right around there. Um, and yeah, the efficiency that you'll gain from it will definitely, um, pay for itself. And as you can see, it doesn't take much converting leads to get an ROI on it. When, when people ask like, oh, is this something I should have looked into my, my question back to them as always, do you sell something where answering a few questions could make you hundreds or thousands of dollars? If you answer yes to that, you definitely wanna do. A test of this, um, and I would say be smart about your test, right? Most software has a two week free trial, but if you think magic will happen in two weeks, That's really not the, the ideal standpoint, right? The two weeks is to, it's easy to set up, get in, learn your way around it, but you wanna at least run it for, you know, 2, 3, 4 months. Especially during a normal time where you start getting inquiries based on seasonality and cycles, um, and things like that to properly evaluate it. Yeah. And it's a good reminder that you get out of something, what you put into something. So if you simply sign up with Lead Ferno and you do nothing, Magic isn't gonna happen. You have to. Yeah. You get out of it what you put into it. So put some work into it. Yep. Set it up. Make sure it's gonna work correctly. Um, I wanted to ask you about, uh, well first, let me remind the listeners that you know, if $150 is entry, that is one service, call one, either one. Saved service call, one new service call, or a more efficient way for someone who needs service to reach you that. In my opinion, it shouldn't be looked at. As I'm adding more overhead to my business, I'm add adding more expenses. It's actually an ad in order to either grow  or reduce actual costs. So by adding $150 or wherever it happens to lay out, this to me seems like a clear, it's a clear saver, not an added. Yep. That, that's a whole goal, right? Is to grow, uh, what's happening. So spend yeah, and spend this, spend this in seed and grow this in, in what it delivers, right? And potentially be able to operate a business. With that does more revenue with less people than ever before. Right? So how can a, how can a small business that 10 years ago, I'm just making this up guys, as a, as a number that did a million dollars and it had, you know, five employees, how could someone do 2.5 million and still have five employees? It's by deploying this type of technology that either helps grow sales and makes the business more. . Yep. So let me, I I would like to ask you, uh, this is the ha getting inside the c e o of a tech company, kind of at the beginning level, you know, before Lead Ferno became a thing and it was just a idea in your head and a blank piece of paper. What was the hardest part, you know, starting from that blank piece of paper and the idea to where you are now? Oh boy. . I mean, it's, it's definitely building the product, how you see it working. Um, there, there's such a misnomer in tech because we use so much tech across the board, right? And things that are actually like, not monumental, but take, uh, quite a bit of effort to make happen are things we just take for granted in our daily life, right? People look at. . You know, I do a search on Google and I can find all these things, and Gmail has all these features and my calendar has all these features, right? They've just become Staples, but they're built by companies that hun have hundreds, thousands of developers, decades of iteration now at this point, and things like that. So you get in and you start to build something from scratch. Yes, some of the pieces already exist, right? We're like tying in an s m s provider and what they already bring to the table. But we're building out all of our own interfaces and building out all our storage of information. And so there's just things that when you get into that, you, you have a plan in blueprints, but you're definitely gonna get thrown for some loops. You're gonna have some change orders, um, you know,  probably in the irrigation business. It's digging down a foot and finding some type of, uh, a large rock that you're like, this is a day of work to move this and this is exactly where we wanna run. Um, I thought this was a 30 minute fix and now I'm looking and it's a three day fix. Yes, absolutely. So I would say that that's definitely the most challenging part, is just kind of feeling your way, um, through that stuff. And you make a lot of decisions on the fly that you don't. , you, you do your best to understand what the, the short-term and long-term pros and cons might be. But you definitely don't always have very black and white or concrete information on that, so mm-hmm. that, that to me is, is definitely the hardest part. I've, I've always been lucky, whether it comes to me naturally or I've just honed it like. The vision side and seeing what it can be, um, and storytelling and evangelizing, all those things like come very easily to me and I'm easily inspired and love doing that stuff. Um, so that side sometimes can be really hard for other people. Where for me, like I can see all of it now, can we build against that vision that I have and, and make that come true? That's, that's definitely the hard part. Yeah. Let me, let me, uh, add on to that. So when you have that vision and you clearly see it, How ha was your estimate on time? In other words, you said, okay, I have this vision and in one year we're gonna have X product. How accurate was your timing on how long it was gonna take to build it? Let, let's see. By which way I answer this. So I was, let's say I was half right, but the truth is, My half right meant it took twice as long. Okay. So I, I, I was pretty much hoping to have our full V1 to market, um, within six months timeframe. And it, it took a full year. Uh, so we, we were able to release a beta version about eight months in, um, which was fine, but it wasn't a real, you know, allowed us to test with some early users, get feedback, stuff like that. But it wasn't a ready for market product until another four months after that. And, , that's really hard when you're building that stuff and you can't generate revenue for that year long, uh, time that, that definitely weighs on you. It's a challenge. Yeah. And as you're building it, you can't see what you can't see until you can finally see it. So I, I can understand how that can take a, a long, a long time, and it's something that I'm. Personal leads starting to learn more about is this patience, you know, just cuz you can see it now, it is clear in your mind. Yep. Having patience to play a little bit longer game than you thought you needed to play is probably, uh, a realistic expectation of bringing something to market. Yeah. Oh. And as you know, a, as a business owner and entrepreneur, like time is the ultimate commodity, right? So you're trying to do as much as you can, as fast as you can, but usually in the, the right way. So balancing those things.  and patients can be really hard because usually business owners, you have a certain drive level. Like that's what's pushing you to do it on your own and to accomplish things and to grow and everything else. And when you have to temper that with patience on what's realistic or what the team can handle in that timeframe, like it's definitely a personal dilemma that you have to do a lot of self-talk to work through at times. So I'd like to ask you, do you have a process or how do you decide what new features to include in the software? And do you have a process for that? A formalized process? No. Uh, but it comes from a, a few different areas. Um, one, number one is customers. Um, we have quite a bit of communication. We have very open lines, right? Our customers can text us, they can email us. Um, we're sending out communication on what we're up to and things we're doing every month. So we have a very, Uh, two-way communication with them and we track what they're asking for. So when we start to see things being asked repeatedly, 3, 4, 5, 6 times, um, and we're always, when they ask for it, we're also gonna ask use case. Tell us about why you're thinking that. , you know, what, what, what are you trying to accomplish with it? We wanna understand those things as well because as we all know, customers sometimes ask for something specific because that's only the way they see it. Yeah. So you have to ask some why and dig a little bit deeper to really understand, well, what problem are they trying to solve? Is there a better way to do it? Um, or, or in my book, I love finding solutions that not only solve their problem, but like six other problems. Right, right. Like the, the, the Swiss Army Knife Solution. It's maybe not as, as elegant or refined as what they wanted, but it solves their problem. And six other use cases can use it to solve their problem. Yeah. Or a hundred or yes. Hey, we can go from this industry and use the same fe, uh, feature in this industry. In this industry. In this industry. Yes. . Yep. Those are super valuable. So that's definitely a, a big piece of it. Another part would be, you know, just staying in tune with the industry. Um, you know, paying attention and seeing what goes on in the industry. Competitors, somewhat similar companies, you know, things like that. Like you just have to, especially in tech, you have to have your. You know, hand on the pulse of what things are. And I'm really big into pulling from all kinds of experiences. I use so many apps just to feel the experience and see what they're doing. Like we can benefit from things that the Airbnb app is doing. We can benefit from what Delta Airlines is offering in their app. Like, there's just so many opportunities to, again, peel away what they're selling or what the process is or anything else. And like how could this apply, uh, to businesses and consumer? you know, using, using our technology. . And then the last is, is just personal, like as I take it in and how do I see those things and how do I see the evolution with the background I've had and the conversations I have with business owners and whatever else. Like, uh, I find it fun to have my own take and angle on some of those things with like, why are things great? Why do they matter? What, what's coming next? Um, and being able to apply those. So those three things usually, you know, work, work together really well to surface. Either give it votes of confidence or really allow you to think deeply on how it can be used and how best to build and deploy. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's see. I want, before I forget, I wanna mention to everyone listening that I'm going to go through the process myself of setting this up on, uh, my e-commerce website. So I'm saying this now so that I have to live by it and actually go do it cuz it's not there right now as we're recording this. But if you go to sprinkler supply store.com/lead fur.  on that page, I'm gonna put a one of Erin's lead boxes. And so if you wanna try it out, go to sprinklr supply store.com/lead ferno and send me, this will come to me personally. Send me, uh, an inquiry and we can experiment together with this text messaging app, how it works. And you'll get to see it from the consumer side, right? Because I'll be using it as the business and you listening will be using it from the consumer. So with that, Aaron, I want to give you kind of like just, uh, the last minute here to, you know, say anything that you haven't mentioned and let people know the best way to either contact you, your team, or, uh, sign up with lead feno. Yeah. Uh, if you go to lead ferno uh.com and up in the top, click to go to our blog. We publish a ton of articles, so if you wanna learn more, um, I'm definitely an education-based seller. Uh, I want people to understand, get their questions answered, get familiar so they can understand h how to, how to use this best. Um, so there's a lot of information there where you can see how our features work. You can understand why texting is so popular. Some of the surveys we've done. Things. Um, and on our site you can just try it as well. The same way, uh, that you can go and, and take Andy's test on there. You can just click on ours and, um, click to be able to, uh, talk and answer questions. You can book a demo, um, right from it as well, so you can schedule a half hour call where I'll walk you through one-to-one and answer any questions that you have or another member o of the team will, so. . Really easy to do those things and like I said, thi this, you know, most likely is something that you want to test. You're gonna be better off knowing yes or no will this work. Um, for me, if you feel good about the web traffic that you're generating and what your search rankings look like and, and stuff you're putting out on social media to, to drive traffic, I said we just wanna help you squeeze more juice from that and, and start more conversations. Welcome any and all, um, questions, conversations, and anything else like that. If you happen to be on Twitter, I'm very active there until Elon shuts it down or melts it away or whatever else is going on with that lately. Uh, so you can always connect with me on Twitter. Awesome. How do they find you on Twitter? What's your handle? Yeah, at Aaron Whitey, so my full name, Aaron, w e i c h e, on. . Yep. And I'll have your name in the title or the show notes, so if you don't remember what he just said, it'll be right there in the title. So, Karen, I, I'm lucky. I, I think I'm the only Aaron Waki on the planet Earth, so if you Google Aaron Waki, you're just gonna get, you'll get my Twitter handle, all kinds of things. So I, I'm easy to, I'm easily stackable online. Very good. Well, thank you so much. I learned a bunch, and just as a final. Sort of thought I had for, um, for those of you listening, I think that if you use a tool like this and your customers are at all, even the littlest bit wowed by the experience, they're likely to tell someone because they've had a good experience. And so if you want to be the talk of the town, um, you should start using technology like. So that you can gain more customers through word of mouth and through building those better relationships through the one-on-one messaging opportunity. So thank you so much, Aaron. Appreciate having you. It was awesome, Mandy. Thank you.

#366 Mail-Right Show: With Special Guest Aaron Weiche, CEO & Cofounder of Leadferno How to Close More Leads with Text Messaging Real estate agents, did you know that communication is evolving fast and over 89% of consumers want to 2-way message with your business? Now you can leverage a business text messaging app that combines SMS and multiple messaging services. You can even enable your existing business phone number to send and receive text messages. Aaron Weiche (WHY-KEY) is the co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, a text messaging platform for businesses to close more leads faster. Aaron is an entrepreneur, founding and leading multiple software companies and digital marketing agencies over the past 20 years.Prior to Leadferno, he was CEO of GatherUp, growing it to serving over 25,000 businesses and appearing in the INC 5000. Aaron lead GatherUp to an acquisition in 2019. Aaron speaks internationally on digital marketing, customer experience, conversion, and messaging. https://leadferno.com/ -------------------------------------- The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show Jonathan Denwood & Robert Newman https://www.mail-right.com jonathan@mail-right.com 775-372-6322 https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa -------------------------------------- Robert Newman InboundREM https://inboundrem.com --------------------------------------

A look back on 2022 and what took place for Leadferno and Whitespark. Features, sales, wins, challenges, hires, mistakes, and more are shared. We also look ahead to what kicks off 2023 for each of us.

How to use text message marketing to generate and convert leads with Aaron Weiche. Using SMS (texting) can eliminate friction in your sales process and deliver the responsiveness and speed that many customers expect. Aaron is the cofounder and CEO of Leadferno, a text messaging platform for businesses to close more leads faster. Aaron is an entrepreneur, founding and leading multiple companies and digital marketing agencies over the past 20 years. Business communication is evolving fast and, according to Leadferno, over 89% of consumers want to 2-way message with your small business. Henry Lopez is the host of The How of Business podcast – helping you start, run and grow your small business. The How of Business is a top-rated podcast for small business and entrepreneurs. Find the podcast, resources and trusted service partners for small business owners and entrepreneurs at our website.

There are several benefits to texting with your customers and potential customers: Many people use texting as their primary communication method. Including a text box on your website helps potential customers easily reach you. A text conversation can help build a long term relationship while a chat is just a session. In this episode we dive deep into the advantages of texting with Leadferno Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Weiche. Aaron also speaks to some of the concerns that small business owners have about texting with their customers and how Leadferno has been built to handle those concerns. Listen now to learn about the benefits of texting and how you can leverage it to bring in more customers and increase customer satisfaction.

GuestAaron WeicheCo-founder / CEO @ Leadferno [@Leadferno]On Twitter | https://twitter.com/AaronWeicheOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronweiche/HostBrendon RodOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/brendon-rod____________________________This Episode's SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?

GuestAaron WeicheCo-founder / CEO @ Leadferno [@Leadferno]On Twitter | https://twitter.com/AaronWeicheOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronweiche/HostBrendon RodOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/brendon-rod____________________________This Episode's SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?

Full episode: This Tech Tool Turns Website Lurkers to Leads and Added $58K to My Wife's GCIAre you a regular Walkthrough™ listener? You're invited to join our Facebook mastermind for Walkthrough™ listeners. Connect with other listeners and the guests you hear on the show, get exclusive content, influence future episodes, and more!Links & Show Notes Leadferno business texting platform Chatting and sending messages is #1 smartphone activity - study mentioned in this episode Survey: Texting is the Preferred Way to Communicate - survey mentioned in this episode NAR 2021 Profile of Buyers and Sellers - data mentioned in this episode 89% of consumers want to have two-way conversations with businesses via messaging - data mentioned in this episode CariMcGee.com - website mentioned in this episode, see Leadferno widget at bottom right corner Survey: Response Times for Text Messages vs. Live Chat - survey mentioned in this episode Podium - mentioned in this episode TextMagic - mentioned in this episode HeyMarket - mentioned in this episode Join our Facebook mastermind for The Walkthrough™ listeners HomeLight's Agent Resource Center Follow and listen to The Walkthrough™: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | YouTube

Are you a regular Walkthrough™ listener? You're invited to join our Facebook mastermind for Walkthrough™ listeners. Connect with other listeners and the guests you hear on the show, get exclusive content, influence future episodes, and more!Links & Show Notes Leadferno business texting platform Chatting and sending messages is #1 smartphone activity - study mentioned in this episode Survey: Texting is the Preferred Way to Communicate - survey mentioned in this episode NAR 2021 Profile of Buyers and Sellers - data mentioned in this episode 89% of consumers want to have two-way conversations with businesses via messaging - data mentioned in this episode CariMcGee.com - website mentioned in this episode, see Leadferno widget at bottom right corner Survey: Response Times for Text Messages vs. Live Chat - survey mentioned in this episode Podium - mentioned in this episode TextMagic - mentioned in this episode HeyMarket - mentioned in this episode Join our Facebook mastermind for The Walkthrough™ listeners HomeLight's Agent Resource Center Follow and listen to The Walkthrough™: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | YouTube

This episode is sponsored by our friends at LeadFerno. LeadFerno allows you to text with customers right from your website using a powerful messaging inbox – so your team can increase conversions, close leads faster, and delight your customers. Right now, members of the Eggs! community can get a free trial of the LeadFerno platform. Just visit eggscast.com/leadferno for your free trial today!  ----Hey everyone, and welcome back to Eggs! Today's special guest is co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, Aaron Weiche. Aaron has been instrumental in building Leadferno into a world-class web-to-text messaging platform that enables businesses to close more leads more quickly. But this isn't all he's done. He is an established entrepreneur and multiple-time founder, running several companies and digital marketing agencies over the past 20 years.Before Leadferno, he was CEO of GatherUp, scaling it to serve over 25,000 businesses and appearing in the INC 5000 — not to mention guiding it through a successful acquisition in 2019. In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, Aaron speaks internationally on digital marketing, customer experience, conversion, and messaging.Joining us today for a conversation about leveraging text messaging as a tool to engage with our audience, the state of digital marketing in 2022, creating a meaningful customer experience, and so much more. Please join us in welcoming to the show CEO of Leadferno, Aaron Weiche.Our Guest:Aaron WeicheCo-founder and CEO at Leadfernohttp://leadferno.com/----Credits:Hosted by Ryan RoghaarTheme music: "Perfect Day" by OPMThe Carton:https://medium.com/the-carton-by-eggsThe Eggs Podcast Spotify playlist:bit.ly/eggstunesThe Plugs:The Showeggscast.com@eggshow on twitter and instagramOn iTunes: itun.es/i6dX3pCOn Stitcher: bit.ly/eggs_on_stitcherAlso available on Google Play Music!Mike "DJ Ontic" shows and infodjontic.com@djontic on twitterRyan Roghaarhttp://rogha.ar

Aaron was considering buying a new boat. He exchanged emails with a local dealership over four days just to get a price quote. Each email wasted time: the whole exchange could have taken 15 minutes over text, but it took 96 hours over email. He didn't buy that boat. He knew that trying to buy from a small business shouldn't be a massive effort.That snail's-pace quote inspired him to make communication better through messaging by creating Leadferno, the company bridging the conversational gap, allowing you to text with customers right from your website using a powerful messaging inbox – so your team can increase conversions, close leads faster and delight your customers.Link to Aaron Weiche's company:https://leadferno.com/Link to Aaron Weiche's socials:https://twitter.com/AaronWeichehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronweiche/Grab a copy of my book:https://partsmanagerpro.gumroad.com/l/qtqax"The Parts Manager Guide" - https://www.amazon.com/Parts-Manager-Guide-Strategies-Maximize-ebook/dp/B09S23HQ1P/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3UZYOGZJUNJ9K&keywords=parts+manager+guide&qid=1644443157&sprefix=parts+manager+guid%2Caps%2C244&sr=8-4Please remember to like, share and leave your comments.Videos are uploaded weekly.For the full video you can find it here on my YouTube channel:https://youtu.be/FSj2rM6p8QAIf you want me to continue making videos like these, please donate to our paypal account: paypal.me/partsmanagerproVisit my website (still under construction):https://sites.google.com/view/partsmanagerpro/contact#h.7lcvniobaq42Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS*This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Most business uses email as their primary communication channel with their prospects and customers. As email has been tried, tested, and proven to work.But have you thought of using text messages? In this episode of Leads to growth podcast, you're going to learn how messages can prove to be the next big thing or how businesses can use text messages to improve their profits. Today's guest is Aaron Weiche, Co-Founder and CEO of LeadFerno. In this episode, Aaron discussed how text messages are outperforming emails by a huge margin. How text messages help in providing a great customer experience. Glimpse of the episode… Why and how text messages get a massive 95% open rate within just 3 minutes of sending.How to create text messages a 2-way communication channel to provide excellent customer experience.How to close more deals using text messages.Join the NASP community today by becoming a Free Member: https://bit.ly/2zWeMmI

Times are changing and so is the way that businesses communicate with their customers. In this episode, Whitney is deep diving with co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, Aaron Weiche, on how to convert website traffic into actual leads through the use of text campaigns. Texting with customers is changing the game, not only for the customer, but for the business. Get ready for actionable steps on how to create an incredible customer communication experience through texting. Aaron Weiche on LinkedIn Leadferno Website

Aaron Weiche is the co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, a text messaging platform that aims to help close more leads faster. He is an entrepreneur, founding and leading multiple companies and digital marketing agencies over the past 20 years. Prior to Leadferno, he was the CEO of GatherUp where he led the company to experience 5X growth in a span of four years and appeared in the INC 5000 list for 2019. He continues to share his expertise as a co-host for a podcast on running a SaaS company called TheSaaSVenture.com, as well as through international speaking engagements on the topics of digital marketing, customer experience, conversion, and messaging. In this episode, we talked about text messaging, digital marketing, conversion…

Marcia talks with text expert and CEO of LeadFerno, Aaron Weiche how to communicate with your prospects and customers in the most convenient and natural method via text messaging. Aaron explains that many will read and respond to a text message on the phone in their hand yet rarely open or reply to an email. It's a way to communicate briefly and engage with your audience in a more convenient way. Aaron has an amazing platform for streamlining business texting and he's offering listeners a free 14-day trial. Check out www.LeadFerno.com ================= Join Marcia on her FREE training "How To 10X Your Profit & the value of your firm - Register @ www.10XYourFirm.com Please subscribe & ring the bell for reminders about next week's show. ================= About Marcia: She is a business growth strategist helping service-based professionals to increase their profits and strengthen their business so that it is worth selling someday. She works closely with her clients to turn their business into an attractive & profitable business asset they can enjoy until they decide it's time to stop. She helps them get a return on their business investment. Marcia is the CEO of Trajectory Consulting & can be found at www.TrajectoryBiz.com Curious and have questions? Text me @ (949) 229-2112

Are you using text message marketing for your business? It's a communication channel that traditionally has been kept to personal chatting between friends and family. But there's a whole world of possibilities when you think about text messaging from a business sense. Text messaging is the #1 preferred communication channel, doesn't require immediate responses, allows for proactive but non-invasive reminders and value-adds, and provides for a phenomenal first-mover advantage as a business. We wanted you to hear from the best of the best when it comes to text message marketing, so we welcomed on Aaron Weiche. He's the Co-Founder and CEO of Leadferno, helping to create delightful conversations at speed for businesses using messaging to close more leads faster. And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don't hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com. FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/forthrightpeople.marketingagency INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/forthrightpeople/ LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/company/forthright-people/ WORKSHEETS https://www.forthright-people.com/worksheets VIRTUAL CONSULTANCY https://www.forthright-people.com/shop

Get your 2-week free trial of Leadferno Took five days over email to try to buy a boat when it could've/should've been a 5-minute discussion SMS helps you convert lurkers to leads quickly High risk and high reward to build your own Text blasts are great for e-commerce Consumers like the two-way features of text, i.e., it's a utility Broke code in early 2021 Sept 2021 went to market "The Lead Box" is always visible for the consumer to engage Customize the buttons and the movement Channels Put the top conversions in front of the customer Go right to text Link out to any URL like your scheduling tool Click to call and track it Primary button Icon (he recommends including "Text" since it's a game changer!) Reporting Google Analytics Funnel Message with Facebook Messenger and Google Business Messages No broadcast SMS, purely one-to-one "Add to Contacts" Free 800 number Can port over landline Turn lurkers into leads." All, Unassigned, Me folders First-come, first-served by sales reps Transfer communications Management can oversee conversations Orange, Green, Blue, Grey Integrates with CRMs, but the SMS is sent from inside Leadferno Zapier integration and an API for custom integrations Instant auto-reply to establish immediate contact During business hours After hours Run multiple profiles Segmentation of inboxes Service departments or locations Have one account but multiple profiles for each location Everything is time-stamped and user-stamped Shortcuts, i.e., snippets Team Personal Conversations can be transferred/assigned Schedule texts in the future for follow-up Closeout conversations as Won or Lost Start new conversations I hate convincing prospects Service requests Google reviews Two-week free trial Watch Previous Episodes of The CRM Sushi Podcast Links Mentioned In The CRM Sushi Podcast Get your 2-week free trial of Leadferno

Businesses are always looking for better ways to communicate with their customers, and text messaging has proven to be an excellent solution. In this Expert Insight Interview, we welcome Aaron Weiche, Co-Founder and CEO of Leadferno.

** Are you a Martech Enthusiast? Subscribe to our 2-weekly newsletter at clubmartech.com ** In this episode, Elias has a chat with Aaron Weiche, the Co-Founder and CEO of Leadferno, a  2-way business messaging platform. The topics we discuss include: Possibilities of text messaging in your marketing mix (SMS, social messaging) Best practices for the use of business messaging Differences in B2B and B2C use Costs and benefits associated with the use of business messaging How to measure results and attribution LinkedIn profile Aaron Weiche Leadferno Website The Marketing Technology Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Guys, the #1 Martech agency in Europe. If you want to be on this podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, visit our website at marketingguys.com or contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

Professional Sales Tips you'll learn today on The Sales Podcast... Co-founder and CEO at Leadferno  He's a starter Self-taught himself how to build a website Microsoft Front Page Moved into SaaS development 8-9 years ago There are lots of gaps as you grow that you must find and fill Requires self-awareness Related episodes and posts Hear How Brandon Bornancin Started Seamless.AI Hear How Jon Ferrara Started Nimble CRM Are you willing to get burned and recover and rebuild? Digital helps him be creative and express himself You can build and fail fast and start over quickly with digital Leadferno focuses on SMS He's all about conversions, which means having conversations with web visitors Offer your customers multiple channels to communicate with you Funnels and lead capture can be crazy The power of choice is huge His goal is to help you start a conversation He's seeing people are more resilient now after getting tossed around during COVID They know they must be connected to their customers Content creation is hard, especially for small businesses He likes to write longer form content The power of choice is huge. Give your customers options." Sales Growth Tools Mentioned In The Sales Podcast Visit Leadferno for your free trial

Erin Links:Google - GMB App Dead - https://support.google.com/business/answer/11402083Twitter Rolls Out Ability to “Unmention” - https://twitter.com/twittersafety/status/1546555047630159872Why Having A User-First Approach To SEO Is Important - Jesse McDonald - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/user-first-seo/456351/Google Indexing Problems - Barry Schwartz - https://searchengineland.com/google-confirmed-indexing-issue-affecting-a-large-number-of-sites-386526Content Consolidation Can Improve SEO - Dan Taylor - https://searchengineland.com/content-consolidation-seo-386518Carrie's LinksGoogle Discover Stories With TikTok, Facebook, YouTube For Destination Queries - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discover-destinations-stories-33754.htmlGoogle Taking Action On Recent One-Star Review Scams & Blackmail Threats - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-star-review-scams-blackmail-33764.htmlRestaurants Face an Extortion Threat: A Bad Rating on Google (paywall) - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/dining/google-one-star-review-scam-restaurants.htmlhttps://support.google.com/business/thread/171274322?hl=en - https://support.google.com/business/thread/171274322?hl=enLocalU Tickets & Sponsors - https://localu.org/den22/#sponsorsZipsprout - https://zipsprout.com/TheTransparency CO - https://askfortransparency.com/Whitespark - https://whitespark.ca/Leadferno - https://leadferno.com/SterlingSky - https://sterlingsky.ca/

Erin Links:Google - GMB App Dead - https://support.google.com/business/answer/11402083Twitter Rolls Out Ability to “Unmention” - https://twitter.com/twittersafety/status/1546555047630159872Why Having A User-First Approach To SEO Is Important - Jesse McDonald - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/user-first-seo/456351/Google Indexing Problems - Barry Schwartz - https://searchengineland.com/google-confirmed-indexing-issue-affecting-a-large-number-of-sites-386526Content Consolidation Can Improve SEO - Dan Taylor - https://searchengineland.com/content-consolidation-seo-386518Carrie's LinksGoogle Discover Stories With TikTok, Facebook, YouTube For Destination Queries - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-discover-destinations-stories-33754.htmlGoogle Taking Action On Recent One-Star Review Scams & Blackmail Threats - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-star-review-scams-blackmail-33764.htmlRestaurants Face an Extortion Threat: A Bad Rating on Google (paywall) - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/dining/google-one-star-review-scam-restaurants.htmlhttps://support.google.com/business/thread/171274322?hl=en - https://support.google.com/business/thread/171274322?hl=enLocalU Tickets & Sponsors - https://localu.org/den22/#sponsorsZipsprout - https://zipsprout.com/TheTransparency CO - https://askfortransparency.com/Whitespark - https://whitespark.ca/Leadferno - https://leadferno.com/SterlingSky - https://sterlingsky.ca/

Join us for this week's Suds & Search to hear from Aaron Weiche, Co-founder & CEO of Leadferno, about why you should ditch form fills for text, how his tool integrates with Google Business Messages, and about his upcoming speech at LocalU

 On today's episode, Shannon talks with Aaron Weiche from Leadferno.  Have you ever wanted to close more leads?  Of course, who doesn't?  But have you considered closing those leads by using a text service directly from your website?   Not only can you send text messages, photos, emojies, and links through SMS/MMS; but you can even enable landlines to accept SMS. Stop having employees' text from their own number. Be sure to listen to this episode to learn more about this new technology.Also, find out how the podcast can be heard throughout the plain communities by dialing the number 330-997-3055. If the number is busy, just dial again! For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.This episodes Sponsors:Studio Sponsor: Union Grove LumberMini Barn: Idea RoomHigh Barn: Shed Haulers BashMini Barn:  Shedsforsale.com

Chewy's eating your marketing lunch straight outta the bowl, and Supreme Court rulings may seem removed from legal marketing, but this could be the moment to serve your community with empathy and a bit of humanity. ----- You want to see great customer service? Take a look in your pet's food bowl. Gyi and Conrad discuss the recent virality of Chewy's exceptional customer service and highlight, comparatively, how maybe—just maybe—your clients should expect more humanity from their lawyer than from a dog food company. Can adding a touch of empathy (hard for lawyers, we know) to your customer service make you go viral? Maybe not, but this is the genesis of referral marketing at its finest. And, yeah, it's been talked about a lot lately, but the elephant in the room is the end of Roe v. Wade. The guys talk about what this means not only to the country, but for cause marketing in the legal world. Don't worry, the show's not shifting into political punditry, nor advocating for cheap or showy opportunism; this is about lawyers being humans. Lawyers have to stand for something, so the guys discuss why it is OK to wear your cause, whatever it may be, on your marketing sleeve. The News: Bob Ambrogi spotlights Mighty's unique approach to serving victims of personal injury. A look at Aira's “State of Link Building 2022” about building connections on the web. LeadFerno's chat and texting capability now connects to your Google Business Profile. Mentioned in This Episode: Lunch Hour Legal Marketing now on YouTube:  Bob Ambrogi, “Uneasy About Billboard Lawyers?”  Mighty.com State of Link Building 2022, from Aira Chewy Tweet  Agencies for Reproductive Rights Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Supreme Court Clio Legal Trends 2021 Report

Part 2 on what Leadferno and Whitespark are doing for marketing in 2022. Aaron talks about exploring paid search, co-webinars and hiring a service for cold outreach to book demos. Darren has been launching a ton lately and talks about their video marketing, landing pages and referrals.

Chewy's eating your marketing lunch straight outta the bowl, and Supreme Court rulings may seem removed from legal marketing, but this could be the moment to serve your community with empathy and a bit of humanity. ----- You want to see great customer service? Take a look in your pet's food bowl. Gyi and Conrad discuss the recent virality of Chewy's exceptional customer service and highlight, comparatively, how maybe—just maybe—your clients should expect more humanity from their lawyer than from a dog food company. Can adding a touch of empathy (hard for lawyers, we know) to your customer service make you go viral? Maybe not, but this is the genesis of referral marketing at its finest. And, yeah, it's been talked about a lot lately, but the elephant in the room is the end of Roe v. Wade. The guys talk about what this means not only to the country, but for cause marketing in the legal world. Don't worry, the show's not shifting into political punditry, nor advocating for cheap or showy opportunism; this is about lawyers being humans. Lawyers have to stand for something, so the guys discuss why it is OK to wear your cause, whatever it may be, on your marketing sleeve. The News: Bob Ambrogi spotlights Mighty's unique approach to serving victims of personal injury. A look at Aira's “State of Link Building 2022” about building connections on the web. LeadFerno's chat and texting capability now connects to your Google Business Profile. Mentioned in This Episode: Lunch Hour Legal Marketing now on YouTube:  Bob Ambrogi, “Uneasy About Billboard Lawyers?”  Mighty.com State of Link Building 2022, from Aira Chewy Tweet  Agencies for Reproductive Rights Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Supreme Court Clio Legal Trends 2021 Report

Today's guest is Aaron Weiche CO-FOUNDER & CEO AT LEADFERNOStart your Free Trial or Request a Demo at LeadfernoIf you are interested in finding fantastic guests for your podcast check out  KitCaster because they make my life incredibly easy by finding me incredible guests and saving me so much timeFollow me on Instagram 

Darren and Aaron talk about the SaaS marketing strategies for Whitespark and Leadferno in 2022. We covered marketing your SaaS features, podcast interviews and events. In covering just some of what we are doing - we declared this part 1, with part 2 to come! No doubt marketing your SaaS is so important in 2022.

 Mike's Links:How Macy's set out to conquer the department store business — and lost - https://www.retaildive.com/news/how-macys-set-out-to-conquer-the-department-store-business-and-lost/608277/Amazon to open first physical clothing store - https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-to-open-first-physical-clothing-store/617416/Google deceived consumers about how it profits from their location data, attorneys general allege in lawsuits - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/24/google-location-data-ags-lawsuit/Gig Workers Were Promised a Better Deal. Then They Were Outsourced - https://www.wired.com/story/gig-economy-outsourcing-uk/Google: SEO Site Migrations Are Hard Because URL Signals Need To Be Forwarded - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-video-site-migrations-32775.htmlUnderstand the screening and verification process - United States - Local Services Help -https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/6226575?hl=en&co=GENIE.CountryCode%3DUnited+StatesGoogle is teaming up with 3C stump for SMB support against Google regulation - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1483859137293344775?s=12Google Autocomplete: A Complete SEO Guide - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-autocomplete-a-complete-seo-guide/251407/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share-back-trafficDeprecation schedule  |  Google Business Profile APIs  |  Google Developers - https://developers.google.com/my-business/content/sunset-datesGoogle's new ederated model for the local API l - https://developers.google.com/my-business/preview/content/upcoming_releasesEverything You Need to Know About the Google Business Profile Manager Agency Dashboard - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-google-business-profile-manager-agency-dashboard/Carries links: Colan Nielsen presenting at Dudacon helping clients grow with local SEO - Tue, Jan 25  1 PM PT -https://t.co/e2kFuzaJYQThe State of Local Search 2022 – January 26, 2021 – 10am ET - Bright Local - https://www.brightlocal.com/the-state-of-local-search-2022-webinar/A Look at Leadferno with Aaron Weiche - 2/8 Webinar -https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2NQobjHMR3eW1aDRYuuTkQTemporary Move for a Medical Practice | Local Search Forum - Local Search Forum - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/temporary-move-for-a-medical-practice.58590/

 Mike's Links:How Macy's set out to conquer the department store business — and lost - https://www.retaildive.com/news/how-macys-set-out-to-conquer-the-department-store-business-and-lost/608277/Amazon to open first physical clothing store - https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-to-open-first-physical-clothing-store/617416/Google deceived consumers about how it profits from their location data, attorneys general allege in lawsuits - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/24/google-location-data-ags-lawsuit/Gig Workers Were Promised a Better Deal. Then They Were Outsourced - https://www.wired.com/story/gig-economy-outsourcing-uk/Google: SEO Site Migrations Are Hard Because URL Signals Need To Be Forwarded - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-video-site-migrations-32775.htmlUnderstand the screening and verification process - United States - Local Services Help -https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/6226575?hl=en&co=GENIE.CountryCode%3DUnited+StatesGoogle is teaming up with 3C stump for SMB support against Google regulation - https://twitter.com/mblumenthal/status/1483859137293344775?s=12Google Autocomplete: A Complete SEO Guide - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-autocomplete-a-complete-seo-guide/251407/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share-back-trafficDeprecation schedule  |  Google Business Profile APIs  |  Google Developers - https://developers.google.com/my-business/content/sunset-datesGoogle's new ederated model for the local API l - https://developers.google.com/my-business/preview/content/upcoming_releasesEverything You Need to Know About the Google Business Profile Manager Agency Dashboard - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-google-business-profile-manager-agency-dashboard/Carries links: Colan Nielsen presenting at Dudacon helping clients grow with local SEO - Tue, Jan 25  1 PM PT -https://t.co/e2kFuzaJYQThe State of Local Search 2022 – January 26, 2021 – 10am ET - Bright Local - https://www.brightlocal.com/the-state-of-local-search-2022-webinar/A Look at Leadferno with Aaron Weiche - 2/8 Webinar -https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2NQobjHMR3eW1aDRYuuTkQTemporary Move for a Medical Practice | Local Search Forum - Local Search Forum - https://localsearchforum.com/threads/temporary-move-for-a-medical-practice.58590/

A look ahead at what 2022 holds for Whitespark and Leadferno. Aaron and Darren lay out their hopes and wished for what they can build, accomplish, market and sell in the next year. 2022 should be a year of big growth for both SaaS companies.

Weiche is not a common name, but in Buffalo MN, Weiche is well known to the history of our small town.  Aaron Weiche sits down in the studio and we cover many topics including his family history and ties to Buffalo, to his current ventures with as the Co-Founder of Leadferno. Aaron is the Co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, a business messaging solution. Helping create delightful conversations at speed for businesses though messaging to close more leads faster.More about Leadferno ---- https://leadferno.com/aboutIf you are looking for a media guy, you can find Luke Edlund on his social accounts.https://www.facebook.com/edlundluke​​https://www.instagram.com/lukeedlund5/​​https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWLA...You can follow the "Buffalo Community Podcast"Facebook: @buffalocommunitypodcastTwitter: @PodcastBuffaloInsta: @buffalocommunitypodcastThank you,Mark Benzer & Tyler ReissThe Buffalo Community Podcast guysTyler Reiss is the lead agent with Hoekstra & Reiss team at Edina Realty in Buffalo MN.you can contact him about your real estate needs at https://www.tylerreiss.com/​​

FULL SHOW NOTES[INTRO music]0:00:11.4 Aaron Weiche: Episode 31, SaaS is a marathon, not a sprint.0:00:16.2 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno, and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.0:00:42.2 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.0:00:45.4 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.0:00:47.0 AW: And if SaaS was a sprint, I would just already be collapsed at the finish line. And I probably wouldn't have finished first in my heat anyway Darren just...0:00:58.4 DS: Yeah, me too.[laughter]0:01:00.6 AW: COVID has taken its toll on my physical well-being. I need to keep working on getting that back under control, so... How have you been? 0:01:10.9 DS: Oh, I've been so busy. I've been...0:01:14.6 AW: Yes you have.0:01:15.4 DS: It's... The last few days have been nice 'cause I'm like, "Oh, just got so much free time now." But the summit, yeah, so we put on another local search summit, 30 speakers, three days, Holly, that is an endeavor. It's a lot of work to put on a virtual conference like that. And so it was all-consuming for the last couple of months, for sure. And all consuming for Jessie Low our marketing manager for the past six to eight months, for sure. And it was very successful. So I thought it was great. We had 3000 registered attendees. Lots of fantastic feedback. I think we did an even better job this year than we did last year, incredible speakers, an incredible talk. So I thought it was great. We came out profitable in the end. So, we're happy to break even because it's more of a marketing play than a money-making thing.0:02:13.2 DS: And a brand exercise, and we're really just trying to build our brand with the summit. And so we definitely got that and we didn't lose money on it. So there was some profit in the end so that was good. We're all a success. I have a post-mortem call scheduled with Jessie this afternoon and Sydney to discuss what went well, what didn't go well, and what changes we'd make for next year. That's what's going on with me. That's it.0:02:40.8 AW: Yeah, no, and I totally get... And you and I were texting a little bit last week during it, and even inside of those three days you had highs and lows, right? 0:02:51.6 DS: Oh man, it's the roller coaster of emotion. It's just like, yeah, I felt kind of low on the second day. I was like, "Oh, why are we doing this? My life is a failure."[laughter]0:03:05.7 DS: And then like day three, at the end of it, I just felt like just so elated with how well it went. That's just the life of a founder.0:03:15.0 AW: Yep, no. Same roller coaster as being a founder, right. I probably should have just taken a screenshot where one of your text was like the low, like, "Oh I'm second guessing everything." And then a couple of texts later was the next day and you're like, "Everything is awesome."[laughter]0:03:34.1 DS: Totally. Yeah, that's how I felt about the summit. Now I've kinda settled somewhere in the middle. Just trying to evaluate it logically and think about like, alright, is this a valuable thing for us to do and do we wanna invest so much effort into it next year? 0:03:48.6 AW: Well, one thing that I definitely noticed from the sales side of me is you put in a lot more calls to action for your products and services and things like that, and the breaks and slides and different things like that. Do you have zero visibility... Right, we're on the couple of work days outside of the event ending, do you have any visibility to... If that's made an impact or will it be something that you'll let run a little bit and then evaluate? 0:04:23.0 DS: Yeah, we've had a couple of really big days since the summit. And so I do think like I could tell just straight up finances being like, "Well, that was a good day." And then a couple days later, "Well, that's another good day." And so seeing that and noticing how close that was to the close of the summit feels definitely like there is a direct business boost. More sign-ups that kind of stuff. And so I wanna give it a bit more time because a lot of people don't take immediate action. They're like, "Oh, I saw the summit, I learned about this thing at Whitespark summit." And a week or two, or three or four later, they finally get around to signing up for the thing or trying our software. And so I'm gonna give it a month and then I wanna do a comparison of our accounts, like new accounts and new sign-ups from that period... From the last period and cross-reference it with attendees at the summit and then we'll see. Yeah.0:05:21.1 AW: Awesome. Well, I can only think or feel that it will be stronger than other things you've done just because I have either been a part or have watched other things that you've done all the way from your weekly videos to things like that. And this by far in a way was your most sophisticated or visual call to actions with what Whitespark offers and does. So I think that's a really good step forward, as you and I have discussed in some of our conversations like, "Man, you crush at education, you crush it, putting stuff out there." You have a lot of opportunity in the trade. I'll give you all these great things. Please just listen to how our tools and services can support you in some of these things that you're doing. And just being a little more firm in asking them to do a free trial or to look into your services and tools. I felt like you really... I was looking at that and part of me was like, "Oh, this is good. This is good, do those things Darren." So good job.0:06:30.5 DS: Yeah, calls to action. You gotta call them to action, if you want them to take action, you should give them a call.0:06:36.3 AW: Yes, it's great, it's great to be top of mind because of all the goodwill and how you've positioned yourself as an expert... Yeah, those things are totally great. And so in six months, if they have a customer that needs something specific that folds into that. Yes, you will likely be top of mind because of how you've established yourself. But there's a lot of people that you can get to take a next step, while they're also feeling that euphoria and feeling like, "Oh, I'm learning new things, it's time to do new things, it's time to change a tool I'm using or to start using something like this, and now I have trust and I have excitement and I wanna do it right now." So just make that road really... Or that bridge really easy for them to cross.0:07:19.4 DS: Totally. Well, you're a master at all of that, so I always appreciate your advice and yeah, I agree that that's a key thing that I'm really trying to get better at, and I appreciate you pushing me on some of that.0:07:32.3 AW: Yeah, well, like I said, if you look at the world of like, you can only get what you give, you give. So I totally think you asking for a little get, that's no problem at all. And speaking of that, you had to compile and put out the local search ranking factors report as well, which is a massive undertaking.0:07:56.1 DS: That... Yeah, so that was a big part of what consumed me leading up to the conference, 'cause not only did I have to deal with some organization. Jessie, of course, took care of most of it. But it was really just compiling the data and analyzing the data and putting my own presentation together. That was a ton of work for sure, and so now that that's off my back, I just feel very light right now, but I do have to get around to writing up my findings into a blog post and get it published.0:08:26.3 AW: Yeah. When do you exhale harder? When you log off the summit on the last day? Or when you wake up the next day and you just don't have all of that hanging on you? 0:08:38.7 DS: Yeah. I felt pretty relaxed after the moment the summit ended, I was like, "Yeah cool, I don't have it, I don't have to do a anything." And then the next day, actually, I had a bunch of wrap-ups stuff I had to deal with, so... Yeah.0:08:55.1 AW: So you clicked close and then you're just like, "Joe, get me a beer." [chuckle]0:09:01.3 DS: Well, I would have gotten my own beer. I would never... I would never do that, that would not go over very well. So I'm very capable of fetching my own beer.0:09:11.1 AW: I just meant in a celebratory way, right? 0:09:14.4 DS: Yes, I definitely did go down to the beer fridge, yes, immediately.0:09:18.8 AW: And just possibly being passed out in your chair. Like nonstop, three days, all of the emotions, everything else, you might have just been tapped out, so.0:09:29.2 DS: I was very tapped out. Absolutely.0:09:31.3 AW: Oh, awesome.0:09:31.3 DS: How about you? What's up with you these days? 0:09:34.7 AW: Since we talked just the week before we were launching, so Leadferno has launched, and it's gone okay, there hasn't been any part of it where I'm like, "Oh my gosh." We talked before, I wanted to hit 50 trials, and you said 10. And yeah, we were closer to 10 than 50, so you were spot on there ...0:10:04.3 DS: Wait, didn't I say the opposite? You said 10, and I was like, "No way, you can get like 700."0:10:09.8 AW: No, no, no [laughter] you were more of the voice of reason with it, but it was... It definitely went well. And I look at... Right, it's not like the world was waiting for this, and the fact that news broke, that Leadferno has launched, didn't send people running into the streets and...0:10:31.4 DS: Yeah. I did see it on CNN actually, that was huge. That was huge.0:10:35.6 AW: That would be bad. I can't imagine a scenario where I get that kind of press of something great, it would be like, Leadferno took down the internet, everyone is mad. I don't know what else.0:10:47.5 DS: That's right. Weren't you responsible for that Facebook outage? That was you guys, right? Just so much traffic, you just ruined the servers.0:10:56.2 AW: I was... That was interesting, between the... When the whistle blower interview happened, and then the next day they have that outage, it's hard to believe like, "Oh, maybe someone inside was also like, yeah, I'm not gonna go that far, but I'll sabotage something on the inside to make an outage."0:11:09.4 DS: I know. That would get me wondering.0:11:11.9 AW: Yeah, very interesting situation. So things have been progressing well as we get more into our topic, I can talk about some of my early learnings and then just the actions you have to take off of those learnings and conversations and things like that. But mostly working really hard on just any amount of publicity, trying to do as many podcast interviews, webinars, presentations like mine at the local search summit. So just trying to get as many mentions, shares, links, all of those things. Because it takes a lot to get that ball rolling. I'm just starting to see some of it now, where we're getting this past week, where I'm getting some inbound leads, that it's like, "Okay, great." And without... It isn't any one of those things, it's just knowing like, "Okay, I now have 10 of those things out in the universe, and a month ago I had only two or three."0:12:19.9 AW: So continuing to work on those and then lastly, I spent all last week in San Francisco and was at the SaaStr Annual, which is probably the largest SaaS conference. Normally, it's like a 10,000 plus person event, they limited it to 5000, it was all outdoors, it was at a fair grounds in San Mateo, just south of San Francisco. And yeah, it was really, really well done, you had to be vaxxed to attend, you had to have a negative test within 72 hours, and they provided test there, so like the day before the event, we went there to pick up our badges and got a COVID test there, and that all worked out well, and yeah, you were just... You were always outdoors.0:13:17.5 AW: And yeah, just felt... I felt really easy. It was great, it was great to be around people and energy, it was nice to have in-person learning, and then also be able to network and talk with people. It was just so great to talk shop with vendors that were there, or talk shop with other people running other SaaS businesses in between. So it was definitely like an uplifting week for sure. It was one of those like, "Oh man, I've missed a bunch of these things and I don't have another one on my calendar again," but it felt really good for three, four days to do all that.0:14:00.5 DS: That's amazing. I can't imagine the state of our particular province in Canada is really bad, our COVID situation is worse it's ever been. And so I dream of one day getting back to this, like being able to go to an in-person conference over here, I just... I miss everybody, I miss seeing people, I don't see anybody, to my immediate family.0:14:23.3 AW: Yeah, no, definitely. It's definitely tricky, but like I said, this one I looked at, alright, from all the measures that are there and everything else, I'm like for the state that things are right now, I couldn't ask them to go through too many other precautions and...0:14:43.8 DS: Sounds like they did a great job with all the... Being careful with things and trying to be as safe as possible at it. Do people wear masks outside or not really? 0:14:55.4 AW: I would say maybe 5%.0:14:58.0 DS: Sure.0:14:58.7 AW: I mean it was really very little. People... They could if you wanted to, when we went to check-in, we were masked the first day until we tested, and were tested negative. But yeah, once we were then at the event, and it does feel where you're like, "Okay, all of these people," yes, we all have different interactions and who we've been around, and how we conduct our personal choices on our own time. But when you... It definitely felt a little bit of like, "Alright, everybody here is vaccinated, everybody here has been tested within a few days of being here." So... I don't know, it felt as secure as it could, I guess.0:15:41.1 DS: Any mind-blowing take-aways? Where you're like, "Oh my God, that's the greatest idea. I'm definitely gonna do that at Leadferno," you just went to a three day SaaS conference.0:15:49.3 AW: I know, I mean, the short answer to that is no. And I think there's some interesting things in... And this is kind of the segue, this came up like, this is what I wanted to talk about in the phrase of marathon not a sprint. One, I look at in prior years, this is the fourth or fifth SaaStr that I've been to, and I usually have had one of those like... Just something more probably tactical to help bring back to the business or put into it. I think two things, my current state, one, I've spent a good amount of time and have done a lot of things in SaaS where... And heard a lot of, read a lot of... So you have all of those aspects. So you're coming at it from a different position, and in Leadferno being so new, there's also what we have in front of us for next steps and biggest needs are really known, and really the only things we should be focusing on.0:16:57.1 DS: Sure.0:16:57.6 AW: So there's a little bit of... There are plenty of things that I looked at, especially when you're looking at software solutions and things like that. And I found myself just saying, "I can't wait until I need a solution for that."0:17:09.5 DS: Yeah, totally.0:17:11.2 AW: I don't have the volume or the complexity or any of these things to even worry about that or need that, I have my own fish to fry right now. So yeah, it was kind of a combo of those two things. But really the big thing for me... And that's again, what led to the title of this is I walked away just really realizing that, no matter if you're where I'm at like me, where it's like, "Hey, we have a $1000 in MRR right now, and we got a long way to go to get us where we need to be." And then you're talking to someone else at the conference that's at $250,000 ARR, and they wanna be... They wanna get to half a million by the end of the year, or someone who's at half a million and they can't wait till they're a million or someone at a million, and they wanna be five or 10. Everyone is at a stage in their company, and that stage has its challenges and things to figure out, and some of them might be specific to the company and the founders and what they're good at and what they lack experience in or have as a challenge, and others are just systematic of the stage that you're at.0:18:24.8 AW: Maybe it sounds weird, but I like... The biggest thing I got was some calm out of it. Because at the stage I'm at right now, it's like you feel like every day matters so much to get something done and accomplish and to talk to a handful of prospects and do whatever else. And the conference just really made me zoom out and realize everything I do in these days is important, it is all contributing. What this really is, it's a long-term game of survival, it's running the long race, even though every day is like a sprint, you're pealing 100 yards off the marathon that you're trying to... To try run with it. So that was probably my biggest take away, and that's what led me... That's why I texted you, I'm like, "Yeah, we need to record. This is what I'd like to talk about." And it was really helping me with that frame of mind, and so that's where I just thought us talking about, what is... What is your... What is what. "What's keeping you up at night right now? That feels like a super short-term thing, but solving, doing that short-term thing is what allows you to stay in the game, to run the marathon to be long-term."0:19:39.0 DS: Yeah. If I was to answer that question for myself, it's really like every day we're sprinting on our existing applications, which is frustrating because it slows progress on the bigger vision of building a new product. So if I think about our long-term or two years, five years, then I know exactly what we're gonna have at that point, but it just feels painful to get there, it's just like... I have to find some calm because it feels like it's just taking forever. And so something that I thought was gonna be launched by the end of September is now looking more like the end of October, and then it just everything gets longer and longer. I understand the reasons for it when I talk to the Dev team and then I'm like, "Oh hey, how come were so behind?" It's like, "Well, because we just spent three weeks fixing that problem on our other product." So what do you do? It's really tough to get there, and I think you just gotta recognize that it's the way it's gonna be. It's always gonna take longer than you think.0:20:49.8 AW: Yeah. Unfortunately. Some of the decisions to not make it take longer end up being just really hard decisions where... We've had these conversations before where you have to say no to something else because it's getting in the way of being able to accomplish those other things. And when you're weighing out what's the priority, what's the impact, and sometimes just really... Who's this decision for? Is this so I sleep easier at night? Or will this actually cost us something? Do we gain something in doing this? Does it cost us something in not doing it? There's just so many strands to it, and as founders and leaders, we can just be so emotional about those decisions where maybe they're not an emotional decision sometimes, but because we're so invested, we can't separate ourselves from those at the same time.0:21:48.8 DS: Yeah, totally. What's keeping you up at night? What are the things that you're struggling with? 0:21:57.5 AW: Yeah. I have two just big items right now, one was a known is like, I knew this was gonna be what people were saying, I need this, you're missing this, whatever else, and that was our mobile apps. So one, we made the decision in being a communication service and around text messaging, that we weren't gonna build... When we built our web app first for power users more than anything else, that we weren't going to build it responsive. Because if they were able to use a responsive version of it in web, from snappiness of it, access of it, push notifications, there's a bunch of different things and when we outline our technical scope and where users were interact, it was like, yes, it would allow them to use it on mobile. But then if we had users that didn't download the app and just kept using it on mobile, like that experience was gonna fall short, it was gonna degrade over time because we were... Once we have native apps, we weren't gonna put anything into that.0:23:11.8 AW: So, we always clearly knew we were gonna build a web app first because that was gonna be more difficult based on our approach and our build, and it would allow us the easier way to do some of the settings and account-based things and whatever else. So that then when we did a fast follow and we built the mobile apps, they would be streamlined only focused on the communication back and forth with the customer and contacts and things like that, and be lightweight and be around, centered on productivity with it.0:23:44.7 AW: And we even made the choices right in using Flutter for development, so it's like right now, we're a couple of weeks into work on the mobile apps, and that work is just going 6X faster than if we have built in one language and then we say, "Alright, now we're gonna go and build in these others," and if anything, we're just removing things only related to mobile or only related to the web. So that one was the known and we knew it and it's on the road map and we knew that there would just be... We're gonna launch and then there's gonna be four to six, eight weeks max, where people are like, "Oh, I love this, but I want it on my phone." And then we just have to say, alright, we have to wait for this time.0:24:29.7 DS: Do you feel particularly happy with the 10 sign-ups that you have right now, considering you don't have some of these things? Like, you know like, "Hey, this is our entry level experience and we're already meeting your needs, and so we're doing pretty good, we don't have the mobile app, we don't have integrations, we don't have some of these things that you feel like you need." And so does that make you feel pretty good about where you're at already? 0:25:00.2 AW: A little bit. I would definitely be worried if I had no one, then I'd be like, "Oh boy, we got a problem here." But yeah, I would probably... I would feel better if I was at two to three times where we're at with paying customers right now. That would just... A little bit more statistical but I'm happy we're slowly working our way out of counting customers on two hands. That's great that we're moving on to toes now.0:25:31.1 DS: That's right.0:25:32.7 AW: So I would love to exceed fingers and toes, I'd feel a little bit better on that side. It does affect... Especially the way I am like, I am a little bit apprehensive on sales calls and demos, just 'cause I'm like, "I know this is gonna get asked." I've done enough of these now, I've done somewhere between 50-75 demos, and it's almost every time. So it's easy to understand and yeah, the entire time I've always had an answer that like, "That mobile would be a fast follow," all of those kind of things.0:26:07.9 AW: And then we discussed, and I played out the scenario in my head, if we did things the opposite, if we would have done just mobile only, the load of what we would have had to build for some of the settings things and things like all the saved replies and stuff like that, would have been a lot trickier. So we wouldn't have gotten to market as fast with our initial product, then developing the web would be a little bit... So it's like doing things the other way, so to say like, "Oh, well to get rid of your mobile objection, you should have just built mobile first." That would have caused some other problems and issues and elongated the process a little bit, so... I feel good with the way that we approached it and what we bit off first with what's there. And it's just living through the frustration of the next handful of weeks where it's like, "I'm gonna get the question, I don't have an immediate yes. It's coming. Here's what we're predicting right now, as far as the date."0:27:10.1 DS: I often think of like building a SaaS company and a SaaS product, sort of like building a high-rise tower in the middle of the city, and it's like you build the first floor and you're like, "Move on in!" "Yeah, we're already leasing the first floor." "I know we're still building like the next 100 floors on top of it, but, hey, we're ready for you to move in. Don't mind the construction."0:27:37.5 AW: It's only gonna get better.0:27:39.2 DS: Exactly. Yeah. Believe we're putting a pool in on the third floor, we're putting in a fitness center on the fifth floor. It's gonna be great.0:27:49.8 AW: No, I mean you're totally... I hear that. And that fits in with the marathon, not a sprint analogy as well.0:27:57.2 DS: Totally, yeah.0:27:57.4 AW: Where it's like, yeah, you're not just building a single story building, and you're done and whatever else. It's like, "No, you're trying to get this thing to exponentially add floors continually to what's there. And even on that side, I think I can comment on some of that like, messaging and the evolution of those things too, but, the second item that's of main focus is just integrations, and this is the one where I knew this would come up, I didn't know it would come up so strongly and repeatedly.0:28:34.3 DS: Right.0:28:34.9 AW: And I think that being a blind spot is kind of a couple of things. One is just maturity in time, where, you know the last time I had this immature of a product was five years ago, and the world of software is a lot different, and the expectation has become that your software can talk to others. And then I hadn't built something that was so ingrained in the sales and communication process as you know, what GatherUp was and sending surveys afterwards and things like that, like the integration needs there were very light and some very straightforward things. We get asked instead of, I thought, "Oh, I bet about 25%, 30% of the time we're gonna get asked about integrations, we know what we need to do, they're more on our medium plan timeframe instead of short-term." But yeah, it became super clear to me in the first two weeks after launch, like this needs to be on our short-term plan. We have to get something accomplished here, because this is also being brought up 80%, 90% of the time.0:29:47.5 DS: Are you able to identify based off of your initial calls, like, "What is the number one we have to integrate with this as soon as possible because it's so common, and it's like you're getting a lot of people saying, "This is the thing."0:29:58.4 AW: Yeah, absolutely.0:30:01.1 DS: What is the thing? 0:30:02.0 AW: Yeah, top is CRMs. It's all updating the conversation into the contacts or having the contact created because the conversation is created, so that by far. The action that we've taken from that is we immediately started to look and talk to a couple of freelancers and then a vendor that's all they do is build apps, Zapier apps and integration, so we talked to a couple of those and we selected a vendor, and then we just started work this week on our Zapier app.0:30:40.7 DS: That's interesting. So you're outsourcing. You're like, we gotta get this to market quick, this is necessary, and so you don't have the dev resources, so you're like, "We're going to hire this outside team to start building our integrations right now."0:30:53.6 AW: Yeah, so one, having built a Zapier app before, I know that it's right, its own kind of nomenclature for how they want things done, and any developer can read up on it, study it, do whatever else, but I'd be asking... I looked at it, I'd be taking one of our small team and saying, "Okay, none of you have ever done this before, but within a few days, you'll get it." "You'll have some blind spots and some pitfalls and whatever else, but I'm also pulling you off of something you know how to do really well and asking you to learn that new thing." And this is kind of a shorter term like a get it done type thing. So, when I weigh those things out, it's like, "Alright, I can take it to these guys, have delivery of this within 20 working days, and I'm not sacrificing someone else from the team, taking them from a strength and putting them into having to learn something new." So yeah, it was just really pretty easy to say like, "Okay, I would love if we weren't paying on top of till I get this accomplished," but this is gonna be... It's gonna be faster, quicker.0:32:03.6 AW: We're also getting their expertise because my last Zapier app we weren't integrating with CRMs, so I was able to say like, "Okay, here's similar products. What do you guys think we should be creating for triggers and actions and the integrations in the Zapier ecosystem?" And you know they have experience in doing this, so they're able to outline it and you know make it pretty clear on us what we needed to do, and also outline a couple of things like... Our product is built API-driven, the back-end is node, so we have all the APIs and everything else, but there's a few things for how a customer might wanna set up an integration and handle something that they're like, "You might wanna create variances of this or you might wanna make this more real-time and build a web hook off it," so they were able to outline some of those things that we can pick apart over to... We won't do all of them right away, but they have recommendations where we can say like, "Okay, we wanna try to get these one to two done while you're building, but then these other ones we know that they'll probably come up based on your experience and they're at least on our radar to start creating them."0:33:13.6 DS: Yeah, it makes me think about like it's like another aspect of that marathon is limited development resources. It's like you can only build so much. And so it's that constant prioritizing and pushing things to next month and pushing things to next quarter and this will be something that we're gonna tackle next year, and if I had double my dev team, triple, quadruple. I see some companies, they have like 100 developers and they have 100 developers, and I'm like, "How are you not pumping out incredible stuff every week?" It's like you have 100 developers, but your product looks like it hasn't done anything exciting for months. So, it blows my mind. I don't know how companies... I can't imagine. How does that happen when you get to that scale of a huge company and you're still not innovating? That's really bizarre.0:34:07.3 AW: Well, you end up with technical debt.0:34:10.9 DS: Yeah.0:34:11.2 AW: You end up with a lot of dependencies, you've likely built so much that there's no... And we got to this point six years in at GatherUp. There wasn't anything that was like a yes, no. It was all if or maybe or also was it attached to everything, 'cause it's not like, "Yeah, it just can't be this because and how we did this or how we built this other feature and this also interacts with that, it's now competing, or it just has to be... Or now we have to build something that controls this, so these two things can be handled separately." You definitely get a lot of that every time, right? The same analogy of building the building up, once you get to the 60th floor, there are things like, "Okay well, we put a pool in on the 20th floor, and because of the weight of that, we can't do that how we want to... How much higher we wanna build, so we gotta go back and rip the pool out or fortify that more like... " All those things build up for sure, so.0:35:16.4 DS: Yeah, I guess that's how it happens as you just keep building it gets more complicated. Everything has to talk to each other and I'm facing that right now. And it's like I like your outsourcing idea. I have this one thing as a founder, every week I got some new thing I wanna build, but we don't have dev resources to do it, and so I'm like, I just pinged my lead developer this morning being like, "Hey, I wanna build this thing. How about I get it done over in Upwork?" I made the mistake last time of building something in Upwork and then it being completely useless. We'd love to integrate it with our software eventually, and so it's that tricky balance of building something in a way with the right technology so that we can still use it and integrate it into our larger software vision for later.0:36:02.4 AW: That's where the Zapier app makes sense because it is kind of on an island, right? 0:36:08.4 DS: Totally, it's perfect.0:36:09.4 AW: Yes, they have to use their API, but it has to follow the rules and the structure of how you build the Zapier app. So in that case, it isn't something like, "Oh well, yeah, we had this person build it, but now it's in a different language. We can't just mold it into ours at any time. And we need them forever in the Upkeep," like our team can learn and pick apart how it works, and we can do our own Upkeep as we get on the road if we need to, or we can make the decision again that, "No, we'll have them update it 'cause it'll be faster and we're focused on other things."0:36:49.2 DS: Yeah.0:36:49.4 AW: But yeah, so much of it comes out at the end of the day is like, when you're small and you need efficiency, the most efficient thing is people doing what they do best. I even know it for myself, the things that I'm good at, I can get more done than anyone I know with the things I'm good at. The things that I suck at, those take 10 times longer, right? It's just like, oh my God, this is never gonna end because I stink at it. I'm teaching it to myself at the same time. I don't enjoy it, so I'm like putting it off or...0:37:21.1 DS: Yes.0:37:21.5 AW: Procrastinating.0:37:22.6 DS: Procrastinating. Oh, totally. I know that feeling, like big projects where you're like, "Oh I hate doing this work," and then it just takes 10 times longer because you just pick away at it here and there, you'll work for a little bit and not enjoy it, but yeah 100% I agree.0:37:36.9 AW: Yeah. And I can see that even with one of our developers, he was stuck on our Stripe and billing and that wasn't his favorite thing, and it was hard at points and had to re-factor some stuff really quickly and whatever else. And now that he's working on the mobile app, in his work patterns and what he's sharing, in just the time and effort being put into it, I can tell totally this excites him.0:38:06.0 DS: Yeah.0:38:06.9 AW: He's excited to work on it, and the output is so much different than, "Oh, course, another dead-end on this and having to figure out this, like, 'Oh, I got a challenge, but hey, I'm gonna get it solved 'cause I wanna see this work at its next stage.'" So.0:38:20.0 DS: Sure. Yeah. Just thinking about that floors analogy is just you're just slowly putting on one floor at a time, just stepping through it and it takes a long time to build a company and going back to what you said about companies at those different stages. Everyone's looking to grow, even when you get to $10million, $50 million ARR, you just have more stuff to sort out and you've got the next mile to complete of your marathon, the next floor to put on your building.0:39:00.1 AW: Yeah. No, absolutely correct and even the last thing that it sparked in my mind and then it led me to just doing some of it last night is like going back and aligning web copy to the types of conversations that I'm having with customers, right? So it's like some of the web copy I wrote in February and March when we launched the marketing site and got that up there. Well, I've had hundreds of conversations with prospects and friends and people in the space. Everything else since then and my story has evolved like I've... It's allowed me to craft it better and realize what are people interested in? 0:39:40.9 DS: Right.0:39:41.6 AW: Where do we better align with those things, and so it's like going down that and it brought me to like, "Oh, I need to go back and look at those things, right?" I put in a sprint before, I'm getting content up and getting out there like what we are, but I've run further now, so I need to re-analyze it and go back on it and know, yeah this... There's a better version of it and one that's more succinct to what I'm seeing resonate with customers and the types of things they're asking about, my content should be answering. So from that standpoint, it just really made me realize like, "Oh, don't just leave that stale content out there," because you've evolved a bunch since you wrote that, you need to go back and bring that back up and do something new with it one way or the other.0:40:35.0 DS: Yeah. It's constant evolution, constant revision, tweaking, changing, progressing, growing, it's like... I don't know if you wanna call it a marathon that never ends? Or is it just one marathon after another? 0:40:48.5 AW: An ultra marathon. [laughter]0:40:50.6 DS: Yeah. Ironman.  You just keep doing all these different marathons, and so I don't know if it's like each product launch, each phase of your product launch, is that a marathon? And then you start another one? I don't know what the best analogy is.0:41:05.7 AW: Sounds like it, but I think it points out, Darren the reason... Then I also think like the emotional and the personal aspect sides of it as founders. And I think... You and I do in this podcast, it has multiple benefits, it's important for us to be able to talk about things out loud, it makes us reflect on things, it allows us to hear what the other person is going through, so you don't feel like you're alone with it. So I just think those things are really important inside of it too, is like, as you're going through this because it is so grueling, because it's long-term, because... Sometimes at certain points, you're just trying to survive, you're not even trying... You're not even trying to run your best time in mile 13, you're just trying to freaking get through it, so you can get to the next part of it is like, you have to think about those kind of things for yourselves too. Do you have the right outlets, taking care of yourself, especially the mental side. I don't know, as we opened with this, like the physical side, I need to get better at lately, like I spend way too much time just on my computer. I need to do a little bit more on the health side of things, but all of those things are so important so that you can make the long-term. You just can't crush yourself in some of these cycles of, this is do or die, this has to happen now, I need to get this done. Those can take their toll.0:42:31.7 DS: Yeah. That constant as a founder there's just stuff, that never-ending to-do list, that weight of all of the things that need to get done, that you wanna get done in order to progress and grow the company is just... It's pretty heavy, it's a lot to carry.0:42:47.3 AW: Yep. So make sure you have an outlet, make sure you're talking about it, or just even... Listen, listen to others, to know you're not alone in it, right? 0:42:58.0 DS: Yeah. And I hope that some of our listeners are feeling the benefits of that too, you're not alone, we're all in this together.0:43:04.4 AW: No. Darren and I... I struggle every day with certain aspects and just gotta keep pushing ahead so you can make it tomorrow to figure out the things tomorrow.0:43:15.0 DS: Yep, every day... The struggle.0:43:18.6 AW: Alright. Well, hey, let's call it a wrap, great to catch up with you. Happy that your load is hopefully lightened and hopefully you guys can finish the year strong and heads down on getting platform to its next steps. I know that's just such a big evolution for you guys. I really hope that can be your singular focus as you close out the end of the year.0:43:44.5 DS: Thank you, it is coming together and good luck with your mobile app and your integrations and the next phase of Leadferno. I'm excited to watch you grow through the rest of this year too.0:43:54.8 AW: No. I would love for our next episode... Or maybe we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. One of our episodes, the end of the year will be like, "We did it," and we've accomplished these bigger things and then we'll still have a bunch of other problems. But sometimes I'd rather have a bunch of small problems than a couple of the big ones, 'cause it's a lot to push that boulder up hill.0:44:18.1 DS: Yeah. One marathon after another one, so once we get... Once we finish the marathon that we're currently on, then we can announce that we did it and discuss what our next one is.0:44:29.3 AW: There you go, you nailed it.0:44:31.0 DS: Alright, thank you, Aaron. Great to talk to you as always.0:44:34.4 AW: Great to catch up, Darren. Thanks everyone for listening, we always appreciate comments or questions via Twitter or email. And hopefully we'll see you again soon. Hopefully we hit record in a tighter cycle than six weeks this time again.0:44:52.3 DS: Yeah. I would really appreciate any reviews on the iTunes store, those are really helpful.0:45:00.9 AW: There you go, then others can find us. We appreciate new listeners, alright. Thanks everybody, talk to you soon, Darren.0:45:05.6 DS: Talk to you soon. Bye.[OUTRO music]

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Aaron Weiche. Aaron is the CEO and Co-founder of Leadferno, a business and text messaging platform to close more leads faster. Aaron is a digital marketing veteran of over 20 years founding and growing both digital marketing agencies and marketing software products.

In this episode, we're joined by Aaron Weiche, co-founder and CEO of Leadferno, a business messaging solution, to discover more about his unique career journey that led him from the agency world to founding and running multiple companies. We'll hear about what inspired him to make the career pivots that he did, as well as how he envisions the future of communication for businesses. Tune in to discover why text messaging is no longer just a “nice to have” and how your communication strategy is at the heart of delivering a strong customer experience.

FULL SHOW NOTES[INTRO music]0:00:10.5 Aaron Weiche: Episode 29, Prioritize or Die.0:00:16.2 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]0:00:42.5 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.0:00:46.0 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.0:00:48.0 AW: Did you see what I did with that clickbait title of our episode today, Darren? 0:00:52.9 DS: I did actually. I wrote something different, but yours is way better, yeah, that's good. [chuckle]0:00:56.8 AW: I think I was mostly trying to avoid, right? You had wrote prioritization and I was like, that just sounds like a word that I will somehow mangle when we go to hit record, and then yeah, I just went all-out sensationalism and clickbait and...0:01:12.2 DS: And I actually think, not only is it clickbait-y, which is great, but it also was accurate. I think that it's really the theme of this episode.0:01:20.9 AW: Yeah, and it's not... As we get into it, it's not an instant death, it's just probably a slow death if...0:01:28.8 DS: Absolutely.0:01:29.8 AW: You don't adhere to it. And yeah, I'm super excited to get into that. But it's been five weeks since we've last recorded, and we caught up a little bit before hitting record. Sometimes I think we should just hit record the second we get on and let people hear all of our small talk, and then maybe wrap that into the after show. We usually have really big... We just had some really big ideas. We'll see if we can put those into play someday. But...0:01:57.2 DS: Yeah.0:02:01.7 AW: What has been consuming your time this last handful of weeks? 0:02:07.0 DS: I've been busy with the summit. Just, I've been on lots of calls with the team, planning our software, and lots of summit stuff. So just trying to get all work...0:02:19.3 AW: So you're talking about, for those that don't always listen to us, you put on a local search summit, virtual last year, it was your very first one.0:02:29.2 DS: Yeah.0:02:29.3 AW: Remind me again, how many speakers... I know the attendee number was super high. Like frame up how the very first one went.0:02:36.8 DS: So our Whitespark Local Search Summit, the first one we did last year, a virtual summit, it's free to attend, pay if you want the recordings, and we had 6,000 registered... People registered for the event. We...0:02:56.7 AW: That's so awesome.0:02:56.8 DS: It was huge, yeah. So I was a little bit shocked with how well we did. We had 32 speakers, I think, a three-day event. And so it's a lot of work to put it together. So this year, I'm really excited about how things are shaping up. Our line-up is phenomenal. We've got incredible speakers like Aaron Weiche speaking. [laughter] So it's gonna be fantastic. I can't wait for it. We really put a lot of polish on it this year. I gotta give a shoutout to Jesse Lowe on our marketing team, she is our marketing team, and she...0:03:29.8 AW: Go Jesse.0:03:33.2 DS: She's done such an incredible job with the design, and we're building our website now and our sponsor deck, and just everything is just getting really nicely tweaked and polished, and it's gonna be an incredible event, and I think that we're shooting for 8,000 registrations this year, but it really feels like that level of conference quality that you might see at a Moss Con, I feel like we're hitting our stride with it this year and really kinda taken it to that next level. So been really busy with that, trying to get that stuff working out.0:04:03.5 AW: That's just so incredible, like when you say those numbers. I remember that attendees were in the thousands, but again, first-time event, you pull it off during a pandemic.0:04:15.1 DS: Yeah. [chuckle]0:04:16.1 AW: Some of it probably helpful 'cause people were just so hungry for good information, good interaction. I remember, I super enjoyed... So many of the speakers are like friends and people that we see on the conference circuit that you get to see in person and have a beer with or grab dinner with, and it was just like... It was just great to hear David Mihm present. It was just great to hear people that you're used to that are smart and have something different in your day than Zoom calls with your internal team. [chuckle] So...0:04:50.1 DS: Yeah.0:04:51.3 AW: Those are some lofty goals, man. 8,000, that's awesome. I can't wait.0:04:54.3 DS: I'm a little bit worried that instead of increasing our registration count, we might drop, and one of the concerns I have is just virtual conference burnout. It's like we kinda hit it and at a sweet spot last time around, whereas it's been a full year, and I don't know, my inbox is blowing up with virtual conference invites all the time, and so I just wonder if people are a little bit burnt out from it, but we'll see.0:05:20.4 AW: Yeah, could be, but I would say in the local space, other than local you, nothing else comes close to the level of content that you put into that event. So I think no matter what, even if you stay the same, even if you're a little bit lower, like you've put something great in motion that I can't wait for it to be like an in-person, just imagine like... Imagine if you're able to pull off a 1000-person in-person conference event in local, that would be nuts.0:05:54.7 DS: While we plan to do it, I actually have already looked into doing the conference at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, and so one day we're gonna go to... It's like castle in the mountains, in the rocky mountains, it's so beautiful. I wanna do it there. I've looked into pricing. I would have done it if I felt confident that by 2022, we wouldn't have weird COVID variants locking us down again, but their cancellation policy is like, "You gotta sign that contract, and if you back out, you lose 75 grand." So it was like, "Okay, I can't commit." But 2023, I feel like we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it in the mountains, it's gonna be great.0:06:35.1 AW: Oh my gosh, that sounds epic to say the least.0:06:39.1 DS: Yeah. I want that to happen.0:06:45.3 AW: On my side of things, you and I talked during this as friends, and then professionally on a couple of things, but I had a hard two, three weeks of being able to focus on work, which is really strange for me because I'm definitely a workaholic, work is a hobby, I just love being immersed, but the short of it is, my mom has Lewy body dementia, and it's gotten to the point where she can't live on her own, and so we had to transition her into assisted living, and the combination of visiting facilities and finding the right one for her and organizing everything that goes into a transfer like that and to some of the medical things and records and application and process, and then she was living in a town home that we owned, so cleaning that out, and then my wife and I decided to sell the town home as well, with my mom moving out of it, we just felt like the timing was right, and real estate market's great.0:07:46.3 AW: So it was really hard. I'm normally like a lot of hours, 50, 60 hours easily of high-output work, I was probably more in the 30-hour range and having a hard time focusing 'cause of these bigger things, and it was really hard on me for a little bit because I'm just so not used to it. It was just jarring off of my normal schedule and what I usually put myself into and everything else. So it's nice to be on the other side of that now and feel Mom has moved and settling in and that's a really... That's a good situation for her and everything else, and the town home was sold and closed and that's wrapped up, and so we're not spending nights and weekends over there getting it ready to sell and that whole process. So it's definitely threw me for a loop that when I was in it, I definitely felt like I was just like kind of treading water, if not drowning and looking around, like, "What direction do I go here? This feels awful weird."0:08:49.4 DS: Oh man, I'm so sorry. It's gotta be... It must have been really tough, must continue to be really tough for you with your mom, so I'm really sorry to hear that.0:09:00.0 AW: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. You and I, we had some personal conversations that were helpful, easy outlet for me to talk through some of those things. But yeah, it's just... The reverse parenting and the things that go along with that is you enter the next stage of life. It's definitely interesting, and yeah, it can be overwhelming and... I don't know. I guess I just wanted to share that for those of you running a company, starting something, all those things are hard enough, and that's not even throwing in what real life throws at you [chuckle] sometimes, and when you're an entrepreneur, you just live so much of your life in the business, and it can get hectic. So know if it's getting hectic for you, you're not alone, and hopefully you find the right people to talk to and the right ways to sort through it, and you get to the other side of that moment.0:09:51.9 DS: Yeah, for sure. We all have the things that come up that we... We try to run a business, but life interrupts often. Yeah.0:10:00.9 AW: On the plus side of life, I'm fully vaxxed, that says of like three and a half, four weeks ago, so I've had weeks now to live as a vaccinated person. I booked a flight just two days ago. I felt like such a noob going into my Delta app and like, "Oh, how do you book a flight?" I had completely forgotten. And booking a hotel, all of it just felt... I felt like I was making these huge purchases on something literally... I used to probably do 30 to 40 flights a year, something that I used to do a lot. I probably illegally was booking flights while driving somewhere. It was just that common of a repeated process. And then I actually bought tickets to SaaStr. They're doing in-person in September. They said you have to be vaccinated. I think almost the entire conference is outdoors. They're using a big outdoor facility out in California  ____.0:11:00.6 DS: Oh wow.0:11:01.0 AW: So I'm really interested to check that out and see that and looking forward to it. I think my wife Marcy is... I saw the glee in her eyes when I said I was booking travel. She was like, "Yes, I could use some alone time in the house. This sounds great." [chuckle] Yeah, she's very encouraging. She's like, "That sounds wonderful. Is it tomorrow?" "No, babe. You gotta wait a couple of weeks."0:11:28.7 DS: Wow, that's a huge move. Booking travel. We're a couple of months behind you in Canada with our vaccination rollout, and so this is beyond my comprehension at this point. But yeah, I look forward to one day booking travel [chuckle] hopefully in the not too distant future.0:11:46.5 AW: You will get there soon. When it happens, if you just need a field trip, come on down to Minneapolis and let's hang out for a couple of days.0:11:53.3 DS: Oh my... I should just make that... I should book it right now, yeah.0:11:57.6 AW: Done. Sounds like a plan.0:12:00.1 DS: Yeah, I would love to, would love to.0:12:00.8 AW: Yeah.0:12:02.1 DS: What's happening with... I remember last time we talked, you had your Flutter main developer leaving. How's that sorting out? 0:12:09.9 AW: Oh man, that has been a struggle. So we engaged both our initial recruiter that's helped us build our team, and then we went through Toptal.0:12:23.4 DS: Oh yeah.0:12:24.7 AW: And I would just say that really the biggest challenge is Flutter is really two to three-year-old as far as being still not mainstream, but just on the map. So the pool of candidates is just super small. So my experience with Toptal, to cut to the chase, we did hire someone, it wasn't through Toptal, we probably had four or five interviews through Toptal, one we interviewed and felt like they weren't the right fit for our project, the next candidate, we interviewed literally an hour after we interview them, we found out they took another job, another project to work on, then they sent us one that was like twice the hourly rate that was in our budget, so that was a non-starter, then we interviewed another one, liked him. Toptal does... They basically put them with you on the project for five days as like a free trial, and then after day one, he backed off the project. He didn't like the... He basically said, "I should've asked a few more questions." He didn't like the state management that we were using with it and felt like he wasn't gonna be a good fit for that, which was great that he didn't waste any more time, but it totally felt like a back-to-the-drawing-board.0:13:50.2 AW: And so we also had a couple of interviews with our original company that was recruiting for us, and we ended up, one of the two candidates they sourced for us, got to move forward with him, and he just started part-time this week. So that process took us five to six weeks to completely reset, which where we're at in timing right now and trying to get to launch, that feels like we lost an eternity, losing two to three sprints.0:14:20.8 DS: Sure.0:14:21.2 AW: But all you can do is be happy now. The one little plus is he does have some Node JS, which is our backend, so he might be a little bit full stack for us, which is interesting. So far we kinda have two frontend, two backend.0:14:35.8 DS: Yeah.0:14:38.3 AW: So that wild card might be nice with it. So it's taken a while. It wasn't ideal. Some of it's no fault of anyone, it's just kind of a... I think Flutter is starting to grow, so those that have talent and experience there are in high demand, especially when we are looking for someone that had at least a year experience within Flutter, not looking to learn it with us.0:15:05.6 DS: Do you... Okay, now that you've been through this process, do you have any regrets about choosing Flutter as a less mature language that maybe doesn't have the same pool of candidates that other languages have? 0:15:19.2 AW: No, because the whole reason we selected it is because we knew we were gonna do mobile apps as well. And so really my only regret will be, is if that process isn't as smooth for us to kick out our mobile apps. We're gonna launch with just our web app, and then fast follow with the mobile apps. So I just look at it... We knew that there would be some pieces of immaturity in libraries with Flutter and things like that, and we've kind of crossed a few of those bridges, but I'm still really hopeful that the main reason we decided why was to only work on one code base, per se, to deliver the frontend in web and native app experiences. So from that side, I still feel good. If that falls flat, then I'll be super frustrated that we should have used React and React Native, something more tried and true.0:16:13.8 DS: Yeah, yeah. Well we'll see. I guess we'll talk about in a future podcast, how your mobile app development is proceeding.[chuckle]0:16:22.7 AW: There you go. Hopefully, it'll probably be a couple of episodes from now, but yeah, I can't wait. I'm excited to get to that part of things.0:16:30.2 DS: Yeah for sure. Yeah. Alright. What else is going on? How are things at Leadferno, I guess, now that you've got your development back on track? 0:16:40.7 AW: Yeah, progressing well, it's just with anything, never fast enough.0:16:47.6 DS: Yeah.0:16:50.5 AW: But... And I think this probably serves as a good crossover with us to start talking because, prioritization, because that's really where we're at right now, is like we kinda internally set four months ago, like end of June, we're recording this right now on June 11th, it'll come out next week, but we said end of June is when we wanted to go live, and I can see from where we're at right now, it's gonna take us another sprint or two, just testing, clean up some of those things. But even when we launch then, it's still not gonna be perfect. So there's definitely like, launch is our priority right now, but then there's a couple of priorities that I have to answer to inside of that launch, that, which one's most important? Is it time? Or is it features? And I have some conundrum within that, on which one to place first, and I think I've arrived somewhere, which is good, 'cause you do need to make some decisions on these things [chuckle] and not waffle on them. But that's been hard.0:18:00.5 DS: It's exactly what I'm dealing with too, with our stuff that we're working on at Whitespark. I could build my grand vision over the course of the next year or build it into phases, so we have multiple launches. And so our goal is definitely to get to these multiple launches. So we have our phase one, phase two, phase three, and then once we get phase six wrapped up, then that's the grand vision of what I wanna build. So that prioritization, what goes into phase one, what... Do you move to phase two? Is what we had planned for phase three more important to put for phase two? That's all the stuff that I'm debating right now.0:18:46.0 AW: Yeah well and, as you and I have discussed off-recording, I think you were wrangling for a long time with how do you fit this in or how do you prioritize this next thing with what you're doing, right? And you have tools and services that you sell right now, and how do you balance not only supporting those, but do you continue to improve and mature those. At the same time, what I heard from you is just like the next thing that you're building being so important to you, right? Like no matter what we were talking about, your answer would turn to platform really being the answer to other things that we were trying to solve or discuss or whatever else, and it became apparent to me, and then I think apparent to you, platform needs to be the prioritization, right? 0:19:43.4 DS: It really does, and one of the things it's like, your title Prioritize or Die, and you mentioned it's a slow process, and it is. It's really like death of a company by 1,000 cuts. It's one little thing after another, and we've been up against that for, I don't know, five, 10 years. We're just constantly... Before we can progress on this, we gotta finish that one last thing, or we gotta do this little thing, or we have to update our crawling architecture, or we gotta change our mailing application.0:20:17.7 DS: It's just like... Because we're already a mature company with a customer base to support and software to keep running, it's really hard to build that next generation of our product, and it's something that, it's really become clear that if I don't turn everything off, we won't ever get there. Or it'll just take us another three years to get there, and so this prioritization has really hit home with me, and it's like we're putting everything on ice. If it's not mission critical, we don't do it.0:21:00.0 DS: So if it... We're putting all resources towards building platform, which is the next generation of Whitespark products, and so I have to do it, otherwise, it won't happen, and so... And if it doesn't happen, we will continue to be a profitable successful company, but we won't have that growth. That thing that... That catapult into the two times, three times, five times growth that I wanna see happen for Whitespark. The potential is there, and it's like, I'm always looking at it. It's this sort of future thing. It needs to stop being a future thing, and it needs to be a now thing and that we're building it right now.0:21:40.3 AW: Yeah. No... One, I fully support that, and I totally agree with your statement. You won't reach your potential, right? You have these ideas, you know these things, you have so much experience in the space. You know what needs to be delivered, and if you keep hopping around with the other things that you have right now and trying to forward those at the same time of creating this ultimate idea, like you just can't... You can't split pairs that many ways and still have something yet left to do something with.0:22:19.1 AW: I think you put it... You put it perfectly in our pre-show notes when you just wrote, "It's okay to put other things on hold."0:22:28.9 DS: Right, yeah.0:22:29.0 AW: But we had some conversations, but I'd love to hear or maybe you sharing a little bit, like what happened in between some of our conversations where you're thinking about this internally and going through the... How uncomfortable at first, and how did you get yourself more comfortable with, it's okay to put things on hold and pursue this big idea that feels... This feels like what I need to do, but then it's much different to say you're going to do it and then put that in action to just do it.0:23:02.8 DS: Yeah. So I would say there was two things that happened. One, you and I talked about this platform stuff and you had pushed for... You'd be like, "Man, Darren you should really... You really... You need to start putting other things on hold and focus on platform." and so that seed was planted, and then... So I've always been faced with well, we'll get to that when we finish this thing. We'll get to platform when we finished this next thing, and the thing that was lined up was something that I think I've mentioned on the podcast before, but we have a new feature that we're integrating into our local citation finder that does a deep audit and a stand-alone tool, which we're calling Scanarator.0:23:46.4 DS: So this thing was built by one of our developers who we brought in-house, but he was a freelancer working on the side, and I wanted to do the side project, but I didn't wanna distract my team from... So he built this thing. And it's great, it works really well, but now that we're at this phase where we're actually integrating it into our stack, it became clear that we couldn't do it because he built it in his own weird framework-y thing, and so it's like, "Well, we're getting close to launching this thing, it's all functional, but when it comes to integrating it, we're gonna have to re-write it in our stack." and I was like, "What?" This is gonna take us like another month, maybe two, and then it was Click! 0:24:30.4 DS: This light bulb went off. I'd be like, what is that gonna give us? Is it gonna increase our MRR by a $1,000 a month? Maybe. Maybe it's not gonna give us that much more. It's like I keep pushing on all of these things that will definitely improve our software, but that's not gonna two times our company. It's just gonna keep us floating along. It's going to keep us staying the course. If I put that on ice, it doesn't hurt us. We've already raised our prices for the local citation finder.0:25:04.0 AW: So great, we're putting it on ice. We're not integrating that functionality until we can integrate it into platform, and so that was like... You planted the seed. I saw that exact situation occurring again, where I'm like, "My God, I'm not gonna delay platform by another two months." Forget it. We're putting everything on ice, we're focusing on platform, and that absolutely... I feel so good about that decision, and I know that that's gonna get us to where we need to go. And it's like... I don't know why it took me so long to have that shift of perception, 'cause it's really easy to just keep building on what you already have rather than going after the big prize.0:25:44.5 AW: Yeah. Well, it's probably a couple things. One, we all have different levels of risk aversion, and especially the larger you grow your company, you're responsible for more people, you're responsible for more customers. I think part of your success, Darren, is what I see in you is, you are so wired to not only please but exceed what people get from you. It's in all of the content you share, the presentations you give. You just give so much, and so I think when you look at this, I think it's been hard for you to wrangle with something, be like, "I'm just gonna let it be good enough for a while, instead of constantly pushing on it to be great, even though its ceiling just isn't the ultimate ceiling, right? 0:26:30.5 AW: And that's where getting this transfer of energy put into something that has a very high ceiling, but it's also gonna be hard. There's risk involved in it, and it's risky when you take yourself away from the same track that you've been on on trying to deliver greatness with what you do have out there and just being okay with it being the same for a while, while you put all your focus into one thing.0:26:58.1 DS: Yeah. The to-do list don't stop. Like all of our existing software products, they each have a list of 100 things that I wanna do for them, and then what ends up happening is I end up on all these client calls. So I'm on a sales call, or a customer support thing comes up, and so there's all these polls happening, like a customer... A lead wants this thing, and then your brain goes to like, "Well, if we built that thing, it would serve all of our customers and we could sell more and it would be great." But those are actually distractions, in my personal case, from the bigger prize, and I realize that I have to focus our attention on a bigger price and say, "Well, that's a cool feature, let's do it when we have the main thing that we wanna build it into done."0:27:49.3 AW: One of the things that I've done at multiple past companies, just because the same things you're talking about, like that happens everywhere in business for all of us, and I think the truly great leaders are the ones that find the time and find the ways to separate themselves from the business of doing in the constant motion, and boil it down to what is my one most important thing right now, and am I doing enough for that? Because if that doesn't happen, all of the other things usually pale in comparison, right? 0:28:22.0 AW: And I would try to do this from time to time, whether it was monthly or bi-monthly or even quarterly with my management team and just have a meeting in one of our normal exec team cycles or whatever, but say like, what's the one thing you need to get done right now and does it have a blocker, do you need support, do you need resources? And really make them think on that. 'Cause it was real easy for every run to report on, here's my laundry list of things that I need to do, that all need attention, meetings, calls, whatever. We all have that, but the truly great ones find a way to like... That's fine. That's still all gonna be there if I step away from it or put it on ice or delegate or whatever else. But if I don't do this thing... At some point, the business will pay a price in one way or another. If it truly is important enough to be prioritized, it's something that will cost you if you don't take action on it.0:29:21.2 DS: Right. Basically, it's the exact same concept of that book, Eat That Frog. I think it's called Eat that Frog, and so it's like, you start your day, what is the absolute... You just... I know you've got a list of 100 things, but what's the one thing? Eat that thing in the morning. Do that thing first thing before you do anything else, and It'll set you up for success for the whole day. That same concept can be applied with a greater scale at your company level. What is the frog? What is the one thing that you must focus on to move your company forward? 0:29:54.8 AW: I don't think I'm gonna remember right now 'cause I consume way too many SaaS and leader type podcasts, but one of the ones this past week I was listening to, the guy was talking... He literally puts his most important thing on a post-it note and it's on his bathroom mirror. So he sees it like every morning. So even if it's the most important thing for weeks at a time, he comes face-to-face with it every morning. There's no way he sees it in writing, and I just... So basic, but yet, just this gentle reminder in your mindset that, "Hey, it's great whatever I do today, but if I don't contribute to this one thing, I'm not putting my valuable time into the most valuable thing on my docket at the moment." That was really, really interesting.0:30:41.3 DS: Although it's hard because if you ask me right now, what is my personal one thing, whoa! I got three of them. I don't know. I got three of them. I got the summit, I got my videos I gotta make, and I got platform, right? So I have to move all of those things forward.0:31:01.6 AW: Yeah. And that's not to say that doesn't happen, but at the end of the day, if someone made you strip down to one, it wouldn't be the summit and it wouldn't be your videos.0:31:08.9 DS: No. But I... That... You know what happens though, I would let down a lot of people by having prioritized, and I think that's where the struggle is. It's like I got all these different pulls for my attention and my input, and my input has... Everyone wants it, and so it's really tough when, as your company grows. 'Cause if I didn't do my videos and I didn't do the summit stuff then that would just fall apart.0:31:37.9 AW: Yeah. Saying no is hard.0:31:39.4 DS: Saying no is hard.0:31:39.5 AW: Saying no is really, really hard. It took me a long time to... Especially... I've spent so much of my career on the sales and marketing side of running companies, and it used to be like saying no to bad deals when you're young and hungry and trying to grow, and you just take anything on, even though there's something in your gut that's like, "Oh! This... The communication doesn't feel right, the expectations don't feel right, but I just wanna get this deal. The money is good." whatever else, and then you get into it and you're like, "Oh, I would pay money not to have this deal right now." It is so the wrong the deal.0:32:15.9 DS: Yeah. I got a few of those in my closet, for sure.0:32:18.6 AW: Yeah. I actually... I think more than ever at GatherUp, I got really good at being able to say no to those. Where I was just like, that's not who we need to help us grow. Like that... One way or another, and it was really agency life is where I learned how hard... Having a bad client in SaaS Life isn't great, but it's not... Agency life, that bad client could just put your entire company on fire for no good reason and...0:32:51.1 DS: Sure yeah.0:32:51.5 AW: I don't miss that at all...0:32:51.9 DS: So much time. Yeah.0:32:54.5 AW: 'Cause it's just all service delivery, and when service delivery things go wrong, your only option is to throw more people at it, and that just... There isn't always bandwidth to throw more people at it, and then that upsets the other things you're working on. Like, "Oh, man... "0:33:07.5 DS: Yeah. Yeah. It's tough.0:33:09.8 AW: It totally is. Well, I applaud the moves you're making, and I just flat out think prioritization is the hardest thing in running a business. I think it is the most challenging thing that's there, and something that... I just always have so much work to do, sometimes I feel like I see things really clearly, and other times I fight all of those same battles with what's exciting and what's new and getting distracted, and I don't know. I've just... I've tried over time to just figure out as many things as I can to... How do I boil it down to answer to one thing instead of so many the buts and the what ifs and all of that.0:33:55.8 AW: That's always there in every conversation that you can have with yourself, but a lot of times when I analyze, I just have to look at... And that's where I'm at right now. My priority is launch.0:34:09.6 DS: That is obvious.0:34:10.5 AW: Yeah, I have 30 to 45 days at most, and I'm putting this on recording, I cannot go a day outside of July without launching. It's not gonna happen. The hard part, my what-ifs and buts are... There's one bigger differentiating feature that might get cut off and not delivered at launch, and that super pains me as someone who's a product... I don't wanna use the word perfectionist, but I demand and expect a lot out of our tool, and I know things I wanna build for years, and if I'm launching without something that has always been in my V1 and something that I feel like is a differentiator and I'm gonna have to wait another sprint or two sprints after launching, that just feels like such a like... I've almost said to others on the team, I don't know if this is a great way to do, but I'm just like... It's almost like parenting. I'm just like, don't make me have to decide this. Somehow pull this off, save the day. Let's get this feature included in what we're doing up until this time frame, but I don't wanna launch without the... And if it's super apparent to me that we're not even gonna be able to get it, then I'm gonna launch even earlier because I'd rather launch in early July, knowing I'm gonna be without this no matter what, then holding it even further.0:35:43.2 DS: I think one thing you should try to keep in mind is that you're gonna have a significant potential customer base that doesn't care about that feature. They want the core functionality, they're gonna get that out of the gate, and then by putting all of these things into additional sprints, every time you launch a nice new feature, that's another marketing push, it's another chance to reach out to your existing customers, provide more value to them and do a broader marketing push saying, "Hey, we now do this thing, we now do this thing" and so I actually came that realization with our rank tracker product. We were building the whole thing from the ground up, and then my dev team lead pulled me back and says like, "No, those features... Yes, we want them for launch, it'd be great if they were there for launch, but it actually can be a benefit to launch them after 'cause you get that additional marketing engine running for every new cool thing that you're putting up.0:36:40.1 AW: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I struggle with is just first impressions, and especially when you launch, you do get the love when you launch, right? It's like... At least for me at this point, I have a good network of colleagues and friends and professional contacts, like I'll be able to get social posts that get some good sharing to them and figure out some other distribution things and I just fear. It was the same in running GatherUp for six years, there's so many times where I'd talk to somebody, it's like, "Oh well, I looked at you guys early on, and it was just immature and missing so many things and whatever else," and then they don't pay attention to all the incremental steps you're making all the time and then you're just waiting, you need something to grab them to bring them back to get them to say, "Oh, I should take another look because they probably have a lot more understanding." They have a lot more or whatever else, but whatever turned me off to begin with, they almost hold that to you forever, their first impression was, say... And this won't be the case with Leadferno, I've gotten enough feedback that the interface is beautiful and easy to use and everything, so I'm not worried about that.0:37:54.5 AW: But say that was the case and he was like, "Oh," it just looks Junkie. It felt wrong. I couldn't figure out where to go. It wasn't intuitive at all. That person might never, ever consider you again because they just look at like, that company is not gonna fix that, or why would they fix that, right? 0:38:11.3 DS: Sure. Yeah.0:38:12.5 AW: And those are the things that I stress about, and this feature that I have to decide against is like... It is a differentiator, and it's just one of those things too, you might be like, Aaron, why do you have a differentiator that's on the line at the end, but it's like there's just so many things to build in the product, like something... For one reason, another... And in some of the steps we had to build, it just had to be in that place, and so it's like I'm just worried where... It's not gonna make or break us. But if I could get 20 or 30 people or 40 people to sign up those first few weeks as paying customers, and that's the reason why, or that's what keeps them as opposed to it doesn't, the guarantee on getting them to come take a look again when I message them two weeks or four weeks or six weeks later and be like, "Don't worry, it's here." I might not even know who they were. You know what I mean? It just won't...0:39:08.3 DS: I hear what you're saying with a brand new product launch, you're coming out of gates, no one really knows you, that first impression is kind of important, there is an MVP, that's just two minimum. You shouldn't be so minimum, that attention you get with the launch is wasted, right? I hear your perspective there, and now it does raise the question, what is... Let's say you decide, okay, we can't do it, we can't launch without this feature, is it worth pushing back the launch by another three weeks like this is what you're grappling with, right? 0:39:44.2 AW: Yeah, and I already feel like I'm right. Our internal goal was end of June, and so I've already come to grips with, it's gonna take another sprint and possibly two sprints, but that's where I say... Then I start hitting the point of like, "What's not to keep allowing yourself to keep saying like, Oh, just another sprint and another," right? And next thing it's October and I still don't have a damn product out and it's like... So I've drawn in the line of sand, no matter what, if we hit mid-June and we were hopeful we could get it in whatever, then I'll just say "No, all we're doing is prep in the next five days to launch." That's just what we're doing because I don't wanna work...0:40:24.1 AW: We have enough of the product there. I don't wanna work any further in the dark without people's opinion with money on the line, it's like pilot customers and doing demos and people wanting to learn it, all of that's great. But it's not the same as when they're saying yes or no with $150 or $200 a month behind their name. That's a much different piece of feedback, and I wanna get to that 'cause I want people to either be like, "Yes, and here's what I'd like to see next" or "Here's what I'm already learning in my usage", or "This is a no for me, and here's why. Here's what you're missing. Here's why I'm not willing to plug into this or wait for you to bring this along or anything else." We need to hit that at this point because we've been coding long enough... I don't wanna go further. Yeah.0:41:18.1 DS: It does make me wonder a little bit, and I'm sure you've thought of, This is your communication to that first batch of customers and being really... Lots of reminders about what's coming. You're getting in early, and we're gonna grandfather you in, and this is all the stuff that we're building, and it's gonna just keep getting better and trying to keep that excitement brewing for them.0:41:39.9 AW: Yep. Yeah. I know how important that is. I feel like that's something that we settled into and did really well at GatherUp, like we would be teasing features two or three months out. The minute we had a visual on what the future was gonna look like, we were telling people like, "Hey, this is coming and here's why we're building it." right? And helping them understand strategically how we're looking at things, and it was helpful in so many ways.0:42:10.9 AW: The hard part for me with this is like, I know two things that are really big fast follow. The minute we launch, literally, we will celebrate for an hour and then be like, and now we gotta get to these two things. Our mobile apps being one of them, and so I'll be able to promote those two things like, "Hey, we're heads down working on these." As they take shape, I wanna get it to a point where I can give a good firm date that we'll be able to hit for people so that they're not disappointed, but I also know who knows what the priorities will have to be reset when I have...0:42:50.7 AW: The hopeful is we have 20, 50, 100 users within weeks, and then they're telling us what's missing or what would make their life really easy, and then we have to figure how much do we work on those things versus on these big pieces that will open up more so, Oh, it's about to get interesting.0:43:06.7 DS: It's gonna be good. We have lots to talk about on the podcast.0:43:10.8 AW: But that's just all the reason more why... You just can't go any further, and I think every founder Pride has this. I definitely have this struggle. A minimal viable product is just so hard for me. So hard for me.0:43:30.2 DS: Yeah, me too. And that's actually, it's one of the things I realize has held us back because you could keep perfecting something for a really long time before you ever launch it. That's... Back to our topic, that's prioritizing. What is the priority? What needs to get done that's gonna create revenue growth in your company. That's really what it all comes down to you.0:43:52.8 AW: Yep, absolutely. So I'm gonna keep focusing on my priority of launching, and hopefully the dev team can prioritize my feature and get it in there. If not, we're gonna... The priority is gonna be time and we're just... We're not gonna stretch any further without getting... I don't know what term to use, credible feedback, just real feedback instead of... Like I said, pilot customers and testers and friends are nice, but they're just... They don't look at as critical as those paying for it and using it within their business process. That's who you need to be listening to.0:44:30.3 DS: That makes sense. I liked your comment about drawing a line in the sand. It's like, "We would love to have this feature, but here's the line, if we're not gonna have it, then we're not gonna have it."0:44:43.1 AW: And in a perfect world, your team gets that and understands it, right? If you communicate that far enough up front, what you would hope for out of your team is they're planning and preparing, and knowing that there's a deadline that's far enough out where they can make decisions, do their own prioritizing and figure out those things. Also, even having pride of the work like, "Hey, we don't wanna launch without this." So I think there's some smart things that can be done when you're transparent with your team with that and helping them understand prioritization and why you're prioritizing things that way. Again, that's an area where I really grew at GatherUp in just being very intentional in communicating with the team and letting them know, "Here's the order we're gonna build the features in, and here's why. Here's why it matters to our business or fits in with our vision." and allow them to support it and then make their prioritization and their decisions against it, and I think that's a really freeing thing for your team.0:45:41.7 DS: Yeah. I think it's an area of personal growth for me. That's something I can get a bit better at 'cause I don't really have deadlines defined, and I have been notorious for not defining them, but that also comes back to scoping out our projects really well, so having them really well-scoped, defining these sprints, defining these timelines, that's something that I gotta get better at.0:46:03.9 AW: No. Always something to get better at.0:46:04.0 DS: Yeah, definitely. Whatever.0:46:06.5 AW: Alright. Should we wrap it up? 0:46:09.1 DS: We should wrap it up. We did it in 45 minutes.0:46:12.6 AW: Hey, that's a win. We always discuss if we can go shorter, we try not to get longer, but as I told you, no one's ever complained, no one's ever written us and said, "Hey, this is too long, I just... I can't handle it." 0:46:26.7 DS: Sure. Alright, well, any listeners, if you have any complaints, let us know.0:46:30.1 AW: Yes, or if you have praise, let us know too. It's just always nice to know, it's just not Darren talking or topic ideas we get every now and then, questions you want answered, we'd love to hear from listeners so...0:46:42.9 AW: Alright, Darren. Well, I hope you have a fabulous time enjoying some summer and...0:46:52.4 DS: Yeah. Thanks. Same to you.0:46:54.4 AW: Hopefully. I know you have your second vaccination shot up and coming, and that helps return a few more spices of life and socialization and those things that have been hard to come by.0:47:06.9 DS: For sure. Yeah, I look forward to that. That lifestyle that you're getting into now. Go for a trip.0:47:11.6 AW: It feels kind of good.0:47:15.0 DS: I know. It sounds good.0:47:17.0 AW: Oh, to be normal.0:47:18.4 DS: Yeah. Totally.0:47:19.0 AW: Alright. Well, have a good one, Darren, and thanks everybody. And we'll see you on the next episode.0:47:23.8 DS: Thank you, everybody.[OUTRO music]

FULL EPISODE NOTES:0:00:12.1 Aaron Weiche: Episode 28: Vision and Mission.0:00:16.0 [INTRO]: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped 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.0:00:44.2 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.0:00:48.2 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.0:00:49.5 AW: And, Darren, I think from our conversations that we have weekly, you and I, we've both gotten one shot in the arm now, which is nice to report.0:01:03.6 DS: That is really good to report, yes. I'm just waiting for the second shot and hoping things come back to normal, but a bit apprehensive about things going back to normal, because of variants and whatnot. But it's definitely a step in the right direction, feels good to have some protection that I likely won't die from COVID now.0:01:26.6 AW: There you go. Yeah, that's pretty much... Once you're fully vaccinated, that's proven to be 100%, your protection, depending upon what you're getting, 50% to 90%, mid 90%, depending upon which shot, what application types. But the fact knowing that it won't take you out is definitely reassuring and that's awesome. And, yeah, I can... I've fully accepted the way things were 16 months ago might never be the case, but...0:02:06.8 DS: Same.0:02:07.3 AW: I just... I've come to, like, "Okay, here's how to hedge your bets and to be smart, get vaccinated, all those other things, and... " Yeah, I'm excited to just dip my toe a little bit more into the social world. I'm definitely gonna get on a plane in June, so I'm excited about that. That'll feel awkward.0:02:32.0 DS: Amazing, wow. What an experience.0:02:34.0 AW: Both my co-founder and I will be fully vaccinated, so it's like we're long overdue to have a two, three-day jam session in person, melt some white boards and do something more than Slack, Google Meet, Zoom, everything else we've done.0:02:53.3 DS: I like that, it's a SaaS jam session. Rather than melting faces with guitars, you're gonna melt brains with white boards.0:03:03.6 AW: Yeah. We're just gonna be so high off of expo markers, it's gonna be wonderful. [chuckle] Other than that, what's new with you? 0:03:17.0 DS: What is new? Let's see. In the world of Whitespark, we did launch our new account system, I think I talked about that in the last podcast, that we were about to launch that. We launched it, and it was generally a pretty great launch. Nice and smooth, team did a great job on that. We have obviously lots of kinks to work out post-launch, as there would be with a whole new billing and account system. With that, we launched our new services packages, which have been very successful, so businesses thriving on a listing service side of things, so that's great. Busy planning the next Whitespark Local Search Summit for 2021, that's coming up right away. We're gonna be having that near the end of September, so we gotta get our speakers lined up, everything pre-recorded, get our sponsors in place, we're working on all that.0:04:09.0 DS: I've been really busy with these Whitespark weekly videos. I put in a good five to 10 hours every week, making these videos and then getting them published. It's going really well. I think that they're driving business for sure, we definitely feel the uptick. And we're growing our YouTube channel. We're at 1200 subscribers on YouTube or something, so that's been good.0:04:30.5 AW: That is such a massive undertaking. I would feel that that is so daunting, and you do such a great... I mean, when you tackle these topics, it's not just, "Hey, here's a few things in this direction." You are pretty exhaustive in what you're putting together on these, and great long-form content, blog posts, the videos, I see it all on my social channels. These things are legit and take a whole day out of your week, too.0:05:03.3 DS: Yeah. They might take me five to 10 hours to build and to actually prepare the deck, prepare my notes, figure out what I wanna do, all the research, record the video, then... I don't know how much time my video editing team spends on it, then I got Jesse working on getting it all up on the blog and doing all the promotional stuff. This is just a ton of work, but I believe in the rewards, particularly believe in the long-term rewards. If you can stay with it consistently week after week, month after month, year after year, you end up hitting this point of... It's like the TSN Turning Point, where all of a sudden now we have 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. And the thing is just a snowball that continues to drive value. So, I'm just gonna keep at it a good two years in. If two years we still don't have more than 1200 subscribers, then I'll totally give up, but I believe in the power of this, particularly long term.0:06:04.5 AW: We talked outside of our podcast recordings on this, and I think... And it's something you agreed and you're gonna implement, finding more calls to actions within this content. Because it is so great, it's attracting eyeballs, and it's taking it that last mile and giving people a clear next step on how to get a little bit deeper, start using one of your tools, investigate one of your services, but really working not just a traffic tool but a conversion tool as well.0:06:40.1 DS: I have already started implementing that, yeah. So, that's already... We're going through our content and finding good spots to drop, like little subtle banners. It's not like in-your-face blinking, but it's like, if you're looking for help on this particular aspect, hey, we have this software, we have this service, whatever it is. And so we're definitely integrating that into the content. And again, speaking about long-term value, that content will continue to drive views and people checking it out, and so that's getting our products in front of more people all the time.0:07:14.7 AW: Now, I feel that's especially important with the amount of time you and even the team is sinking into this, for you to have clear metrics that even go past traffic acquisition. I think you need to see... You can definitely tell, right? You feel there's a relation between putting these out and seeing just spikes in sign-ups and things like that. But you definitely wanna get probably pretty confident in the data that's there when you're gonna peel a quarter of your week off on to one thing, right? 0:07:52.7 DS: For sure. And we have... All the little ad placements we'll put within the content will have GTM tags, and they will track conversions in Google Analytics, so Analytics will be able to see if you can go to the campaign and see actually how much money they generate. We're getting all of that technology connected, making sure that we're tracking it well and pulling it into a dashboard. That is another thing we're working on actually. Within the launch of new accounts, we had everything, all of our subscriptions, in Payflow, which is a PayPal product, and we have since launched on Stripe, which offers a ton of benefits to us. And I didn't realize this, but you can send an email to PayPal and say, "Hey, we've moved to Stripe, can you please send us a dump of all our subscription data?" And then you can... Stripe will import it. We're gonna get everybody off of our legacy payment provider and put them on Stripe, which is phenomenal, so that gives us... Within the next week, we're gonna have everybody on Stripe, which means I can set up their metrics, gonna have excellent reporting. Can't wait.0:09:01.5 AW: That's awesome. That's a big win, and not having to cycle through users and have them re-add credit card information over time everything else, that's huge.0:09:14.0 DS: It's super huge, 'cause that was actually our game plan, was every time someone logs into an account, it'd be like, "Oh, we've got a new billing, can you please reenter your credit card data?" That was what we were planning to do, but this is way better.0:09:25.9 AW: Yeah. Yeah, that would have been scary.0:09:28.1 DS: Yeah. What's new with you? How are things going at Leadferno? 0:09:32.1 AW: They're going well. The general consensus is good momentum, especially April has just felt like it's gone really well. I'm spending a lot more of my days on demos and sales type opportunities, lining up pilot customers. And what's been really nice, especially our last couple of pushes and with the amount of features releasing in those pushes, my early demos were, "Here's what's there right now, if you were to test this, but here's 75% of the things that will be coming."0:10:13.2 AW: And now we've hit the point where 75% of it is there, and it's just kind of 25%. And the 25% are bigger things not necessarily features, per se, as infrastructure items, like how our profiles work, which segments locations or departments, where sales team would have one shared inbox and the service department would have a shared inbox, our internal admin tools for managing accounts and customers and things like that. We're using Stripe as well, so just starting to get some of the billing stuff tied in. And those are the really big pieces. We probably only have two or three features left to build for wanting to launch in June.0:11:01.1 DS: Great.0:11:02.0 AW: Yeah. But we have those big pieces. I go back and forth. Some days I'm like, "Man, I feel 90% confident we're gonna nail this and be out there in June," and then the next day the stand-up feels a little wishy-washy and there's a few new blockers, and then I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'm about 50% we're gonna make it to launch in June."0:11:21.7 DS: Sure. I'm always overly confident, to my own detriment. I'm always like, "Oh, this is gonna be great, we're gonna totally launch next week."0:11:29.7 AW: I'm probably more... I don't know if I'm pessimistic, but I definitely fall into reality, and doing just so many releases and doing small features and big features, and just so many different things, I feel like there's some key indicators that you kind of see where you can truly have comfort and confidence that you're gonna deliver. And until I see those, then I'm usually like, "Yeah, I'm not going all in on this or being too aggressive because of those things." And then sometimes on the opposite side I've definitely had times where I'd say to our team, "Hey, no matter what, we have to hit this date. It's not just your part, here's all the other things lined up, and why and why we can't move those. And so we're gonna have to do everything that we can to hit that." It's always a dance, that's for sure.0:12:25.1 DS: Yeah, we're just dancing around.0:12:29.1 AW: Yeah. The one challenging thing right now is we're basically losing our best Flutter developer, our front-end SDK. And we knew it was never a permanent role, he is part-time with us, and we sought him out because we needed some leadership on that side. We had a couple of developers, but we just weren't strong enough for the uniqueness and the newness of Flutter. And so I basically stalked Twitter community on the developers talking about Flutter, loving Flutter, being part of conversations with other developers, and found him and he had time to take on our project, he was looking for his next gig and was willing to take us on part-time for what we could fit.0:13:18.3 AW: It's bittersweet. One, I'm super grateful. He made a huge impact in the two months he was with us, and that was awesome, opened our eyes to some things, and so I'm super, super grateful. Selfishly, I would have loved to have him up till launch or even right after launch, we have some fast follow things that are important. But, yeah, he landed a really great full-time gig with a huge company out on the West Coast, and it's one of those things for him. We would never be able to pay him what he's getting, some options, a great company, everything else. Happy for him, super thankful for everything he did, but now it's like, "Okay, so now we gotta fill this hole." We're actually... It's the first time I ever used it, we're using Toptal, and so far so good. Their process is really easy. I think we're finding the same challenge that we've had in building our team. Again, there's not droves of Flutter developers out there. So far we've talked to one candidate, and that was okay.0:14:32.9 AW: The other hard part is I feel like we're gonna compare him to Luke, who we're losing, who I just feel was really unique and really great in a bunch of ways that we're just... We're not gonna get a one-to-one replacement for him. But hopefully we get a couple more candidates sourced so that we can find someone to plug in and keep our momentum going.0:14:54.1 DS: Yeah. Well, good luck with that, I'm really curious to hear how things work out with Toptal. I've looked at them a number of times, when I'm trying to source developers. I've looked at other ones, like Lemon.io is one that I've checked out before, they look interesting. There's a number of Toptal competitors out there now. But, yeah, I'd love to hear how that experience goes. We'll have to have a podcast episode on that one of these days.0:15:15.4 AW: There you go, I'll keep you updated. With that, to transfer over to our main topic today, Darren. You had brought up in a text conversation that we were having that you wanted to talk about vision, mission, core values, just how do you create or edit or surmise those things from within the company. Tell me a little bit why did you bring that up. What's the...0:15:45.8 DS: Yeah, for sure. Man, Whitespark has been in operation since 2005. So, what does that mean? Sixteen years? And I've never defined this, and so I'm really starting to think about my role as leader in this company and how it's like... We all have a very good general sense about what our why is, how we do it, what we do, but it just hasn't been formally defined. And I feel like that's a big gap in the company, and there's a lot of value to having the vision-mission statement, and so it's definitely time for me to define those. Long overdue, and so I've been exploring it and I thought it would be a great topic for the podcast since this is something you've been through a couple of times, and it's something I'm learning. I'll ask you questions, and you can provide your wisdom.0:16:40.3 AW: Well, I don't know if it's wisdom. It's definitely experience, and I would say passion. I love this part of it. It's translating what the core of what the business is about and where you're trying to get to, and somewhat of how you're gonna get there, and doing it in this way that's both internally and externally translatable, where your team can rally around it, someone from the outside can rally around it, it can help guide your decisions, and it makes it really easy when you're even... I found, with GatherUp, I would use it as I pair it against what features that we were gonna create and why we would prioritize one over the other, because it's like this falls in line with our vision, this is exactly what we wanna be about.0:17:34.6 DS: Yeah. And I think that's really important. In fact, if I think back on the last 15 years of Whitespark, the lack of that very clear vision and mission perhaps led us astray, because I would make decisions, like, "Oh, this is a really cool tool idea." And we would build this thing, but if I had been making decisions based off of our vision I would have recognized, "This is a cool thing, but it doesn't necessarily align with what we're trying to accomplish," and so I wouldn't have done it. And that would have been big time savings in terms of development, resources, my time, marketing time. All of that stuff that we've invested on multiple side projects over the year, the vision can really help focus you in on what's actually important to your company, and that's the big gap I'm recognizing and need to fix.0:18:29.0 AW: I think that's a great take, and not as long of a timeframe, but we definitely have that at GatherUp, was the same kind of "There isn't anything existing, we're doing this work, we're making these decisions. We're loosely talking about our direction and what we're trying to do and giving explanations to how we decide and what our take is on it, but it was really just kind of messy. And there wasn't anything that everybody could anchor into. When you would listen to other people... I always found it interesting, say we're at a conference and there's three or four of us at the conference, and if somebody comes up and just does the normal, "So tell me what GatherUp does." And at the time, we were... This is GetFiveStars, we hadn't re-branded yet, and I'll talk how we used that, but I would listen and it was always a different answer. Right? 0:19:24.7 DS: Right.0:19:25.2 AW: And so when you hear that and you'd hear how short one would be, how loose another would be, the different things mentioned, you just saw like, "Okay, that inconsistency isn't doing us any favors." And you can also see the person sometimes, and even myself would be guilty of it, you're just sometimes fumbling through because you don't have the words right then and there, or you're trying to piece it together in a new way, you're trying to find it yourself on the fly while you're in this discussion. So, I took it on that when we decided we were gonna re-brand GetFiveStars to GatherUp, that I wanted to institute these things. I wanted to create a vision, I wanted to create a mission statement, and I wanted to create core values for the company. And it really was... That was the funnest and most exciting part of the rebrand to me. Even more so than the visual of the logo and whatever else, I just loved working on defining what our DNA was and how we operated within that DNA.0:20:32.9 DS: Yeah, so valuable to have that. And so I'm really... And I know that when GatherUp rebranded, it really did feel... For me, as a GetFiveStars customer, it really felt big, it was like a big next step. GetFiveStars was great, but GatherUp was like, "This is a brand. This is for real. This is a legit big brand, this is what we stand for, this is what we do." And it just really elevated the company to a whole another level. So, you did a great job on that.0:21:05.5 AW: Thanks. It felt grown up. And I think it made our team feel grown up, too. I can easily point to a few things that really gave the team confidence in where we were at or what we had grown to, and that was one of them. When we made it into the Inc. 5000, that was another one where, okay, telling someone we're one of the 5000 fastest growing companies in the US, that's the kind of thing that you could tell your mom or your uncle or your brother, and they'd be like, "Oh, that's impressive, I get that." And there's so many times in our world where, yeah, people have no idea. I could go to someone in town and be like, "Hey, here's my software, and do you wanna use it?" And they just think I made it in my basement on my computer and I'm about to hand them like a floppy disk or a CD-ROM to make that. [laughter] 'Cause there's nothing tangible with it.0:22:05.5 DS: Yeah. "It's shareware. I got a shareware version. I have GetFiveStars here."[chuckle]0:22:12.0 AW: Oh, man. Yeah, it was just really interesting and fun. And the way I see this, especially the vision statement, I really do feel that's on the CEO, the leader, the founder, whoever has that visionary role, this is one that I see should be that person's vision. If you have co-founders and whatever else, definitely having those discussions, but I usually find there's someone in the group that should take the lead that is more of the visionary or has that. And that was kind of... We operated on there's four main partners, and we had our different roles and everything else, but I knew I was best equipped to handle that and create that. And when we created it for GatherUp it was thinking through a bunch of things like, one, I just started and just started to research anything I could find on other companies and reading about all these how-tos and everything else.0:23:16.6 AW: And I wasn't looking for one to, like, "Here's the 12-step process to having a vision statement." I just wanted to... I like to consume a lot and then weed out what I think is really important or what matters to me. So, I took all that on. And then in reading that, I was really just trying to get a feel for what is it about theirs that makes you feel something, and makes them unique and helps position them. And so that's when you read through and you get these great ideas from the Nikes and the Zappos and the Amazons of the world and everything else, but you really have to focus on what makes us us, and be super comfortable and be okay with that.0:24:00.6 AW: And in the case of GatherUp, it was already behind even our name change. We changed from GetFiveStars to GatherUp because we didn't wanna just be viewed as this review tool. We wanted to be about something bigger. We wanted to be about customer experience because that's how we all really viewed what we were doing, is listening to your customers, getting feedback, getting feedback in measurable ways, getting feedback in structured ways like reviews. Reviews is part of it, but our original name just really made it feel like it was all about reviews. And the last thing we wanted to be was like, "Oh, yeah, that's a review factory, you put this in one side and a review shoots out the other side." That's not what we were looking to be.0:24:49.7 AW: So when we created the vision statement, having that in mind and knowing that was our direction, we arrived at the vision statement of "Make customer experience the backbone of your business." And we really looked at that... That elevates that customer experience is our guide, that's what we're working towards, and we view it in a way that it is the most important thing. A human cannot stand up without their spine, it is the most key item to the structure of your body functioning. And we looked at a business the same way, like if you don't have great customer experience you will topple over on yourself, you won't be able to grow and get to where you need to go to.0:25:34.4 AW: That was one of those that was fun to create that, but we could already see it was just really taking apart the conversations and the way we are already loosely positioning ourselves to build that. And then working down from there, then into a mission statement, in front of a presentation, it was basically a pitch to a client one time, had broken down for him, like, "Our tool's here to do this. It's here to gather, manage, and market your customer experience." And that kind of gave us the pieces that we then worked into our mission statement in saying how are we going to execute on this vision, and allowed us to build that out.0:26:17.2 AW: And then really the part I loved the most was building out our core values. And people differ on core values. For some it's just a gimmick, or a marketing ploy, or a way to label some of the elements of culture, but I really care about them and think they serve just, again, a really great purpose to personal decisions and management decisions and things like that. And that one's the opposite, that's one where I went and I asked everyone in our team, "Give me four to five terms that you feel are important about our company, and how we operate, and how you wanna be viewed, and the standards you hold yourself to, and things like that." And so compiled that list and started working, and then pulled out five or six of those that felt really good that represented us, and then I hired a copywriter and we just basically versioned back and forth honing these and finding out how to talk to them so that each core value was this short statement, but then we built a two-sentence definition on how it applies to our business or how you see this in action, "What does that look like when we say... "0:27:35.4 DS: "What does it mean to you as a customer?"0:27:36.7 AW: Yes, exactly. And what does it mean to us internally, too, right? That was a super fun process and that was like... When we re-branded the site, that's the page I just loved, is our About page having vision, mission, and those core values, and then just seeing the pride in our team where they were like, "Yeah, that is us." And I felt like that one was really easy because all I had to do is just really plug into everything that was already going on there and define it, and shorten it, and dropping it down and making it concise and everything else. And that's probably the... That's the position you're in, where it's like there's a ton of things already there, you just need to figure out how to weed through it and find what really connects and what's most important that you wanna anchor to.0:28:31.9 DS: Yeah, it does make me wonder when I listen to the journey that you went through for the GatherUp statements, whether my approach might be smartest to start with the core values. If I start with the core values and I put that out to the team, collect the feedback, start to define and build those out, whether or not those directly inform the vision statement, the ultimate vision statement that we go with as a company. I don't know if that's the best approach. I'm also interested to hear... Well, let me hear your response to that potential approach. What do you think about taking that route? 0:29:12.6 AW: Yeah. I don't know if I could comment on if there's a chicken or an egg with it, and which comes first. Myself, I tend towards defining vision because it's so directional. That's the pull in where you wanna go. That one, to me, is the more important one, to get that direction stated. And then the core values are what are we holding ourselves to and how will we operate to move in that direction. For me, personally, I feel like the direction is more important in defining first.0:29:55.4 DS: Sure. All right.0:29:56.4 AW: But also I don't think you could go wrong if you did it the other way.0:30:02.0 DS: Right. You'd probably end up at the same place actually because...0:30:05.4 AW: Yeah.0:30:06.1 DS: And then I was wondering, so we've got three sections. You've got vision, mission, and core values. What's the difference between the vision statement and a mission statement? 0:30:17.1 AW: Yeah. Your vision statement is your "why." You're putting out there and you're basically stating, "Here's the big thing that we want to accomplish." For GatherUp, it was making customer experience the backbone of every business. And then the mission is to help every business gather, manage, and market their customer experience to improve their business. We believe listening is a business super power, so we're gonna transform conversations into data that drives improvements, bolsters reputation, fuels growth. That's more of the like, "Here's how we're gonna do our why.0:30:57.4 AW: And for Leadferno, the vision is that we want to make connections, make delightful connections at speed. And then how we're gonna do that is we're gonna power business messaging to create conversations, close leads, close more leads faster, and getting into some of the tactical pieces. And to me that's a big thing I pulled out of immersing myself in vision statements, is like it becomes a void of what your features are or how you're gonna do it, any of those things, it's like, "We just want to arrive at accomplishing this. This is what's driving us." Right? 0:31:37.7 DS: Right.0:31:38.8 AW: For Leadferno, right now, business messaging is an incredible way to create delightful connections at speed, but will that be the same in five or 10 years? Will we solve that problem? Will we move in that direction using the same tactical things of SMS and Facebook Messenger and things like that? 0:32:01.0 DS: Yeah. Your "how" may change, but your "why" is pretty set in stone. "This is why we're doing it, this is what we wanna put out into the world, this is what we wanna give to the world." I think there's great value in defining that. "This is what we want people to get out of what we're creating here."0:32:19.3 AW: Yep, absolutely.0:32:20.9 DS: Yeah. All right, great. See, I'm excited, I'm excited to get this all written up for Whitespark and figure that out, my wheels are already turning with ideas.0:32:31.7 AW: Yeah. It's a super fun exercise. And the cool thing is, what I found really helpful is, when we would talk about how... Especially at GatherUp, where you have thousands of customers, you have all these things you're doing, you're able to go back when you're trying to prioritize features and you're using these different elements to help prioritize, how many times is it requested, size of customers requesting it, what's a revenue opportunity by doing it. So you have all these other things that can fluctuate, they might be data points, it just might be the market, might be a gap you have from another product. But at the end of the day, when you can really couple it and say, "Does this support our vision? Does this tie in to how we see this and where we want it to go?" That's what you want, because then you end up... You're building a tool. And every time you're introducing something, it's right in line with the direction you're going, so it's supporting it and it's just making even clearer why that is your vision and how passionate you are about it.0:33:47.6 AW: So, as we moved along, there was just so many things where it's like, "Okay, yes, this exactly folds right into this and completely aligns with our vision why we're gonna do this over this other choice," because it has better alignment with where we wanna end up with what we're driving to.0:34:08.0 DS: And that's exactly... That line of thinking is what brought me to this, because we've launched our new platform, we know what we're building next, but then what's after that and what's after that? So I started planning on my roadmap. This is the way... We've got 100 ideas floating around, and so I now need to take those and put them into a phase launch plan, like, "This is our Q3 launch, our Q4 launch plan, these are the things that we're gonna build." But as I started doing that, it really led back to this, like, "How do you prioritize those things?" And that leads you to your vision statement and your mission, and all of this, it's so important. It's funny to imagine how long we've been developing stuff without that guiding principle, and so building that guiding principle will really help me do that prioritization work on a roadmap. And so I kinda got stalled out on the roadmap, and I'm like, "Dang, I better build this vision statement first."0:35:08.1 AW: Yeah. And I think this is such a great time for you because what you wanna do with the product next, with taking it from a handful of tools that operate independently into a cohesive platform, that's a great time. You're somewhat in a pretty big directional change, so you really should define that direction in words as well as what the product is gonna be.0:35:33.1 DS: Yeah, I agree 100%. That's why I'm talking about it right now. That's why I'm writing that Google Docs and brainstorming exactly what this is gonna be. I think it's a super valuable exercise, yeah. I'm just curious, I look at it and I think, "All right, I can probably get a pretty good crack at it in an hour of just hammering at a Google Doc and doing a little bit of research," and then over time, over the next week, I feel like I should have a vision statement ready to go within a week. It should be there. What do you think the timeline is to develop a good vision statement? 0:36:04.6 AW: Yeah. I would say I would be more interested in getting it to where you really feel great about it than a time frame. For me, both times, they were probably two to three-month processes, just from research, putting it down, whittling it down. So much is like remove, remove, remove, get more focused, things like that. And then that's when I got to the point where then I hired a copywriter and just said, "Hey, I basically wanna volley versions back and forth. Here's everything I have and where we're at right now, what stands out to you? Write a little bit about that, and it's just like back and forth." I can say each time it was somewhere between six to eight iterations back and forth.0:36:52.9 DS: Wow.0:36:54.0 AW: Yeah. And sometimes it was like we'd just be whittling on one sentence in one way, and we'd be doing it in email back and forth, and then be like, "Yes, that's it, nailed it. Boom. Yes, move on to the next one."0:37:04.5 DS: Yeah, this is how Jesse and I write titles for our blog posts and headlines and whatnot. It's just like, "Here are seven variations," let's just keep riffing on them until we come up with the one we like the best.0:37:18.0 AW: Absolutely, completely correct on that. And I really valued, too, the... I wanted someone completely outside to bounce this off of, and someone who is a bit of a wordsmith and a little more polished and craftier. Those were also the benefits for me, is they were gonna introduce some style and some other things to it that I know I couldn't bring. I get the representation and the passion and what it's about, but I wanted them to be able to tell these great little simple stories around it that I might not arrive at or come to.0:38:00.6 DS: Yeah. A good copywriter can really take what you've written and then think about it from that outside perspective and make it resonate with a broader audience. I think there's super good value in hiring a copywriter for this. I'll definitely do the same. I think it's great advice.0:38:17.3 AW: Yep. And so with core values, three of my... What did we have at GatherUp, if I pull up real quick. Four, five... We had six at GatherUp, and a couple of the ones that I love the most, and I also got to see with core values, this is something that your employees can apply to their decision making and what they put themselves behind. Right? 0:38:38.0 DS: Yeah.0:38:38.6 AW: Our number one core value was "Customers rule," and the definition of that was "Never underestimate the importance of the customer, they are your business. What customers share, say, and think is the pulse of any business. It's that simple." So, you can see both the external and how this reads to someone looking to work with you and buy your product, but internally it gave our entire team the knowledge, like, "Hey, making things right for the customer, taking care of them, they are our everything. We're gonna respect, we're gonna be responsive to them, and you need to make decisions based on that." So at the end of the day, you're able to say like, "Well, the customer rules, that's why I made this decision and this is what we did."0:39:25.1 DS: Right, right. Yeah, it's definitely a two-way street. Your product is all about customer experience, so the person reading that is like, "Oh, this is speaking to what I'm trying to accomplish." But then internally your team is also operating by the same principle.0:39:40.5 AW: Yep. Then the second one was, "Service sets us apart." We're obsessed with serving our customers. Every time we hear "Your customer service is the best I've ever experienced," we know that we've done our job. And this became something that I really treasured in a number of different ways, because we actually had this repeated back to us by clients. A couple of our clients, one basically said, "Well, we actually call it 'the GatherUp standard' now when we bring on a new vendor, and are they gonna be as organized, as easy to work with, as responsive, all of these things. And that's how we evaluate them. And until we worked with you guys, we didn't have a bar set." So, it was really awesome to understand, we made such an impact with how we interacted with them that we created a new tool of measurement. Like we were the tool of measurement, "Can they be as good as these guys? That's the kind of partners and vendors that we wanna work with." So, yeah, that was really cool.0:40:45.5 AW: And multiple times I heard from other clients that are larger, that work with tons of vendors, where they're just like, "We wish every vendor was working with you guys. You are the easiest and the best to work with, we look forward to the meetings, we never wanna skip them." And so that's the kind of thing, like when you see that and then when someone would share, "Oh, here's what they just said in this email," we would just comment, we're like, "That's right, service sets us apart." And just realizing, especially as a smaller bootstrapped company, we needed that personal touch, we needed to do those things right, not automate every last thing, not drop the ball, not be loose about it but try to set a whole new category with it.0:41:34.5 DS: It's so important, and that's why people would switch to you, right? They're not getting a great service from another vendor, or as they evaluate the vendors, they don't feel that they're gonna get the same kind of service, and stepping it up is just so important. That's a whole another episode. We've already talked about customer service before, but we can definitely do it again.0:41:55.9 AW: Yeah. No, by far and away it can be like your ace up the sleeve, for sure, and I'm a huge believer in that. I'm just wired that way. I wanna do everything possible I can to help that customer. I'll do it to help a partner, I'll do it to help a friend. It's just in me, I just... I wanna squeeze the most out of every opportunity.0:42:19.3 DS: Right, that's a good way to be. Leadferno's gonna be so successful, thanks to your helping nature.0:42:27.0 AW: Well, I hope so. And some of it, too, is just finding a bunch of people that also feel and care that same way, that selection. And that's why you have these core values, then it's so easy when you go to hire, because then you can measure people against those. Like "Read our core values, is this something that excites you? Are you passionate about these things? 'Cause if not, this might not be the place for you, 'cause... "0:42:50.1 DS: Has anyone ever said no in an interview? They're like, "No. No, I think those values kind of suck, they don't resonate with me at all."[chuckle]0:42:55.6 AW: I've never asked anyone to go and read them, but the ones that mention it bring it up, that shows me... One, simply put, we're doing the research and whatever else. But when they bring them and be like, "Hey, here's a couple of things I read on the website that I really identified with, or got me excited, or said this is a place for me," those are some great tells and definitely factor in.0:43:22.9 DS: Definitely, definitely. So many benefits: Aligns your team, aligns your customers, aligns your hires. Just so many benefits to having this stuff done. And it's actually surprising how many companies don't have it, and it's even more surprising that Whitespark still doesn't have it, so working on it.0:43:40.0 AW: Well, you're there. Hey, you know that it's time to put that flag in the ground and...0:43:43.5 DS: Yeah, definitely.0:43:44.6 AW: And you'll get there. And on the opposite side, completely different experience to do this with Leadferno and not be surmising something that you're watching happening. And it's more a little bit with Leadferno is more building it to be aspirational, where I can draw on all my past experiences and other companies and what we want this to embody, but I didn't have, "Hey, here's years of how I've seen this happen, and all I'm doing is putting a good title on it and writing a good summary for it." That one's a little bit different, and I think it's good to revisit these things from time to time. It doesn't say, "Hey, this is going to be this forever." If it is, that's great. But as we grow, the different core values we have, there might be an addition, there might be something else that gets swapped out, you just don't know.0:44:40.0 DS: Yeah, totally. But I think it's definitely the right approach to, when you start your brand new company, Leadferno, you started with the vision and the mission of core values. It's really great that you've started the company already with a guiding principle, it's so valuable right out of the gates.0:44:58.4 AW: Well, I've already been a part of seeing all the wins you get out of it, so that was one of those, Darren, someday when you sell Whitespark and then you go to start the next thing, you just have this list of all these things that, like, okay, doing all of these things in half the time I did them before, or doing them right from the start, that's just where you get to learn from those things and you get a chance on a blank slate to do it all over again. I saw how big a wins these were and I'm like, "There's no reason not to do these from the start. They're gonna benefit us over and over again." And even if they morph or change... The foundational elements are there, even if the details change.0:45:41.9 DS: Yeah, totally. It would be interesting to see if they do change. One would expect that they would as your company evolves.0:45:48.8 AW: Yeah. No, I totally get it. Your culture can evolve, your people change, the environment changes, so many different things. You definitely can't look at it and say, "Oh, it'll be this forever, this is set in stone." And, yeah, you just gotta read and react to what matters to the people in your company and the direction you're going.0:46:13.0 DS: Yep, yep.0:46:16.7 AW: All right. Well, I think we burned that topic to the ground, I hope.0:46:21.3 DS: I think so, yeah. I think we've talked about all the elements of it, definitely filled a podcast with it.0:46:29.3 AW: Yeah. That went super fast. Like I said, I'm so passionate about this and I just... I love doing this stuff. It almost like... Getting it done for Leadferno felt really awesome, but then I was also kind of sad because I wasn't doing it anymore. It's like, when you're a kid, you get this awesome 1000-piece Lego kit, and you're so excited to get to the end and whatever else, and then you build it and it's beautiful, and you feel accomplishment, and the next day you're like, "Oh, what am I gonna do with the two hour... I miss building for two hours and getting it to the next stage and whatever." Yeah, a little bit, so I felt a little bit like, "Oh, this is so great." And then I was also like, "Oh, I can't... I don't need to work on this anymore for a while, and I really like this work."0:47:17.7 DS: Yeah, I get it. Well, maybe you can help me with mine, that'd be great, if you really wanna get back into it.0:47:24.9 AW: Absolutely, I would love to. When you do, as you're doing right now, right, the first step is this giant barf of throwing everything out onto paper, and then after that, the hard work is whittling it down and trying to get concise. That's when it's good to have other eyes and opinions and things like that on it, to help weed through all of what's there. 'Cause especially as business owners and marketers, I just say all the time, "We just use way too many words."0:47:53.9 DS: Oh, definitely. Well, I'm glad to have a friend like you to walk me through some of this stuff.0:48:00.0 AW: All right. Well be careful what you wish for. You might be like, "Hey, stop it."[chuckle]0:48:04.9 DS: That's right. You're like, "Hey, Darren, can I come over?"0:48:07.9 AW: "Can I come over? I just wanna look at these. I'm gonna be on the first flight to Edmonton."0:48:11.9 DS: That's right.0:48:14.9 AW: All right. Well, great catching up, Darren. Great topic, I'm glad you suggested this, and, yeah, I'm excited to see, in one of the next episodes we'll have to talk a little bit on what you came up with and see how it's been received by the team and your process for putting it together. I think that would be interesting to recap after you come out the other side on it.0:48:36.1 DS: Totally, yeah, we can definitely talk about that on another episode. Looking forward to it.0:48:40.8 AW: All right. Well, take care, my friend, and hopefully we'll hit record again in two or three weeks and find something new to wax philosophical about.0:48:53.4 DS: I'm sure we will. All right. Thanks, Aaron.0:48:53.9 AW: All right. Thanks, Darren. Thanks, everybody, for listening. As always, feel free to drop us a review in iTunes. If you love anything we've had to say today, please share socially, put that link to thesaasventure.com and this episode out on Facebook or Snapchat. I don't know if you can place links on Snapchat so...[chuckle]0:49:15.1 DS: Snapchat.0:49:16.1 AW: LinkedIn.0:49:17.8 AW: Make a TikTok about the SaaS Venture, but just tell a friend, share the news about us, and we love to build our audience and talk to more people. All right. Take care, everybody, and we'll talk again soon.0:49:30.9 DS: Bye, everybody.

When it comes to milestone decisions such as accepting a promotion, selling your company, and starting a new company, Aaron Weiche is an expert. He’s done it a few times over the past decade. In this episode, Aaron and host John T. Meyer distill lessons from Aaron’s ascent to leadership, his story of selling a bootstrapped SaaS startup, and his newest role as Co-founder and CEO of Leadferno.Aaron’s startup track record [03:34]How do you merge into leadership roles at new companies? [08:36]Are you a hand raiser? [13:03]How did you know it was time to jump? [20:18]Taking inventory when you start over [26:07]Transitioning when stakes are high at home [30:50]Rapid-fire recommendations from Aaron [36:10]Take a deep dive to learn from Aaron’s experience in selling a bootstrapped SaaS company.-----Connect with John T. MeyerFollow Leadmore on InstagramSubscribe to the Leadmore newsletterJoin the Leadmore Community

Mike's Links:Travel and Eating Out Are What Americans Have Been Missing Most - NearMedia.co - https://www.nearmedia.co/travel-eating-out-demand/Amazon reportedly plans to make drivers double as furniture installers - Mashable.com - https://mashable.com/article/amazon-reportedly-test-plans-drivers-install-furniture/Police: Man assaults Menard's employee, hits officer with hammer after mask dispute - Fox9.com - https://www.fox9.com/news/police-man-assaults-menards-employee-strikes-officer-with-hammer-after-mask-disputeGoogle My Business: Edit Your Profile, Hours, Photos & More From Web Search - Barry Schwartz - SERoundtable.com - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-edit-web-search-31250.htmlGoogle Search adds keyboard shortcut to edit your query - 9to5Google.com - https://9to5google.com/2021/04/15/google-search-keyboard-shortcut/New consumer update of business on google now showing up in the wild - via YourBizWatchdog on Twitter - https://twitter.com/yourbizwatchdog/status/1382797758797611012?s=20Mary's LinksLocal is now digital: Understanding the new local shopper - The Google Blog - https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/local-shopping-trendsGoogle Merchant Center: A Local SEO Goldmine for Retailers - Andrew Shotland - Search Engine Journal - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-merchant-center-local-retail-data/401551/#closeReview Topic Clusters as Local Business Content Strategy - Miriam Ellis - Moz.com - https://moz.com/blog/review-topic-clustersCarrie's Links:We've heard a few reports recently of reviews not publishing on Google - Joy Hawkins via Twitter - https://twitter.com/JoyanneHawkins/status/1383078294166384648Soft 404 vs NOINDEX - which is better for ranking - via Barry Schwartz at SERoundtable.com - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-soft-404s-or-noindex-empty-pages-31263.html57% of US Small Businesses Now Fully Reopened After COVID Restrictions Eased  = SmallBizTrends.com - https://smallbiztrends.com/2021/04/57-percent-small-business-now-fully-reopened.htmlGoogle Testing Dot next to Updates to indicate a “new GMB” post is available - Joy Hawkins - LocalU.org - https://localu.org/google-maps-highlighting-businesses-that-have-posted-recently/Survey: Why Do Consumers Want To Text A Business? - Aaron Weiche, Leadferno - https://leadferno.com/blog/survey-why-do-consumers-want-to-text-a-business

Mike's Links:Travel and Eating Out Are What Americans Have Been Missing Most - NearMedia.co - https://www.nearmedia.co/travel-eating-out-demand/Amazon reportedly plans to make drivers double as furniture installers - Mashable.com - https://mashable.com/article/amazon-reportedly-test-plans-drivers-install-furniture/Police: Man assaults Menard's employee, hits officer with hammer after mask dispute - Fox9.com - https://www.fox9.com/news/police-man-assaults-menards-employee-strikes-officer-with-hammer-after-mask-disputeGoogle My Business: Edit Your Profile, Hours, Photos & More From Web Search - Barry Schwartz - SERoundtable.com - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-edit-web-search-31250.htmlGoogle Search adds keyboard shortcut to edit your query - 9to5Google.com - https://9to5google.com/2021/04/15/google-search-keyboard-shortcut/New consumer update of business on google now showing up in the wild - via YourBizWatchdog on Twitter - https://twitter.com/yourbizwatchdog/status/1382797758797611012?s=20Mary's LinksLocal is now digital: Understanding the new local shopper - The Google Blog - https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/local-shopping-trendsGoogle Merchant Center: A Local SEO Goldmine for Retailers - Andrew Shotland - Search Engine Journal - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-merchant-center-local-retail-data/401551/#closeReview Topic Clusters as Local Business Content Strategy - Miriam Ellis - Moz.com - https://moz.com/blog/review-topic-clustersCarrie’s Links:We've heard a few reports recently of reviews not publishing on Google - Joy Hawkins via Twitter - https://twitter.com/JoyanneHawkins/status/1383078294166384648Soft 404 vs NOINDEX - which is better for ranking - via Barry Schwartz at SERoundtable.com - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-soft-404s-or-noindex-empty-pages-31263.html57% of US Small Businesses Now Fully Reopened After COVID Restrictions Eased  = SmallBizTrends.com - https://smallbiztrends.com/2021/04/57-percent-small-business-now-fully-reopened.htmlGoogle Testing Dot next to Updates to indicate a “new GMB” post is available - Joy Hawkins - LocalU.org - https://localu.org/google-maps-highlighting-businesses-that-have-posted-recently/Survey: Why Do Consumers Want To Text A Business? - Aaron Weiche, Leadferno - https://leadferno.com/blog/survey-why-do-consumers-want-to-text-a-business

FULL SHOW NOTES[INTRO music]0:00:12.0 Aaron: Episode 27: Plan the work, work the plan.0:00:16.2 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Here are the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.[music]0:00:42.3 Aaron: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. I'm Aaron.0:00:45.7 Darren: And I'm Darren.0:00:47.7 Aaron: Darren, I wanted to start today with a little bit of an inspirational quote for us in our planning topic. Are you ready? 0:00:55.7 Darren: I'm ready. Let's hear it.0:00:57.0 Aaron: So Eleanor Roosevelt said, "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."0:01:05.1 Darren: It's a solid quote.0:01:07.4 Aaron: I like the positivity of wishing and day-dreaming without the work involved, [chuckle] but I get where she's going.0:01:15.2 Darren: Just take your wishes. They're all running around in your brain. Just write them on paper and you're starting to plan.0:01:21.0 Aaron: There you go. One other note. We are also using video recording for this episode. We're gonna test this out and see. When we watch it back we'll [0:01:33.2] ____ if we're cringy or it's just not something that we want or if it's a good second medium for us to distribute our talks.0:01:44.1 Darren: I think our subscribers are gonna go through the roof. You're so handsome. You're gonna have [chuckle] so many people being like, "Well, I wanna see more of that Aaron Weiche."0:01:54.1 Aaron: I'm pretty sure there's not enough of a filter to combat that to make that come true, but it sounds good. All right, well, hey, it's been almost two months since we recorded an episode. I'm definitely to blame on that. I've been super heads down with some things, which we'll talk about my side of planning work and working the plan, but how have things been? Are there any changes in your life in the last two months during the pandemic? 0:02:22.8 Darren: No. Pandemic-wise, it's all the same over here. Nothing really has changed. No one's gotten vaccinated in my immediate family yet, so it's all same stuff here. Busy with work. You're definitely not all to blame. I have been heads down on a bunch of stuff as well, and so I haven't sparked a podcast conversation, but yeah, what's new at Whitespark? Let's see. We launched actually a really big update to our Local Rank Tracker. It's not the kind of thing that has much impact customer-facing, but we've rebuilt the whole thing in our standard tech stack. It used to be on Angular, and now we've switched our front-end JavaScript framework to View, which has many positive impacts for us. We're able to iterate on it much faster. The software is more organized, and so it really opens us up to quicker feature releases on our Rank Tracker, so I'm excited about that.0:03:25.8 Aaron: Nice.0:03:26.8 Darren: We are finally about to pull the trigger on our new account system that I've talked about on the podcast many times, but it's actually happening. And I'm not even gonna say two weeks. It's actually happening in five days on Tuesday. Tuesday is the day that we're gonna pull the trigger, and actually on that day, we've decided we're going to raise the prices of our premier SaaS software, the Local Citation Finder. We're doing a big price increase on that, that I've been talking you a lot about, Aaron. I'm excited about that. I think there's great potential there. I feel like it's long overdue. We've had the same price of that software since we launched it 10 years ago. I've never increased prices, so it's long overdue. I feel like we're just gonna flip the switch and be just all of a sudden, we're making a lot more money, which we should've done a long time ago. So I'm excited about that. And we've got a big new feature to launch. I've talked about this before, I think, on the podcast, which is our citation auditing component that's gonna be integrated into our Local Citation Finder. So that's next on our agenda. That we're gonna be diving deep into that. It's mostly done, but pushing towards launch on that as well, so that's what's new in my world. How is Leadferno going? .0:04:42.9 Aaron: Yeah, well, one, it's great to be public with Leadferno. I think that's the biggest thing in announcing this. Just Monday of this week, I mentioned to you when we were talking before, hitting record earlier today is having this time between leaving GatherUp and just helping wrap up some things there and whatever else and diving head deep into Leadferno, but not really having it in a place where I wanted to promote or talk about it. That was definitely hard. So it was like... In my planning, it's like I had this plan on how I wanted to announce. I wanted to have the marketing website ready, and I wanted to have it to a pretty like, I don't know, full-blown or at a pretty solid part, to be able to build content around and screenshots and specific features. And early in the product and planning, there's a lot of that that you still don't even know how it's gonna end up or come true. You don't have visuals for it, things like that. So that was definitely one part of figuring out how do I make the most out of announcing what it is and driving people to something that actually does a good job of explaining it and all those pieces. So yeah, that was just a huge shift this week in being able to say like, "Here it is. Here's what it's called. Here's the link to it." And be able to socially do that in my professional profiles and my personal profiles. That was awesome.0:06:26.3 Darren: Yeah, I was excited to see the tweet from you and see that you've gone public with it. It's like, "This is the thing. You can check it out now. This is what's coming." So that must be a huge relief and just feel good to get it out there.0:06:41.5 Aaron: Yeah, I was kind of laughing. It checks the boxes on that social high or that dopamine hit you get when your LinkedIn posts and all the congratulations and the comments and the likes and retweets on Twitter and everything else. It's like this fever pitch. I kind of laughed at myself 'cause it's like, "I want that. I need that. I need word to spread on Leadferno and what it is and what it does." But I also felt like one of my teenagers where I'm worried about how many likes are on my TikTok video and things like that. It's like, I was like, "Oh, geez. Don't get caught up in this." But yeah, Monday was definitely just a rush all day long of people reaching out, people I forgot I had in my LinkedIn network where it's like you build these networks of, I don't even know, thousands of people, and then you get something and then you're like, "Oh, who's that? Where did I meet them at?" You go back and recall all of that so.0:07:40.7 Darren: Well, I think you coined the phrase, "LinkedIn is slow Twitter."[chuckle]0:07:46.9 Aaron: Yes. I'm glad you remember that. It totally is.0:07:50.7 Darren: Yeah, it makes some sense. You post something on LinkedIn, it continues to gather likes and comments for weeks, whereas something on Twitter, it disappears within half an hour.0:08:00.9 Aaron: Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. The Twitter steam settled down within 24 hours, and you're exactly like, "I'm still getting messages three days later on everything related to LinkedIn and whatever else." So people can check LinkedIn once a week and feel like they really haven't missed out on too much, where if you're really into Twitter, you're on it every few hours at least, so...0:08:27.2 Darren: Yeah, well, congratulations on going public with your new software, and you got some pilots running too. I'm excited about that. How are those running? 0:08:38.1 Aaron: Yeah, so far so good. I have five pilots up and running. It was definitely hard on me. You have this incomplete product. You know all the things that you want it to do. The vision's there, but you're also rolling out this like, "Hey, it does one-fifth of what it's going to do it in three or four months. Is that good enough for you?" [chuckle]0:09:01.5 Darren: Yeah, you probably get a lot of feedback too where people are like, "Oh, this is great. Can it do this? Can it do that?" And you're like, "Soon, coming. Yeah, we're working on it." [chuckle]0:09:11.3 Aaron: Yeah, so it's great when you get the requests that are in your product road map because that just affirms that the things you thought or what you know to be like feature parity, things like that, are true, but the other part, though, some of the feedback, there's been a handful of things. There's definitely one thing or all the early ones, so it's like, we built it and it's a desktop app only right now and it will be when we launch and then we'll be building our mobile apps right after launch. So with that, really the biggest thing, every time I was doing a demo for a potential pilot user and as they got on it, all had to do with notifications. And it was kind of interesting where it's like, "Yeah, we kinda knew that we built in... We had notifications on our road map, so we fast tracked doing your operating system notifications." You get the little alert that says, "Allow or Block." You allow it. That way, if you just have the window open, you're in a different tab, different browser, whatever else, you're gonna get that notification. But I've learned it's not enough. People have become so dependent on their phone telling them things, so what we're actually looking at doing now is building an SMS notification to fill the gap before we get to apps, so...0:10:35.9 Darren: That's good.0:10:36.5 Aaron: Yeah, yeah. So you'd just be able to drop your own mobile number and your user profile, and it'll just say, "Hey, you have a new lead from Leadferno." That will hopefully be that stop gap until we get an app that has push notifications, and you get your annoying red bubble that you don't want the numbers to go up on.0:10:56.7 Darren: That's perfect. And then at the very least the business owner gets a heads up that there's a new lead, and they can just jump in there and respond to it right away.0:11:03.3 Aaron: Yeah. Absolutely. Other than that, I've been doing Mechanical Turk notifications. I log in to all the pilot accounts, and I see if they have leads in there. And then I send them an email, "You have leads. Do you wanna go in there?" Like, "Oh, we forgot to log in." Working a new piece of software into somebody's routine can be hard and difficult, but yeah, that was one really interesting thing, it was like, "Okay, I just didn't realize how important the notifications were." And that sounds almost silly, but it's like...0:11:37.0 Darren: Makes sense.0:11:38.4 Aaron: My head is around 50 features into V1, but if you don't have this one, then we really... It's just not gonna work for us. We're worried about not meeting customer expectations. We wanna be able to move freely away from our desktop computer. We wanna know these things. So that was definitely a really big win, and then we've just had some other just small things as they're using it like, "Hey, if this expanded when I was typing in, it would be helpful," things like that. So.0:12:10.0 Darren: Can you access the application through a mobile browser? Is it responsive enough that it's functional? 0:12:17.2 Aaron: So we've chosen not to build it responsive, just because we're gonna go straight to mobile apps. The thing that we just didn't feel like a responsive was gonna give us a big enough win for the effort, just for what we talked about, the push notification, just some of the snappiness that you get out of a native app over a responsive site. So we just kinda chose instead of duplicating efforts for something that would maybe get used very little when you have the app as an option, like we're just gonna skip it. And right now, I would love there to be a responsive web design version of it. But six months from now I'll be like, "We have mobile apps. Don't worry about it." So then I won't care, so...0:13:05.4 Darren: Totally. I was only thinking of it as like a temporary stop gap until you actually have mobile versions.0:13:10.7 Aaron: Yeah. And we just looked at it, "Why spend time on that right now when we could just build more features into the core product itself," so...0:13:17.5 Darren: Absolutely. Makes sense. Yeah. Wow, good. It's going well, it sounds like. I know somebody who's running a pilot and they're like, "Man, this thing works too well. I can't keep up with all the leads," So that was great feedback to hear.0:13:31.9 Aaron: Yeah, no, the theory of exposing and marketing that you will text with customers definitely seems to be doing what we thought in opening more conversations. The barrier to starting a conversation for people is so low on text. You're just completely fine texting randomly a new business where having to take the time to make a call and will I get a voicemail or will I get a person or will I get a call tree? Am I gonna ask the right... All of those things is just so much lower, so... Yeah, from what we've seen in our pilots across a very diverse group of business types, and they're all seeing just an increase in conversation starting. It's also just been really interesting, which gets me excited. It's like, "All right, we have these five testers, and we have dozens of conversations happening in a week, but already seeing the differences in how people communicate." And the businesses is what I'm talking about, how the length and their process. Some are using it and immediately jumping into different communication medium. Others are solving it all right in the text conversation. It really gets me excited for the future of like, "Wow, the things that we'll learn as we compile all these conversations for a business to expose what do people care about? What are they asking the most?" Things like that really get me jazzed.0:15:03.8 Darren: Yeah, you think about the sentiment analysis you can do on all that incoming content, that's really interesting.0:15:09.9 Aaron: Yeah, no, totally, for sure. So when I look at that, that gets me excited for planning past the V1. It's like everything right now, I can script for you the next three months to six months, pretty much like almost every move we know we have to make. There's gonna be more things like the notifications that come into play that will be like, "All right, we need to do this, or people are gonna be not happy or frustrated." So we need to solve that, but the fact that there's just so much that has to be in the coming time frame, is just like, holy cow.0:15:53.5 Darren: Yeah, totally. That's almost the way it is with every product. There's just a non-stop stream of things that you can do to make it better. It's a good industry to be in. Speaking of all that stuff and planning that stuff, you wanna get into the topic of the day, planning.0:16:13.8 Aaron: Yeah, absolutely. As it relates to me, this is the first time I had to do planning around a launch of a product. Done plenty of feature launches and things like that, and I already kind of touched a little bit on just planning how to announce it and what was there and what was needed and things like that. But in this too, it was just thinking through like, "Okay, you get the site. You have those elements there. What do you need of those elements? Created some motion graphics for the site, what are all the things that we can round out?" And then after that, it's like, "Okay, putting the site out there, what's kind of our plan? What do we want to have happen? What's the conversion that we want out of it?" So it was mapping out like, "All right, we want people to say, Yeah, send me notifications. We're launching in June, but we'd like to every two or three weeks, send out an email and say, Hey, here's something new that we've just added to it. Here's how things are shaping up. Here's a couple ideas." Like just kind of build that fever pitch so that hopefully there's some people feeling like, "The minute that you will take my money, I will give you my money." That's the hope for sure.0:17:30.9 Darren: You want people to land up at your door with bags of cash.0:17:34.0 Aaron: Yeah, exactly. The next part is we introduced some calls to action for early access. So people who are early adopters who wanna put it to use, we wanna find out who they are and tell us a little bit about you so we can see like, "All right, based on where the product is, would you be a good fit to be a tester? Is it in a business type or a process we haven't served yet where we could learn from it? Will you be a heavy user of features that we already have instead of, Oh, the feature that would really benefit you is one of the last we're gonna build. So I'm not gonna bring you in now and get you frustrated." So that as kind of a pre-launch goal. And then the other one is we're gonna do a partner program with this product. This will probably be one of the most fundamental decisions that I find really interesting, so I decided with Leadferno not to do a white label product, which we had at GatherUp. And a couple of the reasons behind that, the beauty of a white label product is we had a large customer base that are digital marketing agencies and marketers and SEOs, and they resell it. They put their logo on it. They can claim it as their own, and then they can mark it up however they want.0:18:57.0 Aaron: We charge them $50 a month, and they can sell for $100, $200, $300, whatever they want. So those are the pros on it. The cons that I always found that won't be surprising is, one, you're not maintaining double the product, but 25-50%, you're double maintaining a product because how settings work, and how things are accessed, how you name features, you have to keep your brand out of everything, then you have to build materials for your white label people that they can grab and convert to theirs. There's just a whole lot of pieces to it that definitely make it a challenge. And for a lot, it can be worth it. Like for GatherUp, it was definitely worth it for us. We had 400-500 agencies when I left that were reselling our product, and some doing extremely well with it. But I just chose with this one, I wanted to take the route of building a partner program where what our partners, what they have to do is just refer their customers to sign up. They get the benefit of, "Hey, here's a great tool." If we're a web designer, we built you a beautiful site, but let's convert customers to contacting you. That's the ultimate goal.0:20:17.6 Aaron: If we do local search or SEO, we're a digital marketer, we wanna convert that traffic. So this is a great conversion tool. It will allow them... They'll have access so they can see into all of those accounts and see what's happening and grab data and reporting and site conversations so that they can add that to what they're doing on a retainer basis and reporting for that customer. And then also we'll kick them back a percentage of reoccurring revenue. So the downfall is I can't take a $50 product and mark it up to $300, which some have done, but the win is all I have to do is tell them to go look at this. We'll sell them. We'll support them. We'll do all those things. 'Cause the one thing that was probably the most frustrating with a white label product is you build new features, you do all these things, and your resellers just don't know or don't care or don't really have an idea. They don't support the customers as well. It's like you win on the sales side, but you can really lose on the customer experience side.0:21:26.0 Darren: Sure, yeah, actually, I've got two questions about this partner program 'cause it's something that we've been looking at a Whitespark because we currently have some referral partners that send us leads and we don't have a good system. We're currently tracking it manually. Stuff gets lost. It's like someone sends us an email and then we gotta go in and be like, "Oh, make sure that we're giving credit for this person for this referral." And so we've been looking at software solutions, and the more I look at them the more I think, "Wow, they're expensive, and we could easily build our own." So the first question is, are you gonna build your own or are you gonna use some third-party system for managing the referral program? And the second question is, I'm wondering what kind of kick back you're planning to give? 0:22:08.8 Aaron: Yep. So the first one, I'm having a hard enough time building one product. I am not building another product. So [chuckle] I'm gonna use... There's a couple out there. I've watched more than a few Facebook group conversations on things like this. The one that I probably see mentioned the most that I'm probably gonna do the deepest dive in is FirstPromoter. I think based on our needs and what I've read, that's one that I definitely want to investigate. I need to investigate further. I know another founder, Josh Ho. He has a product called Referral Rock. I need to see if that's kind of built the same way as FirstPromoter. I just... I know Josh through online conversations, but I haven't dove into his product as deeply. So I'm gonna find a product that fits the need for us to be able to do that so we can just focus on our core product.0:23:08.5 Darren: Yeah, so I was thinking about this, and it's like, I looked at one called PartnerStack, which Unbounce uses, and it looks really slick, it looks great. But it's $15,000 at the lowest end to $40,000 per year for the high end, and I'm like, "What? That's really expensive." and I don't get the value proposition there because when I think about what my needs are, I need to go into my account system, press a button that says Add New Referral, put in their name, their PayPal email, and it's gonna generate a referral link for them. I give them that link, and then all I have to do is on our website is track the URL parameter, set a cookie, and then on checkout, look for the cookie and record a transaction in our account system if anyone comes through on that cookie. It's actually pretty straight forward, and our team could build it, they're telling me in like... It's a week-ish to build this functionality into our account system.0:24:08.8 Darren: So when I think of it from that perspective, then it's like, "Why wouldn't we just build our own and just have it internally." And then you have to have a page for the referral partner and be able to look how many people came, clicked through on my link, how many people converted, and what is the timeline, what are my kickbacks, what is my next check gonna be. You just need a system like that, so it seems pretty straight forward. And I don't know if it justifies the expense of a third-party tool.0:24:35.3 Aaron: Yeah, my inclination would be I'd do more searching. The pricing on that sounds really steep. Like FirstPromoter, I think is in the $100-a-month range. I think they have some plan variants, but also everything you're describing there and just in building software, like your first blush is like, "Oh yeah, it's just these five things," but then it's like, "Oh, yeah, but these five and these five and these five," and then pretty much then it's a runaway train and I don't know. I'm just hesitant on those. I'm like, "Let's find someone who all they care about is this and let's plug into them, right? They're already plugged into Stripe. They already create the landing pages. They already have all these elements." So like I said, I have enough to do [chuckle] where I'm like, "I'll outsource." If we look at it and like, "Oh, we're only using these three things," then I at least have the experience of using something else and saying, "We could build this better, easier, simpler, that just meets our needs and eliminate that cost," then I'd at least know I'd rather start using something that's there.0:25:45.4 Darren: Sure.0:25:46.5 Aaron: And then head the other route.0:25:47.9 Darren: Yeah, I'll do a little bit more investigating of those two that you mentioned.0:25:51.4 Aaron: Yeah, and then after that, your second question on percentage, I think we'll probably be falling between a 10-15%. This was part of the other thing. Our product most likely, and we're still working completely finalizing, but I would say we're gonna fall between $150 to a $250-a-month product. And in my experience with a lot of agencies, especially the ones that really like the uptake on this product, selling price points is really hard for them. So I looked at it. If we did a white label and say we even discounted the product to, let's say, $100 a month, we could afford to do that for them. They would, because it's already at three figures, I feel like they would price it at $125 anyway. They'd get the same $20 back than if we just did everything else, because they'd be afraid to push those margins higher. Now, some of the really good sales agencies and successful ones like, no, they would probably... They could push it a lot higher and not have a problem with it, but that's just some of the things that I noticed that GatherUp is overwhelmingly a ton of them, just their own price sensitivity and sales.0:27:06.5 Aaron: They're good at their work. They like to do the strategical and tactical things, but selling for a lot of those agencies was really hard. So that's why, I just wanna do it like you make the introduction. We'll make it all happen. You get access. You get data, and you get revenue from it. So I'm hoping that like I said this could be a fatal flaw in my plan. I might be building a white label version of our product six months from now. So...0:27:33.0 Darren: Sure. Yeah, no. I think it sounds like a really good plan to me. I feel the same. Like I'm thinking about our future developments and where we're going, and I don't think we'll ever have a fully white labeled version for many of the challenges that you've already described. It's just so much more to maintain when you do that. I remember white labeling GatherUp and then noticing that the source code references your product. Even some of the class names of your CSS had to be updated, so just so many hassles.0:28:03.4 Aaron: Yeah. No, there is. There is a lot of it that you really have to have in mind when you do it. And it's like when I would talk with our team when we're launching features or things like that. Especially as the brand grew, you worked more like branding things into what you named it and how you created it. And there's just so much where I always looked at... One of our top-three threats all the time was exposing our white label resellers. Like hands down, that was the one thing where I was just always like, "Oh, nothing would be worse than me having 20 emails or 50 emails or 200 emails saying like, You just exposed me as a GatherUp reseller, and I charge four times more than you charge because I'm layering it with a service where like, Oh, what... I'm glad a few times we'd have something small, whatever, and quickly stomp it out or it was only a handful accounts, but that's scary stuff.0:29:03.8 Darren: Yeah. Totally. Well, I like that you're just avoiding that all together, go referral system instead of white label.0:29:09.5 Aaron: Yeah, well, we'll find out. Like I said, that plan might be a bad one. The jury's out on that. We'll see where that one goes. That's one of those, right, where it's like, "I definitely... I feel this way, but I understand this. And it was super successful before, but I don't know, we'll see where I land on that."0:29:31.2 Darren: Yeah, we'll see. I think as a person that has a re-sold product, it's also a lot of work on my end. I would almost prefer the referral system.0:29:41.6 Aaron: Yeah. Yeah, that's my hope. My big question is, is the revenue enough for someone to care because they might not look at your product as like a revenue generator for them. It's like, it's money back in. It adds up. It's worth something, but it's not gonna become a line item on the balance sheet that you really care about unless you have hundreds of customers. I mean, oh man, I hope I have a reseller that's like, "Yeah, sweet. We have 100 accounts that we've brought you." That would be fantastic, so...0:30:15.3 Darren: Yep, and do you pay your resellers... Is your plan, if it's like a percentage, do they get that recurring forever or is it just like for the first six months, the first...0:30:24.0 Aaron: Yeah, we're gonna do recurring for forever, so...0:30:26.4 Darren: Okay.0:30:27.2 Aaron: Yeah, I want it to be a win-win. I actually want it to be a win, win, win. I want the agency to win.0:30:35.4 Darren: Win - win - win.0:30:36.8 Aaron: Yeah, I want the business to win, and I want the consumer to win by loving using our product. When they can text with the business, they win on it. I like this where I was talking to... I was doing a demo with another potential pilot prospect, and he used to be a GatherUp customer and saw what I was doing, and the great thing is he's like, "The beauty of you and Mike... " He's like, "You guys, I never felt like you're out to make money. You were just out to give us a great solution. So I fully trust whatever you're doing on this, and I fully trust whatever price point you set." And I was like, "Oh well, I hope the whole world feels like that, so that sounds good."0:31:14.6 Darren: Yeah, you have implicit trust, everyone that comes over to you.0:31:17.9 Aaron: Yeah. I'm leaving money on the table, but I sleep well at night and I like what the product does, so...0:31:22.6 Darren: Yeah, yeah. Good. What else related to planning? 0:31:27.3 Aaron: Yeah, now that it's like out, now, it's a lot of both planning on the marketing side, how do I keep mentions going and stay in front of people and things like that. Lucky over the years to build contacts. We just had Localogy reached out and did an interview with me. I have a couple of others that lined up, pinging some people and just saying, "Here's an angle. Is it worth mentioning?" To try to keep that going to launch and then use launch as another propulsion. And there's a lot of things that I even joke with our marketing or our product team when they're talking about building something. I'm like, "No, we can wait on that. We can wait. That can come a month after launch." Well, I'm like, "He gives me something newsworthy to talk about and to put out there." So just planning all that out. And then now I'm just starting to focus on the launch plan, and we still have a ton of things to build into the product and just mapping out.0:32:32.2 Aaron: We basically have five sprints to where we wanna hit for our launch date, so it's like we have each of those sprints ratcheted with like, "Here's what we need to do and accomplish in whatever else, and we're really at this point, you're kinda out of room on, "Oh, that can get bumped or at this point, if it falls out of a sprint, it's not gonna be in the product for the V1, which is gonna be a bummer. I look at my list of 20 things right now, and it's like, "I don't wanna live out without any of them at launch, but I'm also... There might be five of them that just aren't gonna make it at launch." So a lot of that planning going on and that plan will probably be re-factored pretty heavily as we move through each sprint, but we'll see what happens.0:33:16.7 Darren: And how do you do the planning? What software systems do you use? How do you communicate this with your team? How do you set up your meetings? How do you lay out this plan and manage to stick to the plan? 0:33:28.9 Aaron: Yeah, so we do all of our sprint planning and development in Clubhouse. My product manager just hates Jira. I think he spent too much of his life in it. So even though Jira is probably the staple that's out there, it's what we used at GatherUp as well, he wanted to use Clubhouse. So that's what we use for that. That's where everything goes into play as far as organizing the sprints and what epics and stories and tasks and everything go into that. For the team, for me, I try to... The less I'm writing things in Clubhouse for me, the better. I try to... That's the weeds for me. I try to stay out of those weeds. I review the stories to keep track of progress. I answer questions when they're needed, but I like to frame things up in just any visual and have done both like Google Slides and also spreadsheets, just to say like, "Here's a high-level view. Here's all of these things." And a lot of times I like to use those and then also match them up for them to understand the business goal side.0:34:39.4 Aaron: I think it's really easy for engineers to be building in a vacuum and not understand the business needs and what goes on publicly and things like that. So helping them understand, "Hey, we need these things done and need to be this far, so we can have pilot testers. And once we have that, we wanna be able to launch and show people the product and have short demo videos and things like that." So it's good to not only have them see the sprints, but like what are the business goals that might be attached to these sprints as far as public launch, how many pilot customers are on the platform, soft launch with some paying customers, all those kind of things with it. So there, I'm pretty, whatever I can pull together fast that is well organized, that shows them and gives them a longer view, helps them see three months out. And how does all this work together? 0:35:39.4 Darren: Yeah, how often do you... Has it been from the genesis of the concept of Leadferno to today. You make these plans, you try to put a structure in place and create the timelines. How often are you sticking to things, or has it been going pretty well? 0:36:00.8 Aaron: No.0:36:00.9 Darren: No.[laughter]0:36:03.5 Aaron: You get all the other challenges in building a team, right, like finding the right people with the right expertise, the right ways to communicate. We can definitely get into this another time, but we hit kind of a road block end of January, February that had to do with our team's expertise with Flutter, and that's what we're using for the front-end SDK format of thing. I don't even know if you can call Flutter a framework or what you call it, but we realized we needed to level up. And so we had to do some changing of our team in relation to Flutter experience, and so that was a big shift that probably just kinda gutted two sprints off us. So we were not only... We weren't moving fast enough to that time because we didn't have the right components, and you're back and forth between, "I'm hopeful this will change," and, "Let's try some of these things and whatever else." And your gut might be telling you something, and then finally, I was just like, "We have to do something, right?"0:37:14.7 Aaron: So yeah, between all that, we just kind of... It's not accurate to say we lost a month. That's how I feel about it, but we had to change guard. We had to hand off information. We had to bring some new people in. Any time you bring new people in, they are also gonna have some ideas, which a lot of times, they're good ones on restructure. "Here's the efficiencies you're missing. Here are some of the things that if I was here from day one, I would have decided different that you're gonna wanna redo this." So it was really hard, and I was super bummed at that point. It would be like, you combine what you're working on isn't public. You can't talk about it at all. You're just in this hole working with development teams and testing and everything else. We weren't at the point of being able to have pilot customers yet. We were trying to do this work to have pilot customers. That was part of it, where it was like, "Man, everything feels like it's just kind of not going right right now, but you just keep working at it and things are getting better."0:38:18.2 Darren: With that big speed bump behind you, are things flowing to plan fairly well since you've kinda caught up from that, that bump? 0:38:28.2 Aaron: Yeah, I feel like it's getting better. We've had to make adjustments. There were things on how we were planning, designing features where we weren't doing a good enough job on it, and so we had to step up our game with how prepared we were ahead of the sprint, how we are creating some of the epics and stories. We're making adjustments there. So yeah, all the stuff is always an evolution, and so you're working hard to how can we constantly be getting better? And you're taking what you feel and what you see and feedback from the team and you're bringing in new expertise. There's just a lot. There's a lot happening at once. And it's like, that's easily the one thing it's like, you come from... I came from a team at GatherUp that our core development team had been together for three years when I left, and there's so much that was in lock step. Things were still hard and difficult and you'd still have misses or holes, whatever else, but so far less just because there's so much trust in the team. They had worked together. They understand the overall direction, a bunch of things like that. And then you jump into something else and you realize you have to rebuild that, and for the first three years at GatherUp, we didn't have it. It took us three years to hit our utopia or our best efficiency within that, and now I'm trying to smash and shrink it into months. [chuckle]0:39:55.2 Darren: Right.0:39:55.8 Aaron: Which is really not possible.0:39:58.8 Darren: No, but I think you are shrinking it, though. It seems like you're moving really fast at Leadferno actually. If you think about how much you've accomplished since you started this, you're progressing pretty zippy, it seems to me.0:40:12.7 Aaron: Yeah, I can tell you personally, the weeks have never flown by faster for me like ever. They are like... I'm like, "What? How is it a weekend?" Then on the weekends, there's no stand-up. I can't see what else got done, [chuckle] anything. It's like, I actually don't want the weekends. I want weekdays. I want stand-ups. I want progress. I wanna test. Man, it's crazy. So anyway, but I threw into our notes. I read a great tweet, and this guy was just sharing something that he had heard. And I reached out to get the pronunciation of his name, and his name is Tobenna Arodiogbu. And he put out this Tweet, and he just said, "Someone once told me it takes about three years to build really great software." And he said, "I kind of agree. The trick is in providing value when your product is merely good and executing every day the right to make it great." And I was just like, "Oh, that's so it." Right? And I'm like, "I'm trying to make great software in six months, and it's not gonna happen. But I need to do well enough where people are like, Yeah, I see where you're going. This is good enough and keep going and we're gonna stay with you."0:41:28.9 Darren: Totally. It's a really good quote. It's like people... You don't wanna take three years to launch your product. Launch it when it's pretty good and it continue to iterate. And actually, this is one of the things that we've actually had a roadblock at Whitespark about is we continue to refine and iterate before, and then we do this massive launch. It took us a year-and-a-half to get this thing out the door, and we're really trying to solve that problem and be like, "No, this is our existing product. We're getting that out of the door." We did it again with our new account system. It's like, "We could have launched this a long time ago if we weren't constantly refining it." And actually the nice thing is that once you get it out the door, all those refinements can come week after week after week, and then you're doing regular updates. You're showing your customers that you're alive and continuing to make the product better, and you have a new marketing push every week. And so that's the cadence that we're trying to get towards where every week we've got some new updates, some new thing that we're pushing live.0:42:35.1 Aaron: Yeah. No, I think you're spot on with that is how can you build and iterate rapidly? I think it's the same thing I was kinda talking about with our team. Like momentum, that's the killer thing. When you have great momentum, it doesn't even matter if it's just constant small steps, but you have momentum. And when we hit our rut, January, February, the momentum was gone. If anything, the momentum was backwards, and that is emotionally tough. It's tactically tough, all of those things. And the same when you get your customers to start feeling that your product has momentum, like, "Hey, every month or every other month or every quarter there's something new," like they feel that momentum. I think that's the key thing to find.0:43:27.9 Darren: Yeah, I see it with ClickUp. So we use ClickUp for some of our project management on our GMB Management Service, and every Friday I get an email from ClickUp. They call it the ClickUpdates 2.75, every time it increments. And they've done, I think, 275 updates. And so every Friday, there is an email that usually covers about three new features in the software, three new things. It's incredible, and that's... I dream of getting to that point, and it doesn't seem impossible. It seems totally within our grasp very soon. As soon as we have new accounts out, we're gonna start iterating on all... 'Cause at Whitespark, we have like five products. So we have so many different things that we're always working on.0:44:14.0 Aaron: Yeah. Well, it gives you a story to tell, and then you can take that story to your customers. That's marketing, and, yeah, ClickUp does a great job. I definitely went on a binge of signing up for any tool with a free trial for researching onboarding processes and things like that. And so I'm still getting a ton of emails, which is great because it helps me understand their messaging, and yeah, ClickUp does... They do a really great job with it.0:44:40.3 Darren: Really good, yeah.0:44:41.0 Aaron: Some of their little animations in their emails and things like that, so yeah, that's definitely a good example.0:44:49.3 Darren: They've got the resources too. I think they got $100 million in funding. [chuckle]0:44:55.2 Aaron: I don't know. It sounds great to have... I would have such a hard... This like Leadferno, we raised a small angel round, so we can scale up a team. And even that still feels hard for me, getting a team of five, six engineers right off the bat. It felt like, "Oh my gosh. That's so much for no income coming in and whatever else." It's like, "Oh, I'm learning, man. I'm baby steps on how to do something that isn't bootstrapped from the start." So...0:45:24.9 Darren: Yeah. [chuckle] Yeah, totally.0:45:28.8 Aaron: Well, cool. I think we've probably worn people out by now. You've worn me out. You just made me answer all the questions today, so...[chuckle]0:45:37.8 Darren: You know what? That's because I'm like the worst planner, so I just basically have to defer to you and be like, "Hey, Aaron, what can you teach me about planning?" So I'm learning as much here as the audience.0:45:48.0 Aaron: Yeah, you're evolving though with it, Shaw, but sooner or later you will be the plan guru, and I'll just take notes from you, so it's all good.0:45:57.9 Darren: Great, well, we'll slate that for March 2022, new episode on planning where I'll lead. I'll give some advice on planning.0:46:06.7 Aaron: You'll hit it before then. I know you will.0:46:08.8 Darren: Okay, great. Great, I appreciate the confidence.0:46:11.3 Aaron: Awesome. Yeah, you bet. All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us. Good to get another episode out. Hopefully we won't let so much time go by until Episode 28, and we'll get back to you. Anything you wanna make note of coming up Darren? 0:46:27.2 Darren: Nah.0:46:28.2 Aaron: Nah? 0:46:28.8 Darren: No. [chuckle] Let's talk about it next time.0:46:30.9 Aaron: Keep doing the things on repeat.0:46:33.1 Darren: Yeah totally.0:46:34.2 Aaron: All right. Well great catching up as always with you Daren, and we'll talk soon. And we'll talk and record soon as well.0:46:41.2 Darren: Yeah within a month. All right thanks, Aaron.0:46:43.7 Aaron: All right thanks take care everybody.0:46:45.7 Darren: Thanks everybody.[OUTRO music]