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Why Most Investors Stall at $5K w/ Sean Tepper (Tykr) · Real Estate Investing with RealDealCrew

0:00
Most people who open a brokerage account,
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put in five thousand dollars and then freeze.
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They buy one stock, maybe two,
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then sit on the sidelines for months guessing.
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The average ticker has over one hundred and twenty thousand in their account.
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and it's not because they are smarter investors.
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It is because they finally have a system that removes the guessing.
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Sean Tepper, the founder of Ticker,
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a tool that turns stock picking into simple green,
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gray, or red signals. And in this episode,
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he brings the four-part framework behind it,
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why he thinks confidence matters more than returns,
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and how the same don't chase two rabbits discipline has built
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his software applies directly to how you scale a real estate investing business.
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If you want the tools he mentions,
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I will drop them in the show notes and you can always find more
0:55
at RealDealCrew dot com. Let's get started.
1:03
Sean Tepper joins me here today.
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you can really learn what he can help you with by going to tykr.com
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I'm going to have that as a clickable link in the show notes.
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But if you are interested or playing at all in the stock market,
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Sean, I have to tell you I've been using Ticker now for quite some time,
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and this is one of those consistent tools that I've I've leveraged that
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I can easily say that it r consistently pays for itself.
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So I this kind of a no brainer for me.
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So I I just head over to ticker dot com,
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check it out. I believe there's even a free trial period.
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So why would you not give it a try?
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So
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Yeah.
1:41
Sean, I really appreciate your time here today.
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Jack, appreciate the invite.
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So, you know, as y you're on a real estate investing show,
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whether it's you know, I'm gonna be putting this likely on both of my channels,
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but we're gonna kinda lift and shift some of the things you've learned
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in this world and I'll try to apply it to the real estate investors
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and what they can apply to their businesses.
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But in the end
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Mm-hmm.
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I find that
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Yo your origin s story is kind of interesting in itself and I'm not gonna spend
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a ton of time on there because people can go down that rabbit hole on
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a number of channels, but you built ticker from a r Excel spreadsheet initially.
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What was the moment you realized it could become a c actual company?
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Yeah that
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And I'll just back up a second.
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I'll keep this real short, but I wanted to make sure I don't make mistakes
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in the stock market because I see a lot of people guessing.
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And I was one of those people between 2010 and 2015,
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2015 and 16. I created the initial spreadsheet.
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I created a gamification to it to make decision making easier for myself.
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So it's it's kind of like a traffic light.
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Stocks are either green, gray,
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or red. That's on sale, watch over priced.
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And I used it the next four or five years with my
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own money because I wanted to make sure like hey if I created an algorithm here
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I want to make sure I test it with my money first before even thinking about giving
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it to people made really solid returns consistently between 15 and
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50% per year still maintaining that today and a lot of customers fall
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in fall around 20% per year. But yeah it was 2019 was the moment
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And I'm like, okay, I think I've got something here.
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And I started sharing that Excel sheet with a few other friends
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and retail investors. And everybody's like,
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you should consider turning this into a software.
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And that was it. That was the green light.
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Took a year to build. We went live in 20 and then the rest is history.
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That's really important to call out.
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Like you you kinda tested the market in a roundabout way.
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Maybe it was by accident before you jumped head first and and building this thing
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out. You kinda let the market kind of give you a little direction first.
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I did, yeah, but it and like when I got started,
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like with most brokers you join,
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like I think I started at E Trade and then I moved to Schwab.
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Brokers don't give you a lot of
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or really any analytics or education.
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They they try to a little, but at the end of the day,
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they really they're not thinking or looking through the lens of
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the retail investor that really make it easy.
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It is a bit of a frustration, but that's where we come in.
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But yeah, I joined and then I was taking advice from like online influencers,
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reading different news sites. And the problem is there's so much
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conflict like regarding a s a single stock.
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For example, you could look at one stock,
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let's say it's Apple, and on that same page you'll see an analyst say buy,
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another analyst say hold, another say sell.
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And it's like, what am I doing here?
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Like am I am I buying? Am I selling?
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You know, and and so yeah, it it was a big frustration.
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I knew like, you know, massive wealth is created in the stock market,
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but nobody was making it easy and it was just a lot of confusion.
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So that was kind
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of the I'm like I gotta create a solution to the problem here.
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You mentioned gamifying it a little bit.
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Like w was that to
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Mm-hmm.
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just to keep your interest going or what what was the reason for that other than
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maybe solving some prom solving a problem whether it's accuracy,
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emotion, or time?
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Sure. What I found
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Through the years. I used to work for companies like Kohler and GE,
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both are great companies, and and a lot of process engineering is used.
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And okay, so what does process engineering mean?
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Well, let's say you've got a hundred data points.
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I remember being told this years ago,
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I can't go into a meeting with other people or let's say executives,
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present those hundred data points.
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I'm just gonna get kicked out of the room.
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What you have to do is you roll it up to either a yes or no or a traffic light
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to make decisions much faster.
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Faster because you're only going to get about a half hour max with people,
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and and ideally they want it even less,
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like let's say 15 minutes. So I learned gamification is really important
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for not only kids but adults to make decisions,
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and that's one thing in finance I never saw is a gamified process that rolls things
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up to a traffic light. I was actually asking the question has nobody created
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the traffic light rating system in the world of stocks?
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It blows my mind. So I decided to you know roll.
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it up to something simple and the algorithm with all the we look
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at the financials we don't do anything fancy with charts we just
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use straight up Warren Buffett type investing which is value investing
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but yeah we'd roll it up to the you know the this traffic light on sale watch over
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price and then I could clearly make a decision and with a high probability make
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money on stocks and avoid at the same time get this avoid the stocks people
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are talking about like you remember years ago GameStop and AMC
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see those MAME stocks and I I was running it through the ticker excel sheet version
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at the time and I was like these are terrible their financials are awful
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so it it allowed me like protection against mistakes was another play there.
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Sorry a lot of answers there in a short amount of time.
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No,
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I I appreciate that, especially bringing up the meme stocks.
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I that's that actually kind of a trend that came and gone.
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I I haven't seen that again. I is that something that has been
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Mm-hmm.
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kind of mitigated now by the system or is that you do you expect
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to see something like that happen again?
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Well the market will always have its main stocks and surprisingly I
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I'm surprised by this SpaceX which went live or IPO on Friday,
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this last Friday.
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There was a lot, well, there was a bit of chatter before leading up to the IPO,
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but now after there's not a whole lot of talk,
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so it's not nearly as hyped as GameStop.
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I'm shocked. I'm sh you know, maybe the market's become a little desensitized,
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but unfortunately, I still see a lot of people,
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and this is an everyday occurrence,
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a lot of people talking about,
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pointing at, hyping up, you know,
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a lot of weak stocks. And you could have,
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you know, a hundred, you could have a thousand,
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you could have ten thousand people talking about the same stock.
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And not millions. I'm not seeing that like the GameStop era,
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but now I see again a lot of people looking at the wrong stocks,
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and that's where we come in. We we can prevent those mistakes.
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You know, this is kind of w my next question kind of strikes a little close
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to home because I have found a a little problem,
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like because I'm a bit of a nerd,
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so I kind of go a little too far into the weeds.
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And then I w especially when it comes to my marketing and communications
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of what I'm offering. And then I then I believe I oversimplified and
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now I've kind of swung back to trying to find this middle ground.
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Like how did you do that regarding your product?
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Like how do you avoid oversimplification or finding that sweet spot?
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Good question. So the rating system came first,
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which is on sale watch overpriced.
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And then, you know, there's old saying you confuse them,
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you lose them. So you bring in too many indicators and too many flashy objects,
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you're just gonna confuse people and they're gonna leave.
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So we it was a tactful process of like getting feedback from customers
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and at the same time looking at
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different things like how are stocks analyzed and and so the second
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big thing we implemented which is I have to give Phil Town credit.
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He d have you heard of or read his books,
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Phil Town?
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Yeah, I'm I'm familiar with the name.
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I'm try y when you said it I was kind of going through my mental Rolodex trying
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to remember where I heard that.
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He he is actually part of the inspiration for Ticker because in his books,
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Rule One is one of the books, the other one is Payback Time.
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Rule one and payback time. he provided some of the calculus that went into Ticker.
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Of course, I took it a step further and and added the gamification,
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added a little more rigor to it,
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a more a few more things I look at.
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But
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Yeah, looking at what he was doing,
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there's a framework he uses called the four M's.
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And I'll kinda I'll break them down,
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I'll make this real short. But these are the four things you want to look
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at when you're paying attention to a stock,
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if you want to buy or sell. So the first thing is the math part.
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That traffic light is the math part.
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That's the easy button, does it on autopilot?
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The second is the meaning of the business.
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That's the how the business makes money.
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How many revenue streams does a business have?
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If a business has a lot of revenue streams,
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it makes it a lot
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Safer. In other words, when rev one revenue stream slows down or gets cut off,
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that's okay because others keep the business moving.
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The third is the moat. How does the business compare to the competition?
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And the last is the management.
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Well, doing those three, those last three,
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those are you can't do those with math.
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You need to, you know, it's the whole quantitative versus qualitative,
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quantitative be math, and qualitative is more subjective.
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when we started integrating with open AI,
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we use open AI Enterprise. We started doing that about three years ago.
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We were able to automate those three things.
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So now you can log in a tick or you can look at the 4M score and it's it's like
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waiting for you. It's right there.
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You don't have to do any man manual analysis.
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So yeah, that again gamified because you again you can't you can't just give
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subjective like I think it's good,
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I think it's bad. It's like scoring systems.
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people resonate with if you're a sports guy like people
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Get attached to sports because most sports,
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not all, but most sports are pretty easy to follow.
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Like and and when you have points involved,
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it makes it gives like a common goal.
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Like this team has a higher score than this team.
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It's it's very easy to understand,
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and that's part of the reason why sports are attract you know attractive
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to so many people. Of course, competition is one thing,
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but scoring systems work, especially simple scoring systems.
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So the 4M we put in a score between zero and a hundred.
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Nice and easy. Keep it clean, and if you can get
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80 or higher, that's like really,
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really a s a strong stock. So it's all about like to back up and really answer your
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question in the shortest terms as possible.
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It's like look at what provides value to the customer and then how
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do you deliver that so it's still really easy to understand?
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And that's why I always think about the you gotta have a scoring system.
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in the equation because if you were to give people long bodies
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of text or paragraphs, you're gonna lose them.
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It's just too much. Scoring systems,
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they work.
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Yeah,
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you mentioned the multiple streams of revenue.
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Th that almost
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Yeah.
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goes a little against some of the what some gurus might even say these days.
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I hear a lot of niching down, focusing on one thing,
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getting that nailed and and you know,
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doubling down on it if it's producing revenue.
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You're you're right, and I can expand upon that.
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So yeah, when you're creating your first business,
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yeah, you want to make sure you nail that first revenue stream and
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you you are focused on it or you put somebody in charge of that,
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but then as the company continues to expand.
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That's that's the smart play then when you bring in other streams of revenue.
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Cause yeah, if you the old saying goes,
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the one who chases two hares catches or two rabbit rabbits catches none.
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You probably heard that metaphor.
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Well nice.
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yeah, you you don't want to spread yourself thin,
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you focus on one thing and then you expand to other revenue streams.
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Like with ticker, for example,
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we're a software as a service subscription play 15 bucks a month or 99 a year.
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Very low barrier to entry, it's kind of like it like buying Netflix.
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You're not gonna break the bank.
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We've got other tiers from there.
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So we focus there. And then we have another revenue stream,
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which is the courses. people can use so that's revenue stream two.
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And I got a team that really helped with that.
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So I kind of point people in that direction.
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They build revenue stream two,
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revenue stream three, which is we will have paid ads on the free trial only.
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just because we're getting more demand there.
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Of course, people can just join ticker subscription and the paid ads go away.
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So that's that's common with business models like Netflix and Hulu
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and I think Disney Plus, I'm not quite sure on that,
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right? You know, it's a common model.
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So it's like what are the what are common revenue streams with this type
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of model and how much effort does it take to put them into place?
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Because once you can identify those and then have the right people on your team
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to execute
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Then they're focused. But you're right,
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like me, I try to keep, I'm really focused on the SaaS business.
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That's where the real valuation of the ticket goes,
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and I got other people to help with the other divisions.
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So.
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You know, y you talked about your tenure now at a couple big outfits,
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whether it's Schwab and and
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Mm-hmm.
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and a couple others. But now seeing this information coming through your platform
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so closely, is there anything or belief about investing that has changed
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now over over the last number of years?
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Gosh, another good question. So I've been investing since 2010,
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and and I really learned that.
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by about 2015, I'll give you some of the aha moments through the journey.
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So in 2015 and 16, reading those books by Failtown,
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it was the whole the key thing with stockpiling,
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which is the concept of when you have great businesses and
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the whole market's falling, which you know happened in 2020 with the COVID did,
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pulled everything down. And then in 2022 we had a recession.
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It wasn't as painful as 08, pulls everything down.
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You want to buy those great businesses and that's when you make those really
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big returns.
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And that has worked out and paid dividends times a thousand.
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So, for example, in 2020, my returns that year were 120%.
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I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to get that every year.
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But you need the market to drop severely,
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buy great businesses, and they take off.
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2022, I think, is like 60%. Last year was actually 70%.
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But am I going to get returns like that every year?
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Absolutely not. So stockpiling was one big event.
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Then over time, like
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after building ticker I found that people getting returns is not
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the thing that people want most.
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The thing that people want most is actually confidence.
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And I learned that
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probably th two to three years into building ticker is like this person
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you you know you talk to customer after customer after customer,
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which is what I highly recommend when you build a company is don't build
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it on your ideas. Bring the customers in and get feedback along the way.
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And I found that hey, less focus on returns.
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Returns are nice, but what people want most is actually the confidence to
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do it on their own. That is literally the thing that helps people sleep better
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at night. I'm not kidding. so we lend
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Then learned whatever we build and ticker is focus on confidence.
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And then my philosophy over time,
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I really learned is it's and I knew this years ago,
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but now I know because my accounts keep getting a lot,
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lot bigger, which is time in the market.
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So I would I literally wish Jack I had a time machine.
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to like when I was sixteen and started working,
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four fifteen I started working.
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Every dollar just put in the market.
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my gosh. Where I'd be today. It's it's incredibly powerful.
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Well, you just probably squashed one of my ending cr questions because
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I usually ask people at the end if you could go back in time,
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what what what piece of advice would you give your younger self?
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So we'll
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Yes, the time machine.
16:49
so we'll we'll probably have to change that one out here now.
16:53
You know, th w one of the things that I w No,
16:54
I'll I'll still give I'll give you a more
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go ahead.
16:56
specific answer when we get there.
16:58
Yeah, you you continue. I'll I'll
16:59
okay, great.
17:00
give you an answer. Yeah.
17:01
You since you built a SaaS product like this,
17:04
could let's dive a little bit into making a better person a better investor.
17:08
What metric tells you the users are becoming better decision makers,
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not just more active users?
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yes, so this points at a common problem with most brokers.
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And again, I'm I'm very thankful
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Really love working with brokers and we're not competitive to brokers.
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So whatever broker people use,
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whether it's Schwab or Fidelity or or Robinhood e Trade,
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the list goes on. That's great.
17:32
You know, pick a broker. Their job is to keep your money safe,
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but problem is people join a broker and they make very few transactions.
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So like buy a stock, maybe one or two,
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and then they'll sit for two months,
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three months, four months, sometimes twelve months,
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and then make another purchase.
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What we found with the ticker community,
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and we have data on this, is people
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typically increase transactions by over 100%.
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So they're joining and they're committing every month.
17:56
And we we teach is you need to treat your broker account like you
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do your mortgage or your rent or your energy bill,
18:03
your cell phone bill. You cannot skip months.
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Like you cannot, it is absolutely imperative you are investing every single month
18:10
because it's time in the market.
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Another thing we track is the average account size.
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Get this. I'm gonna have you take a guess here,
18:17
actually. I won't give you the number,
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but let me hear your guess on the average account size at most brokers,
18:24
especially here in the states.
18:26
Well, just statistically I I know that most people can't even handle
18:30
a five hundred dollar emergency,
18:31
so I'm gonna I'm gonna guess that maybe a grant.
18:35
Okay, you're in the ballpark. There are people that will guess a lot higher,
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but it's actually about five thousand dollars.
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which to brokers out there, you talk to them,
18:44
they cannot stand that. That's terrible.
18:46
The average account size of ticker is over 120,000.
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And what's driving that is people will join and then they get confidence.
18:55
And then they're taking money out of savings,
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they're liquidating weak mutual funds,
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or maybe it's a weak account they inherited from a loved one.
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They're getting rid of that and putting that money into the stock market,
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getting those bigger returns, letting their money build wealth faster.
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And that's why we're seeing that quickly get to $120,000 and beyond,
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which is we love that. So those are the two things I really pay attention
19:21
to a lot with our audience is like how many churches.
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Transactions are they making per month?
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And we don't want to train trading behavior.
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That whole buying and selling the same day,
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which is day trading, or swing trading,
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which is buying today and then selling tomorrow or a few days later or whatever.
19:35
We're training the whole value investing you want to be buying every month.
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If it's one, two, three, four transactions,
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that's fine. But you should be making purchases,
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putting that money to work every month,
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do not skip months. So yeah, those are the things that I care about:
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transactions and account sizes.
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Just to remind everybody, we're talking to Sean Tepper.
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You can learn more and the app we're talking about at tykr.com.
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That's T Y K R dot com. I'm going to have that as a clickable link
20:03
in the show notes. If you found some value in what we're chatting about so far,
20:06
do us a favor, share this with one of your investor friends.
20:09
If you're watching us on YouTube,
20:11
give us a like and subscribe. So you talked about just now about
20:16
In
20:17
the increase in transaction the number of transactions and the amount.
20:21
I mean that the numbers you're throwing around is in comparison is pretty
20:26
a pretty drastic difference between a standard brokerage.
20:29
At what point did you realize that you're building a lot of trust?
20:34
Maybe it's a trust app versus a financial app?
20:38
Thank you for saying that. The very few people have seen that.
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So trust, well, on that. I'm a big advocate and I love using trust pilot.
20:46
So that's where we collect all of our ratings.
20:48
But you're you're right, like
20:51
You gotta get feedback from customers to really hear what they're saying.
20:54
What I and this goes back to listening to the customer and getting feedback
20:57
on features like do you like what do you like?
20:59
What's your pain point? And then you just create features against that that solve
21:03
those problems. But it's the it's literally every day I'm talking to customers.
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And I know people don't love customer support.
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You have to as a founder, you have to learn to love it.
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And and I did. I I love talking to customers.
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I built a lot of friends that way.
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But you're right, that getting that feature.
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Feedback, delivering features people want,
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not features I want, features our customers want.
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solving problems they need solved,
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that builds trust. And then they share it with their friends and then they come
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on and and it just kinda snowballs.
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And then of course always getting those reviews and whatever platform
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you collect reviews on again us,
21:38
we like trust pilots. And then then it's like when I talk about I always tell people
21:43
this, like I was at a conference last week,
21:44
I'll keep this real short, but I was talking about ticker and we have really good
21:48
returns in our account sizes. And one guy was like,
21:51
I'm gonna call you on it, Sean.
21:52
It's
21:53
It's sounds too good to be true.
21:55
It sounds like BS. And I'm like,
21:56
you know what? You're right. Don't even listen to me.
21:59
Go to Trustpilot and see what our customers have to say.
22:02
And then I left him with this.
22:03
I'm like, we have a 4.8 out of five,
22:06
one of the highest in the best in industry.
22:08
He's like, okay. It like changed the mindset,
22:11
but but trust is so critical in today's age.
22:14
you have to build the trust from the word go.
22:16
Yeah, I I think that's imp really important to call out because
22:19
I unfortunately and I think I'm a victim of it to a certain extent,
22:23
there's there's some cus applications or whatever that I've I started using
22:29
and they kind of went off the rails and and for the most part I think
22:33
it is because they kinda lose perspective or they lose track of what actually could
22:39
move the needle for the for the customer.
22:41
Like they may maybe maybe they think they've outgrown their customer.
22:45
I I'm not sure exactly what the situation there that causes the the derailment.
22:49
Well, I got my thoughts on that and I've talked to quite a
22:52
few tech entrepreneurs and this could probably ri translate to real estate,
22:56
but it's I t I even had some bad apples in ticker that they refused to listen
23:03
to the customer. And I always say like,
23:05
don't assume
23:06
Don't think you know what the customer wants.
23:08
And I even had a comment come back at me once,
23:10
which is a Steve Jobs quote, which is the customer doesn't know what they want.
23:14
You have to tell them what they want.
23:15
And it's like, no, okay, that's Steve Jobs.
23:17
The rest of the world, right? We all have to talk to the customer.
23:20
And these these people refuse to get on Zoom calls or Google Meets
23:24
or whatever and get on those calls and really ask those questions.
23:27
And it's it's time consuming and sometimes it's painful because customers
23:31
are going to, they're gonna tear down your your baby.
23:35
They're gonna say things about it that I don't like this,
23:37
I don't like that. You you just gotta you gotta take it all and you have
23:40
to turn it into something good.
23:42
And you gotta do that on repeat.
23:43
That's product ownership. and yeah,
23:46
coming back to what you're saying is or asking,
23:49
but I will tell you what, people,
23:51
most people in tech are really bad at getting feedback from customers.
23:55
And it's it shouldn't be that hard,
23:56
but it is.
23:58
How do you kind of weed through all of that where it becomes like
24:02
a single loud voice versus like actual like movement from your community?
24:07
You're that's another good question.
24:09
So you could get like we got a backlog of feature requests that would keep
24:13
us busy the next five years for sure.
24:15
So the question is what do you prioritize?
24:17
Well you kind of have to look through it your own lens,
24:19
like what features are people looking for the most?
24:22
Which is you want to prioritize that,
24:24
but then you also have to look through the lens,
24:25
what are gonna generate the most revenue for the business?
24:27
Because at the end of the day,
24:28
you need to be a profit center.
24:30
It's we're not building a nonprofit here.
24:32
and we don't want to keep raising capital to sustain.
24:34
We want customers paying revenue or,
24:37
you know, generating revenue so we have a we have a sustainable profit center.
24:41
And you have to so you're kind of combining the two.
24:43
Most requests generates most revenue and kind of looking at that and prioritizing.
24:47
And I I found, and there are people that have pushed back on me a lot on this is
24:51
I try to prioritize features that our current customers want right now.
24:56
As opposed to features getting new customers in the door.
24:59
The reason is, and this is something I learned in the world of process engineering,
25:04
is and even the show of the office made a quick comment on this,
25:07
which is you will generate more revenue faster by serving your current customers
25:13
than trying to go find new customers.
25:15
Finding new customers, of course,
25:17
it's obvious that's where you scale,
25:19
but serving your current customers is priority.
25:21
So we use a tool called, I think it's
25:25
looped in and it allows and there's other tools like it but it allows your customers
25:29
to upvote their favorite features and we attach this to different emails like
25:33
a newsletter and people can upvote what they want most and we prioritize based
25:37
on upvotes. I also prioritize based on customer sort support tickets like
25:41
my customer support team will let me know hey we got another request
25:44
for this and then you get five more of those over the week and it's like okay well
25:48
let's prioritize that and of course again looking at it through the lens does this
25:51
generate more revenue for us
25:53
Especially if it's feature requests that can be put into a higher tier because we've
25:57
got three different tiers of ticker.
25:59
So there's upsell potential. So yeah,
26:02
it's it's product ownership, which is a art and a science all in one.
26:06
But at the end of the day, to summarize all that,
26:08
I know that was a lot. It's like prioritize your current customers first
26:11
and what they want and what generates revenue.
26:13
You kind of put those two together.
26:15
Well, Sean, you you got me like my mind is just whirling with all kinds
26:19
of other questions here. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pick pick my next
26:23
one is like regarding you just talked about how your business is
26:27
is profitable and and some people might even think it's too good to be true.
26:32
Like I I would imagine that that early on it was kind of bootstrapped
26:37
and you kinda had that like everybody you feel like it's you're in a plane and it's
26:42
It's
26:42
about to crash, but then you finally start pulling out.
26:45
Like at what point did you really f feel like Ticker was at
26:52
the point that this is actually going to work?
26:54
Yeah, so and j real quick here,
26:57
we're about we're in year six.
26:59
We're not cash flow positive yet,
27:01
but we could be. But to have context here,
27:04
it took about I think it was 10 or 11 years with Netflix,
27:08
and I think it was 12 years for Spotify.
27:10
but yeah, it's it was probably about
27:14
Year four, I still wasn't sure because we really didn't have product market
27:19
fit even year three, maybe year four.
27:21
And a good indicator on that is churn.
27:23
You wanna be, you know, five point seven five percent or less per month.
27:27
That's a a book out there called T2D3.
27:31
But long story short, if people are joining and staying,
27:34
get that churn below five point seven five percent.
27:37
That is a really good indicator.
27:38
So it was actually year five we were tr we started trending in
27:43
around five percent. And we've been maintaining that over the last
27:47
probably 18 months, somewhere around five percent.
27:49
Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
27:51
But yeah, it took four years. And and how we got there was simply when customers
27:56
leave, we give a really gracious exit.
27:58
Like we always thank them. Like first,
28:00
thanks for you know using the tool.
28:02
Thanks for giving us a try. And second,
28:04
what can we do better? Are we missing features?
28:06
Is the price too high? Is it whatever?
28:08
And that I mean usually it's a in those earlier days,
28:11
especially the first three to four years,
28:13
it was n typically not price. Most people
28:16
People
28:16
doesn't don't say price because the price is already very reasonable.
28:19
but it was missing features. You're missing this,
28:22
you're missing this. Or I use this tool,
28:25
they'd list a competitor because it has this feature.
28:28
It's like, okay, so we get a point to that.
28:30
but yeah, it was it felt good,
28:32
really good to get the churn low.
28:34
Conversion rates high, like when people jump on tykr.com and then join
28:38
the web app or the mobile app.
28:39
You know, getting everything dialed in and now the next big milestone
28:43
is cash flow positive. It's like a laser focus.
28:45
How do we get there? Could happen by December is the goal.
28:48
We'll see. That'll be a big celebration moment,
28:50
I tell you what.
28:51
What
28:52
kind of advice would you give somebody who's kind of in a similar situation like
28:55
that where they're they're questioning whether they made the right move
29:00
or whether they should stick with something like this?
29:02
It's it all comes down to providing value to the customer.
29:07
If people are seeing value, like you're getting ongoing affirmation,
29:12
it's that's the green light, like keep going.
29:15
I I will say this, there there's a rule in business,
29:18
which is businesses don't fail,
29:21
people quit.
29:23
And if you keep listening to the customer,
29:25
and you there's gonna be these micro pivots,
29:27
doesn't have to be this monumental,
29:29
like change a business model, but these little pivots in the business,
29:32
like maybe you wanted to do this and customers want that.
29:34
You know, you kind of you listen to the customer,
29:36
you keep providing value. You know,
29:39
there's an old biblical phrase,
29:40
Galatians 6:9, do not become worried and doing good.
29:43
Proper time you'll reap a harvest if you do not give up,
29:46
is a quick reminder I I use all the time in my own brain,
29:50
which is don't give.
29:51
up keep providing value and if people are seeing value that's the indicator
29:55
to keep providing value keep moving forward and we all as entrepreneurs
30:00
we have those moments like is should I do this?
30:02
Is this logical like or should I pack it in and go go get a job?
30:07
Like I've had those moments I have to admit but I kept reminding okay their
30:11
customers not every day but we're getting feedback really good feedback
30:16
and getting reviews
30:17
Revenues may not be where I want but I'm getting all the other indicators
30:21
in the right spot. Let's keep moving forward.
30:24
So yeah, that it it can be psychological warfare,
30:27
I'll tell you that.
30:28
Well
30:28
that was probably one of the bigger mic drop moments so far is the people don't fail
30:33
but they quit. I'm gonna make a note of
30:35
Yeah.
30:35
that so that we we make sure that to clip that piece out and share it separately.
30:40
With with that being said, you know,
30:44
y and and hopefully you'll you'll be this transparent,
30:47
Sean, but I'd be curious like what was the first thing that broke in ticker when it
30:54
stopped being a personal tool and went to a global SaaS business.
30:58
you mean like that inflection point?
31:01
Yeah.
31:01
trying to think here. There was like it was kind of a gradual process because
31:06
a lot of our referrals come from friends.
31:08
But it was, I'll give you around the year.
31:10
It was probably
31:11
2024 was our last year we used to list a deal.
31:15
This is how you found us was through App Sumo.
31:17
You can get those lifetime deals.
31:19
We're also on StackSocial and we started seeing more referrals from people,
31:23
like people joining and then referring,
31:26
and then those referred over to us were paying the normal subscription.
31:30
They weren't paying the lifetime deal.
31:31
That was kind of like
31:33
Alright, I think we're at a good point here where let's turn off
31:36
the lifetime deals because you never want to be in a lifetime deal for life.
31:39
They're great for starting a business to get feedback,
31:41
get customers and ecosystem, can kind of build the tool.
31:44
But yeah, it's probably 2024 and five,
31:46
referrals from friends. We turned off the lifetime deals.
31:49
I remember the day vividly, it was December 31st,
31:52
2024, and then January 1st, 25.
31:55
No more lifetime deals being sold.
31:56
It's all SaaS revenue. And it was like a clean slate for us.
32:00
At that point as well to go raise capital because that's one thing,
32:04
too. If you are currently selling a lifetime deal,
32:07
you will not be able to raise capital from BCs or Angels.
32:09
I know that's a topic maybe for another day,
32:12
but you need the recurring revenue to create the leverage.
32:15
So that's when we started raising capital,
32:17
a light raise seed round, and then which we're gonna be wrapping up here shortly.
32:22
But yeah, that was kind of inflection point,
32:23
2024 to 25. And that's kind of the moment I knew that this is going to happen.
32:29
Like there are a lot of happy customers.
32:32
There are people that depend on us.
32:33
If we were to go out of business,
32:35
they would be devastated. Come hell or high water.
32:38
This is what I'm doing. And so that was the commitment moment.
32:42
Like I can't, I can't turn back.
32:44
I would imagine that there was a period of time as well where,
32:47
you know, you're adding quite a few users.
32:49
You've built the SAS product. Was there anything on the tech stack
32:54
or even internally with your employ employees,
32:58
like something that just kinda kept you up at night that was was just operating
33:04
by the skin of your teeth?
33:06
yeah, like I mentioned, the bad apples in the business.
33:09
There were there were two particular people that had to go.
33:13
They again not customer focused.
33:15
They wanted they wanted to do what they wanted to do,
33:17
not what the customer wanted to do.
33:18
So got rid of them. That yeah,
33:20
I was losing sleep on that. then they're gone.
33:22
That's like a breath of fresh air.
33:23
tech side, yeah. We had plenty of problems with tech build building the SAS.
33:28
I'll keep this real short, but I actually had to go through two.
33:31
Teams to get to the third one because most people cannot build a SaaS product.
33:36
It is actually quite difficult,
33:37
even with AI, because there's so many little nuances to pay attention to,
33:41
you'll never get it off the ground.
33:42
And the first two teams I worked for in the past,
33:44
and they just could not execute.
33:46
They could build software, they could build modules and widgets
33:49
and do WordPress sites like that.
33:52
They just could not build a SaaS product,
33:53
a custom SaaS product, and got rid of them and got the third company through a
33:58
referral and they've been very good.
34:01
They've been with me ever since,
34:02
which is going on three to four years now.
34:04
but yeah there were there was a moment we went down.
34:06
The the old rule in SAS or in software is you never go down.
34:10
Never and we did go down for about
34:14
I think about four to six hours.
34:16
It was in February of 23. I remember vividly,
34:20
it was a poor decision on our onboarding process was overengineered.
34:24
And and in other words, people based on the location,
34:27
it would spit back stocks based on their location.
34:29
It was like extremely overengineered.
34:32
And I'm like, guys, just show people the I did talk to my engineers,
34:35
just show the names everybody recognizes.
34:37
Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, NVIDIA.
34:40
Let's not pick
34:41
stocks based on their geographic location and based on IP address.
34:45
And so
34:46
That can be a frustration I have with engineers is there there's always this innate
34:52
motivation to create something overly complicated.
34:55
It's like, no, no, we don't, we don't need to do this.
34:57
So that's an ongoing thing, but I lose a lot less sleep now because
35:01
I'm kind of preemptive to it. But that moment in February of 23,
35:05
I like, this is so stupid. So live and learn.
35:09
Yeah. I I was gonna say that you the the two bad apples or the couple
35:13
bad apples that you were dealing with,
35:15
they th y the way you described it,
35:17
it sounded like a couple s senior engineers that were just they're
35:22
set in their ways. I've just dealt with certain
35:24
Correct.
35:24
people like that where they just that's it's their way or the highway
35:28
and you it's it's like pulling lead.
35:31
Yes. And and of course again, they did not want to talk to the customer.
35:35
They knew what was right for the customer.
35:37
They didn't want to confirm that the customer was like,
35:39
no, no. None of us are that smart.
35:41
We need to talk to the customer.
35:44
And they couldn't do that. So and they forgot one of them actually quit
35:48
and that caused the other one to have concerns about their job.
35:50
And I just headed off at the pass and said,
35:53
Yeah, you're gone. We're see your but your buddy's gone.
35:57
You're left alone.
35:58
What are you doing here? That was kind of the conversation.
36:01
It wasn't that direct, but it's like,
36:03
go somewhere else.
36:06
Mm-hmm. So what is some of those things that you learned as
36:11
a cor corporate consulting that maybe they they taught you through
36:16
the various training that has really helped you as a founder,
36:19
but actually on the flip side,
36:22
what did you have to also unlearn?
36:24
Yes. the actually a project I did at GE had a similar situation with
36:30
a lot of engineering-minded people creating a product.
36:33
And when I got in, I noticed a lot of contention and I found out in
36:38
the first week it was their third attempt at building the product.
36:42
And I asked the question at that point,
36:44
did you ever listen to the customer?
36:46
And it was like crickets in the room.
36:48
And then of course I started talking to the customer,
36:50
which the engineers hated, hated me for it.
36:54
That was terrible. They treated me terribly.
36:56
I had one leader who just made my life a living hell every day.
37:00
But after their leader started seeing the results of like listening to the customer,
37:06
they fortunately removed the the bad apples from my way out of my way.
37:10
It was that was a blessing. But that was really the emphasis I learned.
37:15
is if you're not sure, talk to the customer.
37:18
Seriously. Like they're the ones paying you.
37:20
Find out what they want. You know,
37:21
it's it's not overcomplicated.
37:23
So that taught me from GE and then every project there thereafter just implement.
37:28
So that was a big one. What was the second part of your question?
37:30
That was a good question, by the way.
37:32
Something something that you had to unlearn.
37:35
unlearn. unlearn.
37:38
I never like meetings, I know that's really common in corporate culture.
37:41
I'm still trying to unlearn that.
37:43
Like the rule at Ticker is if you set a half hour meeting,
37:46
it should be twenty-five minutes or less.
37:48
If you set an hour meeting, it should be fifty-five minutes or less.
37:51
Like never push it the full amount.
37:53
Still unlearning that, because I I
37:55
Think you recall the days of COVID,
37:57
you know, people would be meeting upon meeting upon meeting with no breaks.
38:00
It was very common, especially the corporate world.
38:03
Well, I've tried to unlearn that.
38:05
And I s I I several meetings today went right to the 11th hour,
38:09
right? You know, the half hour meeting was a half hour.
38:11
It's like, Sean, you need to stop this.
38:13
Like give your people time. And if people have more questions and it goes
38:17
in that hour end of the hour, so be it.
38:20
But that's still something I'm working through.
38:22
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
38:23
We kind of fall into these habits and it's it's actually just kinda hard
38:27
to to break them.
38:28
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
38:30
I know that you've done some real estate investing as well.
38:33
I was curious if a real estate operator wanted to build
38:37
a scorecard for acquisitions, what principles transfer from
38:41
Mm-hmm.
38:41
a
38:41
stock analysis?
38:42
gosh. Yeah, and I'm I'm no real estate expert.
38:45
I really just it's just the property I live in today.
38:49
Which fortunately got it at the right time 2014's in in the valuation
38:55
as you can imagine, like most people buying homes and
38:57
it has significantly increased.
38:59
But yeah, if I were to create a scorecard,
39:01
I would say start in Excel and and that's the easiest is you could literally look
39:05
down all the criteria that adds value or what you're looking for.
39:08
You could create a score against each,
39:10
like if it's you know a point per or five points per or whatever you want,
39:15
and then then it totals up. I think that'd be relatively easy.
39:18
every property you're looking at you could just go down the checklist give
39:21
the point system and then all of a sudden if you went through like 10 properties and
39:24
Let's say it was a scoring system between zero and a hundred,
39:27
and you had a had a few that were 50,
39:29
55, 60, but then you had one that was like 90.
39:31
Well, I think the scoring system has answered our question for us,
39:34
which is the property we should go after first.
39:37
Well, there's our answer. And and I'll say one more thing to this,
39:40
that I think about things like,
39:41
you know, location as such a big deal,
39:43
maybe the age of the home, latest renovations of kitchen and bath,
39:48
applying like a furnace upgrade,
39:50
air conditioning, those are the things that come to mind.
39:52
like if you're checking all the boxes maybe the value the score is going
39:55
to be higher. I don't know. Other people might look for the the ones that need
39:59
the most work, get in really low and then tell up.
40:03
I again I'm not a real estate expert,
40:04
but I I think it'd be it'd be pretty easy and I think it'd actually be kind
40:08
of fun to create a scoring system for real estate.
40:11
Building a SaaS product, this is gonna be kind of a nuanced question,
40:14
but was there a feature that you deliberately did not build but
40:20
you knew would increase engagement but would have hurt outcomes?
40:24
There were a few that we delayed just because we needed to get other things done
40:29
first. For example,
40:31
the the broker connection feature found out that that is the number
40:36
one most important feature to people because it's their money
40:40
now connected to ticker. so you can connect like Schwab,
40:43
Fidelity, e-trade. So like your whole portfolio you can keep track of in ticker,
40:48
you can see the ratings of all stocks and really know if you need
40:50
to make improvements. But that was one where
40:53
Probably could have done earlier,
40:54
but needed to get a lot of the all the stock data,
40:57
all the ETF data, really get that clean,
41:00
making sure it's flowing to ticker quickly.
41:02
So I know it's not a direct answer to your question,
41:05
but you kind of learn like what to prioritize and probably could have made more
41:09
money earlier by delivering that,
41:11
but it'd just be a better experience to do it after all the data is cleaner.
41:14
another one is AI. You know, people rave about AI and they gotta add it,
41:19
gotta add it. And at ticker.
41:21
we always ask ourselves the question,
41:23
if we add AI, what problem does it truly solve?
41:27
And so we just added an AI investing helper,
41:30
which we probably could have done earlier,
41:31
but again, we really wanted to
41:34
prioritize other things. So when you add something,
41:36
it's just it's it's air t not airtight,
41:39
but close to. In other words, it's it's a really seamless experience.
41:42
Otherwise it's gonna be a clunky experience.
41:44
That goes back to product ownership and prioritization,
41:48
what needs to be done before what.
41:50
Well, I mean that's that's a situation right now.
41:52
AI is the hammer, everything's a nail,
41:54
we're gonna jam it into everything.
41:55
So
41:57
Yes, right? Drives me nuts.
41:59
Well, I'm gonna we're gonna jump into the rapid fire and start closing
42:02
out this episode, but I did
42:03
Sure.
42:04
have one more question and we can try to keep it relatively short.
42:07
~ it and
42:08
You got it.
42:09
I'm probably gonna open another can of worms,
42:10
so maybe it will be enticing enough for you to come back,
42:13
Sean. If you had only a spreadsheet and an hour a week to invest,
42:18
what would that process look like?
42:20
it broke up slightly. Only a spreadsheet in an hour to invest.
42:23
If you had only a spreadsheet and one hour a week to invest,
42:27
what would that process be?
42:28
~
42:30
yes.
42:31
I'll I'll give you guys if you don't use ticker,
42:33
I'll just give you the the equation or the keys to the castle,
42:37
if you will, right now. Go to the income statement.
42:40
You can go to Yahoo Finance or Market Watch.
42:42
Both are free. And you want to look at the income statement.
42:45
And the three lines you want to pay attention to are revenue,
42:48
net income, and EPS. There's going to be probably 30 lines,
42:52
if not more, but those are the three:
42:54
revenue, net income, EPS, and see if they're increasing.
42:58
Year over year over the last five years.
43:02
And if so, that in most cases,
43:04
I can't tell anybody what to buy and sell,
43:06
but in most cases, that's going to be a high confidence to buy.
43:09
But that would be ticker does a lot more rigor for us automatically in seconds.
43:13
But that would be a great starting point.
43:14
Is those three lines, if they're increasing,
43:16
that gives you really high confidence that,
43:18
hey, I might have a strong stock here.
43:20
And you could do that in Excel.
43:21
You could you could probably look at five to ten stocks within an hour using that
43:27
process. So there you go.
43:29
Well, I appreciate
43:30
you giving those keys. that alone should give you the reason to visit visit ticket
43:36
ticker dot com. I'm gonna have that again as a clickable link in the show notes.
43:39
T Y K R dot com. Well, if you're ready,
43:43
Sean, we'll close out the show with a rapid
43:45
Sure. Let's go.
43:45
fire. What lie
43:48
do investors often tell themselves?
43:50
market is rigged it's not it's it's really simple math once you figure
43:55
out why stocks go up and down the most and the there's a lot but
43:59
the two main reasons are is the EPS increasing in other words profits
44:02
are increasing number two are they beating their earnings estimate if those
44:06
two two things are hit and their financials are strong share price typically goes up
44:11
You hit on this one earlier, but if you could go back in time and give your younger
44:15
self a piece of advice,
44:15
Mm-hmm.
44:16
what would it be?
44:16
My first job, I was lifeguarding in high school.
44:20
And instead of spending money on stuff I don't need,
44:22
I would say, hey, mom and dad,
44:24
let's set up a custodial account.
44:26
they own the account until I'm 18,
44:27
but I'm like, get that account set up,
44:29
I'm gonna put every dollar I can into the stock market.
44:32
What single process or tool have you implemented that has had
44:35
the biggest time saving impact?
44:36
My team and I, we love Slack. Great communication tool.
44:40
Keeps the team in one central location.
44:42
It's awesome.
44:44
Just remind everybody one more time,
44:45
head over to ticker dot com, T Y K R dot com,
44:50
clickable link in the show notes.
44:51
Really appreciate your time, Sean.
44:53
This was great to meet you and hope you'll consider coming back again.
44:57
Absolutely, Jack. Thanks for the opportunity.
44:59
Well