Latest / 1 to 100 / E38: The Repeatable Launch Strategy with Matt Espinoza and Ryan Kaufman from Clover Labs

Transcript

E38: The Repeatable Launch Strategy with Matt Espinoza and Ryan Kaufman from Clover Labs · 1 to 100

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All right, guys, it's exciting to meet you and we're excited to
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learn about your your businesses.
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Yeah, I get some amazing context.
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Yeah, great to meet you guys as well.
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I think I tried to see Jack do the the Slack DMS Yeah, high
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level mean run run a company called Clover.
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We have companies like Mastershipute like kind of
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growth hack using like SEO and AI video and ran over before
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planned a couple other companies to to help them do that.
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Whoa whoa, wait, sorry, I just learnt about Echoes, but there's
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another one called Mass Distribute as well.
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No, it's no, it's called echoes. It's what we do.
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We just mass distribute content. Oh, yeah.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you do that?
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Well, I mean there's obviously we can get it's like the product
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spec, but like I think just high level for context of the
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viewers, like Clover is kind of our holding company slash
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venture studio. Our whole goal and premise is to
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be the growth kind of suite powering some of the fastest
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growing companies. And so we're kind of doing that
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through, you know, a portfolio of companies.
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We have two right now, there'll be two more that will probably
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come over the next year or two. But yeah, we're we're just kind
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of really powering companies across different areas.
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One company right now is focused on inbound SEOLM optimizations
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and then one is kind of in the social media organic content
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space. And so let's just take any one
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of them. Let's take the like LLMSEO
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optimization. So is the idea like I would buy?
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Is it a tool or is it a service that I'm buying?
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Right now it's a service, yeah, combines, combines kind of a lot
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of tech we built in house. But because it is quite premium
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right now, we're we're working with brands on like kind of a
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service level. OK, sweet.
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OK. And so I, I hire you guys and
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then I do I forget about it. Like do I say like, hey, you
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guys worry about increasing how much traffic comes through and
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how much buying intent comes through on SEO and LLM surge or
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yeah, I guess help me understand, like what is the
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promise that you're you're giving?
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Is it, is it the outcome? Is it some sort of in between
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metric? Like how what would What is your
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ideal version of why someone is buying you?
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I think 3 buckets. So there's like impressions,
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which is like just, they're just blog posts or Reddit post going
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out, like just Reddit impressions there to exist.
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So some people just care about that, others care more about the
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SEO side. And so right now blog posts and
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Reddit posts are ranking quite highly across SEO and LMS until
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like you can obviously track that as well.
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And then the last part is just like just general ranking of
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like domain. So someone searches up a certain
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keyword, you want to be the one that's ranked up the highest.
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But at the other days, it kind of like going to be addressed.
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Like the initial point is like everyone comes in with different
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goals, whether it's they want to grow top funnel awareness,
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whether they want to increase their bottom point conversions.
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Maybe their competitors are really active in either the SEO
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LM kind of ranking. So everyone has a different
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goal. So we consider what their
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objectives are. At the same time, we'll do a
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deep dive on the entire space. So as far as SEO goes, LMS goes,
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Reddit goes, what's kind of the opportunities that are happening
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right now? Which kind of pieces of content
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are being picked up and based on that kind of deep dive, we're
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able to figure out and come up with a game plan of what will be
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the best course of action forward to sort of solve their
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goals. So it is case by case, which is
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why I like the service kind of does happen for best results.
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But yeah, what Matt kind of spoke about is kind of what
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usually follows. I should say, Rashad, we're also
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customers at Foreplay and they're crushing it.
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They're doing so, so many things, right?
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Like if you look at it and from the service business point of
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view, they're taking all the boxes, they've got ownership.
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You can kind of set and forget, not think about it, and they'll
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keep going. There's transparency.
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If something goes wrong, they let you know straight away.
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You don't have to find that something's gone wrong, like
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posts getting taken down off of Reddit, which just I think lets
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you trust your service providers, right?
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That nothing's getting hidden. And then on the software side of
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things, it's really hard to measure organic, right?
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We were talking to Oliver from tabs and bust them not too long
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ago about putting a chart that represents the value that you
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provide to the business into your software product.
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They're sort of similar to you actually the like a blend of
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service and software and you guys figured it out for one of
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the hardest things to to measure right.
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Yeah, I mean like the problem. Like Reddit, I was just saying
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Reddit like has always been a channel that has been relevant
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for brands. People go to these communities
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to talk about their problems. They're asking questions like
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it's one of the most high intend platforms, but for marketers and
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for brands, it's been impossible to scale up any efforts there
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and to kind of capture what's happening.
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So obviously like attribution is tough in itself, but that's kind
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of like one of the pieces we want to come in and and help out
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with. Dude, I didn't use Reddit very
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much before you guys, and now that we're working with you
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guys, I don't use it at all. I'm like, all of this is drivel,
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none of it's real. I'm not paying any attention to
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it all. What's interesting though, is I
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feel like Reddit used to be such like a such a different platform
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than it is now in terms of who's using it.
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And my wife sends me links to things on Reddit and I she's not
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the like the the typical person that would have been using
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Reddit 10 years ago. It's the demographics really
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shifted. The shifted.
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It's very different now than it used.
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We have customers on the calls that say like, are our buyers
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really looking at Reddit posts? Like are they really in these
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communities? And we've had like Fortune 500
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CE OS tell us that they've been an avid Reddit user every single
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day. So you never know who's actually
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looking by the same time if you aren't looking.
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The relevance that Reddit has across the other channels like
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Google and like ChatGPT is, is a big reason why people even are
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interested because that's kind of influencing what's happening
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over there. But yeah, every kind of product,
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every kind of space conversations are happening.
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It's one of those things that you don't really know until you
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so you see it. How big is the company?
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Like how big is your guys's holdco company?
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We have about 42 people full time.
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We started 6-7 months ago. You said 42 people.
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That's correct. Yeah, he started six months ago.
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That's split across like different companies.
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So there are folks who are kind of like Clover Focus that work
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across the companies. A lot of our marketers work
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across companies. We do have some engineers that
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are specific to each company. Customer success is obviously
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going to be specific to each company.
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So yeah, we're still kind of plan to build out more of the
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team. So we're not even close to done
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with that, but it's it's moved very quickly.
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Got it. And how did you capitalize?
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Is it off of revenue or did you raise or what did you guys do?
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We must just did a referral as an outbound as we're only going
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to market version at the moment. Oh, no, no.
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How did you capitalize the business?
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Like where did the money come from to hire these 40 people?
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Me and Ryan sold a company to private equity about a year and
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a half ago and it was kind of funneled a lot of capital from
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that. Wow, got it.
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So you self funded it basically. Yeah, we had a couple angels,
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but most of it self funded. Great.
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Are you profitable at this point?
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Are you still are you still funding it?
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No, we're really profitable. I guess it's awesome.
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Why? Why?
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Choose this structure. Why they like the kind of
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holding company approach or? Yeah.
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I mean, I mean the end goal is kind of what Ryan said like we
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just want to help companies grow very quickly.
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And So what was interesting is that we had like the second
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product, for example, go to 200 KA month within the first three
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days just from cross the line, the initial customer base.
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And I do like with serial marketing.
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And so what's interesting is that with the portfolio
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approach, you have the ability to then just cross sell, upsell,
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downsell existing customers. And we attack different channels
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per per product. So the first one obviously
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tracks like Reddit, SEO, blogs, Second one attacks like TikTok,
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Instagram, short form content. I was think for me and, and this
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I know Matt, yeah, Matt, Matt thinks the same way, but in
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terms of like there's a lot of sort of synergies that like you
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can build a core team that can fulfill and work on similar kind
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of pieces of the puzzle. And so like similar to kind of
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I, I previously worked at Adventure Studio where like over
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a year I worked with 20 different companies and we kind
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of learned that like you can build these internal teams that
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can build many companies as long as there's a focused effort
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within kind of your role. And at the end of the day, we
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can, I, I believe we can grow quicker by having like new
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product offerings. So we're always going to
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continue to go deeper on to that company.
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But the more we can have more offerings, the more we can kind
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of basically make sure there's like an infinite LTV across our
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client base. So that's kind of our
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hypothesis. Like most companies want to
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build a billion dollar company, we want to build a billion
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dollar portfolio and just grow on that overtime.
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Maybe. Maybe the the other side of that
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is why not just have products under underneath one company
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Like why struck like why create this structure like like
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illustratively like Atlassian? Atlassian is a single company
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that has multiple products that are like quite disparate, right?
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So like, why not just have it be different products owned by one
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company? I think it's mostly the
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optionality for like acquisitions on like for a
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company basis is interesting. Even like moving entities, it's
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like mostly just legal structures.
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It's not like real like rhyme or reason.
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It's just like even like moving cash between entities is a
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little bit better from that purpose alone.
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So by having one entity you have the limitations there.
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Yeah, I think the the exit optionality is really good.
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Yeah. It's also like the exit
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optionalities is a huge thing. And so obviously like we want to
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continuously reinvest into ourselves to create these new
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companies. And yeah, I think if we were to
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maybe exit one or two down the line, who knows, it would be a
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lot more complicated. We don't want to sell Clover
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ever. So that kind of internal vehicle
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that we built is is lifelong. And by having different
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companies, we can be more flexible like Matt said.
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I really like it from a go to market point of view as well.
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You have products that are clearly branded after what they
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do. And I think if you just think
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about the consumer in this space, what are they more likely
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to do? Continue to upgrade to different
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products at the same provider after, you know, whatever the
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core reason they adopted your software was, or opt into
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different products that are pointed and solve a particular
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problem. And this is one of the things
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that they talk about on the operators when they're talking
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about SAS, they're like, what does this SAS do?
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Because eventually it gets so bloated and there's so many
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things that you look at and you're like, what does the thing
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actually do? All right.
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Yeah, you're, you're so right. And it's that each of these
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companies will have their own kind of like go to market
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systems. We, we use some, we use the same
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systems across them. But for example, if it's cold
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outreach or paid ads like the hook or the reason that someone
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would hop on a call with us is going to be for one of those
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problems that they solve. They may not have the same
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problems, they may not treat each problem the same.
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And so we can kind of be relevant for that.
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We can bring them in, we can provide value and if they are
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good fit we can introduce them to the others, is kind of the
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way we see it going. Got it, Got it.
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Yeah, Jack, I, I I think like it's so interesting.
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This is like a per per perpetual debate that is like highly
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market cycle dependent. So like one learning for us at
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least who's selling because you guys sell to like you can you
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guys can sell to anyone, right. So you're not really vertical
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dependent. Jeremiah and I sell mostly to
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commerce companies and then actually foreplay can also sell
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to anyone who advertises. So I right, Jack, is that a
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fair? We even have a cohort of people
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that just use foreplay because they love ads.
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So yeah. That's that's that's wild.
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That's pretty cool. Yeah.
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But so an anecdote from the commerce world is that right now
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there's a massive consolidation cycle happening.
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So like it's like a well known thing that across sort of there
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are a few main Martech players so attentive Clavio, Yapo used
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to be in the market. They're no longer post script,
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but there's massive consolidation happening.
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And so people who used to have, for example, attempted for SMS
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and Clavio for e-mail are consolidating 1 to 1.
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And so I guess like how do you guys think about market like
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best in class versus consolidation plays as you think
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about your portfolio construction and how to mostly
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because of like bundling, right? Like but like the reason
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consolidation works is because of bundle pricing.
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Like how do you guys think about that as you cross sell other
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products from other companies into the customer?
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Yeah. I think that that's kind of our
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our goal here is we want to be the ones to provide these
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services across what we do. And so there are going to be
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some incentives for, you know, 1 client, number one, who's a
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client of one of the companies to start with #2 so whether it
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means giving like extended free trials or lower price to kind of
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get started, we do want to provide those incentives to, to
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be as helpful as we can across what they do.
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And so on the back end, we're actually building this out
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shortly with like a team of kind of account executives.
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But really we want to make sure we're building a really strong
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relationship with these clients and are not pushing anything on
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to them, but are being aware of their problems.
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And we just want to really do as helpful as we can because we
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know we have value we can provide if they if they're in a
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position to, to capture that. Jeremiah, do you guys do that
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across your different companies? Like do you bundle across
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companies? No, no, it's hard.
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Losing my experience hard. I, I think the, it's actually
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way harder than I would expect unless somebody's actively in
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market, that's the only time. So when it does happen, So I
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should, I should clarify, we do some, but it's, it's if the
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customer's asking for it effectively, right.
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So if we are in a sales call to sell reviews to somebody and
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they start talking about surveys, then that's a really
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easy opportunity to say, hey, you should go check out no
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commerce. But like that's typically guided
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by the customer. I think there's another world in
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which success could do that pretty well, but we still
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haven't been able to unlock that.
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Like we'll we'll go, we do success campaigns and we say,
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hey, go, you know, try it. If you're in success there, you
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can get a, you know, a bonus for cross selling this other
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company's product. Is it obvious it's underneath
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the same brand like both products?
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I mean, in those conversations, it is because we tell them.
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So just to give you guys a little bit of context.
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So I started a company called No Commerce Surveys.
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We sold to a holding company. The holding company is called
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Tiny. Tiny.
15:40
Yeah. Mm.
15:41
Hmm. Yep.
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Cool. I didn't.
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Know that. Yeah, we're very familiar.
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So OK, cool. Yeah.
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So, so tiny owns the the company that I Co founded, we sold in
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2022. The year prior they bought a
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company called Stamps And so I just took over as CEO of Stamped
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as well. So I run no commerce as CEO.
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Well, and then stamps and then stamped also has a product
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called repeat. But I think there's there's a
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couple of challenges here. One like different products
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under different company names is 1 barrier, but then also
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different teams as a secondary barrier here.
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And so I think, I think those both those things are hard
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solves. We get some cross out, we do get
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some bundling. We'll say, hey, we'll give you,
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you know, 20% off if you sign up for this thing for example.
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But it's not, it's proven to be much harder than I thought it
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would be to, to cross out in that regard.
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I think there's a way to do it. We just haven't do.
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You know, that's because I guess for maybe our comparison is like
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we have our Clover like kind of where companies meet in the
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middle. You think that it's hard because
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the incentives aren't there because they see themselves as
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I'm part of this company. Is that where you think the the
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challenge kind of lies? Obviously there's a lot of like
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going deeper into each client, but is that, yeah, what do you
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think is the main bottleneck? For you, yeah, that's absolutely
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part of it, right. Like the incentives, you have to
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find the right incentive structure ultimately so that the
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individual person who's selling at their manager, all those like
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all the different players involved have some sort of
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benefit in cross selling. So that's that is absolutely
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part of it. But I will say the other thing
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that's interesting is like a lot most customers just don't care.
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They're coming to you for a specific thing.
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They want that thing and they just don't care about anything
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else. And I think I do think even
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companies, a single company that offers multiple products has
17:44
that challenge as well. That's not necessarily like a
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different company challenge. But I see a lot of, you know,
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even in the context where we offer multiple different
17:54
products, it if somebody comes in looking for a specific thing,
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there's work that needs to be done in terms of getting them to
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on board to another feature set of features and other products
18:05
within your ecosystem. To can I can I take the other
18:08
side of that coin? Yeah, yeah, go for it.
18:11
Can I take the other side of that debate?
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Yeah, I, I, I totally disagree. And, and I'll, I'll tell you a
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customer story and then I'll tell you what we're observing
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internally. I was talking to a very large
18:26
retail enterprise, OK. And they were talking about how
18:31
actually this kind of roughly this exact situation where they
18:34
have like an e-mail vendor and an aspect.
18:37
And they were saying how one of those two just came to them
18:42
every year for the past three years and was like, here's the
18:47
benefits. If you consolidate not in like a
18:50
pushy way, but it's like, hey, guys, you are not unlocking
18:53
this. Because if you were to
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consolidate under one roof, I'm sure it's some orchestration
18:57
benefit, right? Like I'm sure it's some obvious
19:00
benefit, but and you guys are not taking advantage of that.
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And then finally they're like we kind of need to do this thing.
19:09
And so this account management work where you just show the
19:14
road map and the potential benefits of attaching all of
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your other products has real impact.
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Now I'll tell you our story. We only three months ago did we
19:23
have more than one product and we started to attach the other
19:27
products to our customer base. We never knew how to cross sell
19:30
anything prior to that. We have already attached at
19:34
least one new product to 1/4 of our book in in like 2 months,
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right? And it is just a muscle you can
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build and it is way easier than you think.
19:45
Yeah. I, I agree that this value to be
19:48
clear, like we, we do that no in particular.
19:52
Well, actually both stamps and no because different product
19:54
sets do that. I guess from my standpoint
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though, I think it's harder than.
20:00
It's not just a, hey, everybody in success, go send, send this
20:04
e-mail to the person you work with or send them a message in
20:07
Slack. Now them do that thing, right?
20:08
That doesn't happen. I think what you described is
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exactly the way it works, which is like maybe it happens
20:15
quickly, but but also many times it's years of presenting these
20:19
options and, and figuring out how to do that.
20:21
But, but I am curious because I, I think like getting 25% of your
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customers to attach an additional product in two to
20:30
three months. That is very fast in my opinion.
20:32
Two months, yeah. Do you think that there's
20:34
something that you did in that process that was, I guess,
20:41
something that made that actually work that quickly?
20:45
No, I mean, dude, life is all about lead.
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I mean, like, yeah, I'm a lead bullets guy.
20:49
I have no silver bullets and I certainly have no gold bullets.
20:53
I got a shit load of lead bullets and I just fire all of
20:56
them. You know what I mean?
20:57
And so it's like you annoy the account managers every day
21:01
saying do you have an account plan for all your accounts?
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And then you wake up the next morning and you do it again and
21:05
again and again. And then you say, hey, in this
21:09
account plan, like when? When would this next thing be
21:12
useful? Hey, did you actually show them
21:14
value of this next thing? Did you turn it on?
21:16
Like what what these guys were talking about?
21:18
Did you turn it on for free for some period of time?
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So that way they can start to feel the value so that we were
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creating like loss aversion as opposed to like potential future
21:27
promise, right. Like, oh, my God, I'm getting
21:29
this value and I'm going to lose it.
21:31
Right. Like, I think it's just like an
21:34
incredible number of lead bullets done all the time.
21:38
Yeah. And you just have to decide
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you're going to do it. Yeah.
21:42
Also have to do this at foreplay, we have to this is the
21:46
only way that we can upsell our new products.
21:48
We have to go down every single one of those roads and we still
21:52
have customers that will say to us, oh, I had no idea you guys
21:55
had creative analytics, right? One of our oldest customers
21:58
right said, oh, I had no idea that you had this.
22:01
I was using this other option. I way I prefer what you guys
22:04
have made and then they, you know, they now spend like 6 KA
22:07
month as opposed to 150 bucks a month, right.
22:11
And it wasn't that we hadn't done the marketing wasn't that
22:14
we hadn't tried. It was just that they were busy
22:16
doing what they do by running an agency.
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I yeah, I feel like it's a conversation that we had Zach
22:21
and I about conditional probability.
22:24
Are people more likely to opt into a standalone creative
22:29
analytics product that's outside of having to opt into foreplay
22:33
first and then into because like, if you think about no, for
22:37
example, me as a customer back when I was an agency, no was
22:40
really easy for me to recommend whenever anybody said, Oh, I
22:43
want to know where my customers came from.
22:45
I want to be able to have a survey at the end of the
22:48
purchase because I could attach that name to, to, to their like
22:53
their query. I didn't even have to think
22:55
about it. It's the first thing that came
22:56
to me. But if no, and I know this isn't
22:58
how the companies were structured, but if no was a
22:59
product in stamped, I'm not sure if I'd be able to retreat it
23:03
that quickly, right? Yeah, it sounds like Ryan and
23:06
Matt have like mastered this. Like once we start doing one
23:11
thing, I mean, what did you guys say?
23:13
You brought the second business up to 200 KMRR like almost
23:19
instantly by attaching it, right?
23:22
Like I can't imagine that that's because you like told you send
23:25
one Slack message. Like you don't do that by
23:27
sending one Slack message, I don't think.
23:30
You might you might be wrong on this one.
23:32
It wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't that hard.
23:35
I'm. Not going to lie, I actually
23:37
want to ask you, Rashad, in terms of we're still kind of
23:41
working on like what are going to be activation points to bring
23:45
out this next company? Like what's the right cadence on
23:47
that? Like these are things we're all
23:49
also experimenting with. What have you seen work well in
23:52
terms of like how do you have you guys built out a system or
23:56
approach internally that's quite structured behind this or it's
23:58
kind of as you go? I'll tell you like my 1
24:02
operating rule that has worked extremely well, at least right
24:06
now while we're like trying to get things to happen really fast
24:09
is I run the company on a daily stand up.
24:13
And every, every day you have to show up and explain what
24:17
progress progress you've made, which is why the lead bullets
24:21
work because you know that like now, now there's actually like
24:27
accountability across the organization.
24:29
So different people ask each other, which is what you kind of
24:32
want to end up with. But early on it was just me
24:35
annoying everyone every day. And you just have that daily
24:38
stand up and you just say like, hey, did we try this?
24:41
Did we try this? Did we try this?
24:42
Did we try this? What, what happened?
24:44
Who was reacting? Well, Why did they react this
24:46
way? Right?
24:47
And you just, and you just need cycle speed to be really fast.
24:52
And the only way you get that cycle speed to be really fast is
24:54
you're doing this daily stand up.
24:56
So I mean, by the way, did you guys literally send out a Slack
24:59
message and then get 200 K of business instantly?
25:02
Is that actually what happened? I love that you came back to
25:05
that because I want to know too. Yeah, pretty much.
25:07
Not a lot of you. Pretty much, yeah.
25:10
And then did you send a second? Did you get a second?
25:13
Did you send a second Slack message and get another 200K?
25:16
No, we, we batched it. So we didn't send it to
25:18
everybody in the first batch. We just sent it to the people
25:20
that thought we'd be good fits. Also one thing we're kind of
25:23
experimenting with, sorry, no, we honestly like the initial
25:27
batch was from like like clients that we built a strong
25:30
relationship with clients that we think would be a good fit and
25:34
there was definitely resonance with it.
25:38
We're all trying to figure out like when is the right time to
25:40
introduce new clients to this other product?
25:42
Is it mentioning it on the sales call, you know, not try and
25:46
detract from the main goal of whatever company they opted in
25:49
for? Is it on the sales call?
25:51
Is it in the onboarding for that first company?
25:53
And that's kind of like one thing we're we're thinking
25:55
about. I don't know if you guys have
25:56
any thoughts around that, but that's something.
25:59
I think about. Really playing with.
26:02
Yeah, sorry, I feel like I'm talking a lot.
26:04
I promise I'm going to shut up after this.
26:05
But I, I, I think an incredible amount about risk.
26:09
So you have a point of view that your customer is going to
26:13
benefit by doing X action. Your customer may not have
26:17
believe that. And so then the question is,
26:19
whose job is it to take the risk?
26:21
Is it your job? Is it your customer's job?
26:23
Like because underneath that dichotomy lives, lives risk.
26:29
And repeatedly what I have seen is the best companies take on
26:34
the risk because they have more information than the customer
26:37
and they are actually the expert and you're underwriting it.
26:41
So said differently, it kind of is like you can call it a free
26:45
trial, you can call it whatever you want, but there's risk that
26:48
is being exchanged. And so the way that we are doing
26:52
it is we're trying to be as aggressive as possible.
26:53
So we're saying we'll take the risk, meaning we'll just give
26:57
you value. And so we'll show up one day and
26:59
say, hey, did you know that you could get this value?
27:02
And in fact, here is the value, whatever that shape takes for
27:06
you and you just turn it on for them.
27:10
And then you say, would you like the keys to this value?
27:13
And I can just hand you the keys if you sign up.
27:16
And like that is the most risk removing way of doing the sale.
27:20
So Jack, I don't know what your guys is like second product is,
27:23
but I would just show up with like what is the report that
27:27
that user shows their boss and says I just got this value for
27:31
free. Do you want to keep getting this
27:33
value? I need to swipe my card here I.
27:36
Think that's well? Said you guys do a new risk for
27:37
glasses at Clover. Yeah, we we focus a lot on like
27:42
insights, like delivering insights.
27:44
And so I think that what you're just saying is like insights,
27:46
same thing as value of like, hey, here's something that might
27:50
be interesting for you. Like here's the reason why it
27:52
would be interesting. Here's how we can help you kind
27:55
of tap into this. And almost like you said, like
27:58
making it so easy for them to just say yes and, and swipe the
28:01
card. And so that's like the
28:03
initiative that we're willing to take on because we're confident
28:06
in what we do. At the same time, we're also not
28:08
going to just force out onto someone if they're still early,
28:11
if they haven't built up enough a relationship.
28:13
So it's that fine balance of like being bold to take that
28:17
risk, but also being conservative to not push it over
28:20
the edge too soon. I think one thing that's
28:24
interesting to hear, I, it sounds like you all are very
28:27
hands on with your customers, correct?
28:29
Like it's a tool with a heavy service component.
28:33
Yeah. And for sure that's the same for
28:36
you as your business too. I think in my business we don't
28:40
talk to 90% of our customers. And so I think that's where
28:44
persons that we never talked to, but like we don't have like a
28:47
regular relationship with 90% of our customers.
28:50
They're just if they need something that they send us a
28:52
message in our help desk and that's kind of it.
28:55
And Jack, I think you guys are a little bit more like that too.
28:57
So what I find is that it takes a lot of touch points with
29:00
somebody in order to like lots of marketing messages, lots of
29:03
time in order to get them to do something different.
29:08
Because we don't have that person they trust that can just
29:12
shoot them a message and say, hey, I think this would be
29:14
really good for you. You should do this there.
29:15
There's some exceptions there, but again, for 90% of our
29:17
customers that's the case. So I think, I think that's my
29:21
experience, I think is because of that more than it is that
29:25
this is a hard thing to do. The the benefit of that is if
29:28
you have a massive customer base and you can unlock that thing,
29:31
then the scalability of that is is really nice.
29:35
But yeah, I don't know exactly what what your experience is in
29:37
terms of like attachment rates on new products and how long
29:39
that takes. But I'm assuming you're not just
29:41
like turning something on and getting 25% your customer
29:44
stopped into it immediately. No, not at all.
29:48
Yeah, I wish. That'd be awesome, be really
29:50
cool. It was a slow climb for our last
29:52
product launch. It wasn't a day 1200K.
29:56
It's definitely where we have like highest value customers
30:00
now, but it took some time. You guys have it?
30:02
Where like it's on the sidebar too, right?
30:04
Like you could switch between the product on the sidebar and
30:06
even then they're not like noticing.
30:07
Oh my gosh, there's something new on the sidebar.
30:09
I. Just know, do you know what,
30:12
what's interesting, we we talked to some of our longest
30:16
customers, right, our oldest customers and I don't know if
30:21
they're over representing, but none of them used more than the
30:26
the core product that they came in to buy, right?
30:29
And we are, you didn't even know about this.
30:31
And it'll be older products, not even like our newest product,
30:34
the older products and they go, Oh no, I never go there.
30:36
I just do this right? People get blind.
30:39
They just do the thing they came to do and you have to.
30:45
This is the other thing too, is like just putting a banner in
30:47
front of somebody or I just did this today actually, what was I
30:50
logged into? Oh, Slack, I switched Slack
30:54
workspaces and there was a little note about do I want to
30:57
update my holiday thing? I clicked X before I even read
31:00
it. Like I didn't even I look at my
31:01
the what I was reading registered after I clicked the
31:05
XI so fast. And I think that's just how
31:08
people end up being. And once you get used to a
31:11
workflow, that's your approach to it, and it takes a
31:16
significant amount of effort to get you out of that.
31:19
One thing as a customer of you guys that I really like is that
31:24
I don't know if this is your equivalent of daily standups.
31:26
It'd be awesome to hear what you guys are doing.
31:28
But our account manager is super commutative, right?
31:32
It reminded me of the agency days.
31:34
You don't have to chase up someone to find out whether
31:38
they're doing the work. We're getting a message like
31:40
twice a week, start of the week, end of the week, which I think
31:44
is so strong. I think it's so good because you
31:47
know, back back in when I was in the agency space, I think that
31:51
your customer has two expectations of you if you're a
31:54
service that you're doing a quantity of work and that the
31:58
quantity of work that you're doing is delivering, right?
32:01
An outcome, right? For example, in the marketing
32:04
agency space, if you launched one ad three months ago and it
32:08
was crushing it, but you just rested on that one ad for three
32:13
months, six months, eventually your client is going to go.
32:16
What's going on here? Yeah, OK.
32:18
You launched one ad. It did very well.
32:20
But why aren't you trying? Why aren't you doing anything
32:22
else? You just send to get my account.
32:25
Yeah. The fact that you have that you
32:26
have this sort of externalization, if that's a
32:30
word of like the stand up of the report of the work performed and
32:36
then you have the charts to show the like outcomes of that work.
32:40
I think it's, I think it's so strong.
32:42
We appreciate that because that that's taken a lot of time and
32:46
effort to make sure and the learning here was just always be
32:50
one step ahead of the client and I would rather over communicate
32:53
and share the learnings and make them feel like we are, you know,
32:58
we didn't just kind of on board them and and see you in a few
33:00
months. So we want them to know what's
33:02
happening. I think that's like because we
33:04
live in this space where we're kind of sass with a service
33:07
behind it. We we have to bring that or
33:09
else, like you said, I don't want someone coming to us
33:12
saying, hey, guys, like what's going on?
33:14
That should never be a piece. We're still optimizing that mad
33:17
in the early days, spend a ton of time with our reps to kind of
33:20
figured out that cadence. And so it's still ongoing.
33:25
But but Jeremiah, like you said, like you, you don't speak with a
33:29
lot of clients, which is that's just kind of, I guess your
33:32
business model is more one and end of the spectrum.
33:35
We're sort of more in the middle where we have to.
33:37
So while we get to do that again is a lot of work and attention
33:41
to detail and time and effort that that goes into that.
33:45
But yeah, it's super important. I remember when I was in agency,
33:49
I had this. I was consulting for a handful
33:52
of like mom and pop agencies and this one, it was like founded by
33:56
this guy who used to work at Google.
33:57
So that was the whole USPI used to work at Google.
33:59
I know exactly how it works. That's from your Google ads.
34:02
And one of the girls at this agency, she was like, I don't
34:06
know why I have to, you know, do these retention calls with
34:09
clients. I'm not here for retention.
34:11
It's like, actually the only reason you join a call every
34:14
week with this customer is to keep them around for as long as
34:18
possible to extend their LTV to the company.
34:20
Your whole job is retention. And obviously, you know, part of
34:23
that is driving the performance, but another part of it is being
34:28
everything that they expect from a person who handles their
34:31
account right. Can we, sorry, can we touch on
34:35
the daily standup thing real quick because I know you've
34:37
talked about this post about it. I'm curious how that actually
34:40
functions. You said company wide daily
34:42
standup. Is that correct?
34:44
So you've got you literally get everybody in the company on a
34:47
call every morning. No, OK.
34:50
Sorry, let me yeah. So basically there are business
34:53
units. So we have like my Co founder
34:57
does the product pods and then I do the go to market pods.
35:01
And so like for for our business we have like an agency segment,
35:06
a mid market segment and then enterprise segment.
35:09
We we don't serve SMB at all anymore.
35:13
So like I basically go through and then every day for the like
35:20
quote, UN quote, full funnel, we like try to understand where
35:26
we're bottlenecked, where do we make progress, things like that.
35:30
And then the same thing happens on the product side.
35:33
And so and that happens in the morning and then the rest of the
35:37
day is empty. And So what happens is if
35:40
something comes up that people need to discuss further or need
35:43
to figure out because they need to talk to someone else, they
35:45
just do that that same day. Yeah.
35:48
So that's like roughly what the structure is, so.
35:50
That they're like what, like 5 to 15 person stand ups where
35:54
everybody's got the ability to actually like weigh in and
35:57
provide updates. I like that actually.
35:59
Like we, we don't do that every day, but something I'm trying to
36:03
do is and like the theme there is like you're front loading the
36:06
decision making. So when you are early in the
36:09
day, you have more brain power to make those decisions.
36:12
Something that I'm even trying to figure out just for myself is
36:14
like, can you make those decisions on the weekends per
36:19
SE, where like you have time to slow down, slow down and make
36:22
these decisions, then have the week for just pure executing.
36:25
So there's different things that I think Matt and I are going to
36:27
test, but it kind of goes through the theme of like, let's
36:31
chime in now to figure out what are the right decisions and then
36:34
we have our time to execute. Otherwise you're just caught
36:38
between the decision making brain, the execution brain, and
36:42
then you don't actually get anywhere.
36:44
Yeah, for for me like execution is more brainless, right for
36:48
most of us I would imagine. And so it's like I would rather
36:51
front load like thinking, collaboration, decision making,
36:56
just do it. I literally do it between 8:00
36:59
and 9:00 AM. So like my stand ups are 15
37:01
minutes each, it's done by 9:00 and then I have actually the
37:07
entire day for execution. Yeah, that's the fun part.
37:12
You guys had about 108010. I think it kind of follows that
37:16
pattern as well if you can give that no.
37:19
Let's hear it. Oh.
37:20
You haven't heard of 1080100, it's this idea that you give 10%
37:23
of like direction at the start, 80% is leverage and then 10% at
37:29
the end to ensure that it's meeting your expectation, right.
37:32
So if you you can kind of structure your days in A108010
37:36
fashion where you start the day with direction, you 80% of the
37:40
day is leverage where whether it's you executing or the entire
37:43
team executing. And then at the end of the day,
37:45
you could also have a end of day stand up or just review was what
37:51
was said that was going to get done done because you can't do
37:54
everything right. Yeah, I like, I mean, that's
37:56
what I'm personally trying to implement for myself.
37:59
I guess you just put a nice kind of title to it.
38:04
So thank you for that. I wish I could take credit, but
38:06
someone told me yeah. Up in discussion, so I'll give
38:09
you that. It's interesting.
38:12
Just just real quick stamped, I like the way that the especially
38:18
on the product and sharing side, the way that they, the team used
38:22
to go about things was very much focused on big goals.
38:24
So going after like this thing that would take a long period of
38:29
time to get two months to to go and push this thing out into the
38:33
wild. And so I've been really trying
38:35
to undo a lot of that. And so the last couple of weeks
38:38
we've been really focused on daily progress.
38:40
And it's not not exactly the same way that you're doing it or
38:42
shot, but just focusing like what are wins that we can get
38:46
out quickly. And it's incredible to see just
38:51
how much has happened in two weeks of doing that compared to
38:55
months of doing things and more of a chasing bigger outcomes
39:00
without as much visibility as to what happened.
39:02
And even just like, I don't even know the, I think the output of
39:06
work is a little bit higher. But even if the outputs aren't
39:08
higher, just being able to see the progress creates momentum,
39:11
and that wouldn't exist without being able to see that progress.
39:17
It also just creates the awareness.
39:19
Yeah. I think part of it is, is that
39:22
we only have so much like conscious focus at a time and
39:27
you're probably only focusing on a few things.
39:29
And so if you, unless you're like, unless you're putting your
39:33
attention, which I think that exercise forces people to think
39:36
about those goals that maybe they would kind of go autopilot
39:39
to. I think it's a good forcing
39:40
function for sure. Yeah, I think most people are
39:43
terrible at staying focused really, really bad.
39:46
And if you let them, they'll be incredible people who are super
39:50
scattered and getting absolutely nothing done.
39:53
So yeah, you got to find ways to.
39:55
Including myself, if I'm honest. Right, right one of.
39:58
One of the easiest things too, like something that I was even
40:01
thinking of like doing this for team members is like, what's the
40:06
one thing that you could do that day that if you completed it end
40:10
to end would be the biggest value driver.
40:12
Like what's your a 20 and hold yourself accountable to
40:15
finishing that thing. Like don't get 80% of the way
40:17
there, don't get 90% of the way there.
40:19
Don't go to like two other projects like.
40:21
And if you stack that over day over day, you're probably going
40:24
to go much faster than if you were working on a few things at
40:27
once. Oh, this didn't get done.
40:28
This needs to be approved. I think that's super underrated.
40:31
Just make a Google Sheet like date main kind of 8020 task
40:36
status and it should be like a check box.
40:39
If you just even think about like dopamine, right, the like a
40:44
daily small dopamine head is going to be way better than like
40:48
a big one every once a month. Even that I mean effectively you
40:53
get you launch something really cool, two days later, you don't
40:57
care about it anymore. You're already on to the next
40:59
thing. If you can actually be getting
41:01
that multiple times a week, that's going to have a lot more
41:04
value. If you want to be super extra
41:06
and make like a chart, like turn that data into a graph.
41:09
Like if you really wanted to, like we're talking like stuff
41:12
you did when you were kids for something like I, I really think
41:16
if you dumb things down, it can go a long way.
41:19
Yeah, Jeremiah, I, I mean, yeah, no one here needs opinions, but
41:25
I'll share one anyway. If I found the reason why I did
41:30
the daily stand up, which is super important actually is I
41:34
was trying to get the team to focus on shifting to selling to
41:38
enterprises over like SMB and mid market.
41:40
So but I couldn't get the behavior to change even though I
41:44
like said the same things over and over again until I changed
41:48
how the day felt for everyone. And that's actually why I made
41:52
the change. It was not like I had some view
41:55
that this daily stand up was a good idea.
41:58
I was just like, I have to break their pattern because their
42:01
pattern is what enables the habit and the behavior.
42:05
And so I was like, I got to do anything to do that pattern
42:08
break, but I have to do it fast enough.
42:11
And so if you're so you're describing something that your
42:13
EPD team is like very used to, I will tell you that whether or
42:18
not you like a daily standup, anything that you can do to
42:22
break the pattern of the entire company will reinforce the most
42:27
strongly that we need to shift how we operate.
42:31
Because you have all of a sudden changed how their day feels.
42:35
And when you do that, they become more open to shifting the
42:39
behavior. And that's actually the single
42:41
most important thing is like driving the orb change is so
42:44
painfully difficult. I mean, like you guys have 40
42:47
people. I'm sure at this point it's like
42:49
40 people's a lot of people to get to like change anything.
42:54
Like once you're past 30, it's just like everything gets hard
42:57
in terms of like people. I think people duration yeah, I
43:04
think it's like communication, like vision is like hard to
43:06
communicate now. So when I was like 5 or 15, it's
43:09
like easier to like share information and everyone kind of
43:12
knows. But now it's like, I think it's
43:14
like the the layer that needs to get to you have to go so far
43:17
the. I like that, though.
43:19
You're putting people into like this state of adaptation, right?
43:23
I'm in a new environment. I've got to adapt to it.
43:25
How do I adapt appropriately to this?
43:28
I think what I've noticed that people have to step up as like
43:32
true owners. So you can look at it like like
43:34
organizational structures, like you have to tell someone to
43:37
maybe like again, I still tell the same information to six
43:39
people, but those six people now have like even like a duty
43:43
responsibility to then share that high level vision or goal
43:45
to like everyone else. And even recently started to do
43:48
like monthly stand ups like town halls, we call them.
43:51
And we still have like weekly kind of check insurance and
43:54
stuff on a per team basis, which I've noticed has helped a lot
43:57
with like just cadences across the across the board.
44:01
I like that, like trying to get people to feel like owners, you
44:06
know, because you, you can imagine there's for somebody who
44:10
doesn't feel like an owner, they probably approach the work that
44:13
they're doing very differently to somebody who has, yeah, a
44:18
sense that they're building something meaningful.
44:21
Something that I like for me that I really want to focus on
44:23
and that we we do focus on at Clover is like, make sure
44:26
everyone knows one, where the company is going and then two,
44:30
their part in that direction. So they need to know like where
44:34
we're going and like, what's my role within this vehicle?
44:38
And if they are, if any one of those is kind of out of sync,
44:41
then their output, their satisfaction, their connection
44:44
to the team, the culture is, is going to be off.
44:46
And so, yeah, we use those monthly stick, kind of refine
44:49
the vision, make sure everyone knows what's coming next, and
44:52
then those one on ones to make sure everyone knows their part.
44:56
And then, yeah, as we get bigger now, like Matt said, we're going
44:59
to have kind of department leads host their one on ones with
45:04
folks because it would be a lot for us to do every single week.
45:08
But yeah, that's super important.
45:11
What's the next product? What do you guys think I'm doing
45:14
next? Can you say product #3
45:17
basically? Right.
45:19
We have ideas, but nothing is yet to be.
45:24
Nothing's confirmed, but we have ideas.
45:27
Maybe when we confirm that, we can hop on here again and tell
45:31
you guys more. But yeah, we'll keep that secret
45:34
for now. I'm sorry I need to drop but it
45:38
was awesome meeting you guys. Likewise.
45:42
Nice to meet you too. So thanks guys.