Latest / 1 to 100 / E11: Referral Strategies from a DMT Shaman

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E11: Referral Strategies from a DMT Shaman · 1 to 100

0:00
I'm going to my daughter's tea party at 4:00.
0:06
Get it? Do you do something like that
0:07
very often? I try to go to most of her
0:11
school stuff, yeah. Your starter's school has a tea
0:16
party. Apparently, well, so the part
0:21
that I don't do is like keep track of the emails that come
0:24
from school. So that part my wife does, but
0:27
the part that I do is show up for a part of it.
0:32
Yeah, exactly. Like I didn't know I was
0:34
supposed to be at this thing in 40 minutes until yesterday.
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So anyway, that's the problem. But yeah, that's.
0:48
Funny, that's funny. Should we talk about the lens
0:51
lunge and what you learned from it?
0:53
That feels that feels like a fun thing to talk about.
0:57
OK. I mean Lynch launch, launch I
0:59
think went good. We had like numeral upgrades on
1:04
like within like the first few hours of launching it and
1:08
amongst current customers like the plan expansion was anywhere
1:13
from 50 to like 400% increase in like their bill, which is really
1:20
cool. So that all went pretty good in
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terms of like learnings retrospectively post launch of
1:27
Lens, we combined it with a bunch of other things which I
1:31
will never do again. The main one being a brand new
1:35
website. I definitely am a bit like
1:38
perfectionist with a bunch of stuff.
1:41
I was at the force myself to like get this out and I I felt
1:44
that the more stuff that I would stack on to needing to be done
1:48
before we got it out, the more willing I was to stock stack
1:52
something else onto it. Again.
1:54
That being said, I feel very good now that like, I like our
1:57
new website, I like the product, I like our pricing, but it was,
2:00
it was, you know, one of these things that added like a like
2:04
multi layers of complexity, even when thinking about how do we
2:07
handle demos coming in, even though there's new pricing, cut
2:10
pricing coming and just like all of this stuff, it's all out,
2:14
which is good. And now it's kind of just like
2:16
still down to continuing to execute and go to market with a
2:22
new product, which, you know, I think everybody always thinks
2:26
that like launches are like when businesses are made, but like
2:30
realistically the launches made nothing most like 99% of the
2:34
time. And if a launch makes your
2:36
business, you're probably in trouble.
2:37
So yeah. Totally, because it'll fade it
2:40
to like very quickly. Yeah.
2:42
Yeah. The the that's interesting that
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you said like stacking things was not a good idea.
2:47
By the way, we've unfortunately learned this lesson a bunch of
2:50
times too. But the main company that I
2:53
think of is Google. What you say that because Google
2:56
announced so many things and I feel like the only two things
3:01
that I remember are AI mode and VO3.
3:05
Like I couldn't, I literally could not tell you what else
3:08
they launched, which is crazy. I actually didn't know they
3:12
launched anything else because I didn't pay attention to it and
3:16
those are the headlines I saw so.
3:21
Did you got the robber's tweet? I have to show you this.
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Look at this this algo bro. And I don't know something about
3:32
AI agents. And then right underneath it,
3:36
finally I can cancel motion. I saw this and I had tears in my
3:41
eyes. Guys, this is.
3:42
So funny. Yeah, Robert's the meme.
3:46
Laura bombing Lord so. Dude.
3:50
That's beast. That's beast.
3:54
One thing I'd be really curious about, Zach, is just like, you
3:59
know, from your seat as founder, CEO and stuff, how do you think
4:02
about products and what products to build, when to launch, what
4:06
to prioritize all that? Because I think this was
4:08
actually like one of the things that I do think makes SAS
4:12
different from like all of us are serving e-commerce
4:15
businesses is that like a hero product is never good enough.
4:19
It never lasts. Like inevitably people always
4:22
want something more. And I think that's true of all
4:23
businesses. But like, you know, athletic
4:25
greens, for instance, you can sell the same product day in and
4:28
day out years at a time and somebody will continue to pay
4:31
for it. And from where we sit and what
4:34
we do like that's never enough. Like 6 months down, six months
4:37
after somebody signs up for your product, they want something new
4:39
and improved usually. So I, I think I'd be curious to
4:43
just like hear what your process is and how do you think about
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that? Because I, I think it's
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something, you know, all of us are thinking about.
4:50
So like my SO when I was always in the lane of like, I want to
4:54
build the best version of something and not like the
4:57
everything product. I think that like our sort of
5:00
like market has shifted in a way in which there just isn't like a
5:05
lot of appetite for that, if that makes sense.
5:09
I think it's especially with like the number of companies
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being agencies that we serve, they're like very price
5:15
conscious. I mean, and I think there's a
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world in which we could have continued down the path that we
5:20
were on, never touching analytics and and like expanded
5:25
Tam. But that also doesn't get rid of
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the fact that there's also a lot of like expansion that can exist
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with inside of our current customer base.
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Another reason why I decided to do it is that I felt that the
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people who were the incumbents weren't executing well.
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If I was under the belief that they were doing it really,
5:47
really well, I would have never done it because I was just like,
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there's no need to do that. I, I generally don't like me too
5:53
products. And so there was like a few
5:56
features and just like executionary elements in which I
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was like, not only should we build this because of like
6:03
business outcomes, but like we should build this because it
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should be built this way. And so that was like the trigger
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for me to be like, OK, I think this is like a meaningful thing
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for me to do. Now, another thing I'll say too
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is like, I was not excited to like even like really build this
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product. Like I inherently am like a
6:20
super creative person and like analytics isn't exciting to me,
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but inherently like that contrast made it exciting as
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well. Like I found like a lot of joy
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in being like, how would you think about this?
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And I think we ended up coming out with a really good product.
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So yeah, it's been good. And like people have been like
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really enjoying it so far. The, the thing that I'm super
6:40
excited about, we like silently launched.
6:42
It was just like an open beta to our API as well as we have over
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100 companies now using our API. And so the thing I'm like super
6:49
excited about is, is that because it's more attached to
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like our core product. What does the API do?
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The API allows you to like access all of the historical
6:58
advertising data that you that we've collected over like the
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last three years to be used in like agents or any other sort of
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like script writing prompts or anything like that.
7:08
But the way that we're approaching the API is a little
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bit differently. Like we're going to have a
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standard API where like if you're a developer looking to
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build on top of like the foreplay data, you can manage it
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in like a, in a familiar API playground, but we're also
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building a layer on top that's like, imagine if your
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grandmother needed to use an API like, and, and data from an API.
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What would that look like? And that's the, the real focus.
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Everybody's like talking about agents and stuff like that.
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I generally have a belief that vertical specific agents is a
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little bit silly because if you take agents up far enough, the
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whole idea is that they're interacting with everything that
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you're doing inside of your business.
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And so our approach is, you know, opening up our data and
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then people can be building agents in like agnostic ways,
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like platform agnostic ways, because I think that's where it
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goes like over a long enough time horizon.
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Yeah. How are you controlling access
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to that? Is that just like for paying
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customers or? Yeah.
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So we, we've, we're going to start it with current customers
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and just like serve the people who log into us every single
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day. First is like our main priority.
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But I've always felt that we had an opportunity to become a data
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business. And so hopefully that will be
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like the sawdust that comes out of, you know, what we've built
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for like our core customers all. Right, I need to follow up
8:25
later. Yeah, I have more questions too,
8:30
but not in this company. That's it.
8:34
You got two more customers. Sweet.
8:38
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so funny, man.
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We can't help ourselves, Jeremiah.
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It's funny because I'm so we're working towards a new product
8:48
launch and some of the stuff you're talking about is actually
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pretty familiar to me too. So this idea of like, so I, I
8:56
took over a reviews business February and February 1st,
8:59
right? And so when they first came to
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me and were like, Hey, would you take this over?
9:02
It's like, man, reviews are kind of boring.
9:04
Like it's just like a, it's a stale category.
9:06
There's not that much interesting.
9:08
Not to say like nobody's doing things, obviously.
9:10
Like if you're a reviews company, there's a building and,
9:12
and making our software better, but ultimately it doesn't feel
9:17
like there's been like meaningful innovation in that
9:19
space in a long time. And so, and again, that's a
9:23
little unfair to the other competitors in the space.
9:25
But like, that's, that's how I that's how I perceive it.
9:28
And it just felt like kind of boring.
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But then you flip that on its head, it's like, OK, well, this
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is boring to me. How can I make it interesting?
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And that's starts to get really cool.
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It's like, oh, OK, I actually love this.
9:39
Like this is an aspect. I think it's really powerful.
9:42
Here's like, if I could rethink this whole thing from the ground
9:45
up, here's how I would approach it.
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And it's totally different, very unique, not so different that
9:51
people wouldn't recognize it, right?
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Like that's, that's not what we're after, but I'm just trying
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to like reframe it into a way that becomes more interesting.
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So we're going to talk about the analytics.
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Like I actually think that that's one of the, the things
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that is really important. I, I suppose in any sort of
10:04
business, right, But especially software like how do you bring
10:06
your unique vantage point to specific problem and solutions
10:12
that and actually make it something that's interesting
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for, for our customers? Because obviously, especially
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when you have a market with a really big Tam, you're never
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going to sell to everybody. You just have to sell to the
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people that also buy into that vision on that viewpoint.
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I think reframing is a good number one skill and like
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success in all areas of life, whether it's like negative
10:31
things or positive things or just like figuring out how to
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like figure out, like take the chapter that you're in at any
10:37
given time and then frame it so that the outcome is like the
10:39
best possible for yourself. I think it's like the number one
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like skill set. It's just like, all right, this
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is the game reframe and then it's opportunity.
10:47
So. Did you see new customers sign
10:51
up, Zach, or was it mostly existing customer upgrade so
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far? We had a decent amount of new
10:56
customer sign up. We're like also free trial 7
10:58
days. So it's seeing the trickle in
11:00
will probably be 7. I I actually like our our actual
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conversion moment happens 24 days after free trial sign up,
11:06
even though it locks after seven days.
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So actually triggering that or measuring that will be
11:11
interesting. And then also with this product
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too, it is a bit more, there's more of a chance that it needs
11:16
some hand holding. I wouldn't say it was like a, a
11:18
blow up of of new free trial customers, but we already doing
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a couple hundred a day. So it's like it fluctuates a
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lot. And so it's not more than we've
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ever had it's, but it was like a 80th percentile day.
11:32
Got it. OK, Got it.
11:34
Yeah. I'm just wondering like how much
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of this space do you see like switching behavior, like the
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tweet that Jack brought up basically like one of one of the
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things that I, and I think we've talked about this before, but
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like the single best thing about serving this market is that
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people are highly likely to try something new.
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Like the desire for trial or the desire for switch is like very
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high, like like in no other category basically.
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And so I'm just wondering if that's something that you saw
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with this. I that I wouldn't say that's
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ever like my goal to do sort of like anything.
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It was more of like, how can we add more value and have higher
12:13
plans with more value? Like that was like the number
12:15
one objective. The secondary objective was like
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these value buyers, you know, in some churn surveys, we're going
12:23
to other tools because they're like, oh, like we're
12:26
consolidating tools and we like using foreplay for research, but
12:31
it didn't have this. And so like we're just
12:32
consolidating. So it's like also a bit of like
12:35
a churn plug. Like the one thing I'm super
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confident in is that I think we're really good at building
12:38
good experience for people from like a software point of view.
12:42
And so no one's usually ever churning off of foreplay because
12:45
they don't like the product. And it wasn't like it was like a
12:49
massive churn reason that they were consolidating tools, but it
12:51
was one that we saw. And so to plug a bit of churn,
12:55
but then also increase our ACV at the same time seemed like a a
12:59
meaningful thing to do. And yeah.
13:01
There's also a problem like in this market and that is that
13:05
marketing people are really, really creative people and
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they've just been asked to make financial decisions for the
13:11
brands that they're working with, unless it's like a brand
13:13
that's quite large. And even then sometimes it's the
13:16
marketing people or the creative people making financial
13:19
decisions. So the brand will say how much
13:21
we spend and the person working in the marketing team who's
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doing lots of awesome, really awesome creative stuff is just
13:28
kind of like licking their thumb and putting it to the window and
13:30
going, Oh, we'll spend more because grow wise is up right.
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So any, anything we can do to offset that pain and get people
13:37
back to doing the creative thing, I think is that good for
13:40
the brand. So we work with that's.
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Sweet. That's sweet.
13:44
It's fun. Product bunches are fun.
13:49
Yeah, we do. We do a bunch because we're
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sales LED. Like the way we do it is very
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different than the way you guys do it.
13:57
We like use our CSMS to like see adoption with like 5 to 10
14:02
customers first, understand what the patterns are, understand
14:04
what it's useful for or what it's not useful for.
14:07
Then we go to the next set then you know what I mean?
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Because like we like literally talk to all of our customers all
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the time, like a human being. In some ways we can iterate
14:15
quickly. In some ways it's slower, right?
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Because it's not like we have just like a knob that we can
14:20
turn on across massive scale and like see what the attach rate
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is. We actually have to like sell
14:30
every new product that we add or every new feature that we add.
14:33
So, so it's like quite different I think.
14:35
It's going to be similar for us over time eventually, especially
14:38
with higher end offerings like Lens, right?
14:41
People do need hand holding to come on board to know how to use
14:44
it. To some extent we want to make
14:46
it as intuitive as possible. But the reality is the, the
14:49
more, I guess multifaceted, the more you can do with the tool,
14:54
right? The more a little bit of
14:56
guidance helps. And then I guess at every stage,
15:00
right, just asking what is it, right?
15:02
What can I, what problems can I solve?
15:04
It's like right at the front end, but but further down the
15:07
line, how do I get all of my team using this like integrated
15:10
into their workflows? So I think over time it's
15:13
probably inevitable for us that we have you know a much more of
15:16
a sales LED motion with lens. Really.
15:22
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, like, think about it,
15:25
right? You maybe have never used a
15:27
creative analytics tool before, right?
15:29
And you see lens, you see it, you see all.
15:31
The no, no, I totally get it. I I just, I don't know why.
15:34
I just assumed from like our convo a few weeks ago that like
15:38
you love PLG. 100% too, if we could avoid, if we could avoid
15:43
primary sales LED 100% like OK, OK, yeah, yeah.
15:48
This is this is the inevitable path of all SAS, but you end up
15:52
in a sales LED enterprise basically, you know, software or
15:59
yeah, software enabled services sort of sort of mindset.
16:03
That's that's where all software goes eventually.
16:05
My ideal situation is that 80% of anybody that would become a
16:09
customer at least never has to talk to someone because I can
16:14
just think that that means good product and like good
16:18
communication because it what happens for us now is that the
16:22
complexity actually isn't really product.
16:24
It's almost just like planned decision making as well.
16:27
And you know, as like organizations have different
16:30
services and different how like the number of, you know, ad
16:34
accounts they serve versus people on their team.
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It's it's more of just like value based pricing for like
16:41
individuals that with a with a unique like needs then it then
16:45
it I think it's like a product sort of thing.
16:48
I think there's another thing as as well that so many people
16:51
overlooking that's actually getting integration in people's
16:53
work flows in different organizations.
16:55
There are people sitting in seats doing certain things day
16:58
in, day out that now need to change, right?
17:01
What they're doing to some extent.
17:03
And that can be, that can be nails on a chalkboard or it can
17:07
be this exciting journey into something new, right?
17:10
And I think that, you know, for US, playing a part in that and
17:15
making sure that successful is going to reflect in how long
17:19
people use the product for. You want like that core subset
17:22
of, let's say, an agency or a brand to be evangelists.
17:24
You're like, this is the coolest thing ever because they were on
17:26
boarded properly as opposed to going, Oh yeah, I guess we had,
17:29
you know, we use that and Dan, he's the guy who gets it.
17:33
But I don't get it right. One thing that I think is
17:36
interesting too, like Zach, when you, when you're looking at the
17:38
opportunity here, because you, you described as more of like a,
17:42
you know, adding value to your existing customers.
17:45
I don't know if you guys do this, but one thing I kind of do
17:48
sometimes and of course it never works out this way, but sit back
17:51
and like and be like, OK, here's, you know, X number of
17:54
customers in the ecosystem in which I, you know, using, using
17:58
my product to some extent. On the no side, it's 6000.
18:01
On the stand side, it's now like collectively, basically it's
18:05
called 45 to 50,000. Like OK, there's, there's this
18:09
number of customers using something here.
18:12
What would it look like to get, you know, from whatever that ACV
18:16
is to this next step up, the next step up, the next step up
18:19
from that. And being able to say, hey,
18:21
there's actually like enough customers here that we don't
18:23
actually have to add any more customers.
18:25
We can just grow the impact we're having on them, the value
18:28
we're generating for those people.
18:30
And that's all that that ultimately matters.
18:32
I mean, it's kind of an interesting balance of like, do
18:33
you go out and acquire new customers?
18:35
Do you just look at the ones you have and how do you, how do you
18:40
expand the it's not like tan at that point, but it's just like,
18:43
you know, the, the opportunity within your existing customer
18:46
base and it's kind of like a it's a fun mental exercise and
18:48
that I wish like the math, like the the the math you can do in
18:51
your head is always really easy to be like, Oh yeah, I could get
18:53
to. I had quadrupled businesses by
18:55
doing this never actually works, but but it's a size at least to
19:01
think of like, hey, there's actually a massive potential
19:03
here. We could just unlock this thing.
19:05
I have never felt that way, mostly because of how
19:08
unsuccessful I've been at doing that because I feel like product
19:11
attached is like way harder than most people like give credit for
19:16
Because like there are so many things that you need to like
19:20
convince someone of when you do like a new product attached that
19:23
actually has a price associated with that.
19:25
But I've I have felt a different thing, which I don't know is
19:28
true at 50,000 customers. But the thing that I have always
19:31
felt it's just every year I need one customer to bring another
19:36
customer onto the platform on average.
19:40
And that is that should be like someone's job or a team's job.
19:48
And if that is all they do is they just think very hard about
19:52
how do I get every customer to bring one new customer every
19:58
year? Dude, you're going to compound
20:00
this thing like nobody's business.
20:02
It's. Actually an interesting thought
20:03
exercise because it's actually like very reasonable, you know?
20:08
Yeah. It's like you basically you
20:09
somehow have to find the point in time during the year where
20:13
that customer is able, likely and willing to connect you to
20:21
one customer who is likely to say yes.
20:24
Like this does not seem that hard.
20:28
Have you ever read the book The Referral Engine?
20:31
No. But it's really good.
20:33
Yeah, it's really good. I I read it when I had a service
20:35
based business. And it's like one of these books
20:38
that says everything that you know is to be true, almost like
20:40
what you had just said. But like it you almost need to
20:42
like just read it in black and white to be like, yeah, we
20:45
should do this, we should do that.
20:46
And it just like reminded me that I should reread that book
20:49
because I remember when I implemented a lot of the stuff
20:51
from it on the service based business, I was like, this is so
20:53
simple. I I remember it like completely
20:55
transforming my service based business where it was almost
20:58
like every customer, every other customer was like bringing
21:01
something new And it was just has like scripts for emails
21:05
inside of it and and stuff like that.
21:07
You should at some point be able to double your business every
21:10
year based entirely on like the simple like 1 to 1 and doubling
21:16
every year. No matter what size of business
21:19
you are, you grow like when you take a step, you'll like open
21:23
your eyes five years later and you're just like, Oh my God, I
21:26
have a massive business. If you can like create a real
21:31
like program and like have a team that just like that is all
21:35
they think about is like how do I get every customer to bring
21:39
another customer once a year? I hear what you're saying.
21:41
You're saying every single customer bring another customer?
21:44
Yeah, it's not. Yeah, like that's what it has
21:45
to. I mean, I mean, look, obviously
21:47
some are going to bring 100, some are going to bring 0,
21:49
right. All right, If you start with the
21:51
objective of I need every 110 customers to bring 10 customers.
21:54
The problem is the actions you will take will be very different
21:58
than if you start with the objective of.
22:00
I need every customer to refer one once a year, right?
22:03
Like the ideas that you come up with will be substantially
22:08
different based on how you frame the problem.
22:12
Yeah, I could show here. Yeah, I think there's a through
22:14
line there between, you know, expanding through our customer
22:17
base base, you know, solving problems for that customer base
22:22
more right and then expanding through new products to new
22:25
markets. And that's the you have to serve
22:27
your customer well. None of your customers are going
22:29
to refer you to another customer if they're not enjoying the
22:32
products that they're getting from you.
22:33
It's not solving the problem for them.
22:35
Totally. But guess what happens if you
22:36
have a team whose job it is to get that referral, They're going
22:39
to complain about your product, they're going to complain about
22:42
your CS team, they're going to complain about your sales team.
22:45
Like this team will make you have such like violent product
22:51
market fit because their objective is to get every
22:54
customer to refer another customer.
22:55
Like like the the design is actually intentional to like
22:59
'cause all of this forcing pressure inside of the
23:02
organization. Yeah.
23:04
It's making me think a lot like one person full time on this.
23:08
They could probably like reach out to like 20 to 50 customers a
23:12
day, like very manually, like purposely manually, and they
23:17
could get this done in a year of just like 1 to 1, like actual
23:21
outreach. And it's like that could be that
23:25
could literally be someone's full time job.
23:27
And if they were to achieve that, it would make like the
23:31
full time salary be nothing. Yeah, because whatever your
23:33
revenue is, if you could double it in a year and then double it
23:38
the year out, even if you got three years of.
23:41
From 1, from 1 channel too like that, that takes all of the
23:44
normal, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:46
By the way, like all the other stuff you're doing is still
23:48
happening, right? This person is just sitting
23:51
there and like, what's going to end up happening?
23:54
If this person is any good, is there going to be like guys like
23:58
90% of the time it's when I ask at the end of week 6 or in this
24:04
particular moment that the probability that I get a
24:07
referral is like 85%. All I want to do is get the
24:11
customer to that moment and then they'll talk to your onboarding
24:14
team or your onboarding product team or whatever it is and be
24:16
like, I don't care. Like we need this thing to
24:19
happen because the probability that that person gives us a
24:24
referral in that moment is so sky high that we will just
24:29
continue to double the business for free.
24:31
The forcing function of having only a singular objective that
24:34
is that objective is just, I mean, like obviously I'm trying
24:39
to figure out how to get how to hire someone to do this or how
24:42
to get someone to do this. Like most businesses should do
24:45
this. And this is like this.
24:47
But the problem is it doesn't live in anyone's org.
24:49
It doesn't live in your marketing team's org.
24:51
It doesn't live in your sales team's job.
24:53
It doesn't live in your CSS team's job because none of these
24:56
people are targeted with like that kind of objective.
25:00
It's like all about the art of creating the moment or finding
25:06
the moment, whichever one that makes someone want to do that
25:10
action, given that they like you enough that they will want to do
25:14
the action in that moment, because tomorrow they may not
25:17
like you. I just thought it was like a
25:19
weird anecdote that happened in my life.
25:21
And I think you could, I don't know if you need to build these
25:23
types of systems into it, but I had a friend who went to a
25:27
shaman and did DMT. And the way that the shaman
25:31
works is that the way he calls it, he keeps the he keeps, what
25:37
does he call it? He called, he keeps the, the
25:40
container. He's like the way I keep the
25:41
container pure is I only work with people through referral and
25:45
each person only gets 1 referral.
25:48
And so we like created this level of like scarcity and oh,
25:53
like, so, so essentially this, this friend that did it, he was
25:55
like, hey, man, I did this experience.
25:59
I think you would really benefit from this.
26:01
And I only get one referral. And I'm like using it on you.
26:04
And so like, feel free to use it if you want.
26:06
If you don't like, let me know and I'm going to refer someone
26:08
else. And I was like, I was mildly
26:12
interested in it, but at the time I had done no psychedelics.
26:16
And I looked at it as like an opportunity of like, this is
26:19
like meant for me. There was scarcity.
26:22
Like, I won't get this. I will never get this experience
26:24
again if I say no. And so I did it.
26:26
And so it was like, now I'm thinking as like.
26:28
Dude, that's such a good mechanic that shaman must be
26:31
like a marketer. Yeah, for the best.
26:33
Oh, here, here's here's the best part.
26:35
There's no price. It's pay what you want after the
26:37
experience. And yeah.
26:42
And I gave him like a couple $1000 because like that was
26:45
incredible and like got my referral, gave it to someone
26:47
else and like whatever. And so like now I'm thinking as
26:50
like if I were to build this program, how do you build in
26:52
that like 1 to one scarcity where the person really thinks
26:55
about? Who is the best?
26:56
I want it. Who's the best fit?
26:58
I want to gift this to someone that they feel value and like
27:01
make. In our like case, it's like
27:03
probably some sort of discount or like, I don't know what the
27:05
fuck we you do whatever. No, no dude.
27:08
See, like by the way, any SAS business, OK, that has any kind
27:13
of reasonable retention will happily pay three months of
27:18
revenue to acquire a customer, OK.
27:22
And and probably you'll pay more like 6 months because most of
27:24
the time you're talking about like a one to three-year
27:26
retention window. And so you give three months to
27:31
the referring person and you give three months to the referee
27:34
and you say, hey, you only get one and every year because you
27:42
need a referral every year, right?
27:45
Right. And yeah, it's essentially like
27:47
the biggest affiliate deal you could possibly have, and it
27:50
can't be gamified because they only get one.
27:53
And yeah, that's actually like really good, really good.
28:00
All right, I know what I'm doing this weekend.
28:06
Oh my God. Yeah.
28:08
See, the, the, the you can just do this because you can just
28:12
like do it through your product. I wonder if I can just do it
28:15
through our product too, versus like implemented through our CS
28:18
team. Because if I can do it through
28:20
our product, I know how to get it done in like, yeah, in a
28:24
weekend. But otherwise I don't know how
28:25
to get it done in a weekend. I like the approach of do it
28:27
with everything, do it with the marketing side, do it with the
28:30
product, do it with the people, right?
28:32
Deal with your existing customer base.
28:34
I really like the approach of just like set it loose and see
28:38
what really, really sticks, right?
28:41
I mean, I'm not sure what it would look like in your product,
28:43
but why not, right? If it's going to serve your
28:46
customers and they're going to engage with it, it's going to
28:48
be, you know, a good experience for them having the product as
28:52
well. But then if there's somebody
28:54
like you said before with the affiliate manager whose only job
28:57
is to to make this happen, surely they would probably be
29:00
pretty competent in that position as well.
29:03
By my only fear with doing this in like a product LED type of
29:07
way is that you would be surprised with like APLG product
29:11
how much fraud goes on in affiliate programs.
29:15
Because initially I was like, oh, this is how this is what
29:17
we'll do. We'll say the first person that
29:19
you refer to foreplay, you get $300, they get $300.
29:24
Credit. Oh, of credit, OK, that's
29:29
better. No, because you want it applied
29:31
to the, you want it applied towards the product.
29:33
So there is no like even if they defraud you, you could just say
29:37
like, hey, this was not a real customer.
29:41
And then you don't have, you can just remove the credit like no
29:44
money is being transferred. Yeah.
29:46
Yeah, the, yeah, the first person you refer unlocks 3
29:50
months free and then from there then you just have the normal
29:54
affiliate like converts over. That's yeah, it's interesting.
29:59
I've been thinking about this a lot, whether it comes to SAS or
30:02
if it comes to the e-commerce brands that we're serving and
30:05
that's the OR comes to the dynamics of a team.
30:08
Just bringing solution to a problem is as as quickly as
30:12
possible and as effectively as possible is probably the best
30:18
use of time. So when it comes to a product
30:21
right, for a customer, let's say it's a, you know, reviews app,
30:25
all right, Reviews app Jeremiah was describing earlier was a
30:27
little bit boring. There's so much appetite for
30:29
reviews to do something a little bit more interesting.
30:32
How can we get video reviews? How can we, I don't know,
30:34
collect the reviews on our social posts, on our ads?
30:37
How can we syndicate those? How can we use our reviews for
30:41
our market research? It's just like there's so much
30:44
appetite there that. Yeah, meeting that problem with
30:49
a solution and making it fun, making it enjoyable to engage
30:53
with. For us working with our ICP
30:55
agencies, we have to think, you know, well, what is it that they
30:58
actually want? Do they want credit?
31:00
Do they want cash or do they want deal flow?
31:03
They probably don't want credit. They probably don't care about
31:05
cash on the small contract value compared to, you know, 5 figure
31:09
retainers, right, with these businesses that they're working
31:12
with. So what is it that they want?
31:14
They want to work with more brands.
31:16
So that's been a big part of my focus is how can we be the best
31:19
friend with our, you know, enormous user base compared to
31:22
the typical agency, right? It's absolutely enormous for
31:25
brands as well, marketers working at these brands for our
31:29
agencies, actually giving them what they want as opposed to,
31:33
you know, some subsidiary thing that doesn't actually motivate
31:37
them to do the thing we want them to do.
31:38
So as soon as you move into that zone of that, This is why I
31:43
think, yeah, it's just someone's job, right?
31:48
Because like it kind of doesn't matter what the answer is, but
31:50
if it's someone's job, they will just sit there and like do the
31:55
thing and figure it out. You know what?
31:59
I, you know what? I, you know what I mean?
32:01
Like it's like kind of amazing. It's like your objective, you
32:06
know, Should you choose to accept like that's, that's it.
32:15
I think that. You know, I couldn't agree more
32:17
with you and I think that sometimes when you look like
32:20
accomplishing the objective because, you know, achieving
32:22
business goals, it like, don't get me wrong, it 100% is like
32:26
the game, the reason that we're all doing this.
32:28
But when you see the impact like first hand of like good business
32:33
done, I imagine this happens with you.
32:35
And from our, you know, a brand refers a brand agency refers an
32:39
agency and they've just achieved this massive unlock in their
32:43
business. They've achieved an entirely new
32:45
service that they can charge for.
32:47
They've moved through revenue ranges.
32:49
Man peace. Separate from it being a great
32:52
testimonial to use in your marketing, it's just it's very
32:56
fulfilling, right? Totally.
32:58
And even then they don't remember to refer their friends,
33:00
You know what I mean? Dude, I, we dude, there, there
33:08
are companies right now, OK, because we have like started to
33:10
experiment with the self-serve offering.
33:12
There are businesses that I kid you not, have gone from like sub
33:18
100 KA month to north of half a million a month in three months.
33:22
OK, These people's lives have changed, right?
33:25
Because it's gone from like a side hustle to this is real
33:29
income. But it turns out people have
33:32
other stuff to do, right? So they're not going to sit
33:37
around thinking like, oh man, I should really get for a mother
33:39
referral, you know what I mean? So, so it's just like, yeah,
33:42
yeah, yeah. So, so anyways, dude, I look, I,
33:45
I, I hear what you're saying and I agree with you.
33:47
And I totally get it. I I just think there is
33:49
something about the mechanics here that actually matter more
33:53
than we give credit to. Like I don't know how this
33:56
shaman figured this thing out. Like you can give it to only one
33:59
person, but and then to only ask for pay what you want at the
34:03
end. But this is like Jedi level
34:07
marketing, you know what I mean? I guess that's why the
34:11
gentleman. Hey, yeah.
34:14
Yeah, yeah. Look, that can't even tell us
34:16
who it is. You know what I mean?
34:17
He's only allowed to refer. What?
34:20
Yeah, but what I can tell you is the biggest meme about it is
34:23
that his name is Chad. You're joking, is it?
34:31
Just. Like American dude.
34:34
No, I don't know where he's from, but yeah.
34:39
And that's my punchline when I tell that story.
34:42
I'm like. And the best part about all of
34:43
this is his name is Chad the Shaman.
34:46
I don't know why when you said shaman, I imagined like, you
34:49
know, in the jungle from like, I don't know, some cultural roots
34:54
there. Not just, you know, Chad.
34:56
I'm going to give you more context.
34:57
This also is like, it's not, I didn't go anywhere.
35:01
So he comes and he'll do like 2 weeks in Toronto.
35:05
And so you also have like a time based sort of like decision
35:09
making process. And he does it at like a
35:13
client's house. So you like works with like
35:15
high, like high functioning people, like only right when you
35:18
have one referral and you start with one, that's like the whole
35:20
circle becomes that. And the house that he does it in
35:22
is in this like neighborhood called the bridle path, which is
35:26
like where like Drake lives and like shit like that.
35:28
Like, and so it's in the basement of this house.
35:31
It's like the whole experience is actually like very, very cool
35:34
because you feel like you're kind of like a part of a club
35:36
and all this kind of stuff. What did you, what did you learn
35:40
from it? Did you were there any like big
35:42
takeaways? Yeah, there was so like the the
35:45
number one thing was that I had realized the time and I had this
35:48
like weird like blocker in myself, which was I was only
35:51
playing games that I thought I could win before my parents
35:54
passed away. It was like this like feeling of
35:57
like I was playing like really small games with like single
36:01
base hits where you're like, it was undeniable that this was
36:05
going to work and it was undeniable that my parents were
36:08
still going to be there when it like, quote, UN quote worked.
36:11
Yeah, yeah. So that that was like the number
36:13
one, sort of like insight. And then the the entire
36:16
experience, people always ask like for me, it was like,
36:19
imagine if your entire life was made out of like Lego blocks,
36:21
like individual Lego blocks and it was like a castle.
36:25
Essentially what happened was like my entire life just became
36:28
Lego pieces again. And then it like I got to like
36:31
watch it get rebuilt in front of me.
36:34
And so like I knew why that room was there or like I saw kind of
36:36
like into rooms that I didn't know.
36:38
It was like, oh, up that staircase and stuff like that.
36:40
That was like, that's like my best rendition of like what the
36:43
experience was. It was just like a really good
36:45
candid look at like my life and like why it looks the way it
36:48
does on like a Lego piece by Lego piece level.
36:51
But I will say like after doing it, my feeling is I don't need
36:53
to do that again. So.
36:56
That's totally true. Yeah.
36:57
So I went to this conference yesterday.
36:59
This guy host this conference called the Storm King
37:02
Conference. His name is Stan Rosenberg.
37:05
Do you know of him by any chance?
37:06
Do you know Stan? He's like the previous VP of
37:09
sales at Wunderkind. So like he knows a bunch of
37:11
people in the E com world anyway.
37:13
So it's a bunch of like merchants and then a bunch of
37:15
vendors, right. And it's a smaller setting.
37:18
So it is like a very high trust setting basically.
37:22
And while it was nowhere near this deep, the dichotomy between
37:28
that conference and like, I mean, shop talk as an extreme
37:32
right could not be greater, right?
37:35
And I actually think something that I've learned is people want
37:38
spaces where they can be more vulnerable and feel like it is
37:42
like a high trust situation, even when there are commercial
37:45
transactions involved, right? Like they, they want to, they
37:50
want to be in those kinds of spaces.
37:52
They want to be able to have those types of conversations.
37:56
One of them, one of the sessions that I sat in was just like a
37:59
leadership session. Basically.
38:02
You could tell like initially people were sort of like
38:04
answering the questions a little bit surface.
38:06
And then it got like deeper and deeper very fast.
38:08
It was like a 45 minute session. And I think that there's this
38:11
interesting dynamic of for like generally for high achievers,
38:17
the total number of places where you can talk about things like
38:22
that at that level is actually very small.
38:26
And usually it is not with the people with whom you work.
38:30
So, so the one unique thing about this conference was that
38:32
there was like generally there was like one person from each
38:36
company, right? And so no one was sort of like
38:39
looking around, seeing if their colleague was there.
38:42
But that's like not, I mean, that's like the opposite of shop
38:44
talk, right, Shop time, like you come in like AI don't know, like
38:47
a posse of 10 or something like that.
38:50
Your conversation just reminded me of that experience that I had
38:54
yesterday. Cool.
38:55
Was it like a multi day thing or it's just like a one day and it
38:58
was nice? It was literally just one day.
39:01
Yeah, yeah, it was one day in New York yesterday.
39:04
Shopify auditions is happening here.
39:06
So I went yes, I didn't go to like 2 auditions.
39:07
I went to some like the surrounding events and stuff
39:09
like that and it what that reminded me of just like how
39:13
much of a circle jerk this entire industry is.
39:16
Like it was just like it's just like so single pass.
39:23
Like I feel like I met about 500 people that have like a post
39:29
purchase upsell app and I thought it would be the same one
39:31
but it never was. What is really cool, I will say
39:34
is like Shopify has built a really solid developer
39:37
community. I think we've like talked a
39:39
little bit on this podcast about Shopify and the way they're
39:41
treating like their App Store and their helpers and stuff like
39:43
that. And like there's obviously
39:45
negatives and stuff that gets to a certain scale, but then going
39:48
and seeing like they're also doing like a lot of stuff, like
39:50
really, really like right when it comes to.
39:54
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
39:56
Like probably like I'm trying to think of like a better developer
40:00
community. Not that I'm a part of a ton,
40:02
but it's like it's. Community wise, I think it's
40:04
like really, really doing a lot of things right.
40:07
I think the only better developer communities are like
40:09
the large open source projects, right?
40:13
Like next JS or yeah, like that's, that's the only thing
40:19
that even comes close. But yeah, I think Shopify has
40:23
like clearly done an exceptional job and, and, and everybody
40:27
knows each other. Like, that's not a mistake
40:29
either, right? Like, these things don't just,
40:32
like, happen for free. I'm on jury duty notice next
40:35
week, which is, like, ridiculous.
40:37
Yeah. It's like, it's like weirdly one
40:39
of my dreams to be on jury duty, even though I've never even like
40:43
I know it's not going to be what I expect it to be.
40:44
I just like if I ever got called for jury duty, like I want to
40:47
choose you one, you know, like a televised jury duty would be
40:50
awesome. Oh my God dude, that sounds
40:52
horrible. It would just.
40:54
I just rush your life, you know that, right?
40:57
Yeah, no, but I just look at it as like an experience, you know,
40:59
like ideally it would happen when I was like retired or
41:01
something, but I would just love to be like part of like a
41:03
historical case, you know? I just think it'd be cool.
41:08
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now, if that happened to
41:11
me, I would be so mad. I would just be like, Oh my God.
41:18
Like the probability. Yeah, the way that would impact
41:22
everything would be ridiculous, but we'll see.
41:27
I mean, it's it's actually very hard to get picked in a jury,
41:31
you know that, right? They like, call like hundreds of
41:33
people and then there are 12 people who are on the jury, so.
41:37
Yeah, I've never even been called so.
41:39
You've got something on your white board behind you.
41:41
It says focus and something and then say no, right?
41:44
I just, I can't think of anything worse than getting
41:48
called for jury duty and being expected to do something that I
41:52
don't want to do and having no choice about it.
41:54
No thank you. No thank you.
41:56
I'm going to say no, all right. You're not allowed to say.
42:02
Man, jury duty. Hey, what happens if you get
42:06
stuck? And it's like one of those ones
42:07
that goes on for days, you know, because people can't come to a
42:11
decision. Is that what would you do in
42:12
that situation? Just stuck.
42:15
You just have to do it. Yeah, you just, you just, Yeah,
42:18
someone have to do it. I met some Israeli people the
42:22
other day and they're telling me about how they have to do years,
42:25
years of service. You know, dude, these are not
42:28
the same thing. No, no, no, no, no.
42:30
Like defending your cut. No, no, no, these are not dude.
42:34
Like if, if you are called, like if the country requires you to
42:38
serve your country for two years, it's very like to defend
42:42
it. It's very different than like
42:45
serving on a jury to like, you know, nominally adjudicate your
42:50
peers. Like 1 is like defense from the
42:55
outsiders and then the other one is litigating on the insiders.
43:01
Like it is way easier to inspire people to defend from outside
43:06
forces than it is to get people to litigate internal dynamic,
43:11
you know, internal dynamics, right?
43:13
Who? Needs inspiration.
43:14
You're doing it anyway. It's kind of funny for, for as
43:21
like, for as libertarian as I am and like and like free choice.
43:24
I actually am a proponent for mandatory service.
43:27
Weirdly, Yeah. I feel like it's like, me, too.
43:30
Yeah. But like everything else, I'm
43:31
like, you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want.
43:33
You can't tell me what to do. There's like a part of me that
43:35
feels like mandatory service, like at a very specific age
43:41
would be net, net or net positive for a country.
43:46
I think a service here is just a good idea, you know, like, yeah,
43:52
I'm generally a fan all. Right, that's where we wrap it
43:56
up all. Right.