Ep. 24: Goodbye for Now

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to another episode of SasLife FM. M. I'm, um, Chris. Here with me always is Sam.

Speaker A: Hey, Chris, how you doing?

Speaker B: Hey. I am well, a little rusty. It's been a while.

Speaker A: Yeah, it has been a while.

Speaker B: Got to figure out how all this works again.

Speaker A: Huh? Huh? Yeah, yeah, we got to dust off the mics and start talking, so. Yeah, it'll be fun.

Speaker B: Well, we will do that, but I'm also not going to bury the lead. This might be our last episode, at least for a while, if not forever, so we can get into that further. Kind of toward the end let's chat and do our normal catch up just to bring people up to speed about where we've been and what we've been doing and then we'll talk about kind of the future of the show or lack thereof at the end of the podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds great. Well, I'm happy to dive into it first and as you kind of alluded to, the last two months have been kind of a rollercoaster ride for myself and with Text retailer and the business and I've actually been undergoing a pivot over the last two, three months and I'm unveiling a new name, new concept of Text retailer and it's going to be called Audience Tap. And so there's a lot of reasons that went into this. It's kind of a big change from a marketing perspective, not so much from a product perspective, but the big thing is, yeah, we're, I'm, um, I've decided to change the name, move into a new market, move a little bit away from E commerce merchants. We'll still service those that we have and we're still going to keep an eye on the, the E commerce marketplace as a potential vertical that we're going to look at. But I'm shifting our market into moving more into the creator space. So it's, yeah, it's a pretty big change. So we've, I've been working on new marketing websites, new go to market strategy, all that stuff over the last two months and it's been pretty all consuming. So that's, that's my big news that I'm not going to bury the lead on and yeah, we can kind of dive into the reasons why and. But it's exciting time. But it's just, yeah, it's been a lot of work for sure.

Speaker B: That is a lot of work. And I know you and I have been chatting obviously behind the scenes here, so I've had kind of an inside, uh, track to know what's going on and it's exciting. I'm excited for you. I think it's a really great opportunity. But why don't you tell the audience a little bit about why audience tap and not Text Retailer?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So when Text Retailer was first created, my thesis was let's give traditional e commerce merchants another way to communicate and to sell product with, with their either new customers or existing customers. Very similar to like what you would do with an email marketing platform or program where you want to push new product to your customers through email. We wanted to do the same thing with SMS text messaging, but we didn't want to go just the traditional, hey, here's a new product. Click on the link, you go to your Shopify page and then you add it to your cart and you check out from Shopify. And it's really just more of a marketing like type of platform. We want it to be much more interactive, much more conversational. And so that's where we brought the text to buy concept to the table, where now a merchant can still send out that offer for a product, but instead of having a link to the product detail page on Shopify, instead the customer would literally just reply with the quantity of that item that they wanted to purchase. And if they weren't interested in it, they just don't reply. There's no, no obligation, anything like that, but they would just reply with the quantity they want. And because we have the credit card and the shipping information already on file for that customer, we could actually complete the order 100% within the text message thread. Really easy shopping experience, really fun for the customer. You get an offer for something that you haven't seen yet, you really like it, you hit yes or you type in one and three days later it's on your doorstep. It's pretty amazing.

Speaker B: So do you need to build out a new Shopify essentially then? Are you duplicating a ton of effort here? Tell me more.

Speaker A: So that's something from day one we've always had because we realized that not everyone's going to be on Shopify. At least half of our current customers aren't using any other e commerce platform. So we have the product management system built directly into Text Retailer. So you can create products, you can have images, you can control inventory, we have variants. So you can do different sizes or different colors, whatever it might be of that particular product and all that's built into Text Retailer. And like the Shopify integration is just kind of an add on to that where we can use Shopify as the source of truth. So again, that was all kind of the original thesis is let's give all these tools. If you already have Shopify, we can extend this text to buy capability to Shopify. If you don't, you can just use our platform to manage your products and sell those products directly through, through text retailer. But I mean gosh, it's been what, 18, 18 months now, almost two years that we've been working on this with, with actual live customers. And honestly the biggest challenge has been Shopify itself. The, the platform risk with Shopify. The, they are very protective of the checkout process and they have a lot of rules and regulations when it comes to the checkout process. And frankly the way that we do text to buy is not something they really approve of in the manner that we do. So we've been waiting for like official support from Shopify to unlock their Shop Pay API, which I thought they talked

Speaker B: about or we talked about in a previous episode that they was in the

Speaker A: works long time ago. It was August of last year that some pretty major competitors of mine that are in the text messaging space all announced their partnership with Shopify to basically unlock text to buy using Shop Pay, which is Shopify's payment, payment processor or specialized wallet system, I guess. So customers can put a, put their, their address and credit card information into Shop Pay and it's good for any Shopify merchant that accepts Shop Pay. So it's, it's very similar to the, the bolt, Amazon, you know, one click checkout, fast rally, all of those, all those companies that, that offer wallets, it's Shopify's version of that. So there was a lot of hope for me that oh, finally there's going to be this official path for, to allow payments outside of Shopify proper, outside of their web based checkout and we can bring those tools into a text message thread. Don't know how official this is, but the rumor on the street is that all of those programs that were announced by all of these other major competitors have been shut down by Shopify itself. So it's like they've pulled back that API that I never was given granted access to. It sounds like those are all now either on hold or it's been delayed. So uh, ultimately this just comes back to Shopify is just a real pain to work with if you're dealing with the checkout, which we are. They're great for app developers in other areas. If you can just kind of extend on other areas that not touch the checkout. It's a wonderful ecosystem and it gives you a lot of, a lot of exposure, a lot of distribution. But for us, with what we want to accomplish, it just doesn't feel right. And so that was one of the main reasons to kind of look at, well, maybe there's a different marketplace or a different industry that makes sense because frankly, if you take away Shopify's distribution, E commerce becomes very difficult. Then you, you, there's only a handful of other platforms, all have their pros and cons that when it comes to offering something like this. And it just felt like a really uphill battle to continue to do E commerce. Still absolutely going to keep my eye on it. I would love to come back to E commerce because I think the buying experience and the shopping experience from a customer perspective could be pretty amazing. But we need to be able to accommodate merchants and their needs as well. And right now I just don't, I don't think it's the right timing for that, at least within the Shopify ecosystem.

Speaker B: Well, it doesn't seem like you're ruling that out at all. You're just shifting the potential platform risk. Instead of putting it front as a hurdle you need to overcome, you're shifting it to upside on the back end in a new market you could enter.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so this gives us an opportunity to kind of take a look at those tools that we've built for those that, for the merchants that aren't using any kind of e commerce platform, really double down on those internal tools, make them stronger, make them better. And it also kind of gives us an opportunity to get into a whole different product mix in the sense that with Shopify, I mean, it's very geared towards physical products, you know, direct to consumer products. You're selling an actual widget, you're selling a product that's going to be shipped out to customers. And they dabble a little bit in digital products, but not really. And so that's the new direction, especially with audience tap that we're going to be going into. So now we have the ability to take all of our learnings, all of our tool set that came from E Commerce, so we can accommodate physical products. And we can now also build out a digital product system as well. And so we'll be able to sell both physical and digital products not only through text messaging, with text to buy, but we're kind of doubling down on the online experience as well. So with this new kind of positioning, it lends itself really well for a niche market that I already know well, which is the creator market. The same customer base that Textiful had, which is speakers, authors, coaches, podcasters, basically, you name it, anyone that has an audience that's following them. And uh, typically these individuals, yes, they might have physical products like a book that they've written, but a lot of times they have digital products. You know, whether it's a course, whether it's an ebook or something else that's packaged up, they're sharing their knowledge with their audience and they need a way to sell that. And so we're going to be providing all of those tools to sell those digital products both online and using our Text to buy system. And so I'm pretty excited about the future of it because we are. It's kind of broadening the mission of what Text Retailer was and converting it into a, uh, much more broad communication tool. So we're investing more into our automation system, these tools to present products, to capture data from customers in a live setting or online. So really giving all of those tools to kind of build these funnels to ultimately sell products. And those products can be physical or digital. So it's pretty exciting. And the thing that I really like about it after, after playing in the sandbox of Shopify and in the shadow of the platform risk and all that, is they're all our tools. So we can design the checkout, we can design the product pages, we can build all of that internally and make it really simplified for the creators that we want to cater to and really have a solution that's geared just for them.

Speaker B: This is a really cool direction. Like I said before, I mean, I'm excited for you. I'm sure that people are wondering, okay, what happens now to Text Retailer and the site and the customers there and what if anything happens on your other business? Um, on Textiful, totally separate business, but now you've kind of got three platforms up and running, if I'm understanding correctly.

Speaker A: I do. It's a lot.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's one of the things that I really struggled with at the beginning was even after I identified the pivot of the new market that we're going to be going to. And again, it's the same tools. So we're using the exact same tool set that we have. We don't have to do a whole lot of re engineering or reimagining of the product. It really is more of a pivot on the marketing channel, on the marketing side. And when I started thinking about that, I'm like, well, does Text Retailer as a concept appeal to creators like speakers and authors and coaches? Does that name even resonate and it didn't feel like it made a whole lot of sense to them, mainly because they're not retailers, they don't envision themselves as retailers. And the other thing that it also did is it locked us into text messaging. And that's still obviously a big part of our feature set. It's our bread and butter. It's what we're kind of our differentiator. But when you start getting into information products and how you deliver them, email becomes very smart. An easy way to deliver an information product. If you what, no matter how you purchase it, whether it's online or through text message, yeah, we can send you a text with a link to get that product. But email works just as well. So there's plans on bringing in email components into this and I felt like I didn't want to limit ourselves to being a text only platform and really kind of expand the mission a little bit more of we give you tools to connect with your audience, to tap into your audience if you will.

Speaker B: See what you did there, huh?

Speaker A: And really kind of connect with that audience. And whether or not you use it for just general communication or whether you're actually selling products to them, that's kind of up to your business model. But we'll give you the tools to do either.

Speaker B: Well, good for you, Sam. This is really fun and it definitely seems like, you know, like with any startup as you kind of try to find that product market fit, you know, you put on a couple different hats, you go in a couple different directions, listen to the customers and see where ultimately things point. And I think you've done that. So awesome.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm excited. And you asked about what's going to happen with the text retailer brand and my plan right now is basically transition all existing customers over to Audience tab and from their perspective, the current customers. The only change is honestly the logo in the upper left hand corner. So the, the administrative interface, the tools they have access to, all that's going to stay the same. Even our support with E commerce tools that we already integrate with like the Shopify and the BigCommerce, that's all going to remain. It really is more on the marketing side how we talk about the product, what the benefits of the product are. And like I said, I'm leaving the door open for coming back to E Commerce but that just until we see a viable path for distribution and it makes a lot of sense. I just think we're going to put a pause on that, on that pin. But you can still do all those things with the platform, which is the nice part about it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think in any platform there's always people who use it in a way that you didn't intend or is part of an, um, audience or part of a cohort that you're not necessarily aiming for. And that's great, that's fine. It's just not where your marketing and positioning is going to be spent.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we've been spending a lot of time on marketing and positioning, like you said, and just put the feelers out there. And so far we haven't officially launched. The website's out there, so you can check it out, but we haven't officially launched or, or pushed current customers over to the new platform. And I'm, I'm still kind of working through the wording and the announcement and what that's going to look like, but it'll be a really interesting Q1 and a, uh, really, really interesting 20, 23. And as a whole, I'm really excited for this year. But man, it's. Anytime you do a pivot like this, it sounds simple, like, oh, I'm just going to create a new name, you know, I just gotta need a logo and it'll be fine. It's a lot of work. There's a lot of things that you don't think about and it's a big effort and I don't want to do this again. Uh, I don't want to have to go through a name change. So if you don't have to go through a name change, just avoid it. It's a big pain. So on one hand it's exciting, on the other hand it's just like, man, I really do feel like I'm starting over yet again. That can be tough at times. But I am excited for the future. I think this just, it feels like it has more legs, more potential, at least for me personally and the type of business that I want to build,

Speaker B: you know, that's another really, really big point. Is the whole founder market fit. Right. And this does feel so much more natural to you. It's really building off of things that you've done well before.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And this is, this is again going back to a marketplace that I know well. I'm excited to be able to go, once it's ready, back to existing textival customers and be like, hey, if you like what's going on there, keep using it. But if you want these other things, which are frankly, things that we've heard over the last three years as Complaints like small things like I want to take a form and put it onto my website that allows people to sign up to my text list. Textival doesn't have that. And that's like basic 101 text marketing need that's built into Audience tab. So we can have a lot of these features that frankly, I just didn't build out on text to full because I was building Text Retailer and now it kind of comes full circle to kind of offer text to full two point, uh, zero plus a whole lot of features that creators didn't even think they needed. And that's the main need that we're kind of seeing is in order to accomplish all these things, you're stitching together three, four, five different platforms. And we're hoping to kind of bring that all into, uh, one place for these creators just to make their lives a little bit easier. And so you're absolutely right. It's nice to talk to these, these speakers, these authors, the same individuals that I've talked to for years and years and years with my other business and be able to kind of give them. Here's another option out there and kind of go back to that same well that I'm really have been, have been catering to for a long time.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, you know, as you're talking about this, it's not terribly different than what I've been going through. Lots of changes on our end too. Um, it is different, but not terribly so. And here's what I mean. So, you know, as longtime listeners will know, this podcast for me started out following the journey of building Pipetech Hub. And I've referenced a number of times the rest of the business and our other components, but for the most part, those were siloed. Well, that is no more. We've completely brought together the entire Pipetech team with Pipetech Hub, Pipetech Inspect, and our other platforms, and repositioned a few things, I think, to give give our users a lot more power and cohesiveness. So it's been a journey because it's also meant integrating teams that were previously siloed a bit. Yeah, kind of had to sort through that, but it's gone really well. I'm um, happy to say. It's a lot of work, but it's gone really well. And so now we have one completely unified team working toward a lot of the same goals. And in fact, we've also brought on another three team members here, I think, since our last podcast. So we're growing quickly, but it does feel like drinking from a fire. Hose.

Speaker A: Well, it sounds like it's, uh, I want to go so far as labeling it as a pivot, but it does feel like it's a change that impacts obviously your team structure, like you just said, but your marketing efforts as well. How do you talk about the software that you're selling? How do you package that up? How do you explain it to potential customers? And so in that sense, your marketing is pivoting a little bit too.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is. What's really happened and what's driven this is that pipetech Hub has really taken off. Are, uh, responding to it? Well, they're using it a lot and they're using it in conjunction with PipeTech Inspect, our primary field based software. So as that kind of happened, they've asked for more features and we've looked at things like, well, why do I have to go to this other place to manage my licenses for PipeTech Inspect? Well, I guess you shouldn't. You should be able to just log into Hub. So we'll add some account management features. Hey, I'm getting this invoice over here. It would be really cool if I could see this history in Hub. Yeah, that does make sense. It would be cool. And so we're kind of getting that on the one side and then on the other side we were getting, uh, requests for. I'm using Pipetech Review in the Office, which is our main desktop office software. I wish it could be a little more like what I'm seeing for the web and have a couple of these other features really, you know, want to stay in the office, can't go on into the cloud for reasons X, Y or Z. But I do love that feature. So what we did was said, yeah, I guess we named Hub correctly. It really is becoming the hub for everything. It must have kind of gone in the back of our mind.

Speaker A: You don't have to go through a rename.

Speaker B: Don't have to go through a rename. Well, we already did, remember, from Pipetech project.

Speaker A: Right, right. You did it already.

Speaker B: So we've added some of the account management features to pipetech Hub and then we took it a step further and we actually have rebranded Pipetech Review to Hub for Desktop. So within pipetech Hub, you can use a desktop client, you can use a web client. And for now they're still a bit different, a, uh, bit divergent. But we're working every day toward bringing those things closer in line and we're able to take some of the things that people love about Pipetech Review and put them into pipetech Hub and likewise, take a lot of the concepts from pipetech Hub, bring them down into pipetech Hub for desktop. So it's been fun, but as you can imagine, that necessitated, okay, we can't keep these teams totally siloed anymore. It's time. We're all going to be one again. And we always were, we were always under the same cto. We, we did have that at least, but now it's even deeper.

Speaker A: It just sounds like you're consolidating and making a really cohesive vision for the company. And as opposed to all these one off siloed things, let's bring it under a single umbrella and get some benefits out of that. In the sense not only from easier from the customer perspective of understanding, here's what I actually have and here's what all my options are. And they're not named crazy things and they're not, they all kind of live within that ecosystem. But like you said, the benefits for your team, it's just like a, it's a, it's a cohesive vision of this is what we're building. And it might be consumed in the cloud online or it might be consumed in desktop, but ultimately it needs to do the same things and the goals are the same for the customers.

Speaker B: Exactly. Ultimately it is an inspection management platform. And so it all has to work very, very closely together. Now in part of this and part of the fun, uh, is we get to reposition some of our branding and our marketing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So, yeah, now that some of those names have changed, now that some of their position in the product suite have changed, we are, uh, working on a new marketing campaign and a bunch of collateral that goes along with that. And we're trying to get it all completely together before our big trade show here in three weeks. We have three weeks left. Three weeks left. Now, we've been working on this for months, so it's not like we have three weeks to complete at all, but it's still a lot.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we're marching very rapidly toward that, which is exciting. And actually one takeaway from this and kind of doing the marketing stuff is it does really help you clarify the product side too.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You very quickly uncover some things that might not be as clear as they need to be. How do I describe the difference between Hub, um, for desktop and Hub as an example?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Okay. Well, we need to really nail that messaging and in doing that, the products will be nicely defined as well. So there's been some kind of fun back and forth between marketing, uh, and marketing copy and things like that and product and making sure that we truly understand. Well, these are the internal terms we've been using, but maybe they're a little bit fuzzy. Things like that.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's great. And there's nothing like a deadline, uh, to focus the mind. And I got a story for you as well as a conference as well. So back in. Gosh, I'm trying to think of the timeline. I think it was mid November. I was talking to a colleague. They sell software to speakers as well. And we're just kind of talking, talking through the bouncing idea of audience tap. And if he thought this would be a good, good transition, if it would make sense. And he's like, oh, yeah, this speaks to me. This makes a lot of sense, especially for you. What you need to do is you need to attend some of the conferences that I go to. And one of them is the National Speakers association, and they have one coming up pretty soon. So you got to get moving on it. But I think that'd be a really good move for you. And so I checked it out and this was November time, and their first conference is March. So the first week in March coming up. And finally got ahold of them. And I said, uh, yep, I want to be a sponsor. Let's move forward, let's do this. And I've never done a conference ever for any of my businesses. Never done an in person. I've attended as an attendee, but never as an exhibitor. So I'm really excited for this.

Speaker B: And is this more of a conference with a bunch of trade show or a bunch of talks and things like that, or is it more of a trade show where there's a big expo hall or a little bit of both?

Speaker A: I would say, uh, it's more learning in the sense that there's talks, but it's specifically designed for speakers. So the. So the attendees themselves are either aspiring professional speakers or professional speakers. So they are my target market, at least to begin with, with audience tap. So they're attending to learn more. But there's definitely an exhibitor booth concept there. So by sponsoring, we have the opportunity to kind of speak to these, these speakers. And also the networking of just walking around and talking to people and doing that. But so I committed March conference, which was early March. And at the time that I committed, I knew I had a name. I did not have a website yet. I didn't have a logo yet. I didn't have any kind of booth brochures or content or any kind of setup at all. I Literally didn't even know what I needed to make as far as, like, banners or table settings or any of that stuff. So literally, I committed and I'm just like, okay, we're doing this and we're gonna make this happen. I'll figure out all those small details later. And I'm feeling much better than I now because the website's up, I have all the. The design and printed and ready to go, so I'm happy there. But, man, it was a, uh, stressful time in December just to get all of those things going and just thinking through, like, what's the minimum that I need to be able to talk to someone and look like a real business? Because I didn't have any of that at the time. But definitely that deadline and that commitment makes you focus, makes you prioritize. So, yeah, commit to a conference when you don't have a business. That's a good way to get focused and up and running.

Speaker B: Love it. Love it. Well, we've both got all these exciting changes happening, these exciting new directions for you and kind of coalesce direction for me. Why aren't we going to be chatting next week?

Speaker A: Well, I think for me, because of all the things that I've outlined, how much time it's taken to get up and running, I need to do a little bit of time to get my product market m fit, and that takes time. And so I need to kind of claim back as much as I possibly can. And as exciting and as interesting as I think sharing the journey of audience tap will be, I just. I think I owe it to myself to really give it as much energy and effort that I can. And so that's where I'm going to be stepping back from the podcast itself. And frankly, the updates might not be that interesting because you're building product and you're. You're just deep into the daily slog. Yeah, yeah, I'm grinding right now, and it's just like, what'd you do today? Oh, I did this update that impacts, you know, this piece of the software has nothing to do with the business side. It's just something I gotta build, and I just gotta grind through it, and I just gotta build. So that's. That's the big change for me is I just. I want to claim back that time. And so it's gonna be. I'm gonna say goodbye for now. I don't want to say it's gonna be goodbye forever, but I think once things kind of settle and we come up for air a little bit, then There might be more opportunity to talk about some more interesting things, but as of right now, it's just head down and try to build a product and try to get it to fit.

Speaker B: Yeah, I hear you on the time factor and we came to this decision mutually that the time is a factor for me as well. But something else that I keep bumping up against is that our most interesting conversations generally seem to be happening just before the podcast, before we go on air. And there's a lot of things that I would love to go deeper on air. They're fascinating, but they impact certain people in certain ways. And as our team and our business grows, I'm finding myself less and less comfortable being as transparent as I'd like to be. That was the original reason why we focused on only pipetech Hub, because Pipetech Hub was new and I felt comfortable being pretty transparent about it's journey. But as it's grown and particularly now that it's part of our larger business and taking really a central seat there, I'm constantly second guessing, should I talk about this? Ooh, I can't expose this number because it affects this partner. Uh, that was a really sticky situation that a lot of people would love to hear about, but it impacts this exact employee who's going to understand that we're talking about. And so for me, I don't feel like I have been able to find the right balance between being transparent and talking about really interesting, compelling things that our audience would love to work through with us and might identify with and making sure that the integrity is there and that I'm not going too far. So that's been a driver for me.

Speaker A: And I don't think you're alone in that. I think you sent me a tweet a, uh, week or so ago where there's people kind of reflecting on this build in public movement that has been so popular over the last five years or so. And it feels like, and we'll put the tweet in the show notes, but it feels like that there's this really small band of time or age of the business, maturity of the business, I'll say where there's value to be building in public for your audience. And if you're outside that band, which is very small, you're either. Because you're either too early, like where I'm at right now with audience tap, where I can't really give a whole lot of value because the things that I'm working through are very specific to the things that I'm building for the product. So I don't know if there's a whole lot of value there to kind of talk through the development that I'm building and what I'm building. So then you kind of get into that sweet spot where things are humming along and you have some interesting things to talk about, but then you get out of that band when you grow too big, and then you're kind of impacting all these lives of both your employees and your customers. And frankly, you're kind of out of touch with the vast majority of entrepreneurs out there. Especially if your business really blows up, then it's just kind of like the things that you're dealing with on a daily basis. Most, at, uh, least software solo software engineers and developers and owners, they're not dealing with that same kind of things. Like, I don't, I don't deal with managing a team of 100 people. And so listening to a business and their insights of dealing with a team of a hundred people is invaluable to me because I'm just myself. And so there really is this kind of sweet spot where it makes sense to have that transparency and that build in public. And I think it just doesn't seem like it either of us are in that, that, that sweet spot where it makes sense. And so I think there are a lot of people out there reflecting on. Does it even make sense to even start if you know that there's going to be no value outside of that small band?

Speaker B: I'll add two things to that because I agree with absolutely everything you said. The two things I'll add are, number one, I definitely think there are certain things that span all different stages of business and that are interesting. And I could see bringing the podcast back to dive into topics on a deep level with real world examples that were both experiences. But that goes back to the time thing. That's something that needs to be more tightly produced and really, frankly, better prepared for. As I'm looking at the notes that you typed up here, you've got some things filled in. I have empty bullet points for everything. I'm just going off the cuff. It's just not practical now. But I would love for it to be in the future because it's cool. But that leads me to number two, and that's what's the point of the podcast? There's a couple things for me. One is that it's just fun to riff on things with you, and I don't think that's going to stop. We'll keep talking off air. I'm sure, sure, absolutely.

Speaker A: Another, though, uh, if you return my

Speaker B: calls, another is building community. And that's something that takes a little bit more than just throwing up a podcast. We all know in this world you can't just throw up an e commerce site and assume that a bunch of people are going to come and start making purchases. Well, the same actually goes for building community around, uh, a, uh, podcast. A podcast is definitely one touch point, but it's also attending microconf. It's also having an active Twitter presence and engaging in multiple places. And I know for me, I'm not sure that's something I'm good at. It's something I'd like to become better at, but I'm certainly not necessarily good at it or natural at it right now, and I don't have the time to work on it really. So that's the second thing I'll add. Um, I said there were two. I'm going to give a third as a freebie. A third reason for doing this and maybe having the podcast that would be to actually use it as a marketing platform and bring in customers through that. That's something that I've never attempted to do. That's certainly not my audience, so not too worried about it. But that might be a third reason for doing things that doesn't apply to me at least.

Speaker A: Well, like I said, it's. It's. It's been a joy. It's been a fun.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker A: We always thought this would be like, hey, let's kick tires and give it an experiment and see what it's, see what it's like, you know, let's, let's get on this, this podcast craze, you know, because that's what, that's what people need is two more. Two guys talking about their, their SaaS businesses. We need more of that content. And so we thought we would just give it, uh, a, Give it a go. And I had fun while we did it, and so I'm glad we, we did the experiment. But like, everything, times change sometimes and, you know, like I said, it's goodbye for now, but not necessarily goodbye forever.

Speaker B: And there's a lesson there, too. I mean, you've got to try stuff, and it's fun to try new things, and that's part of being a builder and a creator. So I guess that means now it's on to AI.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Build something there. All right, well, let's end it like we always do. Keep that. What are you into, Sam?

Speaker A: Um, things that I'm into, and I'm really interested in this one. So we've been hearing a lot of buzz about the. The, uh, show Yellowstone. I think it's in season four, maybe even five now. But we just. It's never really been on our radar, so we decided to give it a go. So we're on episode two of season one and liking it so far. But the reason I bring that up is you are located in Bozeman, Montana, which is where the show takes place. And I just wanted to get your thoughts. A, have you watched the show? And B, what are you seeing? Has it impacted kind of anything in your world as far as being a. Not. Sorry, a Bozeman native, but someone that lives in Bozeman has seen the show and the impacts on your local community. Uh, what did they get right and did things wrong? That's the other thing that I always like to hear.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, it's been funny, actually. I like the show. I enjoy it for the most part. Little over the top at times, and parts of it are definitely true in terms of land scarcity and development and building these ranches. And there are plenty of billionaires who are buying these ranches out here as well. And that's really all it's accessible to at this point. If it's not in your family and you're not holding onto it because it's a lifestyle that you value above anything else, well, then you probably are selling out. So that's been interesting, and it shines light on something. That's very true. On the other hand, when they're showing Bozeman, it's not actually Bozeman dead. Dead giveaway is the way that you see people parking. You know, they pull in kind of on that diagonal. I'm not sure what town it is. I'm sure we could look it up. But, uh, ours is all parallel parking on Main street, so that's a little different. No big deal.

Speaker A: So you can't stay at the actual hotel that they feature in the show.

Speaker B: You can't be there. No. Although some. Somebody should spring that hotel up here because people would definitely, uh, definitely stay. We do have a pretty big tourism economy, and it's kind of funny to see how the show has impacted the tourists. Probably most visible is that there seems to be a Yellowstone outfit that people will wear. So someone will come in from California dressed like they just came off the Dutton ranch, and you're going, we just wear normal clothes in Bozeman. It's okay. You don't need that.

Speaker A: Oh, that's funny. They're Expecting Westworld. So they step off the train or the plane and they're like, uh, everyone's a cowboy. And that's. They're dressing for the part to quote, unquote, fit, I think.

Speaker B: So it's a riot, but it's been fun. It's a fun show. So I would second your recommendation. I'm into it, too. And, uh, I've got some catching up to do. We're a few seasons behind.

Speaker A: Oh, nice. All right, well, we'll put it on the list and see the zany adventures that happen in Montreal.

Speaker B: That's right. Well, I think in my world, I'm going to call something out, since this is our last episode for the foreseeable future. I have my MacBook Pro M2 out for delivery right now, so hopefully I love it. Hopefully I'm into it. It might be terrible. I actually am one of those few people who liked the touch bar, so losing that'll be kind of a bummer.

Speaker A: Not a big bummer. So you're the one.

Speaker B: I'm the one that liked it. Yeah, I know. And I never understood all the disdain for it.

Speaker A: People hate that.

Speaker B: But I was cool with it. I use it.

Speaker A: Honestly, I never had one, so I skipped over that. I had the older model, and then I jumped right to the, the M M1. And I, I personally love, love, love the, the, the MacBook Pro. Frankly, didn't even know they had a new one coming out. Wasn't on the market for it. I don't think I'm an upgrade on this version, but, man, I, it's just, they're great, so I, I, I think you'll like it.

Speaker B: Well, no, the recommendation is it's an incremental step. I didn't buy the M. UM one because I wanted to see how well it did. You know, I didn't want to be the first on that new architecture. So I held off. And then once the consensus was, this thing's great, figured, cool, the M2 is just around the corner. They actually teased us. They said, um, it was supposed to come out last year. And then all the rumors said, actually now it might be June. Which I thought, no, that was a real bummer. And then suddenly I was just, I don't even know. I was late one night. I think I saw it on Twitter or something that it came out. So I jumped over and ordered it. So, new ship, double the ram, double the hard drive space. It'll be fun.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're going to be living in luxury once it arrives. That'll be Nice.

Speaker B: I am. And it's also, uh, one of the things I like about the pre orders for Mac, so you have to wait for it, is it's given me time to get everything organized, move down to my NAS and things like that. So now, because I don't like to, I don't do the migration. I do, I do a fresh, clean slate.

Speaker A: You do a clean.

Speaker B: So new installs. So it'll be fun.

Speaker A: I do have to say, I mean the migration process, I think I've done that the last few times. It's slick.

Speaker B: It is.

Speaker A: They just have it. They know what they're doing and it's just there's maybe out of all the programs, out of all the apps, like uh, one or two that has an issue with it that you have to reinstall from fresh. But. But I do agree with you. There is something nice about a full, clean install and get the stuff over that you truly need and not have everything that you don't and really start fresh. So that's both work.

Speaker B: Yeah. Pros and cons to both. Maybe if I was more organized and had everything perfectly clean on this one, I'd want to move it over.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But even then, just old apps and stuff that are no longer used or things that might be installed deep, deep, deep somewhere and slowing things down. Good to get rid of them.

Speaker A: Yeah. Nice.

Speaker B: All right, Sam.

Speaker A: Well, good luck with that. Enjoy that. And a small note to everyone that's. That's listened to us, you know, over, uh, the. Gosh, I don't even know what episode we're on. 20 some episodes that we have. Really appreciate it. Hope we weren't too boring for you and hope you got something out of the show. And like I said, hopefully we get to a place where it makes sense for us to come back and share more insights and more. Just more of what's going on. But until then, we, we really appreciate you giving us your time and spending some time with us. Thanks.

Speaker B: Cheers to everybody.

Speaker A: Have a good.