Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's been a minute, man. I think maybe five years or six years since we, we last spoke. I don't know.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we last did a coaching call in 2019. I was checking my inbox and I think it said, yeah, 2019, man, how.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Much time has flown? So run me through. Okay, let's take it from the top. So you run Testimonial Hero. Talk me through what Testimonial Hero is, just so everyone out there can, can track along.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Testimonial Hero is a agency or productized service focused on customer storytelling. Primarily video testimonials, but also more recently written case studies.
We have a little over 40 full time team members doing a little over 5 million in revenue. And our whole mission is to make world class customer stories effortless, to help B2B marketers build trust and close deals faster.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: That is about as clean as a description as you're going to hear from a founder, I think. How many times do you think you've said that?
[00:01:11] Speaker B: You know, probably hundreds, but not, not as much recently. But yeah, probably hundreds over the years.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Dude, I love it. I just, it's one of those things you get that muscle memory out and. But it doesn't sound like you checked out. Which sometimes I would hear when people are pitching their thing over and over again and they're just like, yeah, we do X for Y. And you're like, oh, cool, okay. You don't get washed out. All right. So rewinding all the way back to when we last chatted, do you remember where you were? Do you remember what you were working on at that time and how things were going?
[00:01:42] Speaker B: So when we last chatted in 2019, I think, um, I mean, I had just started the business the previous year. I really started the business in earnest beginning of 2018.
So it's probably, you know, in, you know, a year and a half in, you know, at that point, I think, you know, I, I would imagine and we did our, you know, group coaching session with Jake and a few other, you know, good friends. People have become really great friends over the years.
But yeah, I think I was probably dealing with a lot of the same challenges that a lot of founders are at that stage. I think at the time we were probably doing 600,000 ish dollars of revenue a year. So just, I think probably at the time I was working on a lot of how do I, like, remove myself from being such a key person in the business for so many different things and how do I, you know, delegate, you know, bring in people, you Know, make myself fire myself from a lot of different, you know, key roles. So there's not this bottleneck where everything has to flow through me.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah, the old, the old key person risk. And you had, you had a bit of an, a production or agency background, if I recall. Like, is that the, like before you were doing Testimonial Hero, was that where you're at?
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's correct. So before Testimonial Hero, I spent, you know, probably four or five years running a generalist video agency with a couple of good friends. And you know, that was great, but kind of experienced the pitfalls of a generalist agency where you're kind of, you know, a lot of the projects are completely different and bespoke and it's very hard to extract yourself from the business as the owner or the founder because, you know, you're always, you know, doing these bespoke projects.
So after, you know, that business, I had the opportunity to kind of start over and actually was very reluctant to get back into another agency. Spent about a year trying other kind of non agency businesses, you know, trying some software companies, some just other ideas and then finally had to pay some bills. So I was like, well like what do I actually like know I can do? And I was like, well, why don't I take one of our most popular services at our generalist agency, which was video testimonials, and why don't I kind of try and productize that? And this was in 2018, where this kind of concept of productized services had really begun to gain steam, thanks in a large part to you and Dan at WP Curve and all of the stuff that you guys had done to kind of popularize that. And Brian Castle also was talking a lot about product services at that time. So I think you, you and Brian were honestly some of the people I learned from a lot back in those early days, you know, a lot, you know, virtually remotely and just learning from a distance. And then obviously we also did some, some coaching calls as well.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: What were some of the mindset shifts that you had to make going from, you know, agency land into productized service land?
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question and also like one kind of caveat or note, it's interesting. Like I, I still think, you know, productized, you know, being very productized is the fastest way to go from like zero to you know, a couple million in revenue. But I think, you know, going from like 2 or 3 to, to 10 million in revenue, I actually think kind of becoming a little less productized makes A lot of sense, and that's kind of the journey that we're on now is like we, we started ultra productized and then now in the mid, you know, we're doing a little over 5 million a year in revenue. We're, we're actually, you know, in some ways, I mean, don't get me wrong, we're still very productized, but like, it looks a lot different and some parts of it are almost more agency ask, which I. It's just an interesting observation, right. What got you here is necessarily going to get you there in terms of like that eight figures in revenue. That that's the next big milestone for us.
But in terms of like the product going initially from like the agency to the productized mindset, I think the probably the hardest thing initially was like, how do we stay so focused?
And you know, honestly, I don't know. Like, when I first started Testimonial Hero, like, I really thought it would just be like a pretty small, like, niche, you know, thing.
Otherwise I might not have had the, you know, the courage to be so ultra niche in the name Testimonial Hero. You know what I mean?
You know, if I like. So it's kind of funny that it worked out the way that it did.
But yeah, I mean, it was an aggressive niche down, especially at the time to be like, we're going to focus on testimonials and it's in our name. So I think, yeah, in hindsight it helped. It helped a lot. But yeah, like, if I, if I knew, I would have been doing this for eight years. Like, I probably, I'm not sure if I would have had the courage to do it from the start.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Was the idea behind getting narrow in the niche helping, does that help to keep that scope narrow through definition so people know who you are when they engage and it's like we do this and that's it. Is that kind of how you're thinking or were there other motivations behind that?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I love a good brand name for instant credibility when it comes to like marketing and positioning.
Ultimately, you know, there's a lot of different ways to sort of brand and name companies. And you can have a more of like an empty vessel name that kind of. You kind of imbue with meaning that maybe doesn't mean as much. And there's tons of examples of companies that have been successful doing that as well.
But personally, I love names that, you know, give you, like, you hear the name, then you hear the value proposition and then it gives you like A little like, aha moment.
I guess I'm just like a little bit of a branding and positioning nerd in that respect.
So I always think, like, if I get a cold email, if I'm sending, like, if I'm a prospect and I'm getting a cold email, or if I'm seeing an ad and I'm seeing, you know, who's this ad being served from? Like, how is the name of the brand going to enhance or potentially detract from my, you know, appreciation of the ad and willingness to engage further with it?
[00:09:21] Speaker A: So it helps. It helps your customer understand exactly who you are from the jump.
Yeah. And I think that's a common thing.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Another couple seconds of their attention. If it's a good name, it's relevant to the value prop. Yeah.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: And I think that's a common pattern in agency land, where these agencies have like, numbers and letters and weird things that only mean something to the founder. And then you're getting an inbound email from them. Like, what is Agency 7x32?
I don't know what these guys do. They sound pretty futuristic.
Okay, so that's a pretty healthy start. Like, you started from a pretty. I would say what I see with the productized services, especially back in those days, is it was often more folks that had a consulting background and they were trying to get out of, like, consulting. So you came from more of an agency background and were trying to get to something that was a little bit more structured, healthy, healthy. Jump off.
Now, over the last, if you put it on a timeline here, over the last five, six years, what have the major milestones been along the way?
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question. In terms of major milestones. I mean, I think one big major milestone was going on my honeymoon in the early months of 2020.
And I got. So I got married in, in fall 2019, went on our honeymoon, my wife and I, in Thailand in January, late January and like early February of 2020. So we just like, literally just came back before, you know, all the. The COVID stuff. So we barely, you know, just in time. But I think the. The milestone there was like, I was gone for two weeks, like, completely checked out of the business. And we still, you know, grew our revenue and like, you know, like I had hired a salesperson, our first salesperson in November of 2019.
I think he closed the deal, you know, before the end of the year. So that was great. But I was still there kind of helping him. And then the fact that I was able to, you know, check out for Two weeks completely for the first time in the history of the business and a bunch of deals were closed and it was like I was not even, it didn't even matter.
That was the huge, that was a huge first milestone. I think that is like one of the things that product services do so well compared to a more full service agencies. They're so much easier to sell and they're so much easier for someone else to sell. That's not you as, you know, as in not the founder.
So that'd be the first milestone.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Just on that, I remember an email or a message or something about that because that was definitely an anchor point for you because you were like running towards that goal where you could actually unplug because he'd been plugged in just like so, so long. And I, I do remember, I think you put it in the Slack group or something like that or maybe email and we're like, yeah, he did it, he did it.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean I, I, that, I, I'm sure I did because that, it just felt so good because you know, as, as a business owner, especially a business owner who's, you know, running a business that they care about their lifestyle, which has always been something that I've cared about.
You know, you always kind of, you know, until you achieve it, you're always like wondering like, oh, am I going to be able to have the lifestyle I want along with the, you know, financial benefits that I want? And yeah, so I think that was like, that was the first taste and then next big, I guess milestone would be, I mean, a couple months later we were into, you know, COVID 19 happened and that kind of ground, like our main core product offering, our main service of on site video testimonials was just kind of ground to a halt, right? Because no one was filming in person. So we had to figure out a way to.
Well, actually at that time we're like, okay, how do we like keep the business afloat? What do we sell? Right?
And you know, we tried some, you know, we tried a few different things. We tried doing some, most of our, a lot of our customers were SaaS companies. So we tried some like product demo videos and then we also tried the fully remote video testimonials and we figured out a way to do fully remote video testimonials at a very high quality compared to anything that was available at the time and really anything that still is available.
So that it was like this constraints breed innovation situation where I was like, we have to figure this out or like the business is not going to be around because our main source of revenue is now just functionally not possible. We have to figure out how to sell things and produce them remotely so that once we sold a few of those, deliver them successfully. I think that was like, that would be the next big milestone.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: And you said that it's something that you figured out, and it's still like head and shoulders kind of above the competition.
As a process nerd, there's parts of me that want to dive in and understand more about that. I'm assuming some of it was around instruction to people and how they can best set themselves up to capture good video. Is that a portion of what the process was to get that good stuff out?
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the biggest thing about it was our whole point of view was let's have people capture the testimonials with the best, best camera that they have on them, which is their smartphone, not their webcam. I mean, smartphone cameras are just so much better than webcam cameras, especially in 2019, 2020, when less people were working from home. So there was a lot of process innovation to figure out a way to, you know, how do we do quality assurance, how do we help them set up their camera, how do we get the footage from them, and how do we do all of those things and more and also make it a really easy customer experience, because that is one of our core values, is effortless experience, both for our customer and for our testifying customer who's actually participating in the process. So, yeah, that was like the value innovation. That was like one of the big value innovations. And that's the thing that I think can separate, like, some product has services from others that maybe make a bigger impact is like, if you need some sort of value innovation if you want to get outsized returns compared to, like, the market. Right. If you're just copycatting someone else, like, you're going to get, like, their results or less. So I think we've always been focused on innovation and value innovation that benefits the customer.
And I think that's something that a lot of.
That's something that takes you from average to something that I think can be a lot larger from a revenue and impact standpoint. When it comes to productized agencies, they'll.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Take a slight detour and then we'll come back to milestones. But you made a point about copycatting and one of the, I want to say, patterns that I saw over time and definitely saw it with WP curve, there were about 150 variants of WP banana and WP, whatever. You just add a letter after WP or add a word after WP and you've got yourself a support business. Did you see much of that for testimonial Hero? Is there still.
Is that a. Is that. Does that even register for you? Is that something that's prevalent? And how have you managed that as it's come up?
[00:18:15] Speaker B: So it's a. Yeah, it's a great question.
I would say there really hasn't been that many, and I'll tell you why in a second. It's like, sure, there's been a couple, but I think, you know, a lot less than you'd think, because the. There's a couple things that are really hard about what we do, and they suck for us too, but they suck for everyone. And so it's like, it's. It's not an easy game to get into.
For one, you know, they're not really. It's not really conducive to recurring revenue at all.
You know, we don't focus on recurring revenue. We don't care about it, frankly.
But we've been able to grow super, you know, aggressively, you know, in general, like, pretty quickly, up above 5 million in annual revenue, but we. But without any need for, like, recurring revenue. Right. So a lot of people start productized services because they're chasing this, what they think will be like a panacea of recurring revenue. So, like the. When they see that there's not a lot of easy recurring revenue in testimonials, you know, services, they. They're usually not interested. They want to play an easier game.
So I think that that's. That's one. And then, yeah, there's other nuances that make it quite challenging to. To do our business, which is like, to actually have a successful project, we don't have to. Not only do we have to sell our client, then we have to help our client sell their client to appear in the testimonial.
We have so many leads that would love to work with us, but they're not ready to sign until they line up a few testimonials. So there's major dependency issues there on our customer's customer. So it's like, that's the last thing you want to be dealing with, honestly. You want to just have complete control over whether you can do a project successfully.
So those are two very challenging things about our business that we have figured out how to live with.
But a lot of people don't really want to figure out or haven't been able to figure out or. Yeah, can't figure it out.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Okay, good learnings. So going back to the milestones. So there's a couple that you've knocked off and you went into Covid and had figured out and frankly like pivoted a little bit to figure out a service offering that could work, which sounds like a lot of scratching around and just trying stuff and eventually getting that, that process. Talk me through from that point onwards. What were some other milestones that you were able to hit that kind of stand out for you?
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. And also I should, I should say to add on to the last question, that our biggest competitor per se, from like a revenue size perspective and you know, client perspective, was a company called Case Study Buddy who, you know, built a really nice, great company. We ended up actually acquiring them in Q1, end of Q1, 2024. So, you know, we there they were probably maybe one a good example of a company that, you know, did some really great stuff in the space and then we were able to acquire them. So, you know, win, win for both of us, actually. Win for, for them, win for us. So yeah, I mean, I think like from my perspective, you know, I, I think that, you know, competitors also make the best partners and the best acquisition targets or vice versa. Right. So, um, so yeah, I mean I, and some sometimes I wish we had a few more competitors so we could grow by acquisition easier. Right.
But you know, there's, so there's, there's pros and cons there and you know, ultimately, yeah, we can talk about, you know, acquisition stuff a bit later. But yeah, coming back to other milestones.
So, yeah, I think getting to, you know, breaking a million dollars in revenue, that was a big milestone, I think.
And we did that, I think in.
So we, we, I think we almost broke it in 2020. We did maybe like 800-850K. And then 2021, we just exploded. And this was the zero interest rate era, you know, 2021, post Covid stimulus check. Like just massive amount of low zero interest rates, massive amount of VC funding we sell to sas.
So we were able to just ride that wave and you know, grew, you know, a little, did a little over 3 million in revenue in 2021 from 800K. So that's, you know, that's serious growth.
And so, so yeah, we pretty quickly, you know, and then actually spent a couple years integrating that growth because that's a crazy amount of revenue growth for, you know, going from 800k to 3.4 million in a year for a, you know, professional services, business, a lot of growth to integrate. So we. We were able to absorb that growth. But we did stay around that level for 2022, 2023. Really, you know, those were, you know, two pretty flat years for us. And then 2024 saw some awesome growth, getting us a little over 5 million in revenue now. And we're also growing this year. So I think that the next big milestone would. Would be. Oh, and also we made the Inc. 500 list in 2021. I guess that was cool. I think it's back there. You can see the plaque back there. I mean, as someone who grew up, you know, reading that magazine and stuff, I mean, it's cool to make the list. In reality, like, the main thing that changed was like, we. Now we got so many sales calls. Like, you make one of those lists, and then you just end up getting prospected by, you know, everyone. So it's like. It's like, how did your life change? Yeah, you get. People try to sell to you constantly. It's. It's exhausting. So it's like it was more of, like a vanity metric and then.
But it was cool to achieve and. And then, yeah, I think that the. The other, you know, big one is making our first acquisitions that we made in 2024, and restarting growth in 2024 was. Was massive.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Love it. I think with the ink, I would argue that a lot of entrepreneurs have these milestones or even metrics that they are meaningful. They do mean something, personally. And I don't think there's anything. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's just being honest with yourself about why it matters to you. If it's an emotional thing and you have an emotional connection to being, like, well, legit. That's my definition of legit. For some people, it's getting to 10k a month, and then it's like 50k and 83k and then double, double, double, and then like 10 mil in error, which is a pattern that I see a lot. But, yeah, congrats, Inc. 500, let's go.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I think we're like, number 342. So pretty. Yeah. And it's actually 5,000 now, so they let quite a lot of people on it. But it was nice to be within the actual top 500.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: So talk to me about that period of growth from 800k to, I think you said 3.4 mil in the heady days of the ZURP era.
What did that look like for you as a founder?
[00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, honestly, yeah, basically. Look, you know, we felt unstoppable and then. But in reality there are a lot of things that we were doing wrong but like sales and a lot of like kind of mistakes we'd learn from and you know, in the future. But yeah, I mean when, when you're just the demand just seemed, you know, it was a very frothy time. I'm sure it was unprecedented. I don't think there'll ever be a time like that again. It was just insanity. I guess you didn't know it at the time, but it was just like everyone, the marketing budgets for software were absolutely insane.
So like, I think in hindsight, like we, we thought we were like amazing geniuses at the time, but really it's like, you know, most of the, and there were some, certainly some things we did right and we took advantage of a good situation but like a lot of it was like the market was driving that, which was, you know. So I mean, I'm just grateful that we integrated the growth ultimately and we didn't like die from indigestion because, you know, there's that saying like, well, you can die, you can kill your startup or your agency just as easily from indigestion as starvation.
So thankfully like we, we were able to absorb that growth and you know, kind of caught us. Took us a couple years to actually catch up and like grow beyond that.
But I think it was a good thing and I'm honestly grateful that we went through it because I think in that, you know, 2ish million in revenue is like a really tough kind of zone where you're kind of like, you're big enough to need more people and some more expensive investments in leadership and people, but you're also not quite big enough to be able to afford those.
So part of me is like, maybe we helped just fast forward through that period as fast as possible. Although it's not that different at 3 million, honestly, it's still some of the same issue. But I do think broadly speaking, the faster you can get from like, you know, 1 to 5 or 1 to 4, like the better in that sort of like 1 to 3 can be a little bit of like a, a messy middle or like a, you know, zone of death.
So yeah, I think mostly just grateful and, and it's like kind of gave me a healthy respect for like, you know, you can't control everything and you're always going to be, you can control a lot, but like, you know, sometimes, you know, a lot of your success comes from Timing in the market and the macro situation. So you got to make hay while the sun shines though, when, when things are good. Like, you got to make hay if the economy is good.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: So, hell yeah. That's actually one of my favorite sayings and I think it's sometimes hard to see it when you're in it.
I could see it for the W, like, for the timing that we had for WP Curve.
This platform was growing. There was a compound annual growth rate that was obvious. There wasn't a really like, there wasn't a web flow or anything around. Squarespace and WIX were okay, but not great and still kind of expensive for what you got. And when there is that like, window of opportunity, it is hard to have the conviction to just run full tilt. But I think that's when you're early, if you've been at it for a few years and then you're committed to the market, you're committed to the product, and you're, you know, like, okay, people are spending now. We've got to capture demand. We've got, we've just inverted our problem. We don't have to create it, we've got to capture it.
Where, where did things break? What were the breakpoints during that time?
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so I, I think so because, I mean, I, I, I will say I actually not that many things broke.
We just didn't really realize at the time, like, we didn't have a full understanding of like cash versus accrual accounting.
So we, we thought we were doing way better than what we were on an accrual basis.
And like, like we in reality, like, you know, we weren't fully earning revenue because even though we were getting paid cash, like, we, a lot of times, like it was taking a while for like, people would pay us money and then they'd like, be like, oh, yeah, sorry, we're doing this other project and we'd like take the money and we'd spend it. So it's like that. But that wasn't actually like earned revenue. So like the biggest thing that, like, we thought we were like, you know, had the most amazing business in the world. You know, we had a great business, but it wasn't as good as we thought it was. When we started doing our books and accrual, that was like the big learning. We're like, oh, wow. You mean like, we actually haven't technically earned like the revenue that like we spent last month because, like, we haven't delivered the work for it. We have to have a revenue recognition policy. Like so basically it was more of like, oh, cash and cruel are very different when you get paid a lot up front. Which we were. Which what was what. That is what was happening.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Not the first time. Not the first time I've heard that. So.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: Yeah, and it didn't. So it didn't. The good news though, it didn't like, we didn't break things on the client delivery side or anything like that for, you know, it was more of like just a learning a business learning around the nuances of like, you know, cash versus accrual and, you know, how to run your transitioning from running your business on a cash basis to an accrual basis. And when you, when you have like a subscription product or service like cash and accrual, you know, and you're, you know, look pretty similar, right?
[00:32:50] Speaker A: It's.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: If you're getting monthly payments and you know, from customers and your expenses align with those, you know, with, with, you know, your revenues align with those expenses on a monthly basis. Cash and accrual aren't that different. The problem with us at the time and any product as a service that's, you know, running a similar model to us is like, you get paid, you know, you might, you get paid like, say you get like 20k up front for a couple projects and then you, you know, you actually do the projects in month like 3 and 4 and your revenues and your expenses are, are misaligned. So like, to actually see the true performance of the business, you need to figure out a way with accrual accounting to, you know, follow best practices and follow GAAP. And if you're in the U.S. ideally, I mean, you know, it's not, you're not legally mandated to, but like, it's good practice to.
So yeah, this is just a lot of like, accounting stuff. We learned that we're like, you know, oh, we have to like, actually do this correctly if we want to see how we're really doing. But the fact that we were, you know, doing like essentially projects and packages made it, you know, turned out to be like a godsend in a lot of ways too, because we were able to staff up and like, absorb all that demand on a project basis, right? Like, if, if we would have had to like, if we had retainers and we had to hire like each new client, you know, every two clients, we had to hire one person and we grew from 800k to 3.4. Like, that would have been incredibly, incredibly hard to like, resource that from a, you know, hiring a headcount perspective. So that is one of my sort of favorite things about, you know, I have a few favorite things but like one of the on the list is like just like how much easier it is to resource, you know, more project based businesses compared to like retainer monthly recurring businesses where you need always need to resource full time staff to that account.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Some good learnings in there. A couple of points that I'll add and I think this is true for most bootstrap productized services.
If your service allows you to go semi annual or annual and there is demand to be able to do that and you can capture that revenue upfront and customers will pay, even if it's going to be 5 to 10% of customers, I tell people to go for it because it just creates even just like a mental buffer where you've got, I don't know, an extra five, ten grand of cash in the bank when you're starting out. Just creates so much breathing room and it feels so much better than you're watching your monthly recurring revenue subscriptions tick over and you're like, all right, we need to get 100 more subscriptions and then we can finally hire that next person sort of thing.
But the other thing that I was going to say is in the GoDaddy days post acquisition, one thing that they did aggressively, which was completely the very, very far end of the spectrum from a bootstrapper mentality, I would argue is because at the time that I was there, I think it was roughly 20% private equity owned. Everything was about the dollars. Everything was focused on arpu, everything was focused on ltv. And so products by default would be offered one, two, three year terms, which to me was just mind blowing to be able to offer a support like a WordPress support package for two and.
But I'd set up these alerts to know when these would go off and I'd literally be partying at my desk and so excited because it's like you're talking about thousands of dollars up front for a product that the rack rate on it is maybe like a hundred bucks a month or something. And you're capturing all of that up front.
It sounds like what you experienced and learned through that was when you do capture that revenue up front, you start to see that gap and distance between getting the revenue in and actually fulfilling it. And he starts to forecast off that, you know, inflated buffer. That's a good, like to me, that's a good problem to have. Like, that's a, you know, that's a nice, that's a nice position to be.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good, it's a good problem to have for sure. Because at the end of the day, like you know, as, as founders, we pay our bills in cash. In like more cash is always a good thing. Gives you optionality, lets you invest in marketing.
I mean, all of our growth has been driven by the fact that we've always had a ton of cash on hand because we've always been driving sales aggressively and reinvesting the business. And we're able to, when you collect up front, like you said, you're able to pull that revenue forward and redeploy it.
And I mean, so yeah, and there's this thing where like, and this is just my opinion, but I think like a lot of people, you know, they, they think monthly recurring revenue and they're like, oh, like few, like I won't have to sell the customer next month, like, what a relief. I'll just get three customers and five, When I get five customers, I'll be good. But they find out very quickly that like it's not that recurring because Churn is quite high, especially in marketing services.
Like arguably to the fact that like they're not even really doing like recurring services is just putting customers like on a project payment plan. Because like if you, if you actually only keep a customer for like six for like you know, five months, that's like your average and you're just like, you'd be better off just charging them up front or in two chunks and doing like two quarter project with them or something. Right? It's like unless you're keeping customers for like 12 plus months, you know, it's like how, how recurring is that revenue really? Not to mention like, you know, if we look at Churn so like this, there's like this huge, I'm curious if you agree with me on this, but like especially in marketing services, which again are like very, you know, fickle and like people change what they want. Like campaign doesn't work, you know, one month things, you know, you know, economy shifts, like slash. So yeah, I mean it's there, there's a big illusion of like predictability that's not really there when it comes to like MRR for a lot of productized services.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: I couldn't agree with you more. And I'm going to riff on this a little bit because I see, I still see it at some level, which is it's very hard when you're super close to it to really admit that it's not a recurring need.
I think. Russ from Design Pickle had this, he got this like really early on because he'd come from an agency background and recognize that maximizing, just maximizing revenue capture and maximizing the amount of like same kind of like godaddy mentality. Grab as much cash as you can up front, get someone to the highest tier of plan, get them locked in for as long as you can and that's gonna, that's kind of like your insurance policy.
I think there is like such a romantic notion of recurring but frankly if you've got churn monthly churn over 5% then you really have to have an honest conversation with yourself of whether you've actually got a recurring business. I remember in the early days of WP curve it was like 2022 and it'd be growing and at the same time you're seeing people sign up. Every cancellation that comes through is just like a stab in the guts. So you start to ask yourself what can we do to position ourselves less as a reactive kind of service provider that will be on call when you need it and actually steer the relationship and grab someone's hand and walk them through all the things that they need to know and set that tone up front and explain that over the course of this amount of time we're going to take your site from this to this.
That took us some time to learn, but implementing things around proactivity around automatically, like almost like automatic updates, like opt out updates, just like trying to figure out how you can win that business on an ongoing basis, you have to spend a bunch of time on that because if you don't and you're just a line item on an expense sheet and it's someone that has got like most people have some like kind of budget sensitivity and they say, oh, we like that product and we like that team, but we haven't used it for two months. So this is the like love you guys but we can't, like we don't get much value out of you. Like it's still a cancellation, it's still shit. So yeah, I would see a lot of that. I would see a lot of people trying to shoehorn a particular service into a monthly package. And then I'd start by saying like, what's the frequency of use?
And even at Canva, Canva, if you look at the, I guess the expansion of the Canva product line, Canva as a design tool is like best in class, like so good, so intuitive to use, easy, just fun. But the frequency of use, unless you're a power user for that product is maybe Using it once a week, a couple of times a week, but you're not in there every single day now. Canva came out with Canva docs, as you've probably seen recently, Notions come out with notion mail. And you're looking at this way of becoming part of a user's plumbing and part of a frequency of use case thing. And if the frequency of use case isn't there for a service or a productized service, you absolutely have to figure out how you can maximize that frequency and steer that if you can be honest with yourself about what that frequency is, which it's hard to do sometimes, and then figure out how to capture all that revenue upfront. So I don't know, is that true to your experience? Are those the sort of things that you came to bear for you as well?
[00:43:15] Speaker B: Yeah, they are. And the other thing I would say is, you know, when you don't like, customers who formally churn very rarely come back.
You know, it when someone churns, like, and it's like a formal, like cancellation thing, it's like unlikely they'll ever sign up again.
But if you were, you know, if you were selling them a package and it's like a consumption model, they will come back.
You know, it's like a lot of the way that honestly, like, you know, a lot of the consumer packaged goods we use in our lives are. It's like, you know, we, we buy some toothpaste, we use it. If we use it, you know, when we're done, we with the toothpaste, we buy some more. But like, they don't. We don't need that, Feel the need to get on a toothpaste subscription. Even though I'm sure, you know, people have tried to do that. Right.
But, you know, it's just sometimes, you know, easier to just use it and then buy it again when we need it.
So I think about lifetime value. I. Every decision that I make is like, how can we maximize lifetime value for the customer?
So essentially to me, lifetime value is more important than monthly recurring revenue, because that's not important to me at all.
I'm focused on lifetime value because if I tried to optimize for monthly recurring revenue for our particular service and there are other services out there, you know, that this is also true for, you know, we would just be too much of trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, as you said, and we would actually be hurting our ltv.
So I would much rather, you know, stomach that what's. What some people would refer to as unpredictability and to. To have a much better ltv.
And yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily, like, I don't subscribe to the theory that unpredictability is something that we have to, like, you know, try and, like, banish and manage. Like, unpredictability in and of itself, you know, is just what it is. I don't think it's inherently bad in a lot of ways. And like, there are other ways to, you know, if you really don't like unpredictability, there's other ways to make things, like, predictable, like, you can make. And a really good quote I've heard before is like, if you don't have predictability in your revenue, have predictability thanks to your marketing.
And that's honestly what we try to do. It's like, we're always able to forecast what we're going to do for the next month, sometimes the next two months, but usually not a lot more than that.
But, like, we're always able to forecast because, like, we have, you know, we know what our pipeline looks like and, you know, we're not like, caught off guard or anything. So there. There are other ways that you can create predictability by actually doing a good job at marketing. But again, it's harder. It's a lot easier to kind of, you know, just look at your stripe dashboard and be like, oh, here's what my MRR is. So I guess, you know, tell yourself, what do you think it'll be next month? Even though you really don't have any idea, depending on what happens, actually doing the work in creating predictability through marketing is harder.
But, yeah, it is important if you want to grow to, you know, figure out that marketing engine.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: There's some gold in there. I. There are two things that came to mind as you're talking about ltv.
I just love nicknames. I don't know. I've always loved nicknames. And the nickname that came to mind for you was Mr. LTV. Like, that would be like, a fitting nickname, but the other. Another fun fact is that the LLC that we had for WP Curve was actually called Lifetime Value llc because I knew that every time I was looking at all the paperwork and dealing with, like, all of the tax and bookkeeping and nonsense like that, I needed that reminder in my face all of the time.
So it was funny going through and signing the acquisition papers and then just like, lifetime value, lifetime value, handing it over. This is your lifetime value. Now you could have it. It's a hard thing to let go of that's awesome.
So predictability in marketing. That's a really good thread.
I agree with you. I agree that there's like a control element and I think the thing that I take away from what you just said is like controlling the controllables. So you can control your output, you can control your effort, you can control the campaigns, you can control your go to market and you're going to have variability on the back end of how much interest you get, how many people sign up, those sort of things. Where else do you apply that mindset in writing, that unpredictability? Because to me that sounds quite calming and quiet. It gives me a sense of peace where I'm like, cool, I can control what I can control and everything else beyond that is going to be what it is.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think also, you know, just having ample like cash reserves or like access to liquidity, like a good line of credit helps, you know, helps a lot because I think, you know, there are months, you know, where, you know, you know, especially over the, you know, history of the business where it's like, okay, if we look, you know, we look over a 12 month period, like we'll, you know, we're wildly profitable some months, we're, you know, break even some months, we lose a little bit of money some months and then it, you know, and I think, you know, most of the time like we're almost always profitable. Maybe there's like one or two months where we're not profitable. By the way, I'm speaking on a cash basis here in terms of cash flow. So like positive cash flow. But like it's never like a big deal to us because we, you know, we always have that cash reserve from, you know, the majority of the months, which are good months. So like, I think it's like you have to give yourself. You know, obviously this is like kind of common sense but like it bears repeating. But it's like when there is, when you're embracing unpredictability, you want that margin for error and it's okay to have a month. That our mantra over the years was it's okay to have one month. That's not great. We just don't do back to back negative cash flow months. And I think we've always stuck to that for the most part.
And yeah, so then just having that, whether it's, you know, that cash on hand and that line of credit, I mean, helps a lot in terms of just, you know, helping me sleep at night and also just making the business easier to run because it's not it's not like, oh, well, you know, had a. That month was tough. Like, we can easily absorb that. Not a problem.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes it easier to play.
To play a longer game. All right, now, looking forward, we've gone down memory lane a little bit, but let's talk about now in the future. As you mentioned earlier, you've become.
I like the word acquisitive. When you say I'm acquiring companies, I've become acquisitive. Do you want to talk me through acquisition strategy, what you look for?
Yeah, just kind of take me through how you're thinking about acquiring, because it sounds like you're acquiring to help with growth, but I'm making assumptions there.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So we made two acquisitions in 2024. They were both strategic in nature in that they really helped us unlock a new capability, which was our written case study unit.
So prior to those acquisitions, we were solely focused on video testimonials. Video is my background, so that's something that felt very comfortable in. And that was all of our revenue, really, was video.
But we had the opportunity to acquire two companies who specialized. You know, one of them did video as well. Case study Buddy did video and written, but they were a little more leaning toward written.
And their roots were in really high quality written content. And the second company was a company called Upshot, and they were. They're a division of, actually a larger company, but their division was called Upshot.
And we acquired them, and they were fully focused on written. And then we kind of, post acquisition, kind of merged those two companies into our written customer story division.
So, you know, very quickly, post acquisition, you know, we were doing, you know, 40, $50,000. 40 to $50,000 a month in written case studies, essentially. Right. And, like, with the team that was, like, immediately producing them and stuff. So, like, we could have. We just skipped a ton of time by doing that. Like, we could have figured out how to do that and, you know, built it up piece by piece. But in that case, we were able to just kind of compress some time and, you know, make those acquisitions. Now we got a. We got. We structured those acquisitions in really favorable ways. They weren't huge acquisitions for us to do. We were able to just do them off our balance sheet. And, like, if they would have blown up, it would have been okay. Like, it wouldn't have been, like, a huge negative. So, like, that, you know, and I think I want to be clear that, like, that's something that's important to me. Like, I like things that have a lot, you Know that have a pretty capped downside and, like, a pretty high upside if they work out. So there's like, some asymmetries there, some asymmetric, you know, rewards, and both of those acquisitions fit that. There's also acquisitions that we have not done and probably won't do that we looked at, and we're like, this could be great, but if it blows up, like, I'm on the. I'm personally, my house is on the hook because, like, this is gonna. We need to raise debt to do this from, you know, SBA and, you know, whatever. And, like, if this doesn't work, like, this not working out is not an option. And, like, we probably aren't going to do any of those.
And, yeah, like, so. So we look at, like, acquisitions, small acquisitions with deal structures that, you know, where they're asymmetric bets, limited downside. If. If everything goes wrong, it's not that big a deal. We can. We can absorb it. And if it goes well, the upside is really big. We're also looking at incubation as well.
And, you know, we're actually incubating a new brand. Our first new brand, other than Testimonial Hero, is going to be launching later this month, maybe.
When is this podcast going to come out, do you think?
[00:55:20] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say, can we get an exclusive? I love it. This would be the first exclusive.
[00:55:25] Speaker B: Yeah, we can get. What's the release date on this?
[00:55:28] Speaker A: Well, I can time it with what you need.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Perfect. Yeah.
Let's do an exclusive. We can do exclusive.
So we're launching.
This is the exclusive, folks. So we're launching our first brand. After focusing just on Testimonial Hero for seven years, we're launching a brand called Product Hype. We got the domain product hype.com that's like hype as an excitement. And it's focused on product videos. You know, scroll stopping product videos for SaaS and cybersecurity companies. So think product demos, but on steroids, because they're actually exciting. And, you know, we are. We are going to make good products look incredible and great products look absolutely stunning on video with motion design and animation and all these things. So, yeah, it's launching.
It's out now, if you're hearing the podcast.
But, yeah, basically this one, we tried to acquire it.
We weren't able to get an interested seller, and, you know, we couldn't come to terms. We're like, all right, we'll build it ourselves. We'll put, you know, you know, probably, I don't Know, maybe almost six figures into it and just build it out ourselves, you know, hire the team, hire, you know, do the brand, acquire the website, which. Which cost us a little bit to get the dot com, but.
But yeah. And then. So I think that's. That's kind of. Our strategy is like, you know, we want. We'll either acquire things that are asymmetric, or we will incubate them and build them ourself, you know, and put like, you know, $100,000 in to incubate a new business unit. Because, again, like, if it doesn't work out at our company size, it's not going to kill us. And the. And if it does work out, you know, which. The upside is really big.
[00:57:35] Speaker A: Couple of things that jump out from, for me, from that. The first is the fact that you're not romanticizing SBA loans and personal guarantees. I don't. That people who are early fully recognize what a personal guarantee can mean to your.
Just your overall sense of mental health. Do you want to. Can you expand on that a little bit? Just, you know, obviously this is not financial advice, but if someone is thinking about funding through debt or getting a loan or doing whatever, like, what are they actually usually signing up for?
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I think. And I would also caveat this by saying, like, the. A lot of, like, debt out there and like, SBA programs are sort of tailored for giving someone who's leaving, like, a W2 job a way to, like, buy a business. Right.
And my kind of core point and what I've realized, because I took a look at that going down that route is like, I actually, I'm not that person. Like, I have a business. It's, you know, it's spitting off excess cash flow.
And, you know, I. I also have a team a bit. A large team behind me who I can operationalize to spin up these new business units or integrate acquisitions. Like, so it's like I'm playing a little bit of a different game.
And so for that, I, you know, I think the main thing I realized is, like, I actually don't need to go the traditional route because I'm playing a different game because I've. I've built up different resources in, you know, the team and the. In the cash flow that we have compared to, you know, someone who's. Who's leaving a W2 job to buy a business. I do think that, you know, sba, like, for that purpose, like, the SBA can make a lot of sense, like, if you don't have any other options but yeah, I mean, it's personally guaranteed. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's on you if it doesn't work out. So it's like you, you got to make it work out. And another thing that, for me personally, why I'm not so interested about that is like I, at this stage in my career, I'm also not super in the day to day of any of my businesses, any of. So it's like I'm not super in the day to day of testimonial hero. I have a general manager, you know, who, you know, pretty soon after this comes out was going to, also going to be promoted to president to basically run, you know, the entire business. And so it's like I, I don't want to get, put myself in a situation like when I'm already like, I worked hard to like remove myself from the day to day and like have a pretty awesome lifestyle in a lot of ways. Like, I work, I still work every day and I work hard, but I work on the things I want to work on. I want that to continue. I don't want to have to force something just because I got like a loan on it. Right. So I think there's, there's this lifestyle aspect that I want to preserve that I, to me, even if like, yeah, sure, could I go bigger technically, like in some ways if I like juice the returns, it's like, yeah, well, leverage cuts both ways. So again, I'm just, I've come to the conclusion that like, I, I'm really happy where I am at, where I'm at. I'm really ambitious for what I'm going to build, but like, I don't, I think I'll get to my goals without, you know, using a lot of leverage and I'll have a, I think a great lifestyle on the way. That that's kind of what my motivations are at this stage.
[01:01:31] Speaker A: I love hearing that because I think in the early days when folks are starting out, it's really easy to just let the tail wag the dog kind of thing.
So I need to get into, I need to raise a bunch of cash and run as fast as I can for as long as I can and then, you know, potentially burn myself out after a couple of years and then I've got to deal with those issues later on. And what I hear from you is that you're thinking about how your business fits your life and fits your motivations and fits the things that you're interested in and can be a vehicle to Support that rather than you being like thrown from pillar to post by it. And there's some real wisdom in that. And I think it takes some time to get there because it's very easy to see what other people are doing and be like, well that is like that business is going great guns. But what you don't see is that person's working 100 hours a week and they're on the verge of a mental breakdown or you know, the counter can be true as well. So there's, yeah, there's some real wisdom in that.
Revenue milestones tracking Forward sounds roughly 5 ish mill annual revenue. Talk me through what the next five years you want it to look like. Which, what direction are you heading in?
[01:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And just one other thought on that point you made around ambition and comparing yourself to other people and not knowing the full story.
The one thing that I always think about is you're not allowed to cherry pick other people's parts of people's lives and be like, yeah, I like want that per this, I want this person's like, you know, revenue. But like my lifestyle and like my relationship with my kids and wife like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like if you trade places with someone like you in theory like you, you trade places 100%. And so it's like a lot of times like you know, we're not seeing the full picture and it's like, yeah, I might want some of what that person has, but I also might really like parts that I have that they may not have.
So yeah, that's something I always try to remember even though it's easier said than done. Right.
In terms of the next kind of couple years I think, you know, we are producing, we are focused on this multi brand strategy and we are launching a, a number of, you know, video first productized agencies that we can cross sell to our, our core customers. So like, you know, we have, you know, hundreds of customers for Testimonial Hero. Most of them need more than testimonials. We spent seven years perfecting testimonials and then we, then we asked ourselves, all right, like what else can we sell these customers that you know, what else would they buy from us? Right?
How else can we help them? How else can we create and capture more value for them? So you know, now we are, we are, you know and that's like, that's product type, right? So the SaaS companies need video testimonials. They also need really good product videos. So you know, increasing LTV Increasing share of wallet is the phrase, you know, the business phrase for that. We're increasing our share of wallet with those customers and frankly we're also just making their lives better and easier because they can go to, you know, one group of companies, you know, with their same project manager and they can now get a lot more of the videos that they want and need instead of like juggling multiple vendors. So yeah, Obviously, you know, 10 million 8 figures is the next big milestone for us.
You know, whether we hit that in, you know, two years, three years, four years, you know, I don't know. But that's, you know, that's what we're pushing towards and we think that, you know, multiple different brands and this kind of cross sell share of wallet strategy is going to be a really key part of that.
Yeah, you know, and both for again creating and capturing more value but also retention and you know, continuing to work with the customers.
So. And yeah, we could, but sticking with the niche brand. So like product type testimonial hero, like still super niche but more of like a family of brands.
[01:06:31] Speaker A: Talk to me about your methodology for uncovering these opportunities. So you have an existing customer, you know, that they've got maybe like a level of marketing spend or they've got problems that they need to solve. Are you looking at other purchases that they're making? Are you thinking about things like doing in an audit on what you're seeing from them on a marketing platform and where their gaps are? How do you think about filling in those gaps or creating some demand about something that maybe they don't know that they're deficient in?
[01:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's a few different things.
One is like, they'll usually ask us like, hey, like can you guys do this type of video?
And if, if not, like, you know, who can? And once someone, once multiple people ask us that a few times, like that's a pretty good data point.
And then I'll also just kind of staying abreast of just industry trends and seeing like cool work that's being done in the industry.
Like if we see like major trends, you know, we, you know, that are, that are coming out, we're like, oh, this is, this is cool. Like this is definitely a thing. Like more people are doing this, we're seeing, you know, clients in our industry doing this or you know, companies, leaders in the industry doing this. And then it just becomes like, is it this a, a partner? Is this a acquisition or is it a like incubation? Right you know, partner, buyer, build, right? So, like, it could be like. And it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to, you know, we might say, look, we don't need to. To actually incubate all these things. Or some of them might be too far afield strategically, like, because that's. The other thing is, like, you know, so. So then we might try to partner with someone on that, right?
But yeah, we only really want to go into.
Build a brand around something. We can be in the top. We want to be in the top.
One or two, maximum three. But really, can we be a category leader in the space? If we don't think we can be a category leader, we're not really that interested. So we're only going to compete in places we think we can win. And I think I always ask myself, like, if the buyer, if the prospect had, like, perfect information, like, why are they gonna choose us? Right? It's like, we can't just rely on, like, oh, like, they hadn't, like, they hadn't heard about, like, this other company who's, like, gonna be. Who's, like, way better than us. And that's why they chose us. Like, that's not like, a really good strategy, right? Because eventually, like, they will hear about the other companies. So it's like, let's assume that the buyers have perfect information. They're omniscient, and they know all the companies in this, whatever segment we're getting into.
Why do we have any business being in that segment? And why would we win the deal? And can we win? Can we be in that small consideration set, you know, in that situation? And if the answers of that are like, yes, we can, and like, we have a good hypothesis there, then we will, you know, consider moving forward with it.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: You just distilled what was probably top five lessons that I learned in my time at canva.
So a lot of the questions that I try to help people solve before were, how do we get, like, how do we go to market, how do we expand, how do we do this, how do we do that? And there's a part of me that's like, with the WP curve time, you just had to be the best in market. Like, you just had to be the best, had to figure out a way to be the best. I got to see that at scale and what that really means when you've got a lot of cash to spend on growth, a lot of cash to spend on hiring great people, all those sort of things, and it is just the return on investment and the Return on everything is so, so much greater when you are not like hacking together parts of your products so they're not broke. And it seems so obvious, but it's something that is so often missed where you've got a slightly deficient product and you're trying to plug the gap with more spend on acquisition or whatever other thing.
Trying to put, in some ways, put lipstick on a pig.
So, yeah, like, I'm fully with you on that now. Last question for the day. Because, you know, we're coming up on time and I've got a couple of ideas I want to throw you away once you get off this call. Try to come with some sort of value add to everyone that I'm catching up with from back in the day.
You mentioned that you've. And I see it as like a little bit of a, like a bow tie where you've gone highly productized and then you started to expand out a little bit and you're talking about getting back out into something a little bit more potentially there's more breadth or more, I'd say customization or agency flavor to what you're doing. How does that play into the future? Does that mean that you will take on those bigger projects? Have you thought about that extra revenue and that stuff that doesn't quite fit within each of those brands? Is that something that you'll look at supporting or do you just say, yeah, we've got these particular categories in these particular brands and that's only like the scope that we play in?
[01:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good question.
And just to confirm if a client comes to us and asks us, oh, can you do this too? How do we sort of consider answering that? How do we evaluate these more kind of potentially out of scope opportunities? Is that the question? Mm, yeah. So I think we, we look at it. Yeah, it's a good question. Like, I think the, the most exciting thing to me is always like, if it makes sense from like a R and D perspective, it's like, like, you know, will we, will this be something that like we may want to. We don't do now, but like we might want to do eventually and like, you know, assuming we think we can still do a really good job with it, like, what can we like is. Can this be like a, you know, just like a research project for us to kind of learn more about our hypothesis around this, this new area.
That to me that like in, like that to me is like the most interesting thing. Like we'll of course always look at it two from. Can we do this profitably? Can we do it in a good job? Can we do it a way that makes the client highly satisfied and it's not going to break too many processes?
But I think yeah, the R D thing is the most exciting. The other thing I will say that's kind of related to this is I think a lot of the aversion to like going outside the system with like some you know, productized services is like the, the quality of the team is you know, is quite, you know, average perhaps and like the, you know, and that can be a strategy, right? You like highly systemized things and you bring in, you know, more entry level talent with really good sops and like that's the business. And, and when you do that like, you know, things do break, you know, because you know, you're not set up to go beyond that system.
I personally, and we've kind of always been like this like you know, the biggest reason for our, you know, success is the quality of the people that we've been able to attract and retain. Like by far like that's the reason why like, you know, there's no secrets. It's we're in a people business, we're in a services business. Like it, none of this works without like the incredible team members on the testimonial hero team and the product type team. Like and you know that you know, when you have those people that quality of talent, you know, you can do a lot more and you can deviate and you can just do whatever you want because like smart people just figure it out and they, you know, it's so much easier. So I think, I think there is a like misconception or maybe there was, you know, historically for many years around like you just kind of create a system and you hire a bunch of, you know, entry level people, you know, offshore to kind of run it. I really low prices and like they're there, that can work. But I think today and especially in our creative field that we're in, it's like, you know, it's not different from an agency in the sense that like your product is your people and like you still need to figure out ways to retain, attract and retain really, really good talent.
And that has probably been the biggest contributing factor to our success is our ability to attract and retain incredible talent. And to do that there's a lot of things that go into it. But like a big part of doing it is like you have to have enough to pay them, you know, and you have to have enough. That means you have to charge enough and to charge enough, you have to get really good at what you're doing in the first place. So I think, like, you know, since this is the last question, I want to kind of tie a bow on it. And like, that to me is like, what it's all about is like, you know, you have to get. Act genuinely really, really good to charge really good rates. And then when you have really good rates, like, you have, you know, profitability and you can reinvest in the business and bring in great people, but none of that works if you don't actually, you know, get really good first and also bring a differentiated approach because it's not good enough to just be good. You know, being different in many cases is better than just being good.
[01:17:08] Speaker A: Perfect. Thank you, Mr. LTV. So if anyone's looking to follow along with what you're doing, where do they go? Twitter or X, I suppose, website. Where can they find out more about you and the companies that you're working on?
[01:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
If anyone, a great place to, you know, get in touch with me is on LinkedIn or X.
Sam Shepler on X. Sam Shepler on LinkedIn.
You can check out more about Testimonial Hero at TestimonialHero.com you can check out more about product hype@product hype.com and I also am happy to chat with any product if you're a productized founder, agency founder. I love to meet people and talk shop. So feel free to, you know, whether, you know. Yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. X. Happy to chat, answer any questions.
[01:18:06] Speaker A: Right on. Thank you so much, Sam. So good to see where you are now. Appreciate you sharing all of the lessons and yeah, sincerely, thank you. Appreciate it, man.
[01:18:16] Speaker B: Thanks, Alex. This was super fun and yeah, glad we got the opportunity to do it.
[01:18:21] Speaker A: Right on. Thanks.
