I can't hear you. What's up, bro? You ready to record? [laughs] You ready? I'm ready. What am I looking at? Oh, let's put you, uh... Let's get you right here. Um, hold on. It's not sticking.
Okay, let's turn you around, flip you. Oh, that's probably pretty good right there. That's great. All righty. Hey, am I- Welcome back to the show... for, uh- Dude... for the volume, am I...
Is this, is this better, or is, uh, is it fine if it's way over here? It's quiet over there. It's quiet. I'm gonna hold it then. Like last time, I'll just do this number. Right like that. You know, [laughs]
it's all part of the process. It's all part of the process. You know, [laughs] you had decided to take a trip. It looks amazing. I know you're doing this on purpose. Uh [laughs] I am.
This, this took a lot of work, getting this background dressed up. Yeah, your setup probably looks ridiculous right now. [laughs] Oh, wait, wait. I got it on a gimbal. Check this out. Oh, there we go. Dude, that's sick.
I would- Ah. Dude, go up there and jump. [laughs] I, I, I already did. I already did. I know. Do it like I told you. By request. What'd you say? By request? I said I, I, I already did, by request.
So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna do... All right. We're ready. Are you a soccer fan, or are you just kinda rocking it because, like, it makes sense where you're at?
I'm a Real Madrid fan. I don't watch as much anymore, but when I lived in Madrid for a year, I became quite a fan. That was when Ronaldo was on the team, so I had a Ronaldo jersey. But now he's not- Snap. I know.
Now he's not on the team, and so I just got... I, I got a no-name. It's a legit jersey. You can't see the back. There's no name on it, but it's an official jersey. Uh, and it fits. The one I got s- 2016 no longer fits.
Uh, it was... It's too short. It's too s- skinny. I thought I had lost a bunch of weight, but apparently I was even skinnier back then. It's like, it's like small. But actually, it never really fit super well.
It was always kind of on the small side. Jerseys run small, and so it was a large. I'm a big dude, so I got an XL, and it's a little loose, but it feels great. Yeah. Yeah. But you...
But that's a real, that's a real jersey. Real jersey, yeah. It was a whatever. If you know where to get any dupes, let me know, 'cause I'm not trying to shop- Everywhere... Well- Everywhere...
I was looking at DHGate, and I couldn't figure out, like, how to order it. It was, like... So if anybody's listening, can you just walk me through how to order a dupe? And maybe you can after this, I don't know.
But- Yeah. I don't know how to order them. They're... I mean, in, in Europe, they're all over the place. You just walk around the city, and you can find them everywhere. Uh, I've never ordered one online, but yeah.
That's a good question. I'm sure someone listening would know how to do that. We have a, a little... this golf room right over here. And I wanted to make it, like, kinda sportsy. I'm from Texas.
My wife's from Wisconsin, so I was gonna get, like, a Dirk Nowitzki jersey, a Troy Aikman jersey- Oh, sick... a, yeah, Brett Favre, and then Giannis, even though he's probably gonna dip soon. But I wanted to do that.
Um- Dude... but I'm talking about- Get a Giannis one. That'll be worth a lot... 100 bucks. What? What'd you say? That'll be worth, that, that'll be worth a lot when he's on- That's why I'm wanting a DH one...
uh, or when he moves on. Yeah. That's why I want a fake one. I'll just go spend 100 bucks on four of them. Yeah. I'm not gonna spend $600 on, on four jerseys. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. It's ridiculous. Why would you?
But it's... Dude, would you rather, would you, [laughs] would you rather get a million dollars right now or not be able to visit Rhode Island for an entire month? [laughs] I saw that question on a podcast.
Well, that's a million dollars. I, I would, I would never visit Rhode Island for the rest of my life for free. Oh, [laughs] I saw that question on a podcast, and it's like this satire podcast.
[laughs] And then they're like trying to- That's so funny... they're trying to, like, figure out, like, how to make it, like, actually make sense as to why you'd wanna go to Rhode Island versus take the million.
[laughs] Uh, it's funny. Yeah. That is funny. It's funny, dude. I, I, I... Greg on Twitter, I always see, he, he has the dumbest would you rathers.
I think the recent one was would you rather have $5 million now or $1 a day for five billion years? [laughs] It's so upsetting. You could spend a billion or $100 a day for the rest of your life. [laughs] It's like...
But it, it's, it's such rage bait. And rage bait is so funny to me because it always, there's always so many people that are just baited by it. They're... And the internet's such a funny place.
The internet's such a funny place. It is. It's hilarious. Um, I love it. There's this p- [laughs] You, I need to send you a clip.
It's called the Probably podcast, and it's, like, these high schoolers, maybe they're in high school, maybe middle, I don't know, but they're, like, all on Zoom.
[laughs] And, like, one guy's way down here in the corner, and all you can see is, like, his nose up, and he's talking. But they're like, "Have you ever been to Boston?"
And then the other people will be like, "Uh, I don't know if I like that town." And then the other guy, he's like, "It's not a town, it's a city." He's like, "No, I think it's a town."
And, like, they're just- [laughs] I don't know. I gotta send it to you to make it make sense. It's so funny. But it's my favorite TikTok channel right now, besides Two Dads and Tech. And so- I know.
Two Dads and Tech's such a good channel... all I do is binge watch our clips. [laughs] I know. I, I've, I was, I was showing my family a few hours of Two Dads and Tech on YouTube Shorts last night, and the kids loved it.
It's very family-friendly. I, I recommend if you don't know what to watch this, uh, Friday night for a family movie night, just go check out Two Dads and Tech. [laughs] For a few hours. Some great episodes on there.
Two hours. [laughs] Oh. All right. Oh. Um, I was gonna tell you, I've, uh, I think you've been liking the posts. I've been cold calling this week. I've been dusting off the old tops. I have been liking those.
Dude- Dude... it's a great testament. So I'll bring everyone up to speed who's not looking at your LinkedIn as often as I am, which is, by the way, 50 to 30- A few hours every night... 50 to, 50 to 55 times a day.
I mean, I'm just checking out your profile picture. [laughs] I know. I get those notifications. I'm going back through old posts. I'm just reminiscing on all the good times.
Troy is doing a 30-day self-regulated challenge.Of cold calling. Um, and you're dialing like what? One to two hundred dials a day, I assume using something like Nooks or you have a different dialer.
What is it, Trell-Trellis? Yeah. Who are you using? I might try Trellis. Trellis. Yeah. Yeah. I might try Trellis. But keep going.
So anyways, he's using a, an, a parallel dialer, which if you're not familiar, parallel dialers in the sales world are phone tech software systems that will dial one to five or more phones at the same time.
You set up all your different configurations internally, and you'll basically teach it what to do if someone answers. So it's how you can dial five people at once.
Everyone's always like, "Well, how do I answer five calls at once?" Well, you don't. It hangs up four if one answers and you have a conversation, then you just...
It's casting a much wider net much faster, much more, uh, consistently, and you can dial a lot more people. So he's been doing that. He's on day three now, right? And it's a 30-day challenge. Yesterday was day three.
It's July 3rd, everybody, by the way, so July 2nd was day three. Yeah. That's right. July 3rd and, uh, by the time you're like, you're hearing this, he'll be on day 10 or so.
He's, day one you, you did like 150 or so dials. You got 10 meetings booked. Is that correct? 10 connects. So 10 people picked up. Okay. Okay. And then we're gonna back, we're gonna backtrack a little bit. Okay.
I'm using a parallel dialer, but I'm doing power dialing. And just to make- Yeah... things more confusing, that just means it dials one at a time, but automates the dial.
So it'll dial, it'll hang up, and go to immediately to the next person, so I don't have to click anything. I should honestly parallel dial and do like maybe three at a time or something like that.
Um- Well, there's a whole system- I hear it's like not, not good... it depends on your data. If you're power dialing one by one with highly accurate,
like P1 data I would call it, you're, you don't wanna do more than one at a time.
Because every single dial you make is a highly valued contact that you have some degree of confidence, maybe 85% degree of confidence, if this person answers, they are the right person that I should be talking to. Yeah.
Yeah. When you're dialing like three, four, five at a time, we're talking lists of like 20,000 people- Yeah. We're trying to- You're trying to just hammer through them. Yeah, yeah. It's not all P1s. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
But go on. I know you know your 30-day challenge a lot better than I do. I, I did my best. No, no, no. I like it. I like it. I'd actually prefer that you, you narrate my entire life versus just this challenge.
Um- I know. Me too. [laughs] Yeah, no. So it, it was day three yesterday. Today's July 3rd. I don't think I'm gonna do it today. I feel like I don't have the time, and people are out for July 4th. But- Yeah.
July 3rd, whatever... but all that to say, uh, here in the States, it's Independence Day. Um, but first day, 100 something dials. I can't remember the exact number of dials. 10 connects, four meetings.
Second day was a little less dials. 10 connects, four meetings. And then yesterday, so third day, was nine connects, one meeting. I was not, I was not hot yesterday. But nine meetings in three days? Huge.
That, I mean, even if you're spamming your TAM with email as... 'Cause I'm a one-person shop right now, right? So like- Yep... nine meetings in three days is crazy. And then I just made a post- It is...
I have five, it's July 3rd, I have five meetings from those cold calls today. So we'll see and actually get to understand like the no-show versus show rate. Only one person has not accepted.
All the others have accepted, so we'll see how that goes. But yeah, man, it's going well and I'm realizing, I think I was avoiding cold calling 'cause I haven't done it in probably like four years. I never needed to.
Sure. I was hitting my quota without it. Why add like a little, you know, annoying thing to the mix? Sure. Man, I'm, I'm fun. Like you get like- Yeah...
a little bit of adrenaline and then when somebody answers, you're like, "Oh." You gotta perk up and get ready. And so- Yeah... then when you get that meeting, it's like a high. You're like, "Dang, I got it.
I, I like persuaded- Yeah... them into a meeting. I'm good at this stuff." Yeah. Like- Yeah... yeah, it kinda, kinda boosted my ego a little bit to be honest. But I'm having fun.
I'm hoping I keep going and maybe it'll be like just like may- hopefully I'll, after the 30 days I'll just kinda put it into the daily mix, like one an hour a day or something. We'll see. Sure.
So with those 10 meetings booked, are they all qualified meetings? Do you think those are, you know, sales qualified? If they turn into, you know, an interest, it'll actually be revenue for your company?
Or what do you think? How do you, how you, how do you quantify that? Or qualify rather? Yeah. So I think that h- honestly all but that one that was not accepted would be considered a quality meeting.
And by quality meaning, I simply just mean it's a company that we could sell to. It's a company that would be a good fit, something like that, right?
I'm not meaning like, "Oh, they have a burning problem right now that they need to solve." Sure. But it's a good fit company and I'm like, "Okay, now it's my job to go out there and, and try to flip it," right?
And so, yeah, I'd say all but that one, and it's only because I think she was laid off 'cause she made me send the email via, in the invite to her Gmail, and she kinda like sounded like maybe she was in between on the calls.
But also, I, I made a post that I, I think one thing
that enough people or a lot of reps don't do when they're on cold calls is like actually care about the other person, and I'm a pretty empathetic person, honestly, maybe to a fault.
Like, I put myself in some crappy situations by like caring about people's feelings too much. Yeah. You do. Not a bad thing, not a good thing, whatever.
But I say all that 'cause like this one dude was like, "Yeah, I just actually got laid off," blah, blah, blah. And I was like, "Oh, man." And whatever.
He's telling me this story, and he was giving me like all this, this whole spiel about the industry, the challenges he saw, the challenges he saw at a previous company, all this stuff. So it really helped like make...
It helped me understand possible roadmap features and stuff like that. And so at the end I was just like, "Wait, wait, before you go, how can I help you?" And you can tell he was taken back. You could tell he was like...
He goes, "W- w- well, honestly, I've never been asked that. Um, I don't know." And I said, "Okay. Well, tell you what. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
I have a little bit of a following, and if there's anybody in my network I can introduce you to, let me know. I'm more than happy to. Like, you just spent a good amount of time with me. You've helped me a lot," whatever.
And so like i- it's weird that just like telling somebody that you're willing to help them kinda like shocks them. Yes. Yes. It's a pretty sad world we live in, but that's just the way it goes.
Um, I'm gonna fix this little camera right here so I look so much sexier. One second. Yeah.I was thinking the same thing. I was like, geez Yeah, yeah, I see you fixing the camera. But- So, so embarrassing...
yeah, man, I'm loving it. I, I feel like it kinda brought some life back into me on the prospecting train. I was kinda getting sick of these- Love that...
researched emails and stuff like that, and so I'm kind of glad I started it, but we'll see. I'll continue to update the TDIT following via, uh, the, the podcast, so we'll see how it goes.
So you mentioned you hadn't had to cold, cold dial or cold call in five years. What was, going into this, what was your, what was your hypothesis? Let's, let's do some, uh, scientific method here, some peer review.
I mean, tell me, tell me what you expect to happen after 30 days and, you know, what sparked the whole approach? Why, why do 30-day challenge to yourself? Yeah, um,
well first, I, my expectation was I was gonna set maybe five meetings a week, so I was actually blown away by how, I wouldn't say easy it was, but by how [chuckles] easy it was. That's one thing.
Now, what am I trying to do?
I feel like for a bit there, there was a, a lull in like pipeline-generated interest in the company and things like that, and I kinda like made every excuse in the book to not fix it and to not kind of like go against it and fight against it and find ways to solve it.
And I don't know, I was like in this, I think we talked about it last episode, where I was like, "Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, not really there right now." Like I, I felt- Yeah...
I felt like, I wouldn't say depressed, but I was like for about three weeks, I was like, I don't know, no f- no motivation, don't really care. Yeah.
And I don't know what it was that like shocked me back to life, but now I'm like in this grind mode, and it feels like it's been a wh- a complete 180 for the business.
And, and these cold calls are a credit to that because it's making me feel like, oh, crap, what I'm saying is resonating. It's just that I was never able to like actually get the message across to people. And so
I'm hoping that it... I mean, I'm hoping it generates at the end of the 30 days, definitely, you know, $250, $300,000 plus in revenue.
'Cause if you think, let's hypothetically just say nine meetings is a standard for a week. In opportunity or revenue? Revenue. Okay. And re- Revenue... like you're talking, how long is your sales cycle?
Like when would that actually come into fruition- Like a couple of calls-... in your trajectory?... or a couple emails 'cause I don't have- Okay... enough time to like drag it through a long- Dude, that'd be insane.
I mean, that'd be an enormous- Yeah... advantage. I mean, uh-uh, you should, you should be writing this, you know, s- day by day, beyond your s- your posts, like your learnings, the challenges. Yep.
I got a spreadsheet of all the- That's huge. Yeah... pipelines generated, everything, and then at the end of the 30 days, I'll do like a big post about like all that stuff. I love that. I don't know, man.
It's just I needed to do something different. I needed to, to break out of like this little lull that I was in, and I did, and I feel good, man.
I, I feel much better than I have in probably like a year where things are at, so we'll drink some coffee to that. I think there's... Oh yeah, dude, I would too, but look at this, look at this empty mug of mine.
Oh, so sad. Dude, I would have that last little drop. No, like I would- That was worth it. I want your- That was worth it. [laughs] Okay. Shit. Um, full reason. Um, there is, so two things.
One, I saw a post recently about how sales orgs typically, we're talking general paintbrush, get sales enablement, sales training, we have sales methodologies.
There's like sales expectations because of the resources put from the company typically toward their sales enablement. But then you look at like marketing, and there's like, just do it, y- you know? Dude. Knucklehead.
It's like they're obviously, again, generalizing, but I do think there is so much impetus and value placed with sales orgs that rely on, which is my th- my second thing, the psychology of success with salespeople.
The, the feeling of getting a random person who's never heard of you, never heard of your company, never even considered buying the product you have to offer on a cold call,
gauging and, and, and then persuading interest, and then ultimately getting their money and, and having them pay for your product, like that, that goes back to like the how to win friends and influence people types- Mm-hmm...
of like reciprocity and, you know, the liking of communication and- Yep... I think there's something very, very profound and consistent with what you're even communicating now. Like, yeah, it just feels great. Like
it just feels great.
Like that, I mean, it's like a very simple statement, but I think that's why salespeople succeed is 'cause they build on this process, and they build on the momentum, and over and over and over again, uh, it just, it just compounds into this ultimately very successful journey.
So I'm excited to see what day 30 looks like. And, uh, your, your posts are popping off too, so I think a lot of- Thank you... people are excited to see what that 30-day challenge looks like. Yeah.
Yeah, to be honest, missed opportunity for a decent amount of side income because I'm tagging all the tools that I'm using every single day, and I'm like, damn, like one, one post is, you know, 1,000, 2,000 bucks if I were to just shout them out.
Yep. I'm doing 30 posts with these companies, like just- Huge... willingly. Now- Yeah... n- you know, maybe they're giving me some, "Hey, give, have Unlimited for free" kind of stuff. Sure. Sure.
I don't know if I'm not saying anything, but at the end of the day, that's still not like worth what I could probably get paid. Like, I'm like, dang, I could probably get like 30K just by doing this, 30 posts. Yeah. So-
You could... it is what it is, man. I'm not here to like milk the money. I'll make the money in the future. Sure. But yeah, it's going well. Also, Cloudflare, you see the news? Bring me up to speed.
I have not seen whatever you're talking about. I know, I know. You're in Europe, so like your X is probably collecting dust in a corner. I don't know. I just haven't been on it as much. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know, dude.
I know. So Cloudflare, which hosts many, many websites across the internet,
they are making it to where AI cannot scrape websites anymore, so you're no longer allowed to, and this will be soon, you're no longer all- like chatbots, ChatGPT, Claude can't scrape websites now.They're putting that into place, and that'll be by default.
So if you're hosting with Cloudflare, no AI tool can, can scrape your website, which is massive. Go ahead, walk away. He's-- I think he's throwing up. He's throwing up again. [chuckles] Look at that view, though.
I don't know what happened, but his mouth looks full. His mouth looks full, and I think he's got headphones in, so I'm pretty sure he can hear me. [sighs] Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Da, da, da, da, da.
Da, da, da, da, da. I thought, I thought you were gonna keep talking, and then you just waited for me. Thank you. No, no. So, that's so kind- Yeah... and gentlemanly. Welcome back to the AI conversation. Yeah.
So that was, uh, actually, I... It's on my ph- [chuckles] of course, it's on my phone. Um, what'd they say? Oh, okay. So essentially, yeah, by default, AI web scrapers will not be able to crawl websites anymore, and
it said companies-- I'm gonna get these numbers wrong a little bit, but it essentially said, "Since ChatGPT," or any sort of LLM like that, a search, AI search bot, whatever you wanna call them, since then, I think it's, like, 800...
Something like 800 times less traffic comes to my site, and it said since the Google AI review thing, like, that they do, that, uh, it's 30,000 times less likely that somebody will come to your site.
Because they don't need to- Wow... 'cause they're looking you up and getting the answer right there. And so essentially, what's happening is they're saying it's not fair, and they're saying it's- Yeah, yeah...
essentially a monopoly, and they're spending all this money and not getting anything. And so, yeah- It's very interesting... I don't know. I think it could actually change the future of- Yeah...
how LLMs work, especially, like, the ease of access. I'm sure there will be, like, some crazy paid plans that will allow you to access them. But huge, huge internet move from Cloudflare, which I'm- That is huge...
I'm excited for, I think. But also, at the same time, I use it so, so much. But it does- Yeah...
come back to, like, if you don't have your own unique data or your unique content, and you're just using everybody else's that, like, you're building your product off of, then, like, you're probably gonna be screwed here soon.
So... I think we've talked about this before, traffic and web traffic specifically. I think SEO and AI are combative and co-combatants. They're, they're opposing forces.
I think SEO as we know it, which is, let's say, a 30-year-old philosophy and technology, is probably going to be, I wouldn't venture to say ruined, but changed as much as the telephone did when iPhones were launched.
Yeah, for sure. And if you rely on what the SEO knowledge is to date, you're, you're screwed. I, I just, I just don't think the internet is going to work the way that it has- No... in the last 30 years. I agree.
I don't think it's gonna work the same way at all, and so that's interesting. Yeah. Now, I mean, what are you at Demo doing, Demo, your company, to conceptualize how to even respond with traffic, with...
I know, I know you're, you're going through a lot of exciting things right now, so, you know, divulge what you're comfortable divulging, but, like, what does, what does a company, software company do as traffic gets hammered like it's getting hammered?
It's a good question. I think, um, to your point with SEO, we paid a lot of money for, like, a very premier agency to run SEO. It's, like, AI human-in-the-loop SEO stuff,
and many months into it, we were getting, like, 20 clicks a week, which I recently had to end the engagement because we were spending way too much money for absolutely nothing.
So to your point, I- Do you mind telling me what, what your cost per click was? Fifty? Um, well, I... We were getting 25 clicks a week and spending $6,000 a month, um, and that was with a heavily discounted rate, too.
Like, they charge way more than that. Oh my goodness, yeah. And so anyways- That's rough... I was livid, and, like, that's what would keep me up at night is, like, dude- Sure, sure...
we are trying everything for this traffic. Sure. And so to your point, what's a software company to do? I think it's, one, that you preach heavily is own your audience. Like, do anything you can.
Host webinars, bring people to your site, do lead magnets, and collect emails. Like, that's...
At the end of the day, it's gonna be the [chuckles] the only thing that, like, will keep a company going at some point is just that email list, and people ignore it. And I think that it's, it's huge. Like, it really...
It's such an old technology and an old way, old way to communicate in 2025, but, like, that's the only way you're gonna be able to get to people is if they opt in, right? And so there's that. I also saw a company who...
They did a month challenge of getting almost all of their employees to post on LinkedIn. Now, this is very niche- Wow... because people have to be on LinkedIn. Um, oh, I think it was Storylane.
I don't know if it was a month challenge or what, or if it was a week. I can't remember. Okay. But they generated millions and millions of impressions for free- Wow... because they were just posting, right?
And so it's like- Sure... you've gotta create noise somewhere. Yeah. And that's what I feel like a software company in the B2B space specifically needs to do, is create noise.
But I mean, man, people are coming out with some really good ads and stuff like that. Like, really funny ones. Like, you just gotta, you gotta... Like, Adam Robinson is a prime example, I think.
And I think he's trying to figure out what to do with RB2B, to be honest, just given how his- Mm-hmm... posts have been laid out recently. Like, they can't figure out- Yeah... growth, the product, et cetera.
And so, but- But he's like... He kinda always talks like that. I mean- Yeah. Yeah... he, he's always, he's always...
He, He overshares about his company, and I think that's part of his company's growth strategy, is- But-... he's just gonna share... it just creates noise, and it's- Yeah, it does. Yeah, yeah.
And he know, he knows how to generate eyeballs and clicks- Yeah... and kinda, like, the rage baits. Um- Yep. Very rage baitful... but like, I think that's, I think that's the move in B2B sales is- It is...
dude, just-I don't know. So I don't know, man. That's what I'm trying to figure out right now. That's why I'm like, "Okay, if I cold call, I'm talking to people, so I'm gonna get in front of them."
And then there's gotta be a way to just continuously build an email list. I know a lot of companies right now are trying to figure out GEO, which is, like, generative engine optimization. Yeah.
So, like, you show up on all the search results, but now if they get rid of web crawling, like, what does that do? Does that just automatically shut those down? Yeah. I don't know.
I do think the internet needs some regulation around AI and, like, crawling the entire thing. That would hurt me because I use it so much for that. So- Mm-hmm... um, it's giving me wrong...
it gives us wrong sources anyway, so who cares? [chuckles] Right. I think employee advocacy for social engagement is going to be an unbeatable winning strategy. I think Beehiiv has done this so exceptionally well.
Uh, Beehiiv is where I work. Uh, Beehiiv is, you know, four years old and now growing still rapidly every month, every year. But we've created a culture where
not everyone, I mean, there's, there's ghosts there that aren't, they don't really have a social footprint, and that's fine. You can't force anyone in an, in a, you know, a company to, like, use their personal accounts.
Like, that's just not, that's not even the culture we're building. We don't force anyone to do anything. But the culture we've built encourages people to engage with their own personal social accounts
for their own personal brands, for Beehiiv as a company, and the very large gray area between the two.
I mean, I'm a walking example of this, and I can think of at least 10 others on the Beehiiv team that are very vocally their own social brand, but everyone knows they work at Beehiiv because they're also vocal about that.
And I couldn't tell you how many success stories come from this.
I get millions of impressions a month, and a lot of people find out about Beehiiv because of my posts, whether my posts have anything to do with the company or not. And I'm one of, like, 100 employees now.
I think probably 40 to 50 could share a similar story. Yeah. And i- we're talking YouTube, where we have a very well done, very professional YouTube channel with, you know, highly produced walkthrough videos.
People find out about us there. We have Instagram. People find out about us there. We have TikTok. People find out about us there. We have LinkedIn. We have Twitter/X. The list goes on. Reddit.
We have a n- we have a Reddit, like, a really, really well done Reddit subreddit. Whoa. Where, like, thousands of people just go there as, like, their first line of defense.
We have, like, 10,000 people in our private community for paid Beehiiv users. I'm like, there, there's just so- Yeah... much social engagement. Yeah. And it didn't happen overnight.
In fact, for most of 2021, 2022, it was, like, me and a few hooligans just going nuts on Twitter and LinkedIn. Like, that was- Yeah... the strategy. Yeah, yeah.
Like, we're, it was, like, in people's DMs, replying to everything that has anything to do with email. It, you know- It-... Rome was not built overnight. It was, it's- Yeah, yeah... a, it's a thing.
It's a whole- Yeah, social-... it's a whole process... social is the winning strategy. It- It is. It is. It really is. What was I gonna say? Oh, d- that one post that I made, it kinda, like, popped off.
It was a while back, and I was like, "Does anyone k- else only know of Beehiiv because of that Daniel Park guy that posts, like, 60 times a day?" [laughs] Yeah.
And then, like, it got, like, 100-plus reactions and thousands and thousands of impressions, and many of them were like, "Yes," and then a, a lot of them also were like, "No, but now I know about it."
And so it was kinda cool. Mm-hmm. But it's just like, that was one post. It took me- Yeah... three seconds to write [chuckles] and hit post, and there you go. Well- There's thousands of impressions...
the internet is such an algorithmic bubble. No matter what you think, everywhere you are on the internet is forming information around who you are, where you've been.
You can reject as many cookie, you know, pop-ups as you want, but your whole internet experience is created without you knowing it.
And so it's funny because in, in Beehiiv world, we have 10 very direct competitors and, you know, another 30 to 40 that probably think they're our competitors, and we're just like, "Oh, dude, we don't even care about you."
But, like, everyone who uses one of those five to 10 products sees on their internet experience a lot about that product.
And so we're breaking the fourth wall, in a sense, to try to break into bubbles of all these other competitors so that those users of those products don't see their bubble- Yeah... they see our bubble. Yeah.
They see us everywhere in their internet experience. Yeah.
So that, again, I think is where that social engagement comes in is, like, I can, as a human, algorithmic aside, choose who I go after very directly, very manually. And so- Yeah...
and then they're gonna start seeing more of me because I'm in their feed and, you know, it's, it's a, it's a whole thing. You're almost, like, hacking algorithms. Yeah. You're hacking experiences on internet.
It's, you know, it's the whole thing. It's, it's quite fascinating. Yeah. Yeah, and I've got a question for you, but before I ask, I wanna comment on that. Um,
I almost see, like, social and, like, employee advocacy and stuff like that as, think of it as maybe Instagram ads or billboards or something where if you see something enough, it just, like, gets imprinted in your brain, and then when you have that challenge, that problem, that itch that you wanna scratch, you're like, "Oh, Beehiiv," right?
And I, I think of that, like, in many different scenarios. Same thing with, like, you, you kinda brought up sales enablement and sales m- sales methodologies and stuff.
Like, just doing a quiz isn't gonna, like, help you learn a sales methodology, right? It's like you need to see it over and over and over or try it- Mm-hmm...
or even do it over and over, one or the other, doesn't matter. But I feel like, and maybe there's a word for that out there. Maybe there's, like, a phrase for that.
But I do feel like if you see something enough times, you will... And that's why ads work and retargeting ads work. Yeah.
But if you see something enough times, it's just gonna get imprinted in your brain for the t- or for when the time comes that you need something like that, and so- It is... or want something like that.
But my question for you was, with Cloudflare announcing that by default you won't be able to, AI won't be able to crawl websites, how do you think that's going to affect AI?How it's going to affect AI And let's stop right there to give a quick shout-out to our sponsor of today's episode, and that is Tango.
I have been seeing Tango everywhere on LinkedIn, so I caved. It's like one of those things, right? When you see something enough, you end up caving, and you decide to try it.
I caved, I tried it, and honestly, I think what they're building is gonna change the way that CRM automation is done.
A lot of companies today do data entry and all that fun stuff, but what Tango is doing is they're automating every single thing that a sales rep does within Salesforce.
You just have to do it once, and it'll automate it from there on out.
So things like adding leads to Salesforce, progressing a deal from stage one to stage two, uh, closing a deal, creating your quote, all of those processes can now be automated if you just do it one time.
And so that's what they're doing for organizations. I think it's incredible. I think it's incredible. I used it for a HubSpot workflow.
I also used it for a step-by-step how-to guide on setting up HubSpot web posts and demo. So many use cases.
Literally anything that you wanna automate in your CRM can pretty much be done through Tango, so go check 'em out. It's tango.us. That's T-A-N-G-O dot U-S. Now let's get back to the episode.
AI, and more specifically, like, the LLM chatbots, the ChatGPTs, the Clods of the world. I still think AI is going to most consistently and sustainably be a tool used by people who are good at what they do.
And so I think what it does to AI negatively is that it negatively affects people who are trying to get AI to be the thing that does everything.
But I think what it does for those who are using AI to do what they do more effectively, those people will just have to navigate this new experience and use AI differently. I don't think...
You know, it might, it might do, do for you a little bit less or a little bit differently than what you've built some of your tools to do, but I don't know, like- Yeah... we gotta, we gotta use our own brains sometimes.
Yeah. I don't think it... Also, regulations are so interesting, like Cloudflare doing that, like what, what really changes like tomorrow? Like probably over months and months things will roll out differently.
But also, like, I think it, I think of it almost like Cloudflare taking a stance against like OpenAI, but like who's gonna win the fight, you know? Are, are...
Is Cloudflare really saying like, "Hey, we're actually gonna effectively prevent you from doing what you're doing"?
It's like, okay, well, what if OpenAI valuation in the trillions just decides to circumvent that somehow? And, uh- Just buy Cloudflare, now we- It's almost like-... out across the internet. [laughs] Honestly- Yeah...
I wouldn't be surprised, but like- I wouldn't either... people... Everything on, everything on the internet is just guardrails, and you- Yeah... can always figure out your way around those guardrails. Yeah.
So I, I don't know. Yeah. This is all somewhat over my head. I don't, I don't know how it really affects us day to day right now. Yeah, no, it wouldn't do anything right now.
I'm just curious if it really does become impossible to crawl websites, what is the value outside of... Uh, I mean, there's a lot of value. I'm gonna... I'm not gonna say what is the value, but- Right...
at least for many use cases, it's like, "Hey, what does this technology do?" Or, "Hey, how do you do this?" Or, "Hey, can you get me some research on the best foods to eat because I'm sick?" Or whatever.
It's like- Yeah, yeah... well, we can't scrape those websites, so what are you gonna do now? Um- Yep... but interesting. We'll see. We'll see how it plays out. We will see. We will see. How's your trip been?
It's been good? Where are you at right now? It's been great. I am in the Dolomites in- Detroit again. [laughs] Do- yeah. [laughs] I'm back in Detroit. Dolomites, deep North Italy. Um- Yeah. That's sick...
hour drive from Austria. Yeah, so we're doing a- Those look amazing... oh, we did two amazing hikes so far.
We did a, like a mile and a half pretty easy hike, then we did about a three and a half mile slightly more strenuous hike yesterday, and the next hike we're gonna do, my wife and her sisters are gonna watch our kids and some of the other kids and probably do like a pretty simple hike that...
We're- we've been carrying the, the little ones. Like, I have a backpack for my one-year-old, and we have another backpack for the three and a half year old.
He walks most of the time, but then, you know, it's like six hun- uh, yesterday was about s- almost 700 feet, uh, ascension, and then the same, you know, 600 to 700 descension.
So at some points he's like, "Yo, I'm tired." I'm like, "Well, we prepared for that, so hop on up. You know, hop in the backpack."
They'll probably do something easy, but we, me, my two brothers-in-law, and my brother-in-law, um, so my wife's dad, we're gonna do like a pretty strenuous hike, so six to eight miles, like 2,000 feet ascension. Ooh.
But it's like- Nice... like you see those rocks behind me? Let me see. Like that? You're gonna just go up- There's rocks like that all over the Dolomites.
No, like, what there are, there are some lifts where you take it, like, to, like, this point, and that's not the exact mountain we're gonna hike. There's- Yeah... these are all over the place up here.
But you take a ski lift to basically, like, right here. Yeah. And then you literally do... You're not rock climbing. There's like trails, but it's very like- Yeah... it, it is...
It's, it's off, it's off, off course, you know? It's like it's not a real thing. Yeah, yeah. So it's strenuous. So it'll probably take five to six hours, maybe, maybe longer. Yeah. I'm very excited for that.
Um, I don't- You good?... get to do that, like, ever. Yeah, me and, me and my two brothers-in-law and my father-in-law. When? Oh, when?
Either tomorrow or the next day, so by the time this comes out, I will have already done it. Got it. Got it. And then you come home next week? Yeah, July 10th.
All right, so we can get back to our Tuesday recordings, 'cause- I know... you're catching me off guard... putting CX work for us. Our, our podcast team is working for it.
We're giving them the episode on like Saturdays, and we're like, "Oh, by the way, it needs to be done like yesterday." They're like, "Uh, uh, uh," Yeah. They've been doing a great job, though. Yeah, they have been.
They continue to impress me. They have been. They have been. I feel like we talked about this this morning. We don't post on... We don't post enough short form clips- Yeah... on social media.
Like- We're gonna solve that. We're gonna solve that... we're gonna solve it. I feel like I texted you this morning, we have to do like the Alex Hormozi method and just post and, and the issue is just- We will...
honestly for me, it's-How he-- Why is it like this? It's how you get... Like, I can't just go to my Google Drive on my phone and download it because it doesn't save to my videos anymore.
I don't know if something changed. That's so annoying. So I have to go download them all on my computer, then send them all to my own text message thread. Uh, so I just send it directly to myself, then I download it.
But it downloads in, like, the, the timeframe. So if it's a episode from s- episode seventeen, a clip from episode seventeen, I have to, like, scroll all the way up to find that video because it's like-
It's ridiculous... it's, it's annoying. But yeah, I'm like, man, somebody does... And just, hey, if anybody's out there and you're kinda cheap, we'd love to pay you to whip up some short form clips and, uh- Yep...
post three or more clips a day. I don't care if you rinse and repeat the same clips. Yep. But every single day on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, hit me up. Or Daniel up. We'll get there. Yeah.
No, we'll, we'll get there. I think the, the way that we at Two Dads and Tech have grown is by doing something until it's done well, and then delegating it.
Then doing something else until it done well, and then delegating. So people are like, you know, I'm at Beehiiv full time and own a company with my wife. Troy's at Demo full time, which is like early days startup.
He's grinding his life. Like, we're both, like, very busy, but Two Dads and Tech is actually growing a lot, and, and we're doing, we're doing it well, and it's super exciting.
But, like, we both agreed early on that we wanna, we wanna just, we just wanna record. Yeah. Uh, like, this season of life, Two Dads and Tech is gonna be one to two hours commitment a week from us, and the other- Yeah...
ten plus hours a week that could be devoted, that needs to be devoted for it to be done well, that's gonna be done by someone else. Yeah, for sure. Um, so we have a newsletter now. Go to twodadsintech.com.
You can check that out. That's growing. It's just, like, trying to delegate everything. Sales for sponsors. By the way, hit me up, daniel@twodadsintech.com if you wanna sponsor Two Dads and Tech. I mean, it's everything.
We're just like, we're trying not to, like, do anything but record, and I think that's what's gonna be most fun in the long run. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it is fun. It, it's- Yeah, it is... it's extremely fun. It is.
Dude, Superhuman was acquired by Grammarly. Did you see that or no? Isn't that... Dude, what? No, I saw that, but what?
I actually think it's- First of all, they, they, they raised a million or a billion dollars, Grammarly did. Who? Who, Grammarly? Grammarly. Grammarly ra- Uh, it wasn't a raise. It was, uh, I wouldn't use that word.
It was a billion dollar loan, but, like, a private equity loan, I think. I don't know the whole structure of the deal. But this was, like, uh, maybe a month or two ago, um, they, they raised a billion dollars, and
then they acquired Superhuman, which I, I'm assuming was somewhat part of that.
And the, the value of the acquisition was not disclosed by either party, which I was, like, digging a little bit for, 'cause I was like, wow, that's a big one. No, I wanna know. I feel like it's a lot.
Like, I would've... Like, I, I would've been less surprised if Superhuman had acquired Grammarly. Yeah. Yeah, I think we see Grammarly as just, like, this little Chrome extension that kind of helps you- Yeah...
like, type and not make mistakes when you're typing. But they must be a lot bigger. I, I guess there's a much bigger player over there that I don't really know about. I love Grammarly.
It really does help you write, and, like, it does show you where you're making mistakes. Yeah. But their whole thing now is, like, we want to change email productivity in the future. Yeah. Yeah.
And may- And, like, I don't know. I, I did not think Grammarly was that big, but- No... they, they must be. Neither did I. And it's kind of a good, I don't know- Yeah... two good forces coming together.
Like, they both have good brand names. They both have- Yeah... you know, like, very, uh, loyal followings, but- Yes... I don't know. Dude- I guess, what are you gonna do?
Just make sure I can type my emails- That's what I'm saying... without mistakes? I don't know. I don't know.
Dude, every time I see these unicorn acquisitions, it gives me so much faith that the internet is such a big place, and there's so much room for so many things.
Like, you can just do things, and you can make millions or billions of dollars, just, like, go after it. So yeah, it's, it's exciting. By the way, unrelated, I am running again, which is exciting. So my neck,
my neck is not suffering, but I had to make a very difficult decision, and the chiropractors and doctors listening to this might not agree, but I have to choose either physical or mental health in some facets, and I choose mental health right now, and it is causing me to suffer a little bit.
But actually, it's exciting, 'cause I'm not in pain. It... As I run, my neck pain is getting better, which I didn't expect. But I've run four times in the last two weeks. Neck is doing phenomenal.
Um, and it's, it's like, it's a different type of running than what I'm used to. I'm doing like two, three mile runs, but it's extremely intense because it's so hilly.
So I'm going uphill, like 35 degree grade, and it's like exhausting going super slow. Then I'm going really fast downhill because j- that's all you can do going downhill.
But my VO2 max is actually skyrocketing because I think I was so focused on long distance running that I'm, I'm like, "Oh, I'll just go run five or 10 miles," but, like, my heart rate was like, "Dog, you can't go run five or 10 miles."
Yeah. So it's like- Yeah... it just thinks I'm like a dying fat beluga whale on the beach. But, like, now I'm running like two to three miles and I'm like chilling.
Like I'm two, two miles, I'm like not even out of breath, so my VO2 max is like, "Oh, wait, he's not a fat beluga washed up whale on the ocean. He's just a, he's just a normal guy running two miles."
So I don't know, it's a little bit of encouragement in the, in the midst of a long season of, of back health and, and that's interesting and fun. Yeah. Yeah, that is [laughs] I love it.
I, I feel like, and, and we'll sign off here soon 'cause I gotta get ready for this call, but um, I do feel as if maybe five years from now you're gonna be like, "Dang, I wish maybe-" Maybe. "...
10 years from now, maybe 20 years from now, who knows?" No, so here, here's what I'm doing. I, I'm a, I'm, I'm going, I'm not gonna push it. I'm not gonna push it. I, I know the limits. I'm not gonna go run a marathon.
Like, I canceled the Chicago Marathon. I'm not, I'm not gonna train for long distance running, but like those two to four mile runs, like those are, those are good. I'm not- Relaxing... pushing myself physically. Yeah.
It's very good for me mentally. It's the outlet I need. So I, I'm finding a balance. I'm like, I'll know when I've pushed myself too hard, and I'll be able to scale back, I think, without doing like irreversible damage.
Yeah. Good. Take it easy. Don't, don't push yourself too much. Um, but to sign us off, I have five calls from all that freaking cold calling I do, so, um, 'cause I'm a boss and like I get five calls.
But yeah, I got five meetings that I gotta go, uh, jump on because of these- Amazing. Amazing... uh, cold calls, which is amazing. I'll let you know how they go. It is.
And everybody, you'll know the no-show rate and stuff like that. But if you're still here, twodadsintech.com. And- Check us out... and also, like, subscribe to us on YouTube. One to- Yeah...
zero to 100 was a little slow. 200 to 300 was really fast. 300 to 400 was slow. So like, help us out. We're just trying to get 1,000 subscribers, and I feel like we should have that by now. Yeah. Yeah.
So like, what's, what's the deal, guys? Yeah. A lot of people listen to us on Spotify. Yep. So that's like- Dude, we have a... We, we did not, not this week, 'cause I did post, but last week we did...
I don't think you said anything. I mean, and if you did, it was probably like a smaller post, but- No, I didn't... I did not promote it whatsoever last week. And like our plays are very...
Like we have a, a base, we have a follow, like a following- We do... base for sure. Like- We do...
we get a, a good amount of plays across all different channels, um, every single epis- or every single week, regardless on if we promote it or not, but I gotta go make this protein shake because I wanna go get really strong.
Two Dads in Tech. Take it easy. Subscribe. Twodadsintech.com. Five stars Spotify. Love you all. Five stars Apple. Um, go enjoy your hikes. Have fun with your family. Virtual hugs. And, uh, yeah, virtual hugs and kisses.
Toodles. [laughs]