And were back for another episode of start a hustle, a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. If you want to start own or build a business, then you’re in the right place, we bring you the real truth about what its like to take something from concept to launch from growth, innovation, experience, failing or winning big weve got you covered. So lets get down to business with another episode of start a hustle
Brought to you by full scale, dot io and were back another episode of startup hustle matt de corsi, here with matt watson, hi matt whats up whats up whats up im, trying to figure out all this ai stuff, and you know im just like. I think i need to be intelligent before i can figure out artificial intelligence you’re agreeing with that we need. We need you to be more intelligent. I know so ive brought in experts, so i
Have i have brought in experts and with us today we have jerry abbiogh whos, the co-founder and cmo of standard insights. Uh standard insights is an ai as a service growth, marketing platform that ensures businesses or helps them, helps businesses to execute data-driven, omni-channel campaigns and im. Looking forward to jerry telling us what exactly that means, so jerry welcome to startup. Also, hey thanks matt glad to be here im glad im glad to have you too now, before i get into the explanation of what all that meant i do have to let you know that todays
Episode of startup hustle is brought to you by crown cfo. They offer fractional cfo services for any size business. You can get the impact of a cfo for the fraction of a cost, just go to crowncfo com forward, slash hustle, to learn more and uh, or you can click the link in the show notes. Now jerry tell us exactly what all of this ai as a service growth marketing platform stuffs all about yeah, really real, quick
So ai its most basic definition, is getting a computer to think and act like a human and were already seeing it being used in our everyday lives. Two big two common examples: amazon with their product recommendations and netflix, with their movie recommendations. Okay, so now for those of you listening, you know i like it when you are interactive, so go
To standard insights, dot, io and then you have a brother or sister product, which is i order dot menu. Lets talk a little bit about that jerry whats whats, your back story, i mean how did you get into all of this and what? What brought us to these couple platforms yeah a couple couple things, so there are two pivots if you will so the first pivot was me co-founding, standard insights and uh. How that started was my last corporate job was nine or ten years ago, and when i left corporate america i
Started my own business, helping software companies with sales and marketing initiatives and some of my clients did well. We had successful exits and, as they say in life, you learn from failures in one of those clients that i had it was a big bus. Other bus fell on my face and that company was actually my first experience with working with an ai machine learning company. We had a great idea, poor execution and when i learned two things at that time was number one, regardless of what
Software platform you have out there, it has to be easy to use and solve your potential clients business problems, so that was number one and number two. There was something bubbling beneath the surface with regards to artificial intelligence and machine learning applications so much so that there was a study put out late last year by statista that the ai
Market is projected to be a 500 billion dollar industry in about five years. So, as this client was imploding about three four years ago, through serendipitous events, i met my future co-founder. He used to live in atlanta, worked for a fortune, 50 company as a technological architect. He was visiting from chennai india. We met over a few beers through mutual friends. He had shared with me or pitched me. This
Prototype that he had of an ai as a service growth, marketing platform to help businesses drive repeat buyers. So learning from what i learned in the past from my past client, i thought it had enough legs to warrant an extra look. I took the concept flew out from atlanta to denver to the outdoor retail show, and a week later, when i came back to atlanta, uh standard insights was born. Actually we were called a different name back then, but the idea was born. I had
Secured two beta clients and we were off to the races, so there was uh number number one pivot for standard insight, so the second pivot to i order dot menu, one of our competitors last year. Well, mcdonalds bought one of our competitors uh its an ai driven company to help them better engage uh with their customers. So once we saw that last summer we developed, i ordered that menu an ai
Driven uh digital menu and we kind of fell flat man to be honest, it just wasnt the right time. I took it to a buddy of mine up the street, who owned a thai restaurant. He said to me hey. This is great, but i dont think were ready for it, and even if i did this today, id uh have to lay off the majority of my weight staff. You know americas just not ready to order food from your smartphone. The idea sounds cool, but hey. Everyone loves holding that menu in
Their hand – and everyone loves listening to what the waiter waitresses you know has to say about the specials of the day, so we shelved it last summer, covid comes along and march shuts the entire planet down. That includes restaurants, and we pulled it out of the garage made some tweaks and a handful restaurants already using it. So any software or any business that does well solves a problem. I mean what overall i can. I get that and thanks for that overview, but whats the whats, the true problem.
That either one of these platforms is trying to solve, like in the in the case of the menu. Is that just? Is that just alleviating the need for servers or making things faster and the same same question goes with standard insights, so the standard, insights or eye order. The main problem that its trying to solve is to help businesses drive repeat buyers through ai driven relevant customer engagement. So that’s the overall premise of it, but because of covid there was another factor that helped that eye orders solving and that is in regards to safety.
So now weve got two problems that were solving with i order its safety of the the restaurant patrons and then driving repeat buyers or customer loyalty from that that customer base, because some restaurants now dont allow you to order in person at all. Right like like. I went to uh um, i mean they, i mean, even if they do have one person theyre doing it all on like a tablet or a phone or something like
Its just so different now yeah absolutely and this all just changed in the hand. Last three months, three, four months: how long have we been in this uh mess since march when basically everythings shut, forever yeah well yeah? This seems like normal to me. I dont remember life before this at this point yeah its prolonged. What day is it matt? You mentioned restaurants feeling different. I just realized. I havent been to a physical restaurant since march
Since all of this happened, i literally have not been out to eat anywhere, so ive been doing it hopefully ill start, hopefully ill survive in this brave new world. Now, obviously, when it comes to you know, you mentioned certain ai applications like netflix or amazon um. You know putting the right kind so with standard insights. This is about continuing to put the right things in front of the right eyes and taking that uh well, call it that digital product mapping out of the hands
Of people okay, so so how do you go about doing that, so we started off when we first started two years ago focusing our initial vertical. If you will was e-commerce clients, they were the early adopters of ai and we wanted to to branch out. So we were looking at our other verticals, so you know financial services, brick and mortar and now restaurants, so every business can benefit from data driven customer engagement, variety of channels, whether that could be email text or social media. So we wanted to have a specific focus on
Driving repeat: buyers for businesses, big or small, but across a variety of different verticals and with i ordered that’s, going to be the restaurant hospitality space so ill. Tell you what im all about i order, because my wife has an impossible time, picking anything off of any menu, so any kind of any kind of data driven solution that can get that order in faster im. A big fan of i go for that all day.
So you know, ai is, is for many people, a somewhat new technology and then overall, it hasnt been around for a long time um. I would imagine that over the years that youve had to overcome some specific problems, was there something that either one of these platforms was there? Was there a big hurdle you guys had to jump over uh? Probably the biggest thing would be education, people, just they kind of know about ai and but they kind of dont. So my last company, i work with my client. If you talk to 10 people,
One or two like oh yeah, i get a i you know, hurt but now fast forward, four or five year years later that you talk, you ask that same ten people, maybe four or five, would know about ai. So the thing is its about a the education process and do you need a big staff to run it and you know with us? No, you dont for
The most part, its simply, you know plug and play with an api connector or a csv file or extraction uh, transform load tools. We try to make it simple. If you have clean data, you run it through our smart choice, ai engine and it pops out the recommendations and within two clicks of your of your mouse, you can prioritize and execute campaigns matt. What would you use this kind of platform for well, as somebody who sells stuff online, i mean were always trying to figure out
Why people buy who buys how to increase conversion um? You know whos the ideal customer i mean these are common problems for every business right and the more data you have, the the more you need a tool like this to help sift through it and figure out the the signal from the noise and matt watson, you’re Yeah you’re absolutely right. I mean its cliche to
Say that you know datas the new oil, but really it is a commodity and those people that know how those companies that know how to use it and use it to their advantage. Theyll win over those that dont yeah. You know its its interesting because with your marketing driven solution, this is very similar to what our cmo at full scale did for a job and he used to work for husk varna, who sells all kinds of construction and different kinds of materials where you know they Have they are literally
Have people that are mapping the different products to different buyers, and just because you know someone buys concrete doesnt mean you know what kind ive learned more about concrete through hiring joel than than i ever thought id know. But you know that has so much to do with like what what messages you’re delivering via email, what you’re putting them in front of in your website. Maybe what you’re spending your cpc ads on and weve seen some various uh just here through the
Podcast some different innovators and startup founders that are doing some really cool stuff with ai, its like everything from uh, knowing when certain tv ads were going to be on. So you could raise your cpc bids and and try to get a higher click-through rate, and you know really in the end, you talk about data being the new oil. Well, it has so much to do with trying to determine what people are.
Gon na you know buy from you, so you know: there’s there’s been some people on the early cusp out there jerry are there. Are there particulars, particular individuals or companies that have mentored or invested in you, so were self-funded right now and along the way. We even ask so myself and the three other co-founders: we want to achieve some certain goals. If you will before we seek funding because im sure you guys are familiar, i mean, if you’re getting funding, i mean our products already developed. So
Were just doing tweaks in here and there, but you know when you’re getting funding like early on the less control you have of your company or your shares, you’re doling out equity, equity, stakes left and right. If you’re getting funding at the early, you know early onset. So were just fortunate enough that were able to make it this far with being self-funded there any uh particular any type of business or
Anyone in general that youve modeled the company after so weve taken so yes, we have so weve taken uh about four or five different companies that and im not going to share to four or five different companies, but yeah. Absolutely um yeah were looking at looked at four or five different companies that hey they’ve got a cool product and another company has a cool product, and so we wanted to be more of a whats. A good example um, like a multi-faceted pocket knife.
Instead of a phillips screwdriver, so it would encompass a multitudes of uh. You know tech stacks if you deserve so there’s some is there something that you’re doing to differentiate yourself from the competition that you can share yeah. So one thing is, and people ask this all the time its like hey. Can you help your tool sounds cool? Can you you know help me bring new buyers, and so the intent of our platform is to drive repeat buyers from your existing comp customer base. I mean there’s a lot of cool tools out
There using artificial intelligence to bring new people in uh. You know we dont, we dont do that. Just looking at your existing data, you know, uh, you know scoring all the customers that are potential profitability figuring out. What each you know, what jerry or matt or the other match likely to buy and then executing campaigns around that, so ours is just singularly focused on driving, repeat business.
From your existing customer base, well so at my company stockify, you know we saw a product of software developers and uh. You know we are. We see more growth every year of expanding our existing customer base. You know how much our existing customer base spends versus finding new business and um expansion is a is a huge opportunity and and might be something a lot of people.
Dont really think about is theyre always trying to find the new customer, but you can make a lot more money from your existing ones as well yeah, and there was a study put out by bain that a five percent improvement in uh in business from your current Customer base can generate between 25 and 95 in profit. However, people dont always realize that theyre always looking for the the new shiny object spending a lot of
Money on you know, cpc ads right facebook ads to bring that new new customer in and that costs a lot of money. And yes, there is relevancy to that. But once youve been around, once youve got a certain level of customers, its time to focus on upselling cross-selling, those guys yeah and its. I mean its its pretty business 101 info to share that you know. Keeping the customers that you have is also a lot
Less expensive than finding new ones right, um! So, but you know, is there anything that now its one thing to expand sales? Do you guys do anything when it comes to like client or customer retention? Is that is that a specific focus as well yeah? Absolutely because the worst thing you want to do is get someone or you know, the owners or president of a company, all hyped up on ai software, and they signed
A check but at the end and but then none of their um. You know none of their staff ever log into the software, and so when it comes time to to renew its like. Oh hey, we bought into the hype, but we didnt use it or we didnt log in so yes to address that you know were uh with our clients were in constant communication with them once a week once every other week or how often, even if just to Say hi: how are things
Going that’s it so were in front of them all the time, not just because they just signed a check. We got the contract and poof onto the next um and if you go to standard insights or our products, we do offer maintenance services, a maintenance services component to it to help uh people that need it run and execute the software yeah. I was actually curious about that because i think a lot of people are intimidated by the term artificial intelligence and then obviously every business has a different set of needs. It has a
Different set of clients, it solves a different set of problems so um, you know, assuming that i think the managed service side of things is important for businesses like yours. Just so you know, if im going to sign up, i feel a little better about that. So when, when it comes to building a startup or building any kind of business uh, obviously you got to have some kind of plan. What have you guys done to plan uh standard insights and i order dot menu? So we start off with the core
Uh, basics of you know, driving repeat buyers, but were always on the lookout for new and different verticals. That could use the basics of our platform and then obviously well well tweak accordingly um. We did that last year, with with uh that you know launching of i order, but then no one really bought right and you know just because you, you shoot a basket you’re, not always going to make it in the hoop right, so it didnt make it. Last year, its like
Okay, we spent some time developing a prototype and it didnt take, but we developed that prototype. We had the knowledge of that prototype and yeah. We did shelve it, but then covet comes along. I mean no one planned for covid coming along, but hey you take advantage of whats presented to you, so we pulled it out of the garage, so were always looking at different verticals. I was in another podcast couple weeks ago, and someone mentioned to me its like
Hey one of the board members of this big real estate international company is on on my board hes on that board, and i think your product would be cool to help find out the different behavior patterns that make people buy real estate or to different homes and And a different breakdown so now were having a meeting with him and exploring that angle. I was in
Another meeting last week, someone mentioned to me like hey this – would be cool, for you know doctor clinics in hospitals that they also need to be up to date more in tune with their marketing, just because a lot of those guys are losing revenue due to kovid And so were exploring that opportunity and i told that that person said hey look. That sounds like a great idea. It happens.
To be that one of our, my our fellow co-founder ceo, he used to be an md, so were always looking at other opportunities, other verticals that can benefit from our platform and help help others. So jerry is your goal to build a a business here. That kind of does consulting and services and kind of. Does these one project at a time or are you trying to build a platform, that’s kind of hands off and really scales, and then people can just come use your platform? So the uh build a platform that scales
Thats, first and foremost, but to keep customers and keep them engaged. We do offer the managed services so first and foremost, is building a platform that scales absolutely so that’s. What i wonder with all this ai stuff is it? Does it require a lot of professional services right to help people figure out how to solve a problem, how to use it, and so its like? You really have a business
Thats very services uh based versus a product that’s strictly software, like you know, the customer comes and uses it, but its all self-service that’s the hardest part. So there’s gon na be a balance because there’s a software piece but with anything and you guys are, are in marketing. You know yes take the data taken and but another part of marketing is, you know, content creation right and we dont do that, but part of driving repeat buyers not only having the proper data having a data-driven
Mindset, but also having content that goes along with it. So when you’re sending a data-driven email text or a social media post um, you got the data there, but you need awesome. Looking content to go along with it, so that’s, where our maintenance services mainly comes in, is to complement our software that’s a hard part. You talk about it. You know people dont people, think marketing is a lot easier than it is and when you talk about content creation and
A lot of different stuff and matt, i think, youll, attest to hanging out with me for the last few years that um, you know, there’s a lot more work that goes into creating quality content than than a lot of people. Think there is, you know, sometimes well talk to people, and you know well what goes into creating the start of hustle podcast a lot of work, um, a lot of consistency, a
Lot of effort, and – and you know, a fair amount of planning and that’s – not it doesnt come intuitively to everyone. So you know when it comes to marketing and selling your own products and services like how do you? How do you go out and find uh people to use your platform or for us so its? You know old school right. You know,
Knocking on doors so now with i order literally, i have the ability to knock on doors. Just in my restaurant i live in. We live in my wife and i we live near downtown atlanta, so there’s a plethora of rent restaurants that i could walk to theyre, not busy. Nowadays, every restaurant on the planet is hurting, so they have a pain point, so i can actually knock on doors but then also having a social media.
Presence, you know, building credibility being on this podcast. I didnt think being guests on podcasts will be part of the marketing strategy going into 2020. But i did my first podcast back in february then got a second guess invite from there and it just kind of snowballed. And while everyone was shut down a few months back, i started doing podcasts so now, im building credibility so its a, i guess, a multi-faceted approach. If you will and then we also have channel partners in in the you know, industry verticals that
Are helping us out as well so channel partners are a is not something that all listeners will even know. What that is. You know channel partners, basically aligning your vertical up with another companies. For example, uh youve probably done something youve probably signed up for one thing and they’ve had a one-click install or something like that. Uh that isnt, a third-party software
Or plug-in, or something like that, what are a few things that you can tell us about channel partners and and finding them yeah so lets take for i order, so i reached out to consultants in the restaurant industry pitch to them. Hey. I think this. You know. Obviously, youve got the the brains and uh consulting expertise, but i do think that combining your your brain power and technology uh could set you apart from the other guys, so its looking out for people like that in various industries that could make themselves competitive.
Right, uh have a more competitive tech, stack matt. What have you learned about sales channels over the years? I know you always have some interesting input on this category on this topic. Well, i mean theyre theyre, always dramatically different from one business to another right. Ive done three different businesses in uh recent years, and the go-to-market strategy of all three of them has been so completely different from one to
Another so um you once you thinking, you know how to you know, do this and you move on to the next business, its so dramatically, different and um. You know stackify, we are more high volume, so you know we get hundreds of leads a month and deal with uh hundreds of thousands of people on our website. So you know if you can figure
Out how to optimize any of that stuff by a few percentage points its a big deal and um were always trying to figure out how to do that. But the struggle is is never ending. I think one of the things when it comes to to sales channels and just different types of sales partners is uh and matt. Youve talked about this before the you know: what what glitters isnt, always gold, um and you know, matt, and i have both had experience in the past with different
Businesses where weve thought weve aligned ourselves with a huge sales channel partner, and then you put all your effort, energy emotion into that, and then you might just run into a crickets, not hearing anything. And you know when it comes to sales channel partners, though at the same time, if you can find ones that really work out for you, then you’re gon na shorten the life cycle of your sales. Youre gon na get your product in front of several other buyers.
And opportunities really quickly, i just i, i think for all early stage startups that i would, i would say hed you know, have some caution with them, though, because uh you know, i had a specific experience with gigabook, where we basically put everything on hold for about Three months thinking we had an amazing sales channel partner and then it just didnt pan out and didnt. You have an experience like that with vent solutions, dude we have that same same uh experience. Every time you find a potential investor, a potential partner like
All the things right, that’s, just part of business right, you think you got something and you spend a bunch of time hoping and praying its going to happen and then 90 of the time it doesnt just hey, just a healthy shot of reality. For other people not trying to not try not trying to jerry, you got some comments there yeah, so you just have to cast a wide net. Sometimes right, so we were
January or february this year, before this craziness happened, we were knee-deep with some partners for in the financial services space and then once covered happened, those guys disappeared now, theyre reappearing, again say: hey ive talked to my clients, theyre theyre interested theyre, ready to further the conversation. So sometimes i mean you just never know whats going to happen. Uh, obviously kovid put brakes on a lot of things, but as people are beginning to emerge, those relationships youve developed early on in in our case january or february this year are now beginning to uh. To reappear again,
Now guys, speaking of partnerships, matt full scale has a new partnership with crown cfo that’s the sponsor todays episode, and they offer fractional cfo services for businesses of any size and stage. You know when you’re trying to a lot your resources to different things as your business grows. Um you know, financial management and cfo stuff is is important, but not every business can afford a full-time anything. So you go to crowncfo com uh jerry. Have you utilized fractional services? I mean whether its a cfo or anything else before have you ever tried.
That out, no, i have not. No, i have not. I mean ive heard ive, never heard of a fractional cfo that’s uh yeah, a lot of people dont realize as well when you hire a lawyer, that’s, basically a fractional legal team, so jerry im interested to know what a few things that youve learned that transformed you As a leader or a professional or a person have been over the course of building your business and for me its just always getting after it, and i always tell people always challenge yourself: okay, that you can challenge yourself.
In in your professional life, but i wholly hardly feel that if you challenge yourself on your purse in your personal life – and you know, learn from failure and learn how to be on un un uncomfortable. If you will that all those skills you do in your personal life will translate into your professional life and in this case, what im doing and my teams doing right now is launching and scaling a startup. So what whats the whats the hardest thing about startups for us like the hardest hardest thing, was just
Getting someone to to listen to you and then just showing them um, like the the demos i mean i can remember going when we flew out to from atlanta to colorado, gosh, probably shook well over 100 hands when you could do that at the time, and i Got two people out of it to do uh to to do a beta and uh. I mean just building that trust right and you you’re going to someone and saying hey ive got this cool idea. Ill should take you through a demo, and then the person asks is
Is this you know real data, you know, do you have any customers and uh theyll say thanks, but no thanks. So youve got to really do a lot of calling if you will to find the one or two uh. You know businesses theyll, take a chance on you right now. You know what i ordered was a little bit easier, not saying that it was easy, but we already had something established.
And said: hey, look! This is the same engine that weve weve applied to other verticals and i show them the demo, but now weve tweaked it for the restaurant space. So its a little bit easier with i order, because we have some relevancy but yeah. I think that that trust and and relevancy and that’s, probably the hardest thing i mean there’s, always going to be hard steps right. Once you get clients, how do you service those clients or keep them renewing? So
Theres always going to be challenges, but the first initial steps of getting those first few customers the hardest yeah in sports. They say that putting the first points on the board are oftentimes the hardest um, and you know, one of the things is as any startup has. Is you run into that question? Well, who are you working with? Who are your clients, how many users do you have and and when you’re sitting there saying none or two or something like that, its its its a challenge?
To get those first few people on the board did you do anything different than what you would have done now so to get this first handful folks on board, and we just kind of built that from there was just meeting them in person at the trade, shows, Because i could be some guy online and you know, with a social media – account how
Do i know these guys right, but for for me and the other guys in my my team, just meeting those people and shaking their hand and looking them in the eye and building trust that way, ive been uh speaking to social media, i put a post up Over on friday, that got an unusually high number of responses, and i asked as an entrepreneur what is your superpower so jerry as an entrepreneur? What is your super power? I dont really have a super power, but its just, even if i were to answer this questions. Just
Getting after it every day, i mean just basically that’s it, whether you like it or not, just you know getting after it, and another thing id like to add to is especially with whats going on right now or just fyi in life is never let a good Crisis go to waste. Yeah weve heard weve heard that from a few people lately, so it well tenacity is a super power.
Um resiliency and getting up and doing it every day, um i mean that’s, tough and especially when you work for yourself, because if, when you’re, the only person you have to be accountable to that can either be a real good thing or a real bad thing. So on that same note, do you have? Is there a kryptonite that exists in your entrepreneur, world um im sure there is i just trying to
Think of you know: okay, heres, one just being complacent. I i act like you always have nothing and that there’s always someone out there to get you is basically but yeah, never be complacent. So if you go to our website, that’s good advice, yeah, if you get a website on the on standard insights main and about we talk about kaizon, getting better each and every day, because just never sitting on sitting on your laurels were always on to look out.
For competitors and what theyre doing oh theyre doing something great all right cool lets go to our website lets, take a look: how can we tweak things so were doing that each and every day just never sitting on our laurels? So, but if there was a kryptonite just never being complacent, so speaking of your website – and you know one of the things and youve got this in in very large font – all that you need to simplify customer experience yeah what are a couple. What are a couple tips? You can give us
About simplifying the customer experience well aside from having the software being easy to use in tilde, but make sure any of your materials, whether its the website or, if you’re, knocking on doors talking to people always make it about them right and the benefits and speaking their Language versus um talking about the features of your product right that sounds familiar doesnt. It matt, yeah that’s, really good advice of your product right its. What can you do for me? Nobody cares yeah, but once they get it,
Once you get and were allowed because that’s a yeah that’s a like a broken record for me, i always say: features advantages, benefits fab and just like you know, people buy things that i mean there’s a number of reasons that people buy. But what are those benefits and too many people get stuck on trying to sell the features, and maybe they dont understand the advantages of the benefits? But if you cant map that out about your own product, then you’re in trouble. So you know there’s a there’s, a lot to be said there now
A couple other off-the-wall questions for you here jerry: do you consider yourself to be driven or obsessed, probably a little bit of both its probably a you know a little bit of both and maybe not only here in the work, but just um. You know my hobbies. So during my you know, adult life ive uh done a handful of iron mans ive done ultramarathons ive got. I got a blue belt and jiu jitsu. You know at 45 well that’s, not easy, just because you’re fighting against guys, even though you’re theyre, your buds, then theyre
Mid-20S, so could a little bit of both driven and obsessed. I dont think you could do those things without having both qualities and now i take what i do in my personal life, and you know transferring it over here and to appreciate that yeah. I appreciate everything you said now. We end episodes of startup hustle with what we call the founders freestyle now before we get into that just one last thanks going out to crown cfo and and there’s fractional cfo services go to crowncfo com forward, slash hustle! You learn more about them now in the
Founders, freestyle: you know we go over a lot of stuff in these episodes jerry and we like to give everyone a chance to either ge basically give advice or say a couple last things on the way out the door. What would you like to what would you well pass the mic around, but what would you like to say to the to the hustlers out there yeah, so i mentioned a little bit ago: never let a good price go to waste. Uh doesnt mean you have to launch a startup, but just always keep on learning just to
To better yourself, each and every day i mean if youve never worked out before you know, walk around the block or do a 5k just do something to improve yourself each and every day, and you know im 48 years old and i look at society and people Are always you know, fighting on you know on social media i mean you would think these the facebook fighters are, you know theyre like elite mma. You know athletes and theyre, not
And theyre wasting time with that, so just get away from all that noise focus on bettering yourself first and then, once you do that you can help people around you get better that’s it matt. What do you have to say today? I want to point out that you know. Sometimes life is interesting and the timing of things can be very interesting. You know you mentioned that
You worked on an eye order menu and it wasnt working very well um had a struggle, getting traction and and didnt quite get product market fit. We talked about that and all of a sudden coronavirus comes around you’re. Like you know what maybe now this product you know, can find a better product market fit because of the the changes in the environment and um. You know just pointing out. Sometimes you just never know,
And sometimes there’s a window of opportunity for things and sometimes you dont control that window at all um and sometimes you just have to sit around and almost wait for the window. Yeah or you get or you got ta. You know when that windows there you got ta really execute so um. I just wan na point that out that, for those who are listening, sometimes you just never know when your window of
Opportunity is gon na come along yeah. I agree im going to parlay off that mat and you know that weve have at full scale and you have the full scale dot io to check out what we do and we work with a number of different clients. And we had some in february that were on top of the world and in april were singing the blues, where the ones that were singing the blues in february were all the sudden you know on top of the world. So you
Never know when your your moments going to come. I im not a big believer in luck and they say the luck is really just opportunity and preparation meeting at an intersection. So the question is, is you know, are you prepared to take advantage of a situation when it comes up? You know jerry talks about it and jerry. I want to say i appreciate your approach.
Like hey im, going to put on my backpack and im going to go out and im going to shake 100 hands today and that’s getting harder and harder to do like in this current climate, but that’s the way i would i i did it for years yeah, But you have to be prepared so if you’re not prepared and you’re out
There shaking hands and all of a sudden your opportunity comes up. Well guess what that’s? Not bad, luck? Thats! Just you not be prepared, so you guys stayed on top of it and then all of a sudden you’re like wow, okay. This might be the right time to do stuff um. You know, and i think that that’s hard to do on many days, but i want to commend you for that and then the last comment id like to make also
Is you know, there’s a world of very interesting ai solutions out there that are coming up and um? You know i dont know if standard insights is the right one for you or not, but get out there and look at new stuff and new things, because you know much like uh, mr watson had uh had mentioned. You know, hes got tens
Of thousands of visitors to to the stackify site every month, a simple change of one or two percent in action or or non-action can be pretty a pretty phenomenal outcome. So you know, if you’re not getting exactly what you want, get out there and see if there’s, someone that can help you do it, so you know other than that. Jerry thanks for thanks for spending some time with us today, hey thanks guys. I appreciate it thanks for having me on. Thank you, sir im gon na go figure. Im gon na go figure out how to get my
How to get some ai to get my wife to order food faster now…
#artificialintelligence #softwareasaservice #startups
Ever heard of AI as a Service? It’s definitely a thing! Join Matt and Matt as they have a conversation with Jerry Abiog, the Co-Founder and CMO of Standard Insights – an AI as a Service growth marketing platform that enables businesses to execute data-driven omni-channel campaigns. This helps them target the right person, with the right product/service, at the right time.
Transcript
and were back for another episode of start a hustle a podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs if you want to start own or build a business then you’re in the right place we bring you the real truth about what its like to take something from concept to launch from growth innovation experience failing or winning big weve got you covered so lets get down to business with another episode of start a hustle.
brought to you by full scale dot io and were back another episode of startup hustle matt de corsi here with matt watson hi matt whats up whats up whats up im trying to figure out all this ai stuff and you know im just like i think i need to be intelligent before i can figure out artificial intelligence you’re agreeing with that we need we need you to be more.
intelligent i know so ive brought in experts so i have i have brought in experts and with us today we have jerry abbiogh whos the co-founder and cmo of standard insights uh standard insights is an ai as a service growth marketing platform that ensures businesses or helps them helps businesses to execute data-driven omni-channel campaigns and im looking forward to jerry telling.
us what exactly that means so jerry welcome to startup also hey thanks matt glad to be here im glad im glad to have you too now before i get into the explanation of what all that meant i do have to let you know that todays episode of startup hustle is brought to you by crown cfo they offer fractional cfo services for any size.
business you can get the impact of a cfo for the fraction of a cost just go to crowncfo com forward slash hustle to learn more and uh or you can click the link in the show notes now jerry tell us exactly what all of this ai as a service growth marketing platform stuffs all about yeah really real quick so ai its most basic definition is getting a computer to think and act.
like a human and were already seeing it being used in our everyday lives two big two common examples amazon with their product recommendations and netflix with their movie recommendations okay so now for those of you listening you know i like it when you are interactive so go to standard insights dot io and then you have a brother or sister product which is i order dot menu lets talk a little bit about that.
jerry whats whats your back story i mean how did you get into all of this and what what brought us to these couple platforms yeah a couple couple things so there are two pivots if you will so the first pivot was me co-founding standard insights and uh how that started was my last corporate job was nine or ten years ago and when i left corporate america i started my own business helping software companies with sales and marketing initiatives and some of my clients did well we had.
successful exits and as they say in life you learn from failures in one of those clients that i had it was a big bus other bus fell on my face and that company was actually my first experience with working with an ai machine learning company we had a great idea poor execution and when i learned two things at that time was number one regardless of what software platform you have out there it has to be easy to use and solve your potential.
clients business problems so that was number one and number two there was something bubbling beneath the surface with regards to artificial intelligence and machine learning applications so much so that there was a study put out late last year by statista that the ai market is projected to be a 500 billion dollar industry in about five years so as this client was imploding about three four years ago through serendipitous events i met my future co-founder he used to live in atlanta worked for a fortune 50.
company as a technological architect he was visiting from chennai india we met over a few beers through mutual friends he had shared with me or pitched me this prototype that he had of an ai as a service growth marketing platform to help businesses drive repeat buyers so learning from what i learned in the past from my past client i thought it had enough legs to warrant an extra look i took the concept flew out from atlanta to denver to the outdoor retail show and a week later when i came back to atlanta uh standard insights was born actually.
we were called a different name back then but the idea was born i had secured two beta clients and we were off to the races so there was uh number number one pivot for standard insight so the second pivot to i order dot menu one of our competitors last year well mcdonalds bought one of our competitors uh its an ai driven company to help them better engage uh with their customers so once we saw.
that last summer we developed i ordered that menu an ai driven uh digital menu and we kind of fell flat man to be honest it just wasnt the right time i took it to a buddy of mine up the street who owned a thai restaurant he said to me hey this is great but i dont think were ready for it and even if i did this today id uh have to lay off the majority of my weight staff you know americas just not ready to order food from your smartphone the idea sounds.
cool but hey everyone loves holding that menu in their hand and everyone loves listening to what the waiter waitresses you know has to say about the specials of the day so we shelved it last summer covid comes along and march shuts the entire planet down that includes restaurants and we pulled it out of the garage made some tweaks and a handful restaurants already using it so any software or any business that does well solves a problem i mean what overall i can i get that and thanks for that overview but whats the whats the true problem.
that either one of these platforms is trying to solve like in the in the case of the menu is that just is that just alleviating the need for servers or making things faster and the same same question goes with standard insights so the standard insights or eye order the main problem that its trying to solve is to help businesses drive repeat buyers.
through ai driven relevant customer engagement so that’s the overall premise of it but because of covid there was another factor that helped that eye orders solving and that is in regards to safety so now weve got two problems that were solving with i order its safety of the the restaurant patrons and then driving repeat buyers or customer loyalty from that that customer base because some restaurants now dont allow you to order in person at all right like like i went to uh um i mean they i mean even if they do.
have one person theyre doing it all on like a tablet or a phone or something like its just so different now yeah absolutely and this all just changed in the hand last three months three four months how long have we been in this uh mess since march when basically everythings shut forever yeah well yeah this seems like normal to me i dont remember life before this at this point yeah its prolonged what day is it matt you mentioned restaurants feeling different i just realized i havent been.
to a physical restaurant since march since all of this happened i literally have not been out to eat anywhere so ive been doing it hopefully ill start hopefully ill survive in this brave new world now obviously when it comes to you know you mentioned certain ai applications like netflix or amazon um you know putting the right kind so with standard insights this is about continuing to put the right things in front of the right eyes and taking that uh well call it that digital product mapping out of the hands.
of people okay so so how do you go about doing that so we started off when we first started two years ago focusing our initial vertical if you will was e-commerce clients they were the early adopters of ai and we wanted to to branch out so we were looking at our other verticals so you know financial services brick and.
mortar and now restaurants so every business can benefit from data driven customer engagement variety of channels whether that could be email text or social media so we wanted to have a specific focus on driving repeat buyers for businesses big or small but across a variety of different verticals and with i ordered that’s going to be the restaurant hospitality space so ill tell you what im all about i order because my wife has an impossible time picking anything.
off of any menu so any kind of any kind of data driven solution that can get that order in faster im a big fan of i go for that all day so you know ai is is for many people a somewhat new technology and then overall it hasnt been around for a long time um i would imagine that over the years that youve had to overcome some specific.
problems was there something that either one of these platforms was there was there a big hurdle you guys had to jump over uh probably the biggest thing would be education people just they kind of know about ai and but they kind of dont so my last company i work with my client if you talk to 10 people one or two like oh yeah i get a i you.
know hurt but now fast forward four or five year years later that you talk you ask that same ten people maybe four or five would know about ai so the thing is its about a the education process and do you need a big staff to run it and you know with us no you dont for the most part its simply you know plug and play with an api.
connector or a csv file or extraction uh transform load tools we try to make it simple if you have clean data you run it through our smart choice ai engine and it pops out the recommendations and within two clicks of your of your mouse you can prioritize and execute campaigns matt what would you use this kind of platform for well as somebody who sells stuff online i mean were always trying to figure out why people buy who buys how to increase.
conversion um you know whos the ideal customer i mean these are common problems for every business right and the more data you have the the more you need a tool like this to help sift through it and figure out the the signal from the noise and matt watson you’re yeah you’re absolutely right i mean its cliche to say that you know datas the new oil but really it is a commodity and those people that know how those companies that know how to use it and use it to their advantage theyll win over those that dont.
yeah you know its its interesting because with your marketing driven solution this is very similar to what our cmo at full scale did for a job and he used to work for husk varna who sells all kinds of construction and different kinds of materials where you know they have they are literally have people that are mapping the different products to different buyers.
and just because you know someone buys concrete doesnt mean you know what kind ive learned more about concrete through hiring joel than than i ever thought id know but you know that has so much to do with like what what messages you’re delivering via email what you’re putting them in front of in your website maybe what you’re spending your cpc ads.
on and weve seen some various uh just here through the podcast some different innovators and startup founders that are doing some really cool stuff with ai its like everything from uh knowing when certain tv ads were going to be on so you could raise your cpc bids and and try to get a higher click-through rate and you know really in the end you talk about data being the new oil well it has so much to do with trying to determine what people are gonna you know buy from you so you know there’s there’s been some.
people on the early cusp out there jerry are there are there particulars particular individuals or companies that have mentored or invested in you so were self-funded right now and along the way we even ask so myself and the three other co-founders we want to achieve some certain goals if you will before we seek funding because im sure you guys are familiar i mean if you’re getting funding i mean our products already developed so were just doing tweaks in here and there but you know when you’re getting funding.
like early on the less control you have of your company or your shares you’re doling out equity equity stakes left and right if you’re getting funding at the early you know early onset so were just fortunate enough that were able to make it this far with being self-funded there any uh particular any type of business or anyone in general that youve modeled the company after so weve taken so yes we have so weve taken uh about four or five different companies that and im not going to share to four or five different companies but yeah absolutely.
um yeah were looking at looked at four or five different companies that hey they’ve got a cool product and another company has a cool product and so we wanted to be more of a whats a good example um like a multi-faceted pocket knife instead of a phillips screwdriver so it would encompass a multitudes of uh you know tech stacks if you deserve so there’s some is there something that you’re doing to.
differentiate yourself from the competition that you can share yeah so one thing is and people ask this all the time its like hey can you help your tool sounds cool can you you know help me bring new buyers and so the intent of our platform is to drive repeat buyers from your existing comp customer base i mean there’s a lot of cool tools out there using artificial intelligence to bring new people in uh you know we dont we dont do that just looking at your existing data you know uh you know scoring all the.
customers that are potential profitability figuring out what each you know what jerry or matt or the other match likely to buy and then executing campaigns around that so ours is just singularly focused on driving repeat business from your existing customer base well so at my company stockify you know we saw a product of software developers and uh you know we are we see more growth every year of expanding our existing customer base you know how much our existing customer base spends versus finding new business and um expansion is a is a huge opportunity.
and and might be something a lot of people dont really think about is theyre always trying to find the new customer but you can make a lot more money from your existing ones as well yeah and there was a study put out by bain that a five percent improvement in uh in business from your current customer base can generate between 25 and 95.
in profit however people dont always realize that theyre always looking for the the new shiny object spending a lot of money on you know cpc ads right facebook ads to bring that new new customer in and that costs a lot of money and yes there is relevancy to that but once youve been around once youve got a certain level of customers its time to focus on upselling cross-selling those guys yeah and its i mean its its pretty business 101 info to share that you know keeping the customers that you have is also a lot.
less expensive than finding new ones right um so but you know is there anything that now its one thing to expand sales do you guys do anything when it comes to like client or customer retention is that is that a specific focus as well yeah absolutely because the worst thing you want to do is get someone or you know the owners or president of a company all hyped up on ai software and they signed a check but at the end and but then none of.
their um you know none of their staff ever log into the software and so when it comes time to to renew its like oh hey we bought into the hype but we didnt use it or we didnt log in so yes to address that you know were uh with our clients were in constant communication with them once a week once every other week or how often even if just to say hi how are things going that’s it so were in front of them all.
the time not just because they just signed a check we got the contract and poof onto the next um and if you go to standard insights or our products we do offer maintenance services a maintenance services component to it to help uh people that need it run and execute the software yeah i was actually curious about that because i think a lot of people are intimidated by the term artificial intelligence and then obviously every business has a different set of needs it has a different set of clients it solves a different set of problems.
so um you know assuming that i think the managed service side of things is important for businesses like yours just so you know if im going to sign up i feel a little better about that so when when it comes to building a startup or building any kind of business uh obviously you got to have some kind of plan what have you guys done to plan uh standard insights and i order dot menu so we start off with the core uh basics of you know driving repeat.
buyers but were always on the lookout for new and different verticals that could use the basics of our platform and then obviously well well tweak accordingly um we did that last year with with uh that you know launching of i order but then no one really bought right and you know just because you you shoot a basket you’re not always going to make it in the hoop right so it didnt make it last year its like okay we spent some time developing a prototype and it didnt take but we.
developed that prototype we had the knowledge of that prototype and yeah we did shelve it but then covet comes along i mean no one planned for covid coming along but hey you take advantage of whats presented to you so we pulled it out of the garage so were always looking at different verticals i was in another podcast couple weeks ago and someone mentioned to me its like hey one of the board members of this big.
real estate international company is on on my board hes on that board and i think your product would be cool to help find out the different behavior patterns that make people buy real estate or to different homes and and a different breakdown so now were having a meeting with him and exploring that angle i was in another meeting last week someone mentioned to me like hey this would be cool for you know doctor clinics in hospitals.
that they also need to be up to date more in tune with their marketing just because a lot of those guys are losing revenue due to kovid and so were exploring that opportunity and i told that that person said hey look that sounds like a great idea it happens to be that one of our my our fellow co-founder ceo he used to be an md so were always looking at other opportunities other verticals that can benefit from our platform and help help others.
so jerry is your goal to build a a business here that kind of does consulting and services and kind of does these one project at a time or are you trying to build a platform that’s kind of hands off and really scales and then people can just come use your platform so the uh build a platform that scales that’s first and foremost but to keep customers and keep them engaged we do offer the.
managed services so first and foremost is building a platform that scales absolutely so that’s what i wonder with all this ai stuff is it does it require a lot of professional services right to help people figure out how to solve a problem how to use it and so its like you really have a business that’s very services uh based versus a product that’s strictly software like you know the customer comes and uses it.
but its all self-service that’s the hardest part so there’s gonna be a balance because there’s a software piece but with anything and you guys are are in marketing you know yes take the data taken and but another part of marketing is you know content creation right and we dont do that but part of driving repeat buyers not only having the proper data having a data-driven mindset but also having content that goes along.
with it so when you’re sending a data-driven email text or a social media post um you got the data there but you need awesome looking content to go along with it so that’s where our maintenance services mainly comes in is to complement our software that’s a hard part you talk about it you know people dont people think marketing is a lot easier than it is and when you talk about content creation and.
a lot of different stuff and matt i think youll attest to hanging out with me for the last few years that um you know there’s a lot more work that goes into creating quality content than than a lot of people think there is you know sometimes well talk to people and you know well what goes into creating the start of hustle podcast a lot of work um a lot of consistency a lot of effort and and you know a fair amount of planning and that’s not it doesnt come intuitively to everyone.
so you know when it comes to marketing and selling your own products and services like how do you how do you go out and find uh people to use your platform or for us so its you know old school right you know knocking on doors so now with i order literally i have the ability to knock on doors just in my restaurant i live in we live in my wife and i we live near downtown atlanta so there’s a plethora of rent restaurants that i could walk to theyre.
not busy nowadays every restaurant on the planet is hurting so they have a pain point so i can actually knock on doors but then also having a social media presence you know building credibility being on this podcast i didnt think being guests on podcasts will be part of the marketing strategy going into 2020 but i did my first podcast back in february then got a second guess invite from there and it just kind of snowballed and while everyone was shut.
down a few months back i started doing podcasts so now im building credibility so its a i guess a multi-faceted approach if you will and then we also have channel partners in in the you know industry verticals that are helping us out as well so channel partners are a is not something that all listeners will even know what that is you know channel partners basically aligning your vertical up with another companies for example uh youve probably done something youve probably signed up for one thing and.
they’ve had a one-click install or something like that uh that isnt a third-party software or plug-in or something like that what are a few things that you can tell us about channel partners and and finding them yeah so lets take for i order so i reached out to consultants in the restaurant industry pitch to them hey i think this you know obviously youve got the the brains and.
uh consulting expertise but i do think that combining your your brain power and technology uh could set you apart from the other guys so its looking out for people like that in various industries that could make themselves competitive right uh have a more competitive tech stack matt what have you learned about sales channels over the years i know you always have some interesting input on this category on this topic well i mean theyre theyre always dramatically different from one business to another right ive done three different businesses.
in uh recent years and the go-to-market strategy of all three of them has been so completely different from one to another so um you once you thinking you know how to you know do this and you move on to the next business its so dramatically different and um you know stackify we are more high volume so you know we get hundreds of leads a month and deal with uh hundreds of thousands of people on our website so you know if you can figure out how to optimize any of that stuff by.
a few percentage points its a big deal and um were always trying to figure out how to do that but the struggle is is never ending i think one of the things when it comes to to sales channels and just different types of sales partners is uh and matt youve talked about this before the you know what what glitters isnt always gold um and you know matt and i have both had experience in the past with different businesses where weve thought weve aligned ourselves with a huge sales channel partner and.
then you put all your effort energy emotion into that and then you might just run into a crickets not hearing anything and you know when it comes to sales channel partners though at the same time if you can find ones that really work out for you then you’re gonna shorten the life cycle of your sales you’re gonna get your product in front of several other buyers and opportunities really quickly i just i i think for all early stage startups that i would i would say hed.
you know have some caution with them though because uh you know i had a specific experience with gigabook where we basically put everything on hold for about three months thinking we had an amazing sales channel partner and then it just didnt pan out and didnt you have an experience like that with vent solutions dude we have that same same uh.
experience every time you find a potential investor a potential partner like all the things right that’s just part of business right you think you got something and you spend a bunch of time hoping and praying its going to happen and then 90 of the time it doesnt just hey just a healthy shot of reality for other people not trying to not try not trying to jerry.
you got some comments there yeah so you just have to cast a wide net sometimes right so we were january or february this year before this craziness happened we were knee-deep with some partners for in the financial services space and then once covered happened those guys disappeared now theyre reappearing again say hey ive talked to my clients theyre theyre interested theyre ready to further the conversation so sometimes.
i mean you just never know whats going to happen uh obviously kovid put brakes on a lot of things but as people are beginning to emerge those relationships youve developed early on in in our case january or february this year are now beginning to uh to reappear again now guys speaking of partnerships matt full scale has a new partnership with crown cfo that’s the sponsor todays episode and they offer fractional cfo services for businesses of any size and stage you know when you’re trying to a lot your resources to.
different things as your business grows um you know financial management and cfo stuff is is important but not every business can afford a full-time anything so you go to crowncfo com uh jerry have you utilized fractional services i mean whether its a cfo or anything else before have you ever tried that out no i have not no i have not i mean ive heard ive never heard of a fractional cfo that’s uh yeah a lot of people dont realize as well when you hire a lawyer that’s basically a fractional legal team.
so jerry im interested to know what a few things that youve learned that transformed you as a leader or a professional or a person have been over the course of building your business and for me its just always getting after it and i always tell people always challenge yourself okay that you can challenge yourself in in your professional life but i wholly hardly feel that if you challenge yourself on your purse in your personal life and you know learn from failure and learn.
how to be on un un uncomfortable if you will that all those skills you do in your personal life will translate into your professional life and in this case what im doing and my teams doing right now is launching and scaling a startup so what whats the whats the hardest thing about startups for us like the hardest hardest thing was just getting someone to to listen to you and.
then just showing them um like the the demos i mean i can remember going when we flew out to from atlanta to colorado gosh probably shook well over 100 hands when you could do that at the time and i got two people out of it to do uh to to do a beta and uh i mean just building that trust right and you you’re going to someone and saying hey ive got this cool idea ill should take you through a demo and then the person asks is.
is this you know real data you know do you have any customers and uh theyll say thanks but no thanks so youve got to really do a lot of calling if you will to find the one or two uh you know businesses theyll take a chance on you right now you know what i ordered was a little bit easier not saying that it was easy but we already had something established and said hey look this is the same engine that weve.
weve applied to other verticals and i show them the demo but now weve tweaked it for the restaurant space so its a little bit easier with i order because we have some relevancy but yeah i think that that trust and and relevancy and that’s probably the hardest thing i mean there’s always going to be hard steps right once you get clients how do you service those clients or keep them renewing so there’s always going to be challenges but the first.
initial steps of getting those first few customers the hardest yeah in sports they say that putting the first points on the board are oftentimes the hardest um and you know one of the things is as any startup has is you run into that question well who are you working with who are your clients how many users do you have and and when you’re sitting there saying none or two or something like that its its its a.
challenge to get those first few people on the board did you do anything different than what you would have done now so to get this first handful folks on board and we just kind of built that from there was just meeting them in person at the trade shows because i could be some guy online and you know with a social media account how do i know these guys right but for for me and the other guys in my my team just meeting those people and shaking.
their hand and looking them in the eye and building trust that way ive been uh speaking to social media i put a post up over on friday that got an unusually high number of responses and i asked as an entrepreneur what is your superpower so jerry as an entrepreneur what is your super power i dont really have a super power but its just even if i were to answer this questions just getting after it every day i mean just basically that’s it whether you like it or not just you know getting.
after it and another thing id like to add to is especially with whats going on right now or just fyi in life is never let a good crisis go to waste yeah weve heard weve heard that from a few people lately so it well tenacity is a super power um resiliency and getting up and doing it every day um i mean that’s tough and especially when you work for yourself because if when you’re the only person you have to be accountable to that can either be a real good thing or.
a real bad thing so on that same note do you have is there a kryptonite that exists in your entrepreneur world um im sure there is i just trying to think of you know okay heres one just being complacent i i act like you always have nothing and that there’s always someone out there to get you is basically.
but yeah never be complacent so if you go to our website that’s good advice yeah if you get a website on the on standard insights main and about we talk about kaizon getting better each and every day because just never sitting on sitting on your laurels were always on to look out for competitors and what theyre doing oh.
theyre doing something great all right cool lets go to our website lets take a look how can we tweak things so were doing that each and every day just never sitting on our laurels so but if there was a kryptonite just never being complacent so speaking of your website and you know one of the things and youve got this in in very large font all that you need to simplify customer experience yeah what are a couple what are a couple tips you can give us about simplifying the customer experience well aside from having the software.
being easy to use in tilde but make sure any of your materials whether its the website or if you’re knocking on doors talking to people always make it about them right and the benefits and speaking their language versus um talking about the features of your product right that sounds familiar doesnt it matt yeah that’s really good advice of your product right its what can you.
do for me nobody cares yeah but once they get it once you get and were allowed because that’s a yeah that’s a like a broken record for me i always say features advantages benefits fab and just like you know people buy things that i mean there’s a number of reasons that people buy but what are those benefits and too many people get stuck on trying to sell the features and maybe.
they dont understand the advantages of the benefits but if you cant map that out about your own product then you’re in trouble so you know there’s a there’s a lot to be said there now a couple other off-the-wall questions for you here jerry do you consider yourself to be driven or obsessed probably a little bit of both its probably a you know a little bit of both and maybe not only here in the work but.
just um you know my hobbies so during my you know adult life ive uh done a handful of iron mans ive done ultramarathons ive got i got a blue belt and jiu jitsu you know at 45 well that’s not easy just because you’re fighting against guys even though you’re theyre your buds then theyre mid-20s so could a little bit of both driven and obsessed i dont think you could do those things without having both.
qualities and now i take what i do in my personal life and you know transferring it over here and to appreciate that yeah i appreciate everything you said now we end episodes of startup hustle with what we call the founders freestyle now before we get into that just one last thanks going out to crown cfo and and there’s fractional cfo services go.
to crowncfo com forward slash hustle you learn more about them now in the founders freestyle you know we go over a lot of stuff in these episodes jerry and we like to give everyone a chance to either ge basically give advice or say a couple last things on the way out the door what would you like to what would you well pass the mic around but what would you like to say to the to the hustlers out there yeah so i mentioned a little bit ago never let a good price go to waste uh doesnt mean you have to.
launch a startup but just always keep on learning just to to better yourself each and every day i mean if youve never worked out before you know walk around the block or do a 5k just do something to improve yourself each and every day and you know im 48 years old and i look at society and people are always you know fighting on you know on social media i mean you would think these the facebook fighters are you know.
theyre like elite mma you know athletes and theyre not and theyre wasting time with that so just get away from all that noise focus on bettering yourself first and then once you do that you can help people around you get better that’s it matt what do you have to say today i want to point out that you know sometimes life is interesting and the timing of things can be very interesting you know you mentioned that.
you worked on an eye order menu and it wasnt working very well um had a struggle getting traction and and didnt quite get product market fit we talked about that and all of a sudden coronavirus comes around you’re like you know what maybe now this product you know can find a better product market fit because of the the changes in the environment and um you know just pointing out sometimes you just never know.
and sometimes there’s a window of opportunity for things and sometimes you dont control that window at all um and sometimes you just have to sit around and almost wait for the window yeah or you get or you gotta you know when that windows there you gotta really execute so um i just wanna point that out that for those who are listening sometimes you just never know when your window of opportunity is gonna come along yeah i agree im going to parlay off that mat and you know that.
weve have at full scale and you have the full scale dot io to check out what we do and we work with a number of different clients and we had some in february that were on top of the world and in april were singing the blues where the ones that were singing the blues in february were all the sudden you know on top of the world so you never know when your your moments going to come i im not a big believer in luck and they say the luck is really just opportunity and.
preparation meeting at an intersection so the question is is you know are you prepared to take advantage of a situation when it comes up you know jerry talks about it and jerry i want to say i appreciate your approach like hey im going to put on my backpack and im going to go out and im going to shake 100 hands today and that’s getting harder and harder to do like in this current climate but.
that’s the way i would i i did it for years yeah but you have to be prepared so if you’re not prepared and you’re out there shaking hands and all of a sudden your opportunity comes up well guess what that’s not bad luck that’s just you not be prepared so you guys stayed on top of it and then all of a sudden you’re like wow okay this might be the right time to do stuff um you.
know and i think that that’s hard to do on many days but i want to commend you for that and then the last comment id like to make also is you know there’s a world of very interesting ai solutions out there that are coming up and um you know i dont know if standard insights is the right one for you or not but get out there and look at new stuff and new things because you know much like uh mr watson had uh had mentioned you know hes got tens.
of thousands of visitors to to the stackify site every month a simple change of one or two percent in action or or non-action can be pretty a pretty phenomenal outcome so you know if you’re not getting exactly what you want get out there and see if there’s someone that can help you do it so you know other than that jerry thanks for thanks for spending some time with us today hey thanks guys i appreciate it thanks for having me on thank you sir im gonna go figure im gonna go figure out how to get my.
how to get some ai to get my wife to order food faster now so
This episode is brought to you by Crown CFO
Check them out at:
https://www.crowncfo.com/hustle
Listen to the Startup Hustle Podcast
https://linktr.ee/startuphustle
Full Scale
https://fullscale.io
Learn About Full Scale’s Services
https://fullscale.io/our-services/
Stackify
https://stackify.com
Standard Insights
https://standardinsights.io/
iOrder
https://iorder.menu/
GigaBook
https://gigabook.com
Find us on Instagram
https://instagram.com/startuphustlepodcast
Follow us on TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@startuphustle
Matt DeCoursey’s Books
https://amazon.com/author/mattdecoursey
Mixtape the Game
https://www.mixtapethegame.com/
Suggest a Guest
https://fullscale.io/contact/