Omer (00:11.520)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
On this episode, I talk with Josh Haynham, the co founder of Interact, a SaaS platform that makes it easier for businesses to create online quizzes.
You can create a quiz to engage with your online audience or use it to generate new sales leads.
I originally interviewed Josh a couple of years ago where we discussed how he and his co founders bootstrapped their company from zero to $15,000 in monthly recurring revenue in under 10 months.
And they did that with zero outbound sales.
It was all through content marketing.
You can listen to the original interview on episodes 57 and 58.
Since then, the co founders have grown the business to over $40,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
That's almost half a million dollars a year.
So it seemed like a great time to invite him back and find out what they've been doing to keep growing.
And the interesting thing is that the content marketing that works so well for them.
When I interviewed Josh, time dried up and they had to find another way to generate traffic because the content marketing just wasn't working for them anymore.
So I hope you enjoyed this interview.
Josh, welcome to the show, man.
Josh Haynam (01:44.170)
Yeah, thanks for having me again.
Omer (01:46.010)
Yeah, appreciate it.
Yeah, I think you're the second.
Second person to have come back, so.
Josh Haynam (01:53.690)
Oh, that's awesome.
Rare company should be a trophy for
Omer (01:56.570)
that or something like that.
Josh Haynam (01:57.370)
I know, I know, right?
Omer (02:00.590)
All right, let's start with my usual icebreaker.
I want to figure out what gets you out of bed.
Do you have a favorite quote or something you can share with us?
Josh Haynam (02:09.230)
Yeah, my favorite quote is you underestimate what you can do in a year, and you overestimate what you can do in a day or vice versa.
And I just think it's so important because it just is the power of consistency, the power of getting up every day and kind of following your routines, your habits, and kind of trusting the process and knowing that you can get where you want to go.
Just focus on it for an extended period of time.
And also it helps you not freak out so much when you have a bad day.
Or let's say you don't want to get out of bed this day and you want to sleep in.
That's okay as well.
Omer (02:43.610)
Love it.
Josh Haynam (02:44.330)
Because it's really about the long term.
Omer (02:47.370)
So for people who aren't familiar with Interact, tell us a Little bit more about the product.
What does it do?
Josh Haynam (02:54.170)
Yeah, so it's a platform for making quizzes.
And when I say quizzes, it's probably what you think of at this point where it's the stuff that's on Facebook that people are sharing all the time.
What kind of coffee drink are you, Which Disney princess are you, what kind of marketer are you?
That kind of stuff.
But it's also a lead generation platform.
So our quizzes can be set up to where they capture contact information within the quiz and then you can actually filter those contacts based on which quiz outcome they get.
So their personality or how they answer particular questions.
So it's a way of doing filtering as well as going out into the world and capturing you new contacts that you can then sell to.
Omer (03:31.770)
So who is your target customer and what problem are you trying to solve for them?
Josh Haynam (03:38.170)
Yeah, so we work with a huge variety of people.
One in particular is in the retail space.
So we do work with a lot of people who sell actual products.
And the problem that we're solving for them is that it's difficult to stand out on social media.
It's difficult to make something that is really interesting that people will click on instead of whatever Kardashian's article is next to your post.
So what we do is we help them to create quizzes.
For example, what's your style, personality or what type of jewelry fits you, that kind of thing.
And then you put those out onto social media and then also on your website and then people take those quizzes and at the end of it you can recommend products as well as capture an email so you can do follow ups.
Omer (04:20.790)
Now when we spoke last time, I guess it was back in 2015, you'd been in business for just over a year and as I mentioned earlier, you guys have gone from 0 to $15,000 MRR in under 10 months.
One of the things that I remember about our conversation and the whole story of Interact was what you'd been doing with content marketing.
And there were a couple of things there.
One was you.
You often hear that, you know, content marketing takes a long time to get going, to start building up traffic and a following and Even getting to 15k monthly recurring revenue in 10 months is quite a feat with just content marketing.
Usually it requires some kind of jumpstart, like, you know, doing outbound sales, which you guys weren't doing.
The other thing I remember about our conversation was that you had written countless number of posts and nothing seemed to be working for for a long time until you sort of cracked the code with one particular article that you wrote.
So let's just, you know, I don't want to kind of repeat the whole conversation that we had back a couple of years ago, but for people who haven't heard that interview, just tell us a little bit about what happened and how you came up with that one blog post that helped you get the breakthrough.
Josh Haynam (06:04.320)
Yeah.
So the backstory on that was we had no luck reaching out to people initially in terms of trying to get customers.
So we did.
We did do the traditional stuff like reach out to your potential customers and see if you can get them on board as your beta users or whatever.
We didn't hear back from anyone.
So I started doing content.
And at first it was a lot of generic stuff.
I remember distinctly doing a 72 blog post ideas article that took me weeks.
And then I published it and got a bunch of traffic.
But nobody signed up for our product because it's a quiz product and blog post.
That's a completely different strategy.
So that doesn't even make any sense.
I did the same thing for long time, and it was actually around the 100th article that I finally had a realization that if I'm going to reach anybody who's actually going to buy our product, I've got to write stuff that's very particular to what we do.
So I switched over to how to make quizzes as my theme.
Like how to make quizzes, how to make personality quizzes, how to make all sorts of different kinds of quizzes.
And that article in particular, how to make a personality Quiz, was the one that broke us through.
And then I started to write articles that were similar to that.
And that's the way in which we actually got all of our initial customers.
And some of those initial customers were huge brands like the American Red Cross and Forbes and Red Lobster signed up because they read those things.
So it was that switch into a very niche market that ended up helping us break through.
Omer (07:37.940)
How do you keep going?
When you said you've written 100 articles and nothing seems to be working, why didn't you just stop and try something else?
Josh Haynam (07:51.620)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of parts to that.
The biggest part is that you have to make the focus not beyond the success.
The focus has to be on how do I get better at this thing that I'm working on.
And, you know, I've always been a curious person.
I've always been somebody that likes to learn.
And so for me to be learning something is really fascinating.
And during that time, I was learning about the world of blogging and content marketing and getting connected with people like Rand Fishkin from Moz and other folks in that genre.
And that was super interesting to me.
So that's the number one reason that I was hooked in.
The number two reason that I was able to keep going was that I wasn't overly stressed financially because we were still doing some consulting work on the side.
Part of that time I was in college.
And then we did start getting some customers.
So I think in order to keep going in the long run, when something's not taking off, you have to first really enjoy the learning process and second, be financially okay.
Not like, you know, rolling in it or anything, but you have to be okay because I think it can be overly stressful.
If you're, if you're up against a wall trying to make money and also trying to learn something new, that's not a good situation.
So you got to have those two things.
Omer (09:17.770)
Okay, so let's kind of talk about what's been happening since then.
So a couple of years later, you've gone from 15k mrr to 40,000.
Over $40,000, you're still bootstrapped, self funded business.
What have you been doing in that time?
And before we get into what worked, tell me about something that hasn't worked.
Josh Haynam (09:49.100)
Yeah, so this one is a bit shameful because I mentioned at the beginning we had reached out to people trying to directly go to our custom and we got no responses.
For some reason I thought that would be a good idea.
Basically what happened was we wrote those initial articles that actually worked.
So the first ones that were getting customers about making personality quizzes and that kind of stuff.
But then that started to dry up.
It was such a niche that once I had written 100 articles that were very specific to what we did, the 50 to 100 got us basically nothing additional.
The first 50 were getting all the customers and the next 50 weren't reaching anybody new.
And so I was searching for what to do next and landed right back on outbound sales.
And that did not work.
You know, what we do with quizzes is something that's brand new to everyone we work with.
I have never spoken with somebody that's like, oh, I'm a quiz expert, I know exactly what to do.
Nobody.
When you approach somebody cold and say, hey, you can use a quiz for marketing, first you have to have this conversation about what the heck does that even mean?
And you almost never get past that.
If you do, then somebody up the chain in that company is going to be like, this is a dumb idea.
Trying to introduce something through outbound sales is something that I have found for this company does not work.
And I was pretty stubborn about that.
I'm a generally stubborn person, but that lasted like a year plus.
And we actually hired and then had to let go four different people on sales because I kept thinking that, oh, it's the people, it's the process, it's whatever.
We'll try it with a new person and a new process and this is going to work.
So I can't say it's typical.
I guess it does happen in startups from time to time, but that's something that did happen with us and it's not a great thing to look back on.
It's kind of frustrating to realize how much time and money and kind of emotional energy I was wasting trying to go back to this strategy that was never going to work and never did work.
I don't know if it ever will for us, but, yeah, that did not work.
Omer (12:21.360)
Did you think in the back of your mind that maybe sales was just like the content marketing?
That maybe after you'd done the hundredth post or the hundredth call or whatever, that you'd get a breakthrough?
Is that maybe one thing that kept you going for so long to try and make this work?
Josh Haynam (12:41.370)
Yeah, that's definitely part of it.
The other part of it is that we did make a sale from time to time, but the ROI was vastly negative.
You'd spend 10 times as much money on people and tools as you would on what you actually made back.
There was some success.
Very, very little.
Then also that aspect of, okay, well, I've done this with content marketing.
Maybe it's just around the next corner, it's just around the next bend and you just got to keep going with it.
There are times in business, just like with the content market, where that is absolutely true.
And if you give up halfway through, that's the same as never starting because you don't get anywhere in the first half.
It's the second half that really breaks you through.
And that was part of what kept me trying at it.
But it was not the same scenario.
Omer (13:31.110)
So why is it that sales didn't work?
What do you think were some of the takeaways from you from that experience?
Josh Haynam (13:38.230)
I can kind of speak to that.
From both sales that we ended up making and sales that we didn't make, sales that we ended up up making.
The process would go essentially, you hook one person in from an organization and the way that happens is a very long conversation about how a quiz works for marketing, mainly focused on other companies in the same space as that target prospect that are doing quizzes.
So you have a very long conversation, then they're like, oh, this is interesting.
I'll pull in my colleagues.
Then you have a very long conversation with the colleagues.
So you do that.
And then if you are going to make a sale, you have another very long conversation with the rest of the team and or technical people talking through how this works.
And all of this is just about how it works.
None of it is about how it actually benefits the organization.
And so if somebody higher up didn't then veto it, you would make the sale.
But all you've been talking about is how it works.
You haven't even talked about how it's going to be used.
So then you've got to jump into how it's going to be used.
You have another series of three or four calls and the odds are that it never actually gets implemented.
So that's kind of how it would go even if you made the sale.
If you didn't make the sale, what would happen is you get on the phone with somebody that is like, oh, that's interesting.
I wonder what you're talking about with those quizzes.
Like, maybe I've seen those around.
Usually not even that.
Those conversations would really just be a questioning conversation of what do you mean by using quizzes for marketing?
How does that connect with my systems?
Where do I share it?
How do I use this?
And you'd go through that and they would be intrigued by how that works, but in no world ready to plop down a credit card and buy it.
So you were basically just spending all that time educating somebody on a new idea which they then didn't want to buy.
Omer (15:33.740)
What was your kind of ballpark, lifetime customer value at the time?
Josh Haynam (15:42.340)
Yeah, we had raised our prices up a little bit.
So lifetime value is in the thousands.
So reasonable for sales.
Had the numbers worked out like we were in the ltv where you could afford to do outbound sales if it worked.
Omer (16:01.300)
But it sounded like it was a very.
It doesn't seem like it should have been such a lengthy process just having to explain so many meetings just to explain what it does or how it works.
Josh Haynam (16:15.260)
Yeah, exactly.
Omer (16:16.140)
It's a quiz, come on.
Josh Haynam (16:18.140)
It always got stuck there and you would get into the weeds and there's really no coming back from that in my book.
I think you can sell a solution, but you can't necessarily sell an idea to somebody.
Omer (16:34.440)
Okay.
So you kind of kept going for about a year.
I know you, you call that the.
The year of failed sales?
Josh Haynam (16:46.840)
Yeah.
Omer (16:47.720)
What, at what point did you decide enough was enough and you had to try something else?
Josh Haynam (16:54.200)
Yeah, the point where that happened was actually when I took a break.
I went on vacation right around this time last year.
I disconnected.
I was in Morocco, so I was in Northern Africa.
And there was really no reception anywhere.
And it was also on the other side of the world.
So the option of checking in on things was pretty much off the table.
And so for a week or two, I was really forced to stop just trying to go after the same thing I was going after for so long and actually think about it from an outside perspective.
And being in a different place is a great way to think about things from an outside perspective.
So I did that.
And towards the end of that time, I was vacationing with my brother and his wife and we were all talking and it just kind of became very clear to me and also to them hearing all my stories that I was trying to do something that was not working.
And for the first time, I actually address that head on.
I've always been the type to, if something's not working, there's a solution, there's a way to fix this.
Right.
But in this case, it came to a point where, no, there's actually no way to fix this.
And not only that, but trying to continue doing the same thing is really dragging me down.
And it's not good for my psyche or my morale or the team, which was really small at the time, still, it's not good for any of that.
And so coming back, I cut it off.
I let go our salesperson we had at the time and didn't do anything immediately, but that's kind of where it happened, was taking that break and looking back and thinking, wow, it's been over a year, we're not making any progress on this.
It's not good for my creativity, my morale, any of those things.
And something has to change.
So that's where it kind of got sparked.
Omer (18:56.130)
And then you went back to content marketing again, but you took a different approach this time.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Josh Haynam (19:07.410)
Yeah.
So the way that that came about, so I came back, right?
And first of all, we hired Jane, who is our head of operations now, and handed over all the day to day operations to her.
So answering customer inquiries, doing demos, all that kind of stuff.
So then I wasn't doing anything day to day, and I had some time to think about what to do next.
And I actually stumbled upon an article about Adidas and how Adidas does influencer marketing by sending shoes to thousands of people around the world every time they launch a new product.
And those people are influencers who have 1,000 plus followers on Instagram.
Then they post the pictures of the shoes, and it's a huge driver of sales, like a massive amount, which I never thought about, but it makes total sense now.
So I knew that.
And then I also knew that these very, very specific articles about how to use quizzes for lead generation do super well if they're put in front of an audience.
But Google doesn't have much of an audience to give because nobody knows about this idea, so they're not searching for it.
But if we pair that with influencers, then maybe that will work.
And that's what I did.
I started reaching out to anybody in the marketing space, any sort of blogger, and offering them our tool, just like Adidas offers people's shoes.
And in return, they would write an article that's basically exactly the same as the ones that I used to write that got us our first customers, but they posted on their blog, and then it reaches a new audience that's not just whoever's searching for it, reaches people to follow them.
And that worked.
So basically, the majority of our growth, I mean, last time we spoke, we were at about 15K.
Now we're over 40.
The majority of that growth has come in 2017, 2016, and the remainder of 2015 after we spoke, there was not much growth, and most of it has come in the last 11 months.
Omer (21:10.720)
Okay, great.
So let's talk a little bit more about that.
So the idea of influencer marketing is pretty straightforward, that you're reaching out to people who have their own audience or followers, and you're getting them to talk about your product in whatever way.
Right.
Whether it's a blog post or podcast or whatever.
So first question for you is, how did you figure out who were the influences that you were going to go after?
Like, there might be somebody who has a really popular blog, but none of their followers or audience are ever going to be interested in paying for a product that creates quizzes?
Right.
So did you.
Did you worry a lot about that and try to sort of figure out who were the right influences, or was it just, let's just go out there and just get as many people on board as we can and sort of figure it out as we go along?
Josh Haynam (22:19.020)
Yeah, right, right.
That's a super good question, because we actually did play around with this, and we tried reaching out to lots of different people, travel bloggers, food bloggers, all that kind of stuff.
And what, what came up was the exact same problem that we had with doing sales.
The influencers that we actually work with, and we target them very specifically now are people that are already trying the latest thing and they want to be on the cutting edge.
They want to be the one experimenting with a new tool, with a new idea.
The way that we look for that is by looking at the other content that they post or whether they're working with any of our partners.
So we have technical partners who are email marketing programs and stuff like that.
If these bloggers have already reviewed, let's say, ConvertKit, that's a perfect connection for us to then partner with that person as well.
It ended up being the same problem.
And it kind of reared its head again, where if we reached out to a travel blogger and they never heard of using quizzes for marketing, we're not going to convince.
Even though they're a partner and they're getting the product for free, it still doesn't work.
Which is crazy.
You can't even convince somebody to do something for free if they've never heard of it and they're not bought in.
So we focus a lot on people that want to experiment with new things and get excited about that rather than needing to be convinced.
And that's what we do.
Omer (23:46.880)
Got it.
And then once you had identified these people, how would you, how would you kind of reach out to them and just tell me a little bit about how the conversation would go?
Josh Haynam (24:01.590)
We use a pretty standard email that we customize to reach out to the bloggers.
And it really asks about, hey, we have this partnership that we're offering.
You get to use our tool.
What we ask in return is that you do a blog post, but it's not required.
If you don't like the tool or it doesn't work out for you, no problem, you can still use the tool.
And so we kind of left it very casual.
And the people that did respond, the conversations mainly start with just discussing a quiz idea, something that might work for their business, because we want them to use it first so they can actually write about how they used it and what the process was like and all those types of things.
So the conversation is very consultative.
It's really about, here's an idea that I have for your site and what we can do with it.
Let's talk about that.
Let's get you set up, let's get all this stuff running and then it becomes really easy.
If they get it set up and it actually works for them and they're getting their own list to grow, then they'll obviously write about it and talk about the whole process and all that stuff.
So that's pretty much how we do it.
Omer (25:04.900)
Did you kind of like lay out any requirements in terms of what you expected people to kind of produce in terms of coverage for it, in terms of how long a blog post should be or what kind of format, or did that matter much to you at the time?
Josh Haynam (25:22.650)
We don't require anything.
We rather give examples.
At first I was giving examples of my own articles and saying, hey, this is what I'm looking for.
Then now, since we have several hundred of these blog posts floating around there from our partners, we'll just reference a few of those and say, hey, this is what we're looking for.
Just so you know what to expect.
This is what we expect from our end.
So that is kind of the way we go about it.
Omer (25:49.730)
Did you give these influencers, did you put them on some sort of affiliate program?
Or were they just really just recommending the product based on the experience of using it, or was it both?
Josh Haynam (26:02.770)
It's both.
We have an affiliate program.
It's optional.
So some people don't even opt to use it if they don't feel like it's the perfect fit for their audience.
They'll just do the post and then it's just a blog post about using quizzes.
Others will use the affiliate program and they'll have a link that's in there, that's in a promoted link and they'll link from that when they do their blog post.
It's really optional.
I'd say it's like 50, 50.
Half of them use the affiliate link, the other half don't bother.
Omer (26:32.830)
How long would you give them the product for free?
Like if somebody wrote a blog post, did they have it for forever?
Josh Haynam (26:41.270)
Yeah.
Yes, they do.
They do have access to it forever.
And then they become part of our insiders network as well.
So part of what we always have to work on is making our product more explanatory.
Because as we reach more people, we're getting even more people who have never heard of Quizizz using it.
So it's a very interesting world and that as we grow, we're reaching more people.
But they all are doing this for the first time.
So those partners help us create our product in a way that's much more in line with somebody who's never done quizzes before.
Because our team can no longer understand that we can't go back because we've done so many of them.
At this point, we can't even fathom what it's like to be doing it for the first time.
So we use that network as a way of improving our own user experience.
Omer (27:33.780)
And I guess it's not just about getting them to write a blog post.
It's probably more important to develop a relationship, because then as you continue to evolve the product and release new features and things like that, you can keep going back to these people, and then there's always additional opportunities for them to go back to their audiences and tell them more about the product.
Josh Haynam (27:58.630)
Yeah, exactly.
And a lot of the referrals that come in are not even from the blog post.
They're actually people talking to each other.
They'll be in a mastermind group or they'll be meeting in person, and that's what actually prompts the other person to give it a try.
So that's kind of the long game, is that we've got now thousands of people out there who are advocates, and every time they're talking with other marketing people, you know, and they get into different subjects of what they're doing, the quizzes come up and then we get recommended.
So it is a very long game.
Omer (28:32.650)
What type of objections did you get from people when you were trying to get them on board to.
To look at the product, promote the product?
What were some of the.
The typical pushback that you got?
Josh Haynam (28:51.140)
Yeah, the biggest one we get, and we still get it, is that this is just not a fit for my audience, which is very interesting because the quizzes are on Facebook all the time.
And I think there's a mental disconnect between the fact that everybody takes quizzes and my audience won't like quizzes, which are.
Those are not mutually exclusive.
So you can do both.
It's very interesting that a lot of website owners, bloggers, and marketers somehow think that their audience is not something that would like taking quizzes.
But I talked to so many people about quizzes, and they're like, oh, well, I don't tell people this, but I take those quizzes online.
I'm like, I know.
Everybody does.
So I think there's still.
I'd call it maybe a stigma, I would call it a resistance in some sense, of marketers and people who run blogs and websites not getting that a quiz is not some gimmicky thing, but it's rather entertainment marketing.
And entertainment marketing is something that works.
It works really.
Really well, and it's much cheaper than traditional marketing, but there's still a stigma there.
So over time, that's already starting to dissipate, but it's something that takes a very long time to develop.
Omer (30:10.810)
Now, another thing that helped you to grow the product was actually focusing more on the product and the user experience.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Josh Haynam (30:25.130)
Yeah.
So what we do, and it's not something that most people do, and it's very painstaking, is we will do the same thing where we offer somebody to use our product for free.
But the catch is we have to be able to do a screen share the first time you use it.
And we will watch you and talk to you, obviously, as you're going through the process.
And these calls can be up to two and a half hours long.
And I still do them myself.
Other people on my team do them as well.
And we watch people as they go through the process.
Where are they getting stuck?
What's difficult?
Which parts do they understand?
Well, which things can they not find?
All that kind of stuff.
And we pair that with an internal dashboard that we have that tracks how people are progressing through our app and where they get stuck on average, all those types of things.
And we use those two things in conjunction.
The anecdotal where we're watching people and the overall where we see the statistics to incrementally improve the user experience of our app.
Because we have all the features that people need, we've got all the customization, all that kind of stuff.
Our issue is that people still have never done this before.
And that's not changed when we started.
Nobody had ever done this before.
Even now, nobody's ever done this before, but there's just a lot more people now.
So it's very difficult to kind of take something that's brand new and explain it to everybody individually.
And so that's where we do just a ton of time talking with people, watching the experience and then improving it.
Omer (32:03.110)
How do you get these people on board?
Where do you find them?
Josh Haynam (32:07.110)
All over the Internet, bloggers, different retail brands, all that kind of stuff.
And we just approach them kind of doing this offer similar to our partner offer, but it's in return for kind of a user experience study.
They'll get to be able to use the tool.
Omer (32:24.110)
And how do you.
What is there a particular tool that you use to watch them?
Or you just screen share over Skype, or how do you do it?
Josh Haynam (32:33.230)
Yeah, we use Join Me most of the time.
That way we can switch it over and then also record the session if they're okay with it.
And then our whole team can go back and watch those.
It's almost like a basketball team watching film.
We're watching people use our site and seeing where we can improve.
So yeah, we just use Join me.
Omer (32:51.720)
So it's kind of like, you know, building your own sort of usability lab and kind of recruiting these people and watching them.
Now a lot of people probably wouldn't do that.
Right.
They might kind of go down a different route, which would be, let's get the team together, sit in a room without any customers and figure out how to improve the product.
And I'm not knocking that because I've done that a lot.
And then the other thing would be to maybe figure out, okay, what are the tracking tools and sort of analytics and click tracking and all of those things that we can build into the product, which is going to help us figure out how people are using it, where they're getting stuck, etc.
But it seems to me what you're doing is kind of a much simpler way to solve that problem.
Let's just find customers, let's just sit with them, even if it's virtually, and let's figure out, you know, how easy or hard it is to use our product.
Josh Haynam (34:07.110)
Yeah.
And you know, we've done both of those other things and I think over the last few months in particular, I feel I've been kind of smacked in the face by how the best word I can come up with is dumb in terms of my ability to communicate with people who have not used our product before.
I think my team is in the same place because we are so entrenched in building it, we're so entrenched in the logistics of it and how to make it the most efficient as possible so we can handle a bunch of users that we completely forgot how to translate that over to somebody who's experiencing this thing for the very first time.
And so at this point, I actually don't even.
I stop myself from making any plans or talking with any of my team members unless it is immediately following or during or just before a call with a customer where we're actually talking through and watching them use it because we are so bad at going back into that headspace of doing this for the first time.
And anything we do on our own is going to be counterintuitive to the way that it should be set up because we're not thinking about it as a first time quiz builder and a first time user.
We're Thinking about it as somebody who's done this a bunch of times and understands all of the ins and outs and is just trying to do it as quickly as possible.
So we have to actively not do either of those first two things.
Omer (35:44.030)
So give me one example of something in the user experience that none of you guys, nobody in your team had figured out was an issue.
But when you talk to a customer, it was blindingly obvious that there was a problem there.
Josh Haynam (36:06.800)
Yeah, there's one that's a bit embarrassing at this point.
Omer (36:11.120)
Oh, good.
Josh Haynam (36:11.760)
When you jump into our build.
Yeah, when you jump into our builder the first time, it presents you with the first page of the quiz, which makes decent sense.
I mean, there needs to be some more explanation on there.
But people get that for the most part.
It's like, okay, this is the COVID of the quiz.
I should put in the title and an image and that kind of stuff.
But then there's no button for what to do next.
And there's a sidebar menu, which we've done this so many times.
We're like, oh, yeah.
Well, then you go to the results, but there's no button that says to do that.
And I was sitting on implementation calls, and people would get through the first screen and be like, all right, now what?
And I'm like, wow, I feel like such an idiot right now.
Unless you've been in here before or why would you know to go to that sidebar and click on a different part of it and go to the next thing?
You got to have some sort of prompt that says, all right, you're done.
Move on to the next step.
So that is one in particular that's pretty bad, looking back on it.
But it's just one of those things that you don't think about when you've done it thousands of times yourself.
You just run through the process without even taking a second to stop.
Omer (37:24.490)
So that's one thing I really like about you, Josh, is that you look at these situations, these problems with the user experience or whatever, and you kind of say to yourself, I'm the one who's stupid.
I'm the one who should have figured this out and done it better or differently, whereas it's lot easier.
And I've seen a lot of people do this when there's a problem with the product.
No, no, the user is stupid, because they should be able to figure this out.
So let's get a smarter user in there.
So, yeah, I just think that's a great trait to have in any person or any.
Especially any Kind of leader in any kind of organization.
And the other thing that I really like about you is your transparency and the fact that you come and you're willing to talk and spend just as much time about the things that didn't work, the things that you failed on, as much as the things that worked and were successful.
And you had said to me, well, the transparency, there are kind of good sides to being transparent, and there are also some downsides to that.
So I want to kind of talk a little bit about that.
Josh Haynam (38:50.030)
Yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, first, on the upside, I think it does get us some exposure.
It's kind of negligible on how much that actually translates to customers.
But the bigger thing is that I always think of a younger version of myself.
And it's funny because I actually have brothers who are 10 years younger than me, so they kind of are a younger version of myself.
And I just wish somebody had been more.
More open about the actual experience of starting and running a company and what to do when you run into problems and what to do when you're having a hard time with it.
Because there's so many shows and things about success and everybody's just flaunting how great they are, and they never talk about the realities of it in the day to day and what that looks like.
And so it's been amazing.
I've gotten a good number of notes from people at this point, just kind of saying thank you for being open about stuff.
And that means a lot to me because if I had had somebody that was a bit more transparent as I was kind of going through the process for the first time, I think I could have saved a good amount of pain in doing things the wrong way or agonizing over things that weren't actually important, that kind of stuff.
So that's why I do it.
The drawback is that I do share everything and I don't really hold back on anything.
I'm actually talking about the real issues that we're facing and the real problems that we're solving and how we're solving them.
And we're also very open with that on our blog, writing blog posts and sharing screenshots of our product and how to set certain things up and what the negative side of that is, that you will get competitors who then take all of that and reconstruct your product.
This has happened to us two times in the last 14 months where we have had agencies, influencers, take what we've done, replicate it, and then sell it to their audience.
And they've Already got an audience built in, either as an agency or as an influencer.
And they have gone as far as using screenshots of our product, both on their blog and in their marketing materials.
Omer (41:07.180)
This was an actual screenshot of Interact?
Josh Haynam (41:10.860)
Yes.
Actually of Interact on their websites as examples of how to do whatever it is they were talking about how to do.
It's.
It's insane.
It's.
It's something that.
That I would never do, you know, that's.
It's just.
It's cheating.
Omer (41:31.420)
And this isn't some teenager sitting in a bedroom saying, yeah, I can build that, so I'm just going to go and build it and copy some stuff.
These are people who are influencers who.
Who are running businesses, right?
Josh Haynam (41:54.580)
Yeah.
Yeah.
The two in particular are real businesses at this point.
They both have probably more employees than we do.
And it's just funny.
In our Slack channel, we will share these screenshots of their product using our exact stuff.
Like, for example, we built this whole analytics system, and Connor, one of our engineers, made it from scratch.
He was like, oh, these colors would look good and I'll make the graphs like this and all that stuff.
And then we saw a presentation video from one of these competitors with the exact same analytics.
And this is something that he just made up.
It's not like he was using some boilerplate analytics system, like he created it.
And it's actually not that great.
We're redoing it right now because it's not intuitive.
But this other company had used it verbatim without changing a single thing.
So that's the kind of stuff that ends up happening when you're open with what you're doing.
Omer (42:52.710)
Does that make you want to hold back with what you share?
Josh Haynam (42:59.350)
No.
I think if I've learned anything is that you are really just competing against yourself.
Our biggest challenge right now is making our product easier to understand.
It's not that somebody is comparing us head to head against the competitor and we keep losing out.
It's that when somebody comes on and they don't know what to do every step of the way, they're going to get confused and decide it's not worth their time.
So I always feel as if it's always a battle against yourself to keep getting better and keep improving both your product and your marketing strategy and your onboarding strategy, all those things, rather than, oh, we got to make sure nobody is doing the same stuff as us now.
The one thing I do kind of wish for was that we had a real competitor.
And by that, I Mean somebody who was kind of figuring out what to do next.
Because what tends to happen at least the last couple of years is we'll kind of agonize over problem, come up with a solution, implement it, and then two months later, all of our competitors are doing the same thing.
It would be really cool if we had somebody that we were going back and forth with where they solve one problem, then we build our own version of it.
We solve a problem, they build a version of it.
We had somebody to truly compete with where you're both getting better.
Whereas what's happening now is they take whatever we have and then they put some marketing behind it and go out and sell it, rather than actually trying to solve the problems on their own.
Omer (44:37.860)
I wonder, I mean, what is the best way to deal with that?
I mean, I think it's a great attitude to have in terms of what you said.
You're just competing against yourself.
And in many ways, I think you have to ignore some of this stuff that's going on.
If there aren't other means available, whether it's legal or whatever, to.
To try and address those.
Josh Haynam (44:58.820)
Yeah, I mean, I think the best way to win out in the end is just to not ever be able to be defeated.
If somebody is never going to give up, then you can't beat them.
Right.
So I think that's kind of the stance that I've taken, is that we can keep improving, we can keep getting better, and so it really doesn't matter.
And we've already seen competitors come and go.
You know, they've come, copied all our stuff and then ended up failing.
And we've been around for just over four years in total, and that's already happened in that amount of time.
So I expect it to continue happening where as we keep improving and getting better, whereas other folks are just kind of staying the same, we will keep moving forward and we will find new success and new paths and kind of forge our own path as we go.
And in that sense, it doesn't matter who's copying what and what competitor is doing which thing, because if we keep moving forward, we will keep growing.
Omer (46:02.780)
And it's a good lesson.
And it's just not about the product.
Right.
Anyone can look at a product and say, wow, those guys are making money.
I'm going to build this because I can.
But just because you can build a product doesn't mean you can build a business or a successful business.
Josh Haynam (46:21.410)
Yeah, exactly.
There's so much to it.
And you can't just put together a great marketing campaign and get people to buy something and expect that to be a real business.
A business lasts over time.
There's ups and downs.
There's ebbs and flows.
There are big problems to be solved.
If you're not actually solving problems and you're not practicing solving problems, and by practice, I mean doing it and then getting feedback on it, which is exactly what you do when you are building a product for customers, then you're not actually getting better at any of those things.
When the tides turn and all of a sudden your marketing campaign stops working, you don't know what to do because you've never figured it out before.
That's where I don't mind as much.
Obviously, it's irksome when we lose somebody to a competitor that has the same product as us, because it is.
But at the same time, if we keep practicing ourselves at getting better on user experience and marketing and sales and onboarding and product, then we'll be okay.
We'll make it through, and we will have learned a heck of a lot along the way rather than just kind of ripping off something and making a quick buck.
Omer (47:37.910)
That's a great way to think about it.
All right, let's get on to the lightning round.
I'm going to ask.
Well, you know the drill, man.
Okay, so what's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Josh Haynam (47:50.870)
Best piece of advice is to take a beat.
Everything always seems like the end of the world, but nothing is because the world's still here.
So take a beat when something is really rough and take a second to think it over.
Omer (48:04.050)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Josh Haynam (48:08.050)
Yeah, so hopefully I won't say the same one I said last time, but it's the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
I think it's got great life advice in terms of networking and marketing and just connecting with others, which is the most important part of business.
Omer (48:22.930)
Yeah, that's a classic.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Josh Haynam (48:29.890)
Persistence.
I think if I ever get a tattoo, which I'm thinking about, then it will be the word persist, because there's so many times when you just have to kind of keep going, and that's the key.
Omer (48:42.050)
Dude, you are the poster child for persistence with your stories of 100 blog posts and the year of failed sales.
Josh Haynam (48:49.890)
Yep.
Yep.
Omer (48:51.810)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool?
Or habit?
Josh Haynam (48:57.130)
Yeah, so I'm going to cheat, and it's neither.
Well, I guess it's habit, so that's not cheating.
It is Prayer.
I'm a Christian guy, and so meditation is the similar thing.
Prayer.
Meditation is really what grounds me.
Omer (49:10.330)
And you do that every day?
Josh Haynam (49:12.810)
Every day right after I wake up.
Omer (49:15.290)
Sweet.
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Josh Haynam (49:22.650)
Yeah, that's a good question.
I want to open a pizza shop and also a gym.
Why?
Because those are two of my favorite things.
A pizza shop and a gym.
Because you got to have the gym for being in shape, and you got to have the pizza because it's delicious.
Omer (49:41.770)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Josh Haynam (49:47.690)
Interesting fact.
I run 1,000 miles a year, which is quite a lot.
Wow.
Yeah.
Omer (49:55.560)
Is that just like.
Do you run in races or events or.
It's just.
You just.
It just builds up from daily.
Weekly running?
Josh Haynam (50:03.160)
Yeah, daily.
Weekly running.
You know, four or five miles a day on most weekdays.
And it just adds up.
You know, you get to 100, 120 miles a month and just kind of turns into a thousand miles a year.
Wow.
Omer (50:17.640)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work, apart from pizza?
Josh Haynam (50:24.780)
Yeah, I would say there's a couple of things.
Being outside, which is just kind of being in nature, and then also that's connected to my other one, which is just my faith.
Omer (50:36.140)
That's awesome.
You know, I think the nature thing, I've talked to a few people about this, and it's not something that a lot of people talk about, but I was never into nature.
Josh Haynam (50:51.190)
Right.
Omer (50:52.470)
But for the last few years, it's something that I do a lot more.
And I find that the more I get away from technology and spend more time just in the outdoors, the more better, I think, and the better ideas I come up with.
Josh Haynam (51:10.310)
Yeah, I totally agree.
Omer (51:12.550)
And I think there's some science behind there somewhat.
Josh Haynam (51:15.670)
There's gotta be.
There's gotta be.
I mean, it's just so.
It's so clearing of the head to be in a space where there's so much beautiful stuff around and you're not around technology, you're offline, that kind of thing.
I love it.
Omer (51:31.910)
Now, one thing we're gonna have to do.
Well, first of all, I think you have a great story, and I love how we've been able to pick up from the conversation we had a couple of years ago and you' you know, come back and helped us to, you know, continue to see the ups and downs that you've had.
But the, you know, how in the long term, you're continuing to make great progress and continue to grow the business.
And I think based on what I've seen with this business and what I've learned about you, I know I'm confident that that is going to continue to happen.
So I think we should agree now to set a date for when you guys hit a million dollars a year.
Let's have you back.
Josh Haynam (52:15.180)
Sounds, that sounds good.
I love it.
Omer (52:17.260)
That would be a great, great, you know, time for us to have a follow up conversation and.
Josh Haynam (52:21.900)
Yeah.
Omer (52:22.420)
And see, you know, what's been going on.
Now if people want to check out Interact, they can go to try interact.com and if they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Josh Haynam (52:40.700)
Yeah, so I am on all the socials, so Twitter Haynam, I'm on LinkedIn.
You can search for Josh Haynum.
I'm the only Josh Haynum in the world.
So you will find me.
And those are the main ones, I guess.
Omer (52:54.700)
Awesome, Josh, thanks again.
I wish you all the best and look forward to having that conversation when you hit the big one.
Josh Haynam (53:03.980)
Thanks again.
Yeah, thanks man.
Thanks for having me back.
Omer (53:06.540)
Cheers.
