Spilling the Beans on Being a Boss | Tom Fitzgerald, Vancouver Coffee Snob

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Bits and Bytes. Today we have a special guest, Tom Fitzgerald. Tom, I'll let you quickly introduce yourself. Sorry, go ahead.

Thanks for having me on. No, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. My name is Tom Fitzgerald, as you said. I am, I guess, on two things. I have a secret identity which is a quote unquote anonymous. Not so much anymore. Coffee blogger. I run a website called Vancouver coffeesnob.com and a spin off company that is now my full time gig, which is called Ciply, which is a mobile app that curates the best coffee shops in Vancouver and saves you a ton of money inside them when you use it to buy drinks.

And now, Tom, I think you have a very special cup here with you on that show. Just quickly show our guests that are watching on YouTube.

Total coincidence that I decided to use this for this specific podcast.

But yeah, you gotta plug when you gotta plug though, right?

Totally, yeah. Vancouver coffeesnob.com, the most illiterate coffee blog on the Internet that just got really popular.

I mean, speaking of cool cups, like, I think Sam, I'm not sure if you have one over there.

Oh, I mean, you can go first, I'll go after.

I mean, I don't really have a cool story to this, to be honest. Like, I just.

It's awesome though.

What. What am I looking at?

It's. So the cat itself is called Pusheen. Have you guys. I think it originated.

I've seen a Pusheen at Indigo.

Yeah, no, it looked crazy. Like the artist started doing the emoticons on Facebook and I think that's where it just like exploded because then it turned into, you know, like plushies. It turned into T shirts, like stickers. Like it's a total. Like they even have lamps now. It's really.

And that's. That's where Gene Savings account goes, I think. I think they have emojis, like official ones on Facebook messenger too, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, yeah. So I know my stuff, darling of the world.

My cup is a Jam Cafe cup. For those of you that are listening to this and. Oh, focus in whatever. It's really interesting. So my wife's name starts with J and then obviously I'm Sam. So like a lot of our close friends call us Jam. But this cup, like Tom worked out of our launch offices so he knows how close by Jam Cafe is. But. But the first Jam Cafe was actually in Victoria before it expanded over to Gastown. And my parents happened to be like on vacation in. In Victoria. And they found Jam Cafe. They didn't know, like, there's a lot bit of hype around, like, brunch places. Right. But they didn't know any of that. Cause. Cause, you know, they just walked in and then they're like, hey, cool. Like, I think my son would like this. So she asked the waitress if she could buy two cups, and they were like, yeah, sure, 10 bucks each and every. That's the story. I didn't steal these cups.

I was just gonna say, like, I didn't know they stole those cups.

They don't, but I think they were just like, well, I guess. Sure.

I guess every other cup in your cupboard is stolen, just not those two specific ones.

I mean, like, I got an awful lot of launch cups, so that's where they're all going. No comment. But I think a great place to start is Tom, what are you drinking? And it's coffee for those listeners.

So I actually brought the bag down with me. You sent me an email just before this podcast kicked off and said, oh, I hope it's a geisha. And I was like, ah, damn it, I know I've got to go make myself a geisha. So it is actually. I mean, so let's see if we can kind of get rid of my face there. So this is from Pallet Coffee Roasters. And you'll see it's actually geisha, not geisha. Gesha is just the. The cultivar, the village or whatever. Kind of depends on who you're talking to that time of day kind of thing. But it is a exceptionally floral coffee. It's like I described it as like drinking a bunch of flowers, which, unless you know about floral coffee, that actually sounds pretty disgusting. But it tastes like coffee, just with a very floral kind of tea like, quality to it. But it's. It's pretty special.

So if I have a cup of Timmy's and I chew on a rose, it's that similar.

I haven't ever tried that. I'm gonna assume, like, if you were to drink oil from a car, from a very, very old car, and also flowers as well, do you think that it would taste floral or do you think that it would taste like shitty old oil? Not that I'm insinuating that Tim Hortons coffee is shitty old oil. Disservice to shitty old.

You're just burning bridges five minutes into the show.

I mean, I don't think there is a bridge between me and Tim Hortons. I've been very vocal about how I dislike that coffee.

Yeah. So Many Canadians are up in arms right now just listening to this.

Yeah, that's, I guess tune out. It's only going to get worse.

I was going to ask you what are your thoughts then on other fast food coffees? Have you ever tried them? Because I know like McDonald's, I heard, you know, people are, you know, pretty happy with McDonald's coffee. I personally can't really tell it. To me it's just like caffeine. But you know, what do you think? Like McDonald's rating out of 10? Let's just say for like a fast food coffee level, not, you know, artisanal.

But I mean for fast food coffee, I'd give it a two. I just don't, I don't think there is any good fast food coffee. I don't, I don't really like the very, very dark roasted stuff at the best of times. It's very difficult to do it well and the, I mean the buying process and the markets that they use in the types of coffee don't really help in general. The specialty coffee market. And that's where my love lies. No disrespect to anyone that drinks it. You can, you know, it's. If it's a lot, for a lot of people, it's a starting block into specialty coffee. Sam, you gave me instant coffee once and I was very vocal about how I didn't like that. But that's cool you're drinking coffee, right? It's that first step and now we've got you going to craft cafe drinking geishas and all sorts of stuff that you probably would never have done if you hadn't started into coffee. But to answer your question, I hear that McDonald's coffee is the best of a bad bunch. Having tried it, I don't really get what the love about it is. These people that like it might be putting five sugars and a bunch of cream in it. Not sure.

Yeah, I mean they're definitely very heavy handed with the sweeteners. So it's a nice perk.

Hence me being a coffee snob. Right. It's not. My specialty isn't cheap fast food coffee. It's that kind of higher end stuff.

I was kind of hoping your specialty would be instant coffee, but I guess I didn't quite convince you the last time, the last you were on a launch podcast.

There might be some future for instant coffee in my opinion. There are a few companies out there that are trying to make it better and I'm, I've done some experiments myself. But watch this space with that? Yeah.

Was it the Korean type of instant coffee or.

No, no, this would be North American.

Ah, I see, I see. Thanks, Sam. I thought you were gonna, you know, bring up the. What are the maxims? Like, Korea is so popular with instant coffee. Like, they have advertisements all the time. Then you just see that little golden packet is like, with the model next to it and they're like maxims.

In the UK it's Maxwell House and over here there's Nescafe. And Yeah, there's a bunch of different.

Well, that's where like the whole, like, Dalgona Coffee kind of craze came from. Was like getting those instant packets and, you know, blending for an hour. Yeah. Remember Dalgona Coffee and how it was the world's biggest thing for two weeks?

I had this idea where I was like, this is a stupid trend. I hate it. I made it at home. And I was like, this is disgusting. How can I write? Because everyone had written about it, Instagram posted about it, and I was like, oh, how can I do this in like, a unique way that would get me a load of coverage? And I tried to do the first, as far as I'm aware, mushroom, powdered mushroom, instant coffee, Dalgona Coffee. And I failed miserably. It was an absolute disaster. Tasted even worse than normal. So, yeah, I haven't got much to say about that, unfortunately.

Wow. I mean, okay, I can tell, you know, like, you got that. I can see why ciply and your coffee blog came up like. So actually this might be a good time then. Can you tell us a bit more then? And to our audience especially, like, what is cipli?

Right. So CIPLI is a spin off. It's kind of an evolution from Vancouver Coffee Snob and just to kind of dial it back a little bit more. Vancouver Coffee Snobs, just a blog about local coffee shops. I do reviews, I do news, I do top 10 lists, that kind of stuff. And so I started to get to know lots of people in the coffee industry. And I wanted to. Doing a review or doing a top 10 on the site on the Vancouver Coffee Snob blog would drive loads of people into the shops. But it would, it would last for a month, maybe. Maybe only a few weeks. And then people would forget about it or move on to a different one or it wasn't top of mind for them. So I wanted to find a way to scale helping coffee shops. And so I actually asked them what their top three problems were. Number one was recruitment and keeping stuff. And I tried doing a Job board. And I failed miserably at that, which just never happened. But the other two were sales and marketing. And so I thought, okay, you know, the big problems with those being they can't afford marketing and they can't afford to pay for a salesperson. It's way too expensive to have someone going out into the city trying to convince people to come into a coffee shop. So I thought, is there something I can do with my tech background that might be able to nail the problems down for coffee shops and then scale it? And so CIPLI was my as many ideas before it, but CIPLI was the idea that kind of came into fruition. And the idea was, is I would be the marketer for the coffee shop or for several coffee shops. There's 52 now, and I would be the commission only salesperson for them. So I'll bring them, I'll market their shop and I will bring them a customer and I'll push them through the front door and then they take over and they give them great service and they sell them muffins and cookies and all that kind of stuff. And the way I get people in, apart from, you know, just creating a nice community and curating the shops on the app so that only the best are there, you never end up wandering into a bad one. What I do is I give the users of the app a discount on coffee, well, on drinks when they get into that shop. So a latte might cost you five bucks if you use the credit card, but if you go through cipli, then it cost you four bucks. And that little kind of dollar off is a little thing that kind of convinces people to use the app and then head to those coffee shops. And then the coffee shop owners take over, sell them a muffin, sell them a cookie, sell them brunch, that kind of stuff.

That's awesome. And like, that's great. Especially like when you look at the landscape of, you know, especially hard downtown where a lot of the workspaces are, there's so many coffee shops. And generally, I think, you know, personally, people will just kind of try to go somewhere that's on the way to work or something. But it definitely, I think opens up so many opportunities for people to try new coffee shops. Like maybe they found one that, hey, that's like actually just a minute off from my normal path. Let's give it a try. That's, that's amazing.

Yeah, happens all the time. Except for the downtown part. Not many people are going downtown at the moment. Coffee shops down there are struggling. And Gastown as well, rents are high. Not many people there at the moment because lots of people are working from home. So it's really been the year of community coffee shops.

Yeah, well, that's the crazy part because, like, it's full disclosure. Like we had Tom on our previous show at Launch, so we've gone through a bit of this and Tom is a longtime Launch alumni, so we've known about CIPLI for, for quite a while. Right. But like my personal experience with CIPLI is it's, it's creating trips now. Right. Like, obviously I'm not just going to Delta or North Van or whatever for a coffee, but in this day and age where, where like, you know, you, your trips have to be valuable, like, and like, we're not. I'm. I'm going to be very careful about how I say this because I don't want to encourage people to go out. Right. But on those kind of mental breaks that you just need to, you know, go outside for. In New west, one of my favorite places now for, for a walk or something, right. Like that, that becomes like the designation that our destination is the word I'm looking for as opposed to like, hey, this store down the street from me is. Is on simply like, I don't. I found that I've used. Had that use case very little, but it's more like coffee shop discovery.

You've actually just given me a really good idea of a blog post there. And it could be, you know, great parks or great walks around simply coffee shops. Because you're right, it's now people are. They're not going to other shops anymore. They're just going to shops on the Cipley network because that's how they buy their coffee now. And so especially with the new ones, people go, oh, okay, well what's around that area? I want to go check that out. And they otherwise may not have known about it or may have known about it, but. But not gone for whatever reason. And this just gives them that extra push and it's given coffee shops loads of new customers. It's been fantastic.

Yeah. Actually, I want to ask like, have you seen like, how other coffee shops that are currently struggling with COVID the pandemic and lack of, I guess, organic discovery. What are some ways that you've seen some of the coffee shops you partnered with try to battle against that?

Oh yeah, it's a great question. So interestingly enough, when all of this kicked off, I simply. Sales essentially went to zero overnight. It was a bit Of a scary moment really because everybody was staying indoors. And so I actually pivoted. I'm still sort of there, but kind of came back to siply. It's much better now, but I pivoted into pro bono absolutely for free. Helping coffee. Any coffee shop that needed my help didn't have to be on the ciply network kind of survive. So I help them build online stores to sell, you know, beans, kind of take home stuff. So it could be beans, cups, brewing equipment, that kind of thing. Help them design and implement gift cards so that people who love their local coffee shop could, you know, buy a $200 gift card just to kind of give the coffee shop some money just to make it through and pay bills and things like that. I've done tons of help with kind of online marketing strategies. Keeping your audience engaged and keeping people to get them to remember your brand. Even if you might be closed or struggling, you know, there's no reason why you can't be talking about yourself and providing content to people. I've been helping people kind of design. So for example, there was a period where most coffee shops, you couldn't actually go into the coffee shop. So I kind of helped them strategize out. Okay, well, how do we turn this door into a hatch? Or are there any windows? Can we just open a window and serve coffee out of that window? I think that's kind of died off a little bit now. People are now lots of coffee shops have got their doors open and you can go in and you can sit down and they've worked out how to partition everything off. But I think I did a massive survey and I think one of the major things that came out of it is that people are just worried about other people. And so one of the things I think a lot of coffee shops have cottoned onto and really done to help compete in this Covid world is to make sure that everybody's separated, everyone's wearing masks, everything's clean. If you've got booths, they've got partitions up between them. For example, Cafe Portrait in the west end has essentially built big wooden frames with plastic between them. It looks awesome. And you're all in your own little cubicles when you're in there. And it feels really, really safe. And there have been a few coffee shops that have kind of fallen by the wayside and haven't survived. But it's been pretty cool to see most coffee shops adapt and limp buy. I've been telling them that they don't have to get bigger. They don't have to expand, they don't have to make a million dollars. They just have to survive until all of this is over.

And that's like, I think, first of all, kudos to you for first trying to support in your own way. But I kind of want to dive a little bit deeper because of your background as a technologist, right. And you get this very unique vantage point of seeing Covid's impact on retail. I'm just going to broadcast in a little bit, right? Like, are there things that technologies could be doing to support it? Because I think as a generality, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, a lot of. And I won't say that Covid hasn't affected this industry, but we've been blessed compared to many industries that have just had to close the doors. No other way around it. Right. And so, like, from that standpoint, like, what are you seeing? Things that maybe are being done to support things like retail and what more could be done, you think?

That's a really good question and probably one that I've only really thought of from my perspective. I mean, I can give you an example. Maybe I'll give you the example that sipli of something we did and then maybe we can extrapolate out of that as stuff comes into my head. So one of the things that was a problem with Ciply is pre Covid, you would go in and you'd hand your phone to the barista and then punch a code into it. And as soon as Covid hit, you know, you can't touch people's phones now. You can't get up close and personal. So we shifted to a model that is now voice only. So, Sam, I know you use siply and you went, oh. So I'm hoping that the coffee shops have shifted to this. The idea being that they now tell you a code so the barista will know a code to tell you. And then they tell you, you put it in your phone and you. You show them that it was successful. What we're also shifting to in the future, which we're working on right now, is it's going to be. You walk in and you say, I'm order 1, 2, 3, 4. And they look it up on their point of sale and they accept order 1234. And it shows it on their screen and you can shout across the shop or from outside or something like that. So the reason we did that is that we just spoke to people. We were. We asked them what the problems were and they didn't want people touching their phones. And that was, that was actually a no brainer that we'd already thought of even before we'd spoken to people. But it was, it's thinking like that, that looking for the problems that occur and then coding your way around them is essentially what we did there. So I guess to answer your question about what other technology companies could do, I mean, it's not very tech, but I did stuff like I implemented for any of the services that people pay me for. I set the payment terms to 180 days. It's like, look, you guys can't pay me now. Pay me whenever you can. 180 days is more than enough free commissions on things like that. Anyone that's, that's in need of free services where we can supply them, that's, that's what I've tried to do. Like I said, not very technologically kind of solution based, but certainly something a tech company can do. Because we don't have a brick and mortar store, we don't have staff, that kind of stuff. It's very easy for us to implement that kind of thing.

Yeah. Because I mean from my perspective, I definitely see a couple of things that probably you're already doing without thinking about it. But honestly, one of the biggest technological advances from a store I regularly go to isn't new tech at all. And the answer was our Walmart finally started getting touchless payment.

Oh right.

And for the longest time, like you know, touch, you know, tap, pay by tap has been around a long time, right. And stores have implemented it. But Walmart was like kind of that one stubborn dude that just was like, nope, stick your card in for your $4 purchase.

Okay.

And this kind of finally pushed them over the edge because they're like, well like our queues are like 50 people deep. We can't have each of them. And then I have to spray the thing every time. Right. So that's been huge. But like I think on a generality, like I've been surprised by how so many businesses that, and I'm going to focus on the small business sector because Walmart I think is an anonymous. But, but like they, they haven't felt a need or a push to advance technologically, right? So, so things like if you're a restaurant or a coffee store, having a menu available, having an online ordering system, like these aren't things that will cost you tens of thousands of dollars anymore, right. Like maybe in 2002, like you had to hire a web dev like you know, your former self and they'd have to go in and fix it. But there's, There's. There's so many. There's wixes, there's different things where you can accept money and it's safe and it's. You don't need to be a developer to do so. And it's just. From my perspective, it's been so surprising that these people are so good at whatever it is their business is about, whether they're selling, you know, small goods or, or food or whatever. But this, like, the pandemic has really forced them to be like, well, I guess I'd better get on Uber Eats or else I'm screwed.

Yeah, right.

And that's not the best example. Like, we. I don't really want to go into the debate about, like, the, the rev share between Uber and the restaurants and whatever, but, but just as a generality, like, I'm just noticing, like, like there's been a clear technological push from what I consider traditional businesses.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. No, I especially think it's great because I've worked in, like, for example, like, the hospitality needs quite a while, both back end and front end as manager. And it's just like, you know, it was a little frustrating, right, because there's like two parts to it. Like, a lot of the software that a lot of restaurants use, they're very old or outdated. And the main reason is because it's expensive to upgrade. And then the second part is like, you know, when you work at. Whether it's a large chain or a small change, it's just. The learning curve, I think, is also an issue too. Like, sometimes restaurants don't have that time or resource to train their employees. But like Sam said, it's, in a way, it's very. One of the positive impacts of this pandemic is that it has forced the hands of these businesses to, you know what? This is a time for the change. And hopefully I think that does open more doors for new ideas, especially in the tech industry, to help improve those services and actually find issues or new solutions and such. Because before TAP was very common, but POS systems that were completely online and stuffed, they weren't really necessary. So there wasn't actual enough sampling or user experience to actually figure out where the kinks are and stuff. So I think it's great.

There's also this fear as well in companies where they're like, okay, well, they ain't broke, so don't fix it. And that stifles many big companies. It just seems to be like rite of passage For. For large corporations to kind of get safe rather than get edgy. And so we saw in what, a month, most major companies that certainly I've had contact with in my IT consultancy days, they went from big offices downtown, paying God knows how much per square foot to everybody working at home. And if you'd have bought that up a year ago and said, right, well, we could say 50 grand a month, if we just sent everybody home, people would go, no, can't be done. Just think of all these things that have to fall in line to do it. And then, sure enough, we worked it out in like a month when all of this kicked off, probably less than that. It can be done, but I don't know. I don't know if people are lazy or people are just safe or what, but I kind of like taking those risks. I've done all sorts of stupid crap that has and hasn't worked. And it's great to be able to kind of, you know, test the waters and so on.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Go for it. I was just gonna say, like, that's. I think that's part of you being a tech founder. And I'd say as a generality, in terms of professions, tech founders tend to be more risky than, say, an IT consultant. Right?

Yeah. Right.

So, yeah, go for it, Jane.

Yeah. Oh, no. I just wanted to add on, like, this actually kind of leads up to a really good discussion point, too, is like, what makes a good entrepreneur? Because, you know, you've mentioned already in the past too, like, businesses need to pivot when a problem arises. You gotta learn how to pivot. If you're stuck in your old ways, you know, all you can do left is just to flop if. Especially when you're facing such a big crisis like this. So I guess kind of like adding into that, like, what other qualities do you think makes a strong entrepreneur?

It's a good question. And I don't consider myself a strong entrepreneur, so it's kind of hard to reflect on any of the things I've done. I agree with you with pivoting. Insofar as if you are stuck spinning your wheels or trying something and it's failing and failing and failing. What's that quote? The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Pivot. So pivoting. When I got started into this entrepreneur stuff, I always thought that pivoting was like, okay, well, we got a coffee app, and we just noticed that apples are really good, so we should probably buy an orchard. I thought it was that. But pivoting can be almost like evolution of a company. It can be so simply started off, or the idea of Cipli started off as buying big bags of coffee, breaking them down into lots of smaller little bags and selling a subscription service. And it's now a technology company. So essentially I worked out where to go in what direction and then came up with this. So, yeah, definitely strength in pivoting. Going back to the question, what was it? It was, what makes a good entrepreneur? I think you have to be a little bit mad to be an entrepreneur. Like just a little something not quite right with you because it's not safe. It's terrifying at times. The lows are really low. The highs are really high. I can think of probably one of the craziest moments I had was I was walking around Superstore and I didn't have a panic attack, but I was about as close as I could get to having a panic attack because everything I thought about, oh, God, what if this doesn't work? What happens if, you know, I lose all the money that I put into it and, like, really started to panic. And you have to be able to kind of take those on the chin and just keep going forward. I think tenacity probably plays a part in that as well, in that I kind of firmly believe that at times the reason Cipli has been successful is just because I haven't given up and I've just kept going because it's really, really hard, especially as I'm a solo founder, I have been, and I'm still looking for a co founder or someone to join, but haven't found anyone that's mad enough to join this ride, but it's hard work to do it on your own. And I think to just keep going when other people might stop. I think that probably a lot of entrepreneurs will say that that's part of what makes an entrepreneur successful, or at least competent.

Just to pinch in on that a little bit. Like, we definitely have entrepreneurs that come in and they say, you know, you have to be crazy. It is really hard. What's so hard? Like, try and try and paint a picture. Because I think listeners out there, some people maybe are, you know, right now, they're saying, right on, Tom, I'm right there with you. It's hard for me too. And I think there's other people outside looking in that are like, it doesn't seem so bad. You get to drink coffee all day. People, you know what I mean? Like, I'm sure somebody's Thinking that as well. Right. Like so. So I kind of want to help, help listeners paint that more holistic picture. Right. Obviously there's good points and I don't want to just emphasize on bad things, but let's start there. Like what, what is so hard about being a solo founder? Being in, you know, in full control of, well, literally your, your career and everything. Right. Yeah, let's start there.

Right. So to mirror what you just said, it is awesome. Right? There's so much fun to be had and I don't want to paint a bad picture of it, but yeah, it's really hard. I guess an example I could give is think about like a time when you may have worked in an office with a boss and a boss and another boss and a manager and then a director and a CEO and so on, and something goes wrong and shit hits the fan and you need to turn to somebody and perhaps you've got someone above you that can take some flack for maybe something that you broke or maybe a customer's pissed off and you need to escalate it to someone who has a better title than you so that they feel a little bit more, you know, taken care of. That doesn't exist for, for me. So I've had, you know, pretty rare, but I've had people who have not had a great experience in a coffee shop using sickly and have been pissed off. And there's, you know, the buck stops with me. I have to find a solution to this. I can't palm it off onto anybody else. Even if I'm having a bad day or I'm hungover or something like that. It all falls on you. And it doesn't just fall on you that one day. It falls on you 24 hours a day, every single day of the week. Every single week of the month and month of the year. It's the pressure that's on because of that is pretty intense. And I'm still. It's just me here doing this full time. I have contractors that I use for various tasks, but I don't have any full time employees. So I don't have people working with me that I can kind of delegate to for certain things. And especially in the early days, you probably won't have the budget for that. So it's very difficult from that perspective. Talking from a solo founder perspective, it's really lonely. And that sounds a bit. Worries me and a bit weird, but this comes up. You just have to Google it. This comes up really often with solo founders bouncing ideas off of People, for example. So if I have an idea for a new feature and I want to sound it out with someone, there's no co founder to my left that I can turn to and go, hey, Bob, what do you think about this? So you have to get used to living in your own little bubble with no one else to talk to. And you can have mentors and you can talk to your wife, in my case, about it, but there's only a certain limit that other people want to hear about that kind of stuff. And then on top of that, you're not just. In the past, I was an IT consultant and I was really good at it, and I knew my role really well and I knew all my technologies, and now I know a little bit of accounting and I know a ton of marketing, and I know I did sales in my previous role, but, you know, I know more about sales and I know about sales management.

Now I.

Know about product management and managing a team overseas in Armenia. Dealing with random stuff that happens from a technical perspective that I've never dealt with before. Dealing with new personalities in coffee shops, dealing with two marketplaces. So I've got B2C and so that's the users of Ciply. And now, now I have to learn how to juggle 52 different coffee shops and their individual needs and the kind of relationship management that goes through it. So what you end up being is a kind of a Swiss army knife. And that's both one of the most fun parts of entrepreneurship, but also very, very difficult because a lot of the skills were brand new to me. Accounting, like, I never filled in corporate taxes before. Stuff's boring to me. I can barely do my own taxes, and it's like I click a few buttons on SimpleTax CA. And I had to learn, you know, like, what profit and loss sheets are and how Wave. I use Wave apps to do my bookkeeping. And, you know, all of that stuff is just new stuff to learn. So you end up kind of getting quite bogged down with a lot of that stuff. And learning those new skills takes time. And that's time away from growing your company, potentially, or talking to new coffee shops or working out how to do a successful Facebook ad campaign. And there's another Pandora's box of bullshit. You go into Facebook ads or Google Ads, you just start throwing money into an endless chasm of whatever, and you have to kind of work out what to do. I think my camera just died. Probably a good time to stop the rant anyway. Give me one second. I'm just Gonna sort that camera. I think I put a new battery in it.

I think there's definitely a lot to unpack there. But. But, like, I think what you talked about earlier, just talking about tenacity, I don't know, Gene, can you relate to that? Because. Because I know you have your own. You're starting your own kind of what we call side hustles in the millennial. In the millennial age. Like, how is tenacity something you're born with or you got to build on?

I mean, honestly, like, I just want to say, like, every point that, you know, Tom, you brought up, like, I was just like, in my head, I'm just like, yes, yes, totally. It's hard because, like, I guess in a way, I'm like a solo founder as well. So a lot of the ideas and a lot of the business plans that have want to execute, it's just kind of like, okay, well, is this going to work? Like, I can rely on my partner to kind of bounce some ideas off, but in the end, like, he's not as involved in the process as I am, so. But when it comes to tenacity, I think I want to say that it is something that you kind of naturally been build up, not just speaking from the entrepreneurial aspect, but just, you know, through life when hardships happen, when, you know, like, it starts when you're a kid, right, like, whether, you know, you join sports, maybe you're not as great of a sports team player, but, you know, you want to keep going because you love it and you kind of build this kind of resistance to failure. But then on the flip side of things, I also think that not everyone is absolutely cut out to be an entrepreneur, if that kind of makes sense. Like, I don't know, Tom, maybe if you want to put some thoughts into this, but for me personally, like, I think, like you said, like, everyone needs that little bit of madness because it's not crazy easy. Yeah, it's definitely not an easy pathway to go down. And I don't think it's a matter of being born with a certain set of skills. Skills or personality, but it's a matter of how much you really want to do something or how much passion you have to do it. And with that, tenacity, I think just kind of comes more naturally along with how much passion you have towards building that future for yourself. But, yeah, no, I don't know.

I think you said a lot without saying that you don't know, but just to fire it back to. To Tom, like, like, we're we're talking about, you know, taking a lot of gut punches as, as an entrepreneur, like when you have to deal with a bad customer or a bug fix or a bad, or a bad customer experience with the bug fix or the lack of a bug fix or the fact that they don't care. You're, you're in London right now visiting your parents and you're eight hours ahead and, and they're like we can't get our coffee and it's three in the morning for you or whatever. But, but like on the flip side of that, like what keeps you going to keep taking those punches?

That's a great question and that's a much more happy question to answer there. I think it's the. I keep in regular contact with my users and I take, do surveys. I have a group that I call the Insiders who I throw all sorts of ideas at and get feedback and just talk to general customers and also the coffee shops as well. So what keeps me going is that I get great feedback from people who say that they've never been to this coffee shop before and now they have and they had a great experience or thanks to you, I now, you know, bought my first grinder at home or whatever. It might be some form of kind of progression through their coffee journey all the way to the coffee shop saying, this is brilliant. You know, this promotion or shout out that you did doubled our foot traffic last week. That kind of thing. Really what it boils down to is that this is from stems from the Vancouver Coffee Snob blog. Is that really all I want to do is grow the coffee scene? I think Vancouver's got an awesome coffee scene and there's always room to grow it and make it better and make it truly world class. And to help with that, in my own way, having never been a barista and you know, really having a background in tech rather than coffee and just kind of learning the coffee stuff over the last six, seven years, it's pretty satisfying. It's pretty great to see that progression. And I'll be honest as well, it is nice to see the numbers going up each month. So seeing your revenues going up and seeing your amount of users that are coming into the ecosystem go up each month and navigating through, I don't know, the COVID stuff where I'm thinking like, oh crap, am I just going to have to close this down and refund everybody for all their credit that they've got to then becoming okay, well we fixed it, we got over this and now we're expanding and growing again. That kind of stuff is tremendously satisfying. And what I would say to anyone that wants to start something is work out what those things are and keep those in mind for, for the days where sometimes the weeks and months where it's hard and you're kind of you down and it's, it's. You're not enjoying it as much as you thought you might do if you can remember what those things are and then go after them. A good example for me is bringing on new shops. I love going to speak to new shops and I love bringing them on board and then, you know, publishing all the photos and telling people about them, doing blog posts and stuff like that. And that I've noticed when I don't have that. So over December, probably, actually I think it was like from October to early January. I hadn't been out to a coffee shop to onboard or meet anybody because all the restrictions kicked in again and I wanted to do my part, that really affected me. And then when I started to work out how to do it all online and via Zoom and convince people that, you know, I can't come in, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to talk to you on the phone. Everybody wants to meet me. Then it got good again. Like, it was pretty satisfying. I onboarded two new shops last week at United Strangers in North Vancouver and 05 Ts in Kitsilano. Now it's pretty great being able to hit that publish inside later and send up a post to Instagram, shout out.

To another launch alumni later.com right there.

That's right. They are, aren't they? Yeah.

Yeah. I was going to say, though, did you close those sales over Zoom?

So let me think. Not entirely. I had to go in to do some training for United Strangers and I'd met those guys a bunch of times before. Oh, five. I did go in, but then closed the rest over email and the phone. I do have a few. I have another three that are hopefully coming on board soon that have been done completely over. I see it's mostly over the phone, which is surprising.

Yeah. What's that adjustment been like? Because I think so much of your current sales strategy is going in and building rapport with the shops.

Right.

But now we're doing that. I mean, obviously we're remote right now, but doing that entire kind of value proposition through the phone or through Zoom or whatever. Like, how have you had to adjust?

I've had to get very good at working out what people want to hear over the phone and trying to guess what their facial expressions are. Like the sales process, like when you're sitting in front of someone. I'm just, I'm really good at picking up on what people are thinking and extrapolating my ideas off of that and expanding out the conversation and driving it forward and so on. Doing it remote has sucked. No two words about it. It's been incredibly difficult. I don't know how long term scalable it could possibly be. One of the things is because I've got this big brand behind me, this Vancouver coffee snob brand. Everybody that hasn't met me before because I'm sort of anonymous, everybody wants to meet me and work out who I am. And then so when I first go to a coffee shop to meet someone to just chat about siple, I put aside a minimum of three hours in the first two to two and a half hours are just talking about coffee and then it doesn't take much to close after that. I have like a 95% close rate on if I can get in front of a coffee shop. So that kind of that rapport building is. I just don't see how it can be properly done in any other way other than in front of people to the most efficient way it can be done. It's just going to take longer. Like it has over the phone and chasing people up over email and that kind of stuff. But I hope I can get in front of people again soon. It's one of the things I kind.

Of feel like one of the openers is, wow, you're really tall in person. By the way, Tom is tall in.

Person, you know, so I get a few things. I get, wow, you're really tall. I get, oh, kind of figured that you'd be an Asian woman because, you know, like the 90% of the food influences in Vancouver are Asian women. And then what else do I get? Oh, I get, oh, where in Australia are you from? And I go, oh, I'm not from Australia. And they go, oh, I'm so sorry, where in New Zealand are you from? And then that's actually I kind of like that because that gives me a little bit of that I love doing the self deprecating thing. So I can say no, actually I'm English and I can throw like I do callbacks every now and then where we might be talking about something and you know, I'll go, you know, so I tried this coffee from Australia, which by the way, as we spoke about earlier isn't my homeland, just to remind you, you know, Just throw little jokes in like that. But yeah, the, the tall thing. For those of you that are listening and watching on YouTube, I'm 6 4, so I'm pretty.

Oh, wow.

Yes.

See, Jean's never met you in person, so she doesn't, she doesn't realize earlier. So maybe we should have started with that. Right?

Yeah. And it doesn't help. I wear stilettos everywhere.

No, I was gonna say, like, you know, you're. When you. Sam mentioned tall for a second, I'm like, wait, so does that mean, like the Chariot is just like a normal sized office chair? Like I got one of those gaming chairs and like the top of the head at least goes like up to here for me. But you're actually towering over that.

Yeah, but Jean, you. You could live in that chair.

That's true. I nap in it all the time. It's the most amazing thing ever.

This is actually one of those. This is really good. It's a IKEA chair and it always hits the top 10 list of like the most comfy chairs. And it's like the really big one or the really big back. So, yeah, I mean, that's how tall I am.

For chair enthusiasts, I think that's called a Marcus.

Ah, there you go.

I'm pretty sure it's called a Marcus. I've had a lot of time during the, this last year to read up on really weird things.

But.

But one note I was going to make just, just to end off talking about sales is like, obviously at launch we work with a lot of entrepreneurs that are foreign, that thankfully they trust the value that we bring to them. And over time we actually help bring them to Vancouver to be headquartered out of Vancouver. But a lot of times somebody we've been working with and Gene can attest to this. We haven't met them for the first 12 months of our working relationship. Right. So everything from getting them to commit to the program, getting us to commit to work with them, all that is done virtually and it has been so from day one. And I'd say the number one thing for people that are struggling with, I guess what you can call virtual sales and virtual close is I think it's to remember two things. First is if they're having a conversation with you, there's a reason for that. Either they have a pain point that you can help solve or maybe reverse. You're trying to pick their brain and you're trying to get your problem solved. Right. But most of the time they want something that you, you may or may not be Able to provide. So the first thing is if you cannot provide it and you know this, walk away and it's going to sound counterintuitive, but that's how you go to my second point is the entire purpose of. You can call it a sales call, you can call it a meet or whatever. The entire purpose is to build trust. So if I'm on a call with Tom and I can't give Tom what he wants, the more I BS him about being able to provide his pain point, the less trust I'm gonna have when he actually meets me in person. Right? And this just 10x is because Tom can actually see me and like does town look like this sketchy looking guy or, or his jeans ripped or something like that? Like, like whatever it is that Tom uses to judge his, his, his trust, you know, spidey sense. Like that is 10x because they can't see you. They can't, they can't. Sometimes it's just a phone call, right? But if. And that's like the number one thing that I found that's most effective is. Is being so brutally out of your way honest that like almost trying the anti sale, right? Like, oh, I can't really help you because you know your coffee's bad and I can't fix that. Right? Like, I don't know if you're gonna go that blunt, but. But you know what I mean, right? Like that's how you build trust. And that's the second part is the entire point is for them to feel like they have an ally in solving that. Whatever that pain point is, Right? Yes, there's gonna be, there's gonna be monetary transactions, whatever it is. That's. That's business, that's reality. Everybody needs to make some money from something. But, but if you can close those two key things, that's what I found most effective.

I mean that's just good sales advice anyway, regardless of being in front of someone. Like the no bullshit side of things. And it's yeah, sales. Lots of people don't trust salespeople anyway. But the no bullshit thing is just why bother wasting your time trying to convince someone who ultimately might damage your brand because they get pissed off with you in the future and then badmouth you to other people. I've said no to plenty of coffee shops. I've dropped coffee shops before that haven't been meeting the standard that shit's important, you know, you can't. I wouldn't say that, you know, one bad review and you're done kind of thing. I Truly don't believe that. I think that, you know, people get bit too obsessed over bad reviews. But getting like a name for yourself as someone that's lied or, I don't know, bought on a bad coffee shop in my situation, like, you know, over a long enough period of time, if you keep doing that, that's terrible for your brand.

Yeah, super important to maintain that like brand integrity even just like the moral integrity that you want to put yourself in. Like for me too, like whenever I like, you know, obviously I'm just like starting out. So there's a lot of certain things I don't have or sometimes quality of products are not always up to standard. So I'm always trying to be informing my customers. Like just the other week I've had issues with both of my suppliers with my products. One of them, the labels are falling off and so I was just like hand gluing all of them in. The other one was that the numbers that identify the colors of the embroidery threads, I smell, I mean, they came completely mislabeled as a totally different color. So, you know, obviously like I could have just gone ahead and just be like, hey, you know what, whatever, not a big deal. But when it comes to these small details, it's so important that you are upfront about them. It was actually kind of interesting because I posted this in several groups that are into like the whole hobby of cross stitching. And I found it interesting that a few other sellers based in UK and stuff kind of actually had more of like a. I don't want to like put them down, but their view on me, you know, posting about the mislabeling of these threads and such, they were kind of like, oh, you know, these things happen. Like, don't make a big deal about it. I'm like, how could you do that as a business person? You're receiving money from your customers and they're trusting you that you're going to deliver what they're purchasing. So it's almost like it's very deceiving if you just knowingly sell something without being clear about it from the start how they might be. And the color is so important too when it comes to these products. So I mean, I think honest business is always the best practice. Your customers are eventually going to find out and then word of mouth is really important. They might start telling other potential clients like, you know what, they have really bad business practices. Don't go there. They might like, you know, trick you or they're just going to take your money and run you never know what kind of rumors can spread from that.

You know, go back to that question you asked me earlier. What makes a good entrepreneur? What you're doing right there makes a good entrepreneur. You know, hey, it's going to be a complete pain in the ass for you to relabel everything or to fix whatever problem it might be. But the fact is, is if you're the person that's doing that, then that makes you a better entrepreneur than the next person and hopefully makes you more successful at what you do.

So speaking of good entrepreneurs, we're going to slide over to Gene's favorite questions.

So should we ask every single question?

Why do you have kind of an evening look in your eyes when you said that, Sam?

That was like cuz, cuz I like to make fun of Jean because, because I don't know, I'll let her ask the question first. But, but everybody always tries to like, like, like I think it's a founders thing or, or it might be like a tech industry thing where like we asked for three people and they always give us five or they give us one or they don't give real people at all and they say things like Donald Duck. It's, it's absurd the responses we get. But yeah, go ahead Gene.

But that's why it's kind of fun because you get to learn just a little bit more about your guests to see.

Oh, and by the way, when Jean answered her own question, she gave four answers or something like that.

I still don't even know what the question is, so this is completely confusing to me.

Go for it.

All right, so the question is if you could create a dream team of three people, whether they are dead, whether they are currently alive, celebrity historian, totally a figment of your imagination. Like who would those three people be and why? If you have a reason, who.

So this would be to create a team, to make a company or.

Sure, it could be simply. Or whatever you want.

There you go.

That is a question I haven't ever thought about the answer for. Probably not going to do a very good job of this. Um, okay, let's think about what I'm trying to achieve with CIPLI then. One of the things I want to inject more of is humor and sarcasm and self deprecating stuff to make my marketing a little bit better. There's a really good author I like called Danny Wallace. Maybe we can involve him. He's incredibly sharp witted. He wrote the book called yes man, which there was a Jim Carrey film that was based on that, where a guy says yes to everything for a year. It's one of my favorite books ever. And he does exactly that. It's nothing like the film at all. But he does say yes to everything for a year and it's awesome. And the guy's written a ton of books. So let's involve Danny Wallace. I sent him an email once years ago and he never replied to me.

He didn't say yes.

He didn't say yes. What a bastard. He's cut. Get rid of him. I don't want him anymore. Okay, let's somebody with deep pockets. You know, one thing that makes a good entrepreneur is the ability to get people to give you money. And that is something that I'm working on right now. I'm looking at funding simply so who's got enough money but wouldn't be a pain in the ass about it? Because you couldn't get involved with someone like Jeff Bezos because he'd probably drain.

Your blood and, well, he'd just buy up the whole coffee industry, which would defeat the purpose of you helping coffee shops in the first place.

Right? Yeah, he would do that. He'd find a way to make it super evil. But then you couldn't have that like, chaotic good of Elon Musk either because that guy, that guy's madder than a bag of cats.

So that's too much mad for you. I actually like the way Tom's going about this because we can actually talk through, you know, what you're thinking. Because he doesn't want to sell coffee on Mars, apparently.

No. No. So it would have to be someone who had some pretty good traction into the investing world or just like some really deep pockets that like to throw his money around. I don't know, maybe we could do Elon Musk on that one. He's got some pretty cool cars that he could probably donate to the mix as well. First coffee shop on Mars, that's one thing. All right, we'll throw Elon Musk in there.

Probably sell coffee out of a cybertruck.

Yes, actually, I'd love one of those. I think they're brilliant. Who else we got then? There's a. I could use some real coffee nerd. Well connected coffee nerd power in the company. Global coffee nerd power. And there's a really decent YouTuber called James Hoffman who owns a big roastery in London called Square Mile. And he's become kind of the guy to go to for YouTube videos about coffee. He'd probably be a really decent person to have on the team as well. Just for his connections around the world. He knows every single person in the coffee industry. I think they're kind of semi boring answers really there. I haven't. Maybe throw in Donald Duck as well because that came up earlier. He seems pretty cool around or like, you know, you know what, Rick from Rick and Morty. He would, he would have some sort of ray gun that would just fix everything.

Would it be like a mascot for you or something?

Yeah, no, it would be, it would be more for his scientific prowess, I think. Do you guys watch Rick and Morty at all? It's not pretty funny adult cartoon. He's a scientist.

Picture between Rick and Elon Musk. You're gonna have a blast.

I would die. I would basically die instantly.

So you're basically self, self sabotaging yourself. But I, I, I kind of felt like when you were starting talking, you would use the Hoffman pick. I've honestly spent more time watching his videos. Like, he talks about the most minuscule things he'll review, like coffee filters, like literally the paper that your coffee goes through, and he'll spend like 15 minutes diving into it. And he has all these like, measuring apparatus to measure. Like, I don't know, I don't know, the things he measures.

Tds, readers and all sorts of stuff.

Yeah, Lots of funky acronyms and whatnot. But like, for some reason his voice is just so soothing that like, even without knowing his, like, resume and his background history, you're like, I feel like this guy knows what he's talking about.

Yep, definitely. So get. Imagine that, you know, he turns around and says, you know, you should go out and buy Ziply. It's great for the following reasons. And for the next 25 minutes, I'm going to tell you why it's so great. That's what I need. That's the power I need.

Yeah. And someone to roll his pockets. So someone with deep pockets to find that.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that'll do. Yeah.

Great response. I actually liked it because usually when we ask these questions, like, we don't get too much of like the thought process going behind it.

But I was also like, 95 sure when you started talking about humor that you're gonna go the Kevin Hart route, which, like, I think more than one person has dropped on this show. I like him.

I'm not the biggest fan like that. That's so I actually edged towards more kind of really on the line humor. Like Edge of what's appropriate. Jim Jeffries. I really like Frankie Boyle. Jimmy Carr. These are all. Jim Jeffries is an Aussie and one's a Scott, one's a Brit. You know, this is the kind of stuff you can never use in marketing. It's like, you know, someone's gonna take a swing at you eventually for saying the stuff that you say. But I like, I like people who are pushing the boundaries of comedy, but not in a way that would get people to turn against my brand and hate everything about Sipley. I mean, it's bad enough that I have fuck bad coffee as the first thing you see when you hit my website. And that raised a few browse, but it has kind of really bought in some people who want to want a different kind of experience of, you know, you're just your generic coffee brand.

Well, I think, I think just to kind of wrap things up, I don't think we can leave you here without some coffee recommendations. So. So just for everybody that's listening to this episode, I'm going to narrow things down just because I know there's a lot of global people that are listening to this episode as well. But just if you're in Vancouver, whether you live here or eventually when someday you get to travel here or whatnot, where are you going for coffee and what are you drinking? And maybe come from the perspective of someone who is a coffee novice, let's say.

Okay, so I came a little bit prepared for this. I bought some things with me. There is a coffee roaster in Vancouver called Pallet Coffee Roasters. And it's typically my go to for if people want a really interesting espresso. But they're not that good at understanding what espresso is or an easy drinking filter coffee. I even had to make coffee specifically for my wedding so that I could give a bag of coffee to everyone. This is how much I think about them or how, how highly I think about them. So that's their logo there. This particular coffee is a little bit.

More.

Not unapproachable, but it's not what I would consider an approachable coffee that, you know, just tastes like coffee. That one's got sorts of fruits and stuff like that going on in it, but they have a really solid lineup of kind of easy drinking, medium roast kind of coffees. The other one that they go from really, really nice chocolatey caramel espresso to the weirdest coffees you've ever seen in your whole entire life are these guys here. So this is House of Funk. These guys are in North Van. They sell their cans coffee, Sorry, those.

That are Only listening to this. We highly advise you to move over to our YouTube, just Google, launch Academy Bits and Bytes and you'll find the episode.

That's a good point.

The link is probably going to be in the description, but like you, you kind of have to see this. Can. I can't really describe it for you.

It's.

Well, it's called the house of funk, right. But it's definitely funk. There's no other word than funky to describe it.

It's technicolored. It's. I mean, it's in a tin. I don't know when I last opened this, but let's see if we can get the sound to happen. Hang on. Hear that little pop there? So they have a little special gizmo here and it absorbs all the oxygen inside the tin so that when you come back to it after, you know, a week or so, it's sucked all the oxygen out, which is the stuff that makes coffee go stale and it keeps coffee fresh. So this, they have this. They have an espresso there. Like I said, that's really solid. It's kind of my go to recommendation for iced lattes actually is really nice and chocolatey and caramelly. This one in particular is that I'm holding up to the camera for those of you that aren't watching on YouTube. This is a barrel aged coffee. So like I said, it gets pretty weird. They put the green coffee into either whiskey barrels. I think this is a wine barrel and it picks up all the weird flavors that you might find in a whiskey or a wine. And then they roast it and the coffee that comes out is just.

It's wild.

It's so weird and funky and fruity. And one of them the other day tasted like kind of whiskey. The other one tasted like mandarins. It's really bizarre. But again, they have pour overs that are really, really accessible as well. Sorry, filter coffees that are accessible. So you're kind of your lighter medium roasts there. Who else do we have a prototype? I don't have to show to the camera right now, but they have. That's a place that I would recommend people go to. One the best coffee shop of the year on my Vancouver Coffee Snob blog. And the reason I'd recommend they go when they come for a visit is there's literally every single coffee you can possibly imagine for you in that shop. So they usually have five to probably seven different espressos on. They often have 15 different filter coffees available for you to choose from. So essentially you Go in and you say, well, I really like this particular coffee, or I like dark stuff, or I like medium, or I had this coffee once that tasted like blueberries or apples. And they'll probably have something for you to try that will kind of meet your needs there. But for anything else, I would go to my Vancouver Coffee Snob blog, and there's like a button at the top that will take you to the store.

What was the name of that store?

Prototype.

Prototype.

Gotcha.

Okay.

And where's prototype?

Prototype is on Hastings. Do you know where the. There's that big kind of shipping container building on Hastings just as you kind of heading out into East Van before we get to Clark, that colorful building on the left as you're. You're heading out of town. It looks like a bunch of shipping containers. It probably is. I don't know. It's just right there. Or by Strathcona Brewing, if you know that.

Oh, I. I think I know. There's like a. We had to go there for like storage once at my other job, so I think I know where it is.

It's around that area where all the breweries are.

The moment we mentioned brewing with Gene. No further questions, your honor. But. But yeah, just to. Just to clean it up. I think your recommendations were Pallet, which has multiple. Multiple locations in I think various parts of Vancouver. House of Funk is in North Vancouver, and then prototype is in East Van. Ish.

East Vanish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So those are kind of Tom's recommendations. All three, I think, which you can find on the Cipley app, if I'm not mistaken.

Correct. You can, yes. All three of those.

Go through and download that. That's your plug.

Yep. Gets it.

Thank you so much, Tom, for. For spending some time with us, hanging out with us. I think we definitely need to do this again. I know I say this every time, but, like, when we can meet again in person, we need to do more taste tests because I have some new instant coffee to try out with you.

I might have some better instant coffee for you. I will have some beans for you for sure.

What if better is not the goal?

Then roll on, Covid. Let's see how long we can stretch this thing out for.

All right, so yeah, like, if you guys haven't already subscribed to this podcast, we come on every month. We have lots of cool guests like Tom. We want to go through with all different people in techs industry. A lot of them obviously are founders and alumni launch, but we also want to talk to different product managers we want to talk to designers, we want to talk to biz devs, rock stars that are making a difference in, in our cool kind of startup and tech community. So yeah, we'll be back next month. Just stay tuned and like I said, subscribe. Follow our YouTube too, because a lot of times nowadays I think we just lack human interaction. So we've got the video going on. We want to show what's on our desk and whatnot. But yeah. Any final words, Gene and want to wrap it up?

No. It's been really, really great, Tom, having you on the show and especially since you've already guested with us. It was great to see, you know, like, like what you talked about in the show last time you appeared and then how much has changed and how much slip has like, grown since then. So thanks for spending time with us and hopefully again, maybe another year from now, we'll do another check in.

You bet.

All right.

All right, take care.

Bye.