Navigating the SaaS Landscape: Real Estate Tech Innovation with Stephanie Betters

Stephanie Betters, a trailblazer in the real estate tech world, joins me, Jesse Burrell, on the Real SaaS Podcast for an invigorating chat about navigating the complex landscape of SaaS. From her shift from healthcare to founding Left Main REI, a real estate CRM, Stephanie’s journey is nothing short of inspiring. We delve into the art of scaling, the delicate dance between bootstrapping and securing funding, and the crucial elements needed to achieve and maintain product market fit. Our conversation unpacks how our personal use of our products provides a unique advantage in understanding and meeting customer needs.

Chapters

• 0:00 Scaling Strategy and Startup Scars
• 10:43 Bootstrapping vs. Funding
• 22:04 Building an Executive Leadership Team
• 32:10 Evolving Business Strategies and Customer Value
• 40:11 Customer-Centric Product Development Strategy
• 48:00 Customer Engagement and Success Metrics
• 52:46 Lessons Learned From Business Failures
• 1:01:56 The Future of Tech and Data

Transcript

00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
What happens when two powerhouse SaaS founders compare battle scars from building in the same industry on totally different paths? On this episode of the Real SaaS Podcast, host Jesse Burrell sits down with fellow real estate tech founder, stephanie Betters, to talk about scaling strategy and startup scars. From bootstrapping versus funding to the raw truth about product market fit. This episode unpacks what it really takes to build and survive in the SaaS game. 

00:24
Welcome to the Real SaaS Podcast. Real talk with the builders behind the most innovative SaaS companies in prop tech and beyond. We dig into product market fit, team building, funding, failures and the playbooks driving growth. No fluff, just raw insights on strategy execution and what's coming next. Now here are your hosts. 

00:45 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Real SaaS Podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Burrell. I am the CEO and co-founder of Batch Service. We've done over $150 million in software sales since 2019. And I am bringing on innovators, disruptors, huge guests in the real estate SaaS space, and today I have a good friend of mine, Stephanie Betters. How are we doing? 

01:13 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Hey, thanks for having me. 

01:14 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Absolutely. Thank you for coming on today. We have, I would say, became pretty close friends pretty quickly and definitely vibe when we met at Collective Genius. What about a year ago now, right? 

01:27 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, breakfast, random breakfast. 

01:30 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Random breakfast with Casey Ryan. Yeah, so today I think we have a lot of fun stuff to talk about. We're both in the property technology space. I'm more leads driven, You're more of a CRM, but we overlap in some spaces. So I think this is going to be a fun conversation. We're also at very different journeys of our businesses and you've taken funding. I've been bootstrapped. I think we have a ton of stuff to talk about. Before we dive into the details, give the audience know summary of how long have you been a SaaS founder for and, I guess, what got you into it, and touch for a second of you know what you did before. 

02:12 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
All right. So Left Main REI is our SaaS company and so, like you said, it's a real estate CRM and data house specifically built for investors. We have a couple adjacent markets that we do serve to, which is commercial and self-storage investors and some retail agents as well, but 95 plus percent of what we do is for real estate investors. I founded this company by myself in January 2020. So we are a little over five years in almost five and a half years in. 

02:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Nice Congratulations. 

02:44 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Before that I was running a real estate investment company with my husband and another partner. That company is now almost 12 years old. That's kind of what got me into this. I was trying to solve problems for my own company. We ran into issues with systems. 

03:01 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Sounds like a familiar story. 

03:06 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Very long story short. I got real pissed and decided to develop a solution for for us, and it kind of took off from there awesome. 

03:13 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I I didn't even know that you and your husband had a real estate investing company. I thought you told me you used to be an er nurse. You never gave me the nugget on um. That's why I was so confused on. I'm like how did she figure that? Like, how did she get into this um? 

03:29 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
and before that I was a uh and still am a nurse practitioner and I did. I was an ER nurse, I was an ICU nurse, then I went to NP school and I got a job working in cardiothoracic surgery here in Charlotte and I did that for a little over 10 years and kind of semi-retired right With growing a real estate company and uh and the SAS company, but that's. I still have a huge passion for hearts and that's kind of why we were talking about, you know, our kids and stuff and and uh, I tend to. 

04:00
I tend to find the hearts out there and can't help myself. 

04:04 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, that, yeah, that makes sense. You were one of the first people I called when I found out my daughter had a you know heart heart defect. So you know you're able to let me know, like, give me the truth, Like, hey, this is going to be a journey, but you know, doctors are pretty and surgeons are pretty darn good right now, so luckily she been been doing pretty well so far. So again, thank you for for everything on that end. 

04:27
But this is not a podcast on hearts, so let's dive into it, because this is the first question I I really like to ask guests is is very different for each person and um, so let's talk about product market fit. Like we found product market fit a batch immediately. I went from zero to $100,000 a month in sale in less than 90 days and we just right place, right time, profitable, still had our real estate investing company going at that time for a while, but I mean we hit the ground running. That is not the case for every founder. What was your case? What did that look like for you? 

05:08 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I think it's pretty similar. We had product market fit essentially right out of the gate, I think probably because we had our own companies right. We are the customer. We understood the customer and what they needed. So I would say the same thing Right out of the gate product market fit. But we did, in the first year, really need to adjust our ideal product market fit because we had. 

05:33
Well, there's a lot we could sell people software. But we got into pretty quickly like who's going to churn, who's a good long-term fit, what are we the best at? So we still tweaked it that first year and and learned some lessons after launch. But we went to. You know we made our first million within six to nine months. I'd say something like that yeah. 

05:58 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
so that was that was fast yeah, fast yeah. 

06:01 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Break net, break everything best yeah. 

06:06 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Cause I see, I see you know our, our, you know the wholesale real estate investor investor agent community is is is pretty niche-y. So I feel you know a lot of people are kind of really trying to solve their own problems. But I've met a few people that kind of were in the space and kind of did you know wholesaler investing and then kind of have always had that software or that engineer brain or want wanting to create a SaaS product and I feel like if you're not doing a ton of deals, you really don't get it. Like for the holistic picture, and I've seen, you know, a few people fail on that side of things as well, because I think they're just trying to be, you know, a SaaS founder and this is a space that they picked and kind of get the real estate investor. But when you're doing you know, millions of dollars of transactions, you know what works, what doesn't work, what breaks, because we have, you know, we fuel a lot of the real estate props that companies. 

07:03
So I get to talk to a lot of different people, I get to understand their businesses, as our sales guys do as well, and but I come into a lot of it and it's it's someone that's a really good operator and someone that's willing to invest into the, into the product properly. But I think the most important thing is is someone that really did the business at a pretty high scale because it shows that they could build another business. But I do want to get into how different those are, because I see a lot of people that try and do that are successful real estate investors try to get in the software side. They are so different of businesses and sales cycles and people that you're hiring and it's way more expensive than I think. People originally think you could create some MVP product pretty cheaply, but to go battle against established businesses now I think it's even tougher than ever. What are your thoughts? 

08:02 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I mean. So, first of all, I think pain is a gift, right. So like growing, growing, uh, growing a company that you're serving or that vertical that you're serving, the pain that you feel like legitimately helps, I think, create really great product. So I think that's that's a good and, like you said, you can, I think you can, develop product without that intimate pain of trying to do, you know, trying to run a business. But it's harder. I think we get it, I think we have a benefit from having gone through that. But you're, you're dead. 

08:29
On SaaS, building a SaaS company has been wildly different than than building a real estate company and I think you know kind of the core things that stand out is first is speed. Like the speed of which a SaaS company grows or can grow was well beyond it's like 100x what our real estate company did, you know. So things come into place really quick when people buy product versus this transaction. You know it takes 30, even 45 days and, like I don't know, I think it's slower. I think those companies grow potentially slower and saas very, very fast. 

09:03
And then different metrics make sense. Now you're thinking instead of transactional volume and transactional profit, you're thinking of enterprise value and how to build a company that's worth something, that is sellable and that you know continues. That addresses customers in a different way One with buying a product and next with growing them, and you know there's just different metrics involved and different team members. So what helped me make that transition was just really a core focus on building great systems internally, like at the company level not necessarily product level, but our company had great systems, and recruiting people who were way smarter than me, Like building the team, was critical, critical. 

09:50
So and I think that that does apply to real estate too is great, a great team, but going out and recruiting uh folks,

09:56 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
yeah, but the the difference, I would say because obviously I owned a real estate investing company too is when you're the owner, you're typically the smartest person almost in every department and SaaS it's so specialized. My job and your job as CEOs is to find people that know how to do things that we haven't done and that also have been a part of scaling, because this is the first thing that we've scaled and you could say scale sass a lot more than you know. Uh, you know monetarily wise than you know. A huge real estate investor, like the biggest I know, is doing 20, 30, 40 million. That's the biggest in the country, biggest, you know software companies doing billions or trillions now, um, so it's just, it's very different, um. And then the other thing that I notice is you know you're selling on a real estate investing company one transaction to someone and talking them into why you're the best and software as a service. You're having to sell them every single month to continue to pay you and the type of value that you have to give is long-term value versus a one-time value. And that's the biggest difference I've learned is because you're looking at the funnel very differently Getting them to sign up or getting, let's say, someone to do a transaction with you on real estate is. 

11:22
It stops there and then you, just once that transaction has happened, or that first transaction has happened for most real estate investors, that's done. Some people have multiple properties, but that's, you know, a very, very rare case. You're having to, month over month over month over month, show how you're innovating the product, show how you're better than this new competitor that came out is the. You know, the, the journey of the customer, uh, is just getting started when you acquire the customer, versus basically ending um and the real estate investing side. And that was the biggest difference in that. That. I had to, you know, figure out and learn is, you know, the funnels are kind of different or pretty similar on the front end but, um, after that first, first payment's made, um, that's when you're just getting started to be honest with you, 

12:08 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
yeah, how do you keep them? 

12:09
and then how do you help them continue to grow and adapt? More things that you roll out, get stickier in the product, more engagement with the product and, yeah, it's, it's a totally different metric that is introduced in the SaaS space. 

12:23 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Agreed. Okay, let's talk about I'm bootstrapped, you're funded. Give me one or two benefits, one or two drawbacks. I will do the same and see how we overlap. I'll let you start here. 

12:37 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, so I think you should bootstrap as long as you humanly can. I think being bootstrapped is the most ideal scenario. We were until last year, so we bootstrapped is the most ideal scenario. We were until last year, so we bootstrapped. Just before our five-year anniversary, we had a seed round. We raised a safe note round with angels. It's an angel fund, so technically it's a fund, but that fund is with angels. 

13:03
That was my first experience pitching and raising and really the need for raise and the reason for that is we were developed, that we are and we're developing a new product line and it was going to take a couple million bucks for me to be able to develop and launch and go to market with that product line. And I was concerned about weathering that storm from a cashflow perspective, being bootstrapped, not necessarily because you can't, but because you can't put the chips on the table. I couldn't put the chips on the table to do it properly and be conservative with cashflow at the same time. And that's kind of the, I think, the con of being bootstrapped. Every profit matters. That's. All you have to invest is your profit. 

13:49
So if you have a big long-term product that you're developing. You know it's not going to cash. Bring in cash for a while, right, like Luckman Genius, which we're rolling out product line by product line. 

13:59
I knew this was going to take a full year and a couple million bucks to get to the point of all go to market, all product line go to market, and I wasn't willing to to sacrifice my margin, like my, my operating cost margin, having cash in the bank and like being solvent and if anything weird happens with the economy and like there's just an election, I just felt there was a lot of variables there and so if I raised money, I knew that I could put those chips on the table confidently do the move we need to do, like make the full move, not like the like the tiptoe move Right, uh, and like go after this time, like timeline the market. I felt that this product need to go now, uh, because what's you know? It's an AI and data product and time is of the essence. So I felt like we had to do it right from the get-go. So therefore, I went out and raised a seed round, which was great. 

14:53
It was a terrible experience. It sucks raising money. I've raised a lot of private money for the real estate investment space. This is totally different. It sucks. 

15:03 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
For sure. 

15:04 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
That's why I say don't do it unless you have to do it, because it's very distracting. People don't get you and it's kind of like a rejection. You get rejected, right. Really, I don't get real estate, dang it, you're just the wrong person to talk to. I don't know. But it ended up being successful. We oversubscribed what we initially went out to raise. Uh, because we have great partners come to the table like, yes, let's, let's do this. And then, shortly after I got approached by a really strategic venture capital fund that's here in the south, in the southeast, near me. That was like hey, you worked with with our angel fund. We do a lot of deals with them. We see what you're doing. We want to be a part of it too. And so I'm just about to close our priced series round, so it's called a series seed. This is our first price round but that's been a whole another experience. 

15:51
We're working with venture capital on that level of corporate lawyers that dig up every fricking possible spreadsheet you've ever created in your life, you know. But we're just about to close that. So you know, long story short, I, you know, we. 

16:14 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I felt that was a proper move to make for growth for us. So we could do, we could actually go out and grab what we needed to grab, which is fun. And I guess you're saying is I don't want you have a bunch of people that work for you. You're like I have a big bet, I believe in my big bet, but if economy shifts or this happens or that happens, I also don't want to make this bet and bankrupt the company. And that's really why you went in there and raised the money to make sure it was like hey, we, I don't want one bet to jeopardize the company's future, right? So let me go raise the money, let me and then let me have, you know, some dry powder and really do this the way I want to and get it done faster. Is that is that? Was that kind of your thought process, or my? Am I off there a little bit to some degree? 

16:58 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, for the most part, I think you nailed it. The thing that I'll say is what I really weighed that against is the risk, and I think you know we were an established company, revenue, cashflow positive, like proof of concept, right, customers that grow and love us, and what I, what my risk was either not growing or or sorry, I should say, growing slowly or not growing as fast. 

17:24 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Right, like that was a major risk and someone go innovate your idea before you did it right, and that was the other. 

17:30 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
That was the other pieces. I felt that there was a there. I have to capture market share now. In order to do that, I need to, I need to go forward and make a bet, but I was not willing to bet the health of the company on that right so right and part of that. That's why I raised the amount that I did. I just, you know, sold 10, 10%. 

17:51 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, I mean we were developing the same, the same product, without knowing at the same time, and then, instead of, you know, competing against each other, we found a way to, you know, create a partnership there to where you could get what you need to get. We kind of have this, this thing that we each have and then both do it in our own ways, and you know that's what's so fun about. You know masterminds and people that you know want to collaborate, and you know full disclosure. I have invested in her company as well, so you know I do put my money where my mouth is as well, to where I was like I think I think she has something here and we kind of drive in two different lanes. They have some overlap, but more or less it's us. 

18:30
You know being more of a data provider than a competitor to you in any way. Our, our S and B product I wouldn't really I don't hear left main versus batch, whatever ever. So that's, that's never been a problem. And you know being a partner to you and servicing you as we continue to innovate on the machine learning side. You know giving you guys access to that and then you guys creating your derivative product on top. Of that is what's exciting, and I think it's pretty fun to do it. 

18:59 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's been the best part of this. You know, this journey is a level of collaboration that happens, it's, it's, it's rocket fuel for sure to find amazing partners and to work together on product and people who get it. You know, yeah, it's, it's been fun. 

19:15 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Your team is awesome thank you, I'll actually talk about you know the the bootstrap side, because I didn't know that you were a bootstrap for that long. 

19:23
So I think we have we have similar journeys, so good to understand why you went that route, but the the thing that I've always seen a lot of bootstrap companies and, um, you know, I, the benefit to me is, like I, me and Aniva, own the business I could do and not so nice French, whatever the fuck we want to, and we don't have to report to anyone, ever, ever, and we go and do it our way. We do it what it's. You know we live and die by our own swords. You know what I mean. We make a bad decision. We feel it. Make a good decision. We feel it as well. 

19:59
But the one thing that I've always like been envious to some degree is having those investment bankers or those, those angel people, and just building that network even further, of having more people there to give you relationships or sales, that doors that you may not have been able to, that we may not be able to get into, and someone has put in a significant amount of money. Let's say to your business to see it succeed. They don't want to see it fail. So having someone else really have your back that necessarily doesn't run the day-to-day, is definitely a benefit. Obviously, you need to find the right partner. There's a lot of people that you could raise four and two, I would be very strategic. I know that you were very strategic, definitely on that second round that you did, or whatever you call it, because you necessarily didn't need the money. But I think maybe some of the things I'm talking about is what you saw with this private equity firm, and I think that might be a huge contributor of why you're doing it. 

21:02 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
A thousand percent, just like us, right, you know, we meet, you have some kind of like vision chemistry and you're like I think we can help each other, I think we can do something together. It's the same thing with the right venture partner or the right, you know, private equity partner. I think it's harder to find because there's a lot of, there's a lot of snakes and there's a lot of people who are, you know, ivy League grown and know how to run a business on paper but don't know how to do it, you know, in day to day, and so it's really difficult to find the right partners. It's, I think, a little like matchmaking, but that's why I did it, because they're, these doors are open, they want to help, they're the right partner and now I can, I can, you know, we can get bigger and the vision can grow and the execution can grow as a whole, and they're great. 

21:47
So you know anything could happen. You know, I guess it's. It's a relationship, just like anything else. People can. You're not guaranteed no one's going to screw each other over, but I think, I think it's the right partner, is 100 worth the risk? 

22:02 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
for sure. No, I couldn't agree more. So I want to move on um to something else. I think it's really important and I want to talk about building out like an executive team. Let's talk about building that out when you start building that out, when you're first getting started, because we both grew quickly so we had money to spend quickly to hire people. And then I I also want to talk about, for at least my experience, that I've actually had three iterations of having to kind of backfill that team as we've grown to different levels and outgrown people in certain leadership spots. Luckily, some have been able to stay and understand that they weren't that person to get us to the next level, and some people's egos were too big to where they, you know, didn't see it the same way we did, and you know they left amicably, which is nice. But you know, I would love to hear kind of your experience, and then I'll elaborate on mine a little bit. 

23:03 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I made a lot of mistakes, and really in both companies too, and trying to figure out how to grow a leadership team. I don't think you get it right the first time, which sucks, Even though you're like. I'm going to try my best. You know, when we first started, I was more concerned about people who could do the job like who could do the task. 

23:22
And it took me a couple of years to realize first, like, who could do the task? Yeah, it took me a couple of years to realize first of all that that was even how I was looking at it and that was so wrong. I needed I need people who can help me build this thing, not just who can do that one job or can do the task. I needed the dream team, you know. So the first iteration of people that we hired were the one that we were so busy. It's growing so fast. 

23:42
We just need to, like, get the job done, you know and so from a place of like, we got to fill these orders, we got to do this um, and then when we grow and we stabilize, those people couldn't go anywhere like they. They couldn't go up, we couldn't get ahead of the ball right because they just knew how to do the task or do that job. 

23:59
They had the experience to see forward and to build process along the way. So, um, you know, as we, we, I haven't. I haven't turned over our full leadership team, thank god, but I have turned over our coo. Um and got the right person for, on a trust standpoint, but also on a growth standpoint, on a team standpoint where we, where do we need to go? And from the sales team, getting the right executive on staff was really hard too. We went through a couple iterations like sales manager et cetera, and trying to figure out who understands the space, can do the job, but can also grow. 

24:41
I think we have the right person in the right seat now also grow. I think we have the right person in the right seat now. Thankfully, on the CTO side and the experience side, I kind of had a little hack that worked out really well. Last year, a little over a year ago now, I started a advisory board. Like just crazy cool people like, hey, I'll give you a couple of a thousand shares in the company a month if you would meet with me. What for an hour? Right, like, just come hang out with me. 

25:05
I'll give you a couple of, a couple of a thousand shares in the company a month If you would meet with me. What for an hour? Right, like, just come hang out with me. I need I'll pay you in shares to just talk to me about being a business owner and like how you did these things Right. And so I set out to find that the create the person would be like blown away to get a meeting with. Right, holy crap. I got a meeting with them and then they agreed to be an advisor, and so two of my current leadership teams were those people. So they were advisors first and we got to know each other and they got to understand the vision of what we're growing and it was a very natural thing where they were like hey, I think we can do something more together. That's cool. 

25:40
And it was like, oh, I think this is compatible. And it was like, oh, I think this is compatible, and that was a really great kind of like dating way, right, like they had a ton of value to add, so, no matter what, it's a net positive. But then they also understood the vision. Then, right, and they had all this crazy cool experience and they felt really confident they could bring value to the table, and so did I, because I've been working with them on the supervisor level. So that was a really cool hack. 

26:06 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
That's pretty cool. 

26:06
I hope you're you're not doing the same to me because, um, I don't know if you can recruit me away

26:09 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
and then you know you'd be like, no, that was not on, it was not on purpose at all, but it happened with two people, which was really cool. Um, that's awesome, but I think that was nice. So I'd recommend either getting exposure to people like that to see if like to have some sort of dating. I think it's really hard just to hire out of the gate and it's almost like a longer recruiting. 

26:33 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So, yeah, I agree with everything, but let me take it a step further is, I think, at the beginning? So, at the beginning, I just think, after experiencing once, you could experience again. But understanding that, like the task takers and you don't have this huge budget is I actually think those are the people that you're supposed to hire. It's just, don't hire them with titles that they don't need or don't deserve and explain that to them. Be like, hey, you're going to be very important for us to get to a million dollars a month in revenue, but understand that we're going to have to hire someone to mentor you, to help to get you to the next level. So it's like, how do you frame it? How do you hire it? Um, because I some of those people that we ended up not being the keep was one, I, I just didn't know what I didn't know. But two, if I were to do it all over again, it set those proper expectations of like, hey, you're going to be a part of the ground floor, you're going to be able to kick ass, you're going to be able to learn all this cool stuff, but we're going to have to hire someone because I don't know how to do it and I think, if it's positioned properly, as you're starting a new business, it was just mine and yours first software business, so we had no fucking clue what we're doing. But now that I do know that. So for you, people that are getting started, or at the less than maybe half a million million dollars, you're going to have to hire someone else to help you get to that next level, because they've already experienced that, unless there's some people that are incredibly talented. So there's always exceptions, but most of the time that it's what it's going to be like. And then same for you, Steph, um. Luckily, my chief product and CTO they've, like Evo, nailed that at the beginning still have them. They're still brilliant. But sales and marketing that um, and HR and finance actually all of those um we had to cycle through a couple times as growing pains happened in gain. And luckily HR is um. 

28:28
You know we actually hired her at the very beginning and she actually was more valuable than like the, the uh gosh, I don't remember what the job he was like the vp of, you know, human resources or whatever you want to call it. She was more talented than he was. So we're like all right, you got to go, bro, like she's she, you got to go, bro. Like she's she's like. We got the reassurance that like she's the one because she understand the culture better, she understood the business better and she was the one driving projects. 

28:52
He had just always worked for these big corporations and kind of just like, did it this one way when, like hey, man, we're bootstrapped, like you can't go to India with the whole team and spend you know $150,000. Like find a more creative way to make everyone feel a part of the team. And that was fun. Some of it was internally being like they are the person, and the other times it was okay. I wish I would have talked about to these people. What I just spoke to you about is letting them know that like, hey, this is a great experience, but if you want to continue to grow and get that experience and learn and be mentored by someone to potentially have their job and it may not be with us in the future this may be their job, where now they're ready to take on this bigger role and have the proper experience, instead of like the title experience and then go get, and then go get set up for failure at a larger organization or, you know, like a publicly traded company. 

29:51 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Um, but those were some of like my big, my big learning lessons on that side really big lesson and a great piece of advice, and you gave me that advice to like be really careful with titles, because if you hire a VP and you want to top them, just like you said, maybe you don't want to let them go or whatever, but now you got to top them. 

30:10
You got to hire a director. Now, right, and then that director we may not need a director or a president or something you know, I mean or a chief, yeah I mean we threw around chief and VP and director titles when someone wasn't even a manager yet. 

30:24 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So it's like hey, it starts as a manager. Like, do you have ICs that you're managing? And if you have multiple managers, then you need a director to manage those managers. If you're a small organization, it's okay for someone to be a senior manager, like my sister, for example, had a director title and I took it away from her. I'm like you're not a director, what managers are you managing? Well, I want the title, but that's not what you're doing. 

30:47
If you go somewhere else, you don't have this experience managing managers. So like, why are you a director? You shouldn't be. Like it's okay to be that. But like don't get a title or need a title of something that you're not actually doing, because it's going to make you look bad If you go and try and find another job. It's not the proper experience. You don't actually have it. You could. It's just it's egos and people. But you know, sometimes we'll cave in to some. You know someone's managing a person or two and they want to be a director and it's just like but they have that talent or they've had that position in the past at another big company. Sometimes you need to give that to them because they can't take a lesser role. So there is circumstances of when that happens. 

31:29 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
There's a recruiting strategy there, right Like come here and get this title and you know. 

31:33 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
But that's a mistake most of the time, to be honest with you. 

31:36 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
I agree. Yeah, I think you can get wrapped up in that Come here, we're going to grow, we're going to grow. 

31:46 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
We're going to grow, you're going to be incredible. And then they, you know you better be damn sure that they can do it Right For sure. I couldn't agree more. Okay, let's get on to the next topic. You know, I think this would be a good one for both of us to talk about. I have a lot of questions to choose from. I'm just. I'm thinking of thinking of the vibe here. Okay, I think this is a great one to kind of talk about. Some of the things I want to go over is how has your business changed in the last three years. 

32:12 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
I'll have you go first to make me go first all these questions. 

32:14 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I can answer this one. I'll answer this one too is. 

32:18
I'll start then it could give you a few minutes to kind of percolate, um on the idea. Um, our business has changed a ton, especially being in the real estate space. With the interest rates raising um, text messaging um and cold texting was a huge part of batch leads and drove us a ton of revenue three years ago. Now you know that has cracked down. You're not supposed to be doing that and that was a huge pivot. I'm going to talk about in a little bit workflows for our customers, how people, you know, how the machine learning and how we have algorithms now to like we have this amazing algorithm that is like someone literally clicks a button in a zip code. They want to be in and we're going to tell you the most likely to sell homes because we've had machine learning in the background for years. You know testing and building and creating an algorithm and following all these properties that we see and don't see, and looking at the attributes. And you know, in today's world someone wants to make the calls and do the marketing and with data and where it's gotten to, I think it's huge to where us really leaning into like let us do the heavy lifting and let you do the marketing strategies and I think that's been, you know, a huge focus on real estate investors and even agents, on. You know how they want. They're lazy inherently and they want it to be as simple as possible and as a service provider, our job is to innovate ways to do that. So that's another big change of how our business has has kind of evolved. 

33:58
And then the last one is you know, our big focus was batch leads, batch dialer, batch skip tracing, which are, all you know, small business or for real estate investors or agents. And we've created, a couple of years ago, batch data, which is a big data company. Think of Attom Data, Corelogic, Black Knight. How can we create all this awesome stuff we've created, this awesome stuff we've created? How could we sell that to someone like Stephanie or another SaaS provider or data curator or someone that's giving things to the customers in this space? And that company has been incredible growth, where we've grown hundreds of percent's year over year, and I'm passionate about helping and learning from you guys and from your business to where you guys are giving us ideas of how we could be creative and how we. 

34:45
It keeps us on the pulse, I guess, not only talking to our customers on where we want our product roadmap to go. But talking to now our customers that service, adjacent customers and what are they looking for and what kind of trends are we seeing? Overlapping, because we don't have the same product but we have a lot of the same customer and that's been fun for me. And the B2B go to market in motion is so different than you know someone hearing from an affiliate and going and signing up for $100 a month. I'm putting a contract in front of you or someone like you for $100,000 to $250,000 a year. We really have to understand what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish and how we're the solution for you and show you that we believe we're better than you know the other competitors in that specific space. So that's really our last three years have, like we have totally changed as an organization and where our focuses have been. So that's kind of where we're at. 

35:46 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
So I don't think that we've had as much of a change as far as like product goes and product focus. But you know we've had to innovate also because the real estate space has changed and the way that investors are looking at product and what they want to use and what they can afford to use changed, you know, back in 2020 and 2021, especially pocketbooks are a little loose right, like you'll try it for sure. 

36:12
So what we've really changed our focus on is our delivery of time to customer value. So when you buy our product, how quickly do you, as a customer, see that ROI? With that, that focus changed how we look at our product itself. How can we find this thing? How can we make this easier? How can we make this more intuitive? Where are our customers engaging with our product? What are they not engaging with? We did a lot of really deep customer engagement monitoring. 

36:44 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
We do the same. I was going to talk about that. Save that for a little bit later. 

36:47 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
We're going to talk about that so critical and have more customer feedback, drive what it is that we're doing. It's important as much as I have an opinion and I have my own pain as a customer myself. Now we have this opportunity of thousands of people giving us feedback and trying to pick and discern really what is needed to make things more valuable to the customer. Right, we're charging the same amount per user license. How can we deliver more and more value? And that's what drove us developing a new product line. So that's changed, you know, in the last year or so. We have this new product line and and, like you, machine learning, ai, leveraging to to create, you know, incredible models and predictions, etc. Like now's the time to do that, and I I think you as a consumer, if you're not adapting tools like that, you know your business is dead you're dead and if you, as a product developer and and you know, a saas company, aren't finding ways to leverage that, you're dead. 

37:44
So big focus, but you have to. I think you have to do it with intention, and our intention is time to customer value. Like I want you to be able to buy this thing and freaking nail it and and triple your, your ROI in the month from buying the product. Right, how can we make this thing so, uh, so brainless of a decision to buy? And then, secondarily, how can you grow? That was another really big metric that we've been focusing on last year is just customer growth. So, are you successful with the product? Are you adding more users? If you're adding more users, for us it means your team is growing, your company is growing. Your company is probably more profitable and more successful. Are you engaging with other product lines? Because we've developed the trust in the existing product line right like, and so you know, customer value and customer growth have been big focuses and I think we've matured a lot as a company because of that and put out a lot higher quality stuff yeah, and that's something else that we're excited about. 

38:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
We have actually we really focused on user acquisition growth. Obviously, that's always going to be a staple, but we're actually going to create on some additional subscriptions with some really good go-to-market tools. Back to your point of people that have adopted it and that love, or raving fans, as we would say. You say they want to spend more money with us and they want us to be innovative with our products. So we're actually, over these next couple of quarters, coming on with some additional subscriptions as well to help them get more efficient inside of batch leads, and we're very excited to create these offerings for them, and one it gets our lifetime value of the customer up. But at the end of the day, like that's, that's a metric that we look at. I'm kind of old school, like you, to where that's so important to look at, but at the same time, like you know, I'm not just trying to make more money. Obviously, we have to charge for the services that we build. They're expensive but, like you know, us showing that they're spending more money with us also shows that they're making a bunch more money because of what we're giving them, and that's what makes me excited At the end of the day, you're giving us a little bag of money so you could go make a big bag of money and if our product is really helping you be successful there, they're going to continue to keep working with us and that's what's really important. But let's shift, because you gave me a perfect segue of how do you balance. So it's a little bit different for me now than it is for you now Profitability versus growth because you do have raised some money and you do have some different levers you could pull. 

40:11
But for us, when that market shifted, it was tough on us because we were very profitable up through 2022. And we never had to worry about. What we wanted to build is just like are we building the right things? We just had a ton of developers, a ton of resources to like each quarter. We're like okay, what cool thing are we doing now and how's it going to help us grow? That definitely shifted to where it's like okay, now we don't have as many resources. What is the best and highest value of our engineers and product teams? Time to make sure that the customers are seeing the value in our product, and that's kind of how we got to. 

40:51
Adding these, we could grow our revenue without growing our user base. That's really important because there isn't a huge user base growth with these high interest rates and the there isn't a huge user-based growth with these high interest rates and the lack of inventory exchanging hands. So how can we still be successful without having to have, you know, huge organic growth? And that's kind of like where we went to. So our growth versus profitability is like what is one defined growth. So growth we're talking more about monetary growth than just customer growth. 

41:27
That was something that we kind of realigned the entire team on Not saying that we don't want as much, you know, growth as we can customer acquisition wise. But let's focus on that and then be very intentional with what we're building, why we're building it and how can it create you. It create more revenue for the company and that's kind of where we've really shifted this last year for at least our S&B products. On our B2B side, it's just how can more people know about us, because that's been growing like crazy. But the S&B or the real estate investor product line people do know about us and at that point it's how can we be more successful, more profitable on that side? Because that side those products generate 80% of the revenue. So just because this one side's growing a bunch doesn't mean for our whole product suite that it's really making a dent, because it's not. 

42:19 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I agree, I think you have to look at customer, you know, company growth in an on an MRR or an ARR standpoint, yeah, and not just a logo like how many new customers you bring on, because if your MRR, your, you know your monthly reoccurring is growing, that also means that people are you're retaining people and that you are bringing on new people or the people are growing on your platform. So I think that's definitely the truest form and I think it's really hard to decide what to build. 

42:47 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Like. 

42:47 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
I think it's really hard and you know. You know there's bugs and stuff you always got to take care of and you probably always have some sort of degree of tech debt that you've got to catch up with. With release, always Tackle. But you know, I think it's really easy. I was actually talking to another founder about this too. You know, I think it's really easy. I was actually talking to another founder about this too. I think it's really easy to get trapped in customer feedback from a feature standpoint, like wouldn't it be cool if we had this bell or whistle and this and that? And it is like those are cool things. But you can't just push out features. I think you have to push out solutions for customer problems. So you're asking for this feature because you want what? What is that resulting in? And then that's what you solve for. 

43:29 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
A lot of the time when we're sending out these surveys, they're not really critically thinking of what would be impactful from this product. They're just saying this is something I want because it would be nice. Now, if you have hundreds of people, when you have 1000 people saying, raising their hand, saying the same thing, then you're like okay, I need to build this. But a lot of the time, like our chief product officer, he's like what are they trying to accomplish? And, you know, is it more important than the stuff that we've been critically thinking about over the last six months for our customer base as a whole? And I think that's something that we got good at. 

44:12
It's something that was tough for, like our community manager, our uh, product marketing team, um, because they're in there all the time and we're like well, is it more important than these things? 

44:21
And why are like go back to this person, call them, why, why, what are they trying to accomplish from from this feature? 

44:28
And that's kind of battle that we have with some of the team because, like, I'm trying to get as many people on our team to really think big picture. And when we're creating our product roadmap for the next three, six, nine, 12 months, which we have. We bring in all the way down to individual contributors and say here's the crazy stuff that we thought of, what aren't we thinking of or what's more important, and we go all the way down. We have sales reps in those meetings because they are the ones actually talking every day to customers, selling them and also losing those customers for certain reasons. So our sales reps once we brought them into like really our product roadmap discussion, it was very helpful on really identifying where we should and shouldn't work on things, because sometimes at the executive level you're making assumptions and you're not in the weeds as much as they are, and I think people underestimate the experience of a great sales team and a great community team that are talking to the customers much more than we are. 

45:29 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Oh, it's critical, right. And to speak to your sales, the sales point, those are the people who are getting objections. Right, and they're getting objections because they don't see the bridge to solving their problem. They're, you know, that customer problem that they're having. So we can do that with products and I think that's the right way to frame it. 

45:47
But it does cause internal frustration, I think, for product teams and for technical teams, because they'll want certain features. Right, something has to be a priority. How are you going to choose the priority? And, in my opinion, you know, if we get down to the root reason why somebody wants a feature and we can solve for a customer problem, I'm so willing to make that investment because I know it's going to result in revenue. Just because you move the button from there to there, you know, and we spend the you know a couple thousand dollars. We're never going to see an extra dollar for that. But if we drive value to the customer, then obviously we will, so it's. And. But if we drive value to the customer, then obviously we will, so it's. And there's still a balance, because sometimes buttons look stupid and they shouldn't be there. 

46:27 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
That's true, that's true. 

46:28 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
But you know, I think that's the right measuring stick and that's probably part of the rollercoaster, right? Because when you first release, like you've got bugs, you've got features, you've got all this crap you've got to catch up with. 

46:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
And then you can't get stuck in that. You've got to then to continue the growth, you've got to go, you've got to go back to the problems. So I'm sure you what? What proprietary or I guess what, what things have you created? I'll start so I could give like an example of cause. 

47:06
It's kind of a weird question is like, for example, like you know, we build out, you know a lot of data sets, um, for our customer journey and and where the touch points are, and you know open rates and click throughs and so on and so forth. But on the product, um, you know we built out a lot of tableau, um and data bricks reporting to where they talk to each other of. You know product usage and so like. When we do develop a new feature, a new product, like you know, is that being? It's actually multitude things like do we go to go to market right with the property to make sure that our customers know that we have this new thing? And then, if people do know we have it paid versus unpaid, you know we try our best to set. You know a metric of. You know, if we do something on product, you know what are we measuring it against. You know what, what. What means successful, what means failure, and where did it succeed and where did it fail? So, like, like, we've built out a very robust way to make sure you know, like, for us, the number one adoption thing is, you know, did is is list people, you know, pulling the list. If someone comes in and they're not pulling lists, they're going to turn like automatically and how much are they pulling a new customer? How much are they doing? How much do they actually need much? Are they pulling a new customer? How much are they doing? How much do they actually need? Um? And then you know our if, if they're doing a multitude of things, how more likely are they staying for longer? And then that's where we could create our onboardings, um, to help people be more successful. 

48:34
How can we um, you know, create that user journey inside, you know, with pop-ups, with the pendo guides and stuff that we have there, um, and that's where we really use like, a lot of our data for, you know, the customer and the journey is really understanding like, where are they using it, where are they not using it? And if they're not using it, you know make some assumptions of why they aren't. Like we literally pay people to go get onboarded. We pay them $50 to go get onboarded because we know the power of our product and once they see it and know how to properly use it, they're going to stay longer. 

49:11
Um, and that was Anny going like hey, like people cancel 70 more if they don't do an onboarding within the first 60 days. Um, how much is that worth? And then how do we incentivize them to get there? And um, you know, it costs a lot less money to to keep a customer than to keep attaining new ones. So that's an example kind of of how we use you know data inside our you know internal business to try and be more successful and help customers more. 

49:33 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, we do the same thing, so almost you know very, very similar. So we have an API that's embedded in our product that counts user activities, essentially so our number one. Like you said, list pulling for you. Our number one is transactions created. So if you are doing deals, then you're getting value from the platform. It's like a super easy way of saying if something's happening and we have these flags and customer health scores. 

50:00
So if you've gone more than 30 days and you haven't done a deal. Our team is going to be reaching out to you. How's it going? Are you okay? Do you need help? Are you marketing? Are you what do you like? What's going on right? Do you need, do you need, resources from us? And we have some, you know, subject matter experts on the team. I'm happy to jump on calls with people if they need help, coaching or whatever, so that we can make sure that their business is healthy. And that's what. So that's a big one, is this transaction? And then we have some like yellow ones, which is the number of text messages or emails are being sent to the platform, tasks are being done, records are being updated, logins, et cetera. If you're using the platform, you're getting value out of it. 

50:41 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I mean the most important one is logging in. If they haven't logged in in two weeks, you're like what's going on? I really hope you're on vacation right now, or your whole team's on vacation. 

50:54 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
The login thing is kind of interesting too. So we look at monthly active users versus daily active users, like what percentage of people that use your license, are logging in every single day, and that helps us determine if that customer is a healthy customer or not. 

51:09 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
because you know we're the lifeline if you're not engaging with your you're at CRM, you're literally like people should be in there, people that have seats but not everyone, um, that has a seat is going to be in there every day because they're maybe doing a specific task so or you know, maybe people have downsized their team right and then you're going to drop or daily active users are going to drop versus what? 

51:31 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
you have a month, so that's been a cool metric to track. And when we, I think what we've seen really successfully is being proactive, like you said, with onboarding right. When we're proactive like that, people want to know that you care, that you notice them too. But we've been able to be proactive and just really engage on a deeper level with our customers. So we have onboarding too when they buy our product. And then we have customer success with a human being that you can call and ask a question to and you can have. 

52:00
You know, most people have monthly calls, check-in like a vendor check-in. How is the company doing? What are your needs? And sometimes it's like, hey, I need help with a skip trace. Oh good, cool Call Batch, they're awesome. Maybe not even us is providing the service, but we're industry experts too, so we can help them and that creates a ton of value. And if your company is healthy, they're going to use our product right. So that that engagement piece I can't speak highly enough about it. I think it's super important. Once you get proof of concept like you, better go all into that, because it keeps people on platform for sure. 

52:34 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I couldn't agree more. So this one you get to answer first, so kind of putting you on the spot, okay, but I think this is a great question because we, we all have these um, and I think they're funny stories to tell. It's like give me an example of when you felt like a complete failure inside your business but ultimately it turned in to you know, driving your business in a direction of actual success. 

53:01 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
It may not have just happened at the beginning, my gosh I have probably hundreds of examples if I had enough time to think about um. I think the probably the most impactful one was the very first time I had a customer cancellation. 

53:18
That's okay like having to have that conversation like why, why are you leaving? Especially when we were, you know the beginning, when we didn't have a ton of customers and like I had like a personal involvement, right, I knew every single person that you know had bought and they left. I felt personally rejected, I felt like professionally rejected and I had to have that conversation like well, why, why did you make that decision right? And get that kind of hard truth of you know things that are difficult about the product, things that are good about the product but not good enough, and you know what's happening in their business, how much value did it provide them or whatever, right, and getting the harshest feedback from somebody who left, right, uh, so that made me feel like a horrible failure. 

54:03
But it ended up informing what we did with the product and looking at it from a different way. Right, like, okay, the harsh truth is really great feedback, no matter what. All publicity is good publicity, all feedback is good feedback. You got to do something with it. And it was a little bit of a gut check too, because when I launched Left Main, I was like I really cared, right, and I still really care, but I was like this is my baby. What if someone says my baby's ugly? I'm going to take it personal Right and can't. 

54:37 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
But yeah, at the beginning you know you take it personal and at the end of the day some people you know you can't create something that fits all needs and some people are going to build different products that may fit someone's needs. 

54:49 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Right, I mean look at Apple versus Android. People will go to war over which one's better. They're both amazing products, right. 

54:57 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Right. 

54:57 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
And same thing with, like, CVS and Walgreens. They'll be on the same dang intersection. Both of them are doing great, but people have a preference of one versus the other, even though they can both be correct, and someone can have a negative feeling about one thing. So I had to really thicken my skin about that in the beginning and learn real quick that I'm going to take that. I can't take it personal. We're going to make it better. Everything you say I'm going to listen to and it's still to this day. All customer feedback, good or bad. Obviously we all want more good feedback, but it has informed our product and I think it's made us a billion times better and I I honestly can't even recognize our company today as it was five years ago yeah, and I'd say for us, um, the failure of of batch data. 

55:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
You know, our enterprise product, uh, the first two years we launched it, we had had such easy success with you know, just you know, going into the real estate, investor, agent, home service space and just create something bunch customers, bunch value. We did absolutely fantastic. And, you know, going into that B2B world, we were, I want to say, arrogant but confident in just being able to figure it out, like we had with everything else, and that was not the case. I don't think we hired the right people to help advise us on. It's just so different than what we'd already done, unfortunately, and I lost money on that business for almost three years, and I'm talking millions of dollars a year done, unfortunately, and I I lost money on that business for for almost three years, and I'm talking millions of dollars a year, and I felt like a failure, um, in multiple ways is we couldn't get the product market fit so like, like our data was great and but how we packaged it and offered it was was very poor compared to our competitors. The sales process was not great and our pricing and packaging and what people were offering versus what we were and how we were doing it in like in that space, you just come with your best foot forward. 

56:54
Um, the sales leader at the time wanted to. He came from a really big b2b world where it's like hey, I want to anchor, I want to do this, I want to do that and like, and then we finally got to a place. It's like let's make business easy, because everyone in this world or in the prop tech space it's like hey, this is what we charge and and like, there's not a huge like the. The negotiating is really on like terms. So, like, you want to prepay, you get a little discount, or you want this or you want that. Um, now that there's getting to be some derivative products, there's a little bit more there too, where it's just not a commodity anymore, and that's something that we're leaning into. But at first, wrong sales leader, wrong marketing people we had to replace those. So that kind of goes back to our conversation earlier a little bit. 

57:36
And just knowing that it's much slower build, you're not going to just get, you know millions of customers and you know when people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, your brand awareness matters. It was just so different. I felt like a complete idiot. It was hard because we hadn't failed. 

57:57
When you keep winning at a lot of things, you just assume you're going to keep winning. It was a huge slap in the face to be like hey, bud, you got a lot more to learn and you got a lot of work to do. If you want this this, you know this side of the business to be successful. And that's why you saw me excited and so proud, because that was a really long journey to even get to where we're at today and, as I said, it still doesn't even make up a significant amount of our revenue. But I know in two years it up a significant amount of our revenue. But I know in two years it will and I know that we have the right people in place and we're servicing the right clients. 

58:30
So that was definitely one of those lessons to where it felt like, I mean, we were close to pulling the plug at one point because I didn't know what to do anymore, and luckily we persevered and just continued to truck along. But that was tough when you're just robbing your other businesses to see something constantly burn up money and we didn't raise money. So that's me and Evo just burning up money, losing our profits from stuff that we've worked very hard on, on something we weren't doing very good at. So it was tough, it was really tough. 

59:04 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
I think it's just the poignant lesson and all this is like failure is a part of it and the solution is to push through it and figure it out, one little thing at a time, you know, I think all of us have that lesson of getting slapped in the face of. You know, anyone who's successful has that story and has multiple stories like that, and how they persevered. 

59:28 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I know everyone like thinks, just because you know you've done pretty well in your business, but they don't understand all of the, all the go-to markets that you do on something that you spend a bunch of time creating or building software wise, that people just don't give a shit about, and you're like, whoa, I was wrong, like you know. 

59:47
And they're like dude, no, it's just like any other business. Or just getting started Like I feel like I get beat up all the time, like I'm like certain that this is just gonna be revolutionary and we launch it, and people are just like it's okay and I'm like what I was, like this is awesome. So it's just like it's okay and I'm like what I was like this is awesome. Um, so it's just like it's not all rainbows and butterflies. Uh, just cause you know we, we have, you know, companies that are making millions of dollars in it doesn't mean that we're not massively failing all the time as well. So if you're just getting started in any type of business, just know, like you know, people are always, you know, making mistakes and there's always learning lessons around the corner. 

01:00:27 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
I think that's why you got to like, listen to stuff like this and and get involved with people who are doing what you're doing, so that you can normalize it. So I think I'll speak for myself as a founder. I asked myself a lot is this normal? Is this okay, what we're you know, and and when something goes, goes wrong, you don't think it's normal and you just want to be normal. But but the failing is normal, the the mistakes are normal, the you know, and I think the more you hear that, the more uh you know, the thicker your skin can be against problems like that and the more tolerance you have to persevere. So, like, like you said, you almost quit, you almost stop that product line. 

01:01:02
Right, imagine if you did we're close, right,

01:01:05 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
yeah, we're really close yeah, 

01:01:06 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
so you can't do it, you can't stop you know.

01:01:09 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Last question I love ending the pod on this is you know in in this real estate space that you know both of us serve the majority of our clients and what do you think is going to be the most tech disruptive things that are going to be happening? And it doesn't necessarily mean need to be for stuff that we're building ourselves, but, like in the real estate space, what do you think is going to be the most disruptive tech? And I guess I want to know, to some degree, how is your company going to? You know, be a part of that? 

01:01:40 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
So I think, I think, ai you know, this is the buzz, the buzzword, ai for sure. 

01:01:44
But I think in a way bigger than just machine learning. I think machine learning is a big part of it, but I think, because it's growing so fast, I think the way people interact with technology is going to change completely. I think I was telling somebody the other day I think in a few years, I would not be surprised in three to five years, if we don't even have keyboards. You know that we're just talking to technology like we do to our Alexa, right, like hey, Alexa, what's this? And that's how we interact with our computers. Now, right? Or our glasses that we're wearing, like these meta things, right, like hey? 

01:02:16 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
show me this. 

01:02:17 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Right. So I think the way that we interact is is going to change from the, from our traditional sense of like, point and click and varying with keyboard, you know, stuff I think it's been a lot of. It's going to be voice related and it has to be even simpler where you could click for, you know, to get what you want, instead of searching and scrolling and all this stuff. I think I think it's going to be simplified to a pretty serious degree. So, in thinking about the whole interface of technology changing, that means that our product has to be easier, right? Otherwise you can't. If I have to go scroll through tables to try to figure out where the data lives in my system, it's not going to be compatible three, four, eight years from now, right? So I think that your user interface has got to be able to be compatible three, four, eight years from now, right? So I think I think that your, your user interface, has got to be able to be multiple. 

01:03:08
And then, also on the on, as far as the backend, on product, you better have a great data play, because none of that crap makes sense. You can't use machine learning, you can't use LLMs, if you don't have a great database and a good data model that you can query against with voice and using large language. So you a model that you can query against with voice and using large language. So you got to have a centralized place where this stuff lives that you can then query in a more simple user interface, right like language. So long, long-winded answer, but I I think there's going to be some pretty cool disruption with with how we interact with tech so I actually agree and I want to kind of add to what you're saying to some degree. 

01:03:49 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I think with God I'm trying to figure out how to word this properly. With workflows, I think APIs are going to get much simpler to use. To where there's going to be very simple APIs, it's not, you don't need a developer. Let's say it could be for your CRM, it could be for workflow Like. That's something we're really going to lean into is how can we create very simple APIs to solve complex problems for our customers, not just in batch leads, but on the batch data side as well. 

01:04:17
And then, as you're saying, having these you know properly, I guess, infrastructure, big data sets which luckily we already have because we sell to a lot of companies like yourself, I think you know the machine learning, the LLM models, it's anyone could create the derivative product. Are you creating the derivative products that are going to make the impact and and how creative can you get and how can you really really solve a problem? And that's kind of where our focus has leaned into is, you know, having the machine learning. But instead of just building this machine learning thing, what are we trying to accomplish for the customer and how do we make it as simple as possible for them to use it, and then how can they customize it with a simple API to integrate into their CRM or into their dialer, or into their data set or into whatever. That's really where I see on the data side is whoever innovates there is going to win and we have a big bet on the batch data side on that. 

01:05:23 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
Yeah, I made the same bet right All in on data so that we can build great ai and great models. 

01:05:30
you know the, that's the foundation

01:05:32 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I don't even know what models we're gonna build, but, like I, I think the people that build the best and simplest derivative products are gonna win. Um, and who could get to market fastest with those? Because, like I, could build a derivative product and it doesn't necessarily need to be for with those, because I could build a derivative product and it doesn't necessarily need to be for just data. I mean, it could be for someone that's doing a bunch of lead gen through PPC. But we're creating these workflows through an API and through machine learning of like every single. Let's say Doug Hawkins, for example, runs $200,000 a month on PPCI campaigns Every little property or every property or homeowner that comes through. I could score that with a proprietary algorithm to him on the workflow. I'm just giving an example, just some crazy idea. But what's this crazy idea that solves a problem for a ton of people, to give them better insights on what properties they're actually going to buy and where their sales reps should spend their time. 

01:06:29 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
That's it, and at the end of the day, that's what the limiting factor is is time. So how much, how much can we do? How much can we automate it? How much, how much can we scale with time? 

01:06:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I love it. All right, I want I love ending with that question because it kind of talks about the future, talks about where we're going, I guess any last thoughts I always like to end for you to talk about you know last thoughts, for I don't necessarily think it needs to be SAS. I like to say, for you know a founder and it could be advice for someone getting started, someone where you're at or someone you know at any, any level. But what's like advice that you really love you know to give, or something that you think that you have special insight to to where you know someone would be like damn Stephanie's dope. 

01:07:14
that's good advice well,

01:07:16 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
you better know that by now already, uh, by the end of this podcast, no, um, I'm I'm really bullish on the real estate investment space. I think that products for real estate investors are really important. One in three single-family houses are bought by an investor. I think the space is growing. I think regular traditional residential real estate is dying. So I'm very pumped about what we're doing here in this space and I love that you have a dedicated podcast for it. 

01:07:43
Proptech is freaking awesome. But kind of, on a broader sense, just from founder to founder, I think you know, don't underestimate your own pain and what you can create for solutions around that. You know, I think there's a lot of opportunities and the difficulties that you have in your everyday life, in your other company that you're running can be it can be a really impactful product. So don't don't underestimate that, uh, and your ability to create a solution for a customer problem. I think everything should be centered around around those problems. Um, and yeah, there's, there's a lot of ways to to make things work here. So, but the real estate space is where it's at to make things work here. 

01:08:26 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So, but the real estate space is where it's at. And then, if someone is inspired by Stephanie and this amazing podcast we just did, how would they get ahold of you? 

01:08:33 - Stephanie Betters (Guest)
You can find me on social at StephBetters is my handle. You can check out LeftMain LeftMainREIcom. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on all the innerwebs. 

01:08:43 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
On all the places and I always like to end with a little piece of advice too. I try and give something different every time, but something that I've really learned, especially when we've been in two different markets since I founded Batch Service. And when you're doing really good, you're not as good as you think you are, and when it feels really bad and the pain's there, you're actually not doing as bad as you think you are. Sometimes it's market conditions on both sides of things and sometimes you just have to weather storms. But it is tough when you've seen a ton of success and it changes and that may not be to something that you can control. So stay a little bit more level. You're good isn't as good. You're not as good as you think you are and you're not as bad as you think you are either. 

01:09:31
But I think sometimes people get really caught up on both sides of those things and I've got to experience both of that is. You know, looking back on the last two years, you know it's been tough, but I think I probably me and my two partners probably beat ourselves up more than we should have, because I think it was tough on everyone and surviving and still being profitable is something to be very proud of, and when we thought we were the shit, we probably weren't as good as we thought we were either. So it's just that's some advice that I could give you. From doing over $150 million in sales in six years. I've had a roller coaster to go on, so I think that will wrap it up. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Real SaaS Podcast. You can find the podcast on my YouTube channel, Jesse Burrell, and if you're interested in any of our products, check out batchservice.com. And until next time. 

01:10:26 - Speaker 2 (Host)
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