From Bootstrap to Breakthrough: Disrupting Real Estate Telecom with Jordan Fleming

Jesse Burrell sits down with Jordan Fleming, co-founder of smrtPhone, to unpack the transformative journey from bootstrap beginnings to industry disruptors in telecommunications and real estate. Our lively conversation reveals the strategies behind developing a cloud phone system that flawlessly links with CRM platforms like Podio and Go High Level, proving essential for real estate agents and investors. As we reminisce about the technology boom years, we share the importance of reinvestment and innovation in scaling our business, offering listeners a candid look at the triumphs and challenges faced along the way.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bootstrapped Startups Disrupting Real Estate Telecom
• 14:09 Preparing a Business for Sale
• 19:39 Scaling Business Complexity and Growth
• 32:48 Navigating Leadership Transitions and Overcoming Challenges
• 40:12 Navigating Team Challenges and Revitalizing Culture
• 49:26 Future Impact of VCon Technology
• 56:04 AI and Machine Learning Innovations

Transcript

00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
From bootstrap beginnings to disrupting telecom and real estate. This episode is full of unfiltered truth and SaaS strategy gold. Jesse Burrell sits down with Jordan Fleming, the co-founder of SM Art Phone, to unpack how two founders scaled in parallel, serving the same customers, navigating the same headwinds and learning the same hard lessons. Get ready for real talk on product focus, culture missteps, ai hype and how to build something sticky enough to outlast the market cycle. 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. 

00:49 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Welcome to the Real SaaS Podcast real talk with the builders behind the most innovative SaaS companies in real estate. We dig into product market fit, team building, funding, failures and so much more. There's no fluff here, just raw insights on strategy execution and what's coming next. I have a very special guest today Jordan Fleming. I'm your host, Jesse Burrell. I've done over $150 million in software sales in the last six years and Jordan is a monster himself. I'm so excited to having you on here. 

01:21 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Welcome to the show, Jesse fantastic to be here and nice to finally get together. 

01:26 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I know we definitely service similar customers, so this is an episode that I'm very excited for. We really leaned hard and deep into, I would say, the real estate agent and investor space, especially at the beginning. There I'm curious to see where your guys' growth levels are, where you're focusing, and I'm happy to share where we are. But I guess, before we get started, tell us just a quick couple minutes about your current business. Don't go too deep because I'm going to have a bunch of questions about that, but just give us a quick little background of where you're at today and how'd you get there. 

02:05 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Yeah, great. So smartphone is the current business and it is an all-in-one cloud phone system, and so that is. Both the calls, texts, video calling and power dial are all rolled up into one system. And we founded the business eight years ago. 

02:25
And really, people always come and talk about a grand plan and I continue to tell people that luck played its amazing role, because the truth of the matter is I was lucky to meet my co-founders, lucky to meet my co-founders. We were all you know. We were all building custom CRMs inside a platform called Podio, which I'm sure you're familiar with or you've heard of. And then, yeah, well, we were building custom systems. We met each other. They were technical, I was sales and marketing. We said let's work together. I said I have an idea for a phone system. We built it without having met each other and we've scaled. Now, you know, we've got about 60 people in the company and we're a hundred percent bootstrapped. Uh, and we're able to do that and to me, that is the best like. If you are into software, bootstrapping is the way I would encourage anybody uh, to do it, it takes right, absolutely, absolutely, get into that. 

03:25
And you know, we found a niche and we ran hard on the niche and then we slowly expanded that niche to the point where now you know we service, we have about 2400 companies that use the platform on a daily basis, A large part of them real estate investors, although not exclusively, and we now connect to I think we just launched our 10th oh God, this is where I should have done my research our 10th integration with a CRM platform which is High Level, which we integrated to this week. Oh Go, high Level. 

04:00 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, go. High Level's definitely been huge for the real estate investor, agent I'd even say home service A lot of people being so customizable. I you know, when I was in real estate, I was focused on a lot of podium stuff. That was something that you could play with and tweak and tinker with, and I know that's where you guys really cut your teeth to be the first people really to truly integrate properly inside of that platform. 

04:29
And you know my story is so similar to yours was, you know, found the right partners at the right time and we were able to, I think, do what you guys did to some degree. 

04:41
Is you just leaned into a niche service the hell out of that niche and we were coming up, uh, both of us, right on a boom of a real estate, just everyone having all the money in the world, and I know both of us got to capitalize on, you know, 20, 20, 21 and and 22, and we could talk about how, how much probably harder 23 and 24 and 25 have been, um of you know, scaling up to scaling down. 

05:06
But you know, I I think, uh, I'm very lucky too, but I think we, we played our hand of luck and both of us I'm excited to dive into it is. You know, we also took advantage of our luck and both built awesome products for the communities that we serve. And, um, I think being bootstrapped and being very profitable quickly was helpful for at least us with that. But instead of flying on private planes and spending all that money, me and my partners just shoved that right back into the business. And how can we continue to add value for our customers and grow our user base? Sounds like you guys did something similar as well. 

05:46 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Absolutely, and I would add to that, to your point. I think you're 100% correct. But I would also add not only did we ride the exact right moment in time probably both of us but it was exactly that point where technology and real estate really started to fly as well. So it wasn't just the money was opening that, it was the realization, finally, or, I think, a maturation of an understanding that technology will help you scale in real estate. I think it hit right about there as well, and it just like perfect storm, wise, you know, if you couldn't, if you could ask for a more perfect storm than exactly when certainly from our perspective, eight years when we started, it was everybody had the money and everybody suddenly saw technology as valuable and we were niched to a sector that was like, oh great, and you're built for us. And those three perfect storms I think probably both of us benefited from us and those three perfect storms. 

06:46 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I think probably both of us benefited from. Yeah, cause you were 2017, we were 2018 when we uh founded, founded, batch. So yeah we're, we're seven years in and you know it. Just it was, it was the right place at the right time, uh for sure. But you know, I really think the that the things that we did is we just continued to just pour into, into growing the product and making the product better, and I know you guys have done the same thing with with smartphone, because, like I was a real estate investor, so we're kind of solving our own problems is what we're originally trying to do. 

07:19
And then, before we knew it, we're like oh man, we have something special here and this is, you know, at the end of the day, it's really hard to sell a wholesale company versus sell a software company, and the revenue is a little bit more, not a little bit more very predictable Not saying wholesaling isn't predictable with once you have KPIs and metrics but it's not $20,000, $40,000 deals that are making or breaking your month. We have, you know, between all of our products, we have over 10,000 customers. They're not all going to poof away, you know, in a night or not. One deal is going to like ruin a sales reps day, week or month, like that, and for me it was just a new challenge and it was fun to learn and we got to hire different people. I got to hire people that were way better than me, cause I didn't even know what account manager was. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know what like an AE was. I didn't know what a tech stack was Sounds like you're a little bit more technical than I was when you were building this out but luckily, my partners were technical, but they didn't have a background either. So we really just like consumed as many books, yeah, ground either. So we really just like consumed as many. Yeah, we were. 

08:28
You know, building the plane as we're flying. It is what we always said and, and just hoping it didn't crash is was basically our motto at the beginning. But let's uh, let's go over, um, you know, let's talk about, you know, balancing. So you, we're both bootstrapped, so let's get that out of the way. Uh, both of us are, are completely bootstrapped. What do you think about? Um, talk about some of the advantages, but I have some opinions about the disadvantages, too, of of not being bootstrapped, so I'd love to hear your opinion before I talk on it I think advantages, without question, and and right now is a great time like this has been a weird year, or at least for us. 

09:06 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Maybe not for you guys, but it's been a weird year and we've had to do some pivoting. And it's been a weird year where growth may have been at a certain pace, it's slowed and you're having to kind of dig into some bits, and I think a huge advantage of being bootstrapped right away is that you have the space to have those conversations without someone pressing down on your neck, um and and yeah, right, and then like for me, that's, if I had to put that that's at the top of my list, because I didn't play this game to have some asshole telling me why I'm a dick. I mean, pardon my language, but I don't know. 

09:49 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Please, we're raw and unfiltered. 

09:53 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
I'm being generous in my language here, but you know I didn't play this. I didn't do this so that I could have someone else treat me like crap and tell me what to do. I did this so that we could build the best thing possible and create the best life for ourselves, and that doesn't include having someone with a gun to my head because they gave me some money and now I'm beholden to them. 

10:18 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Right and I want to double down on that because I think both of us are entrepreneurial from the get go. To where I think a lot of people that take on money come from the corporate world and are okay having someone help direct them or have an opinion about something. To where I feel neither of us do that. To where I'd never wanted to raise money. We looked at raising money but like we're always so profitable from the get go Not saying we didn't get crunched these last couple of years with profitability, but you don't have someone cutting employees like me Me and my partners, you know, decided to make sure that the product wasn't going to suffer or the employees. 

10:58
So like there was a 12 month span to where we didn't take a draw. So we could, like a year and a half ago to about six months ago, to where it's like we were profitable, but we were barely profitable purposely, because we didn't want the product to suffer or the people to suffer, so we made that sacrifice. That would have not ever happened if we had funding behind us. They would have said fuck yourselves, cut these people. We need to hit this margin and this EBITDA, and now we're in a good place again to where we're able to start building that team back up, we're able to start giving some raises and the people that rode with us during this and understood the sacrifices that we had to make as founders, they're going to see the fruits of that, because we have a good path forward right now and we really dug our way out by continuing to make sure that the product was still at the upper echelon of competing against, you know, our competitors, and that was just too important to us and that would have never happened if we had funding. 

11:59
But at the same time, if you do have funding or you are back this is where I think some of the benefits are is being able to do some strategic roll-ups and being able to acquire some companies that you may want to just go dominate the market or something adjacent that could really grow both sides of the business and that's where and then you also have people that have relationships that me and you may not have to have really big strategic partnerships, and that's where I've always to have really big strategic partnerships and that's where I've always been jealous of, like some friends and some companies I know that have those partners. But there's always a benefit and drawback. I'd rather be bootstrapped personally, but to get to like 100 million sales is way fucking harder to do if you are bootstrapped um, or even 50 million. 

12:43
Uh, I think our peak we did a little over 40 million in like 21 or 22 um, and that was just craziness, with everyone having all the money in the world. But we're, you know, we that number has shrunk since then. That was just one like flukier of of. I didn't even know what to do with all the money I was making at that time. To be honest with you, it was wild, um, but we, we plowed most of it back into the business. To be honest with you, it was, it was wild, but we, we plowed most of it back into the business, to be honest with you, and kept a war chest, knowing that times wouldn't always be great. And you know we, we had upward of 200 employees at one point between our suite of products. So I think we're sitting at about 130 now. So, yeah, is there any other benefits of maybe having backers or funding that I missed that you think would be beneficial for people? 

13:27 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
that are interested. 

13:29
I definitely agree with your the relationships element Like and also part of me. You know if, if we all look ahead at you know your point earlier about it's a way easier to sell a software business than a wholesaling business. Right, like there's a, you're building a tangible asset in a software company that has a defined sort of multiple. Whether you hit it or not, or whether which one it is is irrelevant, it's got to. It is an asset you are playing. Everybody goes into this, knowing one day they're probably going to try and sell their asset. Right, that's right. That's the truth. And I think one of the other advantages of getting funding in is that they have a lot. 

14:09
I don't have experience of selling my business right. 

14:13
I have experience of building my business A lot of it learned on the job, quite honestly but I know how to do this. I don't have expertise in how to sell this or to and how to position against money people who think in a different way than I will ever think, and I see a real advantage to, when you get to that point, having someone in your corner that like is battle tested and knows that shit and can go into war with you to get the best deal for both of you, because or for all of you, because they've got skin in the game for it. That is the only thing that's ever made me go one day, maybe, because every other bit I think it's not worth it. Except for that, when we get to that point, it's going to be me in the room with whoever's looking to buy us, and I know that I don't have as much. I mean being candid, I don't have the experience of that, and so, having someone right next to me who knows how to do it, I think there's advantages there. 

15:21 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So I think on your behalf behalf because we talked about kind of some of those things a couple years ago and it just came back to we already have made too much money. I have too much of a run rate to bring someone on to be told what to do to where I think it's um, my advice to you because we've looked into this and we've talked to people because, like, we're not necessarily trying to sell, but we want to be prepared to sell because, like it's just a more buttoned up organization so I would figure out the last three companies that you've looked up to that have sold and go find out what investment bankers that they they used, interview them and they will start giving you feedback on focal points and where your business is strong and weak on the sales side. And we already started doing that just because we wanted to understand of where our focus should be, where our roadmap should be Subscription revenue is more important than in-app revenue and it trades at a different multiple and so on and so forth, and what they're going to look at for trends from past years to future years and how you're going to put yourself in the best light. So I don't necessarily think you need the right person. You just need to find the right bankers to help you navigate that, because that's what you pay them for when and if you want to go sell, or even if you're just curious, you could kind of be off market on market to where you could kind of have everything put together if you wanted to and they could just kind of start teasing the people that may be looking, you know, somewhere in your space. 

16:54
And then you also have to let them know. 

16:54
You know, do you want PE or do you want strategic, like, do you want to continue to run the company with PE, because they're going to want private equity, is typically going to want you and your founders to be there for at least a couple years, at least a bit. 

17:07
Uh, strategics it's probably more six months to a year, and they have a plan put in place and they're rolling you up and buying your user base a little bit more and some of your technologies or something like that. So you know, at that point it depends what do you want to do and how do you want to do it, what's best for you, and then also the even bigger part is what's best for your employees and the team and the family that you've built to make sure they don't get fucked by you partnering with the wrong person long term, because I'll be out okay, because, because ultimately I'll be out of here at some point when you know when we sell they are they'll keep me around, or they'll want to probably keep me around for a bit, but eventually it's not gonna. 

17:44 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
You know my heart won't be in it and they'll know that. Um and but we've built up. You know we have had in eight years now we don't have this. We're not the same size as you. We're. We're smaller than you. 

17:56 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Well, we've got about 60 people um that's still a lot oh yeah, oh no. 

18:00 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
I'm hey, I'm very proud of what we built, but my point was so in eight years I think we've had in eight years, if we've had five people leave us, I'd be surprised. We've gotten rid of some people Right or reorganized. Recently we reorganized. We didn't get rid of them, but we more like reorganized some things, and that was an unfortunate byproduct. But up until that point which we did this year, I would guess you know we'd fired a couple people who just proved to be unreliable and we've had one or two people leave is incredibly strong. 

18:46
Most of our people have been, a lot of our people have been with us for six years or more, and when you're talking about a company our size and our age, that's a lot, and so your point is very valid. These people matter. They matter to me, they matter to my co-founders very deeply and we didn't build this. Part of the other advantages to being a bootstrap is that we can invest in our personal happiness as co-founders. I've never been someone who's been like I got to hustle and kill myself and have a miserable life until I'm 50 and then have a heart attack and die and my kids will be rich right, like that's not me so all, and nor is it my co-founders. We've had great lives. We've purposely made it so that we could have our best lives, but also for our people, and that's important. 

19:37 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I couldn't agree more. I went a little backwards on. This has been fun, but let's, let's get to the next topic. Um, I guess, talk about balancing growth and profitability. Operational tactics, go to market shift strategies. What is? What is some changes that have been made in your business that you know, over the past two to three years. As you know, because we're very, our core audience is real estate investors, both of ours. Is that not saying we don't have home service, we don't have agents, we don't have, like we all we serve in similar spaces, but you know, with that, their pockets being squeezed it's obviously squeezed where they're spending, you know, their money. Has there been any changes? Or has there been? I guess? Talk to me about what changes that you've had to made. Knowing, with kind of it being a bear market in the real estate market being a little bit tougher, what changes have you guys had to make? 

20:27 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
oh yeah, definitely. Um, you know, it was almost when we started. It was like it was almost too easy. I that sounds. I don't mean that sounds arrogant as well. I don't mean it as arrogant, no let me. 

20:45 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Let me pop in for one second is I think we had a similar experience to where we thought we were. You're always, uh, not as good as you think you are when it's good and you're not as bad as you think you are when it's bad, that's, I think we got in at the right time to where we thought we had Midas touches, and I feel like a lot of people thought that, but you got slapped in the face in 23. I'll let you continue, but I understand exactly what you're saying. It's not arrogant. It was right place, right time and we just thought we're the greatest ever. 

21:11 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
And it was like holy shit, this is just never going to end. And I remember saying on a podcast so I'm a member of Greg, I don't know if you know Greg Head's Bootstrap, practical Found. No, I'll introduce you. You need to talk to Greg and he needs you on his podcast without question. 

21:32
But I remember and I remember the first time I talked to Greg because now I've been part of his CEO mastermind for a while and he's big into practical founders and bootstrap and I remember the first time I talked to him because we were averaging 60% year-on-year growth and I thought that was slow, right, because I didn't know. And I was like I remember saying Greg, you know, and you know, we've been really manageable and we've got a really nice kind of stately progress of 60% year-on-year growth. And Greg was like you think that's a stately progress, like you know, and of course, for software, of course you can go much faster as well if you really go. But my point was that it never occurred to me that 60 percent growth, you know, uh, you know a year on year and and at some points, way more than that, because we were, you know, we were essentially uh, you know, uh, our, when I was watching our m&R every month and I was like what the fuck's going on? It was so easy. 

22:36 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I had your product in like 2018 or like right when you guys launched. We heard about it because we're Podio users and we're like oh, this is dope. 

22:44
So like I've been a customer of yours during that time because you guys had the only solvable problem for like working were you know working inside our crm, like not cold calling but having a soft phone inside the serum for other, for our sales reps, to call out of and be able to check them and be able to make sure we could do the things. Like you were, you guys went like I could let you know your growth. You went viral in the community because you had something good that no one else had done yet. 

23:10 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Yeah, and and that was, and I'd love to say that was a master plan of mine. It wasn't. But there's no question that, as things have changed and and you know, and as, look, growth, any idiot can start a business. That's the easiest thing in the world to do. It's not that hard, yeah, yeah, but two of us right here. But scaling a business, that's harder, that's hard. And scaling a business, you know, scaling a business where you genuinely have, you know, because it it, you know what it's like. You start. We started. You started, I'm sure we started with three of us going Same Right. We started with three of us. We never met each other. They're in Romania, I'm in Poland. We shook hands virtually after Podio. Of all things, podio introduced us. That's crazy, that's crazy. 

24:04
Podio introduced us at a. Podio invited me to an API webinar. Now, I'm not a technical founder, I have no idea what, like I understand. I mean I can read it and go. That's an API, but that's about all I can do right. 

24:18
Like I get it but I don't know how to do it. And so they invited me to this API webinar. And I'm like, out of curiosity, why the fuck do I want to go to an API? Like, why do you want me there? You know I can't do this stuff. Like what's the matter with you? They're like trust me, come. And at that point, at that meeting, they introduced me to Vlad and Alex, who are my co-founders, and and we they were we were like, hey, let's have a chat, let's have a I think it's Skype. 

24:43
At that point, I think because this was pre-Zoom, sort of like- we're talking, how we're talking, how old we are now man this is pre's, this is skype um and uh and we, uh, so we had this call or whatever, and and we, when we decided to do this, um and and, and then you add people, and, and then you add people and you add, and then and everything just scale, starts to add complexity. Not because it means to, but because, but because you're starting to divorce decision making and capability from you know, three people in a room with their heads together, to suddenly you've got someone. Oh, we need some support. Oh, shit, well, uh, let's. Oh, we got a bit. Oh, okay, I need some help here. And then, oh, and you know, and it and it organically. When you're bootstrapped at least and I'm guessing, jesse, you, we have the same kind of growth in that it starts to go. 

25:40
And I remember there was a tipping point for us, or at least in my mind, once we passed like 20 employees. I remember sitting there thinking holy shit, like, first of all, I remember thinking, holy shit, I have 20 employees. And then the second thing is everything just got. It took a little longer or it got a bit more complex, and you have to start building the structure to run your business in a way that when you're starting, it doesn't matter, it's just like throw it in a little pot and see where it goes. And that scaling bit your question of balancing growth and profitability I would also add in there balancing scalability, balancing how you scale the company in a way that you can be happy with, you can feel good about, you can get the best out of. That's a complex piece of the puzzle. 

26:34 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I'd be curious how it was for you guys yeah on on our end, um, we, our growth was pretty crazy. It's like went 200k, 4 million, 16 million in a three-year span. So the growth was was pretty wild uh, 2018, 2019, 2020. And then it scaled from there even further for 21 and two. We made some pretty big mistakes I'd love to actually talk about because, to your point, we went from zero to 20. And then we were doing a bunch of money with you know, on both sides of the house. You know we'd have 30, 40 people. But I mean, we tried to go so big and added product lines to where at one point, we had batch leads, batch dialer, batch driven, batch skip tracing and batch data. So we've consolidated some of those products in. Now it's basically batch leads, batch dialer, batch data, batch skip tracings in the current moment getting migrated over to batch data and consolidating that in. 

27:36
But on the back end it was just a nightmare because you had to have all these different teams managing all these different products and all this different communication funneled up to an executive team, to where I was. Like we got to 200 employees and it was so inefficient, it was so poorly done, it cost us so much money. We just thought more meant more money when it actually made. As to your point, slowing things down, decision fatigue, too many meetings because too many people had to sign off on things. Now we're sitting at about 120, 130 employee-wise, with three products. That still is too much, in my opinion, to where I'd like to continue to consolidate into one ecosystem, but it feels like it's back to where it was when we got started, as we have the right people for the right revenue, making the right decisions and people. Instead of having meetings about having a meeting, people are just going and doing their work again, and getting back to a point to where there's productivity for the scalability, instead of there was like too many employees, to where the productivity went down, would actually hurt the product and hurt the staff and hurt everything was hurt. And you know we back to your point a little bit ago is we had the Midas touch, so more people just meant more employees, which meant more profitability, which meant infinite growth and revenue. In real life, it's not the case and it cost us, as founders, millions of dollars. 

29:04
By making that mistake, you do feel that way or you are growing like crazy. Still be strategic with how you hire and understand that the complexity just keeps compounding itself to where, at the end of the day, I got to a place where I feel like I was just managing people problems, and that's not what I signed up for. I want to be a part of the product, I want to be a part of the roadmap, I want to be able to focus on our customers and if you just have too many people for where your revenue's at or where your business is at, it takes away from everyone and then everyone's trying to show their value on shit that doesn't impact revenue because they have such a specific job role. It was just a huge mistake on our end, to be honest with you, and it was a great learning lesson for this business and businesses to come. So I will make sure to never do it again, because it sucked for me and it sucked for the employees too, and it sucked for the organization. 

29:58
It just it was a. It was not good all around it's confusing, right it's. 

30:03 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
It becomes a confusing time and I think it. I think it becomes confusing for us as founders, slash leaders, as well as for employees. I like, I think it's confused. It's confusing in different ways for both and it just becomes, you know, it becomes something that almost is, it becomes slightly out of control and and that's not. And then not that I cause I'm not a control freak, I'm not one of these micromanaging control freaks people Like it's just not my style, but I I take the view, I take the kind of wide view. 

30:42
Right, my role in many, much of the what I viewed, my role as CEO was and we have to talk about that cause my role has changed recently, but my role isn't to execute. First of all, my role as CEO is not to execute, and if I've got my head down working on shit every day, I am not doing a very good job, because what I really need to be doing is looking up and seeing the board and being able to understand you know where do we need to go and being able to understand you know where do we need to go. Is there any course corrections that I need? And sort of those little tweaky bits where you're not. You know you're not forcing movements, you're just kind of making those little adjustments that keep the flow where it is and that you know that can start. That started from my perspective where I made mistakes and where, when it started to feel out of control, I then had to turn inward in a way that took me out of doing what I do best, which is finding opportunities and partnerships and talking to people and and dreaming of the next thing, because I just had to, like I 180'd and I was facing internally and probably quite honestly for the last two years, and it's only in March of this year where I have graduated from being I am no longer the CEO of Smartphone. 

32:10
Nice Congratulations, I am the chairman of Smartphone, chairman of the board, and really titles are bullshit, but actually. But what isn't bullshit is the purpose being that we, as founders and the exec team, you know where are we going to put our best players. You know where are we going to put our best players and our best play. You know I am the best player to be looking outside with people and meeting them and getting and developing relationships and partnerships and all that. I'm not best placed managing a process of product management or products. You know that's not where I need to be. So we rejigged. We took the decision in March to rejig. We did a complete overhaul of the C-suite, moving out some people from the company as well and moving me out from CEO up to chairman. And I'll be honest, although it was a difficult transition, I'll be honest, it was difficult, it was hard for me to begin with, to wrap my head around it. 

33:12 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Trust me, I'm trying to transition to a similar place right now. 

33:16 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
It was a hard. The first month and a half was sort of like I wasn't sure how to go anymore. That said, after, like in the last little bit I don't know exactly what the timeline is I've started to hit my stride again because I've been able to, I've been able to look up and look out again and I've felt like it's almost like you feel you're. 

33:40 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
You know I don't want to use the term mojo, given that you know that's competitors to both of us, but uh, but you know, but you, you know, I felt like I got my stride back on that and that's only going to be the smartphone's benefit yeah, I couldn't agree more because with when I had all those people, I wasn't doing what I grew the business at, and that was relationships, finding the right affiliates, finding the right partnerships, talking to people in the industry, going to the events, finding what really needs to be done on our product roadmap. That's where I'm happy and that's where I'm effective. And, in a roundabout way, this year I had some family stuff that I had to deal with for a while, so I had to step away completely from the business for over two months to where I wasn't involved at all. So we kind of restructured. People took on certain roles and as I've transitioned back in these last couple months, they're like hey, we're in a great place operationally. You need to start your podcast. Finally, you need to go talk to people. You need to go what you do best. You need to go find a huge data deal, like that is what you do good, that's what makes you happy and that's what helps the company grow. Um, so I've I wouldn't say I'm still the CEO, but like my day to day is very minimal now of being super involved. I maybe have four or five meetings a week that I'm involved in and I am absolutely able to like. My partners are still inside the business. They're integrators, they work in the business, they love working in the business. They're like bro, just like. 

35:16
Just because you're not doing busy work doesn't mean you're not doing. It was always hard for me to say because I'm thinking about things and ideating and I'm not grinding. It was so hard for me to where I have this guilt of like I'm not doing as much as they are. Well, I'm actually doing more, or just as much or even more valuable, you could argue but I'm not doing the grind work. I'm not in the office all day, every day, but all I do is think about these opportunities that we can find and do, and that hasn't changed one bit and I'm just so much happier. 

35:40
So it sounds like our journeys and like where we're at are very, very similar places, which is uh, which is really cool, cause, um, I don't get to talk to a lot of people that are in a similar position that to where I'm in. Uh, we just kind of got to where we're at in different ways, but I'm like very grateful that I had to take a step back and my team's like yo, we're fucking awesome, like you need to go do what you're actually good at. So you're not great at this stuff and you've been doing it for two years, so maybe you should not do this. And they really haven't. 

36:10 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Let me back into the day to day, they're just like no, well, that's me neither, quite honestly, and I would say, you know, to credit my co-founders, alex and Vlad you know they're the ones who kind of drove this and I'm not sure I saw it immediately. You know, I'm not going to pretend like I was just immediately like yeah, this totally makes sense, I'm totally on board. No, there was some difficult conversations. There was some difficult conversations and the testament, I think, to the relationship that we've developed is that we were able to get through what could possibly be a really difficult relationship. We were able to come out through that, that and it only took us two months and that's like a man. You know that, like you, it could have gone south badly, actually, instead what the company is stronger than ever because you know they had identified look, man, you need to be over here doing what you do best, exactly what you just said. We've got this bit to support the company. We want it. We're going to be doing this bit and you need to be going over there and dreaming and thinking and building relationships. 

37:21
I was just in Austin at Brandon Turner's REI Summit this week, just getting myself back out right, just listening on the ground, listening. What are they talking about? What are they worried about? What are the investors worried is happening and things they're thinking about. And I identified three partners that I want to work with and I was able to meet with them and shake their hands and look at them in the eye and I met. I got to meet some customers who came up and like, oh my God, smartphone, like you know, which always thrills me. It still thrills me when someone, when I meet someone who I don't know, just says hey, man, I use your product every day. Um and right, that, like that, the, the, that. And I'll tell you one other thing that thrilled me and this was like, like, if I had to pick a moment which almost made me tear up, uh, a couple years ago, when we were on the cap terra uh list, uh, know, we were put up on cap Terra for business phone systems which you don't apply to. It's not like the. 

38:20 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, Gardner one where you pay. 

38:23 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
This is based on just customer reviews that they fill. We were put up there as the number two and in that quadrant we were in the top right-hand corner and we were up like and ring central was there and everything else, and seeing our logo up against ring central and you know, and all those, was like so that's awesome. 

38:44 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Well, you've done something very good. That's why I'm so excited to have you on is like you have a great product. I've. I know you have a great product. Um, I've known you've had a great product and I was excited to talk to someone that's kind of had a similar journey. I got a couple of great more questions to ask. This is a fun one. Can you share a moment when you felt like a failure but ultimately pushed your business in a better direction? 

39:10 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Yes, where I personally felt like a failure. Yes, no-transcript. Our providers not the only one, but it's one of our providers and they started looking at their customer base and any compliance variations. They were coming down on, let with the hammer of god and um and it and we, we got hit and it and it sparked. We got hit by Twilio and and I like I was due to go to a guy's weekend camping. I'm there in this little cabin with like on with lawyers and like this shit. But it sparked a period of time where, having had having been born in the summer, it became winter, um, from a feel point of view, and and it became very clear that a lot that that some of the team were getting unhappy and and I took that really, really hard. Like that hit me super, super hard. Like just hearing that people are stressed and unhappy, I really took that as a personal failure. 

40:57 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I could see that. I mean, we went through something similar to with, you know, the texting compliance stuff killed, absolutely killed us because we had a huge outbound you know texting platform that you know, when I said, those were like the golden ages for us, because people needing to get phone numbers and doing outbound texting, um, and that's when I saw the shift too, I probably didn't take it quite as hard as you did, but it ended up being worse than I thought it was going to be. I mean, we ended up shutting down outbound texting because it was something that I was not willing to fight against regulations and something that's not compliant anymore and it cost us over $10 million in revenue to shut that division of Batch Lead staff. That was tough, that was hard and it still hurts to this day. 

41:44 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
I bet I mean this wasn't so much a revenue killer, it was a personal killer. It was a real feeling for me of failure, like it's my job and, by the way, I was wrong, I was looking at it wrong but it's my personality, like we are who we are and we all deal with the. You know, like I am who I am and I know that I'm someone who will always take the blame and I will always absorb. It's probably my fault. It's probably my fault. It's like I'll take all of that and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and, and, and, and and and and and and, and and and and and. As you say, what was the profit, what was the outcome of? 

42:35
collaborating across teams in a more direct and personal way, reestablishing bonds, bonds between team members, where we maybe had gotten a little too compartmentalized, which sometimes happens when you start to scale right. 

43:10
You suddenly scale up a department and then it's like the department versus the department and you know that can kind of happen and and I think and it just forced us to re-evaluate you know how we, how we are as a, as people, as human beings, working together and treating each other not that we ever were really terrible at it, but it really spurred a development of an even more open communication across the company, and particularly from the C-suite and executive team to everybody else. 

43:41
After that I started instituting the CEO dinners as a small gesture, when I would go to Romania, where most of the team is I have an apartment there, I had an apartment there and every time I'd be there I'd invite a different cross section of the company to my apartment for a barbecue so that they could get to know me as not just the CEO but like know me and let's have a glass of wine, a steak, and let's tell me what you would do if you didn't have to work, and let's talk about each other. And breaking down those walls came on the back of that real emotional time. 

44:15 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Okay, that's actually a great story. That's something we're working through right now too. As I said, we scaled up to the nth degree of what we didn't need to. At the same time, revenue was going down with the squeeze of interest rates. The squeeze of, I mean it was a combination of tax regulations, interest rate slowing transactions. We got hit pretty hard in a multitude of things that hurt our business model to where you know. 

44:41
I think you know, as the CEO, I think I kind of put my head down and just tried to figure out how to get through it. During that time, as I said, we didn't take, you know, salaries any of us. We didn't draw any money from the company any of us, we didn't draw any money from the company. But where we really went wrong was, I think we could have communicated better with our staff on how we're going to get through it, what our plan was, and now we're finally starting our all hands up again. I'm trying to find creative ways to get back to that culture of what we built at the beginning. 

45:14
Um, you know, I I'm smart enough to know and self-aware enough to know we fucked up like especially on on the culture side too, during that Um, and it just hurts me cause I'm such a culture person and I just was trying to dig us out of it and figured that out and I didn't want to just give bad news to the team. 

45:33
Um, but I still could have given bad news in a positive light, I guess, and it was never like we weren't profitable at all, it was just dude. It was really tight, it was really hard and I was like I just let everyone know their jobs are good, but I didn't really show them how we're going to get out of it as well as I could have, and I'm disappointed in me and my partners of not doing a better job of of doing that. And our executive team was pushing for us to do it and we just, we just didn't. We were just so focused on getting to the other side that I think we lost some of the, the greatness that started us at the beginning on the culture and the vision side of the business, and it's a big focus of what we're getting back to now. 

46:17 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
You also in that sense that's a great story of it. And you also, in those situations, you sometimes you take away the opportunity for your team to go to war for you Because you're so busy, you're so busy thinking I've got to fix this and I'm, you know, like, and you're keeping an ear, and actually they'll go to war, they'll go to the mat to you, you know, and a lot of these people, they, they are loyal and they will. You know, we're under threat. Man, let's whatever, like, let's go, let's, let's band together, and and you sometimes can take away their ability to actually do that with you because you're so busy being like I got to figure this out, or at least, certainly that's more my personality than you know than not. 

47:06 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Yeah, and I think people knew. But like doing the company announcements, doing the all hands that needed to be talked about there, it's not like it was hidden or we're trying to shelter everyone. So I mean the people in the office that are at the headquarters, they knew what was going on. They're going to battle, but I think it could have been a more unified front of transparency of what was going on. And like I'm the CEO, I'm the people person that is my job, like I have founders too, but like I'm going to take the brunt of the blame because I've could have pushed for it and I could have done it. They weren't really backing me to do it. They're kind of like let's just let's figure it out and then we'll get better news. But it's just they're all learning lessons. None of us are perfect. I'll never make that mistake again. So it's something good to learn and I'm just very grateful for the people that are here still that have gotten through the other side, because we have our first All Hands July 1st and we have a huge strategic announcement. We have a bunch of crazy stuff going on for the second half, a 25. And I'm just so eager to share kind of what I've been doing in the background to not just get us in a better place but get us in a place to where we were at the beginning, to where I know there's going to be real growth over the next year or two, and I have like the path of how we're going to get there and metrics behind it. So I've just haven't been this excited about the business in quite a while, so pretty pumped. That's great. 

48:31
Okay, let's jump into some tech trends. So like there's a lot of like just tech's changing and it's crazy and the tools are crazy. You know, what do you think is going to be really disruptive? Cause you're in the, you know telecommunication space more than anything. I've talked to people more in like the data space and stuff. So I would love to hear cause I have some ideas on the telecom side as well. You know, what do you think is really going to be disruptive, and not just ai? Obviously ai is going to be involved in that but like, what do you think is really going to be able to push, push to the like? What are you going to adopt to make your customers that much more successful with smartphone you, you know, in the future or what like pie in the sky. Idea do you have? That could just be a game changer, or, you know, I'll let you kind of take it from here. 

49:26 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Yeah, so one of the big things in our space, you know, because, as you say, we navigate two kind of parts of this. We navigate the telecoms element, which is heavy, heavily regulated and has its own sort of trajectory, and the software element, which is right, you know, like, and we're we're at that intersection of both. Um, one of the things that I'm really excited about as a telecom software company is how are you familiar with the term VCon? Yes, so the VCon, the VCon revolution's coming and I want us to be at the front end of that revolution and it is, you know, and the VCon element which is really taking every conversation, whether it's text message or voicemail or voice, you know, a voice call or video call, every communication, and it is creating a real asset out of it that you can feed into these other elements, whether it's ai or anything else. 

50:45
And but that is a real, that's a real change because there's never been a standard across the telecommunication platform in the United States, for this VConn is the standard that is likely to be adopted and coming, and I suspect that is going to be that is going to unlock an enormous capability for mining all of your conversations and like everything from texts to WhatsApp, to voicemails, to video calls, to everything. To use that for intelligence, understanding your prospects, understanding your deal cycles and, of course, via an AI capability, to be feeding that and developing whether that is virtualized voice agents that really know what they're talking about, or whether that is capabilities of identifying across every call that you make. These are the the people you need to call back right away because they're hot. Um, there's a lot of those, and I think that vcon element is something that is going to be disruptive. Um, and it's but it's exciting disruptive yeah, and I I couldn't agree more. 

52:17 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
All these things that you just mentioned are so true. Now, the golden bullet is how do we productize it to not just be a cool feature but to be something that's really impactful to the businesses? That's our job to figure out and that's where you get rewarded if you figure out the right way to productize something. Uh, cause, like people are already doing this, but it's just like it's kind of cool right now. Right, it's not like where is it to? Where it's making this huge impact into your business, to where the people inside the business or the sales reps are truly wrapping their heads around it and being taught it and it actually making true revenue impact to show for that. 

53:00
That's where I'm curious to see you know where this goes and what it, what it can or can't do, cause we're doing a lot of that stuff with like machine learning more on like the real estate data side. We're doing a little bit on the batch dialer side of things too, of you know to where, conversations and helping people how to answer this question, how to do that. It's very, I would say, elementary compared to what you're talking about. You know right now, but figuring out that way and I think our customers will probably. It's tough to understand what the customers want. 

53:37 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
That is cool, and what the customers need that they'll pay for that that, yeah, and, and AI is still in its shiny thing moment right now. It's still and I and I don't mean that as though I'm disrespecting it or not seeing the power of it, oh no, but it's still in a shiny key moment where, or a shiny object moment where it's people are like, yeah, and I've got ai tools, what are the for what? Uh, ai tools, like you know, like you just answered my question with saying what it is again, like that's not helping me. Um, you know, like, like, come on, you got to do more than just like you know, step one ai, two tools. Step three profit. What's step two? Right? 

54:22
Um, and uh, yeah, I think we're still in a bit of that, but but underpinning that is, of course, and you know, we were relative, we were somewhat late to the party with ai tools, not because we didn't buy into it, but because we were really thinking what do we do that's going to actually produce something meaningful, versus just taking dev time so that we can put the shiny fucking thing on our website and be like look at AI, and you know which is, which is what it felt like for the last year and a half in software, where it's like everyone was just gone. 

54:54
Ai see, and you're like, yeah, but what does it do? Like like, I just saw someone on Facebook posted something which you know it makes someone's tits jiggle. That's what their AI does. It's like, you know, okay, I, I'm not sure, like okay, but I mean, obviously not relevant to us. But we, we took a while to kind of think about it and think what is really going to, what is going to actually be impactful to our customer base and not just be something that so that we can say we've got it, which is it feels like there was a long period of the last year and a half where that's what everybody was really doing. 

55:31 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
That's oh God, couldn't stop laughing. By far don't tell Stephanie this, but best guess so far. By far don't tell Stephanie this, but best guess so far. I'm going to literally do this again with you with like a new set of questions, because this is too much fun. All right, jiggling titties is I'm sorry. 

55:45 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
I, you know. It just so happened that someone said to me today and they're like look at this use of AI. And I was like, honest to God, is this where we are right now? Is this where I am? You're sending me a tool where I can upload a picture and have her tits jiggle. Yay, I mean like, what am I doing with my life? 

56:04 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
yeah. So it's like we were on the batch lead side of things. We were, um, everyone was saying ai, ai, ai and in the background you know we really focus. We built a machine learning like model with true ai, uh, with true algorithms, with true learning, to where it's like someone could log in to batch leads. Today, click on batch rank in some let's call it a county and we have like a 89 actually accuracy score of those properties that we give you that are off market are going to sell in the next six months. 

56:36
Like we've been doing this for years behind the scenes. It wasn't something like there's a difference between like true machine learning and someone saying AI and actually having yes and that and dude, it's been a game changer. So, like deal machine came out with, um, I think, like hot maps or heat maps, I'm like, or I could just give you the properties that are going to sell Like cool, good job on your heat map, buddy, I have an actual algorithm. Someone could click a button and I'm 90% sure that this will sell. Now, is it going to sell at distress for a real estate investor? 

57:10
No, but that's what we're really trying to tell agents is like hey, guys like these are people you should probably be sending mailers and outreach to or calling or, you know, knocking on their doors or doing something like this and our model's just getting better is like the craziest part about it, because we're learning all the attributes of these houses that are selling that aren't on our list and then continuing to feed that model. So we're doing some. That's just one example, some of the cool shit we're doing. We're also going to be doing something on when someone gets something under contract. We're going to tell you who actually buys those types of properties through machine learning and AI. So, like we got some crazy shit coming. 

57:48 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
That's really good, Valuable stuff as opposed to blingy bullshit. 

57:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
It's a real it's real machine learning, yeah, like it's. It's like we have very, very expensive people that we have hired that work for us to do this. This is not cheap. 

58:03
It is very hard to do and it takes a long time to learn and you have to get it better and you have to tweak it and then you have to create a ui and ux around it and productize it and sell it and you know. But, like I know, people want to say like, okay, I got this property under contract. Who are the top 10 people that I need to call first, that I could just sell this property? 

58:23 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
that I can tell are actually buying. 

58:24 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
We're tracking every person that's buying and selling in the United States, from one property to 10,000 properties, and we know exactly what they're buying. And it's something we've been tracking for two years now. It took us forever to build out this model, but now and now we're finally putting the ux, ui and and uh, productizing around it and pricing around it. So that is uh, that's going to be a pretty big lift for next year. That our next quarter, it's actually next quarter. 

58:48
So that's just like some of the cool shit, like I think we kind of had a similar philosophy to you. It's like like let everyone say they're doing AI, let's actually come out with AI. And then people will be like oh, this isn't comparable, because they're just clicking a button and we're telling them where to go, not saying here's a heat map or here's this or here's that, and you still need to figure out, okay, what's what's the best option. We're letting really smart computers and algorithms say you don't have to think about this, this is who's actually buying these houses or who's actually going to be selling these houses. 

59:22 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
So that's kind of a big focus of ours right now and that totally makes sense. And it also it's also like cause. One of our our core concerns always is do what you do best, maximize your product and don't over overreach and I don't mean overreach as though you shouldn't do other things, but it's like I I could very quickly try to get in the data game or I could very quickly build more crm like tools inside a smartphone. Right, I've built crms, I know how to do it, um, but we have to be the best at what we are and one of the things that we're best at is maximizing what your other tools you're using at, particular CRM, right. So our core philosophy and smartphone has always been driven by our integrations with CRM, the CRMs we integrate with. Because you said, like Podio, we were the only game. Like we were the game. In my view, we were the only game. Like we were the game. In my view, we were the game in town for Podio. We launched. 

01:00:18 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
It was a monopoly. No one else Cause you were Nobody could touch it, Okay. So like for people listening that don't understand, when we're talking integration, we're talking direct integration to where it's directly integrated into that. It's not a third party integration to where there's all this weird shit. 

01:00:34
Yes, it's truly integrated and that's what's impressive, because, dialer we have a couple direct integrations with our power dialer. We don't have the soft phone like you do, so the only thing we compete on is power dialing, which we have very different products anyways. Um, it's not what I'm here to even discuss at all, but we have like one with batch leads like true, like real great integration. Um, it is hard, it is expensive, um, and you guys having 10, that is impressive in itself because, um, you're giving someone that signs up for the crm a true tool, an outbound dialing tool that is perfect for them to use, that makes it easy, and that's what, um, you know, when we went into the telecom space, I said this offline to you it's like, dude, I, I did it wrong, like what you did I, I think I think that's just a stickier product than someone that's just cold calling. 

01:01:25
Actually, I know it's a stickier product than someone that's just cold calling. Actually, I know it's a stickier product. When we get offline, I'll talk about churn numbers and yours will be way lower than mine. I'm positive of that. I'll tell you. Don't give me that look. 

01:01:37 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Top trumps of churn numbers. 

01:01:42 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
But no, I'm sure you have it to some degree. But once you have someone that has 10 agents or something, they're not going anywhere with that integration, with that CRM, because it's just it's going to cost them six figures to move all that stuff over and it just, it's just tougher, it's a far stickier concept. 

01:02:01 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
There's a, there's a real stick and we really focus on maximizing the CRMs we connect to so that, like my view has always been, smartphones should be the product that, if you're using one of our CRMs, why wouldn't you use smartphone? It's the only choice that makes sense, because it is so tightly ingrained that your efficiency and productivity and results are going to be maximized because of it, and that's always been our philosophy. But it also means it has to guide us from overreaching into like going oh into data or building CRM. No, we want to build our product so that it's an amazing product and it makes your system of record, your CRM, sing like nobody else can. And that's where, in my view, we win. 

01:02:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
So we're talking merger to make a super product? Then is what we're talking about? Super? 

01:02:56 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
powered a Deadpool Wolverine. 

01:03:02 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
I was like I see too many overlapping things to really go dominate some space right now. No, but before we wrap up, I guess I ask everyone the same question is you know someone anywhere in their journey in, I guess, being a software founder or getting into the software space, you know what's your best advice? It doesn't need to be a beginner, it doesn't need to be someone that's as far as you just like, what's something that is just really important to you, that you've learned along the way, that you'd like to pass on to the people listening today or watching on YouTube. 

01:03:38 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Be ruthlessly specific. Um, you know, uh, and I, and I, I say I'll say why. I mean we, we, we, we. I mean we talked a bit about our initial integration with Podio. Well, that got us to something like $4 million in revenue. We were ruthlessly specific. 

01:04:05
It's very tempting to broaden and be like and being like, oh, but if we go over here, look what we can do, and we, you know, and, and, and you know, and, and everybody's got. This idea of, like, total addressable market size is bullshit, don't? That's the dumbest. Anybody who says what's your total addressable market, tell them to fuck off, because the truth of the matter is it's like where, where are you specifically focused so that you can maximize? You can target and maximize everything you are to, everything you're going after. 

01:04:40
And if you are focused and you have a, and you have a lightning laser focus on that, and you have a lightning laser focus on that, you will be able to scale up in a bootstrapped manner in a way that you will not be if you go in and then you start going. But imagine if, after the first six months of a smartphone, we'd gone. Oh, there are other CRMs, let's go. It took us three years to do another integration because we were just we were laser focused and it was only once we felt we really understood everything, or a lot of things, that we were able to expand. So for me it's ruthless focus. 

01:05:21 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Well, we did not have that and we paid the price a little bit, but it also gave us some opportunities that I wish we would have been more honestly. Um, I would say listen to his advice, because we did go into some other areas. Some were really smart, some were stupid, but, like creating batch data and having this enterprise product was by far the smartest thing that we did, by building out all of our data but having you know skip tracing and and you know a dialer, and then we tried to. We went halfway down the process of trying to compete against you and then we're like what the fuck we doing? Like they're, as you said, very good at what you do and I'm like we don't have time to do that. So at least we learned a little bit from our mistakes. 

01:06:07
But if I could do it all over again, I don't know which route I'd go. I'd probably be a little bit more specific with what we did, or think a little bit more through um, being a little bit more disciplined with not creating all these other things, um, or waiting to where we got it, exactly how we wanted to, until we went to the next thing. I think we could have been better at. So to your point, I think you guys did a really good job by focusing that way and you guys created a good moat because you guys were so focused on something no one could beat you or make a better product than you and that specific thing. 

01:06:42 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
When we launched smartphone. The next week, someone launched a product I can't remember its name which was like a Chrome extension, only version of it, and I think it was called Twidios, twidios, twilio, podio, I think, combination and they literally launched it like the week we launched and we're like what? Like how is it? But? But the honest truth is we, very we established dominance in podio within a couple months. Like it, like it, it just was. It became very evident that we won that race and we wrote and we built that modi to say and and really, yes, people can do use other systems, but there's I, we're still. I believe we're still at the top of the tree no, it was. 

01:07:34 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
If you have podio and you want a soft phone inside it's smartphone like I still hear that because I have a ton of customers that are on podio it's like you guys have a stranglehold on. If you get podio, this is, this is what you use for phone integration. There's no if, ands or buts and like that is by you guys being ruthlessly focused on creating something very special there until you went to the next place. I think it's fine going to the next place. I think we just went to the next place too quickly a few times with a few things, but, um, I also am grateful that we have a product line of things that have helped. Like, if something's not doing great, we've had something else lift that up and um, we're not as dependent. But, um, I I think that it has created. 

01:08:20
Uh, it was very challenging and I don't wish it upon someone else to like organizationally and having a lot of different people report to different people. It it got. It got messy. We're good now, but it was. It was tough, especially when we're growing with like, uh, it was tough on the executive team because they had to help oversee a lot of different products or a lot of different divisions, um, and we also spread people too thin, that like we had one person doing google ads on like four different products or two people, and they're just like, how do I drill deep and hard and make sure that everything's optimized? Because it's just expensive, to be completely honest with you. And then, before we wrap up, how would someone get a hold of Jordan Fleming on social? 

01:09:06 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Embarrassingly not well, I have an absolute hatred of most social media. I will say I'm on LinkedIn. 

01:09:16
I'm on. 

01:09:17
LinkedIn and everybody's welcome to reach out there. I mean, obviously smartphones got its socials, but for me I really don't do social for myself. I know that makes me like that. That puts me at a disadvantage compared to other people who are constantly posting on Instagram et cetera, but LinkedIn is the only one that I'm active on. Awesome, yeah, truth. 

01:09:40 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
Well, this was truly incredible. Thank you. I know it's Friday night for you, so I appreciate you coming on. 

01:09:49 - Jordan Fleming (Guest)
Open a bottle of wine now. 

01:09:52 - Jesse Burrell (Host)
And everyone that stayed to then. We appreciate you and thank you for listening or watching another episode of the Real Sal, the Real SaaS Podcast, and until next time let's get it. 

01:10:06 - Hope (Announcement)
Thanks for listening to today's podcast. Please make sure to subscribe on your favorite service and until next time let's get it.