Season 2 Episode 1: Doordash Hiding Tips and Is Para Dead?

We are back finally for season 2!

Today we have David Pickerell back again to talk about Para, the little app that forced a giant to change their programming.

You may have heard of Para, especially if you deliver Doordash. Doordash has been notorious for hiding part of the tip on delivery offers. David's team at Para was able to figure out a way to identify what the actual pay amount would be for Doordash offers and show it as a notification to Dashers.

It worked great until it didn't. Doordash showed they were pot committed to keeping Dashers in the dark on delivery offers, updating their app so that the total payout information is no longer available.

Today's Guest:

David Pickerell is cofounder and CEO of Para. an app designed for delivery drivers and independent contractors. David was a guest on Episode 102 and joins us again to talk to us about what happened with Para and tip transparency, what does the end of Tip Transparency mean, and what happens next?

What we Talk About

The elephant in the room.

Before we dive into the interview, I talk about the seven month gap between our last episode and today. What happened? What's up with the new season? I talk about transitioning into more work on EntreCourier and better identifying the purposes of both the website and the podcast. 

Setting up the interview

It starts with Para. David introduced Para to us 7 months ago with his vision for an app to help drivers. Since then, Para has introduced some features here and there.

But the big thing in the news was Para's Tip Transparency feature. If you deliver for Doordash, you're aware they like to hide part of the delivery pay when offering a trip. Para was able to identify the total pay amount and display that to drivers via an app notification.

Doordash figured it out and changed their programming so that it was no longer possible to identify the full pay. This of course shut down Para's Tip Transparency feature. Is this the end for Para?

The interview

David shares what happened with Para. He shares how they knew something was changing, what Doordash did to disable Tip Transparency, and how Para responded. He identifies some of the features Para is working on next as well as where they are going next with their app development.

My thoughts.

I think there are two important questions that come out of this:

What does it mean for Para?

What does it mean for us?

We talk about the importance of identity and the big picture, and how it's that concept of the big picture that means that this is NOT the end for Para. I also share why I think that the big picture needs to become a point of focus for Para if they do want to grow from this.

Then I talk about what we do when Doordash or any other app doesn't provide the information we want, or when an important app quits working. The important takeaway from this?

Take control.

More about the EntreCourier

David's previous appearance on Episode 102

Show notes on EntreCourier for this episode

Article on Para Tip Transparency

Article on Is Para Dead?

Visit Entrecourier.com
Our Podcast page is at DeliverOnYourBusiness.com
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Transcript

0:00

So did you miss me? We're back. It is season two. Oh, my gosh. I love the sound of that, my friend. It has been way too long since we've been playing that game. Courier Nation, I want to welcome you to season two, episode one of the Deliver on Your Business podcast. Each week, it is all about empowering you to be the boss. You're not just some workers. Some gig worker, slopping food and stuff around for DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber eats, Instacart, any of these gig companies. But as an independent contractor, you are a business owner. And so this is all about embracing that role so that you can deliver on your business. Now, this week, we've got David Pickerell joining us. David is the CEO of Para, and he's going to talk with us about Para tip transparency and what's next for Para. So here's kind of in a nutshell what we're going to talk about today. You know, first, what's been going on? Why has it been six months since the last episode of Deliver on Your Business? We'll talk a little bit about that, and I'll fill you in on what's been going on, where I'm going with things. And then we'll get into this whole talk about DoorDash, about hiding tips, about what some call the rise and fall of Para. We'll talk with David about Para and about what has happened. Why did their tip transparency future quit is Para dead. What's next for Para? then I'll kind of wrap up with some of my thoughts on what's happening and what I think things can look like. So I want to thank you for joining us. And let's dive into season two as we deliver on our businesses. Okay. So we got this elephant in the room that we got to talk about before we get into Para. And it's this question. Ron, where the hell have you been? It's been more than six months since the last episode. What's going on? And to make things worse, there was no warning. There was nothing at the end of it saying, hey, we're wrapping up for a little bit. We're taking a break and taking a break. Taking a pause isn't an unusual thing for podcasts, and it's not a bad thing. But, you know, it probably would have been nice to have a warning, right? I think at the time, I didn't know for sure, but I guess that's what I wanted to share was just a little bit of the thought process and what's been going on and everything. So it really kind of started with COVID. And if you've been listening to me in the last episode, you probably know that there was a period. Thanksgiving was a time that I was locked in at home. And really through all of November that we had a couple of kids in the house here, had come down with the Corona virus, and so just kind of in quarantine here, making sure that one that I didn't catch it, and that if I did that, I wasn't going to spread it to somebody else while doing deliveries. And it gave me a lot of time to focus on EntreCourier website. And it kind of began a transition because EntreCourier has taken off in a way that I did not expect that it ever would. And I'm pleasantly surprised, and that's putting them out. I'm blown away. And really kind of the end of the year, the beginning of this year, I was able to really transition a lot more of my time into that website to make that into a business. And the thing is, when you make that kind of a transition, you tend to stop and say, okay, what exactly are we doing with this? Where are we going with this? And that's a lot of what happened here, because I started to realize that traffic at EntreCourier has taken off like I never would have expected. The audience here has been fairly steady. But the thing that I am figured out was that they're really meeting two different purposes and that the people that are coming to EntreCourier, they're not coming there for my talk, my opinions, my rants and rays and all those different things. They're coming for information. Basically, the people that are finding my website are people that are looking for answers to questions and especially business questions. And I'm very thankful that they've been able to find them at EntreCourier. But it's a totally different group than people that I think probably interested in the podcast. Now, I think there's a crossover. But the thing is that I figured out that it was like, hey, wait a minute. The podcast has basically just been a spoken version of the blog. You know, I write a blog post each week that is for the podcast. But then I go back and I record the podcast more real close to word for word of what I've done on the blog and just understanding that. Okay. These are two different things. I think I started to understand that EntreCourier is about information. And the podcast was more about delivery life and about what to do with the information. And and some of it is my advice, and some of it are my ideas, and some of it is my opinions and reaction and analysis. But these are all things that are very different than what people were looking for on the website. So what I ended up deciding to do is, okay, let's take a break here and let's focus on the website. So I restructured kind of redesigned and reorganize the EntreCourier website to kind of line up with the whole thing of it being kind of that information is being the answers that people are searching for. Now it's time to launch 2.0. And so I'm calling it season two of the Deliver on Your Business podcast. And the whole idea that I want to do what I want to accomplish here is kind of more create this community. And really the bigger picture of what I want to do here is to build this conversation about how to do business together and and how to use the information. And so it starts with the podcast. And then I've got plans to relaunch the email newsletter. If you were on the mailing list, get ready for something to show up there. And I'd love to build an online community of some kind. I have thought about doing a Facebook page, but I don't know. There are some dynamics about Facebook that I don't want to go there, but we're going to do some things like that, maybe some courses, maybe doing a little bit more with video, some different things like that. But all of this is kind of more around this idea of this conversation about what do we do with the business information and how do we do this delivery life and how do we make life better by being an independent contractor? So that's kind of where I'm going with all of that. And so I thank you for joining me as we launch into I guess, what you would call 2.0 version of all this. Thank you for joining me. Well, now that we got the elephant out of the room, how about I kind of lay down the back story behind why we've got David coming on? You may be aware of Para. You may be aware of kind of the rise and fall of a very controversial app and how this little app that just kind of came from nowhere all of a sudden shot up to almost 200,000 users, all DoorDash drivers, and then it quit working. And so what happened with that? And that's what we want to talk about today. And so let me kind of give you some back story on that. And it starts with we'll start with Para. If you've been listening to this podcast three episodes ago, Episode 102 of season one, David Picaro of Parrot was on, and he talked to us about this new app they're developing. Now, since you just listened to my little explanation, you know, that that was seven months ago. It was in the middle of December of 2020 that David came on. And at that time, hardly anybody knew anything about Para. And he talked about they're building this app. One of the things they wanted to work on was what they call a personal dispatch. They wanted to build an app that could help drivers have a little more control over what's happening with all the different offers and things like that. Now, one thing I'm going to tell you about those guys is that ever since then, one thing that I got to really speak highly about per about is they're very much about just keeping an eye on the pulse of delivery drivers. David goes out and does deliveries himself. Just so he understands what it's like. They talk a lot with drivers. They talk a lot with different people just around the country. And so I really appreciate that about them. So that's something that I think it just says something about them. But since then, they kind of rolled out a couple of things. They rolled out the initial version of their app that was basically just more like an earnings overview. You could download all of your earnings when they came out with that. That was back at a time when DoorDash, with their 1099 and Grub hub with their Grub hub, really had some problems with it. But what that did was you could actually log into your account through Para and get your earnings totals, something that DoorDash doesn't even give you. They developed a feature where they could take a look at your deliveries and give you an IRS compliant log that estimate how many miles and uses language in the IRS about how they could develop a reasonable estimate of how many miles you drove. So there are a couple of interesting things that they came out with. But the big thing for Para was what they call tip transparency, because at one point, they figured out that, hey, there's a way that we can identify how much DoorDash is really paying on a delivery. So now if you're not familiar with it, just give you the back story on DoorDash. And that is that DoorDash often does not tell you the total amount that you will get paid on a delivery that they offer you. What they do is they send you an offer and says it will pay this much. But then in parentheses, it will say the total amount might be higher. Now, it seems like if the tip is more than$5, that's often that breaking point. So let's say the customer gave a $10 tip in $3 delivery fee. So it's going to pay $13. Well, what DoorDash is going to tell you is the pay is $8. So they're hiding a part of the tip. And that could be really frustrating for a lot of drivers, because for a lot of drivers, maybe most drivers, there's kind of this feeling like, hey, we deserve to know how much that delivery is going to be and quit playing games with us about this. And it is playing games. Let's be honest. I mean, it really is what this is all about is that DoorDash needs to get people to accept offers. Right? Well, there's a lot of offers that when the customer hasn't tipped or the tip is really low, it doesn't pay much. Doordash has two options here. They can either pay more money or they can trick you into accepting that little three dollar offer. And this is all about trying to trick you into accepting that $3 offer. So if you just delivered a delivery, I said $8 and you made 20. It's like, great this is awesome. I did make more. Well, now they throw a $3 offer at you, and you might be thinking, yeah, I might make a little bit more. Maybe. I'll take it it's all manipulation. It's all playing games. And it really is the same thing that they were doing under their old pay model. It was really designed around that they built a lot on kind of that little surprise of getting extra money. And they use that to try and trick you into taking more offers. And really is what that's all about. But anyway, so that's a frustrating thing for a lot of drivers. Right? Well, as a result of this, there were a lot of drivers that had gone to using an older version of the Dasher app. They figured out that they could still keep this older version of the app running. And when you got the offer and you saw it through that app, it was displaying the total amount that you would receive. And so they use it with, like, version 5.63.6, I think, real close to that. But anyway, they figured out we could use that. And so there they could tell how much you're going to be getting until DoorDash figured it out, and they shut that down. They basically they made it so that that app would no longer be able to see that information. So that's kind of the backstory on DoorDashes side. Well, at one point, the guys at Para figured out that, hey, we can tell we can get that information, because here's what happens with Para. With Para, you log them into your DoorDash account. And so the way it works is when you get a delivery offer, your DoorDash app or the Dasher app gets that information. But if you logged Para in the Para app gets that information. Also, an opera was able to figure out that, hey, we can see what that amount is. It's just the DoorDash app sees it, but it doesn't display it for you until after you complete the delivery. But Para was able to figure out that, hey, we can see that. So when you get that offer, now we know that this offer is going to pay $20 instead of the $7 that DoorDash is telling you. And so they develop the app so that it could pop up a notification that says the actual pay on this is going to be$15.45 or whatever the amount is. You know. And so once people figured out that that was out there, all of a sudden, I mean, Para blew up within a short amount of time, there up to just under 200,000 users. And it was crazy watching how many people were figuring out, hey, we can know more. And and almost as quickly as it blew up like that, it quit working. And once again, it was DoorDash figuring out that people were able to figure this out. And then they did a work around, and what happened was the way that Para works is since you log into the account. Like I said, they see the information as it comes in. And part of that information that DoorDash sends you includes the total payout. Well, DoorDash figured out well, we just quit sending that particular field. And so now when you get all that information that's missing, so Paras no no longer able to tell how much the actual payout is going to be, DoorDash now sends that information later in the delivery process. So essentially, DoorDash just said, you know what? We are pot committed to keeping the tip hidden, and that killed tip transparency that killed that feature. There's no way to do that feature. Now, Para is trying to do some things to adjust or come up with some different ideas. But there is just no way now for anyone to be able to tell you how much that delivery is going to pay. Now, the one thing I'm not going to get into is whether or not you should use Para. I've cautioned against it. I love the guys at Par, but I've cautioned against it because it has the possibility of deactivation. I think it was one of the first ones to talk about that potential of Deactivation that comes with any of these apps where you log in. There's other apps that do it too. Grid wise, is one of the best known ones. Cover, who is another guest on the show that any of the groups that use a company called Argyle. All of these are things that log you into your account through another app, and there's potential that it could be a violation of the terms of service. I'm not sure that it is. I've been one of those a while. I've cautioned people. I've also been one of those that said it's not as clear cut of violation as some people are making it out to be. The bottom line is there's a lot of controversy over using Para. There are a lot of dashes who feel like using Para is cheating. And there's a lot of misunderstandings about what Para does because they think that you're putting people at risk or something the wrong. I'm not going to dive into all that right now because I don't want to make this too long. But the bottom line, there's a lot of controversy about that. And so now, you know, there's this whole question. There's one side that says, oh, yeah, they're dead. That's it. They're gone. And that's what I wanted to talk about today. So that's why I very, very, very thankful that David was willing to come back on again. And so he gets to be my first guest in season two. And he's been putting a lot of time into trying to adapt and make some changes and things like that. He's been just working crazy hours. So I was just really, really thankful that he was willing to take even a little bit of time. He was kind of on the run. He was, I think, moving from one place to another. So he had to do the interview on his phone and the audio came out actually much better than I thought it would for all of that. But I am thankful that he was able to and willing to come on. So I'm just going to turn it over to the interview here, and we'll talk with David about what happened to Para. And folks, I'm glad to have David Pickerell. He was able to take a few minutes to join us. And I really appreciate him taking the time because just with some of the changes and everything, I know he's been just really swamped. So, Dave, thanks for joining us. And just kind of talking about what's been happening with the tip transparency and everything else. No, thanks for having me back on, Ron. It's good, yeah. In fact, I think you were just about one of the last ones I had on before. I kind of took my pause. So kind of nice to have you start my second season here as well. So you want tell us just a little bit. I know we kind of let up talking into this about how we've had kind of some changes with the tip transparency. You guys came out and just took off like crazy because people taking advantage of it. And then all of a sudden the feature doesn't work anymore. How did that work? What did you find out? What did you see with DoorDash and what was happening there? Yeah. I think what happened is DoorDash changed the way that they send the trip information to the app. So I think one thing to be very clear for listeners. I had some people ask this is like, no drivers accounts are safe, no information is being compromised. And there hasn't been any change in terms of what Doordash would see for a driver account. But what they did is quite smart. So what they did was previously they would send the full trip information to the app and just not show it. Right. So what they've done now is made it so that the app doesn't know the full payout until after you've completed the trip. Right. So effectively, the change made it. So that the way we were doing tip transparency no longer could work. Right. Sure. And I think this was a targeted change by DoorDash, and I'm a little upset and that I think what we're doing is the right thing. You should be able to make an informed decision on the trip that you are taking. So I think you're going to see us, one, continue to fight this fight, right. Because I think it's the right thing to do. And, you know, that's what our movement is. But Secondly, I think we were able to quite quickly realize that because of a lot of the data we have, we could predict tip with quite strong accuracy. So we rolled out a sort of super basic version of that model a day or two ago, and we're going to continue to make that even better. So hopefully, in the meantime, that will still help people make informed decisions and hopefully make more money at the same time. I've heard from a lot of people asking you, hey, is this is this the end of Para? I think it's what I completely say. Definitely not. Right. This is just the beginning. So I think on those same sets of principles of taken advantage of what it means to be an independent contractor and taken advantage of what it means within your rights of that, you're going to see a lot more coming from us. So I think in the next couple of weeks, we're going to layer on Grub Hub, we're going to start to see the ability to approve or decline trips through our app. And I think sort of looking a month or two app, you're going to start to see more apps being brought centrally on to Para. So, yeah. We're going to be hard at work, basically, over the next couple. Yeah. And that's what I've said a couple of times to people that have said, well, does this mean they're dead? And I said, no, it doesn't at all, because the Tip Transparency feature was never what you were about to begin with. It was a feature. It was something that you found out that you could do, but it was never the center of everything. And so it wasn't like you guys live and breathe or survive on whether or not you're able to do that. One feature. We were always trying to build what I call a personal dispatch system for the driver. But I think in the process of trying to build that discovered, Firstly, that Doordash is hiding this. And second of all, that we could put this out there and help people. Right. So I think we realized that that was the right thing to do and wanted to get it in as many hands as possible. So we did. But you're right. And that that wasn't the end goal. I think we stand on a set of principles, and that was the first thing we could do to stand by those principles and help our users. But there's a lot more that's coming. Yeah. Because you guys even introduced a few things that were pretty helpful even early on, but you just didn't get quite the attention that tip transparency has got. But, boy, it sure sounds like DoorDash was definitely, you know, Pot committed to keeping the tips hidden, weren't they? If they're going to make a change in their algorithm to keep you from being able to pull up the tips like that? Yeah. I guess we always knew that they were hiding it, but now they've gone further to hide it. Right. Yeah. It's even more intentional, because my gosh, I sit there and I think even the risk that they had to be taking to do that, because look at how many times we've seen them crash their app by doing some kind of an update or whether they're overwhelmed or something like that. And it's like, are they willing to risk another big crash just so that they could change things and keep the tips hidden? That's what it seems like to me on our end. I think it's not a fight we're going to back down from. I think at the end of the day, driver should still be able to make an informed decision about those trips. I would love to sort of listener thoughts in terms of what people think the next step should be. But in an ideal world, I still hope that DoorDash provides this to everyone. Right. So I think you're also going to see some stuff on our end to see if there's something. Can we keep this movement going and continue to put some pressure on DoorDash to provide this for everyone? Well, yeah. How many people did you end up getting signed up on the app by the time it was all said and done? Almost 200,000. So like 100 and 8890 thousand people. That's crazy. That is crazy. That's a lot of people. I think that tells you right there that people want something different. Yeah. So what do you have coming up next then for Para, do you think? Yeah. So I think right now, immediately where you are over the next couple of days, we just going to continue to improve that tip predictor. you're going to see next is a couple things. So we will be able to predict a tip is strong on something. And we're also going to highlight other things on a trip. So we can basically suggest, hey, we think you should take this trip because it likely has a high dollar amount. I think what you mentioned earlier, too, is we know roughly how long it will take. So we know that this is a good trip. Right. I think the the Grub hub start being added to that basically in the next couple of weeks. So we've already started to run some data around that. So you'll have to record in your Grubhub Ping is coming into one central place, and then we will be able to highlight which ones you think you should take. And there will be an ability to approve or decline a trip after decline a trip in our app. Instead of having to switch back and forth between apps, you see the information in years, then you got to switch back to the delivery app. You could just do it from now. It's a button. But I think once we have that out there. So two things are going to continue to build on. One is to add more platforms to this. Right. Uber, lyft some of the up and coming platforms. Other type platforms are going to try and bring it all into one place. And I think that's sort of on the principle of you should be able to make an informed decision, and you should be able to have tools to run your business that make your life easier. So we're going to keep building on that. And I think the second thing you're going to see us build is more automation, really. Right. So this personal dispatch tool for the individual driver that I talked about, which is right now it will be swipe or click to accept or decline. What do you care about? What are your preferences? And then can we help start doing that for you? So I think really, the direction we're going in is more platforms for automation. Okay. So kind of more of a broad based platform that's going to help drivers with the big picture. Exactly. I hold live like the world's best driver app as a driver app that works for you, right? Yeah. We're excited to see what comes up. And I want to thank you again for taking the time. And I know you've got a lot of things that you're getting caught up on here. So thank you again for taking the time with us. Thank you for having me on. I see you next time on it. Alright. Sounds great. Well, Courier nation. I can't thank David enough for his taking the time in a busy schedule to talk to us. And I just really appreciate him taking time, letting us know what's up with Para, letting us know some of the things that are up next for them. I kind of wanted to leave some of my thoughts here. Two questions, is this the end for Para? And what do we do as a result of all this? How do we respond to it? First question, is this the end? What are the chances that Para can come out of this? Do they have an opportunity to really grow from here? I think they've got an opportunity. But I also think that Para is in a crossroads right now. I think that what happens next is going to make or break them. That's just my guess. I could be wrong. But I think they've got an opportunity because of the exposure that they had because of tip transparency. But I also think that because of that attention, that if what they do next doesn't go well, that it's going to be really hard to recover from that. And so the thing is, both possibilities in my mind, they really tie around one thing and that's your identity as a business, you've got to have a sense of purpose, of identity, of what it is you're trying to accomplish. And if you don't have that, you're going to spin your wheels. And that's true for you and I as independent contractors, it's true for an app like Para. It's true for big companies that it's like you've got to have an identity. And I'll use the example of McDonald's. Some of their biggest flops were when they did things that really didn't fit their identity. They opened up a 301 concept store in Lincoln, Nebraska when I lived there. And it was actually pretty good to me. It reminded me of a Perkins. It was more of a dining. It was sit down restaurant type food. And they they had breakfast and bakery. They had an ice cream soda shop. And then they had kind of the diner food, and the food was really good. It was one of my favorite places, and I was really disappointed when it didn't make it. But the main reason it didn't make it was it just wasn't McDonald's. It wasn't their identity. Mcdonald's went out and they tried fried chicken for a while in some places, and it just never went anywhere because it's just not McDonald's. But at the same time, McDonald's could do this, and they could survive when something like that didn't work because they had an identity. They've got a following. They've got people that will always go to McDonald's because they just know what they're getting at McDonald's. And all of this is to say a big picture like that. That identity, I think, is just really important. And it's that big picture. That is why I don't think it's the end for them, but why it could be. The reason I don't think that it has to be the end is because this Tip Transparency feature, it was never the big picture. It was never what they meant to be. You know, it was never what they set out to do. It was a feature. And so they lost the ability to provide a feature. That doesn't mean that they lost their foundation. It doesn't mean they lost their core. But that does beg this question. What is their core? What is it that they're trying to do? What is the big picture? And I think that's where the danger is for para. I'm just afraid that between what they've been developing and what they've been communicating, that it's hard to see that big picture. I think the vast majority of the nearly 200,000 people that jumped on board with the app, if you ask them, if you ask the DoorDash community and all the people that feel like using Para is cheating, what is Para? It's tip transparency. It's the feature. Tip transparency for a lot of people has become their identity. And if that identity is a feature and that feature goes away, that can be hard to come back from. And I kind of worry about the response. And David talked about that. They created a Tip predictor model. And so what they've done is they've decided that we can kind of figure out from patterns and from the data when it is likely that DoorDash is going to pay more than what they offered. And so that's what they pivoted to. And I think that that can be a good feature. I think there are ways you can kind of get an idea when that might happen. But again, it's a feature. And the part that I worry about is especially I think, some of the responses, the reactions I've seen people say, hey, I took an offer because Paris said that it would pay more and it didn't. And I read that. And I think what part of the word estimate do you not understand? And maybe that's just part of the reality is sometimes when you run a business, you got to understand that you're going to have a lot of people that just don't think. But the thing is, again, it's like as long as the features are your identity, you'll have challenges. And I'm just afraid that if the next thing they do is just roll out something else, but that isn't their identity. And that fizzles. I'm not sure if they'll be able to come back from that. And so, like I said, that question, though, comes up, what is the identity then? What is that big picture that they're trying to do? And I think we got kind of an idea in that what David talked about. He mentioned it here in the interview, but he also mentioned it last time he was on that what they want to work towards is building what they call a personal dispatch system. It's kind of a suite of tools, just things that can help drivers manage delivery offers and the deliveries themselves and things like that. So a more comprehensive app. And, you know, that's the kind of big picture that I think people could get behind. And I think that if they develop something really well here, if they work towards that, they knock it out of the park. I think that there is a potential that Para could still become the app for delivery drivers. And here's the thing, though. I've never built an app, so I don't know what I'm talking about. Right. And I'm sure there's probably a lot of people that would say, yeah, that's been obvious for a long time. But the thing is, I just really feel like that if Para is going to survive from this, they need to Hone in on that big picture. They need to start moving towards that identity and everything and not put out another feature, but instead just double down on this personal dispatch, come out with a basic level of that, even if it takes a little bit longer to do that. But let that be what your communication is about. And let that be what you're introducing, because now you can point people to the big picture and you can add features to that later on. And this isn't by no means. I don't mean to be critical or anything like that. It's just kind of an analysis of what I see and what I'm afraid of happening. I think as far as Para, I love these guys. I really do. I've talked with them many, many times. And the thing that I can tell you is they've got a heart for independent contractors. They really do want to make things better for independent contractors in the delivery space. And I can tell you about a conversation with David when we did the interview as we got done, we were off the record on that. And I mentioned something about how people kind of misunderstood how that works when you log in with your login through Para, because there's people out there that are saying, yeah, well, if you get them to log in, then they can get your bank information. They can get your Social Security number. And I'm just kind of like you guys think about this a little bit. Para only gets access to what you've got access to, and you can't go into DoorDash and get your own bank account information. You can't log into there and pull your own Social Security number. The DoorDash has got too much security around that. And if you don't have that access, neither does Para. And I'm just going on and on about that and everything. And I just really appreciate David's response to my grousing because he just said, you know, I don't really mind that. Really. No, I don't mind that as much, because that tells me that they care about their security. Okay, I get that. But it just I think it just said even that much more, I think, to what he's about. I think that he really he cares more about doing something that helps people. And then if he can make a business out of it even better. Anyway, those are my thoughts, I think, on Para. But the bigger question I think we need to ask ourselves is, what about ourselves? What does this mean for us? And here's the biggest takeaway that I could get from all of this is just a reminder that we need to take control for ourselves. It is a reminder that if we're in business, then we need to treat it like a business. We need to take control. Now, I noticed some people on Facebook Reddit different places like that after that happened. I think we're done with DoorDash. Then if I can't get tip transparency, then I'm done. And I just thought, that's sad. I feel bad for people because it's like you're leaving a lot on the table and you're leaving opportunities behind. Here's the important thing to remember here, you're running a business you signed on as an independent contractor, and so that means two things. One, you're not an employee. If you want those protections, and if you want some guarantees, go somewhere where you're an employee. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's not part of the environment that you signed up for. But the thing is that when you're running a business, when you signed up as a business, you know what that means. That means that DoorDash is your customer. When you're running a business, there's no guarantee that your customer is going to be fair. There's no requirement that your customer is fair about the way they do things. In fact, there's probably a guarantee that you have customers that are going to try and screw you. And DoorDash probably doesn't disappoint us on that one. You know, they kind of take that role of a customer to heart. But here's the thing. If you take the attitude, though, that your success and your failure relies on you. You don't have to rely on DoorDash to be fair or anybody else, because now you're identifying the opportunities that work and whether the pay is fair or not. If it's enough, you take it and you make your decisions. And you know what? If DoorDash isn't paying enough as a customer, somebody else will. And if eventually, nobody is. Now, you know, it's time to change your business model. And that, again, is something that you've got control of kind of real quick. I'll give my thoughts, I guess, on how I look at the hidden tips and not knowing the total amount. When I'm looking at DoorDash offers. I make my decision just based on what DoorDash is offering. And sometimes I will lean towards taking something. If if the pay offered is just enough and it's the kind of restaurant things like that that there's a chance it might pay more. And I'm on the fence about an offer, then I'll take it. But otherwise, I'm like if I feel like I would be screwed because I took this offer and I only paid what the offer amount was, then I'm not taking it. I don't care about the fact that it could have a $20 tip to me making a decision on that. That's FOMO fear of missing out, and it's just not worth doing it that way. That's about the only way that I can say that you do things as far as looking at delivery offers on DoorDash, when you don't know for sure if they might be paying more. And so the thing is, it still works out quite well for me. And in the end, if it's not working well, somebody else is going to give me something better. But here's the thing. I think it's just really important for all of us is focus on what you've got control over, make your decisions and do things based on what you've got control over and stress about those things. Don't waste your time on things that you can't control. So I'm not going to tell you that DoorDash is right hiding the tips. I think it's a scummy move on their part. And I think there's a lot of things that DoorDash does that I scuzzy, you know, but I can't change their Suzzie. You know, two years ago, almost two years ago, there was so much pressure on them about their pay model that they were forced to change the pay model. But the new pay model didn't make DoorDash any less scuzzy. Basically, the new pay model is just a slightly reworked version of the old one. They still do a lot of the same things. It's like meet the new pay model, same as the old pay model. But I can't change that. But it doesn't matter if I can change them. I work on the things that I can work on that I can change that. I can impact, and I can evaluate offers from them. There are still good offers from DoorDash, even when I don't know the total amount. And I'll take those. And if there are not good offers from DoorDash, then I take offers from somebody else. But I take control over the things that I'm doing, because in the end, that's what it boils down to taking control. And I guess that's a good segue into wrapping up this episode, because this is really what it's all about. With the deliver on your Business podcast. It is about taking control. There's a lot of things usually that sometimes I'll do it or something like that. Different people can ask at the end of an episode or anywhere in their podcast. I could ask you to do things like us on Twitter and Facebook, or leave a review at itunes or check out our blog, all those different things. And I'd always love that if you do that. But none of those things that I could ask you are as important as the one thing that I always ask at the end of every episode in season one. And I'll continue that into season two is to ask you to do this one thing. Remember that you're running a business embrace that take control and go.