00:00:00 moving the needle on founder failure one conversation at a time I'm your host Justin Gordon and welcome to startup 2.0 by spark XYZ join us each week as we give you access to some of the top investors and entrepreneurs in the country to help you think through and overcome the top challenges that startups face today's guest is Ed Lee who's the founder and CEO of hello advisor also a Forbes 40 under 40 and Ed is a pricing guru something you may not have thought about too much and in this episode we do a deep dive into pricing

00:00:39 and how you can think about it for your business ed welcome to the show nice to be here thanks for having me yeah have you have you on and we Haas to discuss about pricing and we'll get to that in a second here but first learn a little bit about like how you started the company and like who you work with with it so started hello advisor about two years ago and it really came out of the need from conversations with entrepreneurs with investors about the challenge that companies and founders were having around pricing and so really

00:01:11 focusing our work working with the founders of startups and in a handful of lifestyle companies specifically around pricing and monetization okay awesome and then with that so what are you actually doing with these companies in terms of helping them or that you say pricing but then the workers are actually doing to help them out with the price no that's a great question yeah so when I'm working with companies we're really thinking about a few different things one is kind of getting into the heart of their value proposition when

00:01:40 they're going to market pricing is really the monetary the monetary exchange in terms of what they're offering and so we're helping them understand what their value proposition is and how they're going to start to take that to market from there we start to move into kind of designing what their pricing and monetization is going to start to look like so everything that you see on the Buy Now pages of an e-commerce site or from a consumer goods site and what have you those are all designed and so we're trying to figure

00:02:12 out how can we best design that's so that customers understand what it is that you're offering but also kind of see what the value is from a monetary standpoint and then we help with execution straight through so really all stages stages of the product in the business yeah there any uh I guess particular businesses we prefer to work with are you kind of specialized in I can tell about that we're pretty industry in vertical agnostic but we really do work with a lot of b2b SAS companies we also work with a lot of

00:02:42 e-commerce retail consumer goods companies we one of our recent clients have been in the gaming and the e game space as well eSports space as well so that's been a lot of fun trying to figure out pricing with that it's gotta be fun oh yeah and with the what the whole pricing strategy like obviously want to take a deeper dive into that sure let's start with like a high-level view of what you kind of the process looks like and then dig a little bit deeper into each step of that and yeah so with every conversation it

00:03:14 always starts off with IDI what is the price what is that number that magic number and the funny thing is when you think about designing your pricing that what you price or the price level as we call it is the last step we start off with the pricing strategy right what is pricing supposed to help you and your company achieve is it market penetration are you trying to maximise on revenue and profit are you trying to change the mix this just this morning I was just talking to a very prominent la ecommerce

00:03:47 startup and they're trying to change the mix from you know transactional business to more subscription business how do we use and leverage pricing to do that so what is the strategy and then we follow that with and how do we design the monetization model the pricing model so effectively should it be a subscription should there be three offer should there be ten should it be module there's so many different options but the most important part of it is designing it for your business and your customers not

00:04:18 other not other businesses now they're startups customers but your customers and that's really vital that's really an important piece that's oftentimes saying in this discussion yeah and with that too obvious it's it's tough to really give advice on such a broad things every thought is different right sure but what are some maybe questions that these startups can ask themselves or how they can figure out back into it what their pricing might actually look like right and so you know just for starters you know what you want you know

00:04:46 if I was talking to a company for the first time one of things I'd ask them probably suggest that they do is start to look at the competitive landscape and what I mean by looking at the competitive landscape is not just look at what other companies like yours is pricing but what other models are out there and what are the problems in the pain points that those models present right so when we think about the subscription model and before we had the subscription model it was very transactional so it was

00:05:15 really hard and I couldn't remember that I wanted the extra detergent or the razor blades or whatever else so the scription model filled that pain point and they created a monetization model around that it became a competitive advantage so understanding what the competitive landscape looks like what's the pain point from a pricing and monetization standpoint and you can start to address the other thing is also looking very introspectively we tend to kind of look for external kind of data points like what is other people

00:05:44 charging and whatnot and without asking ourselves the question of like what is it that we really need to achieve so recently talked to a crypto platform it's a data AI driven data platform for crypto currency exchange and there's so many different approaches that they can take they could already find opportunities exit by selling the company they can look to scale the company they can sell the B to B versus B to C and these all require different pricing approaches and it's hard to figure out what we should price if we

00:06:19 don't know which direction we want to go so it's those early conversations to have yeah and then obviously you're choosing a price and then the market knows about how do you iterate on that how do you change it like how do you approach to that side of things now that's that's a really good question so and it's an important point to make is that pricing is not a one-time activity right and a lot of companies it really is I'm launching a product I need a price I need to play on I got to put it on the

00:06:45 price tag yeah but it's very iterative it's very very much evolving so the first step in that is just kind of understanding what's the process you're going to take and it can be something as simple as we're gonna have monthly or quarterly price review meetings when we do our leadership meetings you know it's going to be a topic that we're going to review and these are the four things that we're going to be reviewing within that conversation so you're getting so that you have a pulse not just on what

00:07:13 other people are doing INRI in reaction to your own price but also understanding how the dynamics of your business has changed maybe you know you need to move more towards you need to acquire more revenue growth you need more profitability maybe you need to speed up the sales cycle whatever that may be that you are adapting to your own kind of circumstance as quickly as possible the other part of it is in terms of making sure that you're constantly managing your pricing is the type of work that you're doing to

00:07:47 understand how things like willingness to pay is changing and evolving within your customers and your new customers right Mary there's those that recently discovered your product or service and they love it or they hate it and you need to figure out and understand what has changed and how that's gonna fit into the way that you're going to market with your pricing yeah and I guess it's gonna be so tough to do that you're trying at that feedback and you adjust it but then you may not always be what

00:08:14 you like right and then it was another thing I'm learning about was with the kind of a short term versus long term goals how do they kind of way that versus the pricing and how's it fades like their pricing strategy so I just like what is now and then you have to do that like I'm just curious about so pricing is interesting because it's both short term and long term and so the best way I like to describe it is it is a series of consequences from your last decision and so while the decision that

00:08:44 you make will impact today it's also cumulative in terms of all the other decisions and all the work you did or did not do and past so you know so I look at it in a couple of different lenses especially for startups and entrepreneurs is that when we think long term long term is relative yeah so looking at least 12 to 18 months into the future and saying like when we sit down again what what's gonna change how is your business going to have changed right what do you do better today than you or tomorrow than

00:09:17 you do today and starting to put yourself into that position so that you're looking and keeping an eye on that and then on top of that it's like what are some of the short terms activities that you're working on and you know how do you you know how are you able to push that forward and execute on that as well I'll give you just one example yeah so one of the challenges that some companies have is that while they would love to be creative and innovative for their pricing pricing models one of the

00:09:46 challenges they have in actually implementing executing and realizing the benefit of it which it would be revenue growth new customers and so on is that the back end they're just not prepared right so you know while they would like all the bells and whistles in terms of pricing monetization they just don't have the bandwidth to actually execute on it so it's obviously balancing when we think about short term long term is also putting that into context you know so that we're not losing sight of future

00:10:14 opportunities and by capitalizing on the opportunities that are available today yeah and you met you mentioned not having a bandwidth to do it a little bit more about that yeah so yeah so I can point you know so if you need to change something in your billing system you need to change something on in terms of the way that you present your pricing on your website it requires an engineer across your program sources resources correct and so that is not as any start-up founder will you know will readily no is not always

00:10:43 available they probably they have a very long list of things that they're working on and so while technically it is not difficult to do it is one of a thousand things that they're working on yeah you can say the same thing about marketing and marketing campaigns you say that about if you're a b2b company and you have sales people inside sales what do they do right how do you prioritize how do you fit that in to make sure that you're capitalizing on the opportunities yeah yeah and then we mention a little bit with the comic the

00:11:13 pricing model of obviously what he wants everyone wants subscriptions like yeah clearly like that's the desire of everyone but like what do you see within the pricing now and either different industries or with different companies it's even different price points like just talking through some of those options that companies have and maybe that they don't necessary always realize or anything you've seen it all related to it yeah I mean people like subscription because it's easy it people understand it they don't have to

00:11:39 ironically speak to their customer to explain why this is so great and so but in terms of other types of models I mean one of the things to really demonstrate your value are used to space models so effectively you know and I think companies like slack you know does a fantastic job of this is that the more people that use it not just people in your in not the number of seats that you have in your company but the number of people actually use it your price goes up or you pay more rather right and so

00:12:10 and then it's very clear there you know obviously if I have a hundred people or a thousand people who enjoy a product and you know find value in a product it's you know what I'm paying makes sense so and you know but it is definitely a communication exercise right and there's plenty of examples where companies have really really messed up and down somehow they committed how they price and the way that they want to you know charge their customers Netflix for all the great things that they do from a pricing world

00:12:45 they are time and time again a case study back probably like eight years ago and how not to communicate price chain design in their case price increases but you know so usage base is another great one but what I always encourage every entrepreneur is your pricing model should be your competitive advantage it's a way to kind of distinguish from not just your competitors but just kind of your mark in the market to say our customers are unique our product is unique and the way that we allow people to consume our product by

00:13:21 paying for it is different yeah right and so it's it's something that's often time overload yeah and you mentioned briefly they're like communicating the actual changes to your customers the right so I mean what would be the ideal situation or how should I say they look watch this but do you mean though how I communicate right what do you think so you know nowadays I think cusp companies have gone pretty savvy in terms of how they do it they readily explain for existing customers what's gonna happen

00:13:49 what what does it mean for their accounts what are the options that are available to them being empathetic and that was one of the things that in the past that a lot of companies didn't do is those my price has changed take it or leave it if that doesn't work anymore you have to be more empathetic and understanding of your customers situation even if it's for a $2.00 product and so the way that you're communicating that having the backend ready where you know your customer service wrap or you know the

00:14:19 FAQ on your website is ready to go you know explain that so again it's that dialog that again it's a difficult one especially when it comes to pricing yeah yeah it's like obviously you have the pricing you know the reasons why you're changing your pricing right and then your drinks yeah but to explain that you're right the customers way that they understand and like I'm not right yes irate with you how did you do you have an FX account just curious I do so how are you how do you react to changes once

00:14:48 you tell I you know it's doing what I do it pains me because I would recommend something similar to my clients yeah but at the same time as the on the receiving end of it it just kills every single it's it's it's tough to take yeah you know how does pricing kind of play into Kuster ugh customer uh companies actually go to market strategy is you're just trying to figure out prime market fit like how does that pricing play into there how should they think about go to market so pricing kind of fits into that

00:15:21 intersection of sales and marketing in that the in if you're pricing right then you should be pricing for York stammers which is a question that you should be always it's a discussion you should be having with your marketing team as well as your sales team in terms of how what to kind of package it and how to present it again it's something that you would be having a conversation with your sales team and so when we're thinking about kind of go to market and that intersection of that we're we're

00:15:54 kind of bringing all of that information together and you're you're providing effectively a feedback loop to your sales and marketing as they go to market with the pricing and packaging that you start to kind of put together yeah and then it's maybe hard to answer but how does a company know it had the right pricing I mean how does that ya know about so there's there's a few different schools of thought and the one that a lot of people are comfortable with is when when no one pushes back but the

00:16:27 problem with that is oftentimes when there is no pushback there's a probably good chance you're probably under pricing so I like to say that when you have customers who are kicking and screaming but still pay now you know that you've hit something because now you've hit thieves now you align that value exchange between what makes your product and service fantastic and why people will love it and will love it forever and the price that they're paying that it's still worth it to them yeah so when you

00:16:58 have that situation as difficult as there as that may sound then you found a real sweet spot yeah yeah and I've heard so many different stories about pricing wrong and too low instant yes yes and you're like oh not charge more he's like going back to my like I just use personal training at a company there was like if I had a client as my prices over time and I've actually had a client that was like oh yeah for sure and they just wrote me a check right away for a couple thousand dollars I was like they

00:17:25 probably would have paid out a thousand more you know like that yeah but you got tested I guess but no a testing is definitely one of it there's definitely research that you can do before like the example that I want to know that give us that when I was at LG Electronics we were also a vendor yeah or we're a buyer for other vendor services and you know they'll pitch their prices and their packages and whatever else but there's a big part of me and in our team where they clearly didn't do the research like they have no

00:17:54 idea that while they think that they're offering or proposing a hundred percent they realize that they're not they don't realize that they're only proposing ten percent of what we're willing to actually spend right and so that's that's one part of that opportunity you know that there's a clear misalignment between what people were willing to spend and what you were actually offering and that's where that work in pricing really comes into play and now we'll take a quick break and hear from our sponsor Breck's a big heartfelt

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00:18:56 credit card of the start ecosystem and we highly encourage you to check them out and back to the show yeah and with that too with with testing or like trying different prices out yeah how do you manage that when you have different prices being suggested different customers and managing that having one customer see a price that if they know it's a different price somewhere else or how does that kind of play into pricing so if you're talking about price comparison yeah so again that is that can well people think of that as a

00:19:29 challenge I'd like to see that as opportunity right because at the end of the day especially when we're talking about startups and and and entrepreneurs yeah you know they're they do what they do because there's a problem in the market that they don't see being solved and they think that they have a unique solution or a unique proposition to bring to the office in you know to customers now if you don't really believe that and that's a whole different story but I have yet to meet a founder that isn't

00:19:57 passionate about bringing a unique solution to the market so this is your opportunity to really showcase that right that if it's not just about is our price too high or too low but that for this awesome solution it's worth it yeah and that is a different conversation to have but it also requires a degree of confidence that your pricing where you need to be pricing and that's where we start to kind of go to the wayside where mm maybe there's a little bit more pushback I'll give you a 10% discount or

00:20:31 maybe I'll give you a buy one get one free type of thing yeah and then that's where you start to kind of dilute yeah some of that value and then and with we're going to work with different companies always different founders and what are some of those challenges they're having with pricing that you see come up repeatedly so the challenge with pricing that they have is especially for founders that haven't worked on pricing in the past is that they don't have a process in terms of how they're going to

00:20:59 come with come up with a price and how they're gonna start to design their pricing and a lot of that has to do with the fact that you know they don't know what kind of what kind of research that may need to do they don't know kind of how to process that information to make better decisions and that's what we're looking for we're you know this whole idea of what's the right price versus the wrong price we are looking especially for you know four founders early founders or first time you know entrepreneurs you're really looking for

00:21:28 direction right you can you can you can adjust the price points but the price design is going to be something that's gonna be a lot harder because that is gonna fit in directly with what your customers value or don't value so really well that's one of the challenges they often face is how do I make better decisions and surprisingly for a lot of founders guessing is is their pricing strategy but it's definitely something that they can definitely work on and improve on and and iterate on just going

00:22:01 forward yes you suggest them having some type of process in place and then just evaluating a certain interval of times or whatever it just eats there needs to be more rigor and yes more structure right I mean we you know I say this always very jokingly but you know when we think about you know companies you know founders and when they're starting their company imagine how much time they spent on the logo yeah on the color right of their brand right and don't get me wrong it it is important it's part of your identity but when it

00:22:33 comes to what feeds your business model the amount of rigor that kind of goes into making that decision yeah whatever that may be there it's something that we can definitely improve upon first feels every part of your business potentially all right what exactly such an important decision exam is there anything else then related to kind of pricing that you've seen whether it be other challenges where there just be things that people should be thinking about what their business with pricing yeah that we maybe haven't touched on

00:23:03 just yet the biggest challenge is kind of fitting that into the leadership conversation yeah right it is there's what aspect of it is that as I mentioned earlier there's a very functional component where I just need to get this done yeah versus the fact that in a month's time in a quarters time there might be a new competitor maybe one of my key competitors have changed their price or maybe they've offered something different or my customer base has changed to which one I don't know that yeah to what there's no way for me then

00:23:34 to process that and three I can't make a decision off of that and again it's just having better information to make better decisions and that is just a real a big challenge and that a lot of companies face and with that better information to then is there anything specific or different things you're looking for a different touchpoints looking forward yeah I mean it's it's you know it's it's a strange thing I'm because I can't think of a single startup that hasn't isn't customer first or customer centric

00:24:01 but it's having that conversation about the monetary component to it what is it worth how has that changed you know you know we've introduced these new features has that increased the value for you has that how is that how has that made your life better right it's if it's a consumer you know have you do you do things better do things faster if you're a business are your if your teens more productive how much more productive right you know and it's those type of things that you know that conversation

00:24:31 that we're more likely than not not having with our customers yeah so looking forward in terms of pricing and how this is gonna go I how do you see a changing evolving or yeah in the next few years here so I won't dare to say that we're gonna go towards profitability but I think that especially when we're looking at some of the bigger names like the we works the ubers that I've gone public recently in the scrutiny that they've been under yeah one of the parts of it has been in terms of their business model and what

00:25:03 the future looks like and that sustainability of that and I think you know one of the bright lights for in a recent story around lyft has been the fact that they've been able to leverage pricing to potentially have a pathway to profitability and so I think that in the future and I think increasingly so there's going to be a little bit more scrutiny and in really kind of really upping the game in terms of saying is this balton business model going to actually work of which pricing is a core component to that business model right

00:25:33 and I think that is kind of that direction that we're going into I think there's more I won't say pressure but definitely raising the bar in terms of what does traction start to really look like we know that we can you know we can go to market do marketing to potentially acquire customers does that actually translate into a business and I think that more and more investors more and more founders are asking those questions and I think those are really positive questions going forward yeah yeah and

00:26:05 then how does that I mean with that pricing to them how does that change from the earlier early stage you don't have a lot of data they don't have a feedback yet right as they move along in the process and they grow as a company how does that change Georgia pricing you'd be surprised actually we're going to be releasing a report in the near future where we did a survey on with startup and sort of founders across all stages of growth from from precede all the way to the growth stage and the expansion stage and

00:26:33 so if they do improve they definitely do mature they get really they get a lot smarter and savvy ER in terms of how they price far more structured they have more people on the leadership team that get involved in the pricing they are far more experimental as well so they're more structured in terms of how they go to market or the work that they do before they go to market but also after they go to market as well but again you don't have to be a series II company to be able to do that these are all things

00:27:04 that even at the earliest of Sage's that a founder and two co-founders can be working on just as you would do when you're talking about testing your product with users it is something that you can actively be doing in terms of your business model and your pricing as well yeah and then kind of touched a little bit earlier but looking at it is it a timeline of it's been this long let's keep checking pricing is it how do we have this many customers reacting to it or how do you in a timeframe of these

00:27:32 startups you know evaluate your pricing so like I said I mean we talked about this earlier I mean it is definitely going to be iterative and so it's gonna definitely be situational as well but again your North Star then is your pricing strategy yeah and so you know and this is just general best practice for any kind of business strategy is that you should be re-evaluating and reassessing if the strategy is still relevant for you and your company the same thing goes for your pricing strategy which is why when you're

00:28:04 thinking about and evaluating where you are the dynamics that have changed that that's where you're kind of pointing to and then that's where the rigor comes from like a pricing strategy if done well is is really pressure tested right you need to be very rigorous as to why this strategy makes the most sense for your company and where you want it to go and oftentimes we kind of you know less work is actually doing done in that area yeah yeah and nowadays with with your company I'm just curious as to how

00:28:38 you're spending your time your day look like what does my day look like as a good consultant every day is different but no again I spend most of my time with our clients and we're doing a whole range of projects and engagements with our clients right now we're working with a global global mobile gaming company right now and we're looking at kind of their gaming economy and ways that we can improve upon that so that it makes sense in terms of how in terms of how their players are being monetized also

00:29:16 talking to a data platform where they supply they are they go to data supply for eSports for example and so looking at their pricing and how they're planning to go to market so it really goes across the board from everything from pricing new products to evaluating their go to market to really kind of looking at where the opportunity lies in the prices that they would currently have what can we do to improve upon that what can we how can we think about this a little bit smarter just kind of going

00:29:49 forward yeah and then obviously we've talked about everything related to other companies sure what about your company in terms of the pricing you know how do you approach your own pricing and knowing all these things that you know because now it's your company it's your baby yeah that no it's the same principles apply yeah so one of the reasons why we started hello advisor is that we found a need in the marketplace where especially for startups they need a lot you know they get a lot of support

00:30:18 in a lot of different areas whether it be around product around marketing even around leadership coaching and so on but when it comes to pricing there was you know far less support available for them and so for us it was all about access which meant just making sure that we are able to support or at least share better practices with as many companies as possible which means that our pricing in the way that we kind of go to market is far more flexible and fluid and so again there's not one set price there is it

00:30:51 really dependent on the company's situation and what they are trying to achieve and we work with them on that so that it fits them but we we never want to walk away thinking that they're no longer going to work on price just because they didn't work with us so we definitely want to make sure we provide resources and support in order to make sure that pricing is in loss just because they don't get to work with health advisor yeah and with that seem like why did you get into pricing personally why that's important but like

00:31:25 I'm just a fly for you it's okay my parents asked what do you do know so again you know I you know it was it was always called something else it was called growth yeah it's called revenue optimization it was called revenue enhancement it was called everything else other than pricing yeah but you can't really do a lot of these other growth techniques or mechanisms without understanding price and one of the things that I discovered way back when and again this is really just through kind of all the different professional

00:32:01 experiences I've had is that you you can't just guess in terms of what the pricing has to be whether it be you know one of the things I did early on was working on M&A deals I mean which is effectively a pricing exercise right the whole due diligence process is for buyers to determine what they're willing to pay for that company right and so it's it's and it's a very you know again it's a painstaking process but it's that kind of rigor that kind of goes into determining you know whether it's a billion dollars or two billion dollars

00:32:34 and so it's kind of going back and understanding like there is so much more to it than that and so just kind of through my experiences from big corporates to global consulting firms I'm just working with a range of companies is that as just that is such a important and vital driver for company's growth and sustainability and so you know I just kind of really fell in love with it yeah right with pricing fell not with pricing I go that's great with your with your company then like yeah I'm also curious as to how those insights on

00:33:10 pricing different clients are shared within internally like how you learn from that like maybe suggest other things or above your process how does that work yeah no it's you know you know every customer client is different for sure but you know the things that we share the most is really the dynamic between within other companies so the way that the CEO or the co-founders how they interact with one another how they delegate how they prioritize it's very much you know kind of the psychology of leadership and team management because

00:33:52 from you know when we think about pricing again you can come up with the most innovative pricing model in the world but if you can't communicate and execute that inside and out yeah you know realizing the opportunity and capturing the benefit is it's going to be very challenging so understanding kind of how that kind of fits in and seeing that dynamic and that's that's one of the big things that we like to share and learn from and just kind of understand the different techniques that different founders take

00:34:25 when it comes to prioritizing you know the allocating resources and so on yeah where do you see it going where do you want this to go over the next few years I you know I want you know yeah my ambition and my hope is that when anyone decides to start a new company whether it be a lifestyle company or or a startup or a tech startup that when they think about the kit of things that they need to do is that they're very top of my sorting to think about that pricing question early on right yeah and and if

00:35:00 we can help facilitate that and start to encourage more founders and more entrepreneurs to do that I think I think there would be a lot more companies not struggling quite as much yeah yeah it's funny you mention that I literally had that conversation like yesterday like we're talking about pricing for trying to figure this out and like realizing like in the early on stages I didn't want to get customers you want to get growth you're trying to validate the idea right right so you're moving quickly on that and which was kind of

00:35:29 what we did on ours too and get to the point where like this pricing doesn't make sense for the business and stuff moving forward it's not gonna logistical II work right and so we had to have that conversation but this is making me think of it more like you know and but that's the interesting thing because I think a lot of founders take that approach like let's test you know the product let's test you know talk to customers that are yeah acquisition customers but I also challenge founders to ask the question

00:35:51 if those customers that say that they love your product or service and they're not willing to pay you a dollar for it yeah is it aligned right right what what's you know how does that change the dynamic in terms of how you're gonna go forward because that question never goes away because eventually you're gonna put a price on a price tag on a website yeah someday right it's an unavoidable thing and no customer whether you're a big enterprise customer or you're the consumer off the street no one disassociates the product with

00:36:27 the price yeah and that and that entering that price into that equation into the calculus of the customer is unavoidable yeah and but yet when we think about going to market and building a business we separate that as if it was mutually exclusive and oftentimes it's not and so then we find out that we're not winning customers or converting customers it's like what do we do yeah right yeah it's challenge obviously that's why you're helping companies clear there's a need for yeah but with that too then so you mentioned it has to

00:36:59 align with the strategy and if you're trying to get penetration so that maybe have a lower price strategy sure then how does that expand how does that change as they grow and they get more customers but maybe that the first customer base they can't expand me I'm not priced like how does that so actor in the way that I like to explain it is imagine a tree trunk which it has you know all all the rings all on it and so at the very core are those loyalists the ones that will stick by you who even with all the bugs and all the issues

00:37:30 with customer service they're still gonna they're still gonna use your product and they're still gonna pay that part is gonna be the hard part it's as you start to grow it's understanding what those different customers look like right and what are the different facets and drivers for them as as you start to grow and you know when you start to think about your customers and the shifting of your business in that way now you can start to be a little bit more structured and more methodical right not trying to try

00:38:01 to create a one-size-fits-all solution which is a solution for none is that understanding and starting to kind of migrate the way that you're going to mark it with your pricing for those different kind of for the different customer segments yeah yeah what a challenge it can be you know we talked about a lot of different things relate to price anything it's been trauma see crazy helpful already but is there anything else that you want to mention to startup founders entrepreneurs lifestyle whoever it is about the

00:38:30 pricing and what they should do with it yeah I mean really one don't wait to work on pricing yeah it does take work and the best companies in the world the companies that we admire from Apple to Warby Parker to all birds they have worked they spent a lot of time working on pricing and kind of scenes we just don't see it so don't underestimate how much time it's going to take the second thing is really start to think about it in a more structured methodical way just as you would do from a product

00:39:03 development standpoint the scientific approach to lean methodology you know again so on and so forth but you really want to kind of get into that mindset of how am I actually researching and testing my pricing you know do I have a repeatable process am i just using anecdotal information am i just guessing or just trying to take a couple of comments or feedback that's warm gave me and trying to make a decision that's going to impact my business going forward right and so just kind of starting to put that into place as you

00:39:36 grow more processing more structure but early on you know focus on don't forget about pricing start to think about research and thinking about being more Mathon unstructured in terms of how you plan on going to market with your pricing yeah that's crazy useful and and where can people go to your connect with you or reach out to you in touch no absolutely you can visit our website at wwlp.com you can also reach out to me directly at EDD at homeadvisor.com happy to take any of your questions awesome thank you so

00:40:08 much for coming on today thanks for having me thanks for checking out step 2.0 from spark XYZ if you want to learn more about startups and investing and check us out join the ecosystem at spark XYZ dot IO