How to Measure Startup Risk and Find Product Market Fit with Brodie Meyer

from the crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Harland I'm Matt Hunter CEO at Powder Keg and I'll be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host Christopher Toph day CEO Elevate Ventures and Nate spangle head of community at Powder Keg today's guest is Brody Meyer who is the CEO of yourco he grind it to the nail and I got to see that and then I saw my dad come in and trying tooth and nails and I think that really influenced me like you get rewarded for the hard work you put in Brodie Meyer is the CEO of yourco a platform for two-way communication for non-desk employees in today's show we're going to talk about why starting with the problem is essential for entrepreneurs one powerful strategy from Athletics that is essential for all founders and leaders and maintaining personal relationships while growing your early stage startup and so much more you're going to love this conversation with Brody Meyer Brody thanks for being here man thanks for having me dude appreciate it excited to chat with you about what you're doing with your Co but first just want to get a little bit of context for how you grew up did you grow up in the midwest yes grew up in the midwest grew up in south of Chicago Palos Heights Illinois came to Indiana for college nice yeah Butler Butler cool and you played some sports right I did I played I wrestled I played baseball my whole life and then I ended up playing baseball in college nice would you learn playing team sports that you think maybe applies to how you're doing leadership today yeah one team it's actually something we talk about a lot within our business is we have four pillars we got Marketing sales product support and everyone's got different things going on day in and day out but we really like to talk about okay how can we be one team at the end of the day there's one goal in mind so I love that yeah another thing from Sports though that I really realized especially in sales is be present be in the moment be where your feet are I think you perform the most when you're where your feet are and when you're in this moment and that helps with sales a lot helps me yeah absolutely that's an interesting comment and I'm gonna make one more comment before but I want to go I want to rewind to what your home life was like growing up high school like what it was like what you thought about was entrepreneurship talked about all those kind of fun things but talk about being in your feet I've never heard that said I love that concept you know what flashed my mind two things number one have you ever noticed that athletes move around really slow like people who are really fast especially professional athletes or even like D1 athletes and you were able one athlete why do you guys move around so slow when you're actually really fast and coordinated and talented conserving energy being present being in the moment is it that's what I learned all of all over the place as a child and like I've learned through the years to be able to perform at the peak you possibly can you need to be in the present moment I used to do a lot of yoga I still do yoga but that really helps and like meditation and things that help calm you down that you can go to when your brain starts to go crazy how can I be relaxed how can I be calm and be here right now you mentioned when you're a little kid did you have a lot of that entrepreneurial energy when you're a kid a lot of energy yeah yeah all the time what was your first business first business or money making idea money making idea money making idea I think I was really into e-commerce and I was trying to sell like baseball cards terrible but it's something how old were you when you tried that for the first time early very young like 10.

it had to be yeah maybe 12. yeah yeah I always had entrepreneurial in influences on me that I didn't recognize until he got a little older I am the first Meyer to ever graduate college wow and yes thank you thank you that's awesome I I like to say from a family of Grinders family of blue collar workers and my grandfather started printing business in Chicago a small print shop and they he grinded tooth and nail and I got to see that and then I saw my dad come in and grind tooth and nails and I think that really influenced me like you get rewarded for the hard work you put in so I had some entrepreneurial influences as well were there other things that you saw up close in that printing business that you still use today chaos yeah and embracing the chaos and understanding business is tough you got to keep a level head yeah did you work inside of the business I did yeah what'd you do what was your first job there plant floor stuff boxing collating my dad would bring home stuff and we would collate and put things in boxes and yeah yeah around the table I remember family dinners and everyone being around the table and Classic Family pastimes this is awesome collating I love that that's awesome tell me a little bit about how you came up with the idea for yorko yeah that stems directly from the family business the biggest not the biggest but one of the biggest problems that we've always seen is the front office being able to communicate with the plant floor Blue Collar non-desk staff and vice versa was really difficult we tried to help them Implement slack we use slack or they're they're Microsoft shop so teams we tried all that never worked and Diving deeper into the problem we realized these folks are not always giving a company email we thought maybe it was just like our family shop they're not giving emails but it's very consistent across the board of manufacturing construction Transportation they may not pay for data plans they may not pay for they may not have internet access so we built them a communication platform on top of something that doesn't need any of those it doesn't need I didn't add another app they had to go download and use and go look at you got it yeah so yorko is built on SMS it's a SMS based communication and internet platform doesn't require downloads internet access passwords not another app and some implementation was really quick worked there it's like the light bulb went off yeah and we started scaling it what are some use cases so like with print shop first put that into use what was the first thing like if we can solve this first thing it'd be huge yeah literally just back and forth communication with the employees on like days off like someone there's always emergencies going on in a business everyone's people right everyone's got people problems so them being able to the employees being able to just digitally communicate with the front office and the managers really easily that was like the biggest use case we saw initially and then the more you use it the more use cases occur so it's used very creatively across the board that's really cool when you're discovering the problem what did you learn from the people on the floor about why they weren't using slack and why they wouldn't use teams what were some of those kind of barriers for them to adopt the technology that obviously in the tech space is everywhere super resistant to putting something their employer wants them to put oh Big Brother Big Sister right yeah makes sense it's a huge one it's interesting yeah and that's probably the biggest one which is funny but it's like it's real and people don't want to put things on their phone especially something that their employers having them put on tips especially in those Industries and more traditionally white collared office spaces like you're putting an app on your phone you're putting the thing on it yeah yeah so that was a big key learning there also yeah I guess that's the biggest thing yeah it makes sense yeah when how did you tell me about the moment you realize that your company your family company wasn't the only company that had this problem how did you discover that there was a bigger Market than that oh started just reaching out to people that I knew previously that have some sort of involvement with manufacturing and I got in front of HR in front of their owners presidents I.

T folks and started having conversations and everything that I was saying was resonating with them then I was like you probably have the same problem that that they do so let's try out the solution and so it was really a natural evolvement of that sale that sales motion and then we just kept on repeating it that's great what were some of those things that you learned in those early sales did did every single one of them close or did you have some no's where you're kind of like oh if I had just done this I probably would have gotten that one keep it simple and really try to uncover the actual pain point that that company is facing because we're such a broad product like I said it's used for a lot of different use cases but not everyone has that use CASE front of mind like we have people using it for employee referrals and you don't think SMS can be used for employee referrals and can actually help you find new employees if I'm talking about that and someone isn't really thinking that it doesn't really resonate with them so it's really more about understanding the underlying problem what a lack of communication was causing in that business and then being able to really approach that sale talking about that how we can solve it for that out with the with the tool yeah that makes sense talk to me a little bit about the outcomes for the business what have you seen for some of your customers who have implemented your Co yeah so from something the benefits that yorko provides that actually ties to like business outcomes Financial outcomes we've seen increased Employee Engagement within the business increased Workforce productivity and we've also seen a decrease in legal risk in the business there's a few things that it's really helped with a decrease in legal risk is like within those facilities typically a manager or an HR person gives out their cell phone number and you have uh there's an opportunity there for like sexual harassment yep and if you don't have to give out your phone number now you're just utilizing the YouTube that's huge yeah that's a big one another one is we automatically document and store all messages even on terminated staff so if there's ever any legal argument or anything which there have been sure people can go back and they can look at this is what actually was said to the employee and this was set back so you reduce a little like data loss risk as well and massive time just the discovery process of that without your solution is so disruptive and takes so much time of attorneys and managers and the CEO and the HR folks and that's yeah 100 yep we they some folks put their legal counsel in yorko so that if anything happens they can just go back and look yeah that's great I want to talk more about where you're going with your code but first want to rewind a little bit because all of us here sitting at the table have business failures and I know it's not always a up and to the right trajectory can you talk a little bit about your own business career and some of the failures or challenges you faced getting to yorko yeah my brother and I my brothers are CTO brilliant guy studied Computer Engineering in college and very good at computer science we both always built things together it's a good combo yeah these are great we started a company called fuse me and it was for in-person career fairs and honestly it's like a salute we took a solution and tried to plug it into a problem versus the other way around which is really what we learned here do not do that come start at the wrong first start with the problem yes it's a hard lesson to learn yes but we took this this technology we had that allowed a phone to touch another phone it would just transfer information you're the resume guy yeah you're there I've heard about this Butler grad who was the like sharing resumes at career fairs by tapping your phone that's awesome that Nate remembers this that's awesome I'd heard about that and someone had told me that I needed to meet the resume guy now I put in a face now you met two members yeah there we go Destiny on the resume guy X resume X resume guy Yeah we actually we found a little bit of what we thought we never really experienced product Market fit we definitely have now we never did before so we thought we had it what made you think that people we had a lot of users people were using it yeah the career fairs we made some a little bit of cash yeah and we would sell to businesses and try to attach it to their talent acquisition platform and they got us going with understanding HR so all of this was really it's all positive right we were talking a little bit before like the failure sure it sucked and we definitely what was the nail in the coffin was called um when Kobe came around there's no more need for in-person face-to-face Career Fairs it was all online and our product was rendered useless but we learned a lot we learned a lot from that what were some of the other things you learned beyond the start with the problem start with a problem go after a massive market and do something you really know because we're really ultimately we're building for ourselves like we totally are very passionate about this problem because we're solving it for the family business we're solving it for business owners but we have a customer in New York sixth generation family business and it's I feel so connected with her because she's always been in a family business setting sixth situation yeah what's the business it's called Hicks nurseries yes yeah and we I sold directly to the owner and she loves the product that was a little a long sales process she was very inquisitive about the product before implementing but I think we really changed everything there so it's pretty pretty cool and to hear her feedback and to know that we're helping these small amidstv mid-sized businesses is really exciting what's the average number of employees like where do you what's the entry point like they've got to have two or 20 or 10 or what's your range of your ideal customer profile you can have two but I don't recommend using our solution then 20 is probably the minimum where you actually start to see all the benefits that's interesting because as you grow your company when everybody's growing a company you meet these really crazy inflection points where everything changes right in 2025 50 100 or where all systems and processes break down you got to rebuild things exactly yeah yeah interesting you mentioned before make sure you've got a big enough market talk to me a little bit about the Tam or total addressable market for the business you have now with yourco yeah so 80 of the global Workforce is this non-desk blue collar Workforce wow so it's just huge and it's really exciting because wow we can never stop growing that's that's what we think our addressable market right now we sell only the US and Canada and we try to Target our four main industries we target our construction manufacturing transportation and warehousing and agriculture or farming we have outliers we're starting to get into more like healthcare there's some health centers that use us as well and so it is ever growing it feels but those are the main ones we target across all of those what are the common problems that you're seeing just across the board that's like consistently you can start a sales conversation by asking a question about this one pain point that most Blue Collar Centric businesses have have you ever heard this question what email that's that's how we start what email they don't people try to send out emails yeah and they everyone feels that I say that that's true I do too yeah but really that's a it's a great conversation starter because people feel that pain they've heard you know what email and they hear it on a consistent basis over and over again because they tried it they do try to email their employees so it really is a base at the base level communication and then we we provide value more value than just being able to communicate by showing them the outcomes that they can achieve them so you raise some capital for this business did you go about that differently than you did with fuse me yeah we went to people that we thought could be really strategic to the business and it was pretty successful in raising Capital so far enough that we need we also try to be really Capital efficient smart we really don't have much waste if any and that's how we want to continue to grow this business as we keep going we definitely do want to raise more money but being really Capital efficient yeah that makes a ton of sense yeah what are some of those value-add investors how have they added value to the business or even to you as an entrepreneur as you've navigated these early stages call text email anytime I have questions yeah any specific ones that you remember that you feel comfortable sharing here on the show yeah I think Mike Kelly would be cool with me sharing his name over at Developer Town do you feel comfortable sharing any of the questions you've asked him yeah I can't even everything yeah if I didn't have if we didn't have that guy yeah us too yeah yes Michael is the man always amazing yeah yeah yeah he's actually gonna go down to I think he's going on South by Southwest he's gonna yeah yeah that's great let's talk about that then so what are you doing this weekend yeah so we got nominated top five future of work Technologies technology companies or softwares and we're going down by Southwest we're going down there to pitch on Sunday in front of yeah you ready to roll get your pitch down yeah I'm pumped nice how long are those pitches three minutes or something three minutes six minutes of questions after three and six oh wow that's great yeah that's really great so then besides Capital like when you're evaluating the decision on whether to go down there and pitch or not raising money is great but what are the other benefits that pitching your company in South by Southwest pitch competition or any of these pitch competitions what are the benefits that can bring for a company yeah some benefits are our employees are super pumped they feel like they're part of something bigger and it has made us feel that way as well you focus in on the day-to-day so much it's nice to pull back and be recognized so it's been great for our brand we've had a little bit more brand presence as well and it's it's lending some like trust from our customers or people in the pipeline okay this is a vetted entity absolutely and I think about why when we reached out to bring you on the podcast like it was definitely prompted like you were on our list of companies to to get featured on there but oh they're going to pitch it South by Southwest we need to make sure he's on ASAP get him on the get him on the show thank you direct case study of that yeah thanks for having me I appreciate that quick break from our normal programming I have Erica schweyer CEO from Elevate Ventures here in the studio today Erica thanks for being here yeah thanks for having me and you're going to tell us a little bit about this rally Innovation conference that's coming up yep so it's the largest cross sector Innovation conference in the world we're going to feature six Innovation Studios so think hard tech software Sports Tech Ag and food Healthcare and entrepreneurship's gonna kind of be our catch-all I love that tell me what is who's it for yeah it's for innovators entrepreneurs investors honestly anybody probably listening to this podcast it's going to be a multi-day thing that's multi-day in downtown Indianapolis yep people coming in from all over the country and maybe even all over the world to be here that's our hope yep and the dates are actually August 29th to the 31st perfect and if people want to find out more information about speakers tickets things like that where can they go yeah so they just go to rallyinnovation.

com and sign up for communications they can also get their tickets I love it you heard it here rallyinnovation. com we'll see you there tell me a little bit about the non-business side of life right now because one of the things that's interesting is as you scale as an entrepreneur the to-do list is never done and it never stops growing how are you handling some of the balance with I think you mentioned previously recent recently married yes is that right yeah yeah so with your wife my wife Carly yes yeah yeah how are you navigating that as you scale communication Communications we have a Meyer Bros yorko I got it's my brother Ben and then my brother Nolan he works at the print shop and he's always telling us from the employees side of things too what's going wrong what should we change uh that's great product feedback Priceless yeah yeah it's like a good place where you're thinking about demoing new products or different new features you just put it in the family business immediately if it doesn't yeah every new feature goes to them and then we see what happens yeah that's that's like that's great to have that testing ground because usually if you don't have that Prime customer then it's like you're shopping it around trying to find someone who's okay with you testing trying like being in the laboratory a little bit so that definitely seems like a Priceless testing ground no it's amazing I gotta give a shout out to my dad my aunt my uncle my brother all the shop employees at M G my grandparents are starting a thing like it we wouldn't exist honestly we wouldn't be around we wouldn't be alive if we didn't have of them but also this business yorko would not be right right around yeah huge opportunity and a big shout out to my wife she is very forgiving and yeah we just have to communicate like you said as we scale things are hectic yeah have there been things as you've communicated with your wife uh I imagine she was around for the fuse me days to at least in part maybe yeah what are some of the things that you've learned just in relationship of how to manage that as you're balancing this other relationship with your business which usually has dozens if not hundreds of relationships tied to that business as well there you have to understand the reality is that many most businesses fail and being able to have that conversation up front is super important you never know what's gonna happen and it but thankfully we see these milestones and we continue to hit these milestones and it looks like we're in a really good position to continue to move but there's always that chance yeah I want to talk about business failure for a second so to be frowned upon if somebody starts a business and that fails oh gosh such and such trade the business and it failed and it was kind of fun and I think it became more accepted on the coast and I think I've seen a definite shift in the middle quarter where it's okay there's gonna be failure and what's the percentage we talked about earlier on the previous month yeah in a fail before series A and so that's your threading needle but the other thing I like to point out when people bring this up oh failure risk reverse or failure if you go to work for a large company a Fortune 100 or 200 or 500 company there's equally the amount of risk there because if there's a big downturn in the economy and a layoff or whatever you have no say-so or no visibility whatsoever into what might be three months away yeah like in a startup at least you're sitting if not in the front row the first cart or two of the roller coaster and there's a lot of visibility into being in control your own destiny how do you think about that it makes a lot of sense it we are seeing we've had a lot of friends myself and my brother get laid off right now in the tech industry and we have we'll have a bad day and we'll look at each other and laugh and say you know what we still have jobs yeah there you go yeah so it really it feels good to be in in control of your own destiny at least it does to to myself and Ben yeah so we have listeners out there that are probably thinking about starting a business or wanting to go all in on an Endeavor if you have a couple pieces of advice for The Listener out there that may want to start their own business and want the courage to to go out there and do it what you're doing it right now what's the what's your T your secret make sure it's a problem you go you're going after solving a problem and solving a problem that you're passionate about and bonus point if many people have it I really think if you can solve a problem any problem at all you can have a business especially with like software enabled businesses if you have any problem you can solve a business it's where it gets really interesting is if you can actually scale that business and you have the massive Market to scale into yeah but either way you can you can have a lifestyle business right if you don't have the massive Market to scale into and so I think which by the way lifestyle doesn't necessarily mean small right it just means control your destiny at every step right so you can still have a massive 100 million dollar Plus or even billion dollar business someday in a lifestyle business it just meant you maintain pretty nice lifestyle business but do they exist yeah they definitely do yeah a lot of those generational family businesses yes do that kind of scale I'm just I'm curious then like where do you define like a lifestyle business versus a a business I don't know what like the opposite of that would be but I think there's no difference the Venture scale is different it's different it's a different model it's I think it comes lifestyle business has come down and I've been involved in some conversations where people took this term lifestyle to be a negative thing it's just derogatorily by a lot of people and it's not you know it's to me it's simply I look up the definition one point in time but it really to me lifestyle comes down to control of what you're going to do every single day or no or not having control a hundred percent control period full stop versus some level of not 100 control I one of my brothers who's a middle-aged male told me a few years ago he's like you know what so if I I think I just want to start it and he's been very successful in massive household names and he's like I think I want to start a lifestyle business it's because he wants control of his day that is interesting I always thought a lifestyle business was a business that turned off enough money to afford the light for you to live that's when I thought of Lifestyle business that's what I thought I was like oh he makes enough money for you to live and be happy wow that's this is the learning factor for the listeners there it just I think of that as the category that's not Venture scale because Ventures that's different now you've got to board your report too you're a dribble wheel yeah yeah absolutely you're running fast you're running fast you're gonna run faster yep which can be exhilarating I love both I think both are awesome both are awesome yeah both have pros and cons yeah Brody tell me a little bit about what you've learned from other entrepreneurs whether they're people you know personally or even read about in books or documentaries I'm not sure if you're into kind of studying the history of Entrepreneurship but I'm curious who's inspired you and have you tried to take some of those lessons and apply them to yorco yeah definitely interested on a more on a closer some close to the heart I have other folks that I'm very interested in researching and following the history of business but I remember asking my grandfather he's still with us my grandfather is the one that started that printing company mg graphics he I was talking about him about risk one day I mean he it's like Brody life's a risk I remember that just stuck with me life is a we're risking every single day no matter what you do lifestyle business high tech enabled SAS business uh whatever you're doing like you life is a risk so why not jump off besides my grandfather that's just something that always rattles around sticks with me I'm was very obsessed with the PayPal Mafia growing up it was like for those who don't know tell us who the PayPal Mafia are it's like Peter Thiel Keith raboy Elon Musk these are the people who found basically built PayPal they built PayPal David sacks and they all went on to build these other billion dollar Ventures and it it was always interesting to me how can you put so much just incredible people in one business and it so I've always been very intrigued by them my brother and I I've always built things with Ben and so we've always watched Elon and Kimball musk anything that they were doing yeah what have you learned from watching them what have we learned from watching them a lot of it's just been like YouTube videos like going being able to go after your dream not just like I do like lifestyle businesses I'm a big fan and we serve a lot of smbs and mid-market people and those folks are very happy everyone has a different path I have always been intrigued in building a big business and being in the high growth SAS business not to say that a lifestyle business can't be big but being in that high growth Tech mindset I like I want to continue to push and get on that hamster wheel I do like that yeah um yeah it's exhilarating and I'd say that those are people that have inspired me that is something you can do and you can follow them all on Twitter and you can see what they're currently still doing today and you pick up tidbits here and there yeah absolutely we might need to link up some of uh some of your faves in the show notes one of the tidbits my son has picked up from this guy named Elon is the school doesn't matter I'm struggling with that in his eighth and ninth grade year understanding yeah I understand but that's your job right now is to get good grades in school tell us a little bit what's what's next for your code Brody you're going on the road to South by then what yeah we really have a strong focus on our customers so I think every day being super close to them and learning more from them and we have a large product roadmap of a lot of things we can continuously add to this product so continued growth on the product continue to grow our sales team our marketing team and really try to capture that massive Market I love it if the community is looking to support yorka or wants to plug in with you all is there something the community can do to help support you guys yeah you can follow our LinkedIn page yourco you can if you're a manufacturer you gotta have a majority Blue Collar Workforce reach out about pricing in a demo always looking for more customers yeah absolutely love it got time for the lightning round I think it might be time for the lightning round all right Brody we got three questions for you rattle them off this is a quick paste ready so outside of the amazing entrepreneurs what is Indiana known for basketball boom basketball got it what is one Hidden Gem in Indiana Butler basketball Sammy Hinkle field that's a great answer you're gonna make a lot of people happy out there yeah and who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who's doing big things Benjamin Meyer my brother yes I love that Brody thanks for being on the show today congrats on all the success with yourco yeah great job baby thank you thank you very much appreciate it you got it this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or a segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powderkeg.

com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powder cake executive Community Check out powdercake. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you've just listened to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at cassid have you covered cassid is the first and only podcast and video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at Powder Keg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82 percent off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at casted. us slash powderkeg