Ditching Hourly

DH 381 Zach Stevens - Year 3 of Growing a Subscription Business
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Introduction and Welcome
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Jonathan Stark: Hello, and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. Today I am rejoined by repeat offender, Zach Stevens. Zach, welcome back.

Zach Stevens: Hey, Jonathan. Triple threat.

Jonathan Stark: Yes.

Zach's Business Journey
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Jonathan Stark: This is like our, uh, annual How's Zach's business going? Review. We're, we're a little late. It's January 20, 26, but you came on in 2023 and fall of 2024, and we'll call this one, uh, fall slash winter of 2025. And yeah. So you reached out over email and said, um, you know, I, I guess I had posed some questions last time that you have answers to now that were maybe a little tricky, too tricky to do on the fly and Yeah. And just see where the business is going. So if you could start off by telling folks a little bit about who you are and what you do, and why your business is so interesting or potentially interesting to our listeners.

Zach Stevens: Sweet. Uh, I'm Zach. I am the one of the co-founders at Conversion Factory. We're a marketing team in a box, so copywriting, design and web dev all in one. All under one roof and we help software companies, uh, you know, build the marketing engine and turn traffic into revenue without having to add on additional staff or additional stress.

We project manage everything and get you not only from ideas that a marketer could come up with, but then actually implement a lot of the things that help boost your customer acquisition.

Conversion Factory's Growth
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Zach Stevens: And the first reason that I came on was because my agency, I think within it was like three months we were, it was just me and two other co-founders, and we were doing $36,000 a month.

Within three months of launching,

Jonathan Stark: Hmm

Zach Stevens: uh, the second time around was because I had a year's worth of then running a shop like that under my belt. Um, and now, uh, the reason that we are speaking is because you had POed some questions over email, which is, what are you excited about for next year? And this is back in 2025, but now it being 2026.

And I said, well, conversion factory had its first six figure month in December, which is. Fricking nuts. I didn't think that, wasn't sure that would happen with I, I'm sure what happened eventually, wasn't sure what happened so quick.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah.

Zach Stevens: Um, and now we have a team of 12, so I was going to speak about, well, what does it look like transitioning from being, you know, I was a solo business owner from 2017 until 2023, and then it was just me and three co-founders.

Now we have a team. So understanding what that transition looks like. Um, what does it feel like to do, uh, six figures in one month?

Subscription Model Insights
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Zach Stevens: And then also answering the last question you posed to me, which was why is the subscription model a good thing for soloist, which I didn't have great answers for, but now I think I do.

Jonathan Stark: Okay, cool. So I don't know how ex, you just mentioned it, but I don't know how explicit, uh, it is to the listener that you guys are a subscription business model.

Zach Stevens: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Stark: that's, that's the thing that's really novel. 'cause otherwise, you know, you could be a billing by the hour kind of agency that does marketing stuff for SaaS.

But your, your positioning is like laser focused, you know, it's right in the name and, and, and you actually, and it just rolled off your tongue too. You were like, turn traffic into money or it just like rolled right off your tongue. And, and the subscription model makes it really easy for clients to kind of like.

It's like easy to get your head around. There's no like, sales call at the beginning. It's like, swipe your credit card and let's go and oversimplifying it, I'm sure. But, um, it's like hot and cold running marketing. Just like turn the spigot and here it comes. Which is a, a model that a few people in Ditcherville use, uh, with great success.

You know, if you want to be doing the work, it is a fantastic stable model. And I know, you know, people that didn't scale up head count wise, that are just maxed out, just over capacity sold out. It's like, well raise your prices. Um, but okay. So with all that said, sort of like my cheerleading for the subscription model,

let's start here. Six figure month. Very impressive. But you're, it's not two people or three people anymore. It's 12 people. So

Zach Stevens: Right.

Hiring and Team Expansion
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Jonathan Stark: is that strategically, what was the decision to start hiring? Or how did that whole process happen?

Zach Stevens: Yeah, well, you hit a good point of you. You have two options when you're running this subscription model. You can raise your prices and that's not a bad means of going about doing this if you want to do the work. I think that me and my co-founders were in a position where we, we have a set amount of things that we do really, really well and we could keep doing them, but it got kind of. I don't wanna say boring 'cause the, the projects do individualize quite a bit between them. But we were more interested in building something that could scale and being like, I have this vision of being kinda like the, the Chick-fil-A for marketing, which is, you know, it's not, not quite the, you know, like catering that you get for your wedding.

Um, but it's very accessible and it's still a premium brand and it's very. Simple. You know, like you, you can, you show they, they serve chicken. It doesn't really deviate that much. Um, and we wanted to try our hand at building something that was. Scalable in addition to the fact that we also in hiring out some help because, um, I had my first kid in 2024, which was a big reason why we started adding on additional hands.

Um, and we just, we found the love of delegation. It was like, this is great, you know, I can, I can give direction to somebody, I can coach them. And when I come back from doing big, heavier thinking or, you know, planning out where we want to go next and doing some more marketing initiatives for ourselves.

Then the client work gets done, and we found that to be a greater sense of fulfillment than getting in and doing the work ourselves.

Jonathan Stark: Right. Okay. So the, the, the project of working on the business became more interesting than the, the. Craft doing the activities of your craft. So, so as many people know, I'm not a fan of hiring. I'm not against it for other people. Um, but I don't talk about it that much. I never talk about leadership things or develop employee development or anything like that.

'cause I have almost no experience with it. I've had, I've managed employees and it wasn't for me. So what can you say to the people in the audience who, uh, aren't allergic to employees the way I am? First, I think the, it'd be interesting to talk to the extent that you can talk about the compensation model for the employees, given that you're subscription shop.

So are they w twos or are they contractors? Is it a rotating cast of characters or do you have like, like a specific, so like this is the team right now.

Zach Stevens: Now we have, so all of our employees are like, they're from all over the world. So my two main designers that I work with, one's in Brazil and then one is in Columbia. And we just brought another full-time one from Macedonia. So we have them going on a monthly basis where they have a set fee, they know what they're supposed to be working on, and the way that we gauge it is we tell them, you have a lot of ownership over this and a lot of freedom.

I'm like, you know, my designer Brazil repeatedly tells me, he's like, I typically work six hours a day. And then I'm, I'm home free after that and it's usually he's up before I am. 'cause I'm on the west coast. So he's done and then he goes home and he's compensated, he's only like the top 1% of his country now because of the wage, we're able to pay him, which is a good means for us 'cause it's high quality work and now he's rich.

So it, it's a fantastic trade off. Um. So the compensation model is on a month-to-month basis. We do have our core group that we use, which between copy design and web dev. Um, and now we're trying to get that vetted bench built out for if we do have to scale up where we don't have to bring somebody on with the anticipation of being full-time.

But we have someone who we could reach out to and then growing those core designers to be creative directors or you know, if they're marketers, having them become marketing strategists. And do what we've done, which is duplicate ourselves. Like I have two mini mes that understand my des my design philosophies and my best practices to the point where they're even using my poll string phrases with clients like, Hey, so and so please take a look at this design file and this overview video.

Let me know if we missed the mark anywhere verbatim. Like, that's awesome. You're doing exactly the way that I would.

Jonathan Stark: Yes. All right. How much? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna poke holes in some things, so, so bear with me.

Training and Onboarding
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Jonathan Stark: Uh, how much training goes into getting someone to that point? You know, may, maybe not to that point, but getting someone productive and what's that onboarding look like? Um, there's gotta be, they must be getting paid to onboard, but are they actually doing client work?

Are they, are they profitable? How long does it take to get to profitability? How long do they stick around? What do they leave with all that training and copy you and do the same business model?

Zach Stevens: So I'll answer the, I'll answer the first question or the last question you gave, which was, do they leave? And the answer is no. They, they don't leave. Um, Andre, my, the first designer that we hired has been with us since August of 2024.

And it, it is, it's a decent amount of training. The cool thing about training is that you do it once, record yourself on Loom doing it, and you build out an SOP playbook over time with that first person.

Uh, I, the book that I've been reading as I was doing this, was a book called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. Yeah. Great book. Uh, and every time that I kind of hit this pain line, it was like, what needs to change? And at the time it was, we have too many clients. I'm a new father, I'm sleep deprived. I'm like at 50% capacity right now.

There's no way I'm gonna be able to perform to do this, so I need hands to like help me with this stuff. And I could get hands. It was having them see design the way that I did, where it's like design is subservient of. Marketing and we have to build website pages that work for our development team. It can't just be whatever we want to create and design.

We work within these systems. So it uncovered a lot of systemization within my process that I was unable to codify and. Give to other designers as they, as they came in. And it still happens. Like, you know, you uncover just a, a nuance to, you know, client throws a curve ball at them. You're like, oh, this is how I would respond to that.

'cause I've done it, you know, for almost 10 years now being on my own. Um, so that's the first question, right? they, they They don't leave.

No. What does it look like to, and granted, like I said, we're paying them.

A good amount of money. Yeah. They're rich. They're, it's, I mean, compared to us rates, it's, it's quite low.

And that's the cool thing about the, the world that we live in now is they have access to the same internet you do, and they're just as talented and capable and smart. The only thing they've got you beat on is they have a cool accent. You don't, or at least that's the way I thought of it for myself.

Jonathan Stark: I've heard horror stories about, um, cultural differences around communication skills of course and time zone, uh, if they're dealing directly with clients and also, um, uh, for lack of better term, like a more relaxed work ethic. So I don't know if that, you know, and I'm kind of interrupting my other monolithic question that you were working your way through, but um, it doesn't sound like you've encountered too much of any of those things.

Zach Stevens: Some of it is, like, for example, um, we had a teammate who would always ask the question. Hey, how's it going on their loom videos, like when they first started or they'd put that in at the beginning of responding to a client and everything else. After that, it was totally coherent and fine, well-written English, and I said, Hey, don't start your videos with this question because you're asking a question you, you're not gonna get an answer to.

So be more direct and and that's fine. You know, like we. We coached through that and it small, small pain point to have for the amount of time I'm getting back, not having to go and implement client

work. And we, and we do a lot of training. I think Andre, the first designer we hired, was doing stuff. Behind closed doors where I was still interfacing with the clients and because we were just testing this out, like, you know, how's this gonna go?

Can I even do this? And, uh, he was doing stuff for six, six or seven months before I said, yeah, go ahead. Like, talk to the clients. You know what I would say in certain situations, obviously there's gonna be some things you can't answer and that's okay. You know, then you escalate it to me, most of the design, delivery and feedback, you should be able to take one-on-one though.

Jonathan Stark: Okay, cool. But that was after six months of, of you guys working together. You had built up trust and he was familiar with things and, okay.

Zach Stevens: exactly.

Jonathan Stark: Okay, so I don't wanna jump around too much. I'll try and ask shorter questions just to give folks a, who are considering scaling up with hands, how do you find the talent and vet them?

Zach Stevens: I, we had a couple different means. Um, there's obviously companies like, uh, somewhere, which is formerly Support Shepherd, which charges a, uh, quite a hefty penny for getting their help. I think it's like seven or $8,000 just to get the, the role landed. Um, we used a. Specifically for creative talent, we used a company called Remote Growth Partners.

Um, shout out Jason for having us, helping us find our designers, which was fantastic. Um, I think I got very lucky because Andre was very easy to work with, whereas if I had a, you know, a bad first hire, it might have left a really sour taste in my mouth. Um. Andre's been fantastic, and, uh, Jason's team helped us find them.

That's Remote Growth Partners. We also did some other stuff through, um, JobRack. I mean, there's a bunch of companies out there that do this for things specific to something like Webflow. We used, uh, flow Remote, which is a. Just a more specialized kind of job posting for, specifically for webflow deliver.

So it's out there, I mean, just freaking Google it or chat g bt it. You'll find something I'm sure that will help you source the talent. And then they check for things like their English competency. Um, it's one of the requirements they have to send a loom video showing their communication skills. Um, so they cover a lot of that, which is really nice.

Jonathan Stark: Hmm. Yeah, that's hard for you people. I know people who are still using Upwork for things and it's hard, you know, it's Upwork's so big that it's almost like you are like, am I talking to a real person here? Or like,

Zach Stevens: Yeah, a big,

Jonathan Stark: camera on and I.

Zach Stevens: that was a big like, so we included in our descriptions like, you must send a video. Your camera must be on. Like if you're gonna do this, we need to make sure that you can act, eventually communicate with clients.

And you have to send this video. It's a non-negotiable, and that's a cool filter because if I don't send the video, eh, no.

I don't care how good your portfolio is. You can't follow instructions. So you're out at that point.

Jonathan Stark: And did you have, when you're looking for a role, do you typically have like a ton of people to sift through or is it a, uh, not that many. Like,

Zach Stevens: Well, for, for the design hires, that's where we had the recruiting partner, remoter partners for. So they narrowed it down to like, you know, their top five. And then I got to watch their loom videos. I got to see their Figma files, go in and see is there enough raw material here for me to shape into somebody that can work with conversion factory, uh, or not.

And then I would jump on interviews and some of the interviews didn't go. Really well, and that's okay. It's no different than a sales interview talking to a prospective client. You're talking to a prospective hire. Some of them are gonna be really great and some are gonna really suck. Um, and then you find the ones that are good and it, if it's, I mean, I don't know what I was doing the first time.

I, I think I lucked out with Andre. I, I think that it's just like any other skill. You develop a a sense of what's gonna be a good fit, what's not. What are some things that I know now that I didn't know previously when I was hiring that I would look for on this one? Or like buying a house. You're like, what, what would I, I just bought a house.

Great. Uh, there's so many things about this house that I dislike. How do I change that?

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. So other than maybe using a partner like Remote Growth Partners, what are some of those things that you learned for people to maybe not have to learn the hard way in terms of.

Zach Stevens: Uhhuh. Um, I think making sure that you know, uh, what you want that person to do. Like if you are expecting them to go speak with clients and do web flow development, they need to, you need to understand that they have to fulfill both of those. It can't be a. Well, they're really good at web flow or you know, but they're really good at, they're not really good at this.

Like, it doesn't matter. The thing you need is time back. And if you can't get the whole picture, just wait. Like, you know, keep going until you find the one who is going to be a good fit because it's not worth it to hire incorrectly. Even with us, you know, 'cause everybody was on a contractor basis. There was no penalties.

If we. Let them go, uh, afterward, and it still could have been really annoying to have to just go, go through that. Or even with people that were really good webflow developers, we ran into an issuers like they can't talk to clients yet, but they've done such a good job for us that now we're investing to buy them things like, you know, pronunciation courses and, you know, better equipment for their.

For recording videos and microphones. So I think understanding the totality of the responsibilities that this person could undertake

Jonathan Stark: mm-hmm.

Zach Stevens: is important.

Jonathan Stark: Okay. So be patient and wait for the perfect fit, basically. So that, that's great advice actually. Um, you mentioned that that. Uh, one of the newer people like is done before you wake up. So do you have any time zone issues or like what if they're starting to it? It can't be totally asynchronous if they're client facing.

So how does that work?

Zach Stevens: He's not done before I wake up. He's, he's already like halfway through his workday by the time I get up. And that's actually not true. I'm up quite early. I'm up at like four 30 or five, but I'm not at my computer. I'm doing Jiujitsu and other stuff that I like to do because I have employees that can work on other stuff.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Okay.

Zach Stevens: Um. I met, I would meet with him when he first started. I would meet with him two day, two days a week. And that was to really get him up to speed and coach and say, this is what I expect. Um, this, this hit the mark. This did not, this went well. This did not. Um. That was, you know, all through the training. And then he ended up becoming more like me and by, by virtue of osmosis and being around me.

So there's no time zone issues. The only thing that is sometimes bothersome is we'll have clients that won't respond until like 5:35 PM Pacific Standard Time. Even though our team responded really early, and then the clients just don't get back to it. So that can lead to some of a somewhat of a gap, but then they're up early again the next day and they get right to it and respond.

So as long as we're able to keep this, you know, 12 hour response time or within 24 hours, most people don't notice.

Jonathan Stark: And it, and it is all, you're not having meetings anyway. It's all asynchronous like videos and, and

Zach Stevens: Yeah, with the exception of a couple different, like I meet with the design team once a week to, but it's not even really for. It's because they're managing 12 different clients, or you know, or more, um, and I'm checking in on them personally, like, Hey, how's your mom? I know she was sick. Are you, are you doing okay?

And being, it's more team oriented. It's not always about the work, because the work is quite easy. As for, for us, we're really good at it. I'm more interested in their personal development of like, well, what, what's next for you? How do you want to be a better designer in 2026? And checking in on that more, more frequently as opposed to.

Hey, you gotta move these pixels this way. I could do that over asynchronously.

Jonathan Stark: Right. But when, when we say client facing, when, when I was talking about time zones, uh, they're not having client meetings, right. They're,

Zach Stevens: No, the, the only time they have client meetings are when we do foundational workshops. So if we're doing a brand strategy workshop, then I will meet with the client and I'll have the other designers come with me. That's about an hour. Um, or if we're doing a site map workshop for information architecture or a positioning workshop with the marketing team, then.

We'll get other people on board,

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Zach Stevens: but they have no issue. They usually work US hours and they're happy to do so. 'cause again, we're paying them at the top 1% of their wages.

Jonathan Stark: Right, right. Okay.

Client Management Strategies
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Jonathan Stark: So let's switch over to, um, the client side a little bit more. Uh, are, I don't remember the numbers. What, what has been the, the sort of, if you can share that the client count growth, like when you were getting really busy, how many clients was that? You know, when? In 2024.

Zach Stevens: Uh, well, 2024 wasn't, I think the, it wasn't the heaviest that we actually had as far as client load. Um, I think our high in 2024, we hadn't yet cracked that, uh, 83,000 300, 3330 $4, which is the, the amount you need per month to hit a million dollars a year. For those who don't know, it's kind of a, it's a, it's a well known number within SaaS.

We have socks that have that number on it, that get a lot of, a lot of kicks.

Jonathan Stark: Okay.

Zach Stevens: But I think, let's see in,

Jonathan Stark: Well, how

do you even think of it? Is it a, like a per employee?

Zach Stevens: yeah, so the, the goal is that the, that one designer, I'm, I'm just gonna speak from the design team's perspective, 'cause the same thing trans translates to marketing and web dev. Um, the sweet spot is between five and seven or eight clients, like between five and eight. And if we start hitting that point where, you know, I have two full-time designers and both of them have eight tasks each or eight clients that they're working with, then it's a signal to us that we are gonna need some additional help.

Because if we take on another client, they're gonna be strapped and not be able to produce. So the numbers work out. Um, on that basis where we know that a, at a minimum we should be able to get five clients worked on. And I'm still coming in too and doing stuff like, you know, creative direction and approving things.

If it's, if it's logo design, I'm still coming in and doing finishing touches and being the last person to see the plate before it goes to the table. Um, type of deal.

Jonathan Stark: Right. Okay. So have, do you, when you're getting to that point where it's like, geez, we might need to bring on a couple of more people 'cause you'd need to bring 'em on in like each department. I guess the work is, it's a little must slosh around a little bit.

Like you don't always need one person from each department. Right.

Zach Stevens: No, and it, it depends. So copywriting, the marketing team can use AI a lot more effectively than the design team can because I mean, my, my co-founder just put out today a, it's like a cloud code thing for marketers and it's already up like, I think 15,000 likes or something like that on, on Twitter. Yeah.

Um, so they're able to use AI a lot more. Like the, the impact that one copywriter can have across, you know, all their, their work is, you know, they can essentially be a creative director and have AI come in and help them quite a bit. Whereas design, it's not, and I think I said this the past two times I was on, it's not there yet.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah.

Zach Stevens: It's, it's helpful. We have a, we use AI for quite a bit. It's just, it doesn't complete the job fully. So design's a little. Design has the most variance between intensity of project. You know, like it could be a, I need business cards designed great. 20 minutes, no problem. Here you go. They're fantastic.

You're not gonna have any revisions apart from maybe getting the right phone number on there. Um, and then it could be something like. I need an entire homepage redesigned, and we don't have a creative direction yet. We don't even know what our typefaces are gonna be or colors or anything like that. So we're starting from a lot of creative mess there.

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Zach Stevens: Uh, it's all, I think it, it's usually based on feel 'cause especially once we're past a lot of the initial phases of getting a client from zero to one,

then the work becomes a lot easier. But if we have a lot of zero to one projects, then I think at that point, if we, before hiring, I would probably come in and help.

And, you know, I, I could take on these two, don't worry about it. You know, I've got enough. I've got enough time. Um, it's, and then asking the team, how are you doing? How's your workload? Uh, do you feel okay? Are you overwhelmed? And

today, I had both my designers say, I'm good. I feel really

good. Like I've, I'm ki I'm kind of in a

dead zone actually right now.

Do you have anything else that I could work on?

Jonathan Stark: Hmm. Cool.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's jump back a little bit to the, um. The way that for people who haven't listened to previous episodes, how are these sort of, um, I don't wanna say tickets, but like, when a request comes in, how does that work? And you described two vastly different scopes of work, but between the business card and the brand new homepage for a brand new client that you don't have any, you know, there's, it's all squishy still.

You don't have any definition around what they actually want. If the existing website, they hate it and there's nothing else to look at, or it's a new company. So. How does that, how do you manage the expectations around that? Uh, with someone who sends in a request for like, yeah, we need a brand new home page from scratch.

Zach Stevens: I tell them, say, okay, here are your options. Uh, we have a, a framework that we use called REO. Not to be confused with REO Speedwagon, but it stands for revolution, evolution or optimization, and the supply system of the foundational things that we. A revolution, like in the context of design is we're turning everything on its head.

Even the name of the company is potentially on the line because you have no brand, no brand equity, and it's essentially a Blake slate. You know, there's, there's a whole lot of things that we could do to make this awesome. And I have a video going over this that I've recorded that breaks down these three options and the trade-offs that go between them.

And I have the client pick, I say, I think that you should be doing it. You know, I'll pick, pick which one I think is gonna be the best fit for them. I say, how does it sound to you? In addition to what you just heard? And I lay out, this is how long a revolution should take. This is how long an evolution should take.

And this, and optimization is us essentially just refining what's already there. There there's just no, not a lot of groundwork to lay. It's more about the execution that needs to

change.

Jonathan Stark: And but how does this fit into the subscription model? Like if they can have like,

Zach Stevens: I see. Okay. Um, we, the, it's okay to use sentence enhancers on the show. Right?

Okay.

Jonathan Stark: and answers.

Zach Stevens: Uh, our rule of thumb is when it comes, when it comes to tasks and the atomization of them, don't be a dick about it. Like, 'cause there's, we're not gonna have like a fricking. Table of like, this is how many, like, you know, social posts we can do.

It's like, okay, you need a bunch of graphics for, um, for Twitter, like you're, or, or Google. You're running a set of ads. I know that we can do 10 in a batch and that's gonna be a good amount that that's, that's worked in the past.

Uh,

Jonathan Stark: as like one

request or

Zach Stevens: that's one request. Yeah. Or we'll try and if it's the things that are a little bit more bulky, like for example, if we're doing feature pages.

Feature pages follow a little bit more of a templated format, and we have things that we know are best practice. It might vary a little bit between clients, but our first step in that is let's create a template for copy, and then once we get the template done, we'll use one as a sample. We can write out the framework that we're gonna use on that page, and then copy can batch the remaining.

Three to four other feature pages that are gonna go in there and they just work on those in at one time. After we've got the, the foundation set and we do the same thing for design copy passes this over to design, that becomes one task where design creates a page template for a feature page. Once we have a template agreed upon, then we can fill in everything else 'cause we're replacing graphics and content and icons and you know, re-skinning what should be.

A very similar, uh, layout across the page.

And then, and then the dev team has the, has it even easier because I mean, they're, you know, uploading things and content at an even faster rate. So we batch as much as we can. It's essentially whenever there's something net new or that requires a different skillset, then we split it.

And that's for two, two different reasons. Um, net new creative is. It's totally new. We just want to start from a, a blank slate, and then we want to keep the feedback siloed as best we can, like you are giving feedback on the copy. That's it. And we are just gonna work on the copy because the words that you say are the most important thing on, uh, any kind of deliverable that we provide for you.

Design supports the marketing, and that's why we only want you to give feedback on design, like you are focusing on

this right now, and then we are going to approve that. Once that's done, then Dev should have,

uh, should only be able to focus on technically

implementing

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Zach Stevens: then we're good.

Jonathan Stark: Okay, so, so just paint the picture for me. So a CA client, new client. First thing they throw in there is like a new homepage, please. And you say, okay, we're gonna, this is a project, basically we're gonna break it into a bunch of subtasks. And then, and all of the back and forth for something like that is done asynchronously or.

Zach Stevens: All of it.

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Stark: That sounds frustrating to the client. It sounds like clients would get frustrated with that. Is that.

not the

Client Frustrations and Communication Strategies
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Jonathan Stark: case?

Zach Stevens: well, some of them aren't cut out for it and we

Jonathan Stark: Clients are a choice,

exactly.

Zach Stevens: we, and we make it a point, we say, look, we, we don't do meetings on the fly. We're not going to, we send very

detailed loom videos and our explanations of why we did things. If that is not going to work for you, then we're not a good fit,

Jonathan Stark: Okay. That's cool. Right. Um, okay.

So when, but if you send the Loom video, I guess, I don't know if I, I'm curious about this. I'm not sure if it's a waste of time for the listener. That's, that's why I'm hesitating. Um. But it sounds impossible is, is where I'm getting at. But it's not impossible 'cause you're doing it.

So do I need to go into the details or have ask you to drag you into the details? We're probably at a level of detail that's overkill. And if I dug any deeper it would just be more overkill because basically what we're saying is it is possible and you have to figure it out. If that means only working with certain kinds of clients, which I love, then that's the way it works.

So find your own way, do it your own way.

The Inefficiency of Phone Calls
---

Jonathan Stark: Uh, but the key, I think a key piece to the model though is that there are no phone calls. If

you

had phone calls, that would be typically, that is a monster time suck.

Zach Stevens: Oh yeah, well, there's a, it's a time suck just on the calendar and then also your productivity afterward. Everybody thinks that like, I'm gonna jump into this meeting and then right after I'm gonna jump in and, you know, get to deep work and you're gonna have a half hour gap, at least trying to get your head back into the space where you're gonna go in and do some something really impactful.

You're fooling yourself if you think that's not the case. Uh, I've always thought, you know, if we were to run this subscription, I haven't put the numbers out there 'cause I haven't thought of it, but let's say if you wanted to have one call a week, we'd probably tack on an additional

five, $7,000 to our price tag. If you, you, want to call, that's gonna cost you.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Right. But I mean, I agree with you. I think I'm super anti phone call, Uh, they're incredibly inefficient and they are, um, especially in a, I mean this isn't the the case here, but like in an employee employer situation, when the employer wants to always jump on a call, I guess it's the same with a client, if they always wanna jump on a call.

Uh, a lot of times it's because they haven't taken the time to actually figure out what their question is or what they want, and so they just brainstorm it live, and then you're just listening to, and then finally at the end of 45 minutes, you finally understand what they're asking you, and it's like, it should have been an email or something.

Zach Stevens: Oh, you're speaking about my origin story for not wanting to do this anymore. Uh, the client calls, uh, we had somebody who I wrote out a response like, and said, 'cause I had some questions and I wrote it out and they said, we feel like we really need to call. I said. Okay, fine. Like I'll, I'll get on the call.

And I got on the call and they asked me the same questions and I gave the same answers that I wrote down. Exact same to the word. 'cause I read it off of this. And then when we got, when I was done saying what I was repeating, I said, do you realize that I just said everything that I wrote? And they're like, uh, yeah, so please don't waste my time again with these calls, they're no longer a client, not a good fit.

Um,

Setting Client Expectations
---

Zach Stevens: and now when we're on sales calls, I have like a five, A five working criteria for conversion factory. One of them is we don't do calls except for these things, which we have predetermined weren't a call.

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Zach Stevens: We send loom videos, we do comments in notion. We do comments in Figma.

That's it. How does that sound to you?

And I get them to agree to it on the

call,

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Zach Stevens: that's been a super effective means of setting expectations.

Jonathan Stark: I, I know. So I

have a, a, there's a book called The Super Struck Manifesto by David Guttman, and he has a chapter

on how bad daily standups are for developer productivity, because he says it's like, you know, it's like you're going down to the bottom of the ocean to dig a trench and you gotta. The gear on and jump out of the boat and get all the way down there.

And finally, you, you're productive. And then someone pulls on the rope and is like, oh, could I just talk to you for a second?

You gotta go all the way back up, take off all your gear. And then you know, they ask you something that could have been an email or wasn't urgent or whatever, and

he's got a whole framework for dealing with it too.

So folks wanna check out that book.

You

probably like

it.

Zach Stevens: analogy. That's great.

Yeah,

I'm gonna

Jonathan Stark: it's nice. It's a good, nice short book. It's good. Um, okay, so, so I think the big takeaway here is being really choosy with clients. So like if people are listening and they're like, oh, that would never work with my clients, you're probably right.

It probably wouldn't, that doesn't mean there are no clients that it would work for.

Zach Stevens: I think it depends. 'cause so we, and you'd be really surprised at the people that do this, like we had. One of our clients was $55 million, short of a billion dollars last year,

Jonathan Stark: Okay.

Zach Stevens: like huge. I'm talking like they own a fricking basketball stadium, and we worked with them for just shy of a year, and they were paying us.

They, they wanted more. We offer one first, second, and third floor. They wanted a fifth floor to keep working with us and get more done.

Everything async and they were totally fine with it. They liked it. So it's not like you are limiting yourself based on, um, like that criteria for working with you

and if that's the way you like to work.

It's the way I like to work

Then.

Yeah,

and I think most really impactful and productive people want that time for

themselves. It's like, I need to make

stuff.

I'm thinking, don't interrupt my thinking. 'cause this is where the magic happens.

So there are clients out there that are very wealthy

that will pay you for this, and they don't require a call.

Jonathan Stark: Yes, excellent point. I'm glad you shared that anecdote. Um, yeah, there's weirdos like us out there, clients who don't want to jump on a phone call either. I had, it was never a big deal for me when with client work because, well, for whatever reason it just was never abused. I would jump on a call, but I always worked with really a high level executives and they were busy and they had no reason to call me, so never was a problem.

Uh, but I remember one that was explicitly like, I don't want any developers interrupted. Ever, never interrupt the developers. I was like, wow. Right. Sweet. We're on the same page there, because I feel the same way. It's like you have one phone call, it's like, and you know what's coming. It's 10 30 and you know you have a call at at 11.

You gonna start something? No, you're going to check your email or check your phone and then, or whatever, get a snack and then you're gonna get on the meeting.

It nukes the, probably at least a half an hour on both sides of the meeting.

Zach Stevens: exactly. yeah, so it's, I mean, we could go down. That's an

entire rabbit hole of

Jonathan Stark: yeah,

yeah,

Zach Stevens: itself. Just ask Cal Newport.

Jonathan Stark: right. Kel Newport.

Um, alright, so let's, let's Cal can take it from there.

Can take it from here. Um.

AI in Copywriting and Design
---

Jonathan Stark: Let's jump back to ai, which you touched on a little bit. So obviously it sounds like the, the copywriting arm of the business is heavily using it, heavily are even inside of that. How do those folks use it in a way that is that you, that you think it is ready for primetime, unlike design, which you don't think it's ready, so it is ready, but is it, it can't be great at everything.

Like what are, what are the ways that copy the copywriting department, if you will, is using AI productively?

I.

Zach Stevens: I.

can't answer this as thoroughly as I'm sure you would like to because it's, that's not my department. That's my co-founder, Corey's team. Um, let me try and Corey, if you'd end up listening to this, sorry if I.

Jonathan Stark: We'll do a follow

up.

Zach Stevens: Don't do it well. Um, well think about what, um. Even something like chat, GBT, like what is chat GBT really, really good at language.

It's a large language model. That's what it is par Exelon

at. So if you can, if you can give it, you know, your custom GPTs and said, this is my homepage, GPT that I have like, and Corey's done this, he's curated all these different homepages that we have made for clients that it's able to. Pull in all that data, it can now write like we would on those homepage or a feature page or pricing page based on that client.

Uh, and it does really well 'cause it's spitting out words. The deliverable for that team is words. It's not like it webpage design or webpage build, although they're, it's funny, I feel like design's the one that's not really up for the task right now. But web dev is slowly catching up, uh, and. You know, with cursors new updates that I haven't gotten to play with yet.

Um, I think there's a lot of things that could be done on the web dev

side. Uh, but as far as copywriting goes, it's because of

the, the deliverables, words, and it literally gives you words

that you can then work

with

and change or sometimes deliver.

Jonathan Stark: yeah, it's the sweet spot for, for an LLM obviously. So what does that mean for you, do you think, in the future? So like, 'cause I've seen some sick stuff, like actual developers, but who vibe coded some really sick stuff and it's. If it's not there, it's pretty close to, to

like very good. Corey doctor would disagree.

Thinks it's like, it's like digital asbestos and you know, our, the next generation is gonna spend their entire lives cleaning it out of the walls. But I don't know if that's true. And, um, what would that, I mean, I suppose the answer is obvious, but what would that mean for you guys? Would you adopt that sounds like Copy Corey has in the copy

Zach Stevens: Yeah.

Jonathan Stark: Would you just be like, all in on that?

Zach Stevens: Of course, like if, if we found that the tool was able to hit our standards and help us achieve it at a fast rate. 'cause like, you know, you're a musician, so like, you know what happened when the synthesizer was introduced

to music?

Jonathan Stark: Didn't ruin music.

Zach Stevens: It didn't ruin music.

What happened when the guitar went electric? You know, it didn't ruin music.

It gave people like Hendrix and Stevie Ray, Vaughan and Jimmy Page, another tool or another arrow in their quiver to perhaps do some things they couldn't have done before. Like the Edge, you know, where like his entire repertoire and sound

is not based on killer solos, it's based on overuse of effects

and particularly dialing them

in.

Jonathan Stark: New palette, right? And yeah, even, even sampling.

Which people? Uh, drum machines. Oh my God.

The, the Carl Collection when drum machines came out, but whatever they, they just. They didn't really replace anything. They're just a new thing. But anyway. So is that how you feel about this? It not gonna replace anything?

Or is it just, is it gonna be able enable you to create something that was previously impossible?

Zach Stevens: What do you mean by replace? Like replace a team member

Jonathan Stark: Yeah, like, like every drummer I knew when drum, when the TR 8 0 8 came out, they were like, uh oh, that's not real. You

know, they were all against it. Like, that's not real drumming. That doesn't sound good. I'm way better than that.

And it's like, that's not the point.

Zach Stevens: No. Yeah. And ma'am, this is a, it's a philosophical

Jonathan Stark: Right. It is,

Zach Stevens: yeah. But, uh, in the context of drumming, when did, when did the 8 0 8 come out? I don't know. The year.

Jonathan Stark: uh, late, early nineties maybe.

I'm not sure.

Zach Stevens: Okay. Early nineties, uh, you have Dave Grohl who comes on and smashes it for Nirvana. You have, I don't know the drummer's name, but the guy from Tool who is absolutely fantastic

and brings some things. Yeah. But he's freaking phenomenal. Chad, Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Travis Barker from Blink 180 2, like the drum machine didn't kill drumming.

It just, you know, you still have people who. Want to make stuff by hand and they bring in a different perspective that hasn't, you haven't heard the drums done that way before. And it might be, it might be so different and new because you have all this homogeneity that has come through with, uh, like speaking about music.

The same thing could be applied to copywriting design or web development. You know, it's like your perspective matters still. It's gonna be an amalgam of all your different experiences as kind of my manifesto for brand identities, which is great. Brands aren't created, they're stolen. What they're stolen from is the things that make you, you like.

Liquid Death is a water company, but the reason it's so impactful and different

is because their founder is a skater, punk metal

dude who merged those things with water.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great example. So, I mean, it remains to be seen, but you

are, I mean, uh, if it got there, you would use it and you guys are experimenting with it, and you're, are you bullish on it? Like, do you, do you think it's gonna keep getting better or do you think we're gonna have like an extinction level event and it's gonna be, you know, like, you know, the, the.

Zach Stevens: I, I, I, I think it's, I, it's getting better. There's other tools like, um, specifically for design, like node-based editors, which are really cool, that give you the ability to combine, like actually work in a way that designers typically work, which is, you know, I have this idea, which could be a sketch, and then I can turn this into something that is a little bit more fleshed out and high fidelity and, but I'm not a motion designer.

But with this. It'd be really cool if I could make a move and hey, now I can. That's

awesome. So I've just augmented my, my powers really of being a good creative director and stewarding this brand. And I think that's an important term to recognize within that is stewardship.

Because right now you can't leave a AI alone for like five minutes without it doing something that you're

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like garage

band to make, bring it back to music or, or logic or one of the more sophisticated ones,

like, it's not gonna do anything great for you. Like it, it can maybe make something mediocre for you. But you still have to know what you're doing. You know, you still need, like whatever Billie Eilish, hiss brother Phineas, you, you still need Phineas to run it, or Skrillex or someone.

It's not like, it's not like, oh wow, it's so much easier to edit in digital than it was with analog tape. It's like, yeah, it's easier, but you still have to have taste and like an ear

and

Zach Stevens: Yeah, it's perspective. I mean, I look at, I mean, you are a really good example of that. You know, you, your website is not designed. It's not, you know, anything like, and that's your perspective. Your emails don't have a bunch of, they're not even laid out, even though you use ConvertKit and it's still really

impactful. Even like you're the fricking snail from Ditcherville Man, you know, like

Jonathan Stark: I'm not the snail.

I'm all of them. I'm all of them. No, I know who the snail is anyway, so, uh, I, I'll take,

I'd rather be this nail than any of the other ones, but yeah, no, I mean, that is a, a conscious. Design choice or like antide design choice because I'm not gonna pay someone to do it. I do a crap job, so I'd rather have no design than crappy design.

And with the emails, not that anyone asked, but this is the reason, uh, I want 'em to look like they came from your brother. Like your brother doesn't send you pictures with like, you know, an email with like a bunch of pictures in it and like, you know, a countdown timer and you know, all that stuff. I'm not against people doing that, but for me, I wanted, the vibe I wanted to get across was that it's like one of your buddies sent you an email.

Why they don't have the first name at the top, like most, most of 'em do. Because I would never do that if I was emailing my brother

anyway.

Design choice.

Zach Stevens: great. Brands aren't created. They're stolen,

Jonathan Stark: Yeah.

Zach Stevens: in this case, stolen from your brother.

Jonathan Stark: Hey, exactly. Cool. So geez, looking at the clock, I don't want to, we feel like we could go on

forever and any one of these topics, but yeah. So what should we definitely cover before we wrap?

Subscription Model Benefits
---

Zach Stevens: Well, I've got my five points for Stark, which was the answer to the question of why is the subscription model something good for soloists?

Um, so I've got got them here. I think the first one, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna save the best one for last.

Uh, the first one is that you can prove value fast.

You just get in and get working. You're not gonna go through a rigmarole of onboarding. This is one of the things that's made Conversion Factory very successful, is people ask us, what's your onboarding process like? And we say, we send you an notion invite. Tell us what you want us to work on. We either get to work road mapping out what that looks like and get started on the first task as soon as we know what it is, or you tell us what you need.

We get going done. So prove value fast. Yes. Uh, the second thing is I think it helps you understand where your limits are for some of the questions that clients might ask you. One of my favorite ones, this is actually based off an email that you sent. Uh, I think it's the, it's the snail talking to a client and it says, what do you mean you don't know how long this will take?

It's like, aren't you supposed to be an expert? And the snail says. I know how long it would take me, but you're gonna be involved, so, and that's true. So we have a conversion factory. We, we have our, our V one, you know, market ready V one. This is how long it'll take us to get you a V one. We offer unlimited revisions,

so every revision that you take, figure that's another 24 to 48 hours, depending on the intensity of said revision.

And those are controlled by you.

Mr. Client, not us.

Uh, it's number two. Number three is, uh, you get really used to providing, um, guardrails with yes and answers. So most pe the way that this model works is you have to have some kind of. Uh, limit to what people can put on their plate. You know, like if you were at a buffet, it's like you only get one plate.

So whatever you can fit on there, that's all that we work on. And for us, it's, you have different work rates at different tiers. You have one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, concurrently. So people will ask, can we also work on this and say, yes, and we will do it after we are done with this first thing that is in progress.

Or they might come in with something that's really urgent and say, Hey, we need to work on this. Say we're working on this currently. Do you wanna work on this one or this one?

Make, make your choice. Um, fourth one, and this is really huge, is system implementation. This model does not work unless you have systems in place for getting calls booked with you, getting email follow up, having their dashboard ready to go.

You need to have all of that architected

so that you can do this very effectively and not wanna pull your hair out. I, I don't have any hair, so it doesn't really. Matter, but, um, system implementation, and you will uncover systems to things that you didn't even know were systemized. Like my phrasing, I say pull strings now because like, oh, I'm delivering client work.

Here's my phrase for that. Connect the links done. If I was really tech savvy, I'd have my keyboard shortcuts to be like, you know, with the commands. I'm not there yet. I just, I, I speak now instead. Thanks to ai.

Um. Into the mic and then type it, but that's a different story. So system, system implementation.

Another big thing that this brings about the last one is it's cons. At the very least, consider this a different arrow in your quiver for pricing. And we do this as well because one of the favorite lines that I heard in 2025. Um, it's from Jocko. Willink is there's no solutions, only trade-offs. And we've had clients come and ask us and say, uh, hey, can we get, you know, a, a fixed bid for this?

We say, sure. Here are the trade-offs that you have to consider. On this fixed bid, we are only gonna offer two revisions per deliverable. The fixed price is gonna be a little bit higher than what we think the estimated time it will be on the subscription.

Um, once you pay this, we're locked in. There's, there is no first month guarantee.

For this, uh, and you're gonna pay more upfront than you would for this first month. You're also not gonna have a flexible scope unless you want to get a change order or something else like that. So we list things out as not a good versus bad as a set of trade-offs. I can charge you upfront for this work and this completed deliverable.

I can charge you for access to me at different rates. And both of those have trade-offs inside of

them. So which one do you prefer? Do you want the flexible scope? Subscription's gonna be a good choice for you. Do you want turnarounds every 48 hours? Like as soon as we get something done, we're gonna send it over to you.

Or do you want batched work sent on Thursdays, which is what we would do on a fixed bid. So I think that's the, the coolest thing about this is it's just another way of thinking about how to charge people.

Jonathan Stark: And do you, you actually do that still or is

Zach Stevens: Oh, yeah.

Jonathan Stark: the only option? Okay.

Zach Stevens: We have, so we have, we have our audit, which is a thousand dollars, and that's a fixed, um, diagnostic. And then we have our subscriptions, which vary in work rate. And then we have our custom project, which started at $25,000.

So people will sometimes ask and then we say, sure, this is what it would look like for the stuff.

And the cool thing about the subscription is that it does give you kind of a barometer for like, this is how many tasks I think are tallied up within this. This gives me a good gauge for what a fixed price offer should be. So I don't feel bad. Like if I want to give a price that's comparable to this subscription, I'm going to charge a little bit more because I'm gonna say, this is fixed.

It's a guaranteed price, whereas the subscription, it's largely contingent on you and the revisions that you wanna make. Uh. And giving them that option. It's like, uh, you know, with my, my daughter when she wants to go outside and go for a walk, but she gets kind of fussy. We say, we're in the street, you can hold mommy's hand or you can hold daddy's hand.

Which hand do you wanna hold?

Jonathan Stark: Choice, right?

Zach Stevens: Exactly. And then she feels in control, like she's making the choice herself. And then she chooses the one that

obviously she chooses her mom.

Um,

she's gonna choose the one, she's gonna choose the one that's the

best fit

for her.

Jonathan Stark: Right.

Zach Stevens: clients are gonna do the same.

Jonathan Stark: I, I totally agree with that. I was more curious if you would just consider them to be a bad fit client and you only wanted to do the subscription stuff, but that's a great point. So it's like, it's not necessarily all or nothing for people listening and maybe wanting to start out probably doesn't make sense to start out by hiring.

I mean, that wouldn't make. A ton of sense. If you're a soloist now, it would just be like, okay, so here are some options. It reminds me of, of my advice to people when they're, they've been doing hourly and they're nervous about or confused about switching to value-based pricing. It's like, well just do everything the same as you always do.

Next client comes along, do everything the same as you always do. Scope like crazy in the sales meeting. Create an estimate. And then the one thing you're gonna do differently is take your estimate and multiply it by 1.85 and offer that as a fixed price. And what that does is it, it. It makes explicit in the client's decision making mechanism that there is a risk difference between those two things and, and a lot of 'em will don't want to take the risk.

They don't wanna go back to their boss or partner and say, ah, it turns out this software project's going way over budget. They'd much rather. Pay the premium to get the fixed price in some cases. And in other cases they'll be like, no, I'll roll the dice. I think, I don't think it's actually gonna take as long as you estimate it, and I think you're overestimating how hard it's gonna be, and I'll gamble.

So like one of 'em is a gamble, one of 'em is not. And it's sort of, sort of similar to the, the subscription. It's, it's like one way you could approach it or you know, offer it. And then the other way would be some kind of fixed model. So that's pretty cool. I don't, I haven't. I don't think the other folks that are in, in Ditcherville or other people I've talked to, I don't think they also offer alternatives outside of the subscription model.

Zach Stevens: Well, I mean, I came at it from in reverse and 'cause you know, I was, I'm a huge fan of Blair Ends and David C. Baker and Chris Doe and, you know, I mean, I, I've got a wealth of pricing knowledge under my belt. Should really read this swim book. Uh, you know, learn your lines or hourly Billing is nuts.

Jonathan Stark: Because he has

the

checks in the mail.

Zach Stevens: Or Pricing, creativity or, you know, any of those other books that are fantastic about, or Time's Up, which is Ron Baker's book on the subscription model.

Um, and I've now, I see like, well, pricing's supposed to be just as creative as the work that I'm doing, so why would I not give this as an

option? Because they might want it, and some of them

do.

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Zach Stevens: some people want, I want this thing. And that's it. Great.

Jonathan Stark: I have to ask though, is it still no meetings?

Zach Stevens: Yep.

Jonathan Stark: So it's the same, it is the

same interaction. It is just the, the way the work is scheduled or something,

or,

Zach Stevens: Little,

Final Thoughts and Future Plans
---

Zach Stevens: the only real difference is that we do batched work on Thursdays. So we just, we plow through as much as we can on uh, like, 'cause you know, they're gonna get a set amount of revisions. Um, and it's on them to review 'cause we've sent over things like six different pages of copy for review. On those fixed projects.

'cause then our goal is you want, you clearly want this done fast for a fixed price, we're gonna get it to you. And that's part of the trade off.

It's like, you know, on the, the subscription, you're paying less upfront for a confined work rate. Uh, but you're also gonna get work within 24 hours, 48 hours, what have you.

You're gonna get unlimited revisions on it. And so I'm trying to make them see the nuance between those.

It's like you only get, you only get two revisions. If you want more, then get more. Uh, if you want a flexible scope, pick a flexible scope.

Neither of the thing, neither of the things are

bad or um, or

good.

It's up to you to decide what's gonna be the best fit for

you

as a client.

Jonathan Stark: Cool. Great. Well that's a great place to leave it and we're just about right on time, so, fantastic. Good work. Well, I look, I look forward to bringing you back maybe at the end of 2026 for the, the year end. Wrap up. See how, see if you're up

to 50 employees or what's next?

Zach Stevens: 50 employees within one year is a, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Maybe more AI or something in

Zach Stevens: Yeah. 50 AI agents. Cool,

man.

Jonathan Stark: Uh, cool. So, uh, could you tell folks where they can find out more about Conversion factory or anything else

you're doing online?

Zach Stevens: Sure. So, uh, I think the best person to follow online actually is gonna be my co-founder, uh, Cory Haynes. You can find him at Cory Haynes. That is his Twitter handle. Or X, sorry, whatever it is.

Um, just Google him. He's, he's quite Googleable. Uh,

you can find out more about what Conversion Factor is doing. We also have a podcast called The Factory Floor, which, uh, where we share marketing insights for software companies.

Um, and if you aren't necessarily interested in that, but just want to hear a couple of three nerds and weirdos having a warmup topic before their podcast. We have a segment called The Break Room that is usually about Lord of the

Rings, or one of my co-founders will have a silly quiz for us to take or.

Star

Wars or you know, whatever, just to get the juices

flowing.

Jonathan Stark: Nice. That sounds great. Well, thanks so much for joining us and sharing all of this like fascinating and useful information.

Zach Stevens: My pleasure. Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Stark: Alright folks, I'm Jonathan Stark, and that's it for this week. I hope you join me again next time for Ditching Hourly. Bye.