Surviving the Surge: How to Navigate the Insane Spike in Your Tech Stack Costs

Jennie Wright [00:00:02]:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Wright. This podcast is about list building, lead generation, sales, events, and a whole bunch of other stuff that just kind of piques my interest. And as your host, I am excited to share that there’s a lot going on this coming fall with the podcast. We’re going to have some really great episodes coming up on a lot of topics that are going to be pertinent to what you’re doing in the Q4 of your business in 2024. So stay tuned for those. But today is really, really special because I have a return guest.

 

Jennie Wright [00:00:32]:

It’s Katie Fox from ECAMM and I’m super glad you’re back.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:00:36]:

Oh my gosh. It’s such a pleasure to be back. I wish we could just do this every day. Could this just be our lives?

 

Jennie Wright [00:00:41]:

Did we even end it out? Before we hit record, we’ve been chatting for like 10 or 15 minutes and I’m like, crap, I should have hit record on that because it was a really good conversation. And one of the things that I wanted to bring back and talk to you about is like, you know, as we’re kind of going into the Q4 of 2024 at the time that we’re recording this, and this is a special episode, by the way, this was supposed to be a solo, but Katie and I had this really cool conversation. I’m pretty sure it was on Friday and or Thursday, and we’re like, oh, we should do an episode about this topic. And so hence, this is no longer a solo. So we’re gonna talk about the economies of scale

 

Katie Fawkes [00:01:17]:

as

 

Jennie Wright [00:01:17]:

it pertains to growing and increasing the profits or maintaining profits or however you want to look at it for your online business. And what does that mean? And I’m not going to stick to the regular definition of economy, like economy of scale. This is going to be Katie and I’s definition of it. Okay. So we’re making up stuff as we go. But economy of scale, when I think of it, I think of if I want to maintain the same amount of profit that I’m making from my business, I have to have my, like, things. I have to know my cost, my fixed cost, and then I have to be able to figure out how much I’m going to charge my clients and customers for the products or services that I offer. And if those things change, then I have to adjust my products and services or the cost thereof.

 

Jennie Wright [00:02:04]:

Does that coincide with what you think it means?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:02:07]:

Yeah. Yeah. That was I brilliantly said. That was exactly the voice that was in my head as I was thinking through what that means and like and just being able to break it down and make it really simple for people because that it’s a hugely important part of your business.

 

Jennie Wright [00:02:21]:

Yeah, it is. And when things change, so I don’t know about you, but every I’d say every quarter, but usually twice a year. I say every quarter, but it doesn’t end up being that I do a tech stack audit. And I also look at my prices now inflation has been

 

Katie Fawkes [00:02:41]:

Crazy.

 

Jennie Wright [00:02:41]:

Crazy. Yeah. Either very like real inflation, but then there’s like the inflation of the inflation. Mhmm. Right. So there’s the actual inflation, which I think in Canada was like or actually I think it’s in the States was like 11.9. But then this is on groceries, by the way, but then the cost of the grocery store, they were charging like 17% inflation, not the 11.9. So they’re actually lining their pockets.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:03:05]:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really I don’t wanna say good opportunity, but it like, it’s this weird opportunity where you have the choice to be, like, a good business person, like a a kind and moral business person where you just kind of continue on to to grow at an appropriate rate and to, you know, and to be successful at your business. But then you also have this opportunity for people to really take advantage. And as a business owner, it’s really difficult to know, like, what what the value of some of these things. Like, is someone taking advantage of you? Are you getting the value out of the things that you’re paying for? Is the price increase reasonable, like, according to everything else as you were saying? Like, groceries does not feel that way. Like, every time I go to the grocery store, I’m like, what? I was I bought these 4 things and it’s $200. How is that possible?

 

Jennie Wright [00:03:55]:

Yeah. It does not. It makes and and in Canada, the price of groceries is actually higher than it is in the States Crazy. Which is insane and is not fair. And I just came from the States, by the way. I was staying in this really nice hotel, attended a conference, worked the conference and a bottle of water was 799. Oh my goodness. So I was, you know, Katie Brinkley, so Katie Brinkley and I were roomies for 4 days.

 

Jennie Wright [00:04:21]:

It was wonderful. She was the best roomie ever. And we went to go get some supplies. Right? So we’re gonna buy water, we’re gonna buy a couple of bags of chips and some Double Stuf Oreos. I mean, because that’s what you do when you work 12 hours a day. And, the bill came to $68.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:04:38]:

Wow. Yeah. It does not feel reasonable. I

 

Jennie Wright [00:04:41]:

like you

 

Katie Fawkes [00:04:42]:

have that little voice in your head. Maybe it’s Jenny. Jenny’s in my head most times. But the, yeah, the voice in your head is like, what? This is not a normal amount. So water should be in my mind, like, water is, like, somewhere between 99¢ $3 feels high. Like 3 or like, well, wait. Like, this must be fancy water.

 

Jennie Wright [00:05:02]:

What is this? Like

 

Katie Fawkes [00:05:03]:

What is this? Yeah.

 

Jennie Wright [00:05:05]:

Did you did you, like, magically put fairy dust in there? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so my job on my side of things, I’m always advising clients on the right tech stack for their business. Yeah. And I’m like, Yeah, you got to use this for your graphics and you got to use this for your funnels and you got to use this and we build up a tech stack. But the economies of scale of what’s going on right now in the software, like, world is changing. We’re seeing we’re seeing some really big price increases were happening.

 

Jennie Wright [00:05:36]:

People are getting feeling blindsided Because if you’ve built your business going, I’m paying 49.99 a month for this product, and then that product jumps 300%, that changes your business because you then have to account for that in what you charge clients, customers, and so on. So, I mean, let’s be truthful. You’re a business person, you’re a marketing person, and you also work with a really amazing software, ECAM, which we’ve talked about a few times. Yeah. How is this impacting in your world, normally as a user because, again, you have your own content outside of working with ECAMM. Yeah. How does it impact you? And then what is ECAMM doing?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:06:20]:

Yeah. Those are great questions. So I, as I think I’ve said when I was on last time, but so as you said, I run marketing at ECAM, but I am also a content creator and a podcaster on my own. And I know that for that show, we bootstrap it. So we are by and large only purchasing what we absolutely need. And like you were saying earlier, constantly evaluating, like, how much we’re using it, how much benefit it is bringing into our show because we are a small podcast that, you know, we’re mostly doing it for fun, so it’s not it’s not something that I wanna be spending a ton of money for. And that, you know, I I try always to bring that same mentality into what we’re doing as a team for ECAMM. You know, as you said, we are using tons and tons of different tools, and we’re also recommending a lot of tools to our customers.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:07:11]:

And I think that, you know, more than ever, this is the time where you really need to be saying to yourself, is the tool that you are using, are the tools that you are using actually saving you time? You know, time is money. Are they making things easier for you? Are they necessary for you to be able to accomplish your goals? So, like, if you’re doing a podcast, is the are the tools that you’re using helping you to create your podcast or get your podcast out into the hands of more people? And if not or if you don’t, you know, many of us, and I’m super guilty of this, but, like, many of us sign up for these tools at a time where they maybe were free, maybe they were significantly cheaper, you got a really great deal on it, and now the deal is running out or the prices have gone up. Now is the time to say, like, did you actually spend all that time really understanding how the tool works? Is it really benefiting you? So I think setting up a really great system, probably, you know, at this point, maybe you even wanna be doing this every couple of months, but evaluating how helpful these things are and, you know, do they make the cut in your tech stack? Because some of these tools are going up substantially. ECAM is not, so I should say here that ECAM is one of those tools where yeah. On that, we don’t raise prices, often at all and we, I was saying this before we jumped on, but we have a benefit that a lot of these software companies don’t have because we are I’d

 

Jennie Wright [00:08:36]:

love for you to explain this because this was the

 

Katie Fawkes [00:08:38]:

past year. Yeah. So we are a desktop based app. So when you when you purchase Ecamm, you download it onto your Mac. You’re Mac only. And one of the main benefits of that from a customer standpoint is that you own all of your content. So your content is not sitting somewhere, you know, in a in a cloud space, in a server somewhere kind of owned by someone else, owned by us, and you don’t have to pay any additional fees to store it or to access it or to download it or whatever quality. You’re creating it at the quality level that you want according to whatever you want, and you immediately have that content.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:09:15]:

And because of that, because we’re not we we’re not storing your content, keeping your content, hosting it anywhere, passing those files along anywhere, we don’t have to pay for hosting and for all these services to run our business. And so we’re already able to save a lot of money compared to a lot of our competitors. And so it means that we don’t have to raise our prices in order to continue to make money ourselves and to offer a high quality product for our customers. So it’s important to be thinking through those kinds of decisions as an end user. You know, you in many cases might be trading control and quality and cost for ease. And that, you know, there are tools out there that might seem easier and more templatized and more immediately accessible because they’re web based, but there’s a price you’re paying quite literally and figuratively for that level of easiness. So it’s just worth considering and thinking about. And in many cases, it’s fine and it makes sense for you.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:10:18]:

But you know, more and more and including Ecamm, more and more of these tools are subscription based. So you’re paying monthly or annually for it. So you really wanna make sure that you’re using it. Mhmm. And getting that value out of it and feeling as though it’s, you know, you’re, you’re making more than what you’re spending on these tools.

 

Jennie Wright [00:10:36]:

Completely. Completely. And I have, I have a tool, a calendaring tool that comes up for a yearly renewal coming up in October. And they kind of said, hey, so the new price, you know, when you renew is going to be X, right? The software that does all of my accounting is already $450 a year.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:10:58]:

And

 

Jennie Wright [00:10:58]:

they’re like, hey, so your new package is going to be like 600. 600 a year for me to create invoices? What? Come on. And then this is all my tech stack. Right? And then my email marketing provider is like, Oh, yeah. So you’ve been in this awesome, like, you know, we grandfathered you in because you’ve been with us for so long. We’re so happy that you’ve been a faithful, you know, such and such customer. But as of November X, we’re like, you know, popping up that price and I’m like, Fudge, everything is going up and I get some things have to go up, especially with how you just explained with, you know, server based businesses. That makes sense.

 

Jennie Wright [00:11:34]:

That’s one of the reasons like I do love Ecamm so much because it is on my computer. I download it, it’s there. I love the little updates. Would you like us to put this in your applications folder? Yes, please. There is a bit of a learning curve, but as Doc, one of the amazing figures of ECAM, Doc Rock says, Just go ahead and press all the buttons. You can’t kill it. You can’t hurt it. You can’t break it.

 

Jennie Wright [00:11:59]:

And I have done that and that was one of the ways that I learned. I think it’s necessary to just go and start hitting things and starting to make it work. And I do love the product. It makes me concerned where everything is going. Right?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:12:14]:

And

 

Jennie Wright [00:12:16]:

when it when you’re seeing that it just means that everybody’s going to have to like, it’s a trickle down if I have to pay a 300% increase on my streaming software, that’s going to affect what how I look at how I produce my podcast and so on and so forth. Right?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:12:31]:

Yeah. And cost may fall then down to, you know, if you have like a membership or, you know, a Patreon or sponsors or, you know, you’re going to have to every business owner is gonna have to make those decisions of whether or not that’s a cost that you carry, whether or not you decide to make a change to your tech stack or pass that cost down through to someone else, you know, down downstream of you. So it yeah, it is. I mean, I’m seeing the same as you. I, you know, recently there’s some of the graphic design tools that are out there that are, you know, drastically, drastically raising prices. And it’s just I I think it comes down to really thinking through, like, again, like, how often are you using it? How effective is it for you? Are there other options out there that you, you know, that you didn’t look at because there was a reason why you signed on with whatever tool you signed on with. Maybe it’s worth taking another look at some of those other tools. In the case of the the graphics design tool, prices are going way up, but there had been another tool that we had been sort of, like, half heartedly using.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:13:36]:

And so now that’s gonna be, for us, a change in process, a switch over to a tool that is every bit as good. I just never bothered spending the time diving in and building out, like, a system within that tool. So it’s you know, there are tons of options out there for every tool, including ECAM, so it’s always worth kind of seeing what else is out there, what those prices are, and how hard it is to switch, like to be to kind of rebuild your system in a new tool, and then how hard is it to use on a regular basis. Because at least with the benefit to this kind of dark conversation is that at least there’s tons of options out there. We do live at a time where there are a lot of different tech choices, particularly in those kind of AI based tools. There’s like so much kind of iteration and new tools coming out that there’s lots of choices. So finding the one that works best for you and is the right price for you has never been easier from that perspective. It’s just going to take some thought and a system and a process to make sure that you’re constantly and consistently making the right decisions.

 

Jennie Wright [00:14:38]:

Yeah. I think more now than ever, there’s like a conscientious feeling that we’ve got to look at these things with. And I think before a lot of us were just like, you know?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:14:48]:

Yeah. It was on sale. It was easy. Someone told us it was a good tool. Like, I’m, again, I’m so guilty of like the free trial or like the freemium level where I’m just like, oh, it’s free or it’s a free trial. And like, I’ll, you know, I have great intentions of diving in and learning how to use these tools. And then they sit in my tech stack and I understand maybe like this much of it.

 

Jennie Wright [00:15:09]:

Hey, I was an I was an AppSumo. Was it AppSumo? Yeah. I’m an AppSumo person for sure. I was when I was bootstrapping this business. Because obviously you’ve got to be like lean and mean tech stack machine. And I still have some of those tools because they’re lifetime access, but they’re lifetime access to like a little part of the software. Yeah. Which is fine because then you can you can test it out.

 

Jennie Wright [00:15:32]:

Where do you think all of this is going with, like, how do you think this is gonna shake out? Do you think everybody’s gonna jump on the bandwagon and just be like, okay, you know what, they raised their prices by 300%. We’re going to do it too. What do you think is going to happen? And also with your unique perspective, and I’m going to you’re not going to want to answer this. Pass. Pass. And you can pass. But do you think these price increases are, like, are in alignment with the cost increases in the back end?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:16:03]:

Oh, interesting. Okay. So first question first, where do we think that this is going? I do think we’re going to continue to see more and more price increases across the board because they can, because we can, as business owners. I do think it’ll hit a point where the bubble will burst and the power still remains in many ways in the hands of the consumers. As I said, there’s tons and tons of options out there. There are new tools being built and developed all the time. There are a lot of competitive tools to ECAMM, there are a lot of competitive tools in each one of these spaces. So once consumers figure out, you know, ask themselves those questions and figure out how hard it is to make those changes, I think we’re going to see kind of like huge movements of people from one tool to the other tool, you know, till they figure out what prices make sense and what the market is willing to bear.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:16:54]:

So hopefully we’ll hopefully we’ll see that sooner rather than later. I don’t know if I know the answer to your second question. It’s a really interesting one. I feel so lucky in many ways to work for the company that I do because a, our founders are, like, have always been really, really transparent with kind of the yeah. I mean, I guess the the math that goes into the business. So from, you know, from their perspective, it’s always been, hey, like, we’re here to make tools that help people. We’re not trying to make bajillions of dollars. Like, we’re in it to build a business that’s sustainable, that supports our employees and ourselves, and is beneficial to the community and to our customers.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:17:35]:

So we’ve been able to kind of, you know, move in that space for a really long time now, and it’s, it’s just been a really wonderful experience to be part of. There are lots of tools that, you know, that are built to sell. And, you know, when you sell out to some of these larger companies, the goal of those larger companies is to make as much money as possible. And they don’t care as much about the, you know, employees or user experience or what the price is. Right? They’re they’re there to hit their numbers. And so I it’s gonna be interesting, I guess, to see what happens and how much the how much the market will bear of that. I you know, there’s all these tools, particularly in the in the kind of tech stack world that grew so rapidly, you know, as the pandemic hit and kind of in those 1st couple of years that, you know, and many of them sold to, you know, to really large companies. And so it’s it’s a very different landscape now than it was in 2020 and in 2021.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:18:32]:

So I it’ll be interesting to kinda see. I I don’t think it’s sustainable. I think that people are gonna continue to push back. I think more and more people care about the kind of the the ethos and the people that are behind the, you know, the products and services that they’re shopping for. So I yeah. It’ll be interesting to see. But I yeah. As far as the, like, the details of of you know, I don’t know what that math is because we’ve never I’ve I’ve never worked at a company that’s had to, to kind of deal with some of those logistics.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:19:03]:

Yeah.

 

Jennie Wright [00:19:04]:

I don’t know because I’m not in there either. But the to me, personally, in my own heart, the math doesn’t math.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:19:10]:

It doesn’t feel like it maths. Yeah. I mean, it feels like, you know, I get that, like, hosting is really expensive. And I get that they care about the the bottom line. But, yeah, I don’t it’s it feels like there’s there’s still a lot of padding happening there that doesn’t that doesn’t need to be. Especially if you think about, like, who the target customers are for some of these marketplaces. Right? I mean, if I think about, like, live streaming and even podcast creation tools

 

Jennie Wright [00:19:41]:

Mhmm.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:19:42]:

You know, there’s certainly there are, like, businesses that are using that, absolutely, that that, you know, that can withstand some of these costs. But by and large, the majority of people that are using Ecamm, for example, are solopreneurs and entrepreneurs and individuals who are using this for, like, a side project or, you know, a second business or, you know, a personal project that that isn’t making any money. And so they’re they’re willing to invest that. But if you start raising, you know, costs, then we are going to lose people who just are not willing or able to take on that at a cost.

 

Jennie Wright [00:20:16]:

Absolutely. And I’m thinking about people who are just starting. So when I first started, and I have some, I’m tech savvy, but I’m not graphic savvy, right? So I can play around in Photoshop. I can edit a photo and do that, but I am not a graphic designer by any means. And so when I started off and I got Canva, I was like, Okay, I can handle this price. I can handle 19.99 a month. I can handle that. It allows me to make my graphics.

 

Jennie Wright [00:20:47]:

I’ve got a podcast. I need graphics all the time. Awesome. Fantastic. And then they had this deal where you could add in a couple of team members, which was great. And I was part of it and I wasn’t paying really any extra for that. And I’m not calling out Canva, but as somebody who would be coming into this space now, Canvas priced itself out. Like, I’m not going to pay $400 for Canva, although I love it.

 

Jennie Wright [00:21:13]:

So I’ve got to figure something out. Right? Like, and if I was a noob coming in, that would be, that would be cost prohibitive enough that I would be like, I can’t start my podcast right now. Or, and I mean, I can hear the shouts on the other side of, of podcast land. Like people are like, but there’s other tools. Yeah, there’s other tools. I get it. There are other tools and you can have somebody else who wants to pay that price, create your graphics and sell them to you at a, you know, you can have a VA that does it or whatnot. I totally get that.

 

Jennie Wright [00:21:40]:

But as somebody like me who is a hybrid solopreneur slash slightly a little bit of an agency, like I do have some staff that do graphics for other clients of mine, it’s a cost that I have to look at. Right? Because I have like 6 people who need access to my Canva.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:21:59]:

Yeah. Yeah. It it changes the landscape. That’s for sure. It definitely makes it it makes it so you you do have to think about it. You’re right. Like, I Canva is actually a great example of this because it was so easy and so affordable that it was almost a no brainer. You’re like, absolutely.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:22:17]:

I don’t even wanna think about this. It makes it so shareable. I’m feeling better about my graphics even though I’m not a professional designer. You know, it it you didn’t even think about it. It was

 

Jennie Wright [00:22:26]:

accessible. Yep.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:22:27]:

Yep. And if they had gone the route of just slowly raising prices at, like, a sustainable rate, it probably still would have been fine. Maybe it would have been a little bit more difficult for people just starting out. But as a user, you’d have been like, well, obviously, like, this is, like, so central to my workflow. I I wouldn’t even think about anything else. But you’re right. They kinda went this very weird, you know, interesting way where it Yeah. It does feel like we’ve been tricked a little bit, and it is very expensive now.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:22:57]:

And so it does. It makes, I think, a lot of us sit there and think, okay, well, what are my other options and what, like, what what can I do if I’m not willing to pay this amount of money? And again, there are choices out there. So Canva is not the only player in this field. So it it I think it’s I think these are conversations that regardless of whether you’re a solopreneur or all the way up to, you know, medium to large sized businesses, you need to be thinking about this because there’s more options and lots of changes. It’s not sort of it’s we’re not in a set it or forget it kind of world. You can’t get so used to the tools that you have and love, that you can’t be willing to evaluate them realistically and figure out what choices you need to make.

 

Jennie Wright [00:23:40]:

Agreed. And this just feels a little unprecedented to me. Like, I’ve been doing this for 12 years. I haven’t seen this before. And I think there’s just a lot of reaction. So, you know, I’m glad that we got to talk about this because it is really relevant right now as we’re talking about it. And I think we’re going to and I think you agree, we’re just going to see more things coming our way. And I’m with you.

 

Jennie Wright [00:24:03]:

I don’t mind price increases, but when it feels like whiplash and I think collectively we feel like we’re having whiplash with this, you know, at least I think there’s like for me I know of 4 platforms that are doing this. The whiplash is so much that people are collectively going what the actual, right? And because everybody’s going to have to renew, it’s coming up, you know, because they told you you got this amount of time and that’s where everybody’s trying to think. So if you’re not already today, go look at your tech stack. This is a good reminder, you know, going into Q4, what’s your tech stack look like? What changes are you willing to make? What processes are you willing to change? Then what are you willing to accept? What’s your threshold? Right. So what are you able to accept at that threshold before you have to start making major changes? Like, if your landing page software all of a sudden goes up, what are you going to do? You know, if your calendar software does, right? So obviously most people use Canva. We all share files with each other. I know there’s a workaround with this. With Canva right now, you can, there’s a bit of a workaround and that’s totally fine, but it means you have to share your login with everybody.

 

Jennie Wright [00:25:10]:

So, you know, things to think about. But as we wrap this up, I’d love to ask where people can connect with you and, find you because you’ve also got a really cool podcast of your own. It’s like totally not even ECAM centralized. So tell me about that. Like, where can people find all of the stuff of Katie?

 

Katie Fawkes [00:25:27]:

All right. Well, so you can find me under all of the ECAMM stuff. So if you search ECAMM, I am behind all of those different social accounts. We have a really great community, Discord, a lot of amazing spaces bounce ideas off of people. It’s, a fun way to be online. And then on the personal side for me, so, yes, I do I do an eighties nineties movie review podcast on Thursdays. I love it. I love it.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:26:03]:

We’re called the VHS Club Podcast. You can find us at the vhsclubpoddot com or on YouTube if you search the VHS Club Pod.

 

Jennie Wright [00:26:11]:

Doctor. Absolutely. And I just have just before we go, this is a completely like offline, but I’m going to keep it in the recording. I was in the ECAM Facebook group this I think it was I was waiting for my plane on Friday There was a post that was all caps, like somebody was having a bad day and they’re like freaking out. Right? And what I loved was the support. It’s like, hey, man, we got you. Have you tried this? Have you tried that? And people like, did you get it solved? Let us know your solution. He’s like, yeah, I actually got it solved.

 

Jennie Wright [00:26:42]:

I’m really, really happy. I’m still gonna leave the post up because I wanted the people to see it, but I’m really sorry about the cab. And it was awesome. Like, the person came in. I mean, guns blazing. They were pissed. Yeah. Got the support they needed.

 

Jennie Wright [00:26:54]:

And they’re like, thanks, man. This is the best community ever. Like, they had like, I loved that. Yeah. And and they A lot.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:27:01]:

It is a lie. I mean, I will say I’ve learned this over the past 5 years of being with the Ecamm team that video and live streaming and pod I would put podcasting in the same space. It’s so visual and, like, and immediate and personal that when something goes wrong, it like, you don’t you don’t want to be, like, sitting on hold somewhere waiting for someone to help you. You don’t want to be, like, you know, chatting back and forth. Like, you you want a space where you can go and be like, why is my camera not connecting in? Or, like, you know, I I tried to, like, you know, I tried this and that and the other thing and nothing is working and my, you know, my feed has gone down and people are waiting for me. Like, there’s an urgency to to what our customers are doing. And so, you obviously, we do our best and the customer support team is awesome and there as much as they’re able to be there. But having that community is that umbrella underneath goes a really long way because we have users from around the world.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:28:06]:

There is always a moderator or a user that is online and available. So if something is just, like, going horribly wrong, we do. We see those, you know, all caps, posts. We see a lot of, like, videos pop in. We even had one user years back who just started live streaming, and he was like, I think it’s everything is going wrong. Like, you and people jumped on. I think we ended up taught, like, talking him down by joining as, like, an interview guest and being like, push this, push this. So so it it is like it’s in this day and age where we have, like, access and availability for everything, like, find a group.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:28:44]:

It doesn’t have it doesn’t even have to be my group, but you’re welcome. But, like, find find a group of people that you can go to that you can trust that, you know, that are gonna be there and be and give of your own time as well to to kind of, you know, give back to spaces like that because I think it it is so necessary, like, for our sanity, for asking questions like, hey, what’s in your tech stack? Like, what’s working and not working? Like, these are conversations we all need to have as consumers and as and as content producers to be to be better and to, you know, be more successful and to put more good out into the world. So, yeah, I love that you brought that up because I think it it maybe even a couple of years ago, I would have been like, oh, no. Someone is freaking out in the community. And now I see that, and I’m like, it’s okay. Like, people need to be able to have a space where they feel like they can vent and, you know, and get help and jump on and help others. And I I think it’s really important because it’s it’s hard out there.

 

Jennie Wright [00:29:41]:

It’s really hard out there right now. And the group didn’t even blast this guy. They were just like, hey, man. We got you. It’s okay. It’ll be all right. Like, it was like the hair petting. It’s like, you’re going to be all right.

 

Katie Fawkes [00:29:49]:

The family like dropped over there. Like, oh, run over here. We can help this guy.

 

Jennie Wright [00:29:53]:

Yeah, it was. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And when I saw the all caps, I was like, Oh boy. But then the 53 or so comments, I was like, oh, my God, this is fantastic. Alright. That was a little that was a little inside, but it was fun. And just, for everybody go and check out the show notes on this episode.

 

Jennie Wright [00:30:09]:

You’ll find everything that Katie was talking about. And if you want to know more about Ecamm, there’s a link in the show notes to check that out as well. I am a proud Ecamm user, so, go and make sure you check it out. It is an awesome software specifically for Mac. Just put that out there and go and find that. And as always, thank you so much for listening to the Acquire podcast. We are brought to you by the Audphonic Podcast Network. So go and check that out as well.

 

Jennie Wright [00:30:32]:

And we’ll see you all soon. Take care.