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Hey, I'm Jon.
And I'm Becky.
And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an Impact Uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, what's happening?
I love how small the world is sometimes. Can I tell a little story before I introduce our guests today?
You know, I love the small world stories.
Okay, so we have a dear friend in Chicago, Lisa Tarshish, she is with the Evolve giving group. We just love them so much in the way they show up for philanthropy. And I get this message text from her just out of the blue. And she's like, I don't know why. But I just have this childhood friend that I think you need to meet. He's extraordinary. And there's just something about the way you two look at the world that I just think is is gonna collide in some really cool way. Would you like to meet him? And I'm like, of course. So get on, I get to meet Mr. Brett Kopf. And I think I'm meeting with an entrepreneur. I know I'm meeting with this incredible tech founder. He started this incredible company. Omela it which we're going to talk about today. But then we back up. And how many of you parents out there in you know, the last at least decade have used the remind app on your phone. I mean, we're talking about 30 million active users are using remind It's this incredible education app that allows teachers to send billions of messages back and forth to parents. I can tell you, Jon, I have seen so many photos of my kids in kindergarten working on things, little videos of them out on the playground. And old Brett, he just you know, he invented that. So there's such a good dude. I know. It's so it's just our great joy to be able to have the man the myth, the legend on the podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about how are we going to know our customers? How can we know them well enough to lead to acquisition and retention. Because we want to build cultures of retention. And Brett has done this twice now with two separate companies. And we're going to learn from him. But I want to give you a little bit of background. Again, he is that founder of Omella and remind and he's just generally interested on the intersection of FinTech and education and just helping customers. And so he goes deep into understanding problems and creating solutions because he just wants to focus on improving education. Can I get a whoop, whoop. So he started remind.com with his brother David in 2011. Again, it has 30 million users. 80% of us teachers are using this sending billions of messages. And I just think the vision to give every student an opportunities to succeed. It all started with a teacher and we're going to talk about her. But you know, Brett lives in Colorado. He has an incredible dad, he's, he's not doing dad stuff or FinTech stuff. He's on the basketball court. He cares so much about health, and fasting and reversing pre diabetes. And he's just a regular renaissance man. So Brett, welcome to the podcast. We can't wait to learn from you my friend.
Hi, Becky and Jon. That's quite an intro. I think you've said everything.
Okay, well, thanks for joining us. I'm really appreciate your time today. Yeah, I just think that you are just such a kind human and it's been so wonderful to just sit down and talk shop with you and talk about the industry. And in your you're sort of in this intersection, you know, of, of helping not just, you know, the education sector, but we see so many parallels with the nonprofit sector. And we want to dive into that. But first, we just want to get to know you. So back it up, and back up to Chicago with little Bret, like, tell us about growing up and how you fell into this work and became interested in education.
Sure. So I usually like to tell people that I started my first company when I was five, which is a blatant lie, but I didn't know what that was like John. Yeah, it actually was the time but the why was cultivating from that point, because I was diagnosed at that point with all these learning disabilities and I basically for the Next 15 to 17 years of my childhood to early adolescence, I just felt not smart. Because I had all these learning disabilities and I learned in a different way and the system that I was in in school, though there are really great schools just wasn't built for someone like me. And I therefore struggled because of it. And I had this teacher who kind of alluded to named Miss Whitefield, and my mom who was super involved in education. And they just really cared about me. And so eventually that evolved into starting reminded today, yeah, you listed all the shock stats, where we said billions of messages and 30 million people use it actively. But it all started with that one teacher and dog good consistency of wanting to solve a problem for her so much, you know, today, it's really scaled. So that's, that's how it all began. And sort of my ethos on how I build companies is very, very customer focused. If there's anything to know about me as an entrepreneur, that part of my identity, is that I really do care about them. I'll give you a practical example. Just so you know, I'm not saying that I think my brother and I spoke to 500 individual customers one on one before writing a line of code at momella. To date, I've probably spoke to 2500 of them. And I know I'm talking a lot now, but usually, you know, we have two years in one mouth for a reason, we really try to listen and empathize and seek to understand the problem. And the reason that's the case is because our job is sort of to be this middle ground between highly technical engineering and product team, and people out in the middle of the country, doing really important work in their local communities that need help with that software can help with and we try to bridge that gap. And the only way to do that is by seeking to understand and so that's as like an entrepreneur kind of my identity and on who I am and being very, very customer focused.
Okay, Brett, I love that story. And I think, you know, if someone's listening and thinking, Okay, this tech founder, he's kind of in a different lane than some of us that are on the frontlines of nonprofit mission, what you just expressed, there is the key to unlocking so many possibilities in our missions, I just think of like, when we're building a case for support, are we really leaning into that level of conversations with the stakeholders, the donors, the people that are impacted, before you even go out to start raise them raising the funds? You know, and I think that part of your story really like resonates on me that we need to do a better job listening. And every time we've spoken with you, Brett, I mean, you're just such a source of light, and you're so generous, and how you show up. But it always strikes me that you're so disciplined to to like, do the actual work and the steps. So I would love for you to you're nodding for those that watching the video. But if for those listening today, how do you start to translate this into a little bit about the story of telling of starting Omela, beyond these conversations? How did you start to formalize that into the code at this today?
Yeah, before I do that, I just want to give context and something you know, remind has 30 million users or malas. Growing super quickly, you hear all these big shock stats. But every day, I am on phone calls, talking to customers listening, doggedly caring about these little product features like a pixel. Because I know that death by 1000 cuts, it adds up. And it's just the craft of what I care about. And so I don't want to make it seem like it's easy. It's not we my brother and I are from Chicago, we have very Midwest roots. And we're very focused on things that are core to our value system. So I think back to your question was specifically how we do that applicable Is that correct?
Yeah. And just thread the story of like, you know, from those conversations to turning it into a viable product. I think it's just so interesting.
Yeah. So we started with a hypothesis that we thought it was hard for teachers to collect money in schools. And frankly, before we even started Omela, we took an even bigger step out. And we kind of had this lens on like, well, what problem can we uniquely solve? I'm not a rocket scientist, I can't send a rocket to space. I'm not good at that. But we do know education really, really well. And the other thing is at the time, my dad was dying a few years ago from Parkinson's. And so we thought maybe we should get into healthcare. And so I just went and started talking to a bunch of doctors and Parkinson's patients. And what we soon realized is that it's not the right vertical for us one because this is a little bit depressing. But I just don't want to be dealing in a space where people are dying every day. It's quite crass. But it's a natural part of life. But it's not what I wanted to do and how I wanted to spend my time. And the other thing with healthcare is, it didn't function as a true market. Like with omega, we have a product, we have a customer, we charge them directly. But in healthcare, on the other hand, like, you know, I go to get blood drawn, and then my healthcare company is charging the person who drew blood. And that's just all confusing. So we got to the point of having a hypothesis that it's hard for teachers to collect money in schools. And then I just started messaging them. So on Twitter, I'd go and message them. I would email anyone I know, I would ask all of my friends or any of my business contacts, do you know anyone in a school, and I would just start talking to them. And usually when I got on a call with them, I would give them quick context. And the goal of that is to build trust. I was not and usually I'm not selling anything. People don't like to be sold to I was genuinely seeking to understand. And I would just ask a few probing questions saying like, how do you collect money in schools? Why is it hard? what systems do you use now? And What I basically did was look for trends. Now more importantly than what I'm doing anyone who's listening to this, if you have a product or a business that you're thinking about starting or scaling, the takeaway is that you want to try to find a very deep problem. And you can tell that by two things, one, their eyes bulging out of their head, they start flailing up and down saying, Oh, my gosh, I want this thing or this is a really big problem. So I actually think the way that they speak or move is more important than the words coming out of their mouth sometimes. So that inflection is really important. The other thing is if they start listing off all the different ways that they would use your product, and so they would say, Well, I use Venmo, and cash and cheque and physical permission slips. But it's super frustrating, because I can't track any of that. And it's in 1000 places, and I have to collect like $5,000 a year, that was really helpful. And when you start seeing that time, after time, after time, this is the second takeaway. When you see trends, then your ears perk up. And so when we got to like the 500 customer, we could clearly state the problem, we could clearly have a hypothesis on a solution. And we started to write code. So that is like on the ground, what it actually looked like, and that was over like an 18 month timeframe of doing that.
Wow. I mean, I'll tell you what this reminds me of bread. And this is this is why I love momella so much. And I want to give your quote back to you because I thought it was the most brilliant quote ever. And you said, Oh, Mila is really about if DocuSign Google Forms Venmo and GoFundMe had a baby Mela. And the thing that I value about what you just said is I can tie exactly what you're talking about. Back to what I've experienced as a fundraiser, I can understand that the many times I walked into a cold call with a prospect. And they would be saying Tell me more about your mission, what are your priorities, and you would kind of rattle off your priorities in one, which is hit them right between the eyes. And they look very bored. Maybe sometimes when you're going through a couple of them. But they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, my mom died of breast cancer. Like, tell me about that. Tell me that's very personal to our family. And I think what you're saying here that's so powerful, as it intersects with our business is that when you build cultures of listening, and really tuning in, and not just to the words, but to those social cues into that emotional intelligence, where you're actually seeing people, because I think that's empathy as well, you're tuned in to how they react to things, you have a different lens. And I value that you sat down and met one on one with 2500 of your customers, when you have conversations one on one like that, you know, your base so well. And that is why I think knowing your customer is really a sweet spot for you all. And so I look at this community that you've built, I mean, 30 million. Yeah, it's a huge number. And I can't wait to see what happens with Mel, I know you guys are really at the beginning stages of it. But talk to us about how do you build community around something like that? And how are you solving solutions with these two apps and products that you've created?
Yeah, I'll speak to it and remind because I think it's most applicable. In the early days, we spoke to a few 100 teachers, and remind for anyone doesn't know it's a messaging app makes it easy for teachers, students and parents to communicate safely. And my primary objective was to try to understand if there's a big problem, but what ended up happening is I just got to know these people as human beings. Like I know this teacher, his name is Michael, us. Maybe he listens to this podcast, he's a teacher in Arizona. I know like his two kids, we talked about that all the time, he went through some health health issues, and we became good friends. And there was probably a few 100 teachers that I got to the point to it that even if remind didn't work out, like they literally became my friends because of course, time is our most precious resource. And how do you want to be spending it if I'm not working out on mela I'm going to be with my kids are exercising. And so when I'm working on ml, I want to do it with people that I enjoy. Not only enjoy being with me not only like building the product, but also our customers like I like, like being with them. And so what ended up happening is that it was just very informal. And I'm just like, start texting them like, Hey, I we built this quick feature. What do you think of this? And I'll send them a text with a visual, and they're like, Oh, I hate it. Here's why I hate it. Now, it's rare for that
Thank you for that honesty right?
Yeah, exactly. What we need to talk about that because most people, especially your family and friends won't want to tell you they hate something or your product sucks or it looks ugly. You want to know that though? You want to know the raw truth. And so as we will kind of peel back the onion and build a relationship and talk to them more and more. If they said yeah, I could use that feature or they kind of looked up like that. I'll be like, Michael vs. I'm picking up Michael but just as an example. He's great. I would say I don't believe that. Remember, you could be super direct with me you will not hurt my feelings. How would you use this right? Yeah, you're right. I probably wouldn't like thank you for being so direct. That point was the point of building trust. And the reason is because my job as an entrepreneur like the way I explain It's my mom is I'm a mouse, there's cheese, and there's a maze. And my job is to shrink that maze and shrink it by talking to customers, Swiss cheese, of course. But my job is my job was to shrink that maze. And that means that I have to look for all these patterns and trends based on what customers are explaining when I'm trying to understand the problem.
Yeah, I mean, you make it sound so simple, you know, and I think we overcomplicate things. And we definitely move before actually having the conversations or maybe the data, whether that's qualitative or quantitative, we just think we know the answer. So I think you're bringing up a lot of really good things here. So I mean, what I love about this, too, is we've gotten to be part alongside you as you're kind of building this company and checking in and hearing about your updates. And the way you break down the clarity of your KPIs has been so incredible to me, because that's us, Becky. And I, what are our KPIs that We Are For Good, and we're like so all over the map. And we talked to Brett and we're like, okay, we need this kind of clarity in our work. And I think this can unlock so much potential for the nonprofits listening today. So you kind of break that down, how you arrived at them, and how they inform your day to day work?
Sure. I want to give context before though, there's two types of metrics. There's quantitative numbers, there's qualitative, not numbers really like emotion. And when you're starting something from scratch, if you are, it doesn't matter if it's a business, maybe it's a nonprofit, a consulting firm, or you're starting a theater from scratch, who knows? It's really hard to get statistically significant data, because no one's using your thing yet. You got your first customer? How do you know like, is that statistically significant, you need hundreds or 1000s, or millions. And so in the beginning a lot of data, a lot of it is qualitative, relying on gut intuition and emotion and looking at these like, big eyes jumping out of their face, as you scale and you have something that gets bigger, or they're listening to it a lot or using it that actually get more quantitative. Okay, so now that that's explained that I think it's really important. So people don't overtake our measuring every single API s, we have a framework for how we think about track tracking growth. And it's really simple. First, it starts with what's called retention, meaning, do people keep coming back to your product? The second one is engagement is like when they use their product, how much are they actually using? And are they sending a message every day? Are they collecting money every month, every week, every second? The third one is activation? Meaning when they sign up for your thing? Is it simple? You've all done this before you hit authenticate with Google. It says What's your name? What's your email? What's your password, add your logo, add your picture. And then the fourth one is acquisition. Usually, people start with acquiring users. I believe that's a mistake. Now, of course, it's a blanket statement for some people might be right, but I don't believe that's right. Because if I fill up this water bottle, and if there's a hole in it, all of its going to fall out. So it doesn't matter how many how much water I fill in the top. If there's a hole, I'm going to have crappy retention. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about how to build a product that's really valuable. That's really what it comes down to. How do we solve someone's problem and make it really, really great. Once we knew it was great, and they stayed aka retention, then we made it sticky. So they came back a lot. And this isn't like black magic it's making it's like helping solve a problem. Y Combinator is version of this as built something people while activating them and now acquiring them. So now to your question, because we've done the work all the way up to here, we want to, we want to overfill this water bottle, because like this is a machine. That's the cool thing about software, you put one in, you could scale it a billion times. And so to your point, and I know this is a long way of getting the specific metric that we track internally is what we call KYC, which means know your customer, for most people listening to this and probably won't matter. But KYC means because we're ML is a payments product, you can collect payments, forms digital signatures, ticket sales, donations, fundraisers, tuition. And in order for an organization and a small business and nonprofit, we support all of them to do that they have to connect their bank. And we know that if they connect their bank, they will retain a really, really well, we have all the data to support it quiet and qualitative. And so we have a number that we track every single day, we talk about it every single week, is if we are hitting that number. That's like the key metric that I drive my entire career on. When I say career, like everyday when I wake up in the morning, did we hit this goal? Did we hit this goal? They reached this goal. And I have to tell you, John, really quickly one other caveat. Can I Yeah, because John, you asked a question. But Becky, thank you.
Apparently I'm asking or answering for John right now. It's great.
This is not something we're new to when we started remind one of the biggest investors His name is John Doerr. He was the first check in Google and Amazon. He's famous VC really, really nice person. He came to our office once before he invested and he noticed above the toilet on every side, no matter where you were standing. There was a piece of paper that said Whatt, which stands for weekly active teachers, meaning how many teachers every week are using a product. And he thought that that was amazing. He actually wrote about it and it was one of his books, because everyone in the company whenever they use the restroom or on the digital dashboard, they saw Hey, are we hitting that goal? are we hitting that goal or hitting that goal? And it's really important because we live in this world of plethora of data And there's all this new technology that we can use. But even if you give me 1000 data points if I can't make business decisions today, and that doesn't matter. And so we've decided for us that KYC is an important metric. I think for people listening. They have to decide what matters to them and then be maniacal, maniacal about tracking that metric,
maniacal that that is a hilarious word. But can I just like, geek out a little bit on a concept that you have, like really enlightened to the nonprofit sector? Second, and as an aside, you are brilliant analogy. threatre? Like, can we talk about the cheese in the water bottle?
So that's in my early days of college, I was interested in being an entrepreneur, and I would read all of Seth Godin books who like, oh, yeah,
he is the king of analogies.
metaphors. I was like, Oh, my God, that makes so much sense. The water bottle one, but yeah, the concept of framework with analogies.
But I do think that that's something that gives someone visual to understand and its simplicity. But I also think that you're exactly right on the acquisition piece. Why do we starting with acquisition, why are we trying to grab it? And I'm really saying, like, grab that grabbing is such a horrible word. Like when you're thinking about gathering people, we really want to awaken and warm and inspire someone. And John, can you even imagine if we went back into our early days a nonprofit, and started to track like behaviors. And like the emotional data, the qualitative data, of who's interacting with our organization, and I don't just mean the things that we can see because they're coming to our events, or because they're making a gift each year. But I'm talking about who's watching, who's subscribing who's liking, you know,
their bank account, who's
who's asking about it's, there's, there's so many behavioral indicators in there that say that I'm curious. And I really think when you have someone's curiosity, they don't just come by chance, and they don't come back more than once. Because of something that is benign. It's gotta be personal. And so I do think that behaviorally, there's something there for what you're saying. And I want to know, like what you've learned, when you when you think about these KPIs, and being so laser focused on that, and sidenote, John, we need to get like our one metric. I don't know what our one metric is that we're like, we have a million irons in the fire. And it's a good challenge for you out there. What would be the one if you could pick the one metric? I want to know, Brett, like, what are some do this not that kind of habits our audience can employ to sort of build a habit around tracking that metric or even finding that metric?
Hmm. That's a very good and broad question. You know, the reason I shared what our metric is, which is KYC, that has no applicability to nearly anyone on this, so you shouldn't take that away. What you should take away from it is what will drive your business or organization. Let's use Lisa, as an example. You talked about her in the beginning, Lisa is one of my closest friends from when we were like seven, back in the day. She's great. And she leads a she's one of the leaders at a nonprofit consulting firm, what is the name of it again, I forgot,
evolve, giving.
And let's just say, I haven't talked to her about this, I don't know what it is, but like maybe her core core role because they've been doing this for like 10 years, let's so let's just assume they have really good retention, and customers are happy, because they will be out of business if they didn't, right. And they've been around for 10 years. So her core job is drumming up new business. And so let's say that need, they need to find five or 10 new customers that have $1 million budgets in the northern Chicago area. So I would decide what your core business metric is. And maybe in that case, for Lisa, it is acquiring new customers. And then her entire day her to do list should be specifically focused on that. Because that is what will help drive the company or organization forward. So it's impossible for me to give a KYC analogy of what whatever your KYC is, but you shouldn't think hard about what a healthy business is. Actually, this is a more important point. And I say something else,
you never have. My friend, the microphone is yours.
It's important to think about the framework for what makes a healthy company I keep saying company, it could be a nonprofit, it could be a for profit, it could be a sole proprietor, but if you're building something for someone, whether it's a product or a service that needs to somehow pay you or donate you money, there's usually core metrics that are that show that it is a healthy organization, retention, engagement, activity, activation and acquisition. Those are engagement metrics. And then there's like core revenue metrics around what is our margin? Are we making more money than we are spending? And how fast are we growing? And so once you kind of like think about those top five to 10 metrics and saying, Okay, which one matters for us in the state of company we're in maybe at least this company they've been around for 10 years, they have hundreds of customers, they're super profitable, they don't really need to think about acquisition, they just need to kind of like make sure their engagement and retention is really high. So that is the big takeaway, you should think about core business metrics that matter. And then for you internalize what matters to me right now, today, not in a year from now, because in a year from now, if you do your job, right, it will change.
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I mean, everything you're given, I just think it gives a different lens for how we think about the nonprofit world. And I want to specifically ask you about your entrepreneurial journey. You know, I've heard you talk about the importance of just as first 50 customers that you acquire. And you know, we're gonna be thinking that through this as the first 50 donors, probably, but I wonder if you could take this and just kind of walk us through your mindset of like, what does it look like to acquire your first customers? And what should you be doing with them?
Yeah, it's very personal. And I actually know this on the donor front bay. So mela supports not only schools and PTAs, and clubs, but we have hundreds of nonprofits, small and big anywhere from they raise 10 grand a year to $2 million. And so I talked to them all the time. And it's the same for them as it is, for me, interacting with them. I know that's kind of backwards. But meaning like my customers and nonprofits that PTAs, the club's, the first 50, I'm talking to them nearly every day or every other day without nagging them because I don't want to be rude and intrude on their time. I'm getting their feedback, I'm seeking to understand and there's super fast iteration cycles. Let me give you an example. Just so you know that I'm not I'm not like making it up. We have a product feature in momella, called a request. It's like an invoice if you need to charge someone 100 100 bucks. And you need to remind them, you send an invoice and it reminds them yada, yada. And we had an idea for that and how to make it better. And I literally just texted one of our customers. I said, here's a picture of what it does. Now, this is what we're thinking and why we're thinking it. What do you think? What do you think about that, and he's like, Oh, I hate it, here's why I hate it, I would have no use for it. Now, that's only one data point. So I can't just say take that as God's word, I should get a few data points. But after you get a few data points, and I email or text a few other customers or talk to them verbally, it's pretty clear. The other thing that's really important is for the first 50 customers or donors, they're really probably giving to you, like they believe in your mission, but they're probably donating, giving because they believe in you as a human. It's the same thing as when we raise capital. So with remind my first company, we've raised over $60 million in venture capital from Allah, we've raised a little bit of money as well. And for the most part, they're investing in the human being the person. And so relating to them. And having a relationship is really what is most critical in the beginning. Because once you have 30 million users are like you really, really grow, you're gonna have to extract yourself away from the day to day because it's impossible to scale and no 30 million people, but at the beginning, they should know you very well, and you should really care about them. I just
think, Brett that you think and look at the world differently. And I think it's so important that you are on this podcast right now. Because we firmly believe that the nonprofit, the social impact sector, can benefit so mightily from these entrepreneurial ideas, from these mindsets of that are thinking differently that are taking the lens and shifting it just enough that we can see things not from a myopic view, but from a multi view. Because everyone is different. The way that we interact with tech is different. The way that we interact with each other is different. The way that we are inspired to activate is different and I and I want to compliment you because as evolved as these entrepreneurial mindsets are, you have kept the human at the center you have kept listening and serving at the center. And I think that is what is really striking me right now. And can I throw out an obscenely amazing stat that you have that will knock everyone in the nonprofit sector straight out of their chairs right now.
Yeah. I see what you got. Yeah,
what is Okay, John, what do you think? Is the retention rate for Brett's customers now? Let me bet If this up and say retention rates in nonprofit are, I've already Yeah. 40% is about on average, you have 95% retention on your customers. And so one holy crap way to go to, uh, how the heck are you maintaining that because in the nonprofit world, I know we will be diving into Oh, we must be stewarding them. Well, we must be showing them impact, like, bring that secret sauce in here and tell us what you think, is the answer for how you were able to retain 95% of your customers?
Well, a few things because I know there's a consistent shock stats, but I want you to know that there wasn't always 95%. And so
the humility, yes.
But now it is. And so if you're just starting out at 40, that's okay. You can you can increase it. So one it just dog and focus on helping them. Let me give you an example of what that means. Every single day, we have a toddler stand up our whole company, there's 10 of us small, will get together. And we don't actually talk about a typical what's called Scrum and engineering says this is what I worked on yesterday, this is what I'm going to work on today. We don't believe in that, because we think it's just to like stroke egos. What we do is talk about customers every day. Here are the three customers we spoke to yesterday, here the problems we're having, here's bugs that are popping up. And we'll just talk about those problems every single day. The engineers are in the room, we also have engineers sitting in customer meetings, talking to them, which is 10 times better than me ever saying anything to one of our engineers because they empathize and they feel it. So the first one is just a dog that focus on helping them. And then the second one, and I know that sounds like overly simple, but why C's model is right is like we're just building something that they want. So the product is like it's almost like a craft for us. My wife jokes with me sometimes that this is my art. I have a My handwriting is horrible. It looks like I'm a doctor, my dad told me I should be a doctor. But I've never done that. My handwriting terrible. But this is my art creating this thing is my art. And I really care about as, as my brother who's my co founder, creating a product that's just really, really great and helps them. Now the reason all that has happened and culminates to 95% is because we spent so much time listening to them. And we solved a big problem. If we didn't solve a big problem, if we're making a potato chip. And while potato chips, maybe solve a problem, you get the idea, like 95% won't exist, we're just really helping them. And we're correlating that with the dog that focus on caring about our customer and building something that they want. And so those are like the three things that concoction that helped with that. We also track a daily we have this dashboard, we track it daily, or monitoring it. You can almost say oh, let's use an analog you almost think if you know I was hit by a car and I was on life support very scary situation. But you know, when you're in the doctor's in an ER and they have a little beep, beep, beep, beep beep that little line, there's a random is
it inducer? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That the firm metrics now, because we have enough scale to support it. And it's almost like a crank, we can shift we could say, Huh, retention is dropping, why is there a bug is our payment processor not working? Our customers not happy? Or we're our activation is lower meaning like how people are signing up isn't working, let's go run through that flow real quick and work on it. And so we have crank so we can shift. Now. I know that sounds way way super advanced. We've been doing this for 10 or 15 years. But those are like the three things that we really focus on to help help maintain that level of retention. Fascinating.
I mean, yeah, it is fascinating. And I will just plug of a previous podcast with Vic Harrison, co creator of Charity Water, who talks about their monthly giving program as a product. I mean, looking at it from that sense to where that's how Charity Water drives $60 million in donations, because they've refined that product and the experience, and all of that. So really thinking up Brett and I know you from just spending time with you that you are captivated by the world of philanthropy to and just like what it does to us as humans. And so we want to create space to ask you about a moment of philanthropy that has really stuck with you and your journey.
Yeah, it doesn't have to be literal philanthropy as someone will give me money. Okay. I didn't think oh, no, of course. It's quick, sound cliche, but the human being there's probably two or three, everyone has two or three of them. One of the three people that had the biggest impact on my life was this teacher Miss Whitefield all these threads keep coming back to this woman. And it's not because she taught me math or how to write well or arithmetic, but it's because she genuinely cared about who I was uniquely as an individual. She was super patient with me when I was feeling not smart. And if you look at the undercurrent and emotion of what not smart means, it basically means low self esteem, which of course I don't have now I have an abundance of I know who I am and who I'm not and I'm super okay with that. But for a long time as a younger adult, I wasn't. But she helped me understand that. And so she gave so much time to me and And I thought that that was so nice that she did that, that allowed me to flourish into who I am today and who I'm not because I'm not everything and build this thing that impacts millions of people. So it is really miss Whitefield that I owe a lot of gratitude to,
okay, as the daughter of a teacher, the sister of a teacher, I just, I just think that there is something about those formative years and being seen, I think, in life being seen for who you are, and for the potential and not your shortcomings. And I mean, I feel like we need to rename remind Mrs. Whitefield or something. So thank you, Mrs. Whitefield for the incredible legacy that you have inspired. And to me, that was a beautiful story of philanthropy, because it was just one human being listening to you. I mean, this is such a beautiful legacy that you are perpetuating as you listen and help others so Okay, Brett, we and all our podcast with one good thing. And we'd love to know what your one good thing would be that you'd offer up to our community today, maybe a piece of advice or a life hack. What do you suggest?
I mean, if I had to sum it up in one line, it's go talk to customers or donors. That's it. I
love it when the tech founder is the greatest development officer among investors.
Can I add one more thing notes at the end, but I requested before you made me think of something and you'll appreciate this because your parents can I tell you it, go for it. And then note you that you followed up with on seeing people for who they are. Every night when I put my son to sleep when it's my night, my wife puts him down on the other nights. I tell him that I love him for everything he is and everything he's not. And I'm a new parent, I only have he's only two. But I do that every day because I want him to know that for all the things that he's great at or all the things that he's not doesn't matter is just unbridled, consistent love. And that of course with my son is more important than any of this stuff with like building a company or whatever. That's an important part of my identity. But with him and helping him be the best version of himself is the most important thing to me.
Gosh, you're such a good
humor.
Such a good dad much in your language. I mean, I've heard unbridled of her dog that I've heard diabolical. This interview, I mean, I just love the way you show up. Well, Brett, I mean, okay, we've talked around a little bit about a mela, but give it you know, give the plug, like what is out there that people can share and, you know, bring into their different organizations, they're part of like, hook us up and show all the ways that you show up online, because people are gonna want to connect directly with you as well. Sure, yeah, just go to a
mallet.com, you can email me directly at Brett at o mela.com. We already explained what Omala does. One big takeaway that we didn't share is that we save three to 4% of every transaction. So for every million dollars, our customers collect, we'll save 30 to 40 grand, it's not black magic. It's true. That's one of the reasons for growth very quickly. So email me directly, I am happy to talk to you. And you know that because he listened to this.
And I want to I want to share one more thing. At the very end, you have this incredible repository of templates and forms. And we if you're still willing to share that I want to be generous back to you. So I'd love for you to share how people can get access to all of those forms. But I would also like to say how can this community help bring more teachers into a mela? Because understanding that Mrs. Whitehead is the type of teacher that we want to empower. How can we bring more Mrs. whiteheads around the world into your platform? And please tell us about where all the templates are.
Yeah, real quick templates are omega.com. I'm almost positive, it's slash templates. We have hundreds of templates, everything from small business to nonprofit to PTAs to clubs. The reason we do it is to help save you time. And so you can just click it and then you can just start using them, feel free to check it out. And it's very kind of you and how you can help us. We're open for business and so it doesn't matter. Like if it's a nonprofit collecting money if it's a small but small business invoicing, if it's a teacher that needs to raise money for a ticket sale, fundraiser donation, so anyone who fits into those categories, I directly would love to talk to you. I talk to every customer one by one and just send me an email threat@gmail.com And you
are corrected as momella.com backslash templates, y'all they got small business templates. They've got photo release forms, like come and grab this open source incredible repository of documents and templates and let's work smarter not harder. Brett, thanks for being such an awesome human we are rooting for you. Rooting for a mela thank you for what you're doing to pour into education and into the world.
Thank you both.
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