#61 Growth Loops in Email Marketing, Jake Schonberger, Head of Brand Partnerships, Beehiiv

Summary

Episode #61 Summary: Growth Loops in Email Marketing with Jake Schellenberger of Beehive

In episode #61 of the Always Be Testing podcast, host Ty DeGrange engages in an insightful conversation with Jake Schellenberger, the Head of Brand Partnerships at Beehive. Released on November 12, 2024, this episode delves deep into the mechanics of growth loops within email marketing, exploring strategies that drive customer acquisition, retention, and overall platform growth. Below is a comprehensive summary of their discussion, highlighting key topics, notable insights, and impactful quotes.

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1. Introduction to Beehive

Beehive is portrayed as a robust email service provider (ESP) tailored for newsletter creators. Launched three years prior to the podcast, Beehive has rapidly grown, competing with industry giants like Mailchimp and ConvertKit.

• Jake Schellenberger explains the platform's versatility:

  “Beehive is basically one of the most powerful platforms that email newsletter creators can use to write, publish, produce and monetize their newsletter.”
  [01:28]

Beehive supports approximately 20,000 newsletters ranging from niche topics like dog updates to large-scale publications like the Boston Globe, catering to audiences of varying sizes.

2. Implementing Growth Loops at Beehive

The discussion transitions to growth loops, a pivotal strategy for sustainable growth. Jake outlines several growth loops that Beehive employs:

a. Partner Program

Beehive's partner program incentivizes both users and non-users to refer the platform to potential publishers.

• Jake Schellenberger highlights the program's attractiveness:

  “If they join Beehive you as a partner, you get paid out 50% of whatever that referral ends up paying per month for an entire year.”
  [04:49]

This affiliate-like model not only drives referrals but also offers substantial payouts, encouraging participants to actively promote Beehive.

b. Affiliate Rewards

In addition to the standard partner program, Beehive fosters competitive spirit through rewards.

• Jake Schellenberger shares:

  “We offer every quarter the refer that refers the most folks to us. We send them, we call it the Beehive Beach Club. We send them on a trip to a beach or an island somewhere.”
  [04:50]

Such incentives reinforce engagement and amplify referral efforts.

c. Dogfooding

A significant internal growth loop involves employees actively using Beehive's services.

• Jake Schellenberger emphasizes this strategy:

  “Over 75% of the employees at Beehive have a newsletter, and so we use the product all the time.”
  [05:11]

This practice ensures continual product testing and improvement, fostering a deep understanding of user needs and enhancing retention.

d. Ad Network Utilization

Beehive's ad network serves both publishers and advertisers, creating a symbiotic growth environment.

• Jake Schellenberger illustrates with an example:

  “We work with advertisers that are not on Beehive... It enables publishers to monetize by getting paid for those advertisers.”
  [03:09]

By aligning advertisers with relevant publishers, Beehive ensures effective ad placements, benefiting both parties.

e. Content Marketing through Listicles

Beehive leverages content marketing by producing listicles that feature top newsletters across various niches.

• Jake Schellenberger explains the dual purpose:

  “If you look on the blog, you'll see a couple dozen listicles about the top newsletters... it’s also a really powerful growth loop on a couple different sides of the business.”
  [08:48]

These listicles not only showcase publishers but also enhance SEO, attracting potential advertisers searching for relevant newsletters.

3. Overcoming Growth Challenges

With growth comes challenges, particularly in managing extensive feedback and prioritizing product development.

• Jake Schellenberger discusses prioritization:

  “There is so much to build... the challenge is really just taking enough time to step back, really understand prioritization...”
  [12:57]

Beehive addresses this by implementing cooldown weeks—dedicated periods for addressing technical debt, fixing issues, and evaluating new features. This strategy ensures sustained product quality and prevents burnout from continuous development cycles.

4. Marketing Strategies in SaaS

Marketing Software as a Service (SaaS) presents unique challenges, especially in customer acquisition and retention.

• Jake Schellenberger underscores the importance of customer support:

  “We have a really large customer support team... we want everybody who has decided to pay to use our product to have a really good experience.”
  [16:09]

By embedding engineering personnel within the sales team, Beehive ensures a seamless transition for publishers migrating from other platforms, enhancing satisfaction and retention.

5. Experiments and Learnings

One of the standout strategies discussed is Beehive's emphasis on direct user feedback.

• Jake Schellenberger shares their approach:

  “We send out a lot of surveys... if you're open, honest, sharing feedback directly.”
  [18:28]

Engaging directly with both publishers and advertisers allows Beehive to iterate effectively, refining their offerings based on real-world usage and needs.

6. Career Insights and Influences

Jake reflects on pivotal moments in his career that shaped his approach to growth and product development.

a. Foundational Projects

Early ventures, such as building a payment platform during undergrad, instilled confidence and a deep understanding of product-market fit.

• Jake Schellenberger reminisces:

  “We built a product that worked... it was me and four other people in undergrad.”
  [21:36]

b. Mentorship and Inspiration

Influential figures, like Professor Julia Lee from Harvard, inspired Jake with her multifaceted career and problem-solving ethos.

• Jake Schellenberger praises her impact:

  “She just had a career in multiple different industries... it makes you realize that if you want to make a big change, you can.”
  [23:41]

7. Fun Segment: Personal Insights

Towards the episode's end, Jake shares personal anecdotes and preferences, adding a light-hearted touch to the conversation.

• Jake Schellenberger reveals a unique family coincidence:

  “My birthday is Halloween... my sister was born on St Patrick's Day and my brother was born on Hanukkah.”
  [27:08]

He also discusses his love for biking in Brooklyn and his Halloween costume plans, showcasing his vibrant personality.

Conclusion

Episode #61 offers a deep dive into the strategic growth mechanisms employed by Beehive, emphasizing the significance of growth loops, customer-centric product development, and robust marketing strategies. Jake Schellenberger's experiences and insights provide valuable lessons for anyone interested in growth marketing, performance strategies, and the intricacies of scaling a SaaS platform. The recurring theme—“feedback is a gift”—resonates as a cornerstone of sustainable growth and continuous improvement.

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For listeners interested in leveraging data-driven growth strategies and understanding the nuances of email marketing, this episode serves as a treasure trove of actionable insights and real-world applications.

Transcript

[Ty DeGrange]

Foreign. Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your host, Ty degrange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media and affiliate marketing. We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings and growth markets, marketing and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door and have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host Ty DeGrange and I'm really excited to talk to Jake Schellenberger. Jake, how you doing man?

[Jake Schellenberger]

I'm good. Thanks for having me on the pod.

[Ty DeGrange]

Absolutely. It's been a moment. We both, both got came down with the black lung that was going around, whatever it was. And we're back, we're alive, we're strong.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Stronger for it, persevered.

[Ty DeGrange]

Jake's the, the man. He's the head of brand partnerships at Beehive. Beehive is an amazing email platform which he's going to share more with us about. I happen to be a user, a fan and yeah, Jake's got some great knowledge to share on, on growth, on, on partnerships and a lot of things, all things Beehive. So this should be a good one for everybody out there. Jake, hit us with the, with Beehive. Maybe tell us a little bit just about what Beehive is for those that don't know.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, sure. So Beehive is an email email service provider and esp, we're basically one of the most powerful platforms that email newsletter creators can use to write, publish, produce and monetize their newsletter. The company launched just about three years ago and has grown to a place where it's competing with some of the incumbents like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, etc. In just a couple of years we have about 20,000 newsletters that run their newsletter on the platform and that ranges from folks that have a newsletter about their dog, talk about what their dog is up to, to 100 subscribers, up to the Boston Globe that speaks to millions of people and sends out daily news about what's happening in the world. So newsletters of all sizes, shapes and content types can run and monetize an entire business on Beehive.

[Ty DeGrange]

That's awesome. And yeah, my view is. And you're going to get into this, but I think like the integrations, the ease of use, there's a lot of user friendly features that have been built out over time for creators for folks that are educating their communities like myself. And so I'VE really enjoyed that piece of it and I know a lot of others have recommended it. I think it's getting a lot of adoption. Speaking of adoption and growth, we talk a lot about growth performance marketing on the Pod Learnings. I know we've got some reforged fans in the audience and you know, they are obviously talking about growth loops and we talk about similar flywheels when we talk about growth for many businesses. But what growth loops are is Beehive implementing now what is kind of part of the growth loop for Beehive?

[Jake Schellenberger]

So I'll preface this answer with the part of the business that I work on is called the ad Network. So what my business does is we kind of have essentially an ad network that sits on top of those 20,000 publications. We work with advertisers that are not on Beehive. They come to us and say, hey, we run a financial services platform. We want to advertise in newsletters that speak to people that care about those things. And from a publisher perspective, that enables publishers to monetize by getting paid for those advertisers. So some of the growth loops that I'll mention come from the perspective of growing that part of the business as well as the rest of Beehive. But yeah, to actually answer the question, Beehive as a whole, our main customer is a publication. So somebody that has a newsletter that wants to find a platform or use a platform that can enable them to write their newsletter, grow their newsletter and monetize it. Some of the growth loops that we use most successfully, we have a partner program that's really powerful. So actually, whether or not you are a Beehive user, you can basically be part of the partner program. Recommend Beehive to other potential publishers or existing publishers that are on different platforms. If they join Beehive you as a partner, you get paid out 50% of whatever that that referral ends up paying per month for an entire year. It's a really large payout and it can enable folks to actually earn enough to pay their rent, pay their car insurance, pay their car off every month. And it works really well. It's one of the bigger non direct sales growth loop that we have. Interrupt me whenever.

[Ty DeGrange]

Love a good affiliate program.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Oh yeah, the affiliate program. It rocks. We also offer every quarter the refer that refers the most folks to us. We send them, we call it the Beehive Beach Club. We send them on a trip to a beach or an island somewhere. Awesome. And we don't skimp out. It's a really awesome trip because we really appreciate the work that these folks are putting into the program.

[Ty DeGrange]

It's amazing. Love that.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, I'll mention one other and then can expand on some others as well if we have time, but dogfooding, it's kind of a hidden gem, but I would say over 75% of the employees at Beehive have a newsletter, and so we use the product all the time. The newsletters that people run range in style, content type, et cetera. And that really enables us to do a lot of testing and do real testing so we're not just poking around and seeing if the buttons work. Everybody's actually using the tool because they're writing a newsletter, they're monetizing it. It's a second source of income for them and it really enables us to deeply understand the product. Less of a direct growth loop, but it enables us to really understand what we need to build and how we need to build the product to be better for our users. The growth there is more about retention, I would say, because we know what we would need as a user ourselves to stay on the platform. I've never said this in relation to this analogy or this example, but defense is the best offense. If you build your product really well and you're doing it from the inside, you're keeping people on the platform. That's the best way to grow the business.

[Ty DeGrange]

Love it. Well said.

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Talk about the feature. Say talk about some of the, you know, other pieces of the business that you're focused on. What are some of the examples that you kind of want to dive into and share with the audience?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, I'll actually talk about the ad network a little bit. It relates to dog fooding. So a quick. Another recap on the ad Network. So we will work with an advertiser, say Betterment. Betterment is a personal finance management product. They also have checking accounts, savings accounts, all that stuff. We have a lot of newsletters that write about personal finance. So it's a perfect match. We work with them to get in front of the right customer. We also have a lot of newsletters that speak to creators and marketers. So we actually just run our own ads on Beehive. So we have a campaign on the Beehive ad Network. It feels relatively meta, but that's another way where we actually use our product. We know that we have 500 newsletters that speak to other creators that are writing newsletters, writing about how to grow your newsletter. So we just advertise in those newsletters. We're essentially paying them through an ad to talk about the product they're using to write the newsletter in the first place. And it gets in front of the most pointed audience because we know everybody that's reading about how to write a newsletter is probably interested in writing a newsletter or is writing a newsletter.

[Ty DeGrange]

I love the relevancy.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, I can bring up one or two more. I'll actually talk about the listicles that we write. So we produce a lot of listicles about our own users. So we. If you look on the blog, you'll see a couple dozen listicles about the top newsletters about fashion or top 10 newsletters or topical roaming newsletters about fitness or finance. On its surface, it's a pretty simple blog post, but underneath. And the purpose of the listicle is actually twofold. One is just to showcase our users, give them something to celebrate and motivate them. Motivate maybe folks that aren't on the list to do certain things to get on the list in the first place or the next time it comes around, the next is SEO play for the advertiser side of the business. So when we post a listicle of 10 folks that 10 top newsletters in the music space, those newsletters, they will share that content. They'll share it on their blog, they'll share it on their socials, et cetera, Increases SEO for that list. So the next time Sony comes around and they say, hey, we're googling around, we're looking for newsletters that we want to advertise on, that listicle pops up. The listicle leads folks or that person from Sony to the Beehive website to the Ad Network webpage, and then end up Having a meeting with me and that Listicle just drove a potential ad campaign with Sony. So that Listicle is. It enables us to showcase our publishers, but it's also a really powerful growth loop on a couple different sides of the business.

[Ty DeGrange]

I love tapping into the principles of SEO and also kind of almost the user. It's like you're almost tapping into like intelligent company generated content and maybe some user. And it's, it's a very smart. It's combining a lot of best of elements of like affiliate SEO content strategy. It's, it's a very interesting, intelligent approach and you're coming at growth from a number of angles, it seems.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Exactly. And it's free, it's easy to put together and the incentives are all very well aligned.

[Ty DeGrange]

I love it. No, it's. I think that kind of, it's a great summary of like a lot of the positives that are working well for the levers that you guys are utilizing intelligently. It's, it's very, it's very interesting. So it's why, it's why you guys are doing well, which is awesome. Speaking of doing well, what are you most excited about right now?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, kind of what I mentioned earlier on. But the growth of the business has been really exciting leadership. So Tyler, Ben and the team, they're incredible about just having their finger on the pulse of what publishers need and building it and not waiting. The company overall takes a very strong approach of building fast and shipping fast and so just very exciting. So I've been at Beehive for about a year. I'll talk a bit more about my background later on. But joining a company that is very clearly winning and is not taking that for granted, that is manifested in seeing every product update, shipping, real features, and every time we talk to users or every time users are chirping us on Twitter, asking for products or giving us feedback, we recognize that feedback is actually a gift. We don't push it off. We build the things that they need. And so that excitement is more about just recognizing that we have built a team of builders. And this sounds cliche, but people that actually want to build and people that are excited about recognizing what the gaps are.

[Ty DeGrange]

I love that you guys are walking the walk there. You know, I love that line. Feedback is a gift. It's such a powerful product growth, customer service business mechanism and much easier said than done. And I love to hear that you guys are walking the walk.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Totally. I'll probably repeat that again later on.

[Ty DeGrange]

So that's all right. We can put that in the headlines.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Sounds good.

[Ty DeGrange]

It'll be one of the takeaways. You know, we're obviously a big proponent of Beehive. The growth is there. There's all kinds of growth levers we've talked about that are leading to the success. All great businesses have their challenges. What are some of those challenges that you're looking to overcome right now?

[Jake Schellenberger]

I think it actually directly relates to what we just talked about. Feedback is a gift, but there's always a ton of it. And it's very difficult sometimes to understand. If we're hearing a need from say five publishers and then we hear 20 other needs from a couple hundred other publishers, which ones do we prioritize? There is so much to build and because we have that mindset of trying to ship product really quickly, it's very easy to fall into the trap of just trying to build too much. So the challenge there is really just taking enough time to step back, really understand prioritization and really understand what is both going to move the needle forward for the business. What are also things that we can build fast that will be surprising delight moments for our users that won't shoot us in the foot and create a lot of tech debt in the future. I think most companies, a lot of companies at this stage will experience that and that's definitely a challenge that will never go away. We just have to ruthlessly prioritize while not prioritizing so much that we're not doing anything.

[Ty DeGrange]

Yeah. Such a powerful one and such a challenging one. You know when you kind of related topic, related question, right. Like kind of balancing that new feature shipping mindset to product updates to kind of like that really quality, refined brand and alignment need of quality over necessarily quantity. Right. And impact. What are some kind of guardrails you guys have put in place that have allowed that balance and allowed for the right mix there?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, I can't take credit for this. I think Tyler and the engineering team are very good about understanding what their bandwidth is. And in the last couple quarters we've implemented cooldown weeks. Sometimes they're a week long, sometimes they're multiple weeks. Those are specifically built for during those cycles, that week long or two, whatever week long cycle specifically focusing on fixing things that are broken, managing tech debt and basically going back into that backlog. Every engineering team will have a massive backlog because not everything can get done. But having these cooldown weeks that are interspersed into regular development cycles really helps us understand A, what is the level of tech debt and B, let's just make sure we have specific time set aside to go back and make sure the product that we built a couple months ago is still operating at the level that it should be. And then also just allowing us time to do analysis on. Hey, we launched this new feature. Is it working? Is it working as we expected? That all happens on a continual basis anyway. But having time that's specifically slotted out to do that from a technical perspective is really powerful and really helpful.

[Ty DeGrange]

I love that. Yeah, it's a great. Those are great call outs. You've kind of talked a lot about the process and the balancing of getting that product balance correct and that product release schedule. Right. Flipping over to the marketing side, software is unique. Marketing SaaS is certainly unique. You know, what are some of the challenges that you've seen? I'm curious to know, like what seems to be kind of like how is it done right? Have you seen it done wrong in terms of just marketing SaaS, it's kind of its own beast. I'd love to hear your perspective on some of the things you see working well. Maybe some of the things you've seen in the past not work well.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, yeah. I wrote a couple notes that were kind of the goal of these answers is to be a little bit different from what I've heard in just like other past interviews about how to differentiate. A lot of it comes down to at least what I'm seeing here is the focus on customer service and support and post sale experience. I think everybody can attest to a time where they maybe not B2B but just generally in SaaS they bought a product, they were sold the moon and they got like something less than the moon and then all of a sudden the salesperson goes away and there's no support to help them figure out what they need to do or do what they need to do. We have a really large customer support team and it's on purpose because we want SLAs to be really short, meaning we want like everybody's concerns to be addressed really fast. We want everybody who has decided to pay to use our product to have a really good experience, especially within the first couple days. You'll see on the structure of our sales team on the SaaS side of the business, we have a sales team and then we have an engineering team that sits with the sales team and that person or a couple people depending on the size of the publication that's coming over to beehive, they are extremely hands on. They go in, they actually do the porting over from a ConvertKit or a Mailchimp to Beehive. They'll rebuild Automations, they'll do basically everything a publication needs to then sit down on Monday, get into Beehive and not have to do anything new. So we basically take that first couple days of a publisher deciding to pay to be on Beehive very seriously and then overall try to make sure that everybody's concerns are dealt with within at least one day. So it's not again, not really outbound and growth, but it's more about retention and just making sure the experience is really good. And as you were saying, just walking the walk, if we say it's a good product, we want it to be a good product and a good experience.

[Ty DeGrange]

Well, I love the focus on customer obsession. Again, it's easier said than done but it feeds into that engagement, that retention that you need and want and that's without that you don't really have growth. So I think you've nailed it there. Great call outs. As we like to do on the always be Testing pod. Your favorite experiments and learnings. What are some that come to mind? What are some that kind of drove the most impact or learnings from your perspective?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, it's always the things that don't scale, at least for me. So we run on the ad network part of the business. We touch both sides. So we touch publishers, meaning we talk to publishers and just understand, hey, are the ads that we're bringing you, are they good? Do they make sense for you? Are you getting paid as much as you expected? On the advertiser side, we work with them to try to understand are you seeing good business results? Are the publishers that are running your campaigns, are they appropriate? So we're talking to a lot of people every month or two. We have just not necessarily office hours but just meetings with users and just let them, if they're mad, let them berate us, ask for feedback. We do that quite a bit. And then we also send out a lot of surveys. So last month we sent a survey, basically had an on platform survey that popped up for any user that hadn't partaken in the ad network and just asked some honest questions. Not the most sophisticated experiment. It's really just, hey, we haven't heard from these publishers or these users. We don't really know why they're not engaging. So let's just ask them, see if they'll be honest, give them a platform to provide feedback. Sometimes you can throw like a gift card and say we'll pay you 100 bucks or give you 100 bucks. In a Starbucks gift card. Or maybe not Starbucks, an Amazon gift card. If you just be honest with us. And those are the things that help us the most when people are just open, honest, sharing feedback directly.

[Ty DeGrange]

Yeah, no, it's awesome. I love that you've. Obviously great to see you at Beehive. You've done some really cool things in your career. What was kind of a sliding door moment in your career?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, I wrote a couple down in my notes when I was thinking about this question. So 1. In undergrad, I was studying microfinance as part of my senior thesis. I went to RPI as Rensselaer Polytech. And Microfinance was essentially the graming bank in a couple third world countries. Went in, tried to figure out how to. I'll shorten this answer. It was about to expand, basically how to give micro loans to groups of people that couldn't access regular loans because the loans amount didn't make sense for modern.

[Ty DeGrange]

Remember kiva exploding like 2010, 15 years ago? That was a good example.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Exactly. Very similar types of platforms. I ended up trying to take some of those concepts, bringing them to the us Ended up building a platform called Pay with me. Very similar to what Splitwise is now. We won a couple of business plan competitions. Basically built a platform that was focused on group collections, so enabling you as a person to collect money from 10 people. Our angle was using some of the microfinance structures that were basically social incentives. We enabled somebody, like if you were part of a group that I organized, you would make your payment to me. And the platform showed you, hey, Ty, here's eight other people that haven't paid Jake yet. Send them a note. So you basically were able to send eight people, you may, may or may not know, really rude and funny messages we could post on their wall, basically saying, hey, you've been a bad friend. Why aren't you paying Jake back? That was.

[Ty DeGrange]

I could think of some good uses for that.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Oh, it was great. Yeah. And that angle worked. It was me and four other people in undergrad. We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know how to build a business. But we built a product that worked. I think we transacted. We processed about 20,000 transactions. We didn't make any money. And then we ended up shutting it down. But that was over about a year and a half. It was right out of undergrad. All of our friends were going and getting jobs at consulting firms or banks or whatever they were doing. And after that year and a half, we felt like we were behind very quickly we realized that, hey, we had just built a business. We gained a ton of confidence. We understood how to go to market with a product, we understood how to do research, we understood how to build something, and we understood the concept of feedback. And that was actually a gift. And all of those things led the entire team to go off and just do, like, have incredible careers. Just be very confident and kind of embody the concept of ignorance is bliss. There's no reason why we should have been the ones building a payments platform when we were 18 or 19, but we did because we just didn't know any better. And that definitely opened the door for me to understand what the tech world was, what startups were, and just the empowerment that you feel when you build a product that people use.

[Ty DeGrange]

Now you nailed that. What a great way to answer and to get that real life, real customer product feedback. How many MBAs does it take to get that? I think obviously not to diminish that value, but I think going live, getting the product out, going through all that cycle, all that effort, those learnings can be immense. So well done.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, definitely. I still remember. It's very cliche, but I remember, like, the first transaction that happened, me and my co founder, we were sitting in the student union at our school and we just got a ping. I think it was PayPal that we were using to process. We got a ping that we, like, made $1 and we freaked out. That's amazing. We're in business.

[Ty DeGrange]

We're in business. Yeah. That's so cool. So cool. I love that story. Is there a career, influence or mentor that you want to acknowledge just based on the counsel you've gotten over the years?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, I was thinking about two. One, I went back to school. I went to the Harvard design and engineering schools. And there was a professor woman, Julia Lee. She was incredible. She was technically a professor in theoretical physics. She was teaching a class on design. And she didn't have a specific thing or saying or piece of advice. It was mainly her career that was super inspiring. So she. She has a Nobel Peace Prize or a Nobel Prize in physics. She launched two technical universities in South America.

[Ty DeGrange]

Wow.

[Jake Schellenberger]

And she did. She just had a career in multiple different industries that seemingly don't connect to each other. She's currently working on a company that helps immigrants in the US build businesses, specifically around home improvement. Not necessarily connected to physics, but the nonchalant way she talked about going out and understanding new problems she wanted to solve and just going and digging and solving those problems or trying to I think it put everybody in my program and in the classes that she was talking in at ease when they were thinking about career transitions. Because there's this person in front of you that has had 10 different careers in 10 completely different industries, and it makes you realize that if you want to make a big change, you can. It's possible. And that was just very inspiring.

[Ty DeGrange]

Very inspiring, for sure. That's amazing.

[Jake Schellenberger]

And just so badass.

[Ty DeGrange]

Yeah. Yeah. Theoretical physicists who can do it all in the real world and do it in multiple verticals with ease is pretty amazing. That's awesome. Very cool. Moving down the home stretch, bringing in some fun questions. Item that you bought recently, you rave about.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah. Less of an item, more of a service. I live in New York, in Brooklyn. Lyft Pink is a game changer, mainly because it's. It's 200 bucks for a year. You get free access to Citi Bike. I like to bike around the city, and that includes, at least when I purchased it, it includes the electric bikes, the regular bikes, and then you get priority access to. If you're ordering just a Lyft car, you just get your car faster. It's a little bit cheaper, but mainly about the bike.

[Ty DeGrange]

Awesome. That's great.

[Jake Schellenberger]

I think I saved a couple hundred bucks by using free bikes.

[Ty DeGrange]

Are you ever feel a little bit unsafe on that thing in the city?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah, it's completely lawless, but that's an adrenaline rush, so.

[Ty DeGrange]

That'S amazing. You're just an adrenaline junkie. You don't care. You're like, let's do it. Let's do this.

[Jake Schellenberger]

I mean, I want to be safe, but, um.

[Ty DeGrange]

Yeah.

[Jake Schellenberger]

But, yeah, there's.

[Ty DeGrange]

Yeah.

[Jake Schellenberger]

If I can get a rush on the way to work.

[Ty DeGrange]

Are you finding it's more efficient than other means of transportation?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Most of the time, yeah. And it's not always about the efficiency yet. The rush is there, too. But if it's a beautiful day out and it'll take me a half hour to bike or 20 minutes to take a subway, I might as well be outside.

[Ty DeGrange]

Yeah. You dodging messenger bikes and other bikers as well?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Definitely. The messenger bikes, they'll go any which way. I don't think they even see the stoplights on the whole. I do.

[Ty DeGrange]

They have a sixth sense.

[Jake Schellenberger]

They do, yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. I think I'm respectful on the. On the road, on the bike, for the record.

[Ty DeGrange]

That's awesome. I love it. What's a random fact about you that you want to tell the audience?

[Jake Schellenberger]

I honestly forgot to prepare for this question. So this is the most nerve wracking question. I'm just going to share my go to corporate fun fact because it's relatively topical, but my birthday is Halloween, which is in two weeks. And then I have two siblings. All three of us were born on holidays. My sister was born on St Patrick's Day and my brother was born on Hanukkah, which doesn't hit every year, but just a really odd coincidence.

[Ty DeGrange]

That's a crazy coincidence. Fun fact, yeah, the holiday, birthday, family definitely.

[Jake Schellenberger]

And all good holidays. Nothing that like the holiday overtakes the birthday. They're all celebratory and they're not serious. So it's really fun.

[Ty DeGrange]

Nice. You got a Halloween costume picked out.

[Jake Schellenberger]

I don't. I have a dog. He's a black lab. Last year I dressed as John Wick and my dog's name is Johnny, so he was Johnny Wick.

[Ty DeGrange]

Perfect.

[Jake Schellenberger]

And then my backup. Yeah, my backup is always Jake from State Farm.

[Ty DeGrange]

I love it. Very cool, Very cool. Jake from State Farm. Where can people find you to learn more about you?

[Jake Schellenberger]

Yeah. On Twitter or LinkedIn. I tweet a little bit more than I should handle. Is schoenbergerjake or you can email me jacobhive.com awesome.

[Ty DeGrange]

Jake, this was awesome, man. Tons of learnings about Beehive, how you got there, the growth loops involved. The feedback is a gift message rings true throughout. The product launches you've been through and that you're close to product now is inspiring and awesome stuff, man. I really enjoyed it. It was a packed session and I know get some folks reaching out to you with questions hopefully and let's keep the conversation going. All things Beehive's rocking. So congrats man.

[Jake Schellenberger]

Awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

[Ty DeGrange]

You bet. Sa.