Scaling T.LY: From URL Shortener to Market Expansion

Chris Kiefer (00:01.974)

Welcome back everybody to another episode of The Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer and today I have Tim Leland who is the founder of the world's shortest URL shortener and that is t.ly. So I will let Tim explain kinda his background and how he got to where he is now, but just some context for the listeners. URL shorteners like Bitly that people are probably familiar with, t.ly.

I think, and Tim, you can correct me if I'm wrong when I hand this over to you, but you've got over 400,000 users. It's a Chrome extension, but he's had a ton of success and he's been doing all of this as a solopreneur, which is even more impressive. So I'm excited to talk about how he's growing this and scaling this with a ultra-lean team. But first of all, Tim, thank you so much for coming on.

Tim Leland (00:57.322)

Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's great to get to talk about what I've been working on.

Chris Kiefer (01:02.218)

Yeah, and then the second thing is just go ahead and give us like the 60 second, 90 second bio of who are you, where did you develop your skills, and then if I understand correctly from some other podcasts I've heard you on, you just recently made the leap to go full time on this. So I love knowing that, I was just talking to my business coach, like what was the thing that made you say,

okay, it's happening, I'm going all in. Because I feel like a lot of people have the idea and it's at varying levels of taking off, but there's something that you have to commit as an entrepreneur and say, this is no longer like a side hustle or a hobby, like I'm doing this. So take it away.

Tim Leland (01:51.722)

Yeah, so I've been developing software since college. I got a computer science degree, so my first job was building software. And then I always have kind of been entrepreneur type person. I enjoy like, you know, what can I do to build, you know, or make some additional money on the side, that type of stuff. So started off just building websites for local businesses. And then eventually I've started realizing that didn't scale very well.

website, I'd have to start all over. So I decided to get into building more of apps and I kind of landed into like the Chrome extension store, started building extensions and had a weather extension that kind of grew to close to 300,000 users at one point and started, yeah, still active. I put some time into it, just not as much. And so...

Chris Kiefer (02:41.974)

Is that still active?

Tim Leland (02:51.09)

You know, it makes some money. Uh, you know, I have some pro features that people can upgrade, but what I learned is if you see, you know, even on the new like Mac update, now there's like weather widgets and stuff like that. Like people don't really expect to pay for. Weather. So, um, anyways, that was kind of my introduction to, you know, building something, scaling it to, you know, thousands of users and, um, and then, uh,

company I was working for, um, they needed a URL shortener and I built one there just internal and that kind of exposed me a little bit to why a company would need it. And then eventually, um, Google, you know, I don't know if you've seen recently in the news, they've actually shut down Google podcasts and a few other internal apps, but they're always doing that. Well, they, they announced, and I think it was 2017, 2018 that they were shutting down their Google URL shortener and

Chris Kiefer (03:49.217)

Mmm.

Tim Leland (03:49.89)

there was an extension that used the API. So what dawned on me is a million users that use that extension would be going to look for something new. And that's where I built originally, I built just a link shortener extension and it has grown to that's where you referenced the 450,000. That's grown to be pretty, pretty large user base. And then on top of that, I built my own service, which is the T dot L Y.

as like the SaaS product that people can use for free, but they also can sign up and pay monthly for more advanced features like custom domains and more analytics and just other things that people would want to be able to like manage their short links. And yeah, so I've been doing that since 2019 and just slowly been growing it, adding new features and just a lot of it's just been like marketing. So, you know, I build features, but then I would

put some additional marketing content out there to bring more awareness and, uh, improve my search ranking. And then eventually, like you said, I decided in the past few months to actually go full time on it. So I was able to quit my job.

Chris Kiefer (05:01.886)

Yeah, I'm curious, I would assume that the, well, first question would be, how long ago did you thought of, I could just be an entrepreneur and do this on my own? Was that like 10 years ago or three years ago? And even if it wasn't, if you didn't know how, it probably more recently, t.ly was the pathway. But I'm curious, was this like a, you were hoping to...

Tim Leland (05:25.954)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (05:30.35)

do your own thing for a long time in your life, or was it just recently where this was like an exciting opportunity that you wanted to pursue?

Tim Leland (05:38.346)

Yeah, if I go back, I would say like building the websites. I went from our, I built a few local businesses website, local businesses websites, and I went from thinking, okay, I'll build five of them. I'm charging this much a month for me to quit my job. I'd have to build like, you know, a thousand of them. And immediately I was like, okay, that's not really scalable. So I guess if I go back, yeah, my end goal has been to eventually do my own thing.

And a lot of that's just due to like my thinking. So when I got out of college, I went, got my first job, wasn't a bad job, but I learned real quick, okay, you know, I got to wake up, be here. And it was like, you know, this was way before remote work and things like that. But I'd have to be there at my desk before 8 a.m. and I wasn't leaving till after six. So I would walk in, it was dark, I would leave and it was dark. And I was like thinking.

I don't know if I want to do this for the rest of my life. I wonder what other path is there? And then I started getting, you know, just, I just kind of go deep into learning in different things. I started learning about like IndieHackers, like IndieHackers.com is a website. I got a lot of resources and a lot of interviews like this where people just talk about their story. But once I learned that I don't have to necessarily start like a massive company to be able to like.

Chris Kiefer (06:33.774)

Hmm.

Tim Leland (06:58.326)

go full time, I could just build something, especially on what the internet is, build it, get thousands or millions of people to use it, and then eventually possibly work on that full time and kind of get that freedom that I was looking for.

Chris Kiefer (07:02.924)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (07:12.746)

Yeah, I think that I have a similar story of I got an engineering degree, went into structural engineering, my first job. I lasted six months, same thing. Like it was, when I got it, I was stoked. Big office building in downtown Portland, you know, like 25th floor, beautiful view. But then it's like that wears off after three days. And then it's just like, you're in the grind, same thing. Show up at eight, stay till the end of the day, go home. And yeah, it just.

I can relate on many levels there. I'm curious, with the, with T or any, I guess any extension, I'm sure that it varies greatly on the extension, but a broad market extension that's very applicable, what's the percentage, and maybe you can only speak to the ones that you've had, but like for your weather one, for the URL shortener one, I think you have like a screenshot one as well.

What's the percentage of users to like the conversion of a paid user at any level? Is it like 5% or 10% or was one of your extensions like 20 and the other one's 2%? Like where do those or are you able to determine? Like can you look at another extension and be like, yeah, conservatively I bet 10% of their people are paying or again, I'm assuming it's, I don't know why I'm going immediately to 10, but what is the like,

average benchmark for an extension.

Tim Leland (08:43.402)

Yes. So the, I guess it would depend. So extensions are tough because, uh, people generally install them. And if they don't get immediate value, they uninstall and it's just such an easy process to install and install. And also most of the extensions are free. So they've, you know, people have installed extensions and they kind of just expect it to be free. Like I get all the time, like why.

Chris Kiefer (08:56.794)

Hmm.

Tim Leland (09:08.83)

Why isn't the weather extension completely free? Let's say, and partly, cause it still costs me like hundreds of dollars to run a month. And you know, it's, it's like a one-time upgrade. So I have to get X number of people to upgrade to really just support the extension. But yeah, so people expect it to be free and they will uninstall real quick. So the best thing would be, you know, if you can look at extensions, like maybe one password,

or some of these other ones where it's like the extension is not really, uh, the extension is just like an additional piece for the business versus like

Chris Kiefer (09:46.542)

Hmm. It's like to make the thing that you're gonna buy anyway is easier or integrated better

Tim Leland (09:50.574)

Yes. So like you really can't use one password without paying them. So I imagine there's this, you know, if anybody installs the extension it's like almost a hundred percent conversion. But in my case, I don't know, I'd have to look at numbers, but in a lot of my users can come from anywhere. So, you know, I built the extension originally as just a standalone thing and then kind of integrated it with TDILY. So, um, and, and I tried to, you know, with most of my stuff,

make it a lot of it free and just let people use it. And I'm trying to build it to where it becomes, you know, the number, when people think of, I want to create a short link. Yeah. So I'm probably not optimizing it as much, but I think when I looked this was months ago, it might've been like 2% conversion rate or something like that. So it's not, yeah, 10% would be really nice.

Chris Kiefer (10:29.358)

the name, the household name kind of thing.

Chris Kiefer (10:45.694)

Yeah, but I assume, but like you said, it's more of the, I like that the focus is, does the extension do what I assume it's going to do? How easy is it? Like I feel, this is my perspective, many tools online that are free, I know that there is some, it's like, okay, what's the model here? Are they getting my information? Are they tracking my browser usage?

Do I, are they, is there very limited features that I'm gonna have to pay? Like, you go into them, all of them, with that kind of lens, and so there's kind of like, this seems a little strange, and that would be a reason not to uninstall something. But that makes perfect sense, that yours super straightforward, and it does what it says it's gonna do. I'm curious, how do you over, like if you've got the weather thing, the T.LY, the screenshot, I don't know how many other ones there are.

It seems like it's kind of hard to cross promote, at least directly in the Chrome extension store. How are you able to get people from one thing to another? Is it like, do you get email addresses of people that use your stuff, or what access to communicating with people do you have when you're in the extension world?

Tim Leland (12:07.21)

Yeah, you don't really get that. So yeah, but to go back to what you said, if you're using something for free and there is a company behind it, it's like, you know, Facebook, you're the product, right? You're because of the advertising. So if they're not making money through advertising or, um, you know, selling your data or whatever, then they're usually charging for it.

So that's, that's my thing. I don't know if anybody ever says like, you know, why can't this thing just be free? Well, it's usually most things. Yeah, nothing's free. So, um, now there are some like, you know, there's like some ad blocker extensions that are open source and really, you know, people push to make them free. Like, you know, an ad blocker extension usually isn't going to make money on advertising because that's the whole goal of it. Um,

Chris Kiefer (12:36.746)

Nothing's free. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (12:53.858)

That's the point. Ha ha ha.

Tim Leland (12:55.518)

Now some of those have gone paid, but anyways. Yeah, so cross promoting. I don't think I've probably done, most of my stuff aren't, they're not really related like a weather extension to a link shortener extension. But when you install my weather extension, it takes you to like a blog post on my personal site that has like a list of my other extensions. So maybe some people install it from there, but they're not really like related products.

But I think overall kind of just like in general, like the SEO of like all the extensions I've built over the years have helped. And, you know, obviously like the weather extension grew to hundreds of thousands of users. And then the link shorter extension grew even faster to where it's, you know, getting closer to 450,000, I mean, closer to 500,000 users. So, you know, I'm hoping that one, you know, could get to a million. That's kind of my big goal.

for it.

Chris Kiefer (13:53.978)

Hmm. So you've created the link shortener and you've now gone all in on this. What's the, because I came across this because for the review software that I made, I don't know if you remember, and it's funny, I didn't realize that the person responding to the support tickets would be the creator of it, but you replied, we were asking about some more advanced analytics features. What, like how?

I'm curious for 400,000 users and only a portion of them, because you can use it without making an account. But for, so the small percentage that have made an account, how many like support tickets or requests are you getting in a week or a month? And is it, yeah, like what is the volume of your time that is spent just trying to answer questions? I'm sure sometimes it's ideas.

and then you're logging, okay, how valuable is this for other people? The standard software stuff. But I'm curious, how is your time split in the time that you're spending in T.ly with the different things?

Tim Leland (15:06.462)

Yes, most of my focus is on TDI and I try to always need to respond pretty quickly to any support issues. So that's kind of, you know, pretty much most days I wake up and check emails, review, you know, accounts, anybody who signed up, answer any questions. And then, you know, obviously like feature requests, if it's something I can do, you know, pretty quickly, I'll try to try to do it if it makes sense. And if it's a bigger

thing, I'll, you know, I kind of track it so that I could follow up later if, you know, eventually I, my, I add it to the, um, and, but yeah, I, how much time? And then probably I'd say, you know, a couple hours a day, I'm usually spending emailing and, you know, fixing things and helping people out. And, but I have, I've gotten pretty good at it over the years where I have like, almost like automated, um, like text completion stuff for common questions. And then I try to.

create like, you know, blog posts to answer questions and direct people to those. And then people, in the case of the products I've built, so the weather extension is pretty self-explanatory that they can just figure that out. And then same with the URL shortener. If you're a marketer and you're looking for a URL shortener, you've probably heard of bit.ly and you kind of get the standard idea that you want to take a really long link, paste it in, get a short link that you can then share. And, um,

most people kind of get that now. Some of the more advanced stuff, if they want to import, you know, a CSV file of thousands of links, I've created blog posts specifically for that. So I think people kind of just figure those out. I've also worked for software companies and done, you know, years of working with customers and like, you know, watching how do they interact with software. So trying to make it as easy to use as possible. And then that helps to lower some of those things.

Chris Kiefer (17:02.362)

Right, I'm curious where, like, first of all, a couple random, like just rapid fire ones, have you ever worked or do you have a business coach?

Tim Leland (17:13.062)

No, no business coach. I listened to tons of podcasts.

Chris Kiefer (17:17.498)

which is kind of like a virtual coach, I would say. Do you have, have you been in any like peer groups or software like communities of like, and where it's not just like a forum that you're in, but like where you're meeting weekly or monthly with other software entrepreneurs to share ideas or kick around problems that you're trying to solve?

Tim Leland (17:39.01)

Uh, nothing that's like recurring, but on like indie hackers and on Twitter, like I try to follow other people that are solo people or, you know, building apps like similar to what I'm doing. And I've met with several of them and, you know, exchanged ideas and different strategies on marketing and, um, you know, that's been real helpful. And then, uh, you know, I think, uh, Rob Walling, is that the one you heard me on originally?

Chris Kiefer (18:01.88)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (18:07.445)

Mm-hmm, yep.

Tim Leland (18:08.202)

So like he just came out with a new book that, you know, so I listened to that like day one just went through it all. And his, his stuff is really good for what I'm trying to do. So.

Chris Kiefer (18:11.074)

The SAS Playbook? Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (18:19.482)

Oh yeah, Rob's book was fantastic. The SAS playbook. It was like, I listened to it. I can't remember who told me, or it was, there's a software called You Can Book Me. I interviewed Ben, who works there, and he was the one that suggested that. But Ben Dugavich from You Can Book Me, another great conversation with him. But the reason I ask all those things is because, I don't, I mean, I'm not, I would say that I am not, I'm definitely not like a software entrepreneur. Well.

I guess I do fall into, I'm not like a code like deep in the weeds developer guy, but I have done some development. But I will say from like just a business perspective, getting the coach or the, like I'm in a coaching group right now with like 50 other entrepreneurs that we meet weekly, there's just so much value that I've gotten from.

and I can see my career and the trajectory shift from when we hired a coach personally and then it started getting into coaching groups and it's just that repetition of showing up, creating the space to think about what do I wanna do? Why am I doing this to begin with all that type of stuff? I feel like it's been valuable for me and I think from what I'm hearing from you, you've gotten to where you are with.

So like, again, obviously you're leveraging podcasts and content heavily, you're following some other people, but I would say you've done extremely well without even beginning to tap into those more structured systems or like ideas that have been around for a while. So to me, I don't know if that's something that you've thought about, but I feel like every time I talk to entrepreneurs, the ones like when they're talking about their key inflection points, they always are like,

It's like I'm just trying to short circuit how long it takes to figure stuff out by talking to people that already solved it. You know what I mean?

Tim Leland (20:17.418)

Yeah. I probably have gone to trial and error route of just like brute forcing to figure out what works and you know, probably that's maybe why it's taken me 10 plus years to finally, you know, figure out something that has grown big enough that I could go full time on it. But what you kind of said makes me think so, um, I've, in the past month or so I picked up playing golf. And if anybody plays golf and listening to this,

starting off new in your thirties is definitely, I would say I've played sports, basketball, tennis and stuff like that. And golf is by far the most difficult sport there is, challenging and everybody I've talked to. So I've gone to where I've just watched videos and I'm doing, you know, going to play and I'm hitting practice balls, all that stuff. And everybody's, you just need to go get, you know, some lessons and I've kind of been putting it off, but the more...

Chris Kiefer (20:55.93)

Hmm.

Tim Leland (21:13.65)

I go play and I get frustrated. I'm like, I could probably skip, you know, weeks of trial and error. Yeah. So that's all my list to do is maybe next week or so, go actually take a real lesson and see if they can help me fix some stuff. So.

Chris Kiefer (21:18.734)

six months of frustration.

Chris Kiefer (21:30.638)

I actually, it's funny because I'm, well, I think the first time I hired a coach outside of playing basketball and having a coach, right, was like three years ago. And now I'm seeing the benefit of that and where else can I get a coach in my life? I want a coach for my health and I go to a CrossFit gym so there's a coach there that's watching the movements and giving feedback and stuff. It's like, I'm a huge advocate of find a coach to help.

just literally hold you accountable and comment on what they're seeing, you know? And then if you can get a coach that is knowledgeable in the particular space, even better. But yeah, I think that's just so powerful. The one other, couple other things I'm curious on is, have you heard of the SAS Academy or Dan Martell?

Tim Leland (22:19.534)

I think I've heard Dan Martell just random videos, but not...

Chris Kiefer (22:23.674)

So I'm curious, because I just met him at our coaching group that I'm in. He came and spoke at it, but he has this book called, Buy Back Your Time. I don't know if that rings a bell, but I would say, just because of what you are describing right now, I am stoked. Put it on your reading list or audio book. I listen to all my books, but listen to it in the next two weeks. It's gonna absolutely change your life. It's so tactical. It's so...

Tim Leland (22:34.682)

I haven't read it, but I've heard that, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (22:52.066)

That was the book I probably read five months ago-ish, and that was what made me say I'm getting a VA, like I'm pulling the trigger, I'm gonna do this, and actually hand off my email to someone else. I won't go into all, that's his thing, but I would just say, just literally for value to you, if you read that book, let me know in like two months how it impacted the way you're thinking about stuff, because I guarantee that you're gonna be like, this was awesome.

Because I just, yeah, I think it's a mate, like again, I'm blown away, t.ly again, for people listening, it's super simple to use, it's very, very user friendly, and it does exactly what Tim's saying in like a couple of clicks. You can take this big nasty URL, just shorten it, and now you have a really short link to share. And the fact that you've done all of this and support and marketing without any help is like, you're about to blow up. Like you're, you are like on the, like.

It's gonna 10x what you're doing right now. And I wanna say that with respect, that what you've done is amazing. And I just have blown away that you have no help. It's crazy.

Tim Leland (24:01.706)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I kind of give credit to all the people I've, like I said, listened to and, you know, just random ideas that, you know, they'll say something and it'll spark some idea. But that's, you know, every month or so, I feel like I like, like I keep saying, like I turn these knobs. So I figure out, OK, what can I do to get more traffic or to grow or, you know, what kind of change can I make? And that's just like every month I've been.

turning different knobs to see what works and just allowed it to grow. And hopefully that just continues. I think, what am I gonna do next month to figure out the next growth thing that's gonna get more people to sign up and try it and switch over from some of the competitors. And I've been kind of fortunate. Some of the competitors have done some stuff that I think aren't the best moves and it's actually helped me out quite a bit. So that's been kind of interesting.

Chris Kiefer (24:57.08)

Give me an example of that.

Tim Leland (24:59.018)

Uh, one example is, uh, so, um, you know, they probably have their own reasons, but like Bitly used to be for the last 10 plus years, uh, you could just go to their site and create a short link and on their homepage, and now you have to like sign up and it's still like a free thing you can sign up, but they're getting, you know, they're putting that one extra little barrier and they've also done some like pricing changes to where people have like come and then said specifically they switched because one, it was

more complicated too. They didn't get any kind of support feedback. They would, you know, ask for quite have problems, ask questions and wouldn't hear anything. And, um, and then also surprising support. And then also they put in that extra barrier to where people can't just create, you know, links when they want to, um, which is an extra layer of frustration, but

Chris Kiefer (25:37.498)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (25:50.05)

That's awesome. So what would you say is the like, so you wanna get to a million users. Do you have, how clear have you gotten on like when you think that's achievable by, is the, just like most things, I'm assuming that there's a slower trajectory and then things start to pick up. I'm sure that there's plateaus in there and you gotta figure out new marketing channels, which it sounds like that's kind of the focus that you've been on. But I'm curious, where is the...

What's the next roadblock? What's the, from your perspective, what's holding you back? Or like if you could solve X, from your perspective, this thing would like, it'd be a rocket ship.

Tim Leland (26:30.594)

Uh, probably just bringing more like awareness. So people, when they think of a short link, you know, there's, you know, tiny URL has been around there actually kind of the original URL shortener, 20 plus years, they started in like 2003. Um, and then bit.ly those are the two people think of, they think of bit.ly if they were, or they're a company and they're going to pay and then tiny URL is just a free short link. So, you know, a lot of.

a lot of blogs, let's say list the top URL shorteners. And unfortunately those blogs just like you'll look at it in 2022. You'll say the top 10 URL shorteners. And then they'll say the top 10 URL shorteners for 2023 are the exact same. They don't update it. Nobody changes it. So it's kind of just, it's the pro, you know, the product of a URL shorteners has been around so long that people just have them. Yeah. They don't know that there's, you know, a new option.

Chris Kiefer (27:22.643)

Nothing's changing.

Tim Leland (27:27.354)

And they don't really get updated. So that's kind of been one of my things. If I could somehow get to where my products listed on, uh, some of those review sites and things like that. Now, I don't know if that's going to do it, you know, to send me over the top. Um, but you know, getting, so the million is a goal for the extension, but I'm also, you know, w if I could get more people just using, let's say the API, so more companies who are sending.

text messages and they need to create short links to, you know, either switch or look at using TDILY as an option for that. Or also like, you know, I've done a lot of stuff with QR code. So that's another area where QR codes kind of blew up for like menus. And you know, you just start, if you look at like any kind of mail that you're getting now, um, most of it has QR codes and adding in a short link or adding, you know, using like a URL shortener.

Chris Kiefer (28:10.991)

Hmm.

Tim Leland (28:24.266)

with that QR code has benefits to one, you can track it so you know how many people scanned it. But also once you print that, you might need to change the URL. Let's say the URL changed or somebody messed up. Well, with the short link, you can always go back and update that as needed.

Chris Kiefer (28:28.425)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (28:42.73)

Yeah, I was gonna say when in my past job as the marketing director, we would send out postcards and each QR code or each postcard had a QR code and the QR code was custom for every single piece. So we could see if it got scanned, we knew which house scanned the QR code, which then we could update, you know, and send additional mailers to people that were engaging with it potentially. But 100%, I think that's super smart.

Yeah, what else? I'm looking at, just while you were saying that, I pulled up like G2 has, when I just do top URL shorteners, I was gonna ask you if you've heard, do you know how those ranking, I'm assuming that they're all the same. I have a buddy that works in affiliate marketing, so he does like blogs and stuff, or manages blogs for larger companies like Best Mattress, or Best iPhone Charger, or things like that, or top URL shorteners.

Are you familiar with the affiliate structure and how those blogs rank tools?

Tim Leland (29:48.77)

Uh, somewhat. I do have an affiliate program. That's, uh, you know, something I've been working at, uh, improving, but, um, yeah, no, explain it. What do you.

Chris Kiefer (29:59.546)

So he, and this was like, it's gonna, for those of you listening too, I'm like about to ruin any researching that you do online before buying a product because my friend Kenny, if you hear this, he ruined it for me. He was doing, and still does, marketing for like mattress companies, for example. And mattresses, I would say, he told me that mattresses, home security systems like the Ring and Simply Safe, those types of tools,

The security system and the mattresses are like the two products that have the largest commission payouts for a single purchase. And literally, and again, let's say that G2 doesn't operate like this. In Kenny's opinion, he says every single review blog, it's all the exact same. And basically what happens is, I'm G2, I'm just gonna pretend like this is how G2 operates. I don't know, but this is exactly how.

a handful of industries that he was in operated. So he said, let's say I'm G2, I go to Bitly and say, hey, we're updating our article for 2024, do you guys have any changes to your commission structure? And Bitly's like, oh, it's, nope, still gonna be 20% of the next three years or of the first 12 months or whatever, maybe it's a single payout of 100 bucks if you get a new user or paid user.

and then they go to GoLinks, which happens to be the second one on the list. And they're like, hey, Bitly is giving us 20% of commissions, and GoLinks is like, we can give you 25. And they're like, how many users do you have? And it's literally just a math game. And then they're like, oh, okay. And then we bumped this one to the top. And now, you know, and there might be some other things, not just commissions, because they don't want to lose credibility, but in more or less like in the case of a tie or a toss up of like, yeah, they're all kind of the same.

Literally, this is what Kenny was telling me for mattresses. Like they would, the mattress or the blog companies were coming to the mattress companies and being like, hey, you're only giving us $300 for every mattress we sell. This other company is giving us 600. And people were like changing their rates and stuff to get ranked higher on the blog. And they would do that, which is just like, you read the blog and you think that it's like this really authentic.

Chris Kiefer (32:23.13)

review or thoughtful response of the pros and cons and how cool the mattress is and all this stuff. And Kenny was like, it's really frustrating and disappointing, but it literally just comes down to money and which one, if I can bump this person to number one instead of number three, they're gonna pay X amount more. And that's how it works. So I don't know with certainty if G2 is the same thing.

But that's what Kenny would say is, very, very likely that's how it's set up. Which I don't know what thoughts you have on that, but I'm just like, you know, that's, I have not played that game, I haven't had to. I was just bummed when Kenny told me because I was like, dang it. Now every time I read an article, and the thing is that like a lot of times, they still are good products, right? If there's a company that has a nice affiliate program,

they're generally able to do that because their product is good. Like if I'm gonna give you 80% of my commission as a company to the person that's the affiliate, and I only have two users, like it doesn't matter what my affiliate program is, I still have to have a good product and people have to be signing up and using it for me to want to keep doing it.

Tim Leland (33:39.802)

Yeah, yeah. The affiliates. I, yeah, I don't really trust any blogs. Like most of the stuff you Google and it's like, you know, like you said, mattress or any product I generally, uh, avoid those. I think the wire cutter, which I don't know if it's still legitimate, but that was kind of the one I used to look at it a lot and they, they made money off affiliate links, but they were honest reviews. Yeah. Um, but yeah, to what you said is definitely true because

Chris Kiefer (33:56.782)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (34:00.435)

actual legit, yeah.

Tim Leland (34:06.206)

Anytime there's been some of those sites where I've reached out to it and I'll be like, Hey, um, could, could you do a, you know, an updated review and take a look at TDIY and they'll say, uh, if you pay X amount, you'll be number one. And it's like, wait, that doesn't really make sense. So, you know, you're not really the number one, just so it's a person paying. So I don't know much about the G2 site, but like back to what we kind of started off with, if you're not.

a paying customer than you are the customer, I guess. And in this case, it's like the way, you know, they're making, they're making money some way, somehow you just got to figure out what is, what is their motive to listing those things? You know, do they have advertising on the site, affiliate links, or are they just getting paid, you know, to, to sponsor people to put them at the top? So.

Chris Kiefer (34:56.354)

Totally. Just curious on like the rest of your life, balancing work, family, like do you have a family? Is this, how do you decide, how are you using your business to provide for your life? It sounds like golf, obviously. Tell me a little bit about that realm.

Tim Leland (35:18.794)

Yeah, so, you know, I'm married. I have three boys, ages eight, five, and three. So, you know, summertime they were all out of school but now they're actually all in school at least most, some of the day. So that's, you know, been nice, quieter in the morning. But yeah, so, you know, generally, you know, going this route of kind of working for yourself allows me to, you know,

be more flexible. I already was with my previous company, like working from home, but now it's pretty flexible. Like I actually earlier today went and played golf this morning. So that was kind of nice as the weather's cooled off too. It's been even better, but yeah, I don't know. I'm pretty flexible. I have like a list of things that I want to do. And then I have a list of things I kind of need to do every day. Like a lot of it's the customer support and fixing any issues that might come. And then...

My other time is, and I don't always, you know, have a great plan, but I try to think of any kind of marketing stuff that I can do to just back to bringing more awareness. So if somebody needs to create short links and QR code related stuff that they'll just use TDILY and, um, that would be kind of, you know, my hope is one day I'll be looking at a billboard and some, you know, populated area and see.

QR code with the T.ly short link or something like that. That would be pretty cool. So Yeah

Chris Kiefer (36:51.334)

That'd be awesome. Moving to some wrap up questions. I'm curious, I always ask everybody three favorite books or highly recommended books.

Tim Leland (37:00.894)

Yeah. So I kind of already mentioned the first one I'd written down, but the SaaS playbook, uh, by Rob Walling that, that just released. And if you're building a, uh, you know, SaaS product, it's definitely one to look at so many great takeaways from that. And then recently, uh, Walter Isaacon came out with, uh, the Elon documentary, I guess their biography. So I've been going through that. Um, and it's pretty interesting. Just, you know,

Chris Kiefer (37:23.194)

Hmm.

Tim Leland (37:30.114)

It's all about Tesla and SpaceX and that's been really good. And then I don't remember the author's name, but he's the one that wrote Martian. I recently read, I think he had another book called Hail Mary, which is another like space sci-fi kind of related book. So those are kind of my two business related.

Chris Kiefer (37:49.198)

So the book is, the Elon Musk book, is it just called Elon Musk?

Tim Leland (37:54.26)

Yep.

Chris Kiefer (37:55.866)

The, and what's the author's name? Walter Isaacson. Nice, okay.

Tim Leland (37:58.474)

Walter, yeah. And I've read several of his, so Steve Jobs, I think Einstein, or no, Leonardo da Vinci, he also did one on Leonardo. So there's a bunch and you know, he usually goes pretty deep into people's lives, so.

Chris Kiefer (38:16.942)

Totally. That's awesome. And then the last one you said was the author of The Martian and it's called Hail Mary. And that's about what?

Tim Leland (38:24.173)

Yep.

Uh, it's about, it's like sci-fi. So, um, you know, it's a hail, the, the term Hail Mary is because it's a Hail Mary project to, uh, blank in it. So we're going to, like, we're having a problem. So they're needing to get off of earth and, um, and they're, you know, sending a crew through to find another planet. That's probably a really bad explanation of it.

Chris Kiefer (38:42.446)

Uh.

Chris Kiefer (38:49.305)

Got it.

Chris Kiefer (38:53.567)

I just, I always make notes on the, someday my plan was I ask everybody for book recommendations and I'm making a database and air table. And so on my blog, I want to have like, I'll just, you know, a list of all books that people have recommended and then start seeing books that are more recommended by more people. You know what I mean? So anyways, I always, I keep track of that in my little air table here too.

Hopefully have a cool little thing. If someone wants book recommendations, they can see what people have suggested. So last question is movie. You got a movie recommendation for me.

Tim Leland (39:31.25)

Yeah, so I don't really watch a ton of TV or movies, but the ones that come to mind are more documentary type movies, but I'm not sure there's several of ones that are on Steve Jobs, anything on the ones that, I think there's one, it's just called Jobs. And then I think the other one is the guy that kind of started McDonald's, maybe like the founder or something like that.

Chris Kiefer (39:58.399)

Oh yeah, mm-hmm, yeah, about Ray Kroc.

Tim Leland (40:00.702)

Yeah, so those type of things kind of interesting. But yeah, I don't really watch a ton of TV or movies, probably partly.

Chris Kiefer (40:08.494)

So if you had to pick one of those ones you just mentioned, what would be the one you'd tell me to?

Tim Leland (40:12.782)

Probably the Steve Jobs one, just anything Steve Jobs, you know, that's kind of fact another book recommendation.

Chris Kiefer (40:19.314)

Is that one just called Steve Jobs also?

Tim Leland (40:22.062)

I think it's called Jobs. Well, there's several ones on Steve Jobs' life, but.

Chris Kiefer (40:29.306)

Steve Jobs documentary, The Man in the Machine in 2015. Does that sound right?

Tim Leland (40:36.79)

Maybe.

Chris Kiefer (40:41.95)

And there's the history of Steve Jobs.

Tim Leland (40:46.286)

Probably, I don't know, I don't want to say which one's the best, but there's several of, maybe Steve Jobs, the man in the machine, that looks like the one. I think Ashton Kutcher was playing Steve Jobs.

Chris Kiefer (40:54.966)

Yeah, okay, cool.

Chris Kiefer (41:00.595)

in the one you're talking about.

Tim Leland (41:01.739)

I think so.

Chris Kiefer (41:04.054)

Oh, that one was like a, that's the one that's like a, what's it called? It's a drama, not a documentary, right? I know exactly which one you're talking, I think that one is called Jobs. Yeah, 2013 Ashton Kutcher, yeah. But you're saying that, so the movie, not the documentary.

Tim Leland (41:08.531)

re reenactment.

Tim Leland (41:14.145)

Yeah.

Tim Leland (41:26.07)

Movie, yeah, we'll go with the movie.

Chris Kiefer (41:28.762)

Awesome. And if someone wants to get in touch with you, how would you recommend that they do that?

Tim Leland (41:34.35)

Uh, probably Twitter. That's, that's where I've been trying to push people. So you can follow me on Twitter is Tim Leland and send me a direct message, or, um, you could find me, uh, I have a cool email address is tim at t dot L Y. Very short.

Chris Kiefer (41:52.698)

The best email. You should do t at t.oy. You know? You have an alias for that? Easy to do. Awesome, well Tim, I appreciate your time and coming on to chat about this. This was fun and I'm excited to hear, let me know how the Buy Back Your Time book goes, if there was anything that was interesting. I always love just collaborating with entrepreneurs and if you've got any other.

Tim Leland (41:58.922)

Yeah, that's... Yup.

Chris Kiefer (42:20.93)

books or ideas to kick my way. That's why I do this. So thank you so much and we will be in touch.

Tim Leland (42:28.318)

Yeah. Thanks for having me on.