Aaron Roper: CEO and Co-founder at Prish

^{Joe Fox (00:01.35)}
Hey everyone, Joe Fox here, president of Grow Wave. Today we have a really, really cool episode with a good friend of mine, Aaron Roper. I'm going to let Aaron do a little bit of an introduction for himself, but I was very excited to get Aaron on retain growth thrive today. We've been working with Aaron and we're going to continue to utilize work out or sorry, the software that Aaron is now kind of working with. And Aaron is someone I've really looked up to in this industry.

has had a very, good career in partnerships. And I think if people were to ask, you know, who is one really, really good, consistent partnerships person, I know for a fact that Aaron would be at the very top of that list or somewhere near the top, my friend. But I just, I had to give you that intro because I really respect, you know, the career you've built for yourself, the direction you're going in with Prish. So yeah, do you want to kind of carry on from that intro? Sorry, I went a little

Long there.

_{Aaron Roper (00:59.33)}
Yeah. Whoa, that's great. This is fantastic. I mean, honestly, I've been thrilled to get to chat with you about this and excited about the new trajectory for you within GrowWave. mean, it's been really awesome to see what you guys have been building. So, yeah, I guess a little bit for the audience is I am the owner of a partner relationship management software called Prish.

we are currently as of today, as of tomorrow, something taking it live kind of more in the market, going to market with it. it is, you know, it's a very exciting time for the last six years of my career. I've been on the agency partnerships side, both at recharge, earlier and then rebuy most recently for the last three years.

You know, I was the director of agency partnerships at rebuy during a really pivotal time as we grew several multiples of times. I think we grew about 20 acts from when I started and it was a really tremendous kind of learning experience for me. And it's really shaped what I've been able to build and what we're building now with Prish. And I'm excited to bring that to market.

^{Joe Fox (02:21.807)}
Yeah. And you know, kind of, I said earlier in that intro, Aaron, like you crushed it. Like I think you're sort of like, if I was to look at, you know, not necessarily a playbook because, you know, I think that that's simplifying it, right? Like you just, you and the rest of the partnerships team and the team you built and everything like that. Like it was just really cool to watch that growth and everything that

that you did there. that's awesome. kind of, I guess, coming back to, you know, Prish, we're, you know, we're going to be one of the early adopters of that software. think it's a fantastic software. think having that management kind of component that is personalized is really important between tech and agency and everything like that. I think that's so important. And I think, you know,

We know super well being on the partnership side earlier is like the pressure that agencies are on under and how time poor they are. It's so critical that their lives are easy, right? And as SaaS partners, don't want to take up their time. We don't want to add to their workload. We want to simplify their lives. And I think what Parish is doing and the gap that it's filling in the market,

is really doing that for SaaS providers with agencies. And there's other components to it, but that's just the way that I'm looking at it because we're going to be implementing it. It's like saving time on both sides, but in an effective way that doesn't feel impersonal. So could you tell me a little bit, like obviously, we'll include a link to Prish and everything like that in the show notes and everything.

but obviously we can't be too visual here, in the simplest terms, what is Prish, who is your ICP, and where do you see it heading in the long term?

_{Aaron Roper (04:29.92)}
Yeah, yeah. Well, number one, thanks. That was really good. I loved having these conversations because it helps me to refine what the ICP message is, but also talk about it in a more personal way. think maybe what I'll do is talk about Prish as the vision and then maybe a

^{Joe Fox (04:56.207)}
Absolutely.

_{Aaron Roper (04:58.2)}
kind of glimpse behind the curtain. So years and years ago, when I first got my first whiff of whatever partnerships could be in the ecosystem, I was running an agency here in Seattle and we...

Would build up relationships with various technologies as we needed, but it was really just kind of ad hoc. We didn't really know how to use that to create momentum for our business. just knew that sometimes we need to use a technology and sometimes we need to know who we're going to talk to over there. so that built relationships with companies like smile companies, like recharge companies, like, WP engine when I was doing some WordPress stuff, all kinds of.

^{Joe Fox (05:44.451)}
Yes, yeah, yeah, word commerce stuff, yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (05:45.838)}
Yeah, yeah, and I found that as I was doing that, I was just always so confused. I was like, what is this that I'm really juggling? How do I keep my team up to date? And then when I got into the, you know, kind of the agency partnerships side, first at recharge, then at rebuy, it was not just me.

It was me plus a team of partner managers or me as a director with my team of partner managers, a team of MSMs within Rebuy, a team of sales, know, AEs and BDRs and our executives. Who are we? How are we telling them what matters about our partners and who are our top partners and like the pipeline we're creating with them, the co-marketing we're doing with them.

I mean, the training that we're getting from them, everything. I mean, it was across the board and this was with our tech partners, our compatriots in the space like you guys or the ones like, especially on the agency side. And we all had to be able to juggle that. And so when the opportunity arose to step in and actually take over the reins of

^{Joe Fox (06:43.117)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Joe Fox (06:53.196)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (07:10.574)}
earlier this year, which I don't think you mentioned, but I was able to take over and help a colleague of ours in the space. name is Charlene. Yeah, yeah, no, she's the one that created it. I.

^{Joe Fox (07:19.362)}
Sorry, I should have framed with that because she did an incredible job with that. So don't want to take away credit from Shailene.

_{Aaron Roper (07:28.91)}
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here without what she, she put in. And so, um, she's still involved in the company. She works full time with Klaviyo. Um, she's an expectant mother. Um, and one of the reasons why I stepped in was she needed a business partner. And then she realized that she was doing that. She really just wanted to be able to focus on one thing for the rest of the year. So she took a step out of the business and let me come in and take over.

full control, full kind of vision. And what she built is what I envisioned. My team meeting back when I was at rebuy was something where I could go in or anybody within the rebuy team could go in and know who we partner with. What, what do we have in flight with them? Do I have the latest marketing assets? Don't know what the latest product updates are.

^{Joe Fox (08:07.649)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (08:26.488)}
Do I know how our partnership actually works? Do I know the people? And of course that all can be in a Salesforce instance or something like that, but really you're kind of square peg round hole kind of situation there when you try to do that. You're really just kind of exists. And so that's what we wanted to create. And then we really, my kind of reason I got

^{Joe Fox (08:32.136)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (08:44.813)}
Absolutely.

_{Aaron Roper (08:55.91)}
so excited to get involved here is I see, and maybe Joe, you see this as well as there's so much opportunity for newer players, both on the tech side and the agency side to come in and realize the value of partnerships. So how do you create a partner panel? And then how do you like actually scale and grow that? both on the tech side and the agency side,

^{Joe Fox (09:13.42)}
Absolutely.

_{Aaron Roper (09:23.416)}
And that's one of the things I've been pushing a lot with my agency friends is, hey, look, you have a perspective, share it, champion it. Don't be shy about that. And Prish is built to give both agencies and tech partners the ability to step in and say, hey, this is how we do partnerships, and this is why. And a really easy and enjoyable way to do it as well.

^{Joe Fox (09:32.139)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (09:51.819)}
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, you touched on a really good point there because I think in our industry, and we know this really well, is a lot of people don't get partnerships, right? Like a lot of orgs just see it as an extension to a sales channel or an extension to a lead gen channel or something like that. And I think, you know, it's, whilst it is

partially that, that should never be the focus or intent of it. I think that the benefits, you know, by utilizing a pin like Prish are so much more, so much more, so much wider and so much more available. And I use this as an example because of one of the earlier recordings we did on this is the thing they value the most

about the partnership with GrowWave. And I love hearing, you know, as you mentioned earlier, like different perspectives, because it's important to get different perspectives. The thing they love about the partnership with GrowWave the most is that they have direct impact on the product development, which then helps them do their work or their staff to do better, higher quality, more effective work.

for the merchant, which in turn makes the merchant more happy and the retention's higher and then their staff are happier because they're implementing on a tool that they love and they've had a direct impact on it. That's the single thing that they love the most about the partnership. And I think it's really interesting because to that point I made earlier is that some people cannot be blinded when they look at partnerships. And I think having the right

him in place, sorry, management software in place from the beginning is really critical to be able to measure and to be able to understand that and to be able to track and manage that and help that growth flourish in a way because, you know, without some sort of critical backing or infrastructure to that, it can be either feel like it's just that sales channel or it

^{Joe Fox (12:14.454)}
feel like it's just a Eric-Barry partnership and nothing actually gets executed and there's no product import and there's no development of that really relationship beyond a basic, how you doing point of view, here's our product, see you later. So I think that's why I think what you're doing, what Charlene did to get the product to where it is now is so critical because you're offering support to...

both sides of those partnerships, whether it be tech or agency, you're making all of our time more efficient. You're improving our relationships and our partnerships, not taking away from it. So yeah, that's my external point of view on it. Sorry for the rants, but I just, I just find it interesting. Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (12:59.31)}
Good. Like I said, I learned more about like kind of how everybody sees the product by, you know, having these conversations, lean in towards them. So I was just thinking about this, like, I'd be curious, you know, as I, as I think about what it is that we're building, how

^{Joe Fox (13:03.765)}
Ahem.

_{Aaron Roper (13:28.046)}
market's going to see it. And it's, know, I very much so when I was at a company like recharge, which was really well established when I started, or a company like rebuy that was pretty early on, I was I think employee of the 25 or something like that there. We, you had this like perception of it had to be

polished enough that it was and well put together enough that it like made people feel joyous using it and it was easy to use and it was but it was also really effective and that was something that I wanted to bring into the Prish environment but I'm also

^{Joe Fox (14:04.223)}
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

_{Aaron Roper (14:17.324)}
very quickly realizing, wow, I'd rather just put something out in the market for folks to start using. And one of the things I was telling you about last time we spoke was, you know, I'm excited about what we're putting out with Prish because it's going to solve needs for our partners, our clients, people I call partner and friend from the last several years. And it's going to create a new kind of paradigm.

^{Joe Fox (14:36.36)}
Yes.

_{Aaron Roper (14:46.488)}
But I'm also realizing I need to be authentic kind of to one point of how he's kicked off before we were recording is, you know, things are, things are tough right now. Right. Like I'm holding in the middle. I'm building this company in the middle of a really kind of tough time for, for tech partners, for pipeline generation, everybody's struggling. You know, you got the uncertainty with.

^{Joe Fox (15:00.552)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (15:08.063)}
Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (15:14.424)}
tariffs and the global economy and you know, as you were mentioning is like the economy's down. You know, right now there's looking like March was, you know, so terrible compared to some of the years prior. You know, I'm, we're building, currently building a product taken into market and I don't have the luxury of

just saying, you know what, I'm gonna polish this thing and get it completely right. I need to solve a need. need it. There is a real need right now. And so, you know, I'm taking this call from my kids' because, you know, it's like, I don't have an office right now. I've got to, you know, get me in a transition period. you know, we're being scrappy. And we're trying to, with Prish, just put something out there that's going to make an impact for...

^{Joe Fox (15:43.358)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (15:53.556)}
Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (16:06.264)}
for folks like Grow Wave and for all the other partners we want to work with. And we just want to be helpful. That's like the biggest thing is we want to be helpful.

^{Joe Fox (16:15.993)}
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the thing you've got to think about too, right? And it's like, you know, I look at the way that everything is, know, tariffs, economy, all of these sorts of things.

you're solving a real issue and problem, right? And you're giving, you know, on Prish's perspective, it's like, you guys are solving a massive issue and you're giving people back something that is actually kind of priceless, which is time. You're giving time back to people. So you're saving people time, making things more effective. So that's kind of priceless in a way. The way that I look at it from a

perspective of what's happening currently in the market is, you know, and it kind of comes back to that a little bit of that feedback we got about, you know, the product feedback from partners and all of those sorts of things. So being very, very, very diligent in the way that we approach everything from a product perspective, right. So it's like, we 70 % of our 15,000 merchants use Klaviyo.

So double down on making sure that those are the most robust integrations. Cause no one is going to be able to part with Clavio and Clavio is the essentially, if you look at Shopify as the body, I would say Clavio is the brain and the heart almost together, right? But then what we really sort of have focused on and what Eldar and the team have built from a product side of things is they've been very, very nuanced and focused on

this consolidation, but consolidation of things that make sense together, right? Feeding off of directly Shopify into Klaviyo into GrowWave and being able to repurpose and use that data so that one, it's saving time as well, but saving costs because we really are have been focused on being able to offer all of that consolidation at a very affordable rate. But then thirdly, it's like, I think it's the saving time component.

^{Joe Fox (18:23.078)}
Because it's like, if, if an agency partner or a merchant only has one platform that they're kind of looking into being Shopify, and then they only have two tools and maybe like something like a rebuy and then something like a CX tool, like a gorgeous plugged in. All of those are kind of talking to each other, right? So it's, it's saving the econ manager time. It's saving the agency part of time. And when you think about that,

In these times, if we're saving people time, we're usually saving them money. And I think by doing that, that's exactly what Prisha is doing. And if I look at Grow Wave, I think we're saving time and reducing that, current spend there. If they're not spending it with us, they're spending it elsewhere and they're spending too much on it. So whilst it might be, you know, this weird economic time, like there's no denying that. I also think we're probably in a very fortuitous time.

know, while speed on at different companies.

_{Aaron Roper (19:26.272)}
Yeah, yeah. And I would actually maybe even add on there is what y'all have been able to build knowing your place, you know, maybe not your place is probably not the best word, but like your model of, hey, we're going to be a solution that isn't the most expensive out there. We don't have to go out and get the biggest contracts.

that really does create room for you to operate in ways that are really good for the merchants you work with and the partners you work with. that really resonates with me. I mean, that's one of the things that we really wanna build with Prish is, we're basically every day trying to figure out

How can we solve a problem that exists in the market that has really upscale solutions already? We're not doing anything that's never been seen before. What we're doing is we're trying to do it in a way that can be efficient and done inexpensively in a solid business for us, but it's a solid business tool for our partners, our customers. And so...

^{Joe Fox (20:35.237)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (20:50.609)}
Yep. Yep.

_{Aaron Roper (20:51.756)}
I think that that's the thing that like really is exciting about the way you're talking about it. Because, you know, we were, you know, I was at, an event in Austin, with Rachel Jacobs a couple of weeks back and I was speaking to a bunch of agencies and they were giving me feedback on what they would love to see British do. And I was like, I hadn't thought about that before.

^{Joe Fox (20:57.112)}
Absolutely.

^{Joe Fox (21:13.851)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (21:18.636)}
And I had to really weigh that for the first time as a business owner of just like, so if I do that for you and that is resonating with others, does that create some sort of efficiency that then makes it where I can go further and better and, and, and do more for others? Does it build into the vision in a way that is replicable and

^{Joe Fox (21:42.235)}
Yes.

_{Aaron Roper (21:47.918)}
It's a good foundation, because right now we're building the foundation. And I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but what I'm trying to really say is I, I love this time. I love this time of uncertainty because it just gets me to just build and go. that's what you're seeing too, is you're taking over, you know, the president over a grow wave. You're just like, wow, we got some uncertainty. Okay, let's build and let's grow. Let's just.

^{Joe Fox (21:49.945)}
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (22:07.172)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (22:16.098)}
Let's just make sure that we're not building the wrong stuff.

^{Joe Fox (22:19.175)}
Absolutely, absolutely. I think we're both definitely on that right path there. mean, that's why we jumped out at us as soon as I saw you were out there. was like, let's do this. So, no, I appreciate it. Okay, so a couple of things. I know we're kind of getting near time and everything. So, a couple of things, three more things. One is Aaron, obviously a ton of agencies are gonna be watching this. A ton of...

tech partners are going to be watching this like a lot of people who are in our community and hopefully wider, hopefully we're helping others. Is there anything you want to specifically, I guess, kind of offer to anyone in that regard, you know, from a parish perspective?

_{Aaron Roper (23:06.102)}
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're like I said, we're trying to we're trying to be an effective solution that doesn't have to be as expensive, but it's also a really good starting point when you're trying to get into partnerships. So what we're doing right now is if you go to Prish.io and you sign up for a seven day free trial.

you have the option of number one, going with a monthly plan or an annual plan. But if you go with an annual plan, one thing that's really great is no matter what we roll out in the future, that could be a paid add-on, maybe future additional functionality that you can tack on to Prish, during your term, you get that.

as part of your annual plan, if you sign them. And so I think that's, that's something that we really want to push right now is like, I'm gonna get, you know, upcharged when we roll out, you know, referral payments in the, the future and outs and all that, we're that's kind of table stakes. We just don't have it yet. We're going to be rolling it out this summer. and then additionally on that is we really want to encourage folks to use the software properly. So if.

^{Joe Fox (23:54.553)}
Nice. Nice.

Yep.

_{Joe Fox (24:05.113)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (24:21.402)}
you are in Presh and you follow the onboarding prompts and you get your customer list in there, you connect with your partners, you get some assets to share with them, you really are starting to do it right. We're going to be offering an additional $30 off per month, regardless if you're an agency or a tech partner to use Presh to say, look, thank you for getting in and using the product right from day one. So you have that

^{Joe Fox (24:41.081)}
Nice.

^{Joe Fox (24:49.028)}
Yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (24:51.042)}
that seven day trial to get in and start getting that onboarding stuff done, secure your discount, see if you wanna get that annual and then heck, probably save a ton more money in the end because there's gonna be a ton of new features on the roadmap that we're coming out with. We wanna make sure that we're a very effective, cost effective solution for folks. So I appreciate you. Let me.

^{Joe Fox (24:57.263)}
Ahem.

^{Joe Fox (25:14.677)}
Awesome. Yeah, no, no, Aaron, that's perfect. And I think, you know, you're, you're supporting the people who support you. I love that. think that's a really good way of doing it and getting that feedback from those foundation members as well. I definitely want to be able to get you back on whether it be, you know, kind of like in a six month period of time. By then we would have fully implemented, Perish and be, you know, well and truly in our partner operations.

So I might even get one of the team members from the partnerships team on for that call with us. think that'd be really cool to kind of do a snapshot of, now versus then. So that'd be awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Two last things. Where can people best connect with you? Obviously we'll put it in, that we'll put the link in that you mentioned earlier, is LinkedIn a good spot for people to connect with you or?

_{Aaron Roper (26:11.754)}
Yeah, LinkedIn's a great spot. So just look up Aaron Roper on there. I think I'm one of the only ones. But then you can also find me at Aaron at prish.io. yeah, looking forward to meeting everybody.

^{Joe Fox (26:25.524)}
Awesome. Thank you so much for that Aaron. then lastly, I know you're a big family man. So you know, I have to preface this with everyone is you can't say a person but or people. And, you know, we travel a lot in partnerships we've done so like, I think I honestly feel that we probably travel more than almost any other industry or anyone in the industry. It's crazy. You know, all of that mileage we do but

You know, for example, when you're traveling or when you're at home or when you're out and about, like what's one thing you can't live without is that you can say a food, you can say a beverage, you can say a physical item or a book or anything you'd like.

_{Aaron Roper (27:08.916)}
yeah. This came up this last time in Austin, velvet talk. They needed in Seattle. Where is this? They make money out here. Someone was sending me red and at the one in Chicago two days ago. And I was like, what in the world? Like, I'm so jealous that I just didn't go to Chicago this week. Apparently, there's something going on.

^{Joe Fox (27:13.26)}
Yes. Nice. Nice. Nice.

^{Joe Fox (27:24.068)}
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, no great, great food source. Absolutely. I've eaten that countless times. I think just in general, there is great food scene. Well, but where you are as well. I mean, the US is there's so many good food, food vendors popping up everywhere. And there's always something new to try. So awesome. Well, thank you so much, Aaron. Really appreciate having you on man. Like I said, let's do this again in like six months. I really want to, you know,

_{Aaron Roper (27:39.125)}
yeah.

^{Joe Fox (27:57.027)}
our teams right in the weeds of sort of getting all this up and running. So I'd love to be able to hear from you and the developments and everything that have happened within the product and see where we're at, you know, our thoughts around everything that's happening in the market and if our predictions and everything came true. So yeah.

_{Aaron Roper (28:16.13)}
Sounds great. Thanks again.

^{Joe Fox (28:17.444)}
Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Aaron. Appreciate it. yeah. Thanks everyone for watching this episode. All the show notes and links are below. And please feel free to keep, to reach out to Aaron and take him up on that very kind offer over at Parish. Thank you.