Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast where two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig.
Speaker 1 00:20 All right, welcome back to another episode of brogue startups. Zip sewed one 92. Today. Dave and I are going to talk through, we have two kind of particular things you want to talk through. One is kind of masterminds and peer feedback and the other is a a a tweet storm by a Briana who, uh, has just left Stripe and had some really kind of salient things to say about kind of the business that they've built there and the culture. And I think all of us really look up to Stripe as like the, the kind of business we want to build in terms of culture and just how, how good they are at everything. And I think she shed some light on why that is. So Dave, how's it going man?
Speaker 2 00:57 It's going good. It's going good. And, yeah, we were just chatting a little bit beforehand about last week's episode, which, uh, I presume that most of you in the audience will be listening to already shortly this week while we're recording this one. Uh, and I hope everybody enjoys it cause it was a fun episode to record. We were just recounting that. Yeah, I think it's,
Speaker 1 01:18 I think it's particularly fun when we have a lot of stuff to talk about and I think that's like the, the risk maybe that we have of like having a podcast that goes out every week as some weeks. There's nothing to talk about, right? I mean, I can be working a lot, but there's nothing I can or want to talk about on the podcast. But, um, I think in recent weeks we've had kind of a lot of stuff that we want to talk about and we can talk about and share kind of what we're learning along the way. And that's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 01:43 So what's our subject for this
Speaker 1 01:47 that, you know, one of the things that, that I think both of us are really conscious of is that we're, you know, kind of physically and, um, metaphorically, I dunno what the right word is. Uh, like physically and yeah, men metaphorically kind of alone, right? And in this like bootstrapping world and sometimes it, it, it gets tough and it gets lonely and we have self doubt and things like that and things like mastermind groups or any kind of like peer feedback. A mechanism is something that really helps us a lot. And I know we both, we were in a group together, um, a year ago or so. Um, and we've both been through several different iterations of mastermind groups in the past. And I think just talking about maybe now like in a little bit of hindsight, kind of what, what was good about some of those and what was bad and what we, what we like about groups that we're in, are we, that we want to be in. Um, I think that would be helpful for folks maybe that are, that are just starting out or haven't been in really organized effective groups. Uh, so that they know like what to look for
Speaker 2 02:45 or if you're in a group and you're not really sure, is this working for me? Is this not working for me? Like how, how do you kind of figure it out? Like what is it that you do need? And it's tough to ask those questions I found until I've gotten to a point where it's like, well shit isn't working for me. And then all of a sudden I realized what question I should have asked six months earlier. So hopefully we can talk a little bit about that today.
Speaker 1 03:06 Totally been in groups. That sounds really arrogant. I felt like were a waste of my time. And it's not because I was so much smarter than all the people in there, but that we didn't have the communication style that lended itself to really open dialogue and constructive feedback, which I think is kind of the cornerstone of, of all this kind of stuff. And those are the groups that I get the most out of is where there's, there's positive feedback that's encouraged by all people and is not threatening.
Speaker 2 03:32 Yeah. Uh, I would totally agree with that and I have also been in groups where I felt like there was not an exchange of Ethan's, I'll put it that way where you know either certain people in the group or farther ahead or certain people in the group are way behind and neither is wrong with either of those, but if you're going to be in a group, I found that having you see like a step ahead or a step behind where you're at means that you're going to get the most benefit out of what's going on with that. One of the mastermind groups that I joined very, very briefly, I looked at the people that were there and we had our intro call and it was obvious that one of them was so far ahead of where I was at that he was thinking about things that I was not even ready to start tackling yet.
Speaker 2 04:21 And then there was also somebody in that same group who was really far behind. They were just getting started. They didn't have a lot of MRR and I was kind of in between and I just wasn't, I wasn't feeling the group, it wasn't getting a good vibe out of it. So I didn't even like stay that long. And you know, maybe I wasn't given it as fair shake, but I think it was, I still feel like that was the right call because not having everybody at a close enough level means that it's hard for you to contribute and it's hard for you to benefit from whatever is coming out of that group as well.
Speaker 1 04:55 Yeah, I think like you, you hear folks like Jason Cohen talk about business and, and I'm just confused most of the time I hear him talk about business, I'm like, man, you are light years ahead of where I am and you're thinking about stuff that, that doesn't even occur to me. And so I think like that's an extreme example, but I think it's a point of kind of what you're talking about is that like folks that are that far ahead of where you are practically and tactically you just can't relate to. And so that, that, I think that's probably where like you feel like it's not worth your time because even if you were in a mastermind with Jason Cohen, he would say stuff to you and you're like, sorry man. But that like, I just can't relate to that.
Speaker 2 05:32 Yeah. And that, that definitely is gonna make for a shitty mastermind for sure. And right now you and I started having this conversation on Slack, but yet like how many masterminds are you part of? Right now
Speaker 1 05:44 I'm a part of two regular mastermind groups. One is every other week, the other is weekly. And then plus tiny seed a, which is a weekly kind of co, uh, every other week cohort call, uh, with all 10 companies.
Speaker 2 05:59 Dude, that's a lot of feedback. How do you keep up with all that? That's a lot of feedback. How do you incorporate in filter that,
Speaker 1 06:06 you know, it's a little bit why I show. So I'll take a step back and, and like part of it, like the cohort updates are most of the time, just like five minutes. Like this is kind of where I am, this is what I'm working on, this is what I'm struggling with. Kind of like a stand up. So, so that's not like too probing. Um, we do have like hot seat type things where we, we dive deep into an issue and that, that's cool. And that's more like a mastermind session. One of the groups is with two other kind of really established SAS founders here in Europe and really we just kind of chat, it's not like a really structured mastermind group. I've been part of mastermind groups through the dynamite circle that I'm a part of that, I mean those folks get really serious about, about your mastermind group.
Speaker 1 06:52 Like there has to be an agenda and you have to update this Google doc before the meeting or you can't call in and all this kind of stuff. And like the one I'm in with the two folks here, it's basically like every other week we get on and kind of talk about what we're doing and you know, get, get advice from each other, you know, ask questions or whatever. So it's pretty relaxed. Um, and the one in the middle maybe is the two other founders from tiny seed that that I'm going to call with every week. <inaudible> is pretty organized. Like we always have goals that we set at the end of the meetings and then we, we touch base on those goals like, Hey, did you do this thing you said you were going to do and how's that going? But there, because we're all like in this really similar situation together, we talk a lot, a lot about emotional stuff, you know, like, Hey, I'm not growing.
Speaker 1 07:39 You know, our business is not growing as fast as I want it to. And like how that makes me feel and that's legit and like that's real life kind of stuff that, that we all need to, to grapple with or like, you know, I'm not getting customers kind of getting traction with my app like I want and what does that mean and I don't even know how to think about that. And so we help each other kind of in that respect. So each of them are a little different, which is good. I think if they're all exactly the same they would all, I wouldn't need to be in all of them, but I, I appreciate all of them for different reasons.
Speaker 2 08:09 So is there one that you think you're getting more valuable stuff out of the others or does it vary and how does it, it's different
Speaker 1 08:17 because we talk about different stuff in all of them. Well for starters, one, the one the two and tiny seed or just about Castillo's and I have like a decent amount of stuff to talk about with podcast motor on like pretty high level, you know, like business, the direction the business is going in and stuff. So the group with the other two founders in Europe here is nice to be able to kind of vent and get feedback about that stuff. But I think that like you're talking about Dave, like the, the, the one where it's just the other two tiny seed founders and I, we're all, you know, second time founders at de made a slightly different stages in our journey. Um, the three of us are all at kind of different stages, but we know what we're talking about and we all have a lot of good, insightful feedback and opinions on things.
Speaker 1 09:00 And so I think that's the one where we, we exchange ideas and thoughts the most freely. And I think that's, that's a tough thing cause like part of it's cultural and part of it's just communication style and like personalities. But there's no, like I shouldn't say this to this person or they shouldn't have said that to me. And I feel bad now because they're judging me. Like there's, there's none of that. So that's, that's kind of a rare thing I think. And not something you can kind of fabricate or conjure up. And you can kind of hope that that happens. But, um, I think we were pretty intentional about it. Like we, we picked this group, one of the people I've known for a long time, the other person we, we kind of wanted to bring in after a few weeks of being in the cohort together cause it seemed like a really sensible guy. But I think that it's kinda like fuck picking a cofounder, you know, like you can't just do it. It's got to like that. There probably should be a process to it, but a lot of it is a little bit of luck and kind of who you know and being intentional about the, the psychological process of it I guess.
Speaker 2 10:01 Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So I'm actually on the other extreme of this right now. I am trying to think the last time I was in a formal mastermind, it's been awhile. It's been at least it's been at least nine months. It hasn't been in the calendar year of 2019 at all. And I'm trying to think how far back into 2018 I had one cause there was a brief time that I did resurrect an old one that I had and we brought in some new members and we tried it out, but it didn't really stick. I think it was like late last year, I think we had maybe two or three meetings and it, I just wasn't getting what I wanted out of it and I, and it didn't seem like anybody else was either because it just sort of fell apart of its own accord. And my, what I want to get out of a mastermind now has changed quite a bit over the years.
Speaker 2 10:52 And it's interesting cause, uh, I had a conversation with Brian castle about this at big snow in February this year and Brian and I were in a mastermind at one point and you know, the mastermind didn't last very long. And Brian eventually said I want to leave. And you know, me being the guy that takes everything personally and thinks that it's all about him cause I'm, you know, selfish narcicisstic idiot sometimes. Uh, I asked Brian, I said, Hey man, you know, why'd you leave the mastermind? I thought it was actually doing pretty good, you know, did I, did I screw up? Did I piss you off somehow? And Brian laughed and was like, no, no, I just didn't. Uh, I don't like having the constraint of a weekly or biweekly meeting at a specific time because that's not when my problems happen. That's not when I needed advice.
Speaker 2 11:43 And I thought about that and I was like, Oh that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about it that way. And the more that I thought about it over time, the more I realized as a slightly more experienced founder, I guess, I don't want to say an expert founder cause I'm sure it's fuck not that. As a more experienced founder, I find that my questions are less about operational and execution and how to kind of stuff as opposed to I've got this very specific situation, how the hell do I get out of it? And I find myself running into less of those than I used to. Like when I first started out and had masterminds and was having a regular every other week kind of thing, we were always operating on, okay, here's what I'm going to get done the next time. And then that time you might have, you might be on the hot seat and then you'd bring up a question.
Speaker 2 12:37 And for me it was always like I'm bringing stuff to this group of people to try to get myself unstuck. And then after a couple of years of that I realized I was getting myself unstuck a little more easily without the help of that group. And so that piece of it was less valuable to me, but I still kept coming back and doing that. And it ended up being kind of, I dunno, habituated I guess to where I was just doing it again and again and again, but I wasn't getting as much value out of it as I used to. And then finally when the group just sort of reached its natural climax and we split up after that, you know, I tried to start another group with some other people and then I ended up having two different groups and one of them was the more conversational one like you talked about.
Speaker 2 13:25 And one of them was a little more of the formal, all right, here's what I'm gonna accomplish next week, here's where I'm stuck, here's what I want to talk about in the hot seat, that kind of stuff. And you know, the conversational one was fine, but that usually just ended up turning into, you know, three people hanging out, talking about, well here's what I'm doing in my business right now. But it was less about, you know, here's where I'm stuck. Occasionally, probably maybe one in every three or four meetings. I'd bring up something and be like, Hey guys, I'm having this thing here. Do you have any thoughts on this? The other one, I was still, you know, falling into the old habits, but I just, I wasn't, I wasn't feeling it as much anymore. And so Brian's comment when he made it finally resonated with me in February and I'm like, huh, do I really need a mastermind right now?
Speaker 2 14:11 Like do we need to have that constant contact for everything? And I stopped to think about it and I was looking at the list of things that I wanted to do for recapture and the plans for the year and so on and so forth. And I was like, a lot of this is just execution. I kind of know where it needs to go and we just kind of need the time to get there. And then as things have come up or I've had wins or I've had situations that are crises, what I've done is I've turned around and brought it back to the big snow Slack group where everybody from the, uh, for those that don't know everybody that's in the conference, we all have a Slack channel. And in that Slack group we talk about whatever. And you know, it's active at various times and quiet a lot.
Speaker 2 14:57 And then I assume that there's a lot of private conversations that go on because occasionally I get a monthly report that says there were 113 conversations and I'm like, I wasn't working most of those. So I assume everybody's talking behind the scenes, which is great. That's what I mean, it's, that's what it's there for. Right. And then I realized that that's what I, that's what I need right now is I just need a group of people that I can put something in front of and say, Hey, this is what's going on. Um, what do you think? Or here's what I see. What am I missing? You know, or have you guys run into this before? What would you do? But I don't need that every other week. And so as a result, I've not been in a mastermind for a long time. And you know, part of me was like, Oh God, you know, I should be in the mastermind. I keep talking about masterminds and masterminds are really great, but I, I haven't been in one and I'm, I'm OK with that. Yeah. My name is Dave and I'm not in a mastermind and I'm okay with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 15:51 Yeah. You know, I think that, you know, what are you going to do in the next week and then did you do the thing you said you were going to do last week kind of thing. Is is a lot more geared for folks who are less experienced I think because right. Like all of us who are, you know, most time or fulltime in our businesses are plenty motivated to get shit done and move the needle. So, so I think that that stuff is not as important for me in a ma in a mastermind now. But like you said, it's a lot of really high level stuff and really like a fair amount of is just like social contact with people that are doing what we're doing. Cause like I don't get a lot of like in person chatting about SAS here, here in Annecy you're like we're going to microphone for, you're up next week.
Speaker 1 16:38 I can't wait because I'll get to talk SAS with folks for like, I'll be there for a week in total and that'll like tide me over until whenever the next time I get to do it is, and, and like in between those things I get to talk with, you know, my friends here in Europe every other week and that's awesome. Just social time really. And about every time one person has a big thing they want to talk about, so it kind of works out like a hot seat, but it's pretty informal. You know, Dave, the one thing that like, this is making me think as I, I've had coaches recently, one very intentionally, I've been working with a coach for, for podcast motor Alex from WP curve. So the guy who built WP curve with Dan Norris. Oh yeah. So in working with him for a few months on just like operational organizational kind of stuff with podcast motor and it's made a big difference.
Speaker 1 17:28 And then it's probably a tiny seed, you know, I have access to, to both. Rob and I are pretty much whenever I need to and they're both, you know, multi multi-time, very successful SAS founders. And I find that for particular things that's better than a mastermind group because that's when I want the answer, you know, like if I were to come to you or to Brian castle or to, you know, Derrick Reimer or whoever that I consider kind of like up up here. Like I've asked you the question and you give me your answer, I'd say, yep, okay, that's, that's cool. You know, good. But like if someone who is kind of really, really, really, really been there and done that gives me the answer to the question, then I say, okay, that's, that's the answer. There's no more needing to worry about whether you know, the, where they're coming from is right or whatever.
Speaker 1 18:17 Um, so I think there's definitely a place for that. Yeah. And, and maybe something like for, for folks in general, and I don't know, Dave, this is right for you or not maybe, but like for folks in general, maybe having those like two or three people that you can get time with, even if it's done the, some like through something like clarity.fm to call Jason Cohen and ask him a question, uh, and pay 100 bucks for it. You know, maybe, maybe really helpful for some of those really sticky things that, I mean, cause I think part of it is like you just need the answer sometime. Like, I don't want to jump through all these hoops. Right. I just want you to tell me what to do in this situation. Um, it to offload some of that, like emotional stress, I dunno.
Speaker 2 18:57 Yeah, I think there's some of that. And you know, I've, I've contemplated using clarity's several times where I thought I had a really well-formulated question and then I sat down and I was like, all right, if I'm gonna pay for this, I really need to think this through and make sure I understand what it is I'm asking. What's my goal of getting out of it. And in the end I realized that in every case that I was going to use clarity for somebody. I was gonna call Chris Leymah one time. And even though I've got his personal email, I still was going to go through clarity because that felt like that was the right thing to do. This was something that was totally unrelated. It was going to call a couple of other entrepreneurs that are, I'm pretty well known, but I didn't have personal connections to.
Speaker 2 19:40 And when I sat down and really thought about what it was I was trying to ask, I got a better sense of what the boundaries of that thing were. And once I understood it a little bit better, I didn't end up needing to make the call in the first place. So I mean there's, there's still value in just sitting down and noodling that out. But I think your point about having a a network is huge cause that's really what it is, right? You have a network of folks that you've established some relationships with, either informally or formally through podcasts, through going to conferences, whatever. And those people now be, you know, because you have a relationship with them, they're kind of like your go to folks on those particular things and you can say, Hey, what do you think about this? Or, I know you might have some experience in this, I'm running into this problem here.
Speaker 2 20:30 Would you have 10 minutes to chat about that? Or something like that. And I, I found that those things work really well to sort of scratch my mastermind ditch these days. But that's after eight years of establishing that network, which didn't happen overnight. Certainly for the first three or four years. I don't felt like, I didn't feel like I had that level of connection. You know, there were a few people I could go to, but I would lean on him a little too heavily. Uh, and so after a while it was like, okay, I gotta expand this a little bit. But that's where I think it comes from. That's, that's where I'm getting the value these days is that, you know, you go out and you go to these conferences, you meet people, you make a relationship with them, you become personal friends or you know, professional colleagues or, you know, maybe you're just in the same niche and you know, every time you see each other you're like, Hey, let's go have lunch or have a beer or whatever.
Speaker 2 21:25 And that's where you get some interesting stuff. In fact, uh, one of those connections, uh, I'll just, uh, do a little bit of promotion of our next show. Uh, we're gonna have a de Pinar from formerly of WooThemes public beta and Conversio who just got acquired by campaign monitor. All right. You can do that. Yeah, he's just publicly announcing it right today. Uh, but anyway, he's in one of those guys that I had contact with. Like I met him back in 2011 when he came to the very first MicroComp and he spoke, he talked about WooThemes. That was very first time I'd ever heard a D. and then I ran into him again, you know, a year ago or so at Shopify unite. And we had had conversation, the microcosm a couple of times. And then we talked again at Shopify unite. But you know, these in the same space, it's actually a competitor of mine.
Speaker 2 22:17 Um, but he's a really nice guy. He's really smart. He's very open. He is, you know, he's gone through a lot. He's like founded three major companies, had two exits on that struggle with a lot of stuff. Also has a family. And you know, when I had a specific question about that CEO interview the other day, I found out that he was connected to this guy. And so I said, Hey, could you help me out here? Do you know this person? Can you tell me something about them? And that was a very specific ask. He gave me some great information on that and that, you know, really helped me frame that discussion better and make me more prepared for it. So, but that's a perfect example of exactly that kind of a thing. You know, that's not really a mastermind thing, but it is a network thing.
Speaker 2 23:06 Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I mean I think what we're, we're both getting at is that network and community and feedback and support is super important and however you can or need to get it is, is kind of individual and probably depends on the stage you're at in your journey here. But I think very, very, very few of us do this or want to do it without some kind of community support. Yeah. There's no way to not do this without some kind of community support. You were talking about the social aspect of it earlier. It's interesting you said, Oh, I wanted to be able to talk to other people with SAS. Well, I'd like to be able to talk to other people that aren't just people I live with in this house because I work from home and I, you know, I'm just self-imposed exile I guess.
Speaker 2 23:53 You know, I'm here a lot of the time and as a result that definitely limits my social opportunities. So, you know, we try every quarter to get the big snow Denver contingent together and go out and hang, which I'm delinquent. They're waiting on me to give an answer and I suck if you guys are listening to this, I'm very sorry. Yes, it's on me. And then you know, just trying to find other times to go talk to people in general, like the conversational mastermind thing. That was always great to just sort of catch up with those guys. You know, it wasn't necessarily, I was getting hardcore strategies and tactics out of it, but I was, you know, having a touchstone with friends of mine that I would go hang out with in Vegas. Yep. So in Minneapolis, that was really nice and soon to be Minneapolis goes through, I know it's gonna snow.
Speaker 2 24:38 Oh my God. Speaking of snow this week we're having this crazy weather event in Denver. It was on CNN. Have you heard this? So we are going to swing about 60 degrees from high to low in 36 hours. Windows cracking everywhere. No, I know. This is the last time this happened about three years ago. It killed them, fucked up plants and you know, people's trees and bushes ate it. And uh, it was bad. It was bad for like the next two years and only this last year that things finally start recovering. I had some stuff die in my front yard, but here it comes. Here it comes again. Looking forward to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 25:16 The other thing we wanted to talk through is this tweetstorm from Brianna Wolfson of a formerly of Stripe now I guess and kind of had this tweet storm of seven different things that, that she kind of learned at Stripe. And I mean the tweetstorm is on, Oh Dave, she's like 30 different tweets long but thought we'll definitely link to it. Um, but thought we could touch on a couple of things that she talks about that make Stripe different. Cause I think like I mentioned in the opening, like it's a business in a, an environment that so many of us who have had like firsthand experience with them just are envious of. I mean everything they do is classy. Everything they do is beautiful and works and is fair. And, and I think she talks about like kind of why that is even at the scale they are now.
Speaker 2 26:06 Yeah. And the very, the one that resonated the most with me, and this is the one I want to start with here, is she talks about the concept of turpentine at Stripe. And I was thinking to myself, good God, they don't feed. What the hell are you talking about? They're not striping the highway. The apparently Picasso had this quote said when art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning, you know, all this deep pseudo intellectual bullshit. But when artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. Stripe is obsessed with the turpentine and the, the metaphor, if you're not getting it, if it's not clear, it's basically just an obsession of details. So the reasons artists would be concerned about cheap turpentine is that, you know, they're using a crap ton of it and for them to get the most value out of their work and to try to maximize their own, you know, personal runways of their patrons and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 26:58 They're trying to get the best materials that do the job for them and make it so that they don't have to spend the most money to get it. So that's why they want the cheap turpentine. But really what it's about is obsession with customer details and just understanding your customers so much better than everything else. Uh, another example that she gave of the same thing, uh, had to do with Pixar. So when Pixar was filming Ratatouille, uh, if you're not familiar or you don't have kids, uh, Ratatouille is one of the Pixar movies where a rat ends up being a cook because he's obsessed with food and then has the chef that he gets to fake to cook the food for him who can't cook to save his life. And the rat, you know, is like doing him like a puppet the whole time making him cook in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 27:45 And you know, hilarity ensues when eventually they find out that the rat is cooking the food. But if you've seen this movie and any Pixar movie, really there is a definite beauty and an obsession with details that gives you an immediate experience that you're inside that kitchen. Like when they're in the kitchen and you see them doing the cooking. And I'm by no means a professional chef and no absolutely zero about what goes on in a restaurant kitchen. But when I was watching this movie and I was in there, you felt like you were in a real Paris kitchen. It didn't seem like they just bullshit their way through this. And the reason that the case is that there was a guy, ed Catmull that was basically going to kitchens, the entire crew of Ratatouille visited restaurant kitchens in Paris to get a feel for them, not just one.
Speaker 2 28:35 And they weren't just there for five minutes. I mean they like spent a crap ton of time doing this. And then that he got basically obsessive specificity of these kitchen scenes. The clogs on the tiles, how the chef held their arms while they're chopping. Very, very specific stuff. And so this is what makes Stripe's product and their culture better. Because they're very, very neck deep in the minds of users and they're in the problem space and so on and so forth. That's what makes Stripe really, really successful. And when I was looking back at other entrepreneurs in our space, the ones that have been really, really good, the ones that have had businesses that have taken off are all the ones that obsess about their customers. Yup. Yeah, no, I, I could list out a bunch of them here, but we'll just, uh, we'll throw out three quick examples.
Speaker 2 29:26 One of them obviously Rob walling with drip, he understood email marketing because he had done email marketing for hit tail and found all of these things that were slowing him down and things that he could make his sass that much better. And so we built the system that he really wanted then slowly evolved that over time. Another great example is Jordan golf from cart hook used to run his own eCommerce store, had a bunch of shitty apps that he was working with on Volusion and some other platform that he worked with before that or maybe after that, before he got to Shopify. But in all of that, like he deeply understood why these things sucked and what was his main thing, like how he wanted to build it instead and what would make his life better and how he could make a crap ton of money doing it. He understands those details in a way that few people do. And that's why he was really successful at it. Like cart hook is kicking ass and taking names right now because of that.
Speaker 1 30:20 I mean, having been podcasting with you day for four and a half years and running podcast motor and seeing a ton of podcasters come through is I have a really unique set of experience with podcasting that we translate into the app and the marketing and the pricing and all of this stuff. And I think that's one of the reasons that we're, you know, we're, that we've been successful so far, uh, a cause I think that people don't have that firsthand knowledge, um, and really understand the details and the why behind the details. Um, probably struggle more so than people that have been there and are scratching their own itch. Um, I mean this is kind of a tangent, but I totally agree that the details and understanding where people are coming from and obsessing over like solving that customer need is, is a huge asset and your, and like step towards being successful.
Speaker 2 31:13 And not to beat on this too much further, but one other point that I wanted to make when I was trying to build support vine, the thing that really screwed me on that one was not really understanding what customer really needed the solution because I was basically building something that I wanted without really understanding where the customer pain came from. And it seems to me like if I'm going to build anything in the future that it's, it has to be something that I have like deep personal knowledge of that niche and what is wrong with it. It can't just be, Oh you know, I'm going to go in and do this 10,000 foot form surf where I can hear all the customers complaining about feature X and then I'm going to go build something that has feature X and that's just going to fix it.
Speaker 2 32:03 Because I don't think that works. I mean, I mean I think it will work a little, but I don't think that it gets to the heart of the problem where you're obsessing about their problems. It's more like I'm just going to build a business around this feature and that I think is a, that's a recipe for failure or at least mediocrity. You know, you, you might be able to limp along with that, but unless you really obsess, I don't think you can truly be amazing at that product because those that will obsess about it are going to kick your ass.
Speaker 1 32:32 I will only touch on the one other one here and I think it is um, is really important because you, you see it from like Stripe and what Brianna is saying here and you also see it from Amazon and it's the importance of writing and specifically at Amazon they call them narratives where a, that's like a, a presentation that you make to your peers and your team and your superiors about a problem and how you want to solve it. And I think the big picture kind of messaged with this is like writing, uh, clarifies your thoughts, Dave, like you were talking about earlier with like potentially calling a coach, but when you sat down and wrote out the, the problem you're having and how you might solve it, um, you, you kind of solve the problem for yourself. Sitting down and writing something solidifies kind of your thinking and the, the problem statement that you have and the, the pluses and minuses of, of the situation.
Speaker 1 33:22 You're in so much. And so clearly that, that I think it just kind of kind of solves, solves the problem for itself or at least that when you get this narrative or this problem statement too, your team or to your superiors or whatever, the, the answer is really obvious to them. So I think that, you know, we, we do a lot of meetings like zoom meetings and like video calls and stuff like that, but we all write a lot right? In Slack and in notion and stuff like that. And I pretty much always find that when I write something out and then present the written form to the team, that it's, it's better received because I've had the time to think through it and go back and revise and, and clarify what I'm, what I'm saying and what I'm meaning. And I, I just think that we all should probably take the time to asynchronously write stuff and then present it to the team instead of just offhand saying, Hey, can you hop on a zoom call and we'll talk through this thing and I'll just kind of wing it because you're, I feel like you're always kind of missing something there.
Speaker 2 34:21 Yeah. Inevitably whenever I've just been winging it, those are the times that my ideas come out the most half-baked and therefore that worst implemented, if I haven't really sat down and thought through like my best designs or when I'm actually sitting there thinking, okay, how are they going to use this? What happens if that doesn't work? What do they, where do they end up? And you know, that kind of, uh, usually I, you know, I'll just go back to a very old term that probably doesn't get bandied about anymore, but it's like think through a bunch of use cases and if you're not thinking through like success use cases and failure use cases and all of that, you haven't really framed your thinking very well and therefore it's kinda hard to come up with something. You know, now we talk about user stories and agile, but for me it's still like, it's just a different flavor of use case.
Speaker 1 35:03 Yep. Yeah. So I think Dave will leave the rest of this for folks to read and digest on their own, but was a really interesting bit that Brianna wrote out and always like really appreciate folks who are part of organizations like Stripe that we all really kind of look up to and respect sharing kind of what they've learned and kind of what they're taking away from it. Um, so encourage more of that for folks who are, you know, at some of these companies that will really look up to, to, to kinda share what they're learning. Cause we're, we're sharing what we're learning here kind of in the trenches and, and would love to hear more of it from some of the bigger companies.
Speaker 2 35:37 And if you really enjoyed this episode, the one asked that we always make is for you to share it with somebody you think might benefit from it. And if you have a chance, of course we'd love it, review from you in iTunes. I don't think we've asked for that in a while, Craig. So I'll just go ahead and throw that in this time. And, uh, we hope you enjoyed the episode today. Until next week.
Speaker 0 35:59 Thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already, head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey. Head over to rogue startups.com to learn more. <inaudible>.
