Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 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 00:00:20 All right. Welcome back to another episode of rogue startups today. I have my good friend, Steve McCloud on the show, Steve, how's it going? I'm going well. Thanks Craig. Awesome. So Steve many folks that listen to this podcast may also know you from the bootstrap podcast. Do you want to kind of give a plug and a bit of a, an intro of, of what that's all about for folks who aren't listening currently? Sure. The bridge track podcast, there's something I actually inherited. It was started a few years ago by Anne Lansman and Andre boot off. After a few years, they wanted to concentrate on their core projects. So they gave me the chance to start a new iteration of it, which I've been doing for about a year episodes, a weekly, almost weekly, and, uh, every cover themes that are important for people trying to bootstrap a software product or who are currently bootstrapping a software product, whether it be B2B, SAS, or desktop products, or even like info.
Speaker 1 00:01:12 Info-products cool. Cool. Yeah. I would say that, you know, folks that listen to this show would find a lot of, kind of similarities and overlap with the things that y'all talk about there. And I know you have frequent co-hosts and ed fry Fogel, former guest on this podcast and kind of friend of ours, uh, has been on there a bunch. So I think it's cool for you guys to, to kind of have that running thread of, of kind of things that you all talk about and kind of follow your journey there. So yeah, it's a really, it's a really good show. Thank you. I really enjoy doing it. So, so I think, you know, Steve, we have been talking well for a long time. We've known each other for a few years now and, and, and I think one interesting thing that we want to talk about today that I would suppose you get a lot of questions about.
Speaker 1 00:01:55 I certainly do is what is it like to live in another country? What is it like to be a full time kind of permanent ex-pat right. And I think we're going to be really honest. I hope we're, we're really honest here and it's not all great and it's not all terrible, but I think, uh, hopefully we can kind of shed some light on stuff that folks don't talk about. You haven't seen in blog posts about kind of what it's really like to live in another country, but maybe I, if Steve kind of begin with kind of like maybe share with folks where you're from and where you're currently living and what that whole kind of situation looks like. Sure. So I'm from New Zealand, but partly grew up in Australia too. So that means two new Zealanders. I sound Australian into Australia. And so I signed New Zealand dish back in New Zealand. I'm currently living in Barcelona, Spain, and I've been here for eight years. The reasons I came here at long and varied, but I am here and it's a wonderful place to live most of the time. It's an interesting place to run a business. And when I say interesting, I mean difficult, you don't move to Spain before ease of running
Speaker 2 00:03:00 The life I'm living here is very much not the digital nomad type that I think a lot of people think these days, when you talk about living abroad, you know, where they're living in, in a very much a bubble in, uh, in Thailand or Bali, very much living the life of, uh, a regular person in Spain.
Speaker 1 00:03:17 Yeah. And I think that's really important too, to differentiate because yeah, I mean there is that like digital nomad, uh, you know, tropical MBA, dynamite circle kind of group. That is fantastic. And we did that for a few months, I think right after I quit my job, we traveled Europe for two and a half months and it's exhausting. I would never, ever, ever do it again. I mean, we have, we have kids, I know you have a young daughter too. And yeah, we very much try to live like locals. Like we live in a small village just outside of Annecy and we have a lot of local friends and try to live like, you know, local, local French folks do. Um, but I definitely can appreciate the difficulty of running a business. I think in Europe, right? I mean, France, Spain, the Netherlands, even the UK probably too, maybe a little bit lesser extent is just hard.
Speaker 1 00:04:06 I mean, uh, all, I'll say a couple of things that come to mind when you say running a business in Europe, and maybe you can add another handful, another handful to this, but, um, the first is bookkeeping and I don't mean accounting like taxes. You have to be, I mean, bookkeeping. Um, it is, I just talked to Dave for, for rogue startups yesterday and he was going to get a bookkeeper and I was like, wow, just use bench, bench.co. It's like a hundred per almost a hundred percent entirely automated. They hook into Stripe. They hook into my bank account. They hook into PayPal. All of this stuff happens automatically. They send me one email a month and say, Hey, can you help us categorize these two or three expenses? I go in to have like this automated, like checklist thing. I said, this is this and this, this and this and this, none of that exists in France.
Speaker 1 00:04:52 The concept of a bookkeeper doesn't exist. If you ask somebody for like a PNL or a balance sheet, they say, that's your job. And so I just like, it just blows my mind that like, that concept doesn't exist. I mean, this is a, this is a first world country. Like this is, this is not some undeveloped. And so anyway, that for me, as far as running a business, that is the hardest thing. Um, and all of the tax and insurance stuff and, and just complexity of paperwork that goes along with that is kind of in a similar vein. So I don't know. I'm sure that that rings true to you cause you're nodding a lot, but is there, is there anything else that, like, when you say running a business in Spain is not easy,
Speaker 2 00:05:37 Does it look like I'm nodding, I'm crying. I'm trying to hold back that you mentioned where for American companies, it just does everything. I can't believe it. I would kill for that. We can't use the famous international bookkeeping software, like zero and so on because it just doesn't work in Spain with the Spanish laws for exactly what you described. Everything here is hard. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how that came to be, but all the bookkeeping stuff is difficult, really strange thoughts, which I still haven't got my head around after eight years and we do have a professional. We use a guest store as they call them here in Spain. She runs a little company and helps businesses like mine. And without her, we would be drowning. And she's always asking me to sign some form or, you know, do something on the bed, some type of bank transfer to the, to the taxation department again.
Speaker 2 00:06:28 And I actually don't understand much of it. And I have to say, I don't have a clear idea of just how profitable my businesses and it's, it kind of disturbs me. He knows that most years there's more money in their bank account than there was at the beginning. Yeah. That's really painful. I don't know how much of that is because it is objectively difficult here or is it because you just don't have the right mentality? Not having grown up in Spain and I don't understand these things. I expect them to be the way they were in my home country. Which of course they're not. So maybe I'm the problem. Maybe Spain's actually got a really good system. No it doesn't. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:03 Yeah. Well like Steve, how would you categorize your Spanish level? Cause I think that's a big part of a lot of this,
Speaker 2 00:07:10 Um, uh, a family friend that used this podcast.
Speaker 1 00:07:13 Yeah. Extremely, extremely not. So you feel free to be honest.
Speaker 2 00:07:19 Uh, my, my Spanish has a lot of room to improve. I can read things and newspaper articles and so on, but I can't engage in casual conversations beyond, you know, talking about the weather or the sports. So there's a lot of room for improvement. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:34 I would say my French is similar. I can talk to our kids, friends, parents, and talk to people at the store. And, but our accountant speaks English, which is great. Um, I would totally be lost otherwise. Yeah. And, and, and yeah. Trying to do business and French and for you, Spanish would probably be, would probably be really difficult. And I think that like one of the, one of the, and I think we're going to talk mostly about bad things in this podcast, because I think every, like you mentioned before, we started recording. Like everybody sees like on Instagram, the pictures at the beach and October, and it's beautiful, or the pictures of going skiing in the Alps, which are 30 minutes away and all, like all of that stuff is really obvious, I think. But, but maybe, you know, I think like Dave and I talk, we have a responsibility to be honest about the downside of a lot of things. And I think that's a lot of why you and I wanted to have this conversation.
Speaker 2 00:08:27 How do you mean, how does, how do you make friends? Like if you, if your French is not very good and I guess your neighbors generally don't have a great level of English or not comfortable speaking it, this is what you don't think about before you move to another country where the language is not what you learn. How, how do you make friends in this situation? And it's tough.
Speaker 1 00:08:44 Yeah. Yeah. So almost all of our friends are parents of our kids' friends. So we live in a small town. Each of our kids, like school classes is like 20 kids. And so they each have a handful of little friends and our friends or their parents or their friends, so, Oh yeah. Yup. And Mo most of them speak some, some level of English. Cause we live in a pretty international area with Geneva being like 20 minutes away. So a lot of people go to Geneva and work to some extent in English, but we speak French with them
Speaker 2 00:09:22 All the time. It's something you don't think about? Uh, well, I certainly don't think about it is that how hard it would be that she get into local circles until you have a really good level of the language, but the best way to get a good level of the language is to actually immerse yourself in the culture and make local friends. My, my saving grace was, um, people who live locally from local that have lived abroad and now they've come back home. They kind of want to maintain international life to some degree, even if it's like through other people and they want to practice their English and so on. That was my way of making local friends. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:59 And, uh, your partner is
Speaker 2 00:10:02 Spanish. She said Italian she's, she, she speaks all the languages fluently, which is really frustrating to watch somebody. You can do that. Okay. For a trip to Brazil a few years ago. And in the one month row there, she went from speaking beginner level of Portuguese to being able to have conversations with taxi drivers on political things and obviously frustrating as much it is. It's also very useful to have in a partner. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:10:29 Yeah. And I think that, I think that just comes from you. I think you almost only see that people who grow up in Europe and, you know, grew up Italian or Spanish and learn French and Spanish and Portuguese and all this kind of stuff, because like in the U S or even here, our kids are obviously fluent in English, but like in school, they're only learning like today is Tuesday. It is sunny and my daughter is 10. And so like her kids in her class can't count to 10 in English. And, and like that is such a shame compared to other like Northern European countries, uh, like the Netherlands and Sweden and stuff that, I mean, they're full time English learning from a very young age. Um, I think the difference there is probably that like Spanish or French or Italian, or those countries are so big that you can get by, or up until now, you could have gotten by without learning English and, and working in another language because you can just kind of live in your bubble.
Speaker 1 00:11:32 Um, but, but you know, the Netherlands is such a small place that you can't just know Dutch and think you can get by them. So they have to learn a language. But I don't know. I think, I think the language thing like to get to the point maybe where we're at, where it's like, I can go to a restaurant and order a coffee, I can get an, a taxi and tell them where I want to go is great. But then that, like that next level is a huge jump in learning and, you know, fluency to, yeah. I, I do think that that is, I don't know, maybe the thing that's holding us back right. Of feeling super comfortable where we are.
Speaker 2 00:12:10 Okay. So do you, do you feel like you are part of the community or you feel you're an outsider?
Speaker 1 00:12:14 Both, I guess, you know, like, yeah. And this really chaps my ass. Like I think our friends have pity on us, you know, I like, you know, you just think about it, like you, you, so you go to a, you know, a party or a coffee shop or something, and there's someone there that doesn't speak great English. You would take the extra time to, to talk to them and want to help them and stuff. But if it's every day, uh, eventually they're going to be like, like, come on, just learn. Right. Or don't and go away it
Speaker 2 00:12:46 Like you could learn, but it's, it's a big commitment of time and you've got a business to run and a family to, to, to, uh, tend to, and I hope maybe some health interests and whatever, and it's, it's actually quite hard to find the time and to prioritize that. I mean, that's kind of better myself and I want to spend more time learning Spanish, but not at the cost of my business. Hmm Hmm. My business scan my best energy at the moment.
Speaker 1 00:13:12 Yeah. Your business is right. So I guess we should take a step back and talk about kind of what, what you do and you have two businesses now, right?
Speaker 2 00:13:19 Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty foolish. I want to tougher. Yeah, I have that. Um, why can't I think of what my products are, feature up food, but I've been running that for three and a half years. This is a forum in which your customers can suggest and upvote improvements to your product. The other one is Sabre feedback, which I actually acquired a few months ago, so I haven't built it from scratch. And this one is a feedback button you can add to any website. So it's a kind of synergy between the two products, although they don't integrate yet, uh, pick her up votes growing quite well. Uh, every month we have more customers than the month before. And it's been like that since we started saber feedback, the one I acquired is in a plateau and it was before I took over. And my battle at the moment is growing that and getting it out of the slump.
Speaker 1 00:14:10 Hmm. Hmm. And what does your team look like? Uh, I assume you have like a shared team that works across both apps, is that right?
Speaker 2 00:14:16 Exactly where I was surprised today to see that we're six people, I thought were a five and then Slack told me that we have six years isn't accounted. And I guess I was trying to count in Spanish and not in, not in English. Uh, and that they're all part time. So we have a,
Speaker 1 00:14:33 Uh,
Speaker 2 00:14:35 Five, I just realized. Yeah, because one person had to stop working for it because of family, uh, uh, situation for a few months. Um, yes, we are five. Currently we have a content person. We have a web developer system admin, uh, a general person who does a lot of everything. That's my girlfriend and me and Oh yeah. We just got a designer to start last month to start whipping her products and to shape making them look better and more usable. Yeah. Everybody works part time. So we're much, much smaller than we sound from that
Speaker 1 00:15:11 For, for your designer. I'd love to, we have a designer that we work with part time on kind of project basis, but I'd love to hear how you work with your designer. Cause I think for us, it's made a huge difference. I'd love to hear how you guys work together on the apps.
Speaker 2 00:15:25 It's still quite new. I think we're still working out exactly how to do that. It's just a month now since he started working and, uh, uh, I've given him one part of, of feature up vote the dashboard that only, uh, I show them admin, some moderators see, and I've asked them to do in order to have that. And you identified some problems and he's then suggested a, um, be more consistent and being more modern and then, uh, has done mock ups in some tool called <inaudible>. Are you familiar with <inaudible>?
Speaker 1 00:16:00 Yep. Yeah. That's what our designer uses too.
Speaker 2 00:16:03 It must be what designers like to use these days. He introduced it to me. And then, uh, now he's just started the process of, uh, liaising with our web guy to start turning that into reality. And I'm actually really excited about it and kind of impatient. And I want to keep asking them both. So show me what you've done. Now, show me what you've done now. And I know that's not the right way to manage people, so I'm trying to back off.
Speaker 1 00:16:25 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, five people is, is, uh, at kind of a similar place that we are. Um, how do you, how do you manage them, especially kind of being part time? I would, I would guess I'd make it even more difficult. Cause you, I suppose like have days where they're working with you in days where they're not, what is your general kind of organization and kind of team work flow like?
Speaker 2 00:16:49 Um, so we use the, the typical tools like Slack and email and, and JIRA and get hub. And we communicate a lot through that. Um, at the moment everything goes through me for better or worse. I'm kind of the, um, the hub through which everything goes. And perhaps that's something I need to work on in the year or two ahead, although maybe not maybe at this size, it's the right way. Who knows? I try to communicate a lot repeating the same things over and over again, just to make sure that there's a shared mentality of how our product should work and how our approach should be. And that, that actually helps more than I realized. Just kept saying over and over again, keep the product simple, keep the process simple, make it so that the customer doesn't need to think. And you know, if I say that once or twice, it doesn't get through, but after I've said it every month for, for a year, people start telling me off when I'm breaking that rule and then I know it's getting through.
Speaker 1 00:17:44 Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool. I, I really appreciate that last part of when we've done a good job of kind of instilling these things in our team and we break our own rules, they come back and say, you can't, you know, for me, it's, you can't interrupt a dev cycle when you want a thing. You can't just tell me to stop working on this thing and go over and work on this thing. Uh, or on the marketing side, you know, you can't just come up with some crazy idea and assume that we can just do it and spend a month working on this thing. So I think it's cool. And it's a sign that I think our, our teams have responsibility and ownership over kind of what they're doing, which is I think really hard and like the sign of a really mature team. So that's cool. That's cool to hear
Speaker 2 00:18:30 Well, yeah. Yeah. Just hearing what you said made me think about to what degree you can. I can just trust somebody to do a good job and what degree I need to manage and guide. And I don't think I've quite worked out exactly when to transition from handholding to saying, okay, I trust you, go and do your best and just show me the finished product, but about you, you do, what degree do you just get out of the way and let people do their work?
Speaker 1 00:18:56 Yeah, I think it depends on kind of what area of the business and how much I have done the work ahead of time to be really clear about that. And I think that's where like we all fall down a little bit is if we just fire off a one liner in Slack to say, you know, go build this thing, or can we integrate with Zapier that is not setting them up for success if we just leave them to be and do it however they want. But if you're, I, I, for me, at least if I'm able to like have a call or put together a notion doc, that outlines exactly the kind of marketing thing I want to do or the kind of product I want to build or feature or whatever that I feel more comfortable with kind of letting somebody be because I mean, history has shown at least for us that like, if I do that work and I'm really clear, they have a better chance of being successful. And so that, that's kind of where I stand on things. And if I had to guess how much of the time that is these days, maybe it's like 70% of the time. Um, and the rest of the 30% is kind of this iterative process where I, I fire off a one layer and Slack, somebody comes back a day later and says, Hey, this is the thing I say. Yep, that's that? That is right. But this is not, let's go tweak this one part of things over here. I don't know. What's the percentage for you?
Speaker 2 00:20:09 Well, that actually aspect, there is something I'm struggling with actually telling a professional that actually what they did is not the way I want it to be. And just say it in a way that's respectful and not I'm going to discourage them. I don't want to be that boss who just keeps thinking he knows better about everything. And I, yeah, I, I, maybe I eat too much the other side and think, well, I'll just let them do what they want to do because I don't want to tell them. And actually, I think sometimes I do need to be the firm hand. So I haven't come to terms with how to do that properly. Yeah. I think the danger
Speaker 1 00:20:48 And I don't do a great job of this either, but the danger there is, if you don't, if you're not clear with people and you're like really honest, like I'm proactively honest, that's not the right word. Like this book, radical candor. Have you read this book?
Speaker 2 00:21:03 No, but I'd like to phrase. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:21:05 Yeah. So it talks a lot about this. That like being aggressively open is not the right right term, but like radically candor, like being really, really honest and open and objective with people is actually really good for them and really good for their ability to be successful and stuff. And so I, yeah, I don't do a great job of this, but I try very hard, um, to, to do more of this and be consistent with it because I do think that like, if we're as like business owners and leaders, if we're not communicating consistently and really openly with people that this is what I was getting at, it's like it festers over time. And I say like, if you're a developer, does things 10% wrong all the time, you're going to think this guy is a piece of shit. Like he can never fill the right stuff.
Speaker 1 00:21:54 When, if you're honest, it's probably mostly your fault or my fault because I did not give the right stuff at first. And then when they came back with the first version and said, yeah, that, but I want a little more of this or make the button red or whatever, because they're not bad people. Right. Like, and they, they care a lot about ours. I mean, I care a lot about what we're doing and being successful, but it a super hard like interpersonal thing to give professionals, especially ones that are above where you are in a certain discipline, constructive criticism and feedback about like, Hey, yeah, that's just not what I want. That's super hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:22:32 So I have a specific story to tell about on that theme. Uh, the, the web developer and content person I have, I've worked very closely together for two or three years first on feature upvote, and then starting in April this year on saber feedback. And I worked very closely with them in the first year or so really guiding and being almost difficult. But with saber feedback, they, by now knew the way I'd like to things also because of COVID. And I was stuck for a few months in Australia in a different time zone. I wasn't able to work with them closely, like I would have. So I just basically had the said, say book, you know how we did feature up food. I want you to concentrate now on saber feedback, but just SEO for now. We just need to fix up SEO. I know there's other things you want to do and that need being fixed, but please just concentrate on SEO. And I kept repeating that, but that was it. Then I just let them go do their thing. And now six months later, I look at the work they achieved and it's pretty much exactly what I wanted. Yeah. You can't find that. I think with a team from day one, it takes a long time to get to where everybody has this common idea of how things should be. And I'm just aesthetically pleased how that went.
Speaker 1 00:23:46 That's cool. Do you think it's mostly that you did it before and you're trying to just kind of run the same playbook, but on a different business the second time
Speaker 2 00:23:54 To some degree, that is the case, except the playbook's not written somehow. It was just in the, the, the atmosphere of that team. It should be written. I think that would be sensible of me. Um, but I'm kind of allergic to writing on processes. That's another thing I'm trying to fix, but
Speaker 1 00:24:12 I mean, I think that's the next phase, right. Is, uh, so we're seven people will be eight next month and that's yeah. Seven full time people. Yeah. Um, but that's the next step is to be able to hire somebody and them come in and be productive from day one. Oh, that would be nice because I mean, what you're talking about is like onboarding, right. Uh, of your team took, you know, a year and I'm the same way. Right? Denise, our, our marketing lead for Costas joined and we had hour long calls twice a week, just talking about how we do stuff and how I think about marketing and how she thinks about it. I mean, she has a ton of experience that in a lot of ways is much more rich than mine. And so how do we kind of formulate this plan and we pivot and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 00:24:58 And so now, like we just hired a success person. Um, and that, that ramp up time was quicker, but he's still, he's two months in now and still kind of getting his feet wet in certain aspects. So like, yeah. But, but I think if you look at, Oh, I don't know, like a, a team that's 15 or 20 people, um, you know, like cart, cart, hook, maybe, you know, Jordan Goll, I think they can probably hire somebody. And that person comes in, has like a mentor has a bunch of written processes. They know how to get up to speed, a developer or a person in customer service probably gets up to speed in the first month. Um, but that just seems like a mountain. It gets, there's a mountain of organization and documentation and stuff. I I'm also allergic to. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:42 So why did you start your business? Is it because you wanted the right processes? So did you start it because you actually enjoyed podcasting? Like, do you have an answer? Do you think about that?
Speaker 1 00:25:51 Oh, um, so I think the, the real reason that cast dos exists now is I saw an opportunity, right? So the story is like, uh, this WordPress plugin, seriously symbol podcasting that we own. Um, the person that wrote it originally was going to work for automatic and wanted to kind of offload this to somebody else and kind of already being in the podcasting space. Actually one of our podcast, motor customers came and said, Hey, you know, this guy who lashed Brook is, uh, is selling this plugin. I think this is an interesting space for you guys to get into software if you want to check it out. And so I looked at it and said, wow, this is exactly basically what blueberry and PowerPress do, but they just don't, you know, seriously simple podcasting exists, but the hosting arm doesn't, and really in the podcasting space hosting at that time now there's tools like squad cast that I think are other viable kind of business, but hosting is the only viable for me kind of business model and podcasting. There's just not a lot of different types of businesses. So, um, yeah, just kind of was an opportunity and made some sense. And yeah, here we are. I know you, you were much more intentional about like kind of lifestyle design. And like, if I build a business, it has to be this like four hour workweek potential kind of thing, right.
Speaker 2 00:27:12 Or maybe four hour work day, rather than a four hour work week, that's still pretty good. You know, things have changed, uh, for a couple of reasons. One is my daughter being born last year, made me think more about what I want to get out of the business, but as it keeps growing and especially on feature update side of things, I realized that the business has far more potential than I ever imagined when it started, it keeps growing the way it does then, then you could become quite a serious operation. And I'm still in that battle of whether I want to keep my life very relaxed work-wise or whether I want to really do the best I could possibly could with it. And I'm, I'm still like torn between that. Do you think,
Speaker 1 00:27:55 I think that it's a, a one way or the other, like a binary decision, do you think that you can kind of have a lifestyle business and still get everything, you know, uh, take the business to its maximum opportunity? Do you think those things can exist at the same time?
Speaker 2 00:28:12 Yeah, they can actually. Now you ask, I like that you're just triggered off a third path in my mind. They can. And actually I've discovered that with what I did with saber feedback, where I said that I put my web guy and my content person loose on it, sometimes I realized I just did nothing to do with that all day. And I felt like maybe I'm supposed to be busy or running a business. Why is it that I have still enough time to go for a bike ride or to take my daughter to the zoo? So yeah, this, this mentality, I also have to fight, which is just, it's okay. To not be doing very much and let other people do the work for you.
Speaker 1 00:28:52 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, we look at, at like our mutual friend, uh, Carlos from Quadair now. Yeah. I mean, they are a hugely successful company, Carlos and I are in a mastermind together. So I have to be careful how much I talk about on the podcast. But to me, I think it's, it's pretty like it's in their job descriptions that they work five hours a day and they are a hundred percent growing. They're very successful. They, they could get acquired for, you know, eight figures I'm sure. And I think he's just taking this approach that like, I'm going to put five good hours in and then I'm going to stop and it'll be there tomorrow. Right. And I think that's the thing that for me, like, I don't know, Oh, you haven't talked about this much, but like, like we joined tiny seed and I have this attitude that like our business is super and that we have to have like the pedal to the metal all the time.
Speaker 1 00:29:46 And I think part of that is my own ego thinking that like I, or my business are really important, you know, and maybe, maybe they are, and maybe there's really something. And I should, I do have a lot of respect, but, but maybe I also can just say, man, if we just like live a little and like have a little better life work balance, um, the business probably will still do about the same and I will be more comfortable doing this for 20 years than right. Then the other option, which I think is do this really good and go hard for five years and get everything you can out of it. Um, I think like some people we know in this world have done that and it takes a toll mentally and physically, and then you still have to go do something afterwards. Anyhow, you know, you're very few of us are just going to go sit on a beach for the rest of our lives. So I'm getting more comfortable. Yeah. I mean, I'm getting more comfortable with saying like, yeah, that middle road of like, we can be a successful growing impactful, even high growth business, but I want to work 35 hours a week. Um, and that should be possible as a business owner even.
Speaker 2 00:31:02 And if you're not physically working, aren't you always just thinking over things all the time, no matter what you're doing, the inability to switch off is a bit of a pain. And I think that's why I could never just like work hard for five years salary and then be done. It's like my I'd have this big emptiness. Yeah. The time.
Speaker 1 00:31:22 Yup. Yeah. Um, getting back to getting back to kind of living in another place, like talked about work and like owning a business, um, and taxes and things like that. Are there other parts of, of that, like from a work perspective or not that, that you find challenging or that was surprising that you don't hear other folks talking about,
Speaker 2 00:31:46 Tell us specifically about Spain. This probably doesn't apply to other countries is that people whose mentality is more about enjoying life then about, uh, making the most of work.
Speaker 1 00:32:01 And that really
Speaker 2 00:32:04 Has been difficult for me that people think if you are meeting for business at 10 o'clock, it's okay to turn up at quarter past 10. To me, that's completely not okay. And it shows disrespect, but not in Spain. This is actually what both sides normally expect. This, this has been really tough that I've come in with one type of mindset. It's very much part of my own country, my own culture with the type of place where we just don't do what we have to do, roll up our sleeves, get it done, then leave. Whereas in Spain it's well look in case, it sounds like I'm insulting the country got to say it has one of the highest happiest levels in Europe. It has the longest life expectancy in Europe. They're happy, they're healthy. They have a lot of fun. So I think maybe they're doing it right. And that's, that's, that's something that's very challenging for me even now after eight years.
Speaker 1 00:32:51 Yeah. I agree. I think that a lot of that has rubbed off on me and maybe talking about this, this kind of balanced attitude I have towards, towards work and like the path that we're on lately is some of that. Whereas like, I mean, in the States, there's, there's much less, it's a big place. Right. And there's a lot of different people, but there's much less concept of like work life balance and yeah. It'll all work itself out and stuff. And I think, yeah, Spain, France, most of kind of Mediterranean Europe is, is similar. Do you miss New Zealand? Do you like, I know you went back and like, do you, do you miss it? Do you sometimes, and in some ways, right. Cause I think it's not just a yes or no, but like in some ways, do you, do you wish you moved back?
Speaker 2 00:33:34 Not really, but kinda, uh, in the international yearly, um, Frank's of ease of doing business. New Zealand is either number one or number two year after year. And I look at that and I think here I am in Spain where it's so difficult. And if I went back to my own country, things will be so much easier. I even have talked to a relative of mine. Who's an accountant about whether it would be easy to move the business there while I stay here. And he said, no. As soon as you do that, you're living in one country and running into another life is difficult. So business wise, yes. Lifestyle wise. No, I think my country's really beautiful and I always love visiting it and I'm always happy to leave again. And that's because it's islands in the Pacific 2000 kilometers from the next closest country. There's no sense of an international community is it's a really literally insular place so that I don't miss. And there's no chance of me moving there in the near future maybe one day, depending on family situations, but certainly nothing that's on the cards at all. What about you moving back to the States? Is that something you'd ever do?
Speaker 1 00:34:41 If I had to, I would. I think probably like you it's it's there are many, many, many worst places to move to. You know, I think the U S is a big old mess right now, but objectively like, you know, how much does Donald Trump affect my life? Not, not much. Right. Like I could go back and you live in a little bubble where we have a bunch of friends that think like we do, and I'm sure it would be fine. It would be very sad. But yeah, I mean, I miss, I miss very few things on a regular basis. College football just started being from being from Florida, like that's and living in the Southeast, most of my life, that's a really fun time. Um, it's just really fun. Like Saturday college football and tailgating and all this kind of stuff is just a lot of fun and that this doesn't exist here, but, but I mean, it doesn't exist this year, really in the States either.
Speaker 1 00:35:31 Like there's no fans at the game. So yeah. I mean some, some little things like that. Uh, I miss, I think that, that the thing that, that really pulls at me sometimes is, and you guys, you can probably relate is like that depth of connection that I miss with people here or I'm missing with people here that I undoubtedly would have there. And I think almost all of it is language. Some of it is cultural, you know, so culture is not exactly the same thing as language, but it's similar is like really being able to express myself. And so like, I think in a lot of ways we both probably live, this sounds terrible, like shallow lives, you know, like,
Speaker 2 00:36:18 Yep.
Speaker 1 00:36:19 And so like how that manifests is that like, you know, my friends in work, uh, or my, you know, people I podcast with here a lot more of my real life than, than the people that I see on a, on a daily basis now I think that that's almost everyone in the world right now. Um, because even if you're one of these people that still goes into an office, like we have friends that go to Geneva to work, they have to wear a mask all day, every day from the minute they get out of the car until they leave the parking lot. And there is no water cooler chat. There's no happy hour, there's none of this stuff. So like, I think that's everybody right now. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think if I'm honest, like on a super longterm, like the rest of my life and the rest of my kids' lives spaces, that is the biggest thing I think about is like, is this the extent that I want to like, kind of have connections, um, and that I don't have an answer and maybe it, you know, it gets better every year.
Speaker 1 00:37:13 My French gets better every year, your Spanish spell, he gets better every year. And so I have more deep connections with people. Like we went on vacation with another family last summer for like two weeks and that was so cool. And so maybe that's just kind of getting, getting there. Um, but, uh, yeah, I think that's, that's, that's, if I'm super honest, that's like the thing that keeps me up at night a little. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:37:39 Yeah. I understand. I really do. Um, but I think you might get to the point where you start romanticizing, what it would be like if you were back home. Yeah. Uh, I I've certainly made that mistake. I went back to Australia for three months, a few years ago. Well, more than a few years ago now. And, uh, back to Melbourne where I had spent my twenties and it wasn't what I remembered it being the friends I couldn't wait to spend time with and are busy with jobs and children and new they're, new friends and new interests and, uh, other things also, they just tend set over, gotten a lot of the bad things and just remember the good things that possibly weren't there anymore. Yeah. And it actually helped me get there out of that mentality a lot. And I came back to Spain, more appreciative of life here.
Speaker 1 00:38:29 Hmm. Do you, uh, are your parents still alive in New Zealand?
Speaker 2 00:38:32 Yeah. Yeah. They're in New Zealand, which is why we go, but the idea is every year to take my daughter, but Covance put paid to that. So we're not going this year, but while my parents are around that swell too.
Speaker 1 00:38:45 Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, for us, that's, that's one of the kind of biggest external draws as you know, our family is all in the States. Um, and we try to, yeah, we haven't been back, uh, last Christmas we saw them. So yeah, it'll be, I don't know, another year before we can see them now, I think, um, which is really weird and sad, but yeah, I think that's somebody talking about
Speaker 2 00:39:09 When you're young and single, maybe doing the digital nomad thing, perhaps you can cope with the fact that you won't see your family standard family or your parents for awhile, but when you've got young children and you're more settled, that's actually something right to miss out on your children and miss out on that chance and regularly spending time with grandparents or the uncles and aunties or so on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:39:29 Yup. Yup. Yeah. But I mean, I think, you know, the upside we haven't talked much about upside is like our kids are growing up in a really great place. Like the place we live is really great, super safe, really vibrant and international, like the scenery and the nature here and the health and mindset of the people is really great. I'm sure this exists other places, but, but I, it's not like anywhere I've lived and we've lived at, I've lived in eight different places in the U S and the place that's most similar to is San Diego, but without all the like, kind of California posers, you know, sorry for all the California people out there,
Speaker 2 00:40:12 But does it have the concept of suburbs like you haven't San Diego or in America, or is it more that everybody lives in smaller places? Not corporate.
Speaker 1 00:40:21 Yeah. Like it's more, it's more that like their cities and their villages on the out, you know, outside of those cities. Yeah. Um, so you see, it's kind of the same thing. I think
Speaker 2 00:40:34 When I take my daughter out for a walk, which I tried to do most days, like we see so many people in the neighborhood who know us and know her by name and interact with her. And this is a very positive thing about a child growing up here. Sure. We're a long way from the grandparents, but it's a really fun environment to be growing up in. And for her, this is normal. She knows nothing else.
Speaker 1 00:40:56 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, our kids, my daughter was five and my son was three when we moved. And so he said the other day, so like, I don't remember, you know, the house we lived in, in the U S before we moved here, I was like, yeah, I don't expect you would like, it's, it's all I've ever known. Yeah. And I think, I mean, living a long way from the grandparents is a bummer. If we didn't have this great kind of community feel, that sounds like you have as well, we wouldn't have stayed. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it definitely, it definitely is a two sided coin. I think overall, we definitely are happy to be living here. It's not for the faint of heart though, is I think the thing we're saying is like, you definitely should go in eyes open and say
Speaker 2 00:41:34 Like, there are a lot of things that are really hard there. It creates this stress that now, you know, folks living in their own home country don't have. Um, but I think the upside is definitely there too. Yeah. I completely agree. I've made some great friends, mostly as part of our expert bubble, but whatever the friends we've learnt to sort out the ones that are coming here for six months from the ones who are coming here and definitely because it just gets too hard to keep making friends and then they move away. We make friends, they move away. So now we just filter out the ones who are not intending to stay longterm. Mm mm. Yep. Yep. And that's good. Made a big difference. So it's all about the people around you is that mindset it's like the people you work with too. Yeah. Yup.
Speaker 2 00:42:16 Yup. Awesome. Cool. Steve is really fun to catch up and then really dive into this. I don't think I've ever talked this long or in depth about this. So it's cool to be able to talk to somebody who can relate to do a lot of these things. And I think it's, it's, it's important for folks to hear, uh, if they're thinking about it for folks who want to kind of catch up with you and learn more about kind of what you're up to, where's, where's the best place to go? Okay. So on Twitter, I tend to be active these days, uh, at Steve McCloud. Um, probably have to spell that in the show notes, um, saber feedback, their product I acquired is Sapor feedback.com and then feature upvote.com is the feature request tracking site. You can also find me at bootstrapped dot F M, which is the podcast I run and at Pepperdine episodes weekly. Awesome. Stephen is a lot of fun. Thanks so much. Thank you, Craig. Bye.
Speaker 0 00:43:08 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, that over to rogue startups.com to learn more.
