Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're to startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right, we'll come back to road startups episode two 50. Dave, how are you doing?
Speaker 1 00:00:26 I'm doing fan freaking tastic today,
Speaker 2 00:00:30 And we're going to dive into why the you're doing so fan freaking tastic in a minute, I think big, big news and big update today.
Speaker 1 00:00:39 Yeah. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So we're just going to keep you in suspense for a few minutes long. How are things with you? Craig? Things
Speaker 2 00:00:45 Are good, man. Things are good. We, um, we hired a head of growth, so kind of a chief marketing person. Uh, they started yesterday and yeah, going well so far, you know, it's always kind of like drinking from the fire hose the first day we have, uh, you know, just so much shit going on content, email and product stuff. So I think Sam is, is, uh, trying to keep his head above water, but so far so good. And I'm just really looking forward to that kind of being done to where he is and then, you know, contributing and autonomous. And so hopefully, you know, by this time next month there'll be, he'll be there and rocking and rolling. So that's, that's a big, a big addition to the team and, uh, yeah, looking forward to seeing what the kind of results of that are. So that's, that's kind of the big news on our end. Nice. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:01:32 Things, uh, you know, just some updates on previous episode stuff over here. So my writer search is going really well. I have six, five or six people that I was screening at the end here. I just kinda wanted to get a wide gamut, uh, to see what was out there. And I finally got them to all submit stuff. I also finally had somebody like email me two weeks later saying, oh, sorry, your thing was in Spain. And I'm like, that's a bummer. Yeah. Uh, sorry. Yeah. Uh, I don't know what to say about that, but uh, we're not taking additional applications at this time. So
Speaker 2 00:02:12 I ran into the exact same thing. Did you like copy and paste up a kind of form email to a bunch of people? I did. Yeah. So I think it's probably that coupled with, you know, like a lot of people do cold spammy outreach for, you know, blog, post and writing and topics like that. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the more sensitive kind of like Gmail spam filter events, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:02:36 It wasn't g-mail, it was Yahoo, but, um, Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail all have very trippy, uh, spam filters going on there. And I think Hotmail is probably the worst of the three, to be honest,
Speaker 2 00:02:48 I got to say, I don't know if I would hire someone with a Hotmail email address, like just straight up, like yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's exciting that you got, you got some, some kind of last candidates there and making progress.
Speaker 1 00:03:03 Yeah. And we're, you know, so we got some vacation slated for later this week, we got Memorial day coming up this weekend in the United States and just trying to get a bunch of stuff done before then. And I've got to review these writers and I got to look at all their content and make a decision on who I'm keeping, you know, I've been asking all of them to roll in their invoices. So I can just prepay that and be done now with the think about that. Yeah. Cause everybody's getting paid regardless of what the content was. It wasn't a conditional thing. I said, we're doing a test, we'll pay you. And then I'll pick the best one of the bunch. So, but I haven't had time to go back and do that. And I also need to go back and deal with an explainer video to get it updated a little bit for our SMS launch that we're going to do after I get back. So I got to get that in process and you know, just stuff around the house, but, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:03:50 But yeah. Nice, nice. Well, Dave, I think we've, we've, uh, strung people along long enough, so, so shall we share the good news that you have? I think we should. Yes. All right.
Speaker 1 00:04:04 So I am happy to announce that as of last Friday, I am a full time SAS dude. I am a hundred percent bootstrapped. Now we are only doing recapture at this point. And by we, I mean me. Yes. So I am only doing recapture. I put my notice in, at my freelance client and I told them to go fuck themselves in the nicest way possible. Um, and you know, I gave them four weeks. So this was, you know, four weeks in the making here and it's official. I am now a free man.
Speaker 2 00:04:46 Cue the applause music here. Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's really cool. I, it's not four weeks in the making, right. It's like five years in the making. You've been kind of on this journey for, for a long time now. And it's really cool. It's really cool to see that it culminated in this. I think that's, you know, I think the dream for a lot of us is to kind of own our own time and control vastly, you know, most of our destiny, uh, in that respect and that's, that's awesome that you're able to make it happen, man. It's really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:05:18 Yeah. It was, you know, the, the story of how I got here, uh, you know, was not what I would call the ideal path. And so I'll talk a little bit about that, but yeah, you're right. It started about five years ago when I got recapture. That's when I sort of said to myself, all right, when this thing reaches a certain level, that's when I can look at quitting here. Cause I didn't really see that happening with the plugins. And you know, that at least not under me, I think that they've started to grow and flourish under SIADH and Steph and Steve, and that's great. And you know, they clearly had a different skill set to be able to do that and some adjacent products to do co-marketing and stuff like that. It just wasn't going to happen under me. I didn't, I didn't have the drive there for that.
Speaker 1 00:06:01 I feel like I've got the drive for recapture and you know, we got some momentum from last year and all of that kind of pushed us along to where, you know, I was able to sort of evaluate and say, all right, when is this gonna make sense? And now, you know, I, I'm not going to disclose the exact amount that recapture makes, but it's, it's a strong five figure showing. And in that revenue, you know, we're pretty strongly profitable there. And that profit was enough that I could look at that and say, all right, at what point, when that profit reaches a, a certain level, can I say, fuck you to my freelance client. And you know, I've been kind of watching that number for a while and you know, I, wasn't getting pretty bad about monitoring the profit last year cause you know, pandemic and all.
Speaker 1 00:06:52 So at the end of the year, I said, all right, I'm hiring a bookkeeper because I want to know on a monthly basis, what does my profit look like? I need to know this a lot more tightly than I do now. Best $150 a month I spend she's awesome. Uh, it took like a month to kind of get all those numbers aligned and everything set up in her, familiar with the bank accounts and my categorizations and all that other horseshit. But now that, you know, I've been seeing those numbers and I got to look at last year's and, and, and I got a view that's like 15 to 18 months long. I was like, all right, I feel comfortable with where we're at. You know, there was, there's still a gap compared to what I was making as a freelancer. I was dramatically overpaid in my opinion for what I was doing, uh, which I was not unhappy about.
Speaker 1 00:07:36 But, you know, I think, I think, I think those were handcuffs that kept me there too long, to be honest, um, that extra, that, that, you know, consulting, I think can be it's lucrative and it is great if you're like moving from regular job to become your own person. And I think it's great, you know, if that's the lifestyle that you want to live and I lived it for a very long time, so I'm deeply familiar with that, but I think at some point with bootstrapping, it can be a crutch. And for me, I was on that crutch a little too long, you know, for a variety of reasons. I, you know, I think if I had left a little bit earlier, I would have been more motivated to sort of grow this harder and faster, sooner just didn't quite have that confidence there. Cause I had that big fat cow that I was milking off to the side and that was some sweet, sweet milk. Let me tell ya, so that really, you know, that, that tortured analogy just made it longer than it should have, in my opinion, for,
Speaker 2 00:08:40 For context, like how many hours a week were you putting in with your freelance client? Like, was it 40 hours a week, but, but in chair or was it kind of 20 hours a week and 20 hours doing recapture towards the end? So it's
Speaker 1 00:08:52 Changed over the years. It used to be quite a flip, like I could do. It was, it was kind of a weird setup for a long time and this is the setup that absolutely kept me hooked there. I could do, you know, when I first started working there, I was a very gung ho developer always have been. And so they would ask me to do something, I'd go and do it. They expected this was going to be a week long task. I had it done in a day and then I would come back and ask them for more and they'd give me something else. And they expect that to take another week. And I had that done in another day. And after a while they were like, slow down, Dave, we can't, we can't keep up with you here. And I'm like, okay, I hear this message loud and clear.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 So I, you know, I was still able to more than exceed their expectations, getting things done that they thought would take much longer, but you know, basically allowed me a lot of free time. And that was something that I was using to grow businesses at that time. So I could do easily a 50, 50 split sometimes more like sometimes it was 70, 30 to where I was working on the business for 70% of the time in doing this stuff for 30 and I was more than exceeding their expectations. So in that sense, it was kind of like a retainer relationship. Now over time that has changed. And then this last team that I've been working on for the last three years, you know, it's turned for the first year and a half. It was pretty much like that too. And then it shifted and it became like this churn and burn support thing where we're just constantly working on stuff and you gotta like turn things around and the expectations were very much get stuff done as fast as you can.
Speaker 1 00:10:32 And you know, I was still one of the most productive members on the team, but it did mean that I was suddenly working less on the business. So recapture was suffering, the plugins were suffering and I was suffering because this wasn't really where I wanted to spend my time. Yeah. And you know, after a year and a half of that, it started to grind on me so hard that, you know, I, it was that plus I was just being underutilized, like the number of years that I have in software development and things that I'm capable of doing were not the things that they were asking me to do. I was being asked to do mid-level developers stuff. Just here's a JIRA work on the JIRA when you're done with the JIRA, send it to QA, go pick up another JIRA. And it was just that over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 2 00:11:23 That's yeah, I can't imagine. And
Speaker 1 00:11:26 Yeah, it's like, and then, you know, there were opportunities for other things and when you would step up and say, I would like to do this and, and try to enrich myself and the client and live up to the original mission of why they hired me. You'd kind of get batted down because, you know, I was working for a guy who was a micromanager and that's, yeah, that's hard to work with. Um, especially when, you know, you expect independent work from all those people that working with and that's when I'm hiring people. That's what I expect. And now I'm getting the opposite expectation there. So I'm like, oh, I thought I could deal with it after a while I realized I couldn't deal with it. And it really got on me. Yeah. So that coupled with the level of work that I was doing, it just, it spiraled me into a burnout cycle.
Speaker 1 00:12:15 Um, I I've probably been burned out for months. Um, I couldn't even pinpoint the exact day that I really felt burned out, but I can tell you that I felt literal existential dread every Sunday night when I went to bed and woke up on Monday morning and on Friday afternoon it was elation that I was like, whew, I'm done. I don't have to deal with these people for 48 hours. And you do that week after week. And suddenly you realize I shouldn't be here anymore, you know, a week or two of that. You can that's, you know, that happens in every job. That's, that's not unusual, but to do that for month on month on end, you know, that that's shit, you know, that's, and, and it got me to a point where I actually got into depression and, um, it was probably April that I finally hit that wall and, you know, I, and I had been feeling it for a while and I had even had discussions with my wife and told her how much I hated the job and all of this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 00:13:18 And she was like, well, do you want to quit? And I'm like, I kind of do. But at the same time, while she was very supportive about it and you know, we had already sold the plug-in business. So, you know, there was this, Hey, maybe we could do this, but I had, I hadn't run the numbers. I didn't know what that would look like. And, you know, recapture had changed quite a bit in the last six months to where it was profitable enough that I could do this. So it was only in the last six months that it really became a reality, in my opinion, otherwise I'd just be like chewing through all the money that we had spent or that we had made on the plugin sale. And, you know, my wife and I had sort of talked about that as a, well, what do we want to do with that?
Speaker 1 00:13:59 Do we want to invest that in something else? Do we would invest it in ourselves? Do we want to get some real estate? You know, and we talked about the self storage thing, although I've kind of shelved that for now, because I just, I've been trying to focus on too many things for too long. And now it's time to just narrow that down. Well, it's time to take some time off. Number one, that's what I'm doing now. And it's time to focus solely on recapture and grow recapture and make that bigger and better than it already is, which it's, it's great now, but I need to make it bigger. I need to get it to where, you know, I can fully take our income out of that and maybe start hiring some people to do some of the things on it. And then I'm not as involved in the business anymore, but that's, that's a ways down the road at this
Speaker 2 00:14:46 Point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to dig into kind of what your kind of media, you know, short to medium term plans are. Cause I think that's a, that's a big thing that when you go full time, like your, your, your mindset and your perspective shifts on the business so much, you know, and like you, you're just getting a, you're just a week into it now, so that I don't think you're even like fully aware of how, how little time you had to think about the business and what's really important to it and how you should be spending your time and stuff. And so I would suspect over the next couple of weeks, especially if you're taking vacation that you'll come back with like this new perspective on like, oh, of course, like the business and the product needs this and this and this. And you just didn't have the ability to like to see that before. Cause you're fucking working two jobs and stressed about this and burnt out and COVID and all this other stuff. And now that you have so much less to worry and think about, you're able to see that stuff so much more clearly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:15:43 I'm, I'm going to be interested to see how that unfolds. So short-term my plan is, you know, for the next, I've said two months, I don't know if that's really going to last full two months or not because the kids today is their last day of school today is May 25th. And, uh, we have plans for several camping trips starting this Friday. And you know, the fact that I'm not working the freelance client means that there's all this pressure off and we can just leave whenever. And I don't have to worry about getting work done that week or taking time away from things or just all of that stuff I had to think about before. And so I'm very much looking forward to kind of that decompression, you know, I'm, I'm in literal day three of having quit the job. And my wife was asking me this morning and said, well, how does it feel?
Speaker 1 00:16:33 And I said, it feels like I'm still in a weekend. Right. You know, I, I, it, it, it's not real yet. It still feels like I just have a three-day weekend right now. I think after a week it's going to start to feel more real. And I think by next week when we get back from camping and I don't have to start up anything, like it'll feel more real because it'll get past like a vacation or a long weekend or any of that stuff. And now it's just, it's just me. It's just me doing this. Yeah. So, uh, I I've told myself that I want to give myself some space to just heal from the toxic work environment that I was exposed to there. Cause it, it was pretty brutal there. And, uh, I, you know, I need to get my head out of that first. So, you know, that's what the two months is. I'll definitely be at least a month as my guests and what that is, sorry,
Speaker 2 00:17:31 I'm a month for kind of just evaluating where you are. Well, just know
Speaker 1 00:17:36 Like decompression time, like I'm not gonna try to force hard work on the business, you know, I'm going to do operational stuff. And there's a few things that I want to do. Like, uh, I want to set a couple of webinars in June. That's my big goal right now. That's it a couple of webinars with a couple of partners and you know, some content marketing work, you know, I know that sounds like a lot, but compared to what I was doing before, it isn't like I can do that with a lot lower time commitment and I'm just going to do stuff around the house. So I'm not sitting here in front of my computer eight hours a day, 40 hours a week and just get away from that for a little while. Cause there's definitely this association of this desk and this monitor and the whole position. So I got to rethink all of that and probably just maybe relocate my office for a little while, until I can scrub that mindset out of my head.
Speaker 2 00:18:32 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know. I know someone that every time they change jobs, they worked remotely for a couple of different companies and every time they changed jobs, they, they rearranged their office. You know, like this is the old way I worked at the old company and this is the new way of work at the new company. And like, I never would think of that, but that's, I think it's great. It makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1 00:18:53 I think I may have to do exactly that, uh, for that reason alone, because yeah, everything that I I'm sitting here looking at my desk right now, and it very much reminds me of the work I've done for the last 11 years with that freelancer. So there's some paperwork on my desk. I can absolutely purge and I'll be looking forward to that. But, uh, yeah, just that's the short-term plan and medium term, you know, I need to get back on the, because this last quarter I kind of let the traction stuff, the EOS kind of fall by the wayside. I wasn't real diligent about my rocks and I wasn't real diligent about, you know, trying to meet the goals and, and move the business forward and all of that I was doing. So half-heartedly, and that was the burnout. So, you know, I need to get back on that train, but I'm thinking that's going to be July when I get back on that train that will realign with a quarter. So it gives me June to kind of decompress. I still have a couple of things I want to do to move the business forward then, and then July we start re-evaluating and moving things forward in earnest at
Speaker 2 00:19:58 That point. Yeah. Yeah. That's great, man. I think you're, I think you're doing the right stuff. And I think that just having that decompression time will open up like so much perspective, you know, for, for you and kind of what you see good and what you see bad and what you need to focus on. And like not to have knee jerk reactions to it too much, you know? Cause I think the first, the first little bit of mental space you get, you're going to see something and say, holy shit, of course, this is the thing we have to do, but, but like try to just like, I would put it all like in a notebook and, and then at the end of two weeks or two months or something like that really go back in and evaluate and say, okay, yeah, this was right. And this was wrong. And, and this is what we're going to do because you'll, I would imagine have a lot of, a lot of things come into coming into your mind over the, you know, couple of weeks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:20:49 Yeah. And you know, I have Evernote on my phone and I like to take notes on that. I don't typically write things down cause my handwriting is so <inaudible>. So I use, I use Evernote, so I don't forget that. And that way it's available to me anywhere. I, um, but I have been saving a lot of stuff in the recent five months of just like, here's a marketing idea. I can try, here's some content I probably need to generate. Here's a competitor, that's doing something over here that I probably ought to think about and you know, stuff like that. So I just I've been collecting all of that, but I've not been going back saying, what should I prioritize now? Because there is a, there's a ton of that stuff sitting in a folder in my email client and I really need to evaluate that stuff.
Speaker 1 00:21:36 And you know, like I'm hiring a writer, so they're going to be doing content marketing. I've just got a keyword research report. I haven't even had a chance to look at that yet. And I, I know it's going to be good cause, um, this was a guy that was recommended to me by Ruben Gomez and the, um, and this is somebody that he's used to do his content stuff in the past. So he's gonna, you know, give me some basic keywords in some content groups and, you know, search volumes and competitiveness and all of this sort of landscape stuff. And just talk about like, all right, here's what, this is what you'd probably should focus on for the next six to 12 months. And you know, then I just need to take a writer, show him the report, say here's what my priorities are. Let's start to work on these things.
Speaker 1 00:22:21 And then, you know, then they can create outlines and I can review the outlines and then they create the content and I review that and we post it. So, you know, I've got stuff like that to get on, but once I think I can get somebody working independently, then I can look at a different set of strategies in the business, instead of all this tactical stuff that I've been like focusing on here, you know, there's definitely some strategic stuff I'm missing out on right now. Cause I've had to focus solely on tactics to keep things running. So
Speaker 2 00:22:51 Going back to kind of the financial decision, uh, process, like without talking specifics, cause I think specifics only applied to your use case, but for other folks that are like maybe going through the same kind of thought process right now, like are there things you can share about like when you felt like you had enough revenue and profit and growth and runway and things like that, that, that you felt comfortable doing this, you know, again, like not sharing specifics, but just kind of like to generalize your thought process around that. So that like other folks that are listening can, can maybe like apply that.
Speaker 1 00:23:29 Yeah. Yeah. So your mileage may vary tax, title and license or extra dealer handling charges may apply, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, I can, I can throw out some assumptions that were sort of based in this whole thought process all along. So first of all, uh, I'm pretty fiscally conservative. And in general, you know, this comes from some events that happened early in my teenage years where my father had mishandled tens of thousands of dollars and basically kind of screwed over my college fund. And it had made me had to change what I was going to do for my plans after graduation. It all worked out fine. Don't cry for me, Argentina. But um, that that event just made me realize that having financial cushions is key. And so ever since then, like being able to have a financial cushion and know that there is a backup plan in place has been a major, major asset for me.
Speaker 1 00:24:34 So, you know, if you read most financial books, uh, you know, including a great one by Rameet SETI, which is, I will teach you to be rich, you know, you should have some kind of a financial cushion and there's not a magic number for that. I've seen, you know, anywhere for as low as three, which for me is where we were at for a long time. Six months of living expenses in the bank is another one. And you know, if you can do a year, that's great too. Although I think that one's a bit of a stretch for a lot of people because you know, you're living, if you're living paycheck to paycheck saving that much, that you've got a year's worth of expenses in there is going to be really tough. So shoot for three, get more if you can. And it took me a long time to get more than three.
Speaker 1 00:25:22 So, you know, that was, that was key. Number one is to have that cushion when we sold the business, the plugin business that gave me a big enough cushion that all of a sudden the financial calculus changed a lot. Like all of a sudden my fears about would we be able to meet expenses? What if something big happens? You know, all of these other personal spending questions that kind of hold me back on a lot of other stuff we're immediately alleviated. Like if all of those things suddenly happened at once, major medical expenses, something big, we needed to spend a lot of money on something else on top of all that, you know, there's a major event with the house or the furnace dies or whatever, then you know, all of those things could happen simultaneously and we would still be okay, you know, that's when I was like, all right now we're yeah.
Speaker 1 00:26:15 Now I need to like, let the fear go and think about this from a different perspective. As far as the income goes, my target was always around 80%. If I could make 80% of my finding of my freelance income, then I could make up the difference in savings for the time that it would take me to do the growth to get to a hundred percent. That was my math that was going on. We didn't quite hit 80%, but we're damn close. Um, we're like, it's a 75. And you know, with the plugin sale in the bank, the two of those I'm kind of like, all right, is it really worth waiting another three to six months, right, right. Four or 5% here, or should we just go for it at this point? And you know, for me then there was a third factor, which was my mental health.
Speaker 1 00:27:07 You know, I was like, I'm burned out. I'm getting depressed. This job sucks. I don't like being here anymore. I'm not liking working with this team. Like nothing was making me happy about this, except the paycheck I had to drop it. Like, it just, it was an obvious decision at that point. And when you hit a wall, you can sort of evaluate all that together and say, that's a smart decision at that point. And that one, one more thing I want to add to that. The only thing I would say is on top of all, that is you have to hyper communicate with your spouse. Uh, you know, that just goes without saying whoever your partner is, if you're in this financially with somebody else, you absolutely have to like hyper communicate about your fears, your feelings, what is making you happy? What's making you not happy.
Speaker 1 00:27:59 What the state of the business is, you know, what is your net profit? Like, it's gotta be real all of it. And you gotta, you gotta talk about it. And it became a joint decision with us. You know, I kind of laid it all on the table and said, this is what I see. This is how I'm feeling. What do you think about this? This is what I would like to do. And you know, then you had the discussion and then, you know, my wife was very supportive and we talked about some things saying, all right, well, what if this happens, then we can do this. And what about this? And yes, we'll make sure that that's done. And, you know, mentally, we had been preparing for it for a little while and I even took care of some big expenses last year during the pandemic. So that, you know, I knew that in the future, I wouldn't have to deal with those when we didn't have the income. So, you know, there's lots of things that you can kind of do to prepare for that event.
Speaker 2 00:28:51 Yeah. It all makes a ton of sense to me. I mean, I think that the, the math of, you know, making as much, or almost as much as you were making with the runway to get there and the growth, you know, the, the runway of, of savings to, to bridge that gap and then the growth in the business to, to get you to that point that you need to be to cover your expenses and stuff. Yeah. It makes, makes a ton of sense. And I think the heart and the hard one is the, the growth, right? Like growing a business on the side, even if it's 50% of the time, uh, is really freaking hard. Right. And like, I think that I would be shocked if the business doesn't grow faster now that you're, full-time on it. Even, you know, taking a vacation and not working full-time and not really pushing, uh, like you, like, you could, you could be 60 hours, you know, button the chair, but, but just having the mental space to focus on like the bright things, you know, instead of like, what, what you feel like should happen. I think we'll, we'll make a big difference in like the growth in the next year or so. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:29:50 Even worse, whatever I have the bandwidth to make happen. Right. You know, I might have something that would be really moving the needle of the business, but that's going to take me 30 hours that week to execute on. Or there's some little thing that I could do to make support slightly easier. That takes two hours. Guess which one gets done in my bandwidth situation right now. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:30:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, man, I'm, uh, I'm excited for you. I, I think it's, it's really, really cool. I I've, I've kind of seen it coming for a while, I guess, you know, like just knowing, you know, how well recapture is doing and like your growth rate and stuff. And that's, that's awesome that, uh, that it's finally the right time. Like you said, though, for, for like you and your, your wife, you know, your partner and your family and that your kids are so supportive because it is like, I guess when you're freelancing, it is kind of similar that like, you're, you know, you have a longterm freelancing engagement, so you're kind of like steadily employed, but, but now it is like very much, you know, the, the financial wellbeing of your family is on your shoulders and that's, that's no small thing to take on electively. Right. So like, I think you're, you're very smart to, to be prudent about, about making the jump.
Speaker 1 00:31:03 Yeah. It's, it's been a long time coming and I am so happy to finally be here and a little bit scared looking ahead, but, uh, I'm hopeful and excited at the same time, so
Speaker 2 00:31:17 Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything, as you're looking back that you say like, ah, I should have done it here. I could have done it there that not, not that you have regrets, but now that like, you're, you're three days into this that you say, oh, what, you know, if I'd have known this, I could have done this and this and this different, uh, you
Speaker 1 00:31:38 Know, to hindsight's 2020. So you can always look back and say, Aw, man, I should have done this. You know, today I can look back and say, after I closed on the plugins, I probably should have just said, let's do
Speaker 2 00:31:52 It there. But
Speaker 1 00:31:54 You know, not having done that, it did add a little bit of financial cushion to things. So it felt a little more secure doing it now. And it protected the, the, the nest egg from the sale of the plugins slightly. So, you know, there's that. And would I go back and redo it back then?
Speaker 3 00:32:17 I, you know,
Speaker 1 00:32:19 I can say that I would, I don't know that I would or change what I did at this point, but I probably, you know, again, it's also, it's also personal, right? Because it's about how comfortable you feel and what's your level of tolerance of risk and with three kids and, you know, being the sole bread winner, I just felt like my risk tolerance, wasn't quite there. Realistically, I could have done it after the plugins sale last year. I still wouldn't have been quite at the growth rate that I'm at. So, you know, it would have felt a little scarier, but you know, now that I've seen what that growth looks like since then, I would have probably been like, oh yeah, this all worked out great. This was a great decision. Uh, you know, and that's just as much luck as anything. Yeah. So, you know, would that, would I be in a better space now? It's actually probably likely that I'd be in a better space because then I could have taken that time to decompress last year and then started my growth stuff back in January. And you know, like I'm five months behind on my content marketing stuff at this point. And I wouldn't have been, had I been full-time on it in January. So yeah. I mean, there were things that I wish I had done better and differently and all of that. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's what I would say.
Speaker 2 00:33:39 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just kind of thinking back to when, when I went full-time with podcast motor, it was more of that, that we had, you know, a big cushion and definitely didn't meet our financial needs at that point, but saw the path to get there. And I was more burned out I think, than you are. And so it was just like, you know, we can do this, whether it's the smartest move or not, I don't know. But the alternative of staying here, uh, when we can do something else is, is just not, you know, not an option. So yeah, I think that it's that whole trajectory, you know, it's like how much revenue do you have? How much profit, how much growth and then how much time do you have until you can get to where you need to be. Right.
Speaker 1 00:34:27 Yeah. And I would say that that's the, if you're looking at this from the big picture and you want the quick takeaways on this one, you got to have some sort of backup plan, whether that's a big savings account or something else that you can rely on as a cushion, your retirement account, I don't know whatever you've got. And then you, you gotta have at least some level of product market fit and you gotta be moving forward at a decent clip of revenue that looks like it's on track to meet your profitability and, you know, salary goals. And it doesn't have to be there right away, but you got to have at least some confidence that, that growth is going to get you there within a time period where that cushion isn't going to run out. And if you can make all that happen, then I would say going full time is definitely something that would be worth looking at.
Speaker 2 00:35:18 Yep. Yep. I absolutely agree. Unless
Speaker 1 00:35:21 You're like 21 and you have no expenses and you're living in your parents' basement and in which case, hashtag Yolo, fuck it. Go for it. But that's not me. And I don't think that's most people that are listening in our audience right now.
Speaker 2 00:35:35 I don't think so. They're not our demographic. I do. I do very much hope that for my kids though, as an aside, like I told my kids the other day, I hope they never have a real job. You know, I hope that they can just go and do it and make it happen, uh, because it's not that hard, you know, like relative to getting up and go into the office and working for the man. Like this is not, you know, like not significantly harder. So like, I hope that I hope that, you know, younger generations or people that are just starting out realize that. And I think, I think that's happening a lot in the world. So I think less and less people are, are tied to a day job as, as the only way they can make money, which is cool to see. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:36:16 I mean, it definitely requires a different mindset and an independent work ethic. Uh, and a lot of other stuff that I think takes some time to cultivate, but it's not impossible. And it's certainly, you know, at a lower burn rate, entrepreneurship can be a much easier path to success at that point, because then you've got the time to build that up more slowly instead of be like, okay, I've got a, you know, eight K a month burn rate. Now I got to make an eight K a month. Boom, like that. Like that's not easy to do right out of the gate. You got a long, hard row to hoe on that in order to
Speaker 2 00:36:54 Make that. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Well, man, congratulations again, I'm, uh, I'm super excited for you and super excited for the business and for your family and for, for what it means for all of those things. I think it's just, it's really great and, and stoked to see kind of what, what comes out of this here in the next kind of weeks and months.
Speaker 1 00:37:12 Thank you. Thank you. I am excited as well. And I look forward to seeing what the hell is going to happen with recapture in the
Speaker 2 00:37:19 Next couple of months. Awesome, man. We'll uh, yeah, enjoy that vacation. And uh, and everybody listening. Our one ask is always as if you're enjoying the show, please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. And if you have a minute drop that old rating and review in apple podcasts to, uh, to share with everyone else how awesome rogue startups is. Dave. Congratulations again, man. Thank
Speaker 1 00:37:44 You. Thank you until next week, everyone.
Speaker 0 00:37:47 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.
