Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the rogue startups podcast. We're two startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig.
Speaker 2 00:00:20 All right. Welcome to episode 2 57 of rogue startups. Craig, how are you this week? Who's this?
Speaker 3 00:00:27 Who am I? Who am I speaking?
Speaker 2 00:00:30 A new app? Who does, who does
Speaker 3 00:00:32 It has been a hot minute, Dave. Uh, it's been, uh, all, it's been three weeks since we podcasted. Um, and three weeks in this kind of business world is like a year. So yeah, a lot has been going on, but, but all good. I can't complain. Yeah. How about you?
Speaker 2 00:00:50 Uh, same, there has been a ton of things that have gone on, um, yeah. Uh, we have a lot to talk about and including a really hot subject today, which I think will be of, uh,
Speaker 3 00:01:05 Yeah. Of interest. Yeah, I think so. So we'll, we'll leave that one dangling for a bit and maybe give some updates first. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:01:12 Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3 00:01:13 So you have a shiny new toy to talk about.
Speaker 2 00:01:15 I do. I do. We just launched a new Shopify app, so it's called valid Dar and it does address validation for shipping and we just pushed it out to the store probably like a week or so ago. And right now we're trying to get beta customers and have people try it out. It's just for Shopify, we're in the process of making it available to Wu, but I don't have all the engineering resources that I need at the moment because there's so many priorities and, uh, you know, poor Mike is running around like a chicken said cut up. Uh, yeah, we've got like random stuff we have to comply with from Twilio. Um, I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's this a two P 10 DLC compliance that has that's
Speaker 3 00:02:14 Going on. I hadn't heard of that. Oh
Speaker 2 00:02:16 Yeah. Oh my God. It's a mouthful. Every time I want to say it, I had to like stop and think about it very carefully to make sure I'm not, you know, making something else out of it. But anyway, it's basically apt to person 10 digit long code, or just, you know, what you and I would call a regular mobile number. And they're basically trying to reduce spam and just not let any random Tom Dick or Harry on the platform sending stuff out. So now you have to actually like register with business profiles and there's two different levels of it. There's like the Uber painful level and the slightly painful level. And thankfully, because of our size, we're only at the slightly painful level, but it does like, it requires us to restructure a bunch of shit and recapture that we already built. We've got to collect some information from customers.
Speaker 2 00:03:06 We didn't already have, we got to set up the profiles. We got to like all of these things for compliance and we're supposed to get it done by October 1st. It seems like it's not like a deadline where they shut off our service, but it is a deadline that I just want it off our plate before black Friday. And you know, that's coming up, our lockdown is going to be like beginning of November. So it needs to happen now. Yep. Basically. So that's distracting us at the moment and you know, we got to get that done. I just got done with the fall edition of big snow, which I have decided we are renaming to no snow, tiny comp because it is in the fall and there was no snow. So both of those are accurate. And that was fantastic. We had a great time. It was good to get away. It was good to catch up with everybody. It was good to hang out. You know, it was
Speaker 3 00:04:01 Everyone who went to the last in person like actual snow one where they all able to attend.
Speaker 2 00:04:06 No, not everybody was, there were a couple of family conflicts and yeah, it was just basically family conflicts. It's kind of a weird time of year, right? With September end of summer, beginning of school, we tried to put it in the summer and everybody was like, hell no, like this is not going to work. So we said, fine. How about September? Don't want to go too late. Cause then the weather gets kind of dicey and we wanted to be able to go outside and do stuff. So we picked September and we, it was beautiful. It was absolutely gorgeous up there. It was like 70, 75 degrees. When we were up there in the mountains, super, super warm. We went on a hike, we went on a boat ride. Uh, we had the catered dinners. Everybody did their presentations. We had some campfires in the backyard. Uh, super cool stuff. You know, it was, it was a good time, but yes, some folks weren't able to make it and we miss them. And some other folks, uh, from east came out and that was great. And we enjoyed the time there. So that was, yeah, it was good. It was necessary. I felt like, you know, it'd been, been like 18 months since we had all sort of connected in person. So that was a, that was a good reconstitution of the group.
Speaker 3 00:05:24 Yeah. That's awesome.
Speaker 2 00:05:25 That's awesome. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's, uh, it's been, it's been busy here and you know, there's other stuff. Oh, I lost, uh, I lost my cold sales guy, so, uh, yeah, it scene was going to do some contract work for me and call, uh, the Jilt customers and he was gearing up to do it and then his business blew up. Couldn't do it anymore. And I'm like, ah, shit,
Speaker 3 00:05:49 That's tough. That's tough. And so, so like specifically what you were, or, and now are again, looking for is like a person to just kind of run a list of contacts you have and give folks a call, get them on the phone and try to try to like close a deal or just schedule a meeting with,
Speaker 2 00:06:04 Uh, no, to, to, to actually close a deal. So yeah, I was, I was having him go through, I already have a vetted list. We've already warmed them up with email and I've split it up into those that opened in those that didn't. And we were using the, those that didn't to warm him up so that he knew what the sales process looked like to practice the pitch and, and sort of refine it. And then he was going to go after the open list and try to close some of those. And yeah, so that's what I needed. We were just going to pay a very simple per lead fee that we had mutually agreed on. And that was going to be, you know, he was just going to do his cold sales thing. And, and once he had gotten somebody to a point, you know, we would have a list of who he had called and I would have a list of who had signed up and we would cross check those and I would pay him for the ones that had signed up. So yeah, it just didn't work out and it doesn't look like he's going to be available anytime soon. So if you are interested in said position or, you know, someone who is good at said position, please absolutely reach out to us podcast, rogue startups.com and let me know, because I am definitely in the market for that right now. And could definitely use it today.
Speaker 3 00:07:21 Yeah, man. I mean, you asked me about this in our, in our slack channel a couple of days ago. And the only thing I know of that similar to this is not what you need, but it is like an outsource SDR agency where they basically run like outbound email and LinkedIn campaigns to book meetings for folks. But you're looking for that next step in the process, which I don't have a clue. So, um, yeah, if anybody out there is interested or has worked with folks like this on a contract and kind of short-term basis, right, Dave, like a couple of months, this'll this kind of whole wave
Speaker 2 00:07:52 We'll be over. Yeah. It's not this isn't a, long-term ongoing thing. It's very contract. It's very specific. You know, I've got a pretty sizable list and it'll take a little while to get through it. But once the list is done, I may repeat the list later in February, but I was trying to get something now and then have a second round at it later after the holidays are over. So at most it would be like two rounds of this, uh, based on what I've got, unless another competitor craters somewhere along the way, in which case I'm going to start the whole damn thing over again. But yeah, who knows? Right. It's amazing.
Speaker 3 00:08:29 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:08:30 So that's, it's been busy. It's been crazy, uh, lots going on. How about you, man?
Speaker 3 00:08:36 Yeah. Nice. Nice. Yeah. I mean, similar to, to kind of your update on big snow, tiny comp uh, I decided last week that I like was ready kind of emotionally, we talked about in episode 2 53 about kind of going to conferences and the, the kind of emotional and risk side of it. Ray decided like over here COVID is as good as it's been in a very long time. And, uh, so I'm going to MicroComp Europe next week. Uh, actually leave in a couple of days, leave on Saturday night, Nick getting there like a whole day and a little bit early to just kind of fuck around, you know, and have little like personal day. And then Sunday, evening retreat, Monday, Tuesday conference come back Wednesday. So yeah, really looking forward to, you know, seeing Rob and Tracy and Zander and all the folks. And then also like just seeing all my friends from, from Europe that a lot of listeners podcast and just haven't seen anybody, but you know, our, our couple of friends and my family and a year and a half, so really looking forward to being out and yeah, ed fray, Fogel, who's been on the podcast a couple of times there'll be there and he's speaking and like just really, I just really looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 00:09:47 Um, yeah, yeah. Fi it, it, you know, Dave, it's kind of like the last thing, you know, for me, like mentally and emotionally with COVID is like, all right, I'm vaccinated. Maybe I'll get a booster or whatever I'm out in the world now, you know, like I'm ready to, to kind of be out there and not worry about this stuff anymore. So it feels now.
Speaker 2 00:10:06 Yeah. Yeah. I hear ya. I mean, it was, you know, when we all got together, we did the whole COVID test, but as soon as we did that, it was like, it was back to normal and it felt really good to be normal again, to just do the stuff that you used to do and you weren't worrying about masks and you weren't worrying about, you know, is somebody gonna, you know, get sick and just all that stuff. Right? Yeah. I mean, our worry level has dropped a little bit now that we got our third kid vaccinated and she's fully immune at this point. I know you're not quite there with your kids yet, but I
Speaker 3 00:10:43 Don't know if that's the right term, but I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:10:46 Yeah. Right. I mean, it's, it's as good as it's going to get let's put it that way. Yes, yes, exactly. Immune is probably overstating it a bit. Yes. And that's totally fair, but, um, yeah, I mean, she's now as protected as we can make her at this point. And, uh, you know, I can't do any more than that, so I've done my parental duty and therefore I'm ready to move on.
Speaker 3 00:11:09 Yeah, yeah. But yeah, really, I mean, just really looking forward to it, you know, glad I took a day early to kinda have a day for myself, little kind of mini founder retreat. It's I mean, the pictures of the place, like, it's amazing, like it's right on the GNC, like you open your balcony and there's the ocean it's just really like, I'll get some good thinking done there, which is cool. Um, have you been to Dubrovnik
Speaker 2 00:11:34 Before? You've been, yeah, I
Speaker 3 00:11:36 Went two years ago. Yeah. It's really wonderful. Yeah. Really beautiful place.
Speaker 2 00:11:40 Yeah. Yeah. I'm sad that this is the last MicroComp there in Dubrovnik. I really wanted to go, but with other stuff going on, you know, I've got a, a conference that we're going to in November, we just finished the no snow here in September. You know, they're looking at something in an October with the family. I couldn't make it work logistically. So it was like, yeah, man, another time. All right.
Speaker 3 00:12:06 Yeah. Yeah. And that's the reason I did is this is, this is all I'm doing, you know, through the end of the year, at least. So.
Speaker 2 00:12:11 Yeah. Right. Well, good. Good for you, man. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:12:14 Yeah. And I guess the only other big update, I mean, other than just kind of regular work stuff is we had a, a remote retreat last week, um, for the team. It was really cool. I wrote a pretty extensive blog post about it. We can link that up in the show notes, but it was really great. It was three days, three hours a day, a pretty even mix of like fun. We had people come in and present like a virtual magic show and a coffee tasting and like all this kind of stuff, uh, team building, you know, kind of activities and a fair amount of like non, this sounds terrible, non-productive work. But like, you know, retroing on the last quarter talking about our rocks and what the company has done like in last year and then looking forward and we're moving kind of from rocks.
Speaker 3 00:12:56 Okay. Ours, not that it's terribly different, but like talking about the OKR philosophy and what the OKR for the company is this coming quarter and why, and who really owns it. And those kinds of things. It was great, man. It was great. Like afterwards I was kind of kicking myself for not doing even a smaller version of it sooner. And I think that's the thing I took away is like once a quarter, maybe instead of us just having like a one hour call a week, maybe once a quarter, we have a couple of hours where we have some fun and we do some strategic thinking and planning and talking like, it's just not that it's not that hard. You know, it's not that hard to put together. People really enjoy it. They like feeling connected with the company and the vision and what we're doing and with each other, you know, through the activities. So I guess that's my takeaways. Anyone who hasn't done something like that. Definitely, definitely check it out. Um, but it was, it was a ton of fun.
Speaker 2 00:13:50 Yeah. I think quarterly is a good cadence for that. It's, it's long enough that you can see whatever you were working on. You can seek some kind of result from it. Right. And then on the flip side of that, you know, you can take step back from everything else and everybody just sort of stay okay. The day to day stuff. We're not going to worry about that. Don't mix it in with the day-to-day stuff. Now we're going to think about this in a totally different way. And that, I mean, when I'm doing my EOS, which by the way, I'm due for that as well to do my EOS annual that's the reason I want to do that on that quarterly basis, because that's where you get that, that visibility, I guess. And I can see with a team that you would want to, you know, and then it gives you that opportunity to do something fun. Right. So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 00:14:37 Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And what
Speaker 2 00:14:38 Did you guys do for fun by the way?
Speaker 3 00:14:41 Yeah, so, so the first day we, we had a kind of like virtual treasure hunt and I link, I link up all this stuff in the blog post. We'll just link to that. Uh, so we'd like a virtual treasure hunt, which schools who broke into small groups, which was neat. So we read like four or five of us on a team. The second day we had the magician come in and do a magic magic show over zoom. And it was like, they totally blew my mind. And like, everyone was just like on the floor, amazed. And then, uh, Sherry walling came and talked about kind of mental health and kind of some best practices and things like that. Yep. That was cool. We, we shared a meal together, which was, uh, like, ah, it was good, but kinda like, do you have your camera on?
Speaker 3 00:15:23 Do you not? Like I gotta go get the pizza? Like, it was just a little weird, but just nice to have just a, a time to, to kind of talk and stuff. Um, that's about the only one that like, we just kinda missed on, like, not that it was wrong, but just kind of was weird. And then the last day, the last day we did two really fun things. One was, uh, we had like, it was an Airbnb experience. Uh, and the guy is like a like coffee, efficient, auto, like a Somalia would be for wine, talked about like how to grind the beans properly and how to infuse an extract and all like what, you know, bitterness means and the process and all this kind of stuff. That was really cool. And then the last one was one I came up with, which was, we had a tinker competition, Dino tinker now, like the code, no code thing for kids. Now my son does it. It's like a, it's like a visual coding thing. Right. So like move this block here and it makes the guy walk 10 steps, and then you can move this other one. You can have ifs and whiles and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 00:16:24 So it's kind of like a visual logo or something.
Speaker 3 00:16:27 Yeah. Yeah. And so it was cool. So we did like a timed competition, everyone on the team, 20 minutes to build the coolest, you know, tinker, you know, animation. It's like the guy walking across the screen and he shoots the other guy and all this got like, it was super cool because everyone was terrible at it, you know? And cause we'd never done it before, but it was cool to see what folks come up with. Yeah. So those were like the fun activities. Um, I was, I was pretty happy with it overall.
Speaker 2 00:16:55 Cool. Very cool. Yeah. That's very exciting. Uh, are any of your team going to MicroComp Europe? Are you going to get seen anybody there?
Speaker 3 00:17:03 No. <inaudible> Nope. Okay. Nope. Yeah. That would be the dream, but no.
Speaker 2 00:17:09 Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, I hope that, uh, I hope that goes really well and congrats on having a successful virtual retreat. I've never, it's just never quite crossed my mind. I felt like, well, we'll just keep going through this. Like with just me and Mike doing it together, you know, it didn't really feel like we needed a lot because mostly it's just hanging out on slack and chatting about things. But, uh, yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense for you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:17:39 Yeah. We're 15 people. So like very different being able to get, get the group together was nice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:17:45 Very cool. Very
Speaker 3 00:17:46 Cool. The day we have, we have a hot topic that we're going to, we're going to give our unwarranted two-cents on, I think
Speaker 2 00:17:54 It's worth 2 cents and you know, you didn't pay for it, but we're going to give you at least that much worth
Speaker 3 00:18:00 Unsolicited. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:01 So the topic, so let's give a little bit of background here for those that aren't in the WordPress space. There has been just a shit ton of WordPress acquisitions this year. I think post status was tracking it and said that there were 37 companies that got acquired this year by larger companies. Whether it's, you know, like people like awesome motive or automatic or liquid web, those are the top three that have been buying people up. But there was a big one recently, and that was EG digital downloads, affiliate, WP, WP, simple pay and sugar calendar, which are collectively Sandhills development. They're one of the biggest businesses inside of WordPress right now, short of like Yost who also got acquired, uh, recently as well. So, and this has caused, you know, a great deal of hand ringing in the WordPress community about, oh, you know, things.
Speaker 2 00:18:58 I want it to be like the good old days and we're really gonna miss because with Pippin gone, it's not going to be the same and you know, which it definitely, uh, kinda rubbed me a little wrong. Um, and I think it rubbed, I, I'm not the only one here that, uh, that it rubbed wrong, but you know, it's sorta like, well, what the fuck do you think all these companies are going to do? Do you think they're just going to like run this out until they die? You know, you think Pippin's going to be like in his hospice, home slamming out a release of easy digital downloads up there. I mean, really? Is that what you thought it was going to happen? It just seemed really unrealistic. And it's, you know, it's like, eh, I mean, I'll just shut up now and let you have some, some thoughts on this, but yes, there's a lot of frustrating stuff in there and it doesn't seem to be the case that every single business is going to live forever. You know, MailChimp is now being sold off here by Intuit $12 billion exit. Good on the founders there for, for pulling that off, uh, who knows maybe base camp is next, maybe base camp is going to be acquired by a, a 16 Z, right? Probably not.
Speaker 3 00:20:20 Uh, like the, the, the place like this conversation came from is, is actually like when, when you see everybody doing this and you see this kind of movement, you know, you kind of say what's wrong with this, you know, and that's, that's kinda what I was saying to myself is like, and like our good friend, Brian castle, uh, sold audience ops and super happy for Brian regulations to JD graph him. And like, it just, it makes me say, because, you know, frankly for a long time, like my, my thought was like, oh, at some point, you know, we'll sell Costos and I'm sure at some point I will sell Castillo's. But, but what it really got me thinking is like, what are the alternatives to, to, you know, these people selling at these points? You know? And like I mentioned, like, why not just stay and go public?
Speaker 3 00:21:11 Right. That's like the extreme someone pointed out like going public is not an exit. It's more of a fundraising event than, than an exit because you're still in the company and yeah, you get to liquidate some of your shares and blah, blah, blah. But like, I think what I was, what I was really getting at is like, for us as founders who maybe in the back of our minds and maybe, you know, brilliant in the front of our minds have thought that like, I'm going to build this up and sell it. And it's going to be life-changing money one day. Like, what is the other thing that is on the table that, that could happen in, like, why, why are we seeing so much of this, you know, MailChimp selling for 12 billion is not like a mid market kind of exit, but, but for these, like, no, it's an outlier.
Speaker 2 00:21:55 It's very much an
Speaker 3 00:21:55 Outlier 50,000 to like a million dollar exits. Like, uh, I would, I would say that like a lot of these founders probably are back working later, you know, and are doing something else. Like we saw it with Josh Pickford, right? Like sold bare metrics for whatever reason. Like, I think he was just kind of over, over the business and kind of had taken it as far as he wanted to, but like was back the next week with his next thing. And that's just kind of like, what I, what I was thinking about is like, for us who think we want to, you know, grow a business and have it exit at some point, like, what are the other options that we can have to kind of stick it out, maybe be the acquirer of other businesses and grow inorganically that that's kind of the tack I was taking on it. Not just like, is it right or wrong to sell a business? Cause I think you and I, as capitalists kind of say, it's, it's perfectly fair. Like as long as you're taking care of the people that helped you get there, um, and your, your shareholders, if you have investors like that, that's like, yeah, that's every business, every founder sells a business right. Or exits a business. Right. It could be that it just goes under because you're, you're tired of working on it. It could be because you die
Speaker 2 00:23:05 The voluntary, it could be involuntary, you will exit your business one way or the other.
Speaker 3 00:23:13 Yeah. Yeah. And so like, I dunno, I just, and in this respect, I don't have a lot of answers for, for what I'm kind of opining about, but when you see so much of one thing happening in our space, like, it just is not, uh, not the alarm bells, but like, it kind of just makes me say, is there a different path I should be looking at taking, um, to, to have, uh, a different kind of outcome. Right.
Speaker 2 00:23:35 Well, I mean, let's just enumerate all the different paths that you could possibly take here. Right? So one of them is you just keep running it the same way that you are running it now and do that, you know, as long as you want to. And, you know, obviously most entrepreneurs kind of run that path and sometimes they'll do it until they retire, depending on like, if it's a business in the brick and mortar world, you run a dry cleaners, you've got a hardware store or whatever, you probably will run that until you retire, if you own it. Right. Um, another option is that you sell it off to somebody else because you're tired of it and you're ready to move on. Whether that's, you know, there's been a change in your circumstances, you've got some health problems, family issues, you need money, you are tired of running this thing, and then you want to sell it.
Speaker 2 00:24:24 Another option is that you can take some investment and pull some chips off the table and keep running it, but maybe get some help to do it. So you're not being the sole person doing all of it anymore. Uh, there's the one where you could run it and try to grow it like crazy and, you know, go to IPO. I think that's kinda what Jordan wanted to do with cart hook, uh, until he got limited with some other stuff with e-commerce platforms, but that was, you know, he was looking for funding. He was trying to grow it, build a larger company, all of that sort of stuff. And that's certainly an option as well. You know, what, what are some other options that I missed there? I think that's most of them, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:25:09 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's most of them. And I think that there's a lot of kind of sub levels within each of those. And I guess that, like, for me, just, just with our path, you know, or for you YouTube, like it was kind of just put our, our kind of paths and say like our businesses are, are kind of providing for ourselves and for our families and our kind of basic needs. And then from there, like everything else is gravy, you know? And so I think that you got to say like, once you get to this default alive stage, what are your options? And I think that for me, one thing that's obvious is like, as long as I'm enjoying doing this, I probably will be doing this anyhow. Right. Like whether something amazing happens and there's a big exit or the business just blows up and it's super successful.
Speaker 3 00:25:52 Like I really most days really, really like what I do, you know, and like work is not really work. It's, it's a lot of fun. And I think as long as that's true for most people you'll keep, you'll keep running the business. And I think that, I think that the thing for me is more of a, more of like a timing and a scale thing, I guess, as I've had time to think about this and the many smart people that chimed in, uh, to, to this thread in our slack group, you know, kind of what it came out to was like the time horizon can just be a lot longer than you might think originally for, for yourself and for the business. And it can evolve over time to where, you know, you get into the position of being an awesome motive, you know, or an automatic where you have the ability to go acquire acqui-hire other players in your space to expand to new areas and stuff like we've, we've done a little bit of it, but been on very small scale. But yeah, I think that's just, I don't know. I don't know where we're going with this, but that's, those are some of my thoughts, I guess
Speaker 2 00:26:54 I think you're touching on some of the right stuff there. And I think I want to add to that, you know, it's not just about the scale of what you want, it's about ultimately what your goals are. So like, you know, I can pull three different people in my head right here about what their goals are. So let's talk about like the difference between Josh Pigford, Rob walling and Jordan golf for a second right there. So Josh wanted to build and run something, but then when it got to a certain size, he realized this wasn't fun anymore. He didn't enjoy that. So we wanted to get back to the build and grow stage, like that's where he was the happiest. So that's where he wants to live. So now he sold bare metrics, went back in his building maybe, right? So that's one option. Another one is Rob, Rob went, built, hit tails, sold it, put that money into drip, built that up, sold it worked posts acquisition for a while with a larger company.
Speaker 2 00:27:57 And then that wasn't making him happy. He had enough that he was like, I want to do something different and moved on to, you know, the VC space, right, where he's now running tiny seed and doing that full time. So it wasn't just, he didn't want to go back and have another at bat. He wanted to do an entirely different game, right. He moved on from hockey to baseball, maybe a little more adjacent than that. The analogy breaks down pretty quickly there, but, you know, and then there's like, there's Jordan, Jordan wants to have something that's long-term and grows and goes big really, really big, you know, that's the scale that he's trying to think at. So he started with card hook, switched from abandoned carts to post-purchase upsells was trying to get that stalled for some various reasons. And now he's trying to do the same thing again with rally, again, a very different mentality that he wants to make that, you know, the unicorn sized company, I think that's what he wants. So each one of them has very different goals. And the three of them, I think, are different goals than you and I, and I think you and I have similar, but slightly different goals as well. So let me throw out what I think are our goals. And then you can tell me how wrong I am.
Speaker 2 00:29:24 So for me, right now, my goal is to make recapture and valid are big enough that they are providing for us. And that I can do interesting things with them. And maybe I can find some adjacent stuff, but right now that's all I want to do. Like I'm not trying to grow it huge. I'm not trying to get funding. I don't want to sell, I just want to run it. I just want to do this. And that's okay. I think with Casto dose, you're looking a little bigger than I am. I think you you've definitely wanted to have a bigger team. You're trying to get it to a bigger scale and get more and bigger, interesting customers and build a company, which is a little bit, you know, we're, we're similar, but yet different because your scale of thinking is bigger than my scale of thinking right now. And it's not to say that either of us couldn't change at some point, but I think that's kind of where we're at. What would you say? Is that accurate?
Speaker 3 00:30:27 That's accurate. Yeah. I think that's accurate. And you know, what, what you kind of walking through that makes me think of is Spanx. You
Speaker 2 00:30:37 Think about Spanx a lot. Do you?
Speaker 3 00:30:39 I don't, I don't think about Spanx much and I don't even know the CEO's name, but I just have heard her name thrown around a lot as the rare person who can take it from this is like an idea and the garage all the way to a public company. And I say that because I think it's a really unique thing. And I think that that is why a lot of people sell is that they get to like the Peter principle themselves, right. They're like, okay, I'm like getting so far. And then like, I don't like this anymore, or this is not my thing. Or I suck it, you know, running the business at this scale. And she, and we're going to look up, the name was able to go from like just her to running a business. And it's a public company and it's extremely successful.
Speaker 3 00:31:21 And my kind of life at Castillo's has definitely changed from being, you know, the only one with Jonathan and running, you know, marketing and support and sales and brought in all this kind of stuff to now having like, uh, uh, you know, small to medium-sized team. And I guess that like looking at the longer term viability of me and the business is that like, I would like that to continue to evolve because I think that's what really gets me going, is like the new challenge of the next phase of the business. And I think that's probably the same for a lot of people is like, if you're just doing the same thing and like wash, rinse, repeat the same playbook over and over, we're all probably going to get bored and want to go do something else. But if there's unique challenges in the business as entrepreneurs who just like figuring stuff out, I think that we really key on achieving the next thing. And, um, and, and like whether that's the new product or a feature, or like from a, like at a business level, you know, figuring out how to run a business at the next, you know, whatever tier, like, I think that's what we all are looking for.
Speaker 2 00:32:32 And in fact, now that you've said that if I look back across all five of us, that I just mentioned as various examples, the one thing, probably the only thing that really ties us together, aside from that, you know, we're all single founders, bootstrappers whatever. And we share that in common is that if we're engaged, if we're learning, if we're growing, then we're happy. And it's just a question of what it is you want to learn. And, and where do you want to take that? Like you want to learn and go big. Do you wanna learn and go middle? Do you want to learn and go somewhere else? Do you want to learn within your thing and just live a certain lifestyle? All of these things are great, but it's when you're not learning. I think that's when that's, when people get unhappy. And, you know, I kind of got that sense when people get acquired that they work for something that same company that acquires them for a while.
Speaker 2 00:33:24 And they're just in execution mode. They're not necessarily learning and growing anymore. And they're certainly not in charge of the learning and the growing they're listening to somebody else's learnings and saying, this is what I want to do with it. And that's, I think ultimately what makes all of us unhappy is having somebody else control what we get to learn and what we get to do. So as long as we're in charge of that, it seems like we all are pretty happy about that. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't really matter when you're, you know, if you're moving your company through a certain stage of growth, there are some things like you talked about the Peter principle of this. There are some things I just never fucking want to learn when we get, if I were to get recaptured to an IPO stage, God helped me, but I would never want to deal with Sarbanes Oxley.
Speaker 2 00:34:14 I would never want to deal with quarterly earnings calls. I would never want to deal with like public stock market announcements and PR stuff that we would do. Like, just all of that. When I was in the corporate world, I hated all that crap. And I would hate it if it was my company doing all that crap. So that just, that sounds like hell and I definitely would not want to do that. So yeah, I think, I think you can self Peter principle out of that too. Like there's a size at which I am sitting. I am simply not interested in being a certain size. Like Jordan is interested in being a certain size as a company, and I respect the shit out of that, but I don't want to be that size like that doesn't interest me. So, you know, I, it's very much about what it is that you want out of your life for that.
Speaker 2 00:35:01 Right? And that, that I think is the important part of this to take away is what are your goals? And when S when you see an acquisition out there, ask yourself not, oh, man, you know, why did they do this? But what is it that they needed to get out of this, that they weren't getting out of it before? You know? Cause they'll usually tell you that when Pippin wrote up his little thing about why he sold Sandhills, he talked about his father's declining health. He talked about his lack of passion doing this after 10 years or eight years or whatever, some large number of years, he was sick of doing it. Like I get that. I totally feel that. But you know, people were like, oh, it's just not going to be the same without Pippin. And WordPress is ruined now. And I'm like, Pippin needs to move on. Like, he's ready to move on, let him go, let somebody else step in there. Maybe that somebody is you. Like, if you feel like this is the way you want WordPress to go, then step in there and make it go that direction, you know, that's what should have.
Speaker 3 00:36:04 And just to, just to kind of tie this all together, I think like, that's why, like I'm going to Croatia next week. And that's why you taking the time out of your business to do the no snow event is so important. And like a lot of us are, you know, nose to the grindstone. I'm so important. I have to work in and on the business all the time. But like the truth is you probably are the most important person in the business as a founder. And if you're not happy or you're not productive, or you're not able to be present and productive, then you're doing a big disservice to the business. And, and like, I'm telling myself this because I'm, I'm not the person to, to really do a lot, to take care of myself, but see very much now that like I have to, if I want to keep doing this for five more years, which is very possible, like I can see doing this for five more years and us getting really big. And I would love to, you know, I don't want to be on a two year crash course or else. So like kind of, kind of saying, like, I got to do things to take care of myself so that I can be present and in this, and really do good for the business and for my family and everything, you know, like it's all, it's all ties together. Yup. Yup.
Speaker 2 00:37:13 You can't, you can't do good by the business if you can't do good by yourself.
Speaker 3 00:37:18 Yup. Yup. Cool. Well, Dave really interesting conversation folks, you know, first of all, if you have a sales person or you're a salesperson and you wanna help Dave out, shoot us a message podcast, rugs, startups at com. And if you have thoughts on this, we'd love to hear from you. Additionally, you can hit us up on Twitter. Our Twitter handles are on rogue startups.com and we will see you next week.
Speaker 1 00:37:41 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
