Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today is a solo episode, solo journey with me, just sharing a bit about what's going on with my business, with me personally, with castos, and in my kind of journey as an entrepreneur. So I hope you've enjoyed the last few episodes. We've done interviews with kind of what I think are subject matter experts in their fields. We have another kind of handful of those is coming up, and to be honest, there's been a bit of a lull in the release of the podcast here because I have four or five of those interviews lined up. But I really enjoy doing these solo episodes. At the same time. They're pretty challenging from a logistical perspective to figure out how I'm going to record this. What am I going to talk about? How am I going to stare into this camera and talk into this microphone for 15 minutes and it be helpful and interesting to you. So thanks for bearing with me as I take this bit of a creative journey with you. And I'm sorry that I haven't been on the mic or on YouTube here recently, but a lot's been going on and I wanted to share that with you today. So first of know, I think the headline news is like, business is good. Castos has been growing, team is really solid and really cohesive.
[00:01:12] If I think about kind of covering the core functionalities of the know, product development, support and success, all kind of totally covered teams. Amazing there. I really am kind of marketing manager. We have Dennis, Dennis, our amazing writer who's been doing a lot of the content. He's been doing some kind of partnership outreach as well. And then I'm really owning sales, which is a really good fit for me. I like sales. I'm pretty good at it. I'm effective. And our sales volume is not so high that we need a whole big old sales team to kind of COVID the amount of leads that we have. And unfortunately, we've not really found a way to proactively go get a bunch of new leads. So that's another story for another time. But from a company perspective, I like to think that we have kind of the core functions covered at this point. And it really kind of brings me to the topic of today. And I wrote a blog post about this a couple of weeks ago, but it's taken me some time even since then to really kind of process how I'm feeling about this. I've talked about the teenage years of SaaS and the blog post I wrote was like managing certainty versus uncertainty. And I think that's how I'm feeling here. In the teenage years of the SaaS, product is, if you're early on, you know, that shit is breaking all the time and you have no marketing, you have no go to market, you have no kind of concept of product market fit. And as a result, because everything is broken and you don't really have any kind of assets or resources or momentum, it's really clear what you got to do, right? You got to put 1ft in front of the other every day and you got to march towards this goal, which is just like sanity, right? It's getting across the desert is just the goal and it's actually pretty clear, right. The desert is over there and the end of it is pretty clear. And, you know, when you get to call it 20K MRR or 50K MRR, you can hire a team to take care of some things and churn will be lower, product market fit will be achieved and you'll have a pretty good sense of what the business should look like. Right. And what your journey as a founder can look like from here. So we fortunately kind of crossed that point a while ago, and then we went into like the adolescent phase maybe, which is we raised some money, we joined tiny seed, we raised money after tiny seed as well, had a bigger team. We're trying to do a whole lot. And so that was kind of like the growth phase for us. As we achieved product market fit, we had a really pretty stable product. It's gotten a lot better recently. And then really tried to scale, and I got to say, transparently scaling didn't work out as well for us as we'd hoped. Right.
[00:03:56] I don't really know why, but that's not really the point of this.
[00:04:01] The point is our focus was really clear then, right. It was just go, go run into this brick wall as many times as we possibly can until we run out of money, right? And we did that. And we did that for a while. And that was in a lot of ways really clear. Because the goal every day when I get up is just like marketing sales, go growth.
[00:04:23] Not profitability or sustainability, but just growth. Everything was about growth all day, every day.
[00:04:29] And we've come out of that mode a little bit, right. We're a profitable company.
[00:04:35] Unfortunately, to do that, we did have to downsize our team a little bit. And that's just really hard, right. To say like, hey, we took this shot, we were on this path, we didn't quite get there, and we got to kind of lower our trajectory a little bit to get to somewhere that's sustainable. But I'll tell you, I heard this in the tropical MBA interview with Greg Crabtree. He said you've exited the kind of dream phase of business, which was the zero interest rate environment, and now you're in the punch your competitor in the face and steal their customers kind of phase. And I think that's true. Right? Going back a few years, we were in this totally kind of utopian business state, right? Aside from COVID but zero interest rates, everything was to the up and right. There was venture capital everywhere. People didn't care if they were profitable because they could go borrow or raise money for almost free. And now that's just not the case, right? I think inflation, interest rates are relatively stable, but it's kind of hard for business right now. And so the emphasis is much more on sustainability and profitability.
[00:05:43] And that's just kind of where we are, right? We're in this kind of post product market fit, post growth phase where I don't want to say the foot is off the gas a little bit, but we don't have these major burning holy shit kind of problems anymore. And I got to say, as a founder, it's really unsettling.
[00:06:08] I, like my daughter, thrive in chaos to a fair extent, right? I thrive in saying, holy shit, how are we going to make payroll this month? Or how am I going to close this customer? We got to close this customer. We got to improve this one metric. And I don't say any of those things now, right. I say, like, cool business is pretty good. We got money in the bank. It's getting bigger every month. The team is solid. Sure would I love to have another few people on the team to take some of these things off my plate. Yes. But honestly, life is pretty good right now, and it's just an interesting place to be from a psychological perspective. Certainly is the first time I've felt like this as a founder, and I've had a lot of guilt around it. I think I've wanted to record this episode for a long time, but having investors being part of tiny seed and them hearing something like business is pretty good. I know we're not growing a ton, but 1% a month is pretty good, and I feel okay about it.
[00:07:11] I am not going to go kill myself to figure out some crazy growth strategy to get us to three or four or 5% a month. But that's really where I am. And maybe it's because I'm jaded, right? Maybe it's because we tried and we tried and we tried and we tried, and we couldn't find that thing. Maybe that's it.
[00:07:28] It's possible that the boat I'm in just isn't that great of a boat. Right. Maybe the vehicle or the opportunity that I have in front of me is this is just what it is. I don't know. I put out a tweet the other day that says, if you're not growing 30% year over year, you should pivot or quit. And I think that's kind of related, right? Is I'm kind of saying, this is what our business is. We're in a competitive industry. Fuck. Everyone's in a competitive industry. You better hope you're in a competitive industry. But I'm kind of saying, like, cool. This is just what the business is. We've grown at the same kind of absolute level almost every month of our existence. It went up a little during COVID It's kind of flattened out a little bit now.
[00:08:09] But I kind of say, like, this is what the business is. And so, for me, as a founder, there's a lot of guilt in that because I want to change the world. I want to sell for $50 million kind of person. And that's not the path we're on.
[00:08:26] I think with the realization I've had is like, it's not the path we're on. And I think that that's just not the boat we're in. And so that's kind of been interesting. And then I take a step back and say, fuck, I am super grateful to have castos pay my mortgage and for my kids to go on vacation and all this kind of amazing stuff, and for me to have the freedom to live wherever I want and travel and do all these amazing things and have time to record a podcast at 02:00 in the afternoon. And for us to employ folks who this is their livelihood and pays their mortgage, too, and we're growing, right? But we're not growing like crazy. And so, on one hand, really grateful, feel really great about the opportunity and situation I'm in. The other hand, do feel guilty to say, like, man, I wanted that big, huge, amazing thing for me, for my kids, for my kind of legacy, and kind of realizing that maybe I'm not willing to do the things that we have to do to get there at this point. And that is, like, risk the health of the business or the profitability of the business, raise more money, work 80 hours a week. Maybe I'm just not willing to be the person or the founder that it takes to get to that point. Maybe that's it, but I know this is a bit rambly, but I did just want to kind of share how I'm feeling because in a previous episode I shared a little bit of this. But my thinking has evolved quite a bit since then and kind of getting back to the certainty versus uncertainty bit at those first two levels of the business, right? Getting to product market fit and then entering the growth phase, it's really clear and it's really certain what you're doing every day. And then you get into this teenage phase, I like to say, where things are just going along and things are a little more uncertain. I was sitting around earlier today saying, shit, what am I going to do today? I don't have these burning challenges or projects that I have to do and it's reliant on me and I got to get this out the door or else I'm going to have pissed off customers or churn is going to go up or something like that.
[00:10:36] And to have a little bit of idle time, a little bit of free mental space.
[00:10:43] Is that weird certainty, right? Or that weird uncertainty that I think we're just not accustomed to a lot of times. And again, I really thrive on the shit and just things being in chaos because then it's really clear, like, we have to fix this one problem and everything else doesn't matter now that most of the problems are fixed, aside from astronomical growth. And I'm kind of saying like, I just don't know that we can achieve astronomical growth, then it's a cool, in a way, it's a cool opportunity and place to be in to say, the uncertainty here, I just got to be okay with.
[00:11:23] I'll just share kind of last thing is this applies to the team as well, right? The team kind of sees that, hey, things are pretty good. Like, we're not growing as much, but things are pretty good. And so actually, one of the biggest challenges I've had is like, how do I relay to the team the things that we maybe take for granted, but we do every day and are super important, are still super important to maintain the health and the growth of the business.
[00:11:49] But we're just not going to go do all these million other things. Like, we're not going to go develop a whole new product. We're not going to go pursue a giant new marketing channel. We're going to keep doing the things that we want to do, and we're going to keep putting 1ft in front of the other on the path that we know like has gotten us here and probably will get us to that next step. It might not get us 50 steps ahead, but it'll get us that next step and the step after that. And that's the talk track and the thought process I'm on with the team because I've kind of come to terms with it myself is that's who I am, that's the business I'm in and that's the path I'm on. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this wasn't too rambly, but I do really enjoy getting these solo episodes in and sharing just how I'm feeling, what's going on with the business, where I am in my journey. Because if you've listened to this podcast for a while or you've watched on YouTube for a while, you know that things look really different now than they did, what, eight years ago when I started.
[00:12:45] So I hope this is helpful. Promise to be back very soon with more episodes, have some amazing interviews with really, really talented sales marketing, growth folks, and I can't wait to share those with you. If you are on YouTube, if you could please like subscribe, smash the bell, do all those good things. Sends YouTube amazing signals. If you're listening to your podcasting app, give it a thumbs up, give it a like rating, review all that good stuff. If I can do anything to help you, please head over to Craighewitt me. I am doing some kind of one on one growth coaching these days, so if that's interesting to you, you're looking for some help or just kind of person to bounce some ideas off of offering free kind of growth consultations there. Would love to chat and would love to dive into how we can help you grow your business. Until next time, our.
