Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today, if you're stuck in your business, I have three questions to ask yourself that pretty much guarantee you'll get unstuck and will transform the trajectory of your business. Start growing again, be more profitable, and just be happier running your business. Okay, the first question is a pretty deep one, but I really want to start with a bang here because it probably is the most effective one at getting you out of your own head and your own self limiting beliefs, which is what am I lying to myself about? I think it's a tough one because as founders, we have to be so optimistic and we have to believe that this is going to work and we're going to make it and everything is going to be okay, because otherwise we'd just go get a job. We have to believe in ourselves, in our brand and our company, and in the trajectory and the path and the vision that we think we're building here.
[00:00:58] It is that belief and that conviction, often foolhardy, that gives us the potential to make this thing happen. But at the same time, what happens is sometimes we're lying to ourselves. We are fooling ourselves into believing, I'm not going to run out of money next month. This deal is going to close. I do have product market fit. If you listen to the last episode with Adam Robinson, you hopefully your mind was blown as to what degree product market fit can and can't exist and that we fool ourselves. Check that episode out if you missed it.
[00:01:34] But this balance right between I am an entrepreneur and I believe in myself and I think this stuff is going to happen and I'm lying to myself because I don't have a great product. I don't have as strong a brand as I want. I don't have the degree of product market fit that I believe I have. I suck at sales. We don't know what the heck we're doing with cold email or SEO or whatever it is. You have to come in the middle of these two boundaries somehow. And I think the belief one is easy because you just, that's you as a founder, right? But the other one over here is, is there something that you're lying to yourself about that is holding you back from changing course, from investing in yourself or your team, to learn more or learn at a different pace, to change tact, to forego a decision that you made before to radically change the product and really pivot the business? If you're stuck, then the reality is not over here. And if you're watching on YouTube. This is my right hand. This is the dream that we're all going on. And if you're stuck, it's probably more over here on my left hand, which is like, there's something that I believe to be true that is not, and that's why the company is anchored and why we're not making it. So when I'm stuck and I'm like, what do I do? What's going on here? How do I get out of this rut? The first question I ask myself is, what am I lying to myself about? What, with my founder goggles on, am I seeing? That's green, that's really red.
[00:03:08] So ask yourself that, and I'd love to hear what you come up with. So if you're on YouTube, drop a comment and below and tell me something that as you ask yourself this question, you came up with an answer that was enlightening and really changed how you think about the current situation that you're in. Cool. Okay.
[00:03:26] The second one I've talked about before, I don't know if I got this from Dan and Ian at Tropical NBA, but I definitely have heard them talk about it before. If you don't listen to or watch the Tropical NBA podcast, it's one of the ogs, along with startups for the rest of us, is amazing. Go listen. Go watch. They're amazing guys, but they talk about this one quite a bit, which is, if private equity bought my company today, what would they do?
[00:03:51] And especially for us as bootstrapped, or mostly bootstrapped, indie lifestyle business kind of folks. And I say that in a good way. Like, I have mostly a lifestyle business, right? I have investors. We've taken money twice. I definitely am ultra motivated by them and wanting to get a return for them. But I also have two kids and a wife and family and pets and sports and activities and stuff that I like doing. And so I'm not willing to give up my life for my business. I want to have very strong kind of work life balance, but along with the similar kind of thing of what am I lying to myself about?
[00:04:29] Private equity would come in without any of the emotional attachments and anchoring that you have and make ultra objective, data driven decisions about your business. And so if you're a stock, this is a spectrum, right? If private equity came in, they would probably do a lot of things, and some of them would be really bad for your business. Some of them would probably be really good that you, as a bootstrap founder, are hesitant to do because you think private equity has a bad name. You think they ruin products. They think that you think that you, your brand is too good for doing things the private equity way. And I would just challenge that. Right? Like, to yourself, you can do it. When you're driving down the road, you don't have to talk to anybody about it, but just put on your if private equity bought my company hat and just be really objective and cold hearted and calculated about what you think needs to happen, they'd probably fire most of your marketing team. If you're not growing, why the heck do you have a marketing team? If you're not growing? Why are you building new product? If you're not growing? What the heck are your salespeople doing? So I think they would look at cost a lot. They would look at allocation of cost. Why are we investing in this thing when if we're not growing, we need to invest in this thing over here? Probably. And to me, that usually is why we're investing in product. And why aren't we investing in marketing? But that's to be determined. And the answer is different for everybody, right? It could be we're investing in marketing but the wrong way. We're investing in product but building the wrong products for the type of market that we want to go into. So I don't know. But these are just questions. I don't have any answers here. So if you came here in this episode looking for answers, you're screwed. I don't have any answers. I have three really important questions, and I think this one could be the most important. Knowing most of you, right? Knowing most of you. You're like me. You're like, I just want, like, a good business that provides me with a good life. And for me, I have investors. I want them to get a good return. That's super important to me. So as I get stuck in my business, and it's not like we're not growing or we're not profitable, right? But it's like we're underperforming. If you think about the stock analogy, like, we're just not doing as good as I think we could do sometimes I go, all right, what if, what is Xenon? Or whatever that bought barometrics. If Xenon comes in and buys castos tomorrow, what are they going to do?
[00:06:44] The answer to that should be pretty clear, if you're not lying to yourself too much. Okay, so that's the second question. And the third question is, if you hire me as a coach or you join the DC accelerator or you join tiny seed, and you get a really great advice for somebody who has been there and done that and has been at ten or 20 or 30 grand a month and has gotten way past that point and has learned the lessons, maybe the hard way, what would they say? So if you book a call with me and we're in a coaching session, and you start presenting what's going on and your challenges and things like that, what do you think? I'd say we're a seven figure SaaS business and we've been around for a while and we're profitable and growing. That's pretty good. If you laid it out all on the table at a conference, to me, what would I say? If you get on the phone with Dan Andrews and he sees a ton of this, because they're doing quite a bit of coaching. Now, if you laid your business out to Dan and Ian, what would they say? If you called Rob walling up, what would he say? If you called up Patrick McKenzie or whoever? Right? What would they say?
[00:07:46] You probably know, like, they're not going to come up with some marketing tactic or strategy that you've never heard of, right? Like most of us who listen to the podcasts and are on YouTube and are in the world, know all the options out there. It's usually not the options that are limiting you. It's your mindset. And this is a preview of where this show is going, is a lot around mindset. It's usually your mindset and your ability to have focus, clarity and execution in your business. And so, as we just wrap up, this is a pretty short episode, but the three questions that you should ask yourself if you're stuck is what are you lying to yourself about?
[00:08:28] What would private equity do? Or someone who's really objective, what would they do? Take all the emotion out of your business and you as the founder, and the attachment, what would an objective party do? Private equity is a pretty good example of that, right? Representation. And the last one is, what would a trusted advisor like me, or someone who you really trust and would follow, what would we do? What would we do if we were in your shoes? Or if you came to us, said, hey, here's the deal, what should I do with my business? And I think if you ask those three questions, you probably are going to get some pretty solid insights as to the reality of the situation that you're in and the next step, or a couple of potential next steps that you can take to really set yourself up for success going forward. I hope this is helpful. I hope this is interesting. I hope you ask yourself these questions. Even if you're not stuck, even if things are going great, growing like wild, profitable, growing, hiring the team, all this kind of stuff, I still hope you ask yourself these as checking questions. Hey, things are good. Like paranoia. Check like what? What would happen if I got an advisor on the phone? What would happen if private equity bought us? Are we going down the right road? Am I lying to myself about something that's really important? And do I have those blinders on? So I hope this is helpful. I'd love to hear what you think of these questions. If there are any other questions you ask yourself to gut check yourself, drop them in and comment below on YouTube, or shoot me a message podcast@roguestartups.com. see you next time.
