RS311: Does Your Business Pass The Test?

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome back to another episode of Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today I'm a little starstruck, I gotta say. I'm having someone on the podcast who I've been listening to their podcast for probably ten years. I'm joined today by Dan Andrews, co host of the Tropical NBA podcast. If you don't know Dan and the tropical NBA, and his co host, Ian, I mean, it's just an amazing show. It's an amazing kind of journey of entrepreneurship and two founders over a very long period of time. Dan and I talk in this episode about there are some of the kind of ogs them, along with Rob Walling and Pat Flynn, and some of these are super Og business kind of online entrepreneurship podcasts have inspired and helped so many of us who are now at like, you know, great levels where we have our own real business. And in this episode, Dan and I talk about, you know, his, his journey and evolution as a, as a creator and a podcaster, and just kind of where he sees the medium now because he's seen a lot of it. And so it's really interesting to see his perspective on podcasting and content creation right now. Talk about good versus okay versus great businesses and what those actually look like. And they're kind of metrics and rubric for deciding that. Talk about potential, what a pivot looks like, when and how to think about it, and then just wrap up with in this really noisy, busy, fast world of AI and all this kind of crazy seeming stuff going on, how he stays centered and grounded in these core beliefs and fundamentals of business. And if you follow Tropical MBA, you'll know that they have been on this train of Dan being the money guy and them talking about sops and processes and frameworks. And that's why I reached out to Dan and I wanted to have him on the show now because it's been one of the best kind of focusing and recentering of podcasts that have been on for a while that I've ever seen. Today, Tropical MBA is hands down like one of my favorite podcasts because they're talking about shit that is super important to me all the time. And so I wanted to have Dan on the show to talk about kind of all this, but almost as much just to talk about like, hey, you've been around the podcast for ten years. How did you get to like, what is now, at least for me, like a really, really good spot. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dan. It was really just a great chance to chat with someone who's kind of seen as much as he has, and I hope you enjoy it as well. [00:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So you all obviously started, I'll use the term, like, your brand and your personal brand. You and Ian with the podcast, like, ten years ago, yours was one of the first podcasts I listened to. And so this is pretty cool to have you on the show, but, like, it's changed a lot. Y'all have changed a lot. Your business, your trajectory, you know, the kind of tropical NBA brand has changed a lot. Like, why podcasting? Is it still, like, the best medium and use of your time? I want to get into the specifics of how you put a stake in the ground. But first, I think the medium is important, too. [00:03:22] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. For me, it all comes from podcasting. Instantly made sense to me because I'm a radio guy, an enormous consumer of radio content. And so when podcasts came out, I got the big old ipod as a gift from my mentor because I had, like, a two hour commute, and I was instantly just. There were niche podcasts like ours back in the day, and that's what I would listen to on my commute, and it was extremely valuable to me. And there was sort of a moment in time when I was like, oh, I have something to say here. And so I got a little sort of, like, headphone mic set up and just started banging away at some episodes. I was like, I feel like what we're doing is different than what I'm hearing in the podcast space. And that was a genesis. That was, like, 2009, so it was a very long time ago, and at the time, I didn't have, like, a framework for why I was doing it. I just. It was more memetic. I saw this really important and interesting podcast called Internet business mastery, and I got the chance to hang out with the guys who ran the show, and they were so important to people on the web back in, like, 0708, I would look forward to their episodes coming out, but they were so different from me, and their business looked nothing like my business. And I think that if I had to choose one inspiration, it was probably them. Like, I was like, hey, I can do that, too. I want to try it out. And, yeah, it was instantly satisfying to put out episodes, even if 50 people were listening. It was great. [00:05:07] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, same. Same Internet business mastery, tropical MBA lifestyle business podcast for throwback, smart passive income, and startups for the rest of us. Right. I think you all probably can't appreciate how much you've impacted. Honestly, folks like me, right. And folks who are kind of coming up in the ranks now, folks who are already kind of there. Folks have already kind of gone super big. Y'all, like, deserve so much for giving so much of, like, your knowledge and transparency to the community. [00:05:40] Speaker B: It's amazing. [00:05:40] Speaker A: So, like, kudos to you. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Well, back to your question, though. That's a tribute to the medium in some ways, which is the people who listen are incredibly engaged. And if you have to create a framework for it, if people are listening to this pod and they're investing 60 minutes of their lives, and we've all heard these things about podcasts, but for a lot of times, from a business perspective, it was really pooh poohed because the numbers are smaller. It's hard for growth. How are you going to turn that into something? And I think at this point, the argument is sort of moot. Now, when you talk to marketers, the podcast is the Holy Grail. They almost don't even want to talk about it. 500 podcast listeners. Let me ask you a question. This podcast episode, say 1000 people listen to it, or let's say 100 people listen to it. How many YouTube views would you change that for on the same video? What's the ratio? [00:06:38] Speaker A: I would rather have more people listen to this than to watch YouTube 100%. But I'm also give you five to one. [00:06:48] Speaker B: For me, it's ten to one. And I'm almost feeling uncomfortable based on. I actually think the numbers higher than that. [00:06:56] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Interesting. [00:06:57] Speaker B: A lot of podcasters on YouTube. I would easily, at this point, take a hundred listens on Spotify or on Apple podcasts versus a thousand YouTube views. And I might be wrong about that, but that's just kind of interesting. [00:07:12] Speaker A: It's interesting. I mean, you know, so, like, we're a podcasting company. We talk about this all the time with. With our customers and internally of like, what the fuck are we gonna do with video? Like, we support video. Like, you can publish video through Kastos to. Well, interestingly, not to Spotify because they're, you know, a whole different kind of beast, but to Apple podcasts and a handful of other places. And we publish all these episodes to YouTube, but the lines are really blurry these days, you know? And you were talking about how y'all are gonna start doing more video. Like, I agree it's important, but I don't think it should be, like, the primary focus for most podcasters. You got to decide, do you want a YouTube channel or do you want a podcast? Because you can't do a single piece of content really well for both media, I believe. [00:07:58] Speaker B: I think you're right. [00:07:59] Speaker A: So that's something that, I was on a sales call last week, and guy was like, yeah, I want to. He kept interchanging the words a lot. He's like, I want to start a YouTube channel. I want to start a podcast, and I want to start a video podcast. I was like, yo, bro, you got to get clear on what you want because you might be hiring the wrong team here. [00:08:15] Speaker B: So. [00:08:18] Speaker A: This is relevant. You all have hired a producer, right? I'm sure some kind of young stud that comes from this media background. [00:08:27] Speaker B: Total stud. [00:08:27] Speaker A: And he's teaching you all a bunch of new stuff. What's that experience like for you to be like, dude, I got 800 episodes under my belt. There's nothing you can teach me about podcasting my audience. But he should, right? Or they should. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think there's tons. I mean, the big. I mean, I think there's a lot of gaps in our game, but one is where the overlap between creative and growth lies huge. [00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:54] Speaker B: And he comes from a traditional media background where getting eyeballs is the name of the game. But what really attracted me to him was his understanding of the creative necessity of finding an overlap there. And so basically, an analytical approach to creativity, which you're seeing with youtubers, I think, really commonly is you're seeing youtubers say, well, the algo, one of my favorite youtubers is this guy who talks about urban planning, and he wrote, I happen to own a pickup truck. He put up a video about pickup trucks that everybody commented on and went to the top of his list. And so now he's got like three or four videos just about pickup trucks, because it's that overlap we're talking about. And I think for podcasters, it's a lot less legible, what that is. But I think if you can find it, the podcast median medium is still incredibly powerful for influence, essentially. I think it's the most, the most influence we've seen for marketers, essentially. And I think that's why it's an important nut to crack if you want to start a pod. [00:10:08] Speaker A: I agree. I think that's what it is. It's not the scale of YouTube, but the intensity, if you will, or the quality of those listeners or fans. It's the thousand true fans thing maybe is so much stronger. This episode won't get a thousand listens, probably. And, like, I'm cool with that. And I know we're not a huge podcast, but it's rare for me to go to a conference or a meetup or something like that and someone not know me from the podcast. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:36] Speaker A: And that's the only way. Like, I don't have a strong social presence or anything. That's the only way someone would know me. But it's pretty, it's pretty cool. It's pretty compelling. [00:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, one of your recent episodes where you're like, walking through the details of your business, equipping, like a small group of sort of like investors. They're invested in a way with your narrative, how that bumps into people. It's got enormous down chain influence. And so that's why I think the upside for podcasting is so enormous, because, all right, if you get like 50 people that are like an in crowd listening, that's already well worth most founders time. If growth, if your growth is sort of on your agenda. And I also think it's an enormous moat. So you got the influence part of it, which you can build up an influence equation, which is like something that looks like total number of minutes spent with you versus how they perceive you versus what your offer is, all that sort of stuff. But then there's the moat element, which is go ahead and try to do it. Try to, try to flip on a camera. You mentioning in one of your recent videos, you called it that dang thing. So I really, you know something about that tone. It's hard. It's hard to say something worth saying and to say it every week or whatever the cadence is. And it also, in order to do it well, you can't just sit there and market the whole time. You have to optimize for interesting. And I think that's a mental shift that most founders aren't willing to make. And fair enough, because if they have a channel that's working, then by all means do that, because podcasting won't typically be as focused or as targeted, and it won't work as fast. [00:12:21] Speaker A: So, talking about focus, let's circle back to the, you said in a recent episode, after your DC black event in New York, one of your takeaways was be the money guy. And so I see it. I see it. I see it on Twitter. I see you talking about it in the episodes. And I really get that. I was talking with someone pretty recently, and they said, what do you want to be known for? I think that's an interesting question, because we all are already known for something, but is that the thing that we want to keep marching down that path, or do we want to say no I know I was going here, but I want to shift 30 degrees and go over here. Talk to me about how difficult is that. How difficult is it for you to have the focus on one aspect of entrepreneurship and business, and then practically, what is that looking like? [00:13:19] Speaker B: Clay, heres what that insight was all about for me. So we had this event in New York City, and minimum, you had to have a million dollars in revenue to be there, but the average was much higher. A couple of things I walked out of that room. First off, no one is satisfied with their money people in the room. So that's really interesting. Why is everybody sort of begrudgingly going back to their CPA? Sort of interesting. Okay, that's number one. Number two, the problems in everyone's business basically boil down to team composition. But these things are emotionally challenging and muddled. However, numbers are simple, so we're dissatisfied by our numbers. And numbers are a way to get into that complicated conversation, which is, how are you investing in your team? And I think that that's what great money people do, is they take a look at how you're treating your business as an investment, and they give you a source of truth about it, and it makes it a lot easier to do the difficult things of, am I deploying my investment in personnel correctly? I think the pattern matching I'm trying to do is, okay, I'm doing all these calls with people who run 510 $2 million businesses, and it's just people problems at the end of the day. And it's not necessarily what we all signed up for. And meanwhile, we're unhappy with our financial teams. And so I just saw it as a big opportunity for young people coming up with a numbers focus. It's like, hey, I understand that you might have wanted to go to a traditional career five years ago, but now that there's this new class of founders with these incredible businesses, your skillset could really make an impact on these businesses. [00:15:13] Speaker A: How far off do you think most founders, I'll say, like me or like you, are from the clarity and insight they should have on their, what their financial situation means they should do with their business? I'm saying, what would more information do for most founders? [00:15:36] Speaker B: The key is to find what minimal information galvanizes the most action. And that's, I think, where the bookkeepers and the cpas and stuff are really falling behind. A lot of the founders I deal with essentially have no financial plan. They have a team, they have money in, money out. They have their books, and then they have goals. The question is, how do you figure out financial metrics that marry your plan to your goals. That's the knitting that we've really been focused on in our company. I found it really, really empowering. We got to a certain point, I think it was maybe about 910 team members and well over a million dollars in revenue. And our just financial stuff was breaking down. Like, who's spending money? Why? Where are the budgets? Should we pay this person this much? We had no methodology for these things. It was like, well, number go up and their salary go up and disocay. And so I feel like, you know, to back to your original question, which is a sense for having confidence or imposter syndrome. These are just genuinely the problems I'm dealing with across my plate. And I found it extremely empowering to bring financial intelligence into our company. And what I'm seeing out there is people are dissatisfied with their financial plans. Generally speaking. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Since this is a little outside of your wheelhouse, I guess it's come into it recently, but hasn't been your core competency for a while. What's your level of imposter syndrome with talking about this stuff? [00:17:14] Speaker B: Zero. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Nice. Okay. [00:17:17] Speaker B: I guess because I'm not sure I really understand that much. I think part of the value of podcasting is, like, one of the reasons I love Mike Mishlewitz so much. He's the guy who wrote profit first. This whole thing is like, look, I'm bad at all this stuff. If I were a money guy or a marketing guy, I would work at fucking Facebook, you know what I mean? [00:17:40] Speaker A: Or whatever. [00:17:41] Speaker B: I'm an entrepreneur. My job is to figure out the thing that needs to be done to own this asset and to progress. And so I think for me, it's like, yeah, there's always a new thing that we're doing. I'm not even sure what my core competency is, but trying to make this business a success is my project. And so for me, it's exciting to share the in progress stuff. Like, I'm not Greg Crabtree or Mike. Like, I'm not an expert at this stuff, but I do find, I think the connection between expertise that I find out there and when it latches into your projects or your friends projects and you see it working, it's kind of a magic moment. And so I get excited to share that stuff, and so I don't get caught up on the fact that I'm not the world's leading expert on it or whatever. There's nothing. If that were the case, I couldn't talk about much. Why do you ask about imposter syndrome, though? That's interesting. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Oh, I have an enormous amount of it, like, all the time. [00:18:38] Speaker B: How does it manifest? [00:18:41] Speaker A: Procrastination? [00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, if anybody listened to, like, recent episodes, kind of just saying, like, you know, our business is, you know, it's growing a little bit and it's an okay business and it's kind of what it is, but it's not, you know, we're not stripe or whatever, like some massive, huge, big company, which, which I guess I never imagined we would be, but I've fallen short. I like to use the term like we're underperforming, if you think about the stock analogy. And so that happens, and that happens over time. And I go, well, I'm no good at this. I'm no good at this. I'm no good at this. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to sell. I don't know how to lead a team. And I think that when things are going well, I have almost none. I have almost no kind of imposter syndrome or kind of lack of confidence. And when things are not going well, I have a lot more of it. And then it leads to just sitting at the computer and just, like, scrolling through my chrome tabs and reading my email and stuff instead of shoot this YouTube video, run this SEO campaign, chat with the team and actually do stuff. Yeah. [00:19:55] Speaker B: That resonates. Yeah. First off, my first thought is it's a, it's a heavyweight to bear if you're benchmarking to stripe. [00:20:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:05] Speaker B: You know, that's one thing. And so do we have a framework for benchmarking? You know, do we have a defined industry or competitors or what is our benchmark? And what are we capable of as a team? I mean, one of the things that has been a transition for Ian and I is defining our roles in the company. Like, what are we responsible to? Because part of the, one of the best things about starting a company is you don't have to be responsible anything. So a lot of us get in the game, myself included, because we have a motivational way from things like, I remember the two hour commute. I remember the crap meetings. I remember all this stuff. And what I want is to be free from these things. But at a certain point, we decided that in order to progress, we were willing to opt in to new levels of responsibility, to commit to frameworks, to plans, to budgets, to goals, stuff like that. Just like running a business stuff. But I resonate with the concept of. Yeah, of course we are who we are. We elected to take on this career, and there's going to be a lot of companies and people that outperform us. And one of the cool things about social media, I guess, if you can flip it, is on the one hand, we can benchmark ourselves to the stars and feel bad about it, but also we can flip it and see what they're doing and be inspired. Actually reach out to them. Yeah. And I guess it's sort of been. My project through the pod is like, okay, like, I just heard about this guy that's amazing at podcast growth. Guess who's not me. I wrote down his name, and I'm gonna reach out to him this week, you know, and I'm gonna learn from him, hopefully. Or not, and take it from there. [00:21:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:45] Speaker A: I've definitely gotten a lot kind of healthier with how I approach social media. A lot more active on Twitter. [00:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:53] Speaker A: I mean, LinkedIn is an amazing place these days. If I was a b two b, like, we're not really b, two b company. We're like b to prosumer. But if I was a b, two b company, all I would be doing is LinkedIn. It's amazing. And there's not as much negativity on LinkedIn as there is on Twitter sometimes, but, yeah, I have a healthier relationship with Twitter these days, and it's great. Met a lot of interesting people. You and I chat there sometimes. That's how we connected for this. The ability to connect with people all over the world doing interesting things is that there's nowhere else like it. And they're probably. I mean, there will be at some point, but not anytime soon. I don't think it's going anywhere. Yeah. If you can take the good with the bad. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Well, the concept of procrastination and lack of confidence makes complete sense, given the task ahead of you, which is to figure out the 100% hardest problems in the business every single day. [00:22:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:52] Speaker B: And, you know, I think it's worth building a framework for, like, having a cadence in a system to confront that, you know, because it's. And that's what I've really been trying to do is say, like, this is a blessing that I have these problems to solve and that there's these challenges, and I should work it in, you know, I should figure out, you know, if I. I still love creative time, and that's something I don't want to lose because I'm operating a larger business now, but I can still maintain that and opt into systems that help me to address these things that I am weaker at. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:31] Speaker B: Which for me, I think part of the reason I talk about operations so much on our show is because it's not naturally what I would choose to do or that I was, like, naturally fueled to wake up every morning and to, like, manage team directors through their KPI's or whatever. This is not what I dreamed of, but it is deeply associated with the sort of goals that I want to achieve and stuff. And so I think that's what I resonate with about Mike's writing and why I love podcasts, too, is I just interviewed Jordan Gal, and one of the things I mentioned to him is he's from bootstrapped Web. You mentioned a similar show to ours. They're going through transitions on their show right now, and they're kind of talking about it real time. And I find that very compelling because it's what we're dealing with and the mindset shift. If people are thinking about starting their business right now, it's like failure is sort of what we're responsible for as founders. We are constantly running experiments that don't work out, and it's really demotivating to people that work for us that are used to being successful, you know, or if we were good at something in a past life. And here we are actually just failing quite regularly and screwing up. But I think that in as part of the game is the challenge. [00:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you turn that on its head like that and say, instead of running into a challenge and failing, how do you turn that into a positive and say, I did this thing I learned. We'll iterate and it'll be better next time. Between you and Ian, even, like, how does that work? [00:25:06] Speaker B: I think that is essentially what I've come to realize is the truth of entrepreneurial work. We kind of think that 5% of projects hit, and then maybe another 5% are okay, and then the okay ones are sort of the hardest decisions to make. What do you do with an okay thing? I think the hard part is getting ahead of yourself. In a lot of my coaching calls, I hear about these big visions, but we're wrong. So often. It's like, how do you marry the vision that motivates you? I'd love to have a company that is XYZ versus the actual regular failure of experiments that you have to do. The best founders seem to be able to do it. They let it roll off their back a little bit easier. A failure. They don't identify with it. Like you said, a few things earlier, like, I feel like I am this, I am that. So some of the ways we've tried to retool that over the years is like, you know, our concept of an entrepreneur mobile, like driving a shit car, is actually, you know, empowering me to run these experiments because I don't have a big monthly car payment or whatever, just little things like that. I think you can find that there's. There's a kind of, I don't know, like a dignity and a status to actually trying. Like, there's. There's something that people value in that, too. And I think you do have to try a lot if you're going to start a business and grow it. [00:26:42] Speaker A: You mentioned that, that kind of middle, right? You're. You got something that's not a failure, it's not a home run. It's somewhere in the middle there. I saw Matt Paulson talking about this on Twitter, and he had some metrics around this. We'll try to include the tweet in the show notes. But I think he was basically saying, if you've been working on something for a year and it's not a winner, it's time to cut bait and move on to the next thing. How do you define that? How do you define working or not working? How do you define the amount of time and the inputs and stuff you give something before, because at some point you got to decide it is a winner, but maybe in a different context or it's a loser and we need to pivot. [00:27:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the question. That is the question. I'm tempted now that I'm a little older to be even more aggressive about demanding almost immediate results. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Noah Kagan style. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Yes, if you are not extremely well capitalized. And so this is another way I kind of back my way into it with numbers, is I think a lot of times, say, for example, people have a consultancy and their clients are difficult and stuff, and what they're doing is siphoning off money into some startup asset that they think has. This is like, typically a recipe for failure because you're not capitalized or focused well enough to compete or create something genuinely valuable. And it's also has a little bit of this gambler mentality where, you know, I'll put some stuff over here and see if it hits. And I'm trying to nix that from myself, from our team, and from when we talk to clients. So typically it's like, let's run this experiment. Let's put your neck on the line. Let's put it all out there, and everyone, including you, is going to forget about it in two weeks if it fails. And let's move quickly because we're not well capitalized. We're bootstrappers. Yeah. And it's got to work now. And if you've ever felt product market fit, we felt it a couple times in our life, and sometimes it doesn't scale or whatever. There's a million challenges after it. That's the other thing, is, like, you're just beginning when you get initial traction. Yeah. So I'm tempted to really be more demanding on this. Like, it's either, to use the Derek Sivers phrase, it's a hell yeah or no, right? It's like, people really are begging for this. As Jordan reflects in his cart hook journey, you know, like, he knew to invest in that software because people were begging him for it, you know? [00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:16] Speaker B: And I felt like that when we started our podcast, you know, like, people were like, I want this show to come out next week. And I was like, all right, I'm going to do it. You know, like, that makes sense. Even though there was no money there, I could tell there was value. And so eventually, value will resolve to money. Do. [00:29:32] Speaker A: Do you feel like dynamite jobs and remote first recruiting is. Is a yes as of today? Like, it's a hell yes. [00:29:39] Speaker B: Say remote first recruiting is like a very, very. Okay. Yes. And dynamite jobs is like a yeah, okay. And that's an example of this where, you know, we saw an opportunity to, like, deal with a lot of frustrations we felt in dealing with job boards. And a lot of the ways that we wanted to solve those problems were through our unique applicant tracking software and our database and our interface and feature, feature, feature, feature. And we siphoned so much money into building those solutions when, in fact, what our clients were hell yes about is, like, hey, actually, we agree with you that job board experiences are largely frustrating. How about we just pay, just not do it? [00:30:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:23] Speaker B: How about we just not do it? So to me, it's like, a perfect example of me having this idea. Like, I started out with this concept of a high end fiber. Like, we don't even need job boards. We just need to connect with service providers that can be a facsimile of an employee, and I see my clients doing that. Turns out it's just an enormously hard problem to solve. You have to be extremely well capitalized to solve it. And maybe for every fiverr, there's ten other companies that failed at it. And if you bottle up all the money. Meanwhile, if I just would have put up a landing page that would have cost a couple hundred bucks and said, job boards are a pain in the butt, I think we all can agree on that. Here's a world class recruiter that you can call right now that'll sort it all out for you. That turned out being the winner for us, and it's going really well. I think for us to get to kind of a hell yeah on remote first recruiting, I think we need a strong identity for, like, a niche that kind of goes viral in organizations right now. That's like, SDRs are our number one hire. So maybe if we were, like, Sammy the SDR guy, that would be a little bit more on the direction of hell. [00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I would say Kastos is a yeah to a yes. Maybe. We've, you know, one of the challenges you were talking earlier about, like, as an entrepreneur, you just don't have to do anything. I wanted to push back on that a little bit because, like, at the beginning, you have to do everything, and only as you get revenue and the allure, you know, the. Yeah, the potential of profit, can you give up some of that profit to pay someone else to do the stuff that you don't want to do. [00:32:08] Speaker B: Right. So that's. [00:32:09] Speaker A: That's kind of the shit of the blessing and the shit of entrepreneurship is like, as you grow and have more money, you just give that money away to not do things you don't want to do, basically. And I'll share for SaaS folks out there that getting to a million bucks only then lets you not do what you don't want to do, especially if you're not a developer like me. You just can't run a profitable SaaS business at less than a million bucks annual revenue because you got servers and team and developers and support and all this kind of stuff. And so I just think that much above that, I see it getting really interesting, and we're just not that much above it to where there's a bunch of money going around to where I don't have to do anything. [00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:01] Speaker A: And kind of similarly to the focus thing, we have not found that thing where you put a dollar in over here and we get $2 out over there. I think that's largely my frustration, is like, it's chugging along. It's growing a little bit. It's really stable, which is a blessing. There's not that many, you know, holy shit, moments in the business anymore. But. But it's not a rocket ship. And so you know, I count myself really lucky that like it's really stable and you know, I make good money and all this kind of stuff, but it's taken eight years to get here. [00:33:33] Speaker B: Yeah, totally makes sense. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:36] Speaker B: How much of that perspective is the investors? Would you feel differently if you didnt take on investors? [00:33:45] Speaker A: Not much. Our investors, between tiny seed and Rob and those guys and then we raised some more money later, I dont feel like I owe them a lot. I work really hard because we have investors, but I can only do what I can do. Thats taken some time to realize that I was killing myself two years ago to get them paid back. At least I can only do what I can do, I guess. And the company is what it is. There's probably at this point not that magic thing that's going to unlock 50% year over year growth. That's cool. To your point, I have to put that in the context of stop comparing myself to stripe and compare myself to pick your company that is like us. And yeah, we're pretty successful. [00:34:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And the thing that we've been talking a lot about is basically as the founder, your job is growth. I think we talk about a lot of things, but figuring out where that next million is going to come from, it's daunting. It is the game. That's the job. And so if it's not going to come through your current offers, it's like, well, what offers can we create at this point that are going to expose our, like, expose our surface area to upside trajectories and a lot of, most of them aren't going to work. You know, that's. Yeah, it's hard to have an identity as a company. You know, this is what we do. We're sort of entrenched. Like, our revenue right now is precious to us. It's why we have jobs. But yet Craig's going to go blow it all up with this next idea or whatever. Yeah, and that's the hard part. [00:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so that's a good segue to like, the last thing I want to talk about, which is like, you and Ian have already started over, right. Like completely started over from like the e commerce business to what you're doing now. And, you know, you're about my age, right? You're not almost done. You're probably not going to do this forever. How do you all think about this thing has a life cycle and that's whatever. It's two years, it's five years, it's ten years, and then you're going to go do something else, maybe even within this ecosystem. That's definitely part of the equation. And that my business is a b plus maybe, or a. Yeah. But the risk of something else being a circle makes the thing I have now seem better. So I don't know, how do you all balance that kind of mid career of saying, hey, it's not that bad, this is pretty good, or, yeah, I should be more disciplined and demand a fucking a opportunity, and I'm going to risk what I have now for it. [00:36:39] Speaker B: Bunch of things. I think it probably, for me, it's better to think about an a plus process versus an a opportunity. Ooh, okay. And that would mean finding parlays, leveraging the assets you currently have, having a great productive cadence, and being willing to sustain a bunch of C's along the way to figure out the a that's currently our process. Starting from scratch doesn't appeal to me at all at this point, but I do feel motivated by the fact of. [00:37:12] Speaker A: Of age. [00:37:13] Speaker B: So the fact that I'm 42, I feel like I've worked half of my career to a degree. I mean, just ballpark. I can feel it. I can feel what 20 x plus years feels like, and I know how much time that is. And that's sort of like the egg timer on the stove for me is it's like, let's make it count. Like, I, you know, I kind of fluffed away a couple years in there. Like, I really like this stuff. And so I think that's been motivating to me is like, I'm caring less. Let's just try some stuff, see if it works. And if not, it's fine. I mean, that's the thing. There's this Taleb quote that's like, entrepreneurs are great at taking risk and avoiding ruin. So I do think that there are ways that we can take risks as founders to find growth, to find evolution without betting the farm on it. And that's the trick. And that's part of the reason why doing it without capital makes all the sense in the world. Noah Kagan style back to him. We will accept no strategies that are capital or time intensive at this point. That's not where we're at in the market, and we don't need to be there. There's other people doing that. There's plenty of opportunities that are light in those terms. And really what it takes is bravery and confidence and execution. And those are actually the hardest things. So there's this book that I've been obsessed with lately. It's this beautiful book about poker. And so if anybody's listening is into poker, it's called exploitative play in live poker. And the narrative he tells is, like, with the exploding amount of information in the poker world, everybody's optimizing their game and following in these directions. But still, the number one biggest exploit at the table is that players don't want to look stupid. So it's like, what's always been true remains true, which is that it was the bravery that we had to start in the first place. How can we recapture it and continue to execute with that sort of style and that process as we have more to lose? And I think there's ways to do it. [00:39:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll. [00:39:27] Speaker B: Just. [00:39:28] Speaker A: As you were talking, I was thinking, I think we're fortunate to be able to think in these ways because our basic needs are met through our existing business, and we're able to think in these iterative bets. I think that's not to be lost, because if you're on the clock and you're running out of Runway, the thought process is probably a little different. Yeah, yeah. Neat, neat. So what is, like, I want to. You know, we've talked a lot about. On this show, we talked a lot about, like, new trends in the Internet and in business. [00:40:07] Speaker B: Right? [00:40:08] Speaker A: And I think you all have a really interesting perspective, not just from the podcast, but from the DC of, like, seeing the shit that people are into. And I want to, like, look into the crystal ball a little bit. And so it's like fucking AI, and I don't even know what. But what do you see in the next five years as you're formulating that plan of, like, I want to go to where the puck is, what interests you, or what's on your radar? [00:40:35] Speaker B: I'm tempted to say, craig, that things echo the same way that when we started, is that the fundamental things of bootstrapping are basically always the same, which is what's changing the most radically, is channels. And that's a really dynamic topic. We can sit here and say, well, TikTok's great for e commerce or whatever, but the reality is, for every business, you have to have an instinct of where that channel is going to be, whether it's going to be word of mouth, in person stunts, TikTok, podcasting, whatever. The bootstrapping formula remains the same, which is you need a channel. You need to deliver on a great offer at a profitable level. And that's what starts to get a little technical, and that's where most of us are at, is that we figured that part out. And then we need to build a business organization around and find the next growth channel. Once we get to that level and it's often a matter of tweaking offers, it's a matter of reformulating the way you're constructing a business around that initial successful and figuring out a way to get your founder energy on the next channel that's going to acquire customers for your offer. I don't think those fundamentals have really changed that much. I think the way we can acquire customers has gotten increasingly dynamic and exciting in some ways busy. But when I look back at the DC, it's like a lot of say the technical part of delivering profitably on your offer. We were like, the reason I went to Asia was not exactly to fulfill the tropical brand, but because we needed to hire developers and that was like a technical element to our offer and we just couldn't do it at California prices. And those fundamentals really haven't changed that much. [00:42:26] Speaker A: I wanted to have you on the podcast to essentially get this because I've been listening for a long time, admittedly off and on a little bit. But your show has been one of my favorites of late because y'all have come back to these like fundamentals. And it's really refreshing because there's so much hype and noise and bullshit about tactics and hacks and strategies and stuff. And to hear you all kind of re basing on just like the real important fundamentals of how to run really any business, like. And that kind of agnosticism, if that's a word, is really appealing. Cause like I'm in Sas now, but will I be in Sas always? I don't know, but like, to have the show be kind of rooted in kind of these mostly universal truths is really cool. And so like, I guess just kudos to y'all for. For reaching that point. I'm sure it's been kind of an organic evolution, but I have to say it feels really good to me as like a listener at this point. [00:43:28] Speaker B: I appreciate that, Craig. Yeah, we're getting back on the horse. That was like sort of our COVID thing is like, we're going to figure this stuff out. We're going to do it live. And, you know, through the DC we go to these events where these people are on more of a ride than us. They're going crazy, you know, and they have this tick tock thing that's, you know, that's a tactic or whatever, but at the end of the day when you talk to them, what they're talking about is the same things we're talking about, which is the know how of building an enterprise around a successful TikTok channel or whatever, because that's what the founder brings, is that magic of how to acquire customers. But once you do that, all your work's still ahead of you, and those are those fundamentals that you're talking about. And the other thing I'll say this is with the. With the new amount of sexy, tactical, entrepreneurial stuff out there in the world that really grabs eyeballs. That's a marketing tactic, and it's really working. And we watch that stuff and listen to it and all that. But when you meet those people, I'm always surprised at how much they know their shit. You ask them what key numbers are in their business. You ask them, typically, they're extremely good at employee performance and composition. They're not just like, oh, no, I just put up a YouTube channel. Typically, these people take a lot of this stuff for granted because of their previous business experience or whatever. So I do think that these universal concepts are where the action is behind the scenes. [00:45:04] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. 100%. Dan, this is awesome. Like, been listening to the show forever. Really cool to get a chance to connect like this. Thanks so much, tropicalmba.com dot folks that want to check out the show, and you are on Twitter at tropicalmba. [00:45:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Sweet. Thanks, Craig. It's been a pleasure. [00:45:23] Speaker A: All right, thanks, man.