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[00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:07.440] Hey, what's up, dude?
[00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:08.560] How's it going?
[00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:09.760] What's going on, man?
[00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:11.280] I got a question for you.
[00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:16.400] It's based on this Washington Post article that I read this past weekend.
[00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:18.480] Hey, what's going on, Josh?
[00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:20.000] Hey, what's up, Josh?
[00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:20.800] Hey.
[00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:24.560] Actually, you're in time for a question that I've got for actually both of you.
[00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:28.160] I just read this Washington Post article this past weekend.
[00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:31.920] The article is the happiest, least stressful, most meaningful jobs on earth.
[00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:37.600] It was a survey, and it like, you know, surveyed basically every job and kind of categorized them.
[00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:39.440] So either of you, take this one.
[00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:44.640] What do you think is the single most stressful, least happy job on earth?
[00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:47.680] And this is mostly, like, think of American jobs.
[00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:49.600] The least happy, most stressful.
[00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.680] I don't know, like a police officer.
[00:00:51.680 --> 00:00:52.720] A teacher?
[00:00:52.960 --> 00:00:54.400] It's lawyer.
[00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:56.240] Lawyer.
[00:00:56.240 --> 00:00:56.720] Okay.
[00:00:56.720 --> 00:00:56.960] Okay.
[00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:01.600] Now, what do you think is the least stressful and happiest and like most meaningful?
[00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:02.640] I don't know.
[00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:05.600] Not a teacher, I don't think, because being a teacher is pretty stressful.
[00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:13.680] I don't know, like being like maybe like someone likes like a volunteer, like volunteer work or working with like charities or something.
[00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:14.640] I'm not sure.
[00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:16.320] Children's book author.
[00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:17.840] Yeah, children's authority.
[00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:19.040] Children's book author.
[00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:23.200] Neither of you, you're not even in like the right segment.
[00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:27.200] It is a lumberjack and or a farmer.
[00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:27.840] I could say that.
[00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:28.480] Either of those.
[00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:29.360] Okay.
[00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:29.680] Yeah.
[00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:32.960] People working outside, working with their hands in nature.
[00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:34.000] I can see that.
[00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.480] It's like, they don't necessarily go into why, but it's like, Cortland, you've read that book, Drive, right?
[00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:45.440] Which is like what are the motivations behind finding like, you know, pleasure at work.
[00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:50.000] And if you think about an attorney, you don't really have that much autonomy, right?
[00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.160] You're kind of like in this big machine.
[00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:53.200] You're kind of disconnected.
[00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:54.880] It's like, you know, it's not very meaningful.
[00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:58.320] You know, you're playing whatever side of the field you need to play.
[00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:02.840] But lumberjack farmer, it's like, you know, extremely purposeful.
[00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:05.320] Like you kind of know exactly what you need to do.
[00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:05.720] I don't know.
[00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:13.400] Maybe we should all rethink our jobs because technical fields like what we're in also aren't super high on that list.
[00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:13.960] I see.
[00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:15.320] I pulled up the graphic.
[00:02:15.320 --> 00:02:20.120] It's this Washington Post article called The Happiest, Least Stressful, Most Meaningful Jobs on Earth.
[00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:21.240] And it's not Lumberjack.
[00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:36.120] It's specifically people in the agriculture, logging, and forestry industry have the highest happiness of any industry and the most meaning and purpose of any industry and the least stress.
[00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:39.240] So they want in literally every single category, which is pretty crazy.
[00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:42.600] They do a double click into that, and it's Lumberjack is among them.
[00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:44.840] Lumberjacks and farmers are the ones that are like.
[00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:46.520] Yeah, and agriculture.
[00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:51.320] Yeah, I think it's honestly, it's like humans, we evolved to be outside in nature.
[00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:54.760] And literally none of these other industries are that, right?
[00:02:54.760 --> 00:02:58.200] Like public administration, educational services.
[00:02:58.200 --> 00:03:00.120] Educational services is the most stressful.
[00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:04.600] Scored the highest on stress and also the second highest on meaning and purpose.
[00:03:04.600 --> 00:03:06.680] So, yeah, that seems crazy.
[00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:08.440] Maybe we're in the wrong industry.
[00:03:08.600 --> 00:03:09.640] Makes sense to me, yeah.
[00:03:09.640 --> 00:03:16.200] Like the fact that like the things outside of their control are really literally just the environment.
[00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:16.600] Yeah.
[00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:18.280] So they're like, okay, it's going to rain.
[00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:22.760] Like no one's, you're not going to stress over, it's like, can't get the job done, it's raining.
[00:03:22.760 --> 00:03:24.120] Or it's not raining.
[00:03:24.120 --> 00:03:33.560] I can't farm today, whatever that type of thing is, where all these other ones, lawyers or whatever, it's like, think of how many people could be pulling you in a direction you don't want to go.
[00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:37.640] Like the forces that of other people, like it's all other people.
[00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:40.200] Startup founder, like these investors won't give me money.
[00:03:40.200 --> 00:03:43.080] Like indie hacker, like my users will not pay for my products.
[00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:44.600] Like that is stress.
[00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:46.960] Also, like the status game, right?
[00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:53.360] Like if you're a lumberjack, like people aren't walking around like flashing shiny watches, like, hey, you know, when are you going to get your Lamborghini?
[00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:53.680] Right.
[00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:55.840] Whereas if you're a lawyer, what was that?
[00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:57.200] Um, American Psycho.
[00:03:57.200 --> 00:04:07.280] I don't know if either of you guys saw that movie, but it's like they, they all, everyone in the office like freaks out about like who has the flashiest, most expensive business card.
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:10.720] And like that's the only thing the character is like obsessed over.
[00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:15.200] Josh, we should introduce you to the audience while we're talking about business cards.
[00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:22.320] You are Josh Ho, you're an indie hacker and the founder of a company called Referral Rock, which is very successful.
[00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:26.800] But what I love about your story is that you didn't just like knock it out of the park on your first try.
[00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:31.120] You actually did another business where you sort of tasted defeat.
[00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:32.320] You went all in on that business.
[00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:36.160] You quit your full-time job, et cetera, and you eventually had to set it down.
[00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:38.560] And then you started Referral Rock, and now you're crushing it.
[00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:44.720] You're making, you don't show your exact revenue numbers, but I know you're making more than $2 million in annual recurring revenue.
[00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:48.480] And you started this as completely solo and bootstrapped.
[00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:52.400] So I'm pretty excited to talk about how you did that, because that's kind of where everybody wants to be.
[00:04:52.400 --> 00:04:54.000] Chen, you want to describe Referral Rock?
[00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.040] I think you read a little bit more about how it works.
[00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:00.240] Yeah, so let's say that you run a business.
[00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:02.400] Obviously, you want to grow the business.
[00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:03.520] You want to do marketing.
[00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:07.680] And the most effective form of marketing is word of mouth, right?
[00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:12.480] Because my ads that I put out for my company, they don't have that much credibility.
[00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:14.880] Of course, I want you to buy my product.
[00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:21.280] But if someone's best friend refers it, like that's a really high credibility form of marketing.
[00:05:21.280 --> 00:05:28.880] But the problem is you can't necessarily control when your customers refer your product to other people.
[00:05:28.880 --> 00:05:39.000] And so that's where referral rock comes in because if I sign up for referral rock, then I get these tools that help to prompt my users to share the product with their friends.
[00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.480] Like it gives incentives for them to promote the product.
[00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:46.120] Things like gift cards and PayPal payouts, product giveaways, that kind of thing.
[00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:49.800] What we kind of call it is like a proactive word of mouth, right?
[00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:51.720] So the word of mouth is already going to go.
[00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:54.680] And people, of course, are like, I want my organic word of mouth.
[00:05:54.680 --> 00:06:01.480] I want my just general product loops and word of mouth for just people to be talking about my stuff because it's awesome.
[00:06:01.880 --> 00:06:09.000] But, you know, it's really no different than when you look at marketing automation and sales enablement and all these types of things.
[00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:17.480] It's like, how can you now take what was lots of little steps, calling someone, asking for a referral, emailing all that type of stuff?
[00:06:17.480 --> 00:06:28.040] But how do you wrap that into, you know, doing some automation around it, doing some proactive outreach that isn't sleazy, the whole like, hey, put your friend's name here.
[00:06:28.040 --> 00:06:36.920] And like, or, you know, everyone had that Mary Kay friend or someone that was doing some info marketing types of stuff that's like, okay, great, this is awesome.
[00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:38.520] Now put five friends' names in there.
[00:06:38.520 --> 00:06:40.520] And it's like, hard pass.
[00:06:40.760 --> 00:06:41.880] Sell out my friends that way.
[00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:43.000] Yeah.
[00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:49.160] I love the idea because I think there's a really simple concept at the core of it that would be helpful for people to know.
[00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:52.760] Actually, I gave a talk a few years back called How to Get Lucky.
[00:06:52.760 --> 00:06:53.720] It's on YouTube.
[00:06:53.720 --> 00:07:00.440] I talked about how success in any domain often comes down to like, you know, this luck component, but you can control your luck.
[00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:06.600] And one of the components of controlling your luck is literally just asking people to help you.
[00:07:06.600 --> 00:07:08.040] Like, I'll tell you a story, for example.
[00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:10.840] My friend Lent Hai learned how to code.
[00:07:10.840 --> 00:07:16.480] And less than a year later, like somebody gave her a job offer for like $100 an hour to be a contractor.
[00:07:14.760 --> 00:07:18.400] And a lot of people will be like, oh, she's so lucky.
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:20.800] I can't believe somebody came with that offer.
[00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:30.000] But what she did was after she learned how to code, she told everybody that she knew that she had learned how to code and she was available for hire and here's what she could do.
[00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:36.800] And she just told like a hundred people that, and then suddenly she got quote unquote lucky that somebody was like, okay, here's a job, right?
[00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:39.440] And I think that's kind of like what referral rock is.
[00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:44.240] It's basically telling people, hey, it's not good enough just to build a good product and hope your customers share it.
[00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.120] Like you actually need to ask them to share it.
[00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:48.720] Like that can get a lot of people over the edge.
[00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:52.400] And here's like a bunch of useful tools to help you do that better.
[00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:53.920] Where does your story start?
[00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:55.440] I mean, you've been an indie hacker for a while.
[00:07:55.440 --> 00:07:57.200] You've been a founder for a while.
[00:07:57.200 --> 00:07:58.000] How did you get into this?
[00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.560] Because everybody comes out of a different place.
[00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:03.280] And very few people, I think, end up as successful as you.
[00:08:03.280 --> 00:08:08.240] So how do you think your life before becoming a founder sort of shaped how you've approached it?
[00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:26.080] I mean, I was always sort of the more bent on myself type of mentality person, like where, you know, even like in school type of stuff, it was like, oh, you know, I could just study a little bit enough to get the B, or I could study like 10 times more or five times more to get the A.
[00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:32.800] And it was just like, eh, it's always optimizing for like that efficiency and then also being like, meh, I don't want to do it that way.
[00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:34.080] I want to, I want to try something else.
[00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:39.760] I'm willing to, I'm willing to fall on my face and not make the grade because I, you know, took a shot at something else.
[00:08:39.760 --> 00:08:44.400] So I did a couple weird things like after college.
[00:08:44.400 --> 00:08:53.280] Like I went out to Tahoe and worked on a ski lift even after I had an engineering degree, just because it was like, eh, you know what?
[00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:54.880] I want to, I want to try something else.
[00:08:54.880 --> 00:09:00.920] It's almost like these train tracks set out from society that basically are like, here's what you need to do.
[00:09:00.920 --> 00:09:03.240] Like, you need to get this grade or you need to get this job.
[00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:14.040] And somehow you have this confidence that, like, actually, I can do it this other way and think it through and not follow the success, like the sort of prescribed train tracks, and it'll still be okay.
[00:09:14.040 --> 00:09:14.520] Yeah.
[00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:14.840] Yeah.
[00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:17.640] So I did take an engineering job eventually.
[00:09:17.640 --> 00:09:27.160] And so I did do, you know, I did electrical engineering and then I did, you know, I got into coding previous to that and just was working for software companies.
[00:09:27.160 --> 00:09:35.640] But even alongside that, I started like a car business on the side back before Fast and the Furious made everything really cool.
[00:09:35.640 --> 00:09:41.320] Well, actually around that time because of it, it was like doing aftermarket car work.
[00:09:41.320 --> 00:09:45.000] So I had a partner that did all the stuff, but I was like, oh, cool, I can make the website.
[00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:45.960] I could do all these other things.
[00:09:45.960 --> 00:09:49.800] So I was doing that while I was having an engineering job as well.
[00:09:49.800 --> 00:09:58.840] So that's probably my first like entrepreneurial endeavor that was truly kind of outside the normal day-to-day scope.
[00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:04.120] That's so interesting to me because I relate to the first part of your story.
[00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:06.120] I relate to I was in school.
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:09.400] I was kind of a pretty smart guy, but I would phone it in.
[00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:12.200] Like I was like, I have a good buddy to this day.
[00:10:12.200 --> 00:10:15.800] And we still talk about how we would like get home.
[00:10:15.800 --> 00:10:17.320] We were college roommates.
[00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:25.800] We'd get home and we'd like brag about getting an A minus or a B plus and saying like, look, dude, I studied for like 30 minutes while on the bus to that.
[00:10:25.800 --> 00:10:30.120] Like that was who I was all the way throughout college.
[00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:39.960] But I didn't have that sense that like I knew that I didn't want to be on the tracks, but I didn't have the sense that like there was a place off of the tracks that I could like take this.
[00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:46.000] I was like, okay, well, eventually I'm going to have to get my shit together, get a nine-to-five, and like, you know, play ball with everyone else.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:46.160] Right.
[00:10:46.400 --> 00:10:55.360] But you got off the tracks early and it seems like you were already kind of getting into entrepreneurship and like trying to build your own sites and maybe even make money.
[00:10:55.360 --> 00:11:03.760] Dude, I remember after college, you wanted to, you moved me to San Francisco and you definitely felt like you had to get a nine to five job, but you also wanted to like write a book.
[00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:10.080] And you spent like four months just writing this book with like no real effort put into finding a job.
[00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:16.400] So you had like this like kind of dual personality where you wanted to like not follow the prescribed path, but you also didn't have a plan for how you're going to finance it.
[00:11:16.400 --> 00:11:16.720] Exactly.
[00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:23.840] So you eventually had to get a job, but like you were like, if you could have done it anyway, you would have just read your book and published it and probably made no money and then had to get a job.
[00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:26.160] But like ideally, you would have made a lot of money.
[00:11:26.160 --> 00:11:27.600] I was in the wrong industry.
[00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:32.000] Like if you want to write a novel, that's not a great business.
[00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:42.800] If you want to make it a good business, okay, like you could write like thrillers or like commercial fiction romance novels like with a bunch of like smut and them apparently kill it these days.
[00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:50.240] But I was like trying to write like the next James Joyce, you know, Cormac McCarthy, like highbrow stuff that even writing stuff that makes zero dollars.
[00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:53.920] Even for the people who are famous, they are like firefighters on the side.
[00:11:53.920 --> 00:12:02.000] So like, yeah, it's just that the thing that I chose to be sort of an entrepreneur in is the kind of thing where there was only a dead end there.
[00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:13.360] Yeah, to answer your question, Channing, it was, it was definitely this like bet on myself thing, but I think because I'd seen it before, it wasn't necessarily intentional, but like my parents, my dad was an engineer.
[00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.480] He actually worked at Bell Labs in the early like Unix days.
[00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:17.520] So it was kind of cool.
[00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:20.080] But, but, so he was always on the tech side.
[00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:27.440] But seeing all the other activity, seeing that, like, I had, uh, I got burned in my first corporate inter internship.
[00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:29.680] So I wanted to work for a really small company.
[00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:35.320] So, that first engineering job, I was like, like, you know, engineer number two.
[00:12:35.320 --> 00:12:39.240] Um, and so it was interesting seeing that stuff from the ground up and the activity.
[00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:44.200] So, seeing how small that I think the company might have been 20 people at the time.
[00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:48.360] So, seeing that as like, I'm, I'm not that far from the fire, right?
[00:12:48.360 --> 00:12:50.840] And it's like, I don't think it's that far from here.
[00:12:50.840 --> 00:12:54.520] And it was, and that's also what kind of led me again is like, I think I could do this.
[00:12:54.520 --> 00:12:59.000] Actually, the ideas I'm doing work here, the product things I'm doing work here.
[00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.840] If I was like out there, I could kind of make the whole enchilada.
[00:13:02.840 --> 00:13:03.240] Yeah.
[00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:08.040] Did you, did you look up to like any indie hackers or any like founders who were out there like crushing it?
[00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:09.880] Because I know a lot of software engineers.
[00:13:09.880 --> 00:13:16.200] Like, I worked in the company as sort of a contractor years and years ago, and I was kind of a freelancer, but I always wanted to do like another startup.
[00:13:16.200 --> 00:13:23.080] And I talked to the other engineers, and they would just look at me with like these big googly eyes, like, how could you go out and do a startup on your own?
[00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:23.800] What is that even like?
[00:13:23.800 --> 00:13:27.800] Like, people aren't necessarily aware that that's a path that they can take.
[00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:29.640] I'm probably older than you think I am.
[00:13:29.640 --> 00:13:32.920] So, this is one of the stories I'm telling is like a young guy.
[00:13:33.080 --> 00:13:36.120] So, I'm now in my 40s.
[00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:37.560] I'm 45.
[00:13:37.560 --> 00:13:37.720] Okay.
[00:13:38.040 --> 00:13:39.240] Yeah, you're 10 years older than me.
[00:13:39.880 --> 00:13:43.960] So, but it was like, so this was early 2000s when all this stuff was happening.
[00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:47.960] So, I can't even think of what, like, the things that inspired me.
[00:13:47.960 --> 00:13:52.440] I was reading the guy that did plenty of fish.
[00:13:52.760 --> 00:13:53.560] Oh, yeah.
[00:13:53.880 --> 00:13:54.280] He killed me.
[00:13:54.440 --> 00:14:04.200] So, like, yeah, so it's like stuff like that that made you go, okay, this is a one-person engineer that built a competitor to, you know, match.com and all these other things.
[00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:06.600] And he was like raking on Google Ads, right?
[00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:15.120] So, but it was this honky, rinky-dink.net site that was just like horrible to look at, but it, it helped people find dates and whatnot.
[00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:16.240] And they just ran it on ads.
[00:14:16.320 --> 00:14:22.000] So that was probably one of the ones I remember going, oh, this is possible, right?
[00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:27.920] And as a, you know, what wasn't even called the indie hacker then, but you know, he's probably one of the early ones.
[00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:37.200] Yeah, it was like the Craigslist of dating websites, like hacked together by one person, making like, I think like literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
[00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:40.480] It looked like crap and it was barely even worked.
[00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:44.000] And like, I think everybody who read that was like, his name is Marcus Friend.
[00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:48.320] Everybody who read that story was like, shit, I could do better than that.
[00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:50.880] And then probably went off to make a dating app that failed.
[00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:55.680] So how did you get to the point where you started Referral Rock?
[00:14:55.680 --> 00:14:57.920] I mean, Referral Rock is the business you have right now.
[00:14:57.920 --> 00:15:01.360] You're killing it, again, making over $2 million a year in revenue.
[00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:11.280] Even just a few years ago, I read an interview that you did where you talked about the path to getting to $70,000 a month in revenue, which is a huge milestone that I think a lot of people would love to hit.
[00:15:11.680 --> 00:15:13.040] How did that process start?
[00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:17.280] What's the first step you took to even just coming up with the idea for something like that?
[00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:29.360] I mean, it did hit me in a lull, like after I burned out of the first startup, which we don't have to go into terrible details, but just you'll probably know this story in general because it was a notes app.
[00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:36.080] I know you joke constantly on the notes apps, dating apps, to-do lists, like stuff like that, that are just classic.
[00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:38.800] Everyone's first itch, right?
[00:15:38.800 --> 00:15:45.920] So at that time, to be honest, it was competing with like, it was launched around the same time Evernote was.
[00:15:45.920 --> 00:15:47.280] So it wasn't terrible.
[00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:50.880] It was early in the market enough that it wasn't a trope at that time.
[00:15:51.280 --> 00:15:52.080] It could have worked.
[00:15:52.400 --> 00:15:53.120] It could have.
[00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:53.760] It could have.
[00:15:54.400 --> 00:15:56.400] But I did get a little bit of funding for that.
[00:15:56.400 --> 00:16:00.000] I did get some more feet wet in the tech entrepreneurship side.
[00:16:00.920 --> 00:16:03.640] And also I stumbled into SEO then too.
[00:16:03.640 --> 00:16:06.520] So like we ranked number one for online notes.
[00:16:06.840 --> 00:16:12.200] So it was pretty crazy that I understood that that, like, that was my biggest takeaway.
[00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:19.000] I was like, okay, don't sell to consumers for like trying to be $5 a month, but sell to businesses.
[00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:22.120] But hey, this SEO thing kind of brought in people automatically.
[00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:23.640] So let me double down on that.
[00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:28.200] So that was like hunting for the, that was became my like framing for it.
[00:16:28.200 --> 00:16:39.800] It was like sell something to businesses that can do SEO and bring in people that then I can do the quote-unquote indie hacker dream of just sitting back and building a product and letting people get in.
[00:16:39.800 --> 00:16:47.960] So I always have a ton of ideas and it's just about kind of putting them into different buckets, whether it's throwaway or obviously buying a domain name is that next step.
[00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:56.440] But this one came in when honestly I was just like watching a car dealership and someone walked in and said, hey, a friend referred me.
[00:16:56.440 --> 00:16:58.360] And I would go, how does that work?
[00:16:58.360 --> 00:17:01.800] Like you see Dropbox, you see PayPal, you see all the digital ones.
[00:17:01.800 --> 00:17:03.480] How does it work in the offline world?
[00:17:03.480 --> 00:17:12.840] So quick Google search and buying a domain, let it sit in my brain for a few months, then took a no-code project and kind of converted it into that.
[00:17:12.840 --> 00:17:15.720] I like that you said you took a no-code project, right?
[00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:18.920] Because you had a background as a software engineer.
[00:17:19.080 --> 00:17:29.960] Was that like even at that step, was that something that you picked up from your previous company that you, you know, you're just going to kind of quickly get something out there and not overinvest in it?
[00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:33.160] Actually, I said old code, not no code.
[00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:34.840] But your point is the same.
[00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:43.240] So it was like, I took an old project that I had, which was, I forgot what it was even called, but it was like, it was sort of a landing page type of thing.
[00:17:43.240 --> 00:17:48.880] And what I ended up doing was converted that project into Referral Rock.
[00:17:44.600 --> 00:17:52.160] So it was basically like a layout for a landing page type of thing.
[00:17:52.480 --> 00:18:00.320] And I think I actually decided to not even build a database because I was tired of like building full schemas and then never really getting them off the ground.
[00:18:00.320 --> 00:18:12.240] So I literally used like a, you know, I think it was like an XML resource file as my quote-unquote database for the first, I think, maybe 20 customers or 20, 20 pilot users.
[00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:16.240] And I used SurveyMonkey as the admin interface.
[00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:25.200] So they basically said, upload, I was like, look, you can upload your logo, tell me what you want to, you know, you want the referral reward to be, put all the copy in here.
[00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:31.040] And then I exported it out, just converted it to an XML file, and then just like put it up on the server.
[00:18:31.040 --> 00:18:31.680] So that was it.
[00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:34.800] There was no retention of saving customer data or anything.
[00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:47.680] It was just like a way to templatize from an old code version that got me out the ground to have to see if I can get 10 people to put up a referral program site.
[00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:49.360] So what's going through your mind at this point?
[00:18:49.360 --> 00:18:55.840] Because I know, like, for example, when I started Indie Hackers, I was just thinking, I want to make enough money to pay my rent.
[00:18:55.840 --> 00:19:03.120] And other people, when they start their business, like we just talked to someone a few weeks ago, he was like, I want to make $5 million a year for my business.
[00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:08.880] What's going through your mind when you're putting together this very minimal product and trying to research how referrals work?
[00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:15.520] I mean, it was like, how can I just get people to pay for this on a recurring basis?
[00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:18.720] So it was not necessarily like a huge mark.
[00:19:19.120 --> 00:19:24.400] I think at the point in time, this was past the burnout of the last startup.
[00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:26.160] This is around the time I got married.
[00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:27.040] I started having kids.
[00:19:27.040 --> 00:19:29.440] So I had two kids then, very young.
[00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:35.480] And I was doing a little bit of software consulting on the side and just waiting for that next idea to kind of start.
[00:19:35.800 --> 00:19:41.960] So it was one of those ones where I was still like held up from a financial standpoint by the consulting work.
[00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:48.040] So it was not like I needed to make this, make or break this right away, or I had to go get a regular job or something like that.
[00:19:48.040 --> 00:19:53.400] So I had enough like consulting income from software development to hold that up.
[00:19:53.400 --> 00:20:00.440] But I was like, could this be the train that then I don't have to work for other people anymore and I could just do my own thing?
[00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:01.560] So that was my frame.
[00:20:01.800 --> 00:20:05.080] And I'm also curious, like, can you teach us what you learned?
[00:20:05.080 --> 00:20:08.600] Like, I've also heard the story of the Dropbox referral program.
[00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:16.040] There's a lot of tech businesses that have referral programs, but you said you went to like a car dealership or something and you learned about their referral programs, which presumably are very different.
[00:20:16.040 --> 00:20:18.280] And you thought, oh, I could bring this to the digital world.
[00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:26.040] Like, what do brick and mortar businesses do to get this word of mouth referral that like tech companies don't do that got you so excited?
[00:20:26.360 --> 00:20:28.760] Well, that's what started actually the idea.
[00:20:28.760 --> 00:20:34.440] And what I didn't even know at the time, it stumbled me into like strong positioning, right?
[00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:38.360] Because the first thing I Google searched after that was like, who's doing it for these people?
[00:20:38.360 --> 00:20:46.680] Because you could find companies like a Friend Buy or these other ones that would do digital ones that were very e-commerce based.
[00:20:46.680 --> 00:20:50.920] And the thing I noticed was like no one was doing it for all these other ones.
[00:20:50.920 --> 00:20:52.440] I was like, the mechanic is the same.
[00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:55.960] It's you're having a person go out there advocating for you.
[00:20:55.960 --> 00:21:01.720] And as long as you can attribute it to the right person, you can figure out rewards and that type of stuff.
[00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:03.800] So I realized there was a gap in the market.
[00:21:03.800 --> 00:21:04.600] No one was doing that.
[00:21:04.600 --> 00:21:07.560] No one was doing it that they could talk to CRMs.
[00:21:07.560 --> 00:21:16.320] No one was making it simple enough for a small business versus like e-commerce checkout, give a friend a coupon, you get a coupon type of stuff.
[00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:22.080] So when I started in that direction, it led me down all these people asking for different types of things.
[00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:27.280] And it made it apparent it didn't have to be just a very transactional type of thing.
[00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:33.120] And it led into all kinds of other tunnels, like weird stuff where people are like, I want to add people's name tools.
[00:21:33.200 --> 00:21:35.840] I want to trade referrals with other people.
[00:21:35.840 --> 00:21:41.520] And at some point, it could be like, yeah, let me hone this down a certain path.
[00:21:41.520 --> 00:21:44.800] So the mechanic is not that much different than the big guys.
[00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:51.920] But when you do look at a Dropbox, what their traits are, it's very tightly coupled to the product, right?
[00:21:51.920 --> 00:21:59.600] Like the growth they got was, I think it was like, you get, you know, 500 megabytes extra, I get 500 megabytes extra.
[00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:02.240] So it told a story within that.
[00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:07.280] And then I think their bigger thing is, you know, it became like a viral hook for it.
[00:22:07.280 --> 00:22:10.000] Now, that doesn't mean it's viral for everyone.
[00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:15.760] It's just, you know, that alignment, I think, is what made it work.
[00:22:16.080 --> 00:22:27.920] I'm curious how you got even like, you know, even before you got to the point where people were asking for this feature and that feature, and you were, you know, sort of narrowing down the viral component.
[00:22:28.080 --> 00:22:29.840] You mentioned that you had some pilot users.
[00:22:29.840 --> 00:22:33.120] Like, what did you even do to get it into the hands of pilot users?
[00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:37.600] How did you know, for example, like which segment of people this might even fit with?
[00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:45.920] Like, what were your next steps after you built like the super dressed down like Excel spreadsheet as a database version of the app?
[00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:48.560] I did the things at that time.
[00:22:48.560 --> 00:22:50.400] I think it was like Beta List.
[00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:54.560] I think I like did a beta list launches, you know, pre-product hunt days.
[00:22:54.560 --> 00:22:56.080] So I did one of those.
[00:22:56.080 --> 00:23:04.360] I got some people, I started writing like some janky SEO-based articles to kind of get some traffic.
[00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:12.120] And eventually it just had enough that it was getting maybe five, ten people signing up a week of general interest.
[00:23:12.120 --> 00:23:25.000] But the early parts of that was, I was quick to get on the phone with people or get on a, it wasn't even Zoom, it was like WebEx or some other things, mostly because I would get annoyed with people chatting.
[00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:26.360] So they'd be like, oh, how do I do this?
[00:23:26.360 --> 00:23:27.800] I'm like, let me just show you.
[00:23:27.800 --> 00:23:28.760] This is so annoying.
[00:23:28.760 --> 00:23:31.400] Let's just get on a screen share of something.
[00:23:32.040 --> 00:23:38.040] And that became a bigger unlock because you got to hear what the value meant to people.
[00:23:38.040 --> 00:23:44.200] And you talked to like, I think one of the bigger first companies I talked to was this water filtration company.
[00:23:44.200 --> 00:23:58.760] And a light bulb really went on when they came in and said, oh, yeah, if you can just get us like three or four referrals like a month, and we're going to pay $500 per referral payout to the person that did the referring, like this is, this is going to be gold.
[00:23:58.760 --> 00:24:00.280] And I was like, what?
[00:24:00.280 --> 00:24:05.400] Like, you're, and it just, the light came on how much they would be willing to pay for that.
[00:24:05.400 --> 00:24:07.960] And then they asked if I could do gift card fulfillment.
[00:24:07.960 --> 00:24:10.120] And I'm like, let me get back to you.
[00:24:10.120 --> 00:24:15.080] And then code did that in a weekend and then came back with like an integration that could do the gift card fulfillment.
[00:24:15.080 --> 00:24:19.480] And I'm like, I was like, oh, and we saw the price changed from like $100 to like $300.
[00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:19.880] I'm like, yeah.
[00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:21.800] They're like, that's, oh, that makes sense.
[00:24:21.800 --> 00:24:22.200] Cool.
[00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:23.320] Yeah, we'll, we'll take that.
[00:24:23.320 --> 00:24:24.600] It was like, what?
[00:24:25.240 --> 00:24:28.120] Well, I have to, I have to like highlight this point.
[00:24:28.120 --> 00:24:29.880] So, and you also mentioned this.
[00:24:30.040 --> 00:24:41.480] You did an interview with us and you mentioned the exact same thing that you didn't like talking, and I don't think anyone honestly does, like talking to customers through like a chat widget.
[00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:50.480] And just out of sheer annoyance, you're like, okay, let me just do like a screen share or like do a call where I have it, almost sounded like you were like, let me just like streamline this.
[00:24:50.800 --> 00:24:55.920] Like you didn't have, it seems, a strategy in mind for like building your product.
[00:24:55.920 --> 00:24:57.840] You're like, let me just make this less annoying.
[00:24:57.840 --> 00:25:20.160] But then you mentioned that you quadrupled by just having this, these calls, you quadrupled the amount of people that you converted from a free trial to like them being paid, which is such a subtle and really important thing because I think a lot of people that are indie hackers relate to me in this sense that like I love building cool things.
[00:25:20.160 --> 00:25:26.640] I don't necessarily love like going and doing customer support and like marketing and talking to people necessarily, right?
[00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:29.280] I just want to like make the thing cool and get it out there.
[00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:38.000] But it seems that transitioning to what a lot of people find to be the most uncomfortable part was a huge boon for you in the beginning.
[00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:41.920] Yeah, and it probably got down to like a different type of annoyance.
[00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:43.680] Like where was my pain threshold?
[00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:54.640] It was more painful for me to sit there waiting for them to chat back and like having a single-threaded conversation than it would be to just like, let me just help them and they'll be done and get out of here.
[00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:56.560] What about like funding in the early days?
[00:25:56.560 --> 00:26:04.080] Like I assume this is just you doing wearing every hat as a founder, which you kind of have to do early on because it's hard to hire and if you don't have a co-founder, it's just you.
[00:26:04.080 --> 00:26:05.520] But how did you afford to do this?
[00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:06.880] Like did you have a job?
[00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:08.320] Were you living off of your savings?
[00:26:08.320 --> 00:26:13.280] Because it's like kind of stressful to run a company when you like, I mean, you just gotten married.
[00:26:13.280 --> 00:26:17.680] I'm sure your wife was like, hey, you know, like, is this like, what's up with you financially?
[00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:19.280] How did you fund all this stuff?
[00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:23.120] It was from like the, I think I mentioned consulting a little earlier.
[00:26:23.120 --> 00:26:36.520] So I had after I, that Bria startup burned, and then I did some consulting and I started and I had probably like two or three clients that were, um, had a steady enough work.
[00:26:36.840 --> 00:26:41.640] And fortunately enough, like my wife only knew me to never have a real job.
[00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:44.680] So it was kind of that ongoing joke when she brought me home.
[00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:52.280] It was just like to her parents, it was like, oh, here's, here's my fiancé that, you know, is like unemployed.
[00:26:52.280 --> 00:26:55.800] But at that time, I was like working in my own startup and kind of doing some other things.
[00:26:55.800 --> 00:27:03.560] So I had a knack for at least picking up a couple relationships and doing some other coding once people knew my other stuff wasn't working.
[00:27:03.560 --> 00:27:04.200] So.
[00:27:04.200 --> 00:27:12.840] One of the things I think that I've seen you post about on Indie Hackers and that we talked about a little bit is that your business is kind of like part of your family now.
[00:27:13.480 --> 00:27:22.120] You've got a couple of kids, I think, and they have only ever known you as like dad who works from home on his own indie hacker business.
[00:27:22.120 --> 00:27:27.800] You know, like they have not seen you going to work, which I think is like a very cool concept.
[00:27:27.800 --> 00:27:30.600] Like me and Channing, like our mom was also an entrepreneur.
[00:27:30.600 --> 00:27:36.840] So we grew up basically watching her carve out her own path in the world and like do her own thing.
[00:27:36.840 --> 00:27:38.440] And our dad was like a little bit similar.
[00:27:38.440 --> 00:27:41.240] He's like part of this elite crew of like furniture builders.
[00:27:41.240 --> 00:27:43.400] There's like 10 of them and he would finish the furniture.
[00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:44.280] Somebody would design it.
[00:27:44.280 --> 00:27:45.000] Somebody would cut it.
[00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:45.960] Somebody would build it.
[00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:47.480] And they just did their own thing.
[00:27:47.800 --> 00:27:49.720] How do you think about that with your kids and your family?
[00:27:49.720 --> 00:27:55.720] Like, do you want to intentionally set this example for your kids that they can be sort of their own entrepreneur?
[00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:56.200] Do you care?
[00:27:56.200 --> 00:27:57.320] Do you want them to follow any path?
[00:27:57.320 --> 00:28:00.920] Because I just, I think this is something that doesn't get talked about enough as entrepreneurs.
[00:28:00.920 --> 00:28:03.400] It's like, what do we do with the next generation?
[00:28:04.200 --> 00:28:09.800] I definitely want them to follow their path, but I also want them to be like, know what's possible, right?
[00:28:09.800 --> 00:28:11.000] Like, know that.
[00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:18.160] And I think they're already probably seeing it as a first case example because not only me, but my wife also started her own business as well.
[00:28:18.320 --> 00:28:23.280] She was a nurse previously, so she kind of stumbled into that as well.
[00:28:23.280 --> 00:28:25.680] Like, now she has her own yoga business.
[00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:27.120] So, our basement's converted.
[00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:27.680] She does that.
[00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:28.720] She does online ones.
[00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:32.000] She does it converted over the course of the pandemic.
[00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.480] Now, she's like a hybrid subscription business.
[00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:35.840] Like, it's pretty cool.
[00:28:35.840 --> 00:28:38.080] And so, my kids got to see all that.
[00:28:38.080 --> 00:28:47.120] And we'll eventually have to face this argument one day, but like, I'm kind of of the notion that it's like, if they don't want to go to college, they don't have to go to college.
[00:28:47.120 --> 00:28:49.280] My wife is not on board with that train yet.
[00:28:49.600 --> 00:29:03.040] But, but, in terms of like what we're doing, and honestly, my daughter, even just she's 11 and just started her own YouTube channel because she watches a couple creators like doing crafts and things like that.
[00:29:03.040 --> 00:29:04.800] It's already seeping in a bit.
[00:29:04.800 --> 00:29:12.880] And I don't know if it's necessarily from us, but I think she's just actually finding the things she likes to do and finding like, ooh, I can do that.
[00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:14.080] We never told her any of that.
[00:29:14.080 --> 00:29:21.440] It was just like she wrote down this past October, she's like, My new year's resolution is to post a video, like a YouTube video a week.
[00:29:21.440 --> 00:29:23.360] We're like, Okay, that just came out.
[00:29:23.600 --> 00:29:24.400] How old is she?
[00:29:24.400 --> 00:29:25.840] So, she's 11.
[00:29:25.840 --> 00:29:29.040] Wow, so are you like helping her with the marketing?
[00:29:29.680 --> 00:29:31.840] No, she doesn't really want any help.
[00:29:32.080 --> 00:29:34.880] Like, so she's 11, she wants nothing to do with it.
[00:29:35.120 --> 00:29:37.600] Yeah, yeah, this is so she's been, you know, right now.
[00:29:37.600 --> 00:29:42.480] It's you know, end of end of January, and she's already has like three videos up.
[00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:49.880] It's cool, she takes my old like GoPro type of thing, and she does these little ones with all her, like, she, they're cooking ones now.
[00:29:49.760 --> 00:29:58.520] So, so she'll like pick a recipe, she bakes, and she does, like, you know, it might be half an hour's worth of recording, and she's figured out a video editor.
[00:29:58.520 --> 00:30:01.560] She plays with this, like, that default one that comes with Windows.
[00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:04.520] It's just like video, just called literally like video editor.
[00:30:04.600 --> 00:30:07.720] I'm trying to get her to use something else, but she's, she's against that.
[00:30:07.720 --> 00:30:12.440] But she cuts them up, she edits them down to like five-minute videos.
[00:30:12.440 --> 00:30:15.960] And, and I'm like, oh, you should, you know, put a thumbnail.
[00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:17.160] She's like, nope, don't want to do it.
[00:30:17.160 --> 00:30:18.760] Like, don't want to put a title on it.
[00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:19.080] Don't want to.
[00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:21.000] I'm like, okay, all right, back.
[00:30:21.320 --> 00:30:23.000] So she does all these things on her own.
[00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:26.280] And it's pretty cool watching a little creator in action.
[00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:26.920] Yeah.
[00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:32.120] That point about college, I'm like, so on board with like, kids don't necessarily need to go to college.
[00:30:32.120 --> 00:30:39.240] Channing and I have, there's like a friend, a friend of our family's who has been having a lot of trouble in college recently.
[00:30:39.240 --> 00:30:41.160] And our mom was like, hey, can you, can you talk to him?
[00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:44.040] You know, like, he's not really doing good in school.
[00:30:44.040 --> 00:30:46.360] Like, you know, give him a pep talk because like school is so important.
[00:30:46.360 --> 00:30:50.120] He needs to do great in college and he's racking up all this debt to be in college.
[00:30:50.120 --> 00:30:53.000] And I started asking about like different parts of his life.
[00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:55.560] And it turns out like he's not in the best shape.
[00:30:55.560 --> 00:30:57.400] His health is suffering a little bit.
[00:30:57.400 --> 00:30:58.680] He's pretty lonely.
[00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:00.840] He doesn't have a lot of friends.
[00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:03.480] He's not very happy and he's been dealing with some depression.
[00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:04.120] Right.
[00:31:04.120 --> 00:31:07.400] And everyone in his life is just focused on like school, right?
[00:31:07.400 --> 00:31:10.200] But he needs to do well in school and it's all about school.
[00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:15.240] And I'm sitting here thinking like, well, I have a lot of friends who went to great schools and they are not happy.
[00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:15.800] Right.
[00:31:15.800 --> 00:31:24.600] And like if somebody can like, if you can imagine someone's life as like being much more well-rounded where they have a lot of friends, they have a great partnership with somebody.
[00:31:24.600 --> 00:31:26.600] They have very fulfilling relationships.
[00:31:26.600 --> 00:31:27.560] They're healthy.
[00:31:27.560 --> 00:31:29.720] They're mentally healthy and happy.
[00:31:29.720 --> 00:31:33.320] And then they like, let's say they work as like a janitor and make, you know, 50K a year.
[00:31:33.320 --> 00:31:34.680] That's a great life.
[00:31:34.680 --> 00:31:39.800] If your life is great in every way and you like aren't super focused on your career, I think that's awesome.
[00:31:39.800 --> 00:31:49.840] It's weird to me that we as a society get so focused on like judging and assessing the success of someone's life only along this like professional, educational dimension.
[00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:54.480] Did you mention to him you should maybe look into being a lumberjack?
[00:31:55.760 --> 00:31:57.760] Well, now I didn't know that this episode.
[00:31:59.120 --> 00:32:01.360] We have the ace card to send his way.
[00:32:01.360 --> 00:32:02.240] Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:03.920] I think about that as an indie hacker, too.
[00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:07.280] Like the fact that you, you know, you've got kids and they're saying you do this thing.
[00:32:07.280 --> 00:32:11.760] I love working with people that I love to work with, right?
[00:32:11.760 --> 00:32:19.920] There's this kind of like this sort of mantra: oh, you know, you've got your hobbies and your career and your health and your family, and you've got to like pick two or three of them because you can't do all of them.
[00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.280] I'm like, well, why can't you just work with the people that you love?
[00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:24.320] Like, I work with my brother.
[00:32:24.320 --> 00:32:24.960] It's awesome.
[00:32:24.960 --> 00:32:26.880] I started an Airbnb with my girlfriend.
[00:32:26.880 --> 00:32:27.600] It's awesome.
[00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:29.120] I'm just getting kind of all of the things.
[00:32:29.120 --> 00:32:31.680] You know, like one of your kids wants to take over the family business.
[00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:43.680] Like, that would be cool too, because now you're working with people that you love and you're sort of getting everything rather than just, you know, maybe you're not as happy as a lumberjack, but like you're pretty happy insofar as entrepreneurs go, I think, if you can work with the people that you like.
[00:32:43.680 --> 00:32:53.040] So let's get back to your story because we sort of left off in the beginning where you're sort of scrappy and you're trying to figure out, you know, how to get this thing off the ground and you're talking, you're having some wins and some hits.
[00:32:53.600 --> 00:32:54.400] What happened next?
[00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:57.360] Like, how did you actually scale up to the point where you're making revenue?
[00:32:57.360 --> 00:33:07.360] Because as I understand it, you spent like quite a long time without any real sales and with like pretty slow, slow growth, which a lot of founders find themselves in.
[00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:09.840] How did you sort of get yourself out of those doldrums?
[00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:22.080] I mean, the slow part was probably more in that early part, like after I started talking to people on the phone or over webinars and that type of stuff, it was the constraints were mostly on my time.
[00:33:22.080 --> 00:33:24.800] So I'd like split my days, you know, half.
[00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:30.680] I'd set my schedule to be like, okay, in Calendly, you can set up and talk to me for this amount of time or that amount of time.
[00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:33.880] And every other day, there'd be probably like a four-hour block.
[00:33:34.120 --> 00:33:43.560] And then I'd still have to code and do other marketing endeavors, other, you know, advance the product, make due on the promises I made as a lame salesperson, going like, oh, yeah, I could do that.
[00:33:43.560 --> 00:33:45.480] And I'm like, oh, crap, now I got to code that.
[00:33:45.480 --> 00:33:47.880] So it was mostly a constraint on me.
[00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:50.920] So I did try to start hiring salespeople.
[00:33:50.920 --> 00:33:56.280] And eventually I got lucky enough to stumble upon someone.
[00:33:56.280 --> 00:33:58.440] Actually, I got really lucky.
[00:33:58.440 --> 00:34:05.320] So this is probably also often not as normal indie hacker path, but I kind of had a later co-founder join, right?
[00:34:05.320 --> 00:34:11.000] So this was definitely, you know, past 10 to 15K MRR I was doing by myself.
[00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:13.640] So I could afford somebody to help.
[00:34:14.120 --> 00:34:22.120] And I found someone that used to be a founder that never kind of got to product market fit, was coming off his last startup.
[00:34:22.120 --> 00:34:23.400] And he hit me at the right time.
[00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:31.160] He like messaged me on LinkedIn and said, hey, let's see your have a sales like job open and you know I'm interested.
[00:34:31.160 --> 00:34:33.560] And I'm like, okay, well, so we talked about it.
[00:34:33.560 --> 00:34:41.800] And I was in enough pain after my first horrible sales hire went wrong that I was like, here, just, can I just route these schedules to you?
[00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:43.160] Because I don't want to go back in the queue.
[00:34:43.160 --> 00:34:44.280] I'm working on other stuff.
[00:34:44.280 --> 00:34:47.000] I just, if you can handle these, like, you're hired.
[00:34:47.080 --> 00:34:48.120] He's like, he joked.
[00:34:48.120 --> 00:34:52.200] He's like, well, if this works, you know, is some equity on the table?
[00:34:52.200 --> 00:34:53.400] And I'm like, sure.
[00:34:53.400 --> 00:34:58.120] If you can take, if you could take this pain away, you know, and he, he's a great guy.
[00:34:58.440 --> 00:35:02.360] He's still, and so to this day, like, you know, this is five, six years ago.
[00:35:02.360 --> 00:35:05.560] So he's still with me as basically my co-founder.
[00:35:05.560 --> 00:35:06.920] But I didn't go on a hunt.
[00:35:06.920 --> 00:35:08.600] I didn't go put out listings.
[00:35:08.600 --> 00:35:09.080] I didn't go.
[00:35:09.640 --> 00:35:10.440] It found me.
[00:35:10.440 --> 00:35:14.040] And right, like the luck happens also when you have that surface area.
[00:35:14.040 --> 00:35:23.360] But that was a big unlock that led to us scaling a sales team, scaling an onboarding and services team.
[00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:32.720] Because as we still watched the requests come in and what people needed and were really adaptive to that, you know, people needed help setting up their program.
[00:35:32.720 --> 00:35:35.600] So it became an onboarding customer success thing.
[00:35:35.600 --> 00:35:38.400] We basically were doing inbound sales.
[00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:43.520] So how do we convert that to go from one salesperson to two or three and that type of stuff?
[00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:55.440] So it really got me early on the ramp of like more of a relying on people as a big part of it rather than just pure, you know, self-service and product-led types of motions.
[00:35:55.440 --> 00:35:56.720] Man, I love that.
[00:35:56.720 --> 00:36:05.040] I love like the irony of you were looking for a salesperson and then the guy that you got ultimately sold himself, right?
[00:36:05.040 --> 00:36:09.040] Like, I mean, it sounds like, you know, you didn't, you weren't looking for a co-founder.
[00:36:09.040 --> 00:36:11.680] That was, that was really just him upselling.
[00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:17.280] And so his success at getting the job was also like him proving that he was like worthy of the job.
[00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:17.520] Right.
[00:36:17.520 --> 00:36:19.200] And I didn't know enough about him at that time.
[00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:23.280] So it was still like, you know, hey, let's wait three, four months before we like ratify all this stuff.
[00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:24.880] But it was like, he proved himself.
[00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:28.400] So he put his money where his mouth was, you know, and it worked.
[00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:45.280] And I don't know where it would be without him, honestly, at that time, because like a lot of the scaling pain, he brunted just as much load as I did throughout kind of since then in terms of more of the people management, more of building up these other teams where I got to focus on product and marketing.
[00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:50.400] I kind of viewed it as like, I get to do the bookends and you get to do that kind of messy middle in between.
[00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:56.880] I think one of the challenges of starting a SaaS business is that it typically takes a long time to get it off the ground.
[00:36:56.880 --> 00:37:09.720] There's like a kind of a big movement for indie hackers to start with an info product, like, you know, write an e-book or start building an audience or just like, you know, start a newsletter, something where you can just start making sales on day one because all you're doing is writing content.
[00:37:09.720 --> 00:37:16.200] And if you do SaaS, you know, it's going to be this long slog of a year and a half, two years before you make any money whatsoever and you can quit your job, et cetera.
[00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:21.640] When you look back on the early days of Referral Rock, are there things you would have done differently to sort of ramp up more quickly?
[00:37:21.640 --> 00:37:27.240] For example, like would you have had a co-founder from day one or any other decisions you could have made to just get it going faster?
[00:37:27.560 --> 00:37:32.360] Honestly, I probably would have gotten a product person faster.
[00:37:32.360 --> 00:37:39.320] Like, and that was one of the later, like if you think about having some other people with like strong leadership, right?
[00:37:39.320 --> 00:37:51.640] Like, I got a product person only probably about two years ago, but I was still fledging between all the different hats, all the different jobs, and probably just neglecting that side way too much.
[00:37:51.640 --> 00:37:51.960] Right.
[00:37:51.960 --> 00:37:58.600] Like, it was sort of we had this machine going of the salespeople selling and the service people onboarding and all of that stuff.
[00:37:58.600 --> 00:38:03.240] But the product did start to suffer when my time started to get split.
[00:38:03.240 --> 00:38:10.360] And I think I have a good design sense, but not a great design sense, or at least even to stick with it long enough.
[00:38:10.360 --> 00:38:13.400] So once the product started to get longer into the tooth, right?
[00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:16.920] So it's V1 UIs and stuff like that.
[00:38:16.920 --> 00:38:30.520] When the bootstrap themes I picked from back five, seven years ago started to look really dated, then it's like, oh, that's going to take some level of rigor to kind of redo those interfaces and do those types of things.
[00:38:30.520 --> 00:38:38.680] So I would have focused more on the UI a lot earlier because honestly, as much as I want to complain, like, hey, it's engineered really well.
[00:38:38.680 --> 00:38:40.520] The scheme is great.
[00:38:40.520 --> 00:38:41.720] The models are great.
[00:38:41.720 --> 00:38:50.080] But then you go and look and it's like, yeah, but it's like it could use a paint job where this looks like that, yeah, that avocado green colored refrigerator or whatever.
[00:38:51.360 --> 00:38:59.520] So I feel like we've got this gap in your story where, on one hand, you had this early struggling place where you're wearing all the other hats.
[00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:07.120] And then eventually later, you're like hiring all these people and you know, perhaps hiring in not the ideal order, but like you've got enough money to basically bring on a team.
[00:39:07.120 --> 00:39:08.800] This is a bootstrap business.
[00:39:09.120 --> 00:39:13.360] I think most indie hackers have trouble with like getting from point A to point B.
[00:39:13.360 --> 00:39:16.320] You know, how do you scale up a business from just yourself?
[00:39:16.560 --> 00:39:24.480] You know, you're having these early customer interviews to the point where you can afford to like pay yourself money and be comfortable, let alone hire anybody else.
[00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:28.160] And so I'm curious for you, like, what were some of the milestones that you hit in that period?
[00:39:28.160 --> 00:39:35.120] What were some of the biggest obstacles you hit going from just you to the point where you can make your first hire?
[00:39:35.440 --> 00:39:43.840] For whatever reason, that that early SEO seeded enough and enough incoming interest, right?
[00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:51.040] So, and I think the fact that I moved that price point up early in the life cycle, like this was probably six months after charging.
[00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:56.560] It went from a $59 a month price point to, I think, like the two cheapest plans.
[00:39:56.560 --> 00:39:57.840] It used to be like $59.
[00:39:57.840 --> 00:40:01.840] And then within six months, the cheapest plan was $150.
[00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:03.360] And that I learned through the talking to people.
[00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:05.920] So I didn't necessarily need a massive amount of volume, right?
[00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:10.160] It was still a steady, I think I mentioned maybe like $510 a week.
[00:40:10.160 --> 00:40:13.680] And then it was like $5.10 a day from SEO.
[00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:21.440] And I also the early positioning of we were the only ones doing this type of thing for not e-commerce businesses.
[00:40:21.440 --> 00:40:34.680] So if you look at the market out there of like car dealerships, yoga instructors, all these other things, like there were a lot of people that could use a referral program that solutions didn't exist.
[00:40:34.840 --> 00:40:41.720] Everyone was building e-commerce, like checkout, coupon-based programs and that type of stuff.
[00:40:41.720 --> 00:40:49.720] So I think I got lucky in hitting like a reasonable amount of like unaddressed market space that it wasn't a brand new category.
[00:40:49.720 --> 00:40:51.720] It was something everyone was familiar with.
[00:40:51.720 --> 00:40:55.560] But then like, oh, but no one does it for us and really no one's talking about it.
[00:40:55.560 --> 00:41:03.160] So I got lucky in the area and then there was enough there and then moved the price point up quick enough that I stumbled into something.
[00:41:03.160 --> 00:41:06.280] So I'm going to try to summarize your early story just to make sure you got it.
[00:41:06.280 --> 00:41:12.440] So essentially, you did a lot of blogging and writing early on that sort of people were able to find on Google.
[00:41:12.440 --> 00:41:16.040] And so you had this SEO channel where people were sort of automatically just finding you.
[00:41:16.040 --> 00:41:24.760] And because you're in this niche that was kind of underserved at the time, you hit this window where like people weren't really targeting these businesses with referral programs, you kind of stood out.
[00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:25.880] SEO worked.
[00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:32.600] And then people would come in, you would like literally talk to them, get them on the phone, show them the product, and sort of do sales early on.
[00:41:32.600 --> 00:41:34.760] And eventually the engine was working.
[00:41:34.760 --> 00:41:39.000] You're building the right features that people were asking for, and they were buying directly from you.
[00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:41.720] And then you sort of jacked up the prices, which is a great move.
[00:41:41.720 --> 00:41:42.680] Like, what's easier?
[00:41:42.680 --> 00:41:45.560] You know, finding three times as many customers or charging three times as much.
[00:41:45.560 --> 00:41:48.200] It's almost always charging two or three times as much.
[00:41:48.200 --> 00:41:59.720] And that was basically sort of the full story of how you got to the point of, you know, making 10K a month by yourself and as a solo founder, just sort of being able to fund your business in a self-sustaining way.
[00:41:59.720 --> 00:42:05.880] And you mentioned that, I don't remember what the exact number was, but you said something like 10,000 a month or so.
[00:42:05.880 --> 00:42:15.120] And that's the point where you seem like you hit a wall where you're like, look, okay, now I'm limited in my extra growth because it's just me doing this talking.
[00:42:15.120 --> 00:42:16.800] I only have so many hours in the day.
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:19.440] And that's where you were like, you know, trying to make these sales hires.
[00:42:19.600 --> 00:42:26.320] And eventually, the one that sold himself into eventually a co-founder role, you found him, right?
[00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:30.720] Yeah, I had a working thing and I was limited by my own time.
[00:42:31.040 --> 00:42:41.600] One of the things that Cortland and I, to make this a little bit personal, one of the things that I think that we've struggled the most with is I think we're both very good at wearing all the hats.
[00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:43.280] Courtland's a great developer.
[00:42:43.520 --> 00:42:44.560] I'm pretty good.
[00:42:44.560 --> 00:42:46.240] We're both pretty good writers, right?
[00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:49.440] We're both good at like doing a little bit of marketing here and there.
[00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:55.280] And hiring has been the thing that like we struggled with from the very beginning the most.
[00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:01.440] We've gotten a little bit better at it now, but I'm kind of curious, in a way, you got lucky with that first hire.
[00:43:01.440 --> 00:43:09.280] And since you've grown a bit of a bigger team, has that all been, you know, your co-founder came on and you're like, ah, you get to take a side relief.
[00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:12.320] And like he handles all the staffing and the hiring?
[00:43:12.320 --> 00:43:15.600] Or is that something that you've also kind of honed your skills?
[00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:18.400] I'd say we learned it together.
[00:43:18.400 --> 00:43:23.840] So we both, like at that time, as we were growing through those phases, like I was still building up the marketing team.
[00:43:23.840 --> 00:43:25.200] We had content writers.
[00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:29.440] I had developers that reported to me and I hired and whatnot.
[00:43:29.440 --> 00:43:37.120] So he was doing it on that sales side, but we were both doing the sort of do-it-yourself, nail and scale it type of thing.
[00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:39.920] So he was just doing on one half and I was doing it on the other.
[00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:43.440] And we were coalescing on how to do this, right?
[00:43:43.440 --> 00:43:48.400] So I think we both have a good amount of like judge of talent.
[00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:54.480] And at that point in time, not a lot of people were doing the remote job thing.
[00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.120] And this was, you know, pre-pandemic.
[00:43:57.120 --> 00:44:06.520] So I could go out there and find some people that were like indie hacker types that would be like, Yes, I would love to, I would love to travel while I work.
[00:44:06.840 --> 00:44:08.920] I just have the autonomy and freedom.
[00:44:08.920 --> 00:44:14.680] And so I'd actually find people that were a couple years into their career at least and wanted the freedom.
[00:44:14.680 --> 00:44:19.080] So they valued the freedom over like the biggest paycheck.
[00:44:19.080 --> 00:44:24.680] So I was able to find people and find people that automatically work would work remote.
[00:44:24.680 --> 00:44:29.800] And it was very easy to kind of figure out we were always backfilling for the jobs we already did.
[00:44:29.800 --> 00:44:32.600] So we'd know how to be like, okay, you need to do this.
[00:44:32.600 --> 00:44:33.800] This is the playbook.
[00:44:33.800 --> 00:44:35.080] And they were more experienced people.
[00:44:35.080 --> 00:44:38.040] So it wasn't training someone just strictly out of school.
[00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:48.680] Most of the time, the most success we had were people that had done it before, but wanted to flip into remote work and were responsible enough and that type of thing.
[00:44:48.680 --> 00:44:55.160] So I think that was a big key was that level of experience and wanting to have that autonomy.
[00:44:55.160 --> 00:45:04.520] I'm curious if there was a playbook that you were following of any type because there was such a thing as like the referral industry where you could look at other companies and figure out like, here's how it works.
[00:45:04.520 --> 00:45:06.200] Here's who's killing it in the space.
[00:45:06.200 --> 00:45:07.080] Here's who's not.
[00:45:07.080 --> 00:45:09.080] Like here's what we need to do.
[00:45:09.080 --> 00:45:12.200] I think it helped that when I was working for other people.
[00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:21.560] So I did work for a decent amount of years, like five or six years for a company and then was a manager and did hire people and do interviews and things like that.
[00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:25.400] So that was, you know, five, eight years previous to that.
[00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:31.400] So I think that that did help kind of know elements of those types of playbooks.
[00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:36.680] I think one of the interesting things is like at some point you got to like 70K a month in revenue.
[00:45:36.680 --> 00:45:38.280] It's over $800,000 a year.
[00:45:38.280 --> 00:45:40.920] It's an amazing sort of accomplishment.
[00:45:40.920 --> 00:45:46.320] Now you're well over twice that, which is a place that not very many indie hackers get to.
[00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:53.920] What do you think are some of the key takeaways for how you, I guess, changed running your business from point A to point B?
[00:45:54.240 --> 00:45:58.240] How do you grow from a pretty big business to a pretty huge business?
[00:45:58.240 --> 00:46:00.240] Is it different than the early stages?
[00:46:00.240 --> 00:46:07.680] It's definitely trying to continue to work with the people that are doing more of the dirty work.
[00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:18.960] So it was putting more process in place for people than it was just me because before you could cowboy a lot of stuff and run around and do what you were interested in and that type of thing.
[00:46:18.960 --> 00:46:21.920] And it required a lot more process.
[00:46:21.920 --> 00:46:29.520] It required a lot more documentation, like big uses of wikis and confluence and how someone should work a certain board.
[00:46:29.520 --> 00:46:32.080] It was no longer just you just working your own to-do list.
[00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:38.720] So I think those pieces added up and it was something I always enjoyed.
[00:46:38.880 --> 00:46:43.040] My last role was technically like director of technical operations.
[00:46:43.040 --> 00:46:46.640] So I would go up and set up systems for people like across the company.
[00:46:46.640 --> 00:46:55.360] So whether it was like using a ticketing system to use as a, you know, like a workflow system for a company and different types of things like that.
[00:46:55.360 --> 00:46:56.160] I'm really curious.
[00:46:56.160 --> 00:46:58.560] I want to hear like the breakdown of your tools and the stuff you use.
[00:46:58.560 --> 00:47:01.680] Because right now with indie hackers, like we're just on Notion.
[00:47:01.680 --> 00:47:04.240] We just write everything in Notion.
[00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:05.520] It's very informal.
[00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:12.160] We have literally a list of like documents that are reverse chronologically ordered by the last time they were updated or typed in.
[00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:17.840] And so generally, if there's something I want to know that Channing did or I did or someone that we work with did, did I just look to see the most recent document.
[00:47:17.840 --> 00:47:20.960] And like, I don't think that probably scales beyond like five or ten people.
[00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:22.240] So, what are you like, what are you using?
[00:47:22.240 --> 00:47:23.360] You mentioned Confluence.
[00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:25.120] What else keeps a team together?
[00:47:25.480 --> 00:47:29.720] Uh, Asana is probably our main like working workflow area.
[00:47:29.440 --> 00:47:32.120] Um, and we've kept the whole company on that.
[00:47:32.280 --> 00:47:35.560] And mostly, I think it was important when we were small, right?
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:38.600] Uh, because I could see exactly what's going on.
[00:47:38.600 --> 00:47:47.160] And doing the many hat thing and many team thing, not having to switch into 10 different systems is like a massive time save.
[00:47:47.160 --> 00:47:52.600] And getting people to align to use the tools in the same way so the patterns are the same, right?
[00:47:52.600 --> 00:47:58.440] Like, people use what looks more like the Kanban style board and move things from left to right.
[00:47:58.440 --> 00:48:04.040] You don't have someone else moving things from right to left or using a different style type of board.
[00:48:04.040 --> 00:48:05.240] So, that was a huge thing.
[00:48:05.240 --> 00:48:05.960] And we still do it.
[00:48:05.960 --> 00:48:07.160] Like, our dev team uses it.
[00:48:07.160 --> 00:48:15.720] We don't, the dev team doesn't use like a JIRA or other things, um, all kinds of other, you know, potential tools they could use, but everyone uses Asana.
[00:48:15.720 --> 00:48:24.040] So, having the whole company at this point, which is like 18 people, all using like a similar style workflow.
[00:48:24.040 --> 00:48:26.440] So, everyone gets notifications the same way.
[00:48:26.440 --> 00:48:28.600] So, that's like the main workflow.
[00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:34.840] And then we also use Slack and Confluence is anything that kind of has a longer duration.
[00:48:34.840 --> 00:48:40.920] So, it's like company policies or like larger written-up product specs and designs and things like that.
[00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:43.320] But those, those are really the main tools.
[00:48:43.320 --> 00:48:45.160] Like, we don't have much internal email.
[00:48:45.160 --> 00:48:48.680] It's all if it's related to a project, it should be in Asana.
[00:48:48.680 --> 00:48:51.480] And it also keeps our Slack relatively clean as well.
[00:48:51.480 --> 00:48:52.680] So, nice.
[00:48:52.680 --> 00:48:53.640] Funny story.
[00:48:53.640 --> 00:49:01.880] I started a startup back in 2012 called like Siasto, and it was like a very generic productivity tool.
[00:49:01.880 --> 00:49:05.480] Like, uh, use this for your company to attract tasks and documents.
[00:49:05.480 --> 00:49:06.680] And it was going okay.
[00:49:06.680 --> 00:49:09.200] I think we were making, like, four or five grand a month in revenue.
[00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:11.400] It was just me and one other guy, my co-founder.
[00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:14.960] And we got an acquisition offer, and it was from Asana.
[00:49:14.680 --> 00:49:18.640] And this had to be, like, God, I don't know, like 2012 or something.
[00:49:18.960 --> 00:49:24.400] And so we went and we met with Justin Rosenstein, the founder, and I was all excited because it's like, we hadn't really done shit.
[00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:26.320] You know, we'd been working on this for like eight months.
[00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:27.680] It was very early.
[00:49:27.680 --> 00:49:31.920] And he was flattering us and talking about how they were so impressed with what we built and what we would do.
[00:49:31.920 --> 00:49:34.160] And, you know, they wanted to acquire us.
[00:49:34.160 --> 00:49:35.360] And then they interviewed us.
[00:49:35.360 --> 00:49:37.440] And we just whiffed the interviews.
[00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:41.920] They set us up with like some engineers and like, I don't know, the head of marketing or something and interviewed both of us.
[00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:42.800] And then they're like, you know what?
[00:49:42.800 --> 00:49:44.320] We're actually not interested.
[00:49:44.320 --> 00:49:44.720] Good luck.
[00:49:44.880 --> 00:49:45.840] Good luck, guys.
[00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.840] And so we didn't get any Asana stock.
[00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:51.120] And they went on to IPO and eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars.
[00:49:51.120 --> 00:49:52.480] And we made zero.
[00:49:52.480 --> 00:49:54.640] But it's good to hear that you're using Asana.
[00:49:54.640 --> 00:49:56.160] I was actually really curious about that.
[00:49:56.320 --> 00:50:00.720] I have to say, like, what was the aspiration when they reached out to you?
[00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:03.600] Were you like, oh my God, like, you know, we're getting rescued.
[00:50:03.600 --> 00:50:06.560] Like, we were a sinking ship, like, and they want to bring us on board.
[00:50:06.560 --> 00:50:10.240] Like, did you feel like, oh, you know, like, this was a competitor?
[00:50:10.240 --> 00:50:11.120] So were you like...
[00:50:11.120 --> 00:50:11.760] Yeah.
[00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:13.440] But they were like a legit competitor.
[00:50:13.680 --> 00:50:14.640] We'd raise like no money.
[00:50:14.640 --> 00:50:16.480] They raised like tens of millions.
[00:50:16.480 --> 00:50:17.280] And they had all these.
[00:50:17.600 --> 00:50:23.440] At the time, they had all these crazy ideas about reinventing the way applications are built and the way that people work.
[00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:29.680] And everybody on earth is going to use Asana from the largest companies down toward, you know, the smallest.
[00:50:29.680 --> 00:50:32.560] Like your cleaning lady is going to come and check off tasks.
[00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:34.320] And it was like very, very like, you know.
[00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:40.480] And so I was just flattered that like I was getting to meet this guy and he had anything to do with us or even knew who we were.
[00:50:40.480 --> 00:50:47.840] And, you know, and I was hoping that we would make a boatload of money in the process and also be like sort of validated that we had started a startup that had succeeded.
[00:50:47.840 --> 00:50:57.040] And so it was like very inspiring and flattering that like we went through that process and then very crushing to have it result in literally nothing, just a waste of time.
[00:50:57.680 --> 00:51:07.160] I remember you were flattered enough to the point where you would pick up some of their business practices and you kind of like would reflect on maybe incorporating them.
[00:51:07.320 --> 00:51:21.320] So I remember this like very specific detail because you talked about them enough that Asana used to have this thing where everyone would come in to the office and like one of the first things they would do is they'd have like a 10 minute company meditation session.
[00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:22.440] I remember none of this.
[00:51:22.440 --> 00:51:24.040] I just blotted it all out from my mind.
[00:51:24.680 --> 00:51:25.240] They're dead to me.
[00:51:25.320 --> 00:51:25.640] I remember.
[00:51:25.720 --> 00:51:26.840] I remember zero facts.
[00:51:27.080 --> 00:51:28.520] Josh, would you eve

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
no money.
[00:50:14.640 --> 00:50:16.480] They raised like tens of millions.
[00:50:16.480 --> 00:50:17.280] And they had all these.
[00:50:17.600 --> 00:50:23.440] At the time, they had all these crazy ideas about reinventing the way applications are built and the way that people work.
[00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:29.680] And everybody on earth is going to use Asana from the largest companies down toward, you know, the smallest.
[00:50:29.680 --> 00:50:32.560] Like your cleaning lady is going to come and check off tasks.
[00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:34.320] And it was like very, very like, you know.
[00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:40.480] And so I was just flattered that like I was getting to meet this guy and he had anything to do with us or even knew who we were.
[00:50:40.480 --> 00:50:47.840] And, you know, and I was hoping that we would make a boatload of money in the process and also be like sort of validated that we had started a startup that had succeeded.
[00:50:47.840 --> 00:50:57.040] And so it was like very inspiring and flattering that like we went through that process and then very crushing to have it result in literally nothing, just a waste of time.
[00:50:57.680 --> 00:51:07.160] I remember you were flattered enough to the point where you would pick up some of their business practices and you kind of like would reflect on maybe incorporating them.
[00:51:07.320 --> 00:51:21.320] So I remember this like very specific detail because you talked about them enough that Asana used to have this thing where everyone would come in to the office and like one of the first things they would do is they'd have like a 10 minute company meditation session.
[00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:22.440] I remember none of this.
[00:51:22.440 --> 00:51:24.040] I just blotted it all out from my mind.
[00:51:24.680 --> 00:51:25.240] They're dead to me.
[00:51:25.320 --> 00:51:25.640] I remember.
[00:51:25.720 --> 00:51:26.840] I remember zero facts.
[00:51:27.080 --> 00:51:28.520] Josh, would you ever sell your company?
[00:51:28.520 --> 00:51:30.120] Have you ever thought about like the end game?
[00:51:30.120 --> 00:51:32.200] Is this like a lifelong project?
[00:51:32.200 --> 00:51:33.320] I've thought about it.
[00:51:34.040 --> 00:51:34.600] I don't know.
[00:51:34.760 --> 00:51:37.560] I view it as like there's two tracks in my brain.
[00:51:37.560 --> 00:51:43.800] So there's like kind of what we're doing now, which is, you know, customer referrals and whatnot.
[00:51:43.800 --> 00:51:46.680] But I do think it could be a bigger thing.
[00:51:46.680 --> 00:52:01.400] So I don't know at what point that jumps the tracks from just a very purely, you know, purpose-built, like it's technically like a horizontal SaaS because it applies to like all kinds of different businesses, but where it's just really it's one solution type of thing.
[00:52:01.400 --> 00:52:06.360] Like I have bigger aspirations that it could be this advocacy hub of all kinds of things.
[00:52:06.360 --> 00:52:07.240] Could it do reviews?
[00:52:07.240 --> 00:52:08.120] Could it do all these things?
[00:52:08.120 --> 00:52:18.360] Because if we're tapping into that, you know, aligning with the CRM or whatever, like what else could we do that is helping a business like really do more things with their advocates?
[00:52:18.360 --> 00:52:20.440] So I don't know if it'll ever make that, right?
[00:52:20.440 --> 00:52:22.680] Like it sort of becomes a bigger platform play.
[00:52:22.680 --> 00:52:26.600] It's probably bigger, like maybe I should raise money if I wanted to go for that type of thing.
[00:52:26.600 --> 00:52:29.480] But right now, it's humming along.
[00:52:30.280 --> 00:52:34.680] It's, you know, you mentioned the big revenue number, and but I also have a lot of staff, right?
[00:52:34.680 --> 00:52:41.800] So it's like the value is that we keep growing it and we are building something that is hopefully going to be longer standing.
[00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:44.040] Um, but I could see selling it.
[00:52:44.040 --> 00:52:51.040] I could see now like the interesting part versus when we when I first got started is you know, you could sell parts of it, right?
[00:52:51.040 --> 00:52:52.560] You could sell 10%.
[00:52:52.560 --> 00:53:08.160] I PE people reaching out and saying, Hey, we just want to take a small stake, or you hear the Wistia stories, you hear the there's all kinds of these other options to do partial PE buyouts, or it's not necessarily just like Google buys you or something like that.
[00:53:08.160 --> 00:53:09.920] So I think there's a lot of options.
[00:53:09.920 --> 00:53:17.280] Um, it also does make some decent profits, but not in a way that you know, I'm not buying, you know, brand new houses or anything.
[00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:19.120] You don't have a private jet yet.
[00:53:19.120 --> 00:53:24.400] No, no, I just keep reinvesting it in, honestly, and like looking at all the layoffs and all these other things.
[00:53:24.400 --> 00:53:26.400] Like, I've never, we've never done a layoff.
[00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:27.440] I want to keep it that way.
[00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:34.000] I kind of just slow and steady, but I also keep a decent amount of like money in the business.
[00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:37.600] Um, so I don't think of it as my own money and taking out and having to put it in.
[00:53:37.600 --> 00:53:42.480] I never want to have to take money out of the business and then reinsert it out of my personal money.
[00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:48.320] So, there's a decent, like, I would say, nest egg in there to help kind of fuel bad times and fuel growth.
[00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:53.120] So, it doesn't have to make me feel like I'm spending $20,000 on ads.
[00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:55.520] Like, it's all house money to me in there.
[00:53:55.520 --> 00:53:59.840] Like, the referral rock nest egg is referral rock's nest egg.
[00:53:59.840 --> 00:54:04.000] And at that point, if I decide to exit, that's a different thing, but I'm still having fun.
[00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:05.840] So, that's kind of my other marker, right?
[00:54:05.840 --> 00:54:10.240] It's like, I was going to ask you, how do you feel personally as a founder having gotten to this point?
[00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:10.960] You know, are you happy?
[00:54:10.960 --> 00:54:11.440] Are you sad?
[00:54:11.440 --> 00:54:12.400] Do you feel fulfilled?
[00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:14.320] Do you feel like you're in the thick of the challenge?
[00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:17.200] Because, like, you're right where a lot of people want to be, you know?
[00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:20.800] And so, it's like, how do you feel emotionally on a day-to-day basis?
[00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:25.440] If you asked me three months ago, it would have been a different answer.
[00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:30.440] So, I mean, I'll say last year was a little rough, 2022.
[00:54:30.680 --> 00:54:36.600] There was realized a couple of little things, which is like there's just natural turnover, right?
[00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:37.320] People want to leave.
[00:54:37.480 --> 00:54:41.640] So we had senior people that were here for two plus years.
[00:54:41.640 --> 00:54:43.960] And naturally, they want to change jobs, right?
[00:54:43.960 --> 00:54:46.680] It wasn't for a lack of opportunity because we're like, hey, do you want to learn this?
[00:54:46.680 --> 00:54:47.880] Do you want to learn to do product stuff?
[00:54:47.880 --> 00:54:49.320] Do you want to do these things?
[00:54:49.320 --> 00:54:50.280] And some people don't.
[00:54:50.280 --> 00:54:51.160] And that's okay, right?
[00:54:51.160 --> 00:54:54.920] They just, they're like, well, I'm a great integrations person.
[00:54:54.920 --> 00:55:04.040] I could go on and sell this, my same skill set to someone else that has another business that has a higher ACB and basically get paid more, right?
[00:55:04.040 --> 00:55:10.520] There's a limit to what we could pay that that skill is valued based off of what we make off of customers.
[00:55:10.520 --> 00:55:16.760] So we had like two senior people on the services team leave like within two months.
[00:55:16.760 --> 00:55:19.320] And it just, all the knowledge drained, right?
[00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:21.560] Like you have all of a sudden you're training new people.
[00:55:21.560 --> 00:55:27.960] So there was definitely some rough patches this year on retraining and that was tiring because I got on some calls, right?
[00:55:27.960 --> 00:55:29.880] Like, you know, you have pulled people.
[00:55:29.880 --> 00:55:32.360] I had that great product manager I mentioned before.
[00:55:32.360 --> 00:55:35.160] He got pulled in and he was doing integration calls, right?
[00:55:35.160 --> 00:55:44.200] Like you don't want to pay your product manager to go do integration calls, but at a small team size, you need, you know, everyone's pulling and you need to go dig out of that.
[00:55:44.200 --> 00:55:54.280] So I'd say for probably about five to six months last year, you know, there was a lot of slogging and retracking back to the getting your hands dirty type of stuff.
[00:55:54.280 --> 00:55:55.080] And what about now?
[00:55:55.080 --> 00:55:56.840] Like last year, tough.
[00:55:57.080 --> 00:55:57.800] I mean, it's...
[00:55:57.800 --> 00:55:58.680] I'm doing a lot better.
[00:55:58.680 --> 00:56:02.360] So yeah, it was after that, it was definitely tiring.
[00:56:02.360 --> 00:56:03.960] And we reloaded, right?
[00:56:03.960 --> 00:56:04.840] It took time.
[00:56:05.240 --> 00:56:08.920] We went back on the hiring hunt, trained new people.
[00:56:08.920 --> 00:56:16.880] The people eventually, you know, they take two, three months to kind of get fully up to speed, taking that, taking on customers and things like that.
[00:56:16.880 --> 00:56:18.320] But no, it's in a better place.
[00:56:14.760 --> 00:56:21.920] It's in honestly a better place than it was than like a year ago.
[00:56:22.480 --> 00:56:24.640] But it took that amount of time.
[00:56:24.640 --> 00:56:37.840] And then, as I got to get away from that, I got to go back into more strategic stuff, product planning stuff, the deep work, fun stuff that we all, you know, want to do and move the bigger ball forward than necessarily being in the dirty work.
[00:56:37.840 --> 00:56:44.320] So my headspace is definitely a lot better at it, but it took some time to get there.
[00:56:44.560 --> 00:56:49.440] You're on the happy side of a quote that I just came across a couple of days ago.
[00:56:49.440 --> 00:56:58.160] And the quote is that there's this building and there's a door on the sign, and the door says, Everything you need to be a hero.
[00:56:58.160 --> 00:57:05.520] And a lot of people open this door, but then they back away when they don't see any equipment inside, only a bunch of horrible situations.
[00:57:05.520 --> 00:57:08.240] And so you've just come through the horrible situations.
[00:57:08.240 --> 00:57:11.520] You've been doing this for well over 10 years, it seems.
[00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:14.000] And like, you've seen all parts of it.
[00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:17.280] A lot of people that listen to this are just getting started.
[00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:24.240] What advice do you have for people who haven't gone through all of those horrible experiences and learned all those lessons?
[00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:34.720] Honestly, the biggest thing I would say to that I think helped me break out quicker was I started out kind of dog fooding, but got away from it pretty quick.
[00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:41.360] I know it's a common, like great place to start advice, like using your own product, being your own customer, all that stuff.
[00:57:41.360 --> 00:57:48.560] But once that flip switched of like the value is subjective, it's not about how I value it.
[00:57:48.560 --> 00:57:54.720] And seeing, like, I talked about that water filtration company that a referral to them was like worth 10 grand, it just blew my mind.
[00:57:54.720 --> 00:57:58.800] But it was like, oh, but they're not the only ones, right?
[00:57:58.800 --> 00:58:04.200] So, like, that getting out of dog food mode and realizing I'm not building the product for me anymore.
[00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:04.840] I'm not building.
[00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:07.960] And it's like the customers I'm talking to are not me.
[00:58:07.960 --> 00:58:12.920] Like, there are all these other things that are like, it's hard to get rid of those because that's what got you there.
[00:58:12.920 --> 00:58:16.120] That grit of like, hey, I have this dream.
[00:58:16.120 --> 00:58:22.360] I have this dogmatism, this point of view that I'm going to build XYZ in a way that I want to build it.
[00:58:22.360 --> 00:58:28.360] So that I think is the biggest thing that I've seen where people kind of get often stuck too long.
[00:58:28.360 --> 00:58:35.160] Like they hear that trope advice of like dog fooding, which is great at the beginning, or they stick with their convictions too long.
[00:58:35.160 --> 00:58:38.280] Like, I want to be the indie hacker that doesn't do marketing.
[00:58:38.280 --> 00:58:40.440] And they that joke when they're like, I don't do any marketing.
[00:58:40.440 --> 00:58:43.960] And like, you're talking on indie hackers like two people.
[00:58:43.960 --> 00:58:45.000] That kind of is marketing.
[00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:46.280] Or you're posting in forums.
[00:58:46.280 --> 00:58:47.080] That's marketing.
[00:58:47.080 --> 00:58:50.680] Like they're, but they're like, but I will, oh, you mean you don't want to do paid ads.
[00:58:50.680 --> 00:58:52.360] Okay, but really, what is that?
[00:58:52.360 --> 00:58:56.360] You're going to let your dogmatism about that stop you from that type of thing.
[00:58:56.360 --> 00:58:59.880] So get outside your head, you know, hopefully talk to more people.
[00:59:00.200 --> 00:59:04.120] But those were the biggest like unlocks for me that I kind of stumbled upon.
[00:59:04.120 --> 00:59:04.680] I love that.
[00:59:04.680 --> 00:59:05.000] Yeah.
[00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:07.160] I mean, I think you just summed it up really well.
[00:59:07.160 --> 00:59:09.400] Like, get outside of your own head, right?
[00:59:09.400 --> 00:59:11.560] And you're in your situation to kind of sum it up.
[00:59:11.560 --> 00:59:13.960] It's like, number one, dog fooding is great.
[00:59:13.960 --> 00:59:15.240] You get, you get going.
[00:59:15.240 --> 00:59:26.120] But when you really want to get from zero to one or one to two, like actually talk to other people in your situation, that was like calls and actually getting in front of your customers and seeing what else was out there.
[00:59:26.120 --> 00:59:28.920] And also just actually marketing.
[00:59:28.920 --> 00:59:31.560] Steve Blank has a phrase for this.
[00:59:31.560 --> 00:59:33.320] It's called get out of the building.
[00:59:33.320 --> 00:59:33.880] Same thing.
[00:59:33.880 --> 00:59:34.120] Right.
[00:59:34.160 --> 00:59:35.000] If you're building for yourself.
[00:59:35.560 --> 00:59:35.800] Yeah.
[00:59:35.800 --> 00:59:36.360] Yeah, exactly.
[00:59:36.360 --> 00:59:37.080] Get out of the building.
[00:59:37.080 --> 00:59:45.280] Talk to other customers, and you will learn a bunch of stuff, including the potential that, like, hey, people will pay like a hundred times more for this than you might have guessed.
[00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:46.240] So I love that advice.
[00:59:46.240 --> 00:59:48.880] It's a good reason to talk to people and actually do marketing.
[00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:50.720] Josh, really appreciated having you.
[00:59:44.840 --> 00:59:52.080] Thanks for sharing your story.
[00:59:52.400 --> 00:59:59.840] Can you let listeners know where they can go to basically learn more about you and Referral Rock and anything else you got going on?
[00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:01.280] I know you've got a couple of podcasts, too.
[01:00:01.520 --> 01:00:04.960] If you want to talk to me, I would say kind of on Twitter still.
[01:00:04.960 --> 01:00:10.080] I used to be more active, but since the Elon days, I've been a little less on there.
[01:00:10.080 --> 01:00:13.600] But I am posting more things on Substack.
[01:00:13.600 --> 01:00:16.160] So you can just look up Joshua Substack.
[01:00:16.160 --> 01:00:17.520] There's some things there.
[01:00:17.840 --> 01:00:19.360] Referralrock.com.
[01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:22.720] You can find us for any referral marketing related stuff.
[01:00:23.280 --> 01:00:30.400] And then, yeah, I have a buddy podcast, like ride-along style, also with a SAS founder called Searching for SAS.
[01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:39.040] And it's just kind of the kind of like you guys talking, you know, weekly and whatnot, but one of those ones that's just kind of fun to just talk about what's going on.
[01:00:39.680 --> 01:00:40.080] All right.
[01:00:40.080 --> 01:00:41.520] Thanks again, Josh, for coming on.
[01:00:41.520 --> 01:00:42.240] Great talking.
[01:00:42.240 --> 01:00:42.560] Awesome.
[01:00:42.560 --> 01:00:43.360] Thanks for reminding me.
[01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:44.480] Thanks, guys.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:07.440] Hey, what's up, dude?
[00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:08.560] How's it going?
[00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:09.760] What's going on, man?
[00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:11.280] I got a question for you.
[00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:16.400] It's based on this Washington Post article that I read this past weekend.
[00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:18.480] Hey, what's going on, Josh?
[00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:20.000] Hey, what's up, Josh?
[00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:20.800] Hey.
[00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:24.560] Actually, you're in time for a question that I've got for actually both of you.
[00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:28.160] I just read this Washington Post article this past weekend.
[00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:31.920] The article is the happiest, least stressful, most meaningful jobs on earth.
[00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:37.600] It was a survey, and it like, you know, surveyed basically every job and kind of categorized them.
[00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:39.440] So either of you, take this one.
[00:00:39.440 --> 00:00:44.640] What do you think is the single most stressful, least happy job on earth?
[00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:47.680] And this is mostly, like, think of American jobs.
[00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:49.600] The least happy, most stressful.
[00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.680] I don't know, like a police officer.
[00:00:51.680 --> 00:00:52.720] A teacher?
[00:00:52.960 --> 00:00:54.400] It's lawyer.
[00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:56.240] Lawyer.
[00:00:56.240 --> 00:00:56.720] Okay.
[00:00:56.720 --> 00:00:56.960] Okay.
[00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:01.600] Now, what do you think is the least stressful and happiest and like most meaningful?
[00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:02.640] I don't know.
[00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:05.600] Not a teacher, I don't think, because being a teacher is pretty stressful.
[00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:13.680] I don't know, like being like maybe like someone likes like a volunteer, like volunteer work or working with like charities or something.
[00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:14.640] I'm not sure.
[00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:16.320] Children's book author.
[00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:17.840] Yeah, children's authority.
[00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:19.040] Children's book author.
[00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:23.200] Neither of you, you're not even in like the right segment.
[00:01:23.200 --> 00:01:27.200] It is a lumberjack and or a farmer.
[00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:27.840] I could say that.
[00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:28.480] Either of those.
[00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:29.360] Okay.
[00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:29.680] Yeah.
[00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:32.960] People working outside, working with their hands in nature.
[00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:34.000] I can see that.
[00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.480] It's like, they don't necessarily go into why, but it's like, Cortland, you've read that book, Drive, right?
[00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:45.440] Which is like what are the motivations behind finding like, you know, pleasure at work.
[00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:50.000] And if you think about an attorney, you don't really have that much autonomy, right?
[00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.160] You're kind of like in this big machine.
[00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:53.200] You're kind of disconnected.
[00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:54.880] It's like, you know, it's not very meaningful.
[00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:58.320] You know, you're playing whatever side of the field you need to play.
[00:01:58.320 --> 00:02:02.840] But lumberjack farmer, it's like, you know, extremely purposeful.
[00:02:02.840 --> 00:02:05.320] Like you kind of know exactly what you need to do.
[00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:05.720] I don't know.
[00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:13.400] Maybe we should all rethink our jobs because technical fields like what we're in also aren't super high on that list.
[00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:13.960] I see.
[00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:15.320] I pulled up the graphic.
[00:02:15.320 --> 00:02:20.120] It's this Washington Post article called The Happiest, Least Stressful, Most Meaningful Jobs on Earth.
[00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:21.240] And it's not Lumberjack.
[00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:36.120] It's specifically people in the agriculture, logging, and forestry industry have the highest happiness of any industry and the most meaning and purpose of any industry and the least stress.
[00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:39.240] So they want in literally every single category, which is pretty crazy.
[00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:42.600] They do a double click into that, and it's Lumberjack is among them.
[00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:44.840] Lumberjacks and farmers are the ones that are like.
[00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:46.520] Yeah, and agriculture.
[00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:51.320] Yeah, I think it's honestly, it's like humans, we evolved to be outside in nature.
[00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:54.760] And literally none of these other industries are that, right?
[00:02:54.760 --> 00:02:58.200] Like public administration, educational services.
[00:02:58.200 --> 00:03:00.120] Educational services is the most stressful.
[00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:04.600] Scored the highest on stress and also the second highest on meaning and purpose.
[00:03:04.600 --> 00:03:06.680] So, yeah, that seems crazy.
[00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:08.440] Maybe we're in the wrong industry.
[00:03:08.600 --> 00:03:09.640] Makes sense to me, yeah.
[00:03:09.640 --> 00:03:16.200] Like the fact that like the things outside of their control are really literally just the environment.
[00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:16.600] Yeah.
[00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:18.280] So they're like, okay, it's going to rain.
[00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:22.760] Like no one's, you're not going to stress over, it's like, can't get the job done, it's raining.
[00:03:22.760 --> 00:03:24.120] Or it's not raining.
[00:03:24.120 --> 00:03:33.560] I can't farm today, whatever that type of thing is, where all these other ones, lawyers or whatever, it's like, think of how many people could be pulling you in a direction you don't want to go.
[00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:37.640] Like the forces that of other people, like it's all other people.
[00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:40.200] Startup founder, like these investors won't give me money.
[00:03:40.200 --> 00:03:43.080] Like indie hacker, like my users will not pay for my products.
[00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:44.600] Like that is stress.
[00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:46.960] Also, like the status game, right?
[00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:53.360] Like if you're a lumberjack, like people aren't walking around like flashing shiny watches, like, hey, you know, when are you going to get your Lamborghini?
[00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:53.680] Right.
[00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:55.840] Whereas if you're a lawyer, what was that?
[00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:57.200] Um, American Psycho.
[00:03:57.200 --> 00:04:07.280] I don't know if either of you guys saw that movie, but it's like they, they all, everyone in the office like freaks out about like who has the flashiest, most expensive business card.
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:10.720] And like that's the only thing the character is like obsessed over.
[00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:15.200] Josh, we should introduce you to the audience while we're talking about business cards.
[00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:22.320] You are Josh Ho, you're an indie hacker and the founder of a company called Referral Rock, which is very successful.
[00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:26.800] But what I love about your story is that you didn't just like knock it out of the park on your first try.
[00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:31.120] You actually did another business where you sort of tasted defeat.
[00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:32.320] You went all in on that business.
[00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:36.160] You quit your full-time job, et cetera, and you eventually had to set it down.
[00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:38.560] And then you started Referral Rock, and now you're crushing it.
[00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:44.720] You're making, you don't show your exact revenue numbers, but I know you're making more than $2 million in annual recurring revenue.
[00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:48.480] And you started this as completely solo and bootstrapped.
[00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:52.400] So I'm pretty excited to talk about how you did that, because that's kind of where everybody wants to be.
[00:04:52.400 --> 00:04:54.000] Chen, you want to describe Referral Rock?
[00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.040] I think you read a little bit more about how it works.
[00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:00.240] Yeah, so let's say that you run a business.
[00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:02.400] Obviously, you want to grow the business.
[00:05:02.400 --> 00:05:03.520] You want to do marketing.
[00:05:03.520 --> 00:05:07.680] And the most effective form of marketing is word of mouth, right?
[00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:12.480] Because my ads that I put out for my company, they don't have that much credibility.
[00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:14.880] Of course, I want you to buy my product.
[00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:21.280] But if someone's best friend refers it, like that's a really high credibility form of marketing.
[00:05:21.280 --> 00:05:28.880] But the problem is you can't necessarily control when your customers refer your product to other people.
[00:05:28.880 --> 00:05:39.000] And so that's where referral rock comes in because if I sign up for referral rock, then I get these tools that help to prompt my users to share the product with their friends.
[00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.480] Like it gives incentives for them to promote the product.
[00:05:41.480 --> 00:05:46.120] Things like gift cards and PayPal payouts, product giveaways, that kind of thing.
[00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:49.800] What we kind of call it is like a proactive word of mouth, right?
[00:05:49.800 --> 00:05:51.720] So the word of mouth is already going to go.
[00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:54.680] And people, of course, are like, I want my organic word of mouth.
[00:05:54.680 --> 00:06:01.480] I want my just general product loops and word of mouth for just people to be talking about my stuff because it's awesome.
[00:06:01.880 --> 00:06:09.000] But, you know, it's really no different than when you look at marketing automation and sales enablement and all these types of things.
[00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:17.480] It's like, how can you now take what was lots of little steps, calling someone, asking for a referral, emailing all that type of stuff?
[00:06:17.480 --> 00:06:28.040] But how do you wrap that into, you know, doing some automation around it, doing some proactive outreach that isn't sleazy, the whole like, hey, put your friend's name here.
[00:06:28.040 --> 00:06:36.920] And like, or, you know, everyone had that Mary Kay friend or someone that was doing some info marketing types of stuff that's like, okay, great, this is awesome.
[00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:38.520] Now put five friends' names in there.
[00:06:38.520 --> 00:06:40.520] And it's like, hard pass.
[00:06:40.760 --> 00:06:41.880] Sell out my friends that way.
[00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:43.000] Yeah.
[00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:49.160] I love the idea because I think there's a really simple concept at the core of it that would be helpful for people to know.
[00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:52.760] Actually, I gave a talk a few years back called How to Get Lucky.
[00:06:52.760 --> 00:06:53.720] It's on YouTube.
[00:06:53.720 --> 00:07:00.440] I talked about how success in any domain often comes down to like, you know, this luck component, but you can control your luck.
[00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:06.600] And one of the components of controlling your luck is literally just asking people to help you.
[00:07:06.600 --> 00:07:08.040] Like, I'll tell you a story, for example.
[00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:10.840] My friend Lent Hai learned how to code.
[00:07:10.840 --> 00:07:16.480] And less than a year later, like somebody gave her a job offer for like $100 an hour to be a contractor.
[00:07:14.760 --> 00:07:18.400] And a lot of people will be like, oh, she's so lucky.
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:20.800] I can't believe somebody came with that offer.
[00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:30.000] But what she did was after she learned how to code, she told everybody that she knew that she had learned how to code and she was available for hire and here's what she could do.
[00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:36.800] And she just told like a hundred people that, and then suddenly she got quote unquote lucky that somebody was like, okay, here's a job, right?
[00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:39.440] And I think that's kind of like what referral rock is.
[00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:44.240] It's basically telling people, hey, it's not good enough just to build a good product and hope your customers share it.
[00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.120] Like you actually need to ask them to share it.
[00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:48.720] Like that can get a lot of people over the edge.
[00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:52.400] And here's like a bunch of useful tools to help you do that better.
[00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:53.920] Where does your story start?
[00:07:53.920 --> 00:07:55.440] I mean, you've been an indie hacker for a while.
[00:07:55.440 --> 00:07:57.200] You've been a founder for a while.
[00:07:57.200 --> 00:07:58.000] How did you get into this?
[00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.560] Because everybody comes out of a different place.
[00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:03.280] And very few people, I think, end up as successful as you.
[00:08:03.280 --> 00:08:08.240] So how do you think your life before becoming a founder sort of shaped how you've approached it?
[00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:26.080] I mean, I was always sort of the more bent on myself type of mentality person, like where, you know, even like in school type of stuff, it was like, oh, you know, I could just study a little bit enough to get the B, or I could study like 10 times more or five times more to get the A.
[00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:32.800] And it was just like, eh, it's always optimizing for like that efficiency and then also being like, meh, I don't want to do it that way.
[00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:34.080] I want to, I want to try something else.
[00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:39.760] I'm willing to, I'm willing to fall on my face and not make the grade because I, you know, took a shot at something else.
[00:08:39.760 --> 00:08:44.400] So I did a couple weird things like after college.
[00:08:44.400 --> 00:08:53.280] Like I went out to Tahoe and worked on a ski lift even after I had an engineering degree, just because it was like, eh, you know what?
[00:08:53.280 --> 00:08:54.880] I want to, I want to try something else.
[00:08:54.880 --> 00:09:00.920] It's almost like these train tracks set out from society that basically are like, here's what you need to do.
[00:09:00.920 --> 00:09:03.240] Like, you need to get this grade or you need to get this job.
[00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:14.040] And somehow you have this confidence that, like, actually, I can do it this other way and think it through and not follow the success, like the sort of prescribed train tracks, and it'll still be okay.
[00:09:14.040 --> 00:09:14.520] Yeah.
[00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:14.840] Yeah.
[00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:17.640] So I did take an engineering job eventually.
[00:09:17.640 --> 00:09:27.160] And so I did do, you know, I did electrical engineering and then I did, you know, I got into coding previous to that and just was working for software companies.
[00:09:27.160 --> 00:09:35.640] But even alongside that, I started like a car business on the side back before Fast and the Furious made everything really cool.
[00:09:35.640 --> 00:09:41.320] Well, actually around that time because of it, it was like doing aftermarket car work.
[00:09:41.320 --> 00:09:45.000] So I had a partner that did all the stuff, but I was like, oh, cool, I can make the website.
[00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:45.960] I could do all these other things.
[00:09:45.960 --> 00:09:49.800] So I was doing that while I was having an engineering job as well.
[00:09:49.800 --> 00:09:58.840] So that's probably my first like entrepreneurial endeavor that was truly kind of outside the normal day-to-day scope.
[00:09:58.840 --> 00:10:04.120] That's so interesting to me because I relate to the first part of your story.
[00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:06.120] I relate to I was in school.
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:09.400] I was kind of a pretty smart guy, but I would phone it in.
[00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:12.200] Like I was like, I have a good buddy to this day.
[00:10:12.200 --> 00:10:15.800] And we still talk about how we would like get home.
[00:10:15.800 --> 00:10:17.320] We were college roommates.
[00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:25.800] We'd get home and we'd like brag about getting an A minus or a B plus and saying like, look, dude, I studied for like 30 minutes while on the bus to that.
[00:10:25.800 --> 00:10:30.120] Like that was who I was all the way throughout college.
[00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:39.960] But I didn't have that sense that like I knew that I didn't want to be on the tracks, but I didn't have the sense that like there was a place off of the tracks that I could like take this.
[00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:46.000] I was like, okay, well, eventually I'm going to have to get my shit together, get a nine-to-five, and like, you know, play ball with everyone else.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:46.160] Right.
[00:10:46.400 --> 00:10:55.360] But you got off the tracks early and it seems like you were already kind of getting into entrepreneurship and like trying to build your own sites and maybe even make money.
[00:10:55.360 --> 00:11:03.760] Dude, I remember after college, you wanted to, you moved me to San Francisco and you definitely felt like you had to get a nine to five job, but you also wanted to like write a book.
[00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:10.080] And you spent like four months just writing this book with like no real effort put into finding a job.
[00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:16.400] So you had like this like kind of dual personality where you wanted to like not follow the prescribed path, but you also didn't have a plan for how you're going to finance it.
[00:11:16.400 --> 00:11:16.720] Exactly.
[00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:23.840] So you eventually had to get a job, but like you were like, if you could have done it anyway, you would have just read your book and published it and probably made no money and then had to get a job.
[00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:26.160] But like ideally, you would have made a lot of money.
[00:11:26.160 --> 00:11:27.600] I was in the wrong industry.
[00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:32.000] Like if you want to write a novel, that's not a great business.
[00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:42.800] If you want to make it a good business, okay, like you could write like thrillers or like commercial fiction romance novels like with a bunch of like smut and them apparently kill it these days.
[00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:50.240] But I was like trying to write like the next James Joyce, you know, Cormac McCarthy, like highbrow stuff that even writing stuff that makes zero dollars.
[00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:53.920] Even for the people who are famous, they are like firefighters on the side.
[00:11:53.920 --> 00:12:02.000] So like, yeah, it's just that the thing that I chose to be sort of an entrepreneur in is the kind of thing where there was only a dead end there.
[00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:13.360] Yeah, to answer your question, Channing, it was, it was definitely this like bet on myself thing, but I think because I'd seen it before, it wasn't necessarily intentional, but like my parents, my dad was an engineer.
[00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.480] He actually worked at Bell Labs in the early like Unix days.
[00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:17.520] So it was kind of cool.
[00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:20.080] But, but, so he was always on the tech side.
[00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:27.440] But seeing all the other activity, seeing that, like, I had, uh, I got burned in my first corporate inter internship.
[00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:29.680] So I wanted to work for a really small company.
[00:12:29.680 --> 00:12:35.320] So, that first engineering job, I was like, like, you know, engineer number two.
[00:12:35.320 --> 00:12:39.240] Um, and so it was interesting seeing that stuff from the ground up and the activity.
[00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:44.200] So, seeing how small that I think the company might have been 20 people at the time.
[00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:48.360] So, seeing that as like, I'm, I'm not that far from the fire, right?
[00:12:48.360 --> 00:12:50.840] And it's like, I don't think it's that far from here.
[00:12:50.840 --> 00:12:54.520] And it was, and that's also what kind of led me again is like, I think I could do this.
[00:12:54.520 --> 00:12:59.000] Actually, the ideas I'm doing work here, the product things I'm doing work here.
[00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.840] If I was like out there, I could kind of make the whole enchilada.
[00:13:02.840 --> 00:13:03.240] Yeah.
[00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:08.040] Did you, did you look up to like any indie hackers or any like founders who were out there like crushing it?
[00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:09.880] Because I know a lot of software engineers.
[00:13:09.880 --> 00:13:16.200] Like, I worked in the company as sort of a contractor years and years ago, and I was kind of a freelancer, but I always wanted to do like another startup.
[00:13:16.200 --> 00:13:23.080] And I talked to the other engineers, and they would just look at me with like these big googly eyes, like, how could you go out and do a startup on your own?
[00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:23.800] What is that even like?
[00:13:23.800 --> 00:13:27.800] Like, people aren't necessarily aware that that's a path that they can take.
[00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:29.640] I'm probably older than you think I am.
[00:13:29.640 --> 00:13:32.920] So, this is one of the stories I'm telling is like a young guy.
[00:13:33.080 --> 00:13:36.120] So, I'm now in my 40s.
[00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:37.560] I'm 45.
[00:13:37.560 --> 00:13:37.720] Okay.
[00:13:38.040 --> 00:13:39.240] Yeah, you're 10 years older than me.
[00:13:39.880 --> 00:13:43.960] So, but it was like, so this was early 2000s when all this stuff was happening.
[00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:47.960] So, I can't even think of what, like, the things that inspired me.
[00:13:47.960 --> 00:13:52.440] I was reading the guy that did plenty of fish.
[00:13:52.760 --> 00:13:53.560] Oh, yeah.
[00:13:53.880 --> 00:13:54.280] He killed me.
[00:13:54.440 --> 00:14:04.200] So, like, yeah, so it's like stuff like that that made you go, okay, this is a one-person engineer that built a competitor to, you know, match.com and all these other things.
[00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:06.600] And he was like raking on Google Ads, right?
[00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:15.120] So, but it was this honky, rinky-dink.net site that was just like horrible to look at, but it, it helped people find dates and whatnot.
[00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:16.240] And they just ran it on ads.
[00:14:16.320 --> 00:14:22.000] So that was probably one of the ones I remember going, oh, this is possible, right?
[00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:27.920] And as a, you know, what wasn't even called the indie hacker then, but you know, he's probably one of the early ones.
[00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:37.200] Yeah, it was like the Craigslist of dating websites, like hacked together by one person, making like, I think like literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
[00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:40.480] It looked like crap and it was barely even worked.
[00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:44.000] And like, I think everybody who read that was like, his name is Marcus Friend.
[00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:48.320] Everybody who read that story was like, shit, I could do better than that.
[00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:50.880] And then probably went off to make a dating app that failed.
[00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:55.680] So how did you get to the point where you started Referral Rock?
[00:14:55.680 --> 00:14:57.920] I mean, Referral Rock is the business you have right now.
[00:14:57.920 --> 00:15:01.360] You're killing it, again, making over $2 million a year in revenue.
[00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:11.280] Even just a few years ago, I read an interview that you did where you talked about the path to getting to $70,000 a month in revenue, which is a huge milestone that I think a lot of people would love to hit.
[00:15:11.680 --> 00:15:13.040] How did that process start?
[00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:17.280] What's the first step you took to even just coming up with the idea for something like that?
[00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:29.360] I mean, it did hit me in a lull, like after I burned out of the first startup, which we don't have to go into terrible details, but just you'll probably know this story in general because it was a notes app.
[00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:36.080] I know you joke constantly on the notes apps, dating apps, to-do lists, like stuff like that, that are just classic.
[00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:38.800] Everyone's first itch, right?
[00:15:38.800 --> 00:15:45.920] So at that time, to be honest, it was competing with like, it was launched around the same time Evernote was.
[00:15:45.920 --> 00:15:47.280] So it wasn't terrible.
[00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:50.880] It was early in the market enough that it wasn't a trope at that time.
[00:15:51.280 --> 00:15:52.080] It could have worked.
[00:15:52.400 --> 00:15:53.120] It could have.
[00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:53.760] It could have.
[00:15:54.400 --> 00:15:56.400] But I did get a little bit of funding for that.
[00:15:56.400 --> 00:16:00.000] I did get some more feet wet in the tech entrepreneurship side.
[00:16:00.920 --> 00:16:03.640] And also I stumbled into SEO then too.
[00:16:03.640 --> 00:16:06.520] So like we ranked number one for online notes.
[00:16:06.840 --> 00:16:12.200] So it was pretty crazy that I understood that that, like, that was my biggest takeaway.
[00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:19.000] I was like, okay, don't sell to consumers for like trying to be $5 a month, but sell to businesses.
[00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:22.120] But hey, this SEO thing kind of brought in people automatically.
[00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:23.640] So let me double down on that.
[00:16:23.640 --> 00:16:28.200] So that was like hunting for the, that was became my like framing for it.
[00:16:28.200 --> 00:16:39.800] It was like sell something to businesses that can do SEO and bring in people that then I can do the quote-unquote indie hacker dream of just sitting back and building a product and letting people get in.
[00:16:39.800 --> 00:16:47.960] So I always have a ton of ideas and it's just about kind of putting them into different buckets, whether it's throwaway or obviously buying a domain name is that next step.
[00:16:47.960 --> 00:16:56.440] But this one came in when honestly I was just like watching a car dealership and someone walked in and said, hey, a friend referred me.
[00:16:56.440 --> 00:16:58.360] And I would go, how does that work?
[00:16:58.360 --> 00:17:01.800] Like you see Dropbox, you see PayPal, you see all the digital ones.
[00:17:01.800 --> 00:17:03.480] How does it work in the offline world?
[00:17:03.480 --> 00:17:12.840] So quick Google search and buying a domain, let it sit in my brain for a few months, then took a no-code project and kind of converted it into that.
[00:17:12.840 --> 00:17:15.720] I like that you said you took a no-code project, right?
[00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:18.920] Because you had a background as a software engineer.
[00:17:19.080 --> 00:17:29.960] Was that like even at that step, was that something that you picked up from your previous company that you, you know, you're just going to kind of quickly get something out there and not overinvest in it?
[00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:33.160] Actually, I said old code, not no code.
[00:17:33.480 --> 00:17:34.840] But your point is the same.
[00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:43.240] So it was like, I took an old project that I had, which was, I forgot what it was even called, but it was like, it was sort of a landing page type of thing.
[00:17:43.240 --> 00:17:48.880] And what I ended up doing was converted that project into Referral Rock.
[00:17:44.600 --> 00:17:52.160] So it was basically like a layout for a landing page type of thing.
[00:17:52.480 --> 00:18:00.320] And I think I actually decided to not even build a database because I was tired of like building full schemas and then never really getting them off the ground.
[00:18:00.320 --> 00:18:12.240] So I literally used like a, you know, I think it was like an XML resource file as my quote-unquote database for the first, I think, maybe 20 customers or 20, 20 pilot users.
[00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:16.240] And I used SurveyMonkey as the admin interface.
[00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:25.200] So they basically said, upload, I was like, look, you can upload your logo, tell me what you want to, you know, you want the referral reward to be, put all the copy in here.
[00:18:25.520 --> 00:18:31.040] And then I exported it out, just converted it to an XML file, and then just like put it up on the server.
[00:18:31.040 --> 00:18:31.680] So that was it.
[00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:34.800] There was no retention of saving customer data or anything.
[00:18:34.800 --> 00:18:47.680] It was just like a way to templatize from an old code version that got me out the ground to have to see if I can get 10 people to put up a referral program site.
[00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:49.360] So what's going through your mind at this point?
[00:18:49.360 --> 00:18:55.840] Because I know, like, for example, when I started Indie Hackers, I was just thinking, I want to make enough money to pay my rent.
[00:18:55.840 --> 00:19:03.120] And other people, when they start their business, like we just talked to someone a few weeks ago, he was like, I want to make $5 million a year for my business.
[00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:08.880] What's going through your mind when you're putting together this very minimal product and trying to research how referrals work?
[00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:15.520] I mean, it was like, how can I just get people to pay for this on a recurring basis?
[00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:18.720] So it was not necessarily like a huge mark.
[00:19:19.120 --> 00:19:24.400] I think at the point in time, this was past the burnout of the last startup.
[00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:26.160] This is around the time I got married.
[00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:27.040] I started having kids.
[00:19:27.040 --> 00:19:29.440] So I had two kids then, very young.
[00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:35.480] And I was doing a little bit of software consulting on the side and just waiting for that next idea to kind of start.
[00:19:35.800 --> 00:19:41.960] So it was one of those ones where I was still like held up from a financial standpoint by the consulting work.
[00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:48.040] So it was not like I needed to make this, make or break this right away, or I had to go get a regular job or something like that.
[00:19:48.040 --> 00:19:53.400] So I had enough like consulting income from software development to hold that up.
[00:19:53.400 --> 00:20:00.440] But I was like, could this be the train that then I don't have to work for other people anymore and I could just do my own thing?
[00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:01.560] So that was my frame.
[00:20:01.800 --> 00:20:05.080] And I'm also curious, like, can you teach us what you learned?
[00:20:05.080 --> 00:20:08.600] Like, I've also heard the story of the Dropbox referral program.
[00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:16.040] There's a lot of tech businesses that have referral programs, but you said you went to like a car dealership or something and you learned about their referral programs, which presumably are very different.
[00:20:16.040 --> 00:20:18.280] And you thought, oh, I could bring this to the digital world.
[00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:26.040] Like, what do brick and mortar businesses do to get this word of mouth referral that like tech companies don't do that got you so excited?
[00:20:26.360 --> 00:20:28.760] Well, that's what started actually the idea.
[00:20:28.760 --> 00:20:34.440] And what I didn't even know at the time, it stumbled me into like strong positioning, right?
[00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:38.360] Because the first thing I Google searched after that was like, who's doing it for these people?
[00:20:38.360 --> 00:20:46.680] Because you could find companies like a Friend Buy or these other ones that would do digital ones that were very e-commerce based.
[00:20:46.680 --> 00:20:50.920] And the thing I noticed was like no one was doing it for all these other ones.
[00:20:50.920 --> 00:20:52.440] I was like, the mechanic is the same.
[00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:55.960] It's you're having a person go out there advocating for you.
[00:20:55.960 --> 00:21:01.720] And as long as you can attribute it to the right person, you can figure out rewards and that type of stuff.
[00:21:01.720 --> 00:21:03.800] So I realized there was a gap in the market.
[00:21:03.800 --> 00:21:04.600] No one was doing that.
[00:21:04.600 --> 00:21:07.560] No one was doing it that they could talk to CRMs.
[00:21:07.560 --> 00:21:16.320] No one was making it simple enough for a small business versus like e-commerce checkout, give a friend a coupon, you get a coupon type of stuff.
[00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:22.080] So when I started in that direction, it led me down all these people asking for different types of things.
[00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:27.280] And it made it apparent it didn't have to be just a very transactional type of thing.
[00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:33.120] And it led into all kinds of other tunnels, like weird stuff where people are like, I want to add people's name tools.
[00:21:33.200 --> 00:21:35.840] I want to trade referrals with other people.
[00:21:35.840 --> 00:21:41.520] And at some point, it could be like, yeah, let me hone this down a certain path.
[00:21:41.520 --> 00:21:44.800] So the mechanic is not that much different than the big guys.
[00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:51.920] But when you do look at a Dropbox, what their traits are, it's very tightly coupled to the product, right?
[00:21:51.920 --> 00:21:59.600] Like the growth they got was, I think it was like, you get, you know, 500 megabytes extra, I get 500 megabytes extra.
[00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:02.240] So it told a story within that.
[00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:07.280] And then I think their bigger thing is, you know, it became like a viral hook for it.
[00:22:07.280 --> 00:22:10.000] Now, that doesn't mean it's viral for everyone.
[00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:15.760] It's just, you know, that alignment, I think, is what made it work.
[00:22:16.080 --> 00:22:27.920] I'm curious how you got even like, you know, even before you got to the point where people were asking for this feature and that feature, and you were, you know, sort of narrowing down the viral component.
[00:22:28.080 --> 00:22:29.840] You mentioned that you had some pilot users.
[00:22:29.840 --> 00:22:33.120] Like, what did you even do to get it into the hands of pilot users?
[00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:37.600] How did you know, for example, like which segment of people this might even fit with?
[00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:45.920] Like, what were your next steps after you built like the super dressed down like Excel spreadsheet as a database version of the app?
[00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:48.560] I did the things at that time.
[00:22:48.560 --> 00:22:50.400] I think it was like Beta List.
[00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:54.560] I think I like did a beta list launches, you know, pre-product hunt days.
[00:22:54.560 --> 00:22:56.080] So I did one of those.
[00:22:56.080 --> 00:23:04.360] I got some people, I started writing like some janky SEO-based articles to kind of get some traffic.
[00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:12.120] And eventually it just had enough that it was getting maybe five, ten people signing up a week of general interest.
[00:23:12.120 --> 00:23:25.000] But the early parts of that was, I was quick to get on the phone with people or get on a, it wasn't even Zoom, it was like WebEx or some other things, mostly because I would get annoyed with people chatting.
[00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:26.360] So they'd be like, oh, how do I do this?
[00:23:26.360 --> 00:23:27.800] I'm like, let me just show you.
[00:23:27.800 --> 00:23:28.760] This is so annoying.
[00:23:28.760 --> 00:23:31.400] Let's just get on a screen share of something.
[00:23:32.040 --> 00:23:38.040] And that became a bigger unlock because you got to hear what the value meant to people.
[00:23:38.040 --> 00:23:44.200] And you talked to like, I think one of the bigger first companies I talked to was this water filtration company.
[00:23:44.200 --> 00:23:58.760] And a light bulb really went on when they came in and said, oh, yeah, if you can just get us like three or four referrals like a month, and we're going to pay $500 per referral payout to the person that did the referring, like this is, this is going to be gold.
[00:23:58.760 --> 00:24:00.280] And I was like, what?
[00:24:00.280 --> 00:24:05.400] Like, you're, and it just, the light came on how much they would be willing to pay for that.
[00:24:05.400 --> 00:24:07.960] And then they asked if I could do gift card fulfillment.
[00:24:07.960 --> 00:24:10.120] And I'm like, let me get back to you.
[00:24:10.120 --> 00:24:15.080] And then code did that in a weekend and then came back with like an integration that could do the gift card fulfillment.
[00:24:15.080 --> 00:24:19.480] And I'm like, I was like, oh, and we saw the price changed from like $100 to like $300.
[00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:19.880] I'm like, yeah.
[00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:21.800] They're like, that's, oh, that makes sense.
[00:24:21.800 --> 00:24:22.200] Cool.
[00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:23.320] Yeah, we'll, we'll take that.
[00:24:23.320 --> 00:24:24.600] It was like, what?
[00:24:25.240 --> 00:24:28.120] Well, I have to, I have to like highlight this point.
[00:24:28.120 --> 00:24:29.880] So, and you also mentioned this.
[00:24:30.040 --> 00:24:41.480] You did an interview with us and you mentioned the exact same thing that you didn't like talking, and I don't think anyone honestly does, like talking to customers through like a chat widget.
[00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:50.480] And just out of sheer annoyance, you're like, okay, let me just do like a screen share or like do a call where I have it, almost sounded like you were like, let me just like streamline this.
[00:24:50.800 --> 00:24:55.920] Like you didn't have, it seems, a strategy in mind for like building your product.
[00:24:55.920 --> 00:24:57.840] You're like, let me just make this less annoying.
[00:24:57.840 --> 00:25:20.160] But then you mentioned that you quadrupled by just having this, these calls, you quadrupled the amount of people that you converted from a free trial to like them being paid, which is such a subtle and really important thing because I think a lot of people that are indie hackers relate to me in this sense that like I love building cool things.
[00:25:20.160 --> 00:25:26.640] I don't necessarily love like going and doing customer support and like marketing and talking to people necessarily, right?
[00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:29.280] I just want to like make the thing cool and get it out there.
[00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:38.000] But it seems that transitioning to what a lot of people find to be the most uncomfortable part was a huge boon for you in the beginning.
[00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:41.920] Yeah, and it probably got down to like a different type of annoyance.
[00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:43.680] Like where was my pain threshold?
[00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:54.640] It was more painful for me to sit there waiting for them to chat back and like having a single-threaded conversation than it would be to just like, let me just help them and they'll be done and get out of here.
[00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:56.560] What about like funding in the early days?
[00:25:56.560 --> 00:26:04.080] Like I assume this is just you doing wearing every hat as a founder, which you kind of have to do early on because it's hard to hire and if you don't have a co-founder, it's just you.
[00:26:04.080 --> 00:26:05.520] But how did you afford to do this?
[00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:06.880] Like did you have a job?
[00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:08.320] Were you living off of your savings?
[00:26:08.320 --> 00:26:13.280] Because it's like kind of stressful to run a company when you like, I mean, you just gotten married.
[00:26:13.280 --> 00:26:17.680] I'm sure your wife was like, hey, you know, like, is this like, what's up with you financially?
[00:26:17.680 --> 00:26:19.280] How did you fund all this stuff?
[00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:23.120] It was from like the, I think I mentioned consulting a little earlier.
[00:26:23.120 --> 00:26:36.520] So I had after I, that Bria startup burned, and then I did some consulting and I started and I had probably like two or three clients that were, um, had a steady enough work.
[00:26:36.840 --> 00:26:41.640] And fortunately enough, like my wife only knew me to never have a real job.
[00:26:41.640 --> 00:26:44.680] So it was kind of that ongoing joke when she brought me home.
[00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:52.280] It was just like to her parents, it was like, oh, here's, here's my fiancé that, you know, is like unemployed.
[00:26:52.280 --> 00:26:55.800] But at that time, I was like working in my own startup and kind of doing some other things.
[00:26:55.800 --> 00:27:03.560] So I had a knack for at least picking up a couple relationships and doing some other coding once people knew my other stuff wasn't working.
[00:27:03.560 --> 00:27:04.200] So.
[00:27:04.200 --> 00:27:12.840] One of the things I think that I've seen you post about on Indie Hackers and that we talked about a little bit is that your business is kind of like part of your family now.
[00:27:13.480 --> 00:27:22.120] You've got a couple of kids, I think, and they have only ever known you as like dad who works from home on his own indie hacker business.
[00:27:22.120 --> 00:27:27.800] You know, like they have not seen you going to work, which I think is like a very cool concept.
[00:27:27.800 --> 00:27:30.600] Like me and Channing, like our mom was also an entrepreneur.
[00:27:30.600 --> 00:27:36.840] So we grew up basically watching her carve out her own path in the world and like do her own thing.
[00:27:36.840 --> 00:27:38.440] And our dad was like a little bit similar.
[00:27:38.440 --> 00:27:41.240] He's like part of this elite crew of like furniture builders.
[00:27:41.240 --> 00:27:43.400] There's like 10 of them and he would finish the furniture.
[00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:44.280] Somebody would design it.
[00:27:44.280 --> 00:27:45.000] Somebody would cut it.
[00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:45.960] Somebody would build it.
[00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:47.480] And they just did their own thing.
[00:27:47.800 --> 00:27:49.720] How do you think about that with your kids and your family?
[00:27:49.720 --> 00:27:55.720] Like, do you want to intentionally set this example for your kids that they can be sort of their own entrepreneur?
[00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:56.200] Do you care?
[00:27:56.200 --> 00:27:57.320] Do you want them to follow any path?
[00:27:57.320 --> 00:28:00.920] Because I just, I think this is something that doesn't get talked about enough as entrepreneurs.
[00:28:00.920 --> 00:28:03.400] It's like, what do we do with the next generation?
[00:28:04.200 --> 00:28:09.800] I definitely want them to follow their path, but I also want them to be like, know what's possible, right?
[00:28:09.800 --> 00:28:11.000] Like, know that.
[00:28:11.000 --> 00:28:18.160] And I think they're already probably seeing it as a first case example because not only me, but my wife also started her own business as well.
[00:28:18.320 --> 00:28:23.280] She was a nurse previously, so she kind of stumbled into that as well.
[00:28:23.280 --> 00:28:25.680] Like, now she has her own yoga business.
[00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:27.120] So, our basement's converted.
[00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:27.680] She does that.
[00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:28.720] She does online ones.
[00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:32.000] She does it converted over the course of the pandemic.
[00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:34.480] Now, she's like a hybrid subscription business.
[00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:35.840] Like, it's pretty cool.
[00:28:35.840 --> 00:28:38.080] And so, my kids got to see all that.
[00:28:38.080 --> 00:28:47.120] And we'll eventually have to face this argument one day, but like, I'm kind of of the notion that it's like, if they don't want to go to college, they don't have to go to college.
[00:28:47.120 --> 00:28:49.280] My wife is not on board with that train yet.
[00:28:49.600 --> 00:29:03.040] But, but, in terms of like what we're doing, and honestly, my daughter, even just she's 11 and just started her own YouTube channel because she watches a couple creators like doing crafts and things like that.
[00:29:03.040 --> 00:29:04.800] It's already seeping in a bit.
[00:29:04.800 --> 00:29:12.880] And I don't know if it's necessarily from us, but I think she's just actually finding the things she likes to do and finding like, ooh, I can do that.
[00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:14.080] We never told her any of that.
[00:29:14.080 --> 00:29:21.440] It was just like she wrote down this past October, she's like, My new year's resolution is to post a video, like a YouTube video a week.
[00:29:21.440 --> 00:29:23.360] We're like, Okay, that just came out.
[00:29:23.600 --> 00:29:24.400] How old is she?
[00:29:24.400 --> 00:29:25.840] So, she's 11.
[00:29:25.840 --> 00:29:29.040] Wow, so are you like helping her with the marketing?
[00:29:29.680 --> 00:29:31.840] No, she doesn't really want any help.
[00:29:32.080 --> 00:29:34.880] Like, so she's 11, she wants nothing to do with it.
[00:29:35.120 --> 00:29:37.600] Yeah, yeah, this is so she's been, you know, right now.
[00:29:37.600 --> 00:29:42.480] It's you know, end of end of January, and she's already has like three videos up.
[00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:49.880] It's cool, she takes my old like GoPro type of thing, and she does these little ones with all her, like, she, they're cooking ones now.
[00:29:49.760 --> 00:29:58.520] So, so she'll like pick a recipe, she bakes, and she does, like, you know, it might be half an hour's worth of recording, and she's figured out a video editor.
[00:29:58.520 --> 00:30:01.560] She plays with this, like, that default one that comes with Windows.
[00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:04.520] It's just like video, just called literally like video editor.
[00:30:04.600 --> 00:30:07.720] I'm trying to get her to use something else, but she's, she's against that.
[00:30:07.720 --> 00:30:12.440] But she cuts them up, she edits them down to like five-minute videos.
[00:30:12.440 --> 00:30:15.960] And, and I'm like, oh, you should, you know, put a thumbnail.
[00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:17.160] She's like, nope, don't want to do it.
[00:30:17.160 --> 00:30:18.760] Like, don't want to put a title on it.
[00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:19.080] Don't want to.
[00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:21.000] I'm like, okay, all right, back.
[00:30:21.320 --> 00:30:23.000] So she does all these things on her own.
[00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:26.280] And it's pretty cool watching a little creator in action.
[00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:26.920] Yeah.
[00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:32.120] That point about college, I'm like, so on board with like, kids don't necessarily need to go to college.
[00:30:32.120 --> 00:30:39.240] Channing and I have, there's like a friend, a friend of our family's who has been having a lot of trouble in college recently.
[00:30:39.240 --> 00:30:41.160] And our mom was like, hey, can you, can you talk to him?
[00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:44.040] You know, like, he's not really doing good in school.
[00:30:44.040 --> 00:30:46.360] Like, you know, give him a pep talk because like school is so important.
[00:30:46.360 --> 00:30:50.120] He needs to do great in college and he's racking up all this debt to be in college.
[00:30:50.120 --> 00:30:53.000] And I started asking about like different parts of his life.
[00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:55.560] And it turns out like he's not in the best shape.
[00:30:55.560 --> 00:30:57.400] His health is suffering a little bit.
[00:30:57.400 --> 00:30:58.680] He's pretty lonely.
[00:30:58.680 --> 00:31:00.840] He doesn't have a lot of friends.
[00:31:01.160 --> 00:31:03.480] He's not very happy and he's been dealing with some depression.
[00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:04.120] Right.
[00:31:04.120 --> 00:31:07.400] And everyone in his life is just focused on like school, right?
[00:31:07.400 --> 00:31:10.200] But he needs to do well in school and it's all about school.
[00:31:10.200 --> 00:31:15.240] And I'm sitting here thinking like, well, I have a lot of friends who went to great schools and they are not happy.
[00:31:15.240 --> 00:31:15.800] Right.
[00:31:15.800 --> 00:31:24.600] And like if somebody can like, if you can imagine someone's life as like being much more well-rounded where they have a lot of friends, they have a great partnership with somebody.
[00:31:24.600 --> 00:31:26.600] They have very fulfilling relationships.
[00:31:26.600 --> 00:31:27.560] They're healthy.
[00:31:27.560 --> 00:31:29.720] They're mentally healthy and happy.
[00:31:29.720 --> 00:31:33.320] And then they like, let's say they work as like a janitor and make, you know, 50K a year.
[00:31:33.320 --> 00:31:34.680] That's a great life.
[00:31:34.680 --> 00:31:39.800] If your life is great in every way and you like aren't super focused on your career, I think that's awesome.
[00:31:39.800 --> 00:31:49.840] It's weird to me that we as a society get so focused on like judging and assessing the success of someone's life only along this like professional, educational dimension.
[00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:54.480] Did you mention to him you should maybe look into being a lumberjack?
[00:31:55.760 --> 00:31:57.760] Well, now I didn't know that this episode.
[00:31:59.120 --> 00:32:01.360] We have the ace card to send his way.
[00:32:01.360 --> 00:32:02.240] Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:03.920] I think about that as an indie hacker, too.
[00:32:03.920 --> 00:32:07.280] Like the fact that you, you know, you've got kids and they're saying you do this thing.
[00:32:07.280 --> 00:32:11.760] I love working with people that I love to work with, right?
[00:32:11.760 --> 00:32:19.920] There's this kind of like this sort of mantra: oh, you know, you've got your hobbies and your career and your health and your family, and you've got to like pick two or three of them because you can't do all of them.
[00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.280] I'm like, well, why can't you just work with the people that you love?
[00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:24.320] Like, I work with my brother.
[00:32:24.320 --> 00:32:24.960] It's awesome.
[00:32:24.960 --> 00:32:26.880] I started an Airbnb with my girlfriend.
[00:32:26.880 --> 00:32:27.600] It's awesome.
[00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:29.120] I'm just getting kind of all of the things.
[00:32:29.120 --> 00:32:31.680] You know, like one of your kids wants to take over the family business.
[00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:43.680] Like, that would be cool too, because now you're working with people that you love and you're sort of getting everything rather than just, you know, maybe you're not as happy as a lumberjack, but like you're pretty happy insofar as entrepreneurs go, I think, if you can work with the people that you like.
[00:32:43.680 --> 00:32:53.040] So let's get back to your story because we sort of left off in the beginning where you're sort of scrappy and you're trying to figure out, you know, how to get this thing off the ground and you're talking, you're having some wins and some hits.
[00:32:53.600 --> 00:32:54.400] What happened next?
[00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:57.360] Like, how did you actually scale up to the point where you're making revenue?
[00:32:57.360 --> 00:33:07.360] Because as I understand it, you spent like quite a long time without any real sales and with like pretty slow, slow growth, which a lot of founders find themselves in.
[00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:09.840] How did you sort of get yourself out of those doldrums?
[00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:22.080] I mean, the slow part was probably more in that early part, like after I started talking to people on the phone or over webinars and that type of stuff, it was the constraints were mostly on my time.
[00:33:22.080 --> 00:33:24.800] So I'd like split my days, you know, half.
[00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:30.680] I'd set my schedule to be like, okay, in Calendly, you can set up and talk to me for this amount of time or that amount of time.
[00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:33.880] And every other day, there'd be probably like a four-hour block.
[00:33:34.120 --> 00:33:43.560] And then I'd still have to code and do other marketing endeavors, other, you know, advance the product, make due on the promises I made as a lame salesperson, going like, oh, yeah, I could do that.
[00:33:43.560 --> 00:33:45.480] And I'm like, oh, crap, now I got to code that.
[00:33:45.480 --> 00:33:47.880] So it was mostly a constraint on me.
[00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:50.920] So I did try to start hiring salespeople.
[00:33:50.920 --> 00:33:56.280] And eventually I got lucky enough to stumble upon someone.
[00:33:56.280 --> 00:33:58.440] Actually, I got really lucky.
[00:33:58.440 --> 00:34:05.320] So this is probably also often not as normal indie hacker path, but I kind of had a later co-founder join, right?
[00:34:05.320 --> 00:34:11.000] So this was definitely, you know, past 10 to 15K MRR I was doing by myself.
[00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:13.640] So I could afford somebody to help.
[00:34:14.120 --> 00:34:22.120] And I found someone that used to be a founder that never kind of got to product market fit, was coming off his last startup.
[00:34:22.120 --> 00:34:23.400] And he hit me at the right time.
[00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:31.160] He like messaged me on LinkedIn and said, hey, let's see your have a sales like job open and you know I'm interested.
[00:34:31.160 --> 00:34:33.560] And I'm like, okay, well, so we talked about it.
[00:34:33.560 --> 00:34:41.800] And I was in enough pain after my first horrible sales hire went wrong that I was like, here, just, can I just route these schedules to you?
[00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:43.160] Because I don't want to go back in the queue.
[00:34:43.160 --> 00:34:44.280] I'm working on other stuff.
[00:34:44.280 --> 00:34:47.000] I just, if you can handle these, like, you're hired.
[00:34:47.080 --> 00:34:48.120] He's like, he joked.
[00:34:48.120 --> 00:34:52.200] He's like, well, if this works, you know, is some equity on the table?
[00:34:52.200 --> 00:34:53.400] And I'm like, sure.
[00:34:53.400 --> 00:34:58.120] If you can take, if you could take this pain away, you know, and he, he's a great guy.
[00:34:58.440 --> 00:35:02.360] He's still, and so to this day, like, you know, this is five, six years ago.
[00:35:02.360 --> 00:35:05.560] So he's still with me as basically my co-founder.
[00:35:05.560 --> 00:35:06.920] But I didn't go on a hunt.
[00:35:06.920 --> 00:35:08.600] I didn't go put out listings.
[00:35:08.600 --> 00:35:09.080] I didn't go.
[00:35:09.640 --> 00:35:10.440] It found me.
[00:35:10.440 --> 00:35:14.040] And right, like the luck happens also when you have that surface area.
[00:35:14.040 --> 00:35:23.360] But that was a big unlock that led to us scaling a sales team, scaling an onboarding and services team.
[00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:32.720] Because as we still watched the requests come in and what people needed and were really adaptive to that, you know, people needed help setting up their program.
[00:35:32.720 --> 00:35:35.600] So it became an onboarding customer success thing.
[00:35:35.600 --> 00:35:38.400] We basically were doing inbound sales.
[00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:43.520] So how do we convert that to go from one salesperson to two or three and that type of stuff?
[00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:55.440] So it really got me early on the ramp of like more of a relying on people as a big part of it rather than just pure, you know, self-service and product-led types of motions.
[00:35:55.440 --> 00:35:56.720] Man, I love that.
[00:35:56.720 --> 00:36:05.040] I love like the irony of you were looking for a salesperson and then the guy that you got ultimately sold himself, right?
[00:36:05.040 --> 00:36:09.040] Like, I mean, it sounds like, you know, you didn't, you weren't looking for a co-founder.
[00:36:09.040 --> 00:36:11.680] That was, that was really just him upselling.
[00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:17.280] And so his success at getting the job was also like him proving that he was like worthy of the job.
[00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:17.520] Right.
[00:36:17.520 --> 00:36:19.200] And I didn't know enough about him at that time.
[00:36:19.200 --> 00:36:23.280] So it was still like, you know, hey, let's wait three, four months before we like ratify all this stuff.
[00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:24.880] But it was like, he proved himself.
[00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:28.400] So he put his money where his mouth was, you know, and it worked.
[00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:45.280] And I don't know where it would be without him, honestly, at that time, because like a lot of the scaling pain, he brunted just as much load as I did throughout kind of since then in terms of more of the people management, more of building up these other teams where I got to focus on product and marketing.
[00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:50.400] I kind of viewed it as like, I get to do the bookends and you get to do that kind of messy middle in between.
[00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:56.880] I think one of the challenges of starting a SaaS business is that it typically takes a long time to get it off the ground.
[00:36:56.880 --> 00:37:09.720] There's like a kind of a big movement for indie hackers to start with an info product, like, you know, write an e-book or start building an audience or just like, you know, start a newsletter, something where you can just start making sales on day one because all you're doing is writing content.
[00:37:09.720 --> 00:37:16.200] And if you do SaaS, you know, it's going to be this long slog of a year and a half, two years before you make any money whatsoever and you can quit your job, et cetera.
[00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:21.640] When you look back on the early days of Referral Rock, are there things you would have done differently to sort of ramp up more quickly?
[00:37:21.640 --> 00:37:27.240] For example, like would you have had a co-founder from day one or any other decisions you could have made to just get it going faster?
[00:37:27.560 --> 00:37:32.360] Honestly, I probably would have gotten a product person faster.
[00:37:32.360 --> 00:37:39.320] Like, and that was one of the later, like if you think about having some other people with like strong leadership, right?
[00:37:39.320 --> 00:37:51.640] Like, I got a product person only probably about two years ago, but I was still fledging between all the different hats, all the different jobs, and probably just neglecting that side way too much.
[00:37:51.640 --> 00:37:51.960] Right.
[00:37:51.960 --> 00:37:58.600] Like, it was sort of we had this machine going of the salespeople selling and the service people onboarding and all of that stuff.
[00:37:58.600 --> 00:38:03.240] But the product did start to suffer when my time started to get split.
[00:38:03.240 --> 00:38:10.360] And I think I have a good design sense, but not a great design sense, or at least even to stick with it long enough.
[00:38:10.360 --> 00:38:13.400] So once the product started to get longer into the tooth, right?
[00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:16.920] So it's V1 UIs and stuff like that.
[00:38:16.920 --> 00:38:30.520] When the bootstrap themes I picked from back five, seven years ago started to look really dated, then it's like, oh, that's going to take some level of rigor to kind of redo those interfaces and do those types of things.
[00:38:30.520 --> 00:38:38.680] So I would have focused more on the UI a lot earlier because honestly, as much as I want to complain, like, hey, it's engineered really well.
[00:38:38.680 --> 00:38:40.520] The scheme is great.
[00:38:40.520 --> 00:38:41.720] The models are great.
[00:38:41.720 --> 00:38:50.080] But then you go and look and it's like, yeah, but it's like it could use a paint job where this looks like that, yeah, that avocado green colored refrigerator or whatever.
[00:38:51.360 --> 00:38:59.520] So I feel like we've got this gap in your story where, on one hand, you had this early struggling place where you're wearing all the other hats.
[00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:07.120] And then eventually later, you're like hiring all these people and you know, perhaps hiring in not the ideal order, but like you've got enough money to basically bring on a team.
[00:39:07.120 --> 00:39:08.800] This is a bootstrap business.
[00:39:09.120 --> 00:39:13.360] I think most indie hackers have trouble with like getting from point A to point B.
[00:39:13.360 --> 00:39:16.320] You know, how do you scale up a business from just yourself?
[00:39:16.560 --> 00:39:24.480] You know, you're having these early customer interviews to the point where you can afford to like pay yourself money and be comfortable, let alone hire anybody else.
[00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:28.160] And so I'm curious for you, like, what were some of the milestones that you hit in that period?
[00:39:28.160 --> 00:39:35.120] What were some of the biggest obstacles you hit going from just you to the point where you can make your first hire?
[00:39:35.440 --> 00:39:43.840] For whatever reason, that that early SEO seeded enough and enough incoming interest, right?
[00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:51.040] So, and I think the fact that I moved that price point up early in the life cycle, like this was probably six months after charging.
[00:39:51.040 --> 00:39:56.560] It went from a $59 a month price point to, I think, like the two cheapest plans.
[00:39:56.560 --> 00:39:57.840] It used to be like $59.
[00:39:57.840 --> 00:40:01.840] And then within six months, the cheapest plan was $150.
[00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:03.360] And that I learned through the talking to people.
[00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:05.920] So I didn't necessarily need a massive amount of volume, right?
[00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:10.160] It was still a steady, I think I mentioned maybe like $510 a week.
[00:40:10.160 --> 00:40:13.680] And then it was like $5.10 a day from SEO.
[00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:21.440] And I also the early positioning of we were the only ones doing this type of thing for not e-commerce businesses.
[00:40:21.440 --> 00:40:34.680] So if you look at the market out there of like car dealerships, yoga instructors, all these other things, like there were a lot of people that could use a referral program that solutions didn't exist.
[00:40:34.840 --> 00:40:41.720] Everyone was building e-commerce, like checkout, coupon-based programs and that type of stuff.
[00:40:41.720 --> 00:40:49.720] So I think I got lucky in hitting like a reasonable amount of like unaddressed market space that it wasn't a brand new category.
[00:40:49.720 --> 00:40:51.720] It was something everyone was familiar with.
[00:40:51.720 --> 00:40:55.560] But then like, oh, but no one does it for us and really no one's talking about it.
[00:40:55.560 --> 00:41:03.160] So I got lucky in the area and then there was enough there and then moved the price point up quick enough that I stumbled into something.
[00:41:03.160 --> 00:41:06.280] So I'm going to try to summarize your early story just to make sure you got it.
[00:41:06.280 --> 00:41:12.440] So essentially, you did a lot of blogging and writing early on that sort of people were able to find on Google.
[00:41:12.440 --> 00:41:16.040] And so you had this SEO channel where people were sort of automatically just finding you.
[00:41:16.040 --> 00:41:24.760] And because you're in this niche that was kind of underserved at the time, you hit this window where like people weren't really targeting these businesses with referral programs, you kind of stood out.
[00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:25.880] SEO worked.
[00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:32.600] And then people would come in, you would like literally talk to them, get them on the phone, show them the product, and sort of do sales early on.
[00:41:32.600 --> 00:41:34.760] And eventually the engine was working.
[00:41:34.760 --> 00:41:39.000] You're building the right features that people were asking for, and they were buying directly from you.
[00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:41.720] And then you sort of jacked up the prices, which is a great move.
[00:41:41.720 --> 00:41:42.680] Like, what's easier?
[00:41:42.680 --> 00:41:45.560] You know, finding three times as many customers or charging three times as much.
[00:41:45.560 --> 00:41:48.200] It's almost always charging two or three times as much.
[00:41:48.200 --> 00:41:59.720] And that was basically sort of the full story of how you got to the point of, you know, making 10K a month by yourself and as a solo founder, just sort of being able to fund your business in a self-sustaining way.
[00:41:59.720 --> 00:42:05.880] And you mentioned that, I don't remember what the exact number was, but you said something like 10,000 a month or so.
[00:42:05.880 --> 00:42:15.120] And that's the point where you seem like you hit a wall where you're like, look, okay, now I'm limited in my extra growth because it's just me doing this talking.
[00:42:15.120 --> 00:42:16.800] I only have so many hours in the day.
[00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:19.440] And that's where you were like, you know, trying to make these sales hires.
[00:42:19.600 --> 00:42:26.320] And eventually, the one that sold himself into eventually a co-founder role, you found him, right?
[00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:30.720] Yeah, I had a working thing and I was limited by my own time.
[00:42:31.040 --> 00:42:41.600] One of the things that Cortland and I, to make this a little bit personal, one of the things that I think that we've struggled the most with is I think we're both very good at wearing all the hats.
[00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:43.280] Courtland's a great developer.
[00:42:43.520 --> 00:42:44.560] I'm pretty good.
[00:42:44.560 --> 00:42:46.240] We're both pretty good writers, right?
[00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:49.440] We're both good at like doing a little bit of marketing here and there.
[00:42:49.440 --> 00:42:55.280] And hiring has been the thing that like we struggled with from the very beginning the most.
[00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:01.440] We've gotten a little bit better at it now, but I'm kind of curious, in a way, you got lucky with that first hire.
[00:43:01.440 --> 00:43:09.280] And since you've grown a bit of a bigger team, has that all been, you know, your co-founder came on and you're like, ah, you get to take a side relief.
[00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:12.320] And like he handles all the staffing and the hiring?
[00:43:12.320 --> 00:43:15.600] Or is that something that you've also kind of honed your skills?
[00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:18.400] I'd say we learned it together.
[00:43:18.400 --> 00:43:23.840] So we both, like at that time, as we were growing through those phases, like I was still building up the marketing team.
[00:43:23.840 --> 00:43:25.200] We had content writers.
[00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:29.440] I had developers that reported to me and I hired and whatnot.
[00:43:29.440 --> 00:43:37.120] So he was doing it on that sales side, but we were both doing the sort of do-it-yourself, nail and scale it type of thing.
[00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:39.920] So he was just doing on one half and I was doing it on the other.
[00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:43.440] And we were coalescing on how to do this, right?
[00:43:43.440 --> 00:43:48.400] So I think we both have a good amount of like judge of talent.
[00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:54.480] And at that point in time, not a lot of people were doing the remote job thing.
[00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.120] And this was, you know, pre-pandemic.
[00:43:57.120 --> 00:44:06.520] So I could go out there and find some people that were like indie hacker types that would be like, Yes, I would love to, I would love to travel while I work.
[00:44:06.840 --> 00:44:08.920] I just have the autonomy and freedom.
[00:44:08.920 --> 00:44:14.680] And so I'd actually find people that were a couple years into their career at least and wanted the freedom.
[00:44:14.680 --> 00:44:19.080] So they valued the freedom over like the biggest paycheck.
[00:44:19.080 --> 00:44:24.680] So I was able to find people and find people that automatically work would work remote.
[00:44:24.680 --> 00:44:29.800] And it was very easy to kind of figure out we were always backfilling for the jobs we already did.
[00:44:29.800 --> 00:44:32.600] So we'd know how to be like, okay, you need to do this.
[00:44:32.600 --> 00:44:33.800] This is the playbook.
[00:44:33.800 --> 00:44:35.080] And they were more experienced people.
[00:44:35.080 --> 00:44:38.040] So it wasn't training someone just strictly out of school.
[00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:48.680] Most of the time, the most success we had were people that had done it before, but wanted to flip into remote work and were responsible enough and that type of thing.
[00:44:48.680 --> 00:44:55.160] So I think that was a big key was that level of experience and wanting to have that autonomy.
[00:44:55.160 --> 00:45:04.520] I'm curious if there was a playbook that you were following of any type because there was such a thing as like the referral industry where you could look at other companies and figure out like, here's how it works.
[00:45:04.520 --> 00:45:06.200] Here's who's killing it in the space.
[00:45:06.200 --> 00:45:07.080] Here's who's not.
[00:45:07.080 --> 00:45:09.080] Like here's what we need to do.
[00:45:09.080 --> 00:45:12.200] I think it helped that when I was working for other people.
[00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:21.560] So I did work for a decent amount of years, like five or six years for a company and then was a manager and did hire people and do interviews and things like that.
[00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:25.400] So that was, you know, five, eight years previous to that.
[00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:31.400] So I think that that did help kind of know elements of those types of playbooks.
[00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:36.680] I think one of the interesting things is like at some point you got to like 70K a month in revenue.
[00:45:36.680 --> 00:45:38.280] It's over $800,000 a year.
[00:45:38.280 --> 00:45:40.920] It's an amazing sort of accomplishment.
[00:45:40.920 --> 00:45:46.320] Now you're well over twice that, which is a place that not very many indie hackers get to.
[00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:53.920] What do you think are some of the key takeaways for how you, I guess, changed running your business from point A to point B?
[00:45:54.240 --> 00:45:58.240] How do you grow from a pretty big business to a pretty huge business?
[00:45:58.240 --> 00:46:00.240] Is it different than the early stages?
[00:46:00.240 --> 00:46:07.680] It's definitely trying to continue to work with the people that are doing more of the dirty work.
[00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:18.960] So it was putting more process in place for people than it was just me because before you could cowboy a lot of stuff and run around and do what you were interested in and that type of thing.
[00:46:18.960 --> 00:46:21.920] And it required a lot more process.
[00:46:21.920 --> 00:46:29.520] It required a lot more documentation, like big uses of wikis and confluence and how someone should work a certain board.
[00:46:29.520 --> 00:46:32.080] It was no longer just you just working your own to-do list.
[00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:38.720] So I think those pieces added up and it was something I always enjoyed.
[00:46:38.880 --> 00:46:43.040] My last role was technically like director of technical operations.
[00:46:43.040 --> 00:46:46.640] So I would go up and set up systems for people like across the company.
[00:46:46.640 --> 00:46:55.360] So whether it was like using a ticketing system to use as a, you know, like a workflow system for a company and different types of things like that.
[00:46:55.360 --> 00:46:56.160] I'm really curious.
[00:46:56.160 --> 00:46:58.560] I want to hear like the breakdown of your tools and the stuff you use.
[00:46:58.560 --> 00:47:01.680] Because right now with indie hackers, like we're just on Notion.
[00:47:01.680 --> 00:47:04.240] We just write everything in Notion.
[00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:05.520] It's very informal.
[00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:12.160] We have literally a list of like documents that are reverse chronologically ordered by the last time they were updated or typed in.
[00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:17.840] And so generally, if there's something I want to know that Channing did or I did or someone that we work with did, did I just look to see the most recent document.
[00:47:17.840 --> 00:47:20.960] And like, I don't think that probably scales beyond like five or ten people.
[00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:22.240] So, what are you like, what are you using?
[00:47:22.240 --> 00:47:23.360] You mentioned Confluence.
[00:47:23.360 --> 00:47:25.120] What else keeps a team together?
[00:47:25.480 --> 00:47:29.720] Uh, Asana is probably our main like working workflow area.
[00:47:29.440 --> 00:47:32.120] Um, and we've kept the whole company on that.
[00:47:32.280 --> 00:47:35.560] And mostly, I think it was important when we were small, right?
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:38.600] Uh, because I could see exactly what's going on.
[00:47:38.600 --> 00:47:47.160] And doing the many hat thing and many team thing, not having to switch into 10 different systems is like a massive time save.
[00:47:47.160 --> 00:47:52.600] And getting people to align to use the tools in the same way so the patterns are the same, right?
[00:47:52.600 --> 00:47:58.440] Like, people use what looks more like the Kanban style board and move things from left to right.
[00:47:58.440 --> 00:48:04.040] You don't have someone else moving things from right to left or using a different style type of board.
[00:48:04.040 --> 00:48:05.240] So, that was a huge thing.
[00:48:05.240 --> 00:48:05.960] And we still do it.
[00:48:05.960 --> 00:48:07.160] Like, our dev team uses it.
[00:48:07.160 --> 00:48:15.720] We don't, the dev team doesn't use like a JIRA or other things, um, all kinds of other, you know, potential tools they could use, but everyone uses Asana.
[00:48:15.720 --> 00:48:24.040] So, having the whole company at this point, which is like 18 people, all using like a similar style workflow.
[00:48:24.040 --> 00:48:26.440] So, everyone gets notifications the same way.
[00:48:26.440 --> 00:48:28.600] So, that's like the main workflow.
[00:48:29.000 --> 00:48:34.840] And then we also use Slack and Confluence is anything that kind of has a longer duration.
[00:48:34.840 --> 00:48:40.920] So, it's like company policies or like larger written-up product specs and designs and things like that.
[00:48:40.920 --> 00:48:43.320] But those, those are really the main tools.
[00:48:43.320 --> 00:48:45.160] Like, we don't have much internal email.
[00:48:45.160 --> 00:48:48.680] It's all if it's related to a project, it should be in Asana.
[00:48:48.680 --> 00:48:51.480] And it also keeps our Slack relatively clean as well.
[00:48:51.480 --> 00:48:52.680] So, nice.
[00:48:52.680 --> 00:48:53.640] Funny story.
[00:48:53.640 --> 00:49:01.880] I started a startup back in 2012 called like Siasto, and it was like a very generic productivity tool.
[00:49:01.880 --> 00:49:05.480] Like, uh, use this for your company to attract tasks and documents.
[00:49:05.480 --> 00:49:06.680] And it was going okay.
[00:49:06.680 --> 00:49:09.200] I think we were making, like, four or five grand a month in revenue.
[00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:11.400] It was just me and one other guy, my co-founder.
[00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:14.960] And we got an acquisition offer, and it was from Asana.
[00:49:14.680 --> 00:49:18.640] And this had to be, like, God, I don't know, like 2012 or something.
[00:49:18.960 --> 00:49:24.400] And so we went and we met with Justin Rosenstein, the founder, and I was all excited because it's like, we hadn't really done shit.
[00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:26.320] You know, we'd been working on this for like eight months.
[00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:27.680] It was very early.
[00:49:27.680 --> 00:49:31.920] And he was flattering us and talking about how they were so impressed with what we built and what we would do.
[00:49:31.920 --> 00:49:34.160] And, you know, they wanted to acquire us.
[00:49:34.160 --> 00:49:35.360] And then they interviewed us.
[00:49:35.360 --> 00:49:37.440] And we just whiffed the interviews.
[00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:41.920] They set us up with like some engineers and like, I don't know, the head of marketing or something and interviewed both of us.
[00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:42.800] And then they're like, you know what?
[00:49:42.800 --> 00:49:44.320] We're actually not interested.
[00:49:44.320 --> 00:49:44.720] Good luck.
[00:49:44.880 --> 00:49:45.840] Good luck, guys.
[00:49:45.840 --> 00:49:47.840] And so we didn't get any Asana stock.
[00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:51.120] And they went on to IPO and eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars.
[00:49:51.120 --> 00:49:52.480] And we made zero.
[00:49:52.480 --> 00:49:54.640] But it's good to hear that you're using Asana.
[00:49:54.640 --> 00:49:56.160] I was actually really curious about that.
[00:49:56.320 --> 00:50:00.720] I have to say, like, what was the aspiration when they reached out to you?
[00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:03.600] Were you like, oh my God, like, you know, we're getting rescued.
[00:50:03.600 --> 00:50:06.560] Like, we were a sinking ship, like, and they want to bring us on board.
[00:50:06.560 --> 00:50:10.240] Like, did you feel like, oh, you know, like, this was a competitor?
[00:50:10.240 --> 00:50:11.120] So were you like...
[00:50:11.120 --> 00:50:11.760] Yeah.
[00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:13.440] But they were like a legit competitor.
[00:50:13.680 --> 00:50:14.640] We'd raise like no money.
[00:50:14.640 --> 00:50:16.480] They raised like tens of millions.
[00:50:16.480 --> 00:50:17.280] And they had all these.
[00:50:17.600 --> 00:50:23.440] At the time, they had all these crazy ideas about reinventing the way applications are built and the way that people work.
[00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:29.680] And everybody on earth is going to use Asana from the largest companies down toward, you know, the smallest.
[00:50:29.680 --> 00:50:32.560] Like your cleaning lady is going to come and check off tasks.
[00:50:32.560 --> 00:50:34.320] And it was like very, very like, you know.
[00:50:34.320 --> 00:50:40.480] And so I was just flattered that like I was getting to meet this guy and he had anything to do with us or even knew who we were.
[00:50:40.480 --> 00:50:47.840] And, you know, and I was hoping that we would make a boatload of money in the process and also be like sort of validated that we had started a startup that had succeeded.
[00:50:47.840 --> 00:50:57.040] And so it was like very inspiring and flattering that like we went through that process and then very crushing to have it result in literally nothing, just a waste of time.
[00:50:57.680 --> 00:51:07.160] I remember you were flattered enough to the point where you would pick up some of their business practices and you kind of like would reflect on maybe incorporating them.
[00:51:07.320 --> 00:51:21.320] So I remember this like very specific detail because you talked about them enough that Asana used to have this thing where everyone would come in to the office and like one of the first things they would do is they'd have like a 10 minute company meditation session.
[00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:22.440] I remember none of this.
[00:51:22.440 --> 00:51:24.040] I just blotted it all out from my mind.
[00:51:24.680 --> 00:51:25.240] They're dead to me.
[00:51:25.320 --> 00:51:25.640] I remember.
[00:51:25.720 --> 00:51:26.840] I remember zero facts.
[00:51:27.080 --> 00:51:28.520] Josh, would you ever sell your company?
[00:51:28.520 --> 00:51:30.120] Have you ever thought about like the end game?
[00:51:30.120 --> 00:51:32.200] Is this like a lifelong project?
[00:51:32.200 --> 00:51:33.320] I've thought about it.
[00:51:34.040 --> 00:51:34.600] I don't know.
[00:51:34.760 --> 00:51:37.560] I view it as like there's two tracks in my brain.
[00:51:37.560 --> 00:51:43.800] So there's like kind of what we're doing now, which is, you know, customer referrals and whatnot.
[00:51:43.800 --> 00:51:46.680] But I do think it could be a bigger thing.
[00:51:46.680 --> 00:52:01.400] So I don't know at what point that jumps the tracks from just a very purely, you know, purpose-built, like it's technically like a horizontal SaaS because it applies to like all kinds of different businesses, but where it's just really it's one solution type of thing.
[00:52:01.400 --> 00:52:06.360] Like I have bigger aspirations that it could be this advocacy hub of all kinds of things.
[00:52:06.360 --> 00:52:07.240] Could it do reviews?
[00:52:07.240 --> 00:52:08.120] Could it do all these things?
[00:52:08.120 --> 00:52:18.360] Because if we're tapping into that, you know, aligning with the CRM or whatever, like what else could we do that is helping a business like really do more things with their advocates?
[00:52:18.360 --> 00:52:20.440] So I don't know if it'll ever make that, right?
[00:52:20.440 --> 00:52:22.680] Like it sort of becomes a bigger platform play.
[00:52:22.680 --> 00:52:26.600] It's probably bigger, like maybe I should raise money if I wanted to go for that type of thing.
[00:52:26.600 --> 00:52:29.480] But right now, it's humming along.
[00:52:30.280 --> 00:52:34.680] It's, you know, you mentioned the big revenue number, and but I also have a lot of staff, right?
[00:52:34.680 --> 00:52:41.800] So it's like the value is that we keep growing it and we are building something that is hopefully going to be longer standing.
[00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:44.040] Um, but I could see selling it.
[00:52:44.040 --> 00:52:51.040] I could see now like the interesting part versus when we when I first got started is you know, you could sell parts of it, right?
[00:52:51.040 --> 00:52:52.560] You could sell 10%.
[00:52:52.560 --> 00:53:08.160] I PE people reaching out and saying, Hey, we just want to take a small stake, or you hear the Wistia stories, you hear the there's all kinds of these other options to do partial PE buyouts, or it's not necessarily just like Google buys you or something like that.
[00:53:08.160 --> 00:53:09.920] So I think there's a lot of options.
[00:53:09.920 --> 00:53:17.280] Um, it also does make some decent profits, but not in a way that you know, I'm not buying, you know, brand new houses or anything.
[00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:19.120] You don't have a private jet yet.
[00:53:19.120 --> 00:53:24.400] No, no, I just keep reinvesting it in, honestly, and like looking at all the layoffs and all these other things.
[00:53:24.400 --> 00:53:26.400] Like, I've never, we've never done a layoff.
[00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:27.440] I want to keep it that way.
[00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:34.000] I kind of just slow and steady, but I also keep a decent amount of like money in the business.
[00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:37.600] Um, so I don't think of it as my own money and taking out and having to put it in.
[00:53:37.600 --> 00:53:42.480] I never want to have to take money out of the business and then reinsert it out of my personal money.
[00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:48.320] So, there's a decent, like, I would say, nest egg in there to help kind of fuel bad times and fuel growth.
[00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:53.120] So, it doesn't have to make me feel like I'm spending $20,000 on ads.
[00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:55.520] Like, it's all house money to me in there.
[00:53:55.520 --> 00:53:59.840] Like, the referral rock nest egg is referral rock's nest egg.
[00:53:59.840 --> 00:54:04.000] And at that point, if I decide to exit, that's a different thing, but I'm still having fun.
[00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:05.840] So, that's kind of my other marker, right?
[00:54:05.840 --> 00:54:10.240] It's like, I was going to ask you, how do you feel personally as a founder having gotten to this point?
[00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:10.960] You know, are you happy?
[00:54:10.960 --> 00:54:11.440] Are you sad?
[00:54:11.440 --> 00:54:12.400] Do you feel fulfilled?
[00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:14.320] Do you feel like you're in the thick of the challenge?
[00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:17.200] Because, like, you're right where a lot of people want to be, you know?
[00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:20.800] And so, it's like, how do you feel emotionally on a day-to-day basis?
[00:54:20.800 --> 00:54:25.440] If you asked me three months ago, it would have been a different answer.
[00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:30.440] So, I mean, I'll say last year was a little rough, 2022.
[00:54:30.680 --> 00:54:36.600] There was realized a couple of little things, which is like there's just natural turnover, right?
[00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:37.320] People want to leave.
[00:54:37.480 --> 00:54:41.640] So we had senior people that were here for two plus years.
[00:54:41.640 --> 00:54:43.960] And naturally, they want to change jobs, right?
[00:54:43.960 --> 00:54:46.680] It wasn't for a lack of opportunity because we're like, hey, do you want to learn this?
[00:54:46.680 --> 00:54:47.880] Do you want to learn to do product stuff?
[00:54:47.880 --> 00:54:49.320] Do you want to do these things?
[00:54:49.320 --> 00:54:50.280] And some people don't.
[00:54:50.280 --> 00:54:51.160] And that's okay, right?
[00:54:51.160 --> 00:54:54.920] They just, they're like, well, I'm a great integrations person.
[00:54:54.920 --> 00:55:04.040] I could go on and sell this, my same skill set to someone else that has another business that has a higher ACB and basically get paid more, right?
[00:55:04.040 --> 00:55:10.520] There's a limit to what we could pay that that skill is valued based off of what we make off of customers.
[00:55:10.520 --> 00:55:16.760] So we had like two senior people on the services team leave like within two months.
[00:55:16.760 --> 00:55:19.320] And it just, all the knowledge drained, right?
[00:55:19.320 --> 00:55:21.560] Like you have all of a sudden you're training new people.
[00:55:21.560 --> 00:55:27.960] So there was definitely some rough patches this year on retraining and that was tiring because I got on some calls, right?
[00:55:27.960 --> 00:55:29.880] Like, you know, you have pulled people.
[00:55:29.880 --> 00:55:32.360] I had that great product manager I mentioned before.
[00:55:32.360 --> 00:55:35.160] He got pulled in and he was doing integration calls, right?
[00:55:35.160 --> 00:55:44.200] Like you don't want to pay your product manager to go do integration calls, but at a small team size, you need, you know, everyone's pulling and you need to go dig out of that.
[00:55:44.200 --> 00:55:54.280] So I'd say for probably about five to six months last year, you know, there was a lot of slogging and retracking back to the getting your hands dirty type of stuff.
[00:55:54.280 --> 00:55:55.080] And what about now?
[00:55:55.080 --> 00:55:56.840] Like last year, tough.
[00:55:57.080 --> 00:55:57.800] I mean, it's...
[00:55:57.800 --> 00:55:58.680] I'm doing a lot better.
[00:55:58.680 --> 00:56:02.360] So yeah, it was after that, it was definitely tiring.
[00:56:02.360 --> 00:56:03.960] And we reloaded, right?
[00:56:03.960 --> 00:56:04.840] It took time.
[00:56:05.240 --> 00:56:08.920] We went back on the hiring hunt, trained new people.
[00:56:08.920 --> 00:56:16.880] The people eventually, you know, they take two, three months to kind of get fully up to speed, taking that, taking on customers and things like that.
[00:56:16.880 --> 00:56:18.320] But no, it's in a better place.
[00:56:14.760 --> 00:56:21.920] It's in honestly a better place than it was than like a year ago.
[00:56:22.480 --> 00:56:24.640] But it took that amount of time.
[00:56:24.640 --> 00:56:37.840] And then, as I got to get away from that, I got to go back into more strategic stuff, product planning stuff, the deep work, fun stuff that we all, you know, want to do and move the bigger ball forward than necessarily being in the dirty work.
[00:56:37.840 --> 00:56:44.320] So my headspace is definitely a lot better at it, but it took some time to get there.
[00:56:44.560 --> 00:56:49.440] You're on the happy side of a quote that I just came across a couple of days ago.
[00:56:49.440 --> 00:56:58.160] And the quote is that there's this building and there's a door on the sign, and the door says, Everything you need to be a hero.
[00:56:58.160 --> 00:57:05.520] And a lot of people open this door, but then they back away when they don't see any equipment inside, only a bunch of horrible situations.
[00:57:05.520 --> 00:57:08.240] And so you've just come through the horrible situations.
[00:57:08.240 --> 00:57:11.520] You've been doing this for well over 10 years, it seems.
[00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:14.000] And like, you've seen all parts of it.
[00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:17.280] A lot of people that listen to this are just getting started.
[00:57:17.280 --> 00:57:24.240] What advice do you have for people who haven't gone through all of those horrible experiences and learned all those lessons?
[00:57:24.240 --> 00:57:34.720] Honestly, the biggest thing I would say to that I think helped me break out quicker was I started out kind of dog fooding, but got away from it pretty quick.
[00:57:34.720 --> 00:57:41.360] I know it's a common, like great place to start advice, like using your own product, being your own customer, all that stuff.
[00:57:41.360 --> 00:57:48.560] But once that flip switched of like the value is subjective, it's not about how I value it.
[00:57:48.560 --> 00:57:54.720] And seeing, like, I talked about that water filtration company that a referral to them was like worth 10 grand, it just blew my mind.
[00:57:54.720 --> 00:57:58.800] But it was like, oh, but they're not the only ones, right?
[00:57:58.800 --> 00:58:04.200] So, like, that getting out of dog food mode and realizing I'm not building the product for me anymore.
[00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:04.840] I'm not building.
[00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:07.960] And it's like the customers I'm talking to are not me.
[00:58:07.960 --> 00:58:12.920] Like, there are all these other things that are like, it's hard to get rid of those because that's what got you there.
[00:58:12.920 --> 00:58:16.120] That grit of like, hey, I have this dream.
[00:58:16.120 --> 00:58:22.360] I have this dogmatism, this point of view that I'm going to build XYZ in a way that I want to build it.
[00:58:22.360 --> 00:58:28.360] So that I think is the biggest thing that I've seen where people kind of get often stuck too long.
[00:58:28.360 --> 00:58:35.160] Like they hear that trope advice of like dog fooding, which is great at the beginning, or they stick with their convictions too long.
[00:58:35.160 --> 00:58:38.280] Like, I want to be the indie hacker that doesn't do marketing.
[00:58:38.280 --> 00:58:40.440] And they that joke when they're like, I don't do any marketing.
[00:58:40.440 --> 00:58:43.960] And like, you're talking on indie hackers like two people.
[00:58:43.960 --> 00:58:45.000] That kind of is marketing.
[00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:46.280] Or you're posting in forums.
[00:58:46.280 --> 00:58:47.080] That's marketing.
[00:58:47.080 --> 00:58:50.680] Like they're, but they're like, but I will, oh, you mean you don't want to do paid ads.
[00:58:50.680 --> 00:58:52.360] Okay, but really, what is that?
[00:58:52.360 --> 00:58:56.360] You're going to let your dogmatism about that stop you from that type of thing.
[00:58:56.360 --> 00:58:59.880] So get outside your head, you know, hopefully talk to more people.
[00:59:00.200 --> 00:59:04.120] But those were the biggest like unlocks for me that I kind of stumbled upon.
[00:59:04.120 --> 00:59:04.680] I love that.
[00:59:04.680 --> 00:59:05.000] Yeah.
[00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:07.160] I mean, I think you just summed it up really well.
[00:59:07.160 --> 00:59:09.400] Like, get outside of your own head, right?
[00:59:09.400 --> 00:59:11.560] And you're in your situation to kind of sum it up.
[00:59:11.560 --> 00:59:13.960] It's like, number one, dog fooding is great.
[00:59:13.960 --> 00:59:15.240] You get, you get going.
[00:59:15.240 --> 00:59:26.120] But when you really want to get from zero to one or one to two, like actually talk to other people in your situation, that was like calls and actually getting in front of your customers and seeing what else was out there.
[00:59:26.120 --> 00:59:28.920] And also just actually marketing.
[00:59:28.920 --> 00:59:31.560] Steve Blank has a phrase for this.
[00:59:31.560 --> 00:59:33.320] It's called get out of the building.
[00:59:33.320 --> 00:59:33.880] Same thing.
[00:59:33.880 --> 00:59:34.120] Right.
[00:59:34.160 --> 00:59:35.000] If you're building for yourself.
[00:59:35.560 --> 00:59:35.800] Yeah.
[00:59:35.800 --> 00:59:36.360] Yeah, exactly.
[00:59:36.360 --> 00:59:37.080] Get out of the building.
[00:59:37.080 --> 00:59:45.280] Talk to other customers, and you will learn a bunch of stuff, including the potential that, like, hey, people will pay like a hundred times more for this than you might have guessed.
[00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:46.240] So I love that advice.
[00:59:46.240 --> 00:59:48.880] It's a good reason to talk to people and actually do marketing.
[00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:50.720] Josh, really appreciated having you.
[00:59:44.840 --> 00:59:52.080] Thanks for sharing your story.
[00:59:52.400 --> 00:59:59.840] Can you let listeners know where they can go to basically learn more about you and Referral Rock and anything else you got going on?
[00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:01.280] I know you've got a couple of podcasts, too.
[01:00:01.520 --> 01:00:04.960] If you want to talk to me, I would say kind of on Twitter still.
[01:00:04.960 --> 01:00:10.080] I used to be more active, but since the Elon days, I've been a little less on there.
[01:00:10.080 --> 01:00:13.600] But I am posting more things on Substack.
[01:00:13.600 --> 01:00:16.160] So you can just look up Joshua Substack.
[01:00:16.160 --> 01:00:17.520] There's some things there.
[01:00:17.840 --> 01:00:19.360] Referralrock.com.
[01:00:19.360 --> 01:00:22.720] You can find us for any referral marketing related stuff.
[01:00:23.280 --> 01:00:30.400] And then, yeah, I have a buddy podcast, like ride-along style, also with a SAS founder called Searching for SAS.
[01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:39.040] And it's just kind of the kind of like you guys talking, you know, weekly and whatnot, but one of those ones that's just kind of fun to just talk about what's going on.
[01:00:39.680 --> 01:00:40.080] All right.
[01:00:40.080 --> 01:00:41.520] Thanks again, Josh, for coming on.
[01:00:41.520 --> 01:00:42.240] Great talking.
[01:00:42.240 --> 01:00:42.560] Awesome.
[01:00:42.560 --> 01:00:43.360] Thanks for reminding me.
[01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:44.480] Thanks, guys.