Arvid Kahl: Hello everyone and welcome to The Bootstrapped
Founder. Today, I'm talking to Paul Millerd, author of The
Pathless Path. We are talking about all things, choosing your
own path today, how to not go for the default option that
everybody else wants you to take. But forging your own
journey through your life using entrepreneurship, maybe. Maybe
other things, you will find out in this conversation with Paul
Millerd. Here's Paul.
I've been reading your book, The Pathless Path. And it has been a
wonderful mind expanding read for me. I think it's a great
metaphor, like the whole book and every concept in it. And
it's likely one that my audience of founders and creators who are
listening and people who are generally are just ready to go
on their own journey, are ready to learn about. So please tell
me, enlighten me and the listeners, what is the pathless
path?
Paul Millerd: So the pathless path is a phrase and my book is
sort of taken on a life of its own. And at this point, it's
sort of released into the world and I let people tell me what it
means to them. I think for some people, it is permission to bet
on themselves. For other people, it's sort of a nice hug from a
friend on an uncertain journey without much support. Other
people, it's like, oh, man, maybe this is you. I wish I had
this 10 years ago. That's also me. Like, I wish I had this. And
I think it's my own sense making of what is life look like not
centered around work. And sort of my accidental stumbling into,
oh, there's a different mode of life you can exist in, in which
you actually like your work that will make everything else seem
silly and nudge you to want to build your whole life around
that. And that's sort of what I discovered throughout my
journey. And it's still pretty, not, I mean, it's still not a
widely held view of the world. And it's just like, wow, I feel
like I have this secret knowledge. Other people are
telling me the same thing. I need to get it out there into
the world. And that's what I did with the book.
Arvid Kahl: It definitely sounds like the community that we are
in, the indie hacker or the creator economy, whatever you
want to call it, is more susceptible to the concept.
Honestly, before I read the book, I thought, I'm living my
life in a way that is not conventional. But after I read
the book and was presented with the word, now I have a phrase
for it. Now I have the vocabulary to actually express
it, right? Because I've been trying to fight narratives that
other people try to instill in me for most of my adult life.
And now that I see this in a cohesive unit as the book, it
feels like yes, this is exactly what I've been doing. I'm glad
there's another one. There's something that you wrote in the
book that I really enjoyed, it's like find the others as one of
the kind of the tenants of going on that path, right? Generally,
you present the idea as the default path that everybody is
supposed to take. And there's the pathless path that people
take because they have chosen not to go with the default
route. And in the default route, everything is kind of
predetermined and people tell you where to go. You know where
you need to go because you have these goals already set for you.
And if you take a path that is less like this, going at it
alone becomes complicated, right? It's not as easy as
follow the career ladder that somebody else is laid out for
you. So how do you find the others? How did you do this?
Like you definitely you made the choice at some point to quit and
get into this nomadic lifestyle that you had at some point in
your life. How did you find the others? Did you look for them?
Or did they just come to you?
Paul Millerd: You said it's complicated to do it without
people. I think it's impossible to do without finding the
others. I think this is probably way more important than making
money. Though people don't believe that in their bones. And
you need to work through your fear and money relationship. But
basically, it took me forever to leave the default path because I
had no people around me taking unconventional or different
paths. I didn't have the imagination because I didn't see
people around me and say, oh, there's somebody like me doing
something different. And I could be like that. Eventually, I just
got so fed up and I left. And I felt really alone. Like I
couldn't communicate what I was going through. It was like,
people are like, aren't you worried about income? That's all
my default path friends would say. And it's like, yes, of
course. But I'm more afraid of having to go back and get a job.
And I sort like I think in my first year I struggled but I
started sharing more. I was actually living out what I was
claiming to care about instead of complaining about my boss or
company and I started attracting people. It was very slow at
first. 2017 was a much harder time to find the others. Now,
it's way easier with communities like indie hackers, Nomad list,
Twitter, especially. But it was hard back then. I met some
people at a conference in New York. One thing led to another
and one of those first people I met actually led to the naming
of my book. So it sort of speaks to the serendipity of how these
things happen. Somebody I met at a conference said, you have to
meet this guy, Steven Mosley and he had been doing a podcast for
years about an unconventional path called Unstackable. This is
like 10 years ago. I met him. Not only did he eventually take
over my lease in Boston as I moved to Asia, he said you have
to go to World Domination Summit. This is where the
unconventional people are. I went there. I made like three or
four great friends. One of them was Johnny Miller. And Jonny
Miller, the second day after I met him, he walks up to me and
he goes here, you have to read this book. It was David Whyte's
The Tree Marriages. And in that book was the phrase, the
pathless path. And David Whyte writes about this pathless path
is like, you're not supposed to know what this phrase means. But
it sort of takes over everything and becomes an explanation. And
that phrase, then when I met my wife later, was the phrase we
kind of gravitated to together to sort of describe our shared
journey. So it's kind of funny how these things happen. But
without finding the others, none of this happens. And none of it
is fun along the way. I would have just been like building a
business. But really, I've wanted to build a life and
that's what my book is really about.
Arvid Kahl: That's so cool. I love this. This is the idea of
you going to a conference and then just serendipity taking you
onto this journey, right? Or you already being on the journey and
the winds of serendipity just pushing you slightly, nudging
you into a different direction. That is awesome to me. Honestly,
conferences, I think, particularly conferences that
you've never been to before, you're not a regular but new
ones, are quite powerful. I think for me, when I went to
MicroConf, the first couple of months after we sold our
business back in 2019, I didn't expect this to be a like a
pivotal point in my life. And it's not even that MicroConf was
a conference. It was way out of where I was. I was a software
engineer building a software business. MicroConf is exactly
for those people. But what I learned there was like standing
on stage and telling people my experience, sharing what I know,
helping other people find their way, that's something I enjoy.
Because I didn't know that about me before. I didn't know that I
wanted to write. I didn't know that I wanted to, you know,
speak and teach. But just getting the opportunity, being
invited onstage to give like an attendee talk wasn't even
scheduled, right? If the idea was, oh, yeah, sure. Talk about
what you just did. And I did and I liked it. And ever since then,
that's what I've been doing. And I met people that just like you
said, that have increased just the whole the potential that I
have in the world by just exposing me to other ideas and
other concepts. It's funny that that is something that I can
resonate with, with my own experience. It's really nice.
It's nice to see that if you just choose to act, like the
impetus of action just pushes you forward to explore these
things much more. I really like that.
Paul Millerd: I think people underestimate this. And people
think, oh, I need to have my income replaced before I leave
my job. I need to have a plan. I need to know what I'm doing. But
literally just taking an action will lead to more actions,
right? And Tobi Lutke has this phrase I heard on a recent
podcast he did where it's like, changes information. The problem
on my previous path is I was tricking myself into believing I
was changing things up. I was only changing jobs in the same
career narrative and trajectory of my life, which was really
freaking boring and dumb and not aligned with what I actually
cared about. And eventually, over time you become cynical and
disconnected from what you care about. So I think what happened
at those series of conferences, it was multiple conferences is
that I got rid of that heavy weight over me. And I would just
show up and say, I quit my job. I'm freelancing, a.ka. I don't
really know what I'm doing. But the magic of that was for the
first time I met people not based on how much money I was
making or what status rung I was in. I was meeting people on
shared vulnerability, right? And this is the magic of meeting
other people on unconventional paths is you can bond over your
shared, not knowing what the hell you're doing this. And that
leads to some really powerful friendships. And what I found is
basically I've bootstrapped a life. And because of that the
people around me, they inspire me to keep going bet on myself,
believe in myself to write books, like models like you.
You've written multiple books. It's like, oh, if Arvid could do
it, I could do it, right? And it's so arbitrary but it's so
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, I think just seeing people do stuff and being
powerful too.
around them, right? That's why I'm so big on building in public
because not only is it a really nice way of marketing whatever
you're doing and showing the world what you have to offer,
that's great. But it has such an inspirational power for
everybody else around you. Like just by acting, even in your own
interest, right? Talking about the things that you're doing to
make money you're already lifting other people have who
just see you for the first time and see that it's possible. I
think you're right about this, like in your book, even at a
very early stage, when you were still, like full time
consulting, like a business consultant, you started seeing a
part time consultants like freelance consultants that just
came in for particular projects and then left again, who
sometimes worked for half a year and then went half a year and
traveled or, you know, worked a couple of days a week and did
other things as a side project. And I think just being exposed
to this, sometimes can just change the way you think about
work. I really, really appreciated that about how you
wrote about your own journey. It was very clear that you just you
leveled up your enlightenment about what it means to make an
impact in the world, right? You had all these goals that
somebody else set for you because you were surrounded by
people who were following the regular default track. And then
you just saw other people who had different goals. And all of
a sudden, it became obvious that oh, you don't have to follow
that singular set of goals. You can have your own goals. It's
really nice. And I think the phrase that I want to talk to
you about because I found it quite the thought of it
invigorating in terms of what we currently are experiencing in
the world of entrepreneurship. You call people who go on the
default path, hoop jumpers, like people who jump through hoops
that, you know, are set out for them to jump through. And I was
wondering because you know as bootstrappers, we are a small
indie community and we don't really have much media
representation. Most media representation around our field
is VC funded businesses. It's like the big I need to be a
massively funded entrepreneur to be an entrepreneur. And that to
me sounds again, like hoop jumping, like you need to get
the credibility that an investor gives you. Are we chasing the
wrong dreams? Or more or less is the media attention, just
another hoop jumpers and that makes us also want to jump these
hoops? What's your perspective on this?
Paul Millerd: Yeah, I think so. I think prestige is basically
what we pay attention to or what we think other people pay
attention to, right? This is common knowledge. Common
knowledge is knowing what other people think. Everyone thinks
this, right? That is the default path. And the truth is people
pay attention to starting a company. That is a legible and
credible path in the world. If you tell people, so I quit my
job almost six years ago. I was becoming a freelancer. But that
story did not pass the boomers sniff test. Like people were
like, what do you mean? What's your plan? You know, but if I
had said I'm starting a company, they probably would have been
like, oh, yeah, that's a thing people should do, right? Just
because it is out there. It's a known thing, maybe less so on
the east coast, where I'm from in the US and more on the west
coast. But yeah, that's the thing people do. And there's a
legible path. You raise money then you raise more money. Then
you hire a team, you scale, you go big, you exit, and then you
have your existential crisis and then eventually reach out to us
and ask what the hell am I doing? But, yeah, it's a legible
path. And I think I didn't write about this in the book, but I
call these hustle traps. And the core issue people are trying to
solve is that I feel like I need to do something. I need to be
special. I am a worker in the world. And where I come at it in
my book is starting from the assumption that we are in fact
not workers. There are some people that are possessed with
other worldly effort and like enthusiasm toward extrinsic
goals. Most people are not those people. I suspect you and me are
not those people. We don't have that, right? We can only do
things we're actually interested and excited by, right? So the
mistake is taking other people's goals for your own. That's what
I call a hustle trap, right? You actually need to start from
within. And the problem with that is to go within in today's
world, which many people have not done early in their life,
it's been undermined by school and jobs, is that it usually
involves a season of wandering and non doing. It involves
getting lost to a degree, trying random things, taking time off.
And that does not fit the story in people's head about what
you're supposed to be doing in life, which is essentially
working all throughout adulthood, right? So you need to
go within and figure out what actually fires you up. If
starting a company is the path for you, fantastic, but don't do
it in a very, like short sighted way. I see a lot of people quit
their jobs thinking they want to start a startup, but then they
have a taste of space and looseness and lightness in their
life. And they're like, ah, not for me.
Arvid Kahl: That makes sense. You describe you just mentioned
non doing. That's something that that really stood out to me.
Because, you know, there are many different ways that we talk
about our life when we don't work. And I think in the book,
you point out, there used to be something we called leisure. And
it was a thing that we actually wanted to do, right? That work
was the not at leisure part. So you can be at leisure. That was
the general idea for most of humanity's life, that you work
as much as you need to be able to not have to work, which has
been completely perverted. And now even the word leisure has a
negative connotation as if you are avoiding work, which is this
glorious thing to do. So what is the difference for you between
non work leisure and I guess laziness? That would be like the
most negative version of that that I could find. Are they the
same? Or do they differ?
Paul Millerd: Yeah, so I would say like, there's doing, right?
Doing stuff, all of us not to do that in today's world. It's like
programmed into us from birth, you must do stuff, you can't
just not work. All these phrases we have, right? People get so
nervous. I had a productive Sunday. I get so much done. It's
like what does that mean, right? But the opposite of doing is not
actually like non doing for most people. It's something also a
older term called acedia, right? Which means spiritual or mental
sloth, right? So I think when people are talking about
laziness, it's really a byproduct of building your life
around too much doing, right? You've lost connection to what
matters with you internally. Whereas, like leisure is a whole
nother axis. Like leisure can be passive, that contemplative
mode. Maybe you don't do anything actively for weeks or
leisure can be the active mode. I find writing to be incredibly
leisurely. It's delightful. I love it. And when I don't feel
like doing it, I just don't do it. And I feel connected. I feel
energized while I'm doing it and it doesn't feel hard. It's not
hard effort wise. It's hard in like a skill wise. It's like,
oh, it's gonna take me a lifetime to get good at this.
But it is not hard in terms of like aligning with my natural
flow of life.
Arvid Kahl: Do you consider this to be, I mean, the whole
conversation feels like it's a privileged thing. That's kind of
where I'm going with this, like having the choice even not to
force yourself to work to make ends meet. That alone is a
privilege that not everybody has. You describe this in the
early chapters of your book, like when you describe where
you're coming from, right? That you had these wonderful parents
that did everything. So you could live a life of you know,
of optionality, of choice, of not being like forced into
anything. But you say your dad worked like 10-12 hours a day
for 47 years in the same company just to empower you to do what
you're doing. Did he have a choice? Or are there people like
him out there that should have the choice but don't?
Paul Millerd: In his head, he didn't have a choice.
Arvid Kahl: Okay
Paul Millerd: I think growing up both my parents believed the
story that because they didn't have degrees, they didn't have
choices. I don't fully believe that. But given their worldview,
I think that was the case, right? And increasingly more
people have options and possibilities. I think at this
point in our world, more people than ever have the possibility
of exploring different paths. I think the weird thing about this
is that people say because my parents suffered, I should
suffer. And that doesn't perfectly make sense. Like we're
not trying to pass on suffering, right? And the challenge, too,
is like, my father was working in manufacturing, building
stuff, working on the factory floor and he actually liked it.
The problem is, too many people in today's world are actually
suffering doing absolutely meaningless work, producing
reports that don't need to be re produced for bosses that are
totally unsure why they're doing what they're doing, but they're
just going along with it, right? And a lot of people I call this
like self gaslighting is like, don't you think it's wrong to
like actually pursue your own path? And it's like, that's kind
of weird. Like, if you have the possibility to potentially show
up in the world in a larger and more loving way, like, why not
do it?
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, I've been thinking about this earlier
today. And just there was something in my mind was like,
is it selfish to be on the default path? Or is it selfish
to be on the pathless path? Because in some ways, you could
argue that people who go to default route, the highly
competitive, everything's for me and nothing for them. They're
the selfish ones. But you know, you have this good egg, bad egg
metaphor in your book, where you say as long as you're on the
default path, you're a good egg. And the moment you go and you go
off the beaten path, you're a bad egg. And you consider
yourself one because you think other people think that of you.
But in a way, you are way more selfless by being out there and
empowering and helping people than the people who climb the
corporate ladder. Why do we still perceive it so obviously,
wrongly, in the society?
Paul Millerd: It's very powerful, right? It's hard to
unsee that once you realize that. I think a lot of it was an
industrial era in which countries really were grinding
collectively to build massive industrial bases and needed tons
of bodies to actually do that, right? So we needed to sort of
be like, programmed collectively to believe in these scripts.
They no longer serve our world as completely as they used to.
There are more options than ever, there are more types of
work, there are more paths and possibilities, right? And from
what I've seen, people that are betting on themselves working on
their own, I'm talking like indie consultants, solopreneurs,
self employed, they're owning all the downside of their path
reputationally and financially and that typically makes them
more vulnerable. And from what I've seen, even though many of
them have less money, much more generous. And I don't know if
there's a self selection thing with that. But I sense it has
something to do with the vulnerability of being on a
weird path. And so yeah, I think, for me, I was incredibly
selfish on the default path because really, I couldn't come
up with a point other than I would make more money and that
would make some parts of my life easier, right? But I'm honestly
a nicer person now. I think I'm more generous. I think I've
grown much more in the last six years than I did in the first
ten after graduating. And for me, it's been just a beautiful
opening of my life and to meet other people like you who are
embracing that open spirit motivates me even further.
Arvid Kahl: Likewise. I think your generosity and just showing
up here today is amazing. So thanks for that. But also just
talking about these things in public and making people aware
of that, that is by in itself a generous act, right? Because you
could use your time to optimize whatever KPI you come up with,
right? That could be the time you spend, but you choose to
talk about things. And that brings me to something. I was
just thinking about generosity and not focusing on numbers. You
know because you could make more but you're not. You are choosing
to do something else, but still in our community, indie hackers,
creators, like MRR figures and graphs that go up into the
right. They are all super important still, but it's still
what we project outwards. Like even in our solopreneur
community, we kind of act like we're these huge businesses on
the growth trajectory to wherever, you know. It's so
weird how we use these default path mental models and kind of
try to cram them into our unique own pathless path like life that
we have. Does that mean that it's a continuum? Or does it
just mean that we are kind of looking at the wrong side of
things?
Paul Millerd: I think I did a lot early on to share my journey
financially. My income went from this to this. I went from 150
grand.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, up into the right.
Paul Millerd: Yeah. And I tried to share the overtime. I think
the challenge is, you don't get a lot of attention until your
numbers start going up, right? So less people paid attention. I
was sharing my income. I have like, my total income generated
by year. I made 150,000 in my last year of full time work,
then I made $47,000 US, $47,000, $35,000. And then $77,000,
that's income generated. That does not include expenses or
taxes, right? So I was making much less than those numbers.
And if you look at that, like nobody is like, I want that
Arvid Kahl: Right. Yeah, because it's always more, more, more,
path.
right?
Paul Millerd: I had the time of my life. Those years were so
fun. I was finding work I was falling in love with. And at
that point in the journey, I was pretty much like and I had met
my wife at that point. And she was fully on board. I was like,
let's live a very minimalistic life and like protect our time
and freedom. And she was on board, right? We sort of figured
out like if we stay in Taiwan, we can make about 30 to $40,000
a year US dollars and like live the life we wanted. And that
just makes people unhappy. Because, like, they'll look at
my recent income be like, well, you can say this because of
this. And it's like, well just go back. Like you can read all
my newsletters.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, you did that in public, too. Right?
Paul Millerd: Yeah, and I don't really care if my income falls
again. Like I'm not actually orienting my time to make my
income go up. For the last 11 weeks, I haven't worked more
than five hours a week because I have a newborn daughter. And
like, that time is priceless. And it's been amazing. I hung
out. I woke up at 8 today and hung out with her until 30
minutes ago.
Arvid Kahl: Well, I'm kind of sorry that I interrupted that
with this recording now.
Paul Millerd: It's okay. Mom was getting, my wife was getting
jealous. She wanted baby time.
Arvid Kahl: Oh, good. That makes me feel much better. I love
this. I love to hear that your priorities are so obviously
oriented towards something bigger than tracking a metric.
And in many ways, I've been looking into the tweets that you
wrote and the tweets that were written about you over the last
couple of days. And a lot of people talk about how much money
you're making with the book. Because you're starting to sell
more and more of this, which is kind of it's almost ironic in a
way, right? Like, had they read the book?
Paul Millerd: It's very weird.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it is. I mean, it's great that this is now
generating a lot of attention, which is compensated, you know,
in cash that comes back in from Amazon and all the places that
you sell it. But it's bizarre that people still focus on this,
that this is the impact that they can tangibly relate to. I
wish it was different. I don't know how you feel about this.
But I wish money wouldn't matter that much.
Arvid Kahl: That's right
Paul Millerd: I think the cool thing about my book is I did it.
Paul Millerd: Right? So it's kind of a cool thing to make
From the start, I said if I'm going to succeed, I want to do
it 100% on my own terms. And I did the entire book my way and
self published. And if you succeed with a self published
book, you make about five to seven books a copy, which can be
very financially rewarding. And the cool thing with that is, if
I inspire people to write a book, that's amazing, right? If
the money will inspire them, that's so cool. Because making a
money from a book is pretty amazing. Like other stuff can
get super scammy like people can hack together a course and put
together something pretty scammy. You can't fake your way
through writing a book.
money on. Like that's the one thing where I'm most excited to
make money is because I know other books are gonna be written
because of it and I can't wait to read them.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, I can relate to this. A couple of people have
come up to me and explain to me that just my kind of writing in
public of the books that I wrote, just inspired them to
write to begin with. Maybe not books, some people did, but most
people just started newsletters or blogs. And I'm thinking that
is equally awesome. Like the fact that somebody periodically
reaches out to people they care about that share the same goals
and same ideas and are on similar yet different paths
altogether. That is one of the best things that I think ever
happened to me is to see that I actually gave somebody, it's
like what you said, you have this wonderful phrase in the
book where you talks about permission. You just have a line
in there, I give you permission to do whatever you want. I
paraphrase, but you kind of say if you need permission, I give
you permission. And sometimes people just need this. They just
need this little push of you know, you can write. Like you
literally write every day when you're on social media. You
don't consider it writing, but it is writing. You're trying to
teach people something, right? Might just as well consolidate
that into a blog post or a newsletter or a book. So do it,
you can. So I allow you to do this. I love that part of the
book because I hope that this particular part just kindles
this little reframing in people's minds. And sometimes
that's all you need.
Paul Millerd: Yeah, you can just do things. And this is the cool
thing about writing online, too, especially newsletter format.
You can look back at my old issues and see like my
uncertainty, my discomfort, my small following, my meager
financial earnings, it's all there. And the weird thing about
having some extrinsic success is people start putting you on a
pedestal. Maybe this has happened to you. They think I
know something or like I have some special abilities. It's
like, no, I just stupidly did something I enjoyed for years,
didn't expect anything from it. And now I'm having some
serendipity and luck. I have no idea how to do that. Like I
couldn't have come up with a strategy. And that's why my book
has no how tos. There's like some high level challenges at
the end. But there's no how tos because the truth is the only
path is your path.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, and I think that makes the book even more
powerful and almost more actionable. Because there is
nothing that you can try to implement and then fail, you
know. Like these, it's like a recipe where you don't have the
ingredients. It's not going to help you. And if you try to use
different ingredients, it's not going to be the thing that comes
out that you want it. So giving people just the broad concept.
And that's the last chapter in your book like these eight or
nine steps, just one of them is reflect like, obviously, right?
That is something very basic. But if you forget to actively
think about where you are and where you want to go, if you
just follow whatever other people give you, well, then
you'll never find your own way. So they are actionable steps.
But there are unspecific enough for people to find their own
version of it. I really like that. And what I absolutely like
about your writing is you write about writing, which is always
great. It's always great when people write and then write
about how they learn to write or how they found writing. And for
you, it was related to your health issues that you had at a
certain point, right? It was kind of cathartic. You were
dealing with pain. You were dealing with struggle and you
wrote your way out of it and you have this Quora post, example
where you wrote a lengthy Quora post a reply to somebody's
question about these health issues. And you notice that the
responses coming in where people were like, extremely happy that
you gave them the opportunity to learn from your experience. You
were empowering others by writing. That is something that
I really appreciate, like, how important is writing to you?
Paul Millerd: Yeah, the personal side is the most meaningful.
That was such a relief to publish that on Quora because it
helped me make sense of what I went through. I went through a
really hard time with some health crises and writing was
the only way I knew how to make sense of it. And I think when I
shipped that essay, I was able to let go of some of the
resentment I had toward what I was seeing as lost years of my
life, the prime of my 20s. I'm more or less lost two years to a
day to day suffering of physical issues and the mental challenge
that went with that. And yeah, but I didn't notice at the time
that a reading maybe could be something that's part of my
life. It was always just like, yeah, I'll do it here and there.
And then it snuck up on me over the next three years when I
returned to work. I wrote on the side and it was where the flood
of energy and sensemaking of what was happening to me was
going and yeah, it's such an amazing thing. I mean, so many
people have fallen in love with writing. And when you do it,
there's really no choice. Like you have to write. And for me
writing is easy because like spending time with my daughter
writing was only thing I felt like I had to do. And I just
missed it. I don't have a complete life unless I'm
writing. I don't think all the other work, ah I'm fine. I don't
need to do it. I rather go break broke and be riding in the
middle of nowhere at a beautiful mountain or something.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, Walden Pond, right? Yeah. I very much
resonate with this. Like, if I may, like, give you an example
of how this exact same thing happened to me. Like when we
were in the final year of Feedback Panda, the software
business that we sold, I was under like heavy burnouts. And
you've talked about burnout too. And I really liked the way you
phrased it as like an alignment problem between your individual
goals and the company goals and internally between what you
think you want and what you think you need. We could unravel
this. That alone was a wonderful way of expressing burnout
because it exactly describes what I went through. But it was
the end of an era for me because we were selling this business
and I was mid burnout. And I started writing. I needed some
cathartic way out of this. I was like, constantly under stress,
permanently anxious, the only technical person in the business
who could deal with whatever may come and we had 1000s of
customers. So there was always something going on. I had a lot
of, you know, I was overwhelmed. And I was mid burnout, close to
burnout. I still don't know, I never really diagnosed it. But I
was there. And I wrote this 10,000 word piece, the first
thing I ever wrote because English is my second language.
And I never really wrote much in terms of articles or anything,
but I just started writing about, I think, like mental
health issues for bootstrap CTOs. I think that was the
title. And I just pulled out everything, like every single
thing that I felt went onto the page and then never published
it. Like because we were mid selling the business. I'm not
going to publish an article about how hard it is to run a
business while you're trying to negotiate a good price. That
doesn't make sense. But what it helped me was to crystallize my
thinking and I think that's what writing is, in its purest
essence is intentional thought. It's not thought that just
happens. It's thought crystallized into a shape, we
can retrieve it and mold it and shape it, right? That's what
writing is, which is also why I will never give up writing. It's
going to be just like you, the last thing that I give up. I
will join you at that pond or that mountain that you're
hanging out doing. I'm just going to co write stuff together
because that will be like that is why I live is because I can
do this at this point. And later, a couple of months after
we sold, I revisited this article and I thought I quite
enjoyed this not just for the catharsis that it gave me. But
because I solve a couple problems while writing the
article. I thought about a couple of scalability solutions,
how to deal with certain, you know, customer service problems
and automations that all came to me while writing and I thought
oh, I'm gonna keep doing this. This is fun, started my blog,
started writing, started newsletter, wrote a couple
books. That's where my journey came from, from a mental health
issue that I wrote my way out of just wanted to share that with
you because it feels like you very similarly found writing to
be the catalyst for a journey of teaching, which is kind of cool.
Just wanted to share this.
Paul Millerd: Yeah, I think I want to live an intentional
life. And one way to avoid bullshitting yourself is to ship
out your intentions to 1000s of people. It was hundreds at
first, but I felt like okay, if I'm going to say these things, I
need to do these things. So I've done all sorts of experiments
over the last six years and it's been a really interesting way of
keeping myself accountable. After a month of launching my
book, I think I sold like 300 copies or something. It was an
absolute success. Why? Because in the final months of writing
it, I sort of like broke down in tears and like, I've connected a
few pieces in the book and pulled some pieces together,
wrote the introduction. And it was just like an enormous
release of tension and realizing, like how scared I was
to really admit that this shit matters, like being like living
a life where you do what you claim to care about. It matters.
And I was so scared to say that. I had all these voices adults I
grew up around who would cynically say oh, you're just
naive. You got to work, buddy. Like I had all these voices in
my head and I was small and I was scared. And what the book
enabled me to do is actually show up in my own life and not
be afraid of what people would say, like I was living as if it
mattered, but I was small and scared, right?
Arvid Kahl: It reminds me of the adage from a quote that you put
in there with the freedom from freedom too, right? You're free
from oppression. You're free to express yourself. And that is
something that, I studied political science in Germany. So
that is a very strong theme there as well.
Paul Millerd: How do you say his name? I can improve my
pronunciation.
Arvid Kahl: No. I mean, it's just like my name. I think my
name in German is Arvid Kahl. And in English, it's Arvid Kahl,
right? So you have these.
Paul Millerd: Yeah, I gotta improve my German.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, it's erechfrom and erechfrom talks about the
two kinds of freedom, right? The freedom from, or freedom from,
which means like, you're not exposed to something. And the
other part is agency, which is something that is the freedom to
do something that is allowed for you to do. And I really resonate
with this because ever since I left my last job as a software
engineer, I've been living the freedom to life quite a bit,
then it's scary. It is a scary thing. Yeah, that's kind of why
am I mentioning this year because you kind of have to find
out. I think that's your Oprah quote there. You have to find
out who you are and then do it with purpose, right? The idea
that
Paul Millerd: Yeah, Dolly Parton
Arvid Kahl: Dolly Parton, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, that's right. To
figure out who you are, who that person is, that will go on the
journey. And most of us don't really know this, like, you go
into a life and you have these stories by your parents, by your
grandparents, that's my story too. Like you had very
supportive grandparents. I also had very supportive
grandparents. But they were raised in an Eastern Germany.
They were raised in the German Democratic Republic and to them
finding a job and not talking about what you're doing because
otherwise people might get jealous, that was the epitome of
a good life. And that was what they instilled in their kids and
what their kids instilled in their kids, which is me. So I
had to do a lot of unlearning when I became an adult, of the
things that were taught to me as this is how you live a stable,
safe and good life. And then finding out that I'm actually a
different person that will openly share a lot of things
that my grandmother, she already passed away. But she would pass
away again, if she knew how much I share about my life. That's
kind of how I feel. She would probably like it still because I
could explain it to her and she would see the resonance that I'm
getting. But that would freak her out. Like whenever we talked
about money. And we rarely talked about money in my family,
it was like never ever mentioned what you have because somebody
else might take it because that was the system that they came up
on, right? And unlearning this, whew, quite the challenge and
probably a challenge for many people today who come from,
like, you know, like, multi generational immigrant families
that come from a different culture and that kind of stuff.
Paul Millerd: Well, it's real, too, right? To stand out in
Eastern Germany was extremely risky, right? And that's not
serving us anymore, though, right? And I think scripts about
how to live your life are always changing. I just sense right now
that the scripts that emerged after World War ll because they
were in response to these large scale, massive national country,
industrial systems are even more powerful than we've had before.
For most of humanity, adapting to your conditions was the
natural way. For our generation, living out your parents' idea of
how the world works is the normal route, right? Because our
world is so safe. When the world isn't safe, you're an idiot not
to adapt. When the world is safe, if you don't adapt, you're
likely going to please your parents and make them feel
comfortable. It's been surprising to me how many people
get uncomfortable just based on my life choices even if I'm not
talking about it. They'll unprompted bring up like, don't
you think like people should work in a job? And it's like, I
didn't say anything. What are you talking about? I think
people should do what's best for their life.
Arvid Kahl: Right. That sounds like a lot of projection is
happening there. But
Paul Millerd: Of course, this happens to all of us.
Arvid Kahl: In some ways, you could argue. Yeah, exactly.
That's the problem, right? I was gonna say like, you could
probably argue that they're at least a little bit curious about
it because they're asking a question. They're not telling
you that you're wrong. But it is still the programming that comes
from society and from your parents and from your school,
right? That gives you the baseline, the default that you
then maybe question or at least ask why the other person does
not live that life. Yeah, I love what you wrote about with the
boomer generation and like the how the life that they're
leading is the anomaly.
Arvid Kahl: I think that's what you just said too, right? We're
Paul Millerd: Yeah
adapting is decentered. Like, that's the thing like every
single sci fi movie, every single fantasy story that we
read is about people living a weird life that they always have
to adapt to. So if you look into the narrative, like even Joseph
Campbell with, you know, the Monomyth and all that, that is a
story of adapting, of overcoming, of finding help,
finding guidance, having an emesis, having an enemy, right?
It's always a struggle, like every human story is a struggle.
And then there's these weird 50 years or so, where everything is
great. And we consider this to be the new normal. I'm quite
frightened for the financial systems of the future because I
think the systems we have right now are built on our expectation
that this great phase is going to keep on growing and going to
establish itself forever.
Paul Millerd: Yeah, and this is the weird thing about like,
saying, people are privileged to take an unconventional path
because when you take an unconventional path, you pretty
much always face criticism, lack of lack of support from family
members, you lose friendships. And it can be pretty shitty. And
this comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning,
which is that this is why finding the others is so
important. And this is why I share my work. And I'm out there
in public because it's a generous act to share your work
because you might let the others find you, right? And
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, that's right.
Paul Millerd: This is important. We need more experiments in
living. There's this, I listened to this podcast, The Align
podcast with Aaron Alexander and he interviewed Boyd Vardy. Have
you listened to Boyd Vardy?
Arvid Kahl: No
Paul Millerd: He's a lion tractor. He's gone through all
sorts of trauma in his life, crazy life story. But he says,
to become someone who lives on the track of your life is what
it means to be a modern activist, right? We mistake
modern activism would like having an impact, right? Working
in social responsibility, nonsense, to become someone who
lives on the track of your life. So you work out what it would
mean to go inward and find your way to your gift, your purpose,
your essence. It's incredible what happens around a person
that's found that. And at a deeper level, when you're around
someone that's really in their essence, really in their
mission, you can feel it in them. There's something about
their life, that you look at it and feel yourself lean forward
in your chair and you feel like you can just feel the depth of
it and it starts to wake you up to what's possible. I think
that's it. That's everything, like live true to the track of
your own life.
Arvid Kahl: And honestly, that's what I feel when I listen to you
because Ieven though it's just been six years, you have found
something, right? And that is something. That is incredibly
valuable because most people are looking for that. But they
haven't found it yet. Because they don't know how to look for
it. They don't know, like I was thinking earlier when you were
saying like, you wanted to change things in your life, but
the only thing you did was changing jobs because that's the
only thing you could fathom changing, right? That reminds me
so strongly of the overton window that we have in society,
like the things that we are allowed to discuss, right?
There's stuff that was taboo on the left and taboo on the right
and everything in the middle. You're allowed to talk about it
and you're allowed to discuss it and criticize it. But anything
beyond it, beyond those barriers to the side, that's off limits.
And I think there is a mental overton window for how we live
our life. And we talk about a lot like, oh, career progress
and I'm gonna go to work in that firm. And then I'm going to find
that job. I'm going to go to this school to get these kinds
of degrees. And you have a lot of choice and a lot of option
and people min max all these little things. But just in that
really narrow frame, what you do and what you found is a way to
expand the window. And I think that is incredibly powerful. And
I'm extremely grateful that you're sharing this with me
today, obviously, but in the book and in your newsletter, in
your work. I want more people to be exposed to this, which is why
I'm talking to you, which is why I'm highlighting your work
wherever I can. And I want people to find their own way so
I can learn from them. So that's kind of my selfless approach to
sharing. I think that's one of the last things you say in the
book as well as like, yeah, I'm doing this not just out of the
goodness of my heart, although there is so much generosity, but
it's also something that gets back to you. There's reciprocity
in this. There's an actual relationship between the people
that are on the journey and that, to me is sharing in
public, building in public, teaching in public. That gives
you this reciprocity where you get something out of it
eventually, it's the long game. It's the infinite game that you
play. And sorry, you can probably tell I'm excited by
this because I feel this is something that just if more
people even just consider it for little, that will massively
impact their life. So yeah, thank you so much for being here
today. I cannot express how much I enjoy this conversation with
you.
Paul Millerd: You're a generous human. I appreciate your
curiosity and sharing as well. I think the core thing like I'd
leave people with is, there's this state you can find in which
you are so connected and so alive with a state of being, a
type of work, a way of showing up in the world. That is so
powerful. It's worth finding. Like, I don't know how to find
it. That's the thing. I don't know how to find it. It's hard.
It's confusing, but it's worth finding. And if you find it, I
can't promise you'll make money from it. But you'll find a
different relationship to self in the world in which you might
go places you can't even imagine.
Arvid Kahl: Absolutely. Well, the next place people should go
is probably somewhere where they can find you. So where do you
want people to go to learn more about you and your work?
Paul Millerd: So I explore people's stories like yours. You
should definitely come on the podcast, The Pathless Path
podcast. I've been leaning more into that. But yeah, my book is
basically my super raw, vulnerable journey with all the
missteps and failures along the way. So you can check that out.
Just search the Pathless Path, Paul or boundless.substack.com
for my newsletter and yeah, I write most weeks, some weeks I
take it off. And yeah, you can find me.
Arvid Kahl: And you should find Paul. Like he's worth every
minute you spend with him as evidenced by this one hour long
conversation. Thank you so much, Paul for joining me on the
podcast today. That was an amazing and extremely
instructive conversation. Thank you so much.
Paul Millerd: I appreciate your support.
Arvid Kahl: And that's it for today. Thank you for listening
to The Bootstrapped Founder. You can find me on Twitter
@arvidkahl. You'll find my books and my twitter course as well.
If you want to support me and the show, please subscribe to my
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(http://ratethispodcast.com/founder). Any of this will truly help the
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day. Bye bye