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Ruben Gamez is one of the most thoughtful and wise entrepreneurs I've met. Learn how he built Bidsketch.
Show Notes
Ruben has some great advice on outsourcing, staying focused, getting work done, and building a profitable business that’s not based on your personality.
Sponsors
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Notable quotes
“When you’re browsing Odesk, I always filter by 4 stars or better.”
“In the early days, I spent from $6-$10 an hour on programmers from Odesk. Nowadays, when I hire developers I pay in the $20’s. It’s ways easier to find someone of better quality, when you pay them in the $20-$30 range. Now both of the developers I have are in Argentina.”
“The developers I’m hiring now, from Odesk, are better than the developers I worked with the USA that were making 6 figures.”
Show notes
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Hi, I'm Justin, and this is Product People, the podcast focused on great products and the people who make them. And this week I have Ruben Gomes on the show. He's bootstrapped his product BidSketch while working for The Man, and we'll get into that in a minute. But first, let me thank a few people who make the show possible. Joe Stump over at Sprinterly has been a sponsor forever.
Justin Jackson:If you want to bring transparency and sanity to your development process, you should really try Sprinterly out. It's agile project management that actually works. I've been using it for a couple of years now, and I prefer it to everything else I've tried. Instead of a disorganized backlog, you'll know exactly where each task sits and who's responsible. You can try it for free, www.sprint.ly.
Justin Jackson:And then you get a 10% off with this coupon code, productpeopletv2013. Next up, if you're creating an application that needs charts or a dashboard, I'd recommend Fusion Charts. It's a JavaScript charting solution trusted by developers around the world. They have tons of interactive interactive and animated charts with advanced features like tooltips, drill down, chart export, and zoom. Charts work across PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.
Justin Jackson:You can download a free trial at fusioncharts.com. And after all that, hey, Ruben. How's it going?
Ruben Gamez:All right. Pretty good. How's it going?
Justin Jackson:I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Now, Ed, you're in Washington now, is that right? Yes. Spokane, Washington.
Justin Jackson:Spokane. And have you been there for quite a while?
Ruben Gamez:About two years now. We like it, but not sure about the city. So we're probably maybe in another year or two looking to move to Portland or Seattle.
Justin Jackson:Interesting. Are you guys like into the city life? Like you'd like to be in like somewhere kind of funky like Portland? Is that the idea?
Ruben Gamez:We don't go to the city much, actually. We like to be close to it, like maybe twenty minutes away from it. Yeah. We like all the outdoor stuff. So we're we're okay here.
Ruben Gamez:It's just that whenever we go to the city, there's not much going on here.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:Cool. Like we like hiking and, you know, skiing and all that stuff.
Justin Jackson:Right on. Right on. Well, you should move to where I'm at.
Ruben Gamez:Where is that?
Justin Jackson:British Columbia, Vernon, BC, right in the Okanagan. That's exactly why we moved here, to be around hiking and skiing and all that stuff. But there's lots of good spots around where you're at, too.
Ruben Gamez:Yeah, it's not bad.
Justin Jackson:So today we're going talk about Bidsketch. And maybe let's just start by having you explain what is Bidsketch? What is it?
Ruben Gamez:Sure. It's a web app used by freelancers, consultants and agencies to create client proposals. So it's pretty focused on that.
Justin Jackson:Why did you build it? What was the kind of motivation behind it?
Ruben Gamez:Well, I actually was building another product at the time. I was working at my day job and I was looking to build a product. I was kind of bored of that product. Just, you know, the subject area wasn't very interesting to me. Was test case management.
Justin Jackson:Okay.
Ruben Gamez:And so there was a friend who, for the first time, was going to meet a client. So I was sort of talking him through the proposal process. I went online to search for something to help him out with that. I found something like a plug into Word, which I thought was interesting. So I looked for a web app and I couldn't find anything.
Ruben Gamez:And at that point, I thought, oh, this is, you know, I can't believe there isn't a web app that does this. Right? There are invoicing apps and all that stuff. So that sort of gave me the idea to at least check into like demand and see if I might want to build it.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Let's back up just a bit. Why were you even you mentioned you were full time. Why were you even building products at all? What was behind that?
Ruben Gamez:So I probably, I'd started to build, I don't know, like five, six, seven products before in the past. Don't think I ever finished any of them. I just would start to build something, get excited about something else and then, you know, or get distracted by a new language or something else and just not finish. Right. So I was never serious about it for a long time.
Ruben Gamez:I would just kind of see the products that my company or other places that I had worked for would pay for. I thought, well, I can build something better. Right?
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:Not knowing what's involved on the marketing side, I was just at that point strictly thinking about the technical side of things.
Justin Jackson:Gotcha. So you're a developer?
Ruben Gamez:Right, right.
Justin Jackson:Okay. Have my development So you're a developer and you'd sitting in your office and you'd thinking you'd see something and you'd be like, I can build that better. And the interest for you at that moment was just building something better.
Ruben Gamez:And getting paid for it.
Justin Jackson:Oh, okay.
Ruben Gamez:Because I would see how much money they would spend on these, products. Right? And I'd say, wow, they're paying this much money for a CMS. For this CMS, it's not even that good. You know?
Ruben Gamez:But at that point, like I said, I wasn't I wasn't serious enough to to finish, building those products. It wasn't till later till, I almost started a bit sketched where I started to get more serious about it and I started to read, like, marketing books and stuff like that. And at that point it was because I was really unhappy with the job. So
Justin Jackson:that was kind of the Prior to that, you were interested in pursuing these things both for, you know, you're thinking about making the money, but also for the technical challenge. But you didn't really get serious until you were kind of unhappy where you were.
Ruben Gamez:Right. And it wasn't just like unhappy with the job, just unhappy with having a job. Wasn't for me and actually never was for me. I was thinking about this the other day, I just somehow kind of fell asleep and started off on this path that just was never really my own path, right? Just like doing the things that you're supposed to do.
Ruben Gamez:Just like get a job, start getting promoted, start, you know, like Years later, I looked at what I was doing and I realized that I didn't like what I did. I was wondering how did I let myself get to this point, right?
Justin Jackson:What do you think it is about that? Because I wonder about that. There's probably a lot of folks that feel that way, that feel like maybe that they'd like to go and do something on their own. But sometimes I wonder how much of that is them just not happy in their job and maybe they could find another job that would be better. What do you think is the difference between someone that could just find a better job and someone that is actually kind of set out to build and launch their own thing?
Ruben Gamez:I don't know what the difference is. I just know that I knew that I could the way that I thought about it was this way. I knew that even if I got another job, I'd still be working for somebody else and I would still encounter all these different problems that came with that, right? And that just wasn't satisfying to me. I wasn't learning as much anymore Like new technical challenges weren't going to do it for me.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. You
Ruben Gamez:know, so just the thought of getting a new job, even if it was better, a lot better and new and all this stuff just wasn't going to fix anything. There's, you know, there's nothing that could be fixed by getting a new job. And I also yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess that was it. It was, you know, mainly that.
Ruben Gamez:I just I didn't feel that, a new job would fix anything for me. Plus, I also, purposely actually stayed in a job that, I was unhappy with to make sure that I stayed motivated while building the product.
Justin Jackson:Gotcha. Gotcha. And how long was this process? Like when did you start trying to build products? And then when did you eventually quit your job?
Ruben Gamez:So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's like products that I played around with. Right? I wouldn't even call them real products. Right?
Ruben Gamez:Those I would call projects. So like the very first product, something that I was truly serious about building was was that, test case management tool. And that was really just a few months before I got the idea for BidSketch. And by that point, I was just kind of, like, I wasn't Yeah. I just wasn't excited about the tool.
Ruben Gamez:I'm one of these people that that say, well, you have to, you know, do something that you're passionate about and all this stuff. Right? Mhmm. At the same time, I think you have to find something that kind of excites you about what you're doing. For me, managing test plans and all was just ridiculously boring.
Ruben Gamez:Yeah. Yeah. So I was looking for something else to do. Right? Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:So it was just a matter of months between, like starting that product and then starting on BidSketch. And, but I think after I launched BidSketch maybe about a year later because for a lot of reasons, but actually maybe a little bit less than that. I actually spent like six months or eight months building it and then scrapped all of my work and started over again.
Justin Jackson:Wow. Why'd you do that?
Ruben Gamez:Because when I initially started building BidSketch, I started building it in the language that would be hard for me to hire people in. Not because it would be hard for me to hire people in it, Yeah. Because my background was Java. Right? Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:So I wanted to play around with Groovy. So I wanted so, basically, it's just like, okay. I wanna learn this Yeah. This language, and I wanna learn Grails, which was, like, similar to Rails. Right?
Ruben Gamez:But Yeah. Java based. And, basically, I've realized at one point that if I wanted to hire help, it was gonna be really hard to hire developers that I could afford to to just help me with that.
Justin Jackson:With the sorry. With the Ruby app or was it a Ruby app? On the on the
Ruben Gamez:technical side, no. It was not a Ruby app.
Justin Jackson:So Oh, okay.
Ruben Gamez:That's what I well, that's that's what I, started when I scrapped everything and started all over. Mhmm. Started it as a Rails app because it's really easy to find Rails developers.
Justin Jackson:Gotcha. It's a lot harder to find Grails, developers. Right. Gotcha.
Ruben Gamez:Plus I was, you know, progress was super slow, right? I was at a crappy job. So sometimes those jobs, even though they're not physically exhausting, right? You're tiring, you're you're exhausted by the time you get out, right? Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:And you just wanna just get home and not do much. Yeah. Right? And it's hard to to get to to work, right? So I was working, I'd get get off of work and then I'd spend like three or four hours a night, and then I'd spend like a Saturday or maybe, you know, a few hours, on Sunday working.
Ruben Gamez:I was working all the time. But it wasn't easy, and after several months of doing that because I was doing the the design, I was doing the development, I was doing marketing, like SEO, writing blog posts, like everything. Right? And doing it as a part time effort just was going slow and keeping myself going was just getting tougher and tougher. So, you know, that was kind of why I started over to because it was an awesome feeling once I did and I hired I didn't have a lot of money.
Justin Jackson:Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:I spent maybe a total of like $3,000 or so outsourcing some of the work. But it was awesome when I, you know, get get home from work or wake up in the morning and there was, you know, new code written, right? Like, what was being made while I was sleeping or while I was working?
Justin Jackson:So this was kind of a turning point for you. We should probably stay here for a little bit because I think this is something a lot of people struggle with is that they're working full time. And even that image you just explained, that cognitive load of being at a job all day and having even if it's maybe not a difficult job, there's just the weight of that thing. And they get home and they're tired. So what was it Sorry, go ahead.
Ruben Gamez:I was just going say, you know, that really gets me because sometimes I even though I felt like that, I still did work. Still did it, right? I still took action. I don't feel that enough people do that, right?
Justin Jackson:Not enough people take action.
Ruben Gamez:Right. You know, because there are a lot of things about that that so I feel great when I'm learning new things. And when I would get home and have to write a blog post or do something, the SEO side, that was cool because I was learning and that was fun. That was easier to do. Mhmm.
Ruben Gamez:When I was writing code or doing design or whatever, that wasn't new to me. So it just felt like more like work. Right? Yeah. It was harder to get into the mindset to just feel motivated to do it, but I still did it.
Ruben Gamez:Like for me, one thing that worked really well was just, you know, I, on the days that it was really bad and I had to do something boring, I'd say, I'd tell myself, okay, just do ten minutes worth of work and then I can, you know, have the night off, like play video games all night or do whatever, you know. Yeah. Whatever I want. And almost all of the time that I did that, I'd do five or ten minutes worth of work. I'd keep going because it was just hard to, you I'd start to get into a flow and it was just hard to stop.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. I like that. That's a good kind of technique, I think. And you've kind of brought up two things. One is that this isn't going to be easy.
Justin Jackson:Like there is a lot of hard work involved in what you're talking about. I mean, three hours a night and then all day on Saturday. That's a lot of work. And so I think on one side you're saying people have to expect hard work, right?
Ruben Gamez:Right, right. Yeah, you have to put in the work, period. Right?
Justin Jackson:And on the other hand, there's this idea of boring work. This has actually been this is kind of timely because there's a lot of things kind of blog posts and things of people talking about boring work. And I like that idea of saying, Okay, I'm just going to do ten minutes and then I'm done. But that ten minutes gets you started, doesn't it?
Ruben Gamez:Right. For me, it worked really well. You have to know yourself, right? Sometimes if it was really bad, I'd stop at ten minutes and be like, okay, that's it. You know, I'm gonna play video games or whatever.
Ruben Gamez:Right? But most of the time, that wouldn't happen. Most of the time, I would continue continue working because it's just hard for me to stop, like in the middle of something, right? Just because I said it was ten minutes. So, yeah, that would work pretty well.
Justin Jackson:And once you turned the corner and you scrapped everything, you started again. How did that change things? Like, how did that did that change your motivation? I mean, were you still working, you know, three hours a night and on Saturdays?
Ruben Gamez:Yeah, I was. I was on different things maybe. I think I I was putting in more time on the marketing side and I was reading more, which was cool. But it was like I said, it was just really great to see work get done. Plus, I was also learning to hire people, fire them.
Ruben Gamez:Mhmm. I I, you know, had to let go, a few people, especially when I when you're not paying that much, the quality work is kinda questionable. Yeah. And, you know, managing people in other countries, right, in different time zones and and stuff like that. So that was kinda new, but it was it was cool.
Ruben Gamez:It was nice learning that and super useful. Mhmm. Plus I was also outsourcing. Like, I wasn't just outsourcing code or design. I was outsourcing anything that would take time.
Ruben Gamez:Right? So one example is, like, we had a vacation coming up in Orlando. Mhmm. And I lived in South Florida at the time. And I looked at the weather and it was going to be raining.
Ruben Gamez:I was like, oh, okay. Well, like, what do we do while it's raining? What do you know, there's a bunch of stuff that I guess I can look up online or whatever. I just, sent in, a research request to to a VA to have them look, you know, give me a list of a bunch of things to do, right? Got Stuff like that.
Ruben Gamez:Because, I could have done it myself. It's not hard, right? But I would have spent what, an hour doing that when I could have been writing code or writing another blog post or doing something like that.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Okay, this is the trap I get into. You need to teach me your ways right now because I'm the consummate lone wolf, do it yourselfer. And I know that there's things like oDesk and all that that can allow you to go and outsource and find people. I've made it to the point where I've browsed for things on oDesk.
Justin Jackson:For example, I needed some illustration work.
Ruben Gamez:And I just felt like,
Justin Jackson:oh, this is overwhelming just looking at all these people and that whole front loading of the process. So guide me through that. Give me some hope. What are some things I could do to stop being this person that's doing everything himself and offload some of that to some hired help?
Ruben Gamez:So I guess I'd start off by asking like, what felt overwhelming about it?
Justin Jackson:I think it always almost feels like it's easier to like I would start to play the script in my head. Like, Okay, I'm going to have to find this person. I'm going have to go through a bunch of people's profiles. Then I'm going to have to contact them. Then I'm going to have to explain to them what it is I want them to do.
Justin Jackson:And then I'm going to have to choose somebody. Then it's just like all that front loading communication. And I was thinking in my head, well, but I could just do this in Do
Ruben Gamez:this really quickly.
Justin Jackson:Yeah, in two or three hours. So I think that's the part that I always get stuck on is, especially when you're doing stuff on the side, you kind of feel like, Do I want to spend three hours browsing oDesk and figuring that out? Or do I want to spend three hours working on the business?
Ruben Gamez:Well, I think I would think about it differently. Like, I think about it in a way where I'm saying, Okay, I want to have a relationship with somebody, a virtual assistant or something like that, that can do work as needed. Right? Mhmm. So it's not like for every single one of these projects or tasks, you know, that may take an hour or a couple of hours, I'm finding somebody new.
Ruben Gamez:That would be exhausting.
Justin Jackson:Mhmm.
Ruben Gamez:You know, I'd I'd say, okay, well, I only have one thing to do right now or maybe two two things that are about, you know, two tasks that are about an hour or two hours, but I know that I'm still going to, you know, come up with new things, you know, maybe, you know, a week from now or a month from now, whenever. So I want to find one person that I can give these sorts of tasks to. There are people that will take that sort of work. Right? Just Mhmm.
Ruben Gamez:They'll say, whenever, whenever you have something, go ahead and send it to me and I'll and I'll do it for you. They don't need, like, a guaranteed five hours. Some do, but many don't. Right? And So I start thinking about it just differently, and then I I do it in a way that makes it so that I'm not spending a whole bunch of time browsing.
Ruben Gamez:This is the way that I do it. I don't spend generally all this time browsing profiles. Yeah. Post something, right? Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:And then I I I filter. I just do a really good job of filtering, the responses.
Justin Jackson:Gotcha. And maybe that's the mistake I made as I was looking for an illustrator. So I was browsing profiles, but I should have just gone in and posted an ad.
Ruben Gamez:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, browsing through profiles, I don't do that unless it's a last resort. It takes so freaking long. Yeah.
Ruben Gamez:It's tough to find somebody if you do it that way because it does take a long time.
Justin Jackson:And I think the other kind of script people have in their heads is that they're never going to be able to find anyone good, anyone that they can actually trust and depend on. Maybe just talk about your experience. Like, have you found people that you can actually send work to, like you can email them and they'll get back to you and get stuff done?
Ruben Gamez:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I've found a lot of people. Not everybody is good.
Ruben Gamez:So generally what I'll do is I'll post a project or a job, right, or a need for a certain type of person, you know, position or whatever on Odesk, and then I'll get a bunch of people responding. I only look at, let's say, four stars and better, right? Yeah. Because I wanna see that they have a history. And then depending on, you know, if I'm looking for certain people in certain time zones, then, I filter based off of that.
Ruben Gamez:I ask them to answer a question. Right? So if in their initial response, they're they haven't answered, you know, the question or the couple of questions that I asked for, it's easy to filter them out. Mhmm. So then that really doesn't, you know, you you take maybe, I don't know, like 60 responses and and get it down to like 10 or, you know, or less.
Ruben Gamez:Then what I've done lately is actually, depending on the job, I give them, like I'll email them back, I'll give them a link to a Google form and I ask them questions about the job. Basically, like if it's a help desk job, to do support or something like that, I'll ask them, to log into the app, use it for a little bit, and then answer these questions. Like, I'm a customer and and I I need support. Right? Gotcha.
Ruben Gamez:I try I try them out in the in that's the way that I I approach it nowadays is I try to see how they, you know, react or communicate performing the job.
Justin Jackson:Yeah. Right. And this is all before you've paid them. Right? Like, is Right.
Justin Jackson:The initial part. Okay.
Ruben Gamez:Yep. And then even after, you know, like, I narrow it down and say, okay, I have, like, two or three people. I hire two or three people. Yeah. And I say, for the next two weeks, like, I just did this on the development front, I do this on the support front, I do this, like, for for anything you can do.
Ruben Gamez:Yeah. For the next two weeks, let's work together. And then after two weeks, we'll talk about whether it makes sense to continue working together. Then generally, it's after that two week period, I'm working with, let's say, two people. I know that one of them, I want to continue to work with and the other one I don't.
Justin Jackson:Gotcha. And you do that purposefully? Like if you might hire a couple of people, try them both out and then kind of choose the one that's kind of the best bet?
Ruben Gamez:Right. And let them know that this is what's going on so that they're not surprised right after the two week period that I'm letting them go.
Justin Jackson:Gotcha. Gotcha. And how responsive are these folks? Like, do you can you email them and get stuff done right away? Or, you know, what kind of lead time do you need to give people?
Ruben Gamez:It really depends on the person. If you say that you need somebody to be very responsive within the first few hours, then they can be. Like, it's pretty it's amazing how like, what you can get if the type of job that you're working, that you're offering or not even job, but let's say, you just tell them that the person like, you just how should I say this? If you post your job in a way that makes it very appealing to them, then they're just you're gonna get better people, and they'll be more more likely to to be more responsive and do more for you.
Justin Jackson:That's it for this week. Next week, part two with Ruben Gomes. He goes into the specifics of how you can hire folks on Odesk and achieve that product dream that you have. Thanks again to our sponsors, sprint.ly and Fusion Charts. Go visit sprint.lywww.sprint.ly and fusioncharts.fusioncharts.com.
Justin Jackson:I'm Justin. You can reach me on Twitter at m I Justin or by email productpeople@bizbox.ca. If you like the show, go to iTunes, search for product people in the podcast directory, and give us a five star review. It really helps the show get noticed. That's it for this week.
Justin Jackson:I'll see you next week with part two.