Chad Sakonchick – BetterLegal

BetterLegal is sponsoring LaunchDay #3

https://betterlegal.com?utm_source=launchday&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=launchday_3

What is LaunchDay Podcast?

Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com

Dagobert Renouf (00:01)
Hey guys. So before getting into this interview, I just got out of it with Chad and this interview is two hours. And the reason it's two hours is because for basically one hour, 20 minutes, every time I ask him a question, he started going on to, I built this product, because he built like 20 products and he was always going into which product he's built and he was super passionate.

And at first I was like not sure and then eventually I was realizing what was happening.

⁓ Thankfully, eventually, after about an hour or an hour and 20 minutes...

I started being able to kind of analyze him and to be like, okay, and to focus the interview more. And so this interview is basically three parts. The first part, super interesting, he's talking about his experience with BetterLegal, which is his startup that he started with a co-founder. He had investment for it. He had business angels. And it's very actually genuine.

⁓ testimony of how the fuck it is to have ⁓ a company with investors and he doesn't like it. And you can really see that it's weighing on him. And that's a very interesting part of this interview because probably my favorite part because I love like, you know, going into the darkness and he really goes into that and like, you know, frustration with some, his board of directors.

frustration with the business and yet also grateful for the opportunity and that it's his very successful startup because it makes 2 million I think a year in revenue and it's paying the bills and affording him you know to build all of these other projects on the side but it took like you know it took a lot from him to build this with business angels. So yeah that's the first part of the interview probably like half an hour or something.

Then I start questioning him on things and then he will go on tangent about products. I'm going to leave it in because it's still interesting. He's just very passionate. So it's just quite interesting. It's just sometimes, at least for me, sometimes I was a bit lost about it. And then eventually I finally managed to get him to focus again. And then we talk more about why did he spend all these years building all these products?

on the side of his main business that's making money, but that's also weighing on him. But why none of these products are actually really launched? Like he ships them and he launches them, but they're available, but he's not marketing them. He's not promoting the business. And what is blocking him? And at the end of the internet, like about an hour and a half, we start getting in an hour 15, I think we start getting into that and actually solving these like...

where is it coming from and why is he like not ⁓ promoting these businesses? So yeah, a lot of good stuff in his interview. It's quite long, it's two hours, but I still thought it was worth it. And you know, I'm still experimenting with this podcast. Should I make it short? Should I make it long? I just was happy to like talk with him because I know him for a long time. And I think that was a very, there's some very good parts in there. ⁓ And yeah, so I hope you like it.

Please leave comments if you have any... If you're listening this in audio, which is not a problem because there's almost no video content. That is just us talking for two hours. There's no demo of product or anything. So you can hit me up on Twitter, but I would really... Or you go to the YouTube video and leave comments because I would really appreciate some feedback on this format, like very long format. So please, you know, leave me comments and yeah. I hope you will enjoy this interview with...

Chad from Beto Legal, which is also sponsoring this launch date.

Dagobert (04:10)
Hey Chad, welcome to launch day.

Chad Sakonchick (04:13)
Hello.

Dagobert (04:15)
So we've known each other for I think four years when I was just starting on Twitter and when I think of you I think of the most helpful indie maker I have met. That's what I think. I think you're always trying to help and also not just that you always have like 10 ideas per day of things we could do like partnerships.

Chad Sakonchick (04:41)
That's yeah, it's a curse. ⁓

Dagobert (04:44)
Yeah, you think it's a curse. Why?

Chad Sakonchick (04:48)
Because I pursue all those ideas. So I've got like concurrently eight or 12 different things I'm working on right now.

Dagobert (04:53)
Yeah, it's true.

but at the same time you have a successful startup that's making millions in revenue.

Chad Sakonchick (05:06)
Yeah, success is a sliding scale. Our MRR right now is like $100,000 per month ⁓ subscription. We do about $2 million a year in total revenue. And I think we've actually just cracked. So we've only been on Google Ads.

And we can get into this later, but we just cracked the other platforms. So I think we'll be able to scale up now for the first time. I've been doing this for like 10 years. The Better Legal is like 10 years old. And we just kind of like still ⁓ plateaued for a really long time. People don't talk about getting success. And I've got success to pay my bills and we're profitable. But we've been stagnant for like three or four years. Just like, you know.

Dagobert (05:31)
Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And

also you're not alone. You have a co-founder, you have cost, so it's not like... Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (06:00)
Possible, barely.

Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, we've got investors, we've got like angel investors. And, you know, they just are like,

Dagobert (06:10)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (06:15)
And this is why I tell people all the time when people are like, want to get investment, I want to get investment. like, don't, don't, just don't do it. Don't do it because all they want to do is talk about like making all the money or talk to you about like, what are you doing to get the money? And you spend so much time just talking to them and appeasing them and talking them about the future, but they're so...

They're so like, what's happening today? What's success today? That you say like, hey, this is gonna happen. This is gonna take a few years. They do not care. And they just like, their eyes glaze over. And it sucks. Like, I've been in so many board meetings where I've just like, talked about all this stuff that's going well. And they're like, yeah, but the sales aren't going up. And it's like.

Dagobert (06:44)
Yeah.

Wow.

Like what, for

example, was going well? Just to get an idea.

Chad Sakonchick (07:04)
So we're, so just so everybody knows, my business is called Better Legal and we do LLC formations in the United States. So LLC formations, corporation formations, and LLC is a limited liability company. A corporation is like Amazon or Dell or Walmart or whatever.

And an LLC is actually kind of a newer version of a corporation. So a corporation requires all these steps. So it's like you set up the corporation. Then you have to appoint directors. And then the directors have to appoint how many authorized shares exist. And then you have to create another document. This is like, who owns the share? So it's just like all this documentation. And so if you're a plumber,

Dagobert (07:46)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (07:49)
Like you don't need all that. You just need like a business. So most people were just doing like sole proprietorships, but then they weren't getting like the legal protection. And so like in the seventies, ⁓ the U.S. different states and every state had to do it individually. like they started supporting. Wyoming was the first state to support an LLC, which is a limited liability company in 1978, which is basically like a really quick and easy one document filing.

I own this business, I'm the only owner of business or I own 50%, you own 50%. It's a really easy entity formation to do. So Wyoming.

Dagobert (08:16)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (08:25)
did the first one in this in 78 and all 50 states of the United States didn't support them until 92 or 98. I think it was 92. So it took like 15 years for every state to like catch on. But now they're like the most popular form of business entity because it's easy to maintain. It's fairly cheap. It's kind of quick and dirty and you can just, it's just easy. So.

Dagobert (08:33)
Yeah, okay.

go with it. And there's a lot of

people who do it like who are not from US but who open it from abroad also. Like if you live in a that doesn't support Stripe, usually that's what people do. Like for example, I'm in France, I don't care. like I was interviewing someone this morning, he was in Turkey. In Turkey, it doesn't support Stripe. So he creates an LLC in the US and then he used this LLC, you know, for the Stripe account. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (08:57)
Yeah, so a lot of people, don't...

What

a lot of people don't actually know is if you're international, ⁓ which to me means you don't live in the United States. ⁓

The United States is actually an amazing tax haven for internationals. So if you set up an LLC in the United States or a corporation in the United States, any of the money you make in the United States, you can spend and you don't have to worry about your local government's taxes except for the money that the LLC pays you. So the entity is making the money, not you.

Dagobert (09:43)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (09:51)
So like, DAGO is not making the money. Launch Day is making the money. You can keep the money in the Launch Day account and then pay yourself whatever you want. But then you can have like debit cards and stuff and pay for subscriptions and pay for this other stuff, deduct it, and then pay the US tax rate. And then you can basically pay yourself as a contractor. So that's actually what I do. Like, I am not an employee of Better Legal. ⁓ I am a contractor.

Dagobert (09:51)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't

think I can do that as a French, if I live in France, they check for this shit and it's very easy for them to classify you as tax evasion. I know a of people who do it, like if you're in Southeast Asia, no problem.

In many countries it's not a problem. It's just I know in France I looked and if I open an LLC it's going to be taxed the same as if I was doing it in France. I mean not everything like you said like you can keep the money in the company and put the money like you can reinvest it for example that's going to be I think okay but as soon as you start you know taking money for you

Chad Sakonchick (10:54)
Yeah, but if the

business is then paying you as a contractor, that money is then taxed in your local area. it's like what Apple does when Apple sells all these iPhones and stuff internationally outside of the US, and then they collect all that money in an Irish bank. That money is not coming back to the United States. So anyway, so going back to the original question, which is what's going well.

Dagobert (10:59)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (11:21)
You know, there are 50 different states. So a lot of people that are not in the United States don't realize that the United States is like, is the equivalent of like the EU. And then you've got France and Germany and Italy that are all part of the EU. So the United States is like the first version of that, where like the United States is one country, but then every single state within it is like also a little mini country.

And so every single one of those states has their own government and you don't file your LLC with the federal government. The federal government gives no shits about your company. You file your entity with the local state government. So like I file in Texas or I can file in Wyoming. ⁓ So you can choose what state you file in. You should file in the state where you do the work. But if you have a bunch of contractors that are international, you can kind of fudge that a little bit.

Dagobert (11:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (12:16)
⁓ None of this is legal advice. This is just like, you know, what people do, what I see people do. ⁓ You know, people file in Delaware, but then they have to file again in the state that they live in. I'm not going to get into any of that, but... So like, have to... When someone orders a filing from us, it can be in any one of the 50 states. Every state...

Dagobert (12:37)
Because what you do is you basically

simplify this process. People don't have to know the details of every state. You just file with you and then you take care of incorporating in any state that the person chooses.

Chad Sakonchick (12:41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so.

Right.

Right, the important thing to know is there's 50 states, there's 50 government websites. So every government website, there's no standardization. Like you go to their, whatever their local developers built, and whatever their local laws require. And so we have to do all this weird.

Dagobert (13:04)
Which one has the shittiest? Which state has the shittiest?

Chad Sakonchick (13:08)
Delaware because they're so popular. Because they're so popular, they don't have to do anything. You have to fax in a piece of paper on a fax machine, and you have to write your credit card number on the cover sheet. And you fax it in, and they snail mail you.

Dagobert (13:10)
Delaware, even though...

We got it.

Chad Sakonchick (13:26)
the documents back. Wyoming is the best. Like Wyoming, New Jersey, New York, there's like nine states that are instant. Every other state requires like multiple business days. So like Texas is a huge state and like I file it today, I'm not gonna get my documents back for two days and it might get rejected for any number of reasons. So anyways, you've got to file in 50 states. So if someone orders in Wisconsin or West Virginia or Florida or Tennessee or whatever, like we have to file that and we have to do it correctly in that state. And so we've...

Dagobert (13:44)
Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (13:56)
built a lot of ⁓ browser automations that do that. Yeah, so like in our high volume states, we've always had like a Texas, New York, Florida, Tennessee, like all the popular states where like we could have like seven automations and cover like 60 % of our filings. But we now have a process and we're like on our fourth or fifth iteration of browser automation.

Dagobert (14:00)
Oh yeah, that's how it works, yeah, okay.

Chad Sakonchick (14:22)
We've been building all this technology like I haven't building this technology outside of better legal because I think browser automation is its own thing. And so better legal has been implementing this other technology for browser automation that.

is working really, really well. So we're covering like not only the formation filings, but the state compliance. So you have to like tell the state every year like, hey, I'm still active and here's every state requires different information. So some states might require like your gross revenue. Some states might require, you know, but then, but then the other complex thing is like every state has their own due date. So like Texas, everybody across the entire state is due May 15th for annual report.

Dagobert (14:48)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (15:05)
in one state it might be the last day of the month of your anniversary of your filing. Another state might be the last day of the quarter of the anniversary of your filing. And so you have to like at the beginning of the year we have to calculate every single of our you know 20,000 customers entities due dates and we for free send everybody like hey this is what your due date is. We send it out at the beginning of the year and we send it like three months ahead of time then two months ahead of time and so we do ⁓

the state compliance. like we'll tell you when we'll tell you when your due date is for free. But if you want us to file it for you, we charge 120 bucks or 1250 a month. like we've we've been doing

Dagobert (15:44)
Yeah, yeah. And so,

you had this investor meeting and you're frustrated by that, that they don't see what's going well.

What, like, when you were saying that, like, does that mean, like, you were starting to grow and you were not making money at that time? Like, what was, I'm just like trying to, because I never been in that shit, so I don't know.

Chad Sakonchick (16:10)
Yeah, yeah,

so there's multiple different things that have happened over the years. So I'll just give some highlights. ⁓ We were just starting to kind of figure out how to do the filings best, and we're getting hand on the filings. And a few guys decided that we needed.

a new revenue stream. And so they just like raised a bunch of money and then just decided to try to do tax filings. And they hired a couple of guys from LegalZoom, who's like a huge behemoth that had done this for LegalZoom. And we wasted like half a million dollars because these guys said that they could like basically get 30 % of all of our customers to sign up for this like $1,000 or $3,000 a year tax filing thing. We started signing people up.

Dagobert (16:56)
Wait, so it's your company,

wait, it's your company and you had a co-founder, but you also had a board of directors and they said that and you didn't have any say on that.

Chad Sakonchick (17:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I got outvoted.

Dagobert (17:10)
okay, shit. Wow. Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (17:12)
Yeah, so like I own probably like 35, 40 % of the, yeah, 35 % of the company. My co-founder owns about 35 % of the company. So we each have a board seat, but then there's three other board members. And so like three votes is majority.

Dagobert (17:27)
Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (17:33)
So they wasted half a million dollars and then we sold a bunch of these and then the guys that told us they could do it, basically once the filings came through, they said they couldn't do it. So we had like taken customer money and then they said they couldn't do it. So we had to scramble to get it done while they also quit. That was one thing. ⁓ That was multiple years ago. They're just like...

people thinking the business is gonna go out of business so they show up to a board meeting, they're like in an airport lounge or they say, what if we did, what if we pivoted to this thing?

I don't wanna like...

Dagobert (18:14)
But like

like are they involved or something like that? When you say that it seems like they're just like super away from it and they're just like jump in and like yeah you should do this like super annoying.

Chad Sakonchick (18:19)
No, that's the worst part. That's the worst part. I want to be clear. Yes,

yes. And I think I don't think I'm unique. I mentioned earlier, I was part of this Hampton group.

After listening to a bunch of other founders that, you the requirement to get in Hampton is like two million or three million dollars a year revenue. After listening to a bunch of people, like my experience is not unique. I thought I hated my board because my experience is unique. It's not unique. This is just like a perpetual problem that you have people that aren't in the day to day of the business. They don't have the context of everything that's going on. And then they like fire off ideas.

and they think that their ideas are going to be like the silver bullet. I think the big thing that is the most annoying thing, and I want to be clear, my board and the investors helped me get this business off the ground. So as much as I have disdain for some of their ideas and some of the ways that they treat the business, when we were getting going, I wouldn't have been able to do this without them. So it's a love-hate relationship. It's like a family. ⁓

The thing that I think is, and I think this comes with maturity and through being invested in a lot of companies and being a lot of exposure, I just have some inexperienced investors. ⁓ They think that they're looking for a silver bullet. You do this one thing and it's going to unlock the box. And it just doesn't exist. But then they like,

Dagobert (19:45)
Yeah, like the magic thing to do 10x. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (19:55)
one of our investors or board members, like his Business Insider subscription is the bane of my existence. Because he reads these like Business Insider articles and then he just forwards it to us, but it's paywall so we can't read it. And he's like, we should do this. We should do this. Like I can't read it. So I don't know, I'm not gonna buy a subscription to Business Insider just to read your ideas. ⁓ But like multiple times,

Dagobert (20:05)
my god.

Ha

Ha

Chad Sakonchick (20:23)
Like we've been on a path and we're going down a path and they're like, we should do this instead. We should do this instead. We should do this instead. And I don't want to sound arrogant, but like the thing that made us profitable is the fact that the whole economy had kind of cratered post COVID. Everybody raised a bunch of money. Everybody did this stuff. ⁓ We didn't raise that much money. We only had ⁓ our angel investors.

But like after everything was cratering, I think a lot of their other investments were going down and they just kind of like thought this business was going to fizzle out. And so they left me alone. And so the fact that they left me alone allowed me to focus and go down this path. And that got us to profitability. now, but then it becomes a problem of like the goalposts always move. It's like we just got to get to profitability. that's as soon as we got to profitability, was like, but our growth numbers are low.

Dagobert (21:15)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (21:21)
It's like, can I at least get like a, wow, good job, congratulations, we got to this. Like as soon as you're like, hit this milestone, they're like, well, what about this? What about this? What about this? And so it's like, it's a constant just suck on your mental mindset.

Dagobert (21:26)
Yeah, I see.

Chad Sakonchick (21:39)
of like, you think you're doing great. And that's kind of like why I hate going to board meetings. They're like, they don't understand why I don't like talking to them. And it's like, because every time like I feel good about how the business is going, you guys just stand up in a line to slap me in the face one after another and tell me how it's not going well. And so then I leave the board meeting feeling like an asshole, like I didn't do enough.

And I hate that feeling, especially after I know all the work that I put in, all the success and progress we've made. And the problem is we've got like our competitors. we've got like ⁓ a ⁓ local company that ⁓ my co-founder actually set up their legal documents called Zen Business. ⁓ And they raised...

Dagobert (22:23)
wow.

So they incorporated

using your platform.

Chad Sakonchick (22:31)
No, it was like his law firm, but it was around the same time. And they were actually working on something different. And we were working on this thing and they kind of like pivoted to what we were doing, but they had the, like their CEO was the ex CTO of HomeAway, which is Verbo or VRBO.

Dagobert (22:34)
Okay.

yeah, this

kind of Airbnb kind of thing.

Chad Sakonchick (22:53)
Yeah,

so he became their CEO and because they just had like a $400 million exit to Expedia or $4 billion exit to Expedia, he was able to raise a bunch of money during like the go-go times, like 2021, 2022. They raised $250 million on a $1.7 billion valuation. And like the last I heard...

Dagobert (23:17)
for this... and that

they do the same as you or they do more or less, they do the same.

Chad Sakonchick (23:22)
They

do more, they do a lot more. like, so our annual...

Dagobert (23:24)
They do the taxes and everything,

I guess, that you mentioned.

Chad Sakonchick (23:29)
Well, they spread themselves thin, which I think is a mistake. And I can explain that. So we do about a million a year in revenue. They do like a hundred million, 130 million. So they're like a hundred times bigger. But we raised like a million dollars in angel funds and they raise 250 million and they're not profitable. They're losing like they're losing 30 or $60 million a year last I heard.

Dagobert (23:51)
Yeah, so you

Chad Sakonchick (23:56)
And that was like a year ago. And so unless they can like, like to me, they're bloated now. They have all of these people, they have these offices, they like, they're on this hamstring wheel, right? And so I feel like all I've got to do is like the cockroach method. All I've got to do is like live long enough to survive.

Dagobert (24:07)
Yeah.

But you have the bootstrappers mindset. It's like you raise money, but you have the bootstrappers mindset and it's clashing. Not, you know, sounds like...

Chad Sakonchick (24:26)
Yeah, well, that

was always an issue with the board is they like always wanted me to spend more money and I didn't. They're like, spend more money so we can raise more money. Like, no. And I've had them multiple times tell me that like, out of all the companies they've invested in, like I'm the best steward of their investment.

Dagobert (24:33)
Yeah, you're savvy. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (24:45)
which I'm proud of because like out of all their other investments that I know about, they're all gone. And I'm the only one still standing. And I think that we're gonna grow now. I think after multiple years of stagnation.

I figured out like we've been working on a bunch of things. It's like working on the advertising, working on the content, working on the marketing, working on the SEO, working on internal efficiencies, working on automation, working on AI. It's like all these things, you have to work on them all at the same time. And we have a team that is literally like, it's me and everybody's a contractor. We don't have any employees. So some of these people are full time-ish.

Like full time meaning that they can work up to like 40 or 50 hours through like up work or whatever. So like it's me, it's four operations people that handle like the filings and the customer support stuff. It's two developers, a graphic designer and an ads guy. So it's like nine people that touch the business and like.

Most of them are part-time. Most of the people are part-time.

Dagobert (25:56)
And there's also a story about your

co-founder, because you didn't mention him in that.

Chad Sakonchick (26:05)
Yeah, I don't want to go too much into this because I just don't want to put it out there. like I will just so other people like my my warning to people is like so my co-founder was my best friend and ⁓ we we started the business together. But like our investors and our board members are basically his clients. So.

Dagobert (26:30)
because he

has a law firm.

Chad Sakonchick (26:32)
because he started off with a law firm. And the idea was, once we raised money, he was gonna quit the law firm and he was gonna work full time on this. ⁓ And so I was working on, he was working on, he just did the filings initially and then he was raising money and I did everything else. So once he raised the money from his clients,

Dagobert (26:49)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (26:55)
that gave them board access or they requested board access or he got them board access. As soon as that happened, he quit.

Dagobert (27:05)
⁓ why?

Chad Sakonchick (27:05)
But like there

was no vesting. He did legal documents, so there was no vesting. So like he owns the same amount of the company that I do. ⁓ So I was kind of like stuck. So I could either just like let it fizzle or I could just work on it and just realize I made a mistake and just, you know, work on the business and get experience and build something. But anyway, but the problem was that like, as I said earlier, we have five board members.

Dagobert (27:14)
Yeah, 35%.

Chad Sakonchick (27:34)
and it's in a single vote. So like once the, his clients that he knows really well and they trust him became the board, I basically was outvoted on almost everything. So like, even though I run the business day to day and I'm the one that has all this context and I'm the one that does all the work, I have like three other people that basically just collude and then come in and then just say like, this is what we're doing.

Dagobert (27:40)
Yeah.

Wow.

Chad Sakonchick (28:01)
And I just have to like go along with it. And at one point, at one point, ⁓ a couple of them tried to kick me out of the company. And one guy, who's my favorite, was like, okay, who does this? And they're like, Chad, who does this? Chad, who does this? Chad, who does this? Chad, who does this? Chad. he's like, how are you gonna, how is the company gonna function without Chad? And they're like, well, we're gonna hire these other people. And so luckily,

Dagobert (28:11)
Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (28:28)
The other guys were like, okay, well, it sounds to me like this has not been well thought out through, so we're not gonna do this. But yeah, it just goes to show you that once you raise money and once you give other people a vote, they can promise you everything.

Dagobert (28:49)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Chad Sakonchick (28:49)
And that was the issue.

were like, one of our board members, and again, I want to clarify, these guys, ⁓ like I've been doing startups and stuff for 20 years. This is my first one that has worked, and it wouldn't have worked without these guys. So I want to be clear that it is a push and pull. I have a lot of disdain for a lot of their actions, but they also gave me the capital to work on this and have allowed me to kind of...

run this autonomously. ⁓ So like my frustrations and my appreciation can coexist. ⁓ So anyway, ⁓ I forgot where I was going with that little like disclaimer. ⁓

Dagobert (29:33)
Yeah,

so you have these board members, you have your co-founder. Yeah, I'm not sure where you were going, but I like how ⁓ you share this because that's super interesting because I... Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (29:46)
so sorry. So

as soon as you let other people make decisions, one of these guys specifically said, he's like, I made my money. And I remember the school, we were having lunch at the Four Seasons downtown, meeting each other. And he said, I've made my money. I just want to give back and I want to help others be successful in entrepreneurship. And I was like, what a perfect investor.

As soon as he invested, as soon as he had a board seat, and as soon as he like, he just...

Dagobert (30:15)
Sounds good.

Chad Sakonchick (30:22)
He just flipped and he's not evil, but he just like is greedy and he just was like, we're doing this, we're doing this. I don't care doing this. And, and I realized I was like.

As long as as soon as you give away that equity, the voting rights, all that stuff, you can't get it back. It's gone. And the other thing I want to be very clear about, because this has happened a couple of times, and I'm trying to kind of ease this into our educational stuff, like,

And we have this legal AI contract analysis thing that's free for people to use, $50 free. So I want everybody to use it. like, everybody signs contracts willy-nilly, and they don't read them. They don't understand them. You know, I'll give you an example. In this specific character, we had made an agreement on like equity and fundraising. He was going to invest more money. ⁓

And his other lawyer was looking at it. He had another attorney reviewing it because there was a conflict of interest with our, co-founder. And we had said like, this is what this document is. And we sent it to them. They're like, cool, here's the document back signed. And we were just going to sign it. And I ran it through like a word, like matching system, like what's, find the differences between these two documents. And there was like an extra

Dagobert (31:40)
Yeah.

yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (31:57)
an extra sentence in there that like negated a lot of our agreements. And so I called my co-founder and I was like, hey, what the absolute fuck is this? Like this is, like, like we did not agree to this. Like we sent this document to them.

They agreed and said, this looks good, here's the signed document back, but they had added something, signed it, and acted as if it was the same document. Now here's the tricky thing, is like, so I went ballistic, because my dad's an attorney, so like I know better than a lot of people, and I went ballistic and my co-founder was like,

Dagobert (32:22)
⁓ motherfucker. Yeah.

That's fishy.

Chad Sakonchick (32:40)
He didn't mean it, it was an accident. They got their wires mixed up, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, absolutely not, absolutely not. This is malicious, this is wrong. This is them taking advantage. And what I realized is people have memories and then they have emails that show proof of things, right? But how easy is it?

Dagobert (32:46)
Mm-hmm.

You need the profil.

Chad Sakonchick (33:07)
to actually go into the past and remember, like, I don't even remember what this thing was. This was like three years ago. I cannot tell you what the thing was. So, how am gonna know what the agreement was in my head because I don't even remember it. But if I had just signed the document and I had not done that check, then they would have just gotten what they wanted. And when I said like, no, no, no, we set it up like this, this is what the document says.

Dagobert (33:12)
Yeah.

No, that's why you always need a contract, because... Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (33:33)
So you have to be ultra, ultra careful when you're dealing with other people and dealing with boilerplate documents. It's like, just sign this. Just sign this and ⁓ it's standard. It's like, no, somebody wrote this to be one-sided for a specific party. So you've got to be really careful with that.

So like, I tried to, like, I wanted to go to this Texas State Bar, and I wanted to like have an investigation, and I was told, no, no, it was an accident, da da da. And like the amount of times that that has happened where it's like, this person did this really fucked up, malicious, negative thing. they didn't mean it. was like.

Dagobert (34:17)
Yeah, if it happens

more than once, it's malicious, yeah. Okay, so you have this situation.

Chad Sakonchick (34:23)
So that's just like,

that's just like, if you don't have a board and you don't make investment, you don't have to worry about any of stuff. like, take my hard lesson, and this is just with angels. I can't even imagine what it would be like with VC firms or anything else.

Dagobert (34:40)
Yeah, cause

angels are supposed to be nicer. Yeah. So... It's funny cause I was thinking the other day, it would be fun maybe to just raise some money for a product, just for the fun of it.

Chad Sakonchick (34:50)
I saw you write

that and I probably told you you're an idiot.

Dagobert (34:54)
I don't know, I don't think so. But I'm curious what you think, because my idea was like, you know, if you want to do something really big, you probably need money, you know, just for the fun of like pushing and everything. You really don't think so?

Chad Sakonchick (35:04)
Not anymore. Not anymore.

I am developed, two of the products that I'm developing, one is a loom competitor and one is a Zapier competitor. And I'm not raising money and I'm bootstrapping it all and I'm doing it with like two people, me and another guy.

Dagobert (35:14)
Yeah.

Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (35:22)
And like all, so here's something else to think about. The more people you have in your organization, the more people you have to manage. so much of my better legal work is just like administrative stuff. Just like getting someone a password, getting this to them, answering questions, someone doesn't know about this. And it's just like nobody tells you that once you like meet success or once you like have a business that's running.

Dagobert (35:43)
my god.

Chad Sakonchick (35:51)
and that you have people you've got to hire. There's politics between people. Someone's working more than the other, so they get upset, and then this person's like, ⁓ but so like that stuff always happens. like my preferred method moving forward is the smallest team possible where I know everybody's work quality. I just trust them.

and their work quality and I allow them to be autonomous. We talk about what's going to happen. They go off and do their thing. I check in every now and again or they give me an update and I give them feedback. Like I don't want to manage anybody that is not one of those people. I never want to do that again. Yes. ⁓

Dagobert (36:33)
So agentic people with high agency and who don't

need to be managed. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Wow.

Chad Sakonchick (36:42)
And so

as soon as you, like a perfect example, I think the perfect poster child in 10 years is gonna be studied Elon going into Twitter and everybody saying he was gonna crater.

and then firing like 90 % of the staff there. I remember, I knew people that worked at Twitter and I was an investor at Twitter and my buddy who's a hedge fund guy, we both were invested in Twitter, we knew the same people and they were always talking on their Twitter feed about like, we got these new drinks in the office and like they're just talking about how their lives and how great it is to work at Twitter. I'm like, but when is the work happening?

They had all these people and nobody was doing anything and I had like, I thought it was going to grow and then I'm watching all these people do nothing all day and so I'm getting pissed off because I'm like, you're making my stock dwindle because you're not doing any work. like, know, whatever you feel about Elon, positive or negative, you can't deny that he's an astute businessman.

Dagobert (37:22)
And I remember the drama, you know, yeah.

sure, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (37:43)
And he

has started or gone in and cleaned up companies that were like being mal-managed. And ⁓ Twitter is a perfect example of a company that was so bloated. And I think about having nine people and having to manage nine people, I can't imagine if that was five times that or 10 times that.

Like, I would be doing nothing but like keeping up with those people. And then the solution to that is having a HR person or having a manager. But then it's again the telephone. As soon as you separate what's in your brain into another person, does that person have the exact same thoughts and desires that you do?

Dagobert (38:15)
The only solution is to...

Yeah, yeah, no, Yeah,

yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (38:30)
They

are like the knowledge and the skill set and whatever. like every person you add to your organization, I think over three or five is a net negative. I think any company can be three or five people. Now, I'm talking about in our realm. I'm talking about our realm.

Dagobert (38:48)
It depends on the company. Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (38:51)
You know, you can't be an open AI or an Amazon or something with that many people. But I think even big companies in the next 10 years can be 50 % of their size and be more productive. So my desire is to have a portfolio of businesses with different people that I trust incessantly, that have an agency, that we do something very specific and...

Dagobert (38:55)
for sure.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (39:16)
We make money or we don't make money, but the goal is profit. And then I just have a handful of businesses that I'm passionate about the area or the niche. And I've got a product in that space.

Dagobert (39:20)
Okay.

So you still are running better legal system, making you money, you still driving that. And I remember already three years ago, I think you got into no code because I'm just like, you I remember one of the frustrations you had is you didn't know how to build or maybe you did, but it was too time consuming. I forgot. And so you always had to hire developers.

And the problem is it's expensive and time consuming and everything. And when no code happened, because you're like very high agency guy, you got into no code. You became like probably the biggest, I mean, the best at no code person that I know. Like you can build base. mean, you were like, there were like super advanced with that. And now you, with AI, you got into vibe coding a lot.

And so I just want to know about that journey, because I totally hear the frustration with Better Legal. You grew it, but also there's a lot of frustration with it, which I totally get. And then you started escaping this with more agency, no code, with building your own shit again, separated from all that mess. And that was a few years ago. So what's happening, what happened, and what's happening now? Where was your journey there?

Chad Sakonchick (40:39)
Yeah,

so I got pretty deep into Bubble. ⁓ I still like Bubble a lot, I think, unfortunately, think Bubble is in a bad situation because I think they're moving pretty slowly and I don't think they understand. I've like totally flipped. I was like 100 % gung ho on Bubble and I'm like, ⁓ Bubble is no-go building tool and we use it for better legal and it's great.

Dagobert (41:01)
So Babel is a no code building tool.

Chad Sakonchick (41:08)
The problem is...

Dagobert (41:08)
Yeah and just for the anecdote,

you rebuilt Better Legal entirely.

Chad Sakonchick (41:12)
Yeah, Better Legal

was fully on code and then we rebuilt Better Legal on Bubble. ⁓

Dagobert (41:17)
So

your whole business was built on NoCo, then you had 10 times more speed because you didn't have to pass through a developer to make changes. So that's crazy move right there. One million with that much revenue, that was awesome.

Chad Sakonchick (41:25)
Right, so we basically

rebuilt like five years of custom code in like three months on Bubble.

⁓ And it was it was awesome But part of that part of that speed is because we knew what we were building like we had a working product And we just it was like it was like copy paste and so like if you know The difference is if you know what you're building

Dagobert (41:46)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (41:54)
you can do it fast and you can probably build it, rebuild in code fast because like, you know what it's supposed to look like and what it's supposed to work like. And so that was a very fast transition. The problem is like, the speed is pretty slow. The performance is slow. like, they charge on workload units, but like they don't tell you what a workload unit is. And so,

Dagobert (41:58)
Yeah, yeah.

You mean the performance of the site?

Chad Sakonchick (42:20)
And so with VibeCoding, I started playing with all the VibeCoding tools. I played with Cursor, I played with Lovable, I played with Bolt, I played with V0, the Dreamflow, which is like Flutterflow's deal. Like I've dipped my toe in all of them. Lovable is currently the winner. I use Lovable and V0. And I'm about to start using Cursor again, because I think V0 kind of caps out at some point. But...

Dagobert (42:44)
Yeah.

But what was it like for you, you know, to go through that? Not technically, but like, I imagine it must have been quite empowering and liberating after what you've been through.

Chad Sakonchick (42:55)
Yeah, so with

bubble so with bubble actually I I was rebuilding it by myself and I was like wow I can do this myself, but then I had someone reach out to me on Twitter just like Cold DM me and say like hey, I see you're building something like I'm actually a pro bubble developer. I can help you

And so I just gave him a chance, which is great, as I could just spin up a new thing. I just gave him the Figma file and I was like, build this. And he built it in like a minute. Like it was amazing. So he became my main Bubble developer. I never even, even after being Pro Bubble, like I never built in Bubble. What I loved about Bubble was that he could build like most of it and I could go in and I could see the black box. The black box was now open. Even if you are, even if you're an amazing developer, the second you hand off the code to someone else to build,

Dagobert (43:36)
Yeah, and you could change it.

Chad Sakonchick (43:45)
You then don't know what's going on. Are you going to sift through all the code to understand it? Like the visual part of Bubble where it's like I can see the workload units, I can see the database easily, I can see the workflows and how everything works, I can see the page and I can make edits. Like there was so much time with my old ⁓ front-end developers where like

Dagobert (43:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (44:09)
it took forever to build something because you kind of know what it should look like, but you kind of do it and you need that fast feedback loop of like, let me try that color. no, let's do this, let's do that. And so once you're having to just essentially look over someone's shoulder and say, well, let's see what the 10 pixels, let's see what the 20 pixels, let's move this, I want this like this. Doing that is like a huge time suck.

Dagobert (44:33)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (44:33)
And so it

doesn't work that well. But even when you have Figma files and you build something, you're not using it. You don't get that interactivity. You're kind of like, wow, that looks pretty. But then as soon as it gets developed, you're like, well, that doesn't feel right. So you need that usage. And what is amazing about vibe coding is you can iterate.

Dagobert (44:50)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (44:58)
So fast so like I can say this is what I want this thing to be and then it creates this thing and I'm like No, that's not what I wanted But you can tell it You get clarity immediately and you can touch it you can feel it and you say that's not right And this is why it's not right. So so my we were custom code. We went to bubble

Dagobert (45:08)
It helps you get clarity.

Chad Sakonchick (45:21)
I build all my new projects on v0, cursor, or lovable, depending on what it is. In my workflow...

Dagobert (45:28)
And so you have,

do you build them 100 % yourself now?

Chad Sakonchick (45:32)
No, still have a couple of developers. I have one developer, one bubble developer that I work on a couple of projects with, and then I've got like a backend developer that I work on a couple of projects with. ⁓ And I'm kind of just like focusing on these two individuals and like building stuff with them. So it's me and like one other person usually. But like with my backend developer, he builds amazing backend code. But now because I can do the front end,

Like we don't have to hire a third person. So I can build a front end and I can spend like a week straight just going completely cracked out on the front end and then deliver him this thing and then go work on something else. But I can like build an, I built an entire like zappier chat base, browser base, front end in a week.

Dagobert (46:28)
⁓

Chad Sakonchick (46:30)
So like that's what this one product.

Dagobert (46:30)
And so when you say frontend, you mean like, it's not just like the Figma file, it's going to be like how things interact, how things are related to each other, but maybe not...

Chad Sakonchick (46:41)
⁓

It's a full-blown usable app that doesn't have a database. Connecting to database. So like, there's a bunch of React files, know, ShadCN, all that stuff. And I just give him, it's all on a GitHub repo, and I just give him access to GitHub repo. And he's got all this backend code that's on like, you know, AWS, Lambda, all this other stuff.

Dagobert (46:45)
So what's left to do? So what's left to do?

Okay, and like...

Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (47:06)
And stuff

that has been working that just didn't have an interface. Like we've been interacting with it via APIs, right? And so now we're building it to have an interface. And so I put together the interface. Now we're just working. This is called the masonry.

Dagobert (47:10)
Okay.

Which project is that?

yeah, you told me that, it's been two years going on, right? Or one year?

Chad Sakonchick (47:24)
I think it's been multiple years, but it's it's It's always powered a lot of different pieces of better legal so like ⁓ things that bubble can't do ⁓ Like the brow like the browser engine that runs ⁓ The stuff most people have built like scrapers but nobody's built like a really good just like Internet agent like a browsable agent

Dagobert (47:37)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (47:54)
⁓ Think chat GPT operator, but like with a specific goal. So like it's a browser and we just like say, here's, it's a Wisconsin LLC. Here are all the steps to do a Wisconsin LLC. Here's all the information from our customer. It pops open a browser. You can watch it live and you can watch it fill in the blanks. ⁓

Dagobert (47:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (48:19)
And

if it messes up, can take over for it. So that's like one part of three. So it's kind of like we've got browse, flow, and agents. Browse is like a browser chat GPT operator situation. ⁓ Flow is like basically just zaps. Like it's little buckets of code that are attached to an API and an API key.

And then agents is basically just like. ⁓

tool, like an AI that has a specific task that has knowledge and access to the other two tools. So it can call flows and it can call browse. So they all kind of like work together. What's that?

Dagobert (49:05)
Yeah, okay. Okay. And that's your main thing? That's your main thing

now? That's the main thing now you're doing?

Chad Sakonchick (49:12)
No,

so I've got Better Legal, I've got The Masonry, I've got Coms HQ, I've got Fin Journals, I've got I Am The Wanderer.

Dagobert (49:27)
and you're active on all these?

Chad Sakonchick (49:29)
Yeah. So like yesterday I was, so like I am the wanderer. Like I'll just show you like what this thing is. ⁓ And this is basically a...

Dagobert (49:31)
Awesome.

Yes, show me, show me.

Chad Sakonchick (49:46)
This basically...

Dagobert (49:49)
yeah, you show me that. Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (49:50)
my

own personal use, but I'm just opening it up to everybody. So basically you can just like upload a photo and then it uses ChatGBT's image API to convert it into like, you know, one of like six different ⁓ filters. ⁓ But then I've hooked it up to Printful's API and you can actually... ⁓

you can actually get a picture back. So I'm waiting for like a picture. But so the idea is that you can.

you can like take a vacation photo, upload it, make it look cool, and then like get a mug or a tote bag or a painting or stuff like that. And the reason that I built that was just because my wife and I collect coffee mugs when we go on trips. And so when we have our morning coffee, like, we get some reminisce over like these trips. And it just became such a chore to like get a...

Dagobert (50:41)
Yeah, I love it too.

Chad Sakonchick (50:50)
a mug and then bring it back because you found a mug but you didn't really like it, then you had to bring it back.

Dagobert (50:56)
When you talk about it this

way, it sounds more interesting. I'm just roasting you a little bit. It sounds more, you know, it's not just like I'm gonna generate an image online. I'm like, okay. But when you have a story about, you know, we collect coffee mugs with my wife and I have this coffee mug, that sounds like now I want a coffee mug. You know what I mean?

Chad Sakonchick (51:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so like let me, I'm gonna send you this to you on Telegram. This is like a, ⁓ I went on a, I needed to test it out, so I like just sent my dad a painting of himself snowboarding.

⁓ and so this is the, I'm telegramming it to you.

Dagobert (51:40)
Can you like show it to the camera real quick maybe?

Yeah, but can you show it to the camera?

Chad Sakonchick (51:47)
Oh yeah. So like, this is just a picture I took of him like going down a, just a little run. My dad's a 75 year old snowboarder. And, and so I basically just use like our travel photo filter. And then I, it's just on a 12 by 12 inch painting. And so it's just a little, you know, just a little piece of art. So now we can like,

Dagobert (51:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (52:16)
So now we can decorate the house and stuff. Here's the big thing. This is kind of my, this is my like two things. I wanted mugs, but I knew that they were made in China anyway.

and I couldn't find what I wanted, but I had like a plethora of these images in my phone. But like how many times you've been on a trip and you took a picture of something that you're like, this is amazing. Like you're surrounded and you're inspired by it, you take a picture of it and it just doesn't look cool on your phone.

Dagobert (52:36)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (52:48)
And when you show someone the photo, they're like, cool. But it doesn't translate into being cool and having the same experience. But once you put a filter on it, once you convert it into an illustration or one of these, I'm always trying to make these, like an impressionist painting or a thick sculptural painting or a line drawn thing. Once you convert it to one of those, it recaptures this really interesting.

Dagobert (53:06)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (53:17)
And like the AI is able to extract the coolness out of it and repackage it into this artwork. And so ⁓ now I can make my own mugs. And I was like, but if I'm just gonna make, I'm not gonna build this whole thing just so I can order mugs. So I hooked it up to Stripe and so you can buy this stuff now. ⁓ And I'm just adding to it as I have time. If I don't have anything to do, I wake up and I'm like, I don't really have anything to do this week. There's nothing urgent pressing, I don't have anything on my task list. I'll just mess with it.

And I just add to it a little bit as I go. like, I want this thing. But the ultimate goal for that project is maybe I can just make some money, but I don't have to manage it. The website is working. Stripe handles the payments. ⁓ Chat GPT image handles the conversion to the image. And then Printful handles the sending of the. ⁓

Dagobert (54:11)
Dispatch, yeah yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (54:13)
of the product and the returns. And then all I would really need is like a, I think like a chat bot, an AI chat bot to like handle people with issues. But like the end goal of this is.

Dagobert (54:18)
support. Yeah, I used use Printful

in the past and they don't do some support you have to do yourself still. So

Chad Sakonchick (54:29)
Yeah,

no, I'm gonna have to do that and I'm fully aware and it's fine. But ultimately what I wanna do is any of the money I make on it, I'm gonna pull the EXIF data from it so I know where these pictures were taken and I'm gonna create little buckets of money so if a bunch of people take a lot of pictures in France, I can then go to France and hire a local artist to make a unique piece of art.

Dagobert (54:43)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (54:57)
And so the idea is to use AI image to art to fund human artists in the region. So instead of me buying a Chinese mug from France on trip, I now am putting money into an artist in a local region instead. And so that's kind of how I want that to be. That's kind of the idea.

Dagobert (55:07)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That sounds beautiful,

I'm just wondering how the fuck do you get people to buy that? How do you...

Chad Sakonchick (55:26)
I've got

some ideas, but I don't want to talk about that too much. ⁓ But like, yeah, so I've just got all these different things. And it's basically, whenever I run into a problem, like the masonry, the masonry flow API thing, that stemmed from, I was a heavy user of Zapier. We had 167 better legal Zaps that did all kinds of different stuff, right? ⁓

Dagobert (55:40)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (55:54)
But there was like this one thing that I, this one piece of code that I needed to use like in a lot of different zaps. And a great example is like just a text conversion. So like Texas to TX, Vermont to VT or VT to Vermont, TX to Texas. Like the two letter code, you state code to like the full.

Dagobert (56:13)
yeah, okay, wasn't, okay, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (56:15)
Because when we have to fill in the form, some states want the full name, some states want the two-letter code, and so you have to be kind of flexible, like, what you're going to provide them. And so it's just a stupid Python dictionary of all 50 states and their equivalent of the two-letter code. But I needed that in a lot of different zaps, but there was no ability to create a code step that became global.

So I couldn't say like, here's a code step and I want to put it in my global library in this account. And so we built flow to be that. And so like you can basically copy a Python script, put it into list code block, and then that code block has ⁓ its own API URL and a key. And so I can call it from Zapier, I can call it from Make, I can call it from Bubble. ⁓ And so that became just a really useful tool on its own.

Dagobert (57:02)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (57:15)
⁓ And we're just building it out and so we use it very heavily in better legal like it it runs a lot of stuff in better legal and I'm just I'm trying to get to the book We just never had a good interface, but now with vibe coding I was able to build an interface and so we're gonna we're just now starting to kind of like put the interface on it will probably launch in the next couple of months to like other people to use

Dagobert (57:40)
How do you find customers?

Chad Sakonchick (57:44)
I don't really have a ton of customers. So I'm going to really rely on.

Are you talking about for better legal or are you talking about just in general?

Dagobert (57:58)
in general.

Better legally to have Google Ads, right?

Chad Sakonchick (58:04)
Google Ads, yeah, mostly Google Ads. ⁓

I really, ⁓ a lot of people that I get to use this stuff is like Twitter, like I search on Twitter. The tools really aren't there yet for like mass exposure, but like once they are, I'll put more effort into it. ⁓ in automation, that piece. Yeah, and the people that use, the people that use my stuff right now are people that like I know personally.

Dagobert (58:23)
Yeah.

Okay, so it's like a lot of tinkering, experimenting, validating, building with users.

Chad Sakonchick (58:38)
they have a specific need and I've like in conversations, I'm like, hey, I've got something for that. And I use it. like, it's not scalable yet, but I also don't feel like I've got enough customers to like make sure I've got all the edge cases covered. And I don't, luckily I've got better legal to pay my bills. So like, I don't need these other things to take off and be like making tons of money. I need them to be painless for me.

Dagobert (58:42)
Yeah, okay. Okay.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (59:05)
So, like, everything that I create needs to essentially be self-sufficient. And that's why one of my products is like an AI agent that is like customer support. ⁓ Because, like, with Better Legal, we have this situation where we have... When people ask a couple of buckets of questions, it's either a question that's been asked and answered 1,000 times that an AI agent can handle.

Dagobert (59:29)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (59:32)
every day, all day long, 24-7. We have something that is a very niche question. In the state of Wisconsin, we have this very specific thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. My people, even if I hire the best people in the world, are not gonna have the knowledge of every state and every little thing.

Dagobert (59:49)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (59:52)
But I can download all of the corporate code of every state, the legislation code of every state, the actual laws, rules, and regulations attached to an AI, and it can answer questions better than any lawyer or state agent person that is intimate with it, because all it is doing is taking the real stuff and regurgitating it. So that's bucket number two.

Bucket number three is like people that need like specific help, like very unique things. That's where humans are going to do the work. But like right now my humans are having to answer the other two buckets and they're spending so much time on these buckets that they can't do any of them really well. So if I can take these two buckets away from them on email, chat, and voice and have AI agents handle that,

Dagobert (1:00:24)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:00:46)
those two buckets are going to get better quality answers and none of my people are going have to worry about it. The rest of the questions my people can answer and help with and use AI as a crutch for things that they need help with.

Dagobert (1:00:59)
Okay, so this product

was built from a need you had in BetterLego.

Chad Sakonchick (1:01:03)
Every

single product that I work on is from a need that I have that was not fulfilled by another business. And that's just always how I've done it. So like, it's not that I have a plethora of ideas. I just have a healthy like curiosity in when I use stuff and I need stuff. I'm like, why don't they do this? And a lot of people think, well shucks, they don't do it. Maybe I can get them to do it. And I think...

this isn't really that hard, how can I build this and then make money on it?

Dagobert (1:01:39)
And so what's next? do you... Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah. That's the best thing. That's why I want to build a Slack alternative. But anyway... ⁓

Chad Sakonchick (1:01:40)
How can I scratch my own itch and also make money on it?

I noticed on Twitter you're already putting that idea out there.

Dagobert (1:01:56)
Kind of, I actually, I finally committed to launch day 100 % and then I'm like, shit, this slack idea, it keeps coming back for six months. But anyway.

Chad Sakonchick (1:02:06)
My recommendation

for you is to pick something. I would use Discord, we use Discord. Use Discord and by using it, you will find the holes.

Dagobert (1:02:19)
I hate it, I hate it too much, can't. I mean I say that I might actually use it temporarily for launch day people because I want to make a community of everybody who's done a launch day. Because somebody asked me that. ⁓ Yeah, but anyway, yeah, I'm not sure yet. But I was wondering, like, how do you see yourself? It seems bullshit, but like I'm actually curious.

How do you see yourself in five years? Are you still in better legal?

Chad Sakonchick (1:02:53)
So in a perfect world, ⁓ I would like to own better legal moving forward. think I can help a lot of entrepreneurs ⁓ that I think the other, I think my competitors are not going to do. ⁓

Dagobert (1:03:02)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:03:11)
They're like all of my competitors are run by.

an army of people that are just, you know, punching the clock every day. Like nobody has real passion for entrepreneurs. Obviously there are people within the company that probably feel that way, but the bureaucracy and the red tape and stuff, those people are not getting their ideas through. So like, I think there's a lot of stuff that can be done to help entrepreneurs. And I feel like even though I've been at this for 10 years, I still have another five years of building stuff. I think we're getting to the point where at the end of this year we'll have a really solid product and I'll be able to...

Dagobert (1:03:29)
Yeah.

How could you own it though?

How could you own it? How could you own it though? You said you would like to own ⁓ Battle Legal. How could you get there?

Chad Sakonchick (1:03:46)
What's that?

What do mean?

No, no, no, no, no. I already own 35%. And if it's kicking off profit that's dividend-based, my investors are going to be totally fine with that. ⁓ So if we can turn this into a cash cow, it's weird. It's got to fit into this. It can't be too successful because I'm the one to sell it. And it can't.

Dagobert (1:04:01)
Yeah. Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:04:19)
not make any money. It's got to fit in this realm in between where like everybody's happy. Because like if I make too much money, then they're going to want to ⁓ get investors to like go to the next step, but there's no next step. It's like it is what it is, you know. And so like

Dagobert (1:04:25)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:04:41)
My goal is to just try to make everybody that is involved in Better Legal over the next five years extremely happy. And that is like the investors get their money back and like recurring dividends, the people that work for Better Legal. I've created like tools and systems that like make their jobs easy and pleasurable and where they can like make more money and take more time off. But they're still there. They're like the mechanics of the business. Like they're not having to like answer questions and do this filing and do this stuff and like jittery. It's like they show up.

Dagobert (1:05:05)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:05:12)
and they're like looking at a control panel that is like, there's an error and they can like go and handle it, you know? ⁓ But then all my customers are getting the best access to, ⁓ you know.

Dagobert (1:05:16)
Yeah, I see.

Chad Sakonchick (1:05:30)
all the best information, best education, ⁓ someone that handles their filings and state compliance and all of their changes in their business have, all that stuff, they just trust us and it just works. They're just super happy with the product. That's where I want to see better.

Dagobert (1:05:46)
Yeah, Okay. So you want to keep...

What's interesting, I think, is like, it feels like, you know, lots of people, have a job and then they build on the side. It feels like Better Legal is a job where you have ownership. And it's not just a job, it's way better, it's yours. It's just like there's a lot of also drawbacks, but it's still good, mostly. And then on the side, you're building like this five or six projects or more.

Chad Sakonchick (1:06:15)
Yeah.

Dagobert (1:06:15)
So in five years, what does it look like? So you're still working on Better Legal because it's still your baby and you still love it and it has a mission and it's awesome. And what does the other side look like?

Chad Sakonchick (1:06:29)
So lot of the other projects that I'm building are things that I need for Better Legal. So like, there are things that I have not, that have failed in other aspects where we built a different product in a different organization, but it fulfills that need better for cheaper and better. Like that's like kind of my internal, like ethical.

Dagobert (1:06:35)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:06:54)
you know, thing with myself is like, if I'm going to replace a piece of software that is like embedded in Better Legal and we're gonna put something that I built into it, it's gotta be like cheaper and just as good or better and the same price. And even better if it's better and cheaper.

Dagobert (1:07:12)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:07:18)
And so I think we've got some things that we're doing that meet those goals that I'm really happy with, that I'm about ready. Once they've kind of matured through usage, then I can open it up to other people. Yeah.

Dagobert (1:07:29)
because they maybe reach a level of feature parity with existing tools you're

competing with.

Chad Sakonchick (1:07:36)
Yeah, yeah. So ⁓ then I can open up to other people. But the other benefit is that I can always expose these tools to my better legal customer base. like, if I have a, like, Columns HQ, I want to be kind of be ⁓ like a website builder, SEO automation tool, ⁓ chat, and like customer marketing thing. ⁓ That...

Dagobert (1:07:48)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (1:08:06)
can be sold to nearly every Better Legal customer. And then Better Legal will get like 20 % as a referral. So like everybody wins. Like I get to build something unique. I get to offer it to my customers, which I personally think is better than what everybody else provides for a better price because I don't have VC, I don't have...

Dagobert (1:08:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:08:27)
⁓ offices, I don't have like 500 people I've got to pay. It's something that I've like built that is like crafted tool that I think is better and works better and is also cheaper but then Better Legal also gets the benefit of like allowing me to sell into the customer base. ⁓

Dagobert (1:08:31)
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:08:47)
So yeah, so I'd like to create this ecosystem of tools that are all separate. So like at any point in time, if one takes off and is doing really well and I can't handle it anymore and I maybe want to sell it to somebody else because they'll be able to take it to the next level. They'll be able to provide better, its next evolution of life. Then I can do that. I don't have to like meddle with everything being interconnected. Like they all have their own, they're all their own separate businesses. They can all help each other out.

Dagobert (1:09:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, I see, okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:09:17)
⁓ But they're all like modular where I can remove them or add new ones as I want.

Dagobert (1:09:17)
Mm-hmm.

Okay. And so.

Chad Sakonchick (1:09:27)
So I

really just want to have a portfolio of businesses that make money that are profitable, that build products that everybody's happy with. ⁓

Dagobert (1:09:39)
It seems like you like to optimize processes and build things to make life easier. Like you do that for yourself and your team. That's like the whole thing is that. Like how to make it less tedious, like have more agency, more autonomy, more agency. That's the whole vibe of everything. That's the direction of everything. Automate a lot. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:09:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

how to do more with less.

Yeah.

So one of the tools we're working on right now is called Capture Suite. It's a Loom competitor. And I built it because of my frustration with Loom. It was like, Loom is great. Loom is awesome. I still use Loom every day. It hasn't gotten to the point where I use Capture Suite ⁓ on the daily. And that's how I know it's not ready. Unless I'm using it every day and I'm using it over the existing one, then it's not ready yet.

Dagobert (1:10:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Chad Sakonchick (1:10:34)
but we're still working on it in the background. And what this tool does is, like when we were creating automation bots to file LLCs, the workflow is like, you have to develop a Selenium YAML file. We have a Chrome extension that is a better legal Chrome extension where you can actually like drag and drop.

So you can like go through the process manually and it will build a YAML file and then you can install that into the masonry engine. So, but the problem was even going through this process is like really, really cumbersome.

Dagobert (1:10:56)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Chad Sakonchick (1:11:13)
⁓ And it's very specific only to Better Legal. So what we ended up doing was we would film a loom of someone like going through it and then we'd have to hire someone that is like a little bit more technical to like convert that video into Selenium code and test it ⁓ to get the YAML file to then upload to the masonry. So now what we're doing is Capture Suite is basically ⁓

Dagobert (1:11:24)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:11:39)
Like what Loom doesn't have is like the navigation. Like where am I clicking? What's the XPath of what I'm clicking in? So Capture Suite does transcription, screenshots on every click, and captures what I call the navigation log, which is basically the transcript before what you're doing on the website. So like when you hit record, it's like what website am I on? What's the URL of the website I'm on? Okay, what XPath did they click? What website did that take them to? Where do they click? Where do they click? And then on every click,

Dagobert (1:11:45)
Yeah

Chad Sakonchick (1:12:09)
it has a picture, a screenshot taken. So then you can take the transcript, navigation log, and the screenshots as a zip file, upload them to ChatGPT, and say, build me a Selenium file. So it builds you a Selenium file, and then someone can go in and tweak it, and it just speeds up that process. But Loom doesn't allow me to get the navigation information. So we had to build that. But what's interesting is that that is something that

Dagobert (1:12:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, that's not, and that's not there. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:12:38)
isn't specific to me, anybody has that process where it's like, ⁓ I've got to go to this website, I've got to click here, I've got to click here, I've got to enter this information in, click, click, click, and then it's done. But then they've got to go do that every time. And nobody is building a tool that I know of that is easy to just like create that automation very quickly. So like what we're trying to get to in the long term is like, I can like record the video on Capture Suite.

Dagobert (1:12:58)
You know, I'm just wondering.

Chad Sakonchick (1:13:05)
And then that exported video and all that metadata that goes with it, the files, can be ⁓ run through the masonries like AI. And it takes the video, the screenshots, the transcription, and the navigation logs and...

Dagobert (1:13:19)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (1:13:23)
runs through what is going on and then if it gets stuck it can like say okay well where am I going wrong and it can revisit the video information and and hopefully heal itself and build its own so so we don't have humans building the automations anymore it just requires a human recording the video

Dagobert (1:13:32)
Yeah.

How? It's interesting because throughout this whole conversation, feel like every time you're going into a product, every time we talk about something, you end up talking for about a product. And it seemed like you, I feel like you're like an inventor or something. Like you're just like fascinated with ideas and like, oh, we could do this, we could do that. And every time it is just like, it goes and you know.

Chad Sakonchick (1:14:03)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dagobert (1:14:13)
And I'm just trying to figure out like, wow, you have so much energy for that, man. And I'm like, I'm just trying to think what would be the ideal situation for you, like ideal position for you to be in, you know? Yeah? Yeah, you feel like?

Chad Sakonchick (1:14:29)
I'm in it.

I'm doing it. I'm in my ideal position. And like for me, it's

just having more power. And what I mean by power is like, like I still have to kind of kowtow to the Better Legal Board a lot ⁓ because Better Legal pays my bills. ⁓ Now, once some of these other things start making enough money, then I don't need to work on Better Legal, but I'm trying to make it work.

Dagobert (1:14:55)
But will they? Will they?

I'm not challenging the ideas or the products. They seem good.

Like.

maybe also because of you have better legal, you can stay in that building and doing new things. like, you for me, my problem was I wasn't shipping you. It's not your problem. You're shipping like a shit ton of things. It's not a problem. It's just like, so far you still have only better legal making you money. And I'm just thinking, will you?

Chad Sakonchick (1:15:15)
Yeah. Right.

Dagobert (1:15:35)
Because it makes sense, know, again, it's not about the products or the ideas you have, everything seems good. It's just I'm like thinking.

Do you switch projects a lot? Because it's not a problem, but I'm like, do you have in mind already which project will be ready first? Which one of these will be like, in one year, could you have one that's like, okay, marketing and everything?

Chad Sakonchick (1:16:03)
Yeah, ⁓

Yes, but that changes.

Dagobert (1:16:11)
Okay, why does that change?

Chad Sakonchick (1:16:12)
like

Cause I'll go, I'll go deep into one thing. Cause a lot of, a lot of this building and for me, because I've got this steady income, I don't have the crunch, the time crunch that like you have right now. Once you've got launch day going or whatever, know, hopefully launch day works, but if it doesn't, you know, eventually something will. Cause like I had, had umpteenth startups prior to Better Legal.

Dagobert (1:16:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:16:50)
like for the last 20 years, better legal is the one that made me money. ⁓

I can incubate all of these and just like a VC invests in money in like 20 ideas with like one or two doing really well and then maybe a handful do.

Dagobert (1:17:10)
No, I get it, but none

of these ideas for now are ready. And so I'm just challenging that. And it's interesting what you said about launch day, because for me, it's only when I really, really started running out of money that I started being like, okay. And I was always kind of ⁓ finding, because it's so cool to be, for me, it's not building, for me, it's the vision, the UX, imagining, but it's the kind of same.

Chad Sakonchick (1:17:14)
Right. Yeah, it's, it's,

Yeah.

Yeah, so

I think the question you're asking is like, am I going to start selling them?

Dagobert (1:17:42)
Yeah, but like it, you don't have to, but like I'm just trying to think, okay, because I imagine if tomorrow better legal disappears for some reason, or they file you or like, you know, because you don't have like what happens. That's just like, I'm trying to see, you know, these other projects.

Chad Sakonchick (1:17:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so.

⁓

Some of them are starting to make money.

Dagobert (1:18:08)
Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:18:09)
not enough to pay my bills, but it is enough to like start saving again. yeah. I'm not talking, it's one I haven't talked about yet, but, no, I don't. because it's something it's, it's, yeah, I don't want to talk about that one. no.

Dagobert (1:18:16)
wow, cool, which one makes money?

Okay, you can talk about it if you want.

Is this cyber security thing you told me about? You don't have to tell it.

Chad Sakonchick (1:18:36)
a couple of different things, a couple of different things, but it's because it's like, and these are making money more because like someone came to me and said like, I need this. And I was like, yeah, I can build it. And so I basically built a product for a specific need and then just put an LLC behind it. And so instead of selling them, instead of selling.

Dagobert (1:18:37)
Okay.

wow, okay. Okay.

and you're selling them as like subscription or like high ticket.

Chad Sakonchick (1:19:00)
Instead of selling them like hours like I'll charge you this amount of hours. It is my work I'm like, this is what I'll charge you monthly for this and they're like cool ⁓ So like those things are just Me building many products for like one customer but could become you know bigger ⁓ But like I don't want to talk about it because they're not like They're they're kind of one-offs. I guess a little bit. Anyway

Dagobert (1:19:17)
Mmm.

I see. I see ya.

Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:19:30)
They could grow, but I don't need them to. They just exist. Because my skill set, I've gotten into this area of my career and experience where I have the business acumen, and people know that because I've got a successful business. I've got the technical acumen.

Dagobert (1:19:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:19:51)
from having built stuff before. And even though I'm not like a coder in the weeds and stuff, like I understand code and understand how it works. I understand how databases work with all this stuff. Or how organization and how optimization works. ⁓

Dagobert (1:19:58)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (1:20:11)
I've got the marketing mind because I've been having to work at it every day for last 10 years. So I'm like having to figure out how to do these things. And now AI has like provided me the ability to like...

do all of this stuff instantly. So if I need a new landing page, I pop open chat GBT voice. I've got a, I just literally hold down there and she starts up and I say like, Hey, I want to, I want to make a landing page. and then I feed her all the information about the landing page, about, you know, the business and who the customers are. And I talked to her.

Dagobert (1:20:46)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, you can do all

that. Yeah, I get it.

Chad Sakonchick (1:20:55)
Yeah.

And then I've got like a, then I've got the content and I hand that off to my designer and I'm like, make this look pretty. Whereas previously I would have had to like tell my designer, like what I wanted. And then she would ask for like placeholder information and we'd go back and forth. And now I can just say like, here's all the information. And it took me 30 minutes to like put it together really quick. ⁓ with coding, like I needed a front end, like front end developers, you know, I don't, I don't want to talk negatively about people, but they're just like, they're so difficult to work with.

Dagobert (1:21:15)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:21:26)
And you're a perfect example of what I mean. The amount of front-end developers that I've worked with that are like, instead of building a new feature that we needed because customers were asking for it and we desperately needed it, and just refactored the code to optimize it for like fuck-all milliseconds, ⁓ or were like, should use this new framework, Next.js or blah, blah.

Dagobert (1:21:46)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:21:52)
and like

rebuild all the code like it was a constant battle with these people. And so now I don't need them. I can just be like v0, type type type type type and I've got it.

Dagobert (1:21:57)
Yeah, okay.

No, get all that, I get all that.

I get all that. I'm just like... They just seem to me to be a bit of a disconnect somewhere. Of like... Because you could make money with these products. know. Because you said yourself, you have the business acumen.

Chad Sakonchick (1:22:17)
Yeah.

But it would require

a lot of investment and time in the marketing. Like what nobody understands until you, and you're understanding this now because you've got people that are buying your thing is like the building of the product is this much of this much. Like there's accounting, there's marketing, there's support. So like I already have something working. So like any new thing that comes up,

Dagobert (1:22:34)
100%.

Chad Sakonchick (1:22:49)
I can't have it, like I enjoy my lifestyle. I can't have this new thing be a drag on my life. I want it to work. What's that?

Dagobert (1:22:58)
But why should

it like, okay, okay.

But like, imagine, BetterLego doesn't exist. ⁓ if you own 100 % of BetterLego, why couldn't you put these other projects in BetterLego? So the accounting, because you can pull the resources, so everything is done. Because this is annoying the first time, but once you have a business running and you have people, ⁓ they can do support for 10 products. It doesn't matter.

Chad Sakonchick (1:23:34)
Yeah, I hate that idea because every time I've used a product that is like really good at one thing, but then they want to be another thing, they suck at it. like, no, like here's a great example. Do you use Google Sheets? Okay, every time I open up a brand new Google Sheet, I have to spend like...

Dagobert (1:23:38)
wow, okay.

Okay, so you don't want that.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:23:59)
15 seconds closing windows because they're trying to sell me on using all these different things. I don't want to use them. I just want to use this spreadsheet, but they desperately want me to use Gemini and they won't shut up about it. And I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it unless it's seamless. And I've tried it before where it's like, can you do this thing with these cells? And it like bungles it. And I'm like, okay, I don't want it, but I can't turn you off. Every time I go into spreadsheet,

Dagobert (1:24:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:24:27)
You want me to like convert this into an air table and do this stuff. And it's like, I don't want to do it. I want you to do the thing.

Dagobert (1:24:31)
Okay, okay, So you want to keep, okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:24:36)
I believe everybody should focus on a business that they understand intensely and they develop something that is theirs. And I think that they're not gonna capture 100 % of market. They're gonna capture 100, 1000, 10,000 people that have that exact same need. And the more people that have those intense, passionate...

Dagobert (1:24:52)
Yeah, Focus.

Chad Sakonchick (1:25:02)
opinions and build those things allows all of us to have more optionality in these tool sets. And I just happen to have an interesting perspective because in building this better legal business over last 10 years, there have been cracks where it's like, need this. Now, I'm not going to go compete with Mercury Bank because Mercury Bank is amazing.

Dagobert (1:25:04)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Sakonchick (1:25:27)
I'm not gonna go compete with Stripe because even though I Stripe sucks in a lot of ways, they're amazing. I am cherry picking things that suck that I think are doing poorly.

Dagobert (1:25:36)
No, no, I get all that. I get

it. It just feels like...

Don't you feel some frustration that you're building all these cool things? Because what you said, when I hear you, it means you cannot grow them because you need to be focused 100 % on them. And right now you have better legal. So how do you solve that?

Chad Sakonchick (1:25:59)
No, no, no, no,

Yeah.

What I mean is, I understand that... ⁓ I have this understanding that there are parts of a business... Part of it is that I'm kind of trying to build, a business operating system, but, not under one product. It's like an amalgamation of individual products that, like, you want to use three out of seven of them, then that's fine.

Dagobert (1:26:19)
Okay.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:26:30)
If you wanna use all seven of them, great, but they can all work together. But like any business that I create, I can use these different module businesses to fill a need. And so even if I'm the only user, I'm happy because I have control over it.

Dagobert (1:26:47)
No, no, I get

it. It's just that it seems like you have one business, better legal, and then you have products that haven't become businesses, and that it doesn't seem like it's gonna become businesses soon. And that's a bit...

Chad Sakonchick (1:26:53)
Yep.

⁓ I think that's right. I think a lot of, because of the AI piece, a lot of things are moving a lot faster than they were. But there are things where we've like completely ripped things apart. And because I'm not happy with it, I'm not going to release it. if, even if it's on a third or fourth iteration, I'd rather start over and redo it.

Dagobert (1:27:03)
And maybe that's okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:27:28)
then like Productivity Suite is a great example. People can use Productivity Suite today, I'm not charging anybody, they can sign up for an account and they can use it today. Nobody knows about it. And I don't have it set up to where anybody can charge, where I can charge anybody. But like anybody can use it, I've got like 70 accounts on it, but I'm not charging anybody. Because I don't think the product is good enough to charge people yet. So I'm just not gonna do it.

Dagobert (1:27:51)
But you could

make one of these products good enough to charge, because you know how.

Chad Sakonchick (1:27:56)
Yeah, but I'd rather, like, also think, ⁓ I think, this is kind of, this is a struggle because like, sometimes it takes a long time to get it right. So like, I don't want to fumble with like,

I don't want to fumble with like the intermediate thing that I'm not positive is the right way to do it yet. And I don't want to do it to people if I think it's the wrong thing. So I'd rather use it internally until I'm like, this is it. Now, Capture Suite...

Dagobert (1:28:27)
Okay, yep.

Yeah. No, no, I get that.

Chad Sakonchick (1:28:41)
Capture Suite is a great example. Capture Suite is like ready to go. The only thing that is preventing us from launching it is that when you're done recording something, it then starts processing it. And it like, if you record a 10 minute video and I record a lot of 10, 15 minute videos, on Loom, once you're done, a Loom is ready to go immediately. You have the link.

Dagobert (1:29:05)
Yeah,

yeah, because it's streaming.

Chad Sakonchick (1:29:06)
With Capture

Suite, it starts processing and it might take three or five minutes. And that just slows me down. And so for me, was like, we need that one feature, one more feature, right? We need this feature in order for it to be good enough for me to use it daily and for other people to use it daily. And then it's ready to go.

Dagobert (1:29:16)
Okay, okay, okay. No.

You said something earlier. You said building a business, like building is just this and the whole business is that. ⁓ Which is true.

Chad Sakonchick (1:29:33)
Yeah.

Dagobert (1:29:37)
What happens if you launch Capture Suite? Do you then have to build a whole business? Will you have to do that? And is that like something that maybe you don't, it's not something you want?

Chad Sakonchick (1:29:44)
Yeah.

It's not that I don't want it. It's that I want to run it on autopilot. I understand the things that take time. so again, some of these businesses are things that handle that. One of the big things that I think is really important that we're going to have probably the next couple of months is the AI chatbot handling chat, email, and voice.

Dagobert (1:30:15)
No, no, okay.

no, no, no, no, no,

Chad Sakonchick (1:30:19)
Yeah.

Dagobert (1:30:24)
Do you want to start another business?

Chad Sakonchick (1:30:27)
Yeah, I want to start a lot of businesses. my point is, and I understand why you're confused, the point is... ⁓

I've already got like eight email accounts. I can't check every one of them all day, every day, right? I need automations to do the heavy lifting in order to manage multiple business.

Dagobert (1:30:43)
Yeah.

Okay,

I see. okay, let me know if I understand. You know how ⁓ demanding it is to run a business. You have, it's the case with BetterLego and you've automated as much as you could to make it less and delegated. And now, also because you have so many things you're building, you know that every time you launch one,

Chad Sakonchick (1:31:03)
Yes.

Dagobert (1:31:18)
and actually promote it and start a business, let's say, start the business side of things, then it will add more shit on your plate and then you will become more and more like, not, yeah. And that's super true. That's 100%, yeah, I'm already almost feeling this way with just launch day because I have to manage submissions and that's already fucking, so I have already to think of automation, so I totally get that.

Chad Sakonchick (1:31:25)
Yes. Yes.

stressed out. Overwhelmed and stressed out, no time.

Right. So

if you had two, three, five more businesses, you physically wouldn't be able to do that unless you have more So what other businesses do is they just hire more people. They raise money and then they hire people. What I'm trying to do is say, I don't want to hire people. I want the systems to work. And if I can figure that out, what's that? Systems, business, products, whatever you want to call them, yeah.

Dagobert (1:31:46)
Yeah, and so what you're doing...

But what you're doing... What you're doing... Yeah.

So you're still building these systems. So you're still building these systems. No, no, like, no,

no, you're still building these systems for yourself. It just happens that these systems are also these products, because you're building your own products for yourself. So you're building these systems and it's not so much that they're not ready for market is they're also not ready for you to be completely, okay, I launch and I know even if I have support, if I have, it's okay, because these systems are taking care of it.

Chad Sakonchick (1:32:12)
Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Correct.

Yes.

Dagobert (1:32:33)
That's okay. Now that makes sense. Now I get it. Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:32:33)
Yes. Yeah. and a lot of it, like I said, a lot of it, stems from like needs I had better legal and that like we couldn't scale beyond a certain level. Like if we if we doubled our if we doubled our volume tomorrow, I would be forced to hire more people. And I don't want to do that because I want to manage more people. So we need we need a few things to work. And some of them like

Dagobert (1:32:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:33:00)
Like I said, we're on the fourth or fifth iterations of things where it's like we've tried different things multiple times and we learn a little bit every single time.

Dagobert (1:33:10)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:33:10)
and

we're getting closer and closer and closer to getting the right stuff or the right methods and the right processes working. And once we have that working, not only by doing it in the way that I'm doing it, not only does it help me in Better Legal, not only does it help me manage these other businesses, every single Better Legal customer that also has to do this, I can feed them these different products and say like, hey, if you want to run a business,

Dagobert (1:33:18)
I see, I see.

Yeah, yeah, 100, no, I see.

Chad Sakonchick (1:33:40)
but like do you want to only focus on the parts of the business that you love? Then here are some tools that can help you. That's kind of what I'm trying to do.

Dagobert (1:33:43)
Yeah. It took me a while to get it, because

you have like a 10x vision, basically. You have a vision that's like so many pieces. It took me a while to get it. Now I really get it. It's really cool. ⁓

Chad Sakonchick (1:33:57)
Yeah, yeah. And you

know, I talk in tangents and I make sense in my brain, but as soon as comes out of here, it gets mangled, right? So

Dagobert (1:34:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I get it. I get it. Now

I understand the guiding star. It seems to me you want to be free of all the burden of managing a business, especially since you have a billion business ideas. So trying to first fix the way you can manage all these businesses with all these separate tools. And once you have that in a state that you can do things quickly without being ⁓ slowed down by all this, then you're going to be more ready to ship.

I mean to not ship because you ship, but like to ⁓ grow these because... ⁓

Chad Sakonchick (1:34:39)
Yeah, yeah. But my ultimate

goal, my dream is I desperately wanna see, like I hate corporations. Like I hate big companies that are bloated where people are just zombies in a company. I wanna see, like that's why I love the Indie hacker community is because I see all these people that like.

They like I look at launch day and even though I don't have enough time to like look at every individual thing I love the little trailer you made because I got to see like little like snapshots into people's like The thing that I was talking about with my coffee mug idea thing Everybody has that moment where they're like I need this thing. I want this thing I want this thing like I want I want so many more of those like I want everybody to have a business that is making money that they care about and they're like super passionate about

Dagobert (1:35:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:35:28)
Because the more of those, because it's also selfish, the more of those people that have their own businesses, the more optionality I have to use these different products. But also, these people can also be customers of mine. I can be customers of theirs.

Dagobert (1:35:40)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, it's just growing the pie

and for everyone and it's good. It's growing the ecosystem. It's really positive. Yeah, I see that. Okay.

Chad Sakonchick (1:35:51)
Like, I look at it as like going into a grocery store. If I went to a grocery store 100 years ago, I'd have like 100 products that I could get.

I go into a grocery store today and there's like 40,000 different things I can get. I can get fruits and vegetables from the other side of the world. I can have 50 different options of salad dressings. I can build this perfect thing that I want, whereas 100 years ago I didn't have that option because there weren't enough people providing these products. And so the more people we have providing those products, the more that they get to enjoy their lifestyles, the more that they get to make money. And I also like, as we talked about earlier,

Dagobert (1:36:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:36:31)
I've got a kid on the way. I don't want the first five years of having a kid being me, being stressed out, managing multiple businesses. I want to be able to like live those years. I don't need to be a billionaire. I have no desire to be a billionaire. I want to wake up in the morning whenever I wake up without alarm.

Dagobert (1:36:39)
drowned into management. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:36:51)
I wanna go to the gym, I wanna love my wife, I wanna love my kids, I wanna eat good food, I wanna read great books, I wanna listen to cool music, I wanna walk outside. Like, I wanna do all of these things and if I'm having to be a slave to my own company or companies, then I can't do any of those things. And so if I can figure, if I can solve that problem for myself and I can solve that problem for others, then rising tides rise all ships.

Dagobert (1:37:10)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a beautiful vision meant to end this. This is amazing. I'm glad we somehow got somewhere in the end. And I really like where we arrived. I have one last thing for you, which is just selfish. It's like, how would you recommend I manage people submitting their product to launch day? Because basically right now,

Chad Sakonchick (1:37:27)
I'm

Dagobert (1:37:45)
I did it quickly, people submit a form using uform, then I get an email, then if I approve it, then I basically set a lot of templates in Gmail, and I send them, okay, you're in, then you need to pay, then they pay, then once I check, they pay, I'm like, okay, you can schedule your interview. Once they schedule your interview, then I have basically lots of sequence like this, and I do everything manually for now. Of course, I know you can automate this, but I was just starting, so that's why I'm just gonna do it manually at first.

Chad Sakonchick (1:38:13)
That's the best way to

do it. Like start off manually, doing it all manually first, because you like feel that pain. as like if you just, if you would just hire, if you would just hire a consultant or someone to go do it or an agency or whatever, they tell you how to do it. But like you right now are figuring out the best way to do it in the order of operations. Yeah, and so the next step is like, I assume you just have a list of how this thing goes.

Dagobert (1:38:18)
Yeah, but then, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, but I already do. And so now what do I do?

Yeah, yeah, 100%. But how do I save time?

Yeah. But the problem is sometimes it can just go on the tangent. So that's the problem, you usually. So some guy can be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna... For example, some guy was scheduled for, I did this interview for launch day number two, it's published on my podcast, but he wasn't in launch day number two because two days before he said, oh, my product is not ready. Can you move me to launch day number three? You know.

Chad Sakonchick (1:38:43)
like do this, then this, then this, then this.

Yeah, so,

okay, I was actually thinking about this before we got on the call, because I was thinking about how you could make money. And the way that I figure is you should do like, if you can do 10 Indies and one or two sponsors a week, like you should try to get to the flywheel of doing it once a week.

Dagobert (1:39:22)
⁓ why? What do you think?

Chad Sakonchick (1:39:25)
Well, if you do it twice a week, you know, and you do like 10 people and one sponsor, you're only making like $3,000, which is okay. But like.

Dagobert (1:39:27)
No, once every two weeks you win.

I know, I know, yeah. No, it's just that the problem

is I want to keep it interesting. And I think I personally don't have the, I'm talking like as someone who would look at launch day, I don't have the bandwidth to look at this all the time. So I think it's cool. I was even thinking of doing just one per month because of that. And I want to

Chad Sakonchick (1:39:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, for now, yeah,

for now you should do one or two a month until you're comfortable. And, but you're also going to need to like, you're also going to need to like, ⁓

Dagobert (1:39:59)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Chad Sakonchick (1:40:08)
understand like what is going well and what's going poorly. Like what I've... You're gonna find these things randomly. what I've noticed that you've started posting on Twitter like, you know, the sales. Like get that information from them in your air table and like let people know how many sales are going because right now your big issue is like...

Dagobert (1:40:18)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:40:30)
is too pronged. Everything's always too pronged. Like, you've got to have a steady stream of new people coming in, and with the 110,000 followers you have, hopefully that is not as much of a problem for you. Like, hopefully you can do one or two a month and have like 10... Okay, okay, so that's a non-prong right now. Like, that might become a problem later, but right now this is like, put a pin in it. Now you've got to figure out, like, how do I spend less time on these people? And so...

Dagobert (1:40:44)
yeah, that's okay. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:41:00)
you came up with a really great kind of self-identification where it's like, scheduled this guy for launch day two, but he's not ready yet, so he wants to go on launch day three. So don't talk about which launch day this is for. It's agnostic. It's launch day number agnostic. So we are doing an interview about launch day, and it could be next week or it could be in three months, but like you're paid. And so what you do is you develop your little cycle where it's like, okay,

sign up, you vet them, you pay, they pay, you do the interview, you only, I like that you only do the interviews on Thursday, so you only got to worry about the interviews on Thursday, you can like knock them all out at once. But you should try to do, you should try to get like a ⁓ savings account of these ideas. And it's basically like anybody can be in any launch day until it's full. So it's like,

So launch day three is like these 10 people and this sponsor, but one person's coming out. You say to the group like, hey everybody, like you might be in launch day five or six or whatever, but we've got an opening. You might be on the queue.

Dagobert (1:42:09)
There's some other shit, there's some other shit, like for

example, I'm not putting competing products in the same launch day. And for example, there's one guy in this launch day that's doing analytics, and there's another guy who signed up and there's still room in this launch day, but he's also doing analytics, so I will not put him in the same launch day.

Chad Sakonchick (1:42:28)
Got it, got it. Yeah, think right now you just have to manage this manually, which will suck, but it's gonna create a better product. Because if you develop something for this right now, you still don't have enough data and enough experiences to really understand what your problems and where the gaps are. After doing this three, four, five times, that's when you'll have enough data to say, okay,

Dagobert (1:42:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's I'm doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:42:57)
I need to make this a little bit better and you make this a little... And it's really, again, it's never silver bullet. You're never going to set something up where it's like, it's working. It's like, you're going to chip away at it a little bit. It's going to be like, okay, this one thing is sucking up a lot of my time. So let's get that done and let's spend three days fixing that problem and then you've got that done. And then, okay, what's the next... It's like fixing a leaky boat.

Where are the biggest holes? Okay, let's tackle those first. And then as you go through and as you tackle these things one by one by one by one every week, work on a different problem, that is the biggest problem.

Dagobert (1:43:21)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:43:34)
Or if it's one thing that might take multiple weeks, know, what's the next tackle thing? You might have these big backlog things that might take a couple weeks or a couple months or whatever, but like just tackle the things that you can tackle and try to set yourself a goal with every week or every month. You've got like a little goal and a big goal, or a little goal every week and a big goal every month. And you're just tackling them one by one by one by one. And after a couple of months, you'll start to feel like, wow, this is easy. I've got nothing to do today.

Dagobert (1:43:40)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:44:02)
And then you can

Dagobert (1:44:02)
Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:44:03)
go tackle that next thing. ⁓ But yeah, think if you do like, by the end of the year, if you could get to like 10 or 15 indies a week, one or two sponsors a week, and you've got a healthy group of people coming in, and you can handle doing all those interviews.

Dagobert (1:44:05)
Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:44:27)
you know, on like one or two days a week, maybe it's like Tuesday and Thursday of every week, and you're just building this kitty, and then you can let people shuffle. Like, you know, maybe you can have an air table where like, it's like you're in this launch day, but if you can't do it for some reason on that day, or your product's not ready or whatever, you can just like offer it up. And just like someone at like a diner that's a waitress or a waiter at a diner, and they're like, hey, I can't show up because I'm sick.

Dagobert (1:44:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:44:53)
Someone's

like, hey, I'll cover you. None of these things are totally unique. You can always make an analogy about how something works and then it's OK, how do they do it, and then figure that out. But yeah, think you've got something here that's a great business that you've got to get this thing working. And if you can get to, like I said, 10 Indies, one or two sponsors a week, and then you've got that going and it's running on autopilot,

there will be an opportunity that just becomes apparent all of a sudden, where you'll be able to unlock a new feature or a new product or a side product or a new business that works together that you'll identify and be like, my God, I can work on this thing. And because I already have this...

this thing work, I need to do is plug it in and I can like double my money and it make the time less or whatever. And so like that's kind of all I do is go through that mindset. And sometimes it just takes a really long time. you know, people look at something like Shopify and they're like, wow, Shopify is a really big business. But like those guys started selling snowboards unsuccessfully.

Dagobert (1:45:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:46:05)
Like Shopify was an e-commerce store for snowboards, but they sucked at selling snowboards, so they just like refiddled with the code a little bit and said like, okay, we're gonna just like be a hosted e-commerce platform, but we built this e-commerce platform. And they existed for a very long time before they then became successful.

Amazon sold nothing but books for three whole years before they sold CDs and DVDs. So like you don't have to like invent stuff every week like Sam Altman is like put stuff out every single week like

Dagobert (1:46:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:46:51)
Really great things take time. Just like a great pasta sauce, it's gotta simmer and you've gotta let the flavor build up.

Dagobert (1:46:59)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Well, that was intense. ⁓ Thank you for being a part and sponsoring this launch day. So you're not paying, but you're not paying because you sponsored my previous podcast and I stopped doing this podcast before your last sponsorship went out. So, yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:47:18)
I paid for something different, yeah. But

that kind of brings us back to that thing where it's like, if I was taking money for all these different little products, I would have to fulfill that stuff. And if it's not ready, I paid for your last podcast. But it didn't work out. anyway. But yeah, no, really appreciate it. I'm really, really happy for you. And I think you've figured this out. And I think there's...

As long as you've got new people coming in and you can do this like twice a month, I think you're paying your bills and that's all you need for now. And then it's just like chipping things away and figuring out what is the next. I think like you said, a community is the next obvious thing. We're like buying into it, buying into launch day and being a launch day person gets you into the club where you can then talk with other founders. And that's like, it's a beautiful...

Dagobert (1:47:52)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:48:12)
Filter where it's like $99 is not a ton of money, but it's not an insignificant amount of money so it's just enough to like buy your entrance into this thing and The value that they get is that they get exposure Hopefully they get sales and now that they're a part of this community with all these other people But you have that product that is launched in order to get in

Dagobert (1:48:14)
Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

And I have to approve it also. Yeah. So there's some filtering. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Chad. ⁓ So yeah, I hope you have a good one. I hope, so we'll see exactly what deal you offer. We don't have to get into it. We'll have another video about the deal. But yeah, I hope launch day also brings you some sales because I think it could, you know, so yeah.

Chad Sakonchick (1:48:35)
and you have to approve it.

Yeah, thanks so much.

Yep.

Yeah, it'll

be interesting. We'll see. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm happy to just support others.

Dagobert (1:49:06)
guy now.

Awesome man, have a good one.

Chad Sakonchick (1:49:10)
I do. Thanks so much.