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Hide identifies fear of commitment when looking for a business problem to solve. The group talk about core emotional needs and what to do when your business isn't fulfilling them.
Show Notes
Hide identifies fear of commitment when looking for a business problem to solve. The group talk about core needs and what happens when your business isn't fulfilling them.
Links:
Links:
- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
- Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen
- Hide Shidara on Twitter
Other formats:
Schedule your own What's Stopping You session by DMing @cgenco or @shaisc on Twitter, or at whatsstoppingyou.fm
Creators & Guests
What is What's Stopping You??
Christian and Shai help founders tackle tough problems.
[00:00:00] Christian: Hello and welcome to What's Stopping You episode number two. Joining us is Hide Shidara. Hide, hello, you're an engineer. what's going on? what are you thinking about?
hey everyone. so let's see. I started this project last week, and I have these two blockers that I think, that I think are taking up a lot of energy to think about. So one I think is fear of commitment. And then the other one is, simply just time. the first one fear of commitment is because I've been doing a lot of side projects for a while, and I've shut down probably six, at least at this point.
and each one is pretty, like each one feels like a breakup, like every single time. And it does get easier in terms of process, but internally, like I think the emotions to manage are just. They're difficult. It's just difficult. And like this one, I'm confident about it. I was confident about the other ones too.
but yeah, I think I have some fear of commitment about just obsessing over this problem. Maybe it might not work out. So classic fear of commitment. and then the other one is just time is basically I'm just, I just have two jobs, right? I have my full-time job. I'm a software engineer at Collective Health.
and the other one is I'm just working on this side business, trying to get customers and it's just a lot of time and I don't have a structured routine. even though I am someone that likes routine, I just, something's blocking me from just quickly writing down on a piece of paper, like 10 minutes, just a routine.
[00:01:30] Hide: So I think those are the two things that I'd like to.
[00:01:34] Christian: I feel that the fear of commitment is related to a topic Shai and I were just talking about, that he was helping me with, this morning, so I can,
[00:01:41] Shai: I was about to say, Christian, are you ready to get a bit vulnerable because, yeah,
like we're bringing you into this one as well.
[00:01:46] Christian: For sure. I'll say a little bit about that actually, like that, the way that's manifested in my life is that,I think it's, I think it's a fear of, depending on something to succeed and then it's unsuccessful.
So I, can I've noticed myself constantly hedging those bets of I, I have a product right now called the Video Clipper that's set to launch in two weeks, and I find my mind just going all over the place of Ooh, but what about like this other project that I haven't touched in a while?
that could also be making money. Or Ooh, I could be ramping up, doing consulting work and that would be a way that I could be getting money. And I think. My deconstruction of that from the conversation Shai and I had was that is my fear of failure and trying to hedge against if I launch and nobody cares or nobody buys it or people buy it and then immediately ask for a refund, it'd be much safer for me to be in a position where that happens.
[00:02:30] Hide: But, oh, it's okay cuz I have this other thing that's this promising iron in the fire. does that resonate at all? does that feel like, That make, that makes me feel a lot better. Cuz you've been doing like, you already have a successful business and this is I think your second business, the video clipper. Yeah. So that makes me feel better that someone much farther along than me has like similar emotions. but let's see.
I think all of those things may happen with certain customers, right? some customers would just come in and just be like, okay, I wanna refund this isn't a good fit for me. some customers might just ignore, but then I think it's just about iterating over time. Am I like therapizing myself right now through you
[00:03:06] Christian: I, I think that's how therapy works, right?
[00:03:08] Shai: That's the game.do you wanna give us a little background on, on what the, like what it is you're working on? Just so we have context and then we can dig into the fears.
[00:03:17] Hide: Yeah. so I don't have, like started last week. I've had one user that I'm talking to and then a couple more, and I've just been doing outreach. But essentially the problem is,it's like the bootstrapper problems. Like the software is the easy part. What's the hard part is like finding the customers. So like the problem is simple. How do you find customers for a project that you're working on? And that's it. So it turns out that a lot of people have this problem in not just bootstraps, but also like salespeople, at like companies ranging from, they have teams that do this, right?
SDR teams that just focus on outbounding and outreach. and I haven't. I haven't narrowed down to a specific market segment that I'm confident. I think that's just gonna take a little bit of time. but there, I don't know. everyone has like this lead generation problem, lead qualification problem.
my product right now that I'm thinking about is how do you find specific windows of opportunity where, you can make a sale? how do I explain this? you guys know what windows of opportunity you are, right?
I can infer what it means based on the words you used
[00:04:26] Hide: Sorry. Okay. So let's say competitor, let's say a competitor has an outage, so it's like AWS went down. So that's a window of opportunity for salespeople from a competitor of AWS to jump into like AWS currents, like AWS's current customers and just be like, I see there's an outage. Are you happy with aws?
And they're gonna be like, hell no. Sorry, can I swear in this?
[00:04:49] Christian: Yeah. I think, Shai, can we swear on this? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. We can
[00:04:55] Hide: We can, are you ? Alright, Oh no. So they'll be like, hell no. we are not happy. Obviously there's an outage and if you're using aws, you're probably some enterprise customer and like you, it's costing you a lot of money. So yeah, a salesperson can jump in and they do this all the time. Is you happy with the, with aws?
They'll be like, Nope. And they'll be like, all right, why don't you, why don't we talk and see what we can do? And that would be a window of opportunity or like budget planning cycles or life events. Like I just got promoted or it's get a raise. we just hired a new, like cfo or we just hired a new cto.
Maybe they're making to look, make some organizational changes, some process changes. And those are all like windows of opportunity that you can use to create some triggers, triggers being like just outbounding in this case.
[00:05:45] Christian: Okay, help me understand this cuz I only recently learned what a SDR was. on our last
[00:05:49] Hide: Is from Drew?
[00:05:50] Christian: Yeah. sales development representative. sounds like that's the customer, that's the person who's benefiting from this.
[00:05:56] Hide: I don't know yet. I don't know yet for sure. but I think right now focusing more on account executives, their job is to handle the conversations between, their business and the enterprise customers. SDRs are the ones who do a lot of, I would say like a lot of mass outreach. They're like, the out the sourcers on the recruiting teams where they just go on LinkedIn and they just spam the hell out of LinkedIn.
[00:06:18] Christian: Okay. Okay. sounds this is a area of focus that you only decided like a week ago, so it's not super well defined, but,you would like for this to go not the way that your last, half dozen side projects have gone. you would like for this relationship, not to lead in a breakup, but to be in like a long term thing.
[00:06:33] Hide: Yes.
[00:06:34] Christian: Can I'm curious about the previous six startup breakups, . like what,are there trends or patterns you noticed in, why those break breakups happened? I think you mentioned that, not being able to find customers,has been a big part of it. is that the core reason?
yeah, I think why did they not work? It's hard to say why. But first principles of a business, just paying customers, right? Had didn't either, did not have any paying customers. I think the first few were definitely just Hey, I just built this thing. Like I built this employee directory on Slack, and I was like, all right, customers come to me,
[00:07:07] Christian: Yep.
And Yeah, that's how it goes.
[00:07:09] Hide: didn't yet, the Indie Hackers forum was right. They didn't, that didn't happen. . and then the last one, which I put a lot of time and effort into was I taught a cohort based course for product managers to get more technical. I thought I had more of an advantage as an engineer, to teach technical concepts to people who are not technical.
I think I was right about that, but what I was wrong about was the shape of what technical meant. Sorry. What technical meant is, they just want like breadth, and engineers are very good at explaining like, depth of technical concepts and they don't care about that, because they have a lot of meanings and a lot of other things to do.
[00:07:46] Hide: And, I knew that a cohort based course, which focuses on depth, if you want to learn something in depth very quickly, in a short period of time, that's what a cohort based course is a good solution for. But the shape of the problem, the shape of the solution, we're just not compatible. and I, I was in the, do you guys know Maven? It's all over Twitter. It's like a startup called Maven. Okay. Yeah. It's like a cohort based course, marketplace. And they had this. Program and I was partnering with them to make it. and I spent like a good amount of time on it, I think since September.
and I just ultimately decided to just shut it down December. It just wasn't working. It was hard to get any kind of traction. It was hard to get people to talk to me. I remember at one point I was like, like class started at 10:00 AM and it was like 10 0 5 and there was no one showing up. And I was like, ah, that's painful
[00:08:34] Christian: Oof.
but in the end some people did show up, but yeah, that's definitely not what market pull feels like.
[00:08:43] Christian: Okay. It sounds like the commonality I'm noticing between these two projects is that you were looking for that market poll. you were looking for, people to be expressing to you that you were offering something that, that was valuable that they needed, and you didn't feel like you were getting that.
yeah. definitely it was like someone I talked to had a good way of explaining this. you wanna stand where people are already looking? rather than just trying to get their attention. and I think with like lead generation problems, people are already looking for these solutions. there are a lot of big companies that are working on this and small companies too.
maybe even some indie hackers do. We'll see . and that's why, yeah, I try to take that lesson and, where companies always pay for growth and marketing. I suppose it depends on the company in this down market, but if I can find those companies, I think I would have a better chance of getting paying customers.
[00:09:42] Christian: help me better understand the pain that you'd like to solve with this new project. you talked about this window of opportunity that in this moment where an AWS customer, notices that AWS has gone down,that's a good opportunity for their competitors to be, swooping in.
it, it sounds like with this new project that's the pain that you'd like to address.
the pain is just how does a business make money? Like you need to find people to talk to. so you need to find them, you need to qualify them. You need to make sure that they fit your qualifications. Then after that, you need to make them sign a contract. . so the problem that I'm specifically trying to solve is, there are certain companies that has so much inbound interest.
that they're, the amount of people that they could talk to is too much for their team. So I'm trying to basically just go online and gather data and see if I can pre-qualify them before they have these conversations, which saves them a lot of time. and I think it does make them a little bit of money too, or a lot bit of money depending on the type of data.
[00:10:49] Christian: Okay. the core pain then is,for a business who would like to attract, well-qualified leads, you'd like to,have a form of lead gen where you've gone through the work of pre-qualifying them. You can just feed a business like these are,qualified people who are looking for a service like yours.
And, maybe that's coming off of some winova opportunity event where, they've just been burned by,a business similar to yours and are looking for an alternative.
[00:11:14] Hide: yeah, I just realized I'm not providing good enough contests for this. Basically, it's just, account executives have a metric where they just go, okay. our success metric is meetings booked so that qualifying meetings booked. So I want to increase the amount of meetings booked for that week.
[00:11:30] Christian: Okay. Yeah. If that's one of their core metrics, that sounds like a, and. my hypothesis is that there's a lot of activity, like realtime activity going on online where you can find specific windows of opportunity you can either go in to someone's inbox when they don't care and they're just like, there's like a lot of physics where like people, things that happen that are in motion, stay in motion and so that there's no incentive for them to like change course.
[00:11:58] Hide: But windows of opportunity are creates such a friction that there is a reason to change course. either people are complaining online. and so like my theory is that I can gather that data and I can book them more high quality meetings.
[00:12:14] Christian: I think so let me repeat that back and see if I understand. account executives are a type of person who is, graded based on the number of, qualified conversations that they're having with leads. So if you have a product for them, that's gonna increase the total number of conversations that they can have with leads, that's something that they can directly see.
oh, if I could have 20% more leads, I whatever get paid 20% more, or my boss is 20% happier with me or something. so that, that's the core of pain that you're solving, getting account executives more, qualified conversations booked, and one angle of being able. Generate qualified leads is finding for account executives these windows of opportunity that, I'm not sure how you'll do this, but maybe, if it's, if it's an account executive for, a Google Cloud platform, you could identify for them.
okay, so a window of opportunity for you would look like a was going down or, whatever le node going down. that would be a great moment to,book our conversation That would then be generating more of these conversations for you.
[00:13:17] Hide: exactly,it's timing, right? That's the one thing. that's the hard, that's the part that's really hard is it's timing. Like when do you know it's the right time to actually reach out to someone, because that can make all the difference. so yeah, I think that I can do that.
I hope I can do that. and it's not, this isn't really my idea. Like people are already doing this. Like the, like account executives are already doing this, SGR teams are already doing this. I just wanna know what they're doing so that I can automate it.
[00:13:42] Christian: Okay,
[00:13:43] Hide: Yeah. Like none of what I said is like, anything this is just from research that like talking to people, like this is their process, like their success metrics.
Like I think that's something that I learned is just like, just let them tell me what to do. rather than it's gonna be really hard to sell someone that's this is a new process. We're using artificial intelligence, yeah,
But like they're, they already have a process for it.
It's just really manual.
[00:14:05] Christian: yeah. Th this whole world is, new to me. So I'm asking a lot of questions that are
[00:14:08] Hide: Good to,
[00:14:09] Christian: probably people familiar with this world, be like, who doesn't know what an SDR is? What, what's going on? Okay. Interesting. I think, Shai, I'll let you jump in. Otherwise, I'm gonna, I'm gonna branch off on a, slightly different topic.
[00:14:21] Shai: let's, I can tidy up on this little part. I just have a couple other questions. and I'm coming from the same place as Christian of I don't know about this world, so they might be basic questions, but I think they'll be helpful for us to understand the context. What, how do you know, how do you know that this problem exists?
Who are these people that you've been able to speak with?
[00:14:43] Hide: Why do I know this problem exists? Because, yeah, that's a good question. I know that the problem exists because I've had it myself. I know the problem exists because, The people that I've talked to already have this problem and that they're trying to solve for it. and I know that people are already paying money for it.
[00:15:02] Shai: And the people you've spoken to about it, are they people, is this like friends that you have, who are account executives? Have you, or did you go out and speak to a few account executives that you didn't already know, or, paint. Paint the picture for me. what's your interaction with this world?
[00:15:16] Hide: I just went on LinkedIn and I went a learning about sales. Cause I don't know anything about sales. also making a lead gentle. and I think that's literally my template. And then I just go, do you know, do you have some time to chat about how sales is done at a rocket ship company like X?
That's it. And then I've been able to have some conversations. Not a ton. like they never convert that when you're just outbounding. . But yeah, I think some people responded and some people like talked to me and yeah,
[00:15:46] Shai: Okay. How many, do you remember roughly how many you reached out to, and how many responded? How many you spoke to?
[00:15:51] Hide: the conversion rate's actually pretty good. probably I think I reached out to 12 people and two responded.
[00:15:57] Christian: Wow. That's great.
[00:15:59] Hide: That's pretty good, right? , you know how many people I reached out to for my cohort based course? A lot and none of them responded.
[00:16:07] Christian: 17%. That's,just cold reaching out to people on LinkedIn. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:11] Hide: The positioning has to be pretty good though, and I think, yeah, it's still tough though, It's draining. Just like cold calling people. I feel like that's pretty good.
[00:16:21] Shai: Okay, so you had a couple conversations and you found out a little bit more about how this world works of account executives and meeting their metrics of, conversations booked.
[00:16:32] Hide: Oh, also, here's another technique to learn a little bit more about industries. like rather quickly just act like you're applying for a job spec. specifically for YC companies, cuz they're usually the most hardcore. and then you just go and learn about their business
So if you wanna learn about like growth and marketing, they are probably like growth and marketing companies.
And I did this. and I just ask them like, what was your positioning? Like, how'd you do these sales calls? And they'll be like, they're happy to share.
[00:17:00] Shai: I don't know if that's shady, but But we'll leave that as an exercise for the listener to decide.
[00:17:04] Hide: Yeah.
[00:17:08] Christian: in these. so you reached out to a dozen people, two of them replied back, and you were able to have conversations with them. what were those conversations like? you were asking them like, what are the biggest problems you have, in your role as, an accountant executive?
[00:17:24] Hide: Yeah, the pro, the, the conversations were scattered, like really scattered. they just have a lot of different, they have a lot of different problems. and it's hard, actually, that's something that I could use help on too, is how do you get all, how do you take feedback and like hone in on a specific direction and build a product around that.
just something that I'm struggling with. But sales teams, what they said was sales teams have two ways of getting. leads is one is just these mass email, like drip campaigns, right? They'll have like email lists or they'll even buy email lists of like hundreds of thousands or like millions of people.
[00:18:03] Hide: And they'll send these like massive drip campaigns out and they will get roi, but it will be insanely small. It'll be like maybe 1% like conversion. And that doesn't even mean that they're going to get any contract signed. That's just one per, that's just conversion for meetings booked.
but it's worth it because like it's just an automated process. Just a couple clips, like clicks, you already have a template out, can get that done in 10 minutes. and I think SDR teams mainly do that. And the second way is they literally just go on LinkedIn sales navigator and they just go, they just do exactly what I'm doing.
[00:18:37] Hide: which is like reaching out.
[00:18:41] Christian: Okay. so to Shai's question of like, how do you know this is a problem? It sounds like having more conversations is the core problem of what an account executive is doing. this is the bread and butter, this is how they're making money, this is how they're generating value for their company.
This is the core metric to see how well they're being able to do their job. so it's very clear that this is a problem. I think what I have a fuzzier idea on right now is how you're gonna help them with that problem. Is this, are you offering them like a service that you're gonna be a consultant for them and, pay attention to these windows of opportunity.
is this gonna be like an automated tool? Are you gonna be automating steps that are steps that they're doing,in their job of going on LinkedIn and finding people? have you clarified that? or we still need to have more conversations. We still need to, to hone in on what the problems are.
[00:19:30] Hide: So that's, yeah, that's the part I'm stuck at, is I don't know what the shape of the solution is gonna be because I'm still learning about the problem. And I, my hypothesis is that any kind of lead generation tool is going to be a tool. It's gonna be some kind of SaaS tool specifically because qualification benefits from data, and that's basically what software is, right?
Just the manipulation of data. And so I think that it is conducive to some kind of SaaS solution, which was my goal in the first place. I really like the SaaS business model, so that's what I wanted take for. but again, I don't know for sure. but yeah,I do think that, if I'm able, I don't know where the data's gonna come from.
I'm looking at Twitter, like I'm looking at, just like the internet and I'm looking at like competitors too and see if I can leverage some of their services. But, to be honest, Still, I'm still a little bit like just trying to solve for it. I just know the shape of the problem, just trying to learn more of the specifics and, just gonna try to ship as fast as possible.
[00:20:27] Christian: Yeah. I think that's actually a really good positioning for, starting out on a new thing. Like the classic mistake I see people making is they'll come up with an idea that they fall in love with. it's like a particular solution, and then you spend. Months working on the solution, and then you launch and nobody cares.
So to start with an audience and a problem that they have, that's a very wide problem. It's like the core problem of what this role is. But yeah, you want to help account executives, be more effective in having these qualified conversations. I think merely having more conversations will help you hone in on what a particular intersection is of the problems that they're having and,the software that, that you're capable of making that wouldn't help them with that.
And it, it might look nothing like a lead gen tool. This might be like a, a, I don't know, a timer that helps them. Oh, I've read about, Very successful, sales representative that had this, paperclip method. This is in, Robert c Shelley's book, I think. and he has a, he has two bowls and one of 'em is full of paperclips and the other one's empty.
And at the beginning of the day, he, for every call he has, he just takes a paperclip from one bowl and puts it in the other. And his job for the day is just to, to move the paperclips from one to the other. But he's gotta have that many conversations,to be able to, and, this person became the most successful salesperson in their company, or some, similar superlative.
the, in having these conversations, if you're open to, off the wall angles like that, maybe it's, I don't know, a virtual , two paperclip bold, app or something.
[00:21:52] Hide: why not a to do list app?
[00:21:54] Christian: Sure. Yeah. No, but for real, like the reason there exists so many to do apps is that that's such a big problem that if you can have any sort of specificity on okay, if you're, if you're a minor, like you're gonna have a very different, set of need, not very different.
But to do app can cater to you in a very particular way that a to-do app custom-built for an account executive, would not tailoring for an account executive to do app would look very different. so I all this, I say I think you're on the right track. the being open to, all of the sorts of pain that, that accounting executives, experience, I think has the highest probability of leading you towards a product that you can make that'll, improve their lives.
[00:22:35] Hide: Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that. actually we can talk a little bit more about, just outbounding in general. Cause it's something that like, as just a developer, it really, and trying to not be more than just a developer is quite scary. Like the first, one of the first conversations that converted into, or one of the first outreaches that converted into a conversation I did with Drew, who is the previous guest on this podcast, for the audience to go check that out.
, but we were just co-working. And then, yeah, like this guy responded to me and I was like, I don't know what to say. Like he was a sales engineer. so Drew is a sales engineer too. So Drew already has all of this expertise and intuition on how to talk to them and how to, like, how they speak and how to have conversations with them and what they know.
[00:23:18] Hide: I don't know any of that. And so I was like, I was just complaining to him like, drew, what do I do? and this whole time, like I think my anxiety and my stress levels were going up and up and up. this was not like a difficult conversation. It was just like a, Hey, I'm making this outbounding tool.
He goes, cool. And I'm like, wanna have a conversation? He's yeah. And I'm like, what's your email? He's like this. And I'm like, okay, that's it. Like Liz, that's literally it, right? But this whole time I was just like starting to get like super nervous and like my inner child was coming out
[00:23:46] Christian: Sure.
[00:23:47] Hide: Drew was just like coaching me through, he is it's really not that big of a deal.
And I'm like, drew, he said the word product, I don't have a product. , what the hell do I say? And he is say you just wanna talk to him. And I was like, but what if he doesn't want to talk It is just like crazy stuff. I was going crazy. But, I don't know. it's like, it is that, like I don't have a lot of things in my life at the moment that scare me to that level.
But like outreach is definitely one of those things that does that. and then I think over time I'll get better at it. But I think,developers don't like doing outreach. and probably because it is really scary. and, yeah, just you're not alone. , you feel like that.
Yeah, it is. it's a scary thing to do because you're putting yourself out there and you might, you might get rejected if, when you are, when you're sitting and writing code, the code, like you have control over it. That's exactly what you ask it to. it doesn't tell you're a horrible person in any way, Does it
[00:24:48] Shai: is that you go out there to the real world, to people and those things can happen.
I, I wanna touch on, you said you you'll be out in that situation and you're like, what if they. I can't remember the exact rhetorical question you were asking, what, if they don't like it, what if they, the hack I've figured out for those is to stop it being rhetorical and answer it. what if they what if I go to them and they laugh at me for not having a product? what would happen then? I'd feel, I'd, I'd feel small for a moment and I wouldn't have that sale. And then I'd be fine. They're like, then I'd go and eat to bowl of cereal.
Like ever, the world won't end like when when you play it through oh no, that's, it would feel unpleasant and could I handle it? Could I cope with it? Yes. Yes. I could. and at that point it's still, that doesn't stop it being scary, but it reminds you that you can handle fear.
[00:25:44] Hide: Wait, how's that ever happened? Like you guys run internet businesses have been doing this successfully for a while. Has that ever happened where someone was like, ha, you suck. You don't have a product? Or this product sucks you nerd. Has that ever happened?
[00:25:58] Christian: I think the meanest thing, the meanest interaction I've ever had on the internet was someone who, emailed. and because of some, I hadn't replied to it to his previous email in the respectable amount of time or, it, I think, oh, no, I think this was, I think this was a free customer that, I had emailed and let him know Hey, the freemium tier is going away.
you're gonna have to pay for this now. and he told me to, in a different language, he told me to walk in a forest and I Googled it. And I think that means he was saying I should kill myself for the audacity. I had to charge him money. and that hurt my feelings. . But that's, unusual.
[00:26:32] Christian: Like the second worst thing that ever happened was just like, someone said, Hey, this sucks that you took so long to answer this email. And I was like, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry I did a bad job. And they were like, oh, it's okay.
[00:26:43] Hide: to walk in a forest. at least you learned some new jargon. Was that in, wait, what language was that?
I wanna say like Bulgarian. . it was a tricky one to Google translate. Cause I think I, I had to do Autodetect what it was. I'm also not sure that's what he was saying. He may have just said ah, you should go for a walk. The time, man. Take care of yourself.
[00:27:01] Christian: yeah. yeah. But usually, the simulation of people, in my head is much more vicious and cruel than, how they actually are.
[00:27:09] Hide: Yeah, it always is, right? fear creates this, what is it? It just like amplifies all of the negative thoughts, very short span of time. It's like this, like exponential curve that's like as the thing that you're scared of is easily gets closer and closer is just holy shit.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. . that's not too bad, Yeah. no one's ever, no one has ever, I haven't even rejected plenty of times like outbounding, but like no one has ever said anything super mean, like someone said. Hey Hiday. No, thank you. And that stuck in my head for a while, it's crazy, right?
This is nice. this is, no thank you. That's actually really nice. And I'm like, this
[00:27:45] Christian: in the film adaptation of your life. I could imagine like a 10 minute montage after that. like depressed and close your windows, no, thank you that's funny.
[00:27:54] Hide: These used my name. They said thank you. Exclamation point is the nice message. And just this
[00:27:58] Christian: Yeah. so talk to me about that. it sounds like you're feeling some really intense feelings around rejection, which is, something I can relate to. that's something I only recently unpacked in, couple's therapy. I think I, I used to have this narrative that like I was, impervious to any sort of negative criticism and I would ask people like, ah, you can just give it to me straight cuz I don't care it.
and then these mysterious things would happen to me in my life. I would just not answer customer support emails for six months, and I didn't know why. And I had this complicated narrative of why I was doing it and why I had much more important things to do. But something I've recently unpacked is I am very negatively impacted emotionally by negative,criticism.
[00:28:34] Christian: So having an interaction, like someone saying No thank you, when I, email them and say, you, you can either stop using this or you can, start paying me a little bit of money, would really get to me. And then that would cause ripples for the next several days. And then it would compound. And then customer supporting me will become this big scary, nebulous monster of negative feedback that I wasn't aware of.
I, I couldn't put my finger on like why I was feeling those negative feelings. I commend you for being aware of that. Yeah. I think being aware of those feelings and being able to draw that narrative of,that you felt that way, when having those sorts of interactions, that's fantastic progress.
you're in a position now where you're aware of the problem, you're able to put your finger on it. how does that feel looking forward? it sounds like what you may have identified as next steps for growing this new venture is having more of those sorts of conversations, which also feel very scary to you.
[00:29:20] Christian: That like hopping on the phone with a, oh my gosh. Account executive hopping on the phone with an account executive, that you meet through LinkedIn, sales representative,
[00:29:29] Hide: salesperson.
[00:29:31] Christian: Okay. so how do you feel in this moment about, going on LinkedIn messaging another 20 salespeople,and having a conversation with them?
what does that feel like?
[00:29:41] Hide: it's just in the, I feel okay about it. It's still scary cause I haven't done it that much. but, at the end of the day, they're just people like you and me, they're just trying to do their job. And like I, I do have an understanding of what motivates them, which is just, they get compensated maybe 10 to 15% per contract that they pull in for new business.
So if I'm aligned on what their needs are in that case, then it's probably okay. if they wanna make money, I wanna make money. You wanna make money, they're just normal people. it's hard because I'm LinkedIn, I get like social proof cuz they're like, I.
Google as an account executive, and I've been doing this for eight years, and then in my head I'll just create this narrative of oh my God, this person is like incredible . who am I? Just this lowly software engineer that's just like reaching out to them saying that I can solve all of their problems, which is not true.
I can't solve all of their problems, but yeah, but they're just normal people really. just worked at these giant companies. but no, just trying to have, some connection with this normal person, and see what their problems are and yeah.
do you feel like there's an expectation when you get on a call like that,that you will solve all their problems?
I definitely have some people pleasing qualities,
[00:30:47] Christian: Same. Yeah.
[00:30:48] Hide: yeah, I think a lot of us do . but I, the way that I think about it is do you want someone that's nice to you or do you want someone that gets the job done,for their, from their perspective and They just want someone that gets the job done, right? if I'm successful in making them more money in this very specific area, then they'll pay me money.
And that's all the validation that I'm looking for. that's all the validation I need to focus on at the moment. but it is difficult because I am like, personally I'm a very like, emotional person. And so what I notice is I just have to accept that the way that I do business is that like I want to have some kind of personal connection with this person. So I know some people are like pretty objective and just it's like very transactional and that can be nice , but that's just not me. there, there will always be these like, I think these other emotions that come with it, this like fear of rejection or, maybe the way that I, I have some need for emotional validation, from this person, which is my problem and not theirs.
But yeah, it's also interesting, but I don't, I want you guys' opinion on this, but I have this theory that I told Drew that people that want to do software businesses tend to be like very needy people.
[00:31:58] Christian: Very needy people.
[00:31:59] Hide: Yeah.
what do you mean by that? Okay. So explain all this, right? So we're all people that are like, we want more than just we could go get a good job at Google, maybe two or 300 K a year, white picket fence and just have a very comfortable life.
We're fuck that shit. I want more, I want much more than that. It's like that's a very comfortable life, right? But that's not good enough for us. So that's why I think think what do.
[00:32:26] Shai: I definitely think the community of developers who are not going and getting a stable job with those skills, but instead of doing indie hacking or something along those lines, there's, there'll be a tendency in their personality for more... their personality will skew to one that, that enjoys exploring unknowns and figuring things out on a bigger scale than you might be able to do if you are. if you are doing a regular salary job where there are still unknowns in the work that you're doing, but there are more knowns in the structure of your day perhaps, or those kind of things. and I think it's an interesting, we end up in an interesting niche of people where very often the skills that you need to be a software developer are the ones that line up with wanting your, it's very logical, it's very analytical and often that ties in and lines up with someone who wants to go and work a nine to five and whatever else. But not always. There is a minority of developers who have more of a need for uncertainty, creativity, those kind of things.
[00:33:50] Hide: Is
[00:33:51] Shai: Whether that ties in with neediness, first I'd want you to define neediness.
[00:33:56] Hide: neediness? I guess Neediness is it's a tough one. like competitive people are very needy people, right?
[00:34:05] Shai: I dunno, are they.
[00:34:06] Hide: Oh, yeah.
I'm learning your definition of needy right now. So if
[00:34:11] Hide: for for example, like you ever are doing something, you guys probably experience this on like Twitter, right? You're like, Hey, I made 10, 20, 30 K r a month, and then someone just hops on Twitter. It just goes, Hey man, fuck you, . that's pretty needy, right?
From that person.
[00:34:27] Christian: The person who says fuck you.
[00:34:29] Hide: Yeah.
[00:34:30] Christian: Okay.
[00:34:31] Hide: I'm not, I don't know how to define it, but I'm just trying to define it right now.
[00:34:34] Christian: Yeah, I think I would, I think I would say that person, was experiencing,hurt ego, that they were, seeing someone else's success as,criticism of their own worth. maybe they weren't totally centered and, understanding that like they were valuable and lovable as a person, even if they didn't have
[00:34:52] Shai: I insecure, I would
[00:34:54] Christian: Insecure. Yeah. That's a good word.
[00:34:56] Hide: skip going. Yeah. Insecure
that correlate with people who take indie hacker jobs or just, or work as indie hackers? what? Okay.
[00:35:03] Shai: I don't. I.
[00:35:04] Hide: Do you guys identify as indie hackers?
this is a super interesting conversation and I do wanna refocus us to solving cade's problems. Getting them,
[00:35:11] Hide: I'm sorry. Yeah. but neediness I think is one of my problems.
[00:35:16] Christian: okay.
[00:35:17] Hide: So what,
[00:35:17] Shai: Let's about that
that
[00:35:19] Hide: yeah. I think however, I would define it as so I've had a lot of jobs. I've only been a software engineer for four years now. I've had four or five different jobs if we count consulting too. but I've had a few full-time jobs.
I remember, they were like pretty decent. Like I worked at Indeed before this. I worked at Instacart before, after that. and I worked with some like pretty smart people and, , some of them I really liked. and I remember thinking just I don't know. I would ask like in, in the first shot would be like, is this like what you want?
Because like I didn't know if that's what I wanted. and I remember going like, why can't I just be happy with this?
Like, why do I want more? if I like, did the work, not even work really hard, but just did the work. I could've been, I could've made like a decent amount of money in a pretty comfortable life.
I was just like, yeah, it's I guess I just want more. and I think that is pretty needy, but not needy for like uncertainty and instability. Although those are things that I like, I enjoy. But more just like this. do you guys know a scarf is.
[00:36:23] Christian: I don't.
[00:36:24] Hide: Okay, so the way that I think about it is scarf is like a status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, or fairness.
And it's just a framework that you use. Like some people are more skewed towards some things versus the other. So like people who, sorry, internet businesses are probably skewed more towards autonomy. people who like, like stable jobs and stuff like that probably care more about certainty, maybe about status, stuff like that. and the point is these are things like, those five things are generally what motivate people at the core. so yeah, where am I going with this? Essentially it's like this intense neediness in within myself to want probably independence, freedom and power. in a sense, just a lot more than what, like a pretty decent career could give me.
[00:37:13] Christian: Sure.
[00:37:14] Hide: Yeah, I would encourage you to move away from the framing of that as neediness. It sounds to me like you're expressing that you have needs, and that's okay. Everyone has needs, and you feel like some of those needs aren't being met. And it sounds like that was part of the motivation,for, switching careers in the way that you did.
and I think it would be an interesting question to dive into of are the needs that you would like to address by having this more ambitious, higher risk career path? are those needs that are serving you or are those needs that, if fulfilled would make you a happier, healthier person?
or is it perhaps a need that, is,an attraction of deprivation is the way that,dating book Shai and I read, would frame it, that it's a thing that you're attracted to in the same way that like, sugar is attractive, but that's not healthy for you, in the long term.
how do you currently frame that? What, why work on this at all? It sounds like you, you have a good job. what, why do you feel like you, you, need more than that? What, what need do you feel like is not being met?
[00:38:11] Hide: there's a lot to it, I think. so
maybe to simplify it, like what would happen if you never did anything in software? what if you merely had the job that you have, and had the white picket fence and continued doing that? why would that be a bad,or undesirable reality?
[00:38:29] Hide: why would that be an undesirable reality? that's a good question. Why would that be an undesirable reality? cause I know what happens.
[00:38:40] Christian: Does that feel boring?
yeah, it's boring. Like I know what that looks like. I -just talked to a lot of these people that were like 10, 20 years down the line and I realized, I was like, holy shit, this path is like really set in stone.
[00:38:50] Christian: Okay.
[00:38:51] Hide: Like you could, you're a software junior, software engineer for two years, mid-level for two, three years, four years, depending on where the company is and senior.
And then after that, you're IC manager. Then you talk about stocks during lunchtime or you talk about crypto or talk about the news and
is anyone else falling asleep?
[00:39:12] Christian: Yeah. the way you're discovering it, it sounds like you, you would've died in your thirties. it sounds like you. Want to continue growing that, that feels too safe for you. I think something that'll unpack for myself is in my life I need some balance of stability and some balance of creativity.
I, I want, one foot in order and one foot in chaos. I'd like a solid backbone of my, I have my habits and routines and a stable amount of income that I know that I can live off of. And at the same time, I want to, I wanna be taking my, discretionary time and using that to, to be making riskier bets and, doing stuff like going rock climbing and,yeah, needing some of that excitement.
that excitement doesn't necessarily have to come from career. That could come from a dangerous hobby that you have or something, or,raising
[00:39:54] Hide: just rock climbing without the rope . Sorry.
Oh gosh. Without the, don't do that. too stable right now. I'm just gonna go climb the mountain without.
is. Working on a project like this, making software to, to help salespeople,is that satisfying this core need for,exploration?
is that the reason behind, doing something like this?
[00:40:15] Hide: Okay. So one, I don't think there's that much creativity to it, especially as other people are just telling me what to build. but definitely this need for growth in, in ways that I don't, that are not mapped out, right? Like having sales conversations is really tough for me. and I like that.
It's scary. I like that. and I think that is, we cover a lot of topic of fear on this podcast, and fear is essentially just like how you grow. It's how you empower yourself. , I think Kobe has a really good, clip about this, but he just says when you're doing something scary, there's no point in saying that it's not scary, cuz it is.
But you just have to embrace it and to hold it tight and then boom, now what are you gonna do? and that's just, how you empower yourself. It's if you do something scary two or three times, it's not going to be scary. It's just going to be boring. and I think that is why I'm attracted to building software businesses, especially because there's so many challenges and so many things that scare you.
and yeah, it's nice. It's, like it led me to talking to you two, which guys are internet entrepreneurs and like we would've never met and if I just worked a stable job. So like
[00:41:21] Christian: Yeah. I, okay. in that framing, I think that's admirable. you're pursuing this because it feels scary and it's growth. It's, something that you'd find interesting that you'd like to get good at. you'd like to start doing,tasks that feels difficult and, hard and then eventually game mastery of it.
Yeah. that's, what growth looks like as a human. And I like that framing so much better than, that you're needy like Cuz there's,in the framing that we landed on that, that feels like the heroes journey. That feels like you're going out, venturing into the wild. you're in your village and you make money and you use that to, to buy a sword and then you're gonna go out and venture and try to kill some dragons.
[00:41:58] Hide: that's, that's inspiring. I actually have some swords. I hang 'em up on my wall.
[00:42:01] Christian: there you go. Maybe that'll be useful in one of your own onboarding calls,
[00:42:04] Hide: Yeah, . but I also think that it's a trap in business, if I'm constantly just doing things that are scary. Like sometimes you just have to do what works
[00:42:12] Christian: Okay.
[00:42:13] Hide: or at least simply strapping, like most of the time you just have to do what works.
Like you just have to solve problems that are boring, that you know that people are going to be paying a lot of money for because they've always paid a lot of money for it. And there's no point in trying to be like, okay, how do I use chat G B T to make the next social media, web three company, which someone out there is probably going damnit.
How did we know what my idea was?
I think Christian touched on something, couple of important things there, about, firstly about keeping one foot in order and one foot in chaos. That, it is definitely possible and easy if we're not careful to fall too far one way or the. and then bad things can happen or things can become challenging.
and there are times when we're building something, we have a certain amount of control over how far we lean one way or the other, but sometimes that is also out of our control. And so it's about recognizing if you are, if you're doing some, if you're bootstrapping a SaaS business, and there's a period of time where it's moving too far into order, let's say you have, there's a period of time where it's just, it's quite monotonous.
you know that the best way to grow the business is to have a lot of these calls that you don't love having, but you think it's gonna get you far and you find them boring, is to recognize that has shifted you in that direction. And then Christian touched on this earlier, you, it doesn't have to be your work that pulls you back the other way. I've had periods where I've said, you know what? The next few weeks, the business is gonna be boring. And so I am putting non-negotiable time in my calendar to learn how to wakeboard. that was my, that was a couple months back.
[00:43:55] Hide: That's pretty cool.
[00:43:56] Shai: And I need, I knew I would need that. And it,it helped tremendously.
It's just have this new thing that I had no idea what I was doing and that would satisfy my need for creative exploration or for learning or whatever else we might label that need as whilst the business went through a few weeks that I knew would be a little bit monotonous.
[00:44:16] Hide: Yeah. Wait, what happened in that business where it was like super boring?
[00:44:20] Shai: Oh, it was just a lot of similar kinds of calls. and look, there was some variance to them. There were some interesting things. it was working with people and that's always, there're always, exciting things that happen when you are meeting new people, but. I wasn't able to meet them in a context where I could really get to know them.
it was just quite a monotonous series of calls.
Yeah. Salespeople say that they always have their own styles. Like some people like want some kind of connection, like a personal touch. some people don't. yeah, it's, it definitely depends on your style, but is that draining to like, have to talk to people, but it's just being like a, I get your requirements, I fulfill your requirements, you pay me.
[00:45:00] Shai: I think it depends on the person. For some people that's, that feels quite draining. And for some people it, it's, I know people who would love nothing more than to do that all day.
So I think it's about understanding yourself, your own needs, your own personality, and finding things to fill your life that, that line up with that.
[00:45:24] Hide: Yeah.
[00:45:24] Christian: been running file inbox.com for something like, eight and a half years now, and I had a customer call. just four days ago where it was someone who had this problem where they needed a form to be able to onboard new clients into their business. And I can help, I can fix that for them. And I've been doing this for eight and a half years.
But that's still so satisfying of, and it's,it can be, road and mundane. And,I was able to find interestingness in it by, adding some new form fields that they needed that, it was like this fun technical challenge. But like the, at its core,I feel like helping people never gets old.
[00:45:56] Christian: I,even if I've. Been solving the same problem in people's lives over and over. Like for that person, they still have that problem and I can still solve a for them, and that consistently feels rewarding. I'd love to start wrapping up. you identified two things that you feel like are holding you back at the beginning of this call.
fear of commitment and feeling like, that you didn't have enough time or, structured routine to be able to work on this. part of time that I've noticed in myself is that,if it's, if I don't know what the next step is or if I know what the next step is, and I have some base level fear of it, some, part of my inner child is, throwing a fit that he doesn't want to do the task.
[00:46:31] Christian: I, I noticed that I interpret that as oh, I don't have time. I'm just so busy because I've been playing these games of just constantly pushing stuff forward. but I'm curious. In this moment, how you currently feel about this fear of commitment and this, lack of time. do you feel like what also like what you feel like the next step is?
[00:46:50] Hide: So I think the fear of commitment and lack of time go hand in hand because I'm scared of being fully committed to something. I'm scared of making a plan that I want to stick to. the way that I think about the fear of commitment and the fix that I currently have is,I'm gonna go off on a tangent, but I'll come back, I promise.
so you guys know a Paul Graham, right?
[00:47:08] Hide: Okay. So he's super opinionated and then sometimes he'll make really controversial statements on the internet and people like flock to him and people get turned off. And then seemingly the next month he'll make a completely, like it's the opposite.
little takes the opposite stance and people will be like, Hey dude, what happened ? And he'll just be like, have a different opinion now. I thought that was super weird, but like I talked to someone recently who was really close with Paul, at least in the early days of yc, and he said that Paul just knows that like people are really fickle like that.
Like you might just obsess over something. You might just get into a long relationships and think this is the right person or this is the right product or the right business or the right job. And then like for reasons that we are just human, we just sometimes change our opinion, like even if we're just like full on.
Committed to this one business idea. so I think one thing is just accepting that's just how it's gonna be.
Like, obviously I think I'm right now, right? I'm not saying I am right reality and like time will tell. But like obviously I think I'm right and I just have to commit to that and be okay with being wrong, and pay attention to the signals.
but yeah, that's how I think about it.
[00:48:22] Christian: Presumably there, there will come a moment working on this project where you feel like it's a waste of time and you feel like, ah, what was I thinking? Helping salespeople. I hate salespeople and they're, this isn't a big problem for them at all. having gone through six product breakups, I could see there being some benefit to tying yourself to the mast a little bit of in this moment it's gonna, it's gonna feel difficult, and this is how I'm gonna process those feelings, and this is how I'll be able to decide if, this is truly a reason to, to jump ship and try something else.
what feels to you right now, like a legitimate reason to stop working on this project?
[00:48:54] Hide: To stop working on it. I don't have a reason to stop working
[00:48:57] Christian: So there's no reason you would ever just stop working on it. you're gonna doggedly keep pursuing this no matter.
[00:49:05] Hide: I don't have a good framework. Maybe you can help me out on that. I don't like when to stop. That's basically like saying like, how do you know when to stop dating someone?
[00:49:13] Christian: Yeah.
[00:49:15] Hide: Is it enough? cuz like no one, I don't know, if I was the type of person to start a project, going, I'm gonna stop when this happens.
I probably wouldn't be the type of person to start the project in the first
[00:49:27] Christian: Can I see that. Yeah.
[00:49:29] Hide: I think, I dunno, I think that I'm right.
[00:49:33] Christian: Okay.
honestly, I realize that the probability that I'm right is extremely low.
[00:49:38] Christian: Sure is. is there a maybe a time bound that we can say, you're gonna, you're gonna push through and, keep having calls with people for the next three months and? when the thought comes to mind of oh, maybe I shouldn't be working on this. Maybe there's something else to be working on.
you just table that for the date that you have set in your calendar three months from now when you're gonna think about it. that the core thing I'm curious about, safeguarding against is, jumping ship again when something, emotionally impactful happens. when you have a sales call and someone ends up with saying, no, thank you.
that's gonna feel really bad. We know that's okay. but being able to know that you won't let that feeling push you off until some predefined date or until you've been able to take a step back and really evaluate is this a valid reason to stop working on it?
[00:50:23] Hide: Yeah, good question. so I think what you were saying is do what if I have an emotional reaction that makes me want to stop? I don't have emotional reasons to start this project in the first place. I think I analyzed it pretty well, or pretty, I think I analyzed it and I have, I have specific reasons, like objective reasons why I think this is a good idea and a good fit for me.
one, I can learn sales by learning from sales experts and build tools, that help them do their job better. this is a problem that people already pay money for. I think the thing that would block, like the thing that blocks developers from doing like sales or marketing tools is that it's just really scary to talk to these people. and it is . but that's fine. I think that any solution is conducive to some kind of SAS solution. what else? I dunno. I just had a lot of, now, and now I'm just collecting data, with conversations, in terms of if I have an emotional, I don't know, , like maybe I find out like maybe I pick a specific market segment that's that was like really mean to me. in that case, like I probably should pick another market segment.
[00:51:28] Christian: Sure.
[00:51:30] Shai: Yeah. But. we'll see. Like I, I probably wouldn't stop just because I have an emotional reaction or some, I'll probably just change, maybe change some direction if it's like a really bad emotional reaction, but Okay, so what needs to happen next?
[00:51:47] Hide: what needs to happen next? I need to start making money.
[00:51:53] Shai: Okay. And what needs to happen to get there.
[00:51:59] Hide: I need to talk to enough people and solve the problem in such a way that compels them to give me money,
[00:52:11] Shai: Okay. How many people do you think are you, actually, you asked this earlier. we didn't circle back to it. how many people do you have a sense you might need to speak with?
[00:52:23] Hide: I don't think I need to speak to that many people. which might be wrong, but I think if I speak to 10 people and really have in-depth quality conversations with them, and not just in-depth quality conversations, but also have a decent relationship with them, I think that'll be enough to start, not to start, but like to have a product that maybe fulfills their needs.
and I don't know for sure it does. I guess it does depend on the problem. It does depend on the audience. But if I niche down properly, then I think 10 might be enough. What do you guys think?
I think it's very hard to put a number on it, I think, but I think there are certain things you can be looking for as you have the conversations, which is, so one nice rule of thumb that, I can't remember where I first heard it, but is to keep having calls until you have five calls in a row where you don't learn anything new
[00:53:19] Hide: Five
[00:53:20] Shai: or set up some heuristic like that where, because and yeah, I think towards the beginning of the call you asked about, how do you figure out, like from these calls, how do you figure out what the product is? And I think, wait, after a few calls, you might get lucky and they all have exactly the same problem and you can see a clear solution. But typically two, three calls in, they all seem totally unrelated. And as you have more calls, it starts to become this like pattern matching exercise. And for some people who are like high in intuition, that pattern matching will start to feel incredibly obvious.
Like several calls in, you'll just start to glow with the solution on its own. Some people have to be much more systematic with it, and you need to, they prefer to make detailed notes and then pick out the threads that match, but after a while it's about that pattern matching to to keep going until you start to see the same thing several times and then you can.
Yeah. And then you can hone in from there and you might the, that's why nicheing is helpful, cuz the more similar the people you speak with are, the more quickly you're gonna hit upon repeated patterns of what problems they're facing.
[00:54:38] Hide: Makes.
Oh wait. Also, Christian, I just had an answer to your question, which is, what will compel you to stop? what do you have to see in order for me to go okay, this is done? Is I would've to see that it wouldn't make a good business.
[00:54:49] Christian: Okay.
[00:54:50] Hide: Yeah.
what's that gonna look like? What, you, you,you write down on a piece of paper, this is how much this offering would cost, and this is how much I could make from it. And,it can't be profitable in what source of situations, would you recognize it's not a good
[00:55:04] Hide: entrepreneur workbook. that's the framework I'm using right now. but essentially it's what you were saying is okay, I'm not making enough profit on this. It's costing too much, or, there's no defensible way for me to do this. I'm one person and I wanna keep it that way.
[00:55:20] Shai: if you spoke with. If you spoke with eight people and after those eight you just, you couldn't see any repeated patterns. They they all vaguely spoke about approximate problems they had, but they were pretty happy with their jobs and they couldn't really see any way you like. Would you give up at that point or would that mean you need more data?
more data's always good. I wouldn't give up. I would actually build something and see if they would pay for it before I would give up on it. but that would just mean that maybe the people I'm talking to aren't, they aren't the right fit, or I need to pick a different market segment
[00:55:56] Christian: What would you build if after eight people. Six more sort of scattered conversations that were all saying the same thing of oh yeah, it'd be nice to get more leads. Cuz that's the main thing I'm trying to optimize for. What do you,
[00:56:06] Hide: If they were scattered, if they were scattered conversations, I would feel compelled to go talk to more. or I would read, I would have another conversation with the same people and just be like, where are we going wrong here? If it's scattered, I'm not doing my job maybe so
[00:56:22] Shai: And that might end up being the game. It might be that the first few calls you are not really gathering any data so much as you are perfecting your skill of asking the right questions
[00:56:32] Hide: Exactly. I should just be bad at
it's a,it's a never ending game of growth.
[00:56:38] Christian: On the topic of having scattered conversations, I made a note to come back to this. Have you read either the mom test or deploy empathy?
[00:56:45] Hide: Both.
[00:56:46] Christian: Both. Okay. that's the solution I was gonna give you for not having scattered conversations and.
[00:56:51] Hide: excellent. Thank you.
[00:56:53] Christian: Okay.
yeah, but,it, it's different doing it in real time than reading a book
[00:57:00] Christian: Yeah, for sure.
[00:57:01] Hide: So I think, I'm still working on that skills. that could be exactly what it is, why the conversation is so scattered, because I'm bad at this , so I need to get good at this is the right solution.
Right.
And I think you did that just by having more of those conversations.
[00:57:12] Hide: Yeah. and nicheing down. Yeah.
I think you're on the right track. Thanks.
[00:57:18] Christian: in particular, I really like that you haven't jumped to a solution yet. You haven't. Started coding something that, based on the first conversation you had, you were like, oh yeah, of course people need this and I'm just gonna build it and then, pop out six months later with a thing and everyone's gonna wanna buy it.
you are very focused on like having more conversations, really understanding the problem, really understanding the people. You have a method of lead gen already, that is able to convert at, what did we say, 17%, that you can get people on a call. that's a big deal,to have an engine like that.
that's a significant part of any sort of business involving this sort of person. so I,
[00:57:50] Hide: problem.
important part. I've done LinkedIn, cold calling for all my ideas. Like I, I cold called a hundred dentists once, like a couple years ago. Nothing. Zero , because I just, the messaging was bad, the positioning was bad and they didn't have that problem. So it is like the
that's how you learn how to change those for this time, right?
[00:58:14] Hide: Yep.
[00:58:15] Christian: It's probably how you were able to get that high of a conversion rate. Yeah. you
no, I don't know about that. I think just got lucky on those . We'll see.
that's, we're on a small sample size, so we'll see your as you reach out to more, you may find that it's less, you may find out it's more, I'm excited to find out,
[00:58:29] Hide: Yeah. I'll let you guys know what it's like.
[00:58:31] Shai: I, I think from any,I like that Christian asked about what the stopping criteria are, because I think for any, from any given position, any given situation that you're in, you could make a case for saying, and therefore I should give up now, and you could make a case for saying, and therefore I should continue for longer.
the, whether you. , whether you stay committed or whether you give up, has very little to do with the actual specifics of the, the scenario that you're in.
[00:59:01] Shai: And so it is important to be able to figure out like what, in order to be able to answer the question of whether you continue or whether you give up, you have to also bring in your own values system and your own,whether your needs are being met and your own goals, bigger picture.
And
[00:59:20] Hide: Wait,
[00:59:21] Shai: so it's useful to think about.
[00:59:23] Hide: I'm sorry, I know we're a bit over tight, but can I ask you that question? Shai?
[00:59:27] Shai: Yeah. What's the question?
[00:59:28] Hide: I know you're like killing it with your SaaS. I stalked you on Twitter a little bit before this. when would you give up?
[00:59:38] Shai: It depends. it depends on the, firstly, thank you for describing my situation as killing it. It has, it's. it has some things I'm very proud of. It has a lot of things I am working to improve. I would want to look at exiting a business if need to have a sense that it's not fulfilling my needs and I need to have that feeling for a while. And that's one thing I've learned is that these things can go in ups and downs. a few weeks of feeling frustrated that the business isn't fun, would not be sufficient stopping criteria.
Sure.
if there was a sustained period of time where it wasn't working out in terms of. It also, it depends which business we're talking about. I have one that's been going for longer and is a bit more established and has higher MRR and I have another one that's a bit more on the side.
and then there's things like this podcast for example, there are a few projects going on,
[01:00:34] Shai: but the general answer is would need to be a sustained period of time. where it wasn't feeling fulfilling. I'd identified what it wasn't fulfilling in me and I'd worked to try to see if there were changes that I could make to resolve that.
And if after trying several of those over a sustained period of time, it still wasn't fulfilling my needs, then I would look to exit.
Okay. So basically , you don't have a stopping criteria. not really. Not like a specific well thought out one. Nothing. It's not I, right? Correct. Not, there's not a, there's not like a, it needs to get to this amount of money after this amount of time, otherwise I'm out. This, I don't particularly have that. It's more about do I feel like I'm personally growing from this
[01:01:26] Hide: yeah.
[01:01:28] Shai: amongst the things that I value that make me feel fulfilled?
Is this allowing those to happen?
[01:01:34] Hide: Yeah. I think it's important to just be optimistic, especially when you're doing something just what would you think about stopping it? if you're like, if you're constantly thinking about stopping it, then maybe you should, but it's more for the other way around. It's, I think especially early days, I've definitely got to points in businesses where it's like I've had, you have a run of a few days where no one has bought or you've had a. Research calls when no one's been interested or whatever it is. you start to see this pattern of no one cares about this.
[01:02:00] Shai: And for me, that's one of the things that I take personally is, nothing seems to be happening. No one likes this and therefore no one likes me. that's the implication. And so the stopping criteria question is most helpful for me in terms of, in those situations, it's like when I'm tempted to give up is to then look at, to take a step back and look at does this actually meet any real stopping criteria or is this an emotional reaction where I'm trying to, I'm trying to run away from the unpleasant feelings around what's been happening in the business over the last week, let's say.
[01:02:36] Hide: Yeah, I just think that if you're gonna stop a business, it's just gonna be really hard no matter what. And you just have to be okay with that feeling when you start it like it is the same thing in like a relationship. if you're gonna break up and there's a possibility, you're always gonna break up, right? it's going to be hard. Yeah. Just keep it nice and simple, right?
[01:03:00] Christian: it can be, I think the criteria that, that Shai said of when he would exit his business, I was thinking through. if I were in a situation with either Fileinbox or the video clipper where
I felt like my needs weren't getting met and weren't getting met for a long of time, I think exiting would feel easy cuz it would be, an it would've felt unfulfilling for so long, that, that ending, it would feel like a, it would feel relieving, it would feel like a weight lifted off of me.
I would have more freedom to be able to find other avenues to be getting those needs met.
[01:03:26] Hide: I don't know, like I've met people
[01:03:28] Shai: There can still be stuff tied into that though, right? There's, it's, and I think you could say the same about a personal relationship as well. Like a, there could be a romantic relationship where it's not fulfilling your needs and you get, come to the conclusion that you need to end the relationship that, but it might not be easy to do.
You might still, and yes, it might feel relieving afterwards, but it might also feel incredibly difficult to, there's still attachment, there's still, stuff tied into it
[01:03:51] Hide: Yeah. I think attachment is gonna be difficult. Like I've met people that, like I've talked to people that are exited for a lot, like their companies for a lot of money, but they wanted to exit for some time. And you might think that's a home run, but they're depressed.
It's, it is I think it's just a very human thing, like the same attachment that compels us to work on this thing for so long. It is also the attachment that we have to, we suffer from If we end it right,
[01:04:19] Christian: I
[01:04:19] Christian: I love to dig more into your other projects, cuz it feels like there's, there, there may still be some, unresolved feelings about, closing down the cohort based course
[01:04:27] Hide: maybe , it's probably, yeah. But, we, I'm sorry, I took 15 minutes.
[01:04:36] Shai: That's okay. we're still figuring out the time. constraints for these calls. it's a very hard one to balance cuz realistically you could ease you, you could go on for hours, like digging into all this good stuff. So we're trying to figure out how to balance that with a succinct podcast episode as well.
[01:04:55] Christian: I'd love to attempt to bring us home, Hide, you said in the onboarding questionnaire, in response to the question, what are you hoping to get from this call? What would make the call a huge success? you wanted to know how you can accelerate to the next point, among other things. do you feel like that got clarified?
what do you think needs to be done next to accelerate to, get towards making money from this?
Essentially it's a zero to one problem, Which no one really ever has a clear answer for. But, I think that there, what became clear to me is that there's, although I had a very systematic way of figuring out what I wanted to work on next, I wasn't really paying attention to my emotional needs in terms of closing the book on my previous. so I should probably take care of that first. second thing is just,talk to more people, and figure out what I need to build. just get some more data, and then just start shipping and building. and just a constant iteration process. in terms of, I don't know. I think we talked a little bit about stopping.
I don't know. I just, I, personality-wise, I'm not the type of person that, if I do something, I don't really plan on stopping. so I think that may , that might be something that I need to revisit the future. I think Shai what you were saying about your stopping criteria, thinking about your needs and if they're being fulfilled or not in business is something that I'll have to think about.
but yeah, I think just like doing the work. And just iterating as quickly as possible and just talking to as many people as possible.
[01:06:25] Christian: I look forward to following up with you on seeing how. Your criteria for stopping and, what you identify as your emotional needs in doing these projects and how the conversations with more people went, having conversations with more people, I feel is probably gonna be a common takeaway from these episodes.
that's, that's something I think, everyone could be doing. thank you so much for being our guest on what's stopping you. If you, dear your listener, would like to have the same sort of conversation. You can find us at what's stopping you.fm If you would like to have this conversation but are terrified of the idea of it being on a public podcast, we have, paid options for you that you can choose from.
or you can either direct message, Shai or me on Twitter, Shai any closing thoughts?
[01:07:10] Shai: Yeah, we missed a step. . Hide, where can people find out more about you if they would like to do that?
[01:07:16] Hide: Yeah. first of all, thank you for having me. I had a wonderful conversation. find me on Twitter at catsarecuter98 or I write about all this stuff. catsarebetter.substack.com yeah.
[01:07:27] Christian: Are you a cat or dog person?
[01:07:32] Hide: still deciding. Really? I don't really know.
[01:07:33] Christian: Okay. Hide. thank you so much. Goodbye.
[01:07:38] Hide: Thank you.
[01:07:40] Christian: Except don't leave yet. quick debrief. What'd you think of that conversation? How'd that go for you?
[01:07:44] Hide: It was fun, man. I love having conversations, especially kinda like problem solving conversations where you're trying to like root cause blockers and stuff like that. Especially like emotional ones. Yeah. I liked it a lot.
[01:07:53] Christian: Cool. Do you feel like we, helped you get unstuck? I think you, you came into it pretty, emotionally aware of the blockers that you had. it really helped to know that I wasn't alone in these kind of base fears of like rejection and validation and talking to people. I dunno, business is this weird thing. Like most of the goals that I've had in my life have always, I've just been able to do it myself or just put in the work myself.
athletic goals, you just go to the gym by yourself or you like play with other people, but it's mostly yourself. But like with business, it's like you have to get other people on board,in order for you to succeed. and it's, and then it becomes it's not really even. So I think that's the really difficult switch and that makes it so hard and it's really nice to see, or not nice to see, but it's it's nice to feel less alone that I'm not the only one that feels like that.
I just, that feels scared of doing that stuff.
That's good to hear. Good.
[01:08:49] Hide: yeah.
[01:08:50] Christian: Shai, any other thoughts, other things we need to wrap up?
I don't think so. I would love to have had time to come up with a specific actionable next steps for you so that there was something that like for you to hold yourself accountable against,is there a number of people, a set number of people that you could reach out to in the next however long?
[01:09:11] Hide: Let's do, I'll reach out to, or actually no, I will get meetings with two more people by, in a. So what's today? Wednesday. So by next Wednesday I will get two more meetings.
[01:09:27] Shai: Okay. I actually preferred the way the first one you were setting up because it was, because it was in your control. The number of meetings that you can get that has an element that is completely outta your control.
[01:09:40] Hide: It's not completely outta your control though. Like you just have to
[01:09:43] Shai: Sorry, that isn't completely in your control,
[01:09:46] Hide: oh no, it's not. but then it just forces me to be a bit more it's not about like mass spamming like a bunch of people, right? It's more just about like, how do you like pay attention to like these opportunities and try to be a bit more clever about like, how do you get these meetings?
[01:10:00] Shai: I dunno, not completely in my control, but I think there are things that I can do to influence it. What could you specify a couple of those?
[01:10:07] Hide: yeah, what will the, what will you do?
I'm building this tel that, identifies windows of opportunity where it helps you get more meetings. It's essentially what I'm building, right? so one thing that I could do is I could reach out to, I could leverage current relationships that I have. I could leverage windows of opportunity that I find on social media, right?
what
[01:10:28] Shai: Like concretely, what does that look like the next time you sit down at your computer with some time that you are able to dedicate to this project instead of your day job? What, what will you do first?
[01:10:39] Hide: To the current people that I've already talked to. Hey, do you have any friends that you might know that want something like this? I think that's the first, second is, let's see. Might be able to reach out to people on my former company, maybe not Instacart, cause they're not b2b. maybe indeed just b2b.
Then I can reach out to some accounting executives there. might be a bit too big for my market size, but I don't have to interview them specifically as users. I could chat with them and then leverage that into a relationship to get more people. what else can I do? I think those are the two things. I don't know. Do you guys have any advice for me? , you hasn't done this more?
[01:11:21] Shai: I think those were great starts and my advice would be to break things down into incredibly small actionable goals. the exercise we just did.
[01:11:29] Hide: Okay. Break.
[01:11:30] Shai: much easier to just sit. Especially actually that's, that touches on what you were saying about lacking time. I don't know, I dunno if this is something that you, that happens to you at all, but I've been having a ton of conversations.
I, I tweeted about this last week and it's generated a ton of conversations about what I call my pen knife technique. No, what other people started calling my pen knife technique of, so it's the idea that when we, if you like you, you go and get your pen knife when you have a task that you need to get done that could use a pen knife, and until then, you don't sit and play with the pen knife all day until you figure out something to use it for you. Like you leave it in the drawer until you need it. And it's the idea of using our computer in the same way. So rather than the computer being the place that you sit all day figuring out the next task that you need to do and inevitably ending up, like on Twitter, that you stay away from the computer, decide what the next specific task is that you would like to get done, and then you use the computer for that purpose and then you close it again and you move away and you decide what you wanna do next.
[01:12:38] Hide: That's a good one. I like that.
[01:12:40] Shai: And yeah. But essentially it's like fundamentally, it's just a, it's a way of really getting in the habit of breaking things down into specific tasks instead of realizing you spent the whole day on the computer feeling productive, but not doing any of the things that would meaningfully move your project forward.
[01:13:00] Hide: I like that. That makes sense. Pen. Yeah, I'll try that.
I like where you were going with that, of, breaking down next steps into discrete actions like. if I was looking at my to-do list, and one of 'em said, take advantage of windows of opportunity to contact more people. do I have enough time to do that? I don't know. what is that?
[01:13:24] Christian: Even what, which windows of opportunity in what medium and who am I contacting? But, if the next thing on my to-do list is contact who is the account executive at Instacart, at this email address,and ask to set up a call, that's a juicy task that like, I'm happy to check off, that, that's much more concrete.
And like, how could I not have time to do that? that takes 30 seconds. so the more you're able to break down those more complicated, abstract,goals into actionable next steps that you could feasibly give to a Tesla bot or something, and it would've a reasonable chance of getting it done,the more time I think you'll feel like you have for this project.
[01:14:02] Hide: right? Wait, a Tesla bot is that thing
[01:14:04] Christian: Yeah, they're making robots.
[01:14:07] Hide: to sell?
[01:14:08] Christian: Yeah. For 25 grand or something is what he's targeting. So it'll probably be 50 by the time they're done, but
[01:14:13] Hide: Oh, Tesla bot. I thought I meant to like these Tesla bots do the sales for you.
[01:14:18] Christian: Oh, no,I'm using this to say, I, I think an, a personal assistant might be a better example, once you've broken it down so that, if you could text a personal assistant and say, okay, here's the task. Have you broken it down enough so that they would understand how to do it and they'd be able to do it.
If the task is, take advantage of windows of opportunity and,generate leads,an assistant would come back from that being like, what do you mean what's a window of opportunity? which hour? But if you give 'em the task, send this person this specific email, or don't even send it, like draft it so that I can review it later.
that's a much more, crispy, atomic unit of work that's much more actionable.
[01:14:50] Hide: I like that Tim Ferris would be proud.
[01:14:53] Shai: And it becomes increasingly true the more. Scarier you find the task, right? If it's a big ill-defined task, but it's one that you're comfortable doing, then you can probably get away with keeping it as an ill-defined task. Cuz you're gonna jump right in and figure out how to do the task and figure out the specifics and so on.
But the more like as the, as your fear around the task increases, the, there's a correlation between how scary you find the task and how small of a, of pieces you need to break it down into.
[01:15:22] Hide: Yeah.
[01:15:23] Shai: literally had ones where I've been so daunted at this task and I put it off for a long time and whatever, and I've ended up breaking it down into, pretty much down to the level of click on the Gmail tab, press the compose button.
And it's like each of those is an individual task on this list, like type in the email address,
[01:15:45] Hide: Wipe away
from your
But if that's the level we have to take these things to cuz we're, because we're scared of doing a certain task, then that's the way to do it.
[01:15:54] Hide: Yeah, and like I am not scared of pressing the at symbol on my keyboard, so that's fine.
[01:16:00] Shai: I've got it to the level that it's, that I'm comfortable with.
also, I have on my whiteboard, what's the highest impact thing for my business today that scares me the most, and I try to do it first thing in the morning.
[01:16:11] Christian: That's good.
[01:16:14] Hide: If only because I just want to enjoy my day . So I don't wanna sit around like feeling helpless all the time. And I do sometimes forget to look at it
but yeah, I try to do that living that, that helpless feeling that you get from just not doing something is that sucks. Just sucks.
[01:16:32] Christian: This is something I've talked a lot about with Shai. I have a recurring to do in my to-Do app that. Is, what's the work that I least wanna do today? And invariably when I answer that question, it's the thing that I need to do the most. That's like the most important,scheduling a doctor's appointment or something like that.
yeah, that's, that's insightful and I like the way you worded it. I think if you keep doing that habit, that's gonna be meaningfully pushing forward your business.
[01:16:59] Hide: Fingers crossed.
[01:17:02] Christian: Cool. thank you everybody. I think that's all.