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The "No BS" version of how startups are really built, taught by actual startup Founders who have lived through all of it. Hosts Wil Schroter and Ryan Rutan talk candidly about the intense struggles Founders face both personally and professionally as they try to turn their idea into something that will change the world.
EP256
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Ryan Rutan: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the episode of the startup therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by Wil Schroter, the founder and CEO of startups. com. Wil, there is no shortage of advice or people willing to give it and be helpful for founders. How often are founders engaging with this help and or just asking for help in general?
How often is that happening?
Wil Schroter: Like never. I don't get it. There's so much help out there. Would you be asking for all of it all the time? What is happening?
Ryan Rutan: I'm not sure. Because, we've built a business around this, of course. But people are just running and asking us. And it's funny because I'm sure you run into the same thing.
But when I do start answering questions for people, they're like, Was this easy? All I had to do was ask you, like, how many wishes do I get from you, Startup Genie? And I'm like, as many as you want. I've got another 15 minutes to ask away, right? And everybody's just so mind blown. That was the process.
Wil Schroter: It's unbelievable how much founders suck at asking for advice. And I would put it in two parts. [00:01:00] One is just not asking for it at all. One is it not even asking, okay? But the second part is, like you just, you suggested, when they do ask, they're not that good at it. Either they're not aggressive, I don't mean that in a negative way, they're not complete enough about it.
Or it doesn't occur to them that they should keep asking questions.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah. You know what? One of my favorite questions to ask back to a founder when they're asking me questions is, what do you really want to know that you're not asking me right now? And it's so hysterical. So they'll be like, can I, yeah, you can.
That's what I'm here for. Because that's the thing, man, when you're starting to give advice, you don't want to answer the most banal, pathetic run of the mill question, right? Don't ask me something you can go Google. Ask me the thing that you think I know that nobody else knows so that I can tell you.
Because that's what I'm here for. That's what I want to do. Yeah it's always funny to watch that moment happen.
Wil Schroter: I don't know about you, but I do know about you. In this case I love asking questions. I love asking in, in fact, I'll tell you this when my wife and I go out and we go like on a double date or something with another couple or a group of [00:02:00] people, I always get scolded at the end of the night, okay?
Always get scolded. Because she's dude, you went a little too deep on the questions, right? Yeah, why were you interrogating
Ryan Rutan: them? Yeah.
Wil Schroter: I don't know. I think it generally works, right? I find that when I stop, the dinner conversations go nowhere, or they're just really boring. I'm incapable of small talk, and anybody that's listening to this that knows me is probably nodding their head going, yeah you go a little too deep too fast, right?
And
Ryan Rutan: it's just because that's what interests me. That's the thing. I've said this before, I'm like, I cannot ask those questions and then I will be non participatory in the conversation because I'm not going to talk about the weather again or how upset we are about the price of gas again. I don't give a shit about either of those things.
Wil Schroter: I'm an infinitely curious person, and if I'm not satiating my curiosities, I lose interest. And so it's for me, asking those questions or digging in and asking for advice is something I do all the time. As I'm in the process of building a house, right? So I'm on the phone this week with some of the [00:03:00] contractors that are doing like excavation or they're doing like, groundwork, whatever, or foundation.
I'm asking a million questions. How long does it take concrete to cure? Exactly how far do you go down in the excavation? When do you do? And we hit bedrock, what are our options there? How does the temperature and relative humidity
Ryan Rutan: work with that, right? Oops, I guess I did ask about the weather.
Yeah.
Wil Schroter: But I guess what I'm saying is I'm dying to know all of these things. As a founder, I've found it as my job to ask lots of questions. And I think it's a muscle I've developed over time. But I gotta say, man. When I first started off 30 years ago, I sucked at it. I didn't realize I had permission to do it.
Ryan Rutan: Didn't realize you had permission. You don't know how to ask the right questions. You don't know how to ask the follow ups. You don't know how to, to read the audience or ask the right people. There was that too. Like I spent a lot of time asking the wrong people the right questions or the right people the wrong questions.
Like you, it does take time to get it right. But fortunately, I think in both of our cases we started doing it. There's so many founders that I talked to, I'm just like, who have you talked to about this? Have you reached out to a [00:04:00] subject matter expert? They're like, no. Hey, did you talk to another founder who's done this before?
No.
Wil Schroter: I was like, this concept that we talk about like in every workshop, every day of the week at startups. com. We say, ask a million questions. That's why you're here. That's why we're here. So people come to me and, as I run a pitch deck workshop where every week I'm sitting down with founders and explaining them how to build a pitch deck.
And every time they send me their first copy in, it is awful. Not their fault, by the way, not their fault. Just that's just the nature of a first draft of anything. And I always ask them, I said, Hey have you looked at our videos? Have you looked at our courses, et cetera, that kind of walk through this?
And most of the time they haven't yet, which is usually how I'm informing them that this exists, but here's my party line response to all of them, which is everything you're about to do with this pitch deck, and of course this applies to everything has already been done before, right? There's actually nothing for you to discover.
As far as how to build a pitch deck. Now what you put in your pitch deck, of course is going to be [00:05:00] specific. The mechanics of how to build a pitch deck that investors will love every time has been done a million times before. Just not by you.
Ryan Rutan: Just not by you. Not by you. That's it. There's going to be some adjustment and some nuance.
But we don't need to think about what if I printed it on circular paper and say, all right, no, we don't need to think about that. Like you don't need to think about this stuff right there. There's the. Template and a formula to follow here in terms of how you construct the information that goes on the slide.
What do people react to? What do they not care? And yeah, it's, that is always painful too. Like when you see a founder who you talk to and they're like, I've spent, I spent three months building this thing out. You're like, did you look at how other people did this first? Or, you just playing three little pigs over there where you're like let's figure out by a trial and error and not getting eaten by a wolf, what the best housing would show us.
Let's not. Let's just ask somebody who's done this before, right?
Wil Schroter: No, just a hundred percent. I gotta tell you I learned this, I developed this muscle early on in my career and I think it really helped save me. And I think for a lot of folks listening, this is their first time meet a [00:06:00] founder.
I want you to hear this because I think this is going to be of particular import to what you're doing. Initially, I had this like complex, like I think everybody does, which is, Hey, I don't know the answers now, what I would learn way too late in life is that no one has them and that's actually part of what this is.
Ryan Rutan: We're not making carbon copies of other businesses either. So yes, there is always going to be some aspect of unknown. And no matter who you ask, they're not going to have the answer to exactly what and how to build what you build. But they can give you the process to get there, they can answer some of the constituent parts and turn some variables into constants for you.
But
Wil Schroter: also why you have to get good at asking questions, right? Why you have to look at everything and say, I don't know the answer and neither do you, and that's okay. But how do I find the formula for getting the answer? How do I find the recipe? For whatever I'm about to do. And early in my career, when I was starting, I was really interested in every aspect of building a company.
So for me, it wasn't just about, Hey, I'm interested in design, or I'm interested in marketing, or I'm interested in coding. [00:07:00] I was interested in all of them. Like I wanted to learn how to do all of them as best as I could. In the early days, and I know you went through this too, running your own agency, I did everything.
I did the design of websites, I did the coding of websites, I did the marketing of websites, I did the sales of websites, like everything.
Ryan Rutan: The accounting, the cleaning, the whole
Wil Schroter: thing, right? Everything, and honestly, and I loved it. Now that's not for everybody, but here's what's interesting about that. Having gotten into so many disciplines and then later getting into so many industries, I started to learn a little bit of a hack, and the hack was this.
Everything is infinitely doable. If you start at the smallest possible space to start, if you pick it off 1 percent at a time. And, man, this would have been the most useful information when I was 19 when I was first starting, but damn do I use the hell out of it now.
Ryan Rutan: You wouldn't have heard it at that point anyways, man.
That's the thing. Some of this, the experience has to inform some of this.
Wil Schroter: Yeah, I also had no one around me that was even capable of providing that advice, but that's a whole other issue. But here's what's interesting. As I started to learn that hey, everything's [00:08:00] been done before, and it's actually not complicated.
Now, to be fair, there are a handful of things that actually are complicated, require either a high IQ or a very specialized talent to be able to do. I'll give you two examples on two ends of the spectrum. Creative is easy to understand, right? I can look at the history of creative, in all its forms, art, whatever.
And I can look at the tools of creative, think like Photoshop, right? But it won't make me a creative. I either have that skill or I don't, right? Going on the other end of things when you talk about anything math related, there's a version where you can do basic stuff, and there's a version where you aren't built for it, right?
There's the, where you actually cap out. Just highly theoretical math, you're like, yeah, not for me. You either have that muscle or you do not. That said, those are far ends of the spectrum. So for us, when we're thinking about what are all the things I can do in between, the answer is pretty much everything.
The only difference is whether or not you [00:09:00] sought out the mechanism, the recipe, the playbook, or how to do it.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah. Yeah. And with, and like you said, with most things, I think the, one of the really important things to understand there is. For the broad majority of things all those things in the middle between those two points in the spectrum, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way, right?
Everything seems difficult as all hell when you have zero knowledge. The minute you learn a little bit and all of a sudden you have some basis, some foundation, right? So did I become the best accountant in the world? Clearly not. Was I more than capable of handling the accounting for the agency? Yes, I was.
Did it require a little bit of work and knowledge? Yeah, a little. In the beginning, I was like, debit, credit, don't get it, whatever. Okay, book, a couple hours reading, got it. All right, now I know where to push it. So it's about crossing some of those early knowledge gaps. But again, so many times founders are not asking questions from those who have tread the path before.
They're just literally trying to figure it out through trial and error. But as if there's some misguided belief that there's some honor in just [00:10:00] figuring it out. I don't know. I can't, I don't know what it is. Like I've never, I've really never had a problem asking like when I don't know how to do something like I, I'm an idiot.
I don't know how to do this. How do I do this? And then I go find somebody who looks like less of an idiot than I am that is already doing it. I'm like, help me. And they're like, okay.
Wil Schroter: But I think it's a trained muscle. And I, what I'm saying too is that I think when you train that muscle. It serves you in so many ways, right?
But again, when we see founders for the first time, I think they're often coming from industries, and this isn't unusual, where saying, I don't know doesn't get you a high five, right? You're fearful of the I don't know, and I think that's a dangerous proposition for people. Vulnerability's bad, and all those things, yeah.
Yeah, it's tantamount to, I don't know, I'm weak, whatever. And I've seen it from a different angle, which is, Finding out exactly where to find this information or how to ask those questions or really how to dig in became a bit of a superpower. Asking questions became a superpower.
So let me explain because, Ryan, you've been on this journey with me. Years ago, I figured [00:11:00] out how to be a carpenter and this weekend, I send you pictures or whatever. I just finished an entire kitchen, for my new home, right? Kitchen, pantry, tons of stuff, right?
All the cabinets, all the details, doors, everything, right? And people are like, how could you possibly know how to do that? Dude, I didn't! Like anybody else! Specifically how this happened, I just want to point out how this thing builds. Years ago, specifically, when I was sitting in the delivery room for my son Will next to my wife, right?
And waiting for him to come out I'm on YouTube, basically because my wife and I are just sitting there, there's nothing going on at the time. And I end up stumbling upon a YouTube video, and I just think this is so funny, about some guy who's a carpenter. And he's just teaching basic carpentry stuff.
I don't know why I stumbled upon this video, I didn't even know what I was looking for at the time. But I found the video. He said three things that were like basic things about how to construct something. So it comes out the way you want it to. And I was like, wait, that's it. That's it. Yeah.
Ryan Rutan: So contrast that with if you had just [00:12:00] gone into a wood shop.
And started banging around and trying to figure out, which you did, right? And that, which you without those advice, like how long would it have taken you? Would you have ever come to the same realization? Presumably? Yes.
Wil Schroter: I know for sure. Cause I've been doing it for 30 years prior to that and yet I didn't get that outcome.
But this light bulb went off in me and I was like, wait a minute, if this is as simple as this guy just made it, and it was by the way, what else is this simple? And then all of a sudden something clicked inside me, not just about like carpentry or woodworking or whatever. Just in, in my journey of learning, okay, and I realized that I could actually learn or do anything like Neo matrix style, I know Kung Fu, if I just focused on the first 1 percent of it.
It just so happened that coincided when, I started the process a few years later, building a house, right? And I was like, how hard can architecture actually be? How hard could 3D modeling be? How hard, and I was like, oh, damn. I'm If I just pick off 1 [00:13:00] percent of this problem, but ask about it, if I get awesome at asking questions, I can do anything.
Ryan Rutan: And holy cow, years later. Again, there's so much information out there and there's so much availability now to learn to do anything, right? You picked that up from a YouTube video, right? Which is a way of asking for help, right? You went out you ran a search, right? And that is an expert, right?
Are they talking specifically to you about your nuanced problem? No. And in a lot of cases. Doesn't matter, right? Because the nuances for you to figure out the overall process, the three pieces of knowledge that he gave you that'll unlock this box for you. So you could go build boxes. We're something simple in general enough that now you can apply it to whatever you want to use it for.
And I think that's. The other challenge that founders run into is that they're looking for this, things that are too specific sometimes, right? They want to know exactly the answer to their thing. And you tell them I don't know that, but here's exactly the formula for how else this was solved somewhere else.
And then it's just incumbent on them to be able to say, okay, cool. Now I'll go [00:14:00] apply that, right? As opposed to ignoring all advice that doesn't immediately match exactly the situation, which is something else I see every day.
Wil Schroter: Something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new.
Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you. Which means the answer already exists, you may just not know it. But that's okay. That's what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long. Startups. com.
So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do. Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. The way I see it is if you're going to cook something, look for a recipe. If you're like, no, I'm just going to go in the kitchen and just start mixing shit around and I'm going to see if something delicious, no, it's not going to pop up.
And yes, over time in the hardest way possible, you're going to eventually learn how to cook food, right? You're going to, you're going to eventually learn why bother? All of the recipes that you could possibly need for building a startup already exist. [00:15:00] We built an entire company at startups.
com to store all of them, right? Whether you ask us or anybody else, it isn't the point. The point is that it's already out there. And if you're not using those recipes to go build your business, you're not only wasting time, you're putting your whole damn organization at risk. You know what I mean?
Ryan Rutan: That's exactly it. Yeah. And look, we've talked about the fact that there are like, Some things you need to go through. There's necessitist grind and there's these things. But you want to be doing that grind on the most important possible things. You don't want to be doing the grind to figure out something that everybody else already knows, right?
Guys, I spent the last six years on this crazy theory that we can use abstract containers to contain values. That we could then combine, you mean addition? Yeah, what's that? That's where we take yeah. You don't need to do that, right? Spend your time on the things that are actually going to add that nuanced value to your business, as opposed to just grinding away on the things that have already been [00:16:00] solved.
It's so painful to watch that happen.
Wil Schroter: What that looks like for you as a leader, right? The analogy would go, we're looking at a Sherpa that's going to take us through a mountain pass, right? This very frying mountain pass that could be life or death, right? And there's two Sherpas. One Sherpa's Hey dude, I've got a map.
It's gonna be hard, but I actually know how to get through it, because the map tells us how. The other one's I've got flip flops and a lava lamp. Let's rock.
It's we'll figure it out as we go. Who wouldn't want to follow that guy? And we are the startup Sherpas. It is our job to find the damn map before we go through the mountain pass.
So if we're building a pitch deck, going back to my earlier example man? Find out what the plan is. By the way, if you're building a pitch deck, the plan isn't go download a template, it's like saying, I want to write a book. So I'm going to download a book. This is not the way it works.
There's a whole instruction manual for how to build pitch decks, right? You don't have to guess at a thing. And it's like paint by numbers. Yes. What you put into your pitch deck specifically is going [00:17:00] to be unique, but that's actually not where most people struggle. They don't even know what's supposed to be in it.
They're like, oh, I read somewhere that it has to have these 12 slides. That doesn't tell you jack shit, right? Like, how specifically are they to be constructed? What's the objective of every slide? What does a perfect slide look like? That's like saying every painting needs to have these six colors, right?
Cool. Great, end up making a painting. And so I think for some reason, we have this default notion To go it alone to go through the mountain pass without turning around and saying, Hey, anybody got a map?
Ryan Rutan: Yep. I, to me, that goes back to something you said earlier, man. It goes back to something you said earlier where people are coming from another industry or career where that type of vulnerability and asking for help wasn't allowed.
But it's also something gets coached into people as founders. We talked about this, I don't know, about a hundred podcasts ago, probably, but it was around this notion of like always having to be on, always in pitch mode, always having the answers. So I think that founders have this feeling that I have to be on, I have to have the answers.
I'm the only one who's [00:18:00] trying to figure this out. So I have to be the one who's figuring it out. I should know more about this than anybody else. Ergo, asking anybody anything is a sign that I don't, right? And it's sad thing to see because it's, look, you do have to be on, you do have to have the answers in certain situations, right?
You're pitching to investors. You probably ought to have the answers, right? You want to know the answer to the question they're going to ask. But if you're just trying to figure out like, Hey, what's the best version of a Martech stack for us based on the type of leads we want to go after and the type of conversions we have, like you don't need to go figure that out through trial and error.
If you are a B2B company selling this type of price point to an audience in these locations, Here's your Martech stack, right? That's been figured out. Don't go reinvent the shit.
Wil Schroter: I think part of that is, you mentioned vulnerability, which I think is a really interesting term because I do believe that's probably where it comes from, like this insecurity or vulnerability of asking.
That I think maybe over like the 30 [00:19:00] years of my career so far, I think part of the reason I've gotten so good at asking questions is because I burned off a lot of that like freshman year insecurity. And I think I've just realized that kind of everybody has it. It's the same way like, if I were to go back to dating again, I would feel so much differently about it because all the insecurities I had about dating are gone now.
I haven't been married for what's about to be 13 years. And so I think part of that is, again, it's your freshman year, everybody's going through it. Part of our job, Ryan, and part of our challenge, if you think about our platform, our community and really our product is convincing people coaxing people to ask those questions really in many ways for the first time.
Without feeling guilty about it, without feeling
Ryan Rutan: vulnerable. Without feeling vulnerable and without feeling like they have to defend it. I just had this happen in one of my getting customers workshops and somebody kept coming out of a corporate environment. So there's probably some exactly what you said, which is that they were constantly having to defend their perspective, defend their ideas, defend their everything, right?
You got to watch your own back [00:20:00] all the time. Bring that into a founder's group meeting with a bunch of other founders who are all just there to help. And yet every time a question was asked and someone would offer a piece of advice or perspective or something back, there was constant defensiveness.
Oh I've already thought of this, right? I've already done that. Or I, somebody told me something different than what you're telling me. What are you doing? You don't need to defend it. You don't, you just, Be vulnerable. Listen to what they're saying. Take it for what it's worth.
You can disagree with it, whatever. But it's so funny because then it just shuts everybody down. So this person needs to practice that muscle a bit more, right? And most of us do, to your point, we all have that, that veneer, but you can see it clearly in this case where it was like, at some point, this individual will get over that, I hope.
And they'll be able to just say look, I don't have to feel like I'm being attacked as people are asking me questions. Because all they want to do is get information so they can answer my questions. Alright, so I think this, the this imposed vulnerability is something we all have to practice.
It's a muscle like, like any other. Where we're just okay being vulnerable. We're okay hanging ourselves out there, knowing that, that we may [00:21:00] receive information that's Not as comfortable as what we'd like, or it's not a direct answer, or people are pointing up holes in the armor, whatever, right?
It's okay, right? It's okay to be vulnerable. You should be. Because it opens the doors to a lot of vectors for learning that otherwise just aren't there.
Wil Schroter: I agree. And you also said talking to a group of founders. If we're talking about who to ask these questions from, ask founders. Specifically go to founders, right?
Because people are like should I talk to an expert in this or an expert in that? And yes, by all means you should. Yes, who's also a founder. The reason we advocate for founders specifically is because they not only practice this stuff they're very important by the way, they've had the consequences of getting this wrong and the spoils of getting it right.
The other side of it is, they love helping other founders. That's like the secret gem maybe of this entire podcast. Founders love helping other founders. And if you're a new founder, if you haven't figured out like what [00:22:00] this secret club looks like, where you can just say, Hey, I'm a founder in this massive world, opens up to you great news.
It's available.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, for sure. Like you and I have built a business around this, right? This is we love helping founders so much. We decided to make this our full time business. Full time thing is all we do.
Wil Schroter: Yeah. And you were saying somebody was commenting to you the other day. They're like, Hey, are you enjoying this?
All the questions, right? It was like for you.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, it
Wil Schroter: was
Ryan Rutan: super funny. Yeah, it was super funny. Cause we were talking about, I was encouraging her to go and talk to other founders in the space so that she could get some parallel experiences. And she's they answer the questions.
Yeah, they will. And they're just like, oh, they won't be bothered by it. They won't think I'm trying to compete with them. I was like, you're not competing with them. We already talked about the categories you can go and talk to that are completely non competitive. It's a big market. They'll remember what it was like.
And then somehow it got turned back around to she said, you've been so generous with your time today. Thank you so much. I hope this wasn't a bother. I was like. I've enjoyed this. You're like, have you really? I was like, you've been on this call with me the entire time, right?
Yeah. Did my face, did it look like I was enjoying myself? And she said, it looked like you were having the time of your life. And I said, [00:23:00] that's because I was right. I'm a shit actor, right? I am a terrible actor. Watch some of the YouTube videos where I was trying to do like from a script. You'll see I'm a real shit actor.
So if I look happy, I'm happy.
Wil Schroter: No, I agree. From my standpoint it's funny to me that founders have access to countless other The biggest depth of knowledge you could possibly have in the first factor is they actually just don't know it. They're not aware of that.
And again, why would you be until somebody tells you, right? So if you're listening, great news. How many millennia did we stand on top of oil before we need to dig in the ground and pull it out and it, right? It was there
Ryan Rutan: the whole time.
Wil Schroter: Okay. So the first factor is folks don't even know that the help exists.
Okay, fair. The second thing is, They don't understand the motivation for why people, why founders, would want to help them, or anybody for that matter. So in many ways, they just don't ask. Let me make it simple. Founders love sharing with other founders because we've been through it before. We're basically sharing our own stuff and the way that parents share things with [00:24:00] kids, where they get to share their own experiences, etc.
As a parent, generally speaking, you're not like, Hey son, I'm not going to tell you anything about life because that's my knowledge, not yours. It's the opposite. I can't wait to share with you all the things that I learned because you're going through the same things I went through. And the best parallel I've ever seen, and I love when I catch moments like this, is when I see two military servicemen see each other at an airport or something like that, right?
They don't know each other, but just somehow they pick up on the fact that they both served. And there's this amazing respect. In camaraderie for two
Ryan Rutan: total strangers, right? The celebration of what they did, right? It's a celebration and a recognition of what they did. And I think that's actually a great parallel.
It's a big part of what we do. I realized this some time ago is one of the reasons I love sharing these little things, right? Cause they're all little things in most cases, right? We're not going to unlock that, it's not like I have some. Golden secret that once I tell you, everything becomes simple, right?
But I can [00:25:00] unlock lots of the little doors that are gonna block if you get where you want to be. Each one of those, in my own experience, was probably a completely uncelebrated victory. Nobody high fived the shit out of me because I figured out a way to bring CPM down by 5%, right? Mattered to me when I'm building my business.
When I get to go and tell somebody else that, it's my first chance to celebrate this and help somebody else. Like, how the hell does that not feel good, right? Everybody's going to want to do.
Wil Schroter: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's, it's a great justification. It helps validate your experience, right? I was going to say the other example that I always say, it's two moms in a in a supermarket.
Where one kid is screaming bloody murder and the other mom just looks at her and they just nod, they're like, yep, been there, yeah. They don't exchange a word they just know at that moment that they've both been through the same shit. And I think among founders, we have that amazing camaraderie among us.
Last Friday, we were doing one of our community leader meetings, which for those listening folks that are in the startups. com [00:26:00] platform that want to specifically give back to lots of other startups. They run their own meetings, their own workshops, and they just, want to help other startups.
And they were talking about this, and one of the new founders that had joined was saying, I've been wanting to share this information for so long, but here's what's interesting, I've never had an outlet. I met a couple people here and there, and they were interesting. But now I've got like thousands of people that I have access to that I can share the exact stuff that I've gone through with.
And it's awesome. And it's making me laugh because I was like, think of how opposite that is from everybody that's going to ask him for so much information. To your point, they're like, oh my god, am I bothering him? Whatever. And he's thinking the opposite. He's Oh my God, I'm in my, my, my happiest zone right now.
Because I can help all these people with all this stuff.
Ryan Rutan: Stick
Wil Schroter: on that
Ryan Rutan: for a second. Cause I think it's super important, right? People who've decided to go and like specifically hang a shingle and help other folks, right? Do that, right? At whatever stage you're at as a founder, make it apparent that you're open to this, right?
This is the biggest gift that you can give yourself and the rest of the community. [00:27:00] Is to make yourself available, right? You and I both do this all the time. We're constantly asking, like, how can I be helpful? Sometimes that's just when people come to us, I've started doing a thing like regularly on LinkedIn.
I'll just pop it up. They're like, who needs help right now? And I literally mean that just come and ask me, right? Just put it out there. Let people know that you have something to share. How sad is it? Happy now that this founder found that outlet and now knows that they have a way to share this information.
To your point, it wouldn't have been hard, right? It's like opening up a stand that says free ice cream. I've been waiting for years to figure out how I could get rid of all this ice cream that I have. I want to share my ice cream with the world. Tell me we've got ice cream. Guess what? You're going to fucking show up, right?
It happens every time he's home. I have advice. I've fought this battle. I know how to beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's punch out. Cool. What is it? Here it is. We want to share these things.
Wil Schroter: Yeah, dude. And I think that, again from our standpoint, Ryan, you and I, help people out for a living and we're used to it.
But day after day, as we have people join the platform and come and they come to their first [00:28:00] workshop or they come, first one on one with us or something like that. And they clearly haven't gotten used to asking for advice. And it doesn't matter how old they are. In fact, sometimes the older they are, the worse it is because they've been more conditioned for not asking for advice.
And I'm like, listen, you're in a place right now in your career. Where you are highly penalized every time you don't ask a question, right? Your job, literally your job right now. Is to ask a million questions. It's kind of Ryan, we're in the business of asking questions, the nature of product invention, market adoption, et cetera.
Ryan Rutan: That's it, man. We're just validating everything, right? Everything is an unknown until it's not. And that's our job is to make all the unknowns knowns and carve the path forward. Agreed. So
Wil Schroter: here's what I would say. Generally speaking for founders, there is no excuse whatsoever for not asking for help, for not reaching out.
Talking to as many people as possible, finding the recipes, finding the map, being the Sherpa with the map, not being the Sherpa, [00:29:00] figuring it out as they go. We have many jobs as founders, we have many responsibilities. There's no way we're going to do all of them flawlessly with no input, no feedback in no direction.
So if we're gonna do anything right. We need to be amazing at seeking out help and asking tons of questions.
Ryan Rutan: Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone. You don't have to, and honestly you shouldn't because instead you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes, connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors, helping them win in the startups.
com community, check out the startups. com community at www. startups. com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.