Hey, Rob here. Here we are with emergency,
emergency Friday recording. If anybody was, hopefully we
haven't just ruined everybody's Friday.
And by everybody I mean listener or three listeners, whatever it
were. Three people were waiting for
this podcast and they're like, what the heck is going on?
I'd. Be out of Yeah.
My whole Friday's ruined. Yeah, well, anyways, we had a
plan. We recorded something and then
we scratched it and and Rob put together a an interesting.
I would say we're back in like this almost the spiritual realm
of entrepreneurship with this fun bet.
Why don't you the the post is called the reward is harder
work. If you think pre PMF ain't easy
dot dot dot Rob, why don't you give us the context on this one?
Yeah. So this is, this is actually
something that I've been thinking about for a while,
specifically as I keep lifting heavier and heavier weights and
just not looking forward to it and not.
And then I just have the voice in the back of my head, which
is, which is the, the trainer's voice, Mark Ripatella, who's
just like, you have to do the 5th Rep, you must do the 5th.
And so I just have that in the back of my head, like, all
right, well, that that's terrible.
And so that's been in the back of my mind and it's a super,
it's a, it's the, the process of lifting increasingly awful
weights has just, we talked about this last year about the
simple thing about hard things or the hard thing about simple
things or something like that. And it's, it's just been this
like interesting thing of just how much of what we need to do
is actually quite simple and it is exceptionally difficult to
do. And So what I observe is like
we, we create a lot of, we create a lot of useless work to
avoid doing the simple hard things.
And then once stuff starts working, we kind of think it's
going to get easier. And it doesn't.
And I, it was really it like came I, I, it came to a head
this week when I was at breakfast with a, with a founder
friend who who we both know and he, he's been through the
program, he's gone through it. He'd like been trying to push an
HR tool onto a market that didn't care.
And he just been grinding it out for years on this.
And then kind of randomly in February, things turn.
He like he just kind of found pole in an adjacent space with
kind of the same product, but kind of a different product.
And he's gone from, from like bootstrapped was like he's like
drained his retirement account with like very little revenue
to, you know, like a million run rate now, like 90 days later or
whatever. And so the growth has been
awesome. But, but I was like, OK, cool.
And I I knew what the answer was going to be but but I was like
but I asked him. Was it the the bags under his
eyes or like what told you what that?
Yeah, yeah, I know it was. So I knew what the answer was
going to be because I know the answer to this question and
it's, it's always the same answer.
But I was like, Oh yeah, it's I'm sure it's a lot easier now,
isn't it? And he's like, no, it's so much
worse than before. And I thought it was bad then.
And so like, we, we talked about this and I was like, you know
what? Given that I'm writing this on a
plane last minute, why not just write about this?
Yeah, and let's let's hit two of those things.
One, what happened? How did in case the listener is
in the the February version or the January version of that
startup where it's like, I don't know, there's like some revenue
or something like that. You mentioned he found an
adjacent vertical or an adjacent.
Is it like a category or a sector or something like that?
Like, how did he, how did he take a product that wasn't
really working? And then what changed?
Like, how did he find the pool that led him to take off?
Yeah, So it was just from a couple of anecdotes.
So one of his like kind of customers, one of his customers
had bought and was using it, but they weren't they, they like
they kind of needed something slightly different.
They liked it, they were really good.
And he's trying to sell it to other people, but it wasn't
quite right. And then he got into a
conversation with, you know, like a CHRO of AI think it was
like a plumbing or HVAC company who is like, oh, no, you're
thinking about it totally wrong. It's not about X, it's about Y.
And then he was he was also trying to sell outside of
plumbing and HVAC into, you know, all sorts of HR
departments in different places. And it's like a recruiting tool,
hiring tool. And in all of those other places
they didn't, they work like structurally understaffed in
plumbing and HVAC, they are structurally understaffed.
So if you if you sell anywhere else, there's like a significant
chance that they were kind of OK as it with what they were doing
in the plumbing, HVAC space. They were definitely not OK with
what they were doing, but they didn't have good enough options.
And so so there he had the fit, but he was just until he talked
with that chro and got slapped basically into into like, it's
not X, it's actually Y Yeah. Like until then it just didn't
work. It it kind of like it was, it
was all grinding. It was, you know, some people
weren't prioritizing it, others were prioritizing X and he was
pitching Y. And so it wasn't landing.
Yeah. Is there, is there a
generalizable lesson about that in terms of the either the way
he had the conversation or the outreach and how specific the
outreach is or something like that?
Like what do you take away from that So.
I take, so I take away that you have to find somebody who's
going to tell you the truth. And so most of the way that we
sell and approach sales and approach sales conversations,
they don't feel comfortable telling you the truth.
And so you have to find somebody who's willing to tell you the
truth, what the real project is, what they're really trying to
do. And and that person actually has
to have pull because someone, anyone else who tells you the
truth, it's just, yeah, I don't have any.
I don't have pull, which is useful, but it's not going to.
It's not going to cause you to take off.
Yeah, yeah, let's hit the transition.
So you wrote about the reward is harder work.
What is it? Why does it get harder?
Like as somebody that hasn't gone to 1,000,000 ARR in in 90
days, what what happens? Like what's the?
It's just like you, you go from a you go from where like only
one thing matters and that thing is existential and terrifying to
where like a bunch of things feel like they matter.
You have to keep customers happy.
You have a bunch of feature requests.
You have to understand, you have to bring on new team members.
You have to figure out, oh, crap, do we need to fundraise
now? And you got to probably talk to
VCs, which is always fun. And then you got to do you just
like all like all of these. And there's like a bunch of
fires. And on top of that, you have
that fear that like, oh gosh, we could go, we could go back to 0
or I could take a load bearing wall and this could all come
grumbling down. And so like all of that is
happening and it's, and it's compounded by like, oh, I could
lose a customer. I could do that at it, right?
Like this, something could break here.
And so there's all of these reasons why it just gets harder
that it goes from there being an obvious constraint to the
constraint isn't necessarily super obvious and could be a
bunch of different things. And you could approach it a
bunch of different ways. And so yeah.
And it basically it's, it is universally the experience of at
least of like, like people like us, where when it takes off, it
gets more stress. It gets just increasingly more
stressful. Interesting.
And was that I'm guessing that was your experience at?
It was, it was, and you don't think it's possible for it to
get harder? Yeah, I remember talking to you
and that, I don't know, it was like 2021 or something.
I think it was in the middle of a pandemic and you were like
bloodshot eyes. Like I think you were living at
the at your wifes family's lake house or something like that.
But it was like it was like 15 hours a day of back-to-back
calls. Like it was something crazy like
that. And it was just, you know, just
think things just like keep not working.
You can't fix them. You can't figure out why they're
not working. And it's, and it's just, it's
just like this constant and you, you're like, you're there are
fires burning everywhere. And when you actually like hit
from a market fit and it's it's so difficult.
Do you, do you advise founders when they hit that point or how
do you do you work with them? Like what do you how do you help
them with that? So it's basically there's a
really good quote, I don't know where it's from, but it's called
Let Small Fires Burn. And So what you what you need to
do is you need to have a conceptual model of your
business. I use the case study factory as
that model. And so you just have to figure
out what the constraint is. Because if you attack the
constraint and just kind of keep everything else steady, like
don't drop any balls but attack the constraint, then the
business will improve. If you don't attack the
constraint, then you can do a bunch of stuff.
You can work 80 hour weeks and the business doesn't get that
much better. Yeah.
And So what do? You what's an example of a
constraint that you attacked. Yeah.
So, so an example was we had a bottleneck around onboarding
customers. It was basically like we would
send over a link for them to sell it onboard and then they
wouldn't. And it would be like going on
for weeks and weeks and we'd kind of keep following up and
keep following up. And so that was the because if
they didn't onboard, they were going to churn by default.
And and so and so that OK, that's the constraint.
Question is, how do we make it such that they, it would be
weird if they didn't successfully on board.
Turns out we had to add an on boarding session where not only
like we had to take over their computer on board them, set them
up with all the defaults, launch the product with them in that on
boarding session and then and like and then that bottleneck
was solved. If we had done anything else
other than that, that that it would have just, we would have
just kind of run off a Cliff. There, Yeah.
And how did you know that was the fire that like because there
were what were what were other fires that were burning at the
time? There's just so many other fires
kind of hiring. It's just I, I can't, I don't
think I can art. There's so many product fires
product like which couldn't ship a product they could log into
like we didn't have a website. The guy we could, I could go
down the list of other things that were were not working.
It was we, we had like one person doing sales and that
person was leaving. That person had quit like like
it was, it was all of those things all at once.
And I was like, OK, cool. This is the, if we don't solve
this, everything else breaks. And and then it was like, OK,
cool, we need to immediately ship a fix to this.
Then we need to immediately move to the next thing.
And then it's, it's just like whack A mole with constraints.
And now, now the good thing is we had found pole.
So basically, once you've found pole, attacking the constraints
is a matter of roughly getting out of your own way so that you
can actually serve the pole you've found versus, right?
Like what I've seen is a lot of people, they don't really find
pull. And so everything they do has to
be perfect. It has to like, I have to
perfectly convince this person to buy.
I have to write like I have to wrangle all of this.
And so you don't really have the chance to do this.
Yeah. That's that's super interesting
and it ties to the way that you talk about in sales, describing
your product as small as possible like that should be a
line to pull and then delivering on such a smaller surface area
that in maintaining that developing, it ends up like the
the worst case scenario is you. You describe something big,
something in the big is where pull is, but you don't actually
know it. And so maintaining the entire
thing becomes the work. Yes, yeah.
And and you're pushing them to adopt it and implement it and
you're not sure if they right. And you're not sure are they not
using it because they don't like it, because they don't need it,
because they don't value it or even if they are using it, will
they renew on it? And so you have all and you're
getting feature requests, but you're not sure why and they're
different feature requests from different customers.
So yeah, you just like if you, if you're not super clear on
what pull is, yeah, this phase when you're getting traction is
horrible. Unless you're an idiot, in which
case you're like, yeah, I'm kidding, which I have been an
idiot and and I'm like, yeah, I'm killing it.
They're lovingly. Fondly with appreciation and a
certain degree of envy for for not over complicating the
business, but well, I, I love it, Rob, but we're going to keep
this one relatively tight. Anything else you wanted to add?
You know, there's the to the spiritual part of it.
You write about just loving the work and what what was it like?
The reward for the reward is harder work, but if you love the
work that it is, then actually is a reward in in some ways.
Yeah, so this might actually wind up being next weeks post
the so that the analogy I use in here, there's a couple of
different things that I think the deadlift analogy I think is
a really, really useful one, which is that like when you
deadlift 405 lbs your your personal record, you get to
celebrate that for exactly 3 seconds random.
Random, random. We're just going to choose a
random number. I don't know, like 405 lbs.
Four plates when when you do that, you used to get to
celebrate for 30 seconds and then you get to dread because
the next weight you're going to lift is £410.
Now the interest. And, and so like, that's kind of
how it's like when whenever you do something in a start up,
whenever you like achieve some level of success, it seems like
the next step is always harder and that it's just, it's just
like stepping up in in weights, right?
That, and in the same exact way you are stronger now, you have
adapted to be able to handle the heavier weights.
And in the exact same way, the more success you find, the
heavier weights you lift, the more excuses you have to not
lift the heavier weights, to not do the harder work, to just go
on autopilot, to just coast. And so I think that's, that's an
interesting thing that I have observed and in my view, so I
don't know how this, I have yet to figure out how to enjoy this
in, in weights and deadlifts. I I I go to bed worried.
Sweat. Your wife is like, why are you
drenched in sweat and you're just like shaking?
Staring at this. Are you having nightmares?
No, I just don't wanna. Go like a kind of nightmare.
Yeah, I'm. Not asleep yet, but but what I
know in start-ups is that if you're just thinking about the
financial outcome, the strain will crush you.
A lot of founders who build really suitable companies like
have this massive chip on their shoulder which is also probably
not super helpful or like like mental quite helpful for
building a a successful company. What I've found is the thing in
start-ups that causes you to enjoy the harder and harder work
is the desire to build something awesome that serves the customer
perfectly. And it's that aspiration that
makes it worth it. And like there are other things
too. I want to build a great team.
I want to do that like those things, but those are downstream
of the main thing. Yeah, Yeah.
As somebody who has put the I want to build a great team
before that I want to serve the customer, that's a really bad
mistake that you eventually you eventually end up paying for
anything else. Rob, we want to add on this.
Though they said the last thing, I didn't write this in this one,
but like when you think of it this way, then there are
basically only two constraints in the business.
There are two, there's whatever the the active constraint is in
the business. Is is a is a real constraint,
right? The onboarding process is a real
constraint, but the there's an ultimate constraint.
There are two ultimate constraints.
First one is pull, just like that's an external constraint.
To what extent is their demand in the market?
And guess what the second constraint is?
It's the founders willingness to attack the constraint, the
founders ability to attack the current constraint, just those
two things. And by attack the current
constraint you. I mean whatever the constraint
is in the business if it's. On board in the factory.
That in the factory, Yep, Yep. There's the external constraint,
which is pull, yeah. And then there's just the
founders. The founders ability to get back
under the bar. Yeah, that's fascinating.
That actually reminds me of like the Elon Musk in mythology or
like the real stuff. I, I don't know, I haven't
worked for SpaceX or Tesla or, or Starlink or any of this.
But you know what they say is as soon as he identifies the
constraint, he just goes and does that.
He sits there with the person on the, you know, at the computer
or on the floor, and it's like he's just moving constraint to
constraint across massively valuable and.
He does this at like some, he just like does it.
I'm not the kind of person who's going to be an Elon Musk.
Like I've already I'm accepted. And everyone's like, yeah, we
know. Breaking breaking news,
everybody. But but you, if you, if you look
at him, you're like, I just, I don't think I could physically
work 120 hours every week. Look, you don't have to.
I don't think you need to grind that.
If you're building 7 different companies that are all trillion
dollar companies. Maybe you do, but like you for
me, we don't need all, but we just like if.
If you think about it in terms of how often do I actually
attack the main constraint in my business and how doggedly do I
attack that constraint, The answer is not like once every
three hours in or once every two hours in a 8 hour working day or
a 10 hour working day. It's like if we're really honest
and we look in the mirror, it's like once every two weeks, maybe
once every week. And so simmer, yeah.
Yeah, you just let it simmer. You kind of delay it.
And so you don't have to be Elon Musk level crazy.
You just have to be willing to attack the current constraint.
Why, why do you think founders do that?
Like I'm reflecting on me and thinking like, why do I?
Why is my instincts not to? Because at the experience of it
is after you've attacked it, it's so obvious that you should
have been doing that. And like, it's such a relief.
But beforehand, there's some amount of procrastination.
I'm not really, I'm not really sure.
Like what is it the uncertainty? Like why do you think founders
have this kind of like block? I don't, I we could probably
apply the pull frame like you. You don't do it because you
don't have to. You, you can, you can delay it
or you, you, you perceive that you cannot do it, you can delay
it or that something else, something else will come and
save you or something like that. And so that's how, that's how I
feel like it is with me where it's like, it's OK if I don't do
this right now. And I think like Elon again, is
just psychologically incapable of not attacking the thing right
now. And it's like, you know, that's
that comes that comes with his own baggage, but it's quite
effective. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mine, mine
for, you know, the one easy one that comes to mind for me, it
was like the thing I needed to be doing was fixing my outbound
back. And I put that off for two
months. Like I, I knew it early November
and I put it off until January. And everything that's going on
in my business is because I actually figured that out.
Not, not haven't totally figured it out, but like got it
somewhere closer to that not being the constraint.
And it's like, golly, I wish I would have started that earlier.
So anyways, I imagine listener can has like something on their
mind that they like kind of know like this is the constraint in
my business and I haven't I haven't figured it out.
Yet or the business. The business won't improve
unless you find pull and you attack your constraint.
Yeah, awesome. Well, a quick reminder that
Rob's got a book coming up here in six, six weeks.
Is that published? A7 weeks, 7 weeks and we'll
leave the link to pre-order. There's in the next, I don't
know, week or two. We're going to come out with
like some cool pre-order stuff that we've got packaged.
Rob, anything we want to add on that now or we we leave folks
hanging for a week. Pre-order it and save your
receipt or go. You can just get the receipt off
Amazon or Barnes and Noble or whatever.
Yeah. Don't do not pre-order and then
immediately delete your Barnes and Noble account and and I'll
request that they permanently remove it from the Internet.
Yeah, cool. And then yeah, well, awesome.
Maybe we leave it at that, Rob. Sounds good.
All right. Take care, everybody.