What's up, everybody? This is Courtland from Indy hackers dot com, and you're listening to the Indy Hackers podcast on this show. I talked to the founders of profitable Internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they are today? How do they make decisions both of their companies and in their personal lives and what exactly, makes their businesses tick? The goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us could've been examples and go on to build our own profitable Internet businesses. Today, I'm sitting down to talk to you. Stelly, FT. CEO of Close Close,

is a CRM tool that helps cells people close more deals, and Stella and I go way back. We met and Y Combinator in 2011 in Silicon Valley, back when I first moved here, and since then we've kept in touch since Telly's third time on the podcast, and I really just wanted to catch up with him and see what's going on in his world. Stelly is an experienced Andy hacker. He hit product market fit years ago. Spaces has already been making millions of dollars. He's already grown his team to dozens of people, and I want to get a snapshot of what kind of decisions and concerns you make when you reach that point and your business. And also how a business of that maturity level deals with the crisis we're going through right now with Cove in 19 and all these lockdowns and shelter and place orders. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Stelly Deli. How you doing? How's it going with you?

You know, I honestly cannot complain, but I still do it every day, but I'm working on it. But I'm healthy amount of reasonably saying so. I have lots of blessings to call Vegas

feel the same way. I complained. You have, like, had, ah, lot of travel plans ruined this year and a lot of other plans. But like in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty minor compared to what else is going on. I'm healthy, my family's healthy. I'm safe. I'm also saying, saying I'm a huge introvert, so I think being at home for a long time has it been as much of a challenge is it's been for some of my friends, but it's kind of starting to wear on me after a couple of months. So a couple friends and I are gonna look into getting a cab in this sort of moving away and just riding out the storm together.

We'll see how that is. But one thing I've noticed that I've really kind of enjoy the kind of silver lining is it feels like everything is moving a little bit slower, like the whole world is moving slower. People just aren't getting as much done. They've got their kids at home. Everyone's got everybody a little bit of slack and for some strange reason that just makes me feel better. It feels like it's taken, Ah, load off my shoulders. I don't have to run as fast. Do you feel the same way that you feel like you've slowed down or the world is kind of slow down? And that affects how you think about your job and how you

work My world, definitely a slow down My circle has focused a lot more and it first it's funny. At first I was just complaining because that all these life had to move at these travel plans with a big retreat coming up and, like we had to reschedule and cancel and like, do a ton of these like changing my life plans, which I wasn't cool with, right? I was thick, you know. Reality was sending us all some cards and I was just like, complaining about the council was doubt, and then I had something. I was like Wait a second, you know, I think complaining about too much travel for the past three years, have any single week. And now that there's no trouble,

I complain about not traveling like I'm like, I'm just on asshole like this is just the reality is just like no matter what happens, I just playing. And so I started to work on my attitude and then being able to, I think slowly adjusted the pace, create a routine and appreciate kind of what this phase in time of my life, what it presents to me and what I can learn from it. And it's been it made a big change. But in the beginning I have to say In the beginning I was like fighting reality. You always lose and you do that and so I was just struck, starting with it heart. The pace has slowed. I think it's more like I just spend a lot more time like my mom, for instance. Right? I have a very close relationship with my mother.

But typically, I would see my mom. Maybe, you know, once every two months. And I would maybe talk to her once every other week for, like, a longer conversation. And I've been talking to my mom every single day. I visit her twice a week, I'll drive to her place and she come out of the balcony. I will be down and we'll just check for an hour. And that's kind of awesome, Like it's sad that now I can't like I wasn't hugging her and like it said that its under these circumstances. But I'm still glad for it because it just spending a lot more time with my family, a lot more time with a small circle of friends. Then I used to when life was so busy and I was always on the go. So that's definitely been a blessing.

Yeah, I kind of the same story with my mom. I don't have any balcony chats cause she looks across the country, but she's got a zoom account now and she'll just hop on. Zoom with me and my brother and just chat with us. Talk to us about any hackers. What we're up to you and it's cool. It's brought us closer together. It's kind of helped us recognize, like just the importance of life and the things that really matter. I almost wish that, you know, six weeks a year, we were just gonna do this like social distancing thing. Slow everything down, bring everyone together. It cut everybody some slack and just relax for a little bit.

It's unfortunate that had happened under these circumstances. Yeah, so true last time you're on the podcast. We talked all about sales, and it's a great episode, I was telling you earlier, I constantly recommended any actors. Go listen to it because sales is one of these things that almost every fledgling founder struggles with people are afraid of. And you gave like a master class on how to think about sales. How to find the 1st 100 customers, no matter what you're doing, had a saying great emails, but we didn't talk about your company close last time I talked about clothes was two years ago. You're on the podcast, and two years is a very long time to run a company. So tell us about how things were going with clothes and remind us also what closes

again and how it works. Yeah, so close is a sales tool, basically a CRM that helps small and medium sized businesses to sell. Better to communicate more better and to close deals. And we're a fully remote team. So we're I think by now we're like 45 people are so 14 different countries and were profitable. We're growing, and we're kind of like trying to build a house we want to live in, which is simple, but yet challenging. And yeah, I don't know when you even when you just said the last time we talked about close was two years ago, I was like, Wow, what happened those two years And this was like a draw blank because like it's all a blur in my life. It's just all a big if it's last week,

I can tell you, and then everything else is like two weeks ago or three years ago feels the same I will really know. But I think for us, really, over the last two years, maybe one thing that we have been going through is, like this kind of awkward. Some people call it like the messy middle I call it like the awkward teenage years of a company's life cycle. We're not really Children anymore, like we're not really a startup startup anymore. But we kind of wanna have all the privileges of no responsibility in your process and just being cool and just like winging it. But Wilson are real adults yet, right? So we can have, like, we don't have all the privilege of ah,

really massively scale organization. So we're in this middle phase where we have to find out balance off, being more adult, like in stepping up our game and leveling up a game appropriately to where we are as a business. And it's just awkward it. So you always like one. Bianca Tunisia's is a super awkward. Any time you try to, like, change something about, though, like saying okay now where the size we need to, like, move differently or change some of the things the way we do them the way we work, it always feels like awkward and like, so corporate. It's like, Why do we need this? Like there's an inner rebellion of the child That's like, I don't want this responsibility of all these

things and I want to grow up.

I wanna have a job and earn money, right? Can I just be like a child play? But I wanna, you know, have the power of an adult of deciding what I want to live that make my own decisions, know that. So that's kind of like the last two years and still ongoing, I would say when this, like super awkward trying to figure out adults, and that's been a fun and awkward right for

sure. So how do you look at that when you're deciding? OK, we've got this one list over here. Of all the advantages of being like a small, scrappy startup and another list of all the advantages of being like kind of a grown up company and having all this responsibility in all this success, what is appealing and that second list that's it's causing you to basically drive to be a grown up company. Why not just stay Chinese? Stay free and keep all those advantages.

You know, being a 40 year old that acts like a 12 year old just isn't cool sound. Really. It sounds like a cool idea, like, Hey, what if you just I don't know, you know, played video games all day long, collected unemployment, check at eight Mars bars like get this part that in their days were like That would be awesome, like just not doing anything would be fun. But in reality, it's just not fun to live a life like that, at least up for us. I think part of what drives us it close is this feeling of this dedication to growth, like internal growth,

personal growth and growth. As an organization, as a team, as a company and any time we're growing, I feel like there's a sense of fulfillment within the business. People are happy and people feel like things are changing in a positive direction. They're learning and growing through that process with the business meantime, were stale. There's like the sense of restlessness and I'm fulfillment. It's like everything is the way it used to be, but it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like we're learning fast enough doesn't feel like we're growing. So they So I do think that as the business is growing, as the amount of team members we have is, the amount of customers we serve is the amount of revenue we generate. It's just naive and childish to be like,

but I want this to keep going on indefinitely, up into the right, while I still act like it's people in the basement, right? Right. I get the appeal and I used to be in still probably and one of the chief offenders off holding on to the old days for longer than I should leave right now, I've kind of I've recognized that in me, and any time I impulsively shut something down when somebody's like, Hey, maybe we could change the way we do meeting. So we need a little bit more documentation here, like it would be better if we help. My instinct is always to be like, No, we don't need more process. We've only all this bullshit.

And now what? I've learned this. Just just take a breather. Just breathe in, breathe out, just be like let's put the emotions to the side. If I have said that strong oven impulsive reactions Probably not the smart side of me, the rational side of me of the adult side of me that is the mature side of me that is responding to this. It's probably the child by the childish side of me. So maybe I just like marinade on this idea a little bit. Maybe I just look at it. Maybe I'll just ask a few smart people and then I'll at my two cents if this is good or not, good and, uh and it's challenging. It sucks at times to have to do this. But I've recognized that I was slowing down the growing up process more than I'd like to admit and,

um, trying to get better that it's a never ending process. But I do think it's important, like it's important for us to be the best company we can be for people here to be happy and fulfilled in for me, for my own sanity. I don't like to look back three years ago and be like everything is the exactly the same and where the same people doing the same thing that socks like that feels like we wasted life. We wasted an opportunity to grow and learn. So that's why I think it's important to like again not overdo it right, which is the mistake that we also do at times like we were like this with three people with an idea we wanna have, like higher CFO, you know, and have a corporate responsibility council and, like, do all these things that don't match the baby size of our life cycle that we're in. But it's important to progress and evolve. I think, as you grow as a business,

that's interesting to think about the sort of focus on growth and evolving when you have a team and the fact that everybody feels little bit restless if you're not growing, If you're not going somewhere, it's going like, what is the point of this team will be doing here? We feel the same way internally, attendee hackers, but also nd hackers as sort of a community is very different. The community is almost the exact opposite, so I was just on the forum yesterday having a conversation with some people who are complaining about the change like, well, it was getting too big. It was all these different things, you know? What about the house? Young days of yesteryear, where everything was so small and everyone knew each other. And it's almost like the community is full of people who don't want change.

And so it's It's fun for me trying to grapple with that difference. But in your situation is like you don't have a community. You're 100% team, 100% people on the same page working to achieve this goal. So you're all kind of in it together towards growth. You mentioned that your building, the house you want to live in. What do you imagine that house looks like at the end of the day? Like what companies do you look up to? Who do you model yourself after? And how do you sort of navigate this process of growing

up? Yeah, I think that for us, building house we live in is like applying really long term thinking in what we do in trying to build and create things that have longevity because that is appealing to us. A value metric, like looking at something that had rial longevity, feels more fulfilling, feels like it was something worth doing because it was not just worthwhile for a day, and then it was kind of gone for Gottman useless. And so a lot of that can also be translated into just like the whatever the Golden rule. Just treat others the way you want to be treated. So in our case, it's like, How do we build a piece of software that we'd like using? How do we sell to our customers in a way that we would like to be sold to? How do we support them? How do we give support in a way that we'd like to be at receiving support versus what's the cheapest where what's the way every other company in our space is doing it?

And I think that also, like for us, we realize that recognized, I think, early in this company that we didn't enjoy and didn't like the idea of building a massive organizations off people working in this business. Eso we never wanted to be 10,000 boys, 100,000 plus whatever like we would never wanted to become the biggest business in our category in terms of head counting people, because then it wouldn't be the house we would want to live in. It would be like though the house you'd like to sell. That will be a house I would really like to sell. It would be awesome, probably because you'd get a lot of money if you scale to an insane amount of employees. But it would not be the company I would wanna work for, I think anymore. So we had to always grapple with this. The conflict between we like small like we like small teams like a small circle.

We like a little bullshit. It's possible in our lives, as much trust. And at the same time we're really ambitious. We wanna have massive impact. One accomplish big things. So finding a way to say what is the right balance between these two are ideas that would be fulfilling for us. And we've always said back in the day, we would say, like, would rather be Craigslist and eBay, a WhatsApp and Facebook or just like Can we have a small team small in relative terms? Could we be 100 people during 50 million revenue, 100 million rep. You'll to 300 people doing a couple 100 million revenue? That would be amazing versus could we do 10 billion in revenue and be 100,000 people,

which is obviously probably even harder to do our justice heart gets not hard or better. It's just if I could choose between the 10 billion revenue a company with 10,000 points or $100 million company with 100 employees, which is that by any day of the week that to me is much more appealing because I could still see myself working in that business, right? So to us, it's like, Can we build a company that as significant impact with a relatively small team in ways where, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, I would still actually truly like working in it that b incredible. That's hard to imagine. It is very difficult, I think, to accomplish, and so that's why it's appealing.

I think a lot about the sort of longevity of any hackers as well. And also how do I continue growing this, but also turn it into something where it's just really fun to work on and it's something I could see myself doing indefinitely and so it's It's very much what you said, Building the house that you want to live in, not just the house that you want to sell. I guess in my case, I already sold it, but I'm still living in it. I'm still here. The owners are kind of like, Hey, you stay there and take care of the house. And so I'm kind of in years user. It's like, Yeah, let me make this house as great as I possibly can. And for me,

when I think about my ideal life running any hackers, it's getting to talk to interesting people like you on the podcast three or four days a week. It's getting to travel around the world, which right now is on hiatus. But going to Andy actors meetups across the globe, going to pretty much any country in the world and knowing there's gonna be 30 40 50 people there who are excited to meet, want to show me around who are cool to talk to you and I can learn from them and sort of broadcast their messages to other indie hackers so everybody can sort of build their businesses and learn from each other and then running this online community where It's super cool when I get to code whatever I want. And it's like a living, breathing thing. And people give me that feedback and complains compliments. And that seems to me like super fun and very mission driven because I know the things that I'm doing are just fun for me. But affect other people and at your company. I think you know, you're at a much bigger scale in terms of revenue and hackers make $0. You've got a much bigger team. We've got like four or five people were candy.

Hacker is you've got, I think you said 45 I think the house you want to live in has more constraints, more rules. But also you have more power to kind of do whatever you want. For example, I talkto Jason Freedom TJ Chip Base Camp who have like their four day work week and they have all sorts of different side projects are spending up just like enjoy working on the things they want to enjoy. Working on a d. J. Just driving race cars and took them not only Nagel a wild pitch, and she's also got like a four day workweek and her whole vision is her employees having this playground where they can grow and learn and thrive. Uh, do you have any like that? It closed. You know, how much are you focused on? Like the core mission?

Do you ever get distracted by these little side things? And he's like, you know, meta projects working on your business. What's the balance there?

That's a good question. I think when we started early on, we assumed that we would have a ton of side project and run. Our business is very similar to some of the examples that you shared, and we just never gotten a ranted so far. I think that one thing that has always been pretty amazing is that the people that we've hired have always been incredibly entrepreneurial, and we've always encouraged them. When people came to us and said, Hey, I just want you to know I want to work here for two years and really dedicate myself and grow, But then I want to go on and do my own thing would always go awesome. I just keep us in the loop. We want to support you may well be the first customers maybe will be the first investors, like we want to be part of that journey and we caught the clothes mafia right? And there's all kinds of people that have been kind of part of our journey for a number of years that are now running their own businesses. A lot of them are customers of ours, and we've had all kinds of cases where even people with somebody.

Ryan Robins. It was like quite well known in the kind of blogging space on helping people to make money online. His blood was much smaller, and his kind of online stuff was much smaller when we got to know him and work on some content stuff, and then I told him I wanted him to join us full time and he said, Hey, dude, I'd love to. I think the team is really amazing, but I will always work on my block and podcasts and my other projects, and ultimately I want to do that. And we just talked on the step out and I was like, All right, we'll try to help you on your journey there. You'll help us on what? We're trying to call this on our journey.

This doesn't always have to be forever, right? And so for like I think two years we Ryan did amazing work for clothes and we tried to help him as much as possible. And then eventually he was making so much money. Well, like one day, we'll all have to come and work for you. It's just like, where did you work for your blogged and then we part of wasting and we're still very good friends and constantly in touch. So we've always encouraged side project, always encourage people to follow their dreams of the entrepreneurial. And lots of people that closed do have kind of, ultimately the goal to do something on their own that one day. But in terms of like launching different products and having like all these different product brands and all these new spin up companies within the company, we thought we would do that. And then,

so far, we've always been like, Well, there's all these things we want to do. It goes, there's all these projects that were passion about this, all this stuff, and then any time we discuss well, this would be a neat idea. Nobody was more passionate about that need idea that the other stuff we were doing and so nobody would ever champion this is just take a project like that and run with it. I used to think a lot about it. Will one day will we change? And will we start doing more of these things? That idea that thought faded in the background and might pop up at some point at a different cycle of the company. But so far, it's not been the case.

It's very ironic considering how close started have your running elastic sales and close itself was kind of one of these, like distracting internal side projects that eventually did so well that it kind of blew up and became your primary company and the U States so focused on that and not had that same thing happen again. And it's great. Most companies have the opposite problem. They're not that excited about the thing that they're working on their constantly chasing cars and the distracted. It's hard for them to focus. What is it about close? It gets everybody so excited in your team. How do you make a product that everyone is super enthusiastic to keep working on

this might sound cliche, and I don't want to make it sound like there's not any days that people are frustrated, this business or over it. Or like the last seven years since we've been running clothes they've been, doesn't have times where my co founders are well, like what we do with our life's. What is this like? Is this really the meaning of life? Are we really? Are we choosing making the right choices? So I don't wanna sound too much like, Oh, we chose such a great thing that every single second of every days, it's just not true. Butterflies

and sunshine and

rainbows Yeah, no, that will be. That's just not not realistic, at least not for us. So we do have, like these were like, You know, I wish I'd do something fun that was, like new and had not you know, all this baggage that comes with an adult ish company, right? Versus they and you make any small change. And there's like thousands and thousands of customers and uses that will complain and will resist the change. The car just We just start with a clean slate. Everything is pretty. Everything's meet beautiful,

and you just do whatever you want, so we definitely have those days. But I think it all starts and ends with a customer like we just serve customers that we care about, like, similar to Would you describe? It's like a lot of our customers are very entrepreneurial start ups, or at least interesting companies that are moving differently that are changing differently. I often describe it as like we have a lot off. The type of businesses that we love to serve is kind of the businesses of the future, right, smaller companies. A lot of them distributed, a lot of them tech enabled, even if they're not a technology company. They're more tech savvy than a lot of companies in the industry. Very entrepreneurial,

very international. And so when we talk to, our customers were consistently inspired by what they do. But who they are well, like this is an awesome product that they're building. These people are really smart and really good people, and this is kind of fun, the stuff, how they figured out to have success so far, and so we get passionate about the top of customer was serving and then it's easy to be passionate about building things for them, helping them succeed, giving them advice supporting them. I think one of the best decisions that we made from Day one was to say no to the enterprise, and this is something that most aspects is is don't and from most of them they will never be able to become a 10 billion revenue business without going to the enterprise. We go from anywhere, many of them at least not but for us from day one.

I said the enterprise is not the type of business I care about its not a type of business I'm intimately familiar with. I didn't have a corporate career working at these large organizations to have a real connection to the people that work there. The problem they have the way they operate and to be passion about changing it and helping them. I am like, I don't care about you people. I don't care about your problems. I don't understand it and I don't wanna be in that world, and that also means like saying no to a lot of money once in a while, right that there's always gonna be an enterprise customer that it knocks on our door and waves with the huge potential check ins like wooden. You know, this amount of money be really great for you people. Right now. It's gonna be really easy for you to get it. Just take one meeting with us. And I'm really happy that we've always said thanks, but no thanks. Not because it's not good, but but it wouldn't be the house we want to live

in. Almost like, how much money would you accept in order to be bored for rest of your life? Like, how much would someone have to pay you to be bored and living unfulfilled life? Yeah.

How much money would somebody have to pay you? So you marry somebody that you really don't like? And yet every day with them, at least eight hours a day talking

to I don't know if there's a check sizes. There's not

enough money for that. Is there enough money to be like for the rest of my life? I'm gonna be spending eight hours worrying, talking and interacting with somebody. Really Don't enjoy. That sucks. And that that will be the reality if we went into enterprise for me. At that point, I would be like, all right, if this is what's right for our company and this is what's right for everybody else here, then I need to move on, and there needs to be somebody else that's gonna be doing my job because I would just hate my life, and then I wouldn't be. I would not be passionate about the things we're doing in the sometimes we're building features that I know will serve our customers. But I'm not passion, but I'm not using this functionality every single day.

It's not benefiting me directly, but I care about the people and I care about helping them. And when we then launch it and I see how they respond and how much it helps them accomplish their goals and dreams that I'm like this feature is amazing, like this is also that were built This so I think really caring about the audience you serve helps with longevity. It helps with still being passionate five years, seven years into the journey. If it's just, I think it could be fun to just chase money on opportunity and be like, Wow, we're like making all this money and We've had this nifty idea in this nifty market. I think that could be incredibly stimulating and fun. But not for 10 years. Probably right. Eventually, you're gonna be like, I hate the people I serve in the people I interacted the things we're doing here, no matter how much money it is. So so I think that's kind of that's been our hack to still feel passionate about what we do seven

years in. Do you think making so much money has changed your perspective on it? Because last time when we talk to you already doing millions in revenue, I can only imagine that it's mawr now and it's It's been years of you making this much money. Having a successful company is your perspective changed?

I'm should had, like my You know, I want to say no because I don't like that idea, but I do think it has. But I went through a number of changes, of having a lot of money, a lot of money contextually for me at the time and then having no money contextually for me at the time. I went through this cycle a couple of times early in my life, and that really helped. That helps significantly. So I feel like this hasn't impacted me as much because I had recognized early on already. That money is really amazing. It's important. It's great, but it's not. What drives me makes me really happy. Oh,

fulfills me. And at some point the numbers start to become, you lose touch with it. They all just meaningless. They're not exciting. I think in the beginning, like first time I made 10 K in my life, it was like, Wow, like this is I'm rich like I'm this is this like I can buy everything I want Like I was like at a 19 years older like this is incredible and so rich because most people that I knew in the family that I my mom was making like 30 k a year writes a 10 Kim like I'm fucking the richest first I know. But then I was also broke many times. And then, you know, when you raped and remember raising money, I was like, If I ever raised a $1,000,000 I don't know why a 1,000,000? Because that's what we see in movies and the stories reading books. I was like a $1,000,000 is gonna be meaningful. It's gonna fill me up with fulfillment that make

me feel great. Life will be different after that.

Yeah, and then you do it and you realize three weeks later it's like, You know what's next, and you go through that cycle off enough and eventually you stopping, believing it. Like many years ago, I stopped believing once we hit this revenue number, once I hit this number of whatever potential network, I will feel different. I'm like I that all doesn't really matter it really down anymore.

Reason I'm asking all these questions is because most people listening have not built a successful startup that's generating millions. They have no idea what it looks like, kind of at the end of the tunnel. I talked a lot of people who were just getting started who were just sort of in the thick of it, and they're not sure how things are gonna turn out. So it's kind of cool to see you go through these teenage years and adjust to the money that you're making and figure out what's actually important for you. And I think when I talk to founders in your situation. The answers are pretty remarkably consistent that the people that you deal with or what give you meaning. And so in your case, you get to work with a lot of entrepreneurial people, like the employees that close air, very smart, very talented and ambitious. And quite frankly, this is the most fun people to work with. I love working with entrepreneurs as well. That's kind of how we've set up Andy hackers because you could just talk to them and they know where you're going through.

You know what they're going through and just fun to cheer them on and see how talented they are. But also, your customers are people that you want to deal with. Like you said, you made the conscious decision not to take more money and sell to the enterprise cause that'll be super boring for you, but to work with customers who were inspired by. And I was in the same thing at any hackers. I've seen the same thing that I've talked other people around. We're going to start a business. Probably one of the most important decisions you can make up front is who do you want to work with and who do you want to work for? And that kind of put you on track to live a good life as a founder and get through these awkward teenage years and keep going and keep being excited about your product, even if you know you've been doing it for seven years. Let's talk about some of the hard parts. Your co host on your podcast tweeted a while ago that the most difficult part of sales and marketing is getting used to the grind, you know, doing the same thing over and over and over again. Do you think that applies to being a founder? What's difficult for running a company as long as

you from one intuitively feels to me that there's a kernel of truth in that statement? I saw that as well. I was curious. I'm Rick. We're recording tomorrow's all try to figure out what inspired that I left mum to that. What prompted that? But I also have many times talk to salespeople that are like, Hey, I've been like first year sales was exciting, but I've been doing this five years now and like having these quarters that are like erased every three months, and you have to like another bench of my prospecting, calling emails, negotiating, closing. And then you hit the goal there. And then again, she it's the race.

Then you have to start from the get go. People burn out, and they feel kind of that. This is a tough grind, and what's the meaning and all of this? And I've always been telling people that, like the approach, if you're able to find new ways of looking at this in different ways of looking at this, it makes a significant difference. And with sales people, oftentimes, the most surprising thing is because salespeople chase the clothes deal so much in their mind they're not thinking about. The customer is a lifelong relationship. Most salespeople aren't there just thinking about it as a deal like I'm gonna close this deal once it's signed. I got my money on the board. This thing is done for me,

right? But the moment you think about these interactions as relationships, after all, this too many cells, people, I think pretty good success. If you think about these people, not just this customers but customers for the business is your customers and is your potential lifelong relationships in partnership All you can do, no matter how high the frequencies, how many people deals you're dealing with, You can at least pick one customer week that you're interacting with where you're like This is a winner. This is somebody that's going to do awesome things in their life. There's somebody I really like, a really enjoy. I think that if I had money to invest in people, I would put money into this person,

Inc Right. And then don't just treat that person as a deal. Is a decision maker in a deal. But treat them as a new friend somebody that you want a nurture relationship with for the rest of your life because this person's But we're gonna go on and be a decision maker, and many other companies do many other interesting things, and you're gonna keep going. Being salesperson, other companies start your company's, you're gonna have a lifelong career. You're gonna be be ableto benefit and get so much big over return. So much more off a filling, Richard, because some of these relationships, hopefully many of them, will turn to friendships as well, right?

If you look at it that way, then it's not just a number that's a race, because I hit my quota this month, but I actually have added five more people that I I'm inspired by that. I'm hopefully for nurture that relationship stay in touch with full of the next 30 years. And now selling is building my career's building. My network is building my relationships and not just chasing numbers that I have now chase again, again and again and again, and I think the same. It's true in many other situations. I think on the there's a certain grind to being a founder grind, let's say I can't even say Founders if it's a generic thing because Thomas Anthony me were three co founders in this business, we live very different lives and do very different jobs. But I'll speak from a CEO perspective. The CEO grind, I think,

is probably the U. In many companies, there's a consistency of you dealing with difficult problems or the most difficult problems bubbling up to you, right, because people don't know how to solve them on their own, and at times this can be stimulating and fun, and at times it's a grind and painful is

difficult, and I think there's no one you can go to above you, to be like, Hey, solve this for me I don't feel like solving

it Yeah, give you and I think you turn into the type of person You probably already are that type of person, but it turns you even Mawr into the type of person. It just becomes incapable off ever asking for help. Anybody else And it's just always in the mind set off. All problems in the universe flow to me. I saw so, so, so, so, so solve problems. And when I have problems, I just solved them like I How would I need help? I'm the center of the universe, right? I'm the son that everything evolves around, and I think that that then turns into really unhealthy and unbalanced human beings that then become terrible.

CEOs and I have done this, and I'm still in the process of getting better, asking for help myself or even sharing my problems. It's been a five year process of learning to tell a friend or family member or my co founders or anybody. I have a problem. I have something that's a problem in my life right now. This is still difficult to me, but I'm learning to get better at it. But I think that if you purely saying that mind set off, I'm gonna do this like superhero solve all the problems, having all the answers at all times. If you stand that mode for too long, then I think he can become very, very burdensome. And it can burn you out for sure.

I think this concept of, ah, work, life integration where you realize that these relationships developing when people because you're trying to grow your business, are actually still riel human relationships and doesn't have to just be business, business, business, work, work, work all the time. I think most of us are kind of naturally like that. Like we talked to. People realize they're humans. But there's something about having this overarching mission where you have to grow this company and it has to work. I can kind of turn you into, like, a single minded like single focused robot.

At times you start treating people like they're not people. And when you take a step back like I've been here, I've been there before to take a step back. And you realize every interaction you have with someone can be like a really meaningful fun interaction. And a lot of people that you work with probably can and should be lifelong friends because you spend so much time talking to them and they have stuff going on there lives. You have stuff going on in your life. So you just like, slow down and have conversations is part of why I really like going to India Chris meet ups all over the world because, yeah, I mean, part of it is like I'm doing customer research. I'm trying to figure out why people were using the site and how they're running their companies, but a lot of it is just like, Hey, show me around Cape Town. I want to know what life is like in your shoes,

you know, and the people that I've met all over the roadway still talked to a ton, and I've realized that again, going back to this idea, the business that you build the house you want to live in is not just for your bank account. It's not just for your professional accomplishments. It's also just for your happiness. And if you couldn't use a business to help you build the kind of life that you want to live, for example, you start a company that helps you meet the kinds of people you want to meet. Their just company cameo. You can let go on their website. You could find any celebrity not any celebrity, but a lot of them. And you can pay them a certain amount of money to send like a cool video to a friend for their birthday. Or send a video to your mom for Mother's Day or something.

And if you start a company like that, like, I'm sure the people who run that company get to talk to celebrities all day and maybe like that's their dream, that's what they want to do. And that's something that extends beyond their business. That's something that is now part of their personal life. There, like are part of these circles that they weren't before, and there's tons of companies people get toe, meet people and talk to people on like live and do all these different things that they couldn't do otherwise. So right there with you, I think it's super cool toe have kind of this awareness that, you know, these relationships aren't just all about work, not just about the bottom line.

Somebody once said, If you wouldn't want to work with somebody for the rest of your life, don't work with him for a single day, right? It's a beautiful idea, and I have always been telling people, and I've been living this. This has been the single biggest impact thing I've done in terms of my happiness and fulfillment. Is that any relationship in my life? I'm thinking of it as a 30 year relationship, So if I don't want it to be a 30 year relationship, I know I don't want to deal with you at all right, and I'm not the right person to be in your life. But if I do, I try to think very long term and there's there's real power in that and benefit. I know that when you are at the very beginning, all this sounds like like a luxury like it almost sounds like us discussing which color off Ferraris are the best when it is like foods that trying to get my first customer like Yeah,

it sounds like this is the type of decisions I'm gonna make once I can afford making them. This is what I would have thought. But I don't think it's true. I think that you make these decisions and then you are able to afford to have that life. But you know, often times you know how many times people reach out to me. And they're like a very selfish, which I get US founders right there trying to get something started. And you have to hustle, right? You have to be a little shameless. That's only if I I've definitely been that many times in my life. This just a I have this thing I need from you, Stelly. I read a blocos. I listen to you on a podcast.

I want your advice. When can we talk for an hour. Two hours this week. And you give me everything you have, right? And it's like, yeah, that's a very selfish proposition that assumes that I have nothing better to do than to give all my time to you. But also, the funny thing is that when I then asked them, Hey, can we first started emailing you tell me what it is that you need, and then I'll try to help by email and eventually congratulatory call. 50% of people just fall off the face of the earth like you never hear from them again. Same thing with advisers. You know people all the time.

Emily, We want you in our advisor, but we want to give you shares have been advising our startup. I always go. Go easy, right. Let's not get married. I don't even know you. Why don't you decide to email me once a month? Your progress asked me how I could help. And if over the next couple of months, we both find that I am truly useful and helpful to you and I enjoy helping you. Then maybe a year from now we'll put a ring on it. Right? And will you give me some advisor shares and I'll be a formal adviser? Well, let's start one step at a time. Everybody's always like that's a great idea. And then again, 90% of these people I never hear from again so

that, you know, is gonna be a waste of time. If yes, if they can't even tell you what they're gonna talk about on the call. They don't want to talk over email. You just dodged a bullet.

And then there are people that follow my advice on this. I've written about this and where said, make me part of your journey. Just let me know how things going on a long term if I keep hearing from you for 12 months in a row in month 12 much more invested in your story. And I understand you much better, much more context and a much we're willing to help versus the first time that you picked me where I'm like, I want to be helpful. But I have to ration how much resource and energy I give you. And I think people underestimate that there, like I want everything right now, but they underestimate if I keep in touch with these people that I find useful and helpful that I wanna have in my life and I want to learn from then you will pass very quickly. Five years will pass very quickly and you'll build up. And five years from now maybe you're really good friends with these people. Maybe these people are willing to go to bat for you and really move mountains because they care about you and all you have to do is stay in touch. I keep investing a little bit in the relationship. Andi. That's not instant success.

Riches and wealth, but high passes fast, right? Ends like this Chinese. I'm all all with motivational quotes today because this is the best time to plant trees today. And second best time. The best time was 30 years ago. Second best time, Mr Date, right? It's like, yeah, start now and you'll see time will pass faster than you think. You will go by like this and then these relationships that in the beginning where quite cold will warm up and you're gonna benefit a lot from that,

people get so impatient when they're just starting office founders like, Well, I don't have time to invest in a year in anything, you know. But that time's gonna pass anyway, like a year's gonna go by no matter what. And so would you prefer that you're to go by where you invested in these things? You know, like a few hours a week, maybe even less than that, Or would you prefer that time to pass, and you look back on that year and you didn't do any of that stuff because you were so focused on the short

term. And also like two years from now, could be the executive position you are now when you need help from certain people where you just send cold like think about this thing about being six, like 30 years into. But you're entrepreneur journey and still having to send cold emails to people going. I need your advice can give me an hour and these people going, I don't even know who you are, and I don't have time. That idea should suck to people. Imagine that So you don't want to be that person. Well, the only way not to be that person is to build relationships and invested those relationships.

So let's talk about the modern era. I think it's safe to say we've entered an entirely different era. Do you remember when Cove in 19 sort of first popped onto your radar and you started thinking about how would affect you personally and also affect your business?

Yes, it started popping up in my radar, I think, in January, but it was more of a thing that's happening in China sort of thing. And so I was very passively consuming some of information. It was more like, Ah, interesting. A wonder what this is. Then, in February early February, it started kind of becoming more serious. And I remember I was traveling to Thailand and there was even a discussion. Should I go? Shouldn't I go in? I,

one of my best friends, has lived there for 50 years, and I wanted to visit him and spent some time with him. And he was like, You know what? Yeah. I mean, I feel it's still kind of stable here. I feel it's still safe, you know? Do these precautions where mass wash your hands, you know, keep your distance and it should be fine. And I went there and I was there two weeks. And then when I came back, you know,

kind of mid February, then I started to really like. Then all of a sudden, my Twitter feed started to heat up, and then I started following all these people and all these kind of virologists and experts and everything, and then I started to go into the like many people as well to the deep hole of, like hours and hours of reading and studies metrics and four kids, you know, very dark forecasts. And then I was like, Holy shit, what is happening here? And I think it was end of February. I was convinced. Okay, no matter what it is,

it's going to come to Europe and the US and really big way. It's gonna impact me and my family, my business. So what do I do now? And the first job was trying to convince, like my friends and family members to take this more seriously. And that was such a trip. That was the weird things about this whole thing because they all looked at me like a tinfoil hat. Conspiracy guy. Same here. That's just weird. And they're all like, Why you so negative and why you're so scared and literally they were making fun of me. And I was like, This is I've never been in this position in my life. This is weird.

Why? I'm like the the person that screams like a You need to take this seriously and everybody's like this guy's crazy. It was like an awkward time and it definitely like Rempt up my anxiety to death come level red. Like I was just like, you're the people that I care about and none of them care about this, and I don't exactly know. I don't even know if I'm right, and I don't know exactly what advice to give them what to do. So it's kind of a weird face, but eventually I got around to convince my immediate family and then kind of, like, go through a couple of steps that just felt like preparation, right? I mean, that's all it was. And then then I had to do the went through the same process of the company where I'm like all right,

I'm convinced my co founders to take this more seriously. At that point, I was the one that was like, This is gonna be a huge deal, and there were like, we don't think so. To go through that and then come up with the game plan. I'm like, this is ah, you know, this is gonna become a huge thing, and we need to prepare ahead of it right now, and we should go slow. And we should wait and see I think for most people they went in their own Gilo universe through that these cycles. But for me, it was like I think early generators started reading and paying attention. February Asare a thinking It's gonna be a huge thing. And then March was kind of a month later was when Every when it started to do the lockdowns and everything else

going on. Yeah, putting my founder hat on, I kind of went through the same period. But there was always this uncertainty in the background. Okay, with Andy hackers, how is this going to affect the company? You know, they're gonna be more people on the website, fewer people on the website and a lot of ways, I think I was so focused on my personal life, my friends and family, that I just gonna put that on the back burner and said, Whatever happens will happen. I'll just react, You know,

I don't know how to plan for this. I'm just gonna react and at your situation. I think you know, you've got a much more substantial company. You have a lot of advantages. You've been remote for many years. For example, it wasn't this awkward transition that you had to make. But you're building a CRM tool. Your SAS company. I have absolutely no clue. I honestly have no clue, like how sheltering in place and locked down is affected Closing the CRM space in general. So what are some of the biggest changes that you've had to react to you and were able to predict any of these things? Or you kind of also doing what I'm doing? And just like being in reactionary mode and just trying to wreck very quickly to whatever happens,

I think for us some of the things that we recognized early was that if we're going to go through this like there's Global Pandemic and if it's gonna have this massive economic impact than cash is king and we need to make sure that we can finance things if we experience a big dip and revenue because maybe lots of business of maternal lots of this is will fire sales people. And like Frost, that means downgrading seats or cancelling seats right, Which brings us down in our overall revenue, right? So we decided fairly early a couple of things, one was that we would shift our attention away from contracts like Also Steam would focus a lot on signing these 123 year contracts that would be paid monthly. And we thought, Well, in an economic downturn, one is like a massive shakeup contract. It's not really worth that much right. If these business go out of business, the contract is not worth any money, anything. If they have to break the contract to not go out of business. We're not going to sue them like this is a contract is good during certain stable times,

right? But it's worthless during these insane time. So that's not worry about contracts right now and ship all our attention to pre pace its push to have our customers pre pay for year, two years. Give them a great deal because they're buying during on certain times and see what they say. We didn't know if people would do it on auto. If people would get upset with us with the proposing. I remember when I early talked to this about this with other farmers of like, people are gonna get really upset with you, asking them to prepare during these times. That's another there. That's a herd of ask and kind of every single month since February has been a record month in pre pace for us, and it has significantly impacted our cash position. Right and hands. It really stabilized the business really quickly. Like,

Wow, our cash was there, just going up. We're in a much better position to weather any kind of big decline or multiple declines of revenue. And I was even surprised how good this work and even still to this day, every day, even on the self service side were smaller customers. Just plug and create an account. And by I'm surprised how many choose to pre pay right for year right now, feel the confidence feel that the deal is good enough that they want to do that. That was a very good decision for us that we made fairly early, and that helped us. And then we went through. Some of the things that everybody else went through probably is like, how do we cut costs as much as possible? We made him.

We've made a simple method. February March was like if we lose 30% of our revenue, but we wanna keep the entire team before we have a small team. There's no fat to cut here. There no people that we don't like. There's no but anybody that we would have to let go now. It would take us another 25 years to find another person like that on Hire them again. This is very costly. So how can we cut costs grass, tickly and save as much as we can't without let anybody go so we can weather the storm together. And then we got very creative and we came up with a lot of aggressive ideas and we did move mountains in that way also fairly early. But we had told the team that will do all this together and then we have this, like, worst case scenario that you will all know we can weather without any more changes. All right, so you know,

like we've done everything up front and now we came like weather the storm and I think that really helped tremendous e make people's anxiety like the relief, because people are just so on the edge with their families at home with worrying about their jobs, and what we didn't want to do is we didn't want to be the top of company. That's like in March. Everything is fine. We're just gonna cut some server costs and cancel some subscription and enables like it's not. We have to do these other measures may. It's like, Well, we have to let go of some people, but most others will stay. So where people constantly feel like in the next couple weeks, there's going to be more news, more bad news. We didn't wanna have that, and there was a really good decision,

and we reacted by fast. Now we didn't know what the impact would be for us. And the reality is that we did at first see a lot of like teams firing salespeople, downgrading to a Lord to your plan or some of our smaller customers going. I'm out of it. I wanted to build their a tool to sell to schools. Forget about it. I wanted to build something to sell two bars, a software tool for bars or restaurants. Forget about it. I'm in the tourism industry. Forget about it. So we saw a lot of cancellations on the lower levels when we lost some revenue early on. But things stabilized like in terms of our review that was mostly kind of our existing customer base being conservative, saving costs, right,

acting early as well on their end. But in terms of new customer acquisition, nothing changed. We still capped, like bringing you revenue, lots of lots of new customers and that has continued and even improved, and now kind of it stabilized where our customer base feels like, Okay, we can start adding some seeds. We can maybe upgrade again. We're in wait and see. We don't see these kind of big, wild swings of downgrades of cancellations anymore. And we've been in up, you know, in a better position that what we predicted and project it,

it's always good. That makes always everybody feel like, Wow, this we're in a good situation, much better than what we had anticipated. More bad news can come and this company can, whether it and so that gives people, I think, some peace of mind, which is kind of important right now.

It's so smart to focus on pre payments like you're doing, and I've seen kind of a trend of people doing this recently, even separate from Cove in 19 in this looming recession that people are worried about. Ah, lot of people have come on the show and said, Yeah, we're not even offering monthly plans anymore As a sort of fledgling company trying to build up cash flows, it's much more lucrative just to charge people for a year and get them in the door. And you could just, like, spend way more to require customers that way because you're making way more per customer or not, is worried for month, a month. And now, like you said, it's extremely important because you're not even sure a lot of his customers are gonna be in business a year from now. So these month among the contracts,

like might be completely worthless. How do you have your sort of already charging a certain way? Go to customers and ask for these big pre payments? And how do you know? Get them to say yes. Do you offer them a discount? You offer them a deal? Do you change things up or you just kind of say a look. Things have changed. This is kind of, you know, are you ask?

I think everything is on the table, right? I think that people are too afraid of things. So in our case in general, I think that people feel like whenever they want to change something about pricing or the way they do contracts or the way they charge, they feel like it's almost a like we can't go to people that we have won a certain way as customers and not tell them things are changing and it's like But why? Who says that? Who says that you can't like Is your support teams still the same is your service Didn't still the same is your feature said. Still, the same is any customer that buys from you, never asking for more things or demanding any changes from you. There's no such concept where this is how we got into business last year, and so this is the only way we can be in business for the next 30 years. That doesn't exist. I think especially less experienced founders and teams have a lot more anxiety around these, like they see they need to change something. But what holds them back is the fear of confronting customs that might get upset.

And I think that that you shouldn't some people will always get upset. The Mawr, so people will get upset. But if you respond calm, cool and collected, they'll relax, Right? It's funny how people are like this is outrageous. And then you go, I get that you feel that way. But if you think about it, it really isn't. And then they go, Yes, it isn't what, like one email ago,

you're screaming at me and now you, like, totally agreed with everything. Is that in our case, to be specific, like we just offered people a great deal and we told them, It's simple you by now you get a great deal. You wait till the world is more sane and certain you get, you know, the deal that the same world gets that everybody else gets right. It's a kind of a risky a time to pre pay, so you get a better deal. A lot of people felt that that was appealing, but we've also done other things, like when we did the cost cutting thing. There were certain customers that we're doing things that were costing us a lot of money for a variety of reasons.

Right? That we didn't care as much about holistically were like, you know, amongst all customers on margins are great, and if a few of them do things that eat into that margin, But we were just weren't paying attention to that, that was not that big of a deal. But as when we went through the every penny counts exercise off. What if the world changes forever and we need to save every penny? We had to approach a couple of customers and go, Hey, you know, you're doing all these funky things with the FBI over with all these other things that you've done like, you know, and it costs us too much money and you need to change it right. It's not up for debate,

and it's also not a question of if you like it or not, because none of them liked it. But it was like We need to do this. This is the deal. We cannot have ah, sustained partnership. If our relationship isn't healthy right now, the way you're using our services are healthy for us, so it needs to change, and I've had this before. I had to re negotiate once with a customer that had prepaid and signed a contract for three years and then when we looked at kind of how we charge them back then how the deal was for syphilis in the very early days, we've given them an insane This kind of were like losing money on them, right? And so I had to re negotiate and tell them you have to pay 50% more. And this is it was a customer that was paying us hundreds of thousands a year. You have to pay 50% more or you have to go right,

and they shot it. But I always came back to the I get it. But for this relationship to work, for us to be able to serve you long term, we need to make money. We cannot lose money. We're losing money. So even you need to bring your money somewhere else. You need to give us enough so we could do a good job serving you. It's just that simple, no matter how upset you are. And sooner or later, especially the ones that scream the loudest they get on board, they just go with a program. Go. Okay,

well, I guess they have a point. So, yeah, if you need to change something about your contracts. How you want to charge. You can make it optional. Some companies might be an institution where they can't. They have toe say, this is the only way we're gonna do business now and you have to take it. Leave it, and that's always gonna be harder, like people are going to respond strongly to it. But if it's the right thing to do, if you think it's still fair, then you'll have to do it if you like it or not. And you don't have to be that afraid of. It is just part of doing business in part of life,

but about running your company. And you know the fact that you've already been remote, like I was saying earlier, like, I imagine a lot of stuff. It's kind of the same, but there's some differences. For example, a lot of your employees probably your spending a lot more time working with their kids around. Then they were earlier. You've written a lot. You've talked a lot about running a remote company elsewhere online, but what's changed with you trying to sort of motivate the troops and keep her company

running? Yeah, first, I think it's important to recognize that working from home during a global pandemic with the your entire family is not the same as working remotely right. They're related, but they're not the same thing. And so for us we had decided fairly early that we would want toe move a number of our teams and people toe a four day workweek, which is not what we usually do. We usually work for five days. There's still some people that are very customer facing, and they didn't want to do the four day work week like, you know, people that are not at home with their four Children and I are having a hard time dealing with home schooling, a number of Children, running the school from home and doing a bunch of other things that it didn't use to while they were working. We made it optional, but a lot of people we gave the option to go down to a four day workweek because a lot of our team members were telling us that it's become very stressful for them to work,

and there so many more responsibilities at home having to take care a lot more of the Children having to deal a lot more with family and shoes. And so we wanted to relieve people a little bit of pressure and give a bit more space for people to deal with it. Even if we didn't do like even, we said it's still a five day workweek, Just deal with it. People will just not work. We were like they just wouldn't, but they just wouldn't feel more stressed about it versus now. They can not work and relax, so hopefully be more saying the better family members but also be better employees for us. So that was, Ah, big change that we made for us to keep everybody sane. And then we had to, like, definitely increase the amount of usually a lot of the social interaction of from interaction and games and all that for us would happen during team retreats.

We do every six months would fly everybody into a city for a whole week and those weeks those trees are second best product. Like over seven years. We've really built them to a science and it's not just like let's hang out and, you know, combine and get drunk or whatever and work from the same room. Those weeks have become very important strategic tools of how we run the company. And it was taken away, out. Richie was supposed to be in April. Wait, the Catholic in February, seeing that we didn't think we would be able to make it. So we had to start doing mawr of this, you know, having game nights virtually doing a lot more off that. And we change the way we do meetings in the sense that every meeting that happening now it close starts with a personal update.

And so we do meetings. People go cases last week, you know, things are fine. I'm happy. And I started gardening. And so I feel a bit better. And then the next person would go, Well, my mom is sick. I'm stressed the fuck out. I constant on the phone with her. I'm really worried and I can't focus and everybody goes, Oh, shit. And then the next person goes and says,

Well, we're moving right now, and we're having this in that trouble. And this is going on. Yeah, and that personal up that we didn't used to do that in every meeting, and now we do and we see, especially during these kind of times. It was incredibly important because we would have these moments where people would say things that made everybody gold. You shit, this is going on in your life And it would maybe just good for everybody's air out what's going on and be able to communicate that. But it also helped us to understand how are people doing what is going on in people's lives and be more supportive and being understanding and have just more context on for many was also just like a relief to hear that everybody was struggling with the same stuff they were struggling with, and they just make them feel a little bit better, a little bit more connected. Those are just some things that I can think of that, that we have to take

change. Sounds like one of those proof. Those changes that might last, you know? Yeah, well, this is like nice to hear everyone's personal update. Maybe we just keep doing this indefinitely at any hackers. We have a community manager and she's got five kids, and so you can have her life. It's like right now, with five kids at home, and she's already doesn't get out of work. So my brother and I like, kind of taken over a lot of the community management to sort of help her out, especially Ron Days, which is just,

you know, once spend time with their family. And that's also a habit where it's like, Hey, we should just be doing this all the time. You know, even when all this is over, we're gonna keep doing it the same way. And it's interesting to think about what's gonna change. You know, the point that you made that remote working is very differently, very different than having to stay at home with your family. That kind of related, but they're not necessarily the same. I think a lot of you are assuming that, Oh,

this is just gonna completely change and everyone's getting a taste of remote work. Everyone is going to see exactly what it's like, but it's not necessarily the case because this is isn't exactly what it's normally like, and so a lot of people might not like it because it's completely different. What you think is going to stay the same at close and and also you know What do you think is gonna change? And the SAS industry. And you know what you think we're gonna see on the other side of this?

I don't know. I'm not sure yet. At first I was very cynical, Like I did a lot of counter tweeting to the treats of like, this is the moment of remote work. Everybody's gonna fuck it. I was like dudes And, you know, people like the people that are forced to go home while screaming babies in the background, downloading a bunch of software that never used trying to figure out how to work in that environment, right? They're not gonna be like this is the future. This is how I want to live my life every day from now. They might not. This is not a soft, gentle introduction to this world, right.

But now I'm like, Well, you know, if it is a rough introduction, but still, I do think that ultimately is accelerating. I think there's gonna be a pullback, and lots of people are gonna be like I could never work from home long term. But I do think that a lot of companies are gonna go well. Massive office spaces. Maybe we want to shy away from Ed, giving people more options to work from home, like many companies will see that certain teams just the same amount of work is getting down. No, the same work product. They're like,

Ah, interesting. These people were able to responsibly work without us having them confined in a specific space. So do you think that it is going to ultimately accelerate the adoption of technology and many years of life? It already has zoomed that my mom knows what Zoom is blind. I am crazy. Mind blowing, I never would have thought that my mom is is UnTech savvy is as you could be. And so I think that this has pushed even more technology, not less, and that probably is going to continue just accelerating it a little bit. Not that that was not a trend before. Same thing with distributed and remote work. The other thing that's interesting. I'm not sure if this is true or not. It really will last.

But I am wondering. I'm hearing a lot of people sentiment being Maybe living in the city is not as awesome. Maybe I want to live somewhere else and then work remotely right. Maybe I could have great career opportunities, but live somewhere that beautiful. That is nature that's posted to my family. That's not a stressful, and that's not as vulnerable to these types of things. Maybe that is the future I want to be in. And so I see a lot of desire from people to move away from big cities. And that is not something I was seeing before. I personally and so that's interesting. I wonder if that's gonna last. I worry about travel. I love to travel. I'm slightly worried about the future of travel in the next 23 years of difficult

to read. Um, Brian Chesky is letter. So Airbnb Airbnb that a huge round of layoffs? Yeah, like, uh, frankly, a heartbreaking letter toe, you know? Ah, huge part of the company. And a big part of it was kind of Things have changed for now. You know, we're gonna make it the route, but at the other end of this, we're not sure what travel and these sort of short term state is gonna look like we just don't know. And so I'm right there with you. Travel is gonna be different.

Yeah, I'm I'm not sure if it's gonna be in a better way. I'm afraid not. But we'll have to wait and see. But the thing I'm waiting for mostly right now is like over the next. I think 6 to 12 months, I'm waiting for some. I'm expecting some dominoes to fall globally that are gonna feel surprising because they're not in the headlines right now. They're not something we're all thinking about, but they have been affected by this in ways that will be impactful than like nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about, and then all of a sudden it's a big deal and it's impacting us. And I wonder what that's gonna look like. Also feel like we have just entered the stage of this pandemic where it's not like I think we all think it's humans in like story lines for movies like it. There's a beginning, a middle and an end, and I feel like February March was the beginning for most people,

the way they felt about things, and then April May now feels like the middle, and so people are thinking about the end like it's just one more act and we're out of this. And I wonder if it's gonna be like multiple movies one after the other if this is gonna be a trilogy but like a five part serious and so we're not going to just get out of this in the next, whatever. 36 months and then it's behind us is like a distant memory. And so it's gonna be very interesting times, I think, for a good amount of time ahead.

Maybe it'll be like the Lord of the Rings, where there's like eight endings, is ending scene after another ending scene, and it never quite ends.

But at least at least it had a happy ending.

Hopefully, we'll get a happy ending this time to anyway. Stelly was great catching up to you, catching up with you, hearing what's going on in your life and how you're navigating all this stuff at close and also just getting a snapshot of what it's like to be the founder of ah ah maturing company. A lot of the hackers were listening to this. They've been trying to start fledgling businesses, and now they've been like hit with this sort of existential crisis. Okay, Well, now it's riel, you know. Now I might not be able to get a job if this doesn't work out, or I might not be able to quit my job if I don't grow my company. What's your advice for people in that situation? Do you basically thinking differently about being Andy hackers

in general, I think this is a better time than ever before, probably or in recent history to start something versus to look for a stable career, right? I mean, let's be honest. I feel like trying to look for a company that has stability over the next five years and can give me a secure job that's not going to change. I'm not gonna be in jeopardy is harder now that it seemed in 2019 2018 2017 and so doing something entrepreneurial seem smart to me right now and investing of that. And then I'll just say one thing that we've been repeating the company. I think it might be also useful. I really am a quote machine today, Another good that I've been repeating a lot is it's not the strongest that survive. It's the most adaptable that do, and so I do think this beauty and being an indie hacker like everything that you have always seems to suck, right? If you like. If you were joking about this,

you run a community and you're like how we should run a SAS company. I run this asking like I wish I just run a podcast and community life would be so much easier. Like whatever we have, we cut in value. But being small fields, that waits like I'm in such a disadvantage against anybody out there. But not true. There's beauty in that. And being an Indian Hecker right now gives you such nimbleness. You could be so adaptable. You can change your mind in a second and change what you do. The numbers you need to drive are not that big to be meaningful and significant, and you can take risks. Maybe now that you didn't feel comfortable before because the opportunity cost was too high. Now, what is the thing that you're really losing out on where all these companies,

that offering amazing salaries and, like a 10 year contract where you're never gonna have to worry they're not out there right now, so might as well invest in you, take some risk on you and build something for yourself. So I think this is an amazing time to be in India. Hecker and being small means you travel less baggage of less responsibility is less commitments, so you can move faster and you have to just accomplish very little to start doing meaningful things and have a meaningful impact in your life. So I'm excited, fallen in the hackers out there. There's a romantic side of me that's like, Be nice to be in India, Hager. Right now it's just, like be adventurous. So I think it's a good time to be that and people should feel excited and confident about their position in the world right now. If there in India

I think that advice is spot on and it's happening, there's more in the actors right now than I've ever seen on the website. The numbers are just going up into the right people, realizing that there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of change. It's a good time sort of business and I think Andy hackers tend to be just kind of an ambitious sort of opportunity to crowd where they look on the bright side, and they're just, like are optimistic. They see crisis, and they see how they can change their lives for the better as a result of it. So Andy hackers take Sally's Message to heart. Realize you could be more nimble. You have all sorts of advantages that other companies don't have. If you want to change your mind on something, you don't have to write a sad letter and fired 3000 people. And it's a great place to be in Stelly. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having

me. Can you let listeners know where they go to learn more about, Ah, close and what you're up to? You?

Yes, so you can go to close up calm and visit all blawg. To check that out, you can send me an email. Stelea close dot com. We put together a few Resource is for people. They're trying to sell and acquire customers during this crisis, email templates of good emails and bad emails and strategies to get your first couple of customers during this time. If that's of interest, you could just send me an email Stelea close that calm. Stay in the Hecker Boco Crisis tool kit and I'll know what you need. I'll send it to you and then if you're into podcasts, as you mentioned heating, shot of the living legend and I, we have a pockets together called the Startup Chat to go check that out that this startup dot com yeah, if I can ever help anybody from the indie hacker community. Over the last couple of years, people have always stayed in touch with being reached out and asked questions at all of the community that you built. Always go for you to reach out and ask for help. I'll do my best.

I want to. Second the recommendation for startup shot cool podcast on the fact that heating is so focused on marketing in your sales, like the two of you have the bases covered and you always figure out like some new interesting topic to talk about. I don't how you guys keep coming up with so many things to talk about, but the episodes are short and sweet. I think if you listen to this podcast and you enjoy it, you're really gonna like the sort of chat. Thanks again Sally

for coming on. Hey, thank you so much,

listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, you should subscribe to the Indy Actors Podcast newsletter. You can find that Andy hackers dot com slash podcast. Every time there's a new episode, I do my best to read my thoughts, my takeaways and send them out and a newsletter. Once again, That's Andy hackers dot com slash podcast. Thank you so much listening, and I will see you next time.